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in the brilliant piece of story telling of the battle between Ford and Ferrari, we know that James May has an amazing skill at telling stories and relieving boredom with blunt honesty.
Take a watch and let us know what you think about the Captain Slow’s first episode.CLOSE Veronica and Billy Burkhart and their daughter, Juanita, 5, live in a $35-a-night room at Florence Inn on Dream Street. Recent shootings at Florence Inn and the nearby Super 8 Motel have added to the pressure of trying to find a better place to live. The Enquirer/Patrick Reddy
Police talk to a resident of the Florence Inn on Dream Street, where several officers shot a man who police say was shooting at the motel early Thursday. (Photo: Keith BieryGolick)
Juanita has lived on Dream Street on and off for most of the five years she's been alive.
Drugs, prostitution and other rampant criminal activity there make her mother wish she hadn't.
"We don't have no other choice," said Veronica Burkhart, 47, while knitting inside her motel room at the Florence Inn.
Outside her room, brown wood peeks through a circular scratch in the white door frame left by an Indiana man who shot at the motel last week. After allegedly pointing his gun at responding authorities, multiple Florence police officers opened fire on Jacques Poirer -- sending the 22-year-old to the hospital with critical injuries.
"It's not a safe place to raise a child," Burkhart said.
Billy Burkhart stands in the doorway of his room at the Florence Inn where a shooting recently occurred. At the lower left is a mark left by the projectile fired in his direction. (Photo: Patrick Reddy)
Burkhart and her husband, Billy Burkhart, have past evictions on their residential history and can't come up with the money required for a security deposit.
So Juanita's mom takes her to a relative's home on the weekends, grateful for any time away from the $35-a-night motel she calls a "pain in the butt."
"There are ambulances here for ODs (drug overdoses), fights -- stupid things. There are a lot of drugs," Burkhart said.
"The Florence Police and Boone County Sheriff have better things to do with their time than babysit this motel because of drugs and prostitution."
But police do spend an inordinate amount of time there.
Florence police responded to the motel an average of about five times a week in 2014, according to an Enquirer analysis of Boone County Communication Center 911 calls.
Police most often visited for reports of wanted people and domestic -- both physical and verbal -- situations.
Right behind those incidents were runs for drug activity, follow-up investigations and court summons.
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Florence police made more than 270 runs to the motel in 2014. That's 6.5 percent more runs than they made to the former Super 8 on Dream Street, where a 16-year-old boy shot and killed himself after a drug complaint led to a shootout with police.
Less than two weeks before the officer-involved shooting at the Florence Inn, police declared the hotel a "nuisance" -- just as they did to the Super 8.
City officials created an ordinance last year to curb some of this illegal activity.
Under the ordinance, properties and businesses in Florence can be declared a "chronic nuisance" when a property has three or more nuisance activities in a 60-day period, or 12 or more such activities in a 12-month period.
When that happens, the property owner is required to write a plan to the city that documents how to improve the property.
That happened with the Super 8 hotel. It hasn't happened yet with the Florence Inn.
"As to this date, we have not received a written plan from them," said Florence City Manager Richard Lunnemann.
The owner has until March 8, Lunnemann said.
If nothing happens, the hotel could be foreclosed, according to the city's ordinance.
But not everyone thinks the motel is a bad place.
Patrick Wilson stands in the doorway of his room at the Florence Inn. (Photo: Patrick Reddy)
"I like the place," said Patrick Wilson, 36.
"There was that shooting but that's a one-in-a-million chance."
He only started staying there recently, but said he enjoys the inexpensive rates.
The last update provided by the Florence Police Department about the shooting listed Poirer in critical, but stable condition. He was struck multiple times by police gunfire.
The Boone County Sheriff's Office, which has taken over the investigation, deferred questions about Poirer's condition to the hospital. Hospital officials were unable to be reached Friday morning.
Read or Share this story: http://cin.ci/1AjmB9b[Dispatch=나지연·김미겸·김효은기자] 그녀에게 그는 '쿵'으로 통한다. 그에게 그녀는 '탱'로 통한다. 이 두 단어를 합하면 '탱쿵'. 그래서 그녀는 자신의 인스타그램에 둘만의 암호를 남기기도 했다.
"탱쿵베뤼마취"
그녀의 이름은 태연이다. 별명은 '탱구'. 그의 이름은 백현이다. 그녀에겐 '배켠' 혹은 '백쿵'으로 통한다. 그리고 이 둘은, 스스로를 '탱쿵커플'이라 정의한다.
사랑에 빠진 태연(25)과 백현(22)의 이야기다.
'소녀시대'의 리더 태연과 '엑소K'의 보컬 백현이 열애중이다. 벌써 4개월째다. 'SM'을 대표하는 두 그룹, '소시'와 '엑소'의 주축이 은밀하게 사랑을 키우고 있다.
태연과 백현의 만남은 그 어떤 커플보다 비밀스러웠다. 그리고 조심스러웠다.
'디스패치'가 둘의 데이트를 처음 목격한 시각은 새벽 2시. 당시 '엑소'는 콘서트 연습에 한창이었다. 중국인 크리스의 이탈로 모든 것이 헝클어진 상태. 엑소는 새 동선을 익히기 위해 새벽까지 연습에 매달렸다.
아침부터 이어진 강행군, 지친 백현에게 힘이 된 건 단연 태연이었다. 새벽 2시, 태연은 백현의 귀가 시간에 맞춰 광진구에 있는 숙소로 향했다. 한적한 곳에서 픽업을 했고, 주변 골목에서 자동차 데이트를 즐겼다.
둘의 데이트는 은밀할 수 밖에 없었다. 그도 그럴 것이 두 사람은 최강의 아이돌 커플이다. 특히 엑소의 숙소 근처에는 항상 20여 명의 사생팬이 포진해 있다. 주변 시선을 의식하지 않을 수 없었다.
그럼에도, 뜨거웠다. 대한민국에서 가장 바쁜 아이돌이었지만, 일정이 비는 날이면 어김없이 만남을 가졌다.
엑소의 콘서트가 끝난 26일, 둘은 서울 외곽에서 드라이브를 즐겼다. 소시의 일본 출국을 앞둔 28일, 엑소의 숙소 근처에 차를 세우고 오붓한 시간을 보냈다.
6월에도 비밀 데이트는 계속됐다. 지난 2일, 태연은 일본 콘서트를 마치고 돌아왔다. 3일 오후에는 백현이 홍콩 팬미팅을 끝내고 귀국했다. 오랜만에 주어진 여유, 둘은 언제나처럼 드라이브를 했다.
데이트 패턴을 바꾸기도 했다. 2째주 이후, 백현이 태연의 숙소 근처를 찾아갔다. 태연은 유닛그룹 '태티서' 컴백 준비에 한창이었다. 바쁜 여친을 위해 백현이 움직인 것. 배려가 돋보였다.
두 사람의 인연은 약 3년 전으로 거슬러 올라간다. 2011년, 백현이 SM 연습생으로 발탁되며 인연을 맺었다. 서로에게 호감을 보이기 시작한 건 지난해 10월 경이다. 서로 각자의 팬을 자처했다.
둘을 잘 아는 지인은 "백현이 데뷔를 하며 태연을 이상형으로 꼽았고, 태연은 그런 백현을 귀여워했다"면서 "지난해 후반 서로에게 관심을 표했고, 올해 2월 경 본격적으로 만남을 가졌다"고 귀띔했다.
3살이라는 나이차는 큰 문제가 되지 않았다. 서로 친구처럼 지낸다는 전언. 또 다른 측근은 "백현이 태연에게 '탱구야'라고 부른다. 태연은 백현에게 '배켠', '배쿵'이라는 애칭을 쓴다. 친구같은 연인"이라고 전했다.
탱구와 배쿵, 합쳐서 탱쿵. '디스패치'가 본 태연과 백현은, 서로에게 늘 '탱큐'같은 존재였다.
<사진=김용덕·이승훈·송효진·서이준기자>Friday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh questioned the timing of the announcement former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had been charged by special counsel Robert Mueller for lying to the FBI.
Limbaugh suggested the timing of the news was to draw the attention away from passage of the tax bill among other items in the news, including the Matt Lauer firing from NBC and the “not guilty” verdict in the Kate Steinle murder trial.
“So there you have it – they’re all excited,” Limbaugh said. “Mueller did the deed on the right day. Mueller did the deed to sweep the tax cut deal off the table and to tick everybody off. This is, in Jonathan Martin’s opinion, the swamp banding together – the establishment coordinating its efforts to continue to destroy Trump and muddy the waters. The tax bill is going to pass. As far as [Mitch] McConnell and [Paul] Ryan are concerned, none of this today is a legal problem.”
“It’s a bit of a political problem, but it doesn’t present any legal problems to them or their tax bill,” he continued. “The tax bill is going to pass. But I don’t have any doubt that the timing of this thing today may not be coincidental. Just look at all the news it has swept off the front pages and look what it put back on the front page: ‘Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary.’”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poorNAVIGATING Greece's banks through the shoals of economic crisis is a labour worthy of Heracles. With merely mortal powers, the executives running the country's biggest banks have not done too bad a job. They entered the crisis with relatively prudent balance-sheets and several raised capital earlier this year, when markets were more forgiving. They are also starting to band together to cut costs and plump up their capital cushions.
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On August 29th investors cheered the merger of the country's second- and third-largest banks, Eurobank EFG and Alphabank, to form what will be Greece's biggest. They also managed to secure a promise of an investment from Qatar and announced plans to issue shares to raise capital.
The news prompted a sharp rally in Greek banking shares, which jumped by almost 30% as investors forecast more mergers. Although the euphoria was ephemeral—shares fell the following day—the deal may do something to help stabilise an embattled financial system.
The big advantages of the deal are that it will allow the banks to cut costs, mainly by trimming their branch network, and thus to improve capital ratios. Executives say that within three years the merged bank will reduce its annual costs by €650m ($936m). That would be enough to restore it to profitability if there were no further write-downs on its holdings of Greek government bonds.
Yet talk of profitability looks ambitious given the bleak economic outlook. The two banks posted an alarming rise in bad loans during the first half of the year. Executives say things have improved since, but the trend will not go properly into reverse as long as the Greek economy keeps contracting. Deposits have been flowing out of the system, in part because Greeks are running down their savings to make ends meet. That bodes ill for loan losses, too.
The risk of a big shock still looms as well. There are worries about whether enough holders of Greek government bonds will take part in the private-sector bail-out package agreed in July for it to take effect. This week the interest rate on one-year government bonds surged to 60%, suggesting that many investors think a default is imminent. Despite their best efforts, Greek banks still risk being swamped.Hamas issued a defiant message of support to the Palestinian public in Gaza on Thursday night, as the IDF announced the start of a ground operation in the Gaza Strip aimed at dismantling the Islamist group's military capabilities.
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Israel confirmed the ground operation had begun at precisely 10:30 pm on Thursday night, marking the next stage in the 10-day operation launched with the intent of halting the ongoing heavy rocket fire on large swathes of Israel.
Smoke rises over Gaza following an IAF strike (Photo: AP)
"We're with you in the field, and we aren't afraid of the ground assault." said a statement from Hamas.
The group also warned that it would not "sit with our arms crossed against Israel's stupid actions," said the group's spokesman. adding that "Israel hasn't learned the lesson from Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense."
Hamas military wing (Photo: EPA)
He was referring to the IDF's two previous operations aimed at quelling rocket fire on Israel from Gaza, in 2008 and 2012 respectively.
Furthermore, the spokesman said, Israel will pay a heavy price for the ground invasion. Another Hamas spokesman, Husam Badran, said that the resistance was totally prepared the IDF ground campaign, and vowed that there were signifiant surprises waiting for the enemy.
"We warn Netanyahu of the dreadful consequences of such a foolish act," Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.
Islamic Jihad sounded a similar note of defiance Thursday night. "The resistance is prepared for all eventualities and the rest of the ground operation," its spokesman said.
Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas spoke with the leader of Islamic Jihad on Thrsday night about attempts to reach a ceasefire agreement.
Ziyad al-Nakhalah, the deputy head of Islamic Jihad, told Lebanese television al-Mayadeen from Cairo that the ceasefire talks in which he is participating had yet to show signs of progress.
"So far, we are still treading water and are in the initial stages. I cannot say that there are yet any signs of a serious agreement," he said. "We demand that the ceasefire is undertaken simultaneously with the lifting of the blockade (on Gaza), and we are trying to revise the Egyptian initiative."
Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said Thursday night that the ceasefire efforts faced difficulties, but that the Palestinian president was not discouraged and the efforts were continuing.
The only way forward, Abu Rudeineh said, was to first stop the fire and then discuss the issues.
Abbas will meet Friday in Cairo with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and then continue to Istanbul for a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Tayip Erdogan as part of ceasefire efforts.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry strongly criticized Hamas on Thursday night, saying that the Islamist movement could have saved dozens of lives if it had agreed to the cease-fire proposed this earlier week by Cairo, which had been accepted by Israel.
"If Hamas had accepted the Egyptian proposal, it could save the lives of at least 40 Palestinians," said Sameh Shoukry, according to official news agency Mena.These words are dedicated to G. from the village of 'Ara, to H. from Jaffa, to Dr. S. from the Upper Galilee, to R. from Nazareth and to other friends from the Arab "sector." Occasionally they speak up; occasionally they keep quiet. Sometimes we agree, and sometimes we yell at each other. That's the way it is among friends.
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There is one more thing I know: I can count on each and every one of them blindly, even after not talking to each other for months. They are Palestinian and they are Israeli, and they belong to a minority which wants to be and is trying to be - and sometimes succeeding - part of the Israeli existence.
Uncertain Future When Jews become a minority in Israel Dror Ze'evi Op-ed: The right, which went out in droves to vote for Netanyahu for fear of the Arabs, brought the hope of Jewish independence to an end and laid the foundations for the development of a different entity – an Arab state. When Jews become a minority in Israel
According to previous surveys, more than 50 percent of young Israeli Arabs are in favor of volunteering for national service. They are trying to be loyal both to their people and to their state, and it's not easy. With people like Azmi Bishara, Hanin Zoabi and Raed Salah in the background, and when Father Gabriel Naddaf suffers from violence for supporting IDF enlistment, many prefer to keep a low profile.
For each person who supports Hamas or the Islamic State, there are hundreds who oppose terror. Israel must do much more to increase equality and integration (Photo: Roy Iddan)
They belong to quite a large group of people who have gained personal and professional success. They have done it thanks to the state and despite the hostility and discrimination from their surroundings and sometimes from the state as well.
When one of them, or those who are like them, voices his moderate views, he is ridiculed not only by the screamers in his own sector, but also by the screamers of the Left in the Jewish sector, who want their Arab angry and full of hatred against the apartheid state they paint in their wild imagination.
S., a hospital department head, and G., a successful businessman who has a company with which companies in central Israel prefer to work because it's better, despise such Jews. In their eyes, they are no different from the fascists in the Right, as both encourage hatred and hostility.
The apartheid claims are nonsense and a lie, and the Adalah organization's list of "apartheid laws," which stars in anti-Israel propaganda, is pure deception. There isn't a single law there which smells of apartheid.
Nonetheless, Israel is far from being perfect. Not all of the arguments made by Israel's Arabs are groundless. We should do more and we must do more, much more, for equality and integration. Not that it will change anything as far as Zoabi or Salah are concerned. They will keep spreading poison. But we must not despair because of the inciters. It will be their victory.
So why do they vote for a hostile party, once Balad and now the Joint List? Well, not everyone who votes for these parties is necessarily anti-Israel. This vote is the result of one's identity. Not every Jew who votes Likud or Bayit Yehudi hates Arabs. And in any event, about a third of the Right's voters would have supported a far-reaching compromise in exchange for true peace, which is slightly hard to achieve. So the Arab vote is largely a mirror image of the Jewish vote.
The "other" Arabs are not the majority, but they are not a small minority either. They care about the language and attitude of the Jewish majority. One of them wrote to me, after I wrote about the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during the Holocaust, that those days in Paris and in Northern African countries there were Muslim righteous among the nations who were busy saving Jews, and these days there are Muslim intellectuals who write against anti-Semitism in a blatant manner. He is right. We must not ignore the inciters, and we must not ignore the sane, enlightened stream which fights racism.
While the situation of Israel's Arabs is relatively better than the situation of Muslims in Europe, it's not enough. Israel must do more, much more, to increase equality and participation.
outlawing the Islamic Movement is actually an opportunity, because it requires a clear policy towards the loyal majority.
Only racists exempt the Arabs from being responsible for their situation. But the ball, we must not forget, is also in our court.Video of the Day 1: 4K GoPro Edit – Winter Skiing Preview
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A quick 4K GoPro Edit with all my best winter clips! Nothing better than the mountains and a bluebird ski day.
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All filming was done with the GoPro HERO4, and editing was done with Adobe Premier Pro and After Effects.
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Kristian Bell
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Modern Jesus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8e1sSNsf44
Featured mini edit from Austria:
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Thanks for watching.U.S. bronze medalist Nicholas Goepper celebrates during the men’s freestyle skiing slopestyle medal ceremony at the Sochi medals plaza during the Winter Olympics on Feb. 13, 2014. (Photo: ANTONIN THUILLIER)
It was too late to get a Valentine's Day date, but that wasn't going to stop Nick Goepper.
The 19-year-old Lawrenceburg skier, who won a bronze medal in Thursday's slopestyle event at the Sochi Winter Olympics, went on NBC's Today Show and made sure everyone knew he was single.
He and the show's Twitter account asked women to respond using the hashtag #iwanttodatenick. He told Us Weekly that he will choose one female fan from his social media feed to go on a date after the Olympics. She will be flown to wherever Goepper is training at the time.
Have fun with this and get creative! Looking forward to spending a day with someone awesome! http://t.co/yKwUXrMSj3pic.twitter.com/bQ1euqNmGZ — Nick Goepper (@NickGoepper) February 14, 2014
"This is kind of a tryout," he told Us Weekly. "They post something creative and something to catch my attention."
He said details of the date would be a surprise. Maybe dinner and a sleigh ride, he told the magazine.
"Maybe some skiing. We'll see."
It will be a tough choice. He was getting some creative responses:
They say dating is a numbers game...so can I get yours? Ps. Will you be my Valentine? #IWantToDateNick — Maddie Cutten (@MaddieMay1228) February 14, 2014
Baby, you must be a curling broom, 'cause you just swept me off my feet. ;) #IWantToDateNick#SochiTODAY#Sochi2014 — Breanna Cassel (@LoveRoseCastle) February 14, 2014
My daughter would love to ask you on a date. Look she's already ready for you #iwanttodatenick :) pic.twitter.com/InX8fYjMDN — Christine Hughes (@hugheschris55) February 14, 2014
We're soaring, flying. There's not a star in heaven that we can't reach! @NickGoepper#iwanttodatenick pick me %26.... pic.twitter.com/h4R8TROzYn — Talia Saraf (@TaliaSaraf) February 14, 2014
Goepper's friends say he likes to go big with his freeskiing tricks. He did so with this own Twitter plea, too:
What Could top a Bronze Medal Win for @NickGoepper? Only if @taylorswift13 would be his Valentine! #OlympicValentinepic.twitter.com/hrTfDuBAsD — NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) February 14, 2014
Goepper met the female vocalist at the recent Golden Globes.
Whoever wins this contest will likely have to be accepted by sister Kasey. The siblings had an exchange on Twitter about Nick wanting to find love in Russia.In consideration of Palermo’s upcoming mayoral election scheduled for May 6th and 7th, Times of Sicily aims to provide information about candidates seeking this position. As part of such, today we feature Leoluca Orlando by publishing his curriculum vitae kindly submitted by Leila Orlando.
* * * * *
LEOLUCA ORLANDO
Member of the Italian Parliament
Speaker of the Italia dei Valori’s party
Vice –President of ELDR party (European Liberal Democratic and Reform)
President of the Sicilian Renaissance Institute
Already former Mayor of Palermo, former Member of the European and Sicilian Regional Parliaments
Leoluca Orlando was born in Palermo in 1947, is married and has two daughters. A lawyer and Professor of Regional Public Law at the University of Palermo.
He studied and lived for some years in Heidelberg, in the Federal Republic of Germany
He worked as international consultant for OECD in Paris
From 1978 to 1980, as legal advisor to Piersanti Mattarella, President of the Sicilian Region, until he was killed by the Mafia in 1980.
Political activity
In 1980 he was elected City Councillor for the Christian Democratic Party and in 1985 became Mayor of Palermo. During his five-year administration, Orlando headed a city government made up of movements and parties of the political Left, which constituted a severe break with the political practices of the past. In the same period, which became known as the “Palermo Spring”, he denounced the peril represented by the mafioso economy, the channel through which the Mafia families exercised their power with the complicity of public officials, and promoted a substantial growth of the antimafia movement within the local society.
In 1990 Leoluca Orlando ran as top candidate for the Christian Democratic Party in the elections for the city government and, though boycotted by national leaders of his own party, he was elected with the largest number of votes (71,000) among all candidates. His efforts to renew his party from within met however an ever increasing resistance, and in 1991 he left it and found the Movement for Democracy “La Rete” (“The Network”).
The main aim of the new political movement was to bring moral issues back into Italian politics through the so-called “transversality” (“multipartisanship”), i.e., the participation of all the positive forces of the various political parties in the struggle toward the creation of a more democratic society. As a candidate of this new movement, he was elected to the Sicilian Regional Parliament in 1991 and to the Italian National Parliament in 1992.
In 1993, in the first direct mayoral elections ever held in Italy, he was elected Mayor of Palermo with 75% of the votes, and immediately got under way some reform to banish the economic interest of organized crime from the Municipality. Specifically, he brought to conclusion the process of rescinding all the contracts for the maintenance of public facilities that the City had assigned to companies suspected of belonging to the Mafia families. He had already started this process during his first term of office, but his action had been hampered by the fact that at that time the mayors were subject to the control and the veto power of political forces often conditioned by organized crime.
Moreover, he gave impulse to a new multi-faceted project of civic renewal which, through a variety of programs including cultural and school-based initiatives for the promotion of a new culture of lawfulness, has effectively contributed to free the citizens from the cultural hegemony of the Mafia in a process which has become known as “The Palermo Renaissance”.
In 1994 he was elected Deputy to the European Parliament, where he was Vice President of the Committee for the entry of Malta into the European Union; member of the Committee for Public Liberties and Home Affairs; member of the Committee for Regional Politics; and substitute member of the Committee for Safety and Disarmament. He also worked extensively in favor of the Mediterranean playing a more important role in the European Union, and for the adoption of a EU project against organized crime which was inspired by newly adopted Italian antimafia legislation as well as by the Sicilian experience.
On the mayoral direct elections of November 1997, Orlando was confirmed Mayor of Palermo with 58.57% of the total poll for a second (and last, according to the Italian electoral law) four-year term.
In May 1999 he joined “The Democrats”, a political party founded by Romano Prodi.
In December 2000 he resigned from his office as mayor in order to run for the regional elections of June 2001, where he received about one million votes and was elected member of the Sicilian Parliament and minority leader.
In April 2006 he is elected deputy of the National Parliament.
Since July 2006 he is the speaker of the Italia dei Valori’s party
From October 25th 2006 till April 2008 he has been the President of the parliamentary Commission of the Italian Parliament for regional affairs.
In Mai 2008 he is re-elected deputy of the Italian Parliament.
Since March 2009 he is the President of the parliamentary Commission of inquiry in sanity’s field in the Italian Parliament
In June 2009 he is elected deputy of the European Parliament.
November 2009 he is elected vice –President of ELDR party (European Liberal Democratic and Reform) during the Congress in Barcelona.
Honours and awards and commissions
In 1994, for his participation in the German film “Gezählte Tage” (“Just a Few Days”) he was awarded the Fernsehen Film Preis (Television Film Prize) as the best actor of the film which won the first prize that year. He has participated in numerous other films abroad, among others, the Film “A Sicilian Odyssey” by Jenna Maria Constantine, which won the first prize at the International Film Festival in New York in 2009.
From June 1998 to January 2001 he was President of the Car-Free Cities Club, the European alliance of the cities that seek to promote a sustainable urban mobility.
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In December 1999 he was appointed President of the newly created non profit organization ”The Sicilian Renaissance Institute”.
In April 2000 the group of democratic and liberal parties in the European Parliament awarded him the European Civic Prize “for his struggle against organized crime, and his engagement in favour of the civic renewal of his city”
In May 2000, he was granted the honorary citizenship of the Los Angeles County, in the USA.
In July 2000, at Philadelphia (USA), the American Federation of Teachers conferred on him the Bayard Rustin Human Rights Award “for bringing the freedom of orderly civic society to Palermo, and for sharing the ‘lessons of Palermo’ with citizens and governments in societies that are struggling with similar threats to democracy and human rights”.
[ … ]
… he was conferred the Pushkin Prize 2001 “for his outstanding achievements in the promotion of culture” in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Since 2002 he is the national President of FIDAF (Italian Federation of American Football)
[ … ]
In November 2004 he obtained a degree honoris causa in German philosophy from the University of Trier.
In February 2005 he is awarded of the international prize “G. Pitrè from the International Department of Etnological-History of the University of Palermo
In June 2005 he is awarded from the city of Münster Osnabrück of the Erich Maria Remarque peace prize
In November 2005 he is awarded from the city of Teramo of the national prize “Paolo Borsellino”.
[ … ]
In 2007 Founding member of ECFR-European Council on Foreign Relations
March 2008 he is awarded from the city of Göttingen (Deutscher Altphilologenverband) of the Humanismus prize
September 2008 he is awarded from the city of Cologne of the Konrad Adenauer prize
Selected publications
In addition to several scientific papers, Leoluca Orlando’s publications include the following monographic studies on legal subjects:
Contributo allo studio del coordinamento amministrativo (A Contribution to the Study of Administrative Coordination), Milano, 1974.
Teoria organica e Stato apparato (Organic Theory and State Apparatus), Palermo, 1979.
He is also the author of the following books dealing with politics and his own political commitment:
Palermo, Mondadori, Milano, 1990.
Fede e Politica (Faith and Politics), Marietti, Genova, 1992.
Fighting the Mafia and Renewing Sicilian Culture, Encounter Books, San Francisco, 2001.
Ich sollte der nächste sein, Herder Verlag, Freiburg, 2002.
Hacia una cultura de la legalidad–La experiencia siciliana, Pontificia Università Catolica del Perù, 2003.
Der sizilianische Karren, Ammann Verlag, Zürich, 2004.
Arabic edition of the book “Fighting the mafia and renewing Sicilian culture” edited by The Lebanese Foundation for Permanent Civil Peace – Beirut, December 2004.
Hacia una cultura de la legalidad–La experiencia siciliana, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Mexico D.F, March 2005.
Leoluca Orlando racconta la mafia, UTET, Torino, 2007.
Leoluca Orlando erzählt die Mafia, Herder Verlag, september 2008.
Ich sollte der nächste sein, Herder Verlag, Freiburg, new edition, 2010.
Courtesy of Leila Orlando× Close Important Takata Airbag Safety Recall Information
Update - 3/2016, Expanded to include 2008 model year Corolla/Corolla Matrix and 2008-2010 model year Lexus SC 430 vehicles
Toyota has initiated Safety Recalls for certain Toyota and Lexus vehicles equipped with Takata Front Passenger Airbag Inflators and one Toyota model equipped with a Takata Driver's Airbag Inflator. The subject vehicles are equipped with airbag inflators which may have been manufactured in such a way as to have a potential for the intrusion of moisture over time. Depending on the circumstances, this could create excessive internal pressure when the airbag is deployed and cause the inflator to rupture. In the event of an inflator rupture, metal fragments could pass through the airbag cushion material, striking the vehicle occupants and potentially resulting in serious injury or death.
If you have questions or concerns related to this important safety recall, please contact your Toyota/Lexus dealer or the Customer Assistance team whose contact information is noted in the Frequently Asked Questions links below. These links will also provide the most up-to-date information about this important safety recall.
Parts are currently available for repairs. We request that you contact your local dealer for the remedy as soon as possible.
Driver Airbag Inflator
Toyota has initiated a nationwide Safety Recall action related to the Driver's dual-stage airbag inflators in 2004 – 2005 model year RAV4 vehicles. This is the only Toyota model in the United States and United States Territories involving Driver's airbag inflators. If your vehicle is involved, the Driver's airbag inflator will be replaced at no charge to you at an authorized Toyota Dealer.
Nationwide Safety Recall F0L: 2004 - 2005 RAV4
Front Passenger Airbag Inflator
Toyota has initiated two separate Safety Recall actions related to Takata Front Passenger airbag inflators on various Toyota models and one Lexus model. One is a nationwide recall, DSF (Toyota)/DSC (Lexus), and the second recall is regional, focused on the Gulf Coast and other areas within the United States and United States Territories with consistently high absolute humidity, E04 (Toyota)/ELG (Lexus).
A vehicle may be included in either the nationwide Takata inflator recall activity or the regional inflator recall. In both recalls, if your vehicle is involved, the front Passenger airbag inflator will be replaced at no charge to you at an authorized Toyota Dealer or authorized Lexus Dealer for the Lexus model involved.
Only the models and model years listed below are equipped with the inflators subject to these recalls.
Nationwide Safety Recall DSF/DSC: (Front Passenger) 2003-2008 Corolla
2003-2008 Corolla Matrix
2003-2006 Tundra
2002-2007 Sequoia
2002-2010 Lexus SC430
Regional Safety Recall E04/ELG: (Front Passenger) 2003-2008 Corolla
2003-2008 Corolla Matrix
2003-2006 Tundra
2002-2007 Sequoia
2002-2010 Lexus SC430
High absolute humidity is related to higher temperature, southern coastal areas and is not the same as high relative humidity. Test results from the inflators recovered from consistently high absolute humidity areas have shown a possible elevated risk for Passenger airbag inflator rupture.
If your vehicle is not located in, or has not ever been registered in, the areas with consistently high absolute humidity (such as, Florida, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Gulf Coast and US Territories), your vehicle will be included in the nationwide safety recall.
We will notify you directly by first class mail when parts are released in your area and invite you in to your local dealer for the remedy. However, if your vehicle is part of this safety recall and you have not yet received a letter indicating parts are available, you may at this time schedule an appointment with your |
stations filled the parking lot of his church across the street from Borough Hall.
STORY: Fire consumes N.J. boardwalk rebuilt after Sandy
STORY: N.J. officials vow to rebuild boardwalk — again
"I said to them on Sunday: It's your faith that's saving me," Rossell said of his parishioners. "I admire the faith of these people; they've been through a storm, now a fire up there. And so that's what it's about. I'm up there, expounding, preaching, the faith of these people. They come back and they're faithful. … This is what faith is about. I mean, you see the example of these people, they could very easily be discouraged and give up."
Fueled by wind, the boardwalk fire burned north for hours Thursday, devouring entire blocks before firefighters could stop its progress.
While weather did not cause the fire, strong winds from the north spread it, said David A. Robinson, the New Jersey state climatologist at Rutgers University.
Contributing: Nicholas Huba and Todd B. Bates, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1eLe6ixLarry Alan Burns, the federal district judge in San Diego who just last month sentenced Tuscon shooter Jared Lee Loughner to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years in federal prison, is no darling of the gun control movement.
Burns is a self-described conservative, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, and he agrees with the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia vs. Heller, which held that the 2nd Amendment gives Americans the right to own guns for self-defense. He is also a gun owner.
But while sentencing Loughner in November, Burns questioned the need for high-capacity magazines like the one Loughner had in his Glock, and said he regretted how the Federal Assault Weapons Ban was allowed to lapse in 2004. On Thursday, reacting to last week’s mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., Burns publicly called for a new assault weapons ban “with some teeth this time,” in an op-ed published by The Los Angeles Times.“Ban the manufacture, importation, sale, transfer and possession of both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” Burns wrote. “Don’t let people who already have them keep them. Don’t let ones that have already been manufactured stay on the market. I don’t care whether it’s called gun control or a gun ban. I’m for it.”
Burns argued that while the ban that expired in 2004 wasn’t very stringent, “at least it was something.” Half of the nation’s deadliest shootings, Burns pointed out, have occurred since the ban expired. In his view, high-capacity magazines fall outside the scope of good-faith debates about gun violence.
“I get it.” Burns wrote. “Someone bent on mass murder who has only a 10-round magazine or revolvers at his disposal probably is not going to abandon his plan and instead try to talk his problems out. But we might be able to take the ‘mass’ out of ‘mass shooting,’ or at least make the perpetrator’s job a bit harder.”
Here’s how Burns concluded his piece:
There is just no reason civilians need to own assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Gun enthusiasts can still have their venison chili, shoot for sport and competition, and make a home invader flee for his life without pretending they are a part of the SEAL team that took out Osama bin Laden. It speaks horribly of the public discourse in this country that talking about gun reform in the wake of a mass shooting is regarded as inappropriate or as politicizing the tragedy. But such a conversation is political only to those who are ideologically predisposed to see regulation of any kind as the creep of tyranny. And it is inappropriate only to those delusional enough to believe it would disrespect the victims of gun violence to do anything other than sit around and mourn their passing. Mourning is important, but so is decisive action. Congress must reinstate and toughen the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Read the whole thing here.Posted by
Kamal Hylton,
March 28, 2014 Email
Kamal Hylton
On Twitter:
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First Thoughts
A postponement due to weather and Olympic Stadium roof concerns in combination with a 2-0 loss in the home opener to the Seattle Sounders has made for a horrendous start to the 2014 Montreal Impact season, with the club losing their third straight game and currently sitting near the bottom of the Eastern Conference.
However, Frank Klopas is finally able to incorporate his star forward into the starting XI this weekend, as last season’s 20 goal scorer in Marco Di Vaio has completed serving his three match suspension and he will lead the line when the Impact travel to Chester, Pennsylvania and PPL Park to battle the Philadelphia Union.
Keep Thinking
Philly has been one of the surprise teams in this early part of the season. Even putting their 2-1 away defeat to Columbus Crew to one side, the additions that coach John Hackworth and the organization have made have seen the club combine toughness with technique. The improvement of the team can be summed up when looking at the midfield and the building relationship between U.S. International Maurice Edu and Frenchmen Vincent Nogueira. Both players have shown the ability to protect the back line but the versatility of both players to also contribute to attacking play has given Hackworth more freedom tactically and allowed the likes of Sebastien Le Toux, Christian Maidana and Leo Fernandes to express themselves.
The approach Klopas takes in this match with Di Vaio now eligible to play will be interesting, as although he's all but assured his place up front, the veteran goal poacher will still need time to build up the natural chemistry that comes with live game action. In the first three matches Montreal have played a 4-2-3-1/4-3-2-1 formation but going with a two forward formation with Di Vaio and Andrew Wenger could be an option going up against a central defensive pairing of Amobi Akugo and Austin Berry.
Unlike the usual narrative that would accompany these two clubs, the key to this match won't be about physicality or keeping defensive shape. The upper hand will go to the team that can get more quality from the wide positions and take advantage of set pieces.
Final Thoughts
Admittedly this has been rough start to the season for Montreal, who have arguably had one of the most difficult opening schedules in the league. With Di Vaio back in the fold, one could see the Impact pick up their first points of the season.
Prediction
Montreal Impact 1-1 Philadelphia UnionImage copyright Getty Images
On Thursday the New York Times and the Washington Post both published articles digging deep into the Clinton family finances involving the Clinton Foundation - and the possible conflicts of interest they have created.
In the Times Jo Becker and Mike McIntire write about a Russian energy conglomerate's purchase of a Canadian company with uranium mining interests in the US and Kazakhstan. It's a detailed, 4,000-word investigation with a lot of moving parts, but the gist is clear.
The chairman of the Canadian company that profited from the sale, Ian Telfer, donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, the charitable organisation set up after Bill Clinton left the presidency - most of which was not reported publicly. The founder of the company, Frank Giustra, also donated $31m (£20.5m) to the foundation and flew Mr Clinton to Kazakhstan in 2005, at a time when the nation was considering whether to grant uranium mining rights to Canadian company.
In 2010, at roughly the same time, the Russian company, Rosatom, was attempting to purchase the Canadian company, Mr Clinton travelled to Moscow and was paid $500,000 by a bank affiliated with Rosatom.
The US government, including the Department of State then headed by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, had to approve the Russian purchase, as it involved acquiring strategic mineral rights on US soil. It did.
"Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown," Becker and McIntire write. "But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250m in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation's donors."
Those "special ethical challenges" were scrutinised in the Post piece, as well, which reveals more details about the vast sums of money in speaking fees Mr Clinton has amassed since his presidency ended in 2001.
Mr Clinton was paid "more than $100m for speeches between 2001 and 2013", the Post notes, including "at least" $26m by groups that also donated to the Clinton Foundation, such as financial firms often considered villains on the populist left, like Goldman Sachs and CitiGroup.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Bill Clinton received $26m in speaking fees from groups that also donated to the Clinton Foundation
"The multiple avenues through which the Clintons and their causes have accepted financial support have provided a variety of ways for wealthy interests in the United States and abroad to build friendly relations with a potential future president," writes the Post's Rosalind S Helderman.
Meanwhile Reuters is reporting that the Clinton Foundation will refile "at least five" of its past tax returns to correct errors involving unreported or over-reported of millions of dollars donations from governments.
These stories come on the heels of a Sunday article in the New York Times detailing the growing buzz surrounding an upcoming book about the Clinton Foundation finances, Clinton Cash, by conservative scholar Peter Schweizer.
The work, according to reports, will contain numerous examples of donations to the foundation or speaking fees given to Mr Clinton followed by US government actions that were beneficial to the donating parties.
It appears the book will not contain concrete evidence of actions taken by Mrs Clinton in exchange for donations - but concerns over an appearance of impropriety are stoking interest by media outlets and attacks from Mrs Clinton's political adversaries.
The Times story also reveals that Mr Schweizer's publisher, HarperCollins, has provided advanced copies of the book to both the Post and the Times, which are relying on its research in their own investigations.
In Thursday's article the Times authors state that "some of the connections" between the Canadian energy company and the Clinton Foundation were "unearthed" by Schweizer and that the paper has "scrutinised his information and built upon it with its own reporting".
According to the Post's Helderman, Schweizer's work did not contribute to her story, which "is based on reporting and documents collected independently".
Bloomberg's Leonid Bershidsy writes that the most disturbing element to these stories is attempts by the Clintons to keep some of the donations secret. At the time Rosatom's purchase of US uranium interests wasn't considered a significant deal - the Wyoming mine in question was barely producing any nuclear material and its uses are solely commercial, not military.
"One can only guess at the reasons the contributions, totaling millions of dollars, were kept quiet, but perhaps the idea was to avoid precisely the kind of story the New York Times produced, hinting at a Clinton family interest in helping a businessman friend," he writes.
Mrs Clinton "was clearly worried about the optics of some of the things she and her husband were doing and tried to keep them out of the public eye," he continues. "As is usual in such cases, the cover-up drew her more unwanted attention than her actions warranted."
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush will have his finances scrutinised in an upcoming book
Brian Fallon, a spokesperson for the Clinton campaign, tells the Times the suggestions of impropriety were "baseless".
There is not a shred of evidence "supporting the theory that Hillary Clinton ever took action as secretary of state to support the interests of donors to the Clinton Foundation", he adds.
Clinton Cash is set to be released on 5 May, and this is almost certainly not the last of both the Post's and the Times's investigations into Clinton finances. Expect more stories that focus on the appearance and possibilities of conflicts of interest - but with no firm evidence of quid pro quos, such as Mrs Clinton's direct or unexpected involvement in altering US policy.
Fox News, another outlet granted access to Schweizer's research, is planning an hour-long report on Friday titled The Tangled Clinton Web.
As the US presidential campaign heats up, the issue of questionable financial dealings will likely not be limited to Mrs Clinton, however. According to Bloomberg's Joshua Green, Schweizer is also working on a book about the finances of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who is almost certainly seeking the Republican presidential nomination.
"What we're doing is a drill-down investigation of Jeb's finances similar to what we did with the Clintons in terms of looking at financial dealings, cronyism, who he's been involved with," Schweizer tells Green. "We've found some interesting things."
He adds that he will also share his Bush research with interested media outlets.
Given the level of partisan rancour that's already been directed in support of and against Schweizer, it'll be interesting to see how his next book is received.“For the longest time melee has been a very single player game. It's always just been a'me myself and I against the world' type of thing, but I feel like as we progress as a community you kinda see partnerships start to form.”
“I think we had a really, really good 2016. I feel like we've been pretty much on the come up since we started doing this, so obviously it takes time; like it will still take time and effort from both of us working together, to keep seeing results. But I think at the rate that we're growing and improving I think we can do it. Before, our major goal was to get rank 1 in the world with EVO and we accomplished that way sooner than we thought we would […] like we obviously did our best to prepare for it but it wasn't an outcome we expected. We were ready for the long game. So I feel we're kinda ahead of the long game we predicted for ourselves.”
“The start of the coaching thing was after CEO 2015 where he was kinda getting rocked at the time. He had just lost to Professor Pro and Lucky, he had gotten demolished by Mango, Armada and Leffen, and he came up to me after this and he said, ‘Dude, I think I might retire, I don't think Puff can do it—Fox is too good.’ At the time I could clearly see the flaws in his play because I had known him his entire life, and I'm like, 'I don't think so Juan, I'm pretty sure you can do it. I'm pretty sure Puff can do it, we just have to clean it up.’”
“Juan and I started playing at the same time back in middle school [and] we were the best in our school. We were crazy rivals, we would just go and play Melee for eight hours, maybe play some ping pong, then back to Melee. We were just really competitive with each other so I've seen his Puff evolve and I know it better than anyone.”
“When we start out we'll watch VODs and see: which ways are you approaching that's getting punished, which ways are you opening up. We look at things like that and try to work those out and figure out what we can do instead. We look for what is safe, what will work every time. It's the same thing with punishes. When you missed this edge guard here and they came back and won, what happened? Or when you were in the middle of a combo here and you drop something, they hit you back and they got the stock—why? It really is about cleaning up the game and finding the stuff that always works. And that's why I like the platform tech chasing he does now, and the edge guarding is so much better. That’s why we started to think about the techniques that are guaranteed to work every time.”
“I think [mental coaching] has been really, really important especially leading up to EVO. I think Juan does really well when he's an underdog, but it was really hard for him when he got close to being number one because he's wanted it for so long. It's like he was desperate. So you could see it in his play. As soon as he got closer he started going for these desperation edge guards and just wanted to finish it. All of these thoughts were kind of jumbling in his mind and you really can’t do that when you're playing Melee. You have to be patient, calm and calculated. You almost have to be thinking about nothing so you don’t get hindered from playing the best that you can by every thought that comes into your mind like 'Oh what are people gonna think'. So I feel like I've had to read up a lot on sports psychology and things like that. To really kinda try and get him to perform even when there is a lot of pressure from both himself and from all the fans.”
“If he doesn't perform well, or he's missing a lot of stuff that we had talked about or worked on, I feel responsible too. I feel like it really is a team effort. When he won EVO we were both popping off and pretty much almost in tears; it's definitely a group thing because it's something we've been working on together this whole time. If he loses I feel like it's my fault and there's something I could have done better, and when he wins it's like 'Yes, we did it!’”
“I feel like as a sport develops and things get more and more competitive you take every advantage that you can. Some people are lucky to live in an amazing Smash region like SoCal, and they have all those resources. Other people, like Armada, have to practice on their own because they don’t have as many resources. When you’re trying to be the best, you take every possible advantage you can get. It’s a game of inches, and one small advantage can make or break a title challenge. So I think as esports keeps growing and getting bigger, people will begin to see the value of coaches and teams will start including coaches more and more. It’s another advantage that can help a player succeed, and I feel like Juan and I have done a good job at showing how effective it can be.”
“In the year 20XX every top player has a coach and an analyst. Hopefully that's the way it keeps going, Smash keeps growing, and someday that can happen.”
Super Smash Brothers Melee is one of the remaining competitive single player games in esports. Along with FGC titles such as Street Fighter or Guilty Gear, Melee is a competition of execution, mind games, and man to man combat. Team Liquid’s very own Luis “Crunch” Rosias however, has a different viewpoint on the title, which has been expanding at an incredible rate over the past several years.As the first official Melee coach, Crunch is the man behind the camera giving guidance to Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma in the most successful of all these partnerships thus far. Hungrybox is arguably the number one Melee player in the world right now, and after coming off a first place finish at EVO this year, Crunch is feeling hopeful about their future as a duo.When the two started working together, Hbox was struggling with his game. Under the weight of Fox (the widely accepted best character in SSBM), Hbox felt that Jigglypuff (his only choice of character) simply didn’t have what it takes to compete at the highest level, to a point where he even considered retiring from competition. Crunch sees the improvement from that point until now as a direct outcome of their hard work together.While this is easier said than done, Crunch found confidence in his connection with Hbox both inside and outside of the game. The two had been lifelong friends, and even rivals at a point through middle school when they were first introduced to the game.Herein lies one of the strongest aspects of Crunch and Hbox’s working relationship: Crunch’s affinity to the strongest Puff in the world. Not only has Crunch watched Hbox’s entire growth as a player firsthand, he has picked apart and analyzed hundreds of hours of his game footage. Crunch understands Hbox as he is within the game. His habits, his tricks, his exploits—all of these things make up Hbox’s competitive presence, and in many ways are a product of Crunch’s design.Crunch’s role as a coach goes beyond in-game polishing, however. Melee is a game that is highly demanding both technically and mentally, all at a blistering pace. If two top players are battling it out it often comes down to who is in the better state at that time, or who can play at a higher percentage of their possible skill. This is an incredibly hard thing not only to achieve but maintain over the course of a weekend. Players have to contend with tournament schedules running for 12+ hour days, little sleep, and stressful conditions. This forces Crunch to place a high priority on his mental and out-of-game training for Hbox.On top of Crunch’s need to keep Hungrybox functioning at his best, he himself is familiar with the high emotions that come with the competition. As a duo that has put so much time and effort into their craft, Crunch feels just as responsible for the outcome as Hbox himself.Looking to the future, Crunch anticipates a need for organized coaching as the infrastructure in Smash increases. The game has grown at unprecedented rates within the past five years, from the huge popularity of The Smash Documentary to the first teams that began to pick up top players. Beyond just its heightened production and entry into esports, the competition in Smash is as breakneck as ever with players able to dedicate their entire lives to improving thanks to sponsorships and team support—coaching is the logical progression.With a laugh, Crunch remarks on the changes in the community. They've come a long way; from all day Melee and ping pong sessions with his middle school rival, to the Las Vegas Convention Center at EVO 2016 with his teammate and best friend, surrounded by screaming fans. Even after such a strong year, there’s more to come from Liquid Smash’s dynamic duo, and after Hbox’s decision to leave his job and pursue Melee full time, the bar has been set even higher for CrunchBox.A TEENAGE motorist was told to remove an England flag from his car by a police officer because it could be offensive to immigrants.
Ben Smith, 18, was driving back home to Ingram Road in Melksham on Thursday evening after filling up with petrol, when the officer stopped him on a routine patrol.
He checked the tax disc and tyres on his Vauxhall Corsa but when he noticed the flag of St George on the parcel shelf he told Mr Smith to take it down.
Mr Smith, who works for G Plan Upholsterers on Hampton Park West, said: "He saw the flag and said it was racist towards immigrants and if I refused to take it down I would get a £30 fine.
"I laughed because I thought he was joking, but then I realised he was serious so I had to take it down straight away. I thought it was silly - it's my country and I want to show my support for my country."
Mr Smith had recently installed new speakers in the parcel shelf of his car and wanted to cover them up so they did not get stolen.
He used the flag and laid it out flat on the shelf so it was not obscuring his view out of the rear window.
But it was only there a couple of days before he was stopped by the officer at about 9.30pm close to Melksham Enterprise Park and made to take it down.
He said he is used to getting stopped by the police because he is a young male driver and is often mistaken for a boy racer'.
But he thought it was "a bit strange" to be asked to take down the England flag when the officer found nothing else wrong with his car.
PC Dave Cooper, of Chippenham Road Policing Unit, said he had never come across an officer asking someone to remove an England flag from their car because it could be racist.
He added: "It all depends on the context of a stop. If they are going past a lot of Polish people, for instance, and abusing them, then we possibly would ask them to take the flag down."
He said there would be no police log of Mr Smith having been stopped with details of what was said to him, as there was nothing wrong with his car.
He added the officer could have been based anywhere around the county and just made an independent stop.The Senate voted 94-6 Tuesday to confirm Rod Rosenstein as deputy attorney general.
Rosenstein will be in charge of overseeing the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, including potential connections between Trump campaign officials and Moscow.
He could also decide whether the Justice Department will pursue charges against current or former Trump officials.
Rosenstein will face near immediate pressure from lawmakers to appoint a special prosecutor to oversee the investigation and any potential charges that spin out of it.
Top Democrats, who announced their support for Rosenstein this week, signaled that they think Rosenstein will ultimately side with them.
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Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer Charles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerBrennan fires back at'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview Harry Reid: 'I don't see anything' Trump is doing right MORE (D-N.Y.) said that Rosenstein told him during a private meeting that “he would appoint a special counsel to conduct that investigation if one is required.”
“He has promised to give this careful consideration. I believe if he studies the department regulations, he will come to the same conclusion many of us have, that a special counsel is merited,” he added.
Rosenstein made similar comments during his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year while declining to commit to appointing a special prosecutor.
Sen. Dick Durbin Richard (Dick) Joseph DurbinKids confront Feinstein over Green New Deal Senate plots to avoid fall shutdown brawl Overnight Energy: Trump ends talks with California on car emissions | Dems face tough vote on Green New Deal | Climate PAC backing Inslee in possible 2020 run MORE (D-Ill.) said that the best way for Rosenstein to oversee the Russia-Trump investigation with “independence, diligence and integrity” would be to appoint a special prosecutor.
“If Mr. Rosenstein does not appoint a special counsel, the spotlight will be on him personally to make sure the investigation is conducted properly no matter where it leads. I hope he exercises good judgment,” Durbin said.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTrump says he hasn't spoken to Barr about Mueller report Ex-Trump aide: Can’t imagine Mueller not giving House a ‘roadmap’ to impeachment Rosenstein: My time at DOJ is 'coming to an end' MORE has recused himself from any investigations tied to the Trump campaign amid blowback over his own conversations with the Russian ambassador while a member of Trump's campaign and transition team.
The Washington Post reported earlier this year that Sessions had spoken twice with the Russian ambassador last year, even though he told Sen. Al Franken Alan (Al) Stuart FrankenVirginia can be better than this Harris off to best start among Dems in race, say strategists, donors Virginia scandals pit Democrats against themselves and their message MORE (D-Minn.) during his confirmation hearing he had not had communications with the Russians.
Democrats have praised Rosenstein, pointing to his work for both Republican and Democratic administrations. He was confirmed by a voice vote in 2005 to be U.S. attorney for Maryland.
The move was a break from Sessions’s attorney general nomination, which was opposed by every Democratic senator expect Sen. Joe Manchin Joseph (Joe) ManchinTrump claims Democrats ‘don’t mind executing babies after birth’ after blocked abortion bill Democrats block abortion bill in Senate The Hill's Morning Report - A pivotal week for Trump MORE (D-W.Va.) — who is up for reelection in a state carried by Trump.
Of the six Democrats who voted against ending debate on Rosenstein’s nomination earlier this week, four — Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand Kirsten Elizabeth GillibrandWarren Buffett: I would support Bloomberg if he ran for president Warren vows to forgo 'fancy receptions or big money fundraisers' Dem Party chief defends initial response to Smollett incident: 'We acted on the facts as we knew at the time' MORE (N.Y.), Kamala Harris (Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Ann WarrenSanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' House to push back at Trump on border GOP Sen. Tillis to vote for resolution blocking Trump's emergency declaration MORE (Mass.) — are considered potential 2020 White House contenders.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) also opposed Rosenstein’s nomination because he wouldn’t promise to appoint a special prosecutor.
“Mr. Rosenstein has said that he wants to be approved by the Senate before he decides whether to appoint a special prosecutor, but that delay will mean that a man who was hired and can be fired by President Trump will decide whether the Trump administration will face a thorough and complete investigation,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellHouse to push back at Trump on border Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Overnight Energy: Climate protesters storm McConnell’s office | Center-right group says Green New Deal could cost trillion | Dire warnings from new climate studies MORE (R-Ky.) knocked Democrats on Monday, accusing them of slow-walking Rosenstein’s nomination even though he’s received broad bipartisan support.
“[This is] the latest in a long pattern this year of needless Democratic obstruction that is not intended to change a result, just delay for delay’s sake,” he said from the Senate floor.As their groundbreaking sitcom Peep Show nears its ninth and final series, David Mitchell and Robert Webb discuss its enduring appeal, their own friendship – and how to eat the dog without jumping the shark
There are plenty of comic partnerships that start out with a shared dream and end, like Peter Cook’s and Dudley Moore’s, in bitter tensions and seething envy. That’s not the impression David Mitchell and Robert Webb give. “If we worked in an office together,” says Mitchell, “we’d be friends and go to the pub.”
“The thing we have in common is that we make each other laugh,” agrees Webb, “whether we turn that into money or do it just for the fun of it. It happens less frequently now these days, we’ve both got our own families, but if we do end up in the pub or at weddings and if I make a joke, apart from my wife, the first person I will look at in the room is David to see if it was funny or not.”
“Same with me,” says Mitchell.
We are in a central London club and both men are showing no sign that, after two decades of working together, the chemistry is in any danger. Mitchell is sporting an unconvincing moustache for which he apologises. “I should explain I’m in a Professor Branestawm Christmas thing.”
I find it endlessly pleasing that the truth is that almost everyone feels like a bit of an outsider David Mitchell
He’s been a ubiquitous presence on TV and radio for many years now, but a large chunk of his and Webb’s success can be traced back to a breakthrough moment more than 12 years go.
September 2003 was not a major news month. Johnny Cash died, Swedish voters rejected joining the euro and Andy Roddick won the US Open. But for a hardcore of British television viewers, something very special happened: the beginning on Channel 4 of a small sitcom about two graduates living in a flat in Croydon.
The ninth and final series of Peep Show completed filming earlier this year and is soon to be screened. Channel 4’s longest running comedy by far, it has been an extraordinary creative and critical triumph, winning Baftas, British Comedy and Royal Television Society awards and in 2004 the Rose d’Or for best European sitcom. Yet despite the widespread acclaim it has remained firmly encased in that double-edged designation: cult success.
When it first arrived it looked and sounded like nothing else. For a start, every shot was filmed from the point of view of one of the characters. What they saw was what we saw. Much of the dialogue emerged from internal monologues, which meant that not only were we looking out of their eyes but listening to their minds in all their selfish, conniving, desperate glory. It made an intense, almost claustrophobic viewing experience.
In the first episode both flatmates, Mark Corrigan (David Mitchell) and Jeremy “Jez” Usborne (Robert Webb), seek to seduce their next-door neighbour Toni (Elizabeth Marmur). They’re both hopeless for different reasons: Mark because of his excess of self-consciousness – he tries to woo her with descriptions of the battle of Stalingrad – and Jez because of his lack of self-knowledge.
It was sharp, very funny, sad, pathetic, lifelike, yet slightly surreal. And it perfectly captured the ennui and shapeless existence of 20-something men languishing in irresponsibility and immaturity.
At first glance, though, both its originality and situation suggested a brief life. All those weird camera angles – imagine Facetiming a whole relationship – and streams of consciousness spelled recommissioning doom. And how long could that post-student life be stretched out before the whole thing snapped?
As it turned out, more than a decade. We got used to the camera angles, or just enough of us did. And the concept of an absurdly extended single life came to look less and less absurd within the culture at large.
The show was created by the comedy writing partnership of Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain and executive producer Andrew O’Connor. Originally, as Armstrong says, O’Connor’s idea was to make a live-action Beavis and Butthead.
“You’d have a couple of snarky student types watching TV clips and being amusing about them,” Armstrong recalls. “When we started thinking about the idea, to make it into a half-hour it was evident it needed some other elements. Sam had been watching a crappy documentary called Being Caprice where they put a camera on the head of [model] Caprice so you saw her looking in her fridge for yoghurts. It just had that striking visual thing of the mundane – how much jam do I have left? That was very writable. And from that we thought of the interior monologue.”
The difference between what people say and what they think is fertile comedy territory, but not one often explored in film or television because of the awkwardness of voiceovers. But Peep Show found a way to turn the voiceover into a vital comic component, not tiresomely intrusive but hysterically revealing. A lot has to do with the writing, its ear for the unsayable which often borders on the unthinkable. But it’s also the pitch-perfect delivery of Mitchell and Webb.
“Sam and I and Andrew are called the creators of the show,” says Armstrong, “but really it’s a co-creation with Robert and David. There have been a couple of American attempts at re-versioning Peep Show. When you see other perfectly good comedy actors trying to do something similar you realise how alchemical their performances are.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Webb and Mitchell in their Cambridge days, mid-90s. The picture was taken for the poster advertising their first two-man show. Photograph: courtesy of David Mitchell
The pair first met at Cambridge, where they were both in Footlights, and then did the comedy circuit, eking out a living with bits of writing here and there. When they arrived in London they were by their own accounts a pair of provincials whose main artistic ambition was to be warm and dry.
“I’m from a little village in Lincolnshire,” says Webb, “and Cambridge is just a small market town. We were living just off Finchley Road, where there are seven lanes of traffic. That literally scared me. I walked along that road and I’d think ‘Oh look, there’s a Boots, everything is not weird.’ But the buildings were so tall, I remember being frightened.”
Mitchell grew up in Wiltshire and Oxford, where his parents lectured on hotel management. They both felt bewildered by the number of comedians in London and intimidated in Edinburgh by the competition that existed among them.
“Because you have this anxiety,” says Webb, “that you’re not going to have your go, and obviously not everyone gets a go at all. But now after nine series of Peep Show and four series of the sketch show, we’ve had a go.”
If Webb has copyrighted the voice of the conceited middle-class slacker, so, in playing nit-picking loan manager Mark, has Mitchell become the comic face of uptight, sexually frustrated, convention-bound uncoolness, unleashing some of the finest embittered tirades ever committed to a script.
“We wrote very much towards versions of them that we knew they could play,” says Armstrong. “There are bits of attitude towards the world which are kind of comic exaggerations of their own views. We’ve always found it easy to figure out anything – from a car to a religious philosophy – and know what Mark and Jeremy’s take on it would be. Once you have that, it’s a very nice thing to write towards.”
Indeed, so invisible is the join between the lines and the performances that it’s been commonly assumed that Mark is David and Jeremy is Robert. It’s a conclusion that both men have in different ways played up to. As Mitchell writes in his memoir, Back Story, people wanted to know how his private life compared with that of his character.
“And I’d certainly implied in panel shows, as a way of getting a laugh and developing a persona that people could get a handle on, that I was a lonely, dysfunctional OCD loser.”
You talk to Ade Edmondson and he regrets they only did two series of The Young Ones Robert Webb
But the pair soon tired of the comparison. Early in the interview Webb is quick to arrest the inevitable line of inquiry. “‘Are you like your character on Peep Show?’ is the question you weren’t about to ask, but it comes up,” he says drily, then adds, for clarification, “We’re sufficiently like that that we’d be against type if we played them the other way round.”
Webb as Mark and Mitchell as Jez? It doesn’t bear thinking about. It would be like taking The Odd Couple and making Walter Matthau the Jack Lemmon character and vice versa.
Although Peep Show plots have at times wandered into fabulously unlikely realms, the key to the show’s enduring relevance is that everything is harnessed to an utterly recognisable milieu. The first series was actually filmed in a real, tiny and cramped flat in Croydon. (Peep Show has always prided itself on its sense of verité, but according to Mitchell, Croydon was not selected for reasons of authenticity or naturalism.
“The first director of the series [Jeremy Wooding], who did not go on to direct other series, is a nice man but not, I would say, the perfect director of |
down together. He said, “At the end of the day they need to resolve this between themselves.” He said that everyone needed to “be adults”.
In other words, he made the current division as much Turnbull’s problem as Abbott’s.
This is wrong in substance. Abbott has driven a good 90% of the squabbling that we see reported in the papers. Of the rest, should we really expect Turnbull not to respond? To do so would cement his weakness.
It is also a slap in the face to Turnbull’s strategy of recent weeks. Greiner said he had not discussed [$] this proposed meeting with either Turnbull or Abbott, so we can’t assume this is a Turnbull-sanctioned plan.
Turnbull’s troops have been forceful recently in saying, loud and clear, that Abbott is on his own. And Abbott has seemed increasingly isolated, the de facto leader of a shrinking band of conservative misfits. Turnbull’s speech in London last week – while arguably a provocation – was another step towards undermining Abbott’s credibility in offering conservative “thought-leadership”, as Maurice Newman (he of the one-world government) described it [$]. It seemed as though Turnbull had arrived at a strategy, and was pursuing it consistently.
In one move Greiner has basically said, “No, Malcolm, this is your fault too.” He has handed Abbott and his henchmen a legitimacy they do not deserve.
Finally, it creates yet another problem for Turnbull. He can refuse the meeting, but now that will expose him to further claims of churlishness, of being the one bringing problems on himself. Or he can take the meeting, which will give Abbott an even greater platform, and create over-hyped consideration of that thorny question again: does Abbott deserve a spot in cabinet? That is a question Turnbull has made clear he does not want on the table.
Thanks for nothing, Nick.
The second way Turnbull looked weak was in wayyyyy overreaching in his national security announcement. The announcement itself was significant: the threshold for calling in defence troops to deal with terrorist incidents on Australian soil has been dramatically lowered. This may be justifiable – some of the changes reflect recommendations made by the NSW coroner in his Lindt siege report – though we should hope that parliamentary scrutiny is not rushed.
But the announcement looked crazily aggressive. The prime minister stood in front of Special Forces soldiers who were armed and wearing what appeared to be gas masks; behind them stood an inflatable boat. As a former press secretary I sympathise with the need for images that tell a story; but this image had the feel of an image that was trying very hard to tell a very scary story. Confections have the bad habit of looking confected. The story was strong enough without them.
Finally, we have reports (though they are contested) that a massive super-department – the Department of Homeland Security – is about to be created, including ASIO, the Federal Police, and Border Force, and that it will be ticked off by cabinet tomorrow.
With Turnbull having made a cybersecurity announcement on Friday, this will be the third terrorism-related announcement in a week.
It’s true this has a sense of break-glass about it, but the public are understandably nervous about terrorism and it is not surprising the government is acting.
The bigger problem is that – should it go ahead – this new department looks to have been created almost entirely to satisfy Turnbull’s chief Praetorian Guard, Peter Dutton. It has the added political benefit of being against the wishes of prominent moderates like George Brandis.
Last time Turnbull tried looking like a traditional conservative, with his 457-visa announcement closely followed by his citizenship changes, he and Dutton couldn’t make the case for the changes. They were unable to outline a problem they were solving. Turnbull looked inauthentic, and for some combination of these reasons the Coalition was not rewarded in the polls at all.
Turnbull could not explain his cybersecurity announcement on Friday. Labor today has been putting around a sheet of quotations from Turnbull back in 2008, when he strongly opposed a Department of Homeland Security. As such, I’m willing to bet he won’t have a good reason this time, either.
As I said, confections tend to look confected.
In other news
MUSIC Parallel universes With their two new other-worldly albums, Shabazz Palaces continue to evade categorisation Anwen Crawford “These twinned releases are, broadly speaking, albums about technology and our relationship to it, but you could just as easily, and as accurately, describe them as being about space travel, or about love. There is a character – perhaps it’s also a planet – called Quazarz that appears on both albums, and the two records form halves of a teeming, invented universe. Shabazz Palaces are weird enough to feel right for the times we inhabit. They make an alternative music about alternative realities, in an era of alternative facts.” READ ON POLITICS A simple case of arithmetic Turnbull isn’t the only Liberal avoiding mathematical reality Mungo MacCallum “What are we to make of his bald declaration that ‘the laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia’? This is both irrational and totalitarian, straight out of the Donald Trump school of alternative facts. It has been all too common to hear the extremists (or, as they like to call themselves, the mainstream, the core) deny and attack science in any or all of its manifestations, but we had thought Malcolm Turnbull was rather less of a knuckle-dragger.” READ ONSporting Kansas City has been a lot of things in its 18-year existence. It’s been good and bad, in the Western Conference and the Eastern Conference, and it’s been the Wizards and the “Wiz.” However a transformation occurred more recently that began with the hiring of coach and former player, Peter Vermes, and then the ensuing rebranding of the club. Below you can see the significant boost in attendance that came with a new name and a new park in 2011:
Season Regular Playoffs 2007 11,586 12,442 2008 10,686 10,385 2009 10,053 DNQ 2010 10,287 DNQ 2011 17,810 19,702 2012 19,364 20,894 2013 19,709 20,777
This change culminated in a rapidly expanding fan base that is just as fervent and rabid as any in MLS, anchored by The Cauldron. The club has seen a lot of success in the past two seasons with a US Open Cup win in 2012 and last season’s MLS Cup win at Sporting Park. Things are looking up for Sporting, and this year should yield more of that same success for the defending MLS Cup Champions.
2013 Starting XI
Roster churn: Sporting KC returns 87.7% of its minutes played in 2013 (1st in the East, 2nd in MLS)
Transactions
Player Added Position From Player Lost Position To Sal Zizzo M POR Jimmy Nielsen GK Retirement Andy Gruenebaum GK CLB Kyle Miller D Waived Brendan Ruiz D Waived
2014 Preview
Major League Soccer has seen teams rise and fall from season to season as quickly as in any other sport. A year ago at this time, most of us thought that the San Jose Earthquakes were a favorite in the West, coming off a 72-goal, 66-point performance in 2012’s regular season. We also probably thought the Portland Timbers would be lucky to slip into the Wildcard play-in game. Previous point totals and playoff results, obviously, must be taken with a grain of salt.
While winning the MLS Cup was likely one of the most important moments in many of Sporting players’ lives, it’s not nearly as important as shot data for predicting future success—and SKC limited scoring opportunities better than anyone in the league. Sporting also came in second to the Galaxy in the run for the coveted Golden TI-89 Trophy—given for best expected goal differential in MLS last season—and it returns players that made up 87.7 percent of the team’s total minutes played last season, good for second in MLS behind Real Salt Lake’s 90.5 percent.
It should be no surprise that teams which finish a season well do little to rock the boat for the coming season. But expected goal differential suggests that Sporting is justified in keeping its unit together (+18.3 xGD), while RSL’s success with its current squadron may not be as sustainable (-4.1 xGD).
While Sporting is losing 12.3 percent of its 2013 playing time, the loss of Jimmy Nielsen to retirement makes up most of that (9.1 percent of the team’s total minutes). Considering that our goalkeeper ratings here on the site, as well as those by our own Will Reno, didn’t like Nielsen much in 2013, this could actually make Sporting better in 2014. That’s scary.
Andy Gruenebaum probably ought to be the opening day starter between the posts, but if Vermes goes with Eric Kronberg, we can suppose it’s because he’s good, and we can suppose that both keepers are better than Nielsen.
Whether Vermes goes with Gruenebaum or Kronberg, we all know it’s that SKC defense that makes the biggest difference. Led by USMNT centerback Matt Besler, Sporting allowed the fewest goals in MLS (30), and more importantly for their 2014 projections, the fewest shots (8.9/game) and the lowest expected goals against (29.8).
Before we leave the defensive part of the pitch, I would be remiss if I did not mention Besler’s secret weapon. Despite getting paid mostly to stop others from scoring, Besler can become an offensive weapon with his throw in. Across MLS, about 100 shots were taken directly following throw ins, and 14 of those were scored. Sporting represented about one-quarter of the entire league’s offensive production from the throw in, thanks in large part to Besler’s triceps.
Though Sporting’s defense was best in the league, there is room to grow offensively. SKC ranked 5th in MLS in expected goals, but 11th in actual goals. A narrative worth following this season is the relationship between Vermes and his designated player Claudio Bieler. The Argentine/Ecuadorian striker led Sporting with 10 goals in 2013, but he scored only one of those after July 13th. Bieler found himself out of the lineup often as Sporting was making its push for the Supporters’ Shield (for which it finished 2nd behind New York). Vermes justified one such benching simply by saying that it was a “tactical decision.” Bieler may be Sporting’s best goal scorer, but first he has to make the coach happy and actually play. Our Expected Goals 2.0 suggests that Bieler scored 30 percent more goals than an average player would have, given his opportunities. That was good for 16th in MLS among those with at least 50 shots. Kansas City fans could see more goals from its team in 2014 if Bieler can rack up at least 30 starts and maintain last year’s finishing pace.
Another key cog in the offensive machine is Graham Zusi. Though he’s known mostly as a facilitator for others’ shots, Zusi’s six goals in 2013 were a bonus over the 3.7 an average player would be expected to score, given his shot selection. Though the merits of the assists statistic are up for debate, what is not is that Zusi is immensely valuable to Sporting’s possession-based style of play that generates the most efficient shot ratios in the league. And his hair, oh his hair.
While winning the MLS Cup last year is not, by itself, a great predictor of 2014 success for Sporting Kansas City, adding in the fact that their championship was backed by strong predictive statistics means a lot more, and we are likely to see another championship run from Sporting this season. Sporting has few questions to answer, and kicks off 2014 as the favorite in the East. If Bieler settles in for a full season, well, we could see back-to-back MLS Cups in The Blue Hell.
Crowd Sourcing Results
1st place in the Eastern Conference; Sporting Kansas City received 226 of 404 (55.9%) first place votes, and 93.6% of voters felt that Sporting would make the playoffs.
AdvertisementsIn a recent interview, historian Quentin Skinner had the following to say about Karl Marx and the republican theory of liberty. The republican or “neo-Roman” theory says that we are unfree when we are subject to another person’s will:
I am very struck by the extent to which Marx deploys, in his own way, a neo-Roman political vocabulary. He talks about wage slaves, and he talks about the dictatorship of the proletariat. He insists that, if you are free only to sell your labour, then you are not free at all. He stigmatises capitalism as a form of servitude. These are all recognizably neo-Roman moral commitments.
Skinner also says that “this is a question which would bear a great deal more investigation than it has received.”
I have been engaging in some of this investigation. It is not just Marx or even primarily Marx who believed that the neo-roman theory of freedom leads directly to a critique of wage-slavery. As early as the late 1820s, urban workers seized on the inherited republicanism of the American Revolution and applied it to the wage-labor relationship. They organized themselves city-by-city into the first self-conscious political parties of labor and their main campaign was against “wage-slavery.”
They argued that the wealthy “keep us in a state of humble dependence” through their monopoly control of the means of production. As Thomas Skidmore, founder of the Workingmen’s Party of New York, put it:
thousands of our people of the present day in deep distress and poverty, dependent for their daily subsistence upon a few among us whom the unnatural operation of our own free and republican institutions, as we are pleased to call them, has thus arbitrarily and barbarously made enormously rich.
Their “humble dependence” meant that they had no choice but to sell their labor to some employer or another. Their only chance of leading a decent life was if some employer would give them a job. Though formally free, these workers were nonetheless economically dependent and thus unfree. That is why they saw themselves as denied their rightful republican liberty, and why wage-labor merited the name slavery. Skidmore made the comparison with classical slavery the most explicit:
For he, in all countries is a slave, who must work more for another than that other must work for him. It does not matter how this state of things is brought about; whether the sword of victory hew down the liberty of the captive, and thus compel him to labor for his conqueror, or whether the sword of want extort our consent, as it were, to a voluntary slavery, through a denial to us of the materials of nature…
The critique of wage-slavery in the name of republican liberty could hardly be clearer.
Given their analysis of wage-labor, these artisan republicans were inexorably led to radical conclusions about the conditions that could restore workers their full independence. Every leading figure of these early workingmen’s parties made some form of the argument that “the principles of equal distribution [of property be] everywhere adopted” or that it was necessary to “equalize property.” Here, the “property” to be equally distributed was clearly means of production. And it was to be distributed not just in the form of land, but cooperative control over factories and other implements.
For instance, the major report articulating the principles of the Workingmen’s Party of New York included the demand for “AN EQUAL AMOUNT OF PROPERTY ON ARRIVING AT THE AGE OF MATURITY.” Only with control over this kind of property could workers’ structural dependence on owners be eliminated. For these “Workies” following out the logic of the republican theory led not to a nostalgic, agrarian idealism, but to the view that each person’s independence depended upon everyone possessing equal and collective control of productive resources. Even more striking, they argued that the only way to achieve this condition of independence was through the joint political efforts of the dependent or “enslaved” class.
As Langdon Byllesby, one of the earliest of these worker republicans, wrote, “history does not furnish an instance wherein the depository of power voluntarily abrogated its prerogative, or the oppressor relinquished his advantages in favour of the oppressed.” It was up to the dependent classes, through the agency of their workingmen’s parties, to realize a cooperative commonwealth.
There is an important historical connection between these radical artisans and Marx. As Maximilen Rubel and Lewis Feuer have shown, just at the time that Marx turned from Hegelian philosophy to political economy, in 1841–2, he began to read comparative political history. He was particularly interested in the American republic, and read three main sources: Beaumont, Tocqueville, and a less well-known Englishman, Thomas Hamilton. Hamilton was a former colonel who wrote his own, very popular observation of his time traveling in the United States called Men and Manners in America, published in 1833. For Marx, Hamilton was the best source of the three because Hamilton, unlike the Frenchmen, actually met with and spoke to leaders of the Workingman’s Party of New York. That section of Hamilton’s travelogue includes ominous references to the “Extreme Gauche” of the “Workies” who wish to introduce an “AGRARIAN LAW, and a periodical division of property,” and includes gloomy reflections on the coming “anarchy and despoliation.” It is these very sections of Hamilton that Marx copied into his notebooks during this period of preparatory study.
Unbeknown to Marx, he was copying a copy. In those sections of Men and Manners Hamilton had essentially transcribed parts of Thomas Skidmore’s report to the Workingmen’s Party of New York, which were a distillation of the ideas that could be found in Skidmore’s lengthy The Rights of Man to Property! Skidmore’s book included the argument that property rights were invalid if they were used to make the poor economically dependent, allowing owners “to live in idleness, partial or total, thus supporting himself, more or less, on the labors of others.”
If property rights were illegitimate the minute they were used to make some dependent on others then it was clear all freedom-loving citizens were justified in transforming property relations in the name of republican liberty. This was why Skidmore proposed the radical demand that the workers “APPROPRIATE ALSO, in the same way, THE COTTON FACTORIES, THE WOOLEN FACTORIES, THE IRON FOUNDERIES, THE ROLLING MILLS, HOUSES, CHURCHES, SHIPS, GOODS, STEAM-BOATS, FIELDS OF AGRICULTURE, &c. &c. &c. in manner as proposed in this work, AND AS IS THEIR RIGHT.” The manner proposed for this expropriation of the expropriators was not violent revolution but a state constitutional convention in which all property would be nationalized and then redistributed in shares of equal value to be used to form cooperatives or buy land.
Marx never knew these labor republicans by name, nor any of their primary writings, but it is clear from his notebooks that their ideas and political self-organization contributed to his early thinking, especially at the moment at which he was formulating his view of workers as the universal class. Indeed, in On the Jewish Question, Beaumont, Tocqueville and “the Englishman Hamilton’s” accounts of the United States feature heavily in Marx’s discussion of America. It is there that Marx makes the famous distinction between political and human emancipation, arguing that the American republic shows us most clearly the distinction between the two. This was almost exactly the same distinction that the Workies made when saying, as Philadelphian Samuel Simpson did, “the consequence now is, that while the government is republican, society in its general features, is as regal as it is in England.” A republican theory of wage-slavery was developed well before Marx (see here for evidence of similar developments in France that were also very likely to have influenced Marx).
In the United States, the republican critique of wage-labor went into abeyance for a time after the 1840s, or more appropriately, it was absorbed into the agrarian socialism of the National Reform Association — a tale masterfully told by the historian Mark Lause in Young America: Land, Labor and Republican Community. But “labor republicanism” exploded back onto the political scene in the United States after the Civil War, especially with leading figures around the Knights of Labor and the eight-hour movement. The Knights were for a time one of the most powerful organizations in the country, organized skilled and unskilled labor together, and at their peak included more than 700,000 official members, probably representing more than 1 million participating workers. The Knights used the republican concept of liberty to assert the universal interests of labor and to argue for the transformation of American society. George McNeill, a leading Knight, wrote that “There is an inevitable and irresistible conflict between the wage-system of labor and the republican system of government.” Ira Steward, most famous as an eight-hour campaigner, demanded a “a republicanization of labor, as well as a republicanization of government.”
These turns of phrase were more than rhetorical gestures. They were self-conscious appeals to the republican theory. Indeed the Journal of United Labor even reproduced a famous passage on slavery from Algernon Sidney’s Discourses on Government in order to articulate why wage-labor was a form of servitude. The passage goes:
Slavery. — The weight of chains, number of stripes, hardness of labor, and other effects of a master’s cruelty, may make one servitude more miserable than another; but he is a slave who serves the gentlest man in the world, as well as he who serves the worst; and he does serve him if he must obey his commands and depend upon his will.
This passage, and Sidney’s writings, have played a major role in contemporary scholarship on early modern republicanism, and here it is deployed to critique not the political enslavement to a monarch but wage-slavery.
In fact, the labor republicans not only drew on the republican theory but further developed it in light of the new dynamics of industrial capitalism. They noted that there were two interconnected forms of dependence. One was the general or structural dependence of the wage-laborer on employers, defined by the fact that the monopoly of control over productive property by some left the rest dependent upon those owners for their livelihoods. This, as George McNeil put it, meant that workers “assent but they do not consent, they submit but do not agree.”
The voluntaristic language here was meant to capture how, thought the workers were not literally slaves, they were nonetheless compelled to work for others. As Skinner has shown in his book on Hobbes, it is precisely this conflation of voluntaristic action and freedom that modern republicans have always rejected, and which their enemies, like Hobbes, have regularly defended. Though here, the worker’s dependence was not a feature so much of being the legal property of another as it was being forced, by economic need, to sell his labor:
when a man is placed in a position where he is compelled to give the benefit of his labor to another, he is in a condition of slavery, whether the slave is held in chattel bondage or in wages bondage, he is equally a slave.
Emancipation may have eliminated chattel slavery, but, as eight-hour campaigner Ira Steward once put it, the creation of this new form of economic dependence meant “something of slavery still remains…something of freedom is yet to come.”
According to labor republicans, the structural dependence of the wage-laborer was translated, through the labor contract, to a more personal form of servitude to the employer. After all, the contract was an agreement of obedience in exchange for wages. It was an agreement to alienate control over one’s own activity in exchange for the privilege of having enough money to buy necessities, and perhaps a few luxuries. Indeed, even if the wages were fairly high, the point of the contract was to become subject to the will of a specific owner or his manager. As one anonymous author put it, in the Journal of United Labor, “Is there a workshop where obedience is not demanded — not to the difficulties or qualities of the labor to be performed — but to the caprice of he who pays the wages of his servants?” As nearly every scholar of republican thought has noted, the language of being subject to the caprice of another is one of the most enduring rhetorical tropes of the neo-Roman theory of freedom. It is no accident that it would feature so heavily in labor republican arguments about domination in the workplace.
It was for this reason that the Knights of Labor believed that the only way to “republicanize labor” was “to abolish as rapidly as possible, the wage system, substituting co-operation therefore.” The point about a cooperative system was that property was collectively owned and work cooperatively managed. Only when the class differences between owners and workers were removed could republican liberty be truly universalized. It would, at once, remove the structural and personal dependence of workers.
As William H. Silvis, one of the earliest of these figures, argued, cooperation “renders the workman independent of necessities which often compel him to submit to hectoring, domineering, and insults of every kind.” What clearer statement could there be of the connection between the republican theory of liberty, economic dependence, and the modern wage-system? Here was a series of arguments that flowed naturally from the principles of the American Revolution.
To demand that “there is to be a people in industry, as in government” was simply to argue that the cooperative commonwealth was nothing more than the culmination and completion of the American Revolution’s republican aspirations.Independent investigation needed into lethal crackdown
BEIRUT,— Ruling party forces opened fire on protesters in two cities of Iraqi Kurdistan on October 9 and 10, 2015. In the days since, security forces controlled by the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) have shut down opposition media and barred opposition party members of parliament from their offices.
Thousands of protesters had gathered in several towns and cities across Sulaimani governorate to demand jobs, payment of back wages, and the resignation of Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and head of the KDP. Two protesters and a third man died in the town of Fort Diza on October 9, and two others, both reported to have been unarmed, died in the town of Kalar on October 10.
“Kurdish authorities should, as a matter of priority, get to the bottom of why five people are dead,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director. “The authorities should open a credible and independent investigation to find out who was responsible and whether the use of lethal force was justified, and if not, hold those responsible accountable.”
In Kalar, northeast of Baghdad, on October 10, hundreds of stone-throwing demonstrators surrounded on three sides a tall office building housing the offices of the ruling party. Armed men opened fire from inside the building, killing Uthman Adnan Muhammad, 19, and Araz Bayez, 35. Both were unarmed and stood a few hundred meters away from the building, Araz Muhammad, a local journalist who stood close by, told Human Rights Watch.
Although the circumstances suggest that the gunfire from the KDP building was the cause, party officials have blamed demonstrators. Muhammad said he did not see demonstrators carrying firearms.
On October 9, in Fort Diza, 260 kilometers north of Kalar, people in ruling party offices opened fire at demonstrators who were throwing stones and carrying AK-47 rifles, killing Muhammad Rasul, in his late teens or early twenties, and Muhammad Abdullah, in his late twenties, a Fort Diza resident who said he witnessed the shootings told Human Rights Watch.
The United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms require that, “intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.”
On October 10, a fifth protester, Diyar Khidir Rasul, who was in his early teens, died in Raparin, near Fort Diza, when protesters set the KDP offices there on fire. Rasul was inside and apparently unable to escape, said Wirya Fatah, a resident who was on the scene.
Following the protests, the governing party moved to oust members of the opposition Gorran (Change) movement. On October 12, security forces prevented Muhammad Yusif Sadiq, a Gorran member and speaker of the regional parliament, from entering the Erbil governorate, where the parliament is located, three Kurdish activists told Human Rights Watch. On October 11, security forces had barred the four regional government ministers from Gorran from their offices. Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzan, on October 12, asked the Gorran ministers to resign.
On October 10, government security forces entered the offices of the independent NRT satellite television station in Erbil and detained staff, Ramen Gareb, director of Metro Center for Journalists’ Rights and Advocacy in Sulaimani, told Human Rights Watch. He said he has been in communication with the detained journalists.
He said the journalists were taken to Sulaimani governorate and ordered not to return to Erbil. On October 13, governing party officials allowed the NRT staff to return to Erbil and reopen their offices, the channel reported.
Also on October 10, security forces arrived at the offices of the Kurdish News Network (KNN), a satellite television channel associated with Gorran, and forcibly moved staff to Sulaimani province. They have not been allowed to return.
“The KDP claims to be rights-respecting but has a history of shutting down critical voices,” Stork said. “Barring elected members of parliament from doing their job and forcing critical media staff out of the governorate is a new low.”
Details of the Shootings
Kalar
Several hundred people gathered on October 10 to protest lack of jobs and payment of salaries for government employees, and against President Barzani, Muhammad, a local photojournalist covering the demonstration, told Human Rights Watch. Protesters sporadically threw rocks, he said, and around 6 p.m. they began pelting the offices of KDP branch number 22, shattering windows. KDP office guards responded with occasional warning shots into the air.
Around 6.30 p.m., two large pickup trucks drove through the crowd in an attempt to scatter protesters. Muhammad estimated that about 35 men, some in traditional Kurdish clothes and others in security uniforms, got out of the vehicles in front of the KDP office. About 20 of the men were armed and fired warning shots, into the air and then into the ground, in front of the protesters. The shooters then retreated to the top floor of the KDP offices and fired toward the crowd from there, Muhammad said.
He said he was standing four meters behind Uthman Adnan Muhammad and Bayez when they were fatally wounded around 6:30 p.m. by bullets fired from the direction of the KDP offices. He said that neither Uthman Muhammad nor Bayez had been throwing rocks and that they were standing several hundred meters from the KDP offices. He also said that all shots he heard came from the direction of the KDP offices.
Although protesters had surrounded three sides of the KDP offices, anyone inside could have left through the rear exit, which was not blocked, he said.
On October 10, Hemin Hawarami, head of the KDP foreign relations office, claimed that Gorran protesters had killed Muhammed, who was a KDP member and had relatives inside the KDP building. Najat Hassan, a KDP official responsible for Fort Diza and other districts, also laid the blame for the violence at the hands of the protesters, telling al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper that demonstrators had shot at KDP security guards. He claimed that Gorran was behind the protester violence.
Fort Diza
A Fort Diza resident, Ali Qadir, told Human Rights Watch that at around 2 p.m. on October 9, small numbers of local youth demonstrated for jobs and President Barzani’s resignation. Qadir said he learned this from phone calls from friends in town. Over the course of the afternoon, he said, more people joined and marched to the city government offices, where Mayor Bakir Bayez, a Gorran member, tried to speak with them. Protesters pelted Bayez and his guards with stones, Qadir’s friends said, and around 5:30 p.m. marched on toward the KDP offices in the town center, which they also attacked with stones. Qadir had by then gone to the scene.
Around 6 p.m., Qadir said, he tried to grab a one-armed man shooting at the ground in front of demonstrators from just outside the KDP office, but stopped when the man turned his rifle toward Qadir. Then, Qadir said, several armed men, some in civilian clothes and some in military uniforms, went inside the KDP office and to the top floor and onto the roof, and fired bursts of live ammunition at demonstrators. Qadir said he saw six people wounded by gunshots fired from the direction of the office, one with a head wound. He said he saw about 10 demonstrators carrying AK 47 assault rifles, but they did not fire them.
Qadir said he then saw a delegation of Mayor Bayez, a security official from nearby Raparin, and the local member of Kurdistan’s parliament enter the KDP offices with their bodyguards. Shortly thereafter, another burst of automatic gunfire erupted from the roof, wounding two people no more than 20 meters from Qadir. Later that evening, when demonstrators got closer to the KDP building chanting anti-KDP slogans, Qadir said, he heard a short burst of heavier machine gun fire from inside the KDP offices. Very shortly thereafter, he saw demonstrators carry away a man about 30 years old, with a large part of the back of his head missing. Local security forces then led the KDP officials out of the building and demonstrators ransacked and torched it.
Fatah, who was not on the scene for the initial shooting but collected information from witnesses, told Human Rights Watch that Rasul and Abdullah, were among the wounded and later died.
Fatah told Human Rights Watch that on October 10, he saw demonstrators from nearby Zarawa march to Fort Diza, where they threw stones at the offices of Gorran, the Islamic Group, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, and burned the party flags. In Raparin, an area in Fort Diza district, demonstrators ransacked and torched the KDP office, said Fatah, who had gone to the scene. Some demonstrators were still inside as the fire spread. Some rappelled to safety, but firefighters found Rasul’s burned body inside when they put out the fire.
Read more about Freedom of Expression and Journalism in Iraqi Kurdistan
Read more about Anti-Kurdish government, Anti corruption protests in Iraqi Kurdistan 2011
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CommentsBrigham Young University’s bid to join the Big 12 Conference has found a new opponent in Kansas State’s Student Governing Association.
Three SGA leaders told the Collegian Monday they will consider writing a resolution opposing BYU’s possible acceptance into the Big 12 because of the university’s student Honor Code. The Honor Code bans homosexual behavior:
“Homosexual behavior is inappropriate and violates the Honor Code. Homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings.”
The issue came to the forefront Wednesday when Iowa State University’s student government passed a resolution opposed to BYU joining the Big 12.
The University of Texas Student Government has also considered similar legislation, according to the Daily Texan, the university’s student newspaper.
Trenton Kennedy, student body vice president and junior in entrepreneurship, said the Honor Code at BYU is not inclusive, and that is reason enough to exclude BYU from the Big 12.
“When you’re in the Big 12, you’re expecting a standard of inclusion and a standard of acceptance and welcoming when we know that my fellow students, as student-athletes, are going to be traveling to those schools to participate in athletic events and competitions,” Kennedy said. “So I believe that it should be an acceptable standard to know that my fellow students are going to go to an accepting and inclusive atmosphere when they travel for games.”
BYU is a private, religious university, owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Baylor and TCU are both private, religious institutions in the Big 12. Neither of their student honor codes explicitly say that homosexuality is a violation of their code but Baylor’s does mention that students are not allowed to participate in LGBT advocacy organizations.
Supporting change
Jessica Van Ranken, student body president and senior in political science, said SGA will work on drafting a resolution this week, but she wants to talk with other campus organizations first to get their input.
“We have plans to look into writing one this week,” Van Ranken said. “We’re reaching out to different areas on campus that would be interested in the fact that we’re doing that.”
Those include, but are not limited to, K-State Athletics and the Office of the President. The Big 12 university presidents will be the ones voting on conference expansion sometime this fall.
“I think the message (the resolution) would send is a message that these institutions that have passed these resolutions have students on those campuses who feel strongly about sending their students to an inclusive environment, about fostering an inclusive and an accepting community, both at their own institution and in the conference which they are a part of,” Van Ranken said.
“I think it sends a message of commitment on behalf of our students to the Big 12 in that we want to see a Big 12 that is inclusive and held to a higher standard and that the Big 12 is an organization that matters to us,” Kennedy said.
Van Ranken said the goal of a resolution would not be to keep BYU out of the Big 12, but to express support for a change in the Honor Code.
“The goal of the resolution would likely be to express that the students at Kansas State would support a change in BYU’s Honor Code,” Van Ranken said. “Knowing that we can’t, as we are not students there and we are not necessarily stakeholders at their university, we can’t force a change at that level, but saying that we would support a change at that level.”
“If that change were to occur, we would be significantly more supportive of them joining the Big 12 Conference that we are a part of,” Van Ranken said.
The Collegian requested comment from student leaders at both BYU and Iowa State but did not receive any responses by publication deadline. If either respond, the story |
go to peace with Palestinians, we're going to need to recognize the state of Palestine.
SI: Erekat is rejecting Netanyahu's statement that it's too dangerous right now to allow a Palestinian state. In our talk, he accused the prime minister of quote, "exporting fear to the Israeli public."
SE: In my opinion this man was never a two-stater. He is seeking to have the status quo of one state, two systems, and this will translate into violence and bloodshed. And that what we should avoid. We should protect Palestinians and Israelis by standing tall for the two-state solution. I hope and pray that Mr. Netanyahu will grow to the minute where he can say the truth to his people, that if he wants to have peace with his neighbors, "We need to recognize them. We need to delineate maps with them. We need to have a Palestinian state to live side by side with the State of Israel." He will never say that.
SI: Some Israelis may well interpret what you just said as a threat.
SE: Look, since Eve negotiated Adam, I am the most disadvantaged negotiator in history of mankind. I have no army, no navy, no air force, no economy. We are fragmented.
SI: But you're predicting violence and bloodshed.
SE: I'm under, I'm under occupation. I'm warning, I'm not threatening. I don't want my son to be a suicide bomber. I don't want my son to be killed. I want my son to be like your sons. I want him to be the musician. I want to export hope for him. I'm warning that Netanyahu's statements and actions are leading to desperation and desperation will lead to desperate acts. I'm in no position to threat.
SI: People who follow this, Mr. Erekat, will know that Palestinians have gone unilaterally to the international community seeking recognition of a Palestinian state and have also joined the International Criminal Court, which is a step that would be seen as setting up the possibility of prosecuting Israeli officials. Do you intend to continue that campaign for international recognition and international pressure on Israel?
SE: We win the battle for international law because we are telling our people, "Don't use violence." Even if Netanyahu close the door to negotiations we're going to seek our recognition through international agencies, conventions and so on. And yes, through the International Criminal Court. I'm telling Palestinians, "Don't use violence." We're going to use the civilized means of international law to achieve our goals, our independence, our freedom. And then people threaten me that if I go to court they're going to suspend my aid and so on. No! I'm the victim. They should go to those who commit the crimes and tell them to stop committing crimes and then we don't have to go to courts.
SI: Lay it out for us. What are the next few steps that the Palestinian Authority will take then?
SE: Look, the steps have already been taken before the elections, to be honest with you. I don't want this to look like we're reacting to the elections. We began our drive towards joining the conventions, the ICC, redefining our relations with Israel. We need to see. Either we'll be full partner in trying to achieve a two-state solution within a specified time frame, sit on the table, with maps, review the borders and Netanyahu will stop settlement activities. With the presence of John Kerry. We can do it. It's doable.
SI: You made it clear that your hope is for a negotiated settlement but in the meantime you have taken these steps like joining the International Criminal Court. Will you go ahead to seek prosecutions of specific Israelis?
SE: We are going to take the file of settlements to the International Criminal Court. Because settlements are, in accordance with the four Geneva Conventions, war crimes.
SI: So you will proceed seeking specific cases?
SE: We will, we're going ahead, of course. We're going to defend our people in all peaceful venues available to us.
SI: We just spent some time on this program in Israel and moving around the West Bank interviewing Israelis and Palestinians. And there was a Palestinian businessman who made a very interesting suggestion just before the election. He expressed the hope that Prime Minister Netanyahu and other people on what is described as the Israeli right wing would win, and win big. Because he felt that that would increase Israel's international isolation and work to the benefit of Palestinians. Has it in any way been good for Palestinians that Netanyahu won?
SE: You know before the elections I was also asked. And my answer was, "I hope and pray that the Israelis will choose a government that will make peace with me. That will be my neighbor and not my occupier." I think Netanyahu is determined to be my occupier. So I don't agree with this.
SI: You don't believe that Palestinians can gain an advantage in this situation.
SE: Look, the majority of Israelis want the two-state solution. I know that. And they are normal people like you and us. They have fears, they have concerns, they have good people, they have bad people, like Palestinians, like Americans, like anybody else. But I think the majority of Israelis want to live and let live, want the two-state solution. And unfortunately they have a leader who succeeded in exporting fear to them. And I told you I would rather have a partner in Israel that will make peace with me through a negotiated border lines.
SI: What do you want from President Obama right now?
SE: I really, I appreciate what President Obama has been doing to achieve the two-state solution. I appreciate what Secretary Kerry has done. I think these two people have done more than anyone else did for Palestinians and Israelis. But at the end of the day it's going to be Palestinians and Israelis who will take the decisions and concessions required to make peace. And I appreciate very much what President Obama or the White House said about the full commitment of the two-state solution. Because this is the message that Palestinians and Israelis need to hear from the leader of the world, the president of the United States.
SI: Saeb Erekat, thank you very much.
SE: Thank you.
SI: He's chief negotiator with the Palestinian authority. And elsewhere in the program, we interview Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself on Israeli security, Israeli settlements and a Palestinian state.Comet Swift-Tuttle, the source of the annual Perseid meteor shower, is seen in this false color view captured by astronomer Jim Scotti of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Scotti took this image through a Spacewatch telescope at Kitt Peak on Nov. 24, 1992 during the comet's last close approach to Earth.
The spectacular Perseid meteor shower, peaking Thursday night (Aug. 11–12), lights up Earth's sky every summer as Earth passes through the trail left by Comet Swift-Tuttle, a miles-wide behemoth that swings by Earth every 133 years.
Swift-Tuttle, whose nucleus is 16 miles (26 kilometers) wide, is the largest solar system object to pass close to Earth repeatedly, NASA has said, and researchers once thought it was likely to hit Earth in 2126 — but the last time it passed Earth, in 1992, astronomers took more precise measurements and calculated that its next pass wouldn't be so dangerous after all.
"Its orbit passes very close to the Earth's orbit, so that it has been viewed as a hazardous object over the years," Paul Chodas, NASA's manager for the center of near-Earth object studies, told Space.com. "Now, we know its orbit very well, well enough to say that we are safe from an impact for many thousands of years." [Perseid Meteor Shower 2016: When & How to See It]
Astronomer Jim Scotti of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory remembers observing Comet Swift-Tuttle in 1992 (between late November and early December) through the lab's 36-inch Spacewatch telescope atop Kitt Peak.
"That was a fun comet to observe," Scotti told Space.com. "It's hard to believe it was that long ago now."
Astronomer Jim Scotti captured this series of images of Comet Swift-Tuttle, the source of the annual Perseid meteor shower, between Nov. 25 and Dec. 1 in 1992 during the comet's last close approach to Earth. (Image: © Images by Jim Scotti, University of Arizona)
Scotti tracked the comet over the course of nearly a week with the telescope. "It was relatively bright so it was fairly easy to observe."
Like all comets, sometimes called "dirty snowballs," Swift-Tuttle is a ball of dust, ice, rock and dark organic material. It was discovered in July 1862 independently by both Lewis Swift and Horace Parnell Tuttle.
The comet orbits the sun, but follows a very steep incline as compared to the solar system planets — diving down into the solar system to whip around the sun and back out again. So when the comet passes Earth it's traveling at great speed, Chodas said.
Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle approaches Earth every 133 years during its oblique orbit around the sun. It last approached Earth in 1992, and will return in 2126. Its path of debris causes the annual Perseid meteor shower. (Image: © NASA/JPL)
And its dust and debris, which create the Perseid meteor shower as they burn up in Earth's atmosphere, are traveling quickly, too — at around 37 miles (59 km) per second. And even though the comet only passes by Earth every 133 years, the meteor shower occurs every year when Earth moves through the trail of its orbit.
"The debris is coming in faster than many other comets because it's a very elongated orbit … so that makes the show a little more spectacular because of the speed," Chodas said.
For viewers in the Northern Hemisphere, the Perseids are one of the best meteor showers of the year — and NASA has called it the "fireball champion" of annual meteor showers for its record-breaking number of extra-bright meteors, called fireballs. Those fireballs are visible even in light-polluted areas like cities (still, there are many more faint meteors that are only visible if you go to a darker area).
This year, the peak will be more spectacular than usual, reaching 200 meteors an hour, because of the effect of Jupiter's gravityon the debris trail. That meteor increase, called an outburst, is irregular — researchers have only been able to predict their timing since the late 1990s, NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke told Space.com.
Despite its brilliance, this year's conditions aren't ideal, because there's a bright, waxing moon in the sky around the shower's peak. So if you're planning to look Thursday night, wait until the constellation Perseus has risen and the moon has set (around 12-1 a.m. in most locations).
"Go to a sky that is as dark as possible, and then get comfortable, and dark-adapt your eyes and be patient — the average rate is something like one a minute, but some of them are faint," Chodas said. "Since they appear to radiate out of the constellation Perseus, which doesn't rise until late, this meteor shower is better seen in the wee hours of the morning when that constellation is higher in the sky."
And if you miss the meteor shower's peak, or want to look a few days early, don't worry — you can still see meteors before and after the peak.
"The meteor shower lasts several days, because it's a wide cloud of debris that the Earth is passing through," Chodas said.
Editor's note: If you have an amazing photo of this year's Perseid meteor shower you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.''This whole process of policymaking … has been one of the worst examples of policymaking we've seen on major issues in Australia,'' he said. Despite the poll findings showing more support for nuclear power, the Rudd Government yesterday restated its total opposition to it as an option to help Australia meet its future carbon reduction targets. During the 2007 election campaign, after prime minister John Howard put nuclear power on the agenda, then opposition leader Kevin Rudd said: ''If you elect a Labor government, there will be no nuclear reactors in Australia, full stop.'' Supporters of nuclear power say it is the only practical low-emissions alternative to coal for generating baseload electricity - the minimum required by industry and residential users. Arguments against focus on safety - the risk of accidents and the fact that radioactive waste must be stored securely for thousands of years. Opponents also say it would take too long develop a nuclear power industry.
Ziggy Switkowski, who chairs the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, said: ''[We must] provide for the next generation of baseload electricity generation with clean energy. The only way to do that is with nuclear power.'' Support for considering nuclear was strongest among Coalition supporters (58 per cent), and opposition was strongest among Greens voters (62 per cent). ALP voters were evenly divided, with 46 per cent in favour and 46 per cent opposed. Survey respondents were told: ''The introduction of nuclear power has been suggested as one means to address climate change'', and then asked: ''Do you support or oppose the Federal Government considering the introduction of nuclear power in Australia?'' Federal Energy Minister Martin Ferguson restated the Government's opposition to nuclear power. He also cast doubt on the viability of photovoltaic solar power as a future energy resource. He said the renewable sector kept falsely insisting it could be an alternative to coal as baseload power. But he believed solar thermal technology, which uses the sun's heat to boil liquids to power turbines, was a more likely answer.
Victorian Energy Minister Peter Batchelor dismissed nuclear power as an option for the state. He said increased reliance on lower-emitting gas, clean coal and renewable energy sources were the way ahead. However, hopes for a cleaner future for Victoria's power industry received a setback last month with the abandonment of a ''carbon capture'' project at a proposed power station near Morwell, which instead is to become a gas-fired station. In another setback for the renewables sector, Solar Systems, which was to have developed a 154-megawatt solar photovoltaic power station near Mildura, was put into administration. Meanwhile, the annual Lowy Institute poll has found that climate change is dropping as a priority for Australians. The poll, released today, found Australians have gone from ranking climate change in 2007 as the equal most important foreign policy goal to putting it seventh out of 10 possible goals. The issue fell 10 points since last year and 19 points from 2007. But Lowy executive director Michael Wesley said 76 per cent rated climate change a problem and those who felt this way viewed getting a solution as increasingly urgent.
As the Opposition prepared to put a package of amendments on emissions trading to Parliament next week, political sparring continued over the costs of curbing emissions. Frontier Economics and independent senator Nick Xenophon hit back at Treasury's claim that Frontier's blueprint, commissioned by the Opposition (and Senator Xenophon), had a $3.2 billion hole. They accused Treasury of misunderstanding the ''credit and baseline'' approach to emissions trading and getting its sums wrong. Senator Xenophon said Treasury was acting politically. He said he could not support the Government's scheme unless it included changes to the way the electricity sector was treated. There was a risk the Government's model would cause energy security problems, including blackouts. The Seven Network reported an analysis commissioned by the NSW Government from Frontier last year on the Rudd Government scheme said that in the long term it could lead to real wages 8 per cent below the level they would otherwise reach, if long-run unemployment was to be avoided.
With MICHELLE GRATTANScalability isn't the only issue in making this choice (and I do know of successful databases with trillions of records so databases are more scalable than you think). Nor is it probably the most important.
First you need to look at the meaning of the data. Something like Facebook is tied intrinsically to its application and thus putting the logic there isn't as risky as a business application which has to get its data from imports, database jobs, user data entry from several different applications including some that perhaps the business has no control over. So the risk to data integrity is the first and most important thing to consider when making this choice.
Also how the data will be used and in what environment is critical. How is the information audited? Are there regulatory requirements? How is the reporting done? Do I need to be able to reuse the logic in a different reporting system as well as in the user application? If so the logic needs to rest outside of the application. Do I need to do exports of the data and how is that affected by the logic being in the application. Does that mean the people writing the reporting and export code will not have the ability to see what the logic is because they don't have access to application code? That can be a major problem.
Another consideration is the scalability which includes the performance. How much scalability do you need? Very few things need the scalability of a Facebook. How much performance do you need? Designing for scalability when you will never need it leads to less than optimum results. Will the methods you use to put logic in the application have a negative impact on database performance (many ORMs for instance write terrible database code).
Then there is the argument about less time for development which is ridiculous. If you know what you are doing, putting the logic in the database does not take more time than putting it in the application. It is just that most application developers aren't SQL specialists. However, is saving the devs time to get better at SQL really a plus? No it is not because that choice almost always comes at a cost of performance on the database and at the cost of data integrity.
What I am trying to say is there is no one size fits all. There are some applications where putting the logic in the application makes sense and some where it does not, but thinking there are only one or two critical factors to consider when making the choice is generally a mistake.Most of Carina Polar Research Station has been buried beneath the ice. It was inevitable, really. Over time, the heat and weight of the base caused it to sink slowly, and rather than digging it back up, the next teams simply built on top of it. It sits like a snowy layer cake, each sunken base becoming increasingly abandoned, aged, as you descend. And that’s what you do in The Ice-Bound Concordance [official site]: starting from the very top, you emerge from a blizzard and make your way down through the past to the very bottom of Carina Station, and the secret that it holds.
Except – hang on, that’s not quite right. That’s not right. Let me try that intro again.
Tethys House, a fictional publishing company, can do something remarkable. Using a combination of various partially disclosed methods, they’re able to resurrect long-dead authors as artificially intelligent “simulacra” capable of writing brand new stories. The author “Charles”, for example, has just finished Little Pip Popplewell, which includes “two custom roles for personalization through our You Pick The Cast program”. This is obviously controversial, with living authors decrying the simulacra as “formula fiction” and calling for a renewed focus on craft. Tethys House have an ace up their sleeve, though. They’ve managed to obtain brain scans of Kristopher Holmquist, an author whose gigantic popularity only emerged following his death.
Tethys have built a simulacrum of him and set it to work finishing his infamous unfinished novel, Ice-Bound, which currently only exists in the form of fragments and notes, each contradicting the other. This is no small task, and so the “KRIS” simulacra has been assigned a human partner to help it compile the pieces of Ice-Bound into a finished and marketable novel. It is unclear whether the “finished” or the “marketable” aspect is more important.
So that’s where you come in. Descending through Carina Station, yes, but not as a scientist or researcher – you’re instead something like a co-writer, trying to make sense of various fragments of plot as their long-dead creator politely talks you through them. “What did you think I was going for here?” he’ll ask, and you’ll have the opportunity to affect the story both directly (“I think the Professor should slip and fall,”) and thematically (“I feel this is a chapter concerned with spiral imagery”.) As you and KRIS mirror the character’s explorations deeper into the station, you gradually refine the story more and more into what you feel it should always have been about.
As you might have noticed, this is a game that defies easy explanation. Part of that comes as a result of its format; the first two chapters of Ice-Bound are free, but to play more you need to purchase a book. An actual, real, hold-it-in-your-hands book, crammed to bursting with journal entries and chat logs and newspaper articles. Many of these don’t make that much sense at first. You’ll find references to characters in Carina Station that you know shouldn’t exist, messages between people you’ve only vaguely heard of. As the game progresses, though, the contents of the book (called The Ice-Bound Compendium) begin to gain more and more meaning. It’s a key, really, and to explain how it works, I’m going to have to — okay, bear with me here, I’m going to try and describe how this game actually plays.
I should probably start by saying that in a brilliant example of pacing and tutorial design, most of what I’m about to muddle through is communicated very clearly in play. Any time I felt like I was losing a mechanical thread, the game would reinforce it, or outright ask if I was confused and steer me back onto the right track. As the player descends through Carina Station’s layers, they encounter the various fragments of the story Holmquist managed to complete. At first there are three or four fragments per layer, each represented by an object. A pressed rose, for example, might lead to a fragment about romance; a bottle of pills tells a short story about illness.
Not every fragment can make it into the final story, though. That would be a mess. To counter this, the simulacra gives you a set number of “lights”: little whispering, glimmering circles that, when placed over fragments, activates them. In this way, you can only activate a few at once before you run out of lights. These lights aren’t expended, though, only assigned, leaving you free to change your mind about what a layer’s fragments should be until you descend. Here’s a picture. I hope the picture helps. Good grief, this is fairly tricky to explain.
Different combinations of fragments unlock different “events” – the fragments “Felipe is claustrophobic” and “the Professor is ill” might lead to “Felipe becomes trapped in the air vent”, for example. In turn, these events can combine to make endings. One of them might be “Felipe freezes to death in the air vent”. That seems really quite unfair towards Felipe. Let’s re-arrange some lights. Okay, now the Professor’s no longer ill, and she gives Felipe the strength he needs to leave the air vent. They descend together.
Hm. I thought it was interesting that the Professor was ill. It complicated her motivations for joining an arctic expedition. Can I prevent Felipe’s death and still have her be ill? Let’s re-arrange the lights. Ah, no, Felipe’s dead again. And so on.
At any moment, you can read the individual paragraphs described in the fragments, and alter tiny non-mechanical details. Did the Professor comfort Felipe “firmly” or “desperately”? Did the wind outside “howl like an army of wolves” or “whisper maliciously”? Sometimes the prose verges on purple, and this bothered me at first until I remembered that I was reading early portions of a novel, whose author died before he could get them to a place he was entirely happy with. Sure enough, the Compendium makes reference to the variable quality of Holmquist’s fragments.
So, the Compendium. The KRIS simulacra might not be a human, but it (he?) is still concerned with finishing the story properly. He (it?) is, in many important ways, a facsimile of the author who left Ice-Bound behind. So rather than just throwing in fragments on a whim, he asks if you can find some proof from the notes contained within the Compendium that you’re guiding the story in a direction he’d previously considered. “It sounds like you’re talking about themes of Trial By Fire,” he says, and sends you off to find evidence of that within the Compendium. You leaf through the pages until you find something that you think matches that, and then, in a brilliant touch, you hold the book up to your webcam and let KRIS see it. In the grainy image on your computer screen, the page of the book comes alive. It’s overlaid with new text, or a message dramatically changes, or an animation splinters across it. Content that the Compendium supports your decisions, KRIS “freezes” the layer, stopping you from enacting changes, and descends to the next. The story begins to take shape.
Early on, as I agonised over the combination of lights, KRIS offhandedly chimed in with something like “you think this is difficult? Think about the amount of permutations there’ll be further down”. He was right. The deeper we travelled, the more the scope of the game impressed me. Tabbing into the paragraph view, you can see a breakdown for the exact reasons sentences have been chosen, altered, modified. The more I pressed for the story to contain elements of the fantastic, the more KRIS seeded fragments with impossible stairways, twisting libraries, figures made from icicles.
A love triangle I’d accidentally wrangled from the light permutations was forgotten about for three layers then re-appeared suddenly further down. When I realised quite the extent to which the story was procedural and responsive, it felt like a dizzying pit had opened up. How was this made, I began to wonder. What needs to be done to make a game like this?
The answer, at least in part, involves compromise. Even at its best moments, the story remains fragmented, crystalline. Plot-lines don’t develop or conclude on a particularly large scale, instead being reflected in repeating themes and motifs. To an extent, this works very well: the game was never about writing a story so much as corralling elements of one, and there’s a certain scattered poetry in the way the game introduces elements only to largely forget about them. I wish, though, that I learned what happened to Felipe in the air-vent, or what was in the box Ethan fished out from the ice. Even as this frustrated me, though, I’d feel some small but significant change ripple through the game from a choice I’d made, and I’d press on deeper into the station.
At the heart of all this is KRIS, and the memories of a man called Kristopher Holmquist. Just as reading any other book begins to tell you about its author, directly or indirectly, elements of Kristopher begin to seep into the story. A visit to an actual polar research station. A shopping list. An answering machine. The author takes shape in front of you, and you begin to reconsider some of your responses to his questions. After learning through the Compendium that the living Kristopher could always have used somebody willing to challenge his ideas, I halted when he suggested I take the story to a place I wasn’t interested in. “I’m not sure if that’s right for this,” I said, and he considered it and capitulated. Later, he grumbled when I suggested something. We were collaborators. One of us was a ghost.
When I’m editing, I’m often overwhelmed. At first, writing is an additive process; there is a blank page, sentences fill it word by word. Ideas stack on top of each other like Jenga pieces. Editing is different. I squint at the Jenga tower I’ve built and realise that the piece two rows from the bottom needs to go on the top. The tower falls down. I put it back together again except this time I realise I’ve forgotten three bricks, so place them haphazardly on top. The tower falls down again. Ice-Bound is a game that, more than anything else, captures this feeling of editing.
I’ll position one of KRIS’s lights and learn about a new character, pull a face. They seem fun, but push the story too far in one direction. I add another light. Oh – what if they’re friends with Bakerson? That might mean that he stops them from opening that frozen door? Maybe the story should have more elements of horror. Is there any way I could remove Bakerson altogether and strand this character in the station?
In two layers time, I’ll realise that I never found out what was behind the frozen door, beyond two sentences describing the character’s face, twisted in fear.
In three layers time, the stranded character’s loneliness will have propagated downward through the story in a way that surprises me.
There’s more, of course, but to talk about it would rob it of its surprises. The story gradually opens itself up, approaches stranger and more difficult themes. And then it ends, with a simultaneous flourish and abruptness that left me feeling very strange. In a few brilliant, awful final moments I realised where I’d made mistakes as a player and an editor, where I hadn’t thought hard enough, worked things through. All stories have to go somewhere, all polar research stations have secrets buried at their base. But the abruptness – it bothered me, kicking me back to the menu screen and flashing the “new game” button. Here, the game’s fragmented procedural nature acts in its favour; who would inhabit the base on my third playthrough? My fourth? I can’t help but feel, though, that in the end, the lack of a particular conclusion is sorely missed.
When I finished the game, I picked up the Compendium and turned to a random page. I recognised the names of some characters, and peered closer. Flipped the page. In a little inset was something I hadn’t read before. I must have missed it earlier, and my eyes widened. It didn’t dramatically change the story or dazzlingly recontextualise something. Instead, it added a tiny fragment that, the more I thought about, added to aspects of what I’d played. A little light had turned on, enacting a change that rippled down through the story. Sitting here in a coffee shop, writing these lines, it’s still rippling. Thawing the ice, down in the depths of the Carina Polar Research Station.
The Ice-Bound Concordance is available now.
Jack de Quidt is a writer currently working at Crows Crows Crows on games like Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist.The iPad is a great tablet. It’s well designed, and for the most part, it’s dead simple to use. The iPad is a tablet that sits on your bedside table or coffee table in the living room to quickly browse the web with, check email, read an e-book, and maybe play the occasional game. That’s what it excels in; media consumption.
The non-Pro Surface line was always designed to compete with the iPad. The last two generations all came with ARM processors and were priced very similarly to Apple’s tablet, but despite offering some superior features and capabilities the tablets didn’t take off. This was partly due to the lack of apps on the Modern-focused Windows RT OS, and partly due to the confusing nature of the products. Were they tablets or were they laptops? And why weren’t they good at being either?
Last month, Microsoft announced the Surface 3. It marked the first non-Pro Surface to feature an x86 processor that ran full Windows 8.1. On the hardware side, the Surface 3 builds on elements that made the Surface Pro 3 the critically acclaimed device that it is. Still, the Surface Pro 3 is a different device, designed for a different crowd of people. So how does the Surface 3 stack up as a media consumption device, is it the tablet that can replace your iPad?
Hardware
This would be the third time I slid a Surface out of its box, and every single time, I got the same feeling of unwrapping something premium. Even when unboxing a high-end Lumia, the feeling isn’t quite the same. Despite being light, the Surface 3 feels solid in the hands. It’s beautifully crafted, designed with simplicity and elegance in mind. You’ll appreciate its quality, even if it doesn’t come in gold.
Powering the device is a quad-core Intel Atom x7-8700 processor paired with 128GB of storage and 4GB of RAM. The Surface 3 is plenty powerful, especially for a fanless system. It comes with a full-size USB 3.0 port, Micro USB, Mini DisplayPort, and a microSD card slot, so it makes using storage drives and connecting peripherals a lot easier than having to use a dongle with the iPad.
There’s an 8MP rear camera with autofocus on the Surface 3, and while it’s a nice upgrade over the Surface 2, it won’t replace your smartphone. The 3.5MP front camera is good enough to use for video conferencing, and it’s also surprisingly good in low-light conditions. Just like the Surface Pro 3, the Surface 3 comes with front-facing stereo speakers, and they make me wish all tablets and smartphones have front-facing speakers. It’s only logical.
It wouldn’t be a Surface if it didn’t have a kickstand. To conserve costs, Microsoft didn’t go with the expensive-to-manufacture, ever so intricate, friction hinge that graces the Surface Pro 3. Instead, the company opted for a new 3-stage hinge and kickstand. It’s not as flexible, but works relatively well in allowing you to use the Surface 3 standing, be it on a table, your lap, or your chest when lying down. Even something as light at the iPad Air 2 will make you feel fatigued after holding it for prolonged periods of time, like when watching a movie, so having a kickstand is a great convenience.
Display
The Surface 3 comes with a 10.8” display with support for up to 10 touch points. There’s no “Retina Display” here, but the 1920 x 1280 resolution is more than adequate. Text looks sharp and you won’t see any pixels unless your nose is touching the screen.
The added 0.2” over the 10.6” screen used on the Surface 3 allowed Microsoft to adopt a 3:2 aspect ratio. As an owner of the Surface Pro 2, and an advocate for widescreen displays, I have to say, I like the display on the Surface 3 better because of the aspect ratio. Widescreen displays are great for movies as there’s no letterboxing, but I spend more of my time in the browser, which is better suited for a 3:2 display, particularly in portrait mode.
The display size on the Surface 3 seems perfect for media consumption. 9.7” on the iPad does feel small at times, no matter how much the resolution is increased, and 12” on the Surface Pro 3 is just too big.
Performance
Initially, performance was a major concern for me. My experience with Atom processors in the past has never been pleasant. Intel’s Atom processors have become synonymous with the netbooks that they debuted on. Remember those horrid PCs that also ran full Windows and lagged when you moved the mouse cursor? Thankfully, that’s not the case with the Surface 3, the new Atom x7 processor chugs along just fine.
I tend to have about 20 content-heavy tabs open at a time when browsing the web, and Internet Explorer (Modern) managed them just perfectly on the Surface 3. With the Atom x7 and 4GB of RAM, I could switch from tab 20 to tab 1 or any of the other pages without them having to be reloaded. For the fun of it, I tried switching between them in rapid succession — no lag and no delays!
Other everyday tasks like watching videos, listening to music in the background, and playing games are also lag-free experiences. You may only notice delays if you’ve switched from a Surface Pro with an Intel Core i processor. In that case the Surface 3 does take slightly longer to load certain apps like News, but that’s to be expected really.
Despite the powerful processor and its fanless design, the device never really heated up during regular usage, even with a number of apps open. It got a little warm during benchmarking, but even then, it wasn’t warm enough to make me feel uncomfortable.
Speaking of benchmarks, the Surface 3 delivered a score of 25446 in the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited test, achieving over 100fps in both graphics tests and just under 70fps in the physics test, which is fantastic obviously for a tablet. To put that in perspective, the Surface Pro 2 with its Core i5 laptop internals spat the benchmark out with a score of 42296. The CPU plus internal GPU of Core i processors are a lot better, but that shouldn’t make that much of a difference in Modern UI games.
Software
You probably know all there is to know about Windows 8.1 so I won’t go into too much detail. The Surface 3 with 4GB of RAM comes with Windows 8.1 64-bit, the same operating system you would get on regular desktop and laptop computers. You still have the option to switch between operating in the Modern or the Desktop worlds, but regular tablet users likely won’t ever find the need to use the Desktop, unless they need to be productive or creative.
For those that only need to consume, the tile-based Modern UI is your home. But let’s talk about apps. Keep in mind that we’re trying to determine how well the Surface 3 performs as an iPad replacement. In this case, Windows desktop apps are not a replacement for Modern apps. The argument that full Windows 8.1 is a solution to the Modern “app problem” doesn’t work here. It doesn’t matter how many millions of desktop apps Windows has, for someone looking for a media consumption device, desktop apps just won’t cut it. Those apps are not designed to be touch friendly, and many of them scale poorly on high-DPI displays like the one on the Surface 3.
The good news is that for the everyday user, most of the essential |
U.K. Why is it still stuck in people’s craws?
Blair: Because it was a hugely contested decision, and because the intelligence turned out to be, in many cases, faulty, and obviously that’s a huge issue for people. But it’s also because I think it raises in a very profound way, what is the answer to the problems of the Middle East? And some people say, “Well, the problems of the Middle East all stem from—you wouldn’t have this extremism but for the invasion of Iraq.” You have to go back to people and say, “9/11 happened before any of these things.” And in the end, in my view, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s been happening over half a century, which is the build up of this, as I say, this idea that the religion of Islam should be turned into a political ideology.
And this is—but this is so contested, I think in time, by the way, and I can see this beginning to happen, particularly as the result of Syria, where people can see also the costs of non-intervention. I think people are coming to a more measured analysis, but I think this debate will continue until the history of the Middle East settles.
Glasser: So, you’re never going to be able to get beyond it. I imagine you can’t go anywhere without being asked about it.
Blair: No, and I’m perfectly happy to be asked about it, because it’s something I think about a lot, and all I ever say to people about it is, “Whatever else you do understand, that I took the decisions I took on the evidence available at the time, and I took them in good faith.” And there is a—we’ve tried three forms of intervention in the Middle East; we’ve tried full-on intervention in Iraq, we’ve tried semi-intervention in Libya, and we tried non-intervention or very limited intervention in Syria. All of them are difficult.
Glasser: Does it liberate you, though, in a way, to speak out? You’re speaking out now about British politics and the consequences of the Brexit. You’re no longer worrying about your standing in the popularity polls.
Blair: Yeah, one should never exaggerate this, by the way. I mean, I did win three elections in the U.K. I’ll use them.
Glasser: Of course.
Blair: But part of the trouble when you’re in my position is the way the media has changed, because in the U.K.—I don’t know whether it’s true here, but in the U.K., you’ve got a group of right-wing newspapers that are profoundly hostile to that modern, progressive politics that I represented, because basically, it put the Tories out of power. And then you’ve got a left group that really believe, obviously, support Jeremy Corbyn now in the Labour Party very, very strongly.
Glasser: Right, it’s really moved to the extremes.
Blair: And there isn’t really a constituency in the media in the middle. So, it’s—but there is a constituency in the country.
Glasser: Well, that’s my question about politics, both in the U.K., and more broadly, Europe and the United States. Is the center dead? Richard Nixon used to talk about the “silent majority,” and in a way, he meant a different kind of silent majority, but a lot of people are asking that, and that was the number one question people wanted me to ask you. What happened to the center?
Blair: We became complacent; we became the managers of the status quo, not the change makers, and we’ve got to renew the center. And part of what my institute is doing now in our work in the U.K. but we also want to build alliances and interactions in America and the rest of Europe, to say, “What is the policy agenda that is going to rekindle the politics of hope, and show people there are ways of dealing with the problems we face that remain true to our values, but make sense in the modern world?”
And I think the center can be renewed, the victory of Macron in France in many ways shows that. But we’ve got to renew it, in the U.S., and in the U.K., because if we don’t, our politics carries on being profoundly polarized. It’s going to do immense damage to our countries.
Glasser: Do you see the Democratic Party here and the Labour Party in the U.K. as being able to do that, at this point? Or will it be a new vehicle?
Blair: You know, they’re both—I mean, look. I think when people talk about new parties, there are enormous headwinds to establishing something new. But I think for the Democratic Oarty and for the Labour Party, the choice is very, very simple: you can go to a kind of mixture of what I would call identity politics. You know what I mean by that? In other words, you sort of just line up all the different minority groupings, and then you say, “Right, now we’ve got a majority to govern.”
And you can go for what are very good-sounding things like, we’re going to abolish tuition fees, or we’re going to give you this for free, or that for free. Okay, so that’s one way you can go, and it definitely, in today’s world, and in particular, in the absence of a vigorous change-making center, that’s very attractive. But I don’t think it’s answer, and I’m not sure it would win an election.
Maybe it would, but even if it did, it would worry me. Because in the end, I think a lot of these solutions aren’t really progressive. And they don’t correspond to what the problem of the modern world is, which is the problem of accelerating change. And so, the solutions that kind of look back to the ‘60s or ‘70s, they get a round of applause, but I just don’t believe if you—
Glasser: You’re not a Bernie Sanders liberal.
Blair: Look, I admire what he has done, and actually, even though I disagree with Jeremy Corbyn a lot in the U.K., I have an admiration for their ability to generate that enthusiasm, particularly among young people.
Glasser: Sure, but neither one of them really sort of projects the future, right, when you’re looking to a sort of angry grandpa mode.
Blair: Right, that’s my worry. What they’re—it’s a populism of the left in the same way that the populism of the right doesn’t really provide an answer. I think that populism of the left doesn’t really provide an answer, either. And the question that I—the things that I would be looking at, if I was back in government today, is the relationship—what are you going to do about the communities left behind?
So, education becomes of fundamental importance; infrastructure; tax reform; making sure your welfare systems are properly up to date and correspond with the way that people live their lives, and dealing particularly I think with very specific measures for that small but very ingrained part of the population that just gets left behind, generation after generation. And then I’d put an enormous focus on technology.
Technology is changing the way we live and we work and we think. It’s going to transform the world, and yet I think there is an alarming sort of disconnect between the world of public policy-making, and the world of technology, which is—
Glasser: That’s right. Silicon Valley is its own planet.
Blair: Right, and I’ve said to this a lot to the people in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. “You guys are really—you’re making a big mistake in the way you’re approaching this, because you keep thinking because you’re in jeans and a t-shirt and sneakers, people think, oh, well, that’s cool.” No, today, you’re big, big powerful corporations; you exercise an enormous amount of power over people’s lives.
You’re going to change the way the world is. You’ve got to start talking to the people in the public policy sphere, and those in the public policy sphere have got to be in a position where we can help people through the technological change that could affect them adversely, but then utilize the immense benefits of technology, in healthcare, in education, in the way government works, in order to change the way that we run our societies.
And this is—could be an enormously powerful agenda, but it’s basically not part of the political agenda. Certainly, in the U.K., no one really talks about this. And I sort of say, “Well, this is ridiculous. We’re living through the industrial revolution, probably the most important since the 19th century, and yet we’re not really—we’re not engaged with it.”
Glasser: Well, that’s right. It’s part of the backlash. I think that’s why people are eager to hear from you, and thinking back to the third way, and in a way, the partnership that you and Bill Clinton established at a similar moment of disruptive change in the late 1980s. So, are you going to team back up and—what comes after the third way?
Blair: The third way—it was a concept, and I think like any of these things, it has relevance provided it’s not rooted in the policies for a particular era. So, your values are constant, but your application of them should be ever changing. And I would have a different view of government today than I did 20 years ago. I’d probably want a much more active and strategic government than then. Then, we were living in more liberal times, I think, in the economic sense.
I think today you—people really need to feel that there is someone on their side strong enough to take on vested interests, and clear enough in their understanding of the future to be able to guide them through it, and help them through it.
Glasser: Okay, so if you were doing things differently, you’d have to deal with Twitter, if you were the prime minister of the U.K. right now. What would you tweet at Donald Trump, if you were tweeting at him?
Blair: I wouldn’t be tweeting.
Glasser: Even if you were prime minister, you wouldn’t use it as a tool?
Blair: No, I think—look, one of the things that’s really important in this is to understand the—
Glasser: It’s certainly a good mental health policy.
Blair: Well, the thing is this: it’s—what you learn about politics, particularly when you come to power after a sort of great election victory. Maybe it’s as mine was, a big landslide victory; his is an unexpected victory, right? So, there’s a mode of operating which is the campaign, and then once you win, you have to begin this process of graduation from campaigner to chief executive.
That’s what you are as—of a country. Okay, you should give leadership and vision and so on, but you’re also the chief executive of the country, making the decisions. I think it’s really important you make that switch, and the things that served you well as a candidate and campaigner don’t necessarily transfer to being chief executive.
So, for me, you know, look, it’s entirely up to the president. He likes his tweeting, and there it is. But personally, for me, I wouldn’t be tweeting at all.
Glasser: Well, you mentioned, and I know we—this is a good note to end on, because I’ll get in big trouble if I don’t ask you something about the British royalty. Your own transition from campaigning to governing came exactly 20 years ago, with the death of Princess Diana, in many ways, was at the very beginning of your prime ministership. I recently re-watched that excellent movie “The Queen,” which I learned in Maureen Dowd, you’ve never watched. It really is a very, very favorable portrayal of you, but the movie that portrays your effort to persuade Queen Elizabeth, very delicate diplomacy, to be a little bit more forthcoming and sharing in the national grief over Princess Diana’s death. How does that look to you, two decades on? Was that a key moment in your political career?
Blair: Well, it was a key moment, because obviously her death was such a trauma for the country, and it was a global event of massive significance. So, in that sense, it was obviously momentous, even though it fitted into a completely different character from the normal decision-making of government.
And you know, I think it was a moment when I thought it was important that the country stay together, and that it united around the Queen, and for all that’s made of my so-called persuasion of Queen Elizabeth, actually she worked it out herself as to what she needed to do, and that’s one of the reasons why she’s been such a successful monarch. Because she has an extraordinary sensitivity to the wishes of her people.
But it was a difficult situation. They were grieving their loss, she had to look after her grandchildren, who were at a very delicate stage of their development, and then she had to respond to the grief of the nation. Now, it took a little time to adjust to it, but she did adjust, and when she did adjust, she adjusted magnificently.
Glasser: A note to end it on. Prime Minister Tony Blair, we’re incredibly grateful to have you as our guest this week on The Global POLITICO, and of course, we’re grateful to our audience. You can listen to us on iTunes, or your favorite podcast platform, and email me any time at sglasser@politico.com. Prime Minister Tony Blair, thank you so much.
Blair: Thank you.Facebook…I have a Page…I will post a picture of a “Gay Yoda” I drew, if you go and Like the Legacy Control Facebook Fan Page.
So..there must be some evil paramilitary baron dude fucking with me. I have tried and failed twice to download the Hawken Alpha. I am CRAVING this game (I know, and there isn’t even any loot in it).
I even got some tech support from Brian (Editor of Control Freaks, and all around badass) and still no go. Seriously…fuck windows. I know I am going to get some hate for this, but having only ever had a mac, the Windows interface is so totally foreign and confusing to me…never mind the fact that my.dll file somehow vanishes during download.
I competed in my second ever Magic The Gathering draft tourney today (for Return to Ravnica) and did better than last time. I just missed placing in the top 10. I have learned a lot this time and I am giving the Legacy Control fans this promis…next time…I will place.
I was going to write “Happy Monday” but I don’t want to give anyone false hope.
Javisvia Facebook
Yes, that car is actually in the correct lane.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you see a motorist committing acts so willfully boneheaded that they shake your faith in the basic decency of humanity, you are probably driving in St. Louis But we submit to you, dear reader, that no one has ever driven morethan the hooligan who was spotted driving induring a busy morning commute last Friday along Kingshighway Boulevard in north city, near the intersection with Lee Avenue.As captured in the video below, the car — which appears to be a Pontiac Grand Am or Grand Prix — manages to roll through an intersection, stay in its lane and even keep a seemingly safe distance from a school bus, all while moving backwards.It's enough to make the man behind the camera remark, "Only in St. Louis."The leisurely ease with which the Pontiac violates all laws of the road is nothing short of dumbfounding. In fact, we can't help but wonder: Is this the worst driver in the world, or the best?Posted to Facebook on Friday, the video has garnered more than 4,000 shares and racked up 300,000 views. (We reached out Monday to the Facebook user who uploaded the clip; we'll update the story if we hear back.)The video provides few clues to the reason for this backwards trajectory. The man shooting the video, understandably astonished, muses that perhaps the Pontiac's transmission is to blame. But who knows? Is the Pontiac's fearless driver fulfilling a bet? Or maybe the driver is trying to hide the mileage of an unauthorized joy ride in a much more dangerous version of the F erris Bueller gambit Only in St. Louis indeed. And while it should go without saying, we'll say it again: Please don't drive like this. It's hard enough on the roadways around here as it is.The Cubs have officially signed free agent starter Jason Hammel to a one-year, $6MM deal. The 31-year-old Octagon client can earn an additional $1MM in incentives.
After posting a strong 3.43 ERA in 2012 season that was shortened due to knee surgery, Hammel failed to repeat in 2013. Hammel had reached 8.5 K/9 and 53.2% GB% in 2012, both of which represent career highs by a substantial margin.
As MLBTR's Tim Dierkes noted in ranking Hammel 48th on his list of the top fifty free agents, Hammel saw a dive in his strikeout and groundball rates and dealt with elbow issues. He ultimately ended up with a 4.97 ERA over 139 1/3 innings in 2013.
Prior to the long DL stints in his last two seasons, Hammel had registered three straight years with at least 170 innings for the Rockies. Though he averaged only a 4.63 ERA in that period, those figures were likely inflated by pitching at Coors Field. He posted successive FIP (3.71/3.70/4.83), xFIP (3.76/3.66/4.65), and SIERA (3.90/3.79/4.85) marks that paint a more favorable picture.
The Cubs had signed only three players to guaranteed MLB deals before landing Hammel, none of whom are starters. Hammel will presumably fill out the club's 2014 rotation, joining Jeff Samardzija, Edwin Jackson, Travis Wood, and Jake Arrieta to form the regular starting five.
After missing out on Masahiro Tanaka, Chicago had been rumored to be looking to make a value play on a mid-tier starter. WIth recent injury issues holding down his value, Hammel looks to be the same kind of pitcher that the Cubs targeted last year, when they inked Scott Baker (one year, $5.5MM), Scott Feldman (one year, $6MM), and Carlos Villanueva (two years, $10MM).
Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports was first to report the signing on January 31st (via Twitter). Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports tweeted that the deal was for one year and around $6MM. Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com tweeted the final financial terms. Carrie Muskat of MLB.com first tweeted that the deal was official.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.Money is the driving force of life in today’s world. Those who do not agree and say money can’t buy everything, it is time for them to revisit the age-old psychological theory established by Abraham Maslow. The Maslow’s pyramid, also known as Maslow’s hierarchy shows the fundamental needs of humans and how it will contribute towards their self-actualization.
One look at the pyramid is all it takes to realize that without money, there is no way one can satisfy any of the needs. The most basic needs – food, clothing and shelter don’t come free either. With money playing an important part in everyone’s life, the monetary systems have become the backbones of human civilization. All the established monetary systems are controlled by the governments and central banks. It means the governments and banks have a say on what one can and cannot do with their life – just by deciding when to turn on/off the tap (flow of money).
Governments aren’t gods and they are prone to bad decisions resulting from greed, neglect, lack of understanding, oversight or unforeseen circumstances which may prove very costly to individuals. At the same time, they can also target individuals by controlling their finances (tracking expenses, freezing bank accounts etc.). In order to prevent oneself from being easily manipulated, people should also start using alternative financial systems which are not directly connected with the country’s banking and monetary system. Even Tony Robbins, the well-known motivational speaker and personal finance instructor also agrees with it.
There are currently two ways to invest and safeguard one’s funds. These alternatives to conventional monetary systems are gold and bitcoin. People have been investing in Gold for a long time. going back in history, gold by itself used to be a currency before fiat currency replaced it. Even though Gold is one of the stable precious metals out there, it is still vulnerable to the influence of governments and central banks. There have been cases in history where governments have exerted control over gold by forcing individuals to hand over their gold during the times of depression.
When it comes to choosing between gold and bitcoin, bitcoin is the ideal option to invest one’s money in – to park funds or trade and multiply the investment. Bitcoin is a decentralized currency which cuts out middlemen like banks and other financial institutions when it comes to transactions and maintenance of the financial network. Miners, who are individuals or companies around the world collectively contribute processing power to process transactions and maintain the network. They also act as trusted third party, without caring about the user’s personal information. By ensuring virtually no involvement of banks or government interference in operations and transactions over the bitcoin network insulates it from undue government influence and control over an individual’s personal bitcoin finances.
Tony Robbins on Bitcoin
Tony Robbins maintains a blog where he introduces the readers to financial literacy. Bitcoin prominently features in one of his posts alongside financial advice and financial education material. He understands and also educates people about the differences between bitcoin and other currencies. In the end, Tony Robbins also mentions that the governments can’t devalue bitcoin and it can be used in anywhere in the world in the same form. Bitcoin accounts (or wallets) can’t be frozen by government bodies either.
However, governments can still introduce regulations to control bitcoin exchanges and other third party platforms that offer bitcoin-based services.
Bitcoin is the future of the economy. Governments and central banks are already considering ways to implement bitcoin technology into conventional monetary systems to iron out some of the inherent flaws. Bitcoin has paved the way for all around upgradation of banking and financial sector across the world.
Ref: Gold Reserve Act (1934) | What you need to know about Bitcoin - Tony Robbins | Img: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs by FireflySixtySeven (CC BY-SA 4.0) - Wikipedia Disclaimer: The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of NewsBTC.Hello everyone!Thought i'd register an account finally and share a little project I've been working on for the past few months at my job. I'll try to keep this short, and answer technical questions about the process, if anyone is interested of courseI've been flashing various WinMo and Android devices for years, and had just recently picked up a Nook Color at the time. Well within a hour I was running CM7 on it, and just couldn't believe how much potential was unlocked on this cheap little tablet!Months back at work, we were trying to figure out a better/more portable way to display product demonstration videos to our customers. We used TV's and DVD player to demo product videos, but that made it a pain to show specific items to customers, without changing the DVD chapter for the whole showroom. So we started tossing around the idea of a portable DVD player or tablet, and it took off from there.Eventually we had the idea of doing a trial run of tablets in the showrooms with a video player and videos of the product formatted for the tablet. Initially we tried using Acer Iconia tablets, but they were way too bulky to carry around all day. So we settled on using Nook Colors because of the size and the fact that we could hook a lanyard on so the sales associates wouldn't drop them! Those features sealed the deal and we did a trial run of 7 Nooks in the Florida showrooms. Needless to say, being able to show products video demos on demand were a huge hit for our customers and ended up deploying about 300 nooks to all our nation wide retail locations!It was a crazy few months, and we had a lot of technical hurdles to overcome, but the last of the 300 Nooks arrived in the showrooms at the beginning of the week, and they have had nothing but RAVE reviews from customers.I think using these Nooks running CyanogenMod as a retail selling tool is a huge milestone for mobile computing use in the retail environment.Would love to have hear feedback and like I said if anyone is interested in how we accomplished this technically i'll gladly provide details!----(Combined this from below)I took a Nook and did the initial flash to CM7. Then I completely locked down everything but the Video Player, Calculator, and Screen Brightness Widget. This including disabling many APKs / processes that were not needed that would just sit in the background, wasting battery. Any other applications that couldn't be disabled such as the settings menu are locked down with a password app. Since we're using this as a selling tool, we didn't want anyone browsing the internet or playing Angry Birds, so Play and wireless settings were also passworded. Then I cleaned up the interface and used the launcher to hide all the applications that are either for diagnostics or were simply locked down.Next I took a CWM Backup of our master Nook and copied that image to a CWM bootable card. I opted to leave the stock Nook recovery on there and go with the bootable to prevent... Tampering.So basically once I got the process down to a science, we ramped up production and started flashing them in bulk.For the last step, I put hundreds of product videos formatted for the Nooks native resolution onto a separate SD card and we used a card duplicator to create 300 cards that were installed into each device before we shipped them out.So in a nutshell we take a Nook, pop in the ClockworkMod Recovery card, restore the Backup, and within 5 to 10 minutes I have a fully customized nook that just needs the admin password changed, video card, and then it's ready to go.Ray DetwilerThanks to Beijing’s military parade on September 3, Chinese President Xi Jinping had a bevy of meet-and-greets with world leaders last week, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Xi also met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi – a meeting that gained far less publicity, but has intriguing implications.
China’s military parade was well attended by world leaders, with the exception of two regions: western Europe and the Middle East. Sisi was the only leader of a Middle Eastern country to attend, and Egypt was also one of 17 countries to send troops to march in the parade. Sisi’s presence was especially interesting, as he had already made a trip to China less than a year previously. He visited Beijing in late December of 2014, when China and Egypt upgraded their relationship to a “comprehensive strategic partnership.”
That Sisi made a second trip to Beijing in less than nine months – and personally attended China’s celebration of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II – emphasizes just how serious Egypt’s new government is about deepening ties with China. For decades, the United States has been Egypt’s major strategic partner, but that cooperation has been uneasy since Washington supported the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, during the height of the Arab Spring. Sisi himself gained power after Egypt’s military toppled elected President Mohammed Morsi, leading to even more uncomfortable relations between Sisi and the United States.
China’s state media also saw Sisi’s presence as a positive sign for China-Egypt relations. China Daily cited an Egyptian analyst, Yousri al-Azabawi of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, who said that Sisi’s attendance at the parade, in particular, was a sign that the two countries would seek to emphasize their military relationship. Previous China-Egypt cooperation, including Sisi’s December 2014 visit to China, had focused on the economic aspect of the relationship.
The major deliverables this time around, however, were still economic. During Sisi’s recent visit, China and Egypt finalized a number of deals that had been outlined in December 2014. According to Egyptian Trade and Industry minister Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour, that includes construction of a power plant in Suez Province, a new electric rail project to link Tenth of Ramadan City in Sharqia to Cairo, and a $100 million loan to the National Bank of Egypt for financing medium and small projects.
Nour also noted that China is now Egypt’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade worth $11 billion. Like many of China’s trading partners, however, Egypt is concerned about just how imbalanced that trade is – Nour pointed out that Chinese exports to Egypt account of $10.5 billion out of that $11 billion. “We are working hard to increase our exports to China and urge for opening the Chinese markets for our industrial and agricultural exports,” he told Xinhua. Nour also said Egypt would seek to encourage more Chinese investment.
That hope took a big step forward this week. In a deal announced on Monday, China State Construction Engineering Corporation agreed to build and finance part of a new administrative capital that will be built to the east of Cairo. Sisi’s government expects the project to cost $45 billion over the next five to seven years. When finished, it will include government agencies and the president’s office as well as a new airport.While the full project won't be finished until the fall of 2017, ASU has released what it says is the most accurate rendering to date of what the new Sun Devil Stadium will eventually look like.
The new rendering comes after the Arizona Board of Regents approved the $256 million construction budget and the hiring of Gould Evans/HTNB to design the new stadium which will hold 60,000 people
Previous renderings released in January 2014 included a "scrim" or video board that could project images onto the outside of the stadium which is now clearly gone in the new rendering. The concourse now looks more open and free flowing than previous renderings as well. The "double inferno" student section with more permanent seating in the south end zone remains in the renovation plans.
The Inferno along with the removal of most of the loge section in the southwest and southeast corners as well as the demolition of the upper deck of the north east end zone is scheduled to be completed by August 2015. A new addition announced late last year is a new student athletics facility under the north end zone which will be completed in time for the 2017 season.
ASU continues to emphasize that the stadium will be used more as a year-round facility in the future and the Sun Devil football team will continue to play in the stadium throughout the remodel.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
MEQUON (WITI) -- An 85-year-old Milwaukee woman is dead following a tragic accident in a Sendik's parking lot in Mequon Monday, March 16th.
Mequon police say around 3:40 p.m., an 87-year-old Milwaukee man at the wheel of a vehicle struck five parked cars while driving in reverse. He then accelerated forward, striking a pedestrian and several other parked vehicles and objects.
The 85-year-old Milwaukee woman was pronounced dead at the scene.
A witness who didn't want to be identified said the 87-year-old man was driving a red van.
"I heard a lady frantically screaming. (The victim) wasn't in good condition. I think everyone had kind of assumed the lady was unconscious. I don`t think anyone wanted to be liable for touching the victim," the witness said.
One woman at the scene checked for a pulse.
"She noticed it was fading away," the witness said.
The witness says the 87-year-old man sat in his van. He eventually came out with help from a shopper, but he never went to check on the victim's condition.
"Really no emotion out of him. I'm sure he was probably just in shock," the witness said.
A worker at a nearby store came out on his lunch break to see what was going on.
"She had been lying there and it was gruesome," Steven Hirschberg said.
The Ozaukee County Accident Reconstruction Team assisted Mequon police with the reconstruction of the incident.
We're told Sendik's is cooperating with the investigation.
It is unclear whether the incident was caught on surveillance video, but there are at least four cameras in the area.
Monitor FOX6 News and FOX6Now.com for updates on this developing story.
43.216641 -87.922342Luis Suarez will not feature for Uruguay in the Copa America clash against Venezuela because of his ongoing hamstring problem, and coach Oscar Tabarez suggested he may not play any part in the tournament.
Uruguay face Venezuela in Philadelphia on Thursday night in need of a positive result after a 3-1 loss to Mexico in their group opener.
Suarez missed that game with the injury he picked up while representing Barcelona in their Copa del Rey final victory over Sevilla on May 22, and Tabarez told a news conference the 29-year-old is "still in recovery."
He added: "It's the 17th day and he is still not ready. That being the case, he will not play."
Tabarez indicated that the striker might not play at all in the United States, with the 2018 World Cup qualification campaign in mind.
Uruguay currently top the CONMEBOL table and Tabarez said: "He's an important player and this is an important competition but the most important thing for us are the qualifying games for the World Cup.
"We are in the lead and the contribution of Suarez will be very important."
Suarez only returned to competitive international action in March following the expiry of his FIFA ban for biting Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini at the 2014 World Cup.There are several NFL organizations that could be accused of putting a crappy product on the field. But there’s only one that could be accused of allowing a crappy product into its hallways.
Rain drenched Sunday’s Raiders-Chiefs game at Oakland Coliseum, and that rain flowed from the heavens to the field to, well … the bowels of the stadium:
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Look at this mess in the bowels of the Coliseum. Players have to walk through this to go to and from the field. Smh. pic.twitter.com/z87Q1ObsLp — Courtney Cronin (@CourtneyRCronin) October 16, 2016
There’s concern that the waters might not just be rainwater. Such concerns are not without precedent; as recently as this past May, sewage systems at the stadium backed up, and the result was every bit as nasty as you’d expect.
There's a little issue with the restroom in the visiting dugout… pic.twitter.com/bmjEaFfqe3 — Bryan Hoch (@BryanHoch) May 21, 2016
Back to the current day. The rain soaked all the way through the stadium:
Not a great look at all for the aging coliseum. But hey, at least the Raiders have Ice Cube in the (very wet) house:
Story continues
Good luck navigating that mess, Raiders and Chiefs. Could be more challenging than any football game.
Oakland’s coliseum is leaking. (Screenshot)
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.0
In a rare bit of Hollywood cooperation between Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures, both studios reached an agreement that will allow them to share–and benefit from–Spider-Man appearing on the big screen. But while Marvel has Tom Holland cast as Peter Parker, who made his introduction in Captain America: Civil War and will be leading Spider-Man: Homecoming, Sony still owns the cinematic portrayals of the web-crawler and something on the order of 900 Marvel characters. It goes without saying that they’d like to capitalize on that intellectual property.
We’re already seeing this happen. Fox example, the recent story that Sony has hired screenwriter Chris Yost (Thor: Ragnarok) to write the script for Spider-Man characters Black Cat and Silver Sable, building on a previous version of the script Lisa Joy (Westworld); Matt Tolmach and Amy Pascal will produce the film previously known as the “secret female spin-off project.” However, there’s also the previously announced Venom standalone film and its recently confirmed release date of October 5, 2018. Scripted by Dante Harper (Alien: Covenant) and produced by Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach, we’re hearing that Sony is developing Venom not only as the film to launch their own Marvel Universe, but as an R-rated effort.
Keep in mind that this is the plan we’re hearing about at the moment and that things could still change between now and late 2018—especially once a director signs on and has his or her own vision—but it’s certainly an interesting approach to building Sony’s Marvel Universe. Andrew Garfield‘s take on Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man films was fine, but apparently not a direction the studio wanted to continue pursuing, despite tallying nearly $1.5 billion from just two films. Instead, the newly retooled Sony’s Marvel Universe will launch with an R-rated Venom that is expected to keep its budget modest. It sounds like Sony’s taking notes on the successes of both the MCU and 20th Century Fox’s Deadpool and Logan, and applying them to their own substantial stable of superheroes and supervillains.
Let’s be clear: Sony’s Marvel Universe will not be connected to the MCU in any way (sorry, Guardians of the Galaxy fans, but a Venom crossover is highly dubious) and the planned Venom and Black Cat and Silver Sable films are all part of Sony’s own shared universe, not spin-offs of any existing films. Marvel’s Kevin Feige has nothing to do with these films; it’s Tom Rothman, chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group, who’s calling the shots. The announcement of Venom‘s release date tells us that the execs are happy with the script and the new direction they’re embarking on, but with no director set for either film, obviously things can still change since all of the announced films are still in development.
What I really want to hear more about is Venom‘s tone and story. An R-rating allows for a lot of room for creativity, but just how are they going to bring the alien symbiote into the story? (And, no, Life |
Nazis and white supremacists.
Sign up for our newsletter Subscribe Fight the future.A mother hugs her child outside of their house shortly after an earthquake hit, in Medan, North Sumatra province April 7, 2010. REUTERS/Tarmizy Harva
JAKARTA (Reuters) - A major earthquake of 7.8 magnitude struck off the coast of Aceh on the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Wednesday, but there were no immediate reports of a tsunami or casualties.
A Reuters photographer on Simeulue island, south of Aceh, said there was panic and electricity was cut off after the quake. Metro TV reported that people rushed to higher ground in some areas.
The quake was centered 204 km (127 miles) west-northwest of the coastal town of Sibolga and was at a depth of 46 km (28.6 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said. It had initially reported the quake’s magnitude at 7.6.
The Reuters witness said there were at least three aftershocks.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no threat of a destructive widespread tsunami. However, it added: “There is the possibility of a local tsunami that could affect coasts” no more than 100 km (62 miles) from the epicenter of the quake.
In December 2004, a magnitude 9.15 quake off the coast of Sumatra’s Aceh province triggered an Indian Ocean tsunami that killed about 226,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other countries.New Delhi, Feb. 24: States are poised to get a Rs 5.26-lakh-crore windfall after the Centre agreed to broadly accept the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission.
The commission, headed by former RBI governor Y.V. Reddy, had submitted its report to the President last December in which it raised the states' share of the divisible pool of federal taxes to 42 per cent from 32 per cent.
"The higher tax devolution will allow states greater autonomy in financing and designing schemes as per their needs and requirements," said the report that was tabled in Parliament by finance minister Arun Jaitley.
The new formula will kick in from April 1 this year and will be valid for five years.
The commission has tried to restrict the Centre's discretion in the way it doles out money to states. "We believe that there is a need to alter the existing composition of transfers by increasing the share of 'untied' transfers. This should provide enhanced fiscal flexibility to the states to meet their expenditure needs and make expenditure decisions in line with their own priorities," the commission said.
The recommendations of the Finance Commission are not binding on the Centre but are generally accepted in toto as the body is constituted under a constitutional provision.
The panel's recommendation falls a little short of the 50 per cent share that Narendra Modi had demanded when he met the commission officials in September 2013 as chief minister of Gujarat.
In a letter to all chief ministers today, Prime Minister Modi said the increased money would give the states greater freedom to tailor development schemes to suit their needs. "When you (states) are flush with resources, I would like you to have a fresh look at some of the erstwhile schemes and programmes supported by the Centre. States are free to continue or change these schemes and programmes as per their discretion and requirement," Modi said.
Modi has been a big votary of granting a bigger slice of the federal tax pie to states. "We are moving away from rigid centralised planning which forced a 'one size fits all' approach on states. States have always been voicing their opposition to this philosophy for years," he said.
Jaitley said the commission had recommended the biggest-ever increase in funds devolution to states in percentage terms. "In the past, Finance Commissions used to recommend an increase in the range of just 1 to 2 per cent," he added.
Officials said the states would get a 51 per cent increase over the Rs 3.48 lakh crore they received from the Centre in 2014-15.
However, if all the grants, including plan funds, are taken into account, total transfers to states and Union territories by the Centre would amount to Rs 4.08 lakh crore. The total devolution to states during the five-year period up to 2019-20 will be Rs 39.48 lakh crore, the report estimated.
Small cut
The fine print of the report reveals that states will see a small cut in plan funds. The reason is that the Centre will no longer make separate allocations for about 30 centrally sponsored schemes which will now be lumped under the 42 per cent threshold.
But eight centrally sponsored schemes such as the MGNREGA and food security programme will continue to receive funding from the Centre because of legal obligations and the fact that some of these schemes have been identified as national priorities.
The commission has, however, given states the freedom to implement these schemes as they please.
Former plan panel adviser P.N. Shali said this represented a real "devolution of financial powers". The Centre could always call the shots in the past because of the "unitary" fiscal arrangement. States had demanded that they be given this freedom as the plans in any case could still be centrally monitored.
Officials said that even on disaster management, states had been given greater discretion in deciding how funds should be used.
The commission has also given local governments, including municipalities, greater fiscal independence from the state governments.
The commission has decided to give overall grants of Rs 287,436 crore to all local bodies during the five-year period ended March 2020. Out of this, the panchayats will receive Rs 200,292.2 crore and the municipalities Rs 87,143.8 crore.
Deficit states
The commission has recommended grants in aid of Rs 48,906 crore to 11 revenue-deficit states, including Bengal, post-division Andhra and Jammu and Kashmir, for 2015-16. For the period up to 2020, it will be over Rs 1.94 lakh crore.
The commission, however, rejected a demand made by Bengal and Kerala for special debt-relief packages. The Mamata Banerjee government has been groaning under the weight of a Rs 2-lakh-crore-debt heaped on it by the previous Left administration.
Icra senior economist Aditi Nayar said: "Say, a state government wants to spend more on roads instead of education because it has fewer younger people, it will have the freedom to do so... the move will likely prompt the central government to cut down on its share of centrally sponsored schemes to compensate for the revenue loss."
However, CARE Ratings economist Madan Sabnavis warned that there was a risk that irresponsible states would now be free to spend money on pre-election sops.
Dissent note
Abhijit Sen, one of the four members of the Finance Commission, submitted a dissent note in which he suggested that the funds devolution to the states should be capped at 38 per cent in the first year and maintained at that level unless there was an agreement to sort out fiscal problems.
The former plan panel member said "recommendations regarding devolution and revenue deficit grants are bound to disrupt existing plan transfers, with likely serious effects in the first year of the award period."
Sen added: "Some states... could be hit if the Backward Region Grant Fund (BRGF) is wound up as part of a pruning of plan transfers consequent to our award." However, officials asserted that this would not happen. The panel said the states needed to be fully compensated for any revenue loss.
GST
The commission said it expected the contentious Goods and Services Tax (GST) "would have all the characteristics of a good tax system such as broad base, low rate, minimum rate differentiation, low compliance cost and reduced distortions to the economy".
It suggested that 100 per cent compensation be paid to the states in the first, second and third years, 75 per cent compensation in the fourth year and 50 per cent compensation in the fifth and final year after the GST rollout.
However, it said it wasn't possible to estimate the revenue loss. The 13th commission had recommended a corpus of Rs 50,000 crore for the payment of compensation for GST but the controversial levy could not be implemented.The New York State Board of Regents, which supervises public education, has decided it will no longer be necessary for would-be teachers to pass an Academic Literacy Skills Test. The reason? The test was producing racially disparate results: Only 41 percent of black candidates and 46 percent of Hispanic candidates had passed the exam on their first attempt, compared to 64 percent of white candidates.
With a Department of Education study putting the number of white public school teachers at over 80 percent with a student body hovering around 50 percent white, advocating for a diverse teaching staff is understandable. If rectifying this imbalance is a priority for the Board of Regents, its members should ensure their methods do not diminish the quality of their educators. They are doing the opposite.
Diversity is not always a good thing, and it shouldn’t be political suicide to say so. There should be no diversity in the quality of our public school teachers. Students should be taught by the best and brightest, whatever color they may be. If the results of the Academic Literacy Skills Test reflect a racial disparity, the solution is not to dissolve the standard or reverse-engineer a test that exactly the same number of whites and minorities can pass. The solution should be to direct resources towards our education system so that all students, regardless of their color, are receiving equally excellent educations and being taught by the most qualified teachers—and so that those students can become those teachers later in their lives. If fewer minorities are passing the ALST, the problem is not with the exam itself, but in the comparative quality of the education minorities receive. Lowering the standards for aspiring teachers will only exacerbate, not solve, this problem.
By eliminating the test, the Board of Regents has prioritized the aim of diversity over the success of its students, and has thus blatantly abandoned its primary responsibility. What is politically expedient is not always right, and in the case of the ALST, it seems the Board of Regents has not done its homework.
The test is predominantly made up of multiple choice questions, so here’s one for those that advocated for the test’s elimination:
What is the purpose of education? a) To transmit knowledge and values to the students and to arm them with the tools and resources necessary to further educate themselves.
b) To assemble a diverse teaching staff in order to satisfy the standards of what is deemed politically correct.
The Board of Regents has shamed itself with its answer.EMBED >More News Videos Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's full speech on public safety and violence.
EMBED >More News Videos Many Chicagoans agree with Emanuel that job creation is one of the keys to stopping the violence.
EMBED >More News Videos People are wondering if early childhood intervention can help curb Chicago violence.
EMBED >More News Videos CPD Supt. Eddie Johnson joined ABC7 News This Morning to address the department's plan to hire nearly 1,000 new officers and the mayor's plan to tackle gun vioelnce.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel unveiled a plan Thursday to tackle Chicago's gun violence epidemic in front of about 200 people at Malcolm X College.It was the mayor's most anticipated speech since his public apology for the police shooting of Laquan McDonald. The mayor's office carefully selected 200 specially-invited guests to be in the live audience for his speech.The 40-minute speech also included familiar public safety talking points: tougher gun laws, police-community cooperation, mentoring programs and summer jobs for at-risk teens.The loudest applause came when the mayor repeated his pledge to hire nearly 1,000 more cops. "I think this was a difficult and complicated task, to talk about decades of a systemic issue and address it in one speech. I think there is more to do. I think the mayor said it himself in the remarks, there's still more to do. What we heard today was a strategy for policing us and what we need to hear is an equal strategy for investing in us. I think there's more that needs to be said and we need to have as high a priority on investing in communities as we have in policing communities," said City Treasurer Kurt Summers.Shootings and murders, mostly in Chicago's African-American neighborhoods, are at nationally high levels along with the city's black unemployment rate."What's needed is resources. Jobs. Jobs, housing," said Stan McKinney, West Side resident."I think this is not something that happened last year. This has been going on a long, long time," said Shari Runner of the Chicago Urban League.While the mayor promised $36 million to expand a mentoring program, he vowed the city would find money to pay for more police."This fight is for all of Chicago because it is Chicago's future that is at stake," Emanuel said."One of the things I heard that was kind of new was identifying the people we refer to as perpetrators as also victims. There was a portion of his speech where he talked about them being victims of the trauma in their community, and I think that's something we all need to do, to have programs where we compete against gangs for the attention of our youth and our community, and I thought that was good," said State Senator Kwame Raoul.Several dozen protesters gathered outside Malcolm X College. Many of the protesters are familiar faces who have been involved in protests across the city. They were not impressed by the mayor's speech."At the end of the day he didn't present real solutions. He's not targeting the root problems that we're facing in our communities. He doesn't even come to our communities, so how would he know? He wants to come to Malcolm X and give this whole speech to act like he cares, but he doesn't," said Ja'mal Green.Che "Rhymfest" Smith watched the mayor's speech in person."The mayor said some good things and I think he said some things that need to be worked on," he said.The mayor also promised to pour millions into mentoring programs like Becoming a Man, known as BAM, which one alumnus praised."For me, it helped me a lot with self-determination, I was determined to, like, stay in school," said Dequan Williams.Father Michael Pfleger was invited to watch the speech in person but he chose instead to watch it from home with other community leaders, former gang members turned mentors and community activists instead."We got to do mentoring of those in the communities who feel forgotten and abandoned. Too many brothers in our communities feel like they're throwaways," Pfleger said.City Commissioner and former mayoral candidate Jesus "Chuy" Garcia also expressed disappointment in the lack of specifics in the mayor's speech."What I didn't hear are new initiatives to bring real and substantial economic development opportunities to the neighborhoods that live most of the violence and despair in Chicago. People need jobs, there wasn't much talk about how those new jobs are going to be created," Garcia said.According to an August Economic Policy Institute report Illinois has the highest African American unemployment rate in the country, with most of the state's black population living in Chicago and its suburbs."Violence is just a symptom of a problem. The problem consists of jobs, economic development, infrastructure," said Chicagoan Jonathan Todd.Those whose families have been impacted by violence were also watching.Precious Land, 27, was shot while driving to a laundromat in Lawndale; one of the nearly 70 people shot in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend. The shooting left her paralyzed from the neck down. Land is unable talk, is on a feeding tube and unable to breathe on her own. Her mother said the mayor's speech gave her some measure of comfort."I liked his speech. I felt that he felt, he was feeling all of our pain, all of us innocent mothers that's got kids that got killed or got hurt," Stacey Turner said.Land's shooting remains unsolved, but Turner said she doesn't blame police."I don't blame police. I only blame the young man who shot my daughter, whoever he is," she said.The mother of Alexandria Imani Burgos, who was killed by a stray bullet, agreed with the mayor that there must be an alternative to gangs."A lot of them need love. These kids have a chance to turn their lives around, put down the gun," said Milagros Burgos."I like the part about them getting jobs and getting them off the streets and helping them. I liked that most about it," Turner said.Precious Land's family set up a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for her long-term medical care and relocation.Many Chicagoans agree with Emanuel that job creation is one of the keys to stopping the violence.Chatham resident Star Bush looked for a job and found one at a corner store, but knows a lot of people in her South Side neighborhood are still unemployed."People feel defeated," Bush said. "They feel like they have no other option but to be on the streets sell drugs and do crime."Bush said she blames the lack of jobs and neighborhood development for making the gang and gun violence worse in the area.The Chicago Urban League reported that high unemployment rates among minorities are part of the problem, with 47 percent of people from 22 to 24 are out of school and out of work."The negative impact is that you have people who turn to the street, to the underground economy," said Andrew Wells of the Chicago Urban League. "They join gangs, they sell drugs, because they have to make ends meet."Victor Love, the president of the 79th Street Business Corridor, said a gang war in the area is claiming more than just lives."We've seen businesses open up in January and close by March due to the conditions of the community," said Love.The Carole Robertson Center for Learning has been offering support to children from low-income families from the West and Southwest sides since 1976. They said they know this helps to make not only the families safer, but all of Chicago's communities safer.At the center, infants get nurturing and support, but more importantly they will have the same child care provider until they are three."Attachment is huge for young children," Cerathel Burnett, CEO, said. "If they don't have the ability to attach to a significant adult in their life, they go through life feeling rejected very easily."The Center runs several programs. The largest is in North Lawndale and Little Village. The non-profit prepares children for school and offers support to the kids and their families.The Center's CEO says they are seeing evidence of families that did not get support early with the violence in some of Chicago's communities. A toddler who can't communicate and is frustrated trickles into not being prepared for school and could possibly go into adulthood.The challenge with this type of option is that it takes money, time and investment. But educators and advocates at the center said it's an investment worth it for everyone in the long run.Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson made an announcement Wednesday about the police hiring blitz."I'm confident that these added resources will make us better and give us the capacity we need to address our crime problems across the city," Johnson said.He joined ABC7 News This Morning Thursday to speak on the effect he hopes the hiring surge will have on the department and their strategy on the street.The government wants to measure our happiness. It won't be easy, explains Michael Blastland in his regular Go Figure column.
Did you wake up fretting over the gross domestic product? Thought not. But you might, as you gaze in the bathroom mirror, ponder your happiness or well-being.
Not simply GDP then, but GWB (general well-being), as David Cameron put it. Though Labour was taken by the idea too, like President Sarkozy of France, who recently asked two Nobel Prize winners to look into it.
Knowing whether we're making more than material progress makes sense. The problem is how?
GDP, almost all agree, is a deficient way of adding up what matters most: "Economic performance is... a means to an end. That end is not the consumption of beefburgers, nor the accumulation of television sets, nor the vanquishing of some high level of interest rates, but rather the enrichment of mankind's feeling of well-being. Economic things matter only in so far as they make people happier."
So said the UK's happiness-and-economics guru, Andrew Oswald, a smart - and cheerful - professor of economics from Warwick University.
Horribly difficult
Here's the easy way to do it. First, take a large, random sample of people and ask them a question like: "When all's said and done, at the end of the day Brian, taking the rough with the smooth and all that, rate your well-being on a scale of one to 10."
Your well-being may not be improved by the same things as mine, the fact that you like to get stoned isn't going to see cannabis in Tesco Michael Blastland Government 'to measure happiness'
And we could stop there and add up the national total each year to see if well-being has improved.
But that would only invite more questions, like "what causes well-being to change?" We'd then have to ask lots of other questions about age, gender, marital status, employment (or not), qualifications, housing, recreation and so on.
So, marrieds score higher than singles? QED, marriage is good for wellbeing. Or maybe not. For it soon gets tricky.
Maybe happy people are more likely to marry and we had cause and effect the wrong way round. That's a risk, say researchers, which they address by tracking people over time, to see how happy they were before marrying and what difference marriage made.
But what if people are happier in their 30s than their 20s? If so, following them over the years also picks up the happiness effect of ageing - which we might falsely attribute to marriage.
So you have to find out, are 30-somethings happier than 20-somethings and, if so, can we strip that effect out of the marriage effect that may have happened at the same time? Still with me? And so on, for everything you can think of that might mess up your measurement of the effect of one thing on well-being, rather than another.
How's your mood? Can you feel it? Test your mood with BBC's Mind Spa
So even the easy way is not always easy. For an interesting attempt to measure cause and effect try Mappiness, a project run by the London School of Economics, which offers a phone app that prompts you to record your mood and situation.
The Mappiness website says: "We're particularly interested in how people's happiness is affected by their local environment - air pollution, noise, green spaces, and so on - which the data from Mappiness will be absolutely great for investigating."
Will it work? With enough people, it might. But there are other problems. We've been using happiness and well-being interchangeably. Is that ok? The difference comes out in a sentiment like: "We were happiest during the war." But was our well-being also greatest then?
And what's the policy response? That what we need is a war? And then you remember: we've got one - and it's not making us happy. Maybe that's because to be really happy it has to be a war of national survival. Maybe what we need to be really happy, in other words, is for our circumstances to be really miserable.
Image caption Victimisation is used by some as an indicator of well-being
But maybe this war is improving our well-being by protecting us from terror? So values and political judgements about what constitutes well-being soon muddy the waters, and these may be different from what makes us happy.
What's more, your well-being may not be improved by the same things as mine. The fact that you like to get stoned isn't going to see cannabis in Tesco.
Contentious
Our leaders have to weigh up the pros and antis on each side of any factor in 60m people's well-being. Maybe my environmental well-being - a category often discussed - is served by renewable energy, yours by hillsides free from wind-turbines.
It all begins to sound less like measurement than politics. That might mean we are restricted to counting good or bad things about which few disagree, like infant mortality.
OECD social indicators Share of population in jobless households
Average years of schooling
Mean student performance
Relative poverty rates
Child poverty rates
Income inequality
Gender wage gaps
Healthy life-expectancy at birth
Infant mortality rates
Participation in voluntary groups
Victimisation rates
Suicide rates
Convicted adults in prisons
Another difficulty is that some things that make a big difference are hard to measure, like health-gain from an operation, and hard to add to other good things, like clean air, to produce a national total. Or do you have masses of different, incommensurate indicators?
The OECD has been taking a serious look at this for several years. The Young Foundation has also given it thought.
Some of the social indicators the OECD has considered include average years of schooling, gender wage gaps, participation in voluntary groups and suicide rates. But decide for yourself what we should count towards well-being.
In fact, we measure all this already, through the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and others. Volunteering is a great one - so good for us, Evan Davis once joked, that it ought to be made compulsory. Maybe that's what the Big Society is about.
Other research has suggested that what people say improves their well-being - like having children - is at odds with what they report about their happiness in the moment: "Oh no, not the school holidays!"
Emotional resilience
And even if we could agree what was good for well-being, that doesn't tell us how best to achieve it. That loneliness and isolation are often bad for us might mean that the state should do more - or less, if we think people's relationships thrive when the state gets out of their way and reminds families of their own responsibilities.
So is well-being too woolly, too contentious, too value-laden to be useful? If so, should we give up?
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Here's an argument for giving it some thought: even if we can't agree where the responsibility lies for addressing isolation, say, at least we might rethink the weight we attach to it among other priorities. Yes, a policy might help economic growth, but have we properly considered the softer costs and benefits?
On the practical side, there is evidence that children can be taught emotional resilience - lessons derided by some as "happy classes" - but this does indeed improve their subjective sense of well-being.
The simple exercise of introducing feelings to the national accounts, or thinking of them as a legitimate objective of policy, or of stretching the measure of national progress to include things that are not easily monetized, is horribly difficult, but might be a way of reminding ourselves of what we most care about.The economy is still tanking, but Oakland’s medical pot industry is banking.
The city’s finance wizards are projecting that Oakland’s three dispensaries will sell between $35 million and $38 million worth in marijuana this year. Translated that equals approximately three and a quarter tons, 104,000 ounces, or 4.2 million joints.
The total has been climbing since the city started keeping track in 2004, when the dispensaries paid tax on $4.2 million worth of sales. The figures are derived from the business tax that is paid to the city by the medical marijuana dispensaries on their gross receipts.
David MacPherson, Oakland’s revenue manager who provided the numbers, said in an interview that the industry has grown. He cited Harborside Health Center, the largest dispensary in the Bay Area, which reports bringing in annual revenue of around $20 million.
“Harborside has jumped up in the top percent of businesses in the city,” said MacPherson.
Click on this chart to see how gross receipts from Oakland’s pot dispensaries have grown over the years (by Tasneem Raja)
The city is in financial trouble and in an unprecedented move was forced to lay off 80 police officers earlier this year to try and make up a deficit now at $32 million. The city’s politicians have been hoping that the pot industry will help fill the gap. Plans are in the works to allow more dispensaries and large marijuana cultivation operations that would bring the city more tax revenue.
This year the city voted to raise the tax on pot dispensaries from 1.8 percent to 5 percent. With the new rate, MacPherson said the city expects to bring in $1.5 to $1.8 million in taxes this year. Last year, pot dispensaries paid $435,000 in business tax to the city. Aside from Harborside, there are two others operating now: Coffeeshop Blue Sky, which is run by Prop 19 backer Richard Lee, and Purple
Heart Patient Center.
As businesses such as car dealerships leave Oakland, MacPherson said, these taxes are helping make up the difference. But pot taxation is still no panacea. The $1.5 million to $1.8 million cannabis taxes will account for about 3 percent of the estimated $50 million in business taxes the city of Oakland will bring in this year.
Last year, pot businesses accounted for less than a percent of the city’s $46 million in business tax. The leading industries were: lawyers, accountants and other professionals who paid $10.6 million in taxes; residential landlords who paid $9 million; and commercial landlords who paid nearly $9 million.
If the numbers are an accurate portrayal of how much money the dispensaries are taking in, the industry is still much smaller than others in Oakland, such as the sports industry. Together, the Oakland Raiders, Oakland A’s and Golden State Warriors had revenues of $475 million in 2009, according to Forbes. And even the city’s ailing auto dealers brought in $370 million, according to the taxes they paid on gross receipts last year.
But the pot businesses are closing in the hotel industry, which brought in about $81 million last year by the same measure.
The owners of the medical marijuana dispensaries tried to downplay the growth of the industry. Steve DeAngelo, who runs Harborside, was skeptical of the city’s projections. He claimed that revenue at Harborside is staying flat at around $20 million a year because of more competition from the proliferation of dispensaries in neighboring cities, such as San Jose, which now has 98 dispensaries, according to the city.
“Our sales have not climbed by 30 to 40 percent,” DeAngelo said. “I think the city may be a bit overly optimistic.
Richard Lee, the founder of Oaksterdam University, said that his dispensary, Coffeshop Blue Sky, brings in “a couple of million.”
The size of the medical marijuana market is difficult to calculate. The dispensaries are private – and largely cash — businesses and don’t have to make their earnings public. But authorities are becoming increasingly interested: The IRS is currently auditing Harborside, as The Bay Citizen reported last week.
The only way that the revenue is tracked publicly is if cities require special taxes. In Berkeley, the city estimated earlier this year that the three pot dispensaries are selling approximately $18.5 million worth of marijuana.
The board of equalization estimates that in all of California, between $700 million and $1.3 billion worth of medical pot is being sold, bringing the state sales taxes of between $58 million and $105 million.
Although the price of marijuana is reportedly plummeting for growers and in places like San Francisco, the price of an ounce has held steady in Oakland. Because of the more than 20 dispensaries in San
Francisco, an ounce of marijuana can cost as little as $140, according to industry sources. In Oakland, where there is a limit on the number of dispensaries, the average cost has held steady at about $350 an ounce, according to several industry sources and an informal survey of the prices.
Even so, customers still come from outside of Oakland to buy marijuana at places like Harborside, which has 58,000 members. Indeed, no one believes that Oakland’s 446,000 residents are smoking the more than 4 million joints-worth of marijuana every year. That would amount to each resident, adult and child alike, smoking just under 100 joints during the year.A violent chain-reaction crash involving a Pocono Township police cruiser sent three people, including the officer, to Pocono Medical Center on Thursday afternoon.
A violent chain-reaction crash involving a Pocono Township police cruiser sent three people, including the officer, to Pocono Medical Center on Thursday afternoon.
The crash occurred around 5:30 p.m. on Route 940 near Route 380 in Paradise Township.
Witnesses said at the time, police vehicles from multiple agencies were rushing through the area heading to the Barrett Township area, where dozens of officers were looking for alleged Blooming Grove shooter Eric Frein late Thursday night. One of the cruisers struck a car, causing the chain-reaction crash.
Charlie Cook was on Route 940 at the time. He said the officer's car, which was displaying its lights and sirens, was passing cars that had pulled over on the eastbound shoulder of Route 940, when it struck a vehicle that suddenly turned left across traffic from that same lane.
The cruiser then crossed the westbound lanes, striking a truck that was waiting to pull out onto Route 940.
A witness, who declined to be named, said the violent impact threw the truck into the air, and it crashed into a vehicle that was parked on the lawn of a nearby auto body shop.
Ron Heller of Sciota was driving the truck that was struck, but had only minor injuries. His passenger was transported to PMC with unknown injuries.
"This was pretty intense, to see that coming right at you," Heller said. "He didn't have a choice though."
His truck and the police cruiser sustained heavy front-end damage.
Witnesses said the cruiser was one of several police vehicles, displaying lights and sirens, heading toward Route 447 in Barrett Township, where the search for alleged Blooming Grove shooter Eric Frein has intensified.
Heller's wife, Becca, who raced over from Stroud Township after hearing about the crash, said they had just bought the truck last week. She said after the crash they saw multiple police vehicles heading toward Barrett Township, including armored ones.
"That's what we're gonna drive from now on," Becca Heller said.Like the design of functional objects such as chairs or tables, it would seem new ideas for the humble door would be completely exhausted, and then along comes Austrian artist Klemens Torggler. This 4-panel entryway called the Evolution Door opens and closes in a surprisingly elegant way at the slightest touch, folding in on itself like pieces of paper. Torggler calls this system a “flip panel door” (Drehplattentür), and it’s almost more of a kinetic sculpture than functional door, but I would be happy to have one in every room of my house. And for those of you who envision a crushed finger or hands, he’s already solved that problem.
Currently the door is meant as a prototype, an extension of his artistic practice where Vienna-based Torggler has been creating similar kinetic doors for many years, several of which are available through Artelier Contemporary. (via hajohinta, nsfw)President Barack Obama is backing a controversial campaign by progressives to regulate schools’ disciplinary actions so that members of major racial and ethnic groups are penalized at equal rates, regardless of individuals’ behavior.
His July 26 executive order established a government panel to promote “a positive school climate that does not rely on methods that result in disparate use of disciplinary tools.”
“African Americans lack equal access to highly effective teachers and principals, safe schools, and challenging college-preparatory classes, and they disproportionately experience school discipline,” said the order, titled “White House Initiative On Educational Excellence.”
Because of those causes, the report suggests, “over a third of African American students do not graduate from high school on time with a regular high school diploma, and only four percent of African American high school graduates interested in college are college-ready across a range of subjects.”
“What this means is that whites and Asians will get suspended for things that blacks don’t get suspended for,” because school officials will try to level punishments despite groups’ different infraction rates, predicted Hans Bader, a counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Bader is a former official in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, and has sued and represented school districts and colleges in civil-rights cases.
“It is too bad that the president has chosen to set up a new bureaucracy with a focus on one particular racial group, to the exclusion of all others,” said Roger Clegg, the president of the Center for Equal Opportunity.
“A disproportionate share of crimes are committed by African Americans, and they are disproportionately likely to misbehave in school… [because] more than 7 out of 10 African Americans (72.5 percent) are born out of wedlock… versus fewer than 3 out of 10 whites,” he said in a statement to The Daily Caller. Although ” you won’t see it mentioned in the Executive Order… there is an obvious connection between these [marriage] numbers and how each group is doing educationally, economically, criminally,” he said.
The order created a “President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans.” It will include senior officials from several federal agencies — including the Departments of Education, Justice and Labor — which have gained increased power over state education policies since 2009.
The progressives campaign for race-based discipline policies also won a victory in Maryland July 24.
The state’s board of education established a policy demanding that each racial or ethnic group receive roughly proportional level of school penalties, regardless of the behavior by members of each group.
The board’s decision requires that “the state’s 24 school systems track data to ensure that minority and special education students are not unduly affected by suspensions, expulsions and other disciplinary measures,” said a July 25 Washington Post report.
“Disparities would have to be reduced within a year and eliminated within three years,” according to the Post.
The state’s new racial policy was welcomed by progressives, including Judith Browne Dianis, a director of the D.C.-based Advancement Project. “Maryland’s proposal is on the cutting edge,” she told the Post.
Dianis’ project is also a law firm that litigates race-related questions, and it gains from laws and regulations that spur race-related legal disputes.
“The combination of overly harsh school policies … has created a ‘schoolhouse-to-jailhouse track,’ in which punitive measures such as suspensions, expulsions, and school-based arrests are increasingly used to deal with student misbehavior,” claimed the group’s website.
This “is a racial justice crisis, because the students pushed out through harsh discipline are disproportionately students of color,” the group insisted.
The administration had previously advertised its support for the campaign to impose race-based discipline policies.
In February, Attorney |
to make sure that no other defects are found and then release Django 1.2.1 with an updated documentation builder.In Django 1.2 you have the power to use multiple databases in a single Django project. There is new documentation on how to use this feature. Queries can be issued at a particular database via the using() method on QuerySet objects. Providing a using argument when you call save() will save individual objects to a specific database. GeoDjango has also gotten support for multiple spatial databases.The framework now comes with Cross Site Request Forgery middleware and a template tag to easily enable protection against CSRF attacks. According to the Django developers, a CSRF attack "occurs when a malicious Web site contains a link, a form button or some javascript that is intended to perform some action on your Web site, using the credentials of a logged-in user who visits the malicious site in their browser. A related type of attack, ‘login CSRF’, where an attacking site tricks a user’s browser into logging into a site with someone else’s credentials, is also covered." Learn how to use this feature here Model instances in Django 1.2 can now validate their own data. Also, model and form fields can now accept configurable lists of validators that specify encapsulated, reusable validation behavior. Be aware that invoking a model instance's save() method will not perform validation; you still need to perform validation explicitly.Django 1.2 has a new messages framework that is configurable and robust. It has built-in support for cookie- and session-based messages for both anonymous and authenticated users. As a result, the message API, which is replaced by the messages framework, has been depreciated.Django 1.2 also provides many new authentication capabilities, including a foundation for specifying permissions for individual objects. Since this is not a core-level implementation, a custom authentication backend can provide the implementation.if tags in Django 1.2 have support for comparison operators, so instead of typing:You can type this:==,!=,, <=, >=, in and not in, are the new operators supported in Django 1.2. They work just like Python operators.Filters can also be used now in the if expression:Django 1.2 requires support for Python 2.4 as the new minimum while support for 2.3 has been dropped. The new CSRF protection framework is no longer compatible with the old system, but users of the old system won't be affected until it's removed in Django 1.4. The PostgreSQL database backend has been depreciated because the psycopg1 library hasn't been updated since 2005, but there are other ways to use PostgreSQL.The second bug fix release in the Django 1.1.x branch was also just released. The Django 1.1.2 release notes are available here. Support for the 1.1.x branch will end after Django 1.3 is released.Follow this link for a full listing of the new and depreciated features in Django 1.2. Find the best IDEs, hosting, and applications for Django here. Finally, you should check out the tutorials posted during Django Advent showing how to harness the new features in 1.2.Unsigned Blue Jackets forward Ryan Johansen has found a new way to bide his time before agreeing to terms on a contract extension. And this one is a lot closer than Russia.
Johansen will suit up at running back for One Of The Ohio State(s) this Saturday in the Buckeyes' game against Cincinnati, head coach Urban Meyer announced today. This particular Ohio State, ranked No. 22 in the nation, is seventh in the Big 10 in rushing with 195 yards per game and can use Johansen's size and quickness immediately.
"Ryan is an exceptional athlete," Meyer said. "Our ground game isn't where we want it to be and we think this young man can really help us in that area. The Blue Jackets might not want him, but we sure as hell do."
Meyer said sets have already been designed with Johansen in mind, including option and gadget plays that will take advantage of his 6-foot-3 frame and smooth stride.
"Skipping class, flirting, drinking heavily, pranking nerds and eating burgers at 'The Dube'. He's definitely one of them." - Agent Kurt Overhardt on unsigned Blue Jackets forward Ryan Johanson, who will play for Ohio State this weekend.
"He can skate, so I'm assuming he can run," Meyer said. "We're gonna put a helmet and some pads on him and hope he can score the football for us."
A 22-year-old native of Vancouver, Johansen is eligible to join any Ohio State thanks to an obscure NCAA rule that allows professional athletes without active contracts to play for schools at which they have enrolled, even part-time. Johansen had signed up for a handful of courses at the school since his arrival in Columbus in 2011, including Cooking, Intro to Sports Law and Nude Figure Sculpting, which is the only class he attended according to school records.
He has also been known to arrive unannounced at fraternity and sorority parties around campus, making him an official unofficial student.
"Ryan is a true Buckeye, even though he's only been to a couple of classes," said Kurt Overhardt, Johansen's agent. "He really feels like a part of the community there, doing all the stuff the kids love to do - skipping class, flirting, drinking heavily, pranking nerds and eating burgers at 'The Dube.' He's definitely one of them."
Johansen, a restricted free agent, is at a contract impasse with Columbus that has recently boiled over. He and Overhardt are now seeking a two year "bridge" contract worth $9 million, or $4.7 million a year. The Blue Jackets have countered with offers of $3 million a year for two years or over $5 million for six or eight years, but Johansen's camp is balking.
Rumors are swirling that Johansen could sign with a team in Russia's Kontinental Hockey League any day now and play there until Columbus meets his demands. In the meantime, this particular Ohio State is willing to reward Johansen handsomely, so long as the "payment" remains in the spirit of amateurism.
"Certainly, an NCAA program cannot under any circumstances compensate a player in monetary gains," Overhardt said. "That would be against the rules. But The Ohio State University is not just any NCAA program. The Buckeyes have made a very competitive offer to Ryan that includes only an education and an enriching personal experience.
"But if you see Ryan on a Caribbean vacation, driving a Maserati and sporting new tattoos, remember - he paid for them by himself."
Johansen could not be reached for comment, but Overhardt said his client is looking forward to playing for An Ohio State and being recognized by the people of Columbus for the first time.
___
THIS IS FAKE. IT IS NOT REAL. The NCAA is the most crooked organization since the mafia, but even they're not this crooked.By: J.P. Schwartz
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JP’s FreedomCardboard Blog
2012 Chicago White Sox Top 15 Prospect Rankings
Every year at this time I like to rank each team’s top prospects. My criteria is based upon both past performance and future potential to his parent team. This is my ranking of the 2012 Chicago White Sox Top Prospects.
To qualify, a prospect must have fewer than 130 at-bats or 50 innings in MLB
#1 Keenyn Walker OF
Born: 8/12/1990
Highest Level Reached: Low-A Kannapolis Intimidators
2011 Combined Stats:.257, 8(2B), 3(3B), 24RBI, 21SB
#2 Addison Reed RHP
Born: 12/27/1988
Highest Level Reached: MLB Chicago White Sox
2011 Combined Stats: MINORS: 2-1, 1.26ERA, 5 Saves, 78.1IP, 14BB, 111K,.157BAA
MAJORS: 0-0, 3.68ERA, 7.1IP, 1BB, 12K,.313BAA
#3 Simon Castro RHP
Born: 4/9/1988
Highest Level Reached: Triple-A Tucson Padres (Traded to White Sox December 2011)
2011 Combined Stats: 7-8, 5.63ERA, 115IP, 34BB, 94K,.286BAA
#4 Eduardo Escobar SS
Born: 1/5/1989
Highest Level Reached: MLB Chicago White Sox
2011 Combined Stats: MINORS:.266, 23(2B), 4(3B), 4HR, 49RBI, 13SB
MAJORS:.286 (2 hits in 7 big league at-bats)
#5 Jhan Marinez RHP
Born: 8/12/1988
Highest Level Reached: Double-A Jacksonville Suns (Marlins)
2011 Combined Stats: 3-8, 3.57ERA, 3 Saves, 42BB, 47K,.223BAA
#6 Jared Mitchell OF
Born: 10/13/1988
Highest Level Reached: High-A Winston Salem Dash
2011 Combined Stats:.222, 31(2B), 8(3B), 9HR, 58RBI, 14SB
#7 Nestor Molina RHP
Born: 1/9/1989
Highest Level Reached: Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats (Blue Jays)
2011 Combined Stats: 12-3, 2.21ERA, 130.1IP, 16BB, 148K,.234BAA
#8 Ozzie Martinez SS
Born: 5/7/1988
Highest Level Reached: MLB Florida Marlins
2011 Combined Stats: MINORS:.245, 15(2B), 1(3B), 3HR, 26RBI, 11SB
MAJORS:.130, 1RBI (3 hits in 23 at-bats)
#9 Kyle McMillen RHP
Born: 3/14/1990
Highest Level Reached: Rookie League Great Falls Voyagers
2011 Combined Stats: 0-1, 45.00ERA, 1IP, 3BB, 2K,.429BAA (4th Round Pick 2011 MLB Draft)
#10 Brandon Short OF
Born: 9/9/1988
Highest Level Reached: Double-A Birmingham Barons
2011 Combined Stats:.262, 29(2B), 5(3B), 13HR, 60RBI, 21SB
#11 Kevan Smith C
Born: 6/28/1988
Highest Level Reached: Rookie League Great Falls Voyagers
2011 Combined Stats:.355, 22(2B), 3(3B), 9HR, 48RBI
#12 Pedro Hernandez LHP
Born: 4/12/1989
Highest Level Reached: Triple-A Tucson Padres (Traded To White Sox December 2011)
2011 Combined Stats: 10-3, 3.49ERA, 116IP, 22BB, 94K,.262BAA
#13 Tyler Saladino SS
Born: 7/20/1989
Highest Level Reached: High-A Winston Salem Dash
2011 Combined Stats:.270, 26(2B), 9(3B), 16HR, 55RBI, 7SB
#14 Erik Johnson RHP
Born: 12/30/1989
Highest Level Reached: Rookie League Great Falls Voyagers
2011 Combined Stats: 0-0, 4.50ERA, 2IP, 1BB, 2K,.444BAA (2nd Round Pick 2011 MLB Draft)
#15 Trayce Thompson OF
Born: 3/15/1991
Highest Level Reached: Low-A Kannapolis Intimidators
2011 Combined Stats:.241, 36(2B), 2(3B), 24HR, 87RBI
Disclaimer – I did not attend any minor league games this year, nor do I claim to have any scouting experience. These lists are the product of my own research of statistics and online scouting reports.I bumped into a question on StackOverflow this evening that I felt might make a short post. Accompanying code is available at my Github repo.
The guy who posted observed that the standard.net DataGridview control provides a helpful little glyph next to the row which contains the active cell:
The original poster of the question was wondering how he might include a similar glyph to indicate the active column as well. My problem with that is that there already exists an option for an arrow-like glyph in a column header. Unfortunately, THAT glyph, by convention, tends to mean “Click here to sort on this column.”
That does NOT mean that the OP was off-base, though. I can think of many cases where it would be handy to have some sort of reference to the active column in addition to the active row.
Emphasize the Active Column with the DataGridViewColumn.HeaderCell.Style property
One way to approach this is to simply cause the text in the header cell to be bold when the user navigates to a cell within that column. We can create a class which inherits from DataGridView, and take advantage of the CellEnter Event to cause this to happen:
In the following code, we have a member variable which holds a reference to the last active column. In our constructor, we initialize this column object so that when the control is instantiated, the reference is not null.
We also add an event handler to catch the CellEnter event locally. When this event fires, the handler ( dgvControl_CellEnter ) catches it, and makes a call to our final method, OnColumnFocus. This method accepts a column index as a parameter, and uses the index to identify the new active column. From there, we can use the HeaderCell.Style property to set the font to “bold” for this particular column.
In our constructor, note that we have to make an initial call to the OnColumnFocus method, so that the default starting column will be highlighted when the control is displayed at first. However, we have to check to see if there are actually any columns present first. This is because the Visual Studio Designer needs to be able to draw the empty control when we first place it on a form.
DataGridView: Cause the Active Column Header to Display Bold Text
class dgvControl : DataGridView { // hold a reference to the last active column: private DataGridViewColumn _currentColumn; public dgvControl() : base() { // Add a handler for the cell enter event: this.CellEnter += new DataGridViewCellEventHandler(dgvControl_CellEnter); // When the Control is initialized, instantiate the placeholder // variable as a new object: _currentColumn = new DataGridViewColumn(); // In case there are no columns added (for the designer): if (this.Columns.Count > 0) { this.OnColumnFocus(0); } } void dgvControl_CellEnter(object sender, DataGridViewCellEventArgs e) { this.OnColumnFocus(e.ColumnIndex); } void OnColumnFocus(int ColumnIndex) { // If the new cell is in the same column, do nothing: if (ColumnIndex!= _currentColumn.Index) { // Set up a custom font to represent the current column: Font selectedFont = new Font(this.Font, FontStyle.Bold); // Grab a reference to the current column: var newColumn = this.Columns[ColumnIndex]; // Change the font to indicate status: newColumn.HeaderCell.Style.Font = selectedFont; // Set the font of the previous column back to normal: _currentColumn.HeaderCell.Style.Font = this.Font; // Set the current column placeholder to refer to the new column: _currentColumn = newColumn; } } }
What if I want More?
What if we want more than just bold text in the active header? Well, things get trickier. Manipulating the other properties of the HeaderCell Style require setting EnableHeaderVisualStyles to false. This has the unfortunate side effect of flattening out the styling which some from the Windows 7 GUI styles. The slight gradient and color scheme are replaced by a much flatter header. While we could work around this by overriding the OnPaint method (at least to a degree) and implementing our own painting scheme, the impact of the effect is not too disturbing.
For example, we could decide that in addition to bolding the text in the header, we will set the BackColor to a slightly darker gray:
To do this, we need only add three lines of code. First off, in our constructor, we set the EnableHeaderVisualStyles property to false. Next, in our OnColumnFocus method, we set the Style.BackColor property of the new active column to a darker shade of gray, and restore the previous active column to the default (empty) backcolor:
DataGridView: Cause the Active Column Header to Display Bold Text with a Darker Back Color:
class dgvControl : DataGridView { // hold a reference to the last active column: private DataGridViewColumn _currentColumn; public dgvControl() : base() { this.EnableHeadersVisualStyles = false; // Add a handler for the cell enter event: this.CellEnter += new DataGridViewCellEventHandler(dgvControl_CellEnter); // When the Control is initialized, instantiate the placeholder // variable as a new object: _currentColumn = new DataGridViewColumn(); // In case there are no columns added (for the designer): if (this.Columns.Count > 0) { this.OnColumnFocus(0); } } void dgvControl_CellEnter(object sender, DataGridViewCellEventArgs e) { this.OnColumnFocus(e.ColumnIndex); } void OnColumnFocus(int ColumnIndex) { // If the new cell is in the same column, do nothing: if (ColumnIndex!= _currentColumn.Index) { // Set up a custom font to represent the current column: Font selectedFont = new Font(this.Font, FontStyle.Bold); // Grab a reference to the current column: var newColumn = this.Columns[ColumnIndex]; // Change the font to indicate status: newColumn.HeaderCell.Style.Font = selectedFont; // Change the color to a slightly darker shade of gray: newColumn.HeaderCell.Style.BackColor = Color.LightGray; // Set the font of the previous column back to normal: _currentColumn.HeaderCell.Style.Font = this.Font; // Change the color of the previous column back to the default: _currentColumn.HeaderCell.Style.BackColor = Color.Empty; // Set the current column placeholder to refer to the new column: _currentColumn = newColumn; } } }
There are other options you might explore. In this post, we walked through some very basic ways to provide visual feedback to the user about their location within the DataGridView control.
The source code for this post is available at my Github repo.
CodeProject John on Google“I’ve got nothing to hide, so I’ve got nothing to worry about.”
If you talk about privacy to your circle of friends, how many of them are going to respond more or less exactly that?
That sentence is, unfortunately, rather common. It’s also one of the most dangerously ignorant attitudes toward privacy today. It assumes that your particular habits – normal everyday habits that hurt nobody – aren’t going to be outlawed by the next parliament for no good reason. It assumes that you are 100% law-abiding, even by the smallest stupid laws, which you are not (nobody is). It assumes that you aren’t doing anything at all that could be construed as something else by an adversary looking for patterns that deviate from anything ordinary.
There are many things we do every day that would cause trouble for us if the wrong person used it against us. This is the case for everybody. That’s why we have this concept of privacy. It’s a safeguard that the small infractions we do every day – jaywalking, speeding a little to keep with the traffic flow, just making society work with its all written and unwritten rules, that all those small infractions are regularly ignored. (The written and unwritten rulesets tend to contradict each other to no small degree.)
Most of the things that could cause trouble for us in the wrong hands aren’t even illegal, just taboo in one form of another. Imagine a British politician having any form of sex, for instance, that came to public knowledge through whatever mechanism. Natural as it is for every person – no, every creature of every species on the planet, it would still kill that politician’s career, due to unwritten rules.
There’s a reason the NSA is gathering tons of communications with the explicit goal of finding something to discredit undesirable and troublesome individuals.
Did you ever do something that was the least troublesome for anybody in power? No? Somebody richer than you, somebody more influential? Of course you did. Everybody does. To assure that this keeps happening, our checks and balances lay out a clear framework that is supposed to make people equal before the law. Mass surveillance kills that principle and puts might ahead of right.
This conflict between written and unwritten laws, by the way, isn’t exploitable just by people in power. There’s a beautiful form of labor conflict in South America called strike to rule, where workers insist on following every single written rule. Every single time, it grinds production to a halt. When bus drivers in a major city – possibly Buenos Aires – went on strike, they decided to follow every single traffic rule. The entire city got gridlocked in a heartbeat.
We need to be aware that there is a clear and present conflict between written laws and unwritten rules that make society tick, and that we’re normally expected to let the latter take precedence over the former. But with mass surveillance that erodes privacy, you can be held accountable for breaching either ruleset – which you must necessarily do as they conflict.
This is how selective enforcement comes into play. As in, selective law enforcement. When you have so much data on everybody, and know that everybody is breaking the law or the rules on a daily if not hourly basis, then that shifts priorities dramatically.
At that point, law enforcement shifts its operations from punishing troublesome actions to punishing troublesome individuals.
This is why privacy is important.
Freedom of speech isn’t just the freedom to state any opinion or observation you like. It’s the ability to state any opinion or observation without fear of repercussion for doing so. That’s a much, much stronger freedom, and is critical for keeping power in check.
If you lay out the case for privacy like this to your friends, odds are that they’ll respond with something completely different than the “I have nothing to hide” cliché. If they still don’t get the picture, ask them if they lock the door behind them when they go to the restroom, and the following conversation is likely to take place:
— Of course I lock the door when I go to the restroom. Doesn’t everybody?
— So what do you have to hide in there? What laws are you breaking?
— What? None! I just want some privacy, I think I have a right to that!
Then watch the penny drop, in most cases.A federal appeals court dealt a potentially serious blow to Maryland's landmark 2013 gun control law and similar measures across the country, ruling Tuesday that a lower court was wrong when it upheld the state's ban on assault rifles.
In a 2-1 decision applauded by gun rights advocates, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit concluded that the semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines banned by Maryland's Firearm Safety Act "are in common use by law-abiding citizens." As a result, they don't fall under the exception to the right to bear arms that applies to "unusual" weapons such as machine guns and hand grenades, the court said.
Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh said Thursday that the decision "conflicts sharply with rulings of other federal appellate courts." Frosh said he would appeal — either to the full 15-member 4th Circuit or to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The National Rifle Association issued a statement hailing the ruling.
Chris W. Cox, executive director of the group's Institute for Legislative Action, called the decision "an important victory for the Second Amendment."
"Maryland's ban on commonly owned firearms and magazines clearly violates our fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. The highest level of judicial scrutiny should apply when governments try to restrict our Second Amendment freedoms," Cox said in a statement.
Matthew A. Clark, a spokesman for Gov. Larry Hogan, said the governor's office was studying the ruling but would have no comment.
The judges sent the challenge to Maryland's gun law back to the U.S. District Court with instructions to apply the difficult constitutional test of "strict scrutiny" when considering whether the ban violated the Second Amendment. Previously, U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake had found the ban constitutional under the less-stringent test of "intermediate scrutiny."
If the appeals court's decision reaches the Supreme Court, the ruling could have national importance because it would give justices the opportunity to settle the question of whether states can ban assault weapons and magazines that hold a large number of bullets.
Mark Graber, a law professor at the University of Maryland, said the ruling poses a serious challenge to the law — a signature achievement of former Gov. Martin O'Malley and of Frosh, a state senator when it was passed.
"Strict scrutiny is just that. It is stricter than the ordinary form of scrutiny," he said. Almost all challenged laws fail the test, he said.
Graber said the decision is one of national importance.
"It almost looks like what the court really wants is for this to go up to the Supreme Court," he said.
Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA, gave the law a slightly better chance in the lower court than Graber did.
"About three in four laws subjected to this standard of review are struck down," he said. But Winkler added that gun laws have a better chance of ending up in the 25 percent that survive because they're based on a justification of public safety.
Winkler said the decision is the first in which a federal appeals court has questioned bans on "military-style" rifles and high-capacity magazines.
"These laws are at the very heart of the gun control movement's agenda today," he said.
Chief Judge William B. Traxler Jr., an appointee of President Bill Clinton, and Circuit Judge G. Steven Agee, who was named by President George W. Bush, agreed on the main part of the ruling affecting the assault gun ban. Judge Robert B. King, a Clinton appointee, dissented.
Winkler, author of "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America," said party affiliations are a poor predictor of how judges will vote in gun control cases.
"We've seen both Republican judges and Democratic judges have voted to uphold gun control laws more or less consistently," he said.
Traxler noted that the ban applied to keeping assault weapons in one's home.
"Any prohibition or restriction imposed by the government on the exercise of this right in the home clearly implicates conduct protected by the Second Amendment," the judge wrote.
The 4th Circuit panel said it recognizes that other courts have reached opposite conclusions about similar bans, but said that "we ultimately find these decisions unconvincing."
In his dissent, King said no Supreme Court precedent compels the court to insist on a strict-scrutiny standard. He disagreed with the conclusion that the semiautomatics covered by the ban are standard for home defense.
"Let's be real: The assault weapons banned by Maryland's [law] are exceptionally lethal weapons of war," King wrote.
The clash among federal circuits sets up several possibilities. The state could let the case go back to the District Court and hope to win there under the stricter standard. It could seek Supreme Court review or appeal to the full 4th Circuit, which once had a reputation as the nation's most conservative appeals court but has become more centrist under President Barack Obama.
The full circuit court could decide to hear the case on its own, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.
"This would be a very good case for that," Tobias said. If it goes to the full court, he said, "I think it would be close."
The ruling leaves the ban on assault rifles in place pending a decision by the District Court. UCLA's Winkler said it could take a long time before the case reaches the Supreme Court — if it ever does.
"It's not even a slam dunk that the Supreme Court would take the case,' Winkler said.
Maryland advocates on both sides of the issue found something to cheer about.
Dan Blasberg, president of the gun rights group Maryland Shall Issue, said the ruling "turned my day upside-down but in a good way." He said the case, in which his group was a plaintiff, could force the high court to consider the issue.
"This certainly could be a vehicle to get there," he said. "Our legal counsel is fairly confident they could present a good enough case to prevail."Accidents as minor as a slip of the knife while chopping onions can turn dangerous for patients with hemophilia, who lack the necessary proteins in their blood to stem the flow from a wound.
People with severe hemophilia typically receive regular injections of these proteins, called clotting factors, as a treatment for the disease. But up to 30 percent of people with the most common form, hemophilia A, develop antibodies that attack these lifesaving proteins, making it difficult to prevent or treat excessive bleeding.
Now, researchers from University of Florida Health and the University of Pennsylvania have developed a way to thwart production of these antibodies by using plant cells to teach the immune system to tolerate rather than attack the clotting factors. The study was published today (Sept. 4) in the journal Blood.
“The only current treatments against (antibody) formation cost $1 million and are risky for patients,” said Henry Daniell, Ph.D., interim chairman of biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine and a co-author on the study. “Our technique, which uses plant-based capsules, has the potential to be a cost-effective and safe alternative.”
The study focused on hemophilia A, which occurs when babies are born with a defective gene on the X chromosome. Because girls have two X chromosomes — giving them two shots at having a working version of the gene — the disease typically only affects boys. Worldwide, one in 7,500 male babies is born with this disease.
After receiving factor VIII treatments, between 20 and 30 percent of patients develop antibodies against the clotting protein. Instead of allowing the protein to do its job, the immune system responds to this foreign protein as an invader that must be attacked and eliminated.
“In the hemophilia world these antibodies are known as inhibitors,” said UF co-author Roland Herzog, Ph.D., a professor of pediatrics in the UF College of Medicine and a member of the UF Genetics Institute. “That is what patients are all scared of, because they render their standard therapy ineffective and inhibit the blood from clotting.”
Daniell and colleagues had developed a platform for delivering drugs and biotherapeutics using genetically modified plants to express proteins. After teaming with Herzog and his colleagues at UF, they devised a way to use this technique to stop the body from launching an immune attack on the hemophilia treatment.
Using a combination of factor VIII DNA and another substance that can safely cross the intestinal walls and enter the bloodstream, the researchers fused the genes into tobacco plants. The team fed the resulting plant solution to mice with hemophilia A twice each week for two months and compared them with mice that were fed unmodified plant material. They then gave the mice infusions of factor VIII, just as human hemophilia patients would receive. As expected, the control group formed high levels of inhibitors. In contrast, the mice fed the experimental plant material formed fewer inhibitors — on average, seven times fewer.
“This could potentially be a way to prevent antibodies from forming or lower the incidence of it,” Herzog said. “This is a major step forward.”
The researchers discovered the mice that ate the experimental plants had more signaling molecules associated with suppressing or regulating immune responses, while mice in the control group had more associated with triggering an immune response.
The researchers also tested whether the plant capsules would help reduce antibodies in mice that had already developed them. After two to three months of feedings with the plant capsules, the mice had three to seven times fewer antibodies than before the treatment began.
“We have been looking for a way to induce immune tolerance in hemophilia for a while,” Herzog said. “Oral tolerance is ideal is because you are feeding them something specific that addresses the problem and you don’t have to use drugs that suppress the immune system. It’s not invasive. You’re not manipulating patients’ cells. It would be an ideal way to do it.”
The treatment would not be a one-time solution, however. Patients would need to continue taking the plant capsules to maintain immune system tolerance. When translated to humans, the researchers will use lettuce plants instead of tobacco plants.
Daniell, Herzog and the Penn Center for Innovation are now working with a pharmaceutical company to test this strategy in other animal species, with plans to begin human trials shortly thereafter. For human use, the goal would be to use lettuce plants instead of tobacco plants.
“With multimillion-dollar funding from a global pharmaceutical company and their decades of expertise in bringing numerous protein therapeutics to the clinic, we¹re excited to take lettuce capsules producing human blood clotting factors to the clinic soon,” Daniell said.
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and Bayer. Other authors included Jin Su and Shina Lin from the University of Pennsylvania, and Alexandra Sherman and Xiaomei Wang at UF.Jeremy Corbyn would instruct the UK’s defence chiefs never to use the Trident nuclear weapons system if he became prime minister in 2020, the new Labour leader has confirmed.
Corbyn made his statement in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday in which he said he had a mandate from his election to oppose the replacement of Trident and the use of nuclear weapons.
It is likely Corbyn will come under pressure from those who will question why he would not even fire back at nuclear weapons being trained on the UK. He said: “I am opposed to the use of nuclear weapons. I am opposed to the holding of nuclear weapons. I want to see a nuclear-free world. I believe it is possible.”
Tories can no longer take Labour’s Trident support for granted Read more
Asked if he would use nuclear weapons, he said: “No.” His remarks underscore his longstanding opposition to nuclear weapons, but put into perspective the long-term nature of the debate about whether the Commons should vote next year to replace Trident, a process that is not due to be completed until 2028.
Corbyn said: “There are five declared nuclear weapon states in the world. There are three others that have nuclear weapons. That is eight countries out of 192; one hundred and eighty-seven countries do not feel the need to have nuclear weapons to protect their security. Why should those five need them to protect their security? We are not in the cold war any more.
“I don’t think we should be spending £100bn on renewing Trident. That is a quarter of our defence budget. There are many in the military that do not want Trident renewed because they see it as an obsolete thing thing they don’t need. They would much rather see it spent on conventional weapons.”
The Labour leader said he recognised that other shadow cabinet members held opposing views on the issue, saying: “I am very well aware of the views of a large number of party members and supporters who were quite prepared to vote for me knowing full well my views on nuclear weapons. It would be dishonest of me to say anything less than my honest view on it.”
In other broadcast interviews, Corbyn did not rule out giving MPs a free vote on the possible air bombing of Syria, stressing that such a vote was hypothetical.
His close ally John McDonnell said in a Guardian fringe meeting on Tuesday night that efforts to reach consensus in the party were continuing but MPs might end up having to “agree that we can’t agree”.
McDonnell said: “When you are sending people to potential loss of life, I think it is a conscience decision. It is a moral decision. On Syria, my view is it should be a free vote on the basis of conscience.”
Corbyn also defended his decision not to mention the deficit during his first conference speech as leader, saying he did not believe there was a way to cut Britain to prosperity.
He argued instead that it was better to grow to prosperity. He said Labour had not been clear enough at the last election and suggested that the 36% of people who did not vote were not sufficiently persuaded by Labour’s offer or the clarity with which it opposed the deficit.
He refused to endorse remarks by the shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, that Labour had not faced up to the unpopularity of the free movement of workers inside the European Union and this was one cause of the popularity of Ukip.
He said instead that services needed to be improved in areas of high immigration. “People who have migrated to this country over many years have made an enormous contribution to our society, helped our economic growth, helped our health service and helped our social services, so I don’t necessarily look on immigration as a problem. It is often a very great opportunity.”
Corbyn said it was better to look at the net figures for immigration, rather than the growth figures, and said the inclusion of student numbers gave a misleading figure.
Asked about the presentational aspects of his speech, he said he thought he had looked smart, and denied that he had borrowed large philosophical chunks from extracts sent to him by Richard Heller, a former adviser to Denis Healey, that had been rejected by other party leaders.
Corbyn said: “We were sent some information and ideas by a number of people in preparing this speech.”
He explained that the speech was more than 5,000 words long and 350 words were provided by a friend. “I like the way he put them forward. I like the words he used so I used them in my speech. What’s so bad about that?
“I quoted poets, I quoted Ben Okri, I quoted Maya Angelou. I referred to the works of Keir Hardie. I tried to make a speech about policies and philosophy and a message about the way in which politics should be conducted in this country. Not everyone will like the speech: you cannot please all the people all the time.”An Ahmedabad court last week passed an order barring The Wire from publishing any further report on BJP president Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah’s business turnover “so that the right to live with dignity of the plaintiff (Jay) may be protected”.
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Additional Senior Civil Judge B K Dasondi of Ahmedabad rural court observed that the “injunction should be granted to applicant/plaintiff (Jay)” even though notice was not served upon the opposite parties (The Wire, its editor, the writer of the article, and others).
About not hearing arguments of |
is estimated that the current online gamer base of 120 million gamers in 2016 will grow to 310 million by 2021,” the report titled ‘Online Gaming in India: 2021’ said.
About 75 per cent of the respondents, who were part of the study said they have phones priced below Rs 20,000.
Also, the mix includes casual gamers who prefer more puzzle games as well as heavy gamers, who opt for strategy games.
Young gamers play upto six different games on their devices and there is a strong influence of referrals and peer groups.
The report covered over 3,000 respondents across metros and cities like Jaipur, Lucknow, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Vishakhapatnam, Bhubaneshwar, Guwahati, Agartala and Shillong.
First Published: May 10, 2017 19:57 ISTIt’s spring, and birthday party season is upon our household, time again for my outrageous acts of culinary cluelessness.
A few years ago, you may recall, I regaled my daughter Julia and her friends with flat-as-a-pancake profiteroles.
This year, at Emilie’s request, I made poulet à l’estragon (tarragon chicken in our house) for a noisy gathering of 11.
This would not, for most people, be any kind of particularly heroic act. After all, any idiot can roast a chicken — even three chickens, as I was convinced I had to do — add some potatoes and whisk some crème fraîche into melted fat.
But I am not just any idiot and cooking, for me, under the best of circumstances, is always a kind of adventure sport, fraught with mystery and peril. This year, the mystery was how to cook three chickens simultaneously. The peril lay in fitting all three into the oven in parallel. The excitement came when one burst into flames and scorched its accompanying potatoes. The other two birds sort of steamed their way toward doneness.
Why this happened, I do not know. It is not given to me to know such things.
As the night progressed, though, and the revelers settled down to watch a movie, and I lay down, exhausted, on the couch to attempt to read the paper, I was visited by a revelation.
I closed my eyes and first saw leaden cream puffs. I heard the voices of Times readers, particularly those who have on occasion scolded me for jumping through silly and unnecessary hoops to secure my children’s happiness.
Here you go again, I thought. Nothing ever changes.
Except that, in that tired moment, something did. I realized that I was happy. Not crazed, not self-indulgently wretched, not spinning in neurotic circles of perfection-seeking or self-flagellation, just happy. Just as I’d always been when I’d succeeded in making my daughters’ quirky, creative birthday party fantasies come true.
It’s hard to write about, even admit to, simple happiness. It feels somehow indecent. Embarrassing. Immodest. Inappropriate as a topic of conversation for intelligent people.
What I’m trying to get at is, I suppose, some variation of Tolstoy’s observation about happy families, which always makes for a nicely quotable sentence but is, perhaps, wrong.
Perhaps happiness is interesting, because it isn’t, in fact, simple, or uncomplicated. Perhaps the real thing isn’t just a Hallmark card sentiment.
For me, I realized in that moment, happiness is inextricably bound up in striving. In straining for achievement, of whatever kind. In having a challenge and making it to the other side.
It doesn’t much matter what the challenge or object of achievement is. If none is obvious, one always presents itself.
Last Thursday night, for example, I finished writing my book on children’s mental health issues. The one, you may or may not know, that was due in September 2005.
Coming up the steps to my house late that evening, I felt as if I could float, such a weight of stress and worry and long-term self-doubt had been lifted.
“You even look different,” one of the mothers dropping off her daughter for Emilie’s party said to me.
But in fact I was not different at all. Thursday was the book. Friday was the chicken. Saturday morning dawned with the thought that it was perhaps a good time to lose 10 pounds. On Sunday, I was plagued by the certainty that I’d never get that done, and on Monday I met with my editor and learned that I had to rewrite the book’s first 149 pages. And I was saved. Lifted out of darkness, I was on the road to happiness once again.
There are high roads of this kind and there are low roads. In the grand scheme of things, is it really such a bad thing to throw yourself into creating slightly over-the-top holiday happiness for your kids? There are much more self-destructive ways to burn off that particular kind of psychic energy.
The pride of having your children think you can cook, and well enough that they want to show you off to their friends on their most important dinner of the year, is, I now think, a forgivable sin. A permissible pleasure. Perhaps some kinds of self-indulgence are healthy.
Speaking of pleasures and sin and surprisingly healthful practices: This year, drunk on the awareness of my happiness, I threw all caution to the wind and suggested, when the movie ended 10 minutes before parents were scheduled to arrive, that Emilie open her presents. In the presence of her friends.
This brought a look of shock from Emilie — Mommy, really, I never would have thought this of you! — and utter jubilation from her guests, who gathered around her and then fell into place, their raucousness suddenly silenced by the seriousness of the proceedings.
Don’t you remember this solemn ritual from childhood? The circle, with all eyes on the birthday child as he or she opened gift after gift? There was lots of angst associated with these moments: would your gift be appreciated? Would the birthday child have it already? Would some gifts be liked more than others? Would someone — shame of shames — have forgotten to bring one?
This is just the sort of angst we’ve now sterilized out of childhood. Increasingly, my children attend birthday parties at which gifts not only aren’t opened, but aren’t permitted at all. Sometimes there’s a suggestion of making a donation to charity.
I’ve always found this sort of sad, and watching Emilie’s friends clustered around her, ooh-ing and ah-ing about the gifts and squeezing in until they were elbow-to-elbow in solidarity, I realized that it truly was a pity.
Every card, hand-made or store-bought, was painstakingly removed, read out loud and admired.
“What beautiful hand-writing,” I heard Emilie say.
Every effort was taken to preserve the gift wrapping.
“What a beautiful ribbon.”
Emilie’s friends had tailored their gift choices to Emilie’s interests and obsessions. If they had not seen her open the presents, I realized, their pleasure in giving simply wouldn’t have been complete.
It was, for me, another little lesson in happiness, one that should perhaps lead us to question the current politics of birthday party gift-giving.
It’s easy, for parents at least, to turn away gifts. The prospect of all that stuff is associated with a loss of control — like the idea that some less advanced soul will feed your child junk food on a play date. I fully empathize with parents who live in small spaces and are already being crowded out by their kids’ possessions. But there’s a message that comes through the no-present policy — I don’t want your junk cluttering up my house — that isn’t, let’s say, warm and fuzzy.
We’re very big these days on teaching our children self-control. We make a virtue of scorning self-indulgence. But there is, perhaps, a greater virtue to knowing how to graciously receive. Self-denial can, after all, be so horribly self-indulgent.
I’ve always indulged my penchant for negativity. I’ve kind of made a career out of it, in recent years. But seeing that trait start to show up in Emilie hasn’t been pretty. Maybe it’s time instead to start modeling how to take in joy.Rajshahi Kings retain Darren Sammy in BPL
News Hour:
Last year’s Bangladesh Premier League(2016) runners-up team Rajshahi Kings gave their fans something extra to celebrate in the coming Eid festival as they made a smart move to retained the West Indian Stalwart Darren Sammy for the upcoming BPL 2017.
Labeled as the most entertaining team by the fans Rajshahi Kings promises to entertain the cricket lovers of country with their entertaining and fearless brand of cricket, as according to a press release issued on Wednesday by Rajshahi king’s Public Relation Department.
Darren Sammy has been leading from the front on this aspect and brought glory for the team last year. The team management is confident that his inclusion in the team will bring the best out of the local youths who aspire to be in the Bangladesh team in the future.
The franchise is in discussion with some more exciting proposition and is committed to build a competitive team like they did last year. There will be a few surprises both in terms of local and foreign recruits.
In a Statement, the CEO of Rajshahi Kings Tahmeed Azizul Huq said “We urge our fans to support us as they did last year. There support gives us the strength to perform better”.
Like this: Like Loading...Computer component manufacturers are always pushing for faster, bigger, and more efficient products. That benefits us, the end users, but also them for the premium they can charge on those new parts. And when it comes to memory modules, manufacturer SK Hynix has just raised the bar again.
Buy a desktop PC or laptop today and it will have DDR3 memory modules inside, but that isn’t going to be the case for very much longer. DDR4 memory modules are coming, and they bring with them more clock frequency choices, higher data transfer rates, and significantly lower voltages.
For now, DDR4 is a niche, but SK Hynix has claimed a world first by producing a 128GB DDR4 memory module. Until now only 64GB modules have been available, but SK Hynix has used 20nm 8Gb chips to double the capacity on a single module which runs at 2133Mbps. It can handle 17GB of data per second and only requires 1.2V (DDR3 typically requires 1.5V).
Mass production of the new modules along with a 64GB version is set to begin in the first half of 2015, and they will end up being the module of choice for new servers, no doubt. More memory in less space and at a lower voltage is great news for data centers where it’s all about squeezing more resources in to the same space.
As for when consumers can expect DDR4 to become the new standard in their computers. 2016-2018 is thought to be the transition period, by which time I’m sure 8GB of memory will be the new entry-level norm rather than today’s 4GB. With 128GB modules available, though, those 4 memory slots on your motherboard makes 512GB of RAM possible.A coalition of Libyan ISIS rebels and Boko Haram could be a game-changer on the continent, with ISIS know-how already revamping Boko Haram.
Two African terrorist organization affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS) group could become a major threat on the continent if they come together and boost cooperation, US experts warn.
For now, Libyan Islamist rebels that have proclaimed allegiance to ISIS and Boko Haram in Nigeria have traded little more than praise over the Internet, along with probably some fighters and weapons. Boko Haram has renamed itself Islamic State's West Africa Province (ISWAP).
But if they change gears they could be a true regional danger, the experts warned.
"They could decide that instead of fighting to achieve their immediate local objectives they decided to shift their focus and go after Western interests," said Michael Shurkin, a former CIA analyst and specialist on central Africa at the Rand Corporation.
"For instance, Boko Haram attacking the French soldiers of Barkhane, or the Americans in Cameroon," he added. The former refers to a French anti-terror operation in the Sahel region of central Africa.
"We can easily imagine really terrible scenarios, but I don't think we are there yet," he added.
"For instance the shift between Boko Haram and ISIS in West Africa looks like a rebranding, a marketing tool. But it could be a real transition to a kind of global jihad agenda," he said.
Movements that are geographically isolated can benefit greatly from adopting the initials, rhetoric and symbols of the most feared Islamist extremist group in the world.
ISIS has been able to hold broad swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, maintain an army, blow up a Russian airliner over Egypt and inspire attacks on civilians from Paris to London to California.
Films worthy of Hollywood
Mainly, it could enable the African groups to recruit foreign fighters seduced by the reputation of ISIS, said Peter Pham, an Africa specialist at the Atlantic Council.
The numbers are still tiny, but there are indications that the flow of fighters towards Africa has already begun, with two young French people arrested last month in Tunisia while trying to reach zones controlled by ISIS in Libya.
In the April edition of its magazine Dabiq, published online in English, ISIS calls on volunteers to consider joining Boko Haram "if you can't join the caliphate," Pham said.
Allegiance to ISIS has also allowed the Nigerian group, whose six-year insurgency has claimed 17,000 lives, to receive advice on military tactics.
"The attacks are more coordinated," he told AFP.
The latest Boko Haram videos are of professional quality and carry the insignia of ISIS, which boasts communications specialists who can put propaganda films worthy of Hollywood on the Internet, Pham added.
In Libya, groups that have professed loyalty to ISIS have expanded rapidly, going from 200 to 2,000 members over the past year, he added.
Their growing power, fueled by the post-Muammar Gaddafi political and security chaos that exists in Libya, has European authorities worried to the extent they have started flying reconnaissance planes over their bases.
Jacob Zenn, a specialist in jihadist groups for the Jamestown Foundation, said ties between Boko Haram and ISIS terrorists could soon evolve from the sphere of communications towards seeing Boko Haram people trained in Libya.
"If Libya becomes a hub to sub-Saharan Africa as Raqa is to other parts of the world, then in 2016 or 2017 ISWAP could also carry out a new type of attacks in Nigeria or West Africa under the training and coordination of ISIS in Libya," he added. Raqa is the de facto capital of ISIS in Syria.
Like other experts, Zenn believes that tighter control by Turkey of its border with Syria or setbacks for ISIS in Syria and Iraq could encourage would-be global jihadists - who number in the thousands - to turn to Africa as a battlefront.
AFP contributed to this report.The days of Cambodia waterways and roadsides littered by discarded plastic bags could be just over the horizon following the signing of a sub-decree banning small plastic bags and levying charges for plastic bags given away at supermarkets by the Cambodian government.
The law was drafted early October by sustainable development NGO ACRA Foundation in collaboration with the Cambodian ministries of the environment, interior, finance and tourism. It halts the production and importing of plastic bags smaller than 25 cm wide and thinner than 0.03 cm, while a mandatory charge of KHR 500 (US$0.13) for every plastic bag dispensed at supermarket checkouts will be implemented later in the year.
ACRA country manager, Claudia Oriolo who helped draft the sub-decree explained to AEC News Today that the KHR 500 charged for each plastic bag will be retained by the supermarket. This will hopefully give an incentive, especially at the initial stage, to comply with the law when it comes into effect, she wrote in an email.
In terms of enforcement, first offenders will receive a written warning, while repeat offenders will have the prohibited items confiscated. However, Ms Oriolo explained the law was still awaiting official recognition by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and some provisions could be altered prior to the law being enacted.
The proposed law first started out as a ‘prakas’ (a ministerial declaration), but in order to enable enforcement was upgraded to a sub-decree. The next step towards becoming a law will see it reviewed by Cambodia’s Ministry of Justice before being passed to Cambodia’s Council of Ministers for passing as a law.
Charlotte Muckenstrum, from volunteer funded NGO Plastic Free Cambodia, said there were two differences to this announcement over previous attempts to curb Cambodia’s plastic bag use. For one, it’s the first time a sub-decree has been issued to ban any plastic in the country. Secondly, the campaign not only attempts to stop the use of plastic bags, but also aims to change people’s behaviour about the product.
‘Plastic is relatively new to Cambodia, but the use of plastic (and especially single-use plastic bags) has seen such explosive growth that today Cambodia uses six times more plastic bags than the United States, she explained in an email to AEC News Today.
Changing Cambodian’s Plastic Bag Behaviour
[vimeo 186217535 w=100 h=394] An advert for ACRA Foundation’s plastic bag reduction campaign.
Video uploaded to YouTube by Excess Baggage
As part of its communication campaign to change Cambodia consumer behaviour and habits regarding plastic bags, ACRA has released a Khmer language advertisement. The short advert uses comedy and is set in an outside market, a place Cambodians are more likely to shop. Rather than telling people to stop using plastic, the video encourages people to use only one bag for all their fruit and vegetables.
In January Phnom Penh deputy governor Ieng Aunny said that changing people’s behaviour takes time, but Cambodia cannot wait any longer.
At an ACRA’s SWITCH-Asia project, workshop organised earlier this year attended by several government ministers, ‘Reducing Plastic Bag Waste, Mr Ieng said “policy makers need to take action”.
During the workshop Mr Ieng said that despite being provided freely, plastic bags come with a cost to Cambodia. Poisonous emissions are released when plastic bags are burnt, they contaminate food, leak toxins in landfills, obstruct drainage and sewerage systems, and are littered at tourist sites, he said.
Cambodia’s Plastic Bag Profligacy
In this video, the SWITCH-Asia project “Reducing plastic bag waste in Cambodia” examines the reasons behind the widespread, excessive use of plastic bags, despite their proven and visible damages.
Video uploaded to YouTube by SWITCH Asia
According to Deutsche Welle (DW), Cambodia imports of plastic bags from Vietnam and Thailand amounted to some US$100 million last year. However, it notes the Cambodian government’s commitment to reducing plastic bag use by 50 per cent by 2019. It also notes plans by Cambodia to cooperate with Japan in creating a recycling plant to transform plastic waste into furniture and household materials.
John Le Fevre
Ms Muckenstrum, who attended two workshops organised by ACRA, says alternatives must be given to replace the use of plastic bags and support given to local companies that import or manufacture alternative products.
Part of the reason plastic bags are so widely used in Cambodia is their extreme versatility.Cheap, light-weight, water proof and disposable, a kilogram of plastic bags in Cambodia costs roughly KHR 5,000 (US$1.22).
Cassava bags, paper bags, sugar cane boxes, reusable containers, and bamboo straws are some examples of how we can reduce the use of plastic, Ms Muckenstrum explained.
Research by ACRA found that 10 million plastic bags are used in Phnom Penh daily, with the average Cambodian using more than 2,000 plastic bags every year; ten times higher than average consumption in the European Union and China.
According to Ms Oriolo the Cambodian government intends to apply the same KHR 500 levy on plastic bags at supermarkets to all retail businesses by 2020.
Related:(CNN) Colin Kaepernick's attorney Mark Geragos said Tuesday he has a "high degree of confidence" that he will be able to prove National Football League team owners colluded to keep Kaepernick from being signed.
"I am going to predict right now that we will have a smoking gun," Geragos told CNN's Anderson Cooper on "AC360." "There are people who are not going to get into an arbitration proceeding and they are not going to lie. They are not going to lie. They are going to tell the truth and they're going to say what happened. They were told no, you're not going to hire him."
Kaepernick, who is still a free agent, first took a knee during the singing of the National Anthem before a 2016 preseason game. He said he knelt to protest the treatment of black Americans, particularly by police.
The former San Francisco 49er filed the grievance on Sunday under the league's Collective Bargaining Agreement, according to a statement from Geragos, who is also a CNN contributor.
Read MoreUpdate: Aug, 13 2016. Update the article to include Datical DB under commercial Tools.
A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post about Database Versioning and how it was ignored over source code versioning. Originally posted on my other website, it got quite a bit of attention and sparked some very interesting discussion. As a result of the discussions, I got to know quite a bit about database version control tools. After about two years I thought I would visit the topic again and see what new tools and methods are available for versioning databases. Judging from the speed at which technology moves, I was expecting a very different landscape from where I had left off. To my surprise, there has not been much new developments in this field at all.
Why Database Versioning?
Versioning your database is different than simply checking in the scripts that make changes to your database to version control. The theory is that every change made to your database, specifically a DDL change but perhaps a DML change too, assigns a version number to your database thus allowing you to roll forward or backwards to a specific version safely. Just like you would with source code. For a full argument read the article above. Such versioning could go hand in hand with your code release or could go out all by itself. This makes changes to your database more manageable, reproducible and portable. Below I have compiled a list of tools that allow you to version your database
Commercial Tools for Database Version Control
1) Red Gate
Red Gate Database Lifecycle Management is available for mysql, Oracle, and Azure. It is an integrated tool set that helps with Version Control, Continuous Integration,Release Management and Monitoring of all database changes. Each process can be used individually or can be chained together in your DevOps toolchain. What I like about Red Gate toolkit is their support for and excellent GUI as well as good command line client.
2) DBMaestro
DBMaestro Teamwork is available for Oracle and MSSql. DBMaestro Teamwork positions itself as DevOps for databases with rich feature set which includes and IDE, audit trail, permissions management, object locking prevention etc. DBMaestro will also perform an intelligent 3 way, baseline aware analysis of your database against any code dump you may have to figure out where configuration drift has occurred so you can get your automation under way in the right manner.
3) Delphix
Delphix provides advanced DaaS (Database as a Service) tools that go beyond just versioning of database. Using Delphix’s tools you can bookmark your database, fast rewind, forward, reset, branch and share your environments with other teams. This also allows for faster testing and identifying of errors. Delphix also integrates a data masking tool that allows for masking of sensitive data and data governance with full audit trail.
4) Dev Modeler
Dev Modeler by Databazoo does have a free version for download that supports DB Visualization, Change tracking, data modeling, code completing etc. However I could not locate any meaningful documentation. Nor could I figure out how to reverse engineer an existing database although their website claims you can do so.
5) Datical
Datical is the commercial company behind the Open Source tool Liquibase. However Datical DB is more than just a commercial version of Liquibase. For starters it comes bundled with a nice GUI as opposed to Liquibase’s pure CLI. Datical is also a tool aimed squarely at the Enterprise with feature like Policy Management and enforcement of Regulatory Standards. It also integrates with wide variety of products for toolchain automation like Puppet, Chef, Bamboo, Jenkins etc. You can find more information on Datical DB here.
Open Source Tools
1) liquibase
Liquibase is by far the best DIY database versioning tool out there. For a brief primer on how to use liquibase look here.
2) FluentMigrator
FluentMigrator is to.Net what Active Record is to Ruby on Rails. FluentMigrator promotes writing the changes to the database as classes in C# which are then translated to database changes via migrations. These changes can be checked in to a version control system just like any code changes. This also allows you to run any version control operation on the change like diff, merge, roll back and forward etc.
3) DBGeni
DBGeni feels like ActiveRecord on steroids. Probably because it is. Written in Ruby, DBGeni provides full support for scaffolding your database and automates various tasks like generating migrations, generating relevant code, etc. It also provides ability to write hooks for your database in Ruby.
4) Flyway
Flyway is a java based utility and is a favorite among the java crowd. It provides a command line interface, an API and hooks into Maven, Gradle and Ant. It has support for migrations, baselining, validating and repairing of databases. Although it will baseline an existing database, it is more like a bookmark. I could not find any way or reverse engineering an existing database with Flyway.
5) Sqitch
Sqitch is written in Perl. The unique thing about sqitch is it does not enforce any rules of its own on the user regarding scripting language or numbering scheme. sqitch also has all the standard features that you would expect from a command line database version control tool. Beyond that sqitch is the only tool I found that has support for docker and firebase.
6) Schemazen
Schema Zen is a small but very well maintained utility for versioning changes to MS Sql database. This command line utility is under active development and was brought to my attention in one of the comments on my previous blog posts. Schemazen can reverse engineer a database to its script. Can create a database from its scripts and can compare two databases. It is a small and fast utility well suited for automation.
So which tools do you think I missed? Which ones do you use? Let me know in the comments below. Also let me know if you would like me to test out a particular tool or write a primer for one.665 Bracketeers voted in Batch 61, and 9.72m votes have now been cast.
Visual results can be seen here and today’s results are:
Kolaghan’s Command defeats Servant of the Conduit with 91.90% of the vote
Angel of Flight Alabaster defeats Paranoid Parish-Blade with 89.37% of the vote
Olivia Voldaren defeats Prey Upon with 87.12% of the vote
Reaper King defeats Greenseeker with 87.10% of the vote
Pariah defeats Angel’s Herald with 86.36% of the vote
Chandra’s Phoenix defeats Vigean Graftmage with 84.67% of the vote
Fateful Showdown defeats Harvestguard Alseids with 79.97% of the vote
Hydra Omnivore defeats Timbermaw Larva with 78.20% of the vote
Verdant Catacombs defeats Arcane Sanctum with 77.67% of the vote
Crush of Wurms defeats Malakir Cullblade with 76.15% of the vote
Walking Archive defeats Sootstoke Kindler with 75.38% of the vote
Spirebluff Canal defeats Chronicler of Heroes with 73.61% of the vote
Young Wolf defeats Metamorphose with 72.40% of the vote
Dissipation Field defeats Fa'adiyah Seer with 69.95% of the vote
Ob Nixilis Reignited defeats Vexing Devil with 68.79% of the vote
Everflame Eidolon defeats Multani’s Harmony with 67.73% of the vote
Blazing Salvo defeats Frightshroud Courier with 67.54% of the vote
Carnophage defeats Brutalizer Exarch with 66.72% of the vote
Celestial Dawn defeats Gnarlroot Trapper with 64.81% of the vote
Fleetwheel Cruiser defeats Madrush Cyclops with 60.68% of the vote
Commander Greven il-Vec defeats Gather Courage with 60.61% of the vote
Murderous Betrayal defeats Elvish Fury with 59.60% of the vote
Phyrexian Purge defeats Inspiring Call with 59.16% of the vote
Skullwinder defeats Widespread Panic with 57.41% of the vote
Curse of Inertia defeats Monastery Loremaster with 56.39% of the vote
Marauding Knight defeats Keldon Necropolis with 56.30% of the vote
Forced March defeats Predatory Rampage with 55.05% of the vote
Sygg, River Cutthroat defeats Willbender with 54.80% of the vote
Urza’s Guilt defeats Frost Lynx with 52.69% of the vote
Divine Retribution defeats Crag Saurian with 50.94% of the vote
Jack-in-the-Mox defeats Horde Ambusher with 50.53% of the vote
Mogg Fanatic defeats Sunken Ruins with 50.15% of the vote
Full results to date can be seen here.CORDOVA, Alabama -- A woman who died when a tornado flattened her Cordova home was refused shelter earlier in the day at a nearby church, her teenage son says.
Madison Phillips, 16, said he and his mother approached Long Memorial United Methodist Church after the first of two tornadoes hit the Walker County city on April 27. His mother asked a woman at the church's front door whether they could come in, Phillips said. "We're not letting anybody in the church," Phillips said the woman replied.
His mother, Annette Singleton, told at least two people about the encounter, according to interviews with them.
But Phillips and the two people who heard the story from Singleton say they don't know who the woman at the church was, and Long Memorial's pastor said he has found nobody affiliated with the church who turned Singleton away. The Rev. Ryan Rosser said the church served its traditional role as a shelter the day of the storm, and anyone could have come in.
"The church was open all day, and people were coming in and finding refuge there," he said.
Still, Phillips' account has fueled debate and concern in Cordova, particularly in the black community. Though Phillips said race was not mentioned, he presumed he and his mother weren't welcomed by the woman at the predominantly white church because they were black.
"Can I say I know that's why they wouldn't let us in? No," Phillips said. "Can I say that's why I think they didn't? Yes."
While the facts may be open to debate, this much is not in dispute: When a second storm blew through Cordova at about 5 p.m., Singleton, a 45-year-old mother of four, was killed. So were Jonathan Doss, 12, and Justin Doss, 10, white brothers who were visiting the family's home when the tornado hit.
They were killed trying to ride out the storm in a home Singleton had rented several weeks earlier that was just down the hill from Long Memorial.
The storm hit at least five hours after the alleged encounter at the church, based on the accounts of two people who spoke with Singleton that day.
Homer Rodgers of Cordova said he met Singleton on the morning of the storms on the street near her house. "She was real agitated and worried about the storm.... She kept telling me another storm was coming because the Lord is not through," Rodgers recalled. "She asked me, 'Do you know anywhere I could take shelter?'"
Rodgers said Singleton told him she was going to try Long Memorial. "She came back, and they told her no," Rodgers said. "She said, 'I'm going to go home and pray.'"
Jacqueline Doss, the stepmother of Jonathan and Justin Doss, said Singleton came to her brick apartment at Cordova Manor about noon or possibly earlier on the day of the storms. Singleton, who was a former resident at the apartments, told Doss about having been turned away at the church, according to Doss.
"She was very upset," Doss said. "She said, 'It's ridiculous.'"
The visit lasted until about 3:30 p.m., Doss said. Then, thinking the worst of the weather had passed, Singleton and Phillips headed home, with Doss' stepsons tagging along, she said.
When the next storm hit, Phillips said, he and his mother didn't even discuss trying to go back to the church with Jonathan and Justin. Instead, they went to a small hallway in their rented home and hoped for the best.
"My mama had a Bible and some candles," Phillips said. "Two or three minutes later, I heard a big ol' rumbling, and the house came apart."
Phillips remembers the walls breaking off, the ceiling caving in, the floor sinking and the smothering sensation of not being able to breathe. The next thing Phillips knew, he was walking outside, dazed. Someone took off Phillips' shirt and tied it around his bleeding head. "I said, 'Where my mama at? Where those (Doss) boys?'"
It wasn't until much later that he learned the answer. Doss, who told a hospitalized Phillips the boys were dead, said he began bemoaning his mother's attempt to get in the church: "They wouldn't let us in."
The North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church has heard the allegations about a tornado victim being denied shelter at Long Memorial, an almost century-old church named for one of Cordova's founders.
"We've learned about it from folks like you and the people around the town," said the Rev. Ron Schultz, the superintendent of the district which includes Long Memorial.
But Schultz said Methodist officials know little beyond the basic accusation and what the pastor has told them: that the church served as a shelter to many people on April 27 and its members know nothing about anyone being turned away. Schultz said the conference hasn't attempted to investigate further. "How do you sort out fact from rumor?" he said.
Rosser, who has been pastor of Long Memorial for five years, said he did not contact the victims' families, but he asked everyone he knew to ask at the church whether anyone had been turned away. The answer, he said, was no.
While Rosser was not at the church when the afternoon storm hit, he said he was there earlier in the day, and he left the sanctuary unlocked with the expectation people would come there, as they traditionally do, for safety.
Among those who availed themselves of the church's basement that afternoon was Terry Kelley.
Kelley, a Full Gospel minister who does not attend Long Memorial, said he arrived at the church about 10 minutes before the second storm hit. He said he spent those minutes trying to urge others to come into the church for protection.
"We were getting people as fast as we could," Kelley said. "It didn't matter if they were black, white, brown or whatever."
Kelley added that he couldn't recall if any blacks were among the 25 to 30 people who took shelter there -- about half community residents such as himself and half members of utility crews in town to restore services after the morning storm.
After emerging from the church, which was also damaged, Kelley helped remove what he believes must have been the bodies of Singleton and the Doss brothers from a ditch. He also said he helped the rescue workers tending the injured, including, he believes, Phillips. He said he had not heard the claim that Singleton and Phillips were denied entrance to the church.
"I was pretty much the last person to come in the door," he said. "Had they come and asked for shelter, they would have been granted it. There would have been nobody turned away."
The story has captured significant community interest in Cordova. Some black ministers confronted Rosser about the story, and a running dispute about the allegation has appeared in various threads on Facebook.
Phillips said some of the information that has been circulated has not been accurate. But a number of people say they are convinced the basic story is true.
"I think it's classism as much as racism," said Pete Bush, who is black and the former football coach at Cordova High School. "I know these people. If I would've gone there, they would have let me in. They didn't know her. And she was poor."
When he first heard the allegation, Bush said he felt compelled to look into the matter, talking with Phillips and others. "I just couldn't sleep about this," he said.
The Rev. Darren Allen, pastor of the predominantly black Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Cordova, also investigated the story and was among four ministers who met with Rosser. "What our goal was as a community was to make sure this never happens to anyone else," said Allen, who added that he is considering a public rally to focus on a need for civility and for public shelters.
Former federal judge U.W. Clemon, who represents Phillips' sister, Rheashell Perkins of Birmingham, said he is looking into the matter but is unsure what can be done. "The immediate problem," Clemon said of the church, "is it's a private institution. If it does not receive public funds, it may be entitled to discriminate."
For Phillips, though, the issue is more basic.
"The reason I made it, my mama made me strong. She made all of her children like that," said Phillips, who has gone to live with his oldest brother, a Marine stationed in Hawaii. "But every time I think of my mama, I get sad."
Phillips said he wants the truth to come out. "I don't want them to overlook it," he said. "I want to wake people up. I want 'em to know."
News staff writer Val Walton contributed to this report. Join the conversation by commenting below or e-mailing Demonia at rdemonia |
, rapists and child molesters because no other psychiatric hospital will accept them. They are just too eerie,'' says Wallace, a reporter for the London Times, who recently was in Chicago to promote the paperback edition of her book.
''But then, no expert really has ever been interested. They`ve always been kind of boring, these little silent girls.'' They have not been diagnosed as schizophrenic or psychotic but as psychopathic, Wallace says. ''If that means an inability to see how other people are feeling, or relate to other people, or a coldness, then anybody who reads the diaries can see that`s not the case.
''My interest started when I read their writings, which were extraordinary, then it was stimulated by their trial, which I found very sad. ''Tiny and vulnerable, they didn`t-couldn`t-say anything in their own defense, apart from a few grunts which the court interpreted as pleas of guilty. No evidence was presented showing that they were naive, profoundly disturbed teenaged girls who had discovered boys, and the boys introduced them to vandalism.
''Nothing was brought out about the tremendous force, power, sweetness and lyricism of their writings. Nobody saw these were lost children who were trapped, that each actually wanted to go to prison to escape the other twin.
''They saw themselves as becoming famous writers first of all, famous twins, famous criminals. Later, of course, they didn`t find being criminals much fun. So I thought if I could allow them to be famous writers by telling their story, to satisfy that part of them, they wouldn`t really need to turn to the darker and seedier parts of it all.
''Their story is about a mystical bondage that exists between two twin human beings, who love and hate each other with such intensity that they can neither live together, nor apart.''
As the twins reached puberty, they were so resistant to change of any kind that they wrapped their chests to flatten their breasts. They were sent to a special school in 1977 after their 14th birthday. Even their diagnostic test results were contradictory: They scored as socially maladjusted, depressed, withdrawn, well balanced and independent.
When the twins were by themselves in school they happily chatted. But when a therapist joined them, they clammed up. Two years later they registered for unemployment benefits and locked themselves away in their bedroom. Their family, beleaguered and confused, occasionally would hear giggles upstairs, or sounds of a struggle, but saw little of the girls. Their mother delivered meals on a tray, slid mail under the door.
Thus, at the age of 16, the twins were abandoned by all authorities. But they kept very busy. They collected dolls-families, dynasties, of dolls-which were representations of themselves; they bathed, fed and even educated them and built around them a complex tapestry of plays, cartoons and stories. The twins even operated a mock radio station for the dolls and mimicked deejay patter. Instead of girlish playthings, however, the dolls were more akin to characters out of ''A Clockwork Orange.''Jay-Z’s new album won’t go platinum before its July 4 launch, nor is it guaranteed to debut atop the Billboard charts. You know you’re doing well as an artist when that’s considered a controversy.
Billboard announced earlier today that the 1 million copies of Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail purchased by Samsung won’t count toward its chart totals. The reasoning: the technology giant will be distributing the album to owners of its handsets for free. Therefore, no actual sales will take place. If Jay-Z and Samsung had charged at least $3.49 for the album, the publication explained, the sales would have registered.
Jay-Z made his thoughts known on the topic long before a decision was rendered, tweeting: “If 1 Million records gets SOLD and billboard doesnt report it, did it happen? Ha. #newrules #magnacartaholygrail Platinum!!!”
In the end, however, the brouhaha obscures one of the more remarkable realities in recent musical memory: Jay-Z is essentially getting paid to leak his own album. And one need only compare the launches of Magna Carta and Yeezus to understand how important that is.
Yeezus officially hit stores this past Tuesday, but it leaked online a few days earlier. Experts believe the album will sell half a million copies its first week—likely enough to land it at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, but only half the first week total of West’s Graduation. Jay-Z’s album is also expected to sell about half a million copies its first week, even though the Samsung sales won’t be counted.
Kanye’s album leaked, and so will Jay-Z’s. His Samsung deal guarantees it. Within minutes of Magna Carta hitting 1 million handsets, it’ll be recorded, uploaded and passed around the internet. The difference: Jay-Z’s leak happened on purpose, and he’s getting paid $5 million for it.
As I explained in my book Empire State of Mind, Jay-Z has always managed to stay one step ahead of his peers when it comes to business matters, and it'll be no different when it comes to his new album.
The method of delivery may be unusual, but he’s assuring Magna Carta will be heard by hordes of listeners--and that he’ll be well-compensated for it. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter whether or not this counts toward his chart totals.
As for Kanye West? Now he’s got a commercial blueprint to use for his next album.
For more on the business of Jay-Z, check out my book Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went From Street Corner to Corner Office. You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook.(CNN) A Republican congressman said Thursday night that Congress and the nation may be just days away from James Comey breaking his silence after being fired as FBI director by President Donald Trump.
Rep. Will Hurd of Texas sits on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which invited Comey to testify next week. Asked on CNN's "Outfront" if he believed Comey is still going to testify, Hurd told Erin Burnett, "I'm pretty confident he is. And that hearing may be as soon as the 24th of May."
.@HurdOnTheHill is "pretty confident" Comey is going to testify, the hearing "may be as soon as...the 24th of May" https://t.co/TwuxZ5hyk9 — OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) May 18, 2017
A senior GOP source previously told CNN it was unlikely Comey would testify publicly now that former FBI Director Robert Mueller has been named special counsel for the investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
Hurd also disagreed with the President's comments on Thursday that the appointment of a special counsel "hurts our country."
"The special counsel is a move that's going to make sure that the American people can be satisfied with however this ends," he said. "We've got to make sure that this is done the right way, that we don't react, that we show restraint, that we get to all the facts so that we can be proud of what happens in this investigation."
Read MoreWith the retirement of 110 government-owned chimpanzees, the end of medical research on man's closest living relative may be near.
Today, the National Institutes of Health announced that all of its chimps now living at the New Iberia Research Center would be permanently removed from the research population.
Long criticized by animal advocates for mistreating animals and illegally breeding chimps, New Iberia operates the largest research chimp colony in the United States and is a bastion of a practice abandoned in every other country.
"This is a major message from the NIH: that this era is coming to an end," said John Pippin of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an animal advocacy group. "This is huge."
In December of last year, an expert panel convened by the Institute of Medicine, the nation's medical science advisers, declared that medical research on chimpanzees was ethically problematic and, in most cases, scientifically unnecessary. The NIH announced a moratorium on new chimp research funding and agreed to review the status of its own animals. After years of fighting for an end to medical research on chimps, whose ability to think, feel and suffer is not far removed from our own, animal advocates greeted that news with cautious relief. The NIH's intentions sounded good, but what they'd actually do remained to be seen.
With the decision to retire 110 chimps at New Iberia, the NIH leaves little doubt of its plans. “This is a significant step in winding down NIH’s investment in chimpanzee research based on the way science has evolved and our great sensitivity to the special nature of these remarkable animals, our closest relatives,” said NIH director Francis Collins to the Washington Post.
Excluding the retired chimpanzees, the NIH still owns an estimated 475 chimps eligible for research. Another 500 or so are owned by pharmaceutical companies. The NIH's decisions influence their fate as well, said Pippin.
"With this indication that the NIH is going to get out of chimp research, that's going to drop the bottom out of the whole chimpanzee research enterprise," Pippin said. "How are you going to justify your research in light of what the IOM and NIH have said? Even those not directly affected by this prohibition are going to give up. They do not have scientific or ethical justification to continue."
Kathleen Conlee, animal research director with the Humane Society of the United States, was more measured in her response.
"They're taking a step in the right direction by deeming these chimps ineligible for research," she said. "But we'd rather see them go to sanctuary." She noted that while 10 of the New Iberia retirees will be sent to the Chimp Haven sanctuary, the rest will go to the Texas Biomedical Institute's Southwest National Primate Research Center.
Though the newly retired chimps won't be used again in medical research, that type of research still occurs at Southwest. Indeed, it was an attempt to send retired chimps back into research at Southwest that sparked the controversy that led to the IOM report and NIH review.
"Places like Southwest were built to be research labs. We'd urge the chimps to be sent somewhere where the mission is the well-being of chimps," Conlee said. According to Conlee, housing animals at Chimp Haven costs the government $40 per day, compared to $60 per day at research laboratories.
Conlee said that some companies, including Abbott Labs and Idenix, have agreed to follow the IOM guidelines for chimp research or abandon it altogether. Others, including GlaxoSmithKline, have already given up.
Rather than relying on corporate goodwill, however, both Conlee and Pippin urged people to support the Great Ape Protection Act and Cost Savings Act. Now under Congressional consideration, the bill would end on medical research on chimps.Samsung has launched a trial of its new mobile payments platform in Korea. The Samsung Pay month-long trial is in preparation for a global roll out to more regions. The company announced on the Samsung official blog that owners of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge are the first to be able to use Samsung Pay.
The company boasts that Samsung Pay users in Korea will be able to spend money using the service in more stores than any other competing mobile payment service in the region. It's also billed as the first and only service that works with both NFC and card readers with Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) technology. This makes it ready for deployment and compatible with most retail terminals.
Samsung is taking on Apple Pay with its new service and is taking security seriously when it comes to storing cards inside the app. Instead of storing a card number, a unique, encrypted token is sent to the bank and is linked to your card(s). Making payments is also more secure due to the requirement of either a fingerprint or PIN.
For now, only those residing in Korea will be able to use Samsung Pay on their Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge, though we can't see it being long before Samsung rolls out the service elsewhere.
Source: Samsung TomorrowCo-authored Patricia Sharpe and Daniel Vaughn
Last week, Texas Monthly released its quinquennial list of the state's top 50 barbecue joints. As usual, the list has generated a Texas-sized response, from furious disagreement with our choices to fervent reports from readers already intent on visiting all 50. This year, however, we also have another object: to conclude a long-running argument over which region of the country is home to the best barbecue. It is time settle this quarrel once and for all.
Texas barbecue has no peer on earth. If you happen to be reading this in Texas, you may wonder why we need to state the obvious, but there are people who contend otherwise. In Kansas City they tout paltry slices of gray beef covered in sweet ketchup; the whole thing resembles cold cuts more than barbecue, which is why their arguments generally center on sauce rather than meat. In Memphis they grill ribs over charcoal and fret about whether to hide the product under a pool of sugary sauce or cover it with flavored dust. In the Carolinas they lift their noses and say through pursed, vinegary lips that they invented barbecue. They may have a claim there, but luckily we Texans came along to perfect it.
Let's back up. The American barbecue tradition is rooted in numerous ancient practices. Caddo Indians had a method for smoking venison, and in the West Indies, natives grilled meats on a frame of green sticks. When European colonists arrived in the New World, no doubt tired of all the salt cod from the long Atlantic passage, they found a local populace given to roasting all manner of game -- iguanas, fish, birds, corn, pretty much anything at hand. The Europeans' contribution to this scenario was to introduce a tasty new animal: the hog. Not only was this beast a marked improvement over the previous fare, but its own gastronomic habits proved well suited to the slop-filled environs of the burgeoning Eastern seaboard. In rural areas and colonial burgs, pigs would roam freely, indiscriminately eating trash until someone decided to roast them, which was done in the local manner -- a hole in the ground, a fire, and a split hog laid directly above it on a wood frame.
Barbecue might never have advanced beyond this crude stage but for the fact that another type of animal had come to these shores at the same time as the pig: the cow. Eventually, bovines made their way up through Mexico to the vast grazing lands of Texas, and it didn't take long for Texans to figure out what to do with them. We started out by placing the beef directly over the flames but eventually adopted a more elegant approach by which the meat was smoked to tenderness in a chamber with a fire pit at one end and a chimney at the other. Over time, barbecue proliferated throughout the state, eventually leading to the opening of commercial establishments like Elgin's Southside Market, in 1886, and Lockhart's Kreuz Market, in 1900. We've been arguing about barbecue joints ever since.
Unlike our friends in the South, however, our arguments involve only the important stuff -- not who has the better sauce or rub but who has the best meat. And in Texas, this means beef. Sure, we smoke hogs, in the form of spareribs, pork chops, or even (gasp) pulled pork, but we specialize in the Mount Everest of barbecue: brisket. In all of barbecuedom, there is no greater challenge and no greater reward.
This year marks the fifth time that Texas Monthly has sought to identify the state's finest purveyors of smoked meat. In 1973 -- our first year of publication -- we selected the top 20 joints in the state, singling out Kreuz Market and Taylor's Louie Mueller Barbecue as the best of the best. In 1997 we expanded our list to include the 50 best joints, with Kreuz and Louie Mueller still at the top. Both were -- and remain -- exemplars of the German meat-market style, which has always been, in our opinion, the primary form of Texas barbecue. It's true that Texas can boast tremendous diversity of methods -- from the glazed ribs of East Texas to the cowboy style found farther west -- but the Central Texas holy trinity of brisket, sausage and ribs (beef and pork), smoked for many hours in an indirect-heat pit and served on butcher paper, remains the state's finest contribution to the genre. Until recently, that kind of meal was an indisputably rural phenomenon. Sure, there were a few iconic places in urban areas -- Angelo's in Fort Worth, Otto's in Houston, Sonny Bryan's in Dallas -- but they were hardly citified. Texas Monthly's first 50-best lists of the new century, compiled in 2003 and 2008, showed little change in that regard.
Then something happened. A tectonic shift occurred. Over a few short years, beginning around 2009, an unprecedented number of brand-new, very good joints opened up. (Sixteen of this year's top 50 -- including two of the top four -- were not even in existence five years ago.) Even more unusual, most were in cities, operated by fanatical young pitmasters like Houston's Greg Gatlin of Gatlin's BBQ, Dallas's Justin Fourton of Pecan Lodge, San Antonio's Tim Rattray of the Granary, and the biggest sensation of them all, Aaron Franklin of Franklin Barbecue, in Austin. They were traditionalists, students of the canonical joints, disciples who would bring the old ways into a new age and a new place. And they found an enthusiastic reception among not just longtime barbecue hounds but also the growing ranks of the food-obsessed, the type of people who shop at farmers' markets, stock their fridges with artisanal pickles, and tweet pictures of their meals. Suddenly, that most traditional of foods --pit-smoked meat -- was reaching a much wider audience.
We are now in the golden age of Texas barbecue. A new generation has arisen to take its place beside the stalwarts, and together they are producing more truly exceptional brisket, ribs, sausage, pork loin, pork chops, pork butt, hot guts, prime rib, chopped beef, and chicken than ever before. The pitmasters on our list of the top 50 barbecue joints offer the closing argument in the long-standing case of Texas barbecue versus the world. That case may now be considered closed.There's a lockdown on the Wikipedia page for Austrian economics and wouldn't you know it, one or way or another, it all seems to be Paul Krugman's fault.
Broadly speaking, Austrian economics, for those who have not yet had the pleasure of being introduced, are characterized by an extreme distrust of state intervention in markets, a distaste for statistical modeling and a general confidence that markets, left to their own devices, will avoid booms and busts and nasty things like inflation. From a political perspective, Austrian economics tends to lurk to the right of even such conservative icons as Milton Friedman.
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For more detail, you can go, of course, to the Wikipedia page for Austrian economics. But until at least Feb. 28, if you do so, you will find that the page "is currently protected from editing." An "edit war" has been raging behind the scenes. Two factions were repeatedly deleting and replacing a section of text that had to do with a description of a critique of Austrian economics made by economist Paul Krugman.
The closer you look, the more the whole affair appears at first to be a demonstration of Sayre's Law, which holds that "in any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." One side, which seems from the Talk page chronicling the argument to be just one very stubborn person, is objecting to the inclusion of Krugman's critique on the grounds that what Krugman describes as Austrian economics doesn't actually represent the reality of Austrian economics. In other words, it's as if Krugman was saying "the problem with blue is that it is red." Therefore, his views should not be included as an example of a valid critique. The other side is basically saying that Krugman is Nobel Prize-winning economist whose opinion is well worth including according to the standards of Wikipedia. So there. And back and forth the argument went, with lots of torturous discursions into the process weeds of Wikipedia editing policies, until it got too heated and provoked a lockdown.
On one level, it is amusing that Paul Krugman, a man whose Nobel award (technically, "the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel") was lambasted by one Austrian school acolyte as "the worst decision in the history of the prize" and caused another to sigh "that those of us who believe in liberty are in for a long time in the intellectual wilderness," is indirectly responsible for a Wikipedia Austrian meltdown. But there's also a serious issue at stake.
The Krugman critique in question pointed out that many self-styled Austrians had declared that a dire, disastrous, Zimbabean/Weimar Germany outbreak of hyperinflation would be the inevitable consequence of the stimulus spending and other federal policies expanding access to credit in the wake of the financial crash. But that didn't happen. One can argue that just because some people who are affiliated with the Austrian school made terrible economic predictions doesn't mean that Austrian economics are wrong. Financial writer John Carney makes exactly such an argument at CNBC, going so far as to argue that Austrian economics actually predicted exactly what ended up happening since the financial crash. And sure, such reasoning seems to be at the heart of the Wikipedia dispute -- Krugman, argues the leading dissident, is wrongly characterizing Austrian economics as guaranteeing high inflation after a big credit expansion.
Personally, I would have been quite surprised to see Austrian economists explain in 2009, that, as Carney puts it, it would have been "entirely in keeping with the Austrian approach to economics... [for]... a combination of a growing fiscal deficit and an accommodative monetary policy... [to help] prevent the housing slump and financial crisis from depressing prices generally." I certainly can't imagine any of the founding fathers of Austrian economics, such as Ludwig von Mises, saying such a thing.
For five years conservatives, including many Austrians, warned that stimulus spending and expanded credit would lead to disaster. But hyperinflation is nowhere to be seen, and the economy is slowly recovering. Paul Krugman was right. No wonder there's trouble in Austrian-school-Wikipedia land.
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I asked Krugman if he was paying attention to the Wiki-kerfuffle, and the dispute over whether his characterization of Austrian economics was correct. He declined to plunge in too deep, but did say this: "That is my experience with the Austrians: whenever you try to pin them down, they insist that you fail to understand their profound ideas. And they have indeed been predicting runaway inflation for years now; it's interesting that they can neither explain why they were wrong nor admit that this poses a problem."Throughout the election cycle, liberals have been shocked at just how “shameless,” as Kevin Drum put it this week, Mitt Romney’s campaign has been. It’s not just that Romney lies; it’s the quality of the lies, the indifference to any fact-checking, the insistence on continuing to use a lie long after it’s been definitively debunked.
I have a name for it, and an explanation. Call it lazy mendacity.
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First, some examples are in order. Perhaps the most famous one is the Republican insistence that Barack Obama rejected the idea of “American exceptionalism” in a press conference – an interpretation that depended on yanking a quotation out of context. Bad enough to do it, but years later it’s not at all unusual to come across examples of Republicans still trotting out this one.
The out-of-context quote is a fruitful source of lazy mendacity, as can be seen in the latest campaign flap: Mitt Romney’s eagerness to use a snippet of a Barack Obama speech last week against him. No, Obama didn’t mean to say that people who build businesses didn’t actually build them (in context, as Dave Weigel makes totally clear, “didn’t build that” is about roads and bridges). But it gets worse: A few days into the story, Republicans then produced a video to support their version of the quote by selectively clipping out the context. Just think about that: They couldn’t possibly have thought that no one would notice, given that lots of people had already been pointing out the selective quote. And yet they did it anyway.
Want another? The example I came across that started me on really thinking about this was an op-ed on the Affordable Care Act by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Walker cherry-picked a handful of facts from a legitimate independent analysis of the effects of the ACA on Wisconsin – an analysis that he helpfully linked to in his op-ed, so that anyone who looked at it could easily see his obvious omissions. A typical example: Walker wrote that “for those who are covered by the small-employer group market, the average premium increase will be 15 percent.” But in fact, the study says that 53 percent in that market will have a 15 percent increase, while the other 47 percent will average a 16 percent decrease. In the report, the 16 percent decrease was literally in the next sentence; it would be hard to extract the “bad” part of it without tripping over the “good” part, and obviously anyone who wanted to see whether Walker got it right was going to see that.
Just to be clear: It’s obviously possible to make a case (convincing or not) that Barack Obama’s vision of the United States is different from a Republican vision; that Obama has done too little for business; or that the ACA will hurt Wisconsin. It’s also certainly possible, although I suppose not particularly admirable, to construct careful lies that are not easily disproved. What we’re seeing from Republicans, including the Romney campaign, is something different. Not just mendacity, but lazy mendacity.
So why are we seeing so much of it?
My guess is that it has to do with the growth of the partisan press, and especially the role of the Republican-aligned media – Fox News and conservative blogs and talk radio.
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Republican-aligned media encourage lazy mendacity in two ways. First of all, there’s just a lot of space to fill: Talk show hosts need things to talk about! So there’s a major incentive for Republican politicians and pundits to come up with those things, the more the better.
Second … well, the norms of talk radio aren’t really known for including high standards. And talk shows have dominated the emergence of the Republican partisan press. Indeed, it’s possible that any partisan differences that have emerged – and I do think there are differences – have to do with talk radio having a bigger role in the development of the Republican partisan press than blogs have had in the Democratic partisan press.
And, perhaps – and this is just as speculative as the point above – consumers in the conservative marketplace aren’t nearly as picky about the truth as Democrats are. For one thing, as (my brother) David S. Bernstein has argued, it’s really a marketplace – so to a large extent we’re comparing conservative shoppers with Democratic ones. Yes, I know a lot of liberals think that conservatives are all knee-jerk idiots who salivate at whatever raw meat Rush Limbaugh throws at them, but I’m very hesitant to assert that without strong evidence. What I can credit, however, are structural differences, and this is certainly one.
So: The result of all of this is that there’s a large market for outrages on the Republican side, and one that doesn’t look very closely at whether the outrages are really all that outrageous. Give people incentives, and they’ll respond. The outcome is lazy mendacity.Using data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, a team of astronomers led by the team from US space agency’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland has identified a Jupiter-like huge planet that orbits two Suns simultaneously.
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Situated in the constellation Cygnus, Kepler-1647b is 3,700 light-years away and approximately 4.4 billion years old – roughly the same age as the Earth – and orbits a binary-star system.
Kepler-1647b is a gas giant, making the planet unlikely to host life. Yet if the planet has large moons, they could potentially be suitable for life.
The stars are similar to the Sun, with one slightly larger than our home star and the other slightly smaller.
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The planet has a mass and radius nearly identical to that of Jupiter, making it the largest transiting circumbinary planet ever found.
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Watch Video: What’s making news
Planets that orbit two stars are known as circumbinary planets or sometimes “Tatooine” planets, after Luke Skywalker’s home world in the movie Star Wars.
“Finding circumbinary planets is much harder than finding planets around single stars. The transits are not regularly spaced in time and they can vary in duration and even depth,” said astronomer William Welsh from San Diego State University (SDSU) in California.
The planet takes 1,107 days, just over three years, to orbit its host stars, the longest period of any confirmed transiting exoplanet found so far.
The planet is also much further away from its stars than any other circumbinary planet, breaking with the tendency for circumbinary planets to have close-in orbits.
“It’s a bit curious that this biggest planet took so long to confirm, since it is easier to find big planets than small ones,” said SDSU astronomer Jerome Orosz. “But it is because its orbital period is so long.”
Interestingly, its orbit puts the planet with in the so-called habitable zone the range of distances from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet.
“Habitability aside, Kepler-1647b is important because it is the tip of the iceberg of a theoretically predicted population of large, long-period circumbinary planets,” added Welsh.
The discovery was announced in San Diego at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Monday.
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The research has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal with Veselin Kostov, a NASA Goddard postdoctoral fellow, as led author.If Donald Trump is telling the truth when he says he has no interest in starting a TV network after the election, he sure has a weird way of showing it. From Jared Kushner’s meetings with media industry “deal-makers” to the launch of a nightly Facebook Live broadcast, signs continue to point to the eventual launch of Trump TV. Now there’s the revelation that the Trump Organization already owns three key URLs that could point to a future in the media business: TrumpTelevision.com, TrumpNetwork.com, and TheTrumpNetwork.com.
The latter two addresses once hosted content for a multilevel marketing company that sold vitamins and licensed Trump’s name to help dupe people into joining. TrumpTelevision.com, on the other hand, appears to have never hosted anything, according to Yahoo. The Trump Organization has owned these sites since at least December 2012, but they’ve taken on a new relevance in light of Trump’s rumored television ambitions. There’s a chance that the Trump Organization is just sitting on these websites so no one else uses them, like it’s doing with TrumpVodkaSucks.com and NoMoreTrump.com. But there’s also a chance they will soon be home to a TV network that, as Trump might say, is so good “your head will spin.”Are you looking for a crock pot recipe for the cinnamon roll lovers in your family? This Crock Pot Cinnamon Roll Casserole recipe from Gooseberry Patch’s Slow-Cooker Christmas Favorites is the perfect spin on your traditional cinnamon roll breakfast.
Cris here.
Growing up, every Sunday my mom would throw a tube of cinnamon rolls in the oven while we all rushed to get ready for church. While they were not homemade by any means, it always felt like a special treat. These days, as a mother rushing around on Sunday mornings myself, I can’t imagine getting the rolls in a pan, in the oven and perfectly baked–not burned –before we head out the door. Yep, we are more of a granola bar as we head out the door kind of family. (Note: If you love cinnamon rolls as much as I do, you may want to give our Crock Pot Cinnamon Roll French Toast a try! Psst… Here is a great video of that recipe:
Crock Pot Cinnamon Roll Casserole
So when I saw this recipe for Crock Pot Cinnamon Roll Casserole, it brought back all kinds of memories because it too used those cinnamon rolls my mom would make each week. So I decided to give it a try when we had a lazy morning at home.
When I started cRockin’ this up I realized it was submitted to Gooseberry Patch by my friend Amy over at A Latte with Ott, A. Crock pot recipe fans might be familiar with Amy’s uber-popular Slow Cooker Egg Brunch Casserole.
This Cinnamon Roll Casserole definitely didn’t disappoint! The hubs and I both thought it tasted a lot like a yummy flan on the bottom with a delicious layer of cinnamon rolls on top. Definitely a keeper! NOTE: if you are not a flan fan you HAVE to try our Crock Pot Cinnamon Roll French Toast… it is our absolute favorite way to cook up cinnamon rolls in the crock pot!
&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;
Crock Pot Cinnamon Roll Casserole Crock Pot Cinnamon Roll Casserole from Gooseberry Patch's Slow Cooker Christmas Favorites 4.73 from 22 votes Print Pin Prep Time: 10 minutes Cook Time: 2 hours 30 minutes Total Time: 2 hours 40 minutes Servings: 6 -8 servings Author: Cris Ingredients 2 12 oz tubes of cinnamon rolls cut into quarters- divided
4 eggs
1/2 cup whipping cream
3 Tbsp maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg Instructions Spray your 6-quart crock with cooking spray. (I used my Searing Slow Cooker
Place a layer of cinnamon roll pieces to cover the bottom of your slow cooker completely. (Reserve icing packets)
Beat eggs, cream, maple syrup, vanilla and spices until blended well.
Pour evenly over the rolls in the slow cooker.
Place remaining roll pieces on top and spoon one packet of icing evenly over rolls.
Cover and cook on low for 2 1/2 to 3 hours or until sides are golden and rolls are set.
Drizzle remaining icing over top and serve warm. Notes Best served warm. Tried this recipe? Mention @recipescrock or tag #recipescrock
NOTE: It is highly recommended you first try this recipe when you are able to keep a close eye on it. Every slow cooker cooks differently, so the times listed are just a guide. Additionally, make sure that your first layer of rolls cover the entire bottom of your pan so your egg mixture can cook into the rolls, rather than below them.
For more tips on making successful breakfast slow cooker recipes, please see our tip series.
Slow Cooker Recommendations
I love the non-stick surface of this slow cooker for recipes like this, however, any 5-6qt slow cooker will work just fine. Just make sure to cover the bottom of whatever crock pot you are using completely with the cinnamon rolls.
Other Recipes You Might Enjoy
Crock Pot Cinnamon Roll French Toast
Crock Pot Cinnamon Rolls
Crock Pot Caramel Pecan Rolls
Crock Pot Cinnamon Roll Cherry Cobbler
This post was shared at The Weekend Potluck.
Affiliate links were used in this post.by BRIAN NADIG
The heavy amount of snow that has fallen this winter has forced the Indian Woods Community Association to suspend its snow-plowing program due to insufficient funds.
The association is one of several on the Northwest Side which use a portion of their membership dues to have side streets plowed. The Indian Woods association has provided curb-to-curb snow plowing for many years, although the service was stopped in 2011-12 and then brought back the following winter.
In a Jan. 18 e-mail to residents, association president Jonathan Sladek wrote, "Current snow plowing efforts have provided clean streets and provided easy access to all of our houses. These efforts in December and January have cost the IWCA a total of $3,800. We have currently collected only $2,700 in dues for 2013. This is less than half of the homes in Indian Woods."
The letter also states that the association will not authorize additional plowing until more residents pay the $30 dues.
Forest Glen Community Club president Robert Murphy said that the last time the club ran out of snow-plowing funds was in 1967. "We are still in the midst of our 2014 funds drive, and the response to weather and the four and now five plows we’ve run so far has been very encouraging," he said.
Edgebrook Community Association president Jeff Manuel said that the group’s funds are in good shape in part because it does not pay for curb-to-curb service. "We just go down the middle for emergency vehicles and so that people can get to the front of their house," he said.
About 45 inches of snow has fallen in Chicago this winter, compared to a seasonal average total of about 37 inches.AT&T announced this morning that it will open up pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S5 starting tomorrow for $199 on-contract. Pre-orders can be made in-store or online, with shipments starting in “early April.” That’s right, no specific date has been set, but Samsung did mention April 11 during their big device unveiling back in February.
If you’d like to buy the phone at full retail, you will pay $649. You could also join AT&T Next 18 or AT&T Next 12 and spread that cost out over equal monthly payments of $25 and $32.50 per month, respectively.
In case you were wondering, this is the 16GB model, but it does support up to 128GB micro SD cards. AT&T will have both the black and white models.
In a related deal, you can save $50 off of a Samsung Gear 2 or Gear 2 Neo when you buy a Galaxy S5 from AT&T. This promo ends June 5.The Pixel and Pixel XL are selling out quickly through the Google Store. No, I’m not going to sit here and suggest that Google just sold 10 million phones in its opening week, but |
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むすび
このブログはLispWorksのエディタから更新できるようにしていたが、何故か無駄に更新コマンドに可搬性を持たせて作成していたので、LispWorksのコマンドをちょっと変更するだけでlemからもこのブログを更新できるようになった。
ということで、この記事も記念にlemで書いてlem上から更新を実行してみた。
また、TwitterもLispWorksからしているが、これもちょっとしたコマンドの書き直しでlem上から簡単につぶやけるようになった。
基本的にエディタ側で作り込むのではなくCommon Lisp側で完結するツールを作成し、フロントエンドはほぼ呼び出すだけの構成にしておくとSLIME・lem・LispWorks等エディタで共通で使いまわせるので良いかもしれない。
lemは現在ターミナルで動くが、今後ブラウザ上や、Electron化も検討されているらしいので色々期待している。
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The Supreme Court rejected a plea filed by Sahara Group seeking extension of time to pay Rs 600 crore to market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). The court said that if the company fails to pay the amount by February 6, it’s tainted chief Subrata Roy, currently on parole, shall have to commit himself to jail. Roy cited demonetisation and economic slowdown as reasons for request of extension of time. The court observed that too much indulgence had been granted to the Sahara chief, more than any other litigant.
WATCH VIDEO | Income Tax Panel Admits Sahara Fastest Disposal In 5 Years
On October 25, the top court had extended Roy’s parole after the company deposited Rs 200 crore with SEBI for repayment of investors. After spending over two years in jail, Roy was released on parole when his mother died in May this year. His parole, as well as that of directors Ashok Roy Choudhary and Ravi S Dubey, was subsequently extended on the condition that they should deposit money for refunding investors at regular intervals.
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The Sahara Group in November had presented a road map for the repayment of an outstanding amount of Rs 11,136 crores to SEBI and proposed to clear its liabilities in two-and-a-half years to ensure ‘ábsolute’ release of Roy. The application also said that Roy and the two directors would give personal undertakings regarding the road map and “in the event of three defaults” of payment they would surrender and be taken into custody.
(With inputs from ANI and PTI)Alan Grayson Money Bomb Nets $500k
Freshman Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) just raked in half a million dollars on a non-election year money bomb. The fundraising effort was coordinated through ActBlue, and demonstrates the truth behind the ancient Latin proverb: fortune favors the bold.
“The Republican health care plan is simple: Don’t get sick. The Republicans also have a backup plan. If you do get sick, die quickly.”
Grayson recently became famous in American politics, particularly for his bold condemnation of Republican obstruction to health care reform. However, the first term Florida Democrat from the Orlando area has also done important work fighting against Iraq War profiteering and fighting for transparency in the Federal Reserve.
His work in the Whistleblower Cases led a Wall Street Journal reporter to describe Grayson as “waging a one-man war against contractor fraud in Iraq.” Grayson’s direct style has come to the forefront during a couple hearings on Fed transparency, including exchanges with Federal Reserve System Vice Chairman Donald Kohn and Elizabeth A. Coleman [video], the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve System. He is also one of the people behind the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009, which would audit the Federal Reserve.
Despite the progress he has made, or perhaps because of it, he has gained a number of critics in the GOP, beltway, and media. Some opinion pieces have tried to cast Grayson as the left’s version of a wingnut like Michele Bachmann. There was an opinion piece in the New York Times that called him the ‘liberals problem child.’ However, his blunt manner seems to have revitalized the progressive movement, which had lost some steam since the inauguration of President Obama last January. While many seemed worried that the ideals of change and reform were losing out to pragmatism and appeasement, Grayson has energized the progressives that were instrumental in the 2006 and 2008 election victories for Democrats.
Grayson explained the reason for the money bomb on the Huffington Post:
“I became the Republican’s #1 target to defeat next year. D.C. election forecasters, like Charlie Cook, downgraded my re-election chances, which is a signal to corporate interests to go after me. And Bill O’Reilly began obsessing over me, even going as far as sending Fox News stalker specialist, Griff Jenkins, to wait outside my office all evening last Wednesday. I scare them. More accurately, you scare them. Progressives standing up for what we believe and not backing down when our beliefs get challenged.”
To this end, a new website has been set up.
The $500,000 raised in one day exceeded expectations and suggests that the progressive movement is still gaining ground. According to DownWithTyranny:
“In the 2006 cycle the candidate who attracted the most support from Blue America donors was Ned Lamont, with his campaign that served notice on the Democratic Establishment that the grassroots was unwilling to just eat up whatever crap it was served up from Inside the Beltway hacks. Blue America raised over $77,000 for him in our first year in action. The following cycle, saw another inspiring progressive primary challenger, Donna Edwards, attract the most donors and the largest amount (almost $65,000). It may be too early to tell but it looks like 2010 cycle will mark the year of Alan Grayson.”
There have been numerous criticisms of the Democrats over-eagerness to compromise for many years. However, the end result of Grayson’s money bomb might be to confirm the words of Basil King: “Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.” The current tally of the money bomb can be found below.How Wi-Fi Can Save Data-Guzzling Mobile Devices
Reading Time: 3 minutes
It didn’t take buyers of the new iPad long to discover an unpleasant reality about their new toys. The iPad, with its fast LTE data connection high resolution display, can devour data faster than wireless carriers want to supply it. It you watch a lot of video, your monthly allocation of 2 to 4 gigabytes of data will be used in days, and you’ll be running up bills at the rate of $10 a gig (on AT&T or Verizon in the U.S.)
Wi-Fi and cellular-type services are, of course, both wireless, but there are some critical differences between them. Cellular service operate on specific frequencies assigned to carriers by the government; Wi-Fi is a free-for-all in a couple chunks of spectrum left free for unlicensed use. Cell services use expensive base stations and antennas on towers that cover anywhere from several city blocks to many square miles, depending largely on antenna height; Wi-Fi uses inexpensive access points put most anywhere, with a normal top range of 100 meters. handsets and other devices automatically authenticate themselves to cellular networks, which grant access to subscribers; Wi-Fi either requires external software authentication or is completely open to all comers.
The trick to greatly expanding capacity, especially in areas of maximum use, is to turn Wi-Fi’s weaknesses into strengths. Physically small, low-cost, short-range access points, for example, mean that the same spectrum can be used over and over again even in a relatively confined space (and reuse can be increased with careful placement of access points, turning down the transmit power, and use of directional antennas.)
Devices equipped to use both Wi-Fi and cellular networks are designed to favor Wi-Fi when it is available. But the switching to public Wi-Fi networks is far from seamless and often requires some level of human intervention.
Carriers are increasingly interested in moving traffic from their cellular networks to Wi-Fi but they want to limit access to subscribers. Wi-Fi is relatively cheap, but it’s not free, with one of the biggest costs being the “backhaul” connecting access points to the network via landlines. There currently are two ways to authenticate users. Wi-Fi Protected Access requires a password. It’s simple and lets devices connect automatically after the first time, but distributing the network identifiers (SSIDs) and passwords is difficult, and there is nothing to stop a subscriber from sharing the password with non-subscribers. 802.1x authentication requires a user name and a password, which typically must be entered in a login screen. (The use of 802.1x, which is sometimes used to provide encryption on otherwise open networks, requires a login even if that merely means opening a web page and agreeing to the terms and conditions.)
Enter 802.11u, the latest item in the IEEE’s standard 802 alphabet soup collection. 802.11u, also known as Hotspot 2.0 or Passpoint, is a standard for linking Wi-Fi hotspots to cell networks. A your mobile devices will sense the presence of a Hotspot 2.0 access point and connect to it automatically. The access point will verify the device’s subscription status, most likely using the SIM card present in many phones, and will exchange cryptographic keys so that all traffic between the device and the access point is encrypted (a major weakness in today’s open networks.)
Niels Jonker, chief technology officer for W-Fi hotspot operator and aggregator Boingo, says he expects to see Hotspot 2.0 access points begin to make their appearance early next year. Jonker says sports stadiums are logical places for early deployment. Cellular data networks sag under the strain of tens of thousands of fans texting, tweeting, and, especially, sending pictures all at once. And the reinforced concrete construction of stadiums makes it relatively easy to create small hotspots, allowing for high reuse of spectrum. Device-dense urban centers, such as the Times Square area of Manhattan, are a likely next step, along with airports.
In effect, Hotspot 2.0 will turn these hotspots into extensions of carrier networks. That can be a win for both the carriers, who ease the pressure on their cellular networks, and customers, who get fast wireless outside (unless the carriers really screw this up) increasingly restrictive data caps.Uniformed officers equipped with handcuffs and stab vests will even escort homeowners to and from the bank or on shopping trips to ensure they are not mugged.
Officers from private security firm Atraks say they will use the powers of citizen arrest as they patrol in Southampton to "prevent serious crime".
So far 337 people have signed up in the Upper Shirley area of the city, where it is being trialled, while a further 1,700 have said they will join once they see the service in action.
Upper Shirley is one of Southampton's most affluent areas but is close to a number of run down high-rise apartment blocks.
Dave MacLean, 26, a former dog handler for a security firm, who launched Atraks two years ago, said: they spoke to more than 1,000 people about crime response.
"Most said they were fed up with the level of protection offered by the police and had lost faith," he said. "The police should be here to protect us and a company like ours shouldn't really be needed. It is a last resort but one that we think is justified."
Mr MacLean said his team of eight officers will spend time talking to residents and be a visible presence on the streets to deter criminals.
The Atraks service costs £3.15 pounds a week or residents can make an annual, one-off payment of £163.80.
Shirley resident Paul Graham, 28, said: "We do see the police now and again around here but they are always busy with other things and don't have time to drive down every street.
"They will come if you call them but I think the Atraks scheme will be much more preventative."
Alan Whitehead, MP for Southampton Test criticised the scheme however, saying that it merely "exaggerates" the fear of crime.
"I remain of the view that a paid vigilante service is not the best way to ensure that our communities are kept safe," he said.
A Hampshire police spokesman said Hampshire and the Isle of Wight "remain some of the safest places in the country."
"If you're considering using a private security firm, at a time when crime is falling, then it's worth finding out what training its staff receive and how accountable the company is to its customers," he said.Plants may not be getting enough credit. Not only do they remember when you touch them, it turns out that they can make risky decisions that are as sophisticated as those made by humans, all without brains or complex nervous systems. And they may even judge risks more efficiently than we do.
Those are the findings of a study published Thursday in Current Biology. Researchers showed that when faced with the choice between a pot containing constant levels of nutrients or one with unpredictable levels, a plant will pick the mystery pot when conditions are sufficiently poor.
“It raises a question, not about plants, but about animals and humans, because if plants can solve this problem simply,” then maybe humans can, too, said Hagai Shemesh, a plant ecologist at Tel-Hai College in Israel who worked on the study. “We have a very fancy brain, but maybe most of the time we’re not using it.”
In a set of experiments, Dr. Shemesh and Alex Kacelnik, a behavioral ecologist at Oxford University, grew pea plants and split their roots between two pots. Both pots had the same amount of nutrients on average, but in one, the levels were constant; in the other, they varied over time. Then the researchers switched the conditions so that the average nutrients in both pots would be equally high or low, and asked: Which pot would a plant prefer?A few weeks ago I was at Anime Los Angeles, and was talking to a friend who had only been to one convention before. I had been talking about a shoot I did with a group of cosplayers and said, “Well I did the shoot in the photographers hotel room…” and her eyes widened slightly in horror. “Oh! Oh no, nothing like that. A lot of people here do that out here.” But, what do I tell this person about shoots to let them know that they’re safe?
If you don’t frequent cons in big cities, chances are the only time you’ve heard the phrase “Private Cosplay Photoshoot” was when raunchy photographers were exposed for taking advantage of younger girls. The truth is,There’s no hidden twist, you don’t have to shed any skin. It’s actually pretty common to meet with a talented photographer and take private photos for (usually) free of charge. Especially in Los Angeles.
Guide for Cosplayers and Parents:
Always text a person your location, no matter who it’s with: I’ve shot with several photographers dozens of times. I have a lot of them added on Facebook, and it’s safe to say I know them personally. But even though I know them, each and every time I go off and meet someone for a shoot, I text a friend or family member EXACTLY where I’ll be and who I’m with.
I’ve shot with several photographers dozens of times. I have a lot of them added on Facebook, and it’s safe to say I know them personally. But even though I know them, each and every time I go off and meet someone for a shoot, I text a friend or family member EXACTLY where I’ll be and who I’m with. You decide how comfortable you are with a certain pose: You might think, “If I don’t do what the photographer wants they’re going to stop shooting with me!” There are dozens of photographers, more every day, who will take your photo at conventions. If someone is pushing you into showing something or moving a certain way you
don’t like, don’t hesitate to stop or say something. You feeling comfortable with the photos is the most important thing
The majority of cosplay shoots aren’t sexy anymore: Well, you’re all adorable. That’s a given. But if you don’t want to be sexy, you don’t have to be. You might think because the majority of cosplay photos that get published in mainstream media are pretty sexy, that’s how all photoshoots have to be. They don’t. A lot of favorite shoots done by photographers have been either cute, action packed, or hilarious.
Well, you’re all adorable. That’s a given. But if you don’t want to be sexy, you don’t have to be. You might think because the majority of cosplay photos that get published in mainstream media are pretty sexy, that’s how all photoshoots have to be. They don’t. A lot of favorite shoots done by photographers have been either cute, action packed, or hilarious. Don’t send nudes or pose naked for photographers who pressure you: If at any moment at all, a photographer says “you need to give me naked pictures so I can take your photo better” or pressure you to take off clothes without your consent, you can immediately stop talking to them.
You can block them, delete them, etc., cut off all communication. If they sent you something inappropriate on chat or email, immediately screen shot it, post it in every cosplay group, send it to all your friends, let everyone know that this particular photographer has lost your truth. We will not be angry with you, we will support you. No matter how much we like someone’s photos, we like our community more.
Go through the photos with the photographer to make sure you’re ok with all of them: I did a shoot with Nick Nack’s Photography at Anime Los Angeles this year. I wasn’t paying attention and I bent over too far and accidentally showed too much skin. (i.e. underpants) I asked him to see it after I realized, and asked him to delete it. He then pulled up the rest of the pictures an said, “Ok! Do you want to look through the other ones and delete the ones you aren’t comfortable with?” Which really made me feel safe trusting him with my photos.
Guide for Photographers:
Don’t be offended if a cosplayer takes excessive percausions: If you’re shooting with someone new, there’s a good chance they don’t know what to expect. Be prepared for phrases like, “ok my mom is coming with me”, or “I want to stay near people”, and “my boyfriend is only five miles away.” It’s nothing against you. They want to stay safe. Which, if you’re a safe person, you should have no problem with. You might get the urge to say, “Don’t worry about it. I’m a good guy.” You might be a great person, but the cosplayer has no way of knowing that. Instead of that, say “Alright! I respect whatever makes you feel comfortable.”
Learn their age beforehand: I’ll be the first to say it. I have no idea if certain people are 14 or 26 when they’re in cosplay. Everyone looks so different. It’s always better to be safe than sorry, and make sure the person you’re shooting with isn’t too young. Do not, under any circumstances, do any private shoots with someone under the age of 18 unless their parent or guardian is present. DO NOT EVER EVER TAKE “SEXY” PHOTOSHOOTS WITH SOMEONE UNDER 18. I DON’T CARE IF THEIR PARENTS, GAURDIANS, CON STAFF, THE POLICE, OR THE POPE HIMSELF SAY IT’S OK. JUST DON’T DO IT.
Find out if the cosplayer is ok with being tagged on their personal facebook account before you do it: This is a tricky one that people forget. If you tag someone on facebook, it usually pops up on their feed before they have a chance to approve it. That might be a risky move, if they have friends, family and work colleagues on their Facebook. There are definitely photos I would not want my grandma seeing. (Or, being added to the family photo calendar my cousin makes every year.)
Make sure your own needs are made clear when sending them photos: If you would like credit whenever the cosplayer posts the photos, don’t hesitate to let them know before sending them. You guys are working as a team to make great content, it’s important that you’re happy with how the photos are shared too!
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If there is an American elected official who is the opposite of Donald Trump, it could well be Ravinder Bhalla. A Sikh-American lawyer with a record of fighting discrimination, Bhalla says, “I’m everything that Trump hates. A brown man wearing a turban, and a proud American with the know-how to stop his assaults on our country’s values.” Ad Policy
And while Trump is losing, Bhalla is winning. On Tuesday, when voters across the country rejected the president’s Republican allies in what political analysts referred to as “nothing less than a stinging repudiation of Trump on the first anniversary of his election,” Ravi Bhalla was elected mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey. The win in the city of 55,000, located just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, was celebrated by the Sikh community in the United States, which has frequently been targeted by racists who know little about the 500-year-old religion that has produced many political leaders in India and Canada.
“Given how much we’ve endured in this country, and frankly the fact that we have been here for more than a century now in the U.S. and have felt largely ignored and neglected as a minority community, this is for us a signal shift, where we feel like we’re getting on the map. This is a major development for us,” declared Simran Jeet Singh, a religion fellow at the Sikh Coalition. “And it comes in a context where, like many minority groups, we’re facing xenophobia.” Related Article Our Revolution Candidates Won Big Last Night Collier Meyerson
Bhalla’s victory came on a night of breakthrough victories for women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, democratic socialists, and others who have been the targets of Trump’s crude slurs and discriminatory policies. Like many of the candidates who ran on the state and local levels, in partisan and nonpartisan contests, Bhalla was blunt about his disagreements with the president, telling interviewers, “I am the son of two Indian immigrants and I’m willing to stand up against President Donald Trump whenever his policies are not in line with the U.S. Constitution, and in this case the New Jersey State Constitution.”
“My job as a mayor would be to identify both areas of cooperation with federal government,” said the attorney. But he added that his job would also be “to defend our rights as immigrants and minorities whenever they come under attack. It is my obligation to defend our rights as Americans.”
That’s an appealing message that paralleled the campaign themes of many of Tuesday’s winners.
But the Hoboken breakthrough did not come easily. Though Bhalla has degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, the London School of Economics and Tulane Law School, though he is a two-term at-large member of the Hoboken City Council who has planted deep roots in his adopted city, and though he is a former chairman of the Hoboken Democratic Party and ran with the support of outgoing mayor Dawn Zimmer, he faced a multicandidate contest that finished with racist attacks. Current Issue View our current issue
In the final days before voters went to the polls, anonymous flyers appeared in Hoboken with the message: “Don’t let TERRORISM take over our town.” The message was next to a photo of Bhalla wearing the turban that is associated with his religious faith. (The Sikh religion is distinct from Hinduism and Islam, but many racists and xenophobes confuse Sikh men with Muslims.)
Bhalla responded with a personal note to Hoboken voters that focused primarily on the issues he was campaigning on—especially upgrading the waterfront city’s infrastructure and “tackling flooding and climate change head on rather than wishing it away.” But he concluded by reminding his neighbors that “you know who I am, and the principles for which I will stand. I have never run from who I am and what I believe, and neither should you. I will be the Mayor who will stand with you when you need it.”
The voters agreed. Ravi Bhalla won with relative ease—beating his closest rival by more than 600 votes. On Tuesday night, as the nation was recording an electoral repudiation of a cruel and divisive presidency, the man whose campaign acknowledged that he was “everything that Trump hates” claimed his victory with a message of reconciliation and hope. “Thank you for having faith in me, for having faith in our community, faith in our state, and faith in our country; this is what America is all about,” he told cheering supporters. “We’ve been through a bruising campaign…but now is the time we come together and see who we can work with to bring this city forward.”NEW YORK (Reuters) - As gold surged to an all-time high above $1,040 per ounce on Tuesday, opinion is mixed over whether bullion will continue to rise or pull back sharply.
Investors have piled into the metal to preserve the value of their dollar-denominated assets against erosion by a weakening dollar and inflation due to economic uncertainty.
Seeking safe havens, they have poured money into the popular gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other gold-related assets. Gold ETFs held nearly 1,300 tons of bullion — more than half of the annual mine production.
On the other hand, the weight of near-record long positions in the New York gold futures leaves the market vulnerable to a correction. Analysts had called for a correction but bullion kept rising.
In the past 18 months, gold has corrected sharply each time it rose toward $1,000 an ounce as a resurgent dollar put a damper on the metal’s rise.
Is gold’s record high sustainable in the uncharted territory against the backdrop of the unprecedented global economic stimulus plan?
Four analysts weighed in:
BUY
AXEL MERK, PORTFOLIO MANAGER OF MERK MUTUAL FUNDS, PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA
“I don’t think it (gold rally) is overdone at all. It’s going to be over when the policy makers come to their senses, and the chance of that happening is very low.
“Right now, policy makers think it’s good to debase the dollar. They just don’t know what they are wishing for. The idea that it’s good to destroy purchasing power, and somehow you can depreciate yourself into wealth is something that is cruel and naive.
“I wouldn’t mind if the metal pulls back — I would buy some more. Of course it may happen, but I am not concerned about a pullback.”
TOM DI GALOMA, HEAD OF FIXED INCOME RATES TRADING, GUGGENHEIM PARTNERS, NEW YORK
“I think gold’s rise over the near term has been a function of a Fed that continues to provide massive liquidity to the marketplace. This could find itself in a bad way in the future.
“Gold is hedge against a Fed providing too much liquidity to the market. If we do get inflation, it will do well. If we get deflation, it will do well.
“It’s confirming that the rally in Treasuries in the past month may be forming a bubble. Gold is predicting higher interest rates will come home to roost. Once the Fed stops its QE (quantitative easing) program, it will have an effect on inflation.”
SELL
ASHRAF LAIDI, CHIEF MARKETS STRATEGIST AT CMC MARKETS, LONDON
“We don’t think this is going to be the big move that is going to take us toward that target $1,200. We think we’re going to have to come back down to an area between $970 and $960, and then really recover and regain the $1,050, and really could go toward $1,150 as early...the end of this quarter.
“I would actually see the floor around $970 and there is a chance we could drop back below that when we see a retreat to risk appetite and risk aversion as we enter into this earnings season.”
PRADEEP UNNI, TRADER AT RICHCOMM GLOBAL SERVICES, DUBAI
“Though the dollar weakness factor is behind the rapid move in gold, charts look extremely strained at the moment, and they are hinting at a correction. Any extended gains may trigger profit-taking provided that investment demand continues to protect extended correction.
“Physical markets are most likely to stay calm at such high prices, and this may trigger a correction as there is a steady drop in demand.”A finishing school is a school for young people that focuses on teaching social graces and upper-class cultural rites as a preparation for entry into society.[1][2][3] The name reflects that it follows on from ordinary school and is intended to complete the education, with classes primarily on deportment and etiquette, with academic subjects secondary. It may consist of an intensive course, or a one-year programme. In the United States it is sometimes called a charm school.
Graeme Donald claims that the educational ladies' salons of the late 1800s led to the formal, finishing institutions evidenced in Switzerland around that time.[4] At their peak, thousands of wealthy young women were sent to the dozens of finishing schools available.[5] A primary goal was to teach students to acquire husbands.[5]
The 1960s marked the decline of the finishing school.[5] This can be attributed to the shifting conceptions of women's role in society, as well as succession issues within the typically family-run schools and sometimes commercial pressures driven by the high value of the properties the schools occupied.[5] The 1990s saw a revival of the finishing school, although the business model has been radically altered.[5]
By country [ edit ]
Switzerland [ edit ]
Switzerland was known for its private finishing schools. Most resided in the French-speaking cantons near Lake Geneva.[5] The country was favoured because of its reputation as a healthful environment, its multilinguality and cosmopolitan aura, and the region's political stability.[5]
Notable examples [ edit ]
The finishing schools that made Switzerland renowned[citation needed] for such institutions were Brilliantmont, founded in 1882, now an international secondary school, and Château Mont-Choisi, founded in 1885, which closed in 1995 or 1996. Both were in Lausanne.
Great Britain [ edit ]
In London there were a number of schools in the 20th century including The Cygnet's House, the Monkey Club, St James and Lucie Clayton. The latter two merged in 2005 to become St James and Lucie Clayton College and were joined by a third secretarial college Queens to become the current Quest Professional [14] college in London's Victoria. Quest Professional offers a number of business administration related courses for students aged 16–25 years old and is coeducational.
college in London's Victoria. Quest Professional offers a number of business administration related courses for students aged 16–25 years old and is coeducational. The Campana school in Surrey closed in the 1990s.
Eggleston Hall was located in County Durham and taught young ladies aged 16–20 from the 1960s until the late 1980s.
Evendene Court in Malvern began as a small school in the late 19th century teaching young ladies the duties of their families household staff by requiring them to complete domestic work themselves. Courses lasted typically 6 weeks. By 1900 the school had become popular and extended to several buildings and included a working dairy farm for pupils to learn practical farming. During the Second World War it adopted more traditional finishing school subjects for young women not able to travel to Europe. Pupil numbers remained high until the mid 1990's with a broader curriculum covering Cordon Bleu cookery, self presentation and secretarial skills. It closed in 1999.
Paddock Wood Finishing School in Lightwater founded by a second world war Monegasque-French resistance leader and charity worker. It ran from the 1940s until 1982 after the founder stumbled upon a large clientele of diplomat's children wanting to perfect their English. Despite high student numbers in the 1970s, the Iranian Revolution and political turmoil in central and south America in the late 1970s and early 1980s saw the numbers of pupils fall dramatically in just a couple of years prior to its closure.
Winkfield Place in Ascot specialised in culinary expertise and moved to a new location in Surrey the 1990s before closing in 1998. It was founded by women's educator Constance Spry as a flower arranging and domestic science school and had an international reputation. It taught girls across 3 terms of an academic year with the possibility of studying Cordon Bleu in a fourth term as with Harrow House below.
Harrow House/Rannies was located in Eastbourne and became a specialist culinary school.
About a decade after these schools had closed a diverse group of public relations and image consultancy firms started to appear in London offering largely 1 or 2 day finishing courses and social skills at commercial rate fees far higher that those charged by the colleges that closed mostly by the millennium (Lucie Clayton had been the exception). They appeal often to new international money and corporate clientele. Some partner with 5 star hotels to offer their courses but none are taught by a body teaching staff in a school or college environment like their predecessors. The model is more business and commercial than before.
The old former finishing schools were stand-alone organisations lasting for 15–50 years (often run by families) with a curriculum that varied from one school to another based around the particular philosophy of their proprietor, much like the older British private school model in the 18th and 19th centuries. Contrary to popular belief today, many did offer a small number of O-level and A level subjects and allowed pupils to do retakes or study languages and commercially applicable skills (cooking, secretarial and later business studies) as well as traditional subjects including self-presentation, etiquette, French, art and deportment. However many young women were gently pressured to attend these rather than university up until the late 1970s particularly in elite Catholic schools.
United States [ edit ]
Through much of their history, United States finishing schools emphasised social graces and de-emphasised scholarship: society encouraged a polished young lady to hide her intellectual prowess for fear of frightening away suitors.[15] For instance, Miss Porter's School in 1843 advertised itself as Miss Porter's Finishing School for Young Ladies—even though its founder was a noted scholar offering a rigorous curriculum that educated the illustrious classicist Edith Hamilton.[16]
Today, with a new cultural climate and a different attitude to the role of women, the situation has reversed: Miss Porter's School downplays its origins as a finishing school, and emphasises the rigour of its academics.[17] Likewise, Finch College on Manhattan's Upper East Side was "one of the most famed of U.S. girls' finishing schools", but its last President chose to describe it as a liberal arts college, offering academics as rigorous as Barnard or Bryn Mawr.[18][19] It closed in 1976.
The term finishing school is occasionally used, or misused, in American parlance to refer to certain small women's colleges, primarily on the East Coast, that were once known for preparing their female students for marriage.[20] Since the 1960s, many of these schools have closed as a result of financial difficulties stemming from changing societal norms, making it easier for women to pursue academic and professional paths not open to previous generations.[21]No one enjoys hearing the sound of someone else chewing their food. Most of the time, though, it’s not that big a deal — gross, maybe, but a minor annoyance.
But for a small |
We would go [at it], we were fiery, and then two seconds later we’d be laughing.”
Neither Guerin nor Crosby, who got hurt during that game, scored a point in the series-clinching 2-1 victory over the Red Wings, but Guerin’s impact on the Penguins — and especially on Crosby — ran deep. He helped to solidify, motivate, infuse and even entertain a team stocked with talent but also saturated with youth and inexperience.
Today, Guerin is still striving to help the club while also paging through a new chapter in his hockey career as the Penguins’ assistant general manager, in charge of player development and the search for college free-agent prospects. He also assists general manager Jim Rutherford and associate GM Jason Botterill, and in return is learning all he can about NHL management on a track that one day could lead to running a team in the league.
“A lot of people in this business aim to sit in the GM’s chair one day. I’m no different,” Guerin says. “But I’m a big believer in making sure that it’s the right time and that I’ve learned enough and I’m not jumping the gun. I want to do it the right way.”
He is taking his time. “I’m a young guy again,” says Guerin, 45, grinning at the thought of being early in a second hockey career after a long and highly successful run as a player — 1,263 NHL games with eight teams, 429 goals, 856 points, two Stanley Cups, three trips to the Olympics for the United States and enshrinement in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.
Guerin re-signed for one season with the Penguins after the Cup win. He played just 95 career games here, but the relationship stuck. He retired as a Penguin on Dec. 6, 2010 in an emotional ceremony in front of the home crowd.
A native of western Massachusetts, he returned home briefly after retiring, but he and his family came back to Pittsburgh when the Penguins created a front-office job for him — development coach — during the 2011 offseason. Guerin, his wife, Kara, and their family have settled into a home in Sewickley — with a fully outfitted, fully operational ice rink out back.
“My wife is a saint,” Guerin says. “It’s got nothing to do with the kids. It’s got everything to do with putting up with me. Listen, nobody’s going to cry for us. There are a lot of great things about being in the world of professional sports, but it is not always the glamorous life that everybody thinks it is. Our kids get sick in the middle of the night like with anybody else. Things get crazy.”
He remembers being in a mall in Edmonton, Alberta, in November 2000, having inadvertently left his cell phone in the car, and being told by a fan that he had just been traded to Boston. Kara, he says, packed the house and moved the family within 10 days while caring for a 3-year-old and a 1½-year-old — and with another baby on the way. When Guerin picked her up at the Boston airport, she was wearing one of his jerseys — covered in baby vomit.
“She just looked at me like, ‘This is what it is,’” Guerin says.
If you’re among those who recall Guerin’s brood as the young kids in the stands who got lots of face time on the video board and TV during home games through that ’09 Cup run, holding signs proclaiming, “My dad rocks,” you might be in for a jolt: They’ve grown up.
Kayla is a freshman and lacrosse player at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. The younger three attend Sewickley Academy. Grace, a junior, also plays lacrosse and plans to join her sister at Lafayette. Liam, who plays amateur hockey in the high-level Penguins Elite program, is in eighth grade. Seventh-grader Lexi also plays lacrosse, among other interests. “She’s good at being 12 — purple hair, the whole deal. She’s our youngest, so she gets away with murder,” Guerin says of Lexi.
“If you ask my kids where they’re from, they used to think it’s a trick question,” adds Guerin, who is a veteran of eight NHL teams; he spent most of his career with the New Jersey Devils, with whom he won a Cup in 1995. “Now it’s Pittsburgh. This is home for them. We all felt a connection. I think deep down we all knew that at some point in time we wanted to come back. We love living here. We love being part of the Penguins and enjoying everything that Pittsburgh has to offer.”
The feeling seems to have been mutual from shortly after the Penguins acquired Guerin from the New York Islanders in a March 2009 deal at the trade deadline. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say they rescued him during a time in which he admits to having slipped into some staleness with a struggling Islanders team.
A power forward with the size and tenacity the Penguins needed, Guerin had a personality to match. Fans quickly noticed and approved. Even now, hearing his name tends to evoke a strong reaction among fans, akin to being reminded of your favorite fraternity brother.
“Honestly, it’s mind-blowing to me. I love it,” Guerin says. “I think my personality and the way our family is really resonates with the fans here, and vice versa. Deep down, I think we’re blue-collar people. And I really like that. Deep down, hey, I’m a beer drinker.”
photo by getty images
The Penguins needed Guerin, and being needed brought him back to life for the twilight of his career. The team was in danger of missing the playoffs — a horrifying development to its fans and supporters after it reached the Cup final in 2008 — and Guerin played a key part in a strong stretch run and trek to the Cup. It went beyond his five goals and 12 points in 17 regular-season games, beyond his willingness to fight and beyond capably filling out the team’s top line. Then, in 24 playoff games, he added seven goals, 15 points and one Cup.
“He really just came here and just flourished,” Crosby says. “Everything that Billy brought, on and off the ice, was important for us. We were going through a tough time, a coaching change and everything, and he comes in bringing a fresh face. It made for a good transition, and obviously the result took care of itself.
“He brought a lot of personality. Most guys take a week or two to get comfortable. Billy took about two minutes.”
He rode his new teammates hard, milking the best out of them. Other times, he was a cut-up. Always, he had their attention.
“You can probably count on one hand the guys that I really looked at who I thought had struck the right balance in so many different ways,” says Rob Scuderi, a shutdown defenseman on that team. “It’s not like I had a heart-to-heart chat with him or a Taster’s Choice moment for guys. You try to pick up anything you can that can help you in your career, and he did that for me.”
Guerin and Crosby agree that Guerin helped to take some pressure off of the young captain on a team trying to win big while still learning its identity.
“Everyone respected the veteran ability of Billy Guerin,” Kunitz says. “Once you had that respect, it really pays dividends in the locker room. He can come in and say things, and guys understand where you’re coming from. And when you’re a veteran guy and you’re brought in, you realize the window is closing on a chance to win, and maybe you’re more adept at spitting out the things that need to be said that maybe the other guys are uncomfortable saying.”
If there was an elephant in the room that other players were deftly ignoring, Guerin was the type of guy who would not only point out the beast but also would slap a funky hat and tutu on the thing and blast circus music over the locker room sound system. It was brutal honesty flecked with humor.
Crosby appreciated the leadership assist, and the two developed an instant friendship that endures. Both are keenly competitive, however, and Crosby didn’t always defer to Guerin. As with the incident in that Game 7, there were times when Crosby directed — at times, that was a polite verb for it — Guerin about what to do on the ice. Guerin would do the same, not intimidated by Crosby’s exploding stardom.
“We were funny. We were like a married couple,” Crosby says. “I was pretty demanding. I would probably be pretty tough [to please], and I was 21. At the same time, he’s pretty intense, too. In a way it was really good for us because we pushed each other.”
Despite Guerin’s veteran status, he says Crosby’s presence pushed him to improve.
“I was at a time in my career where, yeah, I had already played 17 years [and was nearing the end],” Guerin says. “You get complacent, I guess, at times. He gave me a kick in the ass that I needed. Practices were no longer just go out and practice; I had to keep up. He held me accountable. It wasn’t always smooth sailing. We laugh about it now. But I think that was important.”
Guerin still gets to yuck it up some with Crosby and other players, but his new set of “teammates” are the Penguins’ other front-office staffers: Rutherford, Botterill, vice president of operations Jason Karmanos, development coach Mark Recchi (Guerin’s old position) and a fleet of scouts.
His earliest duty after switching to management was shadowing Tom Fitzgerald, then an assistant to the general manager. Last summer, Fitzgerald followed former Penguins GM Ray Shero to New Jersey, and Guerin has taken over many of Fitzgerald’s former responsibilities.
Guerin travels a good bit as part of his job. When he is in town, he is part of meetings where the agenda includes everything from possible trades to player evaluations to prospect updates and anything else that needs attention. No, Guerin and his sense of humor aren’t disruptive, but he’s not discouraged from being himself, either.
“It’s such an important trait for him because he can relate to anybody,” says Botterill, the associate general manager. “In this industry, he’s found a balance. When things need to be fun, when things get a little heated or there’s pressure, having a little humor around is very, very important. But he’s also clearly demonstrated that he’s serious about this job and serious about this career. That really comes across in his work ethic and his work and his opinion.”
Guerin has a mind for hockey, but he says he understands that people looking in from the outside might misinterpret his candor and comedic timing.
“That throws people off, and it always has,” he says. “I’ve always had that type of personality. You might think I didn’t take the game seriously at times, but I was always ready to play. I worked hard at that because consistency was my biggest hurdle as a young player. I worked at it. It’s hard. There are a lot of bumps in the road. It’s the same now.”
Guerin got some valuable training for his second career when he served for six years on the board of the NHL Players Association and was a member of the players’ union negotiating committee during the lockout that wiped out the 2004-05 season. He calls that his version of Business 101.
As for what happens on the ice, Guerin watches lots of live hockey, from the Penguins to college to minor-league games. He looks beyond stats and flaws that can be easily rectified — he once noticed a prospect was choking up too much on his stick. After Guerin pointed out the problem, the player corrected it and improved his performance.
His best evaluation comes in studying players’ instincts and the ways in which they perceive plays and react during games.
“Every guy in the NHL wasn’t the fastest on his team. Every guy in the NHL wasn’t the best shooter or the highest scorer,” he says. “But there are things that set them apart. You can’t replace good hockey sense. I don’t care how good your hands are or your shot is. You won’t beat a guy with better hockey sense. You just won’t because you don’t think the game as well.”
He also laments what he considers to be backsliding in sportsmanship among younger players, and he takes every opportunity to try to correct it — in the way he helped to keep teammates in line as a player.
While watching drills during the Penguins’ annual development camp for prospects last summer, Guerin bolted up in his seat when a young player let go with a shot that barely missed minor-league assistant coach Jay Leach’s head as Leach skated behind the net. It bothered Guerin on a couple of levels: First, because he thought the player should have been aware enough not to shoot. Second, because the player did not immediately apologize to Leach. Guerin made a mental note not only to question that prospects’ character for the future but also to address the incident with him later — in a way that made onlookers glad they weren’t in that prospect’s skates.
Guerin had good instincts as a player. He also evolved as the NHL adopted sweeping changes over the course of his career — the addition of a salary cap, rules changes to accentuate skill and offense, and a more serious brand of players who pay attention to details.
“It’s so much of a business now, and there’s a lot on the line,” he says. “I played for so long, and a lot of things changed. When there was a case of beer on the back of the bus and it wasn’t all gone by the time we got to the airport, that was a big adjustment. I tell myself this, and I believe it’s true: Everything’s gotten better.
“You know what? There might be beers left over on the bus, but the game’s better. The product is better. The players are better conditioned, take better care of themselves. I appreciate that. I have a lot of respect for these guys.”
He’s not attaching any ego to this new gig. During a months-long lockout in 2012-13, he attended an Erie Otters junior game with a handful of others from a front office then headed by Shero. It’s cold in Erie Insurance Arena, and guess who got sent to stand in line at the snack bar to fetch coffee for everyone? Guerin did it without complaint, even joking that he had juggled that many beverages before, only it was usually beer instead of coffee.
There have been GMs in the NHL who are younger than Guerin is now. That’s not necessarily a good thing, Guerin says. Nor is he pushing anytime soon to replace Rutherford — who is 66, in his second season here and unwavering in his initial view that he didn’t take the job in mid-2014 for the long haul.
“Just like in anything, you want to make yourself better, and you always want to improve,” Guerin says.
Last summer, he negotiated his first two contracts, both American Hockey League deals for players for top farm club Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. He says he was tough but fair, and looking ahead to perhaps working on NHL deals one day, he has a good sense of how contract terms should be structured so everything fits within the league’s salary cap. “Hey, I held out twice. I know what contract squabbles are all about,” he says.
The notion of being on the other side of contract talks with Guerin intrigues Crosby.
“Maybe I’m going to try to get my [agent’s] license after I’m done playing so I can do that,” Crosby says, punctuated with a smile. “I’d love to go toe-to-toe with Billy. I want to see who gives first.”
Guerin’s Playbook
Bill Guerin has studied hockey for years. He adapted as the game changed and evolved, but he never abandoned his own strong sense of what is right and what works. Although he is relatively new to the world of hockey management, he already has developed some thoughts and theories that run counter to conventional thinking.
While kids are pushed to hone the details in their game, he says, maybe they should be encouraged to play pick-up or pond hockey as well — away from coaches. “Some kids work so much on their skills that they don’t have hockey sense,” Guerin says, noting that he is seeing the results in players old enough to be NHL prospects or potential prospects.
Parents might want to let their kids develop at a reasonable pace and scale back expectations of their prodigy being discovered as the next Sidney Crosby. “We get so much grief at the youth hockey level about the younger kids, 8 and under, playing cross-ice because the parents want them to play on the big ice, but that just turns into a bunch of skating up and down and they can’t think the game.”
He recommend changes to players’ offseason habits. “One of my biggest things — and I really do believe this — is I think the players today are on the ice too much in the summer. I think their body needs a break. I think their mind needs a break. If you’re on the ice all the time, then you’re not doing the proper training off the ice, the track and field stuff, the plyometrics stuff. These are probably dinosaur terms, but I think guys should be off the ice, taking care of their bodies, giving it a chance to recover, with all their work done in the gym and on the track. Come August, you get back on the ice and they’ve got the foundation of strength and conditioning that’s going to carry them through the season.”
He rolls his eyes when he hears players saying they need to get their timing back after the offseason or when coming back from an injury. “That’s kind of a myth. Nobody forgot how to play the game.”
Despite the preponderance of strength coaches and science-based workouts found in NHL locker rooms, he isn’t buying the concept that today’s players are more dedicated physically. “Our generation did train hard. A lot of the guys I played with in Pittsburgh won’t believe this, but I did train hard.”
Freelance writer Shelly Anderson is a longtime sports writer who lives in Mt. Lebanon. She also has written for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Hockey News, ESPN.com, wire news services and other outlets.I got this email today from Gary Sjoquist, QBP Advocacy Director, asking for help to get the word out. I’ve added a few links and photos to it.
As Fat Bikes continue to grow, we’ll see this question of “where else can we ride” become more an issue. This is why Scott Fitzgerald from Fitzgerald’s Bicycles in ID and I launched the Fat Bike Summit series (West Yellowstone in 2012, Island Park in 2013).
At the national level, we want fat bike access to National Parks like Yellowstone and Teton. Currently, under Winter Use policies, fat bikes are banned from National Parks (even though some small National Parks use them for maintenance needs). Part of getting this ban reversed is to inform and educate land managers about what fat bikes are (and are not).
But elsewhere across the U.S., the topic of trail sharing between Nordic and fat bikes, or even snowmobile and fat bikes, will need to be addressed. With major manufacturers now producing fat bikes, and tire production suddenly increased, the numbers are increasing dramatically.
In terms of trail sharing for fat bikes, there are some early success stories, however.
In Methow Valley, WA, the nation’s largest Nordic area has allowed limited fat bike access to groomed trails and reports no issues – even skeptics have reversed themselves after seeing how fat bike tires don’t damage groomed trails.
Michigan Tech University is another area that has experimented with opening Nordic trails to fat bike use, again with zero issues in terms of trail damage. In Victor, ID, in Snowmobile District 33, local fat bike riders negotiated access to groomed snowmobile trails via a sticker program.
So, will fat bikes and Nordic coexist automatically? No, and they probably shouldn’t. It’s going to be a case-by-case deal, where Nordic areas with declining numbers might see fat bikes as a workable alternative. And to be fair, the examples listed out west are vastly different than here in the Midwest, where sight lines are shorter and a lot of our riding will be in heavy woods or grassy rolling meadows.
But fat bikes are not a fad, folks – if you look closely at demographics, riding opportunities in low snow conditions (existing mountain bike trails) and the dearth of winter biking opportunities prior to fat bikes, it’s a sport primed for continued growth. Retailers love it, too, as it allows them to remain a bike shop during the winter months instead of trying to make it selling skiing stuff or fitness equipment.
At the Midwest Fat Bike Summit in Cable, WI, on Friday, January 10th, we’ll examine trail sharing for fat bikes and other winter trail users. We’ll also present fat bike trail grooming techniques, both hand-powered and mechanized, for dual and singletrack trail use by fat bikes. We’ll have more details about this event soon – be sure to check the MORC site.
Another pivotal event for fat bikes will be the Global Fat Bike Summit and Festival in Ogden, UT on January 24/25. Co-hosted by QBP and the City of Ogden, this event will have a Land Manager Summit on Friday, Jan. 24th that will examine and quantify fat bike use, discuss grooming techniques, economic impacts, and offer land managers a demo fat bike ride. Friday evening, the Festival portion of the event kicks in with a Registration Party. Saturday will offer product demos, gear clinics, tech clinics, and several races.
Gary Sjoquist, QBP Advocacy DirectorIn the latest win for people who are reluctant to leave their couches, UberEats—a food delivery service from the ride-sharing firm Uber—is rolling out into Baton Rouge.
“We’re excited to launch in Baton Rouge soon, bringing a way for people to get the food they love at Uber speed,” an UberEats spokesperson says in a statement. “Stay tuned for more information.”
The company declined to provide a timeline or any other details, but the move is part of the service’s expansion into 30 college campuses this semester, including LSU. It will also bring competition to Waitr, the Lake Charles-based food delivery service that has dominated the Baton Rouge market and expanded rapidly in recent years.
Uber’s service operates on a mobile app as well as a website that lets users remotely order food for delivery. The platform operates much in the same way the ride-sharing platform does, through which users request a ride and handle everything from tracking to payment via their smartphones.
Uber expanded its ride-sharing service into Baton Rouge around three years ago. Around the same time, the company launched its food delivery platform in California and has since expanded to more than 100 cities, according to its website. UberEats says the average order takes 35 minutes and tipping is not necessary.
—Sam KarlinMark Sanford says he has no plans to resign as governor of South Carolina, even though 60% of his state's residents (according to a Survey USA poll) wish he would, and even though he continues to behave like a lovesick youth. This week the governor told the Associated Press that his Argentine mistress was his soulmate. Headlines in South Carolina newspapers question his sanity.
In America, righteous religious moralisers who get caught sinning are as common as weeds. The transgressors inevitably are called hypocrites, and perhaps they are. But I argue that many, like Sanford, were betrayed as much by their moral training as by their own weaknesses.
Too often contemporary moral guidance is reduced to vacuous advice about good and bad choices. To me, good and bad choosing is whether to buy two 12-ounce boxes of corn flakes for $4 or one 24-ounce box for $3.75. Most life choices, however, are too complex to be reduced to a simple yes or no.
American conservative Christians tell us all our moral questions can be answered by a list of rules from the Bronze Age. I've got nothing against the Ten Commandments, mind you, but they offer little help with the ambiguities of today's world. Life today is full of heartbreaking circumstances that leave us with no purely "good" choices – when to take a loved one off life support, terminate a difficult pregnancy, leave a stable but stultifying job, end a loveless marriage. The old "thou shalt not" rules desert us when we are most lost.
It is no coincidence, I think, that the "Bible belt" states famous for their culture of conservative religiosity long have had higher rates of divorce, babies born out of wedlock, and other by-products of human frailty than "liberal" states, where people expect to muddle along with uncertainties and doubts. People who believe they are not supposed to doubt are unprepared to struggle with doubt when it comes.
Further, no list of external rules can guide us through the murky depths within ourselves, so that we see how we are jerked around by our unexamined fears and desires and the deceitfulness of ego. It doesn't help that most "successful" people who become political and religious leaders are aggressive extroverts rather than reflective introverts. Show me a pious public moraliser who is a stranger to himself, and I will show you the subject of a future tabloid scandal story.
The righteously religious insist that theirs is the only path to morality, even though their overall behavioral track record appears no better than that of the non-religious. However, this is not necessarily a failure of religion. Buried within the vast, centuries-old heritages of the world's great religions one can find genuinely insightful moral teaching, if one looks hard enough.
However, any advice that acknowledges the complexity of human life is quickly rejected by the "moral clarity" crowd. It appears "moral clarity" is most often achieved by sweeping messy details under a rug instead of dealing with them honestly. For some, the cognitive dissonance doesn't snap until their sins are exposed on YouTube.
Which brings us back to Mark Sanford. Whether he finishes the remaining 18 months of his term in office remains to be seen. In a public statement issued after the "soulmate" remark, Jenny Sanford said she is leaving a door open to saving their marriage. One hopes there's a door open to personal insight as well.He said it showed Australia was a leader in environment policy and recognised his portfolio was an "important part of good governance". Environment Minister Greg Hunt was not involved in Unesco decision, his office says. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen "The best minister in the world" award aims to recognise ministers "who lead quality successful initiatives" that serve the needs of citizens. It also seeks to identify "successful leaders" for the "benefit of the general society". Among other qualities, the winning candidate must be "highly credible among his peers and the general public".
Since he was sworn in as minister, Mr Hunt's other notable accomplishment was to abolish the carbon tax. He has also come under fire from environmentalists for his approval of dredging to make way for the expansion of the Abbot Point coal terminal in north Queensland. The World Government Summit is an annual event "dedicated to shaping the future of government worldwide". The 2016 speakers list includes US President Barack Obama (who appeared via video link), World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, OECD secretary-general Jose Angel Gurria and United Nations deputy secretary-general Jan Eliasson. Abu Dhabi-based newspaper, The National, quotes UAE cabinet minister Mohammed Al Gergawi as saying the award is to "recognise innovation in global government work". "Our world today needs ministers to serve as role models of thought and action."
Mr Hunt's honour follows that of former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan, who in 2011 was named finance minister of the year by Euromoney magazine for his work to avoid the global financial crisis. But Mr Hunt, who has been Environment Minister since 2013, is not expecting any special treatment at home as a result of the international recognition. Loading On learning the news, his wife Paula told him: "You've still got to put the bins out." Follow us on TwitterThe current rate at which biofuels are falling out of favor is largely founded on biased ideologies, which have been shaped by widespread political and corporate agenda-pushing from all sides of the fence.
But first, a digression.
Part 1: When an egg was just an egg
I remember a time when an egg was just an egg. Nobody argued about that. It was a blissful time. Yet, for all its strengths, it was a fragile time held together by unsupported conclusions and limited knowledge.
Part 2: The Time of the Bad Egg
Like many a simple concept before it, the idea of an egg as “just an egg” was consumed in a storm of health consciousness and bad hair. I shall call this storm “the 80s.” Richard Simmons was sweating to the oldies, and cholesterol, it was determined, should be ripped from your body. Just like that, eggs were bad.
Part 3: The Time of Ambiguity; When an Egg is Only Halfway Decent if Eaten in Moderation
Luckily for us, we snapped out of the 80s. Sweatbands disappeared and Jazzercise faded from our collective memory. We got around to doing some research and found that there are such things as good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. Turns out you need some of both to remain healthy. And eggs were good again…. but only if you eat less than 7 a week.
Part 4: The Point
From a human health perspective eggs are confusing, and still not very well understood. They’ve been researched to death, yet we still don’t know exactly how they interact with the human body. The only thing I can say about eggs with any confidence is that in ten years time, new research will make the case for eggs even more confusing, yet people will still eat them.
And eggs are tiny.
Now scale up… no, go larger. Ah, that’s it, something Earth-sized.
In the last decade we’ve come a long way in our ability to measure and understand the Earth and how it works. We’ve realized that perhaps we do have an impact on our environment and that, indeed, there might be a limit to the amount of oil we can squeeze out of our planet.
But the more we’ve figured out, the harder it has become to separate the forest from the trees. The further along we get in trying to change how we power and energize our world, the more we see an increasing global volatility in social, economic, and environmental interactions.
Is it all related, or is it a coincidence? Are biofuels driving up food prices or is it the beginning of the effects of human-caused global warming? Will biofuels even reduce our effect on global warming? Have biofuels, themselves, caused a spike in oil prices? Holy crap. I don’t know.
“Should I eat eggs or not?” you start to ask yourself.
Then, at just this moment — and like all good vultures, I might add — the opportunists begin to circle overhead, casting shadows on the scurrying populace below.
“How can I further my own group’s agenda given the current climate of confusion?” they ask. “I know, we’ll put egg whites in a box and sell them for ten times the price,” they chorus together.
And the politicization begins and the confusion gets worse.
So what does the latest crop of politicized findings tell us about biofuels, food prices and global warming?
On the topic of food vs. fuel:
Well that certainly settles it, doesn’t it?
On the topic of global warming and energy conservation:
The University of Washington and The Nature Conservancy point out that the impact of the production and use of biofuels on the environment depends on the type of biofuel and source of that biofuel.
A climate decision makers survey conducted by Globescan pegs first generation biofuels (corn and soybean derived) at last place on a list of 18 strategies to reduce global warming. But It also puts second generation biofuels (switchgrass, garbage, and woody debris derived) at 8th place with 43% of the 1,350 expert survey respondents saying they could have a significant potential to lower carbon emissions.
Again, clear as mud.
On the topic of biofuels and rising fuel prices:
Are we sensing a trend here? Damn you, ideological vultures. Stop clouding my vision.
What conclusions can we draw from all this?
If not all biofuels have the same effect on global warming, how could they have the same effect when it comes to food prices? If biofuels only account for 1% of all the world’s fuel production, how can they account for 40% of the world’s rising fuel prices?
Do most people even know what a biofuel actually is? I mean, that sounds like a stupid question, but there’s a huge misconception out there which is driven by a lack of understanding: not all biofuels are created equal. I cannot stress this enough.
Listen to any newscast or radio show dealing with the topic of biofuels and you’ll hear a lot about “ethanol” or “biodiesel,” but you won’t hear a single peep about what type of ethanol or biodiesel it is.
To the average person, a biofuel is a biofuel regardless of whether it’s biodiesel or bioethanol, whether it comes from soybeans or switchgrass, or whether it’s derived from an algal pool or cropland. And this is exactly what the circling vultures want the average person to think. It makes it easier to push agendas.
Just like in the case of our lowly egg, biofuels started with the implicit assumption that they were good. “Of course they’re good” we thought “how could it be bad to grow our own fuel from renewable crops?”
But then the bad hair and the health consciousness set in. “Of course biofuels are bad,” came the conventional wisdom “they’re the root of all our problems.”
And this is where our egg analogy breaks down. You see, an egg is simply an egg. It will always be an egg. Sure, we can pump it with Omega-3s and stuff it in a box with added vitamins and minerals, but it’s still an egg. The source is always the same.
A biofuel can be a multitude of different things with very different sources depending on how it’s made and where it’s used. Unlike eggs, biofuels have ambiguity built-in. For someone to try and convince you otherwise is shameful.
The Take Home:
This built-in ambiguity means that all biofuels must be analyzed and judged independently: you can’t lump biofuels into a single category.
The truth about biofuels is complicated and not easy to explain in 30-second soundbites or 200-word articles. Understanding what they are and what they can accomplish takes some personal initiative.
So when you find yourself wondering whether biofuels are the harbinger of global doom or the bright light at the end of the tunnel, don’t let the vultures convince you that they know what the answer is.
Every single organization on the planet has an agenda to push. Because of the confusion and ambiguity surrounding the production of biofuels, it’s easy to twist the information to suit your message.
Truth is, nobody knows what kind of effect the production of biofuels is having on food prices, global warming, and rising fuel costs. Does that mean we should stop moving forward? No.
It is clear that the world needs some sort of energy solution. Will it be electric derived from solar, wave, wind, or geothermal? Will it be hydrogen? Will it be second generation biofuels? I’d be stupid to answer that question. More than likely it will be a complex combination of the above.
Until such time as we get to where we’re going, we’ll just have to wait and see what comes of it all. In the meantime, it’s important to do research and build markets for all of these things because one day we’ll be in survival mode and need one of them to stave off disaster.
Post related to food vs. fuel and climate change:
Image credits: Cloud picture from kevindooley‘s Flickr photostream. SeQuential gas sign from The Udall Legacy Bus Tour: Views from the Road Flickr photostream. Switchgrass picture from Doctor Swan‘s Flickr photostream. Bread from adactio‘s Flickr photostream. All images reproduced and altered under a Creative Commons license.Fears over energy security and climate change have led to record investment in renewable energy. But a major problem threatens to stall progress towards a more sustainable future: national electricity grids are far from ready to cope with the variable output from the new technologies.
A solution might be at hand, though, and would not involve radical changes to the existing infrastructure. Treating groups of dispersed power sources, such as solar and wind generators, as a single entity could solve the problem, creating the virtual equivalent of a single large power station.
“[The power companies’ existing] philosophy is that they’re going to run the grids as if these new renewable sources did nothing to help – a ‘fit and forget’ strategy,” says Goran Strbac at Imperial College London, UK.
That’s because grids must always match the region’s energy requirements, second by second, and renewable sources go through extreme fluctuations as the sun goes in, night falls, or the wind drops, says Peter Lang, at EDF Energy Networks, the Distribution Network Operator for London, East and South East of England.
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If energy generation doesn’t match energy use, power cuts or overload is the result. But as investment in renewable sources grows, grids will have to adapt to less reliable sources.
Chaotic grids
The ever-growing number of wind farms in Europe, and the US are in particular forcing the hand of grid maintainers. And growing interest from consumers in microgeneration – installing, say, solar panels to cover their own needs and selling any excess back to the grid – presents an even greater headache.
In coming years, the number of generators contributing to the grid is set to balloon dramatically by thousands or even millions. “The logistics of controlling even a few hundred large power stations are difficult,” says Strbac.
The best solution suggested so far is a concept known as the “virtual power plant”, says Lang. Each virtual plant consists of several hundred or thousand microgenerators lumped together in cyberspace into a unit comparable to that of a large power station.
Mixed bag
A virtual power plant can contain a mixture of different generators, for example wind turbines, solar cells, hydroelectric dams, and biomass-fuelled combined heat and power stations. A well-chosen mix of all |
— kelly oxford (@kellyoxford) October 7, 2016
A man on a city bus who touched her inappropriately, then smiled.
A boy in drama class who did the same.
A dermatologist who made her undress in his office closet.
One by one, they poured out Friday, thousands of stories of sexual abuse posted to social media — a conversation that was ignited after news broke of a leaked video showing Donald Trump bragging about having his way with women.
In the video obtained by The Washington Post Friday, the Republican presidential nominee is heard making vulgar comments about women in a 2005 conversation with host Billy Bush, then-host of "Access Hollywood." Their conversation was caught on a hot microphone and included Trump's sentiments that he could kiss and touch women freely because he was "a star."
“Grab them by the p---y,” Trump says in the recording. “You can do anything.”
[Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005]
When news of the leaked video broke Friday, it unleashed a deluge of criticism — from condemnation by private citizens to backlash from politicians on both sides — as well as a flurry of responses from Trump surrogates who defended him. In a long campaign that has been filled with falsehoods and shocking statements, this revelation crossed the line, some said, because what Trump seemed to condone was nothing short of sexual assault.
In this video from 2005, Donald Trump prepares for an appearance on "Days of Our Lives" with actress Arianne Zucker. He is accompanied to the set by "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush. The Post has edited this video for length. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
In an initial statement Friday afternoon, Trump defended his comments as "locker-room banter." Around midnight, he issued a more direct apology.
However, in the hours in between, the controversy around Trump's tape activated a large and vocal group of critics online: victims of sexual assault.
Starting Friday afternoon, thousands of people shared personal stories on social media of being sexually assaulted, many using the hashtag #NotOkay. For many hours, #NotOkay was a trending topic on Twitter in the United States. A day later, the hashtag continued going strong.
The outpouring seems to have started after several prominent Twitter users posted about the potential consequences of brushing off Trump's comments. Doing so, they said, would normalize and enable "rape culture." And, they argued, this kind of behavior was more commonplace than some might think.
"If you don't think this will affect female [voter] turn out and crossover, perhaps you should ask a woman to recount all the times she was groped," tweeted Clara Jeffrey, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones.
If you don't think this will affect female turn out and crossover, perhaps you should ask a woman to recount all the times she was groped. — Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) October 7, 2016
"I was so young (8?) that I didn't understand what happened for two decades," one woman replied to Jeffrey. Hundreds of others did the same.
Kelly Oxford, a Canadian writer and social media personality, tweeted about her first sexual assault shortly after Trump's news broke Friday, then encouraged other women to follow suit.
"Women: tweet me your first assaults. they aren't just stats," Oxford posted. "I'll go first: Old man on city bus grabs my 'p---y' and smiles at me, I'm 12."
What followed, Oxford said, was more than a million women sharing their stories "at" her for at least 14 consecutive hours. She estimated she was receiving 50 stories per minute at one point, and called them "harrowing."
"13, male classmate flips my skirt up & I scream & slug him," one woman shared. "Mr. Teacher tells me it's not ok to make up stories about these things. #notokay"
"When you're afraid to look directly at any man because you're scared he might assault you," tweeted another. "This is rape culture, know that it's #notokay"
The Washington Post typically does not identify victims of sexual violence; we have linked to the examples above because they were posted publicly on social media and widely shared.
As the number of stories mushroomed, Oxford created a list where people could more easily see those who had responded directly to her with their sexual assault experiences.
I am in such horrendous shock and yet so proud of the women sharing their assaults. #notokay is trending in US. Not our shame anymore ❤️ — kelly oxford (@kellyoxford) October 8, 2016
Though the overwhelming majority of responses seemed to be from women, a few tweeted in support of male victims of rape and sexual assault as well.
"not only is victim shaming of women #notokay but treating male victims of sexual assault as if they're weak is also repulsing," one person tweeted.
Hundreds of others used the #NotOkay hashtag to offer general support to victims of sexual assault and urge others to change the culture.
Essential reading for anyone, everyone, me. Click, read and ask yourself -particularly as a man- how can I be part of the solution? #NotOkay https://t.co/x1Kaxydfsr — Jason Isaacs (@jasonsfolly) October 8, 2016
Though reports of sexual violence in the U.S. have fallen by more than half since 1993, an American is sexually assaulted every two minutes, according to statistics from the Rape Abuse Incest National Network, a nonprofit that advocates for survivors of sex crimes.
About one of every six women in the U.S. — and about one in 33 men — has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime, the group said.
"Recovering from sexual assault or abuse is a process, and that process looks different for everyone," a statement on the RAINN website reads. "It may take weeks, months, or years: there’s no timetable for healing."
Read more:
‘You have not done anything but ruin her’: Prison for ex-cop who raped girl for a decade
‘I hated this man more than my rapists’: Woman confronts football coach 18 years after alleged gang rape
‘You took away my worth’: A sexual assault victim’s powerful message to her Stanford attackerA poll published Friday by broadcaster ZDF found that 60 percent of Germans now say the country cannot handle the influx of refugees, which totaled 1.1 million in 2015.
The same question was put to Germans in December and, at the time, only 46 percent were pessimistic about the country’s ability to handle the refugees. The poll also found that 70 percent of respondents believe the open border policy will result in increased crime. That’s up from an already high 62 percent in October.
The new poll is a direct rebuke to a repeated assurance made by Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel has promoted her open border policy using the reassuring phrase, “We will manage.” Up until recently, it seemed a majority of Germans agreed.
The dramatic change in the numbers is attributed to what happened in Cologne and other German cities on New Years Eve. Though police initially reported a “relaxed” atmosphere at the evening celebration, the New York Times reports that as many as 50 police reports were filed, alleging theft and sexual assault, in the early hours of January 1st. It remains unclear why police initially gave such a misleading description of what had occurred.
The stories of women who have come forward to talk about what they experienced are remarkably consistent. Hundreds of foreign men, some speaking Arabic, filled the plaza between the train station and the cathedral. Groups of men would surround women and then begin groping them. In many cases phones or wallets were stolen, but some victims say the men seemed less interested in stealing than in giving free rein to their lust.
Sara described how hundreds of “foreign” men circled her and a friend as they arrived at the train station. She told them to keep away and then ran to the nearest police patrol for safety, but the police were overwhelmed. “I never experienced that a policeman says, ‘I would love to help you, but I can’t.’ That was really the worst,” Sara told the NY Times.
Both of the women who spoke to the NY Times Thursday asked that their full names not be used because they were worried about a backlash on social media. One woman who gave a television interview about her experience in Cologne last week became the subject of a viral Internet video in which her full name, which she had not previously released, and place of work were revealed. The video was viewed about a quarter of a million times and resulted in social media accusations that she was a racist and threatening phone calls at work. The video was taken down after the woman threatened its creator with a lawsuit.
The total number of complaints filed with Cologne police now stands is 653, with 331 of those involving sexual assault, and several of those assaults reported as rape. So far, 19 suspects have been identified by name in the attacks, 10 of them whom were seeking asylum, and the other nine of whom were illegal immigrants.* Sicomines due to start copper production around September
* Chronic power shortages, bureaucracy dog project
* Expert says Sicomines will make Chinese hesitate on Congo
* Campaigners say infrastructure is poor and overpriced
By Aaron Ross
KOLWEZI, Democratic Republic of Congo, July 8 (Reuters) - W hen it was signed in 2007, China’s $6 billion ‘minerals for infrastructure’ deal in Congo stirred fears among Western countries that Beijing’s hunger for resources would erode their influence and saddle the vast central African country with unmanageable debt.
Eight years on, as Sicomines prepares to produce its first copper after long delays, the main lesson from the giant project is that investing in one of Africa’s most chaotic countries is a messy and frustrating business, no matter who you are.
While most mining projects in Congo go years before paying significant taxes under the mining code, Sicomines was meant to have an immediate economic impact. The government says the deal has already produced at least $800 million in infrastructure investment.
Chinese firms Sinohydro Corp and China Railway Group Limited are building roads and hospitals in exchange for a 68 percent stake in the Sicomines copper and cobalt mine, one of the largest in Africa with about 6.8 million tonnes in proven reserves.
China’s state-run Exim Bank and smaller Chinese banks are stumping up $3 billion for infrastructure plus a further $3 billion to develop Sicomines, with all the loans to be repaid with mining profits.
Yet production from the mine has been delayed and targets scaled back. Rather than unlocking Congo’s massive resource potential for China, the project has underscored the deterrents to investment, from crippling power shortages to asphyxiating bureaucracy and corruption, said Johanna Malm, a researcher at Roskilde University in Denmark and expert on the contract.
“I think the Chinese... are very hesitant to come into Congo after everything that has happened with Sicomines - after all the fuss, the problems, all the different things they struggled with.”
POWER SHORTAGES
Congo, which extracted more than 1 million tonnes of copper for the first time in 2014, is Africa’s top producer. Industry giants including Freeport-McMoRan Inc. and Glencore have invested heavily in the sector since a peace deal drew a line under a 1998-2003 war that had killed millions.
But foreign investment has struggled to leave a mark in an impoverished country that ranks 184th of 189 countries on the World Bank’s “Ease of doing business” index, and second from bottom in the U.N. Human Development Index.
The southeastern province of Katanga, heartland of the copper industry, receives only about half the power it needs from the national grid, forcing companies to produce their own.
Jean Nzenga, Sicomines’ deputy director, said the lack of power had obliged the roughly 13 sq mile (34 sq km) concession to halve its initial annual output target to 125,000 tonnes.
Even at that level, the mine is guaranteed less than a third of the 54 megawatts (MW) it needs. Work on a 240 MW dam has been delayed by red tape and remains at least five years from completion, Nzenga added.
The start of production has also been slowed by the need to pump out more than 160 million cubic metres of water from the two pits, abandoned years ago by the Congolese state miner Gecamines, Nzenga said.
Concerns about Congo’s unstable political and business environment at one stage threatened to sink the deal, Malm said.
Despite a sovereign guarantee behind the infrastructure loans, which many Congolese fear will burden the country with debt, Exim Bank halted disbursements in 2012. It only returned to the table after reportedly receiving additional financial guarantees.
CULTURE OF SECRECY
For many activists, the culture of secrecy ingrained in the mining industry represents the most serious problem.
In 2013, the Africa Progress Panel, chaired by former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan, said Congo had missed out on at least $1.36 billion in revenues between 2010 and 2012 by selling state mining assets below their value. Critics say Sicomines has brought the opacity to new extremes.
Outside the reinforced barbed wire that encircles the vast Sicomines concession in Katanga’s mining hub of Kolwezi, local residents say they only learned about the contract three years after it was signed, when workers came to conduct a land survey.
A February report by the African Association for the Defence of Human Rights (ASADHO) accused the government of failing to monitor infrastructure projects in Kinshasa, which it says have been poor-quality and overpriced.
Some Congolese activists say the man tasked with implementing the contract, Moise Ekanga, a close ally of President Joseph Kabila, runs what amounts to an opaque shadow government answerable only to the head of state from his yellow offices near the banks of the Congo River in Kinshasa.
“Even the minister of mines cannot ask Mr Ekanga a question about that project,” said Jean Pierre Okenda, an adviser in Katanga to the Dutch-based development organisation Cordaid.
Ekanga did not respond to requests for information.
Nzenga, however, said that Ekanga’s Bureau for Coordination and Monitoring of the Sino-Congolese Program worked with ministries and agencies to track infrastructure disbursements. He urged critics to reserve judgment until Sicomines starts production.
Oscar Melhado, resident representative of the International Monetary Fund, said the contract required closer monitoring, but that he was encouraged that authorities had started to disclose more information.
“We don’t have to single out anyone,” he said. “If we do that for China, we have to do that for (Freeport-McMoRan’s) Tenke Fungurume. We have to do that for Glencore.” (Editing by Daniel Flynn and Kevin Liffey)(See follow-up post here.)
There is a bind in which not every generation has found itself, though the one I know best certainly has: one is, in respect of music, caught between the Scylla of trying too hard to stay with it, and the Charybdis of ridiculous nostalgia for that period of life when one did not have to try at all.
How much longer will we have to listen to the cries of melancholy longing of those now pushing 40: a longing for a more authentic time, in which something we now call 'eighties music' held us all together, forged us, made us better than the current crop of manipulated stooges with their ephemeral junk? The problem with this way of remembering things is that it wasn't 'eighties music' at the time, and it didn't hold us together. It was mostly garbage, just like today; and just like today it had, seen from the inside, internal contours and divisions that made it entirely impossible to think of it all as belonging to the same decadal genus.
That is a first point: that you are simply misremembering when you hear The Cure in some public place, perhaps on a Lite FM station while waiting at the dentist's office, and you announce: I love '80s music! A second point is that no one cares, and, worse, you're embarrassing yourself. To say 'I love '80s music' might have a different semantics than 'I'm pushing 40', but out of your mouth, dear coeval, it is pragmatically exactly the same.
What is the alternative? Well, you can try to stay au courant. You can do the 2010 equivalent of what Houellebecq's protagonist did in Le plateforme, just seven or eight years ago, when he stretched a Radiohead t-shirt, having never listened to Radiohead, over his 40-year-old gut. Hell, if you are really unconcerned with maintaining credibility you can just try it with a Radiohead shirt today and see what happens. You can try to get tips from your younger coworkers or from your students about local bands or about obscure imports. As if anything had to be 'imported' anymore! You can try your best to overlook the fact that you will always remain rooted in a now defunct system, in which music was an object that could be collected, owned, and traded, rather than something whose tokens might be gleaned as desired out of the universal storehouse of the Internet.
Until about 2002 or 2003, I remained intent on keeping abreast of things. I knew that such-and-such record label was based in Berlin, such-and-such other somewhere else. I knew that such-and-such subgenre of techno had spawned such-and-such subsubgenres. I read a print magazine (!) called Wire or The Wire, not to be confused with similarly titled tech magazine, band, or TV show, which served as a sort of cheat-sheet for the memorization of in-group shibboleths. What I took at that time for a sudden, rapid increase in connoisseurship was in fact only a death throe: a final, desperate, farcical attempt to remain with it.
Don't tell me you haven't had a similar moment, observing either yourself or your aging friends, when you stop and you think to yourself: this can't go on. I remember getting into the car of a somewhat older German friend, circa 1995. He put in a cassette of the Stereo MCs: you remember, that English bald guy and his entourage who proposed to 'take you higher'. I thought: well, this is fine, fitting music for a car trip. I visited him again, five years later. We got into his car and he asked: "Do you know the Stereo MCs?" as he, to his mind smoothly, popped in exactly the same cassette (the year was now 2000!). I saw him again in 2003, and again the same thing. We have not seen each other since (as I am learning, the neural and/or hormonal need for enduring friendship dulls right along with the one for musical discovery), but I suspect that he is either still lazily putting on the Stereo MCs to entertain the occasional visitor, or that he is dead. His was a particularly severe case of the general syndrome I am discussing, even if his symptoms were in some sense the opposite of mine: the aging music listener who is simply too uninspired to make any new discoveries, and so places a particular moment, associated in his imagination with his early twenties, on perpetual repeat.
So I can neither freeze a moment in time and cling to it, nor can I move along with the flow of time. What then is left? There is only one thing to do, and that is to go back in time. You cannot accuse me of clinging to my past if I listen to a compilation of Appalachian jug-and-washboard music from the 1920s. I'm clinging to the past in general, and it's a past that belongs just as much to someone born in 1990 as it does to someone born in 1970, even if the junior heir is not yet aware of this. When he becomes aware, I will know vastly more than he does, and I will, if supplicated, consent to initiate him.
There is something slightly pathetic and awkward about this strategy, too: something misanthropic and cranky in an R. Crumb sort of way. Something that, just like the other two options, no doubt is going to make the young people cringe. One is by definition out of step with one's era in caring about the past at all: this much I know all too well from my interest, in my professional life, in things people said and cared about in the 17th century.
Recording technology stretches back only to the late 19th century, so here there is an absolute limit to how far back one can go in one's depersonalized encyclopedic approach to music connoisseurship. Towards this limit is where I choose to linger, seeking out popular music set down by recording technology between 1895 and 1972, and the older the better. As an aesthetic, this is a sort of primitivism: what is prized is low-fidelity, zero production value, recordings of people who do not know they are being recorded, or who don't really understand what recording is.
Following upon one of my recent, categorical denunciations of sports, some readers got the idea that, if I am not a sports fan, the only other possibility is that I am in every respect a snob, which, they believed, must include a passion for classical music. They could not be more mistaken. Other than Lieder, which already straddle the boundary, I am entirely on the side of what some German sociologist helpfully called U-Kultur, that is, Unterhaltungskultur or 'entertainment culture', in contrast with E-Kultur, Ernstkultur or'real culture'. What this distinction misses however is the fundamental difference between the encyclopedist's or the archaeologist's approach to the totality of U-Kultur's past, on the one hand, and the idolater's approach to some tiny sliver of this past on the other, a sliver that happens to coincide with his or her adolescence, and which he or she ignorantly takes to be a singular moment of greatness in a past that is otherwise unworthy of attention.
I maintain that only an encyclopedic-archaeological turn can save an aging person's attachment to popular culture from descending into ridiculousness. Though far better, of course, would be to simply not age at all, and to continue to be able to listen to music with immediacy.Did UK Gov't Already Effectively Outlaw Anonymity Online With Its New Defamation Law?
from the that's-a-problem dept
However, what’s really interesting about Section 5 is its bonus requirement for UGC websites to avoid defamation liability: they qualify for the act’s protection only if the defamation victim can find the user to sue him/her. The act doesn’t explicitly say what information about its users the website operator must give a defamation victim or when (and some of these requirements will be spelled out in regulations that are being developed), but to me the implication seems clear: if the website operator can’t provide authenticated identifying information about its users, the website operator will lose the act’s protection (unauthenticated information is useless to plaintiffs if falsified).
We just recently wrote about a report by the UK House of Lords that recommends ending anonymity online by requiring that any web services collect real names and information at signup, while then allowing users to use a pseudonym. The thinking, then, is that if there is a criminal act or other violation of the law, it's easier to track down who's responsible. As we noted, there are all sorts of problems with this kind of logic, including both massive chilling effects against free speech, and the simple fact that it's not nearly as hard as some technologically clueless people believe to track down online users, even if they're "anonymous." Either way, this proposal is a big problem, and EFF spoke out against the plan However, as Eric Goldman alerts us, it might already be too late in the UK. That's because of a little-noticed provision in the defamation law that was passed in the UK last year. As we've discussed for years, the UK has had terribly draconian defamation laws, that more or less put the burden on the accused to prove what they said wasn't defamation. This was incredibly plaintiff friendly and antagonistic to free speech. The situation was so bad that a whole campaign was mounted to finally update the UK's defamation laws, resulting in a big change that went into effect last year. Many of the new provisions of the Defamation Act 2013 were steps in the right direction, but Goldman noted one very problematic section concerning intermediary liability for defamation claims.The law first sets up a problematic notice-and-takedown system, not unlike what we have in the US for copyright via the DMCA. As we've seen, such laws are widely abused, and Goldman expects the similar provisions of the UK defamation law will likely be abused. But, then it goes even further: if websites want to avoid liability, they have to help identify the users accused of defamation And with that, the incentives are clearly set up so that if you're a UK site, you pretty muchto do what the House of Lords is now suggesting should be required by law: obtain real name and contact info of users, if only to avoid liability from defamation lawsuits. The law has been in effect for about a year now, and it's unclear if many UK-based websites are aware of this provision, or even if it's been used. But, of course, it only takes one high-profile lawsuit to convince nearly every site that they need to start doing this as well.
Filed Under: anonymity, defamation, notice and takedown, real names, safe harbors, ukFacebook Twitter Google+ LinkedIn
Vaidas sent me an interview with ECB board member Benoit Coeure. Here’s the sort of quotation that I’ve made fun of in the past:
On the definition of medium term: “There is an academic definition of ‘medium term’ which is the Milton Friedman definition. That’s 18 months. But it has always been recognized by the ECB, from inception, that the path through which inflation reverts back to the 2 percent number depends on the nature of the shock and it depends on the type of nominal rigidities that you have in the economy. In the current situation, where you have this enormous structural adjustment going on and enormous deleveraging pressures that are obviously weighing a lot on prices, contributing to the subdued price pressures, it is only normal that we see inflation coming back more slowly to the medium term objective. That’s compounded by the fact that a number of European countries are going through a relative price adjustment which is a necessary adjustment, since it’s part of regaining competitiveness. This is temporary, and should not be confused with deflation. Mechanically, this relative price adjustment weighs down on the average euro-zone inflation number. For all these reasons, inflationary pressures will be very subdued for an extended period of time. The definition of medium term is probably more extended now than it could have been in other circumstances because of the situation the euro area economy is in. And we have to acknowledge it.”
It’s hard to imagine an American macroeconomist saying it’s healthy for inflation to be running below target because the economy is so weak. On second thought...
At least it would be correct to say that Paul Krugman and many other American pundits have picked on the ECB for making statements like this in the past. So what could be going on here?
It occurred to me that this is exactly the sort of thing that people at the Fed used to say in the first few decades of its operation, when it hadn’t yet figured out what it was doing. We went from a classical gold standard to a managed gold standard to Bretton Woods to a pure fiat regime, and each time a new approach to monetary policy was needed. Often the Fed was stuck in its old way of thinking, old rules of thumb, and did not rise to the challenge.
You might assume that the Europeans already had plenty of central banking experience, so the ECB should have done fine. But perhaps that’s exactly the problem. They had lots of experience, but of the wrong kind. Maybe they thought that running the ECB would be like running the central bank of a small open economy, whereas it’s more like running the central bank of a large closed economy. More like the Fed. But over in the eurozone they don’t yet realize that fact. They are running years behind the Fed in figuring out how to do things.
Think about what’s wrong with that quotation. The emphasis on weak economies cutting costs. That’s not a bad way of looking at things when you run a central bank in a small open economy, and need to make your economy more competitive. In that setting, however, when things get way out of line you devalue—that’s how you make the domestic economy competitive. But the individual members of the eurozone no longer have the ability to devalue, and the ECB doesn’t seem to realize that the only way for the eurozone as a whole to become more “competitive” is to raise the inflation rate. Counterintuitive, but true.
PS. I have a new post at Econlog.
PPS. Marcus Nunes has a post on a different Coeure interview.
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This entry was posted on January 17th, 2014 and is filed under Monetary Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.Skyfall Beats Avatar For Major Box Office Record By Katey Rich Random Article Blend Skyfall is already a very, very big hit here in the United States, standing as the seventh-highest grossing movie of the year domestically, and likely to keep rising. But in the United Kingdom, home of Bond, it's a flat-out phenomenon. The 23rd James Bond film has now becoming the highest-grossing movie in British history, with $151 million at the UK box office so far to overtake the record previously held by Avatar.
According to
By rebounding so masterfully from the disappointment of Quantum of Solace, Skyfall has secured Bond's future for a long while-- and now we all get to wonder exactly how that future will pan out. Daniel Craig is signed on for at least two more, and a lot of the new character threads established in the recent movie are promised to continue. But who will direct, and where will he or she take Bond? That's what we get to have fun speculating about for the next two years. is already a very, very big hit here in the United States, standing as the seventh-highest grossing movie of the year domestically, and likely to keep rising. But in the United Kingdom, home of Bond, it's a flat-out phenomenon. The 23rd James Bond film has now becoming the highest-grossing movie in British history, with $151 million at the UK box office so far to overtake the record previously held byAccording to Deadline it opened in just 587 theaters across the country, which makes the $151 million gross all the more impressive (it has made $245 million from an opening in 3,505 North American theaters, by way of comparison. Producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli said in a statement that they were "overwhelmed with gratitude to the cinema-going audiences in the UK," and probably more than a little grateful that their movie-- which features Britain more prominently than any recent Bond movie-- has been accepted in kind by its audience.By rebounding so masterfully from the disappointment ofhas secured Bond's future for a long while-- and now we all get to wonder exactly how that future will pan out. Daniel Craig is signed on for at least two more, and a lot of the new character threads established in the recent movie are promised to continue. But who will direct, and where will he or she take Bond? That's what we get to have fun speculating about for the next two years. 7 Actors Who Could Be The Next James Bond Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topIt hasn't exactly been a year to remember for Novak Djokovic who was knocked out of the Australian Open in the round of 64 and has failed to win a title since.
MORE: Nadal makes history with 10th Monte Carlo win
The former World No.1 and current No.2 has been beaten twice by Australian Nick Kyrgios following his early exit from the Australian Open with the 29-year-old Serbian seemingly on the decline with Andy Murray racing clear atop of the world rankings.
One man who has defied age this year however is Australian Open champion Roger Federer, with Djokovic's former Davis Cup coach Bogdan Obradovic suggesting the Serb should learn from the Swiss star.
"Maybe Djokovic should talk to Federer," he told Belgrade daily Blic.
"They are friends, they have known each other for a long time and the Swiss can certainly give him some good advice.
"Given that Federer was able to return into the top 10 and win this year's Australian Open at the age of 36, I see no reason why Djokovic can't be the World No.1 again."
Djokovic has won 14 matches while losing four so far this year with his Australian Open loss to Denis Istomin sparking a form slump of sorts for the Serbian.
"All other players seem to be galvanized against him while his own motivation appears to be inconsistent and shifting all the time," Obradovic said.
"He is not at his best, his serve keeps fluctuating as do elements in his game which really used to be at the highest level consistently.
"However, it is difficult to play at such a high level indefinitely.
"Murray has a huge advantage in the standings but I am sure Djokovic will be back in contention for the top spot."While Clarke was careful to avoid publicly criticising players during his decorated 11-year international career, the gloves have come off in retirement. Michael Clarke leaves the ground after his last Test match. Credit:Getty Images Clarke is particularly upset former teammates had used his retirement to "publicly kick" him, suggesting the comments were motivated by publicity in an attempt to shore up their own media profile. He savaged Symonds, with whom he was once close friends, after the all-rounder questioned Clarke's leadership style. "Andrew Symonds went on TV to criticise my leadership. I'm sorry, but he is not a person to judge anyone on leadership," Clarke wrote in a diary entry from the fifth Test of the Ashes. "This is a guy who turned up drunk to play for his country. It's pretty rich for him to be throwing rocks." He hit back at Hayden's assertion Clarke had threatened to hand back his baggy green cap if asked to continue fielding at bat-pad by Ricky Ponting, saying it was a tongue-in-cheek comment that had been misunderstood by the former opener.
"I think I've shown over the past 12 years how much I've valued representing my country and how much my 389 baggy green means to me," Clarke wrote. "If Ricky had asked me to jump off the Harbour Bridge, I would have jumped. I loved playing for Australia that much." Happier times: Michael Clarke and Andrew Symonds with the World Cup trophy after the 2007 final in Barbados. Clarke hammered Buchanan, who presided over one of the most successful eras in Australian cricket, for alleging that the culture of the baggy green had deteriorated under his leadership. "I don't think John knows a thing about the baggy green, having never worn one," Clarke wrote. "He's still living off the fact that he coached a team that anyone, even my dog Jerry, could have coached to world domination." No love lost: Michael Clarke and former coach John Buchanan. Credit:Getty Images
Clarke believed it was unfair the previous generation were still holding against him mistakes he had made as a 22-year-old in team of "wiser heads". He took over when Australia was in disarray in the wake of the 2010-11 Ashes capitulation and though there were many lows - including the 2013 whitewash in India and homework scandal and subsequent Ashes defeat - there was also a lot of success under his watch. He said criticism of his leadership was "rough". Not so close these days: Michael Clarke and Matthew Hayden. Credit:Vince Caligiuri "Anyone hearing this commentary - and I've had to wear this kind of talk for a very long time - would think I've been the only problem with Australian cricket for the past 13 years," Clarke wrote. "That's a tough rap for someone who has led this team to a World Cup victory at home, won a Test series against the best team in the world, South Africa, in South Africa won an Ashes 5-0, and in Tests has taken Australia from fifth to number one in the world."
"Any time we've lost, it's apparently been because of me - my personal life, my attitude, the way I've captained," Clarke wrote. "Apparently I've been holding us back all along, and now that I'm leaving everyone will get along famously and the Australian team will never lose another game." Loading Clarke said the fierce criticism he received from the media in the wake of his retirement and reaffirmed to him that he had made the right decision.In a Barn, a Piece of Slavery's Hidden Past a guest Mar 28th, 2013 738 Never a guest738Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 11.45 KB In a Barn, a Piece of Slavery's Hidden Past By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN, New York Times GERMANTOWN, Ky. - Even now, slowed by a stroke and 70 years past his boyhood toiling in the fields as a tenant farmer, Isaac Lang Jr. can still recall the terrible secrets hidden inside the old tobacco barn. "Dad told us never to go in there," Mr. Lang, 84, recalled, sitting up in his bed in a nursing home here. "He said, `Boys, I'm going to tell you the truth. It's all right to play around that barn, but don't go inside.' He said it just wasn't right. That it was pitiful. He never did tell us why." The building resembled the hundreds of long, low tobacco barns with rusting roofs that mark these winsome rolling hills along the Ohio River, except for a log structure concealed inside. Its windows were fitted with thick, crisscrossed wrought-iron bars ordered by Capt. John W. Anderson, a Kentucky slave trader. In the forced westward migration of slaves in the years after 1790, historians say, Captain Anderson held an unknown number of African-Americans in the log house, which |
, but it was in vain. This caused some tensions among us. I also have informed (commander) Sheikh Jaffar, the Minister of Peshmerga and his deputy that our fronts needed back up, but that was in vain as well.
Rudaw: Why did ISIS attack Kirkuk?
Kamal Kirkuk: ISIS has its own strategy. They say that they occupy the areas that have oil to impact the Middle East politics, which they have. They are trying in every way possible to capture Kirkuk, but the Peshmerga have thwarted their plans.
Rudaw: How could they reach inside Kirkuk?
Kamal Kirkuk: Many people entered Kirkuk under the pretext of being refugees and volunteers. Terrorists have infiltrated Kirkuk in this way. Those who attacked Kirkuk were such people and did not come from outside.
Rudaw: Does ISIS have sleeping cells in Kirkuk?
Kamal Kirkuk: Yes, I am sure of this. Great numbers of people entered Kirkuk recently and surely some of them were members of ISIS. To remove this threat the refugees must be moved to camps outside the city.
Rudaw: People claim that the Peshmerga forces are weak in Tel al-Ward front, which is why ISIS could advance from that direction.
Kamal Kirkuk: It is not like that. Tel al-Ward is located on various main roads from Hawija, Riyadh, and Rashad. These areas are controlled by ISIS. A high bridge on that border has become a major obstacle. But I assure the people of Kurdistan that they will not remain in that area.
Rudaw: This time ISIS came with many Kurdish members. Do you have any information about the number of Kurds inside ISIS?
Kamal Kirkuk: Not precisely. We could hear them speak Kurdish sometimes. They were even telling each other not to speak Kurdish sometimes. We don’t know how many Kurds have joined ISIS.
Rudaw: Who led this ISIS attack against Kirkuk?
Kamal Kirkuk: Four of their leaders were killed in this battle. Their commander was called Rammah and he was injured. He went into hiding and we are searching for him.
Rudaw: What do you think of the act of dragging the dead bodies of ISIS members in the streets of Kirkuk behind vehicles?
Kamal Kirkuk: I do not believe in fearing your enemy, but once your enemy becomes powerless you should treat him humanely. Even the prisoners should be treated rightly, and only told that they will be sent to court.
Rudaw: Would that act impact the name of the Kurds and the Peshmerga?
Kamal Kirkuk: This was a very ugly and inappropriate conduct. Nevertheless, it would not negatively impact the reputation of the Kurds, because the world knows that this was not a decision of the Kurdish leadership and government. The allies and other countries know how we deal with people and the mistake of one person should not be generalized over the whole nation. The Peshmerga want to protect this nation, prevent the spilling of blood. Certainly, we have not come to the battlefield to mistreat people.
Rudaw: Was the governor of Kirkuk in the city on that day?
Kamal Kirkuk: The governor has visited our fronts before and expressed all kinds of support, which we respect. But on the day of the attack mobile networks were either weak or not available. So we do not know whether he called us or not. But we have talked after that and he visited our forces after the battle.
Rudaw: What did the president of the Kurdistan Region say when he contacted you?
Kamal Kirkuk: The president is constantly checking the forces of Kirkuk and following up the activities. He was constantly trying to boost the morale of the Peshmerga forces during the days of battle. He was praising the Peshmerga and their commanders. He was sending his personal greetings to every one of them and he was very calm. But he was sad for the loss of Brigadier Shwani and he described him as one of his brothers.
Rudaw: The loss of two Kurdish commanders in that battle is an indicator of a weakness, is it not?
Kamal Kirkuk: According to the information I have, Brig. Shwani had been ordered to go to battle with the company of one regiment. But when got there he did not know that the base of that regiment was lost to ISIS. When he went there they were attacked. It was not a weakness. It’s a war and during wars people get killed and injured. But it was a big loss.
Rudaw: Do you support forming civil defense units in Kirkuk?
Kamal Kirkuk: No. We are totally against it. This is a crime against the people of Kurdistan and Iraq. Giving weapons to unknown people whom ISIS might have infiltrated is a great danger.
Rudaw: But there are civil defense units in Jalawla, Khurmatu, and Saadiya. Will they remain there?
Kamal Kirkuk: We have fought for those lands and some people have come and occupied them. When you shed blood for liberating every inch of a land, that land becomes yours. But when a group helps you in liberating it, that group would demand its share and it will stay there and consider it its right. So it is a mistake to get help from such a group. Those groups must leave the Kurdistan Region.
Rudaw: Will that cause problems?
Kamal Kirkuk: Let it be. The Kurds have been oppressed for a very long time and we have been forced to be part of Iraq, where we were gassed and mass-murdered. Then we were told that we were brothers with the Arabs, but even that was forced upon us. It was a lie and not true. The Kurds and the Arabs have different cultures, histories, language, land, and nature. If you say that this is not true, then I ask you, ‘which brother would kidnap his nieces and in-laws then sell them in a different country?’A 37-year old woman by the name of Angela Scruggs has been arrested after she allegedly pulled out a gun during what has been described as an “Aggravated Assault.” The incident unfolded in the Rutherford Blvd. Walmart parking lot on Tuesday.
Scruggs told police she placed her handgun on her lap after a man in the parking lot yelled at her to “Stop Speeding.” The man who allegedly yelled at Scruggs claims that she almost struck his son while driving her Altima. Scruggs says that the man walked over to her with his hands in his pockets, so she pulled the gun out and placed it on her lap. She left the scene and was pulled over by Murfreesboro Police on S. Church Street.
Jason Hill, who called the police, told officers that Scruggs actually pointed the weapon at him when he asked her to “slow down.” He then told Scruggs that he would call the police. He said that Scruggs told him, “I don’t care, I got a carry permit.” A witness told responding officers that Scruggs told Hill that she would shoot him.
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The.22 caliber handgun that belongs to Scruggs was entered in as evidence after she was pulled over and charged with “Aggravated Assault.” She will have to appear in court this October to further explain her actions to the judge.
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MPD Incident Report #14-14309
MPD Arrest Report #14-14309
Rutherford County Sheriff’s OfficeWe've been reporting on Hollywood's Luke Cage wannabes for years. But actor Idris Elba, famous for his role as Stringer on The Wire, may have actually scored the Marvel deal to bring the yellow-booted comic book superhero to life.
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In an interview with Total Film, Idris Elba opened up about his next Marvel role in Thor, the Norse God Heimdall, but he also revealed that Thor was only the beginning of his relationship with Marvel stating:
"I have a picture deal with them (Marvel). I can't tell you much about that, but I can tell you I'll be back....
I wouldn't mind having a crack at bringing Blade back, personally...But erm, there's a couple of things there that they have... Luke Cage is... very interesting."
Teasing or not, we're not sure what other character Elba could be hinting at, especially since he just flat-out says "Luke Cage" — the superhero with super strength and super strong skin. There's no way Elba received a multi-picture deal to expand on the character Heimdall, so we kind of believe him. And why not? Everyone has been itching to do a Luke Cage film, plus it fits nicely in with the other smaller Marvel movies the studio wants to make.(CNN) -- Several thousand barrels of North Slope crude oil spilled into a containment area along the Alaska pipeline Tuesday when an open valve at a pump station allowed oil to overflow a tank, the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company said.
Alyeska said the incident took place about 10:30 a.m. (2:30 p.m. ET) during a planned pipeline shutdown while the company was conducting fire command and valve leak testing at the pump station.
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said a battery failed to control the valve when power was switched from the main grid during Alyeska's tests. The valve has been closed, shutting off the flow, the department said, but the pipeline remains shut down.
The department said the next steps would be to clean up the oil in the containment area, determine the cause of the problem and restart oil flowing in the pipeline. No oil has been reported outside the containment area.
Mark MacIntyre, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency in Seattle, Washington, said two EPA coordinators would arrive on the scene from Anchorage on Wednesday and have a report in the afternoon.
The pump station is near Delta Junction, about 100 miles south of Fairbanks. Ayleska said the lined containment area that took the spill has a capacity of about 104,500 barrels.
Ayleska also said there were no injuries and the pump station was evacuated. An incident management team and other responders were dispatched.
CNN's Nick Valencia contributed to this report.I was sitting in trigonometry class one day when I looked over to see my friend Adrian doodling in his notebook. I poked him and asked what he was up to, and he told me he was designing a game he would eventually make. Almost two decades later, he’s making games and I’m writing about them.
Adrian Perez joined Bungie at the tail end of Halo’s development (he wrote the loading screen) and continued through Halo 3 (and beyond) before leaving the studio in 2013 to join Sucker Punch. He left a little present for his wife, Lauren, hidden in Halo 3 that has remained hidden until now. A gamer by the name of "Lord Zedd" found it and shared it via YouTube.
The secret only appears on December 25, Lauren’s birthday. If you hold down both thumbsticks on the loading screen, the camera zooms out a bit. If you look closely, you’ll see the words “Happy Birthday, Lauren.”
The easter egg was teased in a Bungie Mail Sack post (as reported by Beyond Entertainment). The first was in response to a question put to members of the team about their proudest moment working on the Halo franchise. “Showing my wife the Easter egg I put in the halo 3 loading screen for her - the one that nobody has found yet,” Adrian wrote.
Well done, Adrian. Well done.The body of an Italian pro-Palestinian activist was found hanging in the home of a Palestinian militant in the Gaza Strip early Friday, hours after he was reportedly kidnapped.
Hamas officials reported that the body of Vittorio Arrigoni, 36, was discovered in the home of a member of the Monotheism and Holy War group that claimed responsibility for the abduction in a video released Thursday.
Italian activist Vittorio Utmpio Arrigoni holds his passport during a protest against the Israeli siege on Gaza, in Gaza City, in this August 29, 2008 file photo. AP
Two suspects have already been arrested, and Hamas claims to be searching a third.
The video claiming to show the victim emerged from Gaza on Thursday afternoon, teamed with the extremist group's demand that Hamas release its leader who was arrested last month. The group threatened to execute the hostage if it demands were not met by Friday afternoon.
Co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, Huwaida Arraf, confirmed that the abducted man in the video appeared to be one of its activists, identifying him as Arrigoni.
Later Thursday, Hamas police reportedly stormed a Gaza City apartment and found Arrigoni's body. In a statement, the Hamas Interior Ministry said the man was killed "in an awful way" shortly after he was abducted at mid-day Thursday.
Interior Ministry spokesman Ehab al-Ghussein said the kidnappers had planned from the beginning to kill their victim not to trade him for captives. He also said that a member of the militant group led them to the house.
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The Palestinian People Party, a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization that is headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the killing and demanded the killers face the "utmost punishment."
"This crime does not reflect the morals or the traditions of the Palestinian people," the group said in a statement.
An Italian doctor was reportedly on his way to Gaza from Israel to identify Arrigoni's body.
The video released by the militant group shows a man with a thick black blindfold and a large bruise on his face. Apparently seated, he is held in front of the camera by an unseen person.
In a message on the video, the extremist group demanded that Hamas free its leader, arrested in early March, and two other members whose names had not been previously known.
Sheikh Abu Walid-al-Maqdasi, the leader of the group, was arrested in a crowded beachside neighborhood of Gaza City last month.
Although Hamas authorities were responsible for locating Arrigoni, Hamas itself is a fundamentalist Islamic group. But it faces challenges from even more extremist offshoots of Islam, including Walid-al-Maqdasi's group, that take inspiration from Al-Qaida and the world jihad movement. Hamas has denied that al-Qaida has a presence in Gaza.
Kidnappings of foreigners were common before the Hamas takeover. Most of those abducted were foreign correspondents, including Alan Johnston of the BBC, who was abducted and held for 114 days before being freed in July 2007, just after Hamas overran Gaza, expelling forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
ISM, the organization to which Arrigoni belonged, operates in the West Bank and Gaza and is known for trying to prevent the Israeli military from carrying out its missions. Arraf said this activist has been going in and out of Gaza for more than two years. He was working with farmers and fishermen.
The ISM incident that got the most attention was the 2003 death of American activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer in southern Gaza while trying to block its path.Despite many good intentions and initiatives, gender inequality is still rife in science. Although there are more female than male undergraduate and graduate students in many countries1, there are relatively few female full professors, and gender inequalities in hiring2, earnings3, funding4, satisfaction5 and patenting6 persist.
One focus of previous research has been the 'productivity puzzle'. Men publish more papers, on average, than women7, although the gap differs between fields and subfields. Women publish significantly fewer papers in areas in which research is expensive8, such as high-energy physics, possibly as a result of policies and procedures relating to funding allocations4. Women are less likely to participate in collaborations that lead to publication and are much less likely to be listed as either first or last author on a paper7. There is no consensus on the reasons for these gender differences in research output and collaboration — whether it is down to bias, childbearing and rearing9, or other variables.
It has been suggested that what women lack in research output they make up for in citations, particularly in fields with 'greater career risk'8 — that is, fields with long lags between doctoral education and securing a faculty position, such as ecology. But again, there is no consensus on the relative impact of women's work compared to men's.
The present state of quantitative knowledge of gender disparities in science has been shaped primarily by anecdotal reports and studies that are highly localized, monodisciplinary and dated. Furthermore, these studies take little account of the rise in collaborative research and other changes in scholarly practices. Effective policy cannot be built on such foundations.
Therefore, we present here a global and cross-disciplinary bibliometric analysis of: first, the relationship between gender and research output (for which our proxy was authorship on published papers); second, the extent of collaboration (for which our proxy was co-authorships); and third, scientific impact of all articles published between 2008 and 2012 and indexed in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science databases (for which our proxy was citations). We analysed 5,483,841 research papers and review articles with 27,329,915 authorships. We assigned gender using data from the US Social Security database, among other sources (see Supplementary Information).
We find that in the most productive countries, all articles with women in dominant author positions receive fewer citations than those with men in the same positions. And this citation disadvantage is accentuated by the fact that women's publication portfolios are more domestic than their male colleagues — they profit less from the extra citations that international collaborations accrue. Given that citations now play a central part in the evaluation of researchers, this situation can only worsen gender disparities (see ‘Gender, output, collaboration and citation’).
The interactive companion to this table requires a modern browser (e.g. Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9+) with javascript enabled. INTERACTIVE: Gender, output, collaboration and citation Scientists in these 30 countries contributed the largest shares of the more than 5 million papers published between 2008 and 2012. Explore below to discover what proportion of output was contributed by women and men, and how the gender of lead authors influenced the citation of papers from lone authors, national and international collaborations. Total papers published Field Total papers published Female to Male Ratio Single author First author (national collaboration) Last author (national collaboration) First author (international collaboration) Last author (international collaboration) Continent Country
Gender, output, collaboration and citation data
In our view, the scale of this study provides much-needed empirical evidence of the inequality that is still all too pervasive in science. It should serve as a call to action for the development of higher education and science policy.
Bias by numbers
Men dominate scientific production in nearly every country; to what extent varies by region (see 'Gender and research output'). We probed the proportion of each gender's output by comparing the proportion of identified authorships for each gender on any given paper. For example, for a paper with eight authorships, of which six were assigned a gender, each of the authorships would be granted one-sixth of a paper. These gendered fractions were then aggregated at the levels of countries and disciplines. It should be stressed that these are authorships, not individuals, therefore no author name disambiguation was necessary (see Supplementary Information).
Globally, women account for fewer than 30% of fractionalized authorships, whereas men represent slightly more than 70%. Women are similarly underrepresented when it comes to first authorships. For every article with a female first author, there are nearly two (1.93) articles first-authored by men.
South American and Eastern European countries demonstrate greater gender parity. Eastern Europe may support the idea that communist and formerly communist states may have greater gender balance than other countries. Only nine countries had female dominance in terms of proportion of authorships, and five of these (Macedonia, Sri Lanka, Latvia, Ukraine, and Bosnia and Herzegovina) had more than 1,000 articles in our analysis. In other words, female authorship is more prevalent in countries with lower scientific output.
“Programmes fostering international collaboration for female researchers might help to level the playing field.”
Countries with more than 1,000 papers and high degrees of male dominance include, unsurprisingly (in order of output): Saudi Arabia, Iran, Japan, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Cameroon, Qatar and Uzbekistan. US states with more than 1,000 articles with a gender assigned and high male dominance include New Mexico, Mississippi and Wyoming. The US states and Canadian provinces that are closest to achieving gender parity (and have more than 1,000 articles) include Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Quebec. Again, some of these states and provinces are among the lowest ranking in terms of scientific output.
Our disciplinary results confirmed previous findings and anecdotal knowledge about fields associated with 'care'. Specialties dominated by women include nursing; midwifery; speech, language and hearing; education; social work and librarianship. Male-dominated disciplines include military sciences, engineering, robotics, aeronautics and astronautics, high-energy physics, mathematics, computer science, philosophy and economics. Although disciplines from the social sciences show a larger proportion of female authors, the humanities are still heavily dominated by men.
Next we looked at collaboration. We analysed the proportion of papers by gender that are the result of national collaboration, compared with those that result from international collaborations. For the 50 most productive countries in our analysis (accounting for 97% of the total publications), female collaborations are more domestically oriented than are the collaborations of males from the same country.
And what of impact? We analysed prominent author positions — sole authorship, first-authorship and last-authorship. We discovered that when a woman was in any of these roles, a paper attracted fewer citations than in cases in which a man was in one of these roles (see 'Lead-author gender and citation'). The gender disparity holds for national and international collaborations.
Age-old story
There are several limitations to the conclusions that can be drawn from our findings. Foremost among them is that age indisputably has a role — perhaps even the major role — in explaining gender differences in scientific output, collaboration and impact. As is well known, the academic pipeline from junior to senior faculty leaks female scientists, and the senior ranks of science bear the imprint of previous generations' barriers to the progression of women. Thus it is likely that many of the trends we observed can be explained by the under-representation of women among the elders of science. After all, seniority, authorship position, collaboration and citation are all highly interlinked variables.
Another key limitation is that authorship of papers is only one of many indicators of research activity. Our analysis includes only journal articles, not books, conference proceedings, database construction or code, for example. Also problematic is the lack of universal norms associated with authorship attribution and position. For example, it is possible that some women do not appear as authors despite their contribution to research activities, and there are fields in which authors are listed alphabetically. There is also a concern that gender-assignment techniques can introduce errors (see Supplementary Information). We have tried to mitigate this with validation exercises, but there is always room for improvement.
Future research should drill into questions raised by this analysis. What distinguishes pockets of anomalously high parity? Are there characteristics of the work itself that contribute to disparities in output and citation? Are there other, perhaps less quantitative, aspects of scholarship that reveal a different story regarding gender balance in science? Furthermore, is there anything intrinsic to certain disciplines or cultures that make them more or less appealing to scientists of a particular gender?
Levelling the playing field
Those of a misogynistic bent might read this study as confirming their view that women's research is weaker than men's and there is less of it. Such a simplistic interpretation dismisses the vast implications embedded in these data. Our study lends solid quantitative support to what is intuitively known: barriers to women in science remain widespread worldwide, despite more than a decade of policies aimed at levelling the playing field. UNESCO data show10 that in 17% of countries an equal number of men and women are scientists. Yet we found a grimmer picture: fewer than 6% of countries represented in the Web of Science come close to achieving gender parity in terms of papers published.
For a country to be scientifically competitive, it needs to maximize its human intellectual capital. Our data suggest that, because collaboration is one of the main drivers of research output and scientific impact, programmes fostering international collaboration for female researchers might help to level the playing field.
That said, if there were a simple solution or programme that could improve matters, this issue would already be solved. Unfortunately, behind this global imbalance lie local and historical forces that subtly contribute to the systemic inequalities that hinder women's access to and progress in science. Any realistic policy to enhance women's participation in the scientific workforce must take into account the variety of social, cultural, economic and political contexts in which students learn science and scientific work is performed. Each country should carefully identify the micro-mechanisms that contribute to reproducing the past order. No country can afford to neglect the intellectual contributions of half its population.Contents show]
Welcome to the Kingdom Death Wiki
Kingdom Death is a unique nightmare horror world created by Adam Poots. Originally a line of high quality, limited run, resin miniatures, the world of Kingdom Death has recently grown with the inception of Kingdom Death: Monster. Information and knowledge in the world of Kingdom Death can be extremely fleeting, but there are those who wish to preserve it. Consider this wiki a catalog of all of the places, people, and terrible things that have so far been revealed, as well as a celebration of the art and craftsmanship that makes up the modeling hobby.
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Other CategoriesA Taliban commander who was targeted by the US military in an airstrike nearly a decade ago and who has links to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp – Qods Force remains a key player in the insurgency in central Afghanistan. The Taliban commander, known as Mullah Mustafa, was instrumental in the Taliban’s takeover of Taiwara district in Ghor province several weeks ago. Afghan forces have retaken the district, but maintain a tenuous hold on it.
Taiwara district fell to the Taliban on July 23 after hundreds of fighters assaulted the district center and overran Afghan forces and the local militia and police forces. More than 700 Taliban fighters using “humvees and trucks stolen from Afghan forces in Helmand province” launched the assault, according to The New York Times. Out of a force of 50 Afghan commandos guarding the district, 12 were killed, more than 20 were wounded, and several more are missing. Afghan officials claimed that more than 200 Taliban fighters were killed during the fighting.
Mustafa, who The New York Times described as “a local facilitator of the Taliban,” had “played a major role in the recent offensive” to take Taiwara. He “has contacts in Iran” and “is protected by senior figures in Kabul, the capital, including those in Afghanistan’s peace council assigned to negotiate with the Taliban.”
FDD’s Long War Journal has tracked Mullah Mustafa since the US military targeted him in an airstrike in Ghor province on June 9, 2009. The US military initially believed they killed Mustafa and prematurely announced his death. Two days after the US military announced his death, Mustafa spoke to the media. Mustafa claimed he “never [has] been in the opposition to the [Afghan] government” but did not deny attacking US forces.
The US military said Mustafa commands more than 100 fighters in Ghor and is thought to receive support from Iran’s Qods Force, the external operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
“The commander of approximately 100 fighters in western Afghanistan, Mustafa had recently met with senior Taliban leaders, and reportedly had connections to Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Qods Force,” the US military stated when it wrongly announced his death.
When it retracted its initial report of his death, the US military said it will continue to target Mustafa.
“Mustafa is an enemy of Afghanistan, and we’re working with Afghan officials to pursue him until he is captured or confirmed killed,” Navy Lieutenant Commander Christine Sidenstricker said.
Eight years after the US military tried to kill Mustafa, he remains a key player in the Taliban’s growing insurgency in western and central Afghanistan.
Mustafa likely played a role in the Taliban’s takeover of Char Sada district in Ghor in July 2014. Before the district was overrun, the Taliban exerted significant influence there. In 2013, Mustafa was spotted along with Mullah Abdul Rahamn, the Taliban’s shadow district governor for Char Sada. The two Taliban leaders imposed the Taliban’s strict brand of sharia law when they ordered the public beating of a couple for having an affair.
Iran’s links to the Taliban, particularly in western and central Afghanistan, have been well established by the US military and government. In an Aug. 2010 designation of General Hossein Musavi and Colonel Hasan Mortezavi, both senior officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – Qods Force, the US Treasury Department noted that the two provide “financial and material support to the Taliban.”
Musavi was the commander of the Ansar Corps, the IRGC command that is assigned to direct operations in Afghanistan. The Ansar Corps is based in Mashhad in northeastern Iran. [See Iranian Qods Force commanders linked to Taliban: US Treasury.]
The US military has targeted multiple Qods Force-linked Taliban leaders and operatives inside Afghanistan, while Taliban commanders have admitted to receiving support from Iran.
Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.Vancouver Canucks lose 2-1 to Nashville Predators, snaps two-game winning streak
Canucks blow 1-0 lead, cede winning goal on power play in third period
First loss without suspended John Tortorella, four games remain in suspension
It was the lowest moment of a woeful year for the Vancouver Canucks power play.
On Thursday night at home, the Canucks had a four-minute five-on-four, first period, no score in the game, the chance to grab a lead and roll through the night to a much-needed win. Defenceman Dan Hamhuis, a defensive specialist who scores only a handful of goals a year and is heading to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, was down low near the Nashville Predators net, floating and poised in the left faceoff circle.
Alex Burrows, also down low on the other side of the net, got it going fast, flinging a puck across the crease to Hamhuis, but it came in hot and Hamhuis couldn't handle it. Twenty second later, same situation, and Burrows got it to Hamhuis, right on the stick, and Hamhuis was wide open but only put a soft shot on net. The third time, again the same but Hamhuis had a better shot, though in this episode the Nashville goalie made a solid save. The fourth time Burrows flung it across and Hamhuis couldn't reach the pass. The fifth pass came from Daniel Sedin and Hamhuis had to reach for it and shot wide. The sixth try, Sedin put it on Hamhuis's stick and Hamhuis flubbed the shot.
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What is Hamhuis doing on the power play? What is Hamhuis doing on the power play stationed down low near the net? These are the mysteries of a Canucks power play that remains among the worst in the National Hockey League, despite a man-advantage that generates the third-most shots on goal of any team. Yet very few pucks go in, and the powerless power play is one of the main reasons the Canucks sit a precarious seventh in the Western Conference rather than somewhere more comfortable higher up the standings.
One reason for the problems, it can be cited, is the lack of previous success of any of the Canucks coaches when it comes to the power play.
This year's Canucks, led by the suspended John Tortorella, has assistants Mike Sullivan and Glen Gulutzan behind the behind. Gulutzan runs the power play. The Canucks are ranked 25th in the NHL, converting 14.7 per cent of the time, while generating the third-most shots at five-on-four.
Consider history:
- In Tortorella and Sullivan's four full seasons in New York, the power play, counting backwards from 2013, was ranked 23rd, 23rd, 18th, and 13th. The past two seasons New York was ranked 27th in shot generation. The best year, 2009-10, they were 19th in shots and converted 18.3 per cent of time.
- In Tampa Bay, Tortorella (and Sullivan in the last season), there was some success, ranking fifth in 2007-08 and converting 19.3 per cent, and ninth in 2006-07 with 18.4 per cent. But of six full seasons, three were in the bottom half of the league (twice in the bottom third). The year Tampa won the Stanley Cup, 2003-04, when the team was the third-highest goal scoring team in the league, the power play was 16th ranked converting 16.2 per cent of the time.
- In Boston, where Sullivan was head coach two seasons, the power play in 2003-04 was 17th ranked converting 16 per cent, and 25th in 2005-06 converting 14.8 per cent.
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- In Dallas, where Gulutzan was head coach the past two seasons, the power play was 18th with 17 per cent conversion in 2013, and dead last in 2011-12, converting 13.5 per cent of the time, and dead last in shots on goal.
On Thursday night, the Canucks' failed four minutes in the first period was followed quickly after by another blanked two minutes, with Hamhuis still out there. And then again in the second, another two minutes, Hamhuis stationed down low near the net, the Canucks were blanked again.
In those eight minutes of five-on-four, the Canucks had seven shots on goal. That equates to 52.5 per 60 minutes – which would rank 12th in the NHL, notably lower than where the Canucks actually are ranked, third with 60.6 shots per 60 minutes of five-on-four time. It's indicative of another, more recent, problem, a declining shot rate, which compounds existing issues.
Late in the third, down 2-1 to the Predators, the Canucks again could not convert on the power play, for the fifth time of the game, and Hamhuis remained on the first unit.
Asked about all this, acting head coach Sullivan was measured on Wednesday after practice.
"There's always a solution," said Sullivan.
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He went on to note: "It's not an easy thing to coach."
"If you're not careful you can get in the way, because you have to allow for your most-talented players to act on their instincts," said Sullivan. "And for me, based on my experience, instinctive play is when they're at their best."
What coaches can do: provide a team a framework on getting in the zone, and setting up so the players have the gist of where everyone will be. Emphasize the importance of putting pucks on net, being tough on the goalie, blocking sight lines, banging at rebounds.
"We have to get better at all those areas," said Sullivan.
In 2010-11, when the Canucks nearly won the Stanley Cup, the team had the league's No. 1 power play. It only began to show cracks the next winter. Last year it fell to 22nd. In the glory days, 2010-11, Daniel Sedin scored 18 of his 41 goals on the power play. Last year, he had three power play goals in 47 games. This year he has four in 51 games.
The offensive personnel is unchanged, though older: the Sedins, and Ryan Kesler. But defenceman Christian Ehrhoff and Sami Salo are no longer around.
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"Christian was a pretty key guy," said Sedin in an interview on Wednesday. "He could really move the puck, across the blueline and open up things." There's Alex Edler and Jason Garrison these days, an offensive defenceman, and a big shot. "We have those guys now, it shouldn't be a big issue."
Yet it is. Something – something elusive – is not right. The coaches try everything. Even fourth-line grinder Tom Sestito saw some first-line power play time this month. And on Thursday night, Hamhuis's terrible showing didn't keep Sullivan from sending him back out on the first unit for more attempts, which seemed odd.
If the Canucks are going to challenge in the daunting Pacific Division and the challenging West, they need goals, and goals will have to come on the power play.
How exactly is unknown, since Tortorella doesn't really think it can be practised much.
"It just is [difficult to replicate in practice]," said Tortorella on Jan. 9. "It's not another team playing against you. It's not the pressure of a game situation, to allow your top players to anticipate what the D is going to do."
He talked about developing a "foundation," working on retrieving the puck from the Canucks own end, breaking up the ice, getting in the zone. Studying other teams' penalty-kill tendencies also matters. Tortorella, who loves using video, shows tape of other teams' successful power plays, what works.
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"A lot of it comes from a shot on net, and things happen from there."
Then, overall, it is for Tortorella about the word he uses a lot: "mindset."Portland's most decadent sandwiches are coming to Sin City.
Lardo, the food cart-turned-sandwich chain from chef Rick Gencarelli, will bring its griddled mortadella, double cheeseburger and dirty fries to the Cos |
on a main boulevard in the city of Veracruz in September, and police found 32 other bodies, apparently killed by the same gang, a few days after that. The goal apparently was to take over territory that had been dominated by the Zetas.
Twenty-six bodies were found in November in Guadalajara, another territory being disputed by the Zetas and Sinaloa.
Drug violence has killed more than 47,500 people since Calderon launched a stepped-up offensive when he took office in December 2006.
Mexico is now in the midst of presidential race to replace Calderon, who by law can't run for re-election. Drug violence seems to be escalating, but none of the major candidates, Enrique Pena Nieto, Josefina Vazquez Mota or Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has referred to the body dumpings directly. All three say they will stop the violence and make Mexico a more secure place, but offer few details on how their plans would differ from Calderon's.
Benitez said the wave of violence has nothing to do with the presidential election.
"It has the dynamic of a war between cartels," he said.0 Monica Pearson diagnosed with liver cancer
ATLANTA - Channel 2’s Monica Pearson is sharing a personal story, in hopes it will help others.
Monica was diagnosed with liver cancer and doctors removed 55% of her liver, but she’s doing well.
“I am fine,” Monica told Channel 2’s Jocelyn Dorsey. “I didn’t want to tell anyone until I was through it.”
She told Dorsey she needed positive energy more than anything else.
“When most people hear you have cancer they immediately think you’re going to die within the next three minutes,” she said. “I didn’t need any negativity around me.”
Monica had surgery on Jan. 29 and spent a week in the hospital. She’s still recuperating and will have a scar.
“That's OK. I’m comfortable with that scar. I’m still here.”
Doctors found the cancer during a routine physical.
In 1998, Monica’s doctors found breast cancer during a routine mammogram. She wants everyone to know how important those checkups are.
“I’m doing well. I’m going to be fine,” she said.
Monica will see a doctor every six months for the next five years to make sure the cancer hasn't come back.
“I feel very good about my condition," she said. "I just think it happened because I needed to tell people ‘take care of yourself.’”
Monica says she didn't have any symptoms with the liver cancer or breast cancer.
Her message: “If it can happen to me, it can happen to you. Don't be afraid.”Riot Fest is perhaps the oddest duck of the major Chicago summer music festivals. It feels something like a combination of Pitchfork, early 90s Lollapalooza, Warped Tour, and the Gathering of the Juggalos– thanks to its diverse, often random, lineup and collection of stuff: circus attractions, carnival rides, and mini golf.
What makes it really different compared to Pitchfork or Lollapalooza is it’s nearly entirely focused on a nostalgic reverence for the past. That interpretation of the past, though, could mean emo/pop-punk bands you listened to in eighth grade like Taking Back Sunday, former pop stars like Billy Idol, or more obscure bands like Drive Like Jehu. This allows for a wide variety of people to enjoy very different kinds of musical experiences over the same weekend.
While the lineup maybe didn’t come off as strongly to me personally over past years, the festival got a lot of things right this year. Let’s break it down.
Riot Fest New Location & More Bad Weather
Riot Fest has been cursed with rain the last few years, leading to lots of damage at the park’s previous location in Humboldt Park. Earlier this year, Humboldt Park kicked the festival out, but they were welcomed further south at Douglas Park. I live near Humboldt Park so it was a bit of a bummer I couldn’t walk to Riot Fest anymore, but by and large the move was actually for the best.
The Good
Humboldt Park is a beautiful public space with ponds and lots of vegetation, but its landscaping forced the festival to use a maze-like layout that made it difficult to find some stages and made you spend way too much time walking. Douglas Park was still quite pretty while having a much more open space.
This year, Riot Fest also had three areas where two stages were placed side-by-side, leading to seamless transitions. I spent less time wandering around and more time seeing bands. Food, port-a-potties, and drinks were also in close proximity to stages and there seemed to be less of the random extra stuff like wrestling matches getting in your way.
The Bad
Riot Fest, similar to Lollapalooza, really wants to get your money. It may seem like its edgy and punk, and they do care about the musical experience, but they’re trying to get your money whether it’s charging $3 for water, $8 for beer, or putting in these special VIP viewing areas by the two main stages with an extensive barricade system. While the Riot and Rock stages were side by side you couldn’t walk from one to the other because there was a barricade– and that seemed really stupid.
It also didn’t seem to take into account how popular a main headliner like System of a Down would be and that people were going to try to crush into the small, closed in area in the front. And when people started moshing, they couldn’t get out, and the band had to stop so festival staff could tend to the wounded. Yikes.
The other issue was Douglas Park didn’t have a lot of lighting on site and the festival didn’t add any free standing lights. At night, it was very difficult to get around and avoid the mud pits. That brings me to:
The Muddy
The curse of Riot Fest struck again with more rain. While it did lead to a delay the start of the festival on Friday, most people were able to stay dry for the bulk of the weekend. Still the earlier rain caused the festival grounds to become mostly mud pits by the end of Friday. At this point, Riot Fest should be more prepared, but it didn’t seem like it until the end of the festival when they put down some scattered wood chips. Despite having to fork over six figures each year in park repairs, it doesn’t really seem like Riot Fest cares all that much about dealing with the mud.
Top 5 Riot Fest Bands
While Riot Fest has roots as a punk/hardcore festival, they’ve gotten a lot better at expanding into other genres like funk, hip-hop, and reggae. There were more minorities on stage this year and more women, though both could certainly be more prevalent.
As for the lineup, there seemed to be a lot more novelty and less of those classic punk/hardcore/post-punk bands I really like, though there were still plenty of highlights. With four stage areas I couldn’t get to everyone and I have particular tastes, so don’t be too upset with me if I missed out on your favorite set and let us know what you liked in the comments.
Drive Like Jehu
Drive Like Jehu were an early 90s post-hardcore band that only lasted for a few years before members moved on to other projects; John Reis had a lot of success with his other band Rocket From the Crypt and drummer Mark Trombino became a well known producer for the likes of Blink-182 and Jimmy Eat World. They only recently got back together, and I was very excited for their Riot Fest set.
Fortunately, they did not disappoint. Drive Like Jehu’s songs don’t follow a lot of conventional structures and for a band that hasn’t been together in 10 years, I was impressed how well they managed the unusual time signatures and quick transitions. The best part of their set, though, was the ferocity of the band, particularly the noisy, searing guitars of John Reis and Rick Froberg.
Hum
There was a brief period in the mid-90s where the Champaign-Urbana area was hyped as the next Seattle and Hum as the next Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins. Despite some catchy songs like “Stars,” the alternative rock band leaned more heavily into space rock and shoegaze to ever be way too mainstream.
The latter was definitely true during their awesome Riot Fest appearance where the sound was loud, fuzzy, and metallic, actually sounding like a rocket taking off into outer space. Hum was much more aggressive than they were on record, while sticking mainly to songs from their terrific 1995 album You’d Prefer an Astronaut. This huge-sounding, powerful set was an unexpected highlight for me and one of the best all weekend.
Iggy Pop
While I intended to see System of a Down Saturday night, I was too far away to really enjoy anything, so I made the decision to skip them for Iggy Pop. Iggy was outstanding a couple years ago with the Stooges, and he was equally impressive during his solo set. Despite his age (68), Iggy out does rockers in their 20s. He bounds around the stage, gets down into the crowd, rants like a maniac, and his voice still sounds awesome.
Iggy’s set mixed Stooges’ songs like”1969” and “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” newer tracks, and classic Iggy solo songs like “Lust for Life” and the “The Passenger.” I was also thrilled he paid a lot of attention to his solo/David Bowie-collaboration The Idiot, playing these droning, bizarre experimental tracks like “Nightclubbing” and “Mass Production” all the while strangely avoiding that album’s biggest hit “China Girl.”
Altogether this was a loud, outrageous set that I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.
Snoop Dogg
I wouldn’t say this was really a favorite, but Snoop Dogg was certainly memorable. First, Snoop showed up 30 minutes late for what was supposed to be an hour-long set focused on his classic 1993 debut Doggystyle. That didn’t happen, but Snoop played an older-focused set with tracks like “Gin & Juice” and his iconic appearance on Dr. Dre’s “Nuthin’ But a G Thang” with a couple “newer songs” like “Drop It Like It’s Hot;” there was also a totally random cover of “Jump Around.”
While Snoop definitely had a respect for the old songs and flawlessly rapped them without leaning heavily on a hype man, what really elevated the set was everything else going on. There were twerking dancers, a guy in a Rottweiler costume, and several breaks for Snoop Dogg to light up a few blunts. And at the end, Snoop refused to leave the stage when his time was up and made it 10 minutes before Riot Fest cut his mic and turned off the lights.
Thurston Moore Band
Following the end of Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore has bounced around projects releasing new solo work, forming new bands, and briefly joining a black metal super group. Most recently, he’s been working on a new album with the Thurston Moore Band featuring former Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley and bassist Debbie Googe of My Bloody Valentine.
Playing a set of all new, very long songs, the Thurston Moore Band definitely drew some comparisons to Sonic Youth’s later period, though the music was almost closer to post-rock. Following a conventional verse-chorus-verse structure, most of the songs went into these jamming drone sections where the band continued to build and push different tones and sounds to satisfying conclusions. There were some kinks to be worked out like awkward tuning breaks in the middle of songs, but I was overall pretty thrilled with the direction Thurston is going.
Bonus Round: Foxing
Riot Fest doesn’t invite a lot of up and coming acts, but this year they did seem particularly in tune with the current crop of younger emo bands like Have Mercy, Joyce Manor, and Foxing. Foxing has the emotional intensity of those bands you might have liked as a teenager yet they’re approaching those feelings with much more sophisticated instrumentation and song structures. There were horns, a violinist/keyboardist, and if you removed the singing it was pretty close to a post-rock band like Godspeed You! Black Emperor at points. Foxing had so much energy that I almost wished I was still a teenager.Dilma Rousseff: BRICS Bank Won't Affect Brazilian Policy on IMF
07/17/2014 - 09h54
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FROM BRASÍLIA
One day after officially founding the bank of the BRICS (the political bloc composed of Brazil, China, Russia, India and South Africa), President Dilma Rousseff said that the institution will not affect Brazilian participation in multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
However, Rousseff said that the IMF does not reflect the current global balance of power.
"We haven't got the slightest interest in leaving the IMF," she said. "On the contrary, we're interested in making it more democratic and representative."
"The new BRICS bank isn't against the IMF, but it is in our interest. And it will always have a different stance in relation to developing countries," she added.
The five countries unveiled the bank on Tuesday, at the BRICS summit in Fortaleza. Its headquarters will be located in Shanghai.
The bloc also agreed on the release of US$ 50 billion to finance infrastructure products in the BRICS countries and in other developing nations.
Translated by TOM GATEHOUSE
Read the article in the original languageThere's no doubting Uno The Activist's vision. When the Atlanta rapper speaks of his goals and the future he has his in hip-hop, he's very matter-of-fact. He knows what he was put here for, even if he's still trying to understand the message he's supposed to share. At 20 years old, Uno's still got time to figure it out.
While rap fans likely know him for the Chris French-produced song "What," which he dropped with his cousin Playboi Carti last year, Uno's been releasing music since he was in high school. He began rapping in the ninth grade -- a "nice hobby," as he calls it -- and even formed a group with Carti at one point called TFZ. Once he debuted his first song, "I Doubt It," during his senior year, Uno knew he really had to "go hard" with his music career.
A year after he graduated high school, the self-proclaimed "young O.G." went to the Art Institute to study audio engineering. School wasn't his thing so he only lasted a semester before calling it quits. Lucky for him, this was around the time he dropped "Parkin' Lot Pimpin'" in 2015, and began getting calls to perform shows outside of Atlanta.
Two mixtapes later, and Uno The Activist is proving to be no flash in the pan. His debut tape, No More Thotties, released in 2015, had just eight tracks but showcased the fact he was riding his own wave with songs like the Shing-produced "Guiseppe Swag." Gift of Gab, which dropped last year, highlighted his growth across 15 songs featuring collaborations from the likes of Thouxanbanfauni, Playboi Carti, Maxo Kream and MadeinTyo, among others. Uno's versatility is his gift. He dances across the beat with his sing-song delivery on "Runnin Runnin Runnin" and plays no games when he flexes his trigger finger ("Bitch I carry shells by the box like some Adidas") on "Whole Thang."
Since then, he's dropped more than a few loosies and his SoundCloud page is steadily racking up plays. Songs like the Thouxanbanfauni-assisted "Parkin' Lot Pimpin'," "Whole Thang" with Playboi Carti and "Every Since" featuring both have crossed one million streams territory. Looks like they've got a rap trifecta as a team.
Now Uno is preparing to drop his next project, Live.Shyne.Die. The effort will reflect his life story and what he's gone through during the past two years -- being shot last October will likely pop up in his rhymes. So what's the message he's trying to send on the new tape? "I'm like saying watch who you keep around you, do what you gotta do 'cause you gonna die so while you live you gotta shine," he tells XXL. "Sometimes I feel like singing, sometimes I feel like rapping. I'm just taking people into my world. All I really wanna do is inspire and motivate."
Get to know more about Uno The Activist's rise to hip-hop acclaim in XXL's The Break.
Age: 20
Hometown: Atlanta
I grew up listening to: "I grew up listening to a lot of Andre 3000, a lot of Lil Wayne. OutKast in general. My dad used to always play 8Ball. 8Ball and MJG. One day my friend gave me a CD and it had like four songs on there. Two of them were Mike Jones, one was Paul Wall and the other was Sammie the singer. So when I heard them, when I heard Paul Wall and Mike Jones, these songs I never heard before.
"Like these songs ain't the biggest songs that everybody knew. These are like real sipping lean sipping songs. So then I started getting into the chopped and screwed wave. That really helped my music."
My style ’s been compared to: "I get [Young] Thug. I get [Lil] Wayne. I get Wayne a lot. I just think like with Thug and Wayne, they versatile as hell, you feel me? And I'm versatile as fuck myself. I guess the way my voice sound on a track. I grew up on Wayne. He played a big influence on my rap career. 'Let the Beat Build,' that was when I was like, God damn, yo I can do this, you feel me? The way Kanye made that beat for him and the way he rode it and how he built it up, like, Damn, that's real artistry. That really like sparked like, Damn, I gotta do this. It made me feel good listening to it so I wanna make other people feel good when I do it."
Most people don ’t know: "I played basketball from fifth grade all the way to 11th grade. I could dance good as fuck. I could dance like Chris Brown if I want to."
My standout records to date have been: "Obviously 'What.' Even though I don't really be getting much credit as I deserve on that muthafucker. That was the most major platform I got. Shout out to [A$AP] Rocky for shooting the video. That's just a big ass song a nigga just made in five minutes. That song is just a hit. We was in a studio in [New] Jersey. There was a mic right here [ points in front of him ], two headphones and me and [Playboi] Carti were like this [ simulates putting his arm around Carti ].
"There's a video out but nobody knew we was making 'What' though. There's a video just show us going back and forth rapping, he doing my ad-libs, I'm doing his ad-libs. We talkin' to each other like, 'Check this out.' That's why I say before my verse, like we was just freestyling. We was just list. Like, 'Check this out' and I started going in like, 'I don't give a fuck/Keep that 40 tucked/Nigga try your luck...' One take, we was just vibin'."
My standout moments to date have been: "I'd say Made in America [performance]. They still show my video 'til this day. I was crowd surfing like I was getting crucified. It was a big moment because I didn't know what Made in America was until I did it [in 2016]. I'm from the South side of Atlanta. Everybody was just telling me like, 'We see you on Tidal, bro. You came so far. Who would imagine you would be doing that shit?'
"Overseas tours, who would imagine that? Twenty years old. That was a standout moment for me. I had a couple standout moments but that was a big one. They had booked Carti at SXSW and I still didn't even know what the fuck that was. They booked him extra early. He's like I'm taking you to Made in America with me. So boom, niggas came out and rocked that. Whenever we perform we just bring so much energy to the crowd."
My goal in hip-hop is: "I know I was put in this world for something. I know it's to influence others. I think God gave me my way doing this through music, you feel me? I'm still young trying to figure out what message I'm supposed to be relaying, you know what I'm saying? I bring versatility. I bring energy. Straight, raw energy, you feel me? Undeniable energy, you feel me? It's undeniable when I make a song.
"When you hear it you gotta move. I don't know, it's like you go into a trance. You gotta move. That's a hit factor for me. My versatility will really be my standout. And I rap better than a lot of these niggas. I know I rap for all the real niggas. I been through a lot of shit too. I just want to let people know they don't really need nobody to be leaning on. In this world, you live alone, you die alone so you really have to get it for yourself. I want everybody to know they can get it for theyself. Of course with the help from loved ones and others. But like, you can do it, bro. You don't have to be one of them bystanders watching. You can be doing it. That's what I stand for. I want everybody to believe in theyself."
I ’m going to be the next: "Mogul. 'Cause I can do it all. That's what I'm going for. I'm trying to be the best in every category there is. That's what I find my end result being. One of the greatest ever, legendary stories."
Follow Uno The Activist on Twitter and SoundCloud.
Standouts:
"What" With Playboi Carti
"My Woe"
"Amazing" With Thouxanbanfauni
"Dirty"
"Whole Thang" Feat. Playboi Carti
"Parkin' Lot Pimpin'" Feat. Thouxanbanfauni
Gift of Gab
No More ThottiesHow The Two Songs From The Breaking Bad Finale Explain Everything By Katey Rich Random Article Blend
Breaking Bad has always had a soft spot for on-the-nose musical choices, from the Breaking Bad, really, could it have ended any different?
You can look at the lyrics from the first verse of the song, the only one we hear in the episode, to see why Vince Gilligan thought it was a perfect pick for playing over the final shot of Walt, dying on the floor of the high-tech chemistry lab built based on his own designs:
Guess I got what I deserved
Kept you waiting there too long, my love
All that time without a word
Didn't know you'd think that I'd forget or I'd regret
The special love I had for you, my baby blue
Walt may have found a way to get his money to his family, gotten some closure with Skyler and a final visit with Holly, and even rescued Jesse, but the true love he was coming back for--whether he knew it or not-- was that baby blue, his signature color and the basis of his empire, the only thing by his side when he died. Even in an episode that gave Walt an
The one other major song of the episode gives it the title,
The song, like "Baby Blue," encourages us to see Walt's meth empire as the girl at the center of a ballad, though since "El Paso" comes at the beginning of the episode we don't necessarily see the connection then. Here's the end of the song, though, if you want to find the parallels to the final moment of the episode:
Something is dreadfully wrong for I feel
A deep burning pain in my side.
Though I am trying
To stay in the saddle,
I'm getting weary,
Unable to ride.
But my love for
Felina is strong and I rise where I've fallen,
Though I am weary I can't stop to rest,
I see the white puff of smoke from the rifle.
I feel the bullet go deep in my chest.
From out of nowhere Felina has found me,
Kissing my cheek as she kneels by my side.
Cradled by two loving arms that I'll die for,
One little kiss and Felina, good-bye.
Walter White lays his bloodied hand on a silver tank used for cooking meth and dies on the floor, surrounded by what's left of his empire. That's the nice thing about chemistry equipment and drugs-- they'll never leave you so long as you keep coming back for them.
has always had a soft spot for on-the-nose musical choices, from the "Crystal Blue Persuasion" meth-cooking montage to the day in the life of the prostitute Wendy set to The Association's "Windy." So while it might have felt a little crushingly obvious when the guitars started up and the line "I guess I got what I deserved" played over Walt's final moments on, really, could it have ended any different?You can look at the lyrics from the first verse of the song, the only one we hear in the episode, to see why Vince Gilligan thought it was a perfect pick for playing over the final shot of Walt, dying on the floor of the high-tech chemistry lab built based on his own designs:Walt may have found a way to get his money to his family, gotten some closure with Skyler and a final visit with Holly, and even rescued Jesse, but the true love he was coming back for--whether he knew it or not-- was that baby blue, his signature color and the basis of his empire, the only thing by his side when he died. Even in an episode that gave Walt an unexpectedly happy ending, the song choice is one final reminder of what had truly driven Walt this entire time, and the reason he was stuck dying in this Nazi-owned meth lab to begin with.The one other major song of the episode gives it the title, "Felina", which is an anagram for "finale" but also the name of the girl at the center of Marty Robbins' "El Paso," a lengthy ballad about a cowboy who loves a girl named Felina and dies as a result. Plenty of people made the connection before the episode aired and some impressive dissections of the potential meanings went online. You hear the song in the very beginning, when Walt steals the Volvo and leaves New Hampshire. You can also hear it again below:The song, like "Baby Blue," encourages us to see Walt's meth empire as the girl at the center of a ballad, though since "El Paso" comes at the beginning of the episode we don't necessarily see the connection then. Here's the end of the song, though, if you want to find the parallels to the final moment of the episode:Walter White lays his bloodied hand on a silver tank used for cooking meth and dies on the floor, surrounded by what's left of his empire. That's the nice thing about chemistry equipment and drugs-- they'll never leave you so long as you keep coming back for them. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topA weekend at the cabin led to a surprise international mystery for one man in Carcross, Yukon, after he discovered a working digital camera in a lake and turned to social media to find its owner.
Gavin Gardiner and his partner had just arrived at their Nares Lake cabin on Oct. 28 when they spotted a camera sitting clear and uncovered in the waters off the beach.
"I actually ended up having to strip down and wade in about 20 feet offshore, and it was there under about five feet of water," said Gardiner.
Gavin Gardiner found the mystery camera and thought, 'let's get a bunch of detectives on it.' (Submitted by Gavin Gardiner)
"Luckily it was a sunny nice day, but it was still late October in the Yukon — so pretty chilly."
The couple left the camera to dry out, and while trying to remove the memory card later that evening, it powered on.
"There was a picture of a couple of canoers that was taken pretty much where the camera had been found," he said. "The date stamp was Aug. 12, so it had obviously been there for a couple months."
Since it wasn't fully dried out, Gardiner shut down the camera. They gave it two more days to dry, then tried again.
"It booted up like a charm," he said. "There was a bit of dust and dirt and sand in the case, but other than that it seems just like new."
There were about 50 photos on the camera. They show a large group of travellers exploring the region — Teslin, Whitehorse and Skagway, Alaska make appearances.
"There's a few pictures of the parking lot at Canadian Tire here in Whitehorse," Gardiner said. "They obviously hiked the Chilkoot Trail. Then it goes down to Bennett, so there's a few photos of them canoeing on Bennett. But most of the photos are actually of ducks or small wildlife that they saw."
One picture on the camera showed a bunch of canoes and gear being loaded onto a White Pass train — a useful clue, as it turned out. (Terry Johnson)
Gardiner says that right from the beginning, they knew it would make a "great post" on the Whitehorse Buy and Sell Facebook group. They had seen others post similar quandaries in the past, and thought it would be a good way to track down the camera's owners.
"Let's get a bunch of detectives on it," he said.
Solving the mystery
Response to the post was almost immediate.
Some people suggested contacting outfitters, Parks Canada, or the White Pass Railroad (one photo shows some of the travellers loading up canoes and gear onto a White Pass train).
Gardiner sent off some emails, and included the photos.
When Gardiner's email appeared in her inbox at the White Pass ticket office, Allyson Nannini quickly got on the case and scanned through her August reservations.
'It felt like a little mystery,' said Allyson Nannini, who works for the White Pass railway. (Submitted by Allyson Nannini)
"It felt like a little mystery," she said.
One reservation, from Aug. 10, jumped out at her: it included 17 canoes, kayaks and gear.
"It was exciting — I immediately recognized it because we don't have a lot of reservations for that much gear," said Nannini.
She knew it was her best bet.
It took a couple of days to get in touch with the man who had made the reservation. The camera wasn't his, he told her, but he knew how to track the owner down.
"[He] said there were a lot of shouts of excitement," recalled Nannini. "It must just make their day."
Finding the shutterbug
Meanwhile, in Anchorage, Terry Johnson was just starting to navigate his way around Facebook.
"I'm kind of a troglodyte when it comes to technology," said the University of Alaska professor.
Last week, he finally created an account for himself — not knowing how useful it would be in just a few days.
Friends started getting in touch. Word was getting through the grapevine, from Facebook to White Pass and finally to him: someone was looking for the owner of a lost camera.
Johnson had lost a camera.
Terry Johnson's 'waterproof' camera. (Gavin Gardiner)
He had bought it just before a big trip last summer to hike the Chilkoot Trail, and paddle in the Yukon. He'd used it a lot, on the trail and on the water, but at some point it fell out of the pocket in his paddling suit.
"So that was that, it was gone," he said. "Nothing to do, didn't have any pictures from the trip."
He was sorry to have lost the photos. He had hiked the Chilkoot Trail 40 years earlier, and this time was very different.
"It seems like the mountains have gotten steeper since then, and the trail has gotten more rugged," he said. "It was a fairly demanding trip for someone in my demographic — my family would have liked to see [the photos]."
'Really heroic'
Eventually, Gardiner managed to get in touch, and told Johnson the story of how he had found and retrieved the camera.
"I thought that was really heroic of him," said Johnson.
Johnson was amazed to hear the camera was still working.
"It was underwater for two and a half months. I think that says something about the gaskets."
Most of all, though, he's blown away by the effort to reunite him with his photos.
"The most amazing thing was that he would have taken the trouble to try to find the owner. And this huge community of people passing messages back and forth eventually got through to me," Johnson said.
"That was the best part."
Johnson says Gardiner has offered to mail the camera, and Johnson said he'd cover the costs. He's also offered to host Gardiner, if he visits Anchorage.
"He could have just said, 'Oh look, I found a camera' and taken it home, and that would have been the end of it," said Johnson.
"But you, you live in a nice country, of nice people."I play with queer country band The Paisley Fields. We are based in NYC and have toured all over the US.
Below are my How-Tos for making a profit on tour.
Keep it small.
The more people you bring, the costlier it’s going to get. Don’t bring a huge crew if you don’t need it. We perform as a 6-7 piece group in New York, and tour as a duo or trio. We only need one vehicle and one hotel room on the road. Pro-Tip - Make sure you’re up front with bookers if the size/setup of your act will be different when you’re on the road.
Make a budget and stick to it.
I like to over-estimate how much we expect to spend on tour. Take into consideration EVERYTHING you’re going to spend. Don’t forget about tolls or other small expenses that add up. Pop those numbers into a spreadsheet, and line that up with how much you expect to make. Know how much $$$$ you need to earn per show to make a profit.
Cut those corners.
Save that stay at the Ritz for the stadium tour you’re doing in a few years. (And don’t forget about your friends The Paisley Fields when you get to the top!) If you can stay with friends or family, do it. Find a points program and stick to it. That has been a huge help to us. There are tons of programs that reward you for frequent stays. Choice Hotels is what we use. Our last two tours earned us $100 in gas cards and a free hotel night. Eat cheap and drink cheap. Venues often offer a comp meal and drinks, or at least a discount. Take advantage of that.
Push that merch.
Make sure your merch display/table is on point, so people notice it. Have enough lighting, so people can see it in the dark. Have quality items for sale. A good gauge is asking yourself if you or your friends would buy what you’re selling. If the answer is no, it’s time to rethink some things. Announce it from the stage, so people know what you’re selling and where they can get it. By the way, our new record Oh These Urban Fences… is out now. We’ve also got t-shirts, shot glasses, bandanas and more. You can get everything at thepaisleyfields.com/store. We accept all major credit cards.
Keep it close.
Draw a circle around your hometown on a map, and hit those cities near you. It saves money on gas and logistically is much easier to play cities where you know you can bring a crowd.
Promote.
I don’t understand why bands don’t do this. It’s not that hard, and it’s so important. Nobody is going to come, if they don’t know you’re there. Send out posters, compile a press list, send out your newsletter and hit up your social media followers. You don’t want to harass people, but you definitely don’t want people saying “I had no idea you were here!”
Get it in writing and don’t play for free.
You are there to do a job, and you deserve to get paid. So many musicians and artists would be happy to play for free because we love what we do. That’s why people so often take advantage of artists. Get your fee in writing, and get that money. Keep a detailed record of everything you make.
Go out, and get it girl!
We will see you on the road in January! Let me know in the comments, if I’ve missed anything. Don’t forget to visit thepaisleyfields.com/store to pick up some paisley swag, or if you need some unique merch ideas for your own band! I’m always happy to answer questions; you can reach me at thepaisleyfields@gmail.com.The CIA released a treasure trove of documents about 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden Wednesday afternoon. His file is 470,000 pages long.
The documents are extensive and reveal a number of details about Bin Laden's personal life and offer intense insight into al Qaeda's operations over the years. Even in hiding, he remained a key player in al Qaeda's leadership, operations and attack planning.
"Today’s release of recovered al-Qa‘ida letters, videos, audio files and other materials provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organization," CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in a statement. "CIA will continue to seek opportunities to share information with the American people consistent with our obligation to protect national security."
More from the CIA:
The CIA today released to the public nearly 470,000 additional files recovered in the May 2011 raid on Usama Bin Ladin’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. CIA Director Mike Pompeo authorized the release in the interest of transparency and to enhance public understanding of al-Qa‘ida and its former leader.
The material contains audio, document, image, video and software operating system files. The material is posted in the original Arabic and in as close to the original form as possible, modified only so the files cannot be edited. Among |
, Idaho.[6] He had four siblings, Rachel M. born September 1882, Daniel M. born January 1884, Mary Elizabeth born February 1886 (all of whom were born in Michigan), and Walter E. born July 1891 in Washington.[3] In 1910, Fred and Caroline Smith and their son Walter were living in the Markham Precinct of Bonner County, Idaho; Fred is listed in census records as a farmer.[7]
Smith worked primarily as a manual laborer until he injured his wrist, at the age of 19, while escaping from a fire. He attended the University of Idaho. (Many years later he would be installed in the 1984 Class of the University of Idaho Alumni Hall of Fame.[8]) He entered its prep school in 1907, and graduated with two degrees in chemical engineering in 1914. He was president of the Chemistry Club, the Chess Club, and the Mandolin and Guitar Club, and captain of the Drill and Rifle Team; he also sang the bass lead in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.[9] His undergraduate thesis was Some Clays of Idaho, co-written with classmate Chester Fowler Smith, who died in California of tuberculosis the following year, after taking a teaching fellowship at Berkeley.[10] Whether the two were related is not known.
On October 5, 1915, in Boise, Idaho[11] he married Jeanne Craig MacDougall, the sister of his college roommate, Allen Scott (Scotty) MacDougall.[12] (Her sister was named Clarissa MacLean MacDougall; the heroine of the Lensman novels would later be named Clarissa MacDougall.) Jeanne MacDougall was born in Glasgow, Scotland; her parents were Donald Scott MacDougall, a violinist, and Jessica Craig MacLean. Her father had moved to Boise when the children were young, and later sent for his family; he died while they were en route in 1905. Jeanne's mother, who remarried businessman and retired politician John F. Kessler in 1914[13] worked at, and later owned, a boarding house on Ridenbaugh Street.
The Smiths had three children:
Roderick N., born June 3, 1918, in the District of Columbia, was employed as a design engineer at Lockheed Aircraft.
Verna Jean (later Verna Smith Trestrail), born August 25, 1920, in Michigan, was his literary executor until her death in 1994. (Her son Kim Trestrail is now the executor. [14] ) Robert A. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday to Verna. [15]
) Robert A. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel to Verna. Clarissa M. (later Clarissa Wilcox), was born December 13, 1921, in Michigan.[16]
Early chemical career and the beginning of Skylark [ edit ]
The Skylark of Space, August 1928 A scene from the first installment of, August 1928
After college, Smith was a junior chemist for the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., developing standards for butter and for oysters.[17] He may have served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War I, but details are unknown.[18] His draft card, partly illegible, seems to show that Smith requested exemption from military service, based on his wife's dependence and on his contribution to the war effort as a civilian chemist.[19]
One evening in 1915, the Smiths were visiting a former classmate from the University of Idaho, Dr. Carl Garby, who had also moved to Washington, D.C. He lived nearby in the Seaton Place Apartments with his wife, Lee Hawkins Garby. A long discussion about journeys into outer space ensued, and it was suggested that Smith should write down his ideas and speculations as a story about interstellar travel. Although he was interested, Smith believed after some thought that some romantic elements would be required and he was uncomfortable with that.
Mrs. Garby offered to take care of the love interest and the romantic dialogue, and Smith decided to give it a try. The sources of inspirations for the main characters in the novel were themselves; the "Seatons" and "Cranes" were based on the Smiths and Garbys, respectively.[20] About one third of The Skylark of Space was completed by the end of 1916, when Smith and Garby gradually abandoned work on it.
Smith earned his master's degree in chemistry from the George Washington University in 1917, studying under Dr. Charles E. Munroe.[5][21][22] Smith completed his PhD in chemical engineering[17] in 1918,[23] with a food engineering focus; his dissertation, The effect of bleaching with oxides of nitrogen upon the baking quality and commercial value of wheat flour, was published in 1919.[24] (Warner and Fleischer give the title The Effect of the Oxides of Nitrogen upon the Carotin Molecule – C40H56, which is difficult to explain. Sam Moskowitz gives the degree date 1919,[17] perhaps reflecting different dates for thesis submission, thesis defense, and degree certification.)
Skylark Three began as Amazing Stories cover story (August 1930) The serial novelbegan ascover story (August 1930)
Spacehounds of IPC was also serialized in Amazing Stories. was also serialized in
Triplanetary was the last of Smith's 1930s novels to be serialized in Amazing Stories; his Lensman novels were published in Astounding Stories. was the last of Smith's 1930s novels to be serialized in; hisnovels were published in
Universe Science Fiction, was novelized by Smith's novelette "Lord Tedric", the cover story in the March 1954 issue of, was novelized by Gordon Eklund nearly 25 years later.
The Galaxy Primes was serialized in Amazing Stories in 1959. Smith's novelwas serialized inin 1959.
Masters of Space. The novel was serialized in If. After E. Everett Evans died in 1958, Smith completed his unfinished novel,. The novel was serialized in
Writing Skylark [ edit ]
In 1919, Smith was hired as chief chemist for F. W. Stock & Sons of Hillsdale, Michigan, at one time the largest family-owned mill east of the Mississippi,[25] working on doughnut mixes.[5]
One evening late in 1919, after moving to Michigan, Smith was baby-sitting (presumably for Roderick) while his wife attended a movie; he resumed work on The Skylark of Space, finishing it in the spring of 1920.[26][27] He submitted it to many book publishers and magazines, spending more in postage than he would eventually receive for its publication. Bob Davis, editor of Argosy, sent an encouraging rejection letter in 1922, saying that he liked the novel personally, but that it was too far out for his readers.[28] (According to Warner, but no other source, Smith began work on the sequel, Skylark III, before the first book was accepted.) Finally, upon seeing the April 1927 issue of Amazing Stories, he submitted it to that magazine; it was accepted, initially for $75, later raised to $125.[29] It was published as a three-part serial in the August to October 1928 issues[1] and it was such a success that managing editor Sloane requested a sequel before the second installment had been published.[30]
Mrs. Garby was not interested in further collaboration, so Smith began work on Skylark Three alone.[31] It was published as another three-part serial, in the August to October 1930 issues of Amazing, introduced as the cover story for August.[1] (In 1930, the Smiths were living in Michigan, at 33 Rippon Avenue in Hillsdale.)[32] This was as far as he had planned to take the Skylark series; it was praised in Amazing's letter column,[33] and he was paid ¾¢ per word, surpassing Amazing's previous record of half a cent.[34]
The early 1930s: between Skylark and Lensman [ edit ]
Smith then began work on what he intended as a new series, starting with Spacehounds of IPC,[35] which he finished in the autumn of 1930.[36] In this novel, he took pains to avoid the scientific impossibilities which had bothered some readers of the Skylark novels.[37] Even in 1938, after he had written Galactic Patrol, Smith considered it his finest work;[36] he later said of it, "This was really scientific fiction; not, like the Skylarks, pseudo-science";[38] and even at the end of his career, he considered it his only work of true science fiction.[39] It was published in the July through September 1931 issues of Amazing, with Sloane making unauthorized changes.[40] Fan letters in the magazine complained about the novel's containment within the solar system, and Sloane sided with the readers. So when Harry Bates, editor of Astounding Stories, offered Smith 2¢/word—payable on publication—for his next story, he agreed; this meant that it could not be a sequel to Spacehounds.[34]
This book would be Triplanetary, "in which scientific detail would not be bothered about, and in which his imagination would run riot."[36] Indeed, characters within the story point out its psychological[41] and scientific[42] implausibilities, and sometimes even seem to suggest self-parody.[43] At other times, they are conspicuously silent about obvious implausibilities.[44][45] The January 1933 issue of Astounding announced that Triplanetary would appear in the March issue, and that issue's cover illustrated a scene from the story, but Astounding's financial difficulties prevented the story from appearing.[46] Smith then submitted the manuscript to Wonder Stories, whose new editor, 17-year-old Charles D. Hornig, rejected it, later boasting about the rejection in a fanzine.[47] He finally submitted it to Amazing, which published it beginning in January 1934, but for only half a cent a word. Shortly after it was accepted, F. Orlin Tremaine, the new editor of the revived Astounding, offered one cent a word for Triplanetary; when he learned that he was too late, he suggested a third Skylark novel instead.[48]
In the winter of 1933–34, Smith worked on The Skylark of Valeron, but he felt that the story was getting out of control; he sent his first draft to Tremaine, with a distraught note asking for suggestions. Tremaine accepted the rough draft for $850, and announced it in the June 1934 issue, with a full-page editorial and a three-quarter-page advertisement. The novel was published in the August 1934 through February 1935 issues.[1] Astounding's circulation rose by 10,000 for the first issue, and its two main competitors, Amazing and Wonder Stories, fell into financial difficulties, both skipping issues within a year.[49]
The Lensman series [ edit ]
In January 1936, a time period where he was already an established science-fiction writer, he took a job for salary plus profit-sharing, as a food technologist (a cereal chemist) at the Dawn Doughnut Company of Jackson, Michigan.[50] This initially entailed almost a year's worth of 18-hour days and seven-day workweeks. Individuals who knew Smith confirmed that he had a role in developing mixes for doughnuts and other pastries, but the contention that he developed the first process for making powdered sugar adhere to doughnuts cannot be substantiated.[51] Smith was reportedly dislocated from his job at Dawn Doughnuts by prewar rationing in early 1940.[52]
Smith had been contemplating writing a "space-police novel" since early 1927;[53] once he had "the Lensmen's universe fairly well set up", he reviewed his science-fiction collection for "cops-and-robbers" stories. He cites Clinton Constantinescue's "War of the Universe" as a negative example, and Starzl and Williamson as positive ones.[54] Tremaine responded extremely positively to a brief description of the idea.[55]
Once Dawn Doughnuts became profitable in late 1936, Smith wrote an 85-page outline for what became the four core Lensman novels; in early 1937, Tremaine committed to buying them.[56] Segmenting the story into four novels required considerable effort to avoid dangling loose ends; Smith cites Edgar Rice Burroughs as a negative example.[55] After the outline was complete, he wrote a more detailed outline of Galactic Patrol, plus a detailed graph of its structure, with "peaks of emotional intensity and the valleys of characterization and background material." He notes, however, that he was never able to follow any of his outlines at all closely, as the "characters get away from me and do exactly as they damn please."[57] After completing the rough draft of Galactic Patrol, he wrote the concluding chapter of the last book in the series, Children of the Lens.[58] Galactic Patrol was published in the September 1937 through February 1938 issues of Astounding; unlike the revised book edition, it was not set in the same universe as Triplanetary.[59]
Gray Lensman, the fourth book in the series, appeared in Astounding's October 1939 through January 1940 issues. (Note that the frequent British spelling "grey" is simply a recurrent mistake, starting with the cover of the first installment; Moskowitz's usage, "The Grey Lensman", is even harder to justify.[60]) Gray Lensman (and its cover illustration) was extremely well received. Campbell's editorial in the December issue suggested that the October issue was the best issue of Astounding ever, and Gray Lensman was first place in the Analytical Laboratory statistics "by a lightyear", with three runners-up in a distant tie for second place.[61] The cover was also praised by readers in Brass Tacks, and Campbell noted, "We got a letter from E. E. Smith saying he and Hubert Rogers agreed on how Kinnison looked."[62]
Smith was the guest of honor at Chicon I, the second World Science Fiction Convention, held in Chicago over Labor Day weekend 1940,[63] giving a speech on the importance of science fiction fandom entitled "What Does This Convention Mean?"[64] He attended the convention's masquerade as C. L. Moore's Northwest Smith, and met fans living near him in Michigan, who would later form the Galactic Roamers, which previewed and advised him on his future work.[65]
Smith worked for the US Army between 1941 and 1945. An extended segment in the novel version of Triplanetary, set during World War II, suggests intimate familiarity with explosives and munitions manufacturing. Some biographers cite as fact that, just as Smith's protagonist in this segment lost his job over failure to approve substandard munitions, Smith did, as well. Smith began work for the J. W. Allen Company (a manufacturer of doughnut and frosting mixes) in 1946 and worked for them until his professional retirement in 1957.[52]
Retirement and late writing [ edit ]
After Smith retired, his wife and he lived in Clearwater, Florida,[21] in the fall and winter, driving the smaller of their two trailers to Seaside, Oregon, each April, often stopping at science fiction conventions on the way. (Smith did not like to fly.[66]) In 1963, he was presented the inaugural First Fandom Hall of Fame award at the 21st World Science Fiction Convention in Washington, D.C.[21] Some of his biography is captured in an essay by Robert A. Heinlein, which was reprinted in the collection Expanded Universe in 1980. A more detailed, although allegedly[67] error-ridden biography is in Sam Moskowitz's Seekers of Tomorrow.
Robert Heinlein and Smith were friends. (Heinlein dedicated his 1958 novel Methuselah's Children "To Edward E. Smith, PhD".[68]) Heinlein reported that E. E. Smith perhaps took his "unrealistic" heroes from life, citing as an example the extreme competence of the hero of Spacehounds of IPC. He reported that E. E. Smith was a large, blond, athletic, very intelligent, very gallant man, married to a remarkably beautiful, intelligent, red-haired woman named MacDougal (thus perhaps the prototypes of 'Kimball Kinnison' and 'Clarissa MacDougal'). In Heinlein's essay, he reports that he began to suspect Smith might be a sort of "superman" when he asked Smith for help in purchasing a car. Smith tested the car by driving it on a back road at illegally high speeds with their heads pressed tightly against the roof columns to listen for chassis squeaks by bone conduction—a process apparently improvised on the spot.
In his nonseries novels written after his professional retirement, Galaxy Primes, Subspace Explorers, and Subspace Encounter, E. E. Smith explores themes of telepathy and other mental abilities collectively called "psionics", and of the conflict between libertarian and socialistic/communistic influences in the colonization of other planets. Galaxy Primes was written after critics such as Groff Conklin and P. Schuyler Miller in the early '50s accused his fiction of being passé, and he made an attempt to do something more in line with the concepts about which Astounding editor John W. Campbell encouraged his writers to make stories. Despite this, it was rejected by Campbell, and it was eventually published by Amazing Stories in 1959. His late story "The Imperial Stars" (1964), featuring a troupe of circus performers involved in sabotage in a galactic empire, recaptured some of the atmosphere from his earlier works and was intended as the first in a new series, with outlines of later parts rumored to still exist.[69]
The fourth Skylark novel, Skylark DuQuesne, ran in the June to October 1965 issues of If, beginning once again as the cover story. Editor Frederik Pohl introduced it with a one-page summary of the previous stories, which were all at least 30 years old.[1]
Lord Tedric [ edit ]
Smith published two novelettes entitled "Tedric" in Other Worlds Science Fiction Stories (1953) and "Lord Tedric" in Universe Science Fiction (1954). These were almost completely forgotten until after Smith's death. In 1975, a compendium of Smith's works was published, entitled The Best of E. E. "Doc" Smith, containing these two short stories, excerpts from several of his major works, and another short story first published in Worlds of If in 1964 entitled "The Imperial Stars".
In Smith's original short stories, Tedric was a smith (both blacksmith and whitesmith) residing in a small town near a castle in a situation roughly equivalent to England of the 1200s. He received instruction in advanced metallurgy from a time-traveler who wanted to change the situation in his own time by modifying certain events of the past. From this instruction, he was able to build better suits of armor and help defeat the villains of the piece. Unlike Eklund's later novels based on these short stories, the original Tedric never left his own time or planet, and fought purely local enemies of his own time period.
A few years later and 13 years after Smith's death, Verna Smith arranged with Gordon Eklund to publish another novel of the same name about the same fictional character, introducing it as "a new series conceived by E. E. 'Doc' Smith". Eklund later went on to publish the other novels in the series, one or two under the pseudonym "E. E. 'Doc' Smith" or "E. E. Smith". The protagonist possesses heroic qualities similar to those of the heroes in Smith's original novels and can communicate with an extra-dimensional race of beings known as the Scientists, whose archenemy is Fra Villion, a mysterious character described as a dark knight, skilled in whip-sword combat, and evil genius behind the creation of a planetoid-sized "iron sphere" armed with a weapon capable of destroying planets. As a result, Smith is believed by many to be the unacknowledged progenitor of themes that would appear in Star Wars. In fact, however, these appear in the sequels written by others after Smith's death.
Critical opinion [ edit ]
Smith's novels are generally considered to be classic space operas,[70] and he is sometimes called the first of the three "novas" of 20th-century science fiction (with Stanley G. Weinbaum and Robert A. Heinlein as the second and third novas).[71]
Heinlein credited him for being his main influence:
I have learned from many writers—from Verne and Wells and Campbell and Sinclair Lewis, et al.—but I have learned more from you than from any of the others and perhaps more than for all the others put together...[72]
Smith expressed a preference for inventing fictional technologies that were not strictly impossible (so far as the science of the day was aware) but highly unlikely: "the more highly improbable a concept is—short of being contrary to mathematics whose fundamental operations involve no neglect of infinitesimals—the better I like it" was his phrase.[73]
Lensman was one of five finalists when the 1966 World Science Fiction Convention judged the Isaac Asimov's Foundation the Best All-Time Series.[74]
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Smith in 2004.[75]
Extending the Lensman universe [ edit ]
Vortex Blasters (also known as Masters of the Vortex) is set in the same universe as the Lensman novels. It is an extension to the main storyline which takes place between Galactic Patrol and Children of the Lens, and introduces a different type of psionics from that used by the Lensmen. Spacehounds of IPC is not a part of the series, despite occasional erroneous statements to the contrary. (It is listed as a novel in the series in some paperback editions of the 1970s.)
Robert A. Heinlein reported that Smith had planned a seventh Lensman novel, set after the events described in Children of the Lens, which was unpublishable at that time (the early 1960s).[76] Smith told Heinlein that the new novel proceeded inexorably from matters left unresolved in Children, a statement easily supported by a careful reading of Children. Careful searches by people who knew Smith well (including Frederik Pohl, Smith's editor, and Verna Smith Trestrail, Smith's daughter) have failed to locate any material related to such a story.[citation needed] Smith apparently never wrote any of it down.
On July 14, 1965, barely a month before his death, Smith gave written permission to William B. Ellern to continue the Lensman series, which led to the publishing of "Moon Prospector" in 1965 and New Lensman in 1976. Smith's long-time friend, Dave Kyle, wrote three authorized added novels in the Lensman series that provided background about the major nonhuman Lensmen: Dragon Lensman, Lensman from Rigel, and Z-Lensman.
Influence on science and the military [ edit ]
Smith was widely read by scientists and engineers from the 1930s into the 1970s. Literary precursors of ideas which arguably entered the military-scientific complex include SDI (Triplanetary), stealth (Gray Lensman), the OODA loop, C3-based warfare, and the AWACS (Gray Lensman).
An inarguable influence was described in a June 11, 1947, letter[77] to Doc from John W. Campbell (the editor of Astounding, where much of the Lensman series was originally published). In it, Campbell relayed Captain Cal Laning's[78] acknowledgment that he had used Smith's ideas for displaying the battlespace situation (called the "tank" in the stories) in the design of the United States Navy's ships' Combat Information Centers. "The entire set-up was taken specifically, directly, and consciously from the Directrix. In your story, you reached the situation the Navy was in—more communication channels than integration techniques to handle it. You proposed such an integrating technique and proved how advantageous it could be. You, sir, were 100% right. As the Japanese Navy—not the hypothetical Boskonian fleet—learned at an appalling cost."
One underlying theme of the later Lensman novels was the difficulty in maintaining military secrecy—as advanced capabilities are revealed, the opposing side can often duplicate them. This point was also discussed extensively by John Campbell in his letter to Doc.[79] Also in the later Lensman novels, and particular after the "Battle of Klovia" broke the Boskonian's power base at the end of Second Stage Lensmen, the Boskonian forces and particularly Kandron of Onlo reverted to terroristic tactics to attempt to demoralize Civilization, thus providing an early literary glimpse into this modern problem of both law enforcement and military response. The use of "Vee-two" gas by the pirates attacking the Hyperion in Triplanetary (in both magazine and book appearances) also suggests anticipation of the terrorist uses of poison gases. (But note that Smith lived through WW I, when the use of poison gas on troops was well known to the populace; extending the assumption that pirates might use it if they could obtain it was no great extension of the present-day knowledge.)
The beginning of the story Skylark of Space describes in relative detail the protagonist's research into separation of platinum group residues, subsequent experiments involving electrolysis, and the discovery of a process evocative of cold fusion (over 50 years before Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann). He describes a nuclear process yielding large amounts of energy and producing only negligible radioactive waste—which then goes on to form the basis of the adventures in the Skylark books. Smith's general description of the process of discovery is highly evocative of Röntgen's descriptions of his discovery of the X-ray.
Another theme of the Skylark novels involves precursors of modern information technology. The humanoid aliens encountered in the first novel have developed a primitive technology called the "mechanical educator", which allows direct conversion of brain waves into intelligible thought for transmission to others or for electrical storage. By the third novel in the series, Skylark of Valeron, this technology has grown into an "Electronic Brain" which is capable of computation on all "bands" of energy—electromagnetism, gravity, and "tachyonic" energy and radiation bands included. This is itself derived from a discussion of reductionist atomic theory in the second novel, Skylark Three, which brings to mind modern quark and sub-quark theories of elementary particle physics.
Literary influences [ edit ]
In his 1947 essay "The Epic of Space", Smith listed (by last name only) authors he enjoyed reading: John W. Campbell, L. Sprague de Camp, Robert A. Heinlein, Murray Leinster, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt (specifically The Ship of Ishtar, The Moon Pool, The Snake Mother, and Dwellers in the Mirage, as well as the character John Kenton), C. L. Moore (specifically "Jirel of Joiry"), Roman Frederick Starzl, John Taine, A. E. van Vogt, Stanley G. Weinbaum (specifically "Tweerl"[80]), and Jack Williamson. In a passage on his preparation for writing the Lensman novels, he notes that Clinton Constantinescu's "War of the Universe" was not a masterpiece,[81][82] but says that Starzl and Williamson were masters; this suggests that Starzl's Interplanetary Flying Patrol may have been an influence on Smith's Triplanetary Patrol, later the Galactic Patrol. The feeding of the Overlords of Delgon upon the life-force of their victims at the end of chapter five of Galactic Patrol seems a clear allusion to chapter 29 of The Moon Pool, Merritt's account of the Taithu and the power of love in chapters 29 and 34 also bear some resemblance to the end of Children of the Lens.[83] Smith also mentions Edgar Rice Burroughs, complaining about loose ends at the end of one of his novels.
Smith acknowledges the help of the Galactic Roamers writers' workshop, plus E. Everett Evans, Ed Counts, an unnamed aeronautical engineer, Dr. James Enright, and Dr. Richard W. Dodson. Smith's daughter, Verna, lists the following authors as visitors to the Smith household in her youth: Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, Heinlein, Dave Kyle, Bob Tucker, Williamson, Pohl, Merritt, and the Galactic Roamers. Smith cites Bigelow's Theoretical Chemistry–Fundamentals as a justification for the possibility of the inertialess drive. Also, an extended reference is made to Rudyard Kipling's "Ballad of Boh Da Thone" in Gray Lensman (chapter 22, "Regeneration", in a conversation between Kinnison and MacDougall).
Sam Moskowitz's biographical essay on Smith in Seekers of Tomorrow states that he regularly read Argosy magazine, and everything by H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Moskowitz also notes that Smith's "reading enthusiasms included poetry, philosophy, ancient and medieval history, and all of English literature".[84] (Smith's grandson notes that he spoke, and sang, German.[85]) The influence of these is not readily apparent, except in the Roman section of Triplanetary, and in the impeccable but convoluted grammar of Smith's narration. Some influence of 19th-century philosophy of language may be detectable in the account in Galactic Patrol of the Lens of Arisia as a universal translator, which is reminiscent of Frege's strong realism about Sinn, that is, thought or sense.
Both Moskowitz and Smith's daughter Verna Smith Trestrail report that Smith had a troubled relationship with John Campbell, the editor of Astounding.[citation needed] Smith's most successful works were published under Campbell, but the degree of influence is uncertain. The original outline for the Lensman series had been accepted by F. Orlin Tremaine,[58] and Smith angered Campbell by showing loyalty to Tremaine at his new magazine, Comet, when he sold him "The Vortex Blaster" in 1941.[86] Campbell's announcement of Children of the Lens, in 1947, was less than enthusiastic.[87] Campbell later said that he published it only reluctantly,[88] though he praised it privately,[89] and bought little from Smith thereafter.
Derivative works and influence on popular culture [ edit ]
Fictional appearances [ edit ]
Doc himself appears as a character in the 2006 novel The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont. The novel describes friendship and rivalry among pulp writers of the 1930s. He also appears as "Lensman Ted Smith" in the 1980 novel The Number of the Beast and as "Commander Ted Smith" in the 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, both by Robert A. Heinlein. It is also suggested that he was one of the inspirations for Heinlein's character Lazarus Long. Christopher Nuttall incorporates a fictional quote from “Edward E. Smith, Professor of Sociology” in his military sci-fi book, “No Worse Enemy”.
Bibliography [ edit ]
Because he died in 1965, the works of E. E. Smith are now public domain in countries where the term of copyright lasts 50 years after the death of the author, or less; generally this does not include works first published posthumously. Works first published before 1923, are also public domain in the United States. Additionally, a number of the author's works have become public domain in the United States due to non-renewal of copyright.
Subspace [ edit ]Updated at 3:23 p.m.
Amtrak said Wednesday afternoon that it had not made a decision about service for Thursday along the Northeast Corridor and warned that service levels of trains running along that route could be impacted for the rest of the week.
Early Wednesday, Amtrak had made several changes to its service in the Northeast Corridor after the train derailment in Philadelphia that left seven people dead.
Highlights:
*Amtrak will offer modified service between Washington and Philadelphia.
*No Amtrak service between New York and Philadelphia.
*Service will also be modified between New York and Boston and between Harrisburg and Philadelphia.
*New Jersey Transit will honor Amtrak tickets between New York City and Trenton.
The Northeast Regional Train 188, traveling between D.C. and New York, derailed Tuesday night around 9:30 p.m. At least six people are dead and 140 have been hospitalized. The train service said about 238 people and five crew members were on board.
[6 dead after Amtrak train from D.C. derails in Philadelphia]
Amtrak riders should check the train service’s Web site for updates, as it is expected to make changes throughout the day and possibly throughout the week while authorities deal with the wreckage. The train service also encouraged riders to check its blog for updates on changes to schedules and warned that conditions could change.
In a statement, Amtrak said it “regrets any inconvenience” and expressed its sympathies for those who were killed or injured in the crash.
Transportation officials said they expect other modes, including buses and airplanes, between D.C. and New York to be swarmed by riders trying to make changes to their schedules for Wednesday and the rest of the week.
Early Wednesday morning, the Amtrak’s 1-800 number (800-USA-RAIL) for checking on train service had long waits.
An Amtrak official said decisions are expected to be made later on Wednesday as to how service will run along the Northeast Corridor for the rest of the week.
On Wednesday morning, some passengers were trying to make alternate arrangements to get from D.C. to cities along the Northeast Corridor.
Jeffrey Goldfarb was about to board a 7:25 a.m. train at Union Station to New York City when an Amtrak employee announced that all trains traveling north of Philadelphia were canceled.
“We’ll get you to Philly and then you’re on your own,” the employee said.
“I guess I’ll call my clients and tell them I’m not coming,” said Goldfarb, who works at a public relations firm and frequently takes the train to New York.
He said he still feels trains are a safe mode of traveling, and this crash doesn’t change that for him.
“I feel it’s probably a rare occurrence,” he said.
Another Amtrak rider — Kate McSweeny — said she had planned to travel from D.C. where she works as a lawyer to New York on Wednesday but decided to cancel her trip after the derailment. When she checked early Wednesday morning on the status of her 5:30 a.m. train from Union Station in the District to New York, it read “status unavailable.” And she considered flying on a shuttle on either Delta or US Airways but a ticket was averaging about $1,300 roundtrip.
“I was going to a meeting and was really looking forward to it,” said McSweeny, who takes the train from D.C. to the northeast area several times a month. “I really feel for those people on the train.”Well you see, women are not native to temperate climates, so if you live in the US, UK Ireland etc... you'll need to go to a pet store in order to purchase the proper dietary supplements. Here's what she'll need.
About one kilo of chocolate daily. The sugars keep their metabolisms going. Without constant chocolate intake, she could suffer a mental break-down and kill you in your sleep.
Diamonds are another staple in the woman diet. While many men believe women like to wear them to show their dominance over other women, they are indeed used as food. That's why you pay so much money for them. The jewelry companies know that without their diamonds, the women will die.
Finally, you'll need children. It's a little-known fact that women eat their young. That's why many women feel the urge to procreate followed by severe depression. The depression is a mechanism within the woman's brain used to justify the cannibalism of the child.
That's all you need to know as far as food goes. Just remember that most states still have leash laws with regard to women. Also, buy her a feedbag. It may seem big now, but after about twenty years she'll grow into it.
flibbitygibet · 1 decade ago 3 Thumbs up 0 Thumbs down Report AbuseThe Lower East Side Coffee Shop (via ShotBySusan's Flickr)
Two Chinese-American women eating at a Manhattan diner early Sunday morning said a man called them bitches and whores and told them to "go back to Tokyo" after one of the women asked him to lower his voice while he complained about Vice President-elect Mike Pence's cold reception at a weekend performance of Hamilton: An American Musical. The 56-year-old man was later arrested for pepper-spraying another diner patron in the eyesaccording to one witness, because that patron had spoken up in defense of the women.
Sally Wen Mao, 29, said she told the man to lower his voice around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, soon after he entered Lower East Side Coffee Shop on 14th Street, where she and her friend Jen were eating. At the time, he was loudly complaining about the "racist" cast of the Broadway musical Hamilton, and the audience members who had booed VP-elect Pence on Friday night.
"My friend and I were there eating our meal and then he kind of sat behind us and was having a really loud conversation," said Mao, a poet from Brooklyn. "He was very animated, and he was denouncing the Hamilton castthe whole incident with Pence."
After the Hamilton performance in question, a video of actor Brandon Dixon urging Pence to "uphold American values" for all Americans went viral. Dixon said that he and his fellow cast members "are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us."
Mao's companion Jen (she declined to provide her last name for professional reasons) told Gothamist on Monday that the man at the diner was accusing the production of hypocrisy: of preaching diversity after issuing a casting-call for non-white actors. His argument was apparently in reference to a recent conspiratorial headline from the alt-right website Breitbart: "FLASHBACK: 'Hamilton' Cast Lectures VP-Elect on 'Diversity,' But Issued 'Whites Need Not Apply' Casting Call."
Mao said she spoke |
despite an earlier setback, when Albania rejected a request to host the destruction.
Where the stockpile will be transported to be destroyed remains unclear.
'Clear roadmap'
A statement on the OPCW website said that under the plan "Syrian chemical weapons will be transported for destruction outside its territory to ensure their destruction in the'safest and soonest manner', and no later than June 30th 2014".
The "most critical" chemicals will be removed by 31 December and all other declared chemical substances by 5 February, except for isopropanol - one of two key ingredients for the nerve agent, sarin.
Albania and chemical weapons The ex-communist state declared possession of 16 tonnes of mustard gas to the OPCW
It completed destruction of the declared weapons in July 2007
When further chemical agents were discovered in September 2011, they were destroyed within a year Source: OPCW Q&A: Syrian disarmament deal
The statement read: "Syrian declared chemical weapons facilities will undergo sequenced destruction from 15 December to 15 March, according to a risk-based criterion."
Welcoming the adoption of the plan, OPCW director general Ahmet Umzucu said: "The plan provides a clear roadmap. It sets ambitious milestones to be met by the government of Syria.
"This next phase will be the most challenging and its timely execution will require the existence of a secure environment for the verification and transport of chemical weapons."
Friday's 41-member OPCW executive council meeting in The Hague did not detail where the weapons would be destroyed, following Albania's decision to reject hosting the destruction of the arsenal on its soil.
The Balkan nation had recently destroyed its own chemical stockpile, and the US had asked it to host the dismantling of Syria's weapons.
But following days of protests in the capital, Tirana, and other cities, Prime Minister Edi Rama said in a televised address: "It is impossible for Albania to get involved in this operation."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Tirana to protest against hosting the destruction
However, the prime minister attacked the Albanian opposition for having criticised his government's willingness to consider the idea.
The US embassy in Tirana said in a statement that it respected the government's decision, adding that America "will continue to work with allies and partners as well as the OPCW and the United Nations to ensure the elimination of Syria's chemical weapons programme".
France and Belgium have been named as possible alternative locations for destroying Syria's estimated 1,000 tonnes of chemical arms.
Norway has pledged to send a civilian cargo ship and a navy frigate to Syrian ports to pick up the weapons and carry them elsewhere for destruction.
However it said that it could not destroy the weapons on its own soil because it lacked the expertise.
The OPCW confirmed last month that it had destroyed all Syria's declared chemical weapons production facilities, ahead of a 1 November deadline.
The weapons themselves had been placed under seal, it said.
Sigrid Kaag, the joint OPCW-UN mission coordinator in Syria, told Friday's OPCW meeting that inspectors were working "in an active war zone, in an extreme security situation".In the latest issue of car magazine, the editors are claiming to have received official images of the upcoming 2014 BMW M3 well before its expected official launch at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show where it will be previewed as a slightly disguised prototype version of the production car.
From the following images, the car pictured doesn’t appear to be a rendering based purely on the details and reflections that can be seen on it, and even though it’s currently unclear how car magazine managed to attain the photos, they definitely appear very real to us!
Finished in a bright shade of yellow and completed with four doors, this is the sedan variant of the upcoming M3 while a coupe version is also expected to be released alongside the sedan dubbed the M4.Event Registration
If this event requires library staff to register you, visit or call the library to register. If a registration form is below this event, you may also register by filling out the form and clicking on “Complete Registration” at the bottom of the screen. Listen Here: A Lunch Break Story Time for Adults Email a friend Notify me Print Download to calendar Remind Me
Event Type: Adult Program
Age Group(s): Adults
Date: 4/3/2015
Start Time: 12:10 PM
End Time: 12:50 PM
Description: Corey Snow, professional audiobook narrator and voice actor, will entertain and inspire us with selections from the wide, wonderful world of short fiction. Bring your lunch or your knitting, but most importantly, bring your imagination. In April Corey will be reading "Orientation" and "Shakers" by Daniel Orozco from his collection "Orientation: And Other Stories." Library: Olympia Timberland Library Map to the Olympia Library
Link: Corey Snow— A Morris County family court judge who was accused of
against a man involved in a divorce proceeding has received a private reprimand from the state Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct. Tobia Ippolito of Parsippany filed the grievance against Superior Court Judge Philip Maenza after the judge in 2012 called Ippolito and his wife "tomatoes" and was also recorded calling someone a "jerk," said he "hated" him and wished he were "incarcerated." Ippolito said he believed the judge was referring to him. In an Oct. 24 letter to Ippolito, the committee's counsel, Candace Moody, informed him that "after completing a careful review of your grievance, the committee has decided to issue a private letter of reprimand to Judge Maenza." The letter, labeled "confidential," was obtained by New Jersey Advance Media. Under court rules, a private reprimand represents what's probably the least harsh penalty that could be imposed on a judge. The committee may issue a private reprimand for actions that do not "constitute conduct for which there is probable cause that public discipline should be imposed but that is conduct... that would reflect unfavorably on the judicial office if it were to become habitual or more substantial in character," according to court rules. With the private letter unavailable under a confidentiality rule set by the state Supreme Court, no further information was available on the committee's reasoning. Under court rules, "the reprimand is the sanction" against the judge and no further action is to be taken, explained state judiciary spokeswoman Tamara Kendig. Penalties for misconduct by judges can be as severe as suspension or removal from the bench. Under the rules set for the committee, it may launch investigations in any of six areas, including "conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice," which would fit Ippolito's grievance. Ippolito, who is Italian-American, claimed that Maenza, who is also of Italian descent, made a "derogatory" remark about his Italian background when he said in court on Aug. 17, 2012 that Ippolito and his wife, Lisa, are the "tomatoes in the case." Lisa Ippolito filed for the divorce. And during a break in proceedings on Sept. 10, 2012, Maenza made the second set of remarks in a recorded conversation with a male, perhaps a court employee. Maenza said "The sheriff came with the guy." The man replied, "Oh, he was incarcerated." Maenza then said, "Well, I wish he was. He was a jerk. I hated him." Ippolito claimed in court papers that the judge was referring to him and said Maenza should be removed from the case because of his "blatant hostility" and "blatant hatred" toward him. A week after
in September 2013, Maenza granted Ippolito's motion and removed himself from the case. In his ruling, Manezna said "there was no record of any bias or racial hatred" in the case
"to maintain respect for the judiciary." Maenza denied calling Ippolito a "tomato" when he said he and his wife were "the tomatoes in the case" and said he was using a food-preparation analogy to explain the complex process of divorce litigation. "You're the tomatoes in the case," Maenza said. "The lawyers are the strainer. I'm the bottle." In the ruling, Maenza denied he was referring to Ippolito and said he was talking about "another individual completely unrelated to this case" when he called someone a "jerk," said he "hated" him and wished he were incarcerated. Asked Friday about the reprimand, Maenza declined to comment and referred a reporter to the court administrator's office in Morristown. Rashad Shabaka-Burns, the trial court administrator for the Morris-Sussex vicinage, said he had no comment on the reprimand. Ippolito had mixed feelings about the committee's ruling. Ippolito said it "bolsters my allegations" but does nothing to restore rulings by the judge that Ippolito felt were financially unfair — ruling that he said the new judge in the case, Michael Hubner, has not reversed. Greg Roberts, president of the Family Civil Liberties Union, a group that advocates for those involved in family court litigation, dismissed the private reprimand as insignificant. "This is nothing more than a slap on the wrist for a friend in the industry," Roberts said.
Ben Horowitz may be reached at bhorowitz@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @HorowitzBen. Find NJ.com on Facebook.Show full PR text
Prince Carl Philip Bernadotte is going to race in the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship, STCC, next year for Volvo Polestar Racing
"I am really happy and excited ahead of this new program. This is for sure going to be the greatest challenge so far in my racing career," said Prince Carl Philip.
The Prince is going to drive a fifth Volvo S60 alongside already confirmed Volvo drivers Fredrik Ekblom, Thed Björk, Robert Dahlgren and Linus Ohlsson.
"Our domestic market and motorsport are our two core issues. That is why we are very happy to be able to extend our motorsport program in STCC together with Prince Carl Philip," said Derek Crabb, head of Volvo Motorsport.
The program for Prince Carl Philip with Volvo Polestar Racing spans over several years where the plan for the Prince is to continue his development as racing driver by matching him against the very elite of Swedish racing drivers.
"It is inspiring to see how serious Prince Carl Philip is with his motorsport career and we think that Volvo Polestar can help him to take the next step up. The development he has done so far as a driver is impressive, especially keeping in mind how late he started compared to his competitors who have driven gokarts since they were kids," said Christian Dahl, Team Manager of Volvo Polestar Racing.
Prince Carl Philip made his racing debut in Porsche Carrera Cup Scandinavia in 2008 and he has since then steadily developed as a racing driver, most recently competing in Swedish GT 2012 where he finished fourth overall in the GTB class.
"I want to give a big thanks to Janne "Flash" Nilsson and Flash Engineering for all the help during the past seasons. It has been invaluable, providing me with a lot of great memories and experiences. I am grateful that Janne believed in me as an unexperienced driver and helped me to develop as a racing driver, a dream that I have had since I was a kid. STCC and the cars there will be completely new for me and I am humble before my task. There is no tougher championship in Sweden and at the same time as I have respect for it, it motivates me greatly," said Prince Carl Philip.
Racing Career - Prince Carl Philip Bernadotte
2008 - Porsche Carrera Cup – 27th
2009 - Porsche Carrera Cup – 15th
2010 - Porsche Carrera Cup – 11th
2010 - Porsche GT3 Endurance – 1st
2011 - Porsche Carrera Cup – 11th
2012 - Swedish GT GTB – 4thBreaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
April 26, 2016, 10:47 AM GMT / Updated April 26, 2016, 10:47 AM GMT / Source: Reuters By Reuters
BP said on Tuesday it could cut capital spending further after reporting an 80 percent drop in profits in the first quarter of the year, when oil prices touched a near 13-year low.
The British oil company, the first major to report on one of the weakest quarters, lowered its 2016 spending target to $17 billion, from $17-19 billion, and said the marker could fall to $15-$17 billion next year if oil prices remain weak.
A British Petroleum (BP) logo is seen at a gas station in south London. REUTERS/Toby Melville
These cost reductions have enabled the oil producer to forecast it can balance its books at an oil price of $50-55 a barrel in 2017, it said, down from $60 previously eyed.
BP shares opened 3 percent higher on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday, the second-biggest gainer in the blue-chip FTSE 100 index.
Chief Executive Bob Dudley said he expected crude prices to recover towards the end of the year as producers halt work on fields and fuel demand remains robust.
"Market fundamentals continue to suggest that the combination of robust demand and weak supply growth will move global oil markets closer into balance by the end of the year," Dudley said.
The BP CEO suffered an embarrassing shareholder revolt earlier this month when investors rejected his $20 million remuneration package.
Faced with the worst downturn in the oil sector in at least three decades, BP reduced its capital spending three times in 2015 to $19 billion, slashed nearly 10 percent of its workforce of about 80,000 and sharply lowered costs.
BP slipped to its biggest annual loss last year as a result of lower oil prices, costs related to the settlement of a deadly 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill and huge writedowns.
BP's first-quarter underlying replacement cost profit, its definition of net income, was $532 million, down from $2.6 billion a year earlier but beating forecasts for a loss of $140 million, according to consensus figures provided by BP.
It said 2017 cash costs will be $7 billion lower than for 2014.
BP's current total charge for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has risen to $56.4 billion after an additional payment of $917 million in the first quarter outside a settlement reached last year, it added.
BP is the first oil major to reveal the financial impact of record-low oil prices in the first quarter, closely followed by peers Total, Statoil and Eni later this week and Shell on May 4.
BP's refining and trading segment, known as downstream, once again came to the rescue with a quarterly profit of $1.8 billion, offsetting a $747 million loss in oil and gas production.
BP maintained its dividend at 10 cents per ordinary share.
Read More: Judge Approves $20 Billion Settlement in BP Oil SpillWe did it… broke through $50k raised in this Kickstarter, and unlocked Mark Teppo’s Eternal Queen! Congrats, Mark, clearly this necessitates sitting down over another round of rum cocktails and hashing out the best way to put sea monsters on the map. It's a rough job, this is, but someone has to do it.
Next stretch goal
Our next theme is written by Campbell and Hugo award winner Elizabeth Bear. She has been a D&D player for quite a while, as most recently evidenced by a recorded game with her and a bunch of other fantasy authors that must have been a blast. (It’s out there if you look hard enough!) But like several of our other fantasy authors, she’s never written an adventure for publication. Until now…
Stronger than Magic explores a theme that’s often overlooked: the evolution of technology in a fantasy world. Just because the elves light their cities with magic doesn’t mean the dwarves can’t light theirs with coal gas. Or build steam engines to help with the mining. And more than magic, technology evolves. Time passes. Things change, and the future is a different place than the past.
The cool thing about themes is that by choosing which ones you include, you can create worlds with very different feelings. If you’d like to stick with a more purely magical world, you don’t have to include this theme… but if you want your adventurers to hear the whistle of a steam engine, and encounter some of the conflicts that newfangled sources of power bring about, Stronger than Magic will add a refreshingly different touch to your campaign.
Final three days
The Kickstarter comes to an end this Thursday at 7pm Pacific Time. If you want to see us make the remaining stretch goals (and maybe add one more if things get crazy enough at the end), this is the time to spread the world!If you’ve ever been to a concert, you know the feeling of witnessing your favorite band live. The adrenaline rush and emotion of seeing an electric performance with thousands of strangers, all best friends for two hours while everyone forgets the world for a while and enjoying the moment in singularity. There is nothing like it. On occasion, however, we’ve all been to a show where the actual sound emitting from the PA system just didn’t cut it. Be it from equipment or the internal structure of any given venue that impedes acoustic quality, there are those times where sound quality and clarity are definitely issues.
With that in mind, it’s the summer, and that means it’s time to catch your favorite band, artist, or festival at a town near you. While there are certainly a number of tours this summer that will undoubtedly be amazing, there is one in particular that is going to be more interesting. That band is Incubus, and they will be headlining a summer tour this year in support of their brand new album, 8. What sets them apart from the other concerts this summer? The sound.
Taking The Live Experience To A Different Dimension With MIXhalo
In an effort to improve the sound quality that concertgoers hear, Incubus guitarist Michael Einziger created MIXhalo. Founded with his wife and violinist, Ann Marie Simpson, MIXhalo is a platform that will transform the future of concerts and live events forever. Einziger unveiled the startup during this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt NY event, flanked by friend and investor Pharrell Williams, complete with a live demonstration with Incubus.
Being a longtime fan of Incubus, a tech junkie, and a live music performer, I had to learn more about this concept and the tech behind MIXhalo.
In a phone interview for PopWrapped, Einziger and I talked a little about his past musical achievements and collaborations with artists like Coheed And Cambria. Einziger is an unassuming man, so when the conversation turned to MIXhalo, his passion was evident and contagious. After our introductions, we got right down to brass tax. What is MIXhalo and what will it be like to experience something so different than what we are all used to? Learn from the creator himself:
Michael Einziger Explains MIXhalo
PopWrapped: What is MIXhalo and what set this in motion for you?
Michael Einziger: Well, I’ve been playing concerts all over the world for many, many years. The vast majority of artists that are touring and playing concerts use in-ear monitors while we are performing. I’ve been wearing in-ear monitors for the last 17 years. For years, I’ve been getting these great sounding mixes in my headphones while playing live and wishing that I could offer that same experience to the people that are out there watching. I know that they aren’t out there hearing what I’m hearing and I wanted to offer the audience a way to let them listen to what I’m listening to, if they wanted to.
PW: What made you want to pursue this idea of yours?
ME: I saw this as an opportunity to provide a different experience to people going to see a band play, or an artist perform. Because it is a different experience, the way that we’re hearing on-stage than hearing sound echoing around a large venue. It allows the concertgoer to experience something they think they’ve experienced many times before in a totally new way. Today, especially, there are all of these new technologies being developed, like AR and VR. Immersive experiences are becoming a desirable thing. In all different areas of entertainment, immersive experiences are really interesting and thriving right now. So, I thought this would be a great time to introduce something like this to the world. There were some technological challenges that needed to be overcome in order to make that experience available to large groups of people. On stage, we use these radio packs, RF -radio- technology. You can’t really pass out radio packs to a large group of people. You can do it for a small amount of people, but not an arena full of people. We had to figure out a way to deliver this experience to people in a way that is accessible. That was one of the challenges, and I think we’ve figured it out. We are in an interesting position now. There are still some developments and more testing to do, but we think that we are going to be able to offer this to a very large amount of people.
PW: That’s awesome! I can imagine a bunch of people at a festival. Thousands tapped into MIXhalo.
ME: An ocean of people! It’s a really different experience than what people are used to hearing. Like, for example, you just said at a festival. There’s a lot of noise pollution at festivals. A lot of different artists performing at the same time on different stages, so with MIXhalo’s technology now, you can choose which stage you want to listen to, put in a pair of earbuds, and cut out all of the external sounds so you’re definitely listening to what you want to be listening to. You should be able to log into a different network and listen to what’s going on at another performance. As long you are in proximity of a network, it doesn’t matter how far away from the stage you are, you’ll hear everything as if you’re on the stage.
PW: So, you’d just buy a ticket to a show like any other event, and if that particular artist is making the show available through MIXhalo, then the concertgoer just patches in with an app?
ME: It is an app, but it’s also a WiFi technology that allows for very large amounts of people, all being able to listen at the same time, in real time.
PW: Oh, wow! Very cool, so no latency issues?
ME: Yeah, exactly. MIXhalo does not work with standard WiFi. It’s not like a really robust WiFi network needs to be set up at the venue during a tour in order to use MIXhalo. It has its own WiFi technology that works differently than standard WiFi networks. We have our own access point that needs to be set up, with a closed network that you can join after downloading the app on your phone. That’s it. Download the app, get on the network, and use whatever headphones you use regularly. The headphones do need to be wired. We are in the middle of developing a way to use wireless bluetooth headphones, but as of right now it adds a lot of latency. This is a solvable problem, but it will take a little bit of time. We want people to become accustomed to the experience and being able to use it now, so in order to do that, we have to use wired headphones, which a lot of people still use. It’s not a problem from that perspective. Our WiFi technology is like, well if you want to play a video game, you buy an Xbox. It’s part of a platform, which contains our own patented WiFi technology. What MIXhalo does is provides the platform and the app. Most people have a phone and they’ve already got a pair of headphones. It’s a very low-friction situation. It doesn’t ask a whole lot from the user.
PW: Right! In order to serve something brand new and appealing to the public, it should be easy to navigate. Everything these days, especially in the digital world, is so quick. Functionality in apps and hardware is as easy as putting on a pair of shoes, or a pair of headphones. Which brings me to my next thought about this idea of MIXhalo. Putting on a pair of headphones at a concert will be something that people would have to get used to doing after going to concerts with bare ears since the beginning of time.
ME: Well, it’s funny you should say that because when I was first approached about the idea of wearing in-ear headphones, I thought it was a ridiculous idea and I didn’t like it at all. People say that all the time, too. Believe me, I understand the reaction that people will have to wearing headphones at a concert. Most people wonder about how it will affect the communal experience of being at a concert. A lot of people will say that they go to concerts for the communal experience, and that’s fine. They can still have that experience. No one is taking anything away from anyone. This is new, and MIXhalo offers an experience that they’ve probably never had before. A lot of people try it and they don’t want to go back. And if people choose not to, then that’s okay. It’s just really interesting, really. It’s just a new layer of experiencing something people thought they’ve experienced before.
PW: It certainly sounds like a lot goes into it and you’ve worked hard to make this dream a reality. Can you describe what someone can expect when they use MIXhalo?
ME: It’s hard to put into words what it’s actually like to be listening and watching a performer when you’re plugged directly into them. The singer is singing into a microphone that is literally going directly into your ears. It’s pretty incredible. Also, and this is something that’s really important. MIXhalo does, for the very first time every in the history of concerts, it actually allows somebody at a concert to turn the music down, if they want. As a concertgoer, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve left a show with my ears ringing. You do that enough and it results in hearing damage. With MIXhalo, you’ll be able to control the volume. In the beginning, we will be providing audiences with a high quality mix. In future versions, we will offer the opportunity to listen to different mixes. The drummer’s mix, the guitarist’s mix, singer, and so on. It will be at the artist’s discretion, but the option will be there.
PW: That’s definitely a cool feature. I’m sure that a lot of people out there are curious and would love to take a listen through other perspectives and hear nuances that may be hidden in the layers of the music.
ME: It’s kind of like Instagram, where there are preset filters for photographs. If you gave people full control over all of the different things you could do with filters and photographs, people would actually probably just mess up their photographs real badly. But because they’re preset filters, you can really just press one button and get a different look. We’ll be offering a similar concept. We’ll give you the drummer’s look, or the guitarist’s look. It will be a mix with the featured instrument turned up and more front and center in the mix. Hopefully, people will love it!
PW: Absolutely! When I first saw an article that you shared in Forbes highlighting MIXhalo, I was completely enthralled by the concept and the logistics behind the sheer scale of this thing.
ME: Yeah, it’s really cool! It will actually add to some people’s experiences because you can be anywhere at a concert and always have the same sound. You can be on a lawn, or in the nosebleed section and what they’re listening to is going to be like being on stage. It takes the best sounding place in the venue and brings it to wherever you happen to be.
PW: With this technology, I can imagine that MIXhalo could be used during other events, correct?
ME: Yes! It’s not just music. You could be watching someone giving a speech. Any type of live media where someone’s talking. A political rally. Musical theatre. Any school or where someone is giving a presentation. Take the TechCrunch event, where we introduced MIXhalo. I was sitting in the back of the room and you can’t really hear the speakers very well, so that’s where MIXhalo would have been able to offer anyone in the audience to hear everything being said.
PW: So, this could also help hearing-impaired individuals, as well?
ME: Absolutely! It will definitely help people who are hard of hearing or other issues and will help people who are really sensitive. They will be able to control what they’re hearing a lot more.
PW: My thoughts echoed your friend and MIXhalo investor, Pharrell Williams, when he touched on something: in all of this time of live events, how come no one thought of this before?
ME: I think it’s because bringing this to life is really hard to do, from a technological point of view. Overcoming latency within a WiFi network is very difficult and also developing a platform that is able to withstand thousands of people is a difficult obstacle to overcome. And we did it. We figured it out and it’s really exciting!
PW: It’s really good that you were able to develop a way past the hurdles. There’s always something you face when creating something new, or treading somewhere that no one has done before. The good thing is that you’re doing something no one has ever done before and you set the bar.
ME: The key to overcoming that problem is really the key to solving any problem, which is to try and look at it from a different perspective. We basically came up with our own solution. A lot of people in the tech world, and in general, told me that this wasn’t possible. Of course, that just makes me want to do it more! I’ve had people tell me my whole life that I couldn’t do things and I just did them anyway. There’s nothing more fun than proving people wrong.
PW: I agree. It’s a good thing to be that way because I believe this will change a lot of people’s lives. Not just in the recreational sense, but with helping those with hearing impairment, and a tool to aid in hearing loss prevention. I’m looking forward to trying it out! When can we expect to see the release of MIXhalo?
ME: Yes. We have a bunch of things lining up, which I can’t unveil at this time. What I can say is that we will be bringing MIXhalo with us on the Incubus tour this summer. We’re not going to charge people to try it. We are going to select people interested in trying it out and that will help us with testing MIXhalo, with a launch looking to happen in the Fall.
PW: With all of the advancements in technology, like the smartphone and more ways to connect than anyone ever thought possible, how do you think MIXhalo, and the tech behind it, will be used to benefit people?
ME: I think that this technology is a global technology that can help people in so many different ways, apart from just within the live event market. I’m still working out the details with everything outside of this use, but I really believe that it is going to change things beyond this scope. With all of the advancements we’ve made in other areas of technology, there hasn’t been any real advancement in the live concert market in a very long time, especially the audio portion. PA systems have been improved to overcome the sounds from audiences, so there’s that. My mom went to go see The Beatles when she was a kid and she couldn’t hear the band because the audience was so loud, and all of the girls screaming. You couldn’t hear the band. So, they built PA systems to fix that. The sound has gotten better, but the experience hasn’t really changed. It’s my goal to change that, and to give an option to people who want to try something new.
PW: It is very exciting and I’m looking forward to testing it out with you! So, we will see you on tour this summer with Incubus and Jimmy Eat World. You guys have an incredible record out now, 8. You guys have been making music for a long time and it’s just exciting to see you on tour again!
ME: Yes, thank you so much! It’s amazing for us, 26 years into our career. This is going to be one of the biggest tours we have ever done. I’m really excited about it and the whole band is, too! We’re excited about touring with Jimmy Eat World. Touring with great musicians always makes the experience better for us. We are all feeling very fortunate and appreciative of the fact that we’ve been around for this long and that we’re about to have one of the biggest tours of our career. Attendance-wise, it’s the biggest tour we’ve done since the Morning View tour. I think something happens when you’ve been around for a long time. Luckily, we’ve made music that has somehow found its way into people’s lives. As time goes by, that music grows in importance to the people who love it. I know that to be true for the music that I love. It’s just an honor to make this great music that people connect with, and as time goes on, people want to connect with it even more.
PW: Well, thank you for joining us and we’ll see you on the road this summer!
ME: Thank you so much for having me!
Our summer tour kicks off next month, what show are you going to? Get your tix here: https://t.co/0rerOIg8qu pic.twitter.com/8TWEvyaASL — Incubus (@IncubusBand) June 6, 2017
MIXhalo Is Live Sound, Redefined
So, there you have it! As explained by Einziger, MIXhalo will be available sometime in the Fall on iOS, with an Android version following shortly thereafter. The technology behind MIXhalo is incredibly powerful and the concept itself is something that will benefit a lot of people. I’ll be catching up with Einziger and Incubus at their stop in Camden, New Jersey to try MIXhalo for the first time next month. It’s hard to quantify pioneering technology, but Einziger wholeheartedly believes in MIXhalo. He and his team have overcome the odds and are about to deliver something truly amazing! To learn more about MIXhalo, follow the company on Twitter and keep up with the latest developments here at PopWrapped! See Incubus with Jimmy Eat World on tour this summer!FILE - In this Dec. 29, 2011 file photo, Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, listens as campaign chairman Jesse Benton has a word with him as he signs autographs in Atlantic, Iowa. On Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, Benton was sentenced to probation and home confinement rather than prison for his involvement in a scheme to cover up campaign payments to a former Iowa state senator who agreed to endorse Paul. Benton was convicted of conspiracy, causing false campaign contribution reports to be filed to the Federal Election Commission and participating in a false statement scheme. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Two top aides to Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential bid were sentenced Tuesday to probation and home confinement rather than prison for their roles in a scheme to cover up campaign payments to a former Iowa state senator who agreed to endorse their boss.
Although prosecutors were seeking more than two years in federal prison, campaign chairman Jesse Benton and manager John Tate were instead sentenced to two years’ probation and six months of home confinement, along with community service and a $10,000 fine.
They were accused of conspiring to cause false campaign contribution reports to be filed with the Federal Election Commission. Judge John Jarvey called the crimes serious and said the defendants took advantage of the system designed to ensure transparency in how campaigns are financed.
“There’s nothing like prison time to deter white collar activity,” Jarvey said at Benton’s sentencing, before announcing that he thought the lesser punishment was sufficient.
Prior to the sentencing announcement, Benton told the judge he had endured years of sleepless nights and public humiliation. He said his career is ruined and that he was forced to place his home on the market after going into debt.
“A steep price has been paid,” he said.
Tate asked the judge for similar mercy during his sentencing hearing. Benton and Tate declined comment as they left the courthouse.
Paul’s deputy campaign manager Dimitri Kesari, who also was convicted, was scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesdsay.
The men have argued they broke no laws when they paid a video production company, which passed on $73,000 to former state Sen. Kent Sorenson. He dropped support for Michele Bachmann and endorsed Paul six days before the 2012 Iowa caucuses.
Prosecutors said it is illegal to cause a campaign to file inaccurate spending documents.
Federal prosecutor Richard Pilger said voters have already lost confidence in the political system believing it’s rigged and this case is an example of why they feel that way. The men, he said, took advantage of the system designed to ensure transparency in how campaigns are financed.
The men said they were targeted because of their conservative politics and argued campaigns typically don’t identify payments to subcontractors of vendors.
They are expected to appeal their convictions to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If the judges rule against the men, they may choose to seek further review of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The three men faced up to 35 years in prison had the judge handed down maximums to be served consecutively.
Benton, 38, of Louisville, Kentucky, is married to Ron Paul’s granddaughter, Valori Pyeatt. He also had managed the successful 2010 U.S. Senate campaign for Paul’s son, Rand Paul, in Kentucky and served as campaign manager for Sen. Mitch McConnell’s 2014 re-election, but resigned that summer as the investigation intensified in Iowa.
Speaking before the men were sentenced, an Iowa political consultant said the case is a stark reminder to anyone in the early presidential contest states including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina that they’ll be intensely watched and they should follow the rules carefully.
“What you might get away with doing in a local state legislative campaigns can get you in really deep serious trouble on a presidential campaign if it’s exposed,” said Craig Robinson, who served on Steve Forbes’ presidential campaign in 2000, was state GOP director in 2008 and is publisher of the conservative “The Iowa Republican” blog.
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This story has been corrected to reflect the judge’s name is John Jarvey |
sent him, and the people did fear before the Lord.”
These people do something different: They fear God. And look what happens to their lives: They are blessed at every turn. God wants to give the rest of the world such blessings, and He will! That is what this is all about—that is why the nations are being shaken! God is going to insist that they have these blessings and have their desires for peace and joy filled.
“Then spake Haggai the Lord’s messenger in the Lord’s message unto the people, saying, I am with you, saith the Lord” (verse 13). I, God, am with you! That is why you’re being blessed! I am with you! He is not with those in the nations who need to be shaken from rank selfishness and rebellion and sin. They don’t want God with them! They want to build their own empires, not God’s. But they still want Him to give them rain and crops and peace and safety—and then to stay out of their business.
This tiny minority is not that way, and God says: “I am with you.” “And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and did work in the house of the Lord of hosts, their God” (verse 14). That effort just prospered and prospered and prospered. That is amazing.
Jeremiah 8 tells a similar story. It shows how God is going to bring His judgment upon our peoples because, as verse 9 says, “they have rejected the word of the Lord.” Verse 11 describes how people are going around “saying, Peace, peace;when there isno peace.” They want so desperately to believe that they can solve the world’s problems—but those false hopes are going to explode in their faces!
Isaiah 59:8 says, “The way of peace they know not”! This world’s ambassadors, diplomats, presidents and prime ministers don’t know the way of peace! Soon the chaos that this world is descending into will grow so fierce that they will have to acknowledge that truth!
God wants to show us how to have peace. All these prophecies of the troubled time we live in show us, in spectacular detail, where this is all leading. At the end of these crises, JesusChrist is going to return! Though chaos will engulf the nations for a few short years—tribulation so severe it will shake mankind to its knees—Christ will come to put an end to all that trouble. All these nightmares are directly tied to His Second Coming! And that is the best news we could hear!“Yo, we can do this! We can save New York!” – Michelangelo
Michelangelo is being his usual self, and starts fooling around with Donatello’s laboratory. Fortunately, Donnie arrives before he can do any serious damage, but Mikey does manage to mix a drop of some insane concoction with the retro-mutagen, setting off a chemical reaction. But this is no ordinary reaction; it supercharges the retro-mutagen, making one drop so potent it can turn an entire vial of mutagen into retro-mutagen.
Though he doesn’t remember quite how it was made, Mikey’s gift is still going to use, and the turtles decide it’s time to break into Dimension X and save NYC. To help them, Donnie has a new invention, but first the boys have to stop the Kraang from mutating two innocent people. They’re able to take down a few of the aliens, but soon find themselves surrounded. Fortunately, help has arrived as Leatherhead, Dr. Rockwell, Pigeon Pete, and Slash step in to save the boys. Together, they four mutants have formed the Mighty Mutanimals, and they take the turtles back to their lair to meet their benefactor, Jack Kurtzman. Kurtzman explains what the Kraang are up to, including building a mutagen missile that will change the entire world. Everyone will have to work together to stop this threat, but they can’t seem to agree on anything.
While the teams bicker, the Kraang arrive at the hideout and in then ensuing battle Kurtzman is shot. Everyone retreats to the new lair, and the two teams finally realize they have to work together to make things happen. Unfortunately, the truce doesn’t last long, and the Mutanimals leave while Donatello unveils his previous invention for aerial attacks: The Turtle Blimp. Both teams arrive at the launch site, and the Mighty Mutanimals find themselves dealing with Kraang Sub-Prime. Meanwhile, the turtles drop in from above and Donnie gets inside the missile, but flying Kraang show up to ruin things.
Kraang Sub-Prime manages to fight off the Mutanimals and launch the missile, but Donatello puts all his brainpower to good use and reroutes it to the sun. The turtles escape the falling missile and glide back to Earth. With the two teams now working together, all eight mutants begin the siege of T.C.R.I. With the Mutanimals blitzing the building, the turtles enter the portal and head to Dimension X. However, the turtles lose their blimp as they find the mutated humans working as slaves.
Back on Earth, the Mutanimals are having trouble with the Kraang, and Slash is forced to choose between keeping the portal open and saving his team. Trapped in Dimension X, the turtles have to find a massive amount of mutagen to save all the people. Stealing a stealth ship to sneak on board a Technodrome, the turtles are intercepted by the Kraang’s new Draco-droid and crash onto the Technodrome. Once inside, the boys make quick work of the Kraang and commandeer the Technodrome. Meanwhile, the Mutanimals are able to escape captivity, and try to reengage the portal.
With the portal open and the retro-mutagen loaded, the plan heads into the final phase. Raphael unleashes the retro-mutagen, transforming everyone back into humans and teleporting them out of harm’s way. However, Kraang Sub-Prime has other plans for the boys, and while the others save the rest of the humans Leonardo holds off the enemy. With all the humans safe, Dr. Rockwell teleports the turtles back to the city and sends the Kraang back to Dimension X. NYC is back to normal, and the turtles now have a new team of friends to call on whenever they need help.
This episode seems long overdue this season, and probably would have fit better several episodes ago. When the turtles returned to NYC, there certainly was a lot that needed to be done, but perhaps not everything that happened in the interim was necessary. Seeing Bebop and Rocksteady was great, and dealing with Karai was okay, but this rescue mission should have been more pressing. Karai would have still been around after they were done, and Steranko and Zeck could be transformed later. A common thread for all three seasons so far has been trying to do too much all at the same time. If the show can spend six episodes with the turtles in a cabin in the woods without ever revealing what’s happening in the city, then it can also deal with the Kraang before handling Shredder, or seeing Karai’s story told to its actual end before getting back to the Kraang (not to mention that since the Kraang have been M.I.A. for a while now, the fact that such an important episode was happening seems a bit misplaced).
Now, that’s not to say that this episode was bad, by any means. It was a fantastic story and accomplished so much. Seeing the Mighty Mutanimals back in action was phenomenal; finally these mutations are paying dividends in the story. Not to mention that Irma/Kraang Sub-Prime, Dimension X Mikey, and T.C.R.I. all made return appearances. Seeing these characters/aspects return like this validates everything that has happened with the Kraang, and brought some sort of closure to the plotline thus far. It was fantastic to see it handled as a two-part episode, too (unlike “Return to New York,” which could have been made better with a second part).
The season has finally reached its midpoint, and like seasons past, there’s no telling where it will go from here. The major plot points seem to be resolved, so what could that mean for the rest of this season and beyond? Only time will tell, but certainly the battle for New York has only just begun.
Rating: 9.5/10Chris Henry: I'm not giving up on my World Cup dream BelfastTelegraph.co.uk Ulster's Chris Henry is confident he can still make his World Cup dream a reality despite having heart surgery just last month. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/rugby/world-cup/chris-henry-im-not-giving-up-on-my-world-cup-dream-30846071.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/rugby/article30846070.ece/06e0f/AUTOCROP/h342/2014-12-18_spo_5529806_I1.JPG
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Ulster's Chris Henry is confident he can still make his World Cup dream a reality despite having heart surgery just last month.
After suffering what was described as an "episode" on the morning of the November Test with South Africa, a hole in the organ was discovered and subsequently operated on.
Having already defied expectations by returning to the Ulster gym quicker than expected, however, the Malone man is determined to beat the odds again and remind Joe Schmidt what he is capable of in time for next year's showpiece tournament.
While the Six Nations will come too soon, Henry believes that the quartet of warm-up games confirmed yesterday are a realistic target.
Ireland will play Wales twice, as well as England and Scotland, next summer, and Henry said: "For me, those four warm-up games hopefully will give me a bit of breathing space and I should get some game time.
"I'll just want to show that I'm back and fully fit and playing at my best.
"I don't know about having credit in the bank, Joe is not really that kind of guy. I know it will be whoever is playing the best at that moment so I'll need to show what I can do.
"I won't be trying to live on what I've done in the past."
While admitting that to miss out on a first World Cup appearance would be a big blow, recent months have given the fan favourite a new perception of what is important.
He continued: "If the World Cup is beyond my reach then I would be devastated, but this whole incident does give you perspective.
"There was a stage when I thought I would have to hang up my boots and, for me, I have to suck it up and realise that my body is only going to be ready when it's ready.
"I'll get over it, you have to, and come back again. I'm only 30-years-old, I don't think my best rugby is behind me."
Before thinking about pulling on the green of Ireland of course, Henry will be back playing for his province and he remains enthusiastic about aiding the PRO12 campaign in its latter stages.
"With the way things have gone in Europe for us, there's a massive focus now on the league and I would like to think that there's maybe six weeks of this season where I can contribute."
For now, the process of rehabilitation is required to be slow and steady with the 16-times capped openside able to run for the first time this week.
"It's very simple at the minute, I'll do maybe half an hour on the bicycle and 45 minutes on the cross-trainer.
"I did my first light running on Monday, and in my mind the hardest part is to taper back and not to push too hard.
"It's been a surreal few weeks so I'm still trying to get my head around everything that's gone on but I feel great.
"Watching the games is tough, but just being around the team, trying to help anyone else, hopefully I can contribute that way. I want the guys to realise that just because this has happened to me I'm not going to disappear.
"You don't just need 15 players you need everyone in the extended group to be doing their bit."
Pleased to be back amongst his team-mates, Henry also made special mention of the fans who have given their support.
"The Scarlets game was the first home game I've been able to get to since the incident happened and it really was amazing," he said.
"Everyone was coming up to you to see how you are and just showing real concern. It's lovely and I feel really lucky.
"It's really re-emphasised how amazing the rugby community is in this province."
Ever willing to see the positives, Henry will slow things down over the festive period as he is afforded the rare chance of a regular Christmas.
"It'll be the first normal Christmas week I've had in seven years so I'm going to look at it that way.
"I'm going to eat my Christmas dinner and not worry about whether I'll be able to run the next day.
"We'll hopefully get away for a short holiday in the New Year and then I'll be seeing the specialist in the middle of January.
"I'll get the review off him and hopefully be able to start stepping it up after that."
After the month he's had, nobody will begrudge him the chance to put his feet up until then.
Belfast TelegraphWASHINGTON -- Hoping to put a harsh spotlight on the coercive effect super PACs are having on the political process, a prominent progressive activist and a long-time good government watchdog are joining forces to start one of their own.
Ilyse Hogue, a former top official at MoveOn and Media Matters, along with David Donnelly, the Executive Director of the Public Campaign Action Fund, will file paperwork with the FEC on Monday to formally create an entity called Friends of Democracy.
A hybrid PAC and super PAC, Friends of Democracy will have the power to make contributions to federal candidates (with a $5,000 limit) and raise unlimited sums of money from individuals and corporations. But it will do it all with the aim of demonstrating the need for campaign finance reform.
"The truth is we want to preserve options and use every tool possible to make sure that money and politics remains an issue in the campaign, and that we have the option of creating political accountability around it," said Hogue.
"Most people can see that money in politics in this election is out of control," Donnelly said. "More than 80 percent of Americans want some sensible limits on the way money flows in politics. We felt there needed to be more champions for reform and that opponents of reform needed to be defeated."
Neither Donnelly nor Hogue would discuss how much money Friends of Democracy has on hand, likely because the push to recruit donors will ramp up as the July deadline for reporting contributions approaches. But the purpose of the hybrid PAC is not to match other entities dollar for dollar. To date, super PACs have spent more than $94 million on independent expenditures, according to data from the Sunlight Foundation. The largest portion of that has come from Restore Our Future, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's allied super PAC, which has spent $42 million.
Rather, Friends of Democracy will use its more limited resources to shame the biggest donors and their major recipients, among other objectives. Within the confines of the often-staid campaign finance world, Donnelly is considered one of the more aggressive political tacticians. Hogue, meanwhile, has direct experience working on grassroots oriented and social-media focused campaigns targeting special interests, including a successful effort against the retail giant Target for making a $150,000 donation to a group backing an anti-gay rights gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota.
"There are perverse incentives for candidates to step out [in favor of campaign finance reform]," Hogue explained. "We want to make sure there is a political cost associated with opposing reform and accountability."
According to Donnelly, Friends of Democracy will explore a number of different mechanisms for supporting and opposing candidates, including running independent expenditures, making direct contributions, bundling donations and providing in-kind support for candidates. The hybrid PAC, he explained, will have more operational flexibility than a traditional PAC established as an arm of an existing campaign finance non-profit.WASHINGTON -- The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on Friday made public what it calls the most extensive collection of records on offshore accounts in history, encouraging sleuths to ferret out possible tax evasion.
The online portal, called the Offshore Leaks Database, contains hundreds of thousands of records showing corporations set up in so-called "tax-haven" countries, gleaned from the contents of about 2.5 million emails and financial documents that ICIJ said it received in early 2012. Over the past year, the data have been used by journalists around the world to detail alleged tax evasion by billionaires, oligarchs, emirs, princes and multinational corporations on nearly every continent.
Publication of the documents may heighten scrutiny of some of the world's largest financial institutions and their clients. Governments worldwide have renewed efforts to stamp out tax avoidance as fiscal authorities, including those from Europe and the United States, confront record budget deficits and slow-growth economies.
Click here to search the Offshore Leaks Database.
A 2012 report by the Tax Justice Network (TJN) found that untaxed wealth invested in offshore tax havens ran between $28 and $32 trillion, equal to two years’ worth of U.S. economic output. The report estimated that if the money were to have been invested in home countries, even at low rates of return, it could have generated hundreds of billions of dollars per year in tax revenue.
The TJN report also described the secrecy enveloping the world of offshore tax havens as a "subterranean system that … is the economic equivalent of an astrophysical black hole."
The new ICIJ OffShore Leaks Database provides a small window into that world for the public to peruse. The database contains documents covering 30 years from the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Singapore, Hong Kong, Samoa, Seychelles, Mauritius, Labuan and Malaysia. According to ICIJ, the information came from a leak of documents from two offshore service companies, Singapore-based Portcullis TrustNet and British Virgin Islands-based Commonwealth Trust Limited (CTL).
The documents have been used to unearth stories, starting in April 2013, about tax evasion by politicians in Canada, France, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan and the Philippines; how offshore companies are used to hide the foreign investors in London's real estate market; the use of tax havens to buy and sell on the fine art market; the involvement of companies like Deutsche Bank to help create offshore entities; arms trading in war zones; and how the world's ultra-rich hide their money from taxation.
In making the database freely available, ICIJ hopes to engage the public in its ongoing work to expose the use of offshore tax havens by international corporations and wealthy individuals. Readers are encouraged to contact journalists if they come across promising leads.
Tax havens are nations that offer favorable tax treatment to assets held within their boundaries, often offering zero or near-zero tax rates with very few questions asked. Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Dubai and the micro-state of Jersey, off the coast of England, are just a few of the countries that host corporate entities and trusts created by the world's wealthy and powerful to shield their money from taxes in their home-country.
While the transactions listed in the database likely are legal in countries considered to be tax havens, use of offshore accounts by a corporation or individual often is decried as tax evasion in home countries, regardless of the circumstances.
In some cases, authorities have targeted offshore accounts when accusing banks of facilitating illegal tax evasion.
UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, in 2009 avoided criminal prosecution by entering into a deferred-prosecution agreement and paying $780 million to settle allegations it defrauded the U.S. government. The bank admitted it participated in a scheme to defraud the federal government by "actively assisting or otherwise facilitating" tax evasion by Americans from 2000 to 2007.
Peter Kurer, then-chairman of UBS, said at the time: "UBS sincerely regrets the compliance failures in its U.S. cross-border business that have been identified by the various government investigations in Switzerland and the U.S., as well as our own internal review. We accept full responsibility for these improper activities."
Thousands of wealthy U.S. customers eventually turned themselves in. The Swiss government also turned over the identities of U.S. account holders to U.S. officials.
In 2010, Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, agreed to pay $554 million to U.S. authorities to settle criminal accusations that it helped create fraudulent tax shelters for clients from 1996 to 2002 that deprived the U.S. Treasury of revenue. The bank admitted wrongdoing and entered into a non-prosecution agreement.
At the time, the bank said it was “pleased that this investigation, which concerned transactions that ceased more than eight years ago, has come to a resolution.”
“Since 2002, the bank has significantly strengthened its policies and procedures as part of an ongoing effort to ensure strict adherence to the law and the highest standards of ethical conduct,” it added.
In response to growing allegations of evasion, the U.S. in 2010 enacted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) to enlist financial institutions in the government’s fight to recoup lost tax revenues.
FATCA forces foreign banks to report information on overseas accounts held by U.S. individuals and businesses, and foreign corporations in which U.S. taxpayers hold a substantial ownership stake.
Other nations are now following suit. The eight leading industrialized nations that comprise the Group of Eight (G8) are due to discuss efforts to combat tax dodging at their coming meeting June 17-18 in Northern Ireland.
“The upcoming G8 summit is poised to deliver a hammer blow to offshore corporate tax avoidance," Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said.
“The G8 summit should take advantage of the emerging international consensus that we can no longer allow profitable multinational corporations to play one country off another, ducking corporate taxes and leaving other taxpayers to pick up the slack,” he added.
Banks that structure and facilitate offshore corporate entities designed to minimize tax payments may feel the brunt of the pressure.
A review by The Huffington Post of the ICIJ database, which comprises only a portion of the total data trove in the leak, revealed that UBS was linked to more than 3,000 offshore accounts. It allegedly served as a "master client” -- defined by the ICIJ as "an intermediary or go-between who helps a client set up an offshore entity” -- or as a "nominee shareholder," a shareholder who is not the real owner or beneficiary of the corporation.
The bank declined to comment.
The database shows Deutsche Bank linked to more than 1,000 offshore accounts. A spokesman declined to comment.
Though not all of the offshore accounts listed in the database are currently active -- many are listed as defunct or dissolved -- the data covers three decades of offshore accounts, potentially providing tax authorities with a road map to discover tax cheats.
A slew of ICIJ-inspired reporting in April had dramatic effects.
Herbert Stepic, Raiffeisen Bank International chief executive, resigned his post after news reports alleged he had numerous offshore accounts.
A month later, police in South Korea raided the home of business titan Lee Jay-Hyun, CJ Group chairman and a billionaire grandson of Samsung founder Lee Byung-Chul, as part of a tax evasion probe.
The revelations unearthed by ICIJ and journalists around the world also prompted stern responses from a number of European leaders, and in some cases helped lead to calls for changes in laws to promote banking transparency and prevent tax evasion.
In May, British Prime Minister David Cameron said at a White House press conference that “we need to know who really owns a company, who profits from it, whether taxes are paid.”
Algirdas Šemeta, the European commissioner for taxation, said: “Recent developments, fueled by the outcome of the Offshore Leaks, confirms the urgency for more and better action against tax evasion."
Šemeta further called for European nations operating as tax havens, including Luxembourg and Monaco, as well as protectorates controlled by European countries like the British Virgin Islands, to adopt the European Union's standard of banking transparency.
After Šemeta's statements, Luxembourg announced that it would end secret banking for investments by European nationals. Britain's overseas territories also announced that they would begin sharing banking information with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
In Washington, ongoing congressional hearings on American companies' use of offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. corporate taxes appeared to reach an apex in May, when Apple CEO Tim Cook testified before Levin’s Senate investigative subcommittee on the company’s aggressive use of strategies allegedly for the sole purpose of minimizing taxes.Around mid-season of last year, we became kind of skeptical of the television version of Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro’s “The Strain.” What started off great took a turn for the muddled, but things got back on track by the finale. We have to admit Season 2’s premiere episode really rocked our socks. Especially the black and white prologue, which detailed the birth of The Master that del Toro himself directed.
If you were as big a fan of the opening moments as we were, you’ll be happy to know that we’ll be getting another sequence from Del Toro during Episode 2.04.
According to Deadline during “The Strain’s” Comic-Con panel today, del Toro explained that for tonight’s segment he drew inspiration from an ancient, Eastern European tale from his Nanny, “who use to tell [him] the scariest [bedtime] stories at night.”
Del Toro elaborates that he pitched the idea to exec producer Carlton Cuse over dinner one night. “I was picking up the bill and I didn’t want him to order much, so I told him about the transfer [from creature to creature resulting in The Master’s birth],” Guillermo said. “I told him it should be beautiful and disgusting.”
Cuse chimed in, “I didn’t order the pasta.”
For the next prologue in Episode 2.04 which Del Toro will direct, the scene takes place in a Mexican restaurant and introduces a wrestler character. The moment also serves as a nod to del Toro’s Latin roots.
Look for new episodes every Sunday evening at 10pm on FX. The battle has begun, and evil is spreading. Fight or die!
For more info check out “The Strain” on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.GENEVA (Reuters) - The main opposition group at Syrian peace talks in Geneva wants to meet Russian envoys to discuss what it says are Moscow’s broken ceasefire promises, a move diplomats say aims to put pressure on the Russian-backed Syrian government delegation.
Member of the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) Mohamed Alloush of the Jaysh al Islam attends a news conference aside of Syria peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland, April 19, 2016. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
Russia has sought to revive diplomacy since its air force helped the Syrian army and allied militias defeat rebels in Aleppo in December, President Bashar al-Assad’s biggest victory in six years of war.
Despite the announcement of a ceasefire, a weekend of bombings and air strikes in Syria has rattled the talks that began in Geneva last week.
“The Russians did not fulfil a ceasefire agreement despite the promises from the highest levels of the Russian delegation,” Mohammed Alloush, a negotiator and member of the Jaish al-Islam rebel group, told Reuters.
After a two-hour meeting with U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura, the head of the opposition delegation Nasr al-Hariri said he had submitted two documents protesting against the grim humanitarian situation and violations of the ceasefire.
Hariri said he believed Moscow was shifting its stance but that he wanted to see constructive support on Tuesday.
He pressed for “practical support that manifests itself in backing for the political process and the demands of the Syrian people by putting pressure on the (Syrian) regime to engage seriously in this process.”
Two diplomats said an eventual meeting was likely to include Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov and Middle East director Sergei Vershinin.
KEEPING THE TALKS ALIVE
Russia, Turkey and Iran have sponsored parallel talks, in the Kazakh capital Astana, where they reinforced the ceasefire. It paved the way for a resumption of U.N.-led mediations after a 10-month hiatus.
Ahead of Thursday’s opening ceremony, Moscow had called for the government to “silence the skies”, but violence has continued and the warring sides have traded blame while appearing no closer to actual negotiations.
De Mistura said a militant attack in Homs on Saturday was a deliberate attempt to wreck the talks.
“The opposition wants to see the Russians to tell them to put pressure on the government or else this process will lead nowhere,” said a Western diplomat.
He said the Syrian government chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari’s refusal to discuss anything beyond countering terrorism at a weekend meeting with de Mistura was a clear indication that Damascus was not committed.
De Mistura, who is treading carefully to keep the talks alive, has so far talked to the two sides separately as he tries to forge an understanding of how to proceed in future rounds.
He wants to get the two sides to accept an agenda that would be based on Security Council resolution 2254, focusing initially on a new constitution, U.N.-supervised elections and accountable governance.
Russia and the United States were the prime movers behind the last peace talks, which halted as the war heated up. The United States is now taking a diplomatic back seat, leaving Moscow as the main power broker.Twenty five-year-old Salma's* life crumbled one morning when her husband forced her and her two young children, aged three and two, from their house in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India.
Salma had married in 2010, just after graduating from high school. Her parents were overjoyed when the son of an influential religious leader from their community proposed to her, a humble girl from a poor family. The wedding, she says, was a happy occasion.
After the wedding, Salma left her parental home and went to live with her husband and his family. Her husband was the imam at the nearby mosque and owned a shop that sold religious books. She busied herself with household chores.
But, in the days that followed, their marriage took an unexpected turn. She says her husband and his family turned violent and began to subject her to constant abuse.
"They would beat me up for the pettiest issues," Salma says. "My in-laws always felt that I wasn't worthy of them, and frequently threatened me by saying that my husband would divorce me and marry someone who is equivalent to their status," she told Al Jazeera in a telephone interview.
At times, she says, the family withheld food and medical care as punishment, even from her children.
Salma didn't want to worry her parents, so she kept quiet about the abuse.
"One day my father-in-law convinced my husband to divorce me by uttering the word talaq thrice," she says.
So, a few years into their marriage, Salma's husband threw her out of the house, using the triple talaq to divorce her.
According to this practice, a Muslim man may divorce his wife by speaking the word "talaq", which means "I divorce you", three times in quick succession to her.
The practice has been outlawed in many Muslim majority nations, but is permitted in India under the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act 1937 ( PDF ). According to this act, in matters of personal disputes, the state will not intervene and a religious authority will instead pass judgments.
According to a survey conducted by the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), a women's rights advocacy group, which is campaigning against triple talaq, 59 percent of divorced Indian Muslim women were divorced through triple talaq.
Left to fend for herself and her children, Salma turned to the BMMA for support, after hearing about it from friend who is a member.
Salma's case is just one of those that the BMMA has been highlighting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in the hope of drawing attention to the thousands of women rendered destitute because of the practice.
'Ban on oral divorce'
India does not have a uniform civil code. Every religious community has its own set of laws pertaining to personal issues such as marriage, divorce, property, adoption, inheritance and maintenance. While Muslims, Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews have separate personal laws, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs are governed by a single law known as the Hindu Law.
The BMMA has worked in 15 states across India since its establishment in 2007, focusing on socio-economic issues such as the education and livelihoods of women.
The group started an online petition to ban the triple talaq practice. So far, 50,000 Muslim men and women across the country have signed it.
"In the course of our work, we have regularly been approached by our sisters, complaining about mistreatment and misuse of the oral talaq system. In most cases, men go scot-free and believe their action is approved by the Quran," says Zakia Soman, one of the co-founders of the BMMA.
The BMMA has received several reports of women being divorced by husbands who have sent them a triple talaq message via SMS or other forms of digital media.
"None of the Quranic guidelines of discussion, arbitration, witnesses, specified time period or even a genuine attempt to resolve differences are being followed. In such circumstances, the question of alimony or the rights of children doesn't arise," said Zakia in an email to Al Jazeera, explaining why the BMMA is calling for a ban on this type of divorce.
In the course of our work, we have regularly been approached by our sisters, complaining about mistreatment and misuse of the oral talaq system. Zakia Soman, Co founder of BMMA,
'Figures are false and baseless'
But the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) - a non-governmental organisation that aims to educate Indian Muslims on the protection and application of Islamic laws, disagrees with the BMMA.
Dr Asma Zehra, a member of the core committee of the AIMPLB, says that triple talaq is not one of the most gripping issues facing the Muslim community in India, and that there are many other significant issues that need to be addressed, such as eradicating poverty, and improving education and livelihoods for women.
"The petition and survey figures which are being provided by BMMA are false and baseless," Zehra says. "If one does not agree with the Muslim Personal Law Board, they are free to get married under the Special Marriage Act."
The Special Marriage Act of 1954 was enacted by the Indian parliament to provide a special form of marriage for the people of India and all Indian nationals in foreign countries irrespective of one's religion or faith. It attempts to protect the rights of individuals from different communities who wish to marry and are not permitted by their respective personal laws.
Although Zehra acknowledged that divorce someone via social media may not be the best way to go about it, she says it is still valid under the Muslim personal law.
"India does not need to revisit [it's] divorce laws," Zehra says.
And she believes the alternatives may not always be better. "Our judiciary is overburdened. Several women have had to wait for years for their [divorce] cases to be heard. The lengthy legal procedures would only multiply social and economic hardships for women."
Reform to Muslim personal law
The Shariat Application Act 1937, which states that Muslims will be governed by Islamic laws, does not, however, clearly define the contents of these laws. This means that codified laws do not exist in disputes dealing with personal law and that the law is open to the interpretation of the religious authorities.
This may explain why the Muslim community is often presented with multiple views on many issues, including triple talaq.
"Women are being divorced for the flimsiest of reasons and denied their basic rights. The Muslim Personal Law Board are given a lot of significance by government institutions and seen as the ultimate representatives of Muslims in the country," says Safia Akhtar, another BMMA member who is working on the triple talaq campaign.
The BMMA has sent a letter to India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, demanding that the Muslim Family Law be codified. "Muslim women have never been heard in matters concerning their lives. Certain orthodox and patriarchal men have dominated the debate on rights of Muslim women and have stone-walled any attempt towards reform," reads the letter, which has been signed by the organisation's members.
Recently, 35-year-old Shayara Bano, who was divorced via a letter, has asked the Indian Supreme Court to declare the triple talaq practice illegal, as she said that it violates her right to life, personal liberty, equality before the law and prohibition against discrimination - fundamental rights enshrined in the Indian constitution ( PDF ).
The Indian Supreme Court has asked the Indian government to file before it the report of a committee which was formed to look into aspects of personal laws in various religious minorities.
Maneka Gandhi, union minister of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, which deals with the matters of rights, care and protection of women and children in India, stated that she does not want to voice an opinion on the triple talaq practice until a consensus emerges on the issue.
The Indian government established The High Level Committee on the Status of Women ( PDF ) in India in May 2013. The committee recommended a ban on the practice of oral, unilateral and triple talaq in a report published in June 2015.
"It makes wives extremely vulnerable and insecure regarding their marital status," the report reads.
Salma is happy that the government is taking action.
"It's the life of a woman that becomes miserable. I want an end to this unilateral divorce practice and my children to get what they deserve," she says. "Fights take place between a husband and wife, but this is no way to resolve it."
*Name changed to protect identity.A hundred years ago, a young Indian economist reached New York in the third week of July. His name was B.R. Ambedkar.
Ambedkar later became famous as a relentless critic of the pernicious caste system, an inspiring political leader and the moving spirit of the Indian Constitution, but his early training was as an economist. He had come to Columbia University to study under Edwin Seligman, who also happened to be a friend of Lala Lajpat Rai.
The young scholar would sit for hours in the university library. In his three years at Columbia, Ambedkar took 29 courses in economics, 11 in history, six in sociology, five in philosophy, four in anthropology, three in politics and one each in elementary French and German, according to the Columbia website.
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in preserving government under law, for abuse of legal authority is more readily challenged by a profession whose members are not dependent on government for the right to practice.
[12] The legal profession's relative autonomy carries with it special responsibilities of self-government. The profession has a responsibility to assure that its regulations are conceived in the public interest and not in furtherance of parochial or self-interested concerns of the bar. Every lawyer is responsible for observance of the Rules of Professional Conduct. A lawyer should also aid in securing their observance by other lawyers. Neglect of these responsibilities compromises the independence of the profession and the public interest which it serves.
[13] Lawyers play a vital role in the preservation of society. The fulfillment of this role requires an understanding by lawyers of their relationship to our legal system. The Rules of Professional Conduct, when properly applied, serve to define that relationship.
SCOPE
[14] The Rules of Professional Conduct are rules of reason. They should be interpreted with reference to the purposes of legal representation and of the law itself. Some of the rules are imperatives, cast in the terms "shall" or "shall not." These define proper conduct for purposes of professional discipline. Others, generally cast in the term "may," are permissive and define areas under the rules in which the lawyer has discretion to exercise professional judgment. No disciplinary action should be taken when the lawyer chooses not to act or acts within the bounds of such discretion. Other rules define the nature of relationships between the lawyer and others. The rules are thus partly obligatory and disciplinary and partly constitutive and descriptive in that they define a lawyer's professional role. Many of the Comments use the term "should." Comments do not add obligations to the rules but provide guidance for practicing in compliance with the rules.
[15] The rules presuppose a larger legal context shaping the lawyer's role. That context includes court rules and statutes relating to matters of licensure, laws defining specific obligations of lawyers and substantive and procedural law in general. The Comments are sometimes used to alert lawyers to their responsibilities under such other law.
[16] Compliance with the rules, as with all law in an open society, depends primarily upon understanding and voluntary compliance, secondarily upon reinforcement by peer and public opinion and finally, when necessary, upon enforcement through disciplinary proceedings. The rules do not, however, exhaust the moral and ethical considerations that should inform a lawyer, for no worthwhile human activity can be completely defined by legal rules. The rules simply provide a framework for the ethical practice of law.
[17] Furthermore, for purposes of determining the lawyer's authority and responsibility, principles of substantive law external to these rules determine whether a client-lawyer relationship exists. Most of the duties flowing from the client-lawyer relationship attach only after the client has requested the lawyer to render legal services and the lawyer has agreed to do so. But there are some duties, such as that of confidentiality under Rule 1.6, that attach when the lawyer agrees to consider whether a client-lawyer relationship shall be established. See Rule 1.18. Whether a client-lawyer relationship exists for any specific purpose can depend on the circumstances and may be a question of fact.
[18] Under various legal provisions, including constitutional, statutory and common law, the responsibilities of government lawyers may include authority concerning legal matters that ordinarily reposes in the client in private client-lawyer relationships. For example, a lawyer for a government agency may have authority on behalf of the government to decide upon settlement or whether to appeal from an adverse judgment. Such authority in various respects is generally vested in the attorney general and the state's attorney in state government, and their federal counterparts, and the same may be true of other government law officers. Also, lawyers under the supervision of these officers may be authorized to represent several government agencies in intragovernmental legal controversies in circumstances where a private lawyer could not represent multiple private clients. These rules do not abrogate any such authority. Similarly, there are federally recognized Indian tribes with tribal governments in the State of Wisconsin and these tribes have rights of self-government and self-determination. It is not the intent of these rules to abrogate any such authority of tribal governments.
[19] Failure to comply with an obligation or prohibition imposed by a rule is a basis for invoking the disciplinary process. The rules presuppose that disciplinary assessment of a lawyer's conduct will be made on the basis of the facts and circumstances as they existed at the time of the conduct in question and in recognition of the fact that a lawyer often has to act upon uncertain or incomplete evidence of the situation. Moreover, the rules presuppose that whether or not discipline should be imposed for a violation, and the severity of a sanction, depend on all the circumstances, such as the willfulness and seriousness of the violation, extenuating factors and whether there have been previous violations.
[20] Violation of a rule should not itself give rise to a cause of action against a lawyer nor should it create any presumption in such a case that a legal duty has been breached. In addition, violation of a rule does not necessarily warrant any other nondisciplinary remedy, such as disqualification of a lawyer in pending litigation. The rules are designed to provide guidance to lawyers and to provide a structure for regulating conduct through disciplinary agencies. They are not designed to be a basis for civil liability. Furthermore, the purpose of the rules can be subverted when they are invoked by opposing parties as procedural weapons. The fact that a rule is a just basis for a lawyer's self-assessment, or for sanctioning a lawyer under the administration of a disciplinary authority, does not imply that an antagonist in a collateral proceeding or transaction has standing to seek enforcement of the rule. Nevertheless, since the rules do establish standards of conduct by lawyers, a lawyer's violation of a rule may be evidence of breach of the applicable standard of conduct.
[21] The comment accompanying each rule explains and illustrates the meaning and purpose of the rule. The Preamble and this note on Scope provide general orientation. The Comments are intended as guides to interpretation, but the text of each rule is authoritative.
Rule 1.0 TERMINOLOGY
(ag) "Advanced fee" denotes an amount paid to a lawyer in contemplation of future services, which will be earned at an agreed-upon basis, whether hourly, flat, or another basis. Any amount paid to a lawyer in contemplation of future services whether on an hourly, flat or other basis, is an advanced fee regardless of whether that fee is characterized as an "advanced fee," "minimum fee," "nonrefundable fee," or any other characterization. Advanced fees are subject to the requirements of SCR 20:1.5, SCR 20:1.15(b)(4) or (4m), SCR 20:1.15(e)(4)h., SCR 20:1.15(g), and SCR 20:1.16(d).
(ar) "Belief" or "believes" denotes that the person involved actually supposed the fact in question to be true. A person's belief may be inferred from circumstances.
(b) "Consult" or "consultation" denotes communication of information reasonably sufficient to permit the client to appreciate the significance of the matter in question.
(c) "Confirmed in writing," when used in reference to the informed consent of a person, denotes informed consent that is given in writing by the person or a writing that a lawyer promptly transmits to the person confirming an oral informed consent. See par. (f) for the definition of "informed consent." If it is not feasible to obtain or transmit the writing at the time the person gives informed consent, then the lawyer must obtain or transmit it within a reasonable time thereafter.
(d) "Firm" or "law firm" denotes a lawyer or lawyers in a law partnership, professional corporation, sole proprietorship or other association authorized to practice law; or lawyers employed in a legal services organization or the legal department of a corporation or other organization, including a government entity.
(dm) "Flat fee" denotes a fixed amount paid to a lawyer for specific, agreed-upon services, or for a fixed, agreed-upon stage in a representation, regardless of the time required of the lawyer to perform the service or reach the agreed-upon stage in the representation. A flat fee, sometimes referred to as "unit billing," is not an advance against the lawyer's hourly rate and may not be billed against at an hourly rate. Flat fees become the property of the lawyer upon receipt and are subject to the requirements of SCR 20:1.5, SCR 20:1.15(b)(4) or (4m), SCR 20:1.15(e)(4)h., SCR 20:1.15(g), and SCR 20:1.16(d).
(e) "Fraud" or "fraudulent" denotes conduct that is fraudulent under the substantive or procedural law of the applicable jurisdiction and has a purpose to deceive.
(f) "Informed consent" denotes the agreement by a person to a proposed course of conduct after the lawyer has communicated adequate information and explanation about the material risks of and reasonably available alternatives to the proposed course of conduct.
(g) "Knowingly," "known," or "knows" denotes actual knowledge of the fact in question. A person's knowledge may be inferred from circumstances.
(h) "Misrepresentation" denotes communication of an untruth, either knowingly or with reckless disregard, whether by statement or omission, which if accepted would lead another to believe a condition exists that does not actually exist.
(i) "Partner" denotes a member of a partnership, a shareholder in a law firm organized as a professional corporation, or a member of an association authorized to practice law.
(j) A "prosecutor" includes a government attorney or special prosecutor (i) in a criminal case, delinquency action, or proceeding that could result in a deprivation of liberty or (ii) acting in connection with the protection of a child or a termination of parental rights proceeding or (iii) acting as a municipal prosecutor.
(k) "Reasonable" or "reasonably" when used in relation to conduct by a lawyer denotes the conduct of a reasonably prudent and competent lawyer.
(l) "Reasonable belief" or "reasonably believes" when used in reference to a lawyer denotes that the lawyer believes the matter in question and that the circumstances are such that the belief is reasonable.
(m) "Reasonably should know" when used in reference to a lawyer denotes that a lawyer of reasonable prudence and competence would ascertain the matter in question.
(mm) "Retainer" denotes an amount paid specifically and solely to secure the availability of a lawyer to perform services on behalf of a client, whether designated a "retainer," "general retainer," "engagement retainer," "reservation fee," "availability fee," or any other characterization. This amount does not constitute payment for any specific legal services, whether past, present, or future and may not be billed against for fees or costs at any point. A retainer becomes the property of the lawyer upon receipt, but is subject to the requirements of SCR 20:1.5 and SCR 20:1.16(d).
(n) "Screened" denotes the isolation of a lawyer from any participation in a matter through the timely imposition of procedures within a firm that are reasonably adequate under the circumstances to protect information that the isolated lawyer is obligated to protect under these rules or other law.
(o) "Substantial" when used in reference to degree or extent denotes a material matter of clear and weighty importance.
(p) "Tribunal" denotes a court, an arbitrator in a binding arbitration proceeding or a legislative body, administrative agency or other body acting in an adjudicative capacity. A legislative body, administrative agency or other body acts in an adjudicative capacity when a neutral official, after the presentation of evidence or legal argument by a party or parties, will render a binding legal judgment directly affecting a party's interests in a particular matter.
(q) "Writing" or "written" denotes a tangible or electronic record of a communication or representation, including handwriting, typewriting, printing, Photostating, photography, audio or video recording and e-mail. A "signed" writing includes an electronic sound, symbol or process attached to or logically associated with a writing and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the writing.
CLIENT-LAWYER RELATIONSHIP
Rule 1.1 Competence
A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.
[Comment][Narrative][Other Jurisdictions]
Rule 1.2 Scope of Representation and Allocation of Authority Between Lawyer and Client
(a) Subject to pars. (c) and (d), a lawyer shall abide by a client's decisions concerning the objectives of representation and, as required by SCR 20:1.4, shall consult with the client as to the means by which they are to be pursued. A lawyer may take such action on behalf of the client as is impliedly authorized to carry out the representation. A lawyer shall abide by a client's decision whether to settle a matter. In a criminal case or any proceeding that could result in deprivation of liberty, the lawyer shall abide by the client's decision, after consultation with the lawyer, as to a plea to be entered, whether to waive jury trial and whether the client will testify.
(b) A lawyer's representation of a client, including representation by appointment, does not constitute an endorsement of the client's political, economic, social or moral views or activities.
(c) A lawyer may limit the scope of the representation if the limitation is reasonable under the circumstances and the client gives informed consent.
(d) A lawyer shall not counsel a client to engage, or assist a client, in conduct that the lawyer knows is criminal or fraudulent, but a lawyer may discuss the legal consequences of any proposed course of conduct with a client and may counsel or assist a client to make a good faith effort to determine the validity, scope, meaning or application of the law.
(e) When a lawyer has been retained by an insurer to represent an insured pursuant to the terms of an agreement or policy requiring the insurer to retain counsel on the client's behalf, the representation may be limited to matters related to the defense of claims made against the insured. In such cases, the lawyer shall, within a reasonable time after being retained, inform the client in writing of the terms and scope of the representation the lawyer has been retained by the insurer to provide.
[Comment][Narrative][Other Jurisdictions]
Rule 1.3 Diligence
A lawyer shall act with reasonable diligence and promptness in representing a client.
[Comment][Narrative][Other Jurisdictions]
Rule 1.4 Communication
(a) A lawyer shall:
(1) Promptly inform the client of any decision or circumstance with respect to which the client's informed consent, as defined in SCR 20:1.0(f), is required by these rules;
(2) reasonably consult with the client about the means by which the client's objectives are to be accomplished;
(3) keep the client reasonably informed about the status of the matter;
(4) promptly comply with reasonable requests by the client for information; and
(5) consult with the client about any relevant limitation on the lawyer's conduct when the lawyer knows that the client expects assistance not permitted by the Rules of Professional Conduct or other law.
(b) A lawyer shall explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to permit the client to make informed decisions regarding the representation.
[Comment][Narrative][Other Jurisdictions]
Rule 1.5 Fees
(a) A lawyer shall not make an agreement for, charge, or collect an unreasonable fee or an unreasonable amount for expenses. The factors to be considered in determining the reasonableness of a fee include the following:
(1) the time and labor required, the novelty and difficulty of the questions involved, and the skill requisite to perform the legal service properly;
(2) the likelihood, if apparent to the client, that the acceptance of the particular employment will preclude other employment by the lawyer;
(3) the fee customarily charged in the locality for similar legal services;
(4) the amount involved and the results obtained;
(5) the time limitations imposed by the client or by the circumstances;
(6) the nature and length of the professional relationship with the client;
(7) the experience, reputation, and ability of the lawyer or lawyers performing the services; and
(8) whether the fee is fixed or contingent.
(b)
(1) The scope of the representation and the basis or rate of the fee and expenses for which the client will be responsible shall be communicated to the client in writing, before or within a reasonable time after commencing the representation, except when the lawyer will charge a regularly represented client on the same basis or rate as in the past. If it is reasonably foreseeable that the total cost of representation to the client, including attorney's fees, will be $1000 or less, the communication may be oral or in writing. Any changes in the basis or rate of the fee or expenses shall also be communicated in writing to the client.
(2) If the total cost of representation to the client, including attorney's fees, is more than $1000, the purpose and effect of any retainer or advance fee that is paid to the lawyer shall be communicated in writing.
(3) A lawyer shall promptly respond to a client's request for information concerning fees and expenses.
(c) A fee may be contingent on the outcome of the matter for which the service is rendered, except in a matter in which a contingent fee is prohibited by par. (d) or other law. A contingent fee agreement shall be in a writing signed by the client, and shall state the method by which the fee is to be determined, including the percentage or percentages that shall accrue to the lawyer in the event of settlement, trial or appeal; litigation and other expenses to be deducted from the recovery; and whether such expenses are to be deducted before or after the contingent fee is calculated. The agreement must clearly notify the client of any expenses for which the client will be liable whether or not the client is the prevailing party. Upon conclusion of a contingent fee matter, the lawyer shall provide the client with a written statement stating the outcome of the matter and if there is a recovery, showing the remittance to the client and the method of its determination.
(d) A lawyer shall not enter into an arrangement for, charge, or collect a contingent fee:
(1) in any action affecting the family, including but not limited to divorce, legal separation, annulment, determination of paternity, setting of support and maintenance, setting of custody and physical placement, property division, partition of marital property, termination of parental rights and adoption, provided that nothing herein shall prohibit a contingent fee for the collection of past due amounts of support or maintenance or property division.
(2) for representing a defendant in a criminal case or any proceeding that could result in deprivation of liberty.
(e) A division of a fee between lawyers who are not in the same firm may be made only if the total fee is reasonable and:
(1) the division is based on the services performed by each lawyer, and the client is advised of and does not object to the participation of all the lawyers involved and is informed if the fee will increase as a result of their involvement; or
(2) the lawyers formerly practiced together and the payment to one lawyer is pursuant to a separation or retirement agreement between them; or
(3) pursuant to the referral of a matter between the lawyers, each lawyer assumes the same ethical responsibility for the representation as if the lawyers were partners in the same firm, the client is informed of the terms of the referral arrangement, including the share each lawyer will receive and whether the overall fee will increase, and the client consents in a writing signed by the client.
[Comment][Narrative][Other Jurisdictions]
Rule 1.6 Confidentiality
(a) A lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent, except for disclosures that are impliedly authorized in order to carry out the representation, and except as stated in pars. (b) and (c).
(b) A lawyer shall reveal information relating to the representation of a client to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary to prevent the client from committing a criminal or fraudulent act that the lawyer reasonably believes is likely to result in death or substantial bodily harm or in substantial injury to the financial interest or property of another.
(c) A lawyer may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary:
(1) to prevent reasonably likely death or substantial bodily harm;
(2) to prevent, mitigate or rectify substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another that is reasonably certain to result or has resulted from the client's commission of a crime or fraud in furtherance of which the client has used the lawyer's services;
(3) to secure legal advice about the lawyer's conduct under these rules;
(4) to establish a claim or defense on behalf of the lawyer in a controversy between the lawyer and the client, to establish a defense to a criminal charge or civil claim against the lawyer based upon conduct in which the client was involved, or to respond to allegations in any proceeding concerning the lawyer's representation of the client; or
(5) to comply with other law or a court order.
[Comment][Narrative][Other Jurisdictions]
Rule 1.7 Conflict of Interest: Current Clients
(a) Except as provided in par. (b), a lawyer shall not represent a client if the representation involves a concurrent conflict of interest. A concurrent conflict of interest exists if:
(1) the representation of one client will be directly adverse to another client; or
(2) there is a significant risk that the representation of one or more clients will be materially limited by the lawyer's responsibilities to another client, a former client or a third person or by a personal interest of the lawyer.
(b) Notwithstanding the existence of a concurrent conflict of interest under par. (a), a lawyer may represent a client if:
(1) the lawyer reasonably believes that the lawyer will be able to provide competent and diligent representation to each affected client;
(2) the representation is not prohibited by law;
(3) the representation does not involve the assertion of a claim by one client against another client represented by the lawyer in the same litigation or other proceeding before a tribunal; and
(4) each affected client gives informed consent, confirmed in a writing signed by the client.
[Comment][Narrative][Other Jurisdictions]
Rule 1.8 Conflict of Interest: Prohibited Transactions
(a) A lawyer shall not enter into a business transaction with a client or knowingly acquire an ownership, possessory, security or other pecuniary interest adverse to a client unless:
(1) the transaction and terms on which the lawyer acquires the interest are fair and reasonable to the client and are fully disclosed and transmitted in writing in a manner that can be reasonably understood by the client;
(2) the client is advised in writing of the desirability of seeking and is given a reasonable opportunity to seek the advice of independent legal counsel on the transaction; and
(3) the client gives informed consent, in a writing signed by the client, to the essential terms of the transaction and the lawyer's role in the transaction, including whether the lawyer is representing the client in the transaction.
(b) A lawyer shall not use information relating to representation of a client to the disadvantage of the client unless the client gives informed consent, except as permitted or required by these rules.
(c) A lawyer shall not solicit any substantial gift from a client, including a testamentary gift, nor prepare an instrument giving the lawyer or a person related to the lawyer any substantial gift from a client, including a testamentary gift, except where (1) the client is related to the donee, (2) the donee is a natural object of the bounty of the client, (3) there is no reasonable ground to anticipate a contest, or a claim of undue influence or for the public to lose confidence in the integrity of the bar, and (4) the amount of the gift or bequest is reasonable and natural under the circumstances. For purposes of this paragraph, related persons include a spouse, child, grandchild, parent, grandparent or other relative or individual with whom the lawyer or the client maintains a close, familial relationship.
(d) Prior to the conclusion of representation of a client, a lawyer shall not make or negotiate an agreement giving the lawyer literary or media rights to a portrayal or account based in substantial part on information relating to the representation.
(e) A lawyer shall not provide financial assistance to a client in connection with pending or contemplated litigation, except that:
(1) a lawyer may advance court costs and expenses of litigation, the repayment of which may be contingent on the outcome of the matter; and
(2) a lawyer representing an indigent client may pay court costs and expenses of litigation on behalf of the client.
(f) A lawyer shall not accept compensation for representing a client from one other than the client unless:
(1) the client gives informed consent or the attorney is appointed at government expense; provided that no further consent or consultation need be given if the client has given consent pursuant to the terms of an agreement or policy requiring an organization or insurer to retain counsel on the client's behalf;
(2) there is no interference with the lawyer's independence of professional judgment or with the client-lawyer relationship; and
(3) information relating to representation of a client is protected as required by SCR 20:1.6.
(g) A lawyer who represents two or more clients shall not participate in making an aggregate settlement of the claims of or against the clients, or in a criminal case an aggregated agreement as to guilty or nolo contendere pleas, unless each client gives informed consent, in a writing signed by the client. The lawyer's disclosure shall include the existence and nature of all the claims or pleas involved and of the participation of each person in the settlement.
(h) A lawyer shall not:
(1) make an agreement prospectively limiting the lawyer's liability to a client for malpractice unless the client is independently represented in making the agreement; or
(2) settle a claim or potential claim for such liability with an unrepresented client or former client unless that person is advised in writing of the desirability of seeking and is given a reasonable opportunity to seek the advice of independent legal counsel in connection therewith; or
(3) make an agreement limiting the client's right to report the lawyer's conduct to disciplinary authorities.
(i) A lawyer shall not acquire a proprietary interest in the cause of action or subject matter of litigation the lawyer is conducting for a client, except that the lawyer may:
(1) acquire a lien authorized by law to secure the lawyer's fee or expenses; and
(2) contract with a client for a reasonable contingent fee in a civil case.
(j) A lawyer shall not have sexual relations with a current client unless a consensual sexual relationship existed between them when the client-lawyer relationship commenced.
(1) In this paragraph, "sexual relations" means sexual intercourse or any other intentional touching of the intimate parts of a person or causing the person to touch the intimate parts of the lawyer.
(2) When the client is an organization, a lawyer for the organization (whether inside counsel or outside counsel) shall not have sexual relations with a constituent of the organization who supervises, directs or regularly consults with that lawyer concerning the organization's legal matters.
(k) While lawyers are associated in a firm, a prohibition in the foregoing pars. (a) through (i) that applies to any one of them shall apply to all of them.
[Comment][Narrative][Other Jurisdictions]
Rule 1.9 Duties to Former Clients
(a) A lawyer who has formerly represented a client in a matter shall not thereafter represent another person in the same or a substantially related matter in which that person's interests are materially adverse to the interests of the former client unless the former client gives informed consent, confirmed in a writing signed by the client.
(b) A lawyer shall not knowingly represent a person in the same or a substantially related matter in which a firm with which the lawyer formerly was associated had previously represented a client:
(1) whose interests are materially adverse to that person; and
(2) about whom the lawyer had acquired information protected by sub. (c) and SCR 20:1.6 that is material to the matter; unless the former client gives informed consent, confirmed in a writing signed by the client.
(c) A lawyer who has formerly represented a client in a matter or whose present or former firm has formerly represented a client in a matter shall not thereafter:
(1) use information relating to the representation to the disadvantage of the former client except as these rules would permit or require with respect to a client, or when the information has become generally known; or
(2) reveal information relating to the representation except as these rules would permit or require with respect to a client.
[Comment][Narrative][Other Jurisdictions]
Rule 1.10 Imputed Disqualification: General Rule
(a) While lawyers are associated in a firm, none of them shall knowingly represent a client when any one of them practicing alone would be prohibited from doing so by SCR 20:1.7 or SCR 20:1.9 unless:
(1) the prohibition is based on a personal interest of the prohibited lawyer and does not present a significant risk of materially limiting the representation of the client by the remaining lawyers in the firm; or
(2) the prohibition arises under SCR 20:1.9, and
(i) the personally disqualified lawyer performed no more than minor and isolated services in the disqualifying representation and did so only at a firm with which the lawyer is no longer associated;
(ii) the personally disqualified lawyer is timely screened from any participation in the matter and is apportioned no part of the fee therefrom; and
(iii) written notice is promptly given to any affected former client to enable the affected client to ascertain compliance with the provisions of this rule.
(b) When a lawyer has terminated an association with a firm, the firm is not prohibited from thereafter representing a person with interests materially adverse to those of a client represented by the formerly associated lawyer and not currently represented by the firm, unless:
(1) the matter is the same or substantially related to that in which the formerly associated lawyer represented the client; and
(2) any lawyer remaining in the firm has information protected by SCR 20:1.6 and SCR 20:1.9(c) that is material to the matter.
(c) A disqualification prescribed by this rule may be waived by the affected client under the conditions stated in SCR 20:1.7.
(d) The disqualification of lawyers associated in a firm with former or current government lawyers is governed by SCR 20:1.11.
[Comment][Narrative][Other Jurisdictions]
Rule 1.11 Special Conflicts of Interest for Former and Current Government Officers and Employees
(a) Except as law may otherwise expressly permit, a lawyer who has formerly served as a public officer or employee of the government:
(1) is subject to SCR 20:1.9(c); and
(2) shall not otherwise represent a client in connection with a matter in which the lawyer participated personally and substantially as a public officer or employee, unless the appropriate government agency gives its informed consent, confirmed in writing, to the representation.
(b) When a lawyer is disqualified from representation under par. (a), no lawyer in a firm with which that lawyer is associated may knowingly undertake or continue representation in such a matter unless:
(1) the disqualified lawyer is timely screened from any participation in the matter and is apportioned no part of the fee therefrom; and
(2) written notice is promptly given to the appropriate government agency to enable it to ascertain compliance with the provisions of this rule.
(c) Except as law may otherwise expressly permit, a lawyer having information that the lawyer knows is confidential government information about a person acquired when the lawyer was a public officer or employee, may not represent a private client whose interests are adverse to that person in a matter in which the information could be used to the material disadvantage of that person. As used in this rule, the term "confidential government information" means information that has been obtained under governmental authority and which, at the time this rule is applied, the government is prohibited by law from disclosing to the public or has a legal privilege not to disclose and which is not otherwise available to the public. A firm with which that lawyer is associated may undertake or continue representation in the matter only if the disqualified lawyer is timely screened from any participation in the matter and is apportioned no part of the fee therefrom.
(d) Except as law may otherwise expressly permit, a lawyer currently serving as a public officer or employee:
(1) is subject to SCR 20:1.7 and SCR 20:1.9; and
(2) shall not:
(i) participate in a matter in which the lawyer participated personally and substantially while in private practice or nongovernmental employment, unless the appropriate government agency gives its informed consent, confirmed in writing; or
(ii) negotiate for private employment with any person who is involved as a party or as attorney for a party in a matter in which the lawyer is participating personally and substantially, except that a lawyer serving as a law clerk to a judge, other adjudicative officer or arbitrator may negotiate for private employment as permitted by SCR 20:1.12(b) and subject to the conditions stated in SCR 20:1.12(b).
(e) As used in this rule, the term "matter" includes:
(1) any judicial or other proceeding, application, request for a ruling or other determination, contract, claim, controversy, investigation, charge, accusation, arrest or other particular matter involving a specific party or parties, and
(2) any other matter covered by the conflict of interest rules of the appropriate government agency.
(f) The conflicts of a lawyer currently serving as an officer or employee of the government are not imputed to the other lawyers in the agency. However, where such a lawyer has a conflict that would lead to imputation in a nongovernment setting, the lawyer shall be timely screened from any participation in the matter to which the conflict applies.
[Comment][Narrative][Other Jurisdiction]
Rule 1.12 Former Judge, Arbitrator, Mediator or Other 3rd-Party Neutral
(a) Except as stated in par. (d), a lawyer shall not represent anyone in connection with a matter in which the lawyer participated personally and substantially as a judge or other adjudicative officer or law clerk to such a person or as an arbitrator, mediator or other 3rd-party neutral.
(b) A lawyer shall not negotiate for employment with any person who is involved as a party or as lawyer for a party in a matter in which the lawyer is participating personally and substantially as a judge or other adjudicative officer or as an arbitrator, mediator or other 3rd-party neutral. A lawyer serving as a law clerk to a judge or other adjudicative officer may negotiate for employment with a party or lawyer involved in a matter in which the clerk is participating personally and substantially, but only after the lawyer has notified the judge or other adjudicative officer.
(c) If a lawyer is disqualified by par. (a), no lawyer in a firm with which that lawyer is associated may knowingly undertake or continue representation in the matter unless:
(1) the disqualified lawyer is timely screened from any participation in the matter and is apportioned no part of the fee therefrom; and
(2) written notice is promptly given to the parties and any appropriate tribunal to enable them to ascertain compliance with the provisions of this rule.
(d) An arbitrator selected as a partisan of a party in a multimember arbitration panel is not prohibited from subsequently representing that party in the matter, provided that all parties to the proceeding give informed consent, confirmed in writing.
[Comment][Narrative][Other Jurisdictions]
Rule 1.13 Organization as Client
(a) A lawyer employed or retained by an organization represents the organization acting through its duly authorized constituents.
(b) If a lawyer for an organization knows that an officer, employee or other person associated with the organization is engaged in action, intends to act or refuses to act in a matter related to the representation that is a violation of a legal obligation to the organization, or a violation of law which reasonably might be imputed to the organization, and that is likely to result in substantial injury to the organization, then the lawyer shall proceed as is reasonably necessary in the best interest of the organization. Unless the lawyer reasonably believes that it is not necessary in the best interest of the organization to do so, the lawyer shall refer the matter to higher authority in the organization, including, if warranted by the circumstances, to the highest authority that can act in behalf of the organization as determined by applicable law.
(c) Except as provided in par. (d), if,
(1) despite the lawyer's efforts in accordance with par. (b) the highest authority that can act on behalf of the organization insists upon or fails to address in a timely and appropriate manner an action or a refusal to act, that is clearly a violation of law, and
(2) the lawyer reasonably believes that the violation is reasonably certain to result in substantial injury to the organization, then the lawyer may reveal information relating to the representation whether or not SCR 20:1.6 permits such disclosure, but only if and to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary to prevent substantial injury to the organization.
(d) Paragraph (c) shall not apply with respect to information relating to a lawyer's representation of an organization to investigate an alleged violation of law, or to defend the organization or an officer, employee or other constituent associated with the organization against a claim arising out of an alleged violation of law.
(e) A lawyer who reasonably believes that he or she has been discharged because of the lawyer's actions taken pursuant to pars. (b) or (c), or who withdraws under circumstances that require or permit the lawyer to take action under either of those paragraphs, shall proceed as the lawyer reasonably believes necessary to assure that the organization's highest authority is informed of the lawyer's discharge or withdrawal.
(f) In dealing with an organization's directors, officers, employees, members, shareholders or other constituents, a lawyer shall explain the identity of the client when it is apparent that the organization's interests are adverse to those of the constituents with whom the lawyer is dealing.
(g) A lawyer representing an organization may also represent any of its directors, officers, employees, members, shareholders or other constituents, subject to the provisions of SCR 20:1.7. If the organization's consent to the dual representation is required by SCR 20:1.7, the consent shall be given by an appropriate official of the organization other than the individual who is to be represented, or by the shareholders.
(h) Notwithstanding other provisions of this rule, a lawyer shall comply with the disclosure requirements of SCR 20:1.6(b).
[Comment][Narrative][Other Jurisdictions]
Rule 1.14 Client with Diminished Capacity
(a) When a client's capacity to make adequately considered decisions in connection with a representation is diminished, whether because of minority, mental impairment or for some other reason, the lawyer shall, as far as reasonably possible, maintain a normal client-lawyer relationship with the client.
(b) When the lawyer reasonably believes that the client has diminished capacity, is at risk of substantial physical, financial or other harm unless action is taken and cannot adequately act in the client's own |
– during the Clinton administration.
“At no point has Apple ever said that it does not have the technical ability to comply with the Order, or that the Order asks Apple to undertake an unreasonably challenging development task,” the government’s filing says. “On this point, Apple’s silence speaks volumes.”
But the government in its filing seems to acknowledge its legal push is about much more than gaining access to a single phone. Rather, it wants to ensure it can maintain access to any phone.
“Where Apple designed its software and that design interferes with the execution of search warrants… where it owns and licensed the software used to further the criminal enterprise, where it retains exclusive control over the source code necessary to modify and install the software, and where the very software must now be used to enable the search ordered by the warrant, compulsion of Apple is permissible,” the government says.
Apple has yet to file any formal response with the court. A hearing is scheduled in California for 22 March.You’re sitting at your desk when the phone rings. It’s your boss and he wants to see you in his office. You’re not sure why – nothing in particular comes to mind that would put you in his crosshairs. In fact, you’ve actually been doing a great job lately. Even your boss’s boss mentioned that you were doing outstanding work in a staff meeting the other day, right in front of everyone, including your boss. What could possibly be the problem?
You walk into his office, sit down, and are immediately awash in the most inappropriate display of yelling you’ve ever seen in the workplace. It’s hard to follow all of the criticisms he’s throwing at you, but you make out “incompetent,” “unresponsive” and “careless” amidst a caravan of expletives. The source of the criticism, you finally realize, is a small error you made in a report—something likely no one else even noticed. How could that bring on all of this?
Or…is that really the source of this reaction? Then you remember the look on your boss’s face when his boss sung your praises in the staff meeting. Suddenly this makes sense—he was threatened, and now he’s found one thing to aggressively nail you on.
It’s no surprise that power and aggression often move along the same track. In particular, the threat of losing power is like striking a match near the aggression gun powder keg. Studies have shown that the perceived need to protect one’s power kicks ego defenses into high gear, loaded with enough aggression to regret for a lifetime.
This is, of course, personality specific. Not everyone is going to react this way, but a generous number of people do. According to a 2007 study of American workers, 37% (about 54 million people) have been bullied at work, defined as “sabotaged, yelled at, or belittled” by their bosses. We know that much of this comes from the kind of defensiveness shown by the boss in the scenario above, but what’s really brewing below the surface of the boss’s psyche to elicit this extreme a reaction?
A new study in the journal Psychological Science took on this question from an intriguing angle: could it be that a lack of perceived self competence triggers aggression among the powerful? Power increases the degree to which people feel they must be competent, to fill the demands that come with a high position and to hold onto the position against would-be challengers. If someone in power doesn’t really think he or she is competent enough (or fears they might not be and thinks someone may eventually see through them) then any perceived threat could spark an aggressive reaction – or so this study wanted to test.
Researchers conducted four experiments to test the hypothesis. In the first, they established a basic correlation between power and aggression by having 90 professionals from various fields complete an authority survey (to determine their level of power); the Fear of Negative Evaluation scale (which measures how people think about others’ evaluations of them); and the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionaire (which measures things like argumentativeness, likelihood of physical reaction, etc). The result was that the higher the level of perceived incompetence, the higher the level of associated aggression. Again, this was just a straight correlation – no data manipulation.
The next three experiments took the study farther. In the second, researchers examined peoples’ responses to a primed power role. Assigned roles of varying authority, participants were asked to complete a survey to determine their level of perceived self competence. They were then asked to determine how loud a sound blast should be used as a penalty for undergraduate students who answer questions incorrectly on an upcoming experiment (a fabricated prop for the study). The results: for those in high-power roles who had low perceived self competence, the sound blast level was significantly higher than for people with a high level of self competence. More sound, more aggression.
In the third experiment, participants were first evaluated to determine their level of perceived self competence, and then were asked to complete a “leadership aptitude test.” Some of the participants were given scores indicating that they have excellent leadership skills, and some were told that they had average leadership skills (in other words, some got a self-worth boost and some didn’t).
They were then divided into two-partner groups and told that they’d be competing for a $20 prize with their partners based on scores they earned from taking an intelligence test, with the twist that one partner would chose from a selection of easy to hard tests for their partner to take. They were also advised that whether or not the partner won $20 would not affect the other person from winning $20 (both could win). The results: by a wide margin, participants who had low perceived self competence and did not receive a self-worth boost opted to punish their partners by selecting the hardest IQ tests, indicating a significantly higher level of aggression.
Taken together, the findings from these experiments (including the fourth, not described here for sake of post length) point to a strong conclusion: people in positions of power who do not perceive themselves as competent are far more likely to aggressively lash out against others. The result is ironic, because we typically think of those who attain power as being especially competent – how else can they get so far? But what this study suggests is that power may enhance self critique of competence, and the more someone questions whether they really have what it takes to be in power, the more threatened they’ll feel by any number of situations and people, and aggression too often follows.
Fast, N., & Chen, S. (2009). When the Boss Feels Inadequate: Power, Incompetence, and Aggression Psychological Science DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02452.x
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AdvertisementsAngle: “What’s happening (in America)..is a violation of the 1st Commandment,” entitlements “make government our God.”
That's what Sharron Angle, the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate, said in an April 21 interview with TruNews Christian Radio's Rick Wiles. I have obtained audio of the interview, previously unnoticed, which contains some startling rhetoric from the candidate who has said running for office was a calling from God. But in this interview, she goes much further:
"And these programs that you mentioned -- that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward -- are all entitlement programs built to make government our God. And that’s really what’s happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We’re supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government."
This mindset will further reinforce to some that religion infuses everything Angle believes but also might explain her hostility to government programs, believing essentially they are produced by a false God. And she frames the race as one she has been praying over for some time, a war of ideologies and faith: "And I knew that all along when I started praying over a year ago over it. And this just seemed to be the battle that I needed to go to war with. And I need warriors to stand beside me. You know, this is a war of ideology, a war of thoughts and of faith. And we need people to really stand for faith and trust, not hope and change."
There is more.
Transcripts are below. Audio is at right.
Angle: As believers we know that we have to lean on the Lord daily. And I’ll tell you in this political walk that I’m walking… and I think it is a calling that God has on my life. I have watched him walk with me through politics and help me to see the pitfalls of the political machinery, the seduction of the Party, and even those outside the Party: the lobbyists – all of that to say that the Lord shows me daily where he wants me to walk. And I think that’s what he always wants from us, is not to worry about tomorrow or what is past yesterday, but just take the troubles of the day and work through them with Him. My husband and I pray every morning together, and what we pray is that the Lord would order our day according to His will, not our own. We all have plans, but at the end of the day we need to be content with that thought that God has ordered this day and that he will work it to get it for our good according to Romans 8:28. And also those things in the Old Testament where he says the world means it for bad, but God means it for good.
Wiles: Sharron, why did you get in the race to defeat the biggest Democrat in the U.S. Senate, the majority leader of the entire Senate? Why did you get into this race?
Angle: We’re at war in this country – for our freedom, our culture, for our liberty, our Constitution, and we need a true, battle-tested, proven, Constitutional conservative to take out Harry Reid. It isn’t just about anybody but Harry. Harry is a consummate politician. He reinvents himself at each one of his elections as a conservative. And he has a record that works on both sides of the issue. So, we needed someone who can run to the right and stay to the right of this fellow. When he says that he’s voted seven times against partial-birth abortion, we need someone who can say, “And I have a better pro-life record than you, Harry Reid, and we don’t like the way you confirm our Supreme Court judges, who are all pro-choice. And we all know that the battle has been in the Supreme Court all along for life.” The same thing stands for those who love our Second Amendment. Harry Reid now has the NRA saying, “Thank Harry Reid for all his pro-gun votes.” Well, I have the GOA endorsement and we know that once again those Supreme Court judges would take away our right to keep and bear arms. I’m the only one in this race with a battle-tested, proven, Conservative record that I can stand on. The rest of them fall out in this area fighting Harry Reid. And I knew that all along when I started praying over a year ago over it. And this just seemed to be the battle that I needed to go to war with. And I need warriors to stand beside me. You know, this is a war of ideology, a war of thoughts and of faith. And we need people to really stand for faith and trust, not hope and change.
Wiles: Then I saw the report the other day that 47 percent of the American public will pay no income tax in this country this year. This explains the divide.
Angle: Yes.
Wiles: Half of the country is working to produce and pay the taxes and pay the bills, the other half is living off the taxpayers -- they’re living off the other 51 percent.
Angle: We’re right to that point in the graph where it says, “government dependency.” And we know that once we have a majority that are dependent upon the government, we will lose our freedom; it says we go into bondage. That’s the next stage. Our Founders warned against this. They said don’t… that your liberty is only as secure as the people are. Because once they, um, get the ability to vote themselves entitlements from the largesse of the government, liberty is done; freedom is over with. We were warned. We are there. We’re right on the cusp of it, and you’ve identified those numbers. That’s the war that we’re in. You know, when I talk about a war and a battle and soldiers we have to take up our…our cry for freedom. And we can do it right now at the battle box… I mean at the ballot box. I’m not sure what continues on after 2010. I know people are very frightened about what’s going on in this country. And these programs that you mentioned -- that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward -- are all entitlement programs built to make government our God. And that’s really what’s happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We’re supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government. And you’ve just identified the real crux of the problem. I’ve also been endorsed by a PAC out of Washington D.C. and the name of that PAC is Government is not God. And I thought that that was so appropriate because that is really what’s happening in our society and we need to take our country back.Canadian software company, Netsweep Inc., has added itself to a surprisingly long list of western software developers who are more than happy to sacrifice basic human rights in favour of a buck. According to Ron Diebert, director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs,Netsweep has had a hand in limiting the access of Arab Internet users.
The Canadian company has sold its software to Middle Eastern governments who are struggling to keep a lid on protests in their cities, and Netsweeper makes no effort to hide that fact. The company is unapologetic about their software, as well as how and where it is used.
In a document freely available for download on their website, they state that the software can be used to “block inappropriate content using [a] pre-established list of 90+ categories to meet government rules and regulations – based on social, religious or political ideals.” The same document lists Qatar, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates, along with Canada and India as countries where the software has been implemented.
Not only does Netsweeper have no qualms about how the software is used, they can also be faulted for an extremely conservative, and highly subjective, view of what sites are used for. Tumblr is listed both as a blogging platform as well as being flagged for pornographic content.
Consequently, there were reports that Tumblr was blocked in Qatar, UAE, Yemen, and Kuwait, due to Netsweeper’s classification. So rather than just pull the plug entirely, when things are going really bad for them, some governments are attempting to take the more subtle route of blocking certain content. With the United Nations declaring Internet access a human right, Netsweeper is in clear violation of this.
Tumblr is now reported to be working in the four Arab countries, despite the fact that it is still clasified on Netsweeper’s site as pornography.
The move might have even acted as intentional marketing stunt for the blogging platform, with Qatar based magazine, Qatar Today running their very own Tumblr account now.
The Tumblr incident aside, Internet usage of residents of these four Middle Eastern countries lies at the mercy of both their governments, and a security company which is not only in collusion with these governments, but is also prone to clerical errors that can lead to an entire network becoming off-limits.
While Netsweeper is being championed at home for keeping families safe online, it could just as easily be putting other people in danger if their clients choose to block social networks that play a key role in violent crackdowns on protests.
Read next: Nearing 700 million users, here's what Facebook should do next.SIDE: Past 02
It had been three years since the dragon incident, and Anna Arendelle was now twenty-one years old.
She had yet to accomplish anything.
Or rather, she had yet to win any accolades. Her life was the same as it had been since the time she was fifteen—sent to the outskirts to fight foreign foes, cutting off invaders at their borders and routing mercenaries and warlords that, like vultures sensing weakness in a wounded beast, occasionally prodded at Arendelle with testing strikes. Anna was good at it. Her force was small but dedicated, and loyalty and morale won wars; Anna had yet to fail, and her success should, by all rights, have earned her titles and lands. But her father had never acknowledged her success. To King Agdar of Arendelle, Princess Anna may as well have been another faceless, nameless servant, one sent to die and yet who, against all odds, returned to be a thorn in his side for another day.
It hadn't always been that way. Anna had never been favored, but the tolerance and owed affection that her father granted her in her youth had soured ever since Ellie's death. And that souring of their relationship was not one-sided. They reminded each other too strongly of Ellie to be anything but the bitterest of enemies; Anna still thought about her eldest sister every day, and every time, she wished that Agdar had died. Elizabeth – Ellie – had been perfect: ambitious but ethical, innovative but pragmatic, wise but empathetic, morally just but benevolent. She would have been a perfect monarch. Anna had no doubt about that. Ellie would have revolutionized Arendelle and brought them to a glorious golden age greater than any before—Arendelle would not be the stagnant beast it was now, but a utopia.
Instead, Agdar had killed Ellie.
Anna still wasn't sure what had happened. She had been out of the city at the time, fighting her first battle at fifteen. She had left Arendelle only three months before, and Ellie had been there to see her off with a smile and a wave, a promise to celebrate her victory together. Anna had indeed returned victorious. By the time she did, Ellie's entire household was dead, Ellie's supporters were dead, Ellie was dead. Hundreds and hundreds of people, servants, court officials, the crown princess Elizabeth of Arendelle, all executed for treason and never to be mentioned again on pain of death. Anna's entire world—gone.
No matter what happened, Anna would never forget.
Kristoff approached, his steps respectfully light. "You…really shouldn't be here," he said, but he made no attempt to pull her away. Together they stood in vigil at the complex that had once belonged to Ellie. It ought to have been recommissioned by now and granted to someone, anyone, but instead, Agdar seemed to have forgotten its existence. It lay there in disuse, doomed to a fate worse than death. It would be forgotten.
Anna may as well have been raised here, and she alone remembered the sounds of the household servants going about their business, the well-meaning debates that took place in the courtyard, the smells of whatever new delights were being made in the kitchen, the blossoms that fell from the carefully maintained trees. Now there were dead leaves scattered across browning stone. It was so quiet she could hear her own heartbeat—the only thing here that was not still.
"Let's go," Anna said at last.
She had to report to her father about the latest battles, and the day was no longer young; there were many hours left yet to stand at vigil, to wait at the gates before Agdar deigned to listen.
"I'll be right back!"
Elsa gave a backwards wave as she left the shop, basket of medicinal herbs hooked on her left arm, string of coins tied around her right wrist. She made a tiny hop down the stairs that led into the store, coins jingling into her palm and out again as she did, and she was on her way, gliding down the street with new, comfortable agility, before Kai even managed to respond to her chirped message.
About five shops down, there was a Mr. Dimmes who suffered from gout, hence the medicine she was delivering; and during the evening hours the heat of day cooled into a tolerable warmth that no longer stifled her senses, the throngs of people dwindled into a mild trickle that no longer set off her anxiety, so she was free to brave the markets and purchase whatever Kai needed for the store. Leftover money was hers to keep, and this, she most often spent on simple trinkets.
Today, though, Elsa stopped in front of a tank of water and peered through the glass at a bright yellow fish. It returned her gaze with a baleful stare before resuming its circuit around the tank, giving a particularly angry swish of its tail as it turned away.
"Interested in buying a pet, Miss?" asked the vendor owner.
"Ahh…" Elsa cleared her throat. She had long since mastered speaking, but in the presence of strangers, her skill was blunted by nerves. "N-No, I don't think I can take care of it."
"Oh." Visibly deflated, the man shrugged. "This little fellow's been here for a while. Well, feel free to look around, just don't tap the glass—might startle him."
Elsa did stay to accompany the little fish, though it was altogether uninterested in her company and, indeed, seemed to snub her inability to purchase it by swimming to the farthest corner of its home and prison. Elsa, who made sure to keep a proper distance from the tanks and the water they held, could hardly keep a proper eye on it. She wished she could buy it, but taking care of it was impossible and releasing it in the improper habitat might very well kill it instead. Elsa watched the fish swimming its rounds, feeling an increasing sense of melancholy at the monotony of its path. It only had so much space to swim, so much freedom to live, as was permitted by the walls of its prison.
She could understand that.
It wasn't very long ago that she herself toiled in the dungeons of a castle, oppressed on all sides by dark, humid heat, save for the brief times she was pulled out of her cage—only to be prodded with sharp instruments and goaded into bloodlust.
"Make way for Princess Anna!"
"Huh?" Elsa turned sharply at the loud proclamation, and her elbow struck the corner of the fish tank—and the instant she realized what she had done, she whirled around again, jerking her arm away from the splashing water; but her movement was too sudden, she could not regain her balance, and uttering a small yelp, she tripped backwards into the street.
There was a horse charging down the road, and it was coming straight for Elsa.
Elsa braced herself for impact – and prepared to feign injury – but the horse pulled itself to a halt just before their collision. Or, rather, the rider pulled the horse to a halt, so firmly and so abruptly that the horse whinnied with an indignant shriek as it threw its front hooves up and to the side, finally landing, with a heavy thud, away from Elsa.
"Are you all—"
Whoever had spoken cut herself off with a strangled noise, and only then did Elsa look up at her assailant—and her voice died in her throat in much the same way. Years had passed, but she still remembered. Anna. Elsa hadn't made the connection that the princess was the same person who had saved her then; Anna had never introduced herself as princess when they met, and the name was common enough that Elsa, coming to Arendelle and learning the workings of this kingdom, including the estranged Princess Anna, could not have assumed they were one and the same.
There was another, more pressing matter.
Her hand was wet.
Elsa yanked her hand back into her sleeve, praying that no one had seen. It seemed they had not, or else Elsa would not be surrounded by concerned glances and inquisitive murmurs but by torches and pitchforks; and yet panic drove her past reason and into instinct. She hastened to her feet, taking care to pull her over-wide sleeve further down over her hand, and she cradled the limb close to her stomach until her entire body was slightly bent over the source of her unease. Anna noticed, of course, not the deformity of her hand but the strangeness of her behavior. She outstretched her own hand as though concerned, with a tenuous tremor that was the only remaining indication of her surprise in seeing Elsa again. It was as though the past three years had been only an instant, and they were just now waking up from their shared rest, once again reunited in the corner of that dark alley where they once hid from their attackers.
"Elsa—"
Elsa ran.Today a friend introduced me to Townes Van Zandt, a musician who isn’t, himself, a harmonica player but who has kick-ass music and a wicked harmonica accompanist. I don’t know who is blowing harp on Van Zandt’s Black Widow Blues, but it’s some slick playing! He gets your attention with a righteous warble and then lays out a beautiful little Texas blues lick to prelude the awesome song that is to follow. His part throughout the whole song is fantastically restrained and he sneaks through to shine in tiny moments of brilliance at all the right breaks in the music. His tone is rich and clean to match his style and his licks are bursts of awesome.
And yet I have no idea who this guy is.
Seriously. I couldn’t find out who it is. I’m sure the answer is out there so if you know or can figure it out, let me know in a comment. 1000 points to the winner!
Meanwhile, enjoy Black Widow Blues and afterwards read up on Townes Van Zandt. This guy has some amazing music!
AdvertisementsAs if Westworld didn’t have a pedigree stamp already, Hideo Kojima has just praised its approach to world design, quoting the phrase Anthony Hopkins’ character Robert Ford used to describe Westworld.
Watched "Westworld" E2. What Anthony Hopkins said in that story was an exact theory of my game design. pic.twitter.com/KbJaXQ5N8bNovember 1, 2016
Hopkins’ character says that people return to Westworld because the "subtleties" of the world around them - whether that be a permissive glance, or a bartender who polishes glasses behind the bar - shows them "a glimpse of who they could be", rather than who they already are. The world pulls them back because "they discover something they hadn’t noticed before, something they fall in love with", and characters find it hard to let go of this new world where they can be someone different.
Kojima has praised this approach to world design as it mimics his own theory about creating games, whereby the world allows players to discover new sides to themselves. Once players start a game, or when Guests enter Westworld, they can behave completely differently to how they would in real life and turn into someone different, letting them explore different sides to their psyche.
Westworld gives me shivers. In the anything-goes atmosphere of Westworld where you can be whoever you want, I think these unpleasant versions of people are more likely to surface. Maybe we should keep NPCs in games, as Westworld hints that they’re safer there where they can at least respawn after each quicksave massacre.
Read our Westworld episode 5 review here!A DOM parser for the react.js library, used for instantiating react components declaratively in your html.
This tool is to be used with a bundler such as browserfy but can be adpated for other use cases.
Installation
npm install react-dom-parser --save-dev
Example
html declaration
<div data-react-component="my-module" data-react-props=" name:'simon staton', data: { age: 23 } " id="modules-wrapper"></div>
Before instantiating a react component you must first register it in the parsers registry.
// Require parser var parser = require('react-dom-parser'); // An example react component var myReactComponent = React.createClass({ render: function(){ return... } }); // Register individually parser.register('my-module', myReactComponent); // Register multiples parser.register({'my-module': myReactComponent });
Once modules have been registered you may parse the DOM or any other DOM element to instantiate them
parser.parse(document.getElementsByTagName("BODY")[0]);
To retrieve a react components instance use the getByNode method
var myReactComponentInstance = parser.getByNode(document.getElementById('modules-wrapper'));
To check when parse is complete use the onParseComplete methodUnless you've been living under a rock for the past few months you must've noticed that we've got two much-anticipated flagship smartphones arriving in the very near future: the iPhone 8 from Apple in September and the Galaxy Note 8 from Samsung in August.
It's the old tech foes, Apple and Samsung, head-to-head again, and for this particular round we think the South Korean company might just have the edge - not only because it gets to go first, but because it could have some tricks up its sleeve that Apple can't match.
The timing of the launches
Samsung has already planted a marker in the ground with an Unpacked event scheduled for the 23rd of August, and if you want to steal the spotlight away from something or someone else then it's usually a good idea to get in first. Apple hasn't yet confirmed either the existence of the iPhone 8 or a date for the launch event, but if it sticks to tradition we can expect to see a new phone or phones from Apple in the first half of September.
Don't forget the history here either - as disastrous as the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco was for Samsung, it does mean there's a lot of pent-up demand for a super-sized Android phablet with a stylus, demand that the Note 8 is poised to tap into
As for the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus, they've been selling by the bucketload, as iPhones usually do. While the rumour mill suggests Apple is going to be pulling out all the stops for the tenth anniversary of its flagship smartphone, it's also worth bearing in mind that there are millions of users who are perfectly happy with their current iPhone, and won't be able to afford an upgrade for a while yet.
The features of the Note 8
Nothing we know about the Galaxy Note 8 is official of course, but the leakers and tipsters of today are usually pretty on the money when it comes to predicting the features that smartphones are going to have ahead of time. In the case of the Note 8, it looks like there's a lot to look forward to, following on from the excellent Samsung S8 and S8 Plus.
To start with we're expecting a huge and presumably gorgeous-looking 6.4-inch display, following the 18.5:9 aspect ratio, bezel-busting Infinity Display template now preferred by Samsung. The screen is also tipped to be one of the first on the market to come with a 4K resolution - that's a mind-boggling 3,840 x 2,160 pixels, or 688 pixels-per-inch.
On top of that the rumours suggest a dual-lens camera boasting an impressive 3x optical zoom, as much as 6GB of RAM combined with a state-of-the-art processor, an iris scanner, and a speaker built into the stylus, maybe to read your notes back to you. Considering that Samsung is also likely to maintain its lead over Apple in VR, that's a very appealing-looking package for the Note 8 to tempt buyers with.
The problems of the iPhone 8
Take a glance at any of the iPhone 8 rumours that have been swirling in recent months and it's clear that Apple is aiming high for its next handset, which might appear alongside more minor updates in the form of an iPhone 7S and an iPhone 7S Plus. This is the tenth anniversary of the original iPhone, after all.
What's also clear is that these lofty ambitions that Apple has are causing a few problems in the supply chain. It seems to be touch and go whether Apple will be able to work out how to embed the Touch ID technology under the display in time for the iPhone 8's big reveal (it may get moved to the back or the Sleep/Wake button instead), and we've seen persistent talk that the iPhone 8 will be available in very limited quantities to begin with as Apple looks to iron out various production difficulties.
It doesn't matter how impressive your phone is if you can't get them made fast enough to fulfil demand - just ask Google - and at this stage it would be surprising if there wasn't some kind of delay in the iPhone 8 on-sale date, which would again help Samsung.
The battle between Samsung and Apple
These two tech titans have been locking horns for a long time now and after a period of Apple ascendency it feels like Samsung is finally getting its act together again. From where we're standing the launch of the Note 8 looks set to carry on that momentum.
The iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus aren't bad phones at all - in fact they're very good - but Samsung genuinely raised the bar with the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus this year, with the shrunken bezels and overall design of the phones making Apple's efforts suddenly look rather dated (to be fair, the launches were five months apart). If they can follow it up with an equally spectacular Note phablet then Apple is going to have to have something very special up its sleeve to grab back the headlines and avoid getting overshadowed.
We don't think Apple is going to take a complete beating over the next couple of months, and we're sure that the iPhone 8 will sell very well, if Apple can make enough of the phones to keep up; but when the final assessment is made on 2017, we may well be calling it as Samsung's year.MIAMI -- Paul George will never forget that moment in 2009 when, as a skinny 19-year-old, he found himself guarding the reigning NBA Most Valuable Player. Not in a video game, in a real-life pickup game.
Every year, LeBron James hosts the top high school players in the country at a Nike-sponsored camp. Many top college players are also there as "counselors." In reality, it's a recruitment fest for college coaches and a chance for Nike to develop ties with talent they one day might try to hire as endorsers.
One of the highlights every year, both for the few spectators allowed in and certainly the young men themselves, happens when James suits up and takes on the teenagers in roving pickup games. It's common that he'll bring some NBA friends to those games, including, at times, fellow superstar Chris Paul.
Indiana's Paul George is growing his game into a serious challenge for LeBron James. Robert Mayer/USA TODAY Sports
It's something to see, teenagers who know they're talented and are already into full coddle by the national machine, sometimes turning pale when they suddenly find themselves defending a James-Paul pick-and-roll.
After a good freshman season at Fresno State, George was invited to the camp. Once there, he was given the wave over to the court on which James was playing.
"I like challenges, and it was a challenge," George said. "It was my first time playing against someone of his nature. It was fun. I took a lot away from it."
There was no way either of them realized back then that this was going to be the first of many showdowns.
And there will indeed be many, because, even if it might not be getting the proper attention now, James versus George is almost assured to be the newest great rivalry in the NBA.
James and George have already staged two fantastic mini-dramas in the first two games of the Eastern Conference finals. They've traded clutch shots, jaw-dropping feats of athleticism and long-range bomb shots.
After George's dunk heard round the world over the victimized Chris Andersen Friday night in the Pacers' Game 2 win, James answered with a 30-footer over the top of his new rival. The two then slapped hands at center court.
"He said, 'I got you back young fella,'" George said.
Get ready, this is going to be a long game of attempts at one-upmanship.
" "He's going to be a great one. I thought he had some unbelievable talent back [in 2009] when I met him. He went to a school that no one really paid attention to. But I'm one of those guys who stays up late at night and watches those games. I knew him." " -- LeBron James on Paul George
At age 28 and in his prime after winning his fourth MVP, James isn't going anywhere. At age 23 and coming off his first-ever All-Star season and first appearance on the All-NBA team, neither is George. They are already playing their second playoff series against each other, and both of their teams have aspirations of being back playing deep into the playoffs for the foreseeable future.
"He's going to be a great one," James said. "I thought he had some unbelievable talent back [in 2009] when I met him. He went to a school that no one really paid attention to. But I'm one of those guys who stays up late at night and watches those games. I knew him."
One of the reasons this matchup has so much potential is because of the volume of the action. Unlike with James' more universally established young rival Kevin Durant, George plays in James' conference. They are assured of more meetings. And, unlike Durant, George is guarding James for 40 minutes a game, a task virtually no one else in the league tries to take on.
James moves around defensively, but he will spend more and more time on George as the young swingman develops his offensive game, which is still his weakness.
This isn't James-Durant yet, but you're fooling yourself if you don't see the great potential in how they line up against each other.
"He's improving every time I see him play," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "Every time I see him, he looks taller. He has a unique skill set for his size."
In Game 1, they traded off making huge plays for their teams in the fourth quarter and overtime. George had a brilliant three-point play, on which he drove right through James, then followed it up with a clutch 3-pointer over him at the end of regulation to force overtime.
James got him back by securing a crucial rebound in overtime by out-leaping George. Then, in one of the biggest plays this postseason, James burned George on the game's |
and the Brooklyn Nets will play some double-headers at Barclays next season.
The Nets will own the Long Island Nets outright. A second source says the Nets are paying the NBA a fee of $6 million to rejoin the D-League. That's the same as the Knicks paid the NBA to set up the Westchester Knicks, who play at the Westchester County Center in White Plains, NY.
The Nets had a so-called "hybrid" affiliate D-League team for three years in Springfield, Massachusetts, but two years ago, the owners of that team, the Armor, sold out to a group of businessmen from Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Grand Rapids Drive is now a Pistons affiliate.
In addition to the hint of the D-League announcement, the press release accompanying the groundbreaking noted that the Nets will play one preseason game each year at the Coliseum. Presumably, so will their D-League affiliate.Coach Larranaga first gave Assistant Coach Eric Konkol credit for developing the out-of-conference schedule, and mentioned the 'Canes OOC schedule was top 5 in the country. He felt the team was well prepared for the opener against GT due to the tough early schedule.
Here are some other highlights:
On playing with out Reggie Johnson:
"First of all Reggie was playing very well and giving us great inside presence. He has continued to work very hard, and hopefully when we get him back he will be ready to contribute mightily. He gives us a lot, in terms of rebounding, inside scoring.The rest of the guys (Kenny Kadji, Julian Gamble, Tonye Jekiri and Raphael Akpejiori) realize that they have a major responsibility. The whole key for us offensively is to have balance. If we can get 4 or 5 guys in double figures I think we are in good shape."
On whether he thought he'd ever get his 500th win:
"I don't look at it on the whole, I look at it day to day. I love what I am doing. I really enjoy helping kids grow and learn the game, as well as grow off the court. It's the kids that win games."
On having family members at the game:
"My son Jay was at the game, he is an assistant with the Atlanta Hawks. (Assistant Coach) Chris Caputo and I went to the Celtics-Hawks game and then I had dinner with my son Jay afterward. The Larranagas had a great day."
On team camaraderie:
"What you see if a group of guys that are dedicated to one goal, and that's winning. Rion Brown on Saturday had a great game, and everybody was very excited for him. His dad was an All-American at Georgia Tech. And even though some of our starters had sub par scoring games, they were far more excited to win. I think this team is very unselfish, and they play very hard."
On Rion Brown:
"First of all the great thing about Rion Brown is he has a terrific work effort and attitude. And the great thing about him shooting 9-11 is it will help him relax more. Every game is different in terms of match-ups so you may not see the same performance, but I do know Rion Brown will bring a great attitude and work ethic every game."
On UNC:
"One of the key statistics on Carolina is they are 7-0 at home. They have some young young players and they also have a great support system with their home crowd. We have played some very good teams in hostile environments, hopefully we will be ready. They are a tremendous running team. North Carolina is traditionally in the top 2 or 3 in fast break points."
On Durand Scott:
"I love Durand Scott. He is such a great competitor, and he involves himself in every aspect of the game, and every aspect of our team. He only cares about winning. He is from New York and so am I. We have somewhat of a kinship having played in the same Catholic Basketball League. When we didn't have him, we didn't have our emotional leader. He's going to go down as one of the best players in Miami Basketball history."
Notes from the rest of the ACC:
Wake Forest Coach Jeff Bzdelik noted that he felt 6'9 240 pound freshman forward Devin Thomas could eventually be "one of the better rebounders in the country."
James Johnson of Virginia Tech spoke about the need for other players to step up and match Erick Green's play. When asked, Johnson gave "effort" as the reason for CJ Barksdale's recent benching.
Tony Bennett of Virginia mentioned the health of Jontel Evans and the conservative approach towards his minutes, due to two setbacks in his recovery. Expect his minutes to increase incrementally. Bennett mentioned the ability of Evans to get into the paint as the biggest difference between Evans and freshman PG Teven Jones. Finally he mentioned that one of the keys to slowing down UNC in UVA's win last night over the Heels was making a conscious effort to get back on defense and "form a wall."
Mark Gottfried of NC State noted a healthy respect for Georgia Tech, considering the Jackets beat the Pack last year in Raleigh. When asked about TJ Warren coming off the bench Gottfried said if he could we would "start six." Coming off a tough win on the road at BC, he said Ryan Anderson's improvement and freshman guard Olivier Hanlan's presence make BC an improved squad. Finally Gottfried spoke about Scott Wood's intelligence and confidence and how his communication on defense was underrated.
Roy Williams of North Carolina congratulated Tony Bennett and UVA on defeating his team last night, but also spoke about the play down the stretch last night being a "rude awakening" for his squad. He mentioned some players on the team were not progressing as much as he hoped. He was pleased with the play of Reggie Bullock but felt they needed to get him more shots.
Mark Turgeon of Maryland talked about rebounding better, being the key against a physical Florida State team this week. About the Terrapins schedule, he said his team was as good as its' record, and had time to prove themselves in conference play. On Nick Faust missing last weekend's game, back spasms were the official reason. Turgeon said he would be "very disappointed" if Faust missed this week's game against FSU.
Brian Gregory of Georgia Tech complimented Miami, and noted that his team did some nice things despite the loss. Gregory mentioned that Stacy Poole Jr. is going to need some time to catch up, after missing a lot of time as a mid semester transfer. But Poole's defense and ability to run they floor would be key for the Jackets. Gregory also spoke about the improvement of freshmen Robert Carter and Marcus Georges-Hunt, and how their impact has not been a surprise due to their work ethics.
Leonard Hamilton of Florida State talked about the Seminoles inconsistency and inexperience. But he noted the team is starting to figure things as the practice effort has been better then the game effort. Ian Miller's return from a bone bruise was also mentioned as hope for improvement. Hamilton said that he is still excited about the team, and that they were capable of doing great things, and that they would "find out a lot about the team" this week against Maryland.
Mike Krzyzewski, Duke's legendary coach, spoke about how Rasheed Sulaiman's transition to major college hoops has been aided by the Devils' more experienced players. Coach K gave Mason Plumlee credit for Duke's high percentage of three point shooting. As far as pressure in being undefeated, he said that "hunger for preparation" was the key. Krzyzewski also called Quinn Cook, a "natural point guard", who is judged on whether or not the team wins, as opposed to statistics.
Brad Brownell, of Clemson said he felt that Duke was a better team this year then last. On Rod Hall's performance, Brownell noted he has done "reasonably well" but needs to be more of a vocal leader. He also noted, despite the team's performance against FSU he felt they were a sound defensive squad.
Steve Donahue, of Boston College felt his team played well despite the loss to NC State. On Facing Va Tech he mentioned the exceptional play of Erick Green, and the challenge of executing against their defensive pressure. Donahue mentioned Joe Rahon's toughness made him seem more experienced then a true freshman.
Be sure to stay tuned as we bring you updates through out the season. The ACC Coaches Teleconference takes places every Monday morning.Each week, College Crosse’s Joe Keegan will try to cover the whole field of D1 lacrosse in ten topics. It’s the 10-man ride!
1. Princeton’s man-down defense shut down Hopkins’ extra-man offense by shutting off Shack Stanwick.
Entering Friday, Hopkins’ EMO had converted 8-of-12 opportunities. Quint said it time and time again on broadcasts: Anytime Hopkins is fouled, you can cue the band. Princeton’s defense quieted the band for 60 minutes, but its dominance when man-down was most impressive. The Jays went 0-for-4 as Princeton opted to shut off their quarterback, Shack Stanwick.
Without Stanwick involved, the ball generally stayed above goal-line extended. Only top-down feeds were available, which is a tougher shot than it may seem for a crease player. Catching, turning and shooting before getting popped is near impossible at this level. The best look Hopkins got was off a wall-pass -- but Princeton’s man-down maniacs jumped in front of Pat Fraser’s cannon and ate shot after shot.
We’re getting to that point in the season where teams have enough film on every unit that they face. Midweek games are starting to slow down, and with seven days to prepare, defenses are going to throw wrinkles at opponents. Virginia saw some zone against Penn; Hopkins saw Shack being shut off against Princeton. It’s not time to write off Hopkins’ extra-man. It’s time to grab your popcorn and see what offensive coordinator Bobby Benson draws up if Towson elects to shut Shack off next weekend.
2. Rutgers refused to let Tewaaraton winner Dylan Molloy beat them.
The Scarlet Knights slid quickly to Molloy’s bull dodges. They frustrated him early and often, forcing him into a 3-for-10 shooting afternoon and an ugly ratio of one assist and seven turnovers.
Most of Molloy’s dodges began higher than usual. Rather than driving from X and seeing the play unfold, Molloy was putting his head down from the wing and even dodging down the alley. Rutgers was able to hide their slides well, constantly attacking his blindside -- and sometimes, attacking both his blindside and his frontside.
3. Brown struggled to keep up with #RTempo.
(Relatively) shutting down Dylan Molloy was impressive. Even more impressive? Rutgers out-Browned Brown. The Scarlet Knights threw a ridiculous 32 shots-on-goal. They scored six fast break goals (in the first 30 seconds of a possession); Brown only scored three fast break goals. It was increasingly noticeable over the course of the game that Rutgers’ collective first step in transition was faster than Brown’s. They tweeted it a few times: This is #RTempo. If they keep running like this, then a BTN Plus subscription is a no-brainer purchase. In-conference B1G games are gonna be a whole lot of fun.
4. Two or three times per game, Greyson Torain pulls some absurd move that forces you to hit the rewind button.
Without Casey Rees or Jack Ray, Torain has been Navy’s go-to dodger. He’s not an elite passer (two assists in five games), so he’s seeing extra early double teams. One way to make teams think twice before doubling is to hit the open man. Torain takes the alternate route, and quickly redodges the second defender.
Some of the most athletic players manage to beat defenders with such ease that they never develop complementary moves. That subtle bounce sets up Torain to extend the dodge. Without it, he’d have no angle by the time he beats the slide. By bouncing wide, he pulls that sliding defender outside of his comfort zone and he has room to run by him and bury the shot. Sweet stuff from one of the country’s most exciting players.
5. If Matt Lane keeps passing like this, then the scoreboard at the Carrier Dome might break.
The 6-foot-6 Lane has always been able to get his hands free against short-sticks. Running alongside Sergio Salcido and Nick Mariano, it’s understandable that Lane hasn’t drawn the pole. But after Sunday afternoon’s breakout game (3G, 2A) against Virginia, it might be time to re-think that.
By the time May rolls around, the best offenses have found secondary and tertiary scoring options that make the “Who do you pole?” question impossible for defensive coordinators. There are a ton of answers to that question, and it’s usually the team who picks the least wrong answer who wins. Much of the decision surrounding who matches up with Lane may revolve around the height of the defender rather than the length of the stick. Short-stick or LSM, you can’t put a sub-6-footer on Lane and expect him to hold his own.
6. Virginia’s zone offense is improving, but their best looks still came against man-to-man or on breaks before the zone was established.
The ‘Hoos zone offense was better against High Point than it was against Penn, which is to say it existed against High Point. Some of it was what we typically see against man-to-man defenses (high wing picks with or for Zed Williams), and then some of the looks were new. There were dual quarterback sets with both Ryan Lukacovic and Michael Kraus at X.
In theory the pieces are all there for Virginia to play solid zone offense. Lukacovic and Kraus are smart feeders. Joe French and Mike D’Amario are right-handed and left-handed finishers, respectively. D’Amario and freshman midfielder Dox Aitken can stretch a zone. Zed Williams can play just about any role for the ‘Hoos and find a way to impact the game.
The pieces to the puzzle fit for this to be a great zone offense. What a zone does is it slows down head coach Lars Tiffany’s uptempo team. It minimizes the creativity of Zed Williams as a playmaker, and closes the gap in athleticism any defense faces. Virginia will see more of it, and like Hopkins’ extra-man when Shack is shut off, they’ll have wrinkles ready.
7. High Point goalie Tim Troutner Jr. made several plays as a seventh defender in the Panthers’ zone defense.
All the NFL coaches and general managers in Indianapolis this weekend are missing out on Troutner Jr., who posted the fastest (unofficial) cone drill time right here. Goalies sometimes try to bait shooters with a step or two, but this looks different. Troutner Jr. is making an honest attempt to deny the pass through X. When D’Amario pump fakes, Troutner Jr. books it back to the crease and makes the save on the run.
8. Here’s an unpopular opinion about Saturday’s Maryland-Notre Dame game...
It wasn’t that boring. I feel obligated to write about a matchup between two top-five teams, but everyone seems tired of talking about this. I’ll keep it brief: Sergio Perkovic took eight shots which means eight times I was moved to the edge of my couch fearing for Maryland goalie Dan Morris. When the Motor City Hitman unleashes a shot, it’s exciting. Every time. Notre Dame’s defense -- which is never boring -- held an attack unit which was playing so well that it prompted ESPNU to take the time to photoshop a Run-DMC graphic to two goals, two assists and 12 turnovers. It might not have felt fast, but a lot happened between the whistles.
9. The Pioneers’ pick-and-roll rules were inconsistent, and the Tar Heels capitalized on it.
It didn’t matter who was running the pick-and-roll for the Tar Heels -- the Denver defense was not ready for it. First, Andy Matthews and Luke Goldstock beat a switching defense by slipping the pick. Then a Timmy Kelly-Andy Matthews action in which Kelly didn’t even use the pick drew a double team. Kelly swung it to Matthews, who drew a third defender and patiently waited for Goldstock to come free on the doorstep.
There’s a difference between a well-defended pick-and-roll that produces a goal and this. This was uncharacteristically sloppy for Denver, and I doubt we’ll see this type of miscommunication next week.
10. Tre Leclaire is the most exciting player on an undefeated B1G team that nobody is talking about.
The 6-0 Ohio State Buckeyes have played five games indoors. Every single one has been streamed, but the camera angles have been either too low or too high. Diehard lacrosse fans have watched, but most of the country probably hasn’t seen this year’s edition of the Buckeyes. Well, you’re in for a treat the first time you see freshman Tre Leclaire play. The Canadian product had five goals and two assists in two games this weekend -- none as exciting as this dodge where he initiated contact and split his defender’s stick cleanly in half.
Massholes of the Week: Boston University (Boston, Mass.)
I couldn’t pick one Masshole of the Week. Had to give it to the whole team. The Terriers went 2-0 this week (6-0 on the season), and have piled up some solid transitive property wins. They beat Air Force who beat Duke; they beat Bryant who beat Yale. Their wins over Providence and Navy might look great in May. The Bay State’s fourth-year program should be big climbers in the poll.Position: Center
Age: 17
Date of Birth: July 17, 1992
Place of Birth: Blaine, MN
Height: 6' 5" Weight: 190 lb
Shoots: Right
The 2010 Mr. Hockey for the Division 2A level in Minnesota, Bjugstad is the nephew of former Minnesota Northstars forward Scott Bjugstad. A big, smooth skater with a powerful shot, Bjugstad seems to be pushing himself as hard as possible both on and off the ice to succeed, even loading up on as many AP classes as possible in his junior year of high school so he could qualify for an accelerated graduation to attend Minnesota next year, where he has committed to play for the Golden Gophers. The biggest weakness in his game is that he still hasn't filled out enough to put a physical edge onto his game, but as he develops it's likely to come along. The team that drafts him is likely to leave him to develop in the NCAA and hope that all the pieces will come together to make a dangerous power forward.
2009/2010 Regular Season Stats:
GP G A PTS +/- PIM 28 35 34 69 N/A N/A
Scouting Report (The Scouting Report)
Bjugstad moves very well for a big man and can really break down a defense with his speed and skill. He also competes hard on a consistent basis, and once he fills out his lanky frame, he could add a valuable physical dimension to his game.
The Pipeline Show
The most common words used to describe him from coaches and scouts I've talked to, are humble, character and skill. Not a bad overall package...patterns his game after Joe Thornton
Why He'd Be A Good Fit In Columbus:
If Columbus decides to trade down from the #4 pick, Bjugstad could very well be the target. With his speed, skill, shot, and size, he could instantly revitalize the team's pipeline for the position, but there is the question of how he will develop. His incredible work ethic and drive to succeed point should also get the attention of many general managers looking for a "big heart" player. If he continues to fill out and push his game to the next level, he could well be the next Joe Thornton, just as he currently dreams.
Sorry, no video available for this one - here's a nice shot of the big guy in action:A trio of House Democrats unveiled a resolution on Wednesday that would censure President Trump for his handling of the violence stemming from the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.
The resolution would censure and condemn Trump for reasserting this week that “both sides” were to blame for the violence between white supremacists attending the “Unite the Right” rally to protest the city’s removal of a Confederate statue and counterprotesters. A man with ties to far-right groups has been charged with second-degree murder after ramming his car into a group of counterprotesters, leaving one woman dead and more than a dozen people injured.
Authored by Democratic Reps. Jerry Nadler (N.Y.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.), the measure condemns Trump for his “inadequate response to the violence” and “failure to immediately and specifically name and condemn the white supremacist groups responsible for actions of domestic terrorism.”
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It also specifically condemns Trump for employing chief strategist Stephen Bannon and national security aide Sebastian Gorka in the White House for their “ties to white supremacist movements.”
Bannon previously led Breitbart News, which he described as a “platform for the alt-right,” while Gorka worked there as a national security editor.
“If you look at both sides — I think there’s blame on both sides,” Trump said during a press conference at his namesake tower in New York City.
When asked about the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who initiated the rally, Trump added: “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
Presidential censures have rarely ever been used in U.S. history.
The Senate has voted just once to censure a president: Andrew Jackson in 1834, on the basis that his actions to dismantle the Bank of the United States amounted to an abuse of power. But Jackson's allies gained a Senate majority and revoked the resolution three years later.
The House has considered measures only a handful of times to censure or rebuke presidents, such as John Tyler in 1842 for abuse of powers and James Buchanan in 1860 over his handling of Navy contracts.
No president has ever been rebuked by both the House and Senate at the same time.
Some lawmakers pushed to censure President Bill Clinton William (Bill) Jefferson ClintonKasich fundraises off 2020 speculation Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Howard Schultz must run as a Democrat for chance in 2020 MORE during his impeachment trial in 1998 instead of outright impeaching him, but were unsuccessful.
Jayapal also introduced a resolution on Tuesday that condemned the violence in Charlottesville and the series of equivocal statements made by Trump. Her resolution similarly called for the removal of White House employees “who have supported or encouraged support for white supremacists” but didn’t specifically mention Bannon or Gorka by name.
Trump originally over the weekend blamed the conflicts on “many sides.”
Two days later, and under immense pressure from Republicans and Democrats alike, Trump delivered a statement from the White House declaring that “racism is evil” and specifically singled out “the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”
But on Tuesday, Trump insisted again that the two sides were both at fault for the violence.
“You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say it, but I will say it right now,” Trump said.
This story was updated at 1:41 p.m.Dear Unemployment Insurance Recipient:
Our records indicate that you are currently receiving unemployment benefits through the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency. While the first 26 weeks of your unemployment benefits are the responsibility of the State of Michigan, the federal government funds all unemployment benefit extensions. The United States Congress has until Sunday, February 28, to ensure that these federal benefit extensions continue.
If the Congress does not vote by February 28 to extend federal unemployment benefits, no new extensions will be established and the federal programs that are in place will be phased out. While we are hopeful that Congress will approve an extension of federally funded unemployment benefits by the end of February, this notice is being issued in the event that Congress does not act. Among the specific benefit programs that will be affected if Congress fails to act will be the following:
Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) Tier 1 - Maximum 20 weeks of benefitsl EUC Tier 2 - Maximum 14 weeks of benefits; EUC Tier 3 - Maximum 13 weeks of benefits; EUC Tier 4 - Maximum 6 weeks of benefits; Extended Benefits (EB) - Maximum 20 weeks of benefits. Additionally, the Federal Additional Compensation (FAC) extra payment of $25 per week will also expire.
If these federal extensions expire, the following will occur:
- If you are currently receiving state funded unemployment benefits, you will not receive an extension of your benefits.
- If you are currently receiving a federall funded extension of your benefits, you will not receive any further extension of benefits.
- Extended Benefits can only be paid up to the week ending March 27, 2010.
If Congress fails to extend the expiration date by February 28, 2010, the Unemployment Insurance Agency will begin mailing all unemployed workers currently collecting benefits a letter with more specific information.
If Congress extends the expiration date, extensions will continue through the new expiration date. You will not receive a letter, but this information will be available on the agency's web site at www.michigan.gov/uia and in the news media.
It is our hope that the Congress will act to avoid an interruption in the unemployment benefits that are available to you. And, in fact, we are working to encourage Congress to act quickly so benefits will continue. However, we also understand how critical these benefits are to you and that is why we are providing this notice so you will not be caught unaware if the Congress fails to act by February 28, 2010.The AMRC invents game-changing hybrid 3D printing process 03 May 2017
The Design and Prototyping Group of the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) has developed a unique hybrid 3D printing process that allows electrical, optical and structural elements to be introduced throughout an additively manufactured component during the build process.
‘THREAD’ is a patent-pending process, which means components can now be manufactured with in-built, continuous connectivity and additional functionality passing through the X, Y and Z axes.
The fully automated THREAD process is suited to a variety of additive manufacturing (AM) platforms. It has so far been successfully demonstrated on machines used for 3D printing polymer components.
AMRC Development Engineer and AM specialist Mark Cocking said: “THREAD has scope to simultaneously add multiple industry-recognised threads of differing materials into one component, giving the component additional functions. This will open AM up to a greater variety of uses.
“The development of this process is a potential game-changer. It could be used across many sectors such as medical, aerospace and automotive; where weight and size of components is critical or where components would benefit from integrated data transfer and the protection of sealed connective tracks.”
THREAD will be an advantage in the manufacture of components requiring encapsulated electronics. Components such as those used in medical prosthetics, consumer electronics or structural components that require electrical connections and until now, would have been secured externally to the component.
The nature of the ‘sealed’ conductive tracks could also be of benefit for components which may be sensitive to contamination from debris, corrosion or impact.
“THREAD has potential to be developed as an add-on technology for existing AM platforms and also incorporated into next generation AM technologies,” added Mark Cocking.
Chris Iveson, who is driving the commercialisation of the technology, said: “We see THREAD transforming the functionality of additively manufactured components. Feedback from our contacts in various industries indicates a real need for this capability, with new potential applications being discussed daily. This is a great example of the AMRC using its unique expertise to solve real industry problems.”
The AMRC are further developing the THREAD process and technology for various commercial markets. Manufacturers of 3D printers and industrial users of 3D printing processes are encouraged to contact the AMRC Design and Prototyping Group.How to get boys reading?
Do you feel that reading just isn’t as popular with children these days? We’re all too wrapped up in our iPhones and tablets, after all, and attention-grabbing apps and games are too much competition for boring old books. Well, you might be surprised to learn that sales of children’s books rose by 16% over the past year according to the Publishers’ Association.[1]
Even so, getting kids not just to read, but to get into reading is tough; and getting boys into reading is particularly tough. This is because a combination of factors, some of which we’ve pointed out below. But it’s not impossible to help your son pick up reading for pleasure, and we’ve put together a few tips for hooking your boy’s interest in reading, and hopefully encouraging a lifelong interest in books.
Be a role model
Boys don’t have many reading role models, so it’s difficult for them to pick up the habit from their heroes. If you think about the sort of role models that boys do have- they’re footballers, firemen, policemen… They’re people who do things, who take action, who do their best to win, and reading doesn’t come into that. These people don’t tend to be thinkers, but do-ers, and there really aren’t that many thinkers to look up to in modern society. And even worse, this can make boys think that reading is actually a girly activity.
There’s also the fact you won’t convince your son to love reading if you don’t at least read occasionally yourself. Children are very much influenced by the hobbies and interests of their parents, from music and sport to cooking and baking; reading is no exception. Cally Smart, an English teacher and blogger, spoke to the Guardian about how “The best role models seem to be dads, sports coaches and athletes, men the boys aspire to be. If they experience these men reading and sharing their love of books (any kind of books) then reading is not seen as a female occupation.”[i] So get on it!
Accept the odd distraction
Unfortunately, boys are far more easily distracted than girls. This makes it more difficult for your son to sit still and keep concentrated, especially over long periods of time, meaning that reading is always going to be a little more difficult than with your daughter. But rather than making a point of keeping his attention at all times, and turning the whole bedtime reading process into an unpleasant conflict, just accept that the situation as it is.
There really is no point getting annoyed with him: gently try to keep his attention by incorporating physical activity into reading (we’re thinking of pointing or pulling faces, by the way, rather than star jumps). And if you simply can’t keep him engaged, bear in mind that reading to your son isn’t just for now. It’s for the future. Over time, his attention span will improve; so just keep patient and remember that you’re in this for the long haul.
Encourage your son to read independently
Boys like to feel independent and older than their age. So, if your son is still young, reading bedtime stories to them while they read along is probably the best idea. But once your son gets a little older- and the precise age depends less on development and more on personality- they’ll start wanting more independence, and the ability to do things for themselves. This means that rather than being sat down and lectured to, your son will want to read out loud by himself.
You’ll know when to start better than we do. But when you feel your son is ready, let them take the upper hand when it comes to bedtime reading. Make sure to start with books that are perhaps a little below your son’s usual level: that way, you can keep interference to a minimum if, for instance, there’s a word he doesn’t understand. Over time, he won’t just be reading to you, but he’ll learn to read on his own.
Read around your son’s interests
Once your son starts becoming more independent, it can be more difficult for them to pick up the habit of reading from scratch, or to keep up their previous amount of reading time. This is natural, especially if you only have a small number of books to choose from, which can get boring for your son. The best way to keep your son’s active interest in reading is to read around your son’s active interests!
This could be anything from football to stories about Barbie and Ken, but whatever your son decides is up to him. Don’t try and shape him or force him into choosing things that you deem more ‘suitable’ for him (barring the usual advice about parental guidance). If you do, you’ll make reading unpleasant and he won’t pick up the habit. A good tip is for you to go shopping for books together, and let him pick out what he likes the sound of from the blurb on the back of the cover. Engaging your son in this way will motivate him to read, and to think about reading more often.
Reinforce positive behaviours
With both boys and girls, it’s important to encourage positive behaviours. And this doesn’t just apply to books and reading, but to every aspect of life. It’s of the utmost importance not just to discourage bad behaviour through punishment, but to encourage good behaviour with rewards. So, for his continued commitment to reading- say, if he reads with you every night or you manage to finish a book together over the course of a week- then it won’t be a bad thing to offer just a little reward.
At the same time, it’s also possible to treat reading as a ‘reward’ in itself. If, after all, you’re reading books around your son’s interest- dinosaurs, football, recipe books, it doesn’t matter- he will genuinely enjoy the time you spend together poring over a book, and he may even want to read on his own. But he’ll be especially eager if from a young age you encourage him to think of reading as a reward- something to be enjoyed and savoured rather than a chore to get through.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39718016
[i] https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/jun/11/how-can-we-encourage-boys-to-read-for-pleasure-teachers-give-their-viewsPension bill fizzles, but ‘grand bargain’ is ‘still on track’
Illinois Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, talks with Illinois State Sen. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon, on the Senate floor prior to Senate Bill 11, the pension reform bill, coming up for a vote at the Illinois State Capitol, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2017, in Springfield, Ill. (Justin L. Fowler/The State Journal-Register via AP)
SPRINGFIELD — Putting a snag in the plan to try to pass 12 “grand bargain” budget bills, the Illinois Senate on Wednesday failed to pass a pension reform bill — with a top GOP leader calling the vote a “breach of our agreement.”
The bill had just 18 senators voting yes, and 29 voting no. Ten voted present. And there was no Republican support. Republicans voted either “no” or “present.”
Speaking on the Senate floor, Republican Leader Christine Radogno called the bill’s vote “sort of out of the blue” and a “breach of our agreement,” but the Lemont Republican later told reporters the plan is “still on track.”
“Our caucus wanted everything nailed down before we called the first bills,” Radogno said. “We talked about a piecemeal approach and it was the consensus of the caucus that we didn’t want to do that.”
The bill would create savings by allowing public sector employees to choose whether their benefits are related to raises they may get or to annual cost of living adjustments to their pensions during retirement.
It covers university employees, public school teachers, General Assembly members and Chicago teachers. Retirees and judges are not covered. And other state employees are currently not part of the plan because of ongoing legal action with their contract.
There are procedural ways to get the bill’s language into another bill. And three other “grand bargain” measures that passed the Senate on Wednesday will hold in the Senate before going to the House to ensure all 12 bills are tied together.
There were no plans to call any of the other bills during session on Thursday.
“I think we can always re-vote on the pension bill, which went down. Obviously they need our help on that one,” Radogno said. “We’re prepared to deliver that on significant pension reform, as well as the others. So I think [a] little drama but not the end of the world.”
The pension reform vote marked the first failure of the “grand bargain” package, which also includes an income tax hike, workers’ compensation reform and a temporary property tax freeze.
Illinois Senate President John Cullerton too tried to paint a rosy picture of the bill’s failure — saying he at least now knows what support he has and doesn’t have for the measure. He called it a “misunderstanding” with Radogno and said he intended to call a bill to get CPS $215 million for its teacher pensions, after the pension reform vote.
“I needed to call the pension reform bill in order to first see how many Democrats I have. Because unions are working against it,” Cullerton said. “I had to make the point that it’s tied to teacher pensions parity bill.”
Cullerton said he had been in meetings with Radogno throughout the last few days, making “counter-offers” on the workers’ compensation and education funding bill.
Those are among the most contentious in the plan, along with the revenue bill.
“I got 18 votes on it. And that’s 18 votes with the unions opposing our pension reform bill. She can easily get 12 votes on the pension reform bill,” Cullerton said.
Organized labor opposes the plan because they believe employees will lose benefits — and they don’t want to hand Rauner a win.
Earlier on the Senate floor, Cullerton urged Republicans to vote for the pension reform bill, reminding them Rauner had supported the measure.
“I know that the first few bills the Republicans have so far voted present, but I wish they would take exception to this bill. There’s a little bit of history here. This is a pension reform bill. This is a bill that I negotiated with our governor. He has asked me on numerous occasions, ‘Where is your bill? Please introduce your bill. Vote on your bill.’ And we put it in this package for that purpose.”
Radogno was not on board with a vote on the bill, saying there was talk about passing the “low hanging fruits” where there was agreement.
“This is a very major piece of legislation. It needs to |
turbulent Bialystok, a “babel of languages,” realized that language was both a treasured bond and a divisive barrier. He knew that national languages bound communities together, but he believed that people did not need a shared past to feel loyalty and affinity; a shared future would suffice. To induce Esperantists to commit to their shared future, he did something no language-inventor has done before or since: he gave it to the speakers, to grow it, nurture it, and sustain it. Instead of a mother-tongue or fatherland, Esperantists have a language that is their collective child.
There’s no way Zamenhof could have anticipated the Esperanto of our own high-tech century, but he didn’t have to; the Esperantists have managed on their own. They’ve combined “YouTube” with an ending meaning “doing something,” to make jutubumi, or “messing around on YouTube.” They can lip-synch (bendomimi) or vacuum (polvosuĉili) or rap (repkanti). They’re surfing the TTT (tut-tera teksaĵo). A cellphone is a poŝtelefono (pocket phone), though I usually refer to my smartphone as a kromcerbo, meaning “spare brain.”
Seven years of using a language produced collectively, by trial and error, through negotiations and spats and reconciliations, have convinced me of Esperanto’s untapped potential as a means for political debate. Easily and cheaply learned, it brings all parties to the table on equal footing, speaking to, not at, one another. Any conversation occasions a common act, but an Esperanto conversation is generative. Perhaps a new word will come of it; a new friend; even a new realization. It is an occasion for open mouths to open minds.
While insisting that Esperanto was politically neutral, Zamenhof imagined it becoming the language of political life in multi-ethnic states. I’d like to think that if he were living now, in the country he hailed as a “land of liberty,” he’d point out that if Esperanto can enable us to look beyond the color of one’s skin, it can help us to look beyond the color of one’s state. Imagine it, just there, at the line where red and blue states meet, a “bridge of words” across the divide.
In addition to Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language (Metropolitan), Esther Schor is also the author of Emma Lazarus, which received a 2006 National Jewish Book Award, and Bearing the Dead: The British Culture of Mourning from the Enlightenment to Victoria. A poet and essayist, she has written two volumes of poems, Strange Nursery and The Hills of Holland, and a memoir, My Last JDate. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, Tablet, the Jewish Review of Books, and The Forward, among other publications. A professor of English at Princeton University, Schor lives in Princeton, New Jersey.While the presidential election is now over, the state of Arizona has hundreds of thousands of uncounted ballots that could determine a number of races, including that of infamous Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, reported Colorlines.
The number of uncounted Arizona ballots is not only high — it’s rising.
On Wednesday, there were about 602,000 uncounted ballots in Arizona. On Thursday, the official number rose to 631,000.
Half of all early votes have not been counted yet, and a number of provisional ballots also remain. Latino advocacy groups worry because minorities are more likely to vote early, and a disproportionate number of provisional ballots came from predominantly Latino areas of the state.
Elections officials in the state only have five days to finish counting ballots, but advocacy groups are requesting a deadline extension to prevent voters from being disenfranchised.
[Image via Gage Skidmore on Flickr]The 2015 NFL regular season is just over a week away, and teams are in the process of cutting their rosters down to the 53-man regular season roster limit. The Miami Dolphins' roster is, of course, led by quarterback Ryan Tannehill, a player who in 2012 was the team's first-round draft pick, the first time they had used a first-round selection on a quarterback since the 1983 selection of Dan Marino, and a player who last year became the only Dolphins quarterback not named Marino to throw for 4,000 yards.
Let us now take a journey back to April 2012, when the Dolphins had just used the eighth overall pick to select Texas A&M quarterback Ryan Tannehill. There was so much talk about Tannehill having been a "wide receiver" in college with "just" 19 starts at quarterback. Reports were not using the R word though were they:
Ouch. Maybe they were. Tannehill has been better than these post-draft grades and articles, right? But, maybe he just does not stand up to all those sure-fire picks made in front of him. A reach would, surely, not have anywhere near the career that those value picks made earlier in the selection process have had. Why don't we take a quick look back at the 2012 NFL Draft.
1. Andrew Luck, quarterback, Indianapolis Colts - Luck was considered a "once-in-a-generation" prospect as he came out of Stanford (meaning the Colts drafted two once-in-a-generation quarterbacks in a row - Peyton Manning and Luck). Since joining Indianapolis, Luck has thrown for 12,957 yards, 86 touchdowns, including a league leading 40 last year, with 43 interceptions, and a career passer rating of 86.6. He has started all 48 games since his selection, and he has directed the Colts to an 11-5 record every year. He has also been selected to the Pro Bowl every year. Luck was the clearly worthy of the number one overall pick.
2. Robert Griffin III, quarterback, Washington Redskins - Let us just say the drama surrounding the Redskins and the quarterback for whom they traded away three first round picks and a second round choice was the genesis of this idea. Things have gone from bad to worse to rock-bottom to the sludge you find under the rocks at the bottom. In his rookie year, RG3 appeared to be exactly what the Redskins wanted in their quarterback. He finished that initial season with 3,200 passing yards with 20 touchdowns and 5 interceptions, giving him a 102.4 passer rating, which, along with 815 rushing yards and 7 touchdown carries, earned the 2011 Heisman Trophy winner a Pro Bowl berth. The wheels fell of the next season, with Griffin rushing back from injuries to his ACL and LCL in his right knee, an injury he suffered at the end of the 2012 season. In the next two seasons, Griffin was repeatedly injured, playing in 21 of 32 possible games, winning just five games, and throwing for a combined 4,897 yards with 20 touchdowns and 18 interceptions. This year, Griffin has already sustained a concussion and is now, at best, the backup quarterback for Washington. Speculation abounds that, as soon as Griffin is medically cleared from his concussion symptoms, the Redskins will release him.
3. Trent Richardson, running back, Cleveland Browns - The Browns grabbed the highly touted Richardson with the third pick, only to see him last just 18 games with the club, one of which he did not play. In that first year, Richardson ran for 950 yards on 267 carries, scoring 11 touchdowns in 15 games, missing the Week 17 season finale. The NFL Players voted Richardson the 71st ranked player in the 2012 NFL Top 100 Players list. He started the first two games of the 2013 season for Cleveland, picking up 105 yards on 31 carries, before being traded to the Indianapolis Colts in exchange for a first round draft pick in 2014. The Browns clearly got the better end of the deal. Richardson appeared in all 14 remaining games for the Colts, averaging just 2.9 yards per carry on 157 attempts (458 yards) with three touchdowns. His 2014 performance was not much better, playing in 15 games, with 159 carries for 519 yards (3.3 yards per carry) with three touchdowns. He signed this year with the Oakland Raiders, but was released in the first round of roster cuts on Monday.
4. Matt Kalil, offensive tackle, Minnesota Vikings - The safest pick in the 2012 Draft, outside maybe Luck, Kalil was a surefire dominant offensive tackle who would set the tone for the Vikings' offense for a decade. Except, someone forgot to tell Kalil that. He was impressive as a rookie, earning a Pro Bowl berth. Then his play level suddenly dropped. He has not missed a start since the Vikings selected him, playing left tackle for the NFC North franchise, but he has just not been the same player. Kalil's rookie season was graded as a +14.3 by Pro Football Focus, then he tallied a -6.0 rating in 2013 followed by a -21.1 rating in 2014. Somehow, the Vikings missed on a cannot miss prospect.
5. Justin Blackmon, wide receiver, Jacksonville Jaguars - Maybe the only player whose mess is even worse than RG3's, Blackmon has been nothing short of a disaster for the Jaguars. As a rookie, Blackmon played in all 16 gamesm catching 64 passes for 865 yards with five touchdowns. Since then, he has played just four games, repeatedly being sidelined by alcohol and drug related offenses. He is currently on an indefinite suspension from the league, a suspension that requires Blackmon to request reinstatement, a process that was already completed once and the league actually denied the request.
6. Morris Claiborne, cornerback, Dallas Cowboys - The Cowboys traded up in the draft to grab Claiborne, who had actually been projected to go earlier than the sixth spot. When he was still on the board, Dallas immediately jumped up to the St. Louis Rams' position, sending St. Louis their first and second round picks. Claiborne was immediately installed as the team's starting cornerback, starting 15 games as a rookie. The 2013 season did not go as well, however, with Claiborne falling behind Orlando Scandrick on the depth chart as well as multiple injuries, including a dislocated shoulder and a hamstring problem, limited Claiborne to just 10 games played. In 2014, Claiborne was still behind Scandrick on the depth chart, appearing in the first four games before a knee injury ended his season. So far in 2015, Claiborne has not demonstrated anything to prove he is ready to expand his role with the team this year.
7. Mark Barron, safety, Tampa Bay Buccaneers - Barron was expected to burst onto the scene as a can't-miss safety, yet it appears he is another early pick miss in the 2012 Draft. Barron started all 16 games for the Buccaneers as a rookie, recording 89 tackles with one interception and one forced fumble. In his second season, Barron started 14 games, recording 88 tackles with two interceptions. He started the first seven games of the 2014 season for the Buccaneers, before being traded to the St. Louis Rams for a fourth- and a sixth-round draft pick. With the Rams, Barron moved from safety to a nickel linebacker, recording 23 tackles and three sacks in nine games played, with two starts. In 2015, he appears to have moved back to safety, but does not appear to be lined up as the starting safety for the Rams, who did not pick up the team-option on Barron's contract, meaning he will be a free agent after the season.
8. Ryan Tannehill, quarterback, Miami Dolphins - Miami signed Tannehill to a contract extension this offseason, keeping him on the roster through the 2020 season and paying him $96 million. He became the first Dolphins rookie quarterback to start all 16 games in his first year back in 2012, and he has started all 48 so far in his career. Last year, he threw for 4,045 yards with 27 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. Tannehill has been incredible so far this Preseason, and appears ready to continue to improve on his previous year's stats, a trend he has had every year in the league thus far.
Tannehill is joined by Luck as the only two players in the first eight picks to be with his original team, to not have been benched, or to not be playing so poorly, he should be benched. Tannehill's career started with him being widely panned as a reach. Now, entering the fourth season since the Draft, Tannehill appears to be a player ready to breakout and silence all his critics.In response to a Holocaust denier/conspiracy theorist, let’s begin
. Original post found here if you want it: clickity click!
“Aldrich Plan
----->Balfour Declaration. The two causes, or signatures, for those behind most of the wars of the 20th Century. Israel was created at the direction of the Rothschild, in exchange for Jewish support in war. It's why the US joined WW1 in the first place, and why WW2 happened at all
(blowback against the Zionists, war reparations, etc).”
No, they aren't the causes for war. Unless you think that Germany decided to invade Poland over central banking. Which they really, really didn't. And the Balfour Declaration? Hell, it's just as likely to be the fault of the McMahon Letters. The notion that why the US joined WWI is somehow related to either of those two is ludicrous too. It can't be the Balfour Declaration, because that was made
after
the US entered WWI. The Aldrich Plan...how is that even vaguely related? It isn't. And WWII being blowback against the Zionists and over war reparations? It's like talking to a high schooler who ignores any source of nuance.
Great
factual backup for all the bullshit claims.
“This one's a real eye opener..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dda- 0Q_XUhk [ 2] Rothschild donate supreme court building to Israel, full of masonic symbology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8MR4fK7PWQ
I'm not going to bother with bullshit documentaries or whatever the fuck you wanna call these. The titles say enough about how wrong they are.
Ignoring how poorly this article is written, this proves what exactly? That the US is paying $62 million to build a base in Israel? Hundreds of millions are paid to maintain Guantana mo per year. The author himself mocks the stupidity of the suggestive answers people are giving and conspiracy theories floating around.Whether you’re just starting to repay student loans or you’re looking for a new repayment plan on old loans, there are a lot of options available to lenders. Unfortunately, student loan repayment plans are complicated and full of fine details, making it hard to compare plans and figure out which one is best for you.
We created the chart below as a resource for comparing the different plans available to borrowers. Scroll down past the chart to read more detailed information about each plan, other repayment options, a glossary of terms, and a list of sources.
One fact that stays constant? The lower your monthly payment, the more interest you’ll pay in total. In exchange for a more manageable monthly payment, you’re agreeing to keep your debt for a longer period of time, letting more interest accrue. Many borrowers have no choice: the default plan’s payments can be incredibly high for borrowers just out of college or in public service careers. Our advice is to make the highest possible payments that you reasonably can every month. But don’t overextend overself. It’s much better to pay more interest in the long run than it is to default on your student loans.
How we calculated examples
In the summaries of repayment plans below, we’ve included examples of what a New Yorker with a salary of $35,000/year and is single would pay per month with each plan. This salary is a composite of averages from across the 22 to 27 year old age range. We based these examples on the "average loan" calculations from the Office of Federal Student Aid Repayment Estimator for a four-year public college: $26,946 with an interest rate of 3.9%.
Examples are included solely to illustrate the differences between plans. They are not meant to illustrate your personal loans. After reading through this guide, we suggest you use the Repayment Estimator or contact your lender in order to figure out the best plan for your current financial situation.
Plans Not Based On Income
Standard Repayment Plan
The Standard Repayment Plan is the default repayment plan. If you don’t apply for one of the other repayment plans, you’ll be automatically enrolled in the Standard Repayment Plan when your grace period ends. Not coincidentally, it’s the plan that the majority of borrowers choose - 65% of all borrowers are on the Standard Repayment Plan.
The details are simple. Make monthly payments every month for 10 years (120 months) until you pay off your loan (with interest). This is the fastest way to pay off your loans while paying the least amount of interest (unless you happen to win the lottery and can pay them off all at once).
So what’s the downside? Super high payments. The more debt you have, the higher the payments, starting at a minimum of $50, but growing as high as $300 to $400 per month.
Our example borrower would end up paying $272 per month and would pay $32,585 in total, with $5,638 of that being interest. The standard repayment period is 120 months.
Graduated Repayment Plan
The Graduated Repayment Plan is a slight change to the Standard Repayment Plan, designed for students who may start out with low salaries, but are confident that their salaries will grow over time. Payments on the Graduated Repayment Plan look similar to a staircase:
While payments on this plan start lower than the Standard Repayment Plan, they will end higher, with an increase coming every two years. Graduated Repayment Plans still have a time frame of 10 years, but because you start with lower payments, you’ll end up paying more in interest than with the Standard Repayment Plan.
Our example borrower would start by paying $152 per month and end by paying $455 per month. They would pay $33,979 in total, with $7,032 of that being interest. The standard repayment period is 120 months.
Extended Repayment Plan: Fixed & Graduated
These two repayment plans are just like the Standard and Graduated Repayment Plans, with one major difference: they let you pay off your loans over 25 years (300 months) instead of 10 years (120 months).
While the benefit of this plan is a lower monthly payment, you’ll end up paying more for your loan over time, as more interest will accrue than would on a Standard Repayment Plan.
Just like there are two versions of the 10 year repayment plan, there are fixed and graduated versions of the Extended Repayment Plan. And, just like the 10 year plans, you’ll end up paying more interest on a Graduated Extended Repayment Plan than the fixed payment version.
In order to qualify for an Extended Repayment Plan, you must have over $30,000 in either Direct Loans or borrowed from the FFEL Program. You must also be a new borrower as of October 7, 1998.
Our example borrower does not qualify for this repayment plan as they do not have over $30,000 in loans. Based on averages for a total of $35,000 in loans, we estimate that you would end up paying about 30% more in total by choosing a Fixed Extended Repayment Plan over a Standard Repayment Plan. The extended repayment period is 300 months.
More student loan advice from PolicyGenius:
Plans Based On Income
Income-Based Repayment Plan
We know that this looks like a wall of text that you probably don’t want to read. Stick with us! Income-Based Repayment Plans are incredibly useful despite being more complicated than the plans outlined above.
Income-Based Repayment (IBR) Plans are available to any borrower with a partial financial hardship.
According to Equal Justice Works, a partial financial hardship "exists when the annual amount due on all of a borrower’s eligible loans, as calculated under a standard 10 year repayment plan, exceeds 15 percent of discretionary income."
Discretionary income is determined by taking your adjusted gross income and subtracting 150% of the poverty line. If your income is near or below 150% of the poverty line, your monthly payment will be zero. Otherwise, your monthly payment will be capped at 15% of your discretionary income.
The 2014 Poverty Guideline from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services is $11,670 for a single person household in the 48 contiguous states. 150% of that is $17,505. Using our example borrower’s salary of $35,000/year, we calculated that their discretionary income would be $17,495/year, or $1,457.92/month. 15% of that monthly discretionary income would be $218.69, lower than the Standard Repayment Plan’s monthly payment of $272.
The maximum repayment period under the IBR plan is 25 years (300 months). Any remaining balance on your loans after 25 years will be forgiven. At the end of 25 years, the remaining balance forgiven will be treated as income, meaning that you will have to pay income tax on the remaining balance. A limited amount of your interest will also be forgiven.
If you’re going into a career in public service, you can get your loans forgiven after a 10 year repayment period. There are several restrictions on this program, however, so if you’re in a public service job, we suggest you check out the federal government’s fact sheet on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.
A new version of the IBR program went into effect for new borrowers as of July 1, 2014. The updated version caps monthly payments at 10% of your discretionary income and institutes a maximum repayment period of 20 years (240 months).
Borrowers with an IBR plan must supply their lender with their latest proof of income annually in order to stay enrolled. Monthly payments will be recalculated every year based on this new information.
Our example borrower would start by paying $219 per month and end by paying $272 per month. They would pay $33,114 in total, with $6,167 of that being interest. They would pay off their loan in 127 months.
Pay As You Earn Repayment
Pay As You Earn (PAYE) has a straightforward name, but the details are more complex. Similar to the IBR program, PAYE plans are based on partial financial hardships and your discretionary income.
Once enrolled in a PAYE plan, borrowers’ monthly payments will be capped at 10% of monthly discretionary income. Repayment periods are capped at 20 years (240 months). After 20 years, your loans will be forgiven, though you will have to pay income tax on the forgiven amount. Borrowers in public service careers can have their loans forgiven after 10 years.
Like IBR plans, PAYE plans require that you annually supply your lender with updated proof of income.
PAYE plans are only available to new borrowers after October 1, 2007, and must have received a disbursement of a Direct Loan on or after October 1, 2011.
Our example borrower would start by paying $146 per month and end by paying $272 per month. They would pay $35,666 in total, with $8,720 of that being interest. They would pay off their loan in 161 months.
Income-Contingent Repayment Plan
While Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) Plans are based on income, they do not require a partial financial hardship. This makes ICR plans perfect for borrowers who want to keep monthly payments low, but don’t qualify for an IBR plan or Pay As You Earn.
Your monthly payment for an ICR plan will be based on one of two metrics: 1) 20% of your discretionary income or 2) what you would pay on a fixed plan with a 12 year repayment period. Your monthly payment will be based on whichever metric produces the lower number.
ICR plans have a maximum repayment period of 25 years, after which any remaining balance will be forgiven.
Our example borrower would start by paying $193 per month and end by paying $229 per month. They would pay $35,292 in total, with $8,352 of that being interest. They would pay off their loan in 168 months.
Income-Sensitive Repayment Plans
Each lender’s formula for an Income-Sensitive Repayment Plan varies. They are only available for Stafford Loans, FFEL PLUS loans, and FFEL Consolidation loans.
Our example borrower does not qualify for this repayment plan.
Other Options
If you cannot afford to pay your student loans and you are not eligible for a plan that allows you pay a lower monthly payment, there are options.
Deferment allows you to postpone making payments for up to a year. Borrowers are entitled to deferments if they meet the requirements, which can be met by proving extended unemployment or other financial hardship, active military duty, or one of the other situations (full list here). The government will also pay interest on Federal Perkins Loans, Direct Subsidized Loans, and Subsidized Federal Stafford Loans during a deferment period. Other loans will accrue interest during a deferment. Interest may also be capitalized during this time.
Forbearance also allows borrowers who don’t qualify for a deferment to postpone making payments for up to a year, but it comes with a set of stipulations that may make it unattractive. Unlike deferments, most borrowers are not entitled to a forbearance (there are a few exceptions, outlined here). Interest may be capitalized during a forbearance, creating a more expensive loan.
You may qualify for loan forgiveness based on volunteer work or other public service work. For more details, check out this summary of loan forgiveness programs by FinAid.
What plans do I qualify for?
Here's a cheatsheet to see if your loan qualifies for one of the repayment plans listed in this article:
Standard Repayment Plan
Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loans, Subsidized and Unsubsidized Federal Stafford Loans, all PLUS loans.
Graduated Repayment Plan
Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loans, Subsidized and Unsubsidized Federal Stafford Loans, all PLUS loans.
Extended Repayment Plan
Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loans, Subsidized and Unsubsidized Federal Stafford Loans, all PLUS loans.
Income-Based Repayment Plan
Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loans, Subsidized and Unsubsidized Federal Stafford Loans, all PLUS loans made to students, Consolidation Loans (Direct or FFEL) that do not include Direct or FFEL PLUS loans made to parents.
Pay As You Earn Repayment Plan
Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loans, Direct PLUS loans made to students, Direct Consolidation Loans that do not include (Direct or FFEL) PLUS loans made to parents.
Income-Contingent Repayment Plan
Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loans, Direct PLUS Loans made to students, Direct Consolidation Loans.
Income-Sensitive Repayment Plan
Subsidized and Unsubsidized Federal Stafford Loans, FFEL PLUS Loans, FFEL Consolidation Loans.
Glossary of important terms
Here is a partial glossary of terms mentioned in this article. For a larger and more robust glossary, check out the Office of Federal Student Aid’s Glossary.
Capitalization - when unpaid interest is added to the principal of a loan, increasing the amount of outstanding principal and possibly increasing monthly payments (new interest will also be charged on that larger principal, increasing the overall cost of your loan)
Discretionary income - the difference between your adjusted gross income and 150% of the poverty line, currently set at $11,670 for a single person household in the 48 contiguous states (see example calculation)
Partial financial hardship - when the annual amount due on all of a borrower’s eligible loans, as calculated under a standard 10-year repayment plan, exceeds 15 or 10 percent of discretionary income (depending on the repayment plan you are applying for)
Sources & more to read
Office of Federal Student Aid Repayment Calculator
Office of Federal Student Aid Glossary of Terms
Understanding Repayment Plans from the Office of Federal Student Aid
Understanding Income-Driven Plans from the Office of Federal Student Aid
Income-Based Repayment Loan fact sheet from FinAid
Partial Financial Hardship information from Equal Justice Works
2014 Poverty Guidelines from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Federal Government fact sheet on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program
Understanding Income-Sensitive Plans from of the Office of Federal Student Aid
Understanding Deferment and Forbearance from the Office of Federal Student Aid
Article: "A closer look at the trillion" by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Photo: geckoam: A Biography of a Nation Phillip Knightley Vintage, 2001 - 373 pages, 2001 - Australia 1 Review Australia celebrates one hundred years as a nation in 2001. This book - part history, part travelogue, part memoir - tells the inspiring story of how a one-time British colony with only two sorts of citizens, convicts and gaolers, turned itself into a proud, prosperous and confident country, the greatest sporting nation on earth, where the citizens of its high-leisure cities enjoy a lifestyle that is the envy of the world. The original hostile factions of British Protestants and Irish Catholics were joined by gold rush adventurers, waves of migrants seeking a new life, war-shattered Europeans and then - in a make-over the speed of which surprised the world - new settlers from all over Asia. Despite the appalling bloodshed of two world wars, the horror of the great depression, strikes, riots, secret armies and near civil wars, out of this amazing mix grew a new and unique character, the Australian. Through the eyes of ordinary people struggling with their passions, hopes, dreams and ambitions, Phillip Knightley describes the journey that has taken the Great South Land from a dark, racist and often murderous past to a working multi-cultural society.But analysts in the region, across the political spectrum, strongly caution that no breakthroughs can be expected soon. Fundamental disconnects remain, and in the diplomatic dance, each side claims that its adversaries are coming around to its point of view.
Russian and Iranian officials suggest that Saudi Arabia, the United States and allies like Turkey are coming to realize that fighting terrorism is more important than ousting Mr. Assad, though Mr. Jubeir insisted after his meeting with Mr. Lavrov that “there is no place for Assad in the future of Syria.” Conversely, American and Turkish officials, who contend that his rule drives radicalism, say that Russia has grown more willing to see him replaced.
And even if real consensus can be reached, any agreement would have little meaning right now, when many forces on the ground still believe they can gain by fighting. Any deal that emerges would be likely to cover only the government-held western spine of Syria and parts of the south, where relatively moderate insurgents are strongest. It is virtually inconceivable that the Islamic State, entrenched in eastern Syria, or the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s arm in Syria and a powerful force in the northwest, would be included.
What is nonetheless taking place internationally is a shift in tone, a sense of movement below the surface. That alone is notable in a context of divides that can seem unbridgeable, after four and a half years of fighting that has killed at least a quarter-million people and driven the worst refugee crisis in a generation.
Of all the recent diplomatic exchanges and openings, none is more important than the apparent new spirit of cooperation between Russia and the United States. Fyodor Lukyanov, chairman of a council that advises the Kremlin on foreign policy, said that conversations were returning to the topic of Syria after a year of exclusive focus on the Iran deal, with each side a bit “less firm” in its position.
“Saudi still believes that Assad should go, but now they are a little less sure that the alternative will be better,” he said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “Russia still believes he should stay, but cannot ignore that the general situation is changing, that the strategic position for Syria is much worse now than before.”
Senior American officials say Russian officials have appeared to be more open in recent weeks to discussions about replacing Mr. Assad. These officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic deliberations, say Moscow is increasingly worried about Mr. Assad’s precarious position and the rise of extremist groups, which have recruited several thousand Russian citizens to fight in Syria.News in Science
Scientists find way to block fearful memories
Researchers in the U.S have found a drug-free way to block fearful memories, opening up the possibility of new treatment for people with anxiety disorders.
The findings, published in today's edition of Nature, build on past studies in rats that showed that reactivating a memory - by showing people objects that stimulate the fearful memory - opens up a specific time window in which the memory can be edited before it is stored again.
"Before memories are stored, there is a period where they are susceptible to being disrupted," says psychologist Dr Elizabeth Phelps of New York University.
Earlier studies have shown that drugs can be used to block fearful memories, but the results are not long lasting.
Phelps and colleagues based their studies on findings in rats that show that old memories can be changed or reconsolidated, but only during a specific window of time after the rat is reminded of the fearful memory.
That window of susceptibility is typically between 10 minutes after re-exposure to the object to 6 hours later, when the memory is again stored in the brain.
Exposure therapy
The researchers applied these findings to people in a lab setting. First, they created a fearful memory by showing the volunteers a blue square, and then delivered a mild shock.
Once they had created the fear memory, the study volunteers were again shown the blue square, which reminded them of the fear memory.
The research team waited 10 minutes and then started an exposure training period where the volunteers were repeatedly exposed to the blue square without a shock.
Phelps says simply delaying the exposure training so that it falls within a period during which the memory is susceptible to being edited made a lasting difference in the ability to block the fear memory.
A second group that was exposed to the blue square without the 10-minute waiting period, continued to show fear when exposed to the blue square.
Test repeated
When they brought people back a year later, the researchers re-examined their responses to the stimuli by tracking changes in their skin.
The group that got the exposure training showed no fear response when exposed to the blue square, while other volunteers continued to have a fear response.
Phelps says the important aspect of the study is the time window.
"What we think is happening is [happening] because we did it at the right time, you are restoring the memory as safe as opposed to just creating a new memory that competes with the old memory," Phelps says.
The findings are the first of their type in humans, but she cautioned that the findings cannot be immediately applied to people with severe anxiety problems, such as post traumatic stress disorder.
"We did a blue square with a mild shock," she says. "Normal fear memories are way more complex than that."
But she says the findings do open up the possibility of new training methods that can be studied to help people overcome difficult memories.
"It's really exciting for the potential of treating these disorders. It's just a [while] away," Phelps says.
The study was supported through a grant by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Mental Health.Josh Lowensohn/CNET
Internal police documents reveal the legal processes that law enforcement agencies use to require Apple and Google to bypass the lock screens on seized mobile phones.
Training materials prepared by the Sacramento sheriff's office include a fill-in-the-blanks court order that, with a judge's signature, requires Apple to "assist law enforcement agents" with "bypassing the cell phone user's passcode so that the agents may search the iPhone."
It's more difficult to gain access to a locked Android phone. The document (PDF page 25) says that according to T-Mobile and Google, the only way to "unlock the phone is to have the Gmail user name and password." But Google employs good security -- presumably a so-called cryptographic hash for passwords -- and does "not have access to particular e-mail account passwords, as they are encrypted."
The solution is for police, with a judge's approval, to require that Google "resets the password and further provides the reset password to law enforcement." That will work -- but will also have the undesirable side effect, from law enforcement's perspective, of tipping off the account holder that his or her phone has been compromised by the cops.
Because these are court orders, when Apple and Google receive them, they typically have no choice but to comply. Neither company immediately responded to questions from CNET on Monday.
A law enforcement source in the San Francisco Bay Area has confirmed to CNET that Apple has for at least three years helped police to bypass the lock code, typically four digits long, on iPhones seized during criminal investigations.
The disclosure provides more details about the increasingly common police practice of searching mobile phones, which are often seized during an arrest. Last year's news that iOS stored logs of a user's approximate whereabouts -- something that Apple called a "bug" and soon fixed -- also highlighted how interested law enforcement has become in accessing mobile devices.
Over the weekend, the ACLU posted thousands of pages of documents about cell phone tracking its affiliates obtained through state freedom of information laws. Many police departments engage in "at least some cell phone tracking" without obtaining a search warrant from a judge, which the ACLU says violates Americans' Fourth Amendment privacy rights. (The undated iPhone-Android document was prepared by the Sacramento Valley High Technology Crimes Task Force, part of the sheriff's office, which did not respond to a request for comment.)
Police searches of seized mobile phones also can raise Fourth Amendment issues when done without a search warrant signed by a judge. Whether warrantless searches are legal is still an unresolved question: the U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled on the topic, but in 2007, the Fifth Circuit concluded that police were permitted to conduct a warrantless search for call records and text messages during an arrest.
The Obama administration and many local prosecutors argue that warrantless searches are perfectly constitutional during arrests, likening it to looking through an suspect's wallet or appointment book. Civil libertarians and privacy advocates have responded by saying that because our gadgets today store so much information about us, including correspondence and personal photos and videos, a search warrant should be required -- and some other courts have agreed.
It is |
12:24 p.m.: "Our communities are suffering and it is because of the ever expanding lack of self control & personal responsibility."
Tweeter Val Farrelly replied: "It's nothing to do with self control and everything to do with a lack of gun control."
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Another Beck gem about the shootings: "It is not the gun. It is the soul."
5. Steve Deace: Killings caused by widespread child-murder by parents and a school assignment in France. The right-wing radio talker took to his Facebook page the day of the shootings to attribute them to a "culture of death" for which he used, as evidence, deceptively packaged examples, including "asking kids to write suicide notes in schools" and "allowing and subsidizing parents killing 4,000 of their own children each day."
I Googled "suicide note school assignment" and found one example -- in France. Since Deace had published a blog post about the French story on his Web site, it's safe to assume that's what he was referencing, and it's difficult to see the impact that would have had on a killer who attended school in Connectict.
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For Deace's assertion of 4,000 killings of children by their parents per day, we could find no evidence.
The radio personality also claimed that children are taught that "there is no God, and thus their lives have no real purpose." Right Wing Watch has the report.
6. Larry Pratt: Making schools gun-free zones caused the problem. The executive director of Gun Owners of America, a far-right group allied with the militia movement, makes a leap of logic by claiming that because the massacre happened in an school designated as a "gun-free zone," that the absence of guns in Sandy Hook Elementary School must have caused the problem.
Despite the fact that Pratt once addressed a group of white supremacists and advocated for the creation of militias in the U.S. based on the model of anti-communist Guatemalan death squads, the USA Today Web site gave Pratt a big megaphone to its millions of unique viewers (23 million in May 2011, according to the company's media kit), the day after the Sandy Hook tragedy, in the opinion section of the site.
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There, Pratt asserts:
Hopefully, the Connecticut tragedy will be the tipping point after which a rising chorus of Americans will demand elimination of the gun-free zone laws that are in fact criminal-safe zones. One measure of insanity is repeating the same failure time after time, hoping that the next time the failure will turn out to be a success. Gun-free zones are a lethal insanity.
As AlterNet reported in 2010, Pratt told a rally of gun owners at the Washington Monument that the Oklahoma City bombing was but a battle in a war between the citizens and the government. (He cited the assault on David Koresh's compound by federal law enforcement in Waco, Texas, as evidence of a purported war on citizens by the government. As we reported in April 2010, Pratt continued his rally speech, saying:
We're in a war. The other side knows they're at war, because they started it. They're comin' for our freedom, for our money, for our kids, for our property. They're comin' for everything because they're a bunch of socialists.
Shame on USA Today for publishing Pratt as some kind of expert. Guess they couldn't find a Ku Klux Klan official.
7. Louie Gohmert: If only Sandy Hook principal had an assault rifle, everyone would have been saved. Speaking to host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, the Republican congressman from Texas let loose with this, as transcribed by the Huffington Post:
Advertisement:
"Chris, I wish to God she had had an M4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out... and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids," Gohmert said.
The M4 is the rifle favored by the U.S. military; you can view its specs on the site of its manufacturer, Colt. Yeah, that'll fix everything.At London ceremony...
Liam Gallagher threw Oasis’ BRIT Award into the crowd tonight as he collected the honour on behalf of the band at the ceremony in London.
The group, who split last year, won BRITS Album of 30 years for their 1995 album ‘(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?’.
Appearing as an unexpected guest, Liam thanked the members of Oasis who worked on the record - except for his brother Noel.
He then proceeded to walk to the front of the stage, where he threw the award into the crowd.
Gallagher’s reaction prompted host and comedian Peter Kay to brand him a “knob head”.
The band’s 1995 album beat records by Dido, Duffy and Phil Collins to the award.
Oasis split last August following the departure of guitarist Noel. Both brothers are currently on the verge of launching solo projects.
The ceremony, at Earls Court, has so far seen prizes handed to Dizzee Rascal, the Spice Girls and JLS.
Oasis liveGuaranteed Basic Income
Copyright © 2016 & 2018 by Wil C. Fry
Published 2016.09.29, Updated 2018.11.13
My position: I’m convinced Guaranteed Basic Income could be the lone viable solution for massive job loss due to automation. In the end, I think the benefits would outweigh any negative effects.
Introduction
Every adult citizen receives a tax-free income check from the government, enough to provide basic sustenance, shelter/utilities, transportation, and medical care. There are no restrictions or conditions on how that money can be spent, nor any qualifications or restrictions on who can receive it — except for “citizen” and (possibly) “of age”.
I first heard of the idea a year or two ago, and it seemed farfetched. “Guaranteed Basic Income” isn’t a completely new idea — it’s been floated as long ago as the 1700s, by Thomas Paine (in Agrarian Justice ) — but it seems relatively recent that it’s gaining any traction in the popular imagination. Simply put, this is the idea:Your first thought is probably “Whoa!” — at least that was my first thought. That’s a lot of damn money. With 245 million adults in the U.S., and assuming that a “basic income” is at least $1,700 per month (the amount proposed in a Swiss referendum, adjusted for the cost of living), it would cost the U.S. $417 billion. Per month. That’s about $5 trillion per year, bigger than the current annual federal budget.I was tempted to drop the idea then and there, purely for practical reasons.What kept drawing me back is the increasing number of economists and policy-makers who are considering the idea. So naturally I wonder: what’s the draw of a program that would cost this much? Obviously, the attraction for those on the bottom rungs of society is “Free Money!”, but many of the people considering this idea are not on the bottom rungs of society; in fact, some of them stand to lose quite a bit in taxes if such a thing ever passed — because it would require a dire tax increase. (In fairness, I must mention that there are many economists and policy-makersthe idea too. Here’s one source.)There are multiple arguments in favor of Guaranteed Basic Income (which I will henceforth refer to as “GBI”), and several arguments against it. I will explore them each below.
Automation Is Coming, Like It Or Not
The primary reason the idea is being floated in our time is increased automation : “...what if we’re entering an automated future where there won’t be enough jobs for the people who need them? If this happens, how will people pay for food and shelter?”Each year, new fields of employment are targeted for automation. Even withoutautomation, many technological advancements mean greater productivity per worker, which means employers don’t need as many workers.Some jobs that areunder threat of automation by machines include all drivers — to include taxis, buses, delivery vehicles, and even long-haul trucks — fast food employees, janitorial services, factory workers, pharmacists, anesthesiologists, insurance brokers, architects, stock brokers, loan officers, teachers, human resources, advertisers, paralegals, and even many news writers ( one source of many).Computer programming has come away, and has far yet to go. True, there are some jobs that will beto automate, and thus will be the last to go, but most people don’t have those jobs. Most people are office clerks, customer service representatives, retail clerks, drivers, nurses, secretaries, bookkeepers, accountants, low-level supervisors, teachers, factory workers, and so on.When I was a child, two men used to ride clinging to the back corners of every garbage truck in the land; their job was to dump each household’s trash container into the back of the truck and replace it (close to) where they found it. Now there’s just the driver. A giant metallic arm extends to lift the trash container and dump it into the truck. There aren’t any employees clinging to the back anymore. (This isn’t actually “automation”, because the driver is controlling the robot arm, but it’s an example of how a relatively simple machine can replace a once-standard job.)...referring to the machine voices that answer phone calls or “smart” programs on their phones and PCs. Those use years-old programs, programs that havereplaced many thousands of jobs. There were once half a million telephone “operators” in the U.S., before phone companies realized customers could push a few extra buttons without help — and that massive computers in the background could do the work once performed by hundreds of thousands of women. Every company worth its salt once had rows and rows of telephones, answered constantly by reams of humans — whose only job was to find out which department you wanted. Those jobs are almost entirely gone.When I was a child, one-hour photo booths began popping up everywhere. You could drop off your film, go shopping in the nearest store, and then pick up your processed photos on the way home. Those booths are gone. Yes, you can still get prints at Walgreens, Costco, and so on, but even those departments are now largely staffed by computers, except for the human cashier. Most of us get our photos processed in-device. The last three times I shopped at The Home Depot, I exited without ever dealing with an employee — I rang up my items on self-serve cash registers and paid via machine.Any job that consists of performing exact, repetitive tasks — cashier, grocery stocker, factor worker — is quickly on its way to full automation. But even more complex jobs that require more levels of decision-making are on their way to automation as well. BecauseTry the math. Designers, programmers, repair technicians, etc., will number far fewer than the jobs they will replace — otherwise it wouldn’t be cost-effective to have the robots in the first place. And “cost-effective” is the exact reason companies around the world repeatedly look to replace human employees.In the past, it’s been true that new jobs have arisen to replace the old ones. As harvesting machines began to do the work of millions of farmers, they moved on to other pursuits. As robots at bottling plants took over the jobs of hundreds of thousands, those workers spread throughout other fields. However, many experts — including some in Silicon Valley who are actually working on the programs in question — say that the technology to automate is now moving faster than the market’s ability to provide new jobs.However, instead of circling the automation argument ad nauseam — since I only brought it up to get to the main point, let’s move on. If automation is coming, and if it will eliminate millions of current jobs, what are the possible solutions?
For Increased Automation, The Solutions Are Few
As is common with many “future problems”, science fiction writers have already suggested and played-out many possible solutions to this one.One path popular among libertarians and free market champions is. In other words, “leave the market alone; it will correct itself”. As I have discussed previously, in reality the market tends to protect those at the top, leave the rest behind, and require far too much time to correct itself. If we introduce no new legislation (or remove what few protections that currently exist), my best guess is that untold billions will eventually be unemployed. In order for a free market to survive, there will have to bemoney at the bottom — otherwise those at the top don’t get paid — but there is no requirement for those at the bottom to live in a healthy, secure, or comfortable state. See The Hunger Games for an example of how that might play out. This is morally unacceptable to me.Another idea that some espouse is a “moneyless society”, something like that described in the Star Trek universe. In that concept, technology was the answer: the replicators could make anything, at any time, for anyone. Without scarcity — when every person has enough food, water, healthcare, clothing, shelter, etc. — it’s assumed that the desire for rampant consumerism will dry up, that humans will move on to other pursuits: exploration, art, intellectual improvement, science, etc. But in real life, we don’t have replicators; we have a planet with finite resources — scarcity. And even if we did have replicators, my guess is you couldn’t obtain one without lots of money — and those who did obtain them wouldn’t let you use them for free. Achange would be required — lawsthe free use of these replicators.One idea I tried to float in an as-of-yet-unfinished science fiction work (though I’m sure I first heard the idea from someone else) is that each worker replaced by a robot would — by law — be granted shares in that robot’s work, or possibly shares in the robotics company itself. In this way, as automation fully took over the world economy, every adult human would end up with an income. As new humans reached adulthood, they would automatically be granted shares as well, with the ability to buy more later, if that’s how they chose to spend their money. The end point is that no one would “work” in the traditional sense, but everyone would have enough income to survive. Of course, this too would require political willpower of mammoth proportions; no for-profit company will voluntarily hand over shares of its profits to the humans that it’s replacing with robots. Further, I now doubt seriously that this would even work. If McDonald’s replaces an employee with a programmable food-maker, it’s doing so tomoney. It wouldn’t make sense for either McDonald’sthe robotics company to then give that same salary to the employee for free. Even if they did, it’s not enough to live. (I’ve worked full-time at McDonald’s; you can make a low rent and get food and basic clothing, but you can’t also afford healthcare, for example.) Also, the typical robot in such a situation is meant to replaceemployees, not just one. The only possible way for this to be viable is if the automatons become inexpensive enough, numerous enough, and productive enough to free up enough money to spread around — AND if legislation forces that money to be spread around.Or, we could simply expand today’s existing “safety net” social programs to cover the increasing number of unemployed. But our current welfare setup is a very confused mishmash of dozens of overlapping programs, each with different requirements and loopholes, each with its own failures and frauds, some with different funding sources (Social Security, for example, isn’t funded through the normal federal budget), and all of them together are not actually reducing poverty, at least not by much — the poverty rate has actually increased among working-age Americans, though it has decreased significantly among the elderly and somewhat for children. Also if we somehow levied greater taxes at the top and spread them more efficiently to the bottom, we’re now basically talking about GBI.The only viable one left is GBI.
‘Real Freedom’ Includes Economic Freedom
An ideological reason to support GBI, even if increased automation never takes away any more jobs is “real freedom”.Some proponents of GBI say their real goal is “real freedom for all”. The idea is: without economic freedom, the other freedoms guaranteed by constitutions mean very little. You might have freedom of speech and religion, freedom of the press, and so on, but can do very little with them if you spend every waking moment worrying about finances — how to pay the rent, where the next meal is coming from, how to pay for car repairs so you can get to work to afford the car repairs, and so on. Millions in our country alone live daily in such a state. I lived in that state long enough to know how true it is.This ideological reason for GBI can stand alone, even if automation never replaces millions of jobs.
The Possible Positive Effects Of GBI
First, not every GBI proposal is identical. I am not proposing a specific dollar amount, but rather a “to be determined” amount, which would be enough to cover basic living expenses, including healthcare. I don’t know what a fair amount should be. I do know that housing and healthcare costs vary a LOT across our country. Food, transportation, and utility costs also vary, but not quite as much. I believe the most difficult part of writing decent GBI legislation would be figuring out how to compensate for the drastically different costs of living across the country.I also propose thatamount is set initially, that it would be tied inextricably to the prices of these items somehow, perhaps via a formula yet to be developed. A thousand other details remain to be worked out, including how to most efficiently distribute the money and how to best determine who gets it.The following are some of the assumed immediate and eventualeffects:GBI could eliminate several current systems and overlapping bureacracies. Unlike every other welfare or social safety net program ever tried, this idea does not require the recipient to be poor, old, disabled, sick, or otherwise disadvantaged, so it removes the burden of having tothose disadvantages, and therefore removes the need for expensive fraud investigations. It’s just a simple payment to each adult citizen. The only thing that would have to be proved is citizenship and age, presumably things the government already knows.Dozens of federal and state agencies could close. GBI would be massively more efficient than current systems, eliminating the need for dozens of federal bureaucracies: Social Security, food stamps, unemployment divisions, Medicaid, Medicare, etc., many of which have 50 state agencies each handling the distribution differently. There could simply befederal agency charged with delivering this paycheck to all adult Americans.If constructed correctly to adjust for inflation/cost of living, it would eliminate the need for most domestic charities — soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and so on. From then on,all charitable giving would go to those in less fortunate countries. (And, if constructed this way, it could also eliminate any market fears about inflation, since GBI would rise with it, automatically.)GBI would eliminate the need for any minimum wage laws. Any salary earned on top of a person’s GBI would be used for luxuries rather than needs. It would ensure that every employee had full bargaining power to negotiate a fair salary for any work performed. Today, there is very little bargaining power for many workers, because the choice is often between (1) having no income or (2) having very little income. If every workerhas enough for food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and healthcare, then they’re not so desperate when applying for a job.I can tell you from personal experience that many workers today stay at bad jobs because they have to pay rent next week, or because the electric bill is past due. More than 60 million American workers havedollars in savings. Forty-seven percent of Americans said a $400 emergency expense would put them in debt or force them to sell something. Fewer than a third of Americans have the recommended “six months’ worth” of expenses saved in an emergency fund. So, if they’re paid too poorly, mistreated at work, suffer sexual harassment or racial discrimination, forced to work in dangerous or illegal conditions, etc., they’re not in a position to complain, renegotiate, or just leave. GBI removes that unfair advantage of employers.In effect, the current “floor” for U.S. salaries is “absolute poverty” — having nothing. With GBI, the floor would be raised to “having enough”.GBI could also add a degree of stabilization to the economy, especially at local and state levels. Small and medium-sized cities are often sent into downward spirals when a single large factory or business closes; and the reverse is true too — they can be boosted overnight by snagging a new one. GBI means a safety net for everyone.
Downsides To GBI
High cost
Disruption of society/economy
People would have no incentive to work
Could instigate a vast increase in immigration
Would cause the rise of a “shadow economy”
Would result in higher prices, thus negating any benefits
Of course, as I mentioned at the top, the Numero Uno Problema is “¿How Do We Pay For Such A Thing?” Critics of GBI proposals have a long list of disadvantages, some of which can’t be denied. They include the following:
The Cost
“There could be no such thing as landed property originally. Man did not make the earth, and, though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should issue. Whence then, arose the idea of landed property? I answer as before, that when cultivation began the idea of landed property began with it.”
However, simply stating that the cost would be $5 trillion is dishonest, because it doesn’t take into account massive savings in other areas.
The cost is a real and huge one, but it’s not insurmountable; just large enough to be scary.When Thomas Paine suggested the idea in the 1790s, he theorized — based on his deistic beliefs — that God had given the Earth to all persons as an inheritance, that it was therefore “the common property of the human race” and that “every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.”He proposed that those who used the natural resources of the planet should pay “to the community a ground-rent for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue.”Paine was discussing almost exclusively agriculture, but the same idea can easily be applied to other “common property” in the Earth: oil, metals, water, rivers and coastlines. This was quite the socialist idea in a time before socialism was well-known, to claim that all of humanity together owns the Earth, and therefore anyone who exploits it owes payment to all of humanity.His idea can be broken down to: “You pay us to use the Earth, and we’ll pay you for what you make of it.”Modern GBI proposals have strayed from this ideal, most often proposing giant tax burdens to pay for it. Does the math add up?The gross domestic product of the U.S. in 2015 was about $18 trillion ( nearly twice that of China, and greater than the combined EU GDP). If, as cited above, the per-adult GBI will be $1,700 per month, it amounts to about $5 trillion annually, less than a third of our GDP.So yes, it's, but still massively expensive.However, simply stating that the cost would be $5 trillion is dishonest, because it doesn’t take into account massive savings in other areas. For example, here are some caveats to keep in mind:(1) All other safety net programs (Social Security, and all welfare/entitlements) could be completely dismantled, because GBI is intended to replace them all. Much of our current tax burden is aimed at those programs.(2) Military expenditures could drop by as much as a quarter. Currently more than one-fourth of the Department of Defense’s budget is for “the pay and benefits of current and retired members of the military” — much of which could be replaced by GBI. The same would hold true for the 2.79 million civilian employees of the government. While the government could still offer payment and benefits to its employees, both civilian and military, those amounts should be minimal, since GBI would meet the basic needs of each.(3) Payroll expenditures foremployers could be drastically reduced, across the board, nationwide — due to elimination of minimum wage laws and the knowledge that every employee’s basic needs are met by GBI.(4) All employer-sponsored benefits packages could be greatly reduced as well, including healthcare packages and retirement accounts — because GBI would be designed to cover those. (You’d get GBI for, so no retirement savings are needed.)The first two would free up many billions of dollars infederal spending, which could then be subtracted from the price tag of GBI. The last two caveats free up billions in private spending, which could then be subtracted from the expected tax increase to pay for GBI.So, while GBI would surely mean a greater tax burden for corporations and the wealthy, as well as a greater tax burden on any income earned beyond the GBI check, it would surely not be as sharp an increase as it initially appeared.
Disruption of society/economy
Another real problem would be the disruption of society and the economy. Of course, we can’t predict exactly how much disruption would occur, but we know it would happen. Immediately, the government bureaucracies (including at the state level) would be shaken up —— as benefits and welfare offices close nationwide. Other government departments, including the IRS, would have to change quite a bit. Other fallout would certainly include the closing of many charitable organizations (which are no longer needed). Price fluctuations would ripple throughout the market. (Remember, prices are merelyof how much you’re willing to pay; in a completely different economy, it would take a while before companies settle the prices to match new consumer ideals.)Of course, with GBI providing the universal safety net, the outcome would be softened. Today, if we closed all those offices, we would suddenly have millions of unemployed persons. The economy would crash. But with GBI, every one of those former government or charity employees would still be able to pay basic bills.Other scary predictions have little basis in fact; we just don’t know.
People would have no incentive to work
One negative aspect touted most often is “people won’t work anymore”. Without incentive, or with very little incentive, to work, why would people do it? You mightthis is true, but no one can say for certain because it’s never been tried on a large scale. (It has been studied only in small, localized, and temporary cases.) In the few small experiments with GBI, people did indeed work less, though not as much less as might be expected: only 5-7%. No one quit entirely. More teens were more likely to finish school, and more adults were more likely to attend continuing education (both of which are known to contribute well to society in the long run).For large-scale GBI, perhaps the best we can to at this point is thought experiments. I can ask myself: would I still do something useful/productive/worthwhile if I wasn’t promised any pay for doing so? I’m a stay-at-home parent, so I can already answer this question for myself. I’m not “paid” (in the traditional sense) for my “work”, but I do it anyway because it’s important to me, and I believe that I (like all parents) serve a useful function in society by preparing my children for adulthood. Would I work harder at parenting if I was paid specifically for that? I suppose it’s possible, but I’m fairly certain that I’m already doing as well as I can at it. And millions of stay-at-home parents before me (mostly women) have already performed this important task for no pay (other than being provided basic necessities of life, which is exactly what we’re talking about with GBI).What about other jobs? Would I leave the house to be a garbage collector if GBI already covered my basic needs? Perhaps not. On the other hand, maybe Ido it, because the alternative would be garbage piling up everywhere. (On the third hand, garbage collector is almost certainly on the short list of jobs that will be replaced by automation.) What about school teacher? Some people enjoy teaching children. I don’t think I wouldit, especially if I wasn’t trapped into it by financial desperation. Journalist? I actuallythat, in my small-town newspaper experience. In fact, while working there, I said on multiple occasions that I would still do it even if a giant lottery win brought me financial independence.See, there are many jobs that people do because theythe work, and/or because they see it as useful or necessary for society. Building things, teaching children, cleaning, many fields in medicine, architecture, electronics, computers, radio, administration... the list could get endless. The reason we do those things for money is because wethe money, the way our system is set up. But many of us would do those same things without pay, or for very little pay, if GBI provided for our basic needs. At least I think most of us would.But perhaps the best argument against the “people won’t work anymore” trope is the near-certainty of coming automation. People won’tto work as much anymore, nor will they have as much opportunity for it. The “missing” productivity will almost certainly be surpassed (at some point) by the machines. And many (most?) of the jobs that people won’t want to do if they don’t have to are the very jobs that will certainly be replaced: grill cook, grocery stocker, cashier, garbage collector, farm hand, janitor, etc. Remember thatjobs that require only “unskilled labor” are the jobs that are most easily replaced. The rest are jobs that people enjoy doing or at least don’t mind doing.
Vast Increase In Immigration
Critics also say that any nation implementing GBI would be the target for immigration. Struggling citizens of other nations would hear about the GBI in your country, and give up everything to come there, hoping for a free ride. Immigration is already of great concern to many Americans, millions of whom crazily say they will vote this November to have a 102,514-mile wall built to keep out the immigrants. (Note: this wall will not keep out airplanes, which is how many immigrants arrive in the U.S.) With or without a wall surrounding the entire nation, it is surely a possibility that enacting GBI would draw many from elsewhere, though I don’t believe it’sFor one thing, no GBI legislation has even been proposed or even written in the U.S. There is no cosmic law that would require us to give this money to anyone who showed up. I am certain that any legislator who proposed such a bill would make it clear from the beginning that it would only apply to U.S. citizens, just as I am certain that no other legislator would vote on such a bill unless that part was very clear. Thus it should have zero impact on immigration, unless the critics are admitting that it would be good for the economy overall, therefore making our nation even more attractive to immigration than it already is.
A ‘Shadow Economy’ Would Rise
Some anti-GBI policy makers have suggested that such a policy would “give rise to a shadow economy” (another way to say “black market”). I don’t follow their logic on this. Typically what causes a black market iscertain products. For example, if you ban firearms, then a black market will arise to provide firearms to anyone willing to risk jail to pay for them. If you ban alcoholic beverages, then a black market will arise to provide alcohol. And so on. Much like the illegal drug market in the U.S. today could be eliminated completely by un-banning the drugs in question. GBI has nothing to do with banning any types of products or services. Any “shadow economy” either already exists or would arise for unrelated reasons.
Higher Prices Would Negate Any Benefits
One last criticism of GBI is that it would result in higher prices, thus negating any positive effects. This too, I think, is an unrealistic fear, especially if we stipulate (as I have done above) that GBI would be implemented not at a specific amount of money, but at a specific. In other words, any amount paid to citizens would be the result of adding up how much it costs to live. I very carefully doadvocate for GBI if it would be a dollar amount that’s difficult to change, such as today’s nearly-useless minimum wage laws. If GBI is passed at $1,700 per month, then prices could easily rise to make that amount pointless. But if GBI is passed with specific provisions listing what it should be able to pay for — food, basic living quarters, utilities, clothing, transportation, and healthcare — and if it is set to rise when those prices rise, then this criticism makes no sense.
Conclusion
As pie-in-the-sky utopian ideas go, the proposal of guaranteed basic income is not the most horrible one I’ve seen. It does not institute the long-dreaded (by Americans) socialism or communism, but leaves capitalism in place — only with a raised minimum (from zero to “enough”). Having given it some thought, I am beginning to be convinced that a nearly unfettered market could be a good thing, if something like GBI were implemented.While it is reasonable to be concerned about possible upheaval, I think the results ofdoing it could be much more worrying.As to the disagreements among experts on how much it would cost or whether the results would be negative or positive, all of those are disagreements aboutOne facet upon which we can disagree without guessing is the morality of the proposal — because morality is subjective and therefore different for each of us. I feel certain it is moral to attempt to eradicate poverty, even through government actions, and immoral to ignore it. Some with different moral codes disagree; they believe it is immoral to “punish the wealthy” with higher taxation, and immoral to offer money to people unless it is in exchange for goods or services. I disagree, partly based on Paine’s assertion that the Earth and its resources are common property of humanity, and partly based on my lack of reverence for capitalism — due to its track record.While it is impossible to predict the complete ramifications of GBI,. However, I have next-to-zero faith that anything resembling GBI could be passed in the U.S. in the next few decades. I hope I am wrong. Public opinion in the U.S.capable of shifting very quickly, as it did with gay marriage over the past decade or so. Perhaps it will shift on GBI, as certain future changes become more apparent.Some things that have to happen before GBI can even be considered here: (1) More people need to be aware of what it is. (2) We need to see some hard proposals, lists of numbers that can actually be debated. (3) We’ll need an explanation for how an identical amount of money would be of the same help to a person in Seattle as it would to a person in the rural south — where the median home price can easiliy be 90% lower.
EDITS
• Edit, 2018.11.13: Updated html and css. Fixed a couple of phrasing problems.
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DisqusFloating point numbers are everywhere. It’s hard to find software that doesn’t use any. For something so essential to writing software you’d think we take great care in working with them. But generally we don’t. A lot of code treats floating point as real numbers; a lot of code produces invalid results. In this article I show several counterintuitive properties of floating point numbers. These are things you have to know in order to do calculations correctly.
x + y == x
This first rule is one of magnitude. Addition, and subtraction, require values significant enough to each other to produce meaningful results. The significance here is measured by the difference in the exponent.
For example, the value 1e-10 has a very small magnitude compared to 1e10. With a typical 64-bit float we can add and subtract that small number all we want and still be left with 1e10. The floating point doesn’t have a high enough precision to notice the difference of the small magnitude number.
Any algorithm dealing with large and small values must be aware of this limitation.
n * x!= x + … + x
This is a basic rule about precision that follows from the previous one. Repeatedly adding a number n times will not yield the same result as multiplying by n. The result is different even if x remains significant compared to the summation. There is always rounding involved; two floating point numbers rarely line up well enough that adding them yields the exact real number result.
Iterative calculations should be avoided whenever possible in floating point. Finding closed form versions of algorithms usually yields higher precision. In cases where the iteration can’t be avoided, it’s vital to understand you won’t get the expected result. A certain amount of rounding error will always accumulate.
(x ⊕ y) ⊕ z!= x ⊕ (y ⊕ z)
For many binary operators, like +, - or *, real numbers have an associative property. The expression can be grouped in different ways or done in a different order and have the same result.
This doesn’t hold precisely in floating point. It follows from the previous rules about precision. Changing the order of operations can, and will, alter the results. Even if we’ve taken care that all our values are of similar magnitude the result will still be different.
This is one of the key reasons why we use high precision floating point. We don’t typically need the whole precision in our result, so small accumulated errors are still okay. Consider an example from my current graphics project. If I’m trying to position an object on the screen I am rounding to exact pixels. So the values of 13, 13.1, 13.00000123 are all treated the same, ending up on pixel 13. Accumulated error isn’t a problem unless it accumulates enough to modify the significant part of our result.
x!= 0
Any formula involving division has to worry about dividing by zero. There is a lot of code with a condition such as:
1 2 3 4 if ( x!= 0 ) y = b / x else y = 0
In general this code is broken. If x is the result of a calculation it’s unlikely to actually be zero. Due to rounding errors and precision it may be a number very close to zero instead. The division by zero is avoided, but most formulas I’ve seen equally fail when dividing by a really small number. The problem is one of magnitude again. As the |
you have to make phone calls and knock on doors. It stinks, but it works, and that’s usually where campaigns need the most help. Bonus points if you work full time for a campaign.)
Be humble and always seek feedback.
I have talked to way too many people who have said they are going to be the next George Kennan right out of undergrad. I’m sorry to say it, but you might have to make that coffee, or that photocopy, or organize some events. It will pay off in the long run. Build trust with your bosses, offer to write or do extra research for them, and you’re more likely to build a good portfolio. Oh, and by the way, this work doesn’t really pay that well. After all, it is public service.
I’ve also worked with a number of people, both Gen Y and Millennials, who neither seek nor are particularly receptive to critical feedback. This is the key to growth, and when I first received it, it smacked me in the face. When I graduated from college, I thought that I was a fantastic writer. After all, I had a liberal arts degree! I spelled perfectly and had great grammar! So when I was given my first task — to write a policy piece on Iraq — I was smugly confident that my boss would love what I wrote and publish it wholesale.
Whoo, boy, was I wrong. That 4-page policy paper came back to me covered in red. Fifteen-dollar SAT words that my college professors had loved were slashed in favor of simpler words that communicated ideas more directly. Whole sections were crossed out. By the end of multiple rounds of editing, it was one page of tight analysis.
What that illustrated to me was that I had enormous blind spots — that what I thought was a strength was perhaps not. The only way to know is to ask. Ask often, ask everyone — not just your supervisor, but your colleagues and subordinates (if/when you have them) how you are doing. Ask them honestly, and truly be open to potentially painful feedback. And then change if you need to.
Why does this matter? Because if you don’t, you could slow down your career progression. I once worked with a guy (we’ll call him Tim) who thought he was a great writer and public speaker. He was put on an important project, where his supervisor noted that he was unable to string a cogent argument together, either in writing or in public remarks, and therefore was prevented from doing either. Tim dismissed these criticisms, and guess what — he was subsequently passed over for other opportunities, as people in the office were nervous about the quality of his work and his response to criticism.
Don’t be like Tim. Ask for an honest assessment of your performance, and work to improve.
Never burn any bridges, and don’t be a jerk.
That brash intern in the next cube may just become an influential political appointee in the next Administration, or your boss may become an Ambassador. In my case, an ex-boyfriend (a bridge I would normally have burned) got me in the door of one of the best jobs I have ever had. You never know who might be able to help you — and you should always help others along, too.
Foreign policy circles are small, and will only get smaller as you continue in this field. Cultivate a reputation of being competent and a good colleague. If you have to choose, though, prioritize being a good colleague. There are a lot of competent A-holes in Washington, and no one wants to work with them.
The best networkers are those who build real relationships.
There is nothing more annoying in Washington than someone whose only interest in meeting you is knowing what you can do for them. It’s fake and transactional, and the other person is unlikely to actually help you. The best networkers don’t network at all — they have real conversations. They don’t talk about business until they need to or it makes sense. They show interest in who you are and why you do what you do. All of the rest follows from that. Don’t indiscriminately hand out your card. Have a real conversation.When the podcast "Serial" went viral, fans on Reddit and elsewhere set about looking for clues.
The same is now happening for the Steven Avery case at the center of Netflix's "Making a Murderer" docuseries, and viewers have discovered a fascinating new piece of evidence.
Jerry Buting, one of the original lawyers defending Avery in the trial for the murder of Teresa Halbach, recently spoke with Rolling Stone and said that internet sleuths had found something he and his partner had missed.
"We were only two minds," Buting said. "What I'm discovering is that a million minds are better than two. Some of these people online have found things with a screen shot of a picture that we missed."
One of the crucial pieces of evidence dug up by those sleuths is a detail found in a common photo of Halbach before she went missing and died. It shows the victim with a key chain that has a number of keys on it.
During the investigation of Halbach's murder, the police found a contested key to Halbach's car in Avery's home. But they only found the one key — not the rest of the keys seen on her key chain, which were never recovered.
Had this evidence been introduced in Avery's trial, it would've bolstered the argument that the sole car key, found weeks after an initial search of the Avery property, was planted. And if Avery does ever get another trial, it could help him still.
NOW WATCH: A law professor tricked his students into lying, which shows why you should never talk to police
More From Business InsiderDivorce (Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Despite a Kentucky law that bars the recognition of gay marriages performed where they are legal, a Jefferson Family Court judge has granted the state's first same-sex divorce.
In the first ruling of its kind in Kentucky, Judge Joseph O'Reilly permitted the divorce of two Louisville women who were legally married in Massachusetts.
Though state law says gay marriages performed elsewhere are void in Kentucky, O'Reilly said that barring same-sex couples to divorce here violates the state constitutional guarantee that all people should be treated as equals.
In an eight-page opinion dissolving the marriage of Alysha Romero and Rebecca Sue Romero, O'Reilly also noted that Kentucky divorce law requires that it be "liberally construed" to promote "amicable settlements" of disputes between spouses.
Alysha Romero said in an interview that she was pleased she and her ex-spouse would not have to spend the time and money to return to Massachusetts, where they were wed, to end their marriage.
"I am happy the judge made the right decision," she said.
Her lawyer, Louis Waterman, said: "I am just thrilled with Judge O'Reilly's courage. I think he had a lot of chutzpah to do what he did."
Douglas Haynes, who represented Rebecca Romero, said she was thrilled by the ruling but did not want to comment.
Chris Hartman, director of the Fairness Campaign, said the ruling "is just another step in the direction of full legal rights for LGBT couples."
Gay-rights opponents in Kentucky had predicted the divorce would not be granted.
Martin Cothran, an analyst with the Family Foundation of Kentucky, told The Courier-Journal after the divorce was filed in October 2013 that the marriage "can't either cease or continue because legally it does not exist." And Denny Burk, an assistant professor of biblical studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said "Kentuckians have a moral and legal interest in not recognizing gay'marriage' even if means denying a gay 'divorce.' "
But no one, including Gov. Steve Beshear, who has defended the state's ban on gay marriage, intervened to try to prevent the divorce. Neither Cothran nor Burk responded Monday to requests for comment, while Beshear spokeswoman Kerri Richardson said he had no comment.
The ruling comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to decide Friday whether to hear cases from Kentucky and three other states in which a federal appeals court ruled that there is no constitutional right to gay marriage.
O'Reilly issued the decision Dec. 29, but Waterman said he waited until now to make it public so that it would become final and couldn't be challenged. He said the ruling cannot be appealed and is now precedent in Jefferson County and can be cited but is not controlling in other cases statewide. O'Reilly did not seek re-election and retired at the end of the year.
Judges and family lawyers said last year that the Romeros' divorce was the first involving a same-sex marriage to be filed in Kentucky.
Kentucky law says that a marriage between members of the same sex that occurs in another jurisdiction "shall be void" in Kentucky, and that any rights granted "by virtue of the marriage, or its termination, shall be unenforceable in Kentucky courts."
But Waterman argued that denying a divorce to a same-sex couple would illogically thwart the state's ban on gay marriage by in effect requiring one to continue.
He also noted that Kentucky courts have held that marriages performed in other countries and states must be recognized for purposes of granting a divorce, even if marriage laws are different there than in Kentucky. For example, the Kentucky Court of Appeals has said couples married under common law in other states must be allowed to divorce here, even though Kentucky doesn't recognize common-law marriages.
Even if Kentucky law does not recognize same-sex marriages, Waterman urged O'Reilly to follow the lead of Wyoming's high court, which in 2011 allowed a judge to dissolve a same-sex marriage entered in Canada on the grounds that divorcing the couple did not involve recognition of the marriage as an "ongoing relationship."
O'Reilly, however, instead squarely ruled that barring a same-sex couple from divorcing in Kentucky violates the state constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law and the right of citizens to "enjoy and defend their lives and liberties."
"The Constitution of Kentucky prohibits the exercise of absolute and arbitrary power over lives" of its residents, O'Reilly added, "even if that exercise is approved of by the largest majority."
The Romeros married in Boston in 2009 and moved to Kentucky in 2011, where Alysha worked as an administrative assistant in the University of Louisville's radiology department.
They filed for divorce in 2013 and entered a property settlement last spring.
Read or Share this story: http://cjky.it/1BVneKUBeing able to push a baby in a stroller is something most mothers don't think twice about, but it initially wasn’t an option for new mom Sharina Jones. The 35-year-old Michigan native, who has been paraplegic since she was accidentally shot by a child playing with a gun 30 years ago, found that her wheelchair prevented her from taking her child for a stroll. That was, until a Detroit high schooler designed the perfect solution.
After six months of hard work, 16-year-old Alden Kane presented Jones with a wheelchair-adaptable stroller that would be safe and comfortable for her and her little one. He crafted the device in his high school STEM class (which stands for science, technology, engineering, and math) and collaborated with the University of Detroit Mercy (UDM) to make the design a reality.
The University of Detroit Jesuit High School where Kane is a student and UDM both place heavy importance on doing work in the classroom that benefits the surrounding area. "In the community, there's a lot of need for different types of products like the one for Sharina," Dr. Darrell Kleinke of UDM told Fox 2 Detroit.
The stroller is made with lightweight steel tubing that snugly fits the baby’s car seat and connects to the wheelchair. After perfecting his design, the high school senior hopes to eventually apply for a patent. For now, he can take pride in knowing there's at least one mother whose life has been made better by his invention.
[h/t: Fox 2 Detroit]Officials in California and New York—two of the most gun-controlled states in the union—are leading the fight against national reciprocity of concealed carry for law-abiding citizens.
Breitbart News reported that Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) introduced national reciprocity on January 3 and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced companion legislation in the Senate. Both pieces of legislation would treat concealed carry permits like a driver’s license, making the permit of one state valid in every state.
Gun-control activists are up in arms over the legislation, because it would immediately do away with strict gun controls in a number of states. For example, California currently only recognizes its own concealed carry permit as valid, and does not recognize reciprocity with any other state. When combined with the state’s “good cause” requirement for Californians, the stringent carry rules have kept the licensed number of legal carriers at less than 100,000.
The legislation put forward by Hudson and Cornyn would mandate that California honor the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens from every state.
But officials in California are fighting national reciprocity. According to the Standard Republic, the California Police Chiefs Association opposes the bill because it would “erode local control of issuing concealed carry permits” and reduce “the arbitrariness of the issuing authority rules.” Such complaints are expected from a “may-issue” state, where law enforcement officials grow accustomed to being the final arbiters on who does and does not have the right to keep and bear arms.
The same attitude is prevalent in New York, where New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio led the U.S. Conference of Mayors in the passage “of a sweeping resolution,” describing national reciprocity as “dangerous legislation” which “would essentially force the localities to give full faith and credit to permits that are issued on less rigorous grounds.” The resolution sought to preserve the arbitrariness in permit issuance, too, arguing that national reciprocity “[removes] local governments’ ability to maintain sensible gun standards.”
Those officials complaining about national reciprocity are correct in their assessment that it would knock down local controls, but they are wrong in positing it as a bad thing. After all, the Second Amendment ends on a resounding note—”Shall not be infringed.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.As Johnson notes in another post, it even gets surreal, as the SEIS emphasizes that the pipeline will be protected from the very climate change impacts the pipeline itself will exacerbate. On page ES-16 of the SEIS, we find (pdf):
The pipeline would be buried deep enough to avoid surface impacts of climate changes (freeze-thaw cycles, fires, and temperature extremes).
The pipeline is essential for the expansion of tar-sand production. It is estimated that if the pipeline were approved, the rate of bitumen extraction would increase by 36%. What various industry voices have been trying to tell us is that the tar sands are necessary for friendly US-Canada relations, for jobs, and for energy security. What those industry voices have not told us is that approval of the pipeline would be a nail in the coffin of climate change. Tar-sand oil is very hard to remove from the ground; it requires enormous amounts of water and energy just to get it to the surface. As a result, it releases more greenhouse gases than conventional fossil fuels. It really is the dirtiest of the dirty. Approval of the Keystone pipeline will lock us in to decades of dependency on this dirty energy at a time when we need to develop clean sources of energy. But do the tar sands really matter that much? The answer is clearly yes. Alberta has 1.8tn barrels of oil contained within the tar sands. Extracting and burning all of that tar will cause a global temperature increase of about 0.4oC (0.7oF). That is about half of the warming that humans have already caused. For perspective, according to a recent study, the amount of oil-in-place in the Alberta tar sands is approximately seven times that of Saudi Arabia's proven reserves.
Which is very comforting. The SEIS doesn't bother to note that the pipeline itself will make those protections even more necessary, but it's very comforting that those protections will be there. The pipeline's impact on climate change was summarized by John Abraham And while the pipeline itself may be protected from the climate disaster it will make so much worse, the people of this world will not be protected ; and in January, Lord Stern, who in 2006 led a review that concluded that climate change could displace hundreds of millions of people, cause the extinction of some 40 percent of all species, and cost 5 to 20 percent of global GDP, admitted that he had actually underestimated the damage
The dishonesty of the State Department's SEIS continues with this jaw-dropper:
Spills associated with the proposed Project that enter the environment are expected to be rare and relatively small.
Which would be news to those already impacted by the existing pipeline's neither rare nor relatively small spills
The reaction to the SEIS has been blunt, and Kevin Grandia has compiled a list that must be read in its entirety. Among them have been NRDC Canada Project Director Danielle Droitsch:
A draft environmental review just released by the U.S. State Department for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline ignores mounting evidence the pipeline is not in the national interest. NRDC has completed a preliminary review of the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement and concludes that the State Department failed to account for the pipeline’s impact to water and climate. There is now significant evidence the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would help trigger a major expansion to tar sands development leading to a sizeable increase in greenhouse gas emissions. And we know that a spill of tar sands oil from Keystone XL would pose much greater risks to precious waterways across America’s heartland. Despite this evidence, the State Department found there would be no significant impact to the environment if the pipeline were approved. We disagree. President Obama should reject this draft environmental review and tell the State Department to re-examine the evidence that shows the pipeline isn’t good for the climate, or water protection, or energy security.
The draft impact statement appears to be seriously flawed. We don’t need this dirty oil. To stop climate change and the destructive storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires that we are already experiencing, we should be investing in clean energy, not building a pipeline that will speed the exploitation of Canada’s highly polluting tar sands.
We cannot stress our extreme disappointment with this report. The fact that the Keystone XL pipeline is deemed as non-consequential and not connected to the unabated expansion of Tar Sands is simply not true. Without adequate roadways to markets the tar sands would be locked in the ground. Industry simply cannot expand without pipelines. Expansion of the tar sands in my peoples homelands means a death sentence for our way for life, destruction of eco-systems vital to the continuation of our inherent treaty rights and massive contributions to catastrophic global climate change, a fate we all share.
American Petroleum Institute Executive Vice President Marty Durbin welcomed the State Department’s draft Environmental Impact Statement for the new Keystone XL Nebraska route. “No matter how many times KXL is reviewed, the result is the same: no significant environmental impact,” said Durbin. “The latest impact statement from the State Department puts this important, job-creating project one step closer to reality. Nebraska has finished its final Keystone XL assessment and the governor has given it his full support. The last approval needed is by President Obama, and we urge him to do so as soon as possible."
And Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the Ranking Member on the Energy and Commerce Committee:And Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN):Of course, the Petroleum Institute had a different reaction:Of course, it's a lie that the pipeline will create significant numbers of jobs. The earlier Environmental Impact Statement estimated no more than 500 to 900 local jobs would be created throughout the entire construction throughout the entire region, and the new SEIS estimates no more than a few dozen permanent jobs, once the pipeline has been built. A 2011 study by the Cornell Global Labor Institute found that Keystone may actually destroy more jobs than it creates, and of course neither the fossil fuels industries, nor apparently the State Department that outsourced the SEIS to the fossil fuels industry, seems to care that the pipeline will damage the economy, overall.
Some argue that the tar sands will be exploited with or without U.S. help, but Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska explains:
Tarsands does not expand unless Keystone XL is built. The State Department's assumption that tarsands development does not change with or without this pipeline is wrong and laughable. Why would TransCanada spend billions on building the pipeline and millions on lobbying unless this piece of infrastructure is the--not a--but the lynchpin for the expansion of tarsands. Without this pipeline Canada stays at 2 million barrels a day, with it they get 3 million barrels a day. The President has the ability to keep a million barrels of tarsands in the ground a day. With a stroke of a pen he can protect property rights, water and make a dent in climate change. This report is laughable using the wrong assumption and therefore the wrong science.
And even more to the point, if this president and this nation are to be serious about dealing with the climate crisis, he and we cannot make excuses for expanding use of even more difficult and dangerous to extract fossil fuels, when all our focus should be on weaning ourselves of fossil fuels altogether.
As the graph at the top of this post indicates, we are nearing a level of 400 parts per million atmospheric carbon dioxide. As Peter Gleick recently explained, the planet has not even approached such a level in at least 800,000 years, and it might not have seen those levels in more than 2.6 million years. We have to act as if climate change is an unprecedented crisis, because in the history of the human species, it is. The four-star commander of U.S. military forces in the Pacific is calling climate change the most likely threat that will cripple the security environment, and the U.S. Navy has for years been planning how to secure an ice free arctic. A new study shows global temperatures are the highest in 4000 years.
It shouldn't need to be said, but finding new and more destructive means of burning fossil fuels is not the answer. It shouldn't need to be said, but a White House that, unlike the Republicans, acknowledges and understands the scientific consensus on climate change has no excuse not to be doing everything it can to address climate change. The president's positive steps, including increased fuel efficiency standards and EPA regulation of emissions, isn't enough. There is no halfway, on climate change. There is no balancing between good policies and terrible policies. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) put it:
The president cannot tell us that he is concerned about global warming and approve the Keystone XL project.
If the president is concerned about global warming, he will reject Keystone. If he approves Keystone, all his positive efforts on global warming, both as policy and politics, will be effectively for naught.In its seventh year at the enchanted Heron grounds in Sherman, NY (home of the Great Blue Heron Music Festival), Night Lights Music Festival will take place August 24 to 26. Produced by Ten Thirty Nine Productions (1039) and Community Beer Works, Night Lights will transform the Heron into a magical three-day SOUND & LIGHT spectacular.
Anchored by nationally touring-space rock innovators Papadosio and funktronic masters Dopapod, Night Lights will also feature three (3) sets from WNY’s groove rockers Aqueous, as well as music from Austin-based psych rockers The Bright Light Social Hour and Colorado electronic hydro-funksters SunSquabi. 2017 will also feature Twiddle’s Mihali Savoulidis, the festival’s debut Artist at Large. The Twiddle frontman will also showcase his skills during a one-of a kind Mihali & Frends set, featuring a festival based ensemble of musicians.
Spread over three nights and three stages, including The Public Stage (dailypublic.com), this year’s diverse lineup features festival mainstays Lazlo Hollyfeld and Aircraft, along with Intrepid Travelers, Folkfaces and more. Tribute sets this year include Cleveland’s Broccoli Samurai (Lotus), Buffalo’s Funktional Flow (Sublime), Albany’s Mister F (Game Genie/Video Game), Relics (Pink Floyd) and a late night tribute to the Grateful Dead.
Lights and music will be on full display at the Night Lights Festival.
In addition to the music, activities will include yoga, swimming at the beach, biking/hiking, mushroom walks, and light installations. Food, craft beer from Community Beer Works, craft artisans and a variety of vendors will be available on site.
Tickets are $125 in advance. Camping and Thursday Pre-Party passes are included with all weekend passes. Friday & Saturday single day passes are available. Gates open at 12pm on Thursday.
For more information or questions on Night Lights Music Festival, visit us at www.nightlightsfest.com.
Complete Line-up Roster
Papadosio, Dopapod, Aqueous, Mihali & Frends (sic), SunSquabi, The Bright Light Social Hour, Mungion, Tropidelic, Broccoli Samurai, Mister F, Lazlo Hollyfeld, Funktional Flow, Smackdab, Aircraft, Folkfaces, Intrepid Travelers, Danielle Ponder & The Tomorrow People, Elephant Wrecking Ball, Holy Hand Grenade, Nightfall Of Diamonds, Relics, Boss Tweed & The Carpetbaggers, Space Junk, Skyepilot, Pine Fever, Ocular Panther, BloodThirsty Vegans (sic), Yali, The Truth, Cold Lazurus, Neon VeinsFattyTatties wrote: What if we are looking at this from the wrong angle? What if this was a test?
Right! Right. No need to panic. Sigrid was… she was probably just trying to show off her wizard powers! Or… maybe this was a test! She was fucking with your mind and wanted to see whether you could break free of it. And you did! You’ll show this to her, she’ll be impressed, you’ll get your stuff back, and everything will be fine.
Everything will be okay.
You bang on the door and yell that this isn’t funny anymore! It was a neat trick, but that was everything you owned in the world and you really need it back now! You need everything to be okay!
There’s no reply. You shout until your throat is sore and there’s still no reply.
Baeowulf wrote: On the alternative, you could use your inherent Khajiiti skills and the lockpick that never seems to go missing to sneak in and get your stuff back.
You don’t have inherent Khajiiti skills! You can barely walk across cobblestone without stepping on a squeaky floorboard! And your lockpick was in your bag along with Quill-Weave’s package, your money, your hatchet, your journal, and everything else you gave to Sigrid.
But… you can fix this. You’re a wizard and you’re resourceful and you’re desperate and angry and upset and you’re sure you can find some way to get in there and get your stuff back.
Squiggles wrote: do a HAMMERFELL LOCKPICKING!
LaffinFox wrote: Katia: You can’t let that bitch get away with that! You’re Katia Fucking Managan!
Burst in there, rip off that amulet, and demand your purr-operty back!
Nighzmarquls wrote: Katia–> remove amulate… focus your anger and let the hate flow!
Fuck fuck fuck FUCK.
Ineverus wrote: Katia: YOU ARE THE DUMBEST KHAJIIT IN THE HISTORY OF NIRN. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU. THIS IS THE THIRD TIME YOU’VE SCREWED EVERYTHING UP. THAT’LL PROBABLY BE A LITERAL STATEMENT IN JUST A FEW MOMENTS AS WELL. YOU DO NOT DESERVE TO STAY IN KVATCH, YOU ARE GOING TO END UP MAKING THE WHOLE TOWN DUMBER. OH LOOK AT ME, I’M KATIA MANAGAN AND I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO ABILITY WHATSOEVER TO BE CAREFUL! YOUR ONLY HOPE NOW IS TO MEET ASOTIL AND MARCH ON BACK TO ANVIL IN SHAME, THEN GET ON YOUR KNEES AND BEG QUILL WEAVE FOR FORGIVENESS. EVEN THOUGH THE CHANCES SHE’D FORGIVE YOU FOR SCREWING UP AGAIN ARE NEXT TO NONEXISTENT, IT’S THE ONLY CHOICE YOU HAVE BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOTHING AT ALL.
Drakeclaw wrote: WAIT!!!!! Katia can just go tot he trash can she threw the first letter in, the Crumpled up one! and get it and take THAT to Quill Weave!
Okay. You realize you fucked up. You got all excited and ignored your better judgement and walked straight into what should have been an obvious trap and signed away all your belongings and some things that maybe didn’t even really belong to you. But you can still fix all this. Somehow.
At the very least, you don’t have to let Quill-Weave down again. There’s still that other letter, the one you threw away. Quill-Weave never has to know you are the worst courier ever and gave away the package you were supposed to deliver. She never has to know there was a package. You can keep it a secret from everyone forever and everything will be fine; you just have to run back to the bookstore and get the old letter out of the trash, hopefully before someone empties the wastebasket or-REFUEL 10 REFUEL 10 was Speed Ventures' 10th annual clean power motorsports event which was held at the newly-renamed WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on July 1st, 2018. More Info
Get charged. Real racing on a world-class course. REFUEL offers the growing contingent of electric vehicles an opportunity and venue to competitively track their vehicles against other clean-power vehicles. Speed Ventures also offers instruction and training for those that just want to drive in a performance- or motorsports-oriented setting.
2, 3 or 4 wheels. It's your choice. From electric-powered two- and three-wheeled cycles to production automobiles to purpose-built race cars, REFUEL welcomes any and all electric-motivated vehicles for competition. Read more about the available vehicle classes here.
The Corkscrew is waiting for you. With 11 challenging turns and the world-famous elevation-changing Corkscrew, Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Montery County, California, is the perfect track for your electric vehicle to stretch out its legs. Run your EV on this renowned circuit and experience the opportunity of a lifetime.
1:32.046" Lap Time In 2012, KleenSpeed brought out its WX-11 and smashed its previously-held track record. This record still stands for the EV Cars class in 2018. Do you have what it takes to run faster?Tuesday's special election in Kansas to pick a successor for former Rep. Mike Pompeo, who vacated his seat to serve as CIA director under President Donald Trump, has Republicans nervous and Democrats sensing an opportunity to rally momentum for the resistance.
The heavily Republican district, which Trump won by 27 points, will decide between Republican state party treasurer Ron Estes; Democrat Jim Thompson, a civil rights attorney and army veteran; and Libertarian Chris Rockhold, an aviation expert.
But the race has turned surprisingly tight, with one internal poll circulating among Republicans showing Estes up by only one point over Thompson as of last week. In the days before the vote, both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence recorded robocalls and the National Republican Congressional Committee dumped $92,000 into ad buys for Estes—and Democrats have picked up on that. Thompson and his supporters were getting constituents fired up on social media on Monday and Tuesday under the hashtags #Resist and #FlipThe4th.
Thompson wrote on Twitter, "The momentum is on our side. The country is watching. Let's shock 'em all. Let's WIN this thing!"
"We have a chance...to make history," he said in a video message.
The momentum is on our side. The country is watching. Let's shock 'em all. Let's WIN this thing! (2/2) #RESISTANCE #Indivisible #FlipThe4th pic.twitter.com/54FptsKgpO SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our progressive news model only survives if those informed and inspired by this work support our efforts
— James Thompson (@JamesThompsonKS) April 11, 2017
"An Estes loss—or even a win by only a slim margin—would likely be read nationally as a sign of a backlash against Trump in the heartland and be seen more locally as a renewed vitality for Kansas Democrats as they head into 2018 with the governor's office and the rest of the state's U.S. House seats up for election," Kansas City Star's Bryan Lowry reported Monday.
And Tim Murphy added at Mother Jones that Democrats should be "thrilled" about the Kansas election even if they lose. Thompson, a political novice who was inspired to run by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), built his campaign on small donations and no support from the Democratic National Committee.
"From last Thursday, when Republicans began to sound the alarm, through Sunday, Daily Kos raised $149,255 for Thompson through ActBlue—an astounding four-day haul for a Democrat in a district Pompeo last won by 34 points," Murphy writes. "Thompson's ability build a viable coalition in Trump country, largely on his own, may say a lot more about where the party is headed going into 2018."
Political observers have also said the outcome in Kansas could build momentum going into Georgia's special election next week.Popular tune has an edge of nasty nationalism and dwells on enmity, says Alastair Cameron
A fantastic thing about the Six Nations rugby championship is the all-pervading sense of intense yet immensely friendly rivalry. That friendly rivalry is felt most keenly at the Calcutta Cup match between Scotland and England.
Players sing Flower of Scotland before a match against France in 2003. Picture: Ian Rutherford
In my youth, supporting Scotland in the Five Nations, it seemed a bit of fun to support any team – yes, any team – playing against England. As I started to see and understand more of the world, that pettiness wore off. But I still sang Flower of Scotland proudly, without thinking too much about it.
Of course, I hope that Scotland triumph at Twickenham on Saturday. But I find myself increasingly turned off by Flower of Scotland.
The 2014 Scottish referendum threw anti-English sentiment into sharp relief, and it wasn’t nice. Not everywhere and not all the time. But it was there, sometimes lurking just below the surface – and sadly often only too visible. I’m sure there will be many who insist the 2014 campaign was civic and joyous. It may have felt like that to them, but I challenge them to find many pro-UK people in Scotland who agree.
And that’s the thing about Flower of Scotland – it has an edge of nasty nationalism about it. It’s all about defining ourselves by standing against the people who are now our neighbours, our fellow citizens, our closest kin and our greatest support.
Being Scottish shouldn’t be about enmity with our neighbours, should it?
Flower of Scotland isn’t even a traditional Scottish tune: it’s a song from the 1960s. Surely our ‘national anthem’, even one used informally, should celebrate the many positives about Scotland, not a 700 year old battle?
That’s where Scotland the Brave comes in. It’s also not that old, though it does date back to the start of the 20th century. But it’s packed with positive imagery, and set to a more upbeat tune.
The words are the part that matter, of course. They celebrate the ‘high endeavour’ that we should all have, along with high spirits, brave hearts, and the ‘friends that greet you’. They’re not ‘against’ anyone, and are more compatible with our decision of 2014 and the forward-looking Scotland for which we should strive.
We Scots have the potential to be everything we need and want to be, within the UK. There’s no need to demonise our friends and relatives in England. There is more that unites us with them than divides us from them. I believe we can achieve more as part of the UK family than if we were outside it.
So let’s not define ourselves by who we are supposedly against – the essential feature of nationalism. Let’s celebrate who we are, and who we can be, in the ‘land of my heart forever, Scotland the Brave’.
Alastair Cameron is the founder and executive director of Scotland In UnionIf there was ever a trend Lauren Williams was happy to see in style, it's the midi. The skirt, which hits most women at the calf, fits her perfectly - above the knee.
"On me, it's the right length for a pencil skirt. Otherwise, most skirts are too mini on me," said Williams, 25, who stands at 6 feet 4 inches tall with 49-inch-long legs, measuring from hip to heel. That's one long drink of water.
The Houston native has joined a viral international challenge in the modeling world to determine who has the longest legs.
Williams is claiming the title.
Last month, Russia dubbed Anastasia Strashevskaya, an 18-year-old law student, as "Miss Longest Legs" in a beauty pageant. Her legs measure 42 inches (from hip to heel bone). Then shortly after, a British student and model Alexandra Robertson, 20, claimed to have longer limbs at 47 inches. She's 6 feet 1 inches tall.
And New York model Brooke Banker, 26, who stands 5 feet 11 inches tall, says her legs are in the running, too, at 47 inches long. She's claiming to have the longest legs in the Big Apple.
But officially, the Guinness World Records gives Svetlana Pankratova, who stands 6 feet 5 inches tall, the title of world's longest legs on a female. Hers are 51.9 inches.
"It's funny that you have women coming forward to claim this title," Williams said. "There are a lot of tall women out here, but I do think I'm up there."
Williams, a two-time All-American volleyball player who played at University of Southern California and earned a bachelor's degree in environmental science and a master's in education, worked as a model while living in California. A makeup artist she had worked with |
became independent on 15 August 1947, the specially constituted Constituent Assembly decided that the flag of India must be acceptable to all parties and communities.[8] A modified version of the Swaraj flag was chosen; the tricolour remained the same saffron, white and green. However, the charkha was replaced by the Ashoka Chakra representing the eternal wheel of law. The philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who later became India's first Vice President and second President, clarified the adopted flag and described its significance as follows:
“ Bhagwa or the Saffron denotes renunciation or disinterestedness. Our leaders must be indifferent to material gains and dedicate themselves to their work. The white in the centre is light, the path of truth to guide our conduct. The green shows our relation to (the) soil, our relation to the plant life here, on which all other life depends. The "Ashoka Chakra" in the centre of the white is the wheel of the law of dharma. Truth or satya, dharma or virtue ought to be the controlling principle of those who work under this flag. Again, the wheel denotes motion. There is death in stagnation. There is life in movement. India should no more resist change, it must move and go forward. The wheel represents the dynamism of a peaceful change.[9] ”
History
A number of flags with varying designs were used in the period preceding the Indian Independence Movement by the rulers of different princely states; the idea of a single Indian flag was first raised by the British rulers of India after the rebellion of 1857, which resulted in the establishment of direct imperial rule. The first flag, whose design was based on western heraldic standards, were similar to the flags of other British colonies, including Canada and South Africa; its red field included the Union Flag in the upper-left quadrant and a Star of India capped by the royal crown in the middle of the right half. To address the question of how the star conveyed "Indianness", Queen Victoria created the Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India to honour services to the empire by her Indian subjects. Subsequently, all the Indian princely states received flags with symbols based on the heraldic criteria of Europe including the right to fly defaced British red ensigns.[10][11][12]
In the early twentieth century, around the coronation of Edward VII, a discussion started on the need for a heraldic symbol that was representative of the Indian empire. William Coldstream, a British member of the Indian Civil Service, campaigned the government to change the heraldic symbol from a star, which he considered to be a common choice, to something more appropriate. His proposal was not well received by the government; Lord Curzon rejected it for practical reasons including the multiplication of flags.[13] Around this time, nationalist opinion within the realm was leading to a representation through religious tradition. The symbols that were in vogue included the Ganesha, advocated by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and Kali, advocated by Aurobindo Ghosh and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Another symbol was the cow, or Gau Mata (cow mother). However, all these symbols were Hindu-centric and did not suggest unity with India's Muslim population.[14]
Based on the Calcutta Flag, design of the "Flag of Indian Independence" raised by Bhikaji Cama on 22 August 1907, at the International Socialist Conference in Stuttgart, Germany.
The partition of Bengal (1905) resulted in the introduction of a new flag representing the Indian independence movement that sought to unite the multitude of castes and races within the country. The Vande Mataram flag, part of the Swadeshi movement against the British, comprised Indian religious symbols represented in western heraldic fashion. The tricolour flag included eight white lotuses on the upper green band representing the eight provinces, a sun and a crescent on the bottom red band, and the Vande Mataram slogan in Hindi on the central yellow band. The flag was launched in Calcutta bereft of any ceremony and the launch was only briefly covered by newspapers. The flag was not covered in contemporary governmental or political reports either, but was used at the annual session of the Indian National Congress. A slightly modified version was subsequently used by Madam Bhikaji Cama at the second International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart in 1907. Despite the multiple uses of the flag, it failed to generate enthusiasm amongst Indian nationalists.[15]
Around the same time, another proposal for the flag was initiated by Sister Nivedita, a Hindu reformist and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. The flag consisted of a thunderbolt in the centre and a hundred and eight oil lamps for the border, with the Vande Mataram caption split around the thunderbolt. It was also presented at the Indian National Congress meeting in 1906.[16] Soon, many other proposals were initiated, but none of them gained attention from the nationalist movement.
In 1909, Lord Ampthill, former Governor of the Madras Presidency, wrote to The Times of London in the run up to Empire Day pointing out that there existed "no flag representative of India as a whole or any Indian province... Surely this is strange, seeing that but for India there would be no Empire."[17]
In 1916, Pingali Venkayya submitted thirty new designs, in the form of a booklet funded by members of the High Court of Madras. These many proposals and recommendations did little more than keep the flag movement alive. The same year, Annie Besant and Bal Gangadhar Tilak adopted a new flag as part of the Home Rule Movement. The flag included the Union Jack in the upper left corner, a star and crescent in the upper right, and seven stars displayed diagonally from the lower right, on a background of five red and four green alternating bands. The flag resulted in the first governmental initiative against any nationalistic flag, as a magistrate in Coimbatore banned its use. The ban was followed by a public debate on the function and importance of a national flag.[18]
In the early 1920s, national flag discussions gained prominence across most British dominions following the peace treaty between Britain and Ireland. In November 1920, the Indian delegation to the League of Nations wanted to use an Indian flag, and this prompted the British Indian government to place renewed emphasis on the flag as a national symbol.
[19] Gandhi's Flag, introduced at the Congress meeting in 1921
In April 1921, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi wrote in his journal Young India about the need for an Indian flag, proposing a flag with the charkha or spinning wheel at the centre.[20] The idea of the spinning wheel was put forth by Lala Hansraj, and Gandhi commissioned Pingali Venkayya to design a flag with the spinning wheel on a red and green banner, the red colour signifying Hindus and the green standing for Muslims. Gandhi wanted the flag to be presented at the Congress session of 1921, but it was not delivered on time, and another flag was proposed at the session. Gandhi later wrote that the delay was fortuitous since it allowed him to realise that other religions were not represented; he then added white to the banner colours, to represent all the other religions. Finally, owing to the religious-political sensibilities, in 1929, Gandhi moved towards a more secular interpretation of the flag colours, stating that red stood for the sacrifices of the people, white for purity, and green for hope.[21]
On 13 April 1923, during a procession by local Congress volunteers in Nagpur commemorating the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the Swaraj flag with the spinning wheel, designed by Pingali Venkayya, was hoisted. This event resulted in a confrontation between the Congressmen and the police, after which five people were imprisoned. Over a hundred other protesters continued the flag procession after a meeting. Subsequently, on the first of May, Jamnalal Bajaj, the secretary of the Nagpur Congress Committee, started the Flag Satyagraha, gaining national attention and marking a significant point in the flag movement. The satyagraha, promoted nationally by the Congress, started creating cracks within the organisation in which the Gandhians were highly enthused while the other group, the Swarajists, called it inconsequential.
Finally, at the All India Congress Committee meeting in July, 1923, at the insistence of Jawaharlal Nehru and Sarojini Naidu, Congress closed ranks and the flag movement was endorsed. The flag movement was managed by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel with the idea of public processions and flag displays by common people. By the end of the movement, over 1500 people had been arrested across all of British India. The Bombay Chronicle reported that the movement drew from diverse groups of society including farmers, students, merchants, labourers and "national servants". While Muslim participation was moderate, the movement enthused women, who had hitherto rarely participated in the independence movement.[22]
While the flag agitation got its impetus from Gandhi's writings and discourses, the movement received political acceptance following the Nagpur incident. News reports, editorials and letters to editors published in various journals and newspapers of the time attest to the subsequent development of a bond between the flag and the nation. Soon, the concept of preserving the honour of the national flag became an integral component of the independence struggle. While Muslims were still wary of the Swaraj flag, it gained acceptance among Muslim leaders of the Congress and the Khilafat Movement as the national flag.
Swaraj Flag, officially adopted by the Indian National Congress in 1931[23] The, officially adopted by the Indian National Congress in 1931
Detractors of the flag movement, including Motilal Nehru, soon hailed the Swaraj flag as a symbol of national unity. Thus, the flag became a significant structural component of the institution of India. In contrast to the subdued responses of the past, the British Indian government took greater cognisance of the new flag, and began to define a policy of response. The British parliament discussed public use of the flag, and based on directives from England, the British Indian government threatened to withdraw funds from municipalities and local governments that did not prevent the display of the Swaraj flag.[24] The Swaraj flag became the official flag of Congress at the 1931 meeting. However, by then, the flag had already become the symbol of the independence movement.[25]
A few days before India gained its independence in August 1947, the Constituent Assembly was formed. To select a flag for independent India, on 23 June 1947, the assembly set up an ad hoc committee headed by Rajendra Prasad and including Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Sarojini Naidu, C. Rajagopalachari, K. M. Munshi and B. R. Ambedkar as its members.
[26][27] Indian Flag, the first stamp of independent India, released on 21 Nov 1947, was meant for foreign correspondence.
On 14 July 1947, the committee recommended that the flag of the Indian National Congress be adopted as the National Flag of India with suitable modifications, so as to make it acceptable to all parties and communities. It was also resolved that the flag should not have any communal undertones.[5] The spinning wheel of the Congress flag was replaced by the Chakra (wheel) from the Lion Capital of Ashoka. According to Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the chakra was chosen as it was representative of dharma and law. However, Jawaharlal Nehru explained that the change was more practical in nature, as unlike the flag with the spinning wheel, this design would appear symmetrical. Gandhi was not very pleased by the change, but eventually came around to accepting it.
The flag was proposed by Nehru at the Constituent Assembly on 22 July 1947 as a horizontal tricolour of deep saffron, white and dark green in equal proportions, with the Ashoka wheel in blue in the centre of the white band. Nehru also presented two flags, one in Khadi-silk and the other in Khadi-cotton, to the assembly. The resolution was approved unanimously.[28] It served as the national flag of the Dominion of India between 15 August 1947 and 26 January 1950, and has served as the flag of the Republic of India since then.[8]
Manufacturing process
A header of an Indian flag (size 6, date 2007/2008) certified by the ISI
The design and manufacturing process for the national flag is regulated by three documents issued by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). All of the flags are made out of khadi cloth of silk or cotton. The standards were created in 1968 and were updated in 2008.[29] Nine standard sizes of the flag are specified by law.[1]
In 1951, after India became a republic, the Indian Standards Institute (now the BIS) brought out the first official specifications for the flag. These were revised in 1964 to conform to the metric system which was adopted in India. The specifications were further amended on 17 August 1968.[5] The specifications cover all the essential requirements of the manufacture of the Indian flag including sizes, dye colour, chromatic values, brightness, thread count and hemp cordage. The guidelines are covered under civil and criminal laws and defects in the manufacturing process can result in punishments that include fines or jail terms.[30][31]
Khadi or hand-spun cloth is the only material allowed to be used for the flag, and flying a flag made of any other material is punishable by law with imprisonment up to three years, besides a fine. Raw materials for khadi are restricted to cotton, silk and wool. There are two kinds of khadi used: The first is the khadi-bunting which makes up the body of the flag, and the second is the khadi-duck, which is a beige-coloured cloth that holds the flag to the pole. The khadi-duck is an unconventional type of weave that meshes three threads into a weave, compared to the two threads used in conventional weaving. This type of weaving is extremely rare, and there are fewer than twenty weavers in India professing this skill. The guidelines also state that there should be exactly 150 threads per square centimetre, four threads per stitch, and one square foot should weigh exactly 205 grams (7.2 oz).[5][30][31][32]
There are four places in the country licensed to make the cloth for the national flag, they are in Karnataka, Marathwada, Barabanki in UP, and Banetha in Rajasthan.[33] The woven khadi is obtained from two handloom units in the Dharwad and Bagalkot districts of northern Karnataka. Currently, Karnataka Khadi Gramodyoga Samyukta Sangha based in Hubli is the only licensed flag production and supply unit in India.[31] Permission for setting up flag manufacturing units in India is allotted by the Khadi Development and Village Industries Commission, though the BIS has the power to cancel the licences of units that flout guidelines.[5] The hand-woven khadi for the National Flag was initially manufactured at Garag, a small village in the Dharwad district. A Centre was established at Garag in 1954 by a few freedom fighters under the banner of Dharwad Taluk Kshetriya Seva Sangh and obtained the Centre's licence to make flags.[5]
Once woven, the material is sent to the BIS laboratories for testing. After quality testing, the material, if approved, is returned to the factory. It is then separated into three lots which are dyed saffron, white and green. The Ashoka Chakra is screen printed, stencilled or suitably embroidered onto each side of the white cloth. Care also has to be taken that the chakra is completely visible and synchronised on both sides. Three pieces of the required dimension, one of each colour, are then stitched together according to specifications and the final product is ironed and packed. The BIS then checks the colours and only then can the flag be sold.[30][31]
Protocol
Correct horizontal and vertical display of the flag
Display and usage of the flag is governed by the Flag Code of India, 2002 (successor to the Flag Code – India, the original flag code); the Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act, 1950; and the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971.[5] Insults to the national flag, including gross affronts or indignities to it, as well as using it in a manner so as to violate the provisions of the Flag Code, are punishable by law with imprisonment up to three years, or a fine, or both.[34]
Official regulation states that the flag must never touch the ground or water, or be used as a drapery in any form.[5] The flag may not be intentionally placed upside down, dipped in anything, or hold any objects other than flower petals before unfurling. No sort of lettering may be inscribed on the flag. When out in the open, the flag should always be flown between sunrise and sunset, irrespective of the weather conditions. Prior to 2009, the flag could be flown on a public building at night under special circumstances; currently, Indian citizens can fly the flag even at night, subject to the restriction that the flag should be hoisted on a tall flagpole and be well-illuminated.[5][35]
The flag should never be depicted, displayed or flown upside down. Tradition also states that when draped vertically, the flag should not merely be rotated 90degrees, but also reversed. One "reads" a flag like the pages of a book, from top to bottom and from left to right, and after rotation the results should be the same. It is considered insulting to display the flag in a frayed or dirty state, and the same rule applies to the flagpoles and halyards used to hoist the flag, which should always be in a proper state of maintenance.[1]
The original flag code of India did not allow private citizens to fly the national flag except on national days such as Independence Day or Republic Day. In 2001, Naveen Jindal, an industrialist used to the more egalitarian use of the flag in the United States where he studied, flew the Indian flag on his office building. The flag was confiscated and he was warned of prosecution. Jindal filed a public interest litigation petition in the High Court of Delhi; he sought to strike down the restriction on the use of the flag by private citizens, arguing that hoisting the national flag with due decorum and honour was his right as a citizen, and a way of expressing his love for the country.[36][37]
At the end of the appeals process, the case was heard by the Supreme Court of India; the court ruled in Jindal's favour, asking the Government of India to consider the matter. The Union Cabinet of India then amended the Indian Flag Code with effect from 26 January 2002, allowing private citizens to hoist the flag on any day of the year, subject to their safeguarding the dignity, honour and respect of the flag.[5] It is also held that the code was not a statute and restrictions under the code ought to be followed; also, the right to fly the flag is a qualified right, unlike the absolute rights guaranteed to citizens, and should be interpreted in the context of Article 19 of the Constitution of India.[5]
The original flag code also forbade use of the flag on uniforms, costumes and other clothing. In July 2005, the Government of India amended the code to allow some forms of usage. The amended code forbids usage in clothing below the waist and on undergarments, and forbids embroidering onto pillowcases, handkerchiefs or other dress material.[38]
Disposal of damaged flags is also covered by the flag code. Damaged or soiled flags may not be cast aside or disrespectfully destroyed; they have to be destroyed as a whole in private, preferably by burning or by any other method consistent with the dignity of the flag.[1]
Display
Placement protocol for the Indian flag with another country's flag
The rules regarding the correct methods to display the flag state that when two flags are fully spread out horizontally on a wall behind a podium, their hoists should be towards each other with the saffron stripes uppermost. If the flag is displayed on a short flagpole, this should be mounted at an angle to the wall with the flag draped tastefully from it. If two national flags are displayed on crossed staffs, the hoists must be towards each other and the flags must be fully spread out. The flag should never be used as a cloth to cover tables, lecterns, podiums or buildings, or be draped from railings.[1]
Whenever the flag is displayed indoors in halls at public meetings or gatherings of any kind, it should always be on the right (observers' left), as this is the position of authority. So when the flag is displayed next to a speaker in the hall or other meeting place, it must be placed on the speaker's right hand. When it is displayed elsewhere in the hall, it should be to the right of the audience. The flag should be displayed completely spread out with the saffron stripe on top. If hung vertically on the wall behind the podium, the saffron stripe should be to the left of the onlookers facing the flag with the hoist cord at the top.[1]
A flag procession
The flag, when carried in a procession or parade or with another flag or flags, should be on the marching right or alone in the centre at the front. The flag may form a distinctive feature of the unveiling of a statue, monument, or plaque, but should never be used as the covering for the object. As a mark of respect to the flag, it should never be dipped to a person or thing, as opposed to regimental colours, organisational or institutional flags, which may be dipped as a mark of honour. During the ceremony of hoisting or lowering the flag, or when the flag is passing in a parade or in a review, all persons present should face the flag and stand at attention. Those present in uniform should render the appropriate salute. When the flag is in a moving column, persons present will stand at attention or salute as the flag passes them. A dignitary may take the salute without a head dress. The flag salutation should be followed by the playing of the national anthem.[1]
The privilege of flying the national flag on vehicles is restricted to the President, the Vice-President or the Prime Minister, Governors and Lieutenant Governors of states, Chief Ministers, Union Ministers, members of the Parliament of India and state legislatures of the Indian states (Vidhan Sabha and Vidhan Parishad), judges of the Supreme Court of India and High Courts, and flag officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force. The flag has to be flown from a staff affixed firmly either on the middle front or to the front right side of the car. When a foreign dignitary travels in a car provided by government, the flag should be flown on the right side of the car while the flag of the foreign country should be flown on the left side.[5]
The flag should be flown on the aircraft carrying the President, the Vice-President or the Prime Minister on a visit to a foreign country. Alongside the National Flag, the flag of the country visited should also be flown; however, when the aircraft lands in countries en route, the national flags of the respective countries would be flown instead. When carrying the president within India, aircraft display the flag on the side the president embarks or disembarks; the flag is similarly flown on trains, but only when the train is stationary or approaching a railway station.[1]
When the Indian flag is flown on Indian territory along with other national flags, the general rule is that the Indian flag should be the starting point of all flags. When flags are placed in a straight line, the rightmost flag (leftmost to the observer facing the flag) is the Indian flag, followed by other national flags in alphabetical order. When placed in a circle, the Indian flag is the first point and is followed by other flags alphabetically. In such placement, all other flags should be of approximately the same size with no other flag being larger than the Indian flag. Each national flag should also be flown from its own pole and no flag should be placed higher than another. In addition to being the first flag, the Indian flag may also be placed within the row or circle alphabetically. When placed on crossed poles, the Indian flag should be in front of the other flag, and to the right (observer's left) of the other flag. The only exception to the preceding rule is when it is flown along with the flag of the United Nations, which may be placed to the right of the Indian flag.[1]
When the Indian flag is displayed with non-national flags, including corporate flags and advertising banners, the rules state that if the flags are on separate staffs, the flag of India should be in the middle, or the furthest left from the viewpoint of the onlookers, or at least one flag's breadth higher than the other flags in the group. Its flagpole must be in front of the other poles in the group, but if they are on the same staff, it must be the uppermost flag. If the flag is carried in procession with other flags, it must be at the head of the marching procession, or if carried with a row of flags in line abreast, it must be carried to the marching right of the procession.[1]
Half-mast
The flag should be flown at half-mast as a sign of mourning. The decision to do so lies with the President of India, who also decides the period of such mourning. When the flag is to be flown at half mast, it must first be raised to the top of the mast and then slowly lowered. Only the Indian flag is flown half mast; all other flags remain at normal height.
The flag is flown half-mast nationwide on the death of the president, Vice-president or prime minister. It is flown half-mast in New Delhi and the state of origin for the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and Union Ministers. On deaths of Governors, Lt. Governors and Chief Ministers, the flag is flown at half-mast in the respective states and union territories.
The Indian flag cannot be flown at half-mast on Republic Day (26 January), Independence day (15 August), Gandhi Jayanti (2 October), National Week (6–13 April) or state formation anniversaries, except over buildings housing the body of the deceased dignitary. However, even in such cases, the flag must be raised to full-mast when the body is moved from the building.
Observances of State mourning on the death of foreign dignitaries are governed by special instructions issued from the Ministry of Home Affairs in individual cases. However, in the event of death of either the Head of the State or Head of the Government of a foreign country, the Indian Mission accredited to that country may fly the national flag at half-mast.
On occasions of state, military, central para-military forces funerals, the flag shall be draped over the bier or coffin with the saffron towards the head of the bier or coffin. The flag should not be lowered into the grave or burnt in the pyre.[1]
See also
a b The current flag is an adaptation of Venkayya's original design, but he is generally credited as the designer of the flag.
NotesWith a brand new balance patch right around the corner, the folks at Sony Santa Monica have decided that it’s time for Sony PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale to return to the tournament circuit. The unique fighter held a spot at Level|Up Series’ weekly Wednesday Night Fights events for some time after its release in 2012, and will be making a second debut during the next season of The Runback.
In addition to the thrill of competition, this spring tournament series will also award the first place finisher at the end of the season and Battle Royale’s most dedicated player with Sony’s latest console, the PlayStation 4.
Season two of The Runback 2014 is set to premiere next Thursday, April 10, so be sure to head on over to Super Arcade on 1211 N. Grand Avenue in Walnut, California if you’re interested in competing. More information on the tournament can be found over at Level|Up Series.
Source: Level|Up Series via Sony Santa MonicaBy Leo Babauta
In our rush to get through the tasks of our day, to complete our errands and answer emails, to look at the next video or link we find … when do we think we’ll find happiness?
If it’s not here right now, when will it come?
Maybe we think it’ll come when we improve our lives, or meet our goals, or succeed at our business, or finish our college degree. Maybe it’ll come when we go on that next trip, or when we find time to relax. Maybe tomorrow.
Or we could try this:
Slow down instead of rushing.
Pause to savor the current moment.
Really notice everything about the moment, and find small things to appreciate.
Be grateful for what there is right here, right now.
Allow the things that are bothering you to just be in your life, without fighting with them, without pushing them away.
Don’t allow little things to offend you. They’re not worth ruining this moment.
Let the beauty of this moment wash over you like a warm foamy wave.
These are all things we already know. But we don’t actually do them. The key here is practice.
If you don’t practice being present, slowing down, enjoying the moment right now, when will you practice? What are you practicing now instead?
Start your practice this moment.Smartphones running Android try to prevent the sort of viruses and Trojans that plague PCs by carefully walling off which of the phones' features and data applications can access. But one team of researchers has demonstrated that a clever piece of malware can listen through the walls--literally.
Six researchers at Indiana University and the City University of Hong Kong have created a proof-of-concept program called Soundminer (PDF here) that's capable of using a phone's mic to listen out for credit card numbers. When a user either speaks or types their credit card's digits into the phone, Soundminer parses the audio file, interprets the numbers, and sends them to another app that passes them on to a remote server.
Here's a video of Soundminer in action.
The idea behind the team's work, which they plan to demonstrate at the Network & Distributed System Security Symposium in San Diego next month, is that a smart user wouldn't grant an untrusted application access to his or her web browsing or keyboard, where it could snoop on credit card information being entered into banking website or another application. But few users would suspect an app that asks only for access to the phone's microphone. In fact, permission to access the microphone on an Android device is included under "Hardware Controls" that allow access to all audio settings. Even a seemingly harmless alarm clock application for Android asks for that privilege, as the researchers show in the video above.
Sneakier yet: Soundminer doesn't even ask for access to the phone's network to transmit its stolen data. Instead, the team writes in a paper that it uses a "covert channel" that allows the app to transmit small amounts of data to other applications. In Soundminer's case, those bits are sent to another application called Deliverer, which is designed only to relay the data on to the hacker. The researchers suggest that the second, delivery application could be automatically installed by the first in a single package download.
The covert channels that the researchers identify include the phone's vibration, volume, and screen wake-up settings, all of which are shared with other applications when they're changed. By tweaking those settings in a certain pattern, Soundminer sends a simple secret code to Deliverer, which in turn passes it on to the hacker. And because Soundminer extracts the credit card number from the audio track rather than transmit the entire file, it only has to share 16 digits with Deliverer, easily small enough for its subtle communications to the other malicious app.
I've contacted Google to hear their thoughts on this ultra-clever malware and the potential security vulnerability it represents. I'll update when I hear back from them.
Update: A Google spokesperson has responded with a statement emphasizing that for apps sold in its Android marketplace at least, there are several safeguards that might catch even ultra-stealthy malware. The spokesperson writes: "Android is designed to minimize the impact of poorly programmed or malicious applications if they appear on the device, and we always advise users to only install applications they trust. If users believe an application is harmful or inappropriate, they can flag it, give it a low rating, leave a detailed comment, and of course, remove it from their device. Applications deemed to be in violation of our policies are removed from Market, and abusive developers can also be blocked from using the Android Market for repeated or egregious violations of our policies."
The Indiana and Hong Kong researchers' work is intended to make phones more secure, not steal financial data. So their paper also includes suggestions for how Android, or users, might protect data from the microphone-based attack. Those fixes include turning off the audio feedback on the phone's dialing buttons, and also implementing more specific permissions on apps that would make it clearer to users when a program asks for suspicious access to the mic.
Soundminer strikes me as a remarkable hack, and the researchers' paper is chock full of interesting sleights-of-hand. Check out the full PDF here.
(Hat tip to Chris Wysopal of Veracode for spotting this.)Three Irish tech startups -- Pointy, Cesanta and Xpreso -- have been announced as winners of the ‘Go Global’ competition run by the team behind Web Summit.
Three Irish tech startups -- Pointy, Cesanta and Xpreso -- have been announced as winners of the ‘Go Global’ competition run by the team behind Web Summit.
The companies will now be offered expert advice from senior investors, technology entrepreneurs and technology journalists.
All three winning Irish startups will also be flown to the Web Summit's sister conference, Rise, in Hong Kong. And they will also appear in front of an expected 6,000 people on the main stage at this November's Dublin Web Summit to talk about their companies.
The competition was open to startups less than three years old and which had raised less than €3m in funding.
Dublin-based ‘internet of things’ firm Cesanta develops software designed to enable network communication between devices or appliances using secure connectivity and data intelligence. The company, which was founded by ex-Google engineers Anatoly Lebedev and Sergey Lyubka, has quickly snapped up a seed round of funding from high-end investors that include Eventbrite founder and Airbnb advisor Kevin Hartz. It is swelling fast, having already reached 10 people.
Meanwhile, Dublin-based Pointy was founded in 2014 by Mark Cummins and Charles Bibby and is a service that enables retailers to easily scan their products directly to a website using only an ordinary barcode scanner.
The company got investment of €1.1m in 2015.
Xpreso, founded by Cyclone Couriers CEO Simon Pleass and Eamon Keane eliminates the ‘sorry we missed you’ card that online shoppers receive when they are not at home to accept a delivery. The company recently raised over €800,000 in seed funding.
“It’s great to see Irish startups companies growing and going global,” said Paddy Cosgrave, chief executive and founder of Web Summit.
“The three winners are a great example of the entrepreneurial potential in Ireland and we’re delighted to support them. We’ll be providing them with assistance through our network of investors, media and other major tech entrepreneurs.”
Online EditorsThere is a battle playing out inside your body right now. It started billions of years ago and it is still being fought in every one of us every minute of every day. It is the story of a viral infection, the battle for the cell.
This film reveals the exquisite machinery of the human cell system from within the inner world of the cell itself - from the frenetic membrane surface that acts as a security system for everything passing in and out of the cell, the dynamic highways that transport cargo across the cell and the remarkable turbines that power the whole cellular world to the amazing nucleus housing DNA and the construction of thousands of different proteins all with unique tasks. The virus intends to commandeer this system to one selfish end: to make more viruses. And they will stop at nothing to achieve their goal.
Exploring the very latest ideas about the evolution of life on earth and the bio-chemical processes at the heart of every one of us, and revealing a world smaller than it is possible to comprehend, in a story large enough to fill the biggest imaginations. With contributions from Professor Bonnie L Bassler of Princeton University, Dr Nick Lane and Professor Steve Jones of University College London and Cambridge University's Susanna Bidgood.× Famous for their wings, J. Timothy’s to temporarily close for renovations
PLAINVILLE — Famous near and far for their wings, J. Timothy’s Taverne will close Saturday for kitchen renovations for at least two weeks.
The restaurant announced on its Facebook page that they would close starting Saturday, August 27.
The popular restaurant opened in Plainville in 1979 and produces more than 200 tons of wings every year. They offer four different sauces (Buffalo, Honey BBQ, Teriyaki and Sweet Red Chili) along with the usual trimmings of blue cheese or ranch dressing.
Their Dirt Wings placed second on a Buzzfeed reader generated list of“22 Chicken Wings You Have To Try Before You Die.” It was also featured recently on FOX 61 Good Day Connecticut’s Foodie Friday.
They promised to post updates on their Facebook page about when they will reopen.Kowton has done a nice dubstep/house mix for the Blackdown blog. Lots of nice tunes to chill out to on a Sunday. Head over to the Blackdown blog to read an interview with Kowton.
Check out other dubstep mixes here and subscribe to the feed to get updated about fresh dubstep mixes.
Kowton mix for Blackdown blog – dubstep/house [Filesonic download]
Tracklist:
STL – Bird Art (Something)
Andre – Moments in Life (Mahogani Music)
WBeeza – He So Crazy (Third Ear)
Soundstream – “Live” Goes On (Soundstream)
Kowton – Stasis (G mix) (Keysound)
DJ Abstract – Touch (Tempa)
Kowton – Looking At You (unreleased)
Pearson Sound – Wad (Hessle Audio)
Kowton – Countryman (Keysound)
Emvee – Nocturnal (Wireblock)
Kowton – Metronome (LV Remix)(unreleased – Nakedlunch forthcoming?)
Joe – Grimelight (Hessle Audio)
|
to visit North America since the Vikings) had “ discovered in the past by the men from Bristol who found Brasil. ” This implied someone from one of the Bristol expeditions had actually managed to find it.
The Nautical chart of Western Europe (1473) shows Hy-Brasil in a circular shape ( British Library )
Nearly two centuries later Scottish sea captain, John Nisbet, claimed to have spotted Hy-Brasil on his voyage from France to Ireland in 1674. He is said to have sent a party of four ashore where the sailors spent the entire day on the island.
Large Black Rabbits and a Mysterious Magician
There, they claim to have met a wise old man who provided them with gold and silver. Strangely, the captain said the island was inhabited by large black rabbits and a mysterious magician who lived in a large stone castle by himself. A follow up expedition was led by captain Alexander Johnson who also claimed to have found Hy-Brasil, confirming Nisbet’s findings.
In the following years, Hy-Brasil would retreat into anonymity. As attempts to find it failed again, map-makers started leaving it off most nautical charts. When it was last observed on a map in 1865, it was simply noted as “Brazil rock.”
The last documented sighting of Hy-Brasil was made in 1872 by Robert O’Flaherty and T.J. Westropp. Westropp claimed to have visited the island on three previous occasions and was so captivated by it that he brought his family with him to see it in person. There, they all witnessed it appear out of nowhere only to see it vanish again before their very eyes.
Myths and Legends About Hy-Brasil
There are many myths and legends surrounding Hy-Brasil. In some of them, the island is the home of the gods of Irish lore. In others, it is inhabited by priests or monks rumored to hold ancient knowledge which allowed them to create an advanced civilization. Some think that St. Brendan's famous voyage to find the “Promised Land” may have been Hy-Brasil.
An artistic representation of what Hy-Brasil may have looked like ( Wikia)
In one famous UFO encounter, known as the Rendlesham Forest incident, a strange craft is reported to have landed outside a U.S. military base in the U.K. Sergeant Jim Penniston claims to have touched this craft and telepathically receive 16 pages of binary code into his mind. He wrote down the code the next day and had it translated decades later. The code was said to list very specific coordinates of Hy-Brasil and listed the location where ancient cartographers had it mapped. The message also listed the coordinates of several other ancient sites around the world such as the Pyramids at Giza and Nazca Lines. At the very bottom of the message, coordinates of Hy-Brasil were listed again along with an origin year of 8100.
Binary Code showing the coordinates of Hy-Brasil and other locations ( Tribelightstation)
Hy-Brasil as Ireland's Atlantis
While Atlantis may be the most famous lost civilization, Hy-Brasil is better documented and has more eyewitness accounts behind it.
The legend could be a story that was passed down through generations from the end of the last Ice Age when sea levels were lower. For example, the so-called Porcupine Bank, discovered in 1862, appears to have been an island at some point in time. Located about 193 km (120 miles) west of Ireland, it is a shoal exposed at extreme low tide and where an 1830 chart had ‘Brazil Rock’ located. The bank’s highest point is around 200 meters (656 feet) below sea level and was sunk either due to a catastrophe or rising sea levels.
Porcupine Bank and Seabight, bathemetry of the Northeast Atlantic ( Wikimedia Commons )
Today, no such island called Hy-Brasil exists on any maps or nautical charts and no historical documents were ever recorded to indicate what happened to it. Mainstream historians simply consider it a case of mistaken identity. Nevertheless, it is a peculiar riddle in history that is likely to be debated and discussed into the future.
A Map of Europe from 1570 showing Hy-Brasil at another location (look beside the foot of the animal 'Europa' is riding) ( Wikimedia Commons )
BBC Radio Four made a program based on legends and the story of Hy-Brasil, it can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mdg51
Featured Image: Strange Island in Fog ( BBC)
By Bryan HillDAYTON, Ohio -- Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan arrived in Ohio this week to news of dropping poll numbers and a widening gap in the Buckeye state between the Republican nominee and President Obama. Luckily, they brought back up.
Sen. Rand Paul,R-Ky., joined the pair on the road Tuesday, and while he had planned to campaign for Romney, his appearance on the trail couldn't have come at a better time. The libertarian worldview that made him and his father -- Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas -- populist heroes was on full display in his brief remarks before he introduced Romney and Ryan. Paul told the crowd he was "mortified" by the fact that people in foreign countries are on television burning the American flag and yet still receive foreign aid.
"They are attacking our embassy, burning our flag, torturing and imprisoning the man who helped us get (Osama) bin Laden... what's President Obama's answer? Send them more of your money," Paul said as the crowd booed.
Paul's popularity could help reenergize Tea Party activists and help attract more libertarian voters to vote for Romney local tea party leaders and voters here said. The elder Paul received a little more than 9% of the vote in the state's March presidential primary. "Hopefully he can steal some of those Ron Paul votes," said David Richeson, 59, a toolmaker from Dayton. Richeson said anyone who is still undecided at this point is more likely to vote for Romney than Obama.
INTERACTIVE: USA TODAY/Twitter's Election Meter
One Republican strategist with close ties to Sen. Paul's organization said he could be particularly helpful to Romney in parts of Southern Ohio closest to his home state. "It's a stamp of approval," said the strategist who spoke on background because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the campaign.
Marianne Gasiecki, founder of the Mansfield Tea Party in Mansfield, OH, an affiliate of Tea Party Patriots, did not attend the Dayton rally but said Paul's appearance served as a good reminder to conservatives where Romney stands when they are worried that he may not be as right-leaning as they had hoped. "It shows that he is gravitating toward conservatives," Gasiecki said. "It's a good sign."
Libertarians and Paul supporters were more skeptical. At a forum in Lima on Monday, a man stood and asked Ryan why Paul supporters should cast a vote for his ticket instead of a third party. Ryan responded,"Do you want Barack Obama to be re-elected?"
Some said it was unlikely that many former Paul voters would swing their loyalty to Romney, despite the endorsement of the younger Paul."I don't think they will end up supporting Mitt Romney," said Chris Littleton, a grassroots activist based in Cincinnati. "There will be people who vote for (Libertarian Party nominee) Gary Johnson and yes, some people who will vote for Romney, I just don't think the majority will." Littleton added, "Many think Romney isn't significantly different from Obama."
Derek Landis, an Iraq war veteran and founder of a grassroots group in the Cincinnati area called LibertasFound, said Romney's message on intervention is too different from that of the Liberty movement that many Ron Paul supporters say the congressman represents. "One of the platforms of the Liberty movement is very pro-peace," he said, adding that he would likely cast a vote for Johnson.
Sen. Paul and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman joined the two candidates on the blustery afternoon as a part of the campaign's three-day bus tour through the Buckeye State. Romney has pledged to pick up the pace in the waning weeks of the contest following criticism that the candidate was spending too much time fundraising.
Rich Beeson, Romney's political director, said the campaign was not rattled by recent polling showing Obama in the lead. A poll released Sunday by the Cincinnati Enquirer/Ohio Newspaper Organization showed Obama leading Romney 51%-46% among likely voters; a Washington Post poll released Tuesday showed Obama up by 8 points in the state.
"These polls are all over the place," Beeson said, pointing to polling in states like New Hampshire, Iowa and Virginia where the numbers vary wildly from one day to the next. "You have different people weighing in different ways, we have our internal data and that's what we base our decisions on."
Beeson said Paul's appearance on the trail simply helped amplify the campaign's message that the country can't afford four more years with Obama as president. "Keep plugging away, keep doing what we are doing, it will go our way," he said.
Romney in an interview on CNN said largely the same thing. "Polls go up and down, he said, "but frankly, you're going to see the support that I need to become president on election day. People recognize that we don't want a government getting larger and larger and more intrusive in our lives."Benjamin Rollins Caldwell is interested in what happens to electronics when they die. The designer was walking through an old warehouse when he came upon a hodgepodge of obsolete computers, calculators, telephones, and printers, and decided to take the pallets back to his studio. His vision produced The Binary Collection, a line of furniture made out of up-cycled, disposed electronics that shows us how much e-waste we actually produce.
The understructure of each piece is made of computer towers and sheet metal from printers that are bent to the proper form and riveted together. The surface of each piece is completely covered with colorful motherboards, computer chips, LCD screens, and hard drive disks held in place by sheet metal screws. In the chairs, the cushions are made from woven together ribbon cable and ethernet cables, and the tables have a functional surface made of salvaged glass above the base.
The art and pop culture worlds have taken notice of The Binary Collection, the most famous fan being Mother Monster herself. The collection was exhibited in a large installation called "Living in the Computer Age" at Lady Gaga's ArtRave, an event to celebrate and promote the singer's latest album, ARTPOP. Rollins Caldwell found the partnership fitting, not only because the chair looks like how many of the tracks on ARTPOP sound, but also because he says he likes viewers to be able to relate to his work, much like music.
In addition to Gaga's show, The Binary Collection was recently exhibited at Design Miami. Next stop — San Francisco's FOG art fair, where the entire Binary Room installation will be from January 16–19, 2014.
All images courtesy of BRC Designs.
Grid View The Binary Collection was featured in a room installation at this year's Design Miami.
The entire exterior of the Binary Chair is made from motherboards and computer chips.
All of the parts used to make the furniture were 100 percent recycled from abandoned electronics.
Chair cushions were made from woven ethernet and ribbon cables.
The added piece of salvaged glass on the Binary Table provides functionality without impeding its beauty.
Rollins Caldwell spent hours deconstructing computers and other electronics to get the parts he needed, and even more time placing them on each design to make the final pieces as aesthetically pleasing as possible.
Caldwell says the Binary Cabinet was the most challenging piece to create, because the interior is made of bent and riveted computer tower metal — something that's not easily made visually appealing.
Designer Benjamin Rollins Caldwell in The Binary Room.Amelia Templeton/OPB
The mother of a 17-year-old African-American teen shot and killed by a Portland Police officer in February is calling for a federal investigation into the death of her son.
“I would like the community to stand with us, with me and my family,” said Venus Hayes, the mother of Quanice Derrick Hayes, during a news conference in downtown Portland on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, a Multnomah County grand jury declined to charge officer Andrew Hearst in Hayes’ shooting death.
“Quanice was on his knees when he was shot in the head and in the chest,” Hayes said. “I think that’s important when anybody wants to say that he was this dangerous robber.”
Hayes said her son is the victim in the case and that he was painted by police as a robber or a car prowler.
“All of which is not a reason to be executed in the United State of America or the state of Oregon,” Hayes said.
Multnomah County District Attorney Rod Underhill said Tuesday that there are still many questions surrounding the details of the incident. He said transcripts of the testimony heard by the grand jury would be expedited and, he expects, released to the public.
“Early on, I met with Quanice Hayes’ mother and other close family members to share my sympathy over the death of their loved one,” Underhill said in a statement. “I further recognize the impact on Officer Hearst, his family and co-workers as well as our community as we collectively move forward.”
On Feb. 9, Hearst received a report of an armed robbery at 7:24 a.m. at the Portland Value Inn hotel on 82nd Avenue, police said in a statement Tuesday.
“The victim told police that the suspect, later determined to be Hayes, put a gun to his head and held him hostage for approximately 30 minutes in the car then stole his Oregon Trail EBT card and an item of clothing,” the Portland Police Bureau wrote in the statement.
Police said they also received a 911 call at 7:26 a.m. about a car prowler at the nearby Banfield Pet Hospital.
“An article of clothing found in the victim’s car was linked to the robbery victim at the Portland Value Inn,” police said.
A second 911 call was logged at 7:36 a.m., when a homeowner on Northeast Tillamook Street said an “unwanted person” entered his or her yard.
“The caller provided a description of the suspect consistent with the previous two 9-1-1 calls,” police said. “Near the Tillamook address, Hayes left behind a small bag and items scattered about the ground, some of which were determined to have come from the car prowl at the Banfield Pet Hospital.”
Amelia Templeton/OPB
Police said they located Hayes at 7:48 a.m. and he ran. Officers then set up a perimeter and began to search for Hayes using a police dog, according to the statement.
Officers said they located Hayes at 9:21 a.m., crouching in an alcove between a house and a garage located on Northeast Hancock Street.
“Officers believed he was armed with a handgun, as reported by the robbery victim, and was involved in the car prowl and burglary,” Portland police said.
“Hayes was ordered multiple times by officers to keep his hands up, but made repeated and deliberate motions with his hands to the area of his waistband and pockets,” the statement continued. “During this encounter, Officer Hearst fired three shots from his patrol rifle at Hayes, striking and killing him.”
Hayes’ mother indicated that her communication with the Portland Police Bureau and district’s attorney office is strained. She said she’s been referring their calls to her lawyer.
Hayes said she found out her son was killed nine hours after the shooting, and first learned of his death on Facebook.
Police Bureau spokesman Pete Simpson confirmed that Hayes learned of her son’s death on social media before detectives were able to officially notify the family, which he called “truly regrettable.”
Simpson said the effort to notify the family was delayed because Hayes wasn’t carrying ID. His fingerprints initially matched a different name in the police database, and it took officers time to determine his real identity.
The Oregon Medical Examiner determined Hayes was shot twice in the torso and once in the head.
But during Wednesday’s news conference, Hayes’ mother said she and others had been misinformed by police.
“We later found from the death certificate that that wasn’t true, that my son was shot in the head and twice in the chest,” she said.
Hayes had cocaine, benzodiazepine and hydrocodone in his system at time of death, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office.
Hayes said she was originally told by police and the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office that there were three officers on the scene.
Speaking Wednesday, she said she now believes there were five officers at the scene. Hayes said those inconsistencies make her question the police force’s account of events.
“None of the other officers felt the need to use deadly force,” Hayes said, “only Officer Hearst.”
Police Spokesman Pete Simpson said the bureau has provided accurate, if limited, information to the Hayes family about the shooting.
“It is standard to keep investigative information private during an open investigation of any kind, not just officer-involved shootings,” he said.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office said he could not comment on the Hayes family’s request.'Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica'
by Tycho Brahe, 1602. [previously]
Celestial Globe IN:by Tycho Brahe, 1602.
Schematic of Saturn's rings IN: 'Systema Saturnium' by Christiaan Huygens 1659.
Jules Verne: 'From the Earth to the Moon Direct in Ninety-seven
Hours and Twenty Minutes, and a Trip around it.' 1874.
'Jules Verne, The World's Greatest Prophet' IN: 'Science and Invention' 1920.
'Musée Rétrospectif de la
Classe 100. Jouets à l'Exposition Universelle Internationale de 1900,
à Paris' - a report by Henry D'Allemagne. [I wish this whole work was online] Wow. Uncannily, the first place I went after posting this entry - zenonannexe - has collected some images from this book. Too odd.
'Polichinelle et son Vélocipéde' IN:- a report by Henry D'Allemagne.
'M. Garnerin's Ascent and Descent with his Balloon and Parachute'
IN: 'Air Ballon & Parachute; a Circumstantial Account of the Three
Last Aerial Voyages Made by M. Garnerin' 1802. [touched up]
André Jacques
from a hot air balloon in 1797. He designed and tested the device while he was
considering escape options in prison. He went on to make about 200 successful
jumps but was eventually killed - while still on the ground - during a ballooning accident.
Garnerin made the world's first successful parachute jump:from a hot air balloon in 1797. He designed and tested the device while he wasconsidering escape options in prison. He went on to make about 200 successfuljumps but was eventually killed - while still on the ground - during a ballooning accident.
the) earliest depictions of a
pseudo-Museum or Cabinet of Curiosities or Wunderkammern from
by the Apothecary, Ferrante Imperato, 1599.
This is one of the (if not) earliest depictions of apseudo-Museum or Cabinet of Curiosities orfrom 'Dell'historia Naturale' by the Apothecary, Ferrante Imperato, 1599.
'Museo Cospiano Annesso a Quello del Famoso Ulisse Adrovandi'
by Lorenzo Legati -, 1677. [Watson Antiquarian]
by Lorenzo Legati -, 1677.
'Altre Scoverte Fatte Nella Luna dal Sigr. Herschel or Great
Astronomical Discoveries', 1836 by Leopoldo Galluzzo and Gaetano Dura.
I'm not sure of the manner of publication of this print but it satirises
of 1835 in which articles attributed to RA Locke
appeared in the New York Sun newspaper advising readers that noted
astronomer Sir John
An expedition using a ship supported by hydrogen balloons was proposed.
Herschel, who was not in any way part of the hoax, was not particularly
amused - [small pdf].
, 1836 by Leopoldo Galluzzo and Gaetano Dura.I'm not sure of the manner of publication of this print but it satirises 'The Great Moon Hoax' of 1835 in which articles attributed to RA Lockeappeared in the New York Sun newspaper advising readers that notedastronomer Sir John Herschel had discovered fantastic life on the moon.An expedition using a ship supported by hydrogen balloons was proposed.Herschel, who was not in any way part of the hoax, was not particularlyamused - his reply
'Portrait of Mr Golightly experimenting on Mess Quick & Speed's
new patent high pressure, STEAM RIDING ROCKET'
'Aerial Navigation: The Practicability of Traveling Pleasantly and Safely from New-York to California in Three Days, Fully Demonstrated, with a Full Description of a Perfect Aerial Locomotive'
'Almagestum Novum Astronomiam Veterem Novamque'
by Jesuit astronomer, Battista
includes a detailed lunar map by FM Grimaldi with a geographical
naming system of the moon's surface, much of which persists today.
Frontpiece fromby Jesuit astronomer, Giovanni Riccioli from 1651. The book includes a detailed lunar map by FM Grimaldi with a geographicalnaming system of the moon's surface, much of which persists today.
World Champion Studebaker President Eight Four-Season Convertible
Roadster for Four, with Free Wheeling Under Positive Gear Control, 1931.
IN: 'Description des Travaux Entrepris pour la Construction de la
Tonnelle ou Passage sous la Tamise.' 1840-1841 (Thames tunnel)
This image doesn't show it but written above the pilot is 'The Flight of Intellect'. { B&W image } The rear label reads: ‘Warranted not to Burst’. The satirical illustration relates to a Charles Golightly, who secured a place in history by taking out a British patent in 1841 for a flying machine that employs a steam rocket. The vehicle was never built. Steam engines were notorious for exploding and being generally unreliable in the first half of the 19th century, explaining the skeptical nature of the cartoon. My guess, from 1/2 sentences seen in search results from pay sites, is that the original Golightly patent has now been lost.Neither the artist's name nor the date published is known for the above print and so I'm not particularly sure if this picture pre- or post-dates an/other publication(s) in which the Golightly enterprise is lampooned. Porter was a painter, founder of Scientific American, inventor of the revolver (the idea was sold to Samuel Colt for $100) and author of the eccentrically titled:from 1849. He aimed to build an 800-foot steam powered airship to convey miners to the Californian Goldrush and gave talks in New York where he demonstrated his idea with a hydrogen-filled clockwork model craft that circled above his audience. Although he is known to have constructed working models, disasters afflicted each of the full sized versions he attempted to build up to 1854 when I suppose he abandoned the project.How does this enigmatic entrepeneur connect to our Golightly steam rocket you may wonder? Truthfully, I'm not altogether sure, or at least it's tenuous, but the Rufus Porter story is really fascinating and got me happily sidetracked. There are a couple of satirical prints from 1849 ( one in particular, which is very very similar to the above image) that could hardly have been included in Porter's book but were nonetheless inspired by both the Golightly patent and the 'Aerial Locomotive' hoopla. A 1935 re-issue of Porter's book (also described as a pamphlet) included 3 such contemporary illustrations so the connection may only have been established last century. The Galaxy of Images from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries presents thousands of images drawn from their book and print collections. There are many more themes than those from which I've sampled in collecting the above motley bunch.Thanks for the reminder Martinhidden
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Thursday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi by calling his survey on demonetisation as "fake and sponsored" and dared him to dissolve the Lok Sabha and face elections. "The survey of Modiji is fake and sponsored. If he has guts then he should dissolve the Lok Sabha and face elections, then only real survey can be done," Mayawati told media outside the Parliament.
Mayawati's remarks came after the government on Wednesday said over 93 percent of people taking part in an app-based survey supported the move. Modi had on Tuesday asked people to give their first-hand views and rate the Centres decision to spike Rs 500 and 1,000 notes on his official app. On November 8, the government demonetised the higher value currency notes to curb "black money and corruption".
The demonetisation triggered chaos across the country, with people continuing to line up outside banks and ATMs in interminably long queues. The app was trending on Apple App Store yesterday giving us some idea about the popularity of the app and the buzz created by the app. This comes in the time where several developers have developed fake prank apps for users to "check notes."
With inputs from IANS
Tech2 is now on WhatsApp. For all the buzz on the latest tech and science, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Tech2.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.With Hurricane Matthew projected to be major storm that affects East Coast of the United States, Waffle House is getting ready to stay open for those in need of a hot meal. The Norcross, Georgia-based diner chain is monitoring the hurricane’s path, and it is planning to do everything necessary to keep restaurants up and running in the aftermath.
Waffle House is famous for its 24-7-365 service, and the company is proud of that old-reliable status across the Southeast. Employees at multiple locations in Florida and South Carolina, two states that may be hit by Matthew, were quick to shoot down the notion that their restaurants would close because of the storm. Only those in areas where mandatory evacuations are in effect will be shut down.
Reached by phone, Waffle House vice president and director of culture Pat Warner explained the company’s plans to keep restaurants open — or get them back up and running as quickly as possible after the storm hits. Executive vice presidents in specific markets determine what aid is needed, and Waffle House deploys what it calls "jump teams" and "go teams."
These response units, complete with Waffle House-branded vans and RVs, provide whatever might be needed at a restaurant damaged by the storm. In addition to obvious support in the form of generators and extra manpower to help run the restaurant, they’ll be ready to assist with construction and IT support. And, Waffle House has a food safety team to make sure its food is actually safe to eat once the restaurant is serving again.
The extensive preparations are all made to make sure the chain can offer refuge for anyone impacted by the hurricane.
Matthew is projected to make landfall as a Category 4 storm in southeast Florida by late Thursday, and it’s expected to work its way up the East Coast in the following days, bringing powerful winds and heavy rain. It’s already hit Haiti, causing damage and an unconfirmed number of deaths and injuries.
• Hurricane Watch Expanded in Florida as Hurricane Matthew Heads for Cuba [Weather]
• Hurricane Matthew Pummels Haiti With Fierce Winds and Rain [NYT]
• 24 Hours at Waffle House With Bon Appétit's Restaurant Editor [E]
• All Waffle House Coverage [E]Photo by Steve Dietz, UnionPix.com The GOP tax scam will cause more U.S. factory closures like this one in Western Pennsylvania.
A giant sucking sound, louder than a freight train, noisier than a tornado, shriller than Ross Perot yelling, “I told you so,” blasted across the nation yesterday as Republicans in the U.S. House passed their tax plan.
It was the terrible sound of jobs swept out of this country. When Perot ran for president, he said the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would siphon off American jobs. And he was right. It did.
But this is much, much bigger.
House Republicans approved a scam exempting corporations from all taxes on their foreign operations. Under the GOP proposal, corporations like Carrier and Rexnord can benefit from protections provided by American patents, courts and armed forces, while moving their factories from the United States to Mexico. Or to other low-wage, high-polluting countries like China. Or to countries that charge little or no corporate tax. Once there, instead of paying the new, super-low 20 percent corporate rate Republicans propose for U.S-based producers, the expat factories will pay no taxes to the United States. Nothing. Not a cent.
Rather than Making America Great Again, Congressional Republicans plan to Make America Grieve Again as even more family-supporting factory jobs get shipped offshore to take advantage of the new tax rate of zip.
The math behind that job transfer is simple. Continue manufacturing in the United States and pay a corporate income tax dramatically lowered from 35 to 20 percent. Or move to a ridiculously low-tax country like Switzerland, Montenegro or Paraguay, and pay a measly 9 percent to that nation and nothing to the United States.
With the proposed corporate tax gift from Republicans, CEOs could uproot factories in places like Illinois, Indiana and Western Pennsylvania and ship them to brand new facilities in Bermuda, Palau or Turks & Caicos, where the corporate tax rate is zero. The corporation would pay no taxes on profits to the country hosting the factory and nothing to the United States, which hosts the headquarters.
Republicans contend such corporations will bring those foreign profits back to the United States and invest here. Why would CEOs do that when any American plant they invest in would be billed taxes on profits while the same factory located in certain other countries would pay nothing?
Why would they do that when they didn’t before?
Right now, corporations are sitting on $2.6 trillion in overseas profits. They have not invested that money in U.S. research, factories or jobs because they don’t want to pay the current 35 percent tax rate that would be charged when those profits are returned to the country.
To lure that money back, Republicans propose to give corporations a tax holiday, cutting the rate to between 5 and 12 percent for repatriating the $2.6 billion. The GOP insists corporations will take advantage of that tax deal to bring those billions home and invest in American production. But they won’t. The proof is that they didn’t last time.
Congress gave corporations a tax holiday in 2004 during which CEOs could return foreign profits to the United States and pay a mere 5 percent tax on them in exchange for investment in U.S. research, factories and jobs.
CEOs brought back the money and grabbed that 5 percent rate, alright. But they didn’t use the repatriated cash to conduct research, build factories or create jobs. Just the opposite.
A study by the Democratic staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that the 15 corporations that benefited most from the tax holiday turned around and cut more than 20,000 jobs and diminished their pace of research spending.
Labeling the 2004 tax holiday a failed policy, the report cautions against repeating it, saying it cost the U.S. Treasury $3.3 billion in lost revenues over 10 years and led to U.S. corporations sending more funds offshore.
“There is no evidence that the previous repatriation tax giveaway put Americans to work, and substantial evidence that it instead grew executive paychecks, propped up stock prices, and drew more money and jobs offshore,” said former Michigan Senator Carl Levin, then-chairman of the subcommittee, when the report was released in 2011.
So the contention that corporations now would invest in U.S. research, factories and jobs because Republicans plan to give them another tax holiday is about as solid as smoke ― the stuff emitted from American factories pre-NAFTA and now flowing from mills moved to Mexico. The same goes for the contention that corporations will invest in U.S. research, factories and jobs with completely untaxed foreign profits.
In fact, suspending taxes on foreign profits would create a perverse incentive for corporations to make it overseas instead of making it in America. But Republicans intend to do it anyway.
Republicans say they must cater to the tax demands of corporations because other countries – Germany and Ireland, for example – offer corporations low rates. And those same Republicans contend they must cease charging American corporations taxes on their foreign operations because other countries have stopped.
That describes a race to the bottom. Pretty soon, corporations won’t pay any taxes at all, anywhere to anyone. They’ll provide nothing toward the roads they use to transport their products, the school systems that educate their workers, the Army Corps of Engineers that protects factories from floods.
If countries don’t work together to stop corporations from playing one against the other, workers will get stuck with all of the costs. That’s what’s happening under the GOP tax scam. The tax changes were supposed to benefit middle-class workers. But they do not.
An analysis of the Senate tax plan, released this week by the Joint Committee on Taxation, which is the official nonpartisan review agency serving Congress, showed the scam would give large tax cuts to corporations and millionaires while raising the levies charged to families earning $10,000 to $75,000 – that’s low-income and middle-class families.
White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn said this week, “The most excited group out there are big CEOs, about our tax plan.” Of course they are. Those 1 percenters and their corporations get all the breaks.
To help pay for big fat tax cuts for millionaires and zeroed-out taxes for corporations, Republicans plan to slash programs crucial to workers – like Medicare and Medicaid – and vital deductions, like those for property taxes and student loan interest.Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Image via Flickr/Creative Commons
At the trial of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in Lille, the brilliant, left-leaning economist, referred to as DSK and once considered a “world savior,” stood before the world accused of aggravated pimping.
Although the charges are likely to be dismissed, the DSK scandal triggered the most significant shift of French consciousness around gender issues since the publication of “The Second Sex. ”
In the 1980s and 1990s during François Mitterand’s 14-year presidency, DSK was a leading socialist economist. French women who worked for the Socialist Party at that time, described a behind-the scenes libertarianism that corresponds in detail to all that DSK calmly described at his trial.
These highly-educated women were subject to the dictates and wiles of a man’s world. Their advancement depended largely on their skill navigating coquettish intrigues reminiscent of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” Victory implied that a woman had sexual allure, a sine qua non of personal power. The big winners might even score “the companion” seat on the private plane that left wintry Paris every Friday for weekend frolics in warm climes. (One uncool official was ridiculed for wasting his escort seat on his wife.)
The seasonally scheduled orgies set in a chateau outside of Paris were the high point. No one was “required” to attend. But women assumed their attendance, not to mention their compliance and stamina once there, could only be held in their favor. (I don’t know if men felt comparable social pressure.)
The ceremonials began with a multi-course dinner under elaborate crystal chandeliers served by waiters in white gloves. The participants would address one another with the formal vous, Monsieur, Madame appellations for the first few hours. At the stroke of midnight, chimes would sound the opening bars of Eine Kleine Nachtmusic, signaling that Hermes ties and coiffed chignons might be loosened. The partouze – or orgy – would go on till dawn, with waiters serving champagne and hovering discretely, if attentively, with clusters of grapes, unctuous creams and hot towels.
Before parting, a man and a woman who worked together in some official capacity would shake hands and mutually reassure: On s’annule. The phrase is impersonal and reflexive – one person reciprocally annuls the other. It means I was no more here than you were, or in American parlance – what happens in the chateau stays in the chateau.
While no one I know mentioned DSK by name as a participant, these were the social spheres he inhabited and whose libertine tastes, by his own admission, match his own. Privilege, absolute discretion, exceptionalism were the reigning values, with those at the top, like DSK, certain that their immunity, along with the tradition of noblesse oblige from which it derived, would surely go on forever.
Much has happened since 2011, when DSK was hauled off a plane following a Manhattan chambermaid’s accusations of sexual assault. A few months later, NYU’s Maison Francaise convened a two-day seminar inviting sociologists, philosophers, psychoanalysts and cultural critics to deconstruct the ramifications of the DSK scandal for French society. The shock waves were foundational. Among the, long-stifled questions: How did progressive Socialists so seamlessly appropriate France’s long tradition of aristocratic privilege? Was it acceptable in a land of liberté to criminalize a man for his sexual excesses? How to explain the long-time silence among France’s predominantly male journalists? And finally, what were the implications and consequences for educated and ambitious French women, many seeing themselves for the first time as pawns in an old boys’ game.
At DSK’s trial, the pivotal issue is whether the former head of the IMF knew that the participating women were paid prostitutes. His insistence that he could not tell the difference between women for hire and those “with libertine tastes” derives from an accepted protocol. For decades, French social life was based on the implicit understanding that powerful men held the keys to the inner sanctum. Women who were ambitious, attractive and above all, good sports knew enough to play the male dominant, female subservient game according to the age-old rules.
But a woman persuaded to participate in an orgy for vague promises of political advancement or a weekend in the sun does not necessarily – though she might – have “libertine tastes.” She might be responding to survival concerns or fear of exclusion or peer pressure. I’m not convinced that in her compromised agency she is meaningfully different from a woman who |
using the “Business” 8-series chipset called the B85. For those of you that don’t know the B85 chipset is similar to the Z87 in terms of performance but doesn’t allow overclocking. As a result the price should be lower making it almost perfect for the gamer on a budget.
For the longest time Gaming and Overclocking were considered the same thing when it came to motherboard design. This basically grouped the two activities together making the overclocking side somewhat limited and the gaming side more expensive. This wasn’t a bad thing and gave gamers an excuse to experiment with performance tuning. The problem is most modern systems are plenty powerful and gaming performance is no longer determined by the motherboard but rather by the accessories you choose to install.
We don’t normally discuss cost in our reviews for a few simple reasons. First is price, prices change on a daily basis and while we may quote an accurate value at launch that may not be the case later that week. Prices also vary by store which is actually one of the fun challenges when it comes to buying hardware. Another reason is need. A true hardware enthusiast knows what they are looking for and in most cases is willing to pay it. "Bang for your buck" doesn’t apply in this situation. We do realize that it does become a deciding factor when you have X dollars to spend.
The MSI Gaming series takes this into account and configures their motherboards for bolt on performance. This may come in the form of a factory overclock or an aftermarket Ethernet adaptor with the intent that the user will build what they want and the out of box performance. Despite supporting K-series processors most MSI Gaming motherboards are not overclocking friendly, they do have overclocking specifc motherboards afterall.
Knowing this you will have to take the approach of bolt on performance. For instance, need more power for video encoding? Buy a faster processor, need more frames in games? Buy a faster video card or take advantage of AMD Crossfire. Most PC builders have forgotten that the best, and more consistent, performance boosts are from quality hardware and not from overclocking.Not every NBA transaction has the seismic consequences of LeBron James' return to Cleveland, but smaller moves can still have a big impact.
An example of a difference-making move that didn't create any kind of stir when it happened was San Antonio's signing of Marco Belinelli last summer. Belinelli provided the already-deep Spurs with a reasonable facsimile to Manu Ginobili, and ended up second on the Spurs in minutes played during the regular season. Further, it was the efficiency of players such as Belinelli, Patty Mills and Boris Diaw that allowed the Spurs to keep their foundation players under 30 minutes per game, preserving the veterans' best performance for San Antonio's title run.
Likewise, Washington's midseason acquisition of Andre Miller last season helped to solidify the Wizards' rotation. Miller played more than 20 minutes in a game just twice, but the Wizards went 18-10 with Miller, and knocked out Chicago in the first round of the playoffs.
So which relatively unheralded moves from the 2014 offseason will prove significant this season? Here's a look at five under-the-radar additions from this summer that could have important consequences down the line.Let the news tell it, Chicago is just a place where murders happen and where the Bulls, Bears and Cubs play. But the Windy City is much more than that. As one of the United States' most populated metropolitan areas, the Chi is teeming with a rich and diverse culture. Anthony Bourdain, host of the CNN travel and food show Parts Unknown, recently visited the Chi to get an inside glimpse of the city from some of its residents, including Lupe Fiasco.
Chicago is often seen in a bad light from non residents, but Fiasco assures that his hometown has a lot more to offer. "It's a beautiful place. It's a genuinely beautiful place. You have to redefine what beauty is to you," says Lupe in a clip of the upcoming episode. "When you go to different neighborhoods and it's really bad. And even in that there's still a beauty in the people."
He continues, "Then just from a cultural front we got everything here. If you want capoeira, we got capoeira. If you want house music we got that too. If you want straight finance and you want to just be a stock market baron we got that too. If you want some of the best food you'll ever find we got that too. So we're a crossroads, and we've picked up a lot of little DNA and things from different places on all fronts."
The episode will air Sunday (May 1) on CNN at 9PM EST.It’s Friday.
The latest new thing that I designed is a new Achievemen… hey, what the hell? osu!weekly beat me to it?
…and it has already been implemented? Wow, that was fast._.
Other than that, been busy making design fixes here and there, as usual. Mostly on the new experimental beatmap modding page, which is currently is in a mess by my standard. We received a lot of useful feedbacks and working hard on making it better now.
Also, we received more new artworks to spice up the new forum. Like this, this and this. Go hunt them down. Gallery showcasing the full art will be up soon. The art above is done by by Rachel.
We’re still looking for more awesome talented artists for more illustrations. Find me on twitter if you would like to get paid for your awesome arts ^_^/
Happy Earth Day and have a good weekend.I was indifferent until I adopted a child and now I march.
Anti-abortion protesters attend the March for Life on Jan. 25, 2013, in Washington, D.C. (Photo11: Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images) Story Highlights I used to feel sorry for those who put up signs saying things like: "Abortion stops a beating heart."
And then one day I was pushed off my horse and I became one of them.
One person's inconvenient, unwanted child could easily become another's priceless treasure.
Next week, the yearly March for Life will take place at our nation's capital. Hundreds of thousands of tremendously dedicated people will march, probably in horribly frigid weather, and some from very far away. The media will politely avert their gaze, as will most of the cosmopolitan denizens of the city. They will feel vaguely sorry for the yokels and wingnuts who trudge through the snow with their silly homemade signs, their hearts full of the vain hope that they can somehow turn back time by praying hard enough. There will also be those who are angry at the sight of the marchers, and see in them a desire for the return of back alley butchers and the shaming of girls who got in a spot of trouble.
I used to be one of those who felt sorry for the idiots who spent their money putting up signs along the Florida Turnpike saying things like: "Abortion stops a beating heart," accompanied by an unpleasant depiction of an embryo. And then one day I was pushed off my horse and I became one of them. I think it happens like that for many people: years of puzzled distaste and then bingo! You're out there too with your silly sign on the side of the road, cringing at rude finger gestures. There is a moment when passion becomes ignited, and you find yourself able to withstand indifference, hopelessness and hostility, even welcoming them.
My passion came to me when I fell in love with my youngest daughter. My husband and I both have adopted siblings, and after having four biological children, we decided to adopt our fifth. We had so much to give, and we knew there were so many children in the world who lacked the most important thing of all: a mother and father to love them. Purely because of convenience and ease, we decided to adopt from China. A few months later I traveled there and met our daughter, Lourdes. She was abandoned on a dirty sidewalk at around three days old, and taken to an orphanage full of other little girls. I met her when she was 10 months old.
I knew when I went there what my new daughter's likely history was: in a country where only one child is allowed per family, she was probably an unexpected second pregnancy, or perhaps a first, disappointing female child. In a culture where only a son will make himself responsible for the welfare of his aging parents, having just a daughter is a tragedy. The result of the conjunction of the law and the culture is a deeply unwanted, unvalued baby. And a dangerous baby, sometimes. Perhaps her mother and father were heroes, who had braved the population police to give birth to her, at home, avoiding a forced abortion and a back-breaking fine. All these things I knew, going there, but they were only abstractions to me, things I had read in a brochure or an article.
Then I fell in love. The downy softness of her hair against my cheek became thrilling to me, and the little white tooth that just broke through the gum was a priceless pearl in my eyes. Her giggles stopped my heart with joy, and her toddling steps charmed me. When she called me Mami for the first time I wept with happiness. This little bit of humanity, so deeply unwanted, discarded and worthless, I learned was infinitely beautiful, infinitely valuable. The process of learning this, the process of falling in love with my daughter, was the prettiest thing that has ever happened to me. Somehow, miraculously, she had come through unimaginable dangers and been given to me to cherish. Has anyone, ever, received such a priceless gift?
It soon occurred to me with tremendous force that every child is like that: infinitely valuable and beautiful, no matter how unwanted and inconvenient. From that heart-stopping realization to making those signs and trudging in the snow in Washington it was just a short step. I looked around our country and realized that our culture had erected a temple to self-realization and sexual liberation, and therefore abortion has to be available, because unwanted children will continue to be conceived, no matter how many "free" contraceptives are provided. Nothing restricts personal liberty like a pregnancy and parenthood. As a doctor I can tell you that no scientist questions the fact that a zygote, embryo, fetus and infant are all human beings in different stages of development. Those who believe in unrestricted abortion license do not acknowledge the conflicting right of the little human being, who might be unwanted, but is just as valuable and beautiful as a wanted child.
The theme of this year's March for Life will be adoption. I think that is tremendously fitting. It is like mercy, in Shakespeare's description: "It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." There are millions of people here in the U.S. that have empty arms and overflowing hearts who wish to adopt. This may not be a compelling reason for a woman to bring an unwanted child to term. But the fact that one person's inconvenient, unwanted child could easily become another's priceless treasure might be a timely reminder of the infinite value of every human. That realization was enough to change me forever.
Grazie Pozo Christie, MD, is a Cuban-American member of The Catholic Association Advisory Board.
In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns like this, go to the opinion front page or follow us on twitter @USATopinion or Facebook.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1jcOGMcThe BlockChain is getting it's root everywhere and is ready to disrupt every business existing. This time it's the E-Commerce business. And Particl is here to do so.
Source
Particl (Part)
Particl is a decentralised (POS) P2P Market place. It is a privacy concerned token and uses ring signature. In the market place, the transactions are confidential (CT) and no one can view the transaction (Unless they dig into the ledger as everything is recorded into the block ledger). The Unlinkable and untraceable feature keeps the information of the buyer and seller invisible and also the amount sent is invisible. And if the transaction is not performed the buyers and seller will loose out on the transaction. Thus this makes them practice safe business.
The RingCT (Ring confidential transaction)
This feature has been added over the BTC codebase.
The first one is ease of integration into third-party services and products. The Bitcoin codebase is the one everyone knows and is used to working with. It is much easier for third-party services to integrate coins that operate on the Bitcoin codebase than any other codebase, as proven by the abandonment of the Monero integration into the multi-currency Jaxx wallet and also the recent pessimistic letter from Coinomi on the subject of Cryptonote codebase integration.
The other reason is security. Bitcoin has been running securely for several years now, making it battle-tested as it’s been a primary target for code exploiters and hackers and has stood up to these attacks as unbreakable. Building off such a secure foundation makes perfect sense and once Ring CT is in place, Particl will be the first crypto-currency to do this on the latest BTC codebase.
Supply of the Token:
The token has a total supply of (8,634,140 PART). Interestingly out of that, (996,000 PART) are locked for the second round. And (513,502 PART) are under the control of Swiss Particl Foundation. And the Current Circulating supply is (7,693,317 PART). Current price per token is: $10.07.
Buying And Selling:
Unlike any other online market, you can buy or sell anything you wish to. But the network preserves the spammers and will keep them away. As they will have to re-list their item every 48 hours and this can be automatically done. This all is done by a small amount of fees. The fees is lesser than the real markets.
So if your product does not have a demand, there's no reason for you to list it as you'll only end up paying the fees and not selling the item. This inturn is costly in the long run.
You can even buy the tokens using your credt card and thus elemaniting the fact of buy the bitcoin and then converting it into (PART)
Encripted Chat with the Parties:
You can also chat with the parties without any third party involved in it. The parties info is again kept private unless you tell them your self.
The Voting System:
Another feature in this decentralised market place is it's voting system in place. This system let's the people who hold the token vote for what is good and what is bad. Also they can decide which product should stay into the market and which product needs to be removed. This also keeps the spammers away form the market.
POS
The benefit of POS is know to everyone who are familar with the crypto token. (Proof of stake, like a share of the company. Only if you hold it, you will get the dividend). And we all know how this work..
Incase you do not know:
Holders can simply keep their wallets open and get rewarded for supporting the network. An added benefit of that mechanism is that it negates the value dillution effect of inflation by rewarding an equal or greater percentage of coins to stakers than is created on the network per year.
Interest paid is as follows:
1st Year will be @5%
2nd Year: Will be @4%
3rd Year: Will be @3%
4th Year and after: Will be @2%
Tokens are available on Bittrex.
My Views:
A concept like Decenterilised Marketplace that Particl is following is one of a kind and is unique. With a vey less supply that the token has, you can expect the prices of the token to sore up in value soon and this can be the future of the E-Commerce. We all will be into it. And buying their token while it's cheap and staking it for a long time is a sensible investment decision you will make. I will Surely pick up some of their token while they are cheap. :)
Click Here to visit them.
Note: After the approval of the team of Particl, I have used some of their resources available. I have the temperory permission to use their resources freely. This is not a paid promotion, but to create an awarness of the product. Ignorance is not a bliss in the crypto market.
A temperory permission has been granted by the Particl team on Slack to use their content and post.UPDATE: Click here for further comments from Dave Abbruzzese. Also, we very clear in this story when posting Abbruzzese’s status, had the words he put (From my friend Kari) to start off his post, showing that the first comments were him re-posting his friend’s thoughts, followed by his own brief statement, so any media outlets reposting this who are too lazy to realize that should re-read the article.
Former Pearl Jam drummer Dave Abbruzzese posted the following on Facebook in response to Pearl Jam being confirmed for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2017, with himself not being part of the inducted lineup.
(From my friend Kari)
“So… Rock & Roll Hall of Fucktardia. Ergh.
It makes absolutely zero sense to me…
I’m just gonna shove this statement up someone’s arse:
“As the original ballot is created, the members of each eligible band are determined by largely who was present and active during the most influential recording years.”
I’m not sure how 275+ live shows and 38% of record sales doesn’t fit their criteria… “
I may write more about this as time travels on… As for now, I look forward to sharing my first solo album with you all. Thank you for sharing your opinions & for your love & support.
Abbruzzese also shared a post from an unhappy supporter, and responded to another calling his exclusion ‘bullshit.’ Alternative Nation has reached out to Abbruzzese about doing an interview but we have yet to receive a response.President Obama threw out his shoulder on Sunday at the 19th Street Baptist Church while reaching across the aisle to shake hands with Senate Republican Olympia Snowe, who was also in attendance. Just one day after Congress passed the $787 billion stimulus package, the ill-fated gesture was intended to be an act of post-partisan solidarity.
"The president was seated in an aisle pew on the left-hand side of the church," one eyewitness explained. "Senator Snowe was on the right flipping through her hymnal. He stuck his arm out into the aisle to shake hands with the Senator. And then I saw him grab his shoulder. He looked like he was in a great deal of pain."
Dr. Glenn Stevens, an orthopedic surgeon who treated the president at George Washington University Hospital this afternoon confirmed that the president's shoulder was dislocated in the accident, speculating that it had suffered extreme duress from repeated attempts at bipartisanship.
"His condition is similar to tennis elbow or carpal tunnel, only the repetitive motion of reaching across the aisle appears to have weakened the ligaments in his shoulder," said Stevens.
Also injured in the accident was House Minority Leader John Boehner. The Congressman stumbled over the wooden base of a pew, as he attempted to make his way to his seat. According to sources, Boehner was trying to avoid the president's outstretched limbs as he fell to the ground, crushing his mascara wand in the fall.
"With all due respect to the president, he shouldn't have his arms and feet blocking the aisle," said Boehner, who sustained minor injuries. "Everyone knows he's lanky."
"If you ask me," Boehner continued, "this liberal concept of reaching across the aisle is dangerous. We need to keep those aisles clear. What if there was a fire and people needed a clear passage to the exits? We need to refocus our energies on tax cuts, not liberal spending and aisle-reaching."
One of only three Republicans who voted "yes"on the much-criticized stimulus package, Sen. Snowe was more sympathetic to Obama's thwarted gesture.
"Clearly, I applaud the president's attempts to reach across the aisle. But I do think others in my party are frightened by the idea of being touched by Reid or Pelosi. Personally, I keep a bottle of Purel in my bag. You know, in case they should decide to reach across and put their hands on me."
A History Of Aisle Mishaps
This wasn't Obama's first aisle-related mishap. Last week, his administration faced a major setback when New Hampshire Republican, Sen. Judd Gregg, announced that he would be withdrawing his nomination as Commerce secretary. Citing "irresolvable conflicts," Gregg insisted that Obama needs to reach out further if post-partisanship is to be achieved.
" There are simply no aisles in the Oval Office" explained Gregg on Meet the Press. "And, unfortunately, that's where the president and I conducted most of our business. He did reach across his desk once or twice to shake my hand, but we were essentially standing right next to each other," said Gregg.
Like a growing number of GOP lawmakers, Gregg has criticized the president's efforts at post-partisanship as inflated rhetoric.
"When he reached over to me across the desk, his arm was bent at the elbow," said Gregg with obvious irritation. "If Obama really respected my point of view, his arm would have been fully extended, preferably across some type of passageway separating opposing rows of chairs."
Gregg refused to vote on the stimulus package, one of many signs that Congress is a long way from achieving the post-partisanship Obama hopes to bring to fruition.
"I screwed up" said Obama in response to Gregg's statements. "Let's be clear. We're in the process of setting up folding chairs in the Oval Office. I fully intend to reach across the aisle we create as soon as I recover from this morning's injury. I should be out of this sling in a couple of weeks."
But according to many critics of the administration, putting an aisle in the Oval Office may not even be possible.
"Look, the Oval Office just isn't big enough for an aisle," said Joe Scarborough on MSNBC. "At best you can throw in a few rows of chairs in there. It isn't big enough, it just isn't big enough!"
Experts agree that Scarborough may have a point. As traditionally defined an aisle is a "long space" often separating a group of chairs. According to most definitions "an open space with three rows of chairs to the right and three to the left generally would not be considered an 'aisle.'"
"This hot air about aisles in the White House," said Scarborough, "is just further proof that Obama is not willing to compromise. It's simply more eloquent rhetoric."
Republican Senator Tom Coburn, known for his conservative evangelical views, voiced other concerns. "All this talk about reach arounds in the aisles of Congress just sounds lewd. I don't know how they do things in Chicago, but it just doesn't sound right to me."
When informed that the metaphor being used by the president was "reach across" not "reach around," Coburn's opinion remained consistent.
"Call me old fashioned,"said Coburn,"but my mother always told me that reaching across people is rude. You should wait your turn. That's the thing... liberals are always reaching and grabbing. My advice to Americans in these liberal, touchy-feely, reachy-grabby times is this: hold onto your wallet."
An Aisle In Every Home
As Obama recovers from his dislocated shoulder, he's pledged to continue moving forward, not allowing the setback to weaken his resolve.
"We must bridge the partisan gap that persists in Washington" said Obama.
As part of an ambitious public works initiative, the administration has announced plans to oversee the construction of millions of new aisles all across America.
"The legitimate object of government," said Obama paraphrasing Lincoln, "is to do for the people what they cannot do by themselves."
"Why should supermarkets, churches, movie theaters, and legislative buildings be the only places you find aisles in this country? As president I will see to it that every home in America has an aisle to reach across. The construction of these aisles will stimulate the economy by creating new jobs. But more importantly, a New Post-Partisan Great Society will emerge as parents and children, friends and neighbors, and yes Democrats and Republicans learn to reach across the aisles in the comfort of their own homes."
When asked about the president's ambitious aisle-building initiative, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh had misgivings. "I hope he fails," said Limbaugh.The State of Our Union: America Needs a Great Spiritual Awakening
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This is the time of year when millions of Americans tune in to hear our President give his State of the Union address. He will give his assessment of our national security, our priorities, and our vision for the future.
This is a tricky word — "our."
For these days it seems as if America can hardly find "our vision" for anything, much less the future. Our nation is deeply polarized around our political parties, and totally unrelenting in our commitment to fighting against one another. Despite growing national security threats, violence erupting, escalating racial tensions, the devaluing of human life, and economic insecurity, we find ourselves unable to agree on almost anything.
What's especially alarming to me, serving as the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, is that we fail to realize how the spiritual health of our nation affects the state of our union. As our spiritual lives go, so goes the nation.
It wasn't meant to be this way in America, for one of the reasons our founders so cemented Judeo-Christian principles in our nation is because they were skeptical of mans' ability to govern themselves. So, America would be a nation first subject to God — and subject to His higher law — so that our respect for our creator would provide a baseline for our "more perfect union."
We would at least be united around important things when we couldn't find unity among many things. Where are the leaders in America today that can bring people together, rather than separate us?
For our founders knew that the moment we no longer saw ourselves subject to God — and to His higher law — that we would begin to fight over everything in an attempt to gather God's authority for ourselves.
When our political leaders and the people of America lack fear of God we become subject to that awful temptation we find in Judges 17:6, "to do what is right in their own eyes."
For since the beginning of time, we have been tempted to "be like God" and when a nation's leaders and her people lose their fear of God and replace it with their own authority then we begin to live in a kind of chaotic unity — not with one another — but in an unholy union with that very sin that brought sin to earth in the Garden of Eden. Aside from all of the others, we fail to follow the very first commandment given to us through Moses, "thou shalt have no other gods before me."
In America, we have replaced God with government, and granted politicians the ability to circumvent God's higher law at will. It's our fault as citizens because we are a country that elects our leaders.
While we profess to remain "one nation under God" — and while we have inscribed such belief on our currency and in marble all over our capital — we seem to be more interested in "God bless America" than in actually being "one nation under God."
The first phrase infers what we want from God, and the second phrase infers what God requires. We want His blessing, but His blessing comes with our being subject to His authority.
Rarely is God ever mentioned in the State of the Union address except with that customary salutation, "God bless America." It's all about what we can get from God, and less about what we need from Him.
So, what is the actual spiritual State of Our Union?
It is very simple.
We need to repent, come back to God and put our trust in God alone. America needs a Great Spiritual Awakening.
Now is the time to elect leaders who fear God and we need to learn to fear God again ourselves.
We need not say phrases like "God Bless America" because they are our tradition. We need to speak them with a holy reverence for God's authority, for without God there never would have been an America at all, and without God at its center America will not exist as it has.
I'm trusting that 2016 is a year where we apply a simple verse from 2 Chronicles 7:14, "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."Global warming has been occurring at a steady rate for many decades now -- possibly for over a century, depending on how you interpret the temperature records -- with the past few years setting unprecedented temperature records around the globe. If you go back to 1948-49, the earliest time we've had global temperature maps for the entire world, you'll find that over the vast majority of the Earth, there are more locations seeing the warmest temperatures right now than at any other time. But in terms of "cause for alarm," what does this actually mean?
The first thing we have to realize is that there are two things at play here: long-term trends, which is the gradual warming we're seeing over generational timescales, and short-term variations, which are due to things like the seasons, volcanic eruptions, and weather events like El Niño and La Niña. The record-breaking temperatures we're seeing across the globe are due to a combination of all the short-term and long-term variations superimposed atop one another, and so although last month -- February of 2016 -- was the hottest month ever recorded, that isn't necessarily a reason to freak out.
You see, we're currently experiencing an El Niño event. If you take a look back through the temperature record, many of the largest upward "spikes" you see are due to El Niño years, such as the famous one in 1998. In fact, if you take a look at global average temperatures throughout Februaries, we haven't had one warmer than the one in 1998 until now.
This peak in temperatures that we're seeing now, the one that spans from 2015-2016, isn't due to global warming. That is to say, most of the anomalously high temperatures we're seeing are due to these short-term variations. But what should be far more concerning to anyone who wants to know the truth about climate change is this: the long-term rise in temperatures is continuing at a steady rate. The fact that temperatures appear to be rising at a rate of between 0.40-0.80 °C (0.72-1.44 °F) per century, unabated, is the real cause for concern. That's what global warming really is, the slow, long-term rise in temperatures. That's also the component that humans -- through emissions reduction, energy efficiency, renewable power, policy changes and (possibly) geoengineering -- can do something about.
But there's an insidious argument that's going to come up over the coming years (and possibly the next decade or two), once the current spike in temperature subsides: the idea that global warming will have stopped. Global warming doesn't just stop. It won't stop unless there's a causative reason for it to stop, and -- at present -- there isn't one. But because the long-term rise (i.e., the "global warming" component) is gradual, and the short-term variations (i.e., the fluctuations above an below the trend-line) are large, it's going to appear, over 13-to-17 year timescales, that global warming has ceased.
This is because the long-term rise can be easily masked by short-term variations, and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study -- the one conducted by global warming skeptics that reached the same conclusions as the rest of the climate science community -- reached the following conclusion:
Some people draw a line segment covering the period 1998 to 2010 and argue that we confirm no temperature change in that period. However, if you did that same exercise back in 1995, and drew a horizontal line through the data for 1980 to 1995, you might have falsely concluded that global warming had stopped back then. This exercise simply shows that the decadal fluctuations are too large to allow us to make decisive conclusions about long term trends based on close examination of periods as short as 13 to 15 years.
There are prominent climatologists who have made these arguments before (who will likely make these arguments again), and they will be quoted in a great many news outlets and by numerous science writers. If you see an article that cites one of them claiming global warming has stopped and it isn't yet 2033, the 17 years from now that we're required to wait to see if the rise continues, please refer them back to this article.
Temperature spikes, like the one we're experiencing now, are temporary, and in all honestly are part of the normal variations we experience over the short term. But the fact that the global average temperature is rising -- and that it continues to rise -- is a real long-term problem facing the entire world. Don't let dishonest arguments that gloss over the actual issue dissuade you from the scientific facts. We can fool ourselves into believing that there isn't a problem until it's too late to do anything about it, or we can own up to what the science tells us, and face this problem with the full force of human ingenuity. The choice is ours.See the image on its own
Hangbags away boys! Who’s suing whom in the telecoms trade?
Based on these diagrams from Guardian Tech and the NY Times.
I thought those charts generated more questions than they answered. So, as ever, I tried to answer the obvious questions and convey various contexts simultaneously.
I wondered, too, if I could design the connections so the lines didn’t cross. Almost managed it!
And see if there was a relationship between dropping revenues and litigiousness. What do you think? Is there?
Data: http://bit.ly/sosueme
UPDATE 9th Oct – New data and corrections. RIM is not suing Sharp. Motorola is suing Apple over 18 patent infringements. Sony Ericsson’s revenue resized (we mistakenly used Sony’s revenue). Thanks all for corrects and new info.
UPDATE 12th Oct – Nokia and Qualcomm’s suits were all settled in 2008 (we had one still graphicked as unsettled). Thanks to um, Nokia for that correction.Coming Soon
Bulbul
A man returns home after years to find his brother’s child bride now grown up and abandoned, and his ancestral village plagued by mysterious deaths.
Music Teacher
Burned by his past, an emotionally troubled, small-town music teacher risks everything he has to reconnect with a now-famous former student.
Top Boy
After being forced to flee his East London housing estate, a former kingpin returns home to take back his throne.
Losers
In a "winning is everything" society, how do we handle failure? This series profiles athletes who have turned the agony of defeat into human triumph.
Edoardo Ferrario: Temi Caldi
Italian comedian Edoardo Ferrario riffs on life at 30 and unpacks the peculiarities of global travel, social media and people who like craft beer.
Undercover
A major ecstasy producer living in luxury on the Dutch-Belgian border faces big changes when two undercover agents begin moving in on his operation.
Pacific Rim
As monsters emerge from the sea to attack Earth, humanity fights back using giant robot warriors in this anime adaptation of the blockbuster film.
Messiah
When a man in the Middle East appears to be performing miracles, a rift breaks out over whether he's the Messiah or a fraud in this suspenseful drama.MC the Max is on to new pastures!
The group has finished their contract wth their agency Music&New and have formed their very own company called 325 E&C.
325 E&C was formed by group vocal Lee Soo and the numbers 325 stand for the group’s debut date March 25. With this new start, the group is getting ready to show even more active promotions for their music.
With the January 2016 release of their eighth album “No Matter Where,” MC the Max has consistently reigned the top of the charts with their music and so there is even more anticipation for their new agency.
Meanwhile, member J.Yoon has made a name for himself as a composer and producer for groups such as INFINITE and Lovelyz and will continue to be active under both hats.
Source (1)Galveston commits $41 million to improving island's biggest beaches
Galveston's two largest beaches are set to receive a total of $41 million in improvements, including boardwalks, bathrooms and a pavilion. The Galveston Park Board on Wednesday approved a plan it has been working on for a year to improve Stewart Beach and East Beach parks. less Galveston's two largest beaches are set to receive a total of $41 million in improvements, including boardwalks, bathrooms and a pavilion. The Galveston Park Board on Wednesday approved a plan it has been... more Photo: City Of Galveston Photo: City Of Galveston Image 1 of / 28 Caption Close Galveston commits $41 million to improving island's biggest beaches 1 / 28 Back to Gallery
GALVESTON – Galveston's two largest beaches are set to receive a total of $41 million in improvements, including boardwalks, bathrooms and a pavilion.
The Galveston Park Board on Wednesday approved a plan it has been working on for a year to improve Stewart Beach and East Beach parks.
Improvements will include a boardwalk and a pavilion on Stewart Beach, retail stores and restaurants at both parks as well as public art and expanded camping and RV areas.
"This master plan will serve as a road map for improvements that will enhance Galveston's position as the No. 1 coastal destination in the state and ultimately broaden the island's appeal to tourists all over the country," Park Board Chairman Melvin Williams said.
RELATED: Things to do in Galveston besides go to the beach
The plan, developed by Houston-based consulting firm Knudson Services, includes signage, mobile restrooms, bike racks and food trucks.
Under the plan, the pothole-filled, crumbling road to East Beach is expected to be repaired before the coming summer beach season.Argentina
A rich seam of attacking players but not so hot at the back. Sound familiar? The most successful nation in Fifa’s World Youth Championship having won the competition a record six times, Argentina usually lead the way in development and the future looks pretty rosy with Mauro Icardi and Paulo Dybala waiting to step into the shoes of Lionel |
on you, the players. Did you or some of the other veterans on PC get together this past spring and recognize the opportunity to win one for Coach Leaman as things were shaping up for you to make a run to the championship? Did you talk about how special it would be to see a team he had a big hand in win the NCAA one year and then the club he currently coaches win it the next?
JG: I think after we lost to Union my sophomore year we felt for Coach Leaman a lot because we knew that although he would never make it about himself or anything like that, I think we knew as a group it was a very tough loss for him and it was a game he really, really, really wanted to win. At the same time I know the kind of person he is and he was so proud of Union College when they won the NCAA- he was so proud of all the players he had coached and was very happy for Coach (Rick) Bennett and the school overall. I think that says a lot about him as a person.
When I think back to the beginning of last year, there were a lot of high expectations on us as a team externally- there were a lot of people picking us to win the Hockey East and we kind of stumbled out of the gate. But I think that was more happening because we didn’t believe we were as good as others thought we were- it took us a little while to get that in our mindset. One of the things Coach Leaman did to help us get there was to make sure we were focusing on each other and focusing on the things that we could control and applying that every day at the rink. And he made sure we were coming in with the goal to just get better each day. So it was kind of that one step at a time approach that he instilled in us from day one. So when you talk about trying to win it all because of what happened with Union College, I don’t think he would ever want us to have that mindset or anything like that. It might have crossed the minds of some guys, but I know that for me I wanted to win it for Coach Leaman because of everything he had done for me and the team and I wanted to win it for the group of guys I had the pleasure of sitting in the locker room and looking at every day and battling with in games every night, so those were the motivating factors for us, I think.
KL: Having been a part of multiple championships- Team USA in 2013 and that world junior gold medal in your trophy case and now this- what in your mind do those championship teams have in common? What does it take to win at any level in terms of your hockey experiences- what are the uniting ties that bind on those winning teams you’ve been on?
JG: The biggest thing I’ve noticed is the belief we have in each other and having the willingness to do what it takes to win. If you look at what we did in the (NCAA) tournament, we had guys diving headfirst in front of pucks…that shows a lot about the culture that was instilled here, but also about the camaraderie of the team and the willingness to play for each other and have each other’s backs; to be willing to sacrifice everything for the betterment of the team.
The Team USA experience was a weird cohesion we had in terms of it being such a short tournament, but I think that’s where the (National Team Development Program) NTDP comes in where you have those guys that build the relationships over the course of two-plus years and then come together as a team like that so they’ve already hit the ground running. And then in terms of guys like myself and Johnny Gaudreau and Jimmy Vesey– all those guys that…we come in kind of cold compared to some of the relationships they’ve already built but they’re very accepting of us and welcoming and they just throw us into the mix.
I have to say that the biggest thing for our Providence College team is that you don’t think about the past and things like that because there were a lot of things that we could have gotten discouraged about where we lost a tough series to UNH and we were on the bubble of the tournament. I think our biggest mindset was if he get the chance, we’re going to make the most of it.
KL: You went out on top, signed with Calgary, they’ve probably made it clear that they have big plans for you- how has the summer been for you- the first in which you’re preparing for the new season knowing that you’ll attend your first main NHL camp?
JG: I want to be open to knowing that adversity is going to come, and go with the flow and take everything in stride by learning as much as possible. I was in the mindset when I went out to Calgary at the end of the season and my mindset in the summer was… the biggest thing people talk about at this level is that you need to take a break, you need to a refresher, refreshment period…and thankfully, my family provides a good outlet for that. That’s what being home this summer- two months was pretty good for that. It’s fun going to the gym every day and working out next to two of your best friends and your little brother (Cameron Gillies), so that kind of stuff helps more than I think I realized at the time when I first started, but looking back on it, it’s been a great summer in that aspect.
As far as training, you try to get to get better every day. You do the exercises once a week, and then the next week, you do the same but you try to get your weight up. The next week when you come across that same cluster or something like that and you just go from there. I was making sure that the fun I was having this summer was balanced out with hard work to get ready mentally and physically for the long haul of the season.
KL: You went out to Calgary, you saw the city and was around members of the team and management/coaching staff- what are some of the takeaways you got from that brief period in Western Canada last spring, and what are most looking forward to?
JG: I think the first thing you notice is the passion of the city and the passion of the fans. Everyone talks about it and you have an idea of it when you go, but I was sitting up top with some of the injured (NHL) guys for one of the home games and the catwalk was literally shaking from the crowd at the Saddledome and how incredible the energy from all the fans was. Every single person is in a red jersey and it was a pretty fascinating sight- so I’m very excited for that passion and how everyone cares so much about the Flames, cares about the players- the success on and off the ice of the individuals as well as the team as a whole.
From what I notice about the team itself- the culture is a lot like- it’s very similar to the culture that Coach Leaman instilled in Providence- the never quit attitude and the expectation that you work as hard as you can and try to get better every single day, one game at a time- everything’s a process. It’s a great place to be and I’m very fortunate to be a part of this organization and the city and so I really can’t wait to get the ball.
KL: Is there anything else you want to add or anyone else you want to recognize for your success as we wrap it up?
JG: Just make sure that my mom knows that I love her and that she’s been as big a part of my success as my dad- we talked about him a lot but my mom doesn’t get the headlines, but as any hockey mom is- she’s been incredible and she’s a saint and I want to make sure that’s out there as well.
***
Thanks again to Jon for taking the time to chat- although this blog tends to be Boston Bruins-centric, I want to have more of an NHL flavor from around the league and I believe that Gillies is one of the league’s young stars in waiting. Flames fans have much to be excited about in the years to come with their team, and I suspect he will be a part of that success.The power of social media is bringing more fabulous footage of Croatia as it one was into the public arena. A new occasional series from TCN starts on April 4, 2017, looking at the considerable heritage and history of the country through the videos of yesteryear.
If you were looking for a spectacular symbol of Croatian pride, heritage and tradition, it would be hard to find one more striking than the Sinj Alka, the only remaining knights tournament in Europe, and an event with attracts both national live television coverage and the personal visit of the Croatian President each August, as the proud horsemen of the inland Dalmatian town of Sinj continue the annual tradition of celebrating the 1715 Siege of Sinj by the Ottoman Turks, with an outstanding show of skill and horsemanship on one of the central streets of the town, which is transformed into the Alka knights terrain specially for the occasion.
It is hard to describe the feelings of pride, joy and tradition during the Alka weekend. Yes, of course there is a party, but it is the way local people accept and respect their roles to continue the Alka tradition that stayed with me during my Alka weekend a few years ago.
Every year, for 300 years. And things have not changed too much over time. A wonderful video of the Sinj Alka tournament in 1969 shows many similarities between the tournament of today, as well as a fabulous snapshot of a small and proud inland Dalmatian town almost 50 years ago.
If you have a candidate video to be included in this feature, contact us on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..NORTH and South Korea have agreed after marathon talks to hold a government-level meeting in Seoul with the aim of rebuilding trust following months of tensions and threats of nuclear war.
Yesterday's preparatory discussions - weighed down, as always, by decades of mutual distrust - were held in the border truce village of Panmunjom where the armistice ending the 1950-53 Korean War was signed.
After nearly 18 hours of negotiations, the two sides early today reached agreement on holding their first high-level talks since 2007, the South's Yonhap news agency reported.
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The main challenge was to agree a framework for the talks to be held in Seoul on Wednesday and Thursday.
South Korea had called for a ministerial meeting but the talks are now described as a government meeting between the two sides.
The Unification Ministry in Seoul said the two sides had reached a partial understanding on outstanding issues during the Panmunjom talks, Yonhap said.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency meanwhile said the meeting would focus on restoring suspended commercial links, including the Kaesong joint industrial complex that the North effectively shut down in April as tensions between the historic rivals peaked.
It said other issues included reunion of families separated since the war and the resumption of tours by South Koreans to the North's Mount Kumgang resort. These were suspended after a North Korean soldier shot dead a South Korean tourist there in July 2008.
“It was agreed to discuss immediate and urgent matters concerning the inter-Korean relations including the issue of normalising the operation of the Kaesong industrial zone, the issue of resuming the tour of Mt. Kumgang, the issue of reunion of separated families and their relatives and other humanitarian issues,” KCNA quoted a press release as saying after the talks ended.
Yesterday's talks came about after an unexpected reversal from North Korea, which suddenly dropped its default tone of high-decibel belligerence and proposed opening a dialogue.
South Korea responded swiftly with its offer of a ministerial meeting in Seoul, the North countered with a request for lower-level talks first and - after some relatively benign to-and-fro about the best venue - yesterday's meeting in Panmunjom was agreed.
In a further signal of intent, North Korea on Friday restored its official hotline with the South, which it had severed in March.
The move towards dialogue has been broadly welcomed - given the threats of nuclear war that were being flung around in April and May - but there is sizeable scepticism about Pyongyang's intentions.
“The North Korean offer has all of the hallmarks of Pyongyang's diplomacy,” said Stephan Haggard, a North Korea expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
“Pyongyang is'sincerely' and'magnanimously' inviting the South to fix, and pay for, problems of the North's own creation,” Mr Haggard said.
It was the North's decision to withdraw its 53,000 workers in early April that closed the Kaesong industrial estate.
Kaesong and Mount Kumgang were both significant sources of scarce foreign currency for North Korea, which is squeezed by UN sanctions imposed over its nuclear weapons program.
There are also suggestions that Pyongyang was playing to a specific audience by proposing talks just before US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping sat down for their crucial summit in California.
China, the North's sole major ally and economic benefactor, has been under US pressure to restrain its neighbour and has pushed Pyongyang to drop its destabilising strategy of confrontation.
On Saturday, Mr Obama and Mr Xi closely consulted on North Korea's recent nuclear brinkmanship, and agreed to work together on the “denuclearisation” of the Korean peninsula, US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said.
Analysts say South Korea will approach talks with Pyongyang with a caution born of long experience.
President Park Geun-Hye, who took office in February with a promise of greater engagement with Pyongyang, has welcomed the initiative.
But she remains adamant that any substantive dialogue can only take place if the North shows some tangible commitment to abandoning its nuclear weapons programme.
North Korea has been equally emphatic in declaring its nuclear deterrent is not up for negotiation.
It was the North's nuclear test in February -- and subsequent UN sanctions -- that triggered the recent crisis, which saw Pyongyang threaten both the South and the United States with pre-emptive nuclear strikes.
AFPThe Apache CommonsRDF team is proud to announce the latest release of Apache CommonsRDF 0.2.0. Apache Commons RDF aims to provide a common library for RDF 1.1 that could be implemented by systems on the Java Virtual Machine (e.g., Apache Jena or Eclipse RDF4J). The main motivation behind this simple library is revise an historical incompatibility issue. This library does not pretend to be a generic API wrapping those libraries, but a set of interfaces for the RDF 1.1 concepts that can be used to expose common RDF 1.1 concepts using common Java interfaces. More details can be found at https://commonsrdf.incubator.apache.org/ Version 0.2.0 represent the evolution of the API towards providing a common RDF library. Further details can be found in the release notes: https://s.apache.org/0.2.0-incubating Binary and source archives are available from: http://commonsrdf.incubator.apache.org/download.html User guide: http://commonsrdf.incubator.apache.org/userguide.html Maven artifacts have also been made available on repository.apache.org and Maven Central. Thanks on behalf of the CommonsRDF PPMC. Disclaimer: Apache Commons RDF is an effort undergoing incubation at The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) sponsored by the Apache Incubator PMC. Incubation is required of all newly accepted projects until a further review indicates that the infrastructure, communications, and decision making process have stabilized in a manner consistent with other successful ASF projects. While incubation status is not necessarily a reflection of the completeness or stability of the code, it does indicate that the project has yet to be fully endorsed by the ASF. -- Sergio Fernández Partner Technology Manager Redlink GmbH m: +43 6602747925 e: sergio.fernandez@redlink.co w: http://redlink.coThere contentious negotiations for a new NFL collective bargaining agreement may have boiled over into name-calling from Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson toward two of the league's most prominent players at a negotiating sessions this month.
But New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees -- who, along with Indianapolis Colts QB Peyton Manning, was allegedly on the receiving end of Richardson's remarks -- declined to call out the 74-year-old former player-turned-owner.
"I wouldn't say that things were disrespectful but what I would say is that there's are a lot of issues to get through," Brees said in an appearance on Sirius XM's Mad Dog Radio, "and we're obviously not going to agree on everything and so it's a process and there are a lot of things to consider here. "
Arizona Cardinals kicker Jay Feely told ESPN Radio recently that Richardson -- considered a hawk among owners for having a hard-line in the CBA talks -- criticized Manning, Brees "and their intelligence" at a negotiating session.
Yahoo Sports then reported that Richardson blasted players at the meeting so much so that commissioner Roger Goodell and fellow owners cringed. Some later apologized for Richardson, Yahoo reported.
NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told the Rock Herald Hill the league is not considering removing Richardson from his place on the negotiating committee.
The sides appear far apart as they bicker over how to split the NFL's multi-billion dollar revenue pie.
The league hasn't ruled out a lockout. And Brees, who reiterated to Mad Dog Radio that the players want the owners to prove to them why they want them to take less money, said the union won't back down if a work stoppage is forced upon it.
"We don't want to but we didn't start this fight," he said. "This fight was brought to us."Fleet Devblog #1: Prototyping is Hard
As hinted in my last post I’ve recently started work on a game. I intend to make this the first of a series of devblogs chronicling my work on it. Today, I’m going to give a brief rundown of what the game is (or how I imagine it) and the current state of the prototype I’ve been building.
Fleet
The working title for the game is Fleet; it’s a bit of a mixture between chess and Hearthstone with spaceships and RPG elements. Here’s how it works:
Before a match/out-of-game each player maintains his/her “fleet” which is a collection of ships. Each ship has a pilot and some items. Pilots have some stats, right now Precision, Accuracy, and Evasion, which control Crit Chance, Hit Chance, and Dodge Chance, respectively. A ship’s items are things like weapons or shields or even signal jammers that can be used in game. Pilots’ stats or weapons can be upgraded out of game with some sort of currency that’s earned by winning/participating in games.
Each ship additionally has a class which determines things like how many items it can have, how much health it has, etc. For example, “Jumper” class vessels can move around really quickly, but have low health and only one item slot.
In game, every action (moving, using an item) consumes a portion of the ship’s energy. A fixed amount of energy regenerates at the end of each turn.
Once in-game, the object of the game is to destroy the opponent’s mothership before they destroy yours. The mothership will be at a fixed location opposite your own mothership and can be damaged with weapons like any other ship.
Overall, I want the game to be simple-enough for anyone to jump in after a tutorial and I also want it to be very open to casual play. However, I also think the strategic elements make it a prime candidate for serious/competitive play. I always planned on launching for desktop first, but had hoped I’d be able to open it up to mobile as well (I’ll be developing in Javascript so that’s particularly easy) but I’m starting to think that the amount of information necessary to play will be hard to fit on a mobile screen. That’s a ways off though.
Prototyping
So here’s the problem: I am terrible at prototyping. I’m the type of person that enjoys the design and architecture part of software development probably more than the actual implementation. I’d rather spend 10 days designing the perfect API rather than designing 10 iterations every day. This is almost always a bad thing; iteration is crucial. One article that I found particularly interesting against the idea of premature-abstraction was Casey Muratori’s post on “Compression Oriented Programming. The idea of not abstracting until you need an abstraction, rather than abstracting in anticipation of needing it, makes a lot of sense to me, even if it isn’t exactly what I’ve been taught.
So here’s my progression from being very bad at prototyping to being slightly less bad at prototyping. When I started working on this game, the first thing I started working on was the server networking architecture. And I spent at least an hour just designing it. This was terribly unproductive for a few reasons:
Networking is genuinely very hard to get right
Networking is not as fun as the actual game
Networking won’t tell me whether or not the game is fun
I can’t get easily get feedback on the networking without also having developed the game
A lot of these realizations came after having watched Extra Credit’s excellent video on “MVP” I ended up scrapping a lot of what I had done and started working on a purely client-side implementation. The games would be between a human and an AI player so I wouldn’t have to worry about anything server-side. The next hiccup I encountered was the UI. The nature of the game pretty much requires a fairly hefty UI to represent all the information you need and allow you to take action appropriately. I originally had started out trying to do it all on the canvas, trying to roll my own basic layout library before I caught myself and searched for a better solution. I was working with web-tech anyway, so why not just use HTML for the UI for now? Within about 20 minutes I had a fully functional UI thanks to my existing HTML+CSS experience. That allowed me to finally get to work on the important stuff: gameplay.
Current Status
The gameplay is going well, and I have a few ideas for posts in the next couple of weeks about interesting things I’ve done so far. Currently, the game supports the following:
2 unique weapons
Deploying vehicles from the hanger
Moving vehicles on the board
Using items
Fully functional UI to do all of the above
Turn-taking
An example of current gameplay is shown in the GIF below. The blue hexagons are ally ships, and the red is an enemy ship. The green bars on the left side of hexes represent health and the yellow represent energy.
Against my best wishes because the codebase is a mess, I’ve forced myself to put all the code on GitHub in its current state. Try not to look at the client code because it’s a mess. The game folder is a bit better and more interesting.
Issues & Next Steps
I have these ordered based on how important I think they are, so if you think I’m wrong please let me know!
Very basic AI; just enough to test more interactions
Add “win” conditions so you can play a game to the end
Allow users to customize their fleet (this actually might not be necessary in the prototype)
Add support for status effects/items other than just weapons
Improve AI to make it somewhat formidable
At this point, I’d say it would qualify as a “game”. From there, I’d need to add art, begin adding multiplayer, add much more content & items, etc. One step at a time.
I hope you enjoyed my first devblog; hopefully there will be many more to come. Until then, let me know what you thought on Twitter (@ganashaw).See you next time!Over the weekend, news that a white male poet from Indiana used the pseudonym “Yi-Fen Chou” to successfully enter a poem into the prestigious Best American Poetry anthology rankled the poetry world. The man’s civil-law name? Michael Derrick Hudson. He works at a library in Fort Wayne.
According to a statement from series co-editor Sherman Alexie, the ruse was discovered prior to publication, but the poem was allowed to stay in the anthology. And the submission of the poem under an Asian-sounding pseudonym was certainly a ruse, or at least it was a strategy meant to increase the likelihood that the poem would be published. As Hudson writes in the anthology’s notes:
The poem in question, ‘The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve,’ was rejected under my real name forty (40) times before I sent it out as Yi-Fen Chou (I keep detailed submission records). As Yi-Fen the poem was rejected nine (9) times before Prairie Schooner took it. If indeed this is one of the best American poems of 2015, it took quite a bit of effort to get it into print, but I’m nothing if not persistent.
I realize that this isn’t a very ‘artistic’ explanation of using a pseudonym. Years ago I did briefly consider trying to make Yi-Fen into a ‘persona’ or ‘heteronym’ a la Fernando Pessoa, but nothing ever came of it.
Notice that Hudson is forthright about his opportunism: the assumption of a pseudonym, the adoption of an “Asian” identity is justified by his getting “into print,” and not at all by an appeal to artistic license.
One of the dangers here is that Hudson’s blatantly cynical tactic will be counterposed to the maneuvers of (perhaps) less obviously exploitative white conceptual poets like Kenneth Goldsmith, who recently appropriated the autopsy of Michael Brown in a performance. Whatever their differences, both “events” abstract the material disadvantages of non-white life for the purposes of using identity as a conceptualist readymade.
But at this point, most of the outrage has centered on the knowing inclusion of the poem in the anthology; or, predictably, some are suggesting that a blind submission process would prevent such embarrassments in a satisfactory way. Alexie’s response, in my estimation, does away with both arguments. It’s worth reproducing a large part of it here:
But I had to keep that pseudonymous poem in the anthology because it would have been dishonest to do otherwise.
If I’d pulled the poem then I would have been denying that I gave the poem special attention because of the poet’s Chinese pseudonym.
If I’d pulled the poem then I would have been denying that I was consciously and deliberately seeking to address past racial, cultural, social, and aesthetic injustices in the poetry world.
And, yes, in keeping the poem, I am quite aware that I am also committing an injustice against poets of color, and against Chinese and Asian poets in particular.
But I believe I would have committed a larger injustice by dumping the poem. I think I would have cast doubt on every poem I have chosen for BAP. It would have implied that I chose poems based only on identity.
But that’s not what happened. In the end, I chose each poem in the anthology because I love it. And to deny my love for any of them is to deny my love for all of them.
Alexie, if I’m reading him correctly, is simply stating that selection processes are never impartial or disinterested; a blind submission process, for example, reproduces already prevailing standards of literary “excellence” — it is partial to the norm. He’s also refusing to forfeit his right as an editor to choose the poems he prefers on the basis of their quality. The whole point of an editor is that he makes interested (not disinterested) choices.
Still, I think Hudson’s poetry is terrible. (Here is another of his poems, one strategically drained of sentimentality, where the speaker somehow can’t understand the historical meaning of a Nazi swastika). And I can’t help but wonder if he could have been excluded from the anthology on the grounds that he admits his opportunism in its notes. Either way, I doubt we’ll be reading Michael Derrick Hudson anytime soon. I wonder what pseudonym he’ll choose next.A canary trap is a method for exposing an information leak by giving different versions of a sensitive document to each of several suspects and seeing which version gets leaked. It could be one false statement, to see if sensitive information gets out to other people as well. Special attention is paid to the quality of the prose of the unique language, in the hopes that the suspect will repeat it verbatim in the leak, thereby identifying the version of the document.
The term was coined by Tom Clancy in his novel Patriot Games, although Clancy did not invent the technique. The actual method (usually referred to as a barium meal test in espionage circles) has been used by intelligence agencies for many years. The fictional character Jack Ryan describes the technique he devised for identifying the sources of leaked classified documents:
Each summary paragraph has six different versions, and the mixture of those paragraphs is unique to each numbered copy of the paper. There are over a thousand possible permutations, but only ninety-six numbered copies of the actual document. The reason the summary paragraphs are so lurid is to entice a reporter to quote them verbatim in the public media. If he quotes something from two or three of those paragraphs, we know which copy he saw and, therefore, who leaked it.
A refinement of this technique uses a thesaurus program to shuffle through synonyms, thus making every copy of the document unique.
Known canary trap cases [ edit ]
Following the troubled production of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the late 1970s, Paramount Pictures effectively replaced Gene Roddenberry as producer of further movies in the franchise with Harve Bennett. Roddenberry was retained as an "executive consultant", due to the high regard the series' fans held him in; while he had little real authority he was still kept involved in the creative process. The fans often complained about particular plot developments proposed for the films, such as the death of Spock in Star Trek II, that Roddenberry had opposed. So, before any drafts of the screenplay for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock were circulated, Bennett arranged for each individual copy to have subtle clues distinguishing it from the others. Shortly after Roddenberry opposed the destruction of the Enterprise at the climax of that film, fans began to complain to Paramount and Bennett. He found that a leaked copy of the script was the one given to Roddenberry, but was unable to do anything about it.[1]
After a series of leaks at Tesla Motors in 2008, CEO Elon Musk reportedly sent slightly different versions of an e-mail to each employee in an attempt to reveal potential leakers. The e-mail was disguised as a request to employees to sign a new non-disclosure agreement. The plan backfired when the company's general counsel forwarded his own unique version of the e-mail with the attached agreement. As a result, Musk's scheme was realized by employees who now had a safe copy to leak.[2]
Barium meal test [ edit ]
According to the book Spycatcher by Peter Wright (published in 1987) the technique is standard practice that has been used by MI5 (and other intelligence agencies) for many years, under the name "barium meal test". A barium meal test is more sophisticated than a canary trap because it is flexible and may take many different forms. However, the basic premise is to reveal a secret to a suspected enemy (but nobody else) then monitor whether there is evidence of the fake information being utilised by the other side. For example, the double agent could be offered some tempting "bait": e.g. be told that important information was stored at a dead drop site. The fake dead drop site could then be periodically checked for signs of disturbance. If the site showed signs of being disturbed (for instance, in order to copy microfilm stored there), then this would confirm that the suspected enemy really was an enemy: i.e. a double agent.
Embedding information [ edit ]
The technique of embedding significant information in a hidden form in a medium has been used in many ways, which are usually classified according to intent:
Watermarks are used to show that items are authentic and not forged.
Steganography is used to hide a secret message in an apparently innocuous message, in order to escape detection.
A canary trap hides information in a document that uniquely identifies it, so that copies of it can be traced.
Screener versions of DVDs are often marked in some way so as to allow the tracking of unauthorised releases to their source.
As with the Star Trek incident, major films or television productions frequently give out scripts to the cast and crew in which one or two lines are different in each individual version. Thus if the entire script is copied and leaked to the public, the producers can track down the specific person who leaked the script. In practice this does not prevent generalized information about the script from being leaked, but it does discourage leaking verbatim copies of the script itself.
incident, major films or television productions frequently give out scripts to the cast and crew in which one or two lines are different in each individual version. Thus if the entire script is copied and leaked to the public, the producers can track down the specific person who leaked the script. In practice this does not prevent generalized information about the script from being leaked, but it does discourage leaking verbatim copies of the script itself. Trap streets on maps, or intentionally fictitious streets, are sometimes included to track copyright violations by those who might republish copyrighted maps illegally.
Spurious words are sometimes included in dictionaries so as to detect other publishers copying from them. The OED contains an appendix of such words with which edition of which dictionary first used them and which first duplicated them.
Zero-width spaces are Unicode characters that are not visually rendered. An arbitrary number of these characters can be inserted between the letters of a word. Though they are not visible, they will typically persist even as that word is copied and pasted and transmitted multiple times. This can be used to create persistent, invisible fingerprints in digital text.[3]
In popular culture [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]SAVANNAH, GA—Saying she just can’t keep up with all the people making her child feel insecure, local mom Carol Tyson reportedly learned on Monday that her daughter was now measuring her self-worth against some 13-year-old named Skyla. “Great, some adolescent who doesn’t even have a hold on her own identity is now, totally out of nowhere, the only standard for how my child judges herself,” said Tyson, adding that this new classmate was just the latest among numerous peers, actresses, and pop stars that her 12-year-old daughter Jessica has used to determine her value as a human being. “I mean, she just got over obsessively comparing herself to her friend Mackenzie down the street, and before that, she thought she was garbage unless she was exactly like those two twins from television. At this rate, there’s not going to be anyone left to make her painfully self-conscious by the time she graduates from high school.” Tyson went on to say that she hoped her daughter would one day be confident enough to stick with just one person who makes her feel worthless and fixate on her for the rest of her life.
AdvertisementThink that’s an exaggeration? Look at a new report from Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington, D.C. group. It finds that some of nation’s most famous brands have paid remarkably little to the government over the last five years. In fact, many actually enjoyed a negative tax rate: They received a nice rebate check from the U.S. Treasury.
The 15 giants highlighted by CTJ were chosen to represent a wide range of industries among Fortune 500 companies. They include CBS, Mattel, Prudential, and the California utility PG&E. Together, they paid no federal income tax in 2014, despite profits totaling $23 billion. CTJ’s point is that these companies are not anomalies, they are examples.
While the companies saved on their taxes, they must have paid plenty to accountants and tax lawyers, because to pay no tax you need plenty of help. The perfectly legal loopholes the companies exploited include “accelerated depreciation,” which involves taking the tax benefit of an asset that is declining in value up front rather than over time, and “active financing”–when companies claim that operations are part of foreign financing schemes, and therefore exempt from IRS scrutiny.
Most people agree that corporate taxation is broken, even the companies themselves. Congress has long discussed a quid pro quo of closing the loopholes in return for lower corporate tax rates.
CTJ calls that solution preposterous, as it would essentially reward borderline-immoral behavior.
“The revenues raised from eliminating corporate tax subsidies should not be given right back to corporations in the form of tax-rate reductions,” the report says. “Instead, as the vast majority of Americans understand, these desperately needed revenues should be used to address our nation’s fiscal problems and to make critically needed public investments in our nation’s future.”AROUND HOCKEY EAST: The Vermont Catamounts claimed the second annual Friendship Four championship in Belfast Northern Ireland, topping No. 3 Quinnipiac, 5-1 On Friday the Catamounts defeated the UMass Minutemen, 4-2, to advance to the tournament championship game. Greg Carvel and UMass would go on to play Carvel's former team, No. 19 St. Lawrence in the third place game, skating to a 2-2 draw. Vermont rookie forward Ross Colton (Robbinsville, N.J./1g, 2a) led the Catamounts with three points while Stefanos Lekkas (Ellburn, Ill.) backstopped the win with a career-high 40 saves to be named the tournament's most outstanding player … Northeastern scored four unanswered goals in the third period to come back and beat No. 8 Minnesota, 6-4, on Friday. Junior forward Dylan Sikura (Aurora, Ont./3g, 1a) recorded his first career hat trick in a four-point effort for the Huskies, sparking a come-from-behind win with two strikes, including the game-winner, in the third period... Merrimack earned its first win in Hockey East play, riding a four-point night from freshman forward Tyler Irvine (Livonia, Mich./2g, 2a) to a 5-2 win over Providence Friday night. The Friars bounced back with a 3-2 victory over Colgate at Schneider Arena the next night, as senior defenseman Anthony Florentino (West Roxbury, Mass./1g,2a) recorded three points... No. 4 Boston University won its lone game of the week against No. 9 Harvard on Tuesday, 5-3, by way of freshman duo Dante Fabbro (New Westminster, B.C./1g, 2a) and Patrick Curry (Schaumburg, Ill./1g, 1a) … No. 3 Boston College split two games over Thanksgiving holiday, taking a 5-2 win at UConn powered by a hat trick from JD Dudek (Auburn, N.H) before dropping a 4-2 decision to Minnesota … Maine won its only game of the week, taking a 5-1 |
of saving on the taxes. Correct? -- Matt, Tucson, Ariz.
A: When it comes to some of the recently added players, such as Greg Whittington, Keith Benson, Corey Hawkins and Briante Weber, the tax isn't a factor, because even a veteran brought in would come with the same minimum-salary hit against the cap and tax, as long as a similar one-year deal was offered. I think the moves were done more with an eye on perhaps uncovering a diamond in the rough, or at least being able to continue to monitor the prospects on their D-League affiliate. Now, if the Heat were to trade a veteran making more than the minimum, that type of move would be with the tax in mind. Again, I'm not sure the Heat will even keep a 15th man, with 14 players entering camp with guarantees.
Q: I know I'm a little bit late on this, but Justise Winslow better be good. The Celtics apparently offered the Heat the 15th and 16th picks of this year's draft, an unprotected pick from Brooklyn (which has a solid chance of being a high pick) and another first-round pick down the line. This year, the Heat could've had their pick of Sam Dekker, Bobby Portis, Tyus Jones, etc., and the future picks could've compensated for the picks traded away for Goran Dragic. Though this year should be fun, I am concerned about some years out. By 2018, Dwyane Wade should be retired and Chris Bosh and Goran Dragic will be in their mid 30s. Pat Riley may also be retired. The Heat will basically have Winslow, maybe Hassan Whiteside and almost no draft picks. That deal with the Celtics would have helped a lot. Unless that is, Winslow turns out to be very, very good. Wonder what your thoughts are. -- Mike, Fort Lauderdale.
A: My thoughts are how surprising it is that so many who raved about the Winslow pick in June now are having second thoughts. When it comes to big moments, Pat Riley goes all in. We already know that. Whether it was giving up all those first-round picks to close out the signings of the Big Three in 2010, or the picks dealt to the Suns for Dragic, it has never been about quantity to Riley when it comes to the opportunity for quality. I still believe the questions with the Winslow selection will not be about the potential picks bypassed, but rather bypassing the 3-point shooting of Devin Booker. But, for now, exhale. The Heat came out of the draft with Justise Winslow at No. 10. That seemed like a heck of a result on draft night, and there is absolutely no reason it should seem like anything less now.Prosecutors have charged a respected oncologist at one of the leading cancer research centres in the United States with spiking her lover and coworker’s coffee with a sweet-tasting chemical used in antifreeze and medical research, causing renal failure. Ana Maria Gonzalez-Angulo, a breast cancer doctor at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, was charged last week with a felony count of aggravated assault against Dr. George Blumenschein, a specialist in lung and head and neck cancers at the institution.
Ana Maria Gonzalez-Angulo has been charged with aggravated assault.
The two were in “a casual sexual relationship,” according to a criminal complaint. The complaint said Blumenschein, who joined M.D. Anderson in 2000, suffered a protracted loss of the use of his kidneys and is still being treated for it. M.D. Anderson officials would not say whether he is back at work. Gonzalez-Angulo’s lawyer, Derek Hollingsworth, told the Houston Chronicle that she is “completely innocent.”
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“She is a distinguished citizen and scientist, and these allegations are totally inconsistent with her personal and professional life,” Hollingsworth said in a statement. He told the Chronicle he was confident the Houston District Attorney would reconsider the charges this week. Gonzalez-Angulo, who joined M.D. Anderson in 2003, is free on $50,000 bail. She has published 119 articles in peer-reviewed journals and appeared in a “Day in the Life”video for breast cancer researchlast year. Gonzalez-Angulo, 42, is also involved in a large-scale clinical trial of an experimental cancer drug that she described as “one of the most important trials in the last 10 years.”
She is a tenured professor at the University of Texas and chief of the cancer centre’s section for clinical research. M.D. Anderson officials said Gonzalez-Angulo is on paid administrative leave, but they declined to comment further. The Texas Tribune has reported her salary as a public employee as $238,000 a year.
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Authorities allege that Blumenschein was poisoned on Jan. 27 when he was at Gonzalez-Angulo’s home. According to the charges, when Blumenschein complained that his coffee tasted sweet, she told him she’d added Splenda and told him to finish it, after which she made him another cup. Blumenschein said both tasted sweet. Blumenschein usually drank his coffee black, the Chronicle said. Within four hours, he began experiencing slurred speech, poor balance and a loss of fine motor skills. He was taken to an emergency centre, where he was found to have central nervous system depression, cardiopulmonary complications and renal failure. He later had to undergo dialysis. A 24-hour urine test found crystals consistent with ethylene glycol poisoning, according to the complaint. It also said a county toxicologist concurred with the assessment. A toxicology report by a third expert indicated Blumenschein’s acute severe metabolic acidosis “more likely than not” was due to ethylene glycol poisoning. Ethylene glycol, a solvent and starting material for the synthesis of more complex molecules, is present in all M.D. Anderson laboratories, a cancer centre research administrator said in the complaint. As a result, Gonzalez-Angulo had access to the substance, according to investigators. With files from The Associated PressVoters “must go with Freier,” The Daily News urged in an editorial.
She ran a spirited but careful campaign. Her Yiddish theme song, broadcast from four S.U.V.’s covered with fliers on Election Day, referred to her as Mrs. Freier, not by her first name. Her fliers didn’t feature her photograph, to avoid charges of immodesty. Her husband, not she, gathered the endorsements of 10 local rabbis, who praised both “Mr. and Mrs. Freier” in a letter for their good works in the community.
Mr. Freier, 56, a soft-spoken man with a graying beard who jokes that he is now referred to as the judge’s husband, said that he thinks her record of service made the difference. “They liked what she did with the ambulance service, the at-risk youth,” he said.
Of all her causes, it is the EMS service about which Judge Freier seems most passionate, perhaps because of the ongoing struggle to keep it alive. Ultra-Orthodox women in Brooklyn had tried to form an all-female emergency service since the 1980s, mostly to help women in emergency birthing situations, she said. But it never happened.
Judge Freier pushed for it. In the years that she worked as an attorney in private practice, she signed up for an emergency medical technician course with her mother, who had always told her she could do anything, “unless it’s illegal, immoral or against the Torah,” she said.
When the powerful male-run Jewish ambulance service, Hatzolah, declined to open to female volunteers at her request in 2011, Judge Freier applied for a license for a separate female EMS service, Ezras Nashim. It opened with some 20 volunteers in 2014. When local rabbis were reluctant to support it publicly, her husband went to Israel and filmed himself getting rabbinical approval from senior sages.
Ezras Nashim, she said, is not about being a feminist, but about reclaiming the traditional role of women to help in their own God-given way. It is the same sentiment that drives her other work. “We aren’t saying the men aren’t good,” Judge Freier said. “But there is something different about us just by the fact that we’re women. We are bringing something that you can’t give.”
The service, which she still leads as director, was recently named EMS agency of the year by the city and state emergency medical service councils. Right now, its women respond in their own cars to emergencies, and they help the 911 ambulance dispatched to the scene. But it is now applying for its own ambulance license and in the coming months will face a public hearing at which Hatzolah and other services can object.When the Bills fired Tyrod Taylor's biggest booster in the building and benched the quarterback for the season finale, it was natural to assume both parties would welcome a clean break in 2017.
Looming over the next month is Taylor's weighty $30.75 million contract option, which must be exercised by March 11.
Will the team's brass ultimately decide to double-down on Taylor at that rate, ask him to restructure the deal or risk going all-in on a potential Tony Romo trade?
Although Taylor hasn't ruled out a slightly altered contract, he is unwilling to accept any restructure that would reduce his pay, according to Vic Carucci of The Buffalo News.
Here's where it gets tricky.
Appearing on Friday's edition of Up to the Minute Live, NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport echoed Carucci's report but added that there is a "very real possibility" Taylor will be amenable to altering his salary-cap number as long as it doesn't involve a pay cut.
So what's really going on in Buffalo?
Both parties could have examined the quarterback landscape in early January and imagined that the grass would be greener on the other side by March.
A month later, that's not necessarily the case. New Bills coach Sean McDermott hired Rick Dennison, who previously worked with Taylor in Baltimore, to run his offense.
Is it worth alienating Taylor if Romo views Buffalo as a football outpost still years away from contending for the Super Bowl in a division owned by the dynastic Patriots?
If Taylor's own organization watched him up-close for two years and still remains unconvinced that he's a legitimate franchise quarterback, will he be able to seduce a suitor willing to match Buffalo's financial commitment?
It will be interesting to see if the team's financial experts and Taylor's representatives can find common ground on a restructured deal that leaves Taylor with $30 million in guarantees while lowering the cap number for 2017.
While we expect both sides to put out feelers at the NFL Scouting Combine later this month, perhaps Taylor isn't destined to leave Buffalo after all.University of California professor Robert Reich on Tuesday disputed Republican claims that the wealthy were job creators.
“We have not had this degree of income inequality in America for 80 years and by some measures 100 years,” he told Current TV host Cenk Uygur. “Go back to the Gilded Age of the robber barons. That’s when you find the same kind of concentration of income and wealth inequality and power at the very highest reaches of the United States. We don’t want to go back there.”
Reich said the upper class wanted to defend their power and wealth, “and that’s why they are sponsoring Mitt Romney, who is the avatar, the sponsor of his class.”
He explained that the strong purchasing power of the middle class was imperative to keep the economy health. While the wealthy tended to accumulate their money, the middle class used their income to purchase goods and services, which drove up demand and lead to new jobs being created.
“If there is not enough money in the middle class and among the poor, then what do you get? You get a stagnate economy,” Reich said.
Watch video, courtesy of Current TV, below:A sellout crowd will witness Canada’s Women’s National Team face rivals USA in the Rematch on Sunday, 2 June at BMO Field in Toronto, ON. The match, presented by Canadian Tire, sold out within the first hours of Friday’s public on-sale. Kick off for the match is set at 16.30 ET / 13.30 PT and will be broadcast live on all four regional Sportsnet channels.
Strong momentum built towards Friday’s public sale as the Canadian soccer community rallied quickly and took advantage of various presale and group offers.
“We want to thank our Canadian fans for this incredible display of support for our Women’s National Team,” said Victor Montagliani, President, Canadian Soccer Association. “This is a great indication of how passionate our nation is about soccer and only bodes well as we prepare to host the world for the FIFA Women’s World Cup Canada 2015TM.”
“To sell out BMO Field this quickly demonstrates once again the level of relevancy this team and the sport of soccer has reached in Canada,” added Peter Montopoli, General Secretary, Canadian Soccer Association. “We are thrilled to see the enthusiastic response from the soccer community and look forward to experiencing this momentous occasion on 2 June with our Canadian fans.”
The Canadian Soccer Association and its corporate partners will organize an interactive Fan Fest outside of BMO Field in the afternoon leading up to the match. Fans will be invited to participate in various activities and share the day with like-minded fans. More details will be released as the event draws nearer.
The match against the Americans will be the first time the two teams have clashed since a dramatic semi-final at the Women’s Olympic Football tournament at the London 2012 Olympics. In a drama-filled affair on 7 August, 2012, captain Christine Sinclair handed Canada the lead on three separate occasions but the Americans ultimately prevailed with a 123rd-minute winner in extra time. Canada rebounded from the devastating loss against USA to claim the country’s first-ever Olympic medal in Women’s football and Canada’s first summer Olympics medal by a traditional team sport since 1936.Women in Saudi Arabia have been granted the right to drive, overturning a cornerstone of Saudi conservatism that had been a cause célèbre for activists demanding reforms in the fundamentalist kingdom.
King Salman ordered the reform in a royal decree delivered on Tuesday night, requesting that drivers’ licences be issued to women who wanted them.
Following the decree, women will no longer need permission from a legal guardian to get a licence and will not need a guardian in the car when they drive, said the new Saudi ambassador to Washington DC, Prince Khalid bin Salman bin Abdulaziz.
“I think our leadership understands our society is ready,” he told reporters.
Asked by reporters if Saudi Arabia planned to relax the guardianship laws, or take any other steps to expand women’s rights, Salman would not comment.
The US state department welcomed the move as “a great step in the right direction”.
The decision comes amid a broad reform program that last week led to women being allowed into a sports stadium for the first time.
It is the most significant change yet to a rigidly conservative social order in Saudi Arabia that has strictly demarcated gender roles, and severely limits the role of women in public life.
Earlier this month, a Saudi cleric was banned from preaching after saying that women should not be allowed to drive because their brains shrink to a quarter the size of a man’s when they go shopping.
The move had been widely anticipated amid a transformation of many aspects of Saudi society that has been branded by one senior minister as “cultural revolution disguised as economic reform”. Recent months have seen live concert performances in Riyadh – albeit to male-only audiences – while the powers of the once-omnipresent religious police have been curtailed.
Saudi Arabia had been the last country in the world in which women were banned from driving – a fact that was frequently used by critics as proof that female citizens of the kingdom were among the world’s most repressed.
The most recent campaign to allow female drivers started in Saudi Arabia about 10 years ago, and reached a peak in 2013, when several women who had sat behind the wheel on the country’s roads were briefly arrested by police.
In response to the announcement, Manal al-Sharif, who became the public face of the campaign, after she was imprisoned for driving, tweeted: “Today the last country on earth to allow women to drive … we did it.”
Loujain Hathloul, who was detained for more than two months after she tried to drive into Saudi Arabia from Dubai tweeted simply: “praise be to God.”
Strict guardianship laws, which mean that husbands or fathers can prevent their wives or daughters from leaving the home gave cover to the driving ban, which has long been accepted by many in the intensely conservative kingdom.
A committee formed by senior officials will now have 30 days to study how to implement the move.
Saudi Arabia’s new Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, had viewed allowing women to drive as a key plank of reforms, insisting that the move would lead to higher female participation in the workforce and a breakdown of gender roles that limit social interaction between men and women outside immediate family environments.
However, the Crown Prince and his father, King Salman, had feared that moving too quickly on reforms would cause anger among the clerical establishment and elements of Saudi society who adhere to rigid interpretations of Sunni Islamic teachings that have taken root in large parts of the country over more than a century.
As well as being allowed to enter the National Stadium in Riyadh on Saturday to celebrate the 87th anniversary of the founding of the kingdom, women were also allowed to attend a concert in Jeddah.
In November 1990, 47 Saudi women drove their cars around Riyadh to protest the driving ban. They faced severe punishment at the time and the campaign died away until 2008, when Wajiha Huwaider dared to drive a car around the eastern provinces, escaping arrest.
From 2011 Sharif and another woman, Najla al-Hariri, became global figureheads of a cause that drew the attention of global leaders, who had urged the kingdom to overturn the ban.shared_ptr addiction
published at 14.02.2014 16:26 by Jens Weller
I've written earlier this year about smart pointers in C++, today I just would like to write a little more about shared_ptr. Especially about addiction to shared_ptr, and why you should use unique_ptr in C++11.
pre C++11 and boost smart pointers
Before I dive into C++11 and std::shared_ptr, a few words first, where the roots of std::shared_ptr and unique_ptr are. With the usage of smart pointers, boost has been for many years the preferred source for them. As there is no move, you could not put boost::scoped_ptr into an STL Container. An alternative would be to use boost::ptr_container, but often people are lazy, and so std::vector<boost::shared_ptr<T>> is often used. Its not a good or ideal solution, but its used in a fair amount of code in this world. It clearly deals with memory leaks, and before C++11, is a option worth considering for a lot of C++ programmers. Also some people tend to use shared_ptr in their factories and interfaces, especially if inheritance hierarchies are involved. But before I dive too deep into the world before unique_ptr existed, lets move on to C++11.
C++11, std::shared_ptr and std::unique_ptr
C++11 is in this field of memory management for me a game changer. Move-semantics allow now for using unique_ptr in factories, safely storing std::unique_ptr into STL containers, also unique_ptr can fill the role boost::scoped_ptr. Except for the rare case of sharing, you should always prefer unique_ptr now. This has a few advantages:
the ownership is clearly defined, you but also other users of your code have to think about this (good!)
a factory giving you a unique_ptr, gives you the access to the allocated object, you still can transfer it into a shared_ptr or any other ownership model.
you can't concurrently access a unique_ptr, if your thread has a unique_ptr its also the owner of this object.
you still can share access to a resource via const references, but make sure that changes made by the owner does not affect the objects holding references.
unique_ptr has a smaller memory footprint, as no control block is allocated.
If you don't have access to C++11, prefer boost with scoped_ptr and ptr_container.
shared_ptr addiction
This is what this blog post is actually about, over using shared_ptr. Especially when you move to C++11. I do have to confess, that I had my days of shared_ptr addiction too. shared_ptr, when used with boost in pre C++11 code, it manages very well the allocated resource, and I could focus on something else.
This changed as I visited in 2012 C++Now, Sean Parent gave a very nice keynote. Part of this keynote was about shared_ptr, and that if its misused, its actually a hidden global variable. This thought was new to me, I had never looked at shared_ptr from this angle, but I think, he is right. Especially as more and more code runs in multithreaded ways (CPU, GPU), sharing a heap object/resource across your application might become an issue. Last year Sean Parent has given a very good talk at Going Native, again dealing with pointers and shared_ptr.
But today I think being a potential global variable isn't the only issue with shared_ptr overuse. If shared_ptr is exposed in a public interface, for example in a factory or make function (except std::make_share), it will force you and any other user of this code, to use std or/and boost::shared_ptr. Unlike unique_ptr, shared_ptr can by design not release its ownership, forcing any user to clone the object inside (if possible), if shared_ptr is not useable.
So, when ever you use or see shared_ptr in your code, you should ask whether you really need it, or could replace it either by unique_ptr or scoped_ptr/ptr_container. And of course if you really need to allocate the object with new at the first place.
(My) use cases for shared_ptr
I'd like to give a few examples where shared_ptr can or should be used. First, if you really need to share a resource, think about using a const Type for the shared_ptr:
shared_ptr<const T> const_resource;
Once created, the object can not be changed. Maybe it is a large data set loaded from a database, that now some threads would like to do calculations in parallel. Maybe it is just your config loaded at the beginning of the application.
Also, there is weak_ptr, which allows for storing weak references to a shared_ptr, and only temporarily converting them into a shared_ptr. This works as long as a valid instance of a shared_ptr exists. Also weak_ptr helps to break up cyclic referencing in between shared_ptr instances. So when you need to expose shared_ptr in a public interface, think about preferring weak_ptr.
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This and other posts on Meeting C++ are enabled by my supporters on patreon!Back row L-R: James Rock, Mitchell Larkin, Nicholas Blakey, Joel Crocker, Jackson Archer, Thomas Longmire. Front row L-R: Dylan Makepeace, Cooper Harvey, Billy Longmire, Jai Makepeace.
They’re back. Names like Archer, King, Crocker, Makepeace, Blakey, Longmire, Larkin and Rock were again prominent on the training track at Aegis Park but it’s not what you might think. Run by former North great Brady Rawlings, the club’s father-son academy is now bursting at the seams with talented Kangaroo offspring.
“The purpose of the Academy is to re-engage the families in the footy club,” Rawlings told NMFC.com.au.
“The players who played so much footy for this club, can sometimes be forgotten about, but this is a good avenue to re-engage them. If we can spend time with their kids from an early age, they’ll identify with the footy club. And if we can help develop their skills, it can only benefit them in the long run and hopefully us.”
Rawlings called on the expertise of development coaches Josh Drummond and Jarred Moore to help run the clinic and take the talented youngsters through their paces.
“Josh Drummond and Jarred Moore took the boys through some skills sessions that the AFL players do and we split them into two groups to make it more age specific.
“We have 16 boys all up in the academy who range from 10-18 years of age. Because a few of the boys have younger brothers we had some as young as eight here today. At this stage the academy is just once a year and we incorporate it with Harvey’s Heroes day so they can get out and be amongst the rest of the young Kangaroos supporters.”
Rawlings isn’t interested in pressuring the young Roos at such a young age but believes the academy will keep developing as the boys grow older and gain more experience at North and in their own footy clubs.
“We’ll look to increase the program but at this stage we just want them enjoying their footy and having a bit of fun,” Rawlings said.
“If they’re really looking at heading down the football path when they’re 15 or 16 we’ll cater towards that and up the ante with the program to give them whatever they need to help them develop."
As a club with a rich and spirited history, North is committed to keeping its past connected to its future and these boys could be a very big part of that.
“If any of them become AFL players in the future that’s a bonus, but it’s really about the families and putting time into their kids. As Brad (Scott) says, it’s about making sure they identify with the North Melbourne Footy Club and recognise it as their club.
“We figure if you do everything you can now...help out the young boys and be there for them, you never know if one might fall in your lap and the program will be worth it.”President Donald Trump, flanked by Sen. Tom Cotton, R- Ark., left, and Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017, during the unveiling of legislation that would place new limits on legal immigration. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump embraced legislation Wednesday that would dramatically reduce legal immigration and shift the nation toward a system that prioritizes merit and skills over family ties.
Trump joined with Republican Sens. David Perdue of Georgia and Tom Cotton of Arkansas to promote the bill, which has so far gained little traction in the Senate.
“This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and puts America first,” Trump said during an event in the White House’s Roosevelt Room.
It was the latest example of the president championing an issue that animated the core voters of his 2016 campaign, following decisions to pull out of the Paris climate treaty and ban transgender people from the military.
Perdue and Cotton’s legislation would replace the current process for obtaining legal permanent residency, or green cards, creating a skills-based point system for employment visas. The bill would also eliminate the preference for U.S. residents’ extended and adult family members, while maintaining priority for their spouses and minor children.
Overall, immigration would be slashed 41 percent in the legislation’s first year and 50 percent in its 10th, according to projection models cited by the bill’s sponsors. The bill would also aim to slash the number of refugees in half and eliminate a program that provides visas to people from countries with low rates of immigration.
The rollout included a combative press briefing led by Trump policy aide Stephen Miller, who clashed with the media over the plan and accused one reporter of being “cosmopolitan” when he suggested it would only bring in English-speaking people from Britain and Australia.
The president has made cracking down on illegal immigration a hallmark of his administration and has tried to slash federal grants for cities that refuse to comply with federal efforts to detain and deport those living in the country illegally.
But he has also vowed to make changes to the legal immigration system, arguing that immigrants compete with Americans for much-needed jobs and drive wages down.
Most economists dispute the president’s argument, noting that immigration in recent decades doesn’t appear to have meaningfully hurt wages in the long run. Increased immigration is also associated with faster growth because the country is adding workers, so restricting the number of immigrants could slow the economy’s potential to expand.
The bill’s supporters, meanwhile, say it would make the U.S. more competitive, raise wages and create jobs.
Backers said the bill would sharply increase the proportion of green cards available to high-skilled workers and would not affect other high or low-skilled worker visa programs such as H1-B and H2-B visas. The Trump Organization has asked for dozens of H-2B visas for foreign workers at two of Trump’s private clubs in Florida, including his Mar-a-Lago resort.
The White House said that only 1 in 15 immigrants comes to the U.S. because of their skills, and the current system fails to place a priority on highly skilled immigrants.
But the Senate has largely ignored a previous version of the measure, with no other lawmaker signing on as a co-sponsor. GOP leaders have showed no inclination to vote on immigration this year, and Democrats quickly dismissed it.
“The bottom line is to cut immigration by half a million people, legal immigration, doesn’t make much sense,” said Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York, who called it a “nonstarter.”
The bill would create a new points-based system for applicants seeking to become legal permanent residents, favoring those who can speak English, have high-paying job offers, can financially support themselves and offer skills that would contribute to the U.S. economy. A little more than 1 million green cards were issued in 2015.
In a nod to his outreach to blue-collar workers during the campaign, Trump said the measure would prevent new immigrants from collecting welfare for a period of time and help U.S. workers by reducing the number of unskilled laborers entering the U.S.
But the president is mischaracterizing many of the immigrants coming to the United States as low-skilled and dependent on government aid.
The Pew Research Center said in 2015 that 41 percent of immigrants who had arrived in the past five years held a college degree, much higher than the 30 percent of non-immigrants in the United States. A stunning 18 percent held an advanced degree, also much higher than the U.S. average.
Trump has long advocated for the changes and vowed during an immigration speech in Phoenix last August to overhaul the legal immigration system “to serve the best interests of America and its workers.” He voiced support for the Senate bill at a rally last week in Ohio, where his call for a “merit-based system” that “protects our workers” generated loud cheers.
Some immigrant advocates have criticized the proposal, saying that slashing legal immigration would hurt industries like agriculture and harm the economy.
“Our system is broken, but the response should be to modernize it, not take a sledgehammer to it,” said Jeremy Robbins, executive director of New American Economy, a group backed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
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Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Erica Werner and Donna Cassata contributed to this report.
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Follow Ken Thomas at http://twitter.com/kthomasDC and Jill Colvin at http://twitter.com/@colvinjLinux Mint is a desktop-centric distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop, and Linux Mint LXDE is the edition that uses the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE). The latest release, Linux Mint 11 LXDE, was released August 16, 2011. This article presents a review, the first for an LXDE-based Linux Mint edition on this website.
The installation image is a Live CD, and installation may only be started from the Live environment. Shown below is the boot menu.
Installation Program and Installation Process: It should not come as a surprise that this edition of Linux Mint uses the same installer and follows the same installation routine as other Linux Mint editions based on Ubuntu Desktop. On a test system that I attempted to install it on, on which I was already dual-booting Linux Mint 11, the main edition, and another copy of the same LXDE edition, the installer did not seem to detect that both distributions were Linux Mint.
Even in the advanced partitioning window, you could not tell that two Linux Mint editions were already installed unless you view the entries in the “Device for boot loader installation” dropdown menu.
And on several occasions, attempting to edit a partition caused the partition editing window to freeze. Restarting the system was the only option. My impression of the installer is it is a little bit less stable than the main edition’s.
The default file system is ext4, a journaling file system. Other journaling file systems supported are ext3, jfs, xfs, reiserfs and btrfs. LVM, the Linux Logical Volume Manager, RAID and disk encryption, are not supported. The minimum disk space recommended for installation is 3.8 GB, but a new installation takes up less than 2.9 GB. GRUB 2 is the boot loader. The installer does not have an option to password-protect it.
Desktop: LXDE is a low resource-consumption desktop environment. Just like Xfce, it is fast and very responsive. The menu style is the classical type. Linux Mint’s mintMenu application is available for installation, but it appears that it is not compatible with LXDE. mintMenu is a menu style similar to Lancelot, a menu application for the K Desktop Environment.
The file manager, PCManFM, has features on par with Thunar and Nautilus, file managers for Xfce and GNOME respectively. But one of its features in not available in Thunar and Nautilus.
And that feature, the ability to browse the menu entries, and launch applications, is the shown in the image below. Access is from Go > Applications. I think it is nice.
A feature of this edition of Linux Mint that it inherited from Ubuntu, is the Ayatana Scrollbar, also know as the overlay scrollbar. It is supposed to “improve the user’s ability to focus on content and applications” and to “ensure that scrollbars take up no active screen real-estate” thereby “reducing the waste of space and distracting clutter that a traditional scrollbar entails.”
I did not like it the first time I used it, and my opinion has not changed. It is simply not a very useful feature and the developers know it. An entry in the release notes says you may disable it by uninstalling the overlay-scrollbar and liboverlay-scrollbar-0.1-0 packages. However, I found that the overlay-scrollbar package is not even installed. To disable it, you simply need to remove liboverlay-scrollbar, and reboot.
Installed and Available Software: Major applications installed on Linux Mint 11 LXDE are:
Firefox 5
Dropbox
Exaile music player
VLC media player
GNOME MPlayer, a GTK2 frontend for MPlayer
Mozilla Thunderbird
Pidgin IM client
Transmission Bittorrent client
Abiword, a standalone word processor
Gnumeric, a standalone spreadsheet application
After applying updates, Firefox 5 was upgraded to Firefox 6. Multimedia codecs and libraries required to view Flash and Java content, are installed by default. Libdvdcss2, required to play encrypted video DVD movies, is also installed, so VLC plays those movies. There is no full office suite installed, but LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org (now Apache OpenOffice.org), are available for installation.
As with all Linux Mint editions, there are no games installed, but there are more than 100, including six FPS games, available for installation. All these applications are, of course, besides the usual set of desktop accessories and system utilities.
Package Management: Like all Linux distributions directly or indirectly derived from Debian, Linux Mint LXDE uses APT, the Advanced Packaging Tool, for application management. While apt-get, the most commonly used APT command line utility is very easy to use, there are two graphical applications that are pre-installed to make software management even easier.
One is custom-developed for Linux Mint, and it is called the Software Manager. The main view is shown in the screenshot below. The other, common to Debian-derived distributions, is called the Synaptic Package Manager. While Software Manager has a sleeker interface, Synaptic Package Manager has better features.
Because the Software Manager does not allow true queuing of applications for installation, it is better to use the Synaptic Package Manager when you want to install multiple applications.
This is the Internet category view of Software Manager. Out of the box, the system is configured to check for update once per day, and the Update Manager works.
Shown is the list of updates in the Update Manager. This screenshot was taken today (August 22, 2011), six days after it was released. At the time, there were a total of 22 updates available for installation.“We were puppets,” she added. “I couldn’t do it.”
After crossing the finish line, Tarmoh did a victory lap waving a United States flag, while Felix, a two-time Olympic silver medalist in the 200 meters, told reporters “fourth is the worst.”
But 45 minutes after the end of the race, once finish-line judges decided that third place was too close to call, the official result was posted: dead heat.
“This was an evolving situation,” Jill Geer, a spokeswoman for the track organization, said about the confusion and controversy. “We didn’t have a process in place.”
In track, results are determined by whose torso crosses the finish line first. The image that judges typically examine to determine a winner, known as the outside shot, did not show who finished third. In that photo, judges said, the arms of Tarmoh and Felix obscured their torsos.
“Normally when you have someone with a slightly twisted torso, you go to the other camera and it’s easy to see who is ahead,” said Giles Norton, a qualified USA Track & Field photo-finish official and director of marketing for Lynx System Developers Inc., the official timing and results provider for the track organization.
Photo
Roger Jennings, who had unofficially called Tarmoh the third-place finisher, relied on her twisted torso to make his decision. But he wanted to see an alternate image to confirm his decision for the official results. The second image “shows you nothing,” Norton said. “Ninety-nine times out of 100” the second shot reveals the winner, he said.
“In most cases it wouldn’t matter,” he said. “You would give both people bronze medals and say, ‘Isn’t that wonderful?’ ”
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The track organization’s guidelines give runners up to 30 minutes to contest official results after they are posted. But by the time the official results were posted, 45 minutes after the race, Tarmoh was in the drug-testing tent. A USA Track & Field staff member there mentioned to |
page table with the following:
32 bit virtual addresses
1Kb page
We would like to access a program, how much space is required for the page table?
To calculate this we do the following:
lg(1Kb) = 10 bits = page offset bits
(32 – 10) = 22 bits = page table offset bits
This means that for each program we must load 2 ^ 22 = 4194304 physical addresses
We then multiply the number of physical addresses by the number of bytes required for a pointer, which is the size of the virtual addresses (32 bits = 4 bytes):
4 * 2 ^ 22 = 2 ^ 2 * 2 ^ 22 = 2 ^ 24
= 16777216 bytes
= 16 Mb
That is a ton to load into RAM every time you would like to load any address space (which could be as small as a single byte). This is inefficient, and is an excellent example of why we use multi-level page tables.
Mult-Level Page Table Example
Assume that we have:
32 bit virtual addresses
4Kb page
Two page tables, PT1 and PT2
In this case we have lg(4Kb) = 12 bits = page offset bits
This leaves use to determine how we wish to allocate to the first and second level. In this case lets assume we use 10 bits for both the first and second level page tables (10 + 10 + 12 (page offset bits) = 32). This means that we only need to load…
2 ^ 10 * 2 ^ 2 (4 bytes/32 bits) = 4Kb for PT1
2 ^ 10 * 2 ^ 2 (4 bytes/32 bits) = 4Kb for PT2
2 ^ 12 = 4Kb for page
Total: 12Kb
When we wish to load a single physical address. This is a significant decrease (several orders of magnitude) in required RAM from single-level page table. We must switch out these pages from time to time to use other mapped physical addresses, which does require a fair amount of time. To combat this we attempt to use different page eviction methods (listed in the page tables section of this post).
Addresses, Pages and Tables Breakdown
Lets take a given address: 0xa45b3c23 (8 hexadcimal numbers), with:
32-bit addresses
4 KB pages (12 bit offset)
two-level page table
12-bit first level page table index
First level page table: 0xa45
Second level page table: 0xb3
Page index: 0xc23
Now lets use the same address for:
32-bit addresses
4 KB pages (12 bit offset)
two-level page table
4-bit first level page table index
First level page table: 0xa
Second level page table: 0x45b3 (16 bit offset)
Page index: 0xc23
Notice the page index did not change, since that is given. Since the first level page table was reduced to only 4 bits, there was a (32 – 4 – 12) 16 bit offset for the second page table. This would would change a second level page table would have to be loaded into RAM since it has more Page addresses it can point to, therefore a higher likelihood of a hit.
Issues and Solutions
A page fault occurs when a new page needs to be brought into RAM because it needs to be accessed, but is not present. The solution is to follow a page eviction algorithm and bring the page into memory.
Thrashing occurs when if there is a poor page eviction algorithm, not have enough usable RAM, or too many programs running on a computer. Generally, the solution is to add more RAM or reduce the number of programs running at a given time.
Related Articles
Additional Links
Video by Dr. Mike Murphy, clear explanation of different page table implementations.
Video by Prof. S. Raman, lecture/example of calculating virtual memory to physical.
Lecture Slides from the University of Iowa.
Example Problem, via stackoverflow.Ballistic data for.50 Browning ammunition. Model Cartridge Weight Cartridge Length Propellant Projectile Weight Chamber Pressure Velocity
78 ft (23.8 m) from muzzle M1 HPT 2,082 gr (134.91 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) WC 860? 65,000 psi (4,570 kg/cm²) N/A M1 Blank 917 gr (59.42 g) 3.91 in (99.3 mm) WC 150 N/A N/A N/A M1 Incendiary 1,744 gr (113.00 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) WC 860? 54,000 psi (3,796 kg/cm²) 2,950 fps (899 mps) M1 Tracer 1,785 gr (115.66 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) IMR 5010? 52,000 psi (3,656 kg/cm²) 2,700 fps (823 mps) M1A1 Blank 915 to 955 gr (59.29 to 61.88 g) 3.91 in (99.3 mm) Dupont Hi Skor 700X N/A N/A N/A M2 Ball 1,813 gr (117.48 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) WC 860? 55,000 psi (3,867 kg/cm²) 2,810 fps (856 mps) M2 AP 1,812 gr (117.41 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) WC 860 706.7 gr (45.8 g) 53,000 psi (3,726 kg/cm²) 2,810 fps (856 mps) M2 Dummy 1,248 gr (80.87 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) N/A? N/A N/A M8 API 1,764 gr (114.30 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) WC 860 622.5 gr (40.34 g) 59,000 psi (4,148 kg/cm²) 2,910 fps (887 mps) M10 Tracer 1,752 gr (113.53 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) IMR 5010? 54,000 psi (3,796 kg/cm²) 2,860 fps (872 mps) M17 Tracer 1,732 gr (112.23 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) IMR 5010? 54,000 psi (3,796 kg/cm²) 2,860 fps (872 mps) M20 API-T 1,718 gr (111.32 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) IMR 5010 619 gr (40.11 g) 55,000 psi (3,867 kg/cm²) 2,910 fps (887 mps) M23 Incendiary 1,581 gr (102.45 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) IMR 4831? 58,000 psi (4,077 kg/cm²) 3,400 fps (1,036 mps) M33 Ball 1,762 gr (114.17 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) WC 860 706.7 gr (45.8 g) 55,000 psi (3,867 kg/cm²) 2,910 fps (887 mps) M858 Plastic Practice 460 gr (29.81 g) 5.2 in (132.1 mm) 10B101? 26,100 psi (1,835 kg/cm²) 2,790 fps (850 mps) M860 Plastic Practice-T 460 gr (29.81 g) 5.2 in (132.1 mm) 10B101? 26,100 psi (1,835 kg/cm²) 2,790 fps (850 mps) M903 SLAP 1,466 gr (94.99 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) WC 856 355 - 360 gr (23.00 - 23.33 g) 55,000 psi (3,867 kg/cm²) 4,000 fps (1,219 mps) M962 SLAP-T 1,466 gr (94.99 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) WC 856 350 - 360 gr (22.68 - 23.33 g) 55,000 psi (3,867 kg/cm²) 4,000 fps (1,219 mps) MK211 Mod 0 API 1,765 gr (114.37 g) 5.45 in (138.4 mm) WC 860, MR 5010 or RA-NC-167 671 gr (43.48 g) 55,000 psi (3,867 kg/cm²) 2,910 ± 30 fps (886 ± 9.1 mps)
Used by all.50 Browning weapons. The cartridge is intended for use in proof testing weapons during manufacture, test, or repair.The cartridge is identified by a stannic-stained (silvered) cartridge case.Type Classification: STD - OTCM 36841Used by the M2 machine gun (flexible only). The cartridge is used to simulate firing in training exercises.The cartridge is identified by the absence of a bullet and has crimped cartridge case mouth.Type Classification: CONT - OTCM 36841Used by M2 and M85 machine guns. For incendiary effect, especially against aircraft.Upon impact with a hardened or armored target, the incendiary composition bursts into flame and will ignite any flammable material.Incendiary composition: 34 grains (2.2 g) IM 11The cartridge is identified by a blue bullet tip.Type Classification: OBS - MSR 11756003Used by M2 and M85 machine guns. The tracer is intended to permit visible observation of the bullet's in-flight path or trajectory to the point of impact. Limited to continental US for training purposes only.Trace range: 1,969 yards (1,800 m)Tracer: R256The cartridge is identified by a red bullet tip.Type Classification: OBS - MSR 11756003Used by the M2 machine gun with the M19 Blank Ammunition Firing Attachment, the M85 machine gun with the M20 Blank Firing Attachment, and the M107 Long Range Sniper Rifle. The cartridge is used to simulate firing in training exercises.The cartridge is identified by the absence of a bullet. The M1A1 differs from the M1 in that the M1A1 has a rosette crimp at the mouth.Type Classification: STD - MSR 02806015Used by M2 and M85 machine guns. The cartridge is intended for use against personnel or unarmored targets.The cartridge is identified by a plain bullet.Type Classification: STD - OTCM 36841Used by M2 and M85 machine guns. The cartridge is for use against light-armored or unarmored targets, concrete shelters, and similar bullet-resisting targets.Armor Penetration.500 meters: 0.75 in (19 mm)1,200 meters: 0.39 in (10 mm)The cartridge is identified by a black bullet tip.Type Classification: OBS - MSR 11756003Used by all.50 Browning weapons. The cartridge is used for practice in loading for simulated firing and for inspecting and testing the mechanism of the weapon.The cartridge is identified by three drilled holes in the cartridge case and the absence of a primer.Type Classification: STD - OTCM 36841Used by M2 and M85 machine guns, and the M107 Long Range Sniper Rifle. The cartridge combines the functions of the M2 armor piercing bullet and the incendiary bullet, and is used against flammable targets and light-armored or unarmored targets, concrete shelters, and similar bullet-resisting targets.Armor Penetration.500 meters: 0.63 in (16 mm)1,200 meters: 0.32 in (8 mm)Incendiary composition: 15 grains (0.97 g) IM 11The cartridge is identified by an aluminum bullet tip.Type Classification: OBS - MSR 11756003Used by M2 and M85 machine guns. The tracer cartridge exhibits a visible trace from a point not greater than 100 yards (91 m) from the muzzle of the weapon to a point not less than 1,600 yards (1,463 m) from the muzzle.Tracer: R256The cartridge is identified by an orange bullet tip.Type Classification: STD - OTCM 37107Used by M2 and M85 machine guns, and the M107 Long Range Sniper Rifle. The cartridge tracer is intended to permit visible observation of the bullets in-flight path or trajectory to the point of impact.Trace range: 2,679 yards (2,450 m)Tracer: R256The cartridge is identified by a brown bullet tip.Type Classification: CON - MSR 11756003Used by M2 and M85 machine guns, and the M107 Long Range Sniper Rifle. The cartridge combines the functions of the armor piercing and the incendiary bullet, and is used against flammable targets and light-armored or unarmored targets, concrete shelters, and similar bullet-resisting targets. This tracer is dim at near ranges, but increases to bright as it moves further from the gun.Armor Penetration.500 meters: 0.83 in (21 mm)1,200 meters: 0.43 in (11 mm)Incendiary composition: 27 grains (1.74 g) IM 161Trace range: 328 - 1,914 yards (300 - 1,750 m)Tracer: R256The cartridge is identified by a red bullet tip with an aluminum colored ring to the rear of the red tip.Type Classification: OBS - MSR 04776009Used by M2 and M85 machine guns. The cartridge is used against flammable targets. The cartridge is capable of initiating combustion of flammable materials upon target impact at 175 yards (160 m).Incendiary composition: 90 grains (5.83 g) IM 28The cartridge is identified by a blue bullet tip with a light blue ring to the rear of the blue tip.Type Classification: STD - OTCM 36841Used by M2 and M85 machine guns, and the M107 Long Range Sniper Rifle. The cartridge is intended for use against personnel or unarmored targets.Armor Penetration.500 meters: 0.32 in (8 mm)1,200 meters: 0.16 in (4 mm)The cartridge is identified by a plain bullet tip.Type Classification: STD - OTCM 36841Used by M2 machine gun with the M3 Recoil Amplifier. The cartridge is intended for scaled range training purposes, where range restrictions limit or prohibit the use of one of the other types of live ammunition.Maximum range: 765 yards (700 m)The cartridge is identified by the blue bullet and case which are molded into one piece with high density polyethylene plastic.Type Classification: STD. Type Classification Date: 24-MAY-1983Used by M2 machine gun with the M3 Recoil Amplifier. The cartridge tracer is intended for scaled range training to permit visible observation of the bullet's in-flight path or trajectory to the point of impact. The cartridge is intended for use with the M858 Plastic Practice Ball Cartridge.Maximum range: 765 yards (700 m)Trace range: 22 - 164 yards (20 - 150 m)Tracer: DAG9591254/4The cartridge is identified by a red bullet tip and the blue bullet and case which are molded into one piece with high density polyethylene plastic.Type Classification: STD. Type Classification Date: 24-MAY-1983Used by M2HB machine gun. The SLAP is used in combat against current and future light armored targets and Armored Attack Helicopters (AAHs). The M903 offers the capability to defeat these targets at ranges two to three times that of currently available ammunition.Armor Penetration.500 meters: 1.34 in (34 mm)1,200 meters: 0.91 in (23 mm)Projectile diameter: 0.30 inches (7.7 mm)The cartridge consists of a heavy metal (tungsten) penetrator that is sabot-launched at a much higher velocity than standard rounds. The sabot, which is designed to break up at the muzzle to release the penetrator, must also survive the gun environment until launch. It is injection molded of special high strength plastic and is reinforced with an aluminum insert in the base section. The cartridge is identified by an amber sabot (Ultem 1000).Type Classification: STD. Type Classification Date: 31-MAR-1993Unit cost: $8.87 (Fiscal Year 2005)Used by M2HB machine gun. For use against light armor vehicles and aircraft with the additional tracer feature. This round is also for use in M1-series Abrams Tank gunnery training using a subcaliber insert.Projectile diameter: 0.30 inches (7.7 mm)Tracer: R543The Saboted Light Armor Penetrator with Tracer (SLAP-T), M962 cartridge consists of a tungsten alloy penetrator of the same mass as the Saboted Light Armor Penetrator (SLAP), M903. The sabot, which is designed to break up at the muzzle to release the penetrator, must also survive the gun environment until launch. It is injection molded of special high strength plastic and is reinforced with an aluminum insert in the base section. The tungsten alloy penetrator has a slot in the base to insure full spin-up before separation from the sabot at the muzzle. The penetrator base is cored out to accommodate a trace mix composition.The cartridge is identified by a red sabot (Ultem 1000).Type Classification: STD. Type Classification Date: 31-MAR-1993Unit cost: $12.85 (Fiscal Year 2005)Used by M2 machine gun and the M107 Long Range Sniper Rifle. For use against light armored vehicles and aircraft. This cartridge provides improved penetration performance against enemy personnel and light armor vehicles.Explosive: 13 grains (0.84 g) Comp A-4Incendiary composition: 13.1 grains (0.85 g) #136This cartridge is identified by green bullet tip identification paint. The projectile consists of a brass jacket surrounding a steel body and tungsten core with incendiary and high explosive charges.Type Classification: STD. Type Classification Date: FEB-1996 (for U.S. Army)UPDATE: Expect multiple 100-plus-degree days next week, National Weather Service says
How many fans do you have at your house? How many wading pools? How many popsicles? That's probably not enough. Because next Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service, temperatures could get into the low 100s.
Some weather apps are listing a high of 107, and one person in The Oregonian/OregonLive's office even caught their app suggesting it might be 108. If Portland reaches 107, it will tie the all-time record for hottest day. 108 will break the record.
"107 has been hit three times," Will Ahue, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said Friday. "July 30, 1965, Aug. 8 and Aug. 10, 1981."
Ahue thinks that 107 is a little high of an estimate, at least for now. Currently the National Weather Service is predicting 100 or 101 degrees for Wednesday.
The rest of the week should be warm too.
"We are looking at a week of hot weather coming our way," Ahue said over the phone. "We have hot weather building into the area this weekend."
Tuesday's high is forecasted, as of now, at 97 degrees and Thursday's is 95.
By Friday, Ahue said, the temperatures should cool down into the upper 80s.
It's possible, even likely, that Wednesday's temperature will be record breaking, according to the National Weather Service. The current record for that day at the Portland Airport comes from 1986, when it temperatures reached 96 degrees.
There's another record that Portland won't break next week: longest streak of days without measurable precipitation.
"We are currently sitting at 42 days including today," Ahue said. "Right now, it's still out of the top 10."
The record? 71 days in 1967.
-- Lizzy Acker
503-221-8052
lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyackerThe dual camera setup featured on the LG G6 isn't new. This particular configuration was first introduced in LG's V10, which was released under the guise of being the content creator's ultimate camera smartphone. It's a great phone, though not necessarily aimed at the mainstream, with camera modes to appease the casual photography all the way to the serious videographer. But which one is worth buying?
The hardware + specs I took a pre-production version of the LG G6 out for a day on the town along with last year's LG V20 in tow. Both phones boast a dual camera setup, though they're both equipped with different hardware. The G6 comes with two identical 13-megapixel sensors — with one regular 28mm equivalent lens, and the other a wide-angle 18mm lens — while the V20 packs a regular 16-megapixel main sensor along with an 8-megapixel wide-angle one. For the most part, there's no striking difference in performance between the two devices, though the G6 does feel like a more polished version of what the V20 was aiming to do when it was initially launched late last year. Significantly, LG heard feedback that the output between the V20's (and predecessor G5's) two cameras were too different, owing to variances in the sensors. The company attempted to address that issue by giving the G6 identical sensors at different focal lengths.
Performance and Interface If you've used an LG smartphone In the past year, you may be familiar with the camera app's relatively simple user interface. I like camera apps that don't overwhelm you with options and camera modes all at once, and for the most part both the LG G6 and V20 succeed in that element. There are some nuances with the camera app on LG's newest phone, however, that may take some getting used to.
First off, the G6's camera app takes advantage of its long, 18:9 screen by offering a camera roll of sorts to appear at the top of the viewfinder. It made me feel slightly claustrophobic at first, though, as I had the viewfinder pointed in the direction of the scene I wanted to shoot and a camera roll simultaneously updating on top every time I pressed the shutter button. Eventually, I came to appreciate the convenience of being able to quickly preview the last few shots I'd managed. It's the equivalent of perusing through previous shots on a DSLR, for example. The interface refreshes the camera roll, too, and it disappears and starts over with every new shooting sessions. It's not particularly user-friendly to hide the HDR toggle behind a menu. Second — and this is actually an annoyance with the V20, too — there is no button on the main viewfinder to quickly toggle on HDR. I imagine that would have crowded the interface with the wide-angle toggle resting pretty on the screen, but it's not particularly user-friendly to hide it in the camera app's settings panel either. Regardless, LG's camera app is one of the least user offensive offered up in Android camera land. The various other modes — besides HDR — are easy to toggle between and fairly self-explanatory. There's also an options-within-a-feature menu offered for each individual mode; for example, you can switch between manual and automatic shooting when in auto-shooting mode. This particular menu screen shows up in the second screen on the V20. The G6 introduces one new feature that might be helpful if you're a social media fiend. The guided picture mode, available as part of the square shooting option, lets you program oft-used guides as you need for shooting a photo a certain way, whether that's the way you hold something or simply ensuring that your backdrop is always on par. I'm still attempting to figure out useful situations for the other square camera modes related to this, but I'll follow up in the second-round review of the flagship. Both the LG G6 and V20 were quick to launch and zippy to use, and despite the G6's pre-production software, I experienced no sudden crashes. I was a bit concerned about the G6's focus abilities, however. I thought maybe the camera lens was a bit smudged, but even after wiping it I continued to have issues focusing on objects, particularly close up. Lastly, and I'm happy to see this particular gesture implemented: both the LG G6 and V20 have quick camera launch abilities. From the main Settings panel, you can flip the switch to bring up the camera app with a double-press of the volume down button. Photo Quality There is not much disparity between the photos produced by the LG G6 and V20. You'll only notice the slight differentiators if you're really paying attention, and if you're one of those people, then you should also know that the G6 offered the most malleability of the two, at least in terms of dynamic range. The G6 and V20 may both shoot in RAW format, if you so desire, but the former tends to retain more information to work with after the fact, not to mention that the photos it produces are sharper — despite having fewer megapixels. Daylight
In daylight, the LG G6 and V20 seemed to perform nearly neck and neck. Whether I was shooting vibrantly-colored red cars or lazily pointing the camera toward docked yachts, I was pleased with the overall performance of both smartphones. They both share a few flaws, too, like an ineffective digital zoom (you can peep this in the example above) and the tendency to automatically overexpose parts of a photo (this is particularly prevalent if you're shooting in HDR). The G6 was the better performer of the two smartphones because its end result tended to be better contrasted, even when the blue hues seemed to be displayed more vibrantly on the V20. The G6 also seemed to practice better white balancing than the V20, which was extremely helpful as I was shooting outside on a rainy day. And though most of the G6's photo files were a megabyte or two smaller than the V20's, owing to the lower-megapixel sensor, the photos tended to be slightly sharper, with better detail — a phenomenon that LG has managed to achieve despite putting a smaller 1/3" sensor in the G6 compared to the V20's 1/2.6" primary. Low light
The LG G6's 1.12-micron pixels performed impressively well in low light environments. Remember how I said it was good at color balance, too? That comes through in darker photos, as seen in example above of the altar with the candlelight. I also liked the way the G6 captured the different colors of the decoden I have sprawled out on the table with the aid of a spotlight, whereas the V20 seemed to over process the color profile of each one. Still, both cameras performed well in low light conditions, and I was pleased with both soft-lighted portrait shots produced by the G6 and V20. I also noticed that without the manual mode flipped on, the photos you shoot with the G6 or V20 in the dark will attempt to expose the entire scene, thus resulting in the overexposure of the actual light source. You can't tell there's a tea light candle in there. The G6's result is definitely more detailed, though — when I zoom in, I can more easily distinguish the different threads in the yarn, for example, whereas the V20's pixels appear muddled together. Bottom line
This little comparison article has turned into a sort of revelatory journey on how the cameras have improved on LG's smartphones. To my eyes, this is the first time in a while that an LG smartphone can compete alongside what Samsung puts out — not to mention the Pixel (though it remains to be seen what the Galaxy S8 is capable of). In daylight, the LG G6 takes bright and vibrant photos that aren't overexposed. Conversely, the LG V20, which was marketed as the content creator's phone, often produced unbalanced photos and didn't offer nearly as much detail. If you're considering the V20 because of its sale price, you'll get a camera that's nearly as good as the LG's latest. The LG G6 is also a true performer in low light situations, though the V20 was fine, too. The pictures may not have been as sharp as what the G6 produced, but consider that they were considered the best low light photos that LG offered mere months ago. If anything, this comparison proves the LG V20 is a good bargain and with a discount it's likely more affordable than what your carrier is charging for the G6. LG's latest flagship certainly offers its own upsides for the extra cost, but you can rest easy knowing that if you're considering the V20 because of its sale price, you'll get a camera that's nearly as good as the LG's latest flagship.PLACENTIA The last of four men charged with murdering a 35-year-old Placentia resident in an armed robbery gone wrong was arrested this week after three months on the lam, police said.
Augustin Velasquez, 20, from the Anaheim area, was arrested without incident between Thursday afternoon in Buena Park after being pulled over, said Placentia Sgt. Bryce Angel. Detectives were following up on leads and saw him drive away from a location they were watching in a relative’s car.
Velasquez and three others are accused of fatally shooting Robert Rios around 11:40 p.m. on Jan. 19 at his house in the 900 block of Vista Avenue. in Placentia.
Charles Coghill, 33, was arrested in Fullerton on April 6, Angel said. He has since pleaded not guilty. Ricardo Valenzuela, 37, and Israel Cordova, 31, were already in Orange County Jail on unrelated charges when they were charged in Rios’ murder.
All four were charged with special-circumstances murder several weeks ago, court filings show, meaning they could face the death penalty if convicted. They were also charged with first-degree burglary.
Surveillance video released in early March show three men carrying rifles walking through a front gate and into the yard of the Vista Avenue house. They then appear to get into an argument with someone. The men, who continually exit and enter the frame, then hastily flee, the video shows.
The men had gone there to steal from Rios, Angel said. “They knew him and targeted him. But he fought back, and a struggle ensued.”
The suspects didn’t take anything because the shooting scared them off, Angel said. The murder weapons have not been found. The four suspects are from different gangs but were working together, Bryce said.
Staff Writer Sean Emery contributed to this report.An article by Lucy Parsons about the Haymarket martyrs.
Once again on November 11 a memorial meeting will be held to commemorate the death of the Chicago Haymarket martyrs-1937 is the fiftieth anniversary and this meeting bids fair to be more widely observed than any of the forty-nine previous ones.
It has taken fifty years to dig the facts of this case out from under the mountains of lies that was heaped upon our martyrs by the exploiters in their attempt to cover up their crime of sending five labor leaders to the gallows. You will hear people say today, as one said to me recently, "What! Calling those Haymarket bomb throwers martyrs? Do you think I believe that? You will have to show me."
Now I am writing this article to "show" all such doubting Thomases.
The Protest Meeting
The Haymarket meeting was held as a protest against the brutality of the police who, during the great strike for the eight-hour work day of 188.6, tried with all the vicious power at their command to defeat the hopes of the workers. At noon on May 3, 1886, the striking workers of the McCormick reaper works were discussing their problems in a, mass meeting near the plant when two patrol wagons loaded with policemen appeared. With drawn clubs the police rushed down upon the workers, clubbing them. Two workers were shot.
The next evening the famous Haymarket meet-ing was held to protest against this and other outrages of the police. This meeting was attended by about 3;000 people, men and women. I myself was there with our two children.
The meeting was perfectly peaceful but when it was about to adjourn a company of police charged upon it and ordered the crowd to disperse. At the onrush of these police, violators of the law they were sworn to uphold, someone—to this day he. is unknown—hurled a. bomb into the ranks of the police. Then hell broke loose!
The "Anarchist" Craze
The papers came out next morning with great flare headlines, "The anarchist dynamiters,, bomb-throwers had started a riot and had intended to blow up the city; and but for the courage of the police they would have thrown many more bombs," and so on. They demanded that the leaders be arrested and made examples of.
Six weeks later eight men (our Chicago martyrs) were arraigned in a prejudiced court before a prejudiced judge and a packed jury. They were charged with murder.
Mayor Harrison of Chicago testified for the defense. Here are a few lines from his testimony:
"I went to the meeting for the purpose of dis-persing it should it require my attention, when the meeting was about to adjourn I went to the station (about half a block away) and told Captain Bonfield to send his reserves home, that the meeting was about to adjourn, that the speeches were tame."
But State's Attorney Grinell, pointing to the defendents, said:
"These defendents are, not more guilty than the thousands who follow them; they were selected by the grand jury because they were leaders. Convict them and save our society."
Bailiff Rylance was heard to remark:
"I am managing this case. Those fellows will hang as sure as death. I am selecting men that will compel the defense to waste their challenges, then they will have to take such men as the prosecution wants."
Triumph of Reaction
The trial, so-called, lasted sixty-three days. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty in three hours.
The judge in dismissing the jury-men thanked them for the verdict and told them that carriages were outside to take them home. The capitalists were overjoyed. A sum of $100,000 was paid the jury. The Chicago Tribune on August 20 opened its columns thus:
"The twelve good men and true have rendered a just verdict, let them be generously remembered. Raise a sum of '$100,000 to be paid with the thanks of a grateful public."
When the march to the gallows was begun all the men showed remarkable courage without the slightest tinge of bravado. Parsons was wonderfully composed. The moment his feet touched the gal-lows he seemed to lose his identity... "No tragedian ever made a more marvelous presentation of a self-chosen part," a capitalist paper reported.
On that gloomy morning of November 11, 1887, I took our two little children to the jail to bid my beloved husband farewell. I found the jail roped off with heavy cables. Policemen with pistols walked in the inclosure.
I asked them to allow us to go to our loved one before they murdered him. They said nothing.
Then I said, "Let these children bid their father goodby, let them receive his blessing. They can do no harm."
In a few minutes a patrol wagon drove up and we were locked up in a police station while the hellish deed was done.
Oh, Misery, I have drunk thy cup of sorrow to its dregs but I am still a rebel.
Originally appeared in The One Big Union Monthly (November 1937)TOKYO - Japan raised the severity level of the crisis at its crippled nuclear plant Tuesday to rank it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, citing cumulative radiation leaks that have contaminated the air, tap water, vegetables and seawater.
Japanese nuclear regulators said the rating was being raised from 5 to 7 the highest level on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency after new assessments of radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant since it was disabled by the March 11 tsunami.
The new ranking signifies a "major accident" that includes widespread effects on the environment and health, according to the Vienna-based IAEA.
While Japanese officials have played down any health effects so far, the revision came a day after the government added five communities to a list of places people should leave to avoid long-term radiation exposure. A 12-mile radius already had been cleared around the plant.
Japanese officials have said the leaks from the Fukushima plant so far amount to a tenth of the radiation emitted in the Chernobyl disaster, while acknowledging they eventually could exceed Chernobyl's emissions if the crisis continues.
"This reconfirms that this is an extremely major disaster. We are very sorry to the public, people living near the nuclear complex and the international community for causing such a serious accident," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano.
But Edano told reporters there was no "direct health damage" so far from the crisis. "The accident itself is really serious, but we have set our priority so as not to cause health damage."
To quell anxiety, the government has launched statewide radiation screenings of citizens and property at thousands of checkpoints, but the government's assurances have provided little comfort to the residents of Fukushima, reports CBS News correspondent Lucy Craft.
Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear physicist at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, said the revision was not a cause for worry, that it had to do with the overall release of radiation and was not directly linked to health dangers. He said most of the radiation was released early in the crisis and that the reactors still have mostly intact containment vessels surrounding their nuclear cores.
The change was "not directly connected to the environmental and health effects," Unesaki said. "Judging from all the measurement data, it is quite under control. It doesn't mean that a significant amount of release is now continuing."
Reality Check: |
Google +?By Austin Zamora, Caraway, Arkansas, USA
I firmly believe God’s timing is perfect, and it’s never been more evident to me than in my journey to Community of Christ.
During the summer of 2012 I met a customer at work, and we soon began discussing faith. I was thirsting for a church where I felt welcomed and could be used. She invited me to visit her Community of Christ congregation. I told her I would consider it. But time passed, and I didn’t get there.
My thirst, however, continued. I prayed harder than ever that God would guide me according to God’s time and will. On February 15, 2013, Mrs. Janie messaged me on Facebook and invited me to her Wednesday class at the Caraway Congregation.
I asked God if this is where God wanted me, and I had never felt more led by the Holy Spirit.
The first moment I walked into the church I felt the Holy Spirit, and I felt welcomed. I had found where I belonged.
On June 2, 2013, I was confirmed as a member of Community of Christ. I have found where God wants me and where I can be used. God’s timing is perfect.
AdvertisementsSaturday night during the Invicta show, Mauro Ranallo interviewed Miesah Tate about the arm damaged in the title fight with Ronda Rousey.
Mauro Ranallo: When are you supposed to be back in action?
Miesha Tate: You know I haven’t got any clearance from the doctors yet. I’m going in for my two month checkup here in a minute. But you know the arm is doing really well. Definitely beating any predictions as far as my recovery. So… I’m really anxious to get back in there.
MR: What was the extent of the injury because I know you tweeted a picture of the arm and it wasn’t broken or anything? What happened to the arm in that fight?
MT: I basically tore everything. I tore the inner and outer sides of my ligaments attached to the muscles and bone. They actually pulled the bone off with the ligament and then I tore all the muscles around that. So… it was pretty bad, but you know for me it wasn’t really that bad. I think that… I have the motto that as long as you get up one more time than you fall down then… you know what I mean, you are doing something right? So I’ll be back stronger than ever.Transatlantic Take
WASHINGTON - On Tuesday night, the unthinkable happened. The most urgent task now is to think about what other previously unthinkable things might follow from Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States. There has already been much discussion about whether Trump will turn out to be a less radical president than he suggested during the election campaign — either because he never actually believed all the things he said, or because he will appoint and listen to more sensible advisers, or because he will be constrained by the bureaucracy or the checks and balances in the U.S. political system. In reality, just as we still don’t know whether we will get a “hard” or “soft” Brexit, we don’t yet know whether we will get a “hard” or “soft” Trump presidency.
However, regardless of how radical President Trump turns out in reality to be, the uncertainty created by his election will have consequences of its own that could itself lead to the unraveling of the liberal international order that has evolved over the last 70 years. Given the tendency towards complacency among Western elites, even after the shock of the British vote to leave the European Union in June, it seems to me that we should no longer take for granted almost anything about the world we live in. Is it possible, as the Indian analyst Ashok Malik recently suggested, that international politics may now be returning to “normality” — that is, the way it was for centuries — after what will turn out to be an exceptional period of cooperation after 1945?
In order to answer this question, we should put aside our assumptions about the way the world is (as opposed to the way we want it to be) and think as objectively as is possible about what dangers it might now face. It seems to me there are three levels of danger that we should distinguish. It’s not yet clear to me which of the three are real — or even, given our inability to predict recent shocks, how we should think about which of them are real. But perhaps distinguishing and describing them, even at the risk of being accused of being hyperbolic, will help us to understand where we now are – and what is now at stake.
First, there is a real danger of trade wars. Trump’s thinking on trade breaks with 200 years of economic orthodoxy. He has promised to repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement and to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership and even threatened to leave the World Trade Organization altogether. He has said that, on day one of his presidency, he would declare China a currency manipulator and impose tariffs. It may be that Trump does not go through with much of this. For example, Dani Rodrik has argued that while Trump may erect some trade barriers, he will not “engage in indiscriminate protectionism.” “He will understand soon, if he does not now, the senselessness of blanket protectionism.” We will see whether this turns out to be correct — or simply another example of complacency.
Second, there is a danger of conventional military conflicts. Trump has threatened to respond aggressively to challengesto American power - such as those from Iran naval vessels in the Gulf. As Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution put it, “If you literally implement his [campaign’s] security policy, you’re probably risking war in multiple theaters simultaneously.” Again, some analysts say that Trump will not follow through on his campaign rhetoric. Some say his limited attention will be on domestic issues and he will delegate foreign policy to others in his cabinet. We simply don’t yet know. But we should not make the mistake of assuming that the United States is the only actor in international politics that matters. Instead — and unlike on trade policy — it is likely is that other actors will respond to the radical uncertainty created by Trump’s election.
In particular, China and Russia are likely to test the new U.S. president. Even before his election, against the background of a widespread perception of American decline and retrenchment, they were “probing the peripheries” of American power. Now, they are likely to go much further — and perhaps rather quickly. In short, the demands on the United States to demonstrate “credibility” will increase at a moment at which the ability and willingness of the United States to do so is dramatically reduced. Trump has called NATO “obsolete” and refused to commit to defending U.S allies. Given this uncertainty, countries that have depended on U.S. power for their security and to balance against perceived threats from regional powers are also likely to take action. This could itself lead to military conflicts.
This brings us to the third and scariest danger: nuclear proliferation. Trump has promised to tear up the Iranian deal negotiated by President Barack Obama (“the worst deal ever negotiated” in Trump’s words), which could lead immediately to proliferation in the Middle East. Moreover, it is no longer clear that the U.S. nuclear deterrent is credible elsewhere in the world. In particular Japan — which, as Tom Wright has shown, Trump has been particularly critical of — will wonder whether it can still rely on the U.S. nuclear deterrent. This new danger of proliferation takes place at a time when Russia has made nuclear blackmail a part of their strategy. In short, we should perhaps even think about whether there is now, suddenly, a real risk of a nuclear conflict.
Photo credit: Gage SkidmoreA Guinea Pig for Geniuses!
My students need supplies for our new adopted guinea pig this fall! We are hoping to have a comfortable home for him in August!
My Students
Hello! We are a class of 24, currently! We grow and learn at a Title 1 school in Louisville Kentucky. We are at 98% free and reduced lunches. I wanted to give my students an experience at school that they may not have at home and bring a classroom pet into the mix. I know it will be a lot of extra work for me, but it is always FOR THE KIDS! They are growing and changing everyday and to be able to be apart of that is a reward within itself! Thank you for checking out my project!
My ProjectCocaine Case Puts Spotlight On Fetal Harm Prosecutions
A Mississippi judge has thrown out a murder charge against Rennie Gibbs. At age 16, she gave birth to a stillborn child who tested positive for a cocaine byproduct. Tell Me More looks into the case.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Now we turn to a case that may have implications for how the law treats pregnant women. A Mississippi judge has thrown out a murder charge against Rennie Gibbs. The charge came after Gibbs, then 16 years old, gave birth to a stillborn child. That was in 2006.
The baby was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, but the medical examiner also reportedly found traces of a cocaine byproduct in her system, and that's what led to the murder charge. The case has put another spotlight on the debate over so-called fetal harm prosecutions.
Theses are cases where a pregnant mother is charged for actions that are deemed harmful to a fetus. Joining us to talk about these issues is Lynn Paltrow. She is the executive director of a group called National Advocates for Pregnant Women. And she served as co-counsel on the Gibbs case. Lynn Paltrow, thanks so much for joining us.
LYNN PALTROW: Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: And I do want to mention that we did reach out to the Mississippi Attorney General's office before the murder charges were dropped, and they told us then that they couldn't comment on the case at the time because of the pending trial.
Now the prosecutor in charge of the case did tell local reporters that he plans to file manslaughter charges when the next grand jury meets. So, Lynn Paltrow, let's clarify what's happening here. The murder charge has been dropped, I take it that speaks to premeditation. But if the prosecutor indicates that manslaughter will be pursued, what does that mean? What is manslaughter?
PALTROW: Well, first of all, the depraved heart homicide law under which Ms. Gibbs was charged is not really even intentional, which tells you that when you make murder laws apply to pregnant women it doesn't require that they have any intent to do harm, they just have to do something that somebody thinks is dangerous.
And that's somewhat similar with the manslaughter charge - that you engage in an activity that may not have been intended to result in death, but was thoughtless, negligent or so forth. And...
MARTIN: Now one of your arguments is that the - as we mentioned - that the examiner pointed out that the fetal remains reportedly tested positive for a cocaine byproduct, not cocaine itself, but you were saying that this and other prosecutions based on maternal drug use are based on a flawed premise. What do you mean by that?
PALTROW: Well, the law that Ms. Gibbs is prosecuted under isn't a drug law, it has nothing to do with drugs. It says that the persecutor is using laws that were passed to punish third parties who attacked pregnant women. That established separate rights for fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses - allegedly to protect pregnant women from attacks and violence - to punish women who can't guarantee healthy birth outcomes.
Fifteen to 20 percent of all pregnancies in the United States end in miscarriage or stillbirth. So the prosecutor's way of thinking makes it the fact that by becoming pregnant, a woman puts her unborn child at risk of death and puts herself as a potential subject of arrest and prosecution.
MARTIN: If there is not a healthy outcome - is that what you're saying?
PALTROW: Well, actually, that's not even true. It can be if there's a pregnancy loss, if there's an unhealthy outcome or in South Carolina, it's creating a risk of harm, even if there is no harm or even if the risk is less than, for example, smoking cigarettes. And to answer your earlier question, women in fact - for example, a woman in Utah give birth to twins. One was stillborn.
She was arrested under the state's feticide laws, also intended for punishing third parties, because doctors at the hospital claimed her refusal of cesarean surgery two weeks earlier. Her exercise of her right to medical decision-making was what caused the stillbirth, and they arrested her. We've worked on cases where - and people have to again think about what the consequences of this are. Last summer, a doctor sent an email to a woman saying that if she didn't come in immediately for cesarean surgery, he would be forced to move to the most extreme option which is having law enforcement pick you up at your house.
MARTIN: Well, hold on a second. So you're very focused on what you see as - and what - you're saying that history shows, in some cases, where these laws are applied - or the consequences for women and treating them as a separate class of people. But what about - as you - but you also pointed out that some of these prosecutions are directing - are happening under laws that were directed against people who assault pregnant women or injure them in some way that leads to a miscarriage.
I mean, under that principle, I mean, is there not a case to be made that once a fetus is viable that if somebody does engage in conduct which is known to be harmful, like using crack cocaine, that they are responsible in some way or at least have an ability to foretell that there could be a negative outcome? What's your response to that?
PALTROW: Well, first of all, as I said, every woman who becomes pregnant unfortunately has a 15 to 20 percent of losing that pregnancy. People who attack a pregnant woman are not the same as the woman who at her risk to her own life and health become pregnant and seek to continue that pregnancy to term.
And fortunately and despite the drug war stigmatizing propaganda, none of the criminalized drugs are more risky during pregnancy than smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol. Far more women have health problems that create risks during pregnancy, such as obesity, who live in poverty, who smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol than all the women who use any criminalized drug put together. We tend to focus on that because we're in the middle of an ongoing, counterproductive and dangerous drug war.
And as every leading medical group to address this issue has said, if you want to create greater risks for unborn and born children, then by all means threaten women with arrest or child welfare interventions. If you want healthy babies, you have to create a wall of love, not a wall of blue.
MARTIN: Is your main concern here that these prosecutions are based on flawed scientific knowledge or basically really limited understanding of what actually causes miscarriage, or is it your underlying concern that this, as we mentioned, creates a different legal status for pregnant women?
PALTROW: It's both. I mean, we live in a country where low-income people who are charged with crimes very rarely have the opportunity to have experts testify on their behalf. And the risk of using junk science is greatest for pregnant women because if you have a pregnant woman and a bad pregnancy outcome, of course she's going to have done something that you can blame her for.
And the particular focus on cocaine and other drugs is based primarily on junk science. The research over and over again fortunately says it creates risks of harm, but like those of cigarettes. That's one concern - by the way, my mother smoked cigarettes during her pregnancy. These are increased risks. People don't - in the 87 percent of counties in this country that don't have an abortion provider, they don't say, well, I guess I don't have to find one. I can just go smoke a pack of cigarettes. That's not how it works.
But the other concern is that if we allow the criminal justice and the punitive child welfare system to treat pregnant women as subject to those very punitive controlling systems, you are establishing that upon becoming pregnant - and these laws increasingly apply from the moment a woman is carrying a fertilized egg - to a separate status in which her medical records are not confidential, in which she's not allowed to make medical decisions, in which her literal physical liberty is at stake because somebody outside decides she's creating some kind of risk to her future child.
MARTIN: If you're just joining us, we're talking about so-called fetal harm laws. We're speaking with Lynn Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women. That's a group that served as co-counsel on the case of Rennie Gibbs, which is what we're speaking about now.
A Mississippi judge has just thrown out the murder charge against Rennie Gibbs, but the local prosecutor addressing the case says that he will re-file manslaughter charges when the grand jury reconvenes later on this year. And we do want to mention once again that we did reach out to the Mississippi Attorney General's office last week before the charges were dropped to ask them to join our conversation, and they declined.
So a final word from you on this, Lynn Paltow. Is it your - I think people listening to our conversation would argue that you are defending known unhealthy practices, that we do give, you know, pregnant women, you know - well, perhaps not a lot of legal protection, but cultural protection. We do believe that they sort of deserve some kind of special care, and your argument is that legally, that that kind of difference is - isn't recognized and is in fact dangerous. Is that your point of view?
PALTROW: Well, special care is not putting people in prisons or the child labor system. And I would urge people to go check out the health care that's available in those places. But it's not a defense of less than healthy.
It is a defense of the humanity of mothers. The biggest threats to life, born and unborn, do not come from mothers. They come from poverty, barriers to health care, persistent racism, environmental hazards and prosecutions like these that will frighten women away from getting help from the problems they do have.
MARTIN: Lynn Palrow is the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women. She was co-counsel in the Rennie Gibbs case, and she joined us from our bureau in New York. Lynn Paltrow, thanks for joining us.
PALTROW: You're welcome.
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An argument between two groups of people outside a movie multiplex in Oakland's Jack London Square erupted in gunfire that wounded five people and sent theater customers scrambling for cover, police said Monday.
The victims were wounded when a man opened fire at a crowd outside the Regal Cinemas Jack London Stadium at 100 Washington St. at 9:20 p.m. Sunday before fleeing on foot and then possibly getting into a car, police said.
The gunman was in a group that had been involved in an argument with a second group near the theater shortly before the shooting, said Officer Johnna Watson, a police spokeswoman. The nature of the dispute wasn't known.
The two groups happened to be outside the theater at the time, Watson said. "We don't have any indication that anyone was going to the movies or coming from the movies," she said.
However, the street was crowded with theater customers, who scattered when the gunfire broke out. Some ran to a nearby hotel for cover.
"Everybody started running," witness Rodric Stanley told reporters. "I hid and that's pretty much about it."
None of the victims suffered life-threatening wounds, police said.
A 15-year-old boy underwent surgery, and the others, three young men ages 15, 17, and 18 and a 23-year-old woman, suffered minor wounds to their legs, authorities said.
No arrest has been made.
Jack London Square has undergone extensive development and revitalization in recent years, but violence is not unheard of there.
On a Saturday night in 2005, two gunmen opened fire at gang rivals outside the Regal Cinemas, sending dozens of people ducking for cover. No one was hurt.
Last year, a man with an assault rifle killed two people and wounded four others in a restaurant on the 300 block of Broadway, about three blocks from the Sunday night shooting.
"This is not a surprise," Dipesh Chhetri, 28, of Alameda, who works at a hotel in the area, said of the latest violence. "It's a good neighborhood, but stuff happens."
But Andrew Kirsch, 35, who was walking near the theater Monday with his 5-year-old Chihuahua-terrier mix Hulk, said, "It's totally unexpected. This area is pretty safe to live in, and it's usually pretty quiet around here."Man hit by Caltrain in Redwood City dies, official says
A man hit by Caltrain in Redwood City died Monday night, an official said. A man hit by Caltrain in Redwood City died Monday night, an official said. Photo: Paul Chinn / Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn / Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Man hit by Caltrain in Redwood City dies, official says 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
A train struck and killed a man on the southbound Caltrain tracks near Redwood City Station Monday evening, a spokeswoman said. It was Caltrain’s first fatality of 2017.
The man, believed to be in his early 20s, was trespassing on the tracks around Brewster Avenue near the station when the train hit him around 5:00 p.m., said the spokeswoman, Tasha Bartholomew.
As investigators processed the scene, widespread delays occurred throughout much of Caltrain’s system.
There were 12 fatalities on the Caltrain tracks in 2016, down from 20 the year before, Bartholomew said.
Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @michael_bodleyOver the course of Mr. Keller’s tenure, the paper won 18 Pulitzer Prizes and expanded its online audience to some 50 million readers worldwide. But the economic downturn and the drift of readers and advertisers to the Web also forced the paper to lay off members of the news staff and tighten budgets considerably.
“A couple of years ago, everybody was wringing their hands about doomsday for the news business,” Mr. Keller said to the staff, his voice emotional at times. “People talked, some of them rather smugly, about even The New York Times not being long for this world. And now you look around, and we are economically sturdy. We are rich in talent. We are growing.”
Mr. Keller will continue to write for The Times Magazine and as a columnist for the new Sunday opinion section, which will make its debut this month. Mr. Sulzberger said he accepted Mr. Keller’s resignation “with mixed emotions,” adding that the decision to leave was entirely Mr. Keller’s.
Mr. Keller, 62, is still a few years shy of the paper’s mandatory retirement age for senior executives, but he held the top job for roughly the same period of time as Max Frankel and Joseph Lelyveld, two of the editors who preceded him. Mr. Frankel and Mr. Lelyveld returned to the newsroom for the announcement.
Mr. Keller had asked Ms. Abramson to be his managing editor in 2003 as he assembled a team that he hoped would restore confidence in the paper after the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal. Ms. Abramson had been part of a group of editors who clashed with Howell Raines, the executive editor who was forced out after Mr. Blair’s fraud was discovered.
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Ms. Abramson, 57, said being named executive editor was “the honor of my life” and like “ascending to Valhalla” for someone who read The Times as a young girl growing up in New York. “We are held together by our passion for our work, our friendship and our deep belief in the mission and indispensability of The Times,” she said. “I look forward to working with all of you to seize our future. In this thrilling and challenging transition, we will cross to safety together.”
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The selection of Ms. Abramson is something of a departure for The Times, an institution that has historically chosen executive editors who ascended the ranks through postings in overseas bureaus and managing desks like Foreign or Metro.
Ms. Abramson came to The Times in 1997 from The Wall Street Journal, where she was a deputy bureau chief and an investigative reporter for nine years. She rose quickly at The Times, becoming Washington editor in 1999 and then bureau chief in 2000. She stepped aside temporarily from her day-to-day duties as managing editor last year to help run The Times’s online operations, a move she asked to make so she could develop fuller, firsthand experience with the integration of the digital and print staffs.
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In her remarks to the staff on Thursday, she took time to acknowledge “my sisters,” naming more than a dozen women at The Times who have helped her along the way, including the company’s chief executive, Janet L. Robinson. “Every executive editor stands on the shoulders of others,” she said.
In an interview, Ms. Abramson said she would turn her attention toward a full plate of tasks, focusing first on integrating the digital and print operations more fully, retaining top talent and making NYTimes.com more of an online community.
She also said she believed The Times could be more efficiently managed. “We have a culture of consensus at The Times, and that’s wonderful in one way. But it’s hobbling in others,” she said. “I think it’s possible to preserve the good things about the culture of consensus. But I know Arthur is also very concerned about creating a culture of effectiveness and follow-through.”
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Asking Mr. Baquet to become her deputy was Ms. Abramson’s first major move. As managing editor for news he will supervise the daily report, a job he said he planned to do through constant direct collaborations with editors and reporters.
“My main goal,” he told the staff, “is to stay as close as possible to news gathering. To work the room, to talk to editors and reporters every day, to make sure that we break big stories and have fun doing it.”
He added, “I’m here to listen, to listen to your ideas, to push you to be as ambitious as possible, to get out of your way when you have a big one.”
Mr. Baquet’s career has included reporting and editing jobs at some of the country’s largest and most influential newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune and The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. He was national editor for The New York Times before leaving to become managing editor of The Los Angeles Times in 2000. He became that paper’s editor in 2005 but left in 2006 after his efforts to resist further cuts in the newsroom strained relations with the paper’s owners.
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Soon after he left Los Angeles, The New York Times named him Washington bureau chief.
Mr. Baquet, 54, who was often perceived as Ms. Abramson’s top rival for the executive editor’s job, said he had a collaborative relationship with the new editor, not a competitive one.
“Jill played a big role in bringing me back to the paper,” he said in an interview. “I always thought the competitive thing was too overblown. It was too easy a story line. For the last four years, she’s been my boss. And she’s my friend. Of course we can work together.”
As for Mr. Keller’s plans, he said he was still working out the details of his Op-Ed column and his Magazine assignment. He did rule out one project. “I won’t be writing a book about The New York Times,” he said.Ohio State University has agreed to pay $450,000 to the family of Austin Singletary, the third-year student who died after participating in the traditional Michigan-week jump into Mirror Lake in 2015.
The amount was detailed in a settlement agreement in the wrongful death case, filed with the Ohio Court of Claims last week. In the complaint, Singletary’s parents and administrators of his estate, Tracy and Maxton Singletary II, argued that Ohio State’s negligence led to their son’s death and the university was liable for damages.
Singletary, 22, from Dayton, was pulled from the lake in cardiac arrest the night of the jump. He was treated by paramedics, but died later at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center.
The Franklin County coroner ruled Singletary died from accidental trauma to the head and neck caused by diving into shallow water during the Mirror Lake jump on Nov. 25, 2015. He had a blood-alcohol level of 0.18, the coroner said, more than twice the limit at which a person is considered impaired in Ohio.
The wrongful death claim was officially filed Nov. 21, nearly two years after Singletary’s death, and sought at least $25,000 in damages. The settlement agreement was filed the same day.
There had been ongoing discussions with the university for some time, said Bill Posey, an attorney for the Singletarys. The lawsuit had to be filed with the Ohio Court of Claims in order for the settlement to come about, he said.
"It's just a matter of it takes time to get these things into a position to be resolved," Posey said.
Singletary’s parents agreed to discharge Ohio State, the state of Ohio, and their employees and students from any liability for Singletary’s death.
"They're people of faith," Posey said of Singletary's family. "They get through it, but obviously it's a tremendous loss."
Ohio State also will install a bench in Singletary’s honor at “a mutually agreeable location” to be paid for by the Singletarys. Ohio State has the right to review and approve the bench and its design and location prior to its installation.
"They wanted a memorial on campus to the death of their son," Posey said. "Austin loved Ohio State."
“The university’s sympathy continues to be with Austin’s family and friends over his passing,” Ohio State spokesman Chris Davey said in an emailed statement. “This was a heartbreaking tragedy.”
The university never sanctioned the jump, which dated back to at least 1990 and brought thousands of students to Mirror Lake on the Tuesday of Michigan Week.
Following Singletary’s death, Ohio State’s undergraduate student government voted to support the university’s decision to forbid future jumps.
Ohio State is currently in the process of overhauling its Mirror Lake district. The project will add more vegetation surrounding the lake and a mechanism allowing the lake to be emptied in about 60 minutes. The project is slated to be finished in spring of 2018.
jsmola@dispatch.com
@jennsmolaWakefield has been ranked as the 14th unluckiest place to live from 66 regions across the UK in a new study.
That’s the verdict of a detailed index which ranked Wakefield as 53rd in the UK.
The uSwitch Best Places to Live in The UK Quality of Life Index assessed UK regions for 26 different lifestyle factors including working hours, life expectancy, hours of sunshine, food and energy bills, disposable income and more.
And Wakefield has dropped to 53rd place in the overall table from its ranking of 51st in the last study back in 2013.
Leeds is ranked 9th, York 18th and Sheffield 19th.
There must be something in the sea air down on the south coast as Portsmouth is the luckiest city in the United Kingdom, Chichester the 5th and Southampton the 11th.
Joining them is the North West. Football fans from Liverpool and Manchester are both used to seeing their teams at the top of the table, and that’s where they are here too with the study indicating that Liverpool is the 2nd luckiest city in the country and Manchester the 4th.
Only 70 miles away from Liverpool lies Bangor (which comes in at number 3), whilst Preston sits in 7th. This luck doesn’t seem to apply to Salford however, who were our 6th unluckiest city according to the study.
In contrast, Midlands cities like Lichfield, Coventry and Worcester were all ranked amongst the unluckiest cities.
The Yorkshire city of Ripon, despite its UNESCO status and racecourse, is the unluckiest place in the country.When Lara Logan of CBS News stepped before a packed Chicago ballroom last week, she quickly corrected the newspaper editor who introduced her by noting she’d warned him not to “screw up” the introduction.
No, she told the annual lunch of the Better Government Association, she asked him not to “fuck it up.”
That jest set the tone for a provocative address before 1,100 in which the foreign correspondent and 60 Minutes star skewered American policy in Afghanistan and Libya, called for a ramped-up military campaign against terrorists, and criticized the Obama administration and others for both underestimating the Taliban’s strength in Afghanistan and for tolerating Pakistan’s obvious coddling of terrorists killing American soldiers.
The Taliban and al Qaeda, she made clear, “want to destroy the West and us,” and we must fight fire with fire, She appeared to leave the assembled alternatively riveted and just a bit troubled by a critique with interventionist implications clearly drawn from her reporting.
As one nonprofit executive, a former magazine editor, put it the next day when asked to describe her speech: “Shoot ’em, bomb ’em, fuck ’em. They will kill your children.”
There is a rich history of foreign correspondents being outspoken and passionate in offering political commentary, especially those who have been caught in harm’s way. Logan herself was a victim of brutality; in 2011 the South Africa native was beaten and sexually assaulted by a mob in Cairo’s Tahrir Square while she covered the demonstrations prompted by President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation. Such a harrowing experience would surely impact even the most politically cautious of journalists. Still, the sharp advocacy from such a prominent network reporter caught some in the Chicago crowd by surprise.
Logan’s address was linked to a significant dispatch for 60 Minutes two days earlier in which she chronicled growing terrorist attacks on American soldiers in Afghanistan. She showed a portion to the audience.
It included the top U.S. commander, Gen. John Allen, voicing frustration over attacks by Afghan troops whom we’ve trained and President Hamid Karzai declaring that terrorist attacks are only increasing as America winds down its presence. Allen was also publicly candid, in ways predecessors arguably have not been, about his obvious chagrin over his battlefield enemies having what Logan called “complete freedom of movement inside Pakistan and with the blessing of the Pakistanis.”
In front of the Chicago audience, Logan contended that the terrorist presence in Afghanistan is continually understated. She scoffed at the numbers routinely used by many in the government and think-tank communities to describe the Taliban’s presence in country.
At the start, she lauded her 60 Minutes boss, executive producer Jeff Fager, for providing the admonition that she seek the facts on the story and let them lead her to a conclusion, rather than go out to prove a preordained thesis.
But by the end of her speech, it was obvious that her views are passionate and in some parts unequivocal, in ways that bothered at least some current and former journalists. Said one former reporter and editor in the crowd: “Clearly one tough reporter, but seemingly scarred by all of this. It was totally depressing. Worrying, too. And a call for an amped war on terror.”
While discussing what she believes to be the knowingly understated claim of the Taliban presence in Afghanistan, she said it is absurd to compare Afghanistan to Vietnam. In the latter war, the Viet Cong constituted an insurgency willing to live and let live as long as the U.S. got out of their country.
Al Qaeda is not an insurgency, is driven by ideology and wants to kill us all, on our own soil if they must and even if we pull all our troops out of Afghanistan, Logan said.
She likened the murder of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, to the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen that killed 17 American sailors. She argued that it could well be a precursor to another terrorist attack on the U.S. Indeed, the federal 9/11 Commission did find clear common denominators among a variety of terrorist actions against Americans, including the Cole bombing and the subsequent World Trade Center attacks.
“The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise,” the commission wrote. “Islamist extremists had given plenty of warning that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers.”
Her substantial military and terrorism reporting helps explain Logan deriding the notion of the FBI investigating the Stevens murder, in her mind thus making it look like a routine crime rather than an act of terrorism. She suggested the need for a military action against terrorists in Libya, in the process generating some applause.
“I hope to God,” she said, that we will now take action in Libya.
“While I certainly appreciate her journalistic zeal and courage, I was taken aback, way back,” said David Orr, a liberal Democrat and longtime Cook County clerk.
“She seemed to be saying we should be mounting major attacks, and I thought that was concerning. Personally, I was stunned to hear that from a journalist and disappointed if she believes the answers to problems we face are more military actions.”
A few others contacted later demurred from that view, contending that Logan was, as one prominent corporate lawyer put it, “right on” when it came to her basic analysis, if not her |
yan. He married a British woman in Dublin in 2012 and lived in the city's Rathmines area.
A man was arrested in Limerick, in the Irish Republic on Tuesday over the discovery of ID documents in Redouane's name. He was later released without charge.
A second man, who is in his 30s, was arrested on Tuesday evening, with the Garda saying it was also related to Redouane. He is being held in Wexford.
Entering the final day of election campaigning, Theresa May said she will change human rights laws if they "get in the way" of tackling suspected terrorists.
The PM said she would make it easier to deport foreign terror suspects and "restrict the freedom and movements" of those that present a threat.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Khuram Butt was shown in a documentary about extremists
Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary and director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013, said existing human rights laws did not stand in the way of taking action against suspected terrorists.
"If we start throwing away our adherence to human rights... we are throwing away the very values at the heart of our democracy," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Former SAS commander Col Tim Collins has said intelligence "isn't good enough", adding that police needed to recruit informants from within the Muslim community and appoint Muslim officers.
"MI5 and the police have to recruit sources, informants," he told Today. "Intelligence from within the community is improving, but there's a lot more to be gleaned."
Who were the victims?
Image caption James McMullan, Chrissy Archibald and Kirsty Boden were all killed in the attack
Four of those killed in the attack have been named.
Australian Kirsty Boden, 28, worked as a senior staff nurse at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London. Her family have described her in a statement as an "outgoing, kind and generous person".
"We are so proud of Kirsty's brave actions which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was, not only on that night, but throughout all of her life," they added.
The hospital said that Ms Boden was "an outstanding nurse and a hugely valued member of the staff team in Theatres Recovery, described by her colleagues as 'one in a million' who always went the extra mile for the patients in her care".
Canadian national Chrissy Archibald, 30, was the first victim to be named. Her family said she had died in her fiancé's arms after being struck by the attackers' speeding van.
The family of 32-year-old James McMullan, from Hackney, east London, say they believe he also died.
Mr McMullan's sister said he was believed to be among those who died, after his bank card was found on a body at the scene.
Two French nationals were also killed in the attack, according to foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
The BBC understands one of them to be Alexandre Pigeard, 27.
Manager of the Boro Bistro, Vincent Le Berre, told the Brittany news outlet Le Telegramme how his colleague was attacked in a bar near Borough Market.
"I managed to escape him, but my friend Alexandre did not have that chance," he said. "He was hit in the neck with a knife."
Mr Le Drian confirmed on Wednesday that a second French citizen had been "identified among those who have died".
The identity of the victim has not been released.
The Met have set up a casualty bureau on 0800 096 1233 and 020 7158 0197 for people concerned about friends or relatives.Photo: Ibama
We're talking about deforestation in the Amazon all the time, but can we really understand the magnitude of what we're saying? This is where an image is worth a thousand words: this is how a 15 tons, 40 meters tall, ¡250! years of age, fallen tree from the Amazon looks like.
According to O Globo, this beautiful piece of nature was illegally cut down at Novo Mundo, in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil; and will be showed at the country's capital, Brasilia, for an environmental exhibition next November.This is a chestnut tree whose base is two meters thick, which was found at the same place it had been cut down with a chainsaw.
The species is part of the country's endangered plants, and it's therefore forbidden to cut them down. Families in the region where these trees are depend on its fruits for income, and the fruits are also used in the production of cosmetics.
Says O Globo that the idea of confronting the public with a fallen tree from the Amazon isn't new: Greenpeace Brazil wanted to do it two years ago, but couldn't get through getting a tree from a conflictive area called Castelo dos Sonhos.
The exhibition where the tree will be shown will take place from November 3 to 7, at the official IBAMA offices in Brasilia under the name Mostra Nacional Ambiental.
More on Amazon deforestation:
What is Brazil Planning to Propose at Copenhagen
Brazil's Beef & Leather Giants Unite Against Amazon Deforestation
Amazon Deforestation Drops 46% In One YearTyson Fury is unbeaten in 25 professional fights
Heavyweight champion Tyson Fury should be barred from boxing, according to the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA).
Fury, 27, was filmed making homophobic, sexist and anti-Semitic comments in a video posted on YouTube last week.
The Manchester fighter also voiced his views on bestiality, paedophilia and women during the 57-minute clip.
"This is not his first offence, he specialises in outrageous offensive and racist slurs," said CAA spokesman Jonathan Sacerdoti.
"Behaviour like this should prompt his sponsors to withdraw their backing. Britain does not tolerate or support racism.
"These specific anti-Semitic slurs are centuries old, and his use of them today in 2016 shows ignorance and malice."
The British Boxing Board of Control was not immediately available for comment.
Fury caused an upset by outpointing 40-year-old Wladimir Klitschko in Dusseldorf last November, with the rematch for his WBA and WBO heavyweight titles to take place at the Manchester Arena on 9 July.
His previous comments on homosexuality, paedophilia and women saw more than 100,000 people sign an online petition in an attempt to get him removed from the BBC's 2015 Sports Personality of the Year shortlist.
Fury apologised at the award ceremony last December.The end of the final episode of the second season of the Love Live! School idol project TV anime revealed on Sunday that production on a completely new film for the franchise has been green-lit. The staff of the anime confirmed this over Twitter soon after the episode was broadcast, and added that more information will be posted on the anime's official website at midnight, JST.
The film is the first part of the franchise's fifth anniversary project. The second project will be a "μ's Fan Meeting Tour 2015 ~Anata no Machi de Love Live! ~ ( Love Live! In Your Town!) event.
In 2010, the anime studio Sunrise, Lantis, and ASCII Media Works' Dengeki G Magazine launched Love Live! as a self-described "ultimate user-participation project" which lets its fans vote on the future of the fictional idols. A series of music CDs and animated music videos then followed. The members of the project announced in 2012 that an full anime series has been green-lit for last year. The second season of the anime was announced last June.
Crunchyroll is streaming the series as it airs in Japan, and NIS America has licensed both seasons for North American release.
[Via 0takomu]On the verge of turning 80, David Suzuki gave an interview last week. In addition to promoting his latest causes, he defended his extensive jet travel and ownership of multiple properties.
He flies a lot because he has to, he explained. He’d prefer not to, but there’s no reasonable alternative. To ease his conscience he buys green offsets. “I contribute to putting green energy in continents like Africa. This is just to compensate for what I’ve put out,” he said. As for the multiple properties: he needs the money to fund his lifestyle, after pulling his retirement pension out of the University of British Columbia over its investment policies.
[np_storybar title=”David Suzuki on turning 80, his activist failures and the critics of his frequent flights around the world” link=”http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/david-suzuki-on-turning-80-his-activist-failures-and-the-critics-of-his-frequent-flights-around-the-world”%5D
I pulled my retirement money out of the University of British Columbia when I learned that the pension was investing in things like weapons, coal and other things that I didn’t want to support. And so, in order to have any kind of investment, I’ve bought a few pieces of property, which are my pension, basically. I don’t apologize for the fact that I own property.[/np_storybar]
We all make the compromises we need to live with ourselves. Suzuki’s offsets allow him to buy the smaller carbon footprints of other people so he can continue producing more than his share of emissions. His property portfolio is a similar necessity: he has to eat, right? “I don’t apologize for the fact that I own property,” he says.
During the U.S. Civil War, wealthy northerners who wanted to avoid the fight could pay for substitutes to take their place. Carbon offsets work in a similar fashion: people like Suzuki, who can afford it, get to keep jetting around the globe while someone else makes up for it. For those who can’t afford it, too bad. Activists have little sympathy for people who are caught in a carbon bind, but lack Suzuki’s resources. While he allows himself multiple properties because it’s a personal necessity, eco-warriors dismiss the impact their anti-oil campaigns have on tens of thousands of Canadian workers and their families. It’s just collateral damage as far as they’re concerned.
[np_storybar title=”Read & Debate” link=””] Find
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That’s part of the “progressive” approach to important public affairs. Another element is the casual treatment of public finances. The Conservative government of former prime minister Stephen Harper was much derided for its obsessive focus on a balanced budget. Some of the derision was justified, given the Tories tended to talk a good game while continuing to run deficits and grant boutique tax breaks to favoured voter groups. Like Suzuki, they had good intentions, but couldn’t bring themselves to make the required sacrifices.
The Conservatives have been replaced, and now “progressive” Liberal and NDP governments hold sway across the country. They have very quickly turned back the clock to the days of runaway deficits and spiralling debt. Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau revealed this week that his first budget deficit will be on the order of $25 billion, rather than the $10 billion pledged during the election campaign. In Alberta, NDP Finance Minister Joe Ceci was so appalled by the $10.4 billion deficit he expects next year that he couldn’t bring himself to say the number out loud, despite repeated requests. (He finally uttered the figure a day later after considerable lampooning).
Ontario’s Liberal government has always found it easy to live with debt, having more than doubled the figure during its 12 years in office. On Thursday, Finance Minister Charles Sousa continued to pay lip service to balanced budgets, while promising even more spending and a debt that will pass $300 billion. Ontario pays more in interest alone — almost $1 billion a month — than Alberta’s total shortfall.
“Progressives” shrug this off as a necessity. Alberta will continue to borrow just to pay running costs, rather than reduce any services. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne says “doing nothing” would be more expensive than continuing to “invest” in programs like climate change.
What’s curious is that “progressives” don’t apply the same standard to economic legacies as they do to environmental matters. Suzuki and others insist we owe a duty to future generations to preserve the planet and hand it over in a respectable condition. They are absolutely right. But we also have a duty to protect and preserve their ability to enjoy the same opportunities we’ve had, by managing the economy in a way that allows for reasonable growth and prosperity. People need jobs, and a chance to earn their way.
In running up massive debts, and continually adding to them with ongoing deficits, we are robbing them of that opportunity. By saddling them with our bills, we are dumping our sins on our grandchildren. Ontario’s debt financing now gobbles up more than every other single program other than health care and education. And unlike budgets for those needs, it grows exponentially on its own impetus. Should interest rates rise even marginally, hundreds of millions more will be sucked out of more vital programs to feed the beast.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian emissions fell dramatically, because the economy had collapsed. It’s a pretty drastic way to save the planet. But we’ll get there if we keep this up.
National PostFormer Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson says doctors told him he "probably" had cancer two days before the incident which led to his dismissal.
He says he was given the news prior to the "fracas" with the show's producer Oisin Tymon, although he has since been given the all-clear after the scare over a lump on his tongue.
Writing in his column in the Sunday Times, he has revealed he wants to star in another "car show" and admits there is no way back for him with Top Gear.
He said: "I have lost my baby but I shall create another.
"I don't know who the other parent will be or what the baby will look like, but I cannot sit around any more organising my photograph album.
"Let's stop being silly and pick up the pieces and start again... I just know I'm going to do another car show."
Clarkson said he even considered turning his back on presenting altogether in the immediate fall-out from the incident.
The BBC terminated his contract following the incident, with director-general Tony Hall saying at the time "a line has been crossed" and "there cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another".
Earlier this month, North Yorkshire Police said that following an investigation Clarkson would face no further police action over his attack on the producer at a hotel.
Clarkson pulled out of his planned appearance hosting BBC satirical show Have I Got News For You, which was due to be filmed next week, and aired a day later.
It would have marked his first BBC appearance since the fracas which led to his departure.The launch of the Airtel Zero platform by Bharti Airtel and Internet.org by Facebook in partnership with Reliance Communications are prima facie in violation of net neutrality principles as these are based on differential tariffs for end-consumers, says department of telecommunications (DoT) secretary Rakesh Garg.
In an interview with Business Standard, Garg says, "From the consumers' end, there are different kinds of choices - some paid-for content and some free. Net neutrality says as far as the consumer end is concerned, whatever comes should come at the same price. It should not be dependent on any plan. The way net neutrality is understood, it (the launch of such platforms) violates the principles."
When asked about telecom players' concern of OTT (over-the-top) players having a free ride through their network while they pay licence fees, spectrum charges and others to the government, the secretary says the two issues are not comparable.
"Telecom players are under a licensing regime, nobody has forced them to come. They knew what the rules of the game were and have been working in that. OTT players are working in their own different set of rules. And they have not come up in the last one-two years. They almost came at the same time as mobile phones. Telcos never objected to their environment then, today they say the environment has to change."However, he says a DoT committee will take the final call on whether OTT players have to be brought under the licensing framework or not.
Meanwhile, DoT, through its internal committee, is in the process of formulating a report on the net neutrality issue. Simultaneously, telecom regulator TRAI will also come out with recommendations on the issue through a consultation process. The DoT report is expected to come out by the end of the month, the secretary says.
Recently, telcos, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, had come together clarifying that they fully supported net neutrality but demanded that there be the same rules for all players offering voice communication services. Application providers such as WhatsApp and Skype also offer voice services through an internet platform.
Bharti Airtel's launch of Airtel Zero platform on April 6 had triggered a debate on the issue of net neutrality across the country and many experts said the launch was against the principles of net neutrality. On the platform, companies, including start-ups, can offer apps for free. The app maker will pay for the customer's free usage to the operator and users don't have to pay any data charges.One of the major obstacles for delivering faster Internet to the home is the sheer amount of work and money it takes to lay the cable. Now, researchers are coming up with a workaround that transmits the data wirelessly.
The latest effort, from researchers at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, has set a new world record for wireless data transmission. They've managed to hit 100 gigabits per second while transmitting data over 20 meters, using a frequency of 237.5 GHz. A previous effort by the same group reached 40 Gbps over 1 kilometer.
“For rural areas in particular, this technology represents an inexpensive and flexible alternative to optical fiber networks, whose extension can often not be justified from an economic point of view,” Professor Ingmar Kallfass said, according to TGDaily. With this technology, service providers could connect the gaps in their networks by pointing a laser (or “beam-focusing antenna”) across two transmission towers.
TGDaily also notes that the researchers hit 100 Gbps using a single data stream. In the future, researchers could achieve even higher bandwidths through interweaving of multiple data streams and other techniques.
As exciting as it sounds, don't expect a big bump in home Internet speeds anytime soon. Even after this technology gets out of the lab, service providers would have to figure out how to integrate it, and telecoms companies such as AT&T have noted that signal attenuation and interference can be a problem when transmitting high-frequency data over long distances. There would likely be regulatory hurdles to deal with as well, as telecoms may eventually look to use spectrum beyond 300 GHz, which is currently unallocated in the United States.
But given how long it's taking for wired Internet providers to boost speeds in any significant way, perhaps wireless delivery has a chance to take over long before we all get our fiber-optic fix.This article is over 1 year old
Announcement that sporting events will be open to women for first time comes a month after historic decision to allow women to drive
Saudi Arabia to allow women into sports stadiums as reform push intensifies
Saudi Arabia will allow women into sports stadiums for the first time from next year, authorities said Sunday, in a landmark move opening up three previously male-only venues to families.
The ultra-conservative kingdom, which has some of the world’s tightest restrictions on women, has long barred women from sports arenas by strict rules on segregation of the sexes in public.
The announcement is in line with powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious reforms shaking up the kingdom, including the historic decision to allow women to drive from next June.
I will return Saudi Arabia to moderate Islam, says crown prince Read more
“Starting the preparation of three stadiums in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam to be ready to accommodate families from early 2018,” the General Sports Authority said on Twitter.
Restaurants, cafes and video screens would be set up inside the venues, the authority added.
Last month hundreds of women were allowed to enter a sports stadium in Riyadh, used mostly for football matches, in a one-off event to celebrate Saudi Arabia’s national day.
Sunday’s announcement implies that women in Saudi Arabia will be allowed for the first time to attend sporting events inside stadiums alongside men.
Under the country’s guardianship system, a male family member – normally the father, husband or brother – must grant permission for a woman’s study, travel and other activities.
But the kingdom appears to be relaxing some norms as part of its sweeping “Vision 2030” plan for economic and social reforms as it prepares for a post-oil era.
Last month a royal decree said women would be allowed to drive. The kingdom is also expected to lift a public ban on cinemas and has encouraged mixed-gender celebrations – something unseen before.
“First women driving, now stadiums. What’s next? Night clubs?” said one Saudi Twitter user, echoing a deluge of social media comments expressing surprise over the accelerating pace of reforms.
In a rare public appearance last week, Prince Mohammed pledged a “moderate” Saudi Arabia, long seen as an exporter of a brand of puritanical Islam espoused by jihadists worldwide.
MBS, as he is well known, promised his kingdom will return to “what we were before – a country of moderate Islam that is tolerant of all religions and to the world”.
His comment, while unveiling plans for a $500bm development zone, chimes with his public image of a bold liberal reformer in a conservative country where more than half the population is under 25.
Saudi woman penalised for driving car before ban is lifted Read more
But his vision for a new Saudi Arabia is fraught with risks and could trigger a backlash from conservatives, analysts warn.
“Despite the bold statements, it is important to remember that the dominance of conservative thought since the late 1970’s cannot be quickly reversed,” said analysis firm Eurasia Group.
“Ultraconservative and radical elements continue to pose risks.”
The government appears to have clipped the wings of the once-feared religious police – long accused of harassing the public with rigid Islamic mores – who have all but disappeared from big cities.
Some conservative clerics – who for years staunchly opposed more social liberties for women – have backpedalled and come out in favour of the decree allowing them to drive.Stephen Andrew Feinberg (born March 29, 1960) is an American billionaire financier, who is active in hedge fund management and private equity. He is known for turning around struggling businesses and making them profitable.[1] He is co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Cerberus Capital Management. As of April 2016, his net worth is US$1.25 billion.[2] On May 11, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump named Feinberg to head the President's Intelligence Advisory Board.[3]
Early life and education [ edit ]
Feinberg was born to an American Jewish family[4][5] and raised in The Bronx, New York. When aged eight, his family moved to Spring Valley, New York,[6] a suburb of New York City. His father was a steel salesman.[6] He attended Princeton University and graduated with a degree in politics in 1982.[7] While there, he captained the tennis team and joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps.[6]
Professional career [ edit ]
After graduating from college, Feinberg worked as a trader at Drexel Burnham in 1982 and later at Gruntal & Co..[8]
In 1992, at the age of 32, Feinberg co-founded Cerberus Capital Management with William L. Richter.[8] At the time the firm had $10 million under management; its assets under management have since grown to over $30 billion in 2016.[9][10] In 1999, the firm hired former Vice President Dan Quayle as a Chairman of Cerberus Global Investment.[11] In 2006, the firm hired former United States Secretary of the Treasury John Snow, who serves as a Chairman of Cerberus.[12]
In May 2011, Feinberg stated that he believed residential mortgage-backed securities may present "a real opportunity for continued investment for quite a period of time"[13] and that there were opportunities in buying assets from European banks.
Feinberg has been critical about the pay received by private equity executives, stating, "In general, I think that all of us are way overpaid in this business. It is almost embarrassing."[14] He has also noted in comments made in 2011 that smaller private equity fund sizes may be better for investor returns: "If your goal is to maximize your return as opposed to assets under management, I think you can be most effective with a big company infrastructure and a little bit smaller fund size."[14]
Feinberg has been described as "secretive" in The New York Times.[15] In 2007, Feinberg told Cerberus shareholders, "If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person. We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it."[16]
Cerberus is the parent company of DynCorp, which is a major national security contractor with the U.S. government.[17]
Political involvement [ edit ]
Feinberg is a major Republican donor.[18] In 2016, he served on the Trump Economic Advisory Council during Donald Trump's presidential campaign, donated nearly $1.5 million to pro-Trump PACs, and co-hosted a $50,000 per person Republican National Committee and Trump fundraising dinner alongside other financiers.[19][20] In February 2017, the New York Times reported that President Trump will assign Feinberg a role in the White House leading a review of the US intelligence agencies.[21]
He is a member of The Business Council in Washington, DC, an association of chief executive officers from a broad range of companies who meet several times a year for high-level policy discussions.[22] [23]
Personal [ edit ]
Feinberg reportedly made $50 million in 2004. His lifestyle is less extravagant than his peers in private equity.[24] He splits time between his homes on Manhattan's Upper East Side and Greenwich, Connecticut with his wife Gisela (née Sanchez).[6]Reg Bowers, who served as the official agent for former federal cabinet minister Peter Penashue during a controversial 2011 campaign, has been charged under the Canada Elections Act.
Reg Bowers was the official agent for Peter Penashue during the 2011 general election. He's now a Labrador town's councillor facing charges under the Canada Elections Act related to his time with onetime MP Penashue. (CBC)
The commissioner of Canada Elections announced Thursday that Bowers, now a Happy Valley-Goose Bay town councillor, had been charged with three counts under the act.
The charges, laid Thursday in provincial court in St. John's, relate to allegations of taking illegal contributions from corporations and discounted airfares for Penashue's campaign in the general election.
Penashue won the race in the riding of Labrador, a breakthrough for the Conservative Party of Canada in an area that has traditionally voted Liberal.
After an extensive CBC News investigation into the financing of that campaign, Penashue resigned and ran in a subsequent 2013 byelection. He lost to Liberal Yvonne Jones.
Bowers was elected to town council in January. At the time, he told CBC's Labrador Morning that he felt he "probably" would be charged.
A woman answering the phone at Bowers's house on Thursday told the CBC's Peter Cowan, "I don't think he'd like to talk to you."
However, Bowers later told CBC News his lawyer advised him not to do interviews.
Regarding his status as a councillor, Bowers said he hasn't heard anything for the town and doesn't believe the charges will affect his work.
Town officials said Thursday afternoon they are aware of the charges against Bowers, adding the municipality will make a statement at a later date.
Blamed Bowers for problems
When Penashue stepped down to run again in the 2013 byelection, Prime Minister Stephen Harper referred to Penashue as "the best member of Parliament Labrador has ever had."
The day he tendered his resignation, Penashue — who had served as minister of intergovernmental affairs and president of Treasury Board — blamed Bowers for problems with his election campaign.
Penashue described Bowers as an "inexperienced volunteer" who handled his paperwork and campaign donations, which included ineligible corporate donations.
In the House of Commons Thursday, NDP MP Megan Leslie asked Minister of State for Democratic Reform Pierre Poilievre if amendments will be made to the Elections Act to "crack down on Conservatives who break our electoral laws."
"It's obviously an affair between Elections Canada and Mr. Bowers, and we'll allow the process to unfold," Poilievre said.
Bowers's case is slated for June 9 at provincial court in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.NEW YORK, April 29 (Reuters) - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration on Friday confirmed the existence of a federal investigation into one of his signature projects, a $1 billion economic development plan for the Buffalo area known as “Buffalo Billion,” and ordered a full internal review.
Cuomo announced the development plan in January 2012, saying the state would give $1 billion of incentives, including tax credits and state grants, to national and global companies to come to the Buffalo area in an effort to revitalize the struggling region.
“The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District has an ongoing investigation” into Buffalo Billion, Alphonso David, the counsel to the governor, said in a statement.
He added that the probe “has recently raised questions of improper lobbying and undisclosed conflicts of interest by some individuals which may have deceived state employees involved in the respective programs and may have defrauded the state.”
The investigation is led by Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, and has focused on potential bid-rigging and other possible irregularities in connection with the awarding of state money to private developers, according to previous reports in several New York media outlets.
David said Cuomo had ordered an independent review of all the project’s grants and tapped Bart Schwartz, the former chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan, to oversee the effort.
In a statement, Schwartz said, “The state has reason to believe that in certain programs and regulatory approvals they may have been defrauded by improper bidding and failures to disclose potential conflicts of interest by lobbyists and former state employees.”
Schwartz said he would share any findings with federal prosecutors.
A source with knowledge of the matter but not authorized to speak publicly said Cuomo’s office received a subpoena from prosecutors on Friday seeking documents related to the program. The source said no member of the administration, including Cuomo, was personally subpoenaed.
A spokesman for Bharara’s office had no immediate comment. (Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Cynthia Osterman; Additional reporting by Hilary Russ)MONTREAL — Say you still love us, Jay!
Jay Baruchel has always been Montreal’s Golden Boy. The N.D.G.-born-and-raised child actor, who went on to Hollywood to star in bona fide blockbusters, has made a name for himself in Quebec and Canada as the hometown kid who never abandoned ship.
Until, of course, he did.
[np_storybar title=”‘I won’t lie — Quebec’s politics did my head in’: Jay Baruchel on why he left Montreal for Toronto” link=”http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/celebrity/i-wont-lie-quebecs-politics-did-my-head-in-jay-baruchel-on-why-he-left-montreal-for-toronto”%5DJay Baruchel has been a relentless booster of his hometown in general and his ‘hood of N.D.G. in particular, for years telling anyone who would listen that he would never move to L.A. even though so much of his work brought him to Tinseltown.
Well, things have changed, as Bob Dylan so succinctly put it. Baruchel has moved to Toronto, for work and personal reasons. Here he talks about what prompted him to do what so many anglo Montrealers have done in the past four decades and make the move down the 401.
Q: So you’ve made the move to Toronto?
A: I’ll be perfectly honest: I’ve kind of moved here for a while.
Q: I did hear rumours.
Continue reading…
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When an interview with local entertainment reporter Brendan Kelly recently revealed that Jay had left Montreal and moved to Toronto, most allophones and Anglophones simply shrugged and stoically muttered: “There goes another one.” Because, virtually every Anglophone I know has, at one point or another, at the very least considered the possibility of leaving Quebec. Even if many ultimately didn’t, they’ve considered it.
But judging by the six (Count them, six!) snarky French columns that followed, and the outraged comments on social media, Francophones took the news a little more personally.
“Betrayal” was the first word that came to mind as I observed the reactions. French columnists expressed the kind of incredulous venom that’s usually reserved for a lover that’s been scorned.
Or someone who tells you a truth you don’t want to hear.
Baruchel is the poster boy for Anglo Montreal love. Young, good looking, extremely talented, humble, self-deprecating, enjoying international success, hanging with Hollywood directors and actors, while all the while staying close to home. His affection for this city and for the Habs is so legendary it’s tattooed on his chest. He shouted his love for us from the rooftops.
It was comforting feeling. It was a confirmation of our greatness and our cosmopolitan attributes that even our best and most successful refused to go anywhere, because we’re just too awesome to leave.
And now, not only does he decide to flee, he abandons us for … Toronto? And, not only does he abandon us, he’s painfully candid about the reasons? How dare he call us a “difficult part of the world”? Our joie de vivre is legendary, you guys! Besides … dirty laundry should never be aired when there’s a parting of ways, right, Jay?
Only this wasn’t a love affair gone wrong. It was just a move. But a move that was probably less emotionally charged for the mover than its acceptance was for everyone left behind.
Baruchel made the mistake of candidly admitting that “Quebec politics did his head in.” It’s no big secret that constant linguistic and cultural strife, coupled with the temptation of opportunities elsewhere, can occasionally get tiresome and wear us down. Some of us decide to leave. Jay is allowed to publicly express that sentiment without being treated like Judas Iscariot.
We here in Montreal get so caught up sometimes in the shameless navel-gazing and the self-congratulatory pats on the back
Is admitting that incessant linguistic bickering and the Charter of Values and the corruption scandals and the OQLF chasing down restaurant owners for using the word “pasta” and depleted opportunities for English speakers can be tiresome really that much of revelation? Did it catch some of us off guard? Or is it that we’re just not used to having a well-loved Quebecer publicly acknowledge it as he’s waving bye-bye?
We here in Montreal get so caught up sometimes in the shameless navel-gazing and the self-congratulatory pats on the back about how awesome we are, and how amazing a place this is for artistic expression, and how creative types flock to us to, you know … create, and pursue a bohemian lifestyle. And we look down at poor Toronto and its focus on work, work, work. We’ve got it all figured out here, man, and those poor corporate drones that waste their lives away in pursuit of six-figure salaries … they almost demand pity.
It’s a parochial, self-serving “crabs in a bucket”-type attitude that has been necessitated over the years by decades of brain drain and a massive exodus of capital down the 401.
We need to tell ourselves that story, we have to prop ourselves up as the Xanadu of All Things Awesome, to quiet the voices in our heads that occasionally whisper: “We’re amazing, but we’re a bit of a mess too, right?”
Because we are those things! Amazing!
And a bit of a mess …
Baruchel simply opened a Pandora’s Box no one wanted opened and started a conversation that needs to be had. The truth is that there are many of us who stay in Quebec not only because of what is offered here, but despite what is sometimes offered here. Acknowledging that doesn’t make us traitors and disloyal to the city or the province. It makes us realists.
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And as an allophone and Anglophone, I can assure you that six white non-ethnic francophone columnists (working in an overwhelmingly multicultural province, with media that continues to fail in representing that diversity) clamouring to yell at Baruchel and unleashing a torrent of insults his way for daring to imply that Quebec can occasionally be a difficult place to live in, is highly dubious. My French colleagues should question whether they dispute Jay’s arguments because they misrepresent their reality or perhaps they represent a reality they can’t acknowledge, and don’t understand, because they don’t live it and it’s rarely represented in the media outlets they work for. Nuance is important and it’s sorely lacking when diversity is absent.
This city is manic and magical and inspires me on a daily basis. But it’s also insanely frustrating and sometimes hard to live in. As an Anglophone writer making my way in it, I know without a shadow of a doubt that my professional life would be much easier in Toronto.
But I stay. Because what I get in return is more than what I lose in the process. If one day I don’t feel the same, I hope I don’t get vilified the way poor Jay did.
National PostUndercover footage of a circus elephant being beaten by handlers for no reason has played a role in the recent commitment in Britain to ban wild animals from circuses. The elephant is named Anne; it has been reported that due to the scandal, she will be released from the circus and relocated to an animal sanctuary.
When the abuse footage hit the Internet and was available for millions to see the terrible treatment of the poor elephant, a predictable response from the circus was that it was merely a rogue employee behaving badly; this did little to quell the furor. In fact, if you can stomach a viewing, you can see aggression such as kicking directed |
, a quick check reveals we do indeed have the aesni-intel kernel module loaded on hosts across our fleet. Upon forcing the module to unload, the corruption disappears! Hallelujah!!
Further testing revealed that Herbert was right about HVM—it was not affected. At last, the problem seems to lie in an interaction between aesni-intel and Xen paravirtual mode.
With such a serious bug lurking in the aesni-intel module, you might wonder—how has nobody noticed this before now? After all, AES is occasionally used for SSL traffic too. Well, the answer to that lies in Bug #3—only in IPSec NAT-T Transport mode does the kernel not validate TCP checksums. That means that under any other condition, checksum validation will fail and the packet will be dropped, protecting the application from the corrupted data. That plus the Xen version and virtualization type restrictions make this problem exceedingly rare… an exotic AES unicorn that can be seen only by those who know where it lies. Lucky us :).
Part III: The workaround
After more than a month of tireless research and testing, we have finally gotten to the bottom of our ZooKeeper mystery. Corruption during AES encryption in Xen v4.1 or v3.4 paravirtual guests running a Linux 3.0+ kernel, combined with the lack of TCP checksum validation in IPSec Transport mode, leads to the admission of corrupted TCP data on a ZooKeeper node, resulting in an unhandled exception from which ZooKeeper is unable to recover. Jeez. Talk about a needle in a haystack… Even after all this, we are still unsure where precisely the bug lies. Despite that fact, we’re still pretty satisfied with the outcome of the investigation. Now all we need to do is work around it.
What we did
Unloading the module has proved to thwart the bug(s) we’ve been encountering, though there’s a performance impact associated with such an action. We measured the impact, and it turns out to only be a problem at very high throughputs, the likes of which we have other ways of mitigating. We also know that Xen HVM guests are not affected, and neither is Linux 2.6. Knowing this, we can start to make a plan of attack.
Existing Xen paravirtual guests running Linux 3.0+ were downgraded back to 2.6, but only if they were on an affected version of Xen. We wrote a Chef recipe to do Xen detection and blacklist the aesni-intel module when the problem conditions exist. We have also begun standardizing on HVM hosts rather than paravirtual so that we can still leverage the AES hardware acceleration, among other things.
In conclusion
A proper fix still regrettably eludes us. With later versions of Xen being unaffected, and as HVM adoption grows, there is little interest from the community in sinking the time required to isolate the code which is introducing the problem. We face a similar problem with ZooKeeper—version 3.5 has a fix which prevents a critical thread from dying unnoticed, though 3.5 is still alpha and will be for some time. There is talk of backporting the fix, though the official stance is that it is not considered a blocker for further 3.4.x releases.
We would like to thank the members of our various engineering teams for their help and contributions related to the isolation of these problems. We take reliability very seriously at PagerDuty, and extracting root causes for even the most exotic issues is something we take a great deal of pride and joy in. If you agree, we’d love it if you could join us.It took 13 months, but Bungie's sci-fi, loot-driven shooting game Destiny has finally dipped a toe into the world of microtransactions.
Bungie posted an announcement on Monday that confirms a patch is coming Tuesday, October 13. This update will reintroduce one of the game's sideline characters, Tess Everis, who had been patched out of the game earlier this year. Everis had previously given out bonuses that had been connected to real-life promotions such as Destiny pre-orders, and she will return to the game's "Tower" hub to run a new storefront known as the "Eververse Trading Company."
There, players will be able to trade "silver," which must be paid for through your game console's default marketplace (PlayStation Network or Xbox Live), to buy custom emotes—the optional dances and gestures you can trigger to taunt or celebrate while in-game. The pricing and general value of this new silver currency will be posted when the patch launches next week. Still, we consider this Destiny's first true microtransaction system, as opposed to the freebies that came with purchases of Red Bull this summer.
The explanation for this paid content section sounds mixed. On one hand, Bungie's announcement makes clear that players "won’t lose a Crucible encounter or fail to clear a Raid" if they don't buy any of these upcoming emotes. On the other, Bungie also goes so far as to say that the purchases will "bolster the service provided by our live team for another full year, as they grow and create more robust and engaging events that we’ll announce later this year." That language neither confirms nor denies that those "events" will require payment via microtransactions.
Either way, all players will get a little bit of "free" silver in their accounts next week as encouragement to try the new shop out.LUCKNOW: The previous Bahujan Samaj Party government led by chief minister Mayawati had sanctioned more than Rs 5,000 crore for construction of parks and memorials in the name of dalit icons and installation of statues between 2008 to 2012.The information was given in a written reply in the Uttar Pradesh (UP) legislative council on a question raised by Congress member Naseeb Pathan on year-wise fund allocation for parks and statues between January 2008 to May 2012. The government, however, evaded query on whether the expenditure on dalit memorials "unnecessary" and "obstructed development"" of the state. The government said that since the matter related to expenditure on dalit memorials is subjudice, it will not comment on it.In his reply, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said that between this period total Rs 5,372.41 crore rore was sanctioned for parks and statues. While Rs 377.8 crore was sanctioned between January and March 2008, an allocation of Rs 1435.64 crore was made in the financial year 2008-09, he said. Further, an allocation of Rs 1067.83 crore was made in 2009-10, Rs 1264.48 crore in 2010-11 and 628.38 crore in 2011-12. In addition, the Public Works Department (PWD) spent Rs 118.46 crore and irrigation department Rs 479.78 crore during this period for projects related to dalit memorials.The fund was utilised to construct Bhimrao Ambedkar Samajik Parivartan Sthal, Kanshiram Smarak Sthal, Baudh Shanti Upvan, Kanshiram Green (Eco) Park, Bheemrao Ambedkar crossing, Smriti Upvan, Ramabai Ambedkar ground, park between Gomti barrage and Lamartinere ground, Lord Buddha crossing and Awadh hospital crossing at Lucknow. Gautam Buddha University, Badalpur and sector-95 park of Noida in Gautam Buddha Nagar.Significantly, SP and its chief minister Akhilesh Yadav had earlier said that more than Rs 40,000 crore was spent on memorials. Yadav had said that the cost should also include the loss due to demolish existing residential and official buildings, rate of the land and man power put in the construction of dalit memorials and parks. He also said that the damage to environment due to cutting of hundreds of trees and stone cutting is huge and cannot be calculated in monetary terms.Free Thinking Is Now Considered A Mental Illness
(RC) What happens to a society when thinking outside of the box or being righteously enraged about your government going in the wrong direction becomes an excuse to be sedated and re-educated? It seems we don’t have to go too far back in history to find out.
The Soviet Union used new mental illness for political repression.
People who didn’t accept the beliefs of the Communist Party developed a new type of schizophrenia.
They suffered from the delusion of believing communism was wrong. They were isolated, forcefully medicated, and put through repressive “therapy” to bring them back to sanity.
Now thanks to thought policing by the American Psychiatric Association the latest addition of the DSM-IV(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is setting up the dominoes for arbitrary diagnosis of any dissenting individuals.
Listed as new mental illnesses are above-average creativity and cynicism. The manual goes on to identify a mental illness called “oppositional defiant disorder” or ODD.
Defined as an “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior,” symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness, and being easily annoyed.
A Washington Post article observed that, if Mozart were born today, he would be diagnosed with ADD and “medicated into barren normality.” What used to be known as personality traits are now diseases, and of course there are treatments available.
When the last edition of the DSM-IV was published, identifying the symptoms of various illness in children, there was a jump in the medication for children. Some states even have laws that allow protectives agencies to forcibly medicate, and even make it a punishable crime to withhold a prescribed medication.
Beware people with a strong sense of individuality! Though the authors of the manual claim no ulterior motives, labeling freethinking and nonconformity as a mental illness has a lot of potential for abuse. As a weapon in the arsenal for a repressive state, it seems societal reality is morphing into a playbook for autocrats borrowed from a Phillip K. Dick novel.Frontman seals switch to South Wales
ALBION striker Rickie Lambert has tonight joined Cardiff City for an undisclosed fee.
Lambert, 34, arrived from Liverpool last summer and went on to make five Premier League starts and a further 14 substitute appearances in 2015/16, scoring once.
He appeared off the bench in this season’s league defeat to Everton, and most recently started the Club’s EFL Cup second-round tie at Northampton Town.
Lambert joins a Cardiff side who are currently 17th in the Championship and finished just outside the play-off places last season.
Everyone at West Bromwich Albion would like to wish Rickie all the very best for the future.
In all competitions, Lambert made 10 starts and a further 16 substitute outings for the Club, scoring once against Leicester City at The Hawthorns.Home | Minor Stories Index Verse 117: The Story of Thera Seyyasaka
While residing at the Jetavana monastery, the Buddha uttered Verse ( 117 ) of this book,
with reference to Thera Seyyasaka.
Once there was a thera by the name of Seyyasaka, who was in the habit of masturbating.
When the Buddha heard about this, he rebuked the thera for doing something that would
lead one further away from the attainment of Magga and Phala. At the same time, the
Buddha laid down the discipline prohibiting such indulgence in auto sexual pleasures, i.e.,
Sangha-disesa Apatti = offences, which require penance and suspension from the Order.
Then, the Buddha added, "This kind of offence can only lead to evil results in this world
as well as in the next."
Then the Buddha spoke in verse as follows:
Verse 117. If a man does evil, he should not do it again and again;
neither should he take delight in it; since the accumulation of evil
leads only to dukkha.
Translated by Daw Mya Tin, M.A.,
Burma Pitaka Association, Rangoon, Burma 1986. Saved: 24 December 2016 https://What-Buddha-Said.net/Canon/Sutta/KN/Dhammapada.Verse_117.story.htmThe Spit Magazine offers erotic work that is female pleasure-based — something considerably different from mainstream porn. Yes, it’s the real deal.
From photo shoots to videos, the content is hot, exciting and beautifully raw. “The porn that Spit makes aims to be hot, authentic and fun. We are creating and making porn that showcases people who are often excluded or exploited from mainstream porn,” says Jesse Rae West, administrative coordinator for the site. I spoke to both Jesse and co-founder Caitlin K. Roberts to find out about their site and exactly what goes into producing feminist porn.
Although many may have a lot of misconceptions as to what feminist porn can be, Jesse clears it up by telling me, “Feminist porn can and does often feature hard-core, intensely passionate scenes similar to mainstream porn, but with the overt presence of consent, genuine pleasure and the absence of unproductive social constructs of gender. It is both a political statement and outlet for fantasy.”
More: Being a feminist is not making other women feel bad for their choices
Launched in July 2013, The Spit Magazine is an authentic and alternative porn collaborative, focused on sex positivity and pleasure, and a feminist porn collaboration community. When you visit the Spit website, you’ll be overcome with the sense of celebration, particularly because mainstream porn oftentimes treats women like sex objects, while Spit celebrates bodies and the colourful spectrum of things that make each and every human unique and special.
I was impressed to find that the films and photos on Spit’s website feature women just like me (fat, straight, cis female), which makes me feel like there could be a place for me in this sexual landscape. And I’m sure you will too when you visit the site. Jesse explains to me, “Our content features people interacting in a way that feels genuine to them regardless of what genitals they have or what looks good on camera. We celebrate tummies, cellulite and body hair as much as we do tits, asses and cocks.”
“By watching this representation of all bodies and all people in pornography, it opens up the landscape to a healthier sexual image and more positive body images,” Caitlin adds. “The body is the mouthpiece for how sexuality is expressed. To have negative feelings towards bodies will tie into one’s attitude towards sexuality.”
More: A lesson on orgasms
This year The Spit Magazine was nominated for a Feminist Porn Award, which Caitlin tells me is “exciting and humbling. Something that started off as a passion project is being recognized by people who inspired us to start Spit.” While building the Spit brand, Jesse and Caitlin have spent considerable time and effort ensuring that their porn is made ethically, which includes listening to their critics to promote growth not only in themselves but in their performers as well. Jesse mentions, “We remove the pressure of forcing or encouraging a female performer to reach orgasm, which is so often included in porn with the sole purpose of gratifying men and their sexual ego.”
Jesse tells me, “I hope our work — and the work of others — can help people on their journey to self-love and acceptance.”
So what is next for The Spit Magazine? With its Feminist Porn Award nomination in tow, it has inspired the website to do more and to do more often. Caitlin shares, “I am honoured to be cast amongst people who have been changing the landscape of pornography for years, and I hope we can continue to contribute to the cause in a positive and supportive way.” Next up, it will be hosting its bimonthly play party and porn shoot on April 13 at the Oasis Aqualounge.
More on sex
Getting in touch with your sexuality
Female nipples: Overhyped, sexualized and censored
How to boost your sexual confidenceI’m very happy to announce that Qt 5.7 is now available. It’s been only 3 months since we released Qt 5.6, so one might expect a rather small release with Qt 5.7. But apart from the usual bug fixes and performance improvements, we have managed to add a whole bunch of new things to this release.
Updated licensing
Before going into the content and all the cool new features, I should mention the changes to our licensing that have been implemented with Qt 5.7.
Qt has always been available as Free Software, and will continue to be so in the future. Qt is being developed as an open source project, The Qt Company is fully committed to this, and in addition, the agreement with the KDE Free Qt Foundation legally ensures this.
With Qt 5.7, we are slightly adjusting our licensing of the Open Source version to bring it more in line with the philosophy of the Free Software movement. From this version onwards, Qt will not be available under LGPL version 2.1 anymore. Instead, Qt will be licensed under two main licenses: LGPL version 3 (and GPL version 2) for all almost all frameworks and libraries, and GPL version 3 for our tools like e.g. Qt Creator. In addition, we’re open sourcing some formerly closed Qt add-ons and tools under GPL version 3.
Please check our our licensing pages or the licensing FAQ for all details around this. You can also have a look at my blog post from January where I announced this change.
Unifying Qt for Application Development
The license change gives us a unique opportunity to unify our Qt for Application Development offering between the Open Source and Commercial versions. Starting with Qt 5.7, both packages come with exactly the same content.
This means that all the parts of Qt for Application Development that previously have been available only to commercial users are now available in the Open Source package as well.
This includes the following modules:
The only exception is the Qt Quick Compiler where we need some more time to finish the required changes to be able to support this feature in the Open Source Edition.
C++11
It has been possible to use a C++11 compliant compiler together with Qt (and thus use C++11 in your application) for many releases. But Qt itself didn’t make use of it except for some integration points in our API.
With Qt 5.6 being a long-term release that we will support for three years, we have taken the opportunity with Qt 5.7 to start modernizing our own code base. As one of the core strengths of Qt comes from it being a C++ framework, we want to follow the progress of modern C++ more closely.
Starting with Qt 5.7, we will require a C++11 compliant compiler to build and use Qt. This allows us to use many of the new features in Qt itself, and renew our codebase using features such as constexpr, move semantics, range-for and auto. These efforts are well under way and will continue throughout the next versions.
Apart from adding previously commercial-only modules to the Open Source version, we also have quite a bit of new content in Qt 5.7.
Qt 3D
We want to provide you the tools to create the required WOW-effect to amaze your end users. Modern UIs in many areas require the integration of 3D graphics, or even creating the whole user experience in three dimensions. In past years we’ve been improving our developer offering to make it easier for you to add this dimension into your UIs. With Qt 5.7, we are bringing in the Qt 3D module. This module has been available as a Technology Preview for two releases now, and I’m happy to announce that it has now reached the state where it is becoming a fully supported member of the Qt family!
Qt 3D complements the 3D GUI offering of Qt consisting of integration to OpenGL, Qt Canvas 3D, and Qt Data Visualization modules. Qt 3D provides you with a 3D engine, that comes with both C++ and QML APIs. It makes it a lot easier to embed and handle 3D content within Qt Applications. In general, Qt 3D is much more than just a renderer, it serves as an extensible 3D framework for all kind of simulations. The architecture and most of the development on Qt 3D over the past years has been done by our partner KDAB, a huge thanks goes to them for their work. For a proper introduction, please see the guest blog post from Sean Harmer from KDAB.
Qt Quick Controls 2
Qt 5.7 also comes with a fully supported version of our new Qt Quick Controls, the library of QML-based UI controls. Qt Quick Controls 1 were targeted at the desktop, and came with all the bells and whistles required for desktop applications. This implied an overhead that often made them too slow for usage on embedded devices.
Qt Quick Controls 2 solve these issues. They have been built from the ground up with performance and memory consumption in mind. So while they are fully usable on the desktop, they have slightly more limited functionality and e.g. don’t come with native styling integration. But they are vastly faster, and use a lot less memory than the old controls, making them ideal for many embedded and mobile solutions. Qt Quick Controls 1 are still part of the offering and a suitable API for desktop development. For instance, the Qt Quick Layouts work nicely with both of the control sets.
Architecturally, Qt Quick Controls are based on templates that allow you to create your completely own set of controls ground-up. They also come with a flexible system that allows the rapid creation of custom styles and user experiences. In addition, the existing controls come with three predefined styles:
Default style – a simple and minimal all-around style that offers the maximum performance
Material style – a style based on the Google Material Design Guidelines
Universal style – a style based on the Microsoft Universal Design Guidelines
For a good overview, more details and a teaser video, please see the blog post from J-P Nurmi.
New functionality in existing modules
A lot of new functionality has been added to existing modules, and this blog can’t cover them all. Some of the highlights are:
Qt Core
Qt uses poll() instead of select() in it’s event loop allowing for more than 1024 file descriptors
Qt now uses std::atomic for it’s atomic classes
Qt Gui
NEON optimizations for image scaling in Qt Gui
Optimized the OpenGL function wrappers in Qt for size and speed
Qt QML and Quick
JIT support for WinRT, and 64bit ARM platforms in Qt QML, leading to much better QML performance on these platforms
The debugger now supports debugging multiple QJSEngine instances at the same time
Improved profiler and inspector integration
Qt WebEngine
Qt WebEngine is now based on Chromium 49 and can now print to PDF
Support for DRM-protected HTML5 video in WebEngine
Qt NFC
Support for Android
For all the details, please have a look at our New Features page and the Changes file for Qt 5.7.
Qt for Device Creation
Also Qt for Device creation has received an update and does now ship with Qt 5.7. In this release, we added out of the box support for a set of new hardware:
The NVIDIA DRIVE CX boards (Tegra X1, 64 bit ARM)
The Rasberry Pi 3 (32 bit mode)
i.MX7 based devices (without GPU, uses the Linux framebuffer and the Qt Quick 2D renderer)
Microsoft Windows is now a fully supported as a host platform for developing for embedded Linux. While Qt for Device Creation 5.7 does no longer support Windows Embedded, we now have full support for QNX, including pre-built binaries.
To read more about changes in Qt for Device Creation, please see the separate blog post.
Qt Creator 4.0
Qt 5.7 ships with Qt Creator 4.0, more precisely with the new Qt Creator 4.0.2 version. Qt Creator 4.0 is a full development environment for all desktop, mobile and embedded development and now with version 4, we’ve especially emphasized the designer-developer workflow with the integration of Qt Quick Designer visual layout editor and the new Qt Quick Controls 2. Together, they provide a really nice way to rapidly create touch-based UIs for your embedded and mobile applications. Check out the separate video about the workflow from this blog post.
Qt Creator 4.0 also comes with a set of nice new features, such as Clang integration and extended QML profiler, please find the details from the Qt Creator 4.0 blog post. For the updates regarding Qt 4.0.2, please see the change files.
New Technology previews
In addition, Qt 5.7 also adds a couple of new modules as Technology Previews.
The first one is the Qt Wayland Compositor. The module makes it very easy to create your own Wayland Compositor. This is especially useful for embedded devices that require multi process support. The module has existed as unsupported technology for some time, but has had issues in both the API and implementation. With Qt 5.7, we’ve invested a lot of time and effort to clean up implementation and stabilize the API. It now comes with a full QML API and an improved C++ API with a lot of convenience. We also added a convenience API to create Wayland extensions and use them from both QML and C++. You can read more about it from the blog post from Paul.
The next new module is Qt SCXML. It’s a completely new module that makes it very easy to integrate SCXML based state machines into Qt. It builds directly on top of the Qt Statemachine framework and extends it with with both a SCXML to C++ compiler and a runtime that allows loading SCXML based state machines.
Qt Gamepad is another nice small addition. It makes it possible to ingrate gamepad support into both C++ and QML applications. It currently supports Windows, Linux, Android and iOS.
With Qt for Device Creation, we’re also introducing the first preview of Qt-based Over-the-Air (OTA) updates mechanism. For an overview of this crucial IoT-technology, please see the blog post from Gatis.
Finally, Qt 5.7 also includes a technology preview of the new Qt SerialBus module that allows you to use Qt APIs for device bus communications and protocols. It’s a generic API, but with this version it includes implementations for CAN and Modbus.
Go and get it
Finally, I’d like to give my thanks to everybody who has helped create this release. Again, a special thanks goes to KDAB for its tremendous work on Qt 3D.
You can get Qt 5.7 from your Qt Account or the download page on qt.io.
For an overview of the Qt 5.7, you can take a look at the release page, or for more details check the change files and known issues.
Enjoy the release and have a great, Qt-filled summer!
Do you like this? Share itBack in December, the advisory panel reviewing the Metrolinx Investment Strategy released its report recommending a number of revenue generation tools and showing how these could support an accelerated construction plan for many transit improvements. As background to this proposal, I asked for details on how the panel had worked out the spending pattern and the project timing. Recently, this information was forwarded to me.
What is most interesting about this paper is the chart showing project timing and spending on page 4. The projects include:
Upgrades to GO Transit for all day service on the Milton, Barrie, Richmond Hill, Stouffville and Georgetown-Kitchener corridors;
Electrification of the UPX to Pearson Airport;
LRT lines on Hurontario-Main and in Hamilton;
BRT for Dundas Street and Durham-Scarborough;
An unspecified rapid transit line for Brampton Queen Street;
The Relief Subway line plus partial extension of the Yonge line.
The work is spread over 2015-25 with peak spending in the years 2017-21. The annual expenditures are not constrained by the size of the income stream because bridge financing would be used. This would carry the program through to the later years when revenue would be used to pay down debt rather than to fund current construction.
What is so striking about this plan is that the goal is to build transit as quickly as reasonably possible, not to hamstring construction work with hand wringing about the amount of each year’s spending allocation from Queen’s Park. Much of the hope vested in The Big Move was lost thanks to the extended delivery times for projects which, in turn, were dictated by the abject fear of financing the work with new revenues. A bold plan was neutered by the McGuinty Liberals’ terror of criticism by the “no new taxes” brigade.
It’s all well to point to a list of “funded projects”, but if the delivery dates for construction and completion drift off into the future, the funding announcements are just so much toilet paper.
Overall construction time for each project is sourced from the Metrolinx Investment Strategy. However, the capacity to deliver these projects as outlined has not been factored into schedule development – the Panel’s proof of concept deliberately advances Next Wave projects to begin construction faster than currently anticipated and after the design period is complete. [Page 1]
That phrase “capacity to deliver” brings me to one of Metrolinx’ favourite excuses for an extended rollout schedule – a claim that the construction industry cannot possibly do so much work in so short a time. That fails on several counts notably that the original Big Move, unconstrained by a spending slowdown ordered by Queen’s Park, planned a $2-billion annual outlay (plus inflation) over 25 years, a period we would be well into by now but for Queen’s Park’s reticence.
A great deal of the work outlined here would be underway and completed before the end of the “first wave” of Big Move projects. This shows the effect of more aggressive planning where providing service is the primary goal rather than dragging out spending. If a similar approach had been taken sooner, we could be riding new transit services in the next few years, not hearing over and over about a handful of projects such as the Spadina extension that have been in the pipeline for quite a long time.
Metrolinx staff are supposed to be reviewing the timing of at least the Sheppard LRT project with a view to beginning this earlier. In the current political situation, with the Scarborough subway/LRT debate heating up again, it is hard to know whether Metrolinx will even have the backbone to discuss a speedup of the Sheppard line publicly.
This shows everything that is wrong with that supposedly independent agency – policy debates, “what if” discussions never take place in public, presuming that they take place at all. This might embarrass politicians and show voters what options would actually cost, and how soon they new services could be available, if only we had the collective will to proceed for the benefit of the GTHA as a whole, not for individual by-elections that skew political focus.
Whether any of this comes to pass will depend on how much of the Transit Panel’s recommendations are incorporated into the government’s budget for 2014-15, and whether the opposition parties force an election. The key point is that voters need to believe that any new taxes will actually benefit them, and will do so soon, not a decade or more in the future.
We have had enough of spineless government on the transit file. Dalton McGuinty was a huge disappointment substituting delay for action, and Kathleen Wynne has only one chance to prove that she really believes in attacking the deficit in transit construction head on.
No excuses. Build now.Data
Main_Content
The Geographic Information Office (GIO) strives to meet the needs of our customers by providing everyone with the best possible data available. Through collaboration with our partners, we have been able to provide access to a large collection of data via MD iMAP that can be leveraged for use in many applications and analyses.
GIS Data Catalog
Quickly search for the latest data and geographic content from Maryland contributors. Use keyword or geographic searches to find and quickly display content. Also download into multiple formats or access via APIs for local use.
Open Data Portal
Numerous, additional geographic and non-geographic data sets are available for search. Built-in tools allow for visualization of the data in a table, graph or map format. The Portal is managed by Department of Information Technology (DoIT) with contributions from many State agencies.
Imagery
Aerial imagery is essential for giving 9-1-1 dispatchers the proper context in the event of an emergency call. Thanks to a dedicated funding stream from Maryland’s Emergency Number Systems Board and support from local governments, publicly accessible aerial imagery for the entire state is available and updated on a three year cycle.
LiDAR
The Maryland LiDAR server has been created to provide open access to statewide elevation information for use in a variety of studies and applications. The Maryland LiDAR server maintains the best available elevation data and provides image services in both county and statewide extents.
Data Downloads and Services
Search an inventory of available spatial and non-spatial data download sites. From these sites users can download or, in some cases, order data. Additional resources are provided to organizational web mapping applications where data can be viewed and reviewed.
Please contact the GIO Office at service.desk@maryland.gov for more information.
Please visit the Adobe Website to download a free copy of Adobe Reader.You can soak up the sun’s health benefits—without the burn
You’ve probably heard that your body needs at least a little straight-up sunshine to produce good-for-you vitamin D. But ask your dermatologist, and she’ll tell you that it’s never a good idea to expose unprotected skin to the sun. So how do you get your vitamin D without increasing your risk of sunburn and skin cancer?
Good news: Your body can produce vitamin D even while you’re wearing sunscreen, according to new research from King’s College London’s Institute of Dermatology.
For the study, researchers measured the vitamin D levels of 79 men and women before and after a one-week beach trip to a Spanish island. Half of the participants made sure to properly apply a sunscreen with SPF 15, while the other half hit the beach with bare skin. As you would expect, sunscreen helped protect the sunbathers from burns. And as for vitamin D? Both groups’ vitamin D levels soared—a good thing, since this essential nutrient keeps your bones strong, boosts your immunity, fends off depression, and lowers your cancer risk, according to data from the National Institutes of Health.
While the bare-skinned group had slightly higher levels of vitamin D at the end of the study, researchers say that the difference between the groups wasn’t significant enough to warrant skipping sunscreen. That’s big news, considering previous research found that sunscreen can significantly inhibit vitamin D synthesis and that the National Institutes of Health currently recommends up to 30 minutes of unprotected sun exposure at least twice a week.
The thing is, the studies that came before this one weren’t perfect: They didn’t track the kinds and amounts of sunscreen used, relied on artificial light rather than sunlight, and/or failed to measure UV exposure, says the new study’s author, Antony Young, professor of experimental photobiology at King’s College London’s Institute of Dermatology.
Researchers still don’t know whether a higher SPF could interrupt vitamin D production or exactly how much sun you need for sufficient vitamin D synthesis, says Young. One thing’s for sure, though: Regular use of sunscreen can lower your risk of skin cancer—and based on Young’s findings, slathering on sunscreen looks like it won’t block the sun you need to ward off vitamin D deficiency.
photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
More from WH:
Why You Need Vitamin D
Vitamin D: Do You Get Enough?
Delicious Ways to Eat More Essential NutrientsFishers Mayor Scott Fadness says a proposed $47 million redevelopment project could be a "big next chapter" for the city. The project, which would be located in the city's Nickel Plate District, includes a three-story office building, 500-space parking garage and a mixed-use building which will include 240 residential units and 5,000 square-feet of commercial space.
The project is being proposed through a partnership among Indianapolis-based RQAW Corp., Envoy Inc. and Hageman Group. RQAW has already made plans to invest $4 million to relocate its headquarters to the office space and bring up to 60 jobs to the building.
The city is including $16.5 million in incentives that will cover the cost of the land, waiver of fees, and construction of the parking garage and surrounding hardscapes. The proposal and the incentive agreement will be considered by the Fishers City Council on Monday.
"Economically, I think it's a very viable deal. I think it's a very fair deal with the incentives involved with it from the city," said Fadness. "So we just think it hits all the criteria that has made the Nickel Plate successful to date and will continue to make the Nickel Plate successful in the future."
The mixed-use portion of the project will have the option for live-work units on the first floor. Those units will have street-level commercial entrances for an office or studio and residential space for living, an idea that Fadness called "very interesting for our entrepreneurial city."
The partnership will see RQAW develop and own the office component, which totals 30,000 square feet of space. Envoy and Hagemen Group will develop, own and operate the parking garage and mixed-use building. If approved by the city council, construction is expected to start this year and be complete in May 2018.Software 2.0
Andrej Karpathy Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 11, 2017
I sometimes see people refer to neural networks as just “another tool in your machine learning toolbox”. They have some pros and cons, they work here or there, and sometimes you can use them to win Kaggle competitions. Unfortunately, this interpretation completely misses the forest for the trees. Neural networks are not just another classifier, they represent the beginning of a fundamental shift in how we write software. They are Software 2.0.
The “classical stack” of Software 1.0 is what we’re all familiar with — it is written in languages such as Python, C++, etc. It consists of explicit instructions to the computer written by a programmer. By writing each line of code, the programmer identifies a specific point in program space with some desirable behavior.
In contrast, Software 2.0 can be written in much more abstract, human unfriendly language, such as the weights of a neural network. No human is involved in writing this code because there are a lot of weights (typical networks might have millions), and coding directly in weights is kind of hard (I tried).
Instead, our approach is to specify some goal on the behavior of a desirable program (e.g., “satisfy a dataset of input output pairs of examples”, or “win a game of Go”), write a rough skeleton of the code (e.g. a neural net architecture), that identifies a subset of program space |
mammoth a reality, dramatising the lives of Church, his wife, Harvard Professor Dr. Ting Wu, their fellow scientists, researchers working for a competing cloning lab in Korea, and the conservationists at the Siberian preserve where the mammoths will finally reside. While at times his predictions feel too good to be true, Mezrich’s prose rarely fails to engage.
Gizmodo sat down with Mezrich to talk about a few of the themes present in his book, as well as the future of de-extinction and scientific breakthroughs in general. Below is a lightly edited and condensed version of the interview.
Gizmodo: What brought you to extinct species revival in particular?
Mezrich: I’ve been interested in mammoths since I was a kid, basically, and I’ve always been a fan of Michael Crichton and Jurassic Park, so it’s always been on my mind to tell a story like that. Then a couple years ago, I started hearing about Dr. George Church and the Mammoth Revival project, and I decided I just needed to tell this story. So I basically reached out to him blindly. He let me embed myself in his lab, so I spent a while just living there seeing what was going on, and just getting really into it.
Gizmodo: An early chapter of the book opens four years in the future, when humans have succeeded in bringing mammoths back to life. What makes you think the project will succeed so soon?
Mezrich: Even at this moment, right now, there are three prehistoric woolly mammoth [genomes] alive, living in elephant cells, so we’re on the verge of it. I was talking to George [the previous night]. Even though he doesn’t put a date on it, I put the four year date, but he sees that as totally possible. The slowest part of the process right now is the gestation period of an elephant. Whether we’ll have a woolly mammoth in three years or just be very close in three years, I don’t know, but a lot depends on the money and on the elephant. The initiative is how they work on it, but it is feasible.
Gizmodo: Let’s talk about the money. That’s a huge motivating factor behind the project, but it seems like the wealthy are the ones funding scientific efforts a lot of the time (Editor’s Note: The Church Lab’s Genome Sequencing project is funded mainly by private computing and biotechnology companies). Is this a good thing? How do you feel about science funded on the whims of oligarchs?
Mezrich: Well it’s interesting, you look at this marriage between incredibly wealthy people and science, and in some ways it’s a very good thing. You know, in some ways it pushes science forward. You’re not gonna see (and I wish you would) Donald Trump pouring money into the woolly mammoth revival project, you’re not seeing the government doing these things. [Scientists] do often have to turn to outside sources, and if someone like Peter Thiel wants to live forever, he needs to fund the things in George Church’s lab. So whatever his personal goal, it’s good for everybody. I look at it as a positive thing, I think big money has always influenced outside-the-box science, look at what Elon Musk does or what’s going on at Amazon, Facebook or Google. It’s very very wealthy people throwing money at crazy ideas, and hopefully we all benefit from it. Peter Thiel put in $100,000, which doesn’t sound like much, but you need money to come from outside sources if it’s not coming from academia or the government.
Gizmodo: This book and The Accidental Billionaires both had the protagonists receive additional funding from Peter Thiel. How do you feel about his involvement in particular in such immediately relevant work?
Mezrich: Yeah, I’ve written about him twice. (Editor’s Note: Mezrich also covered Peter Thiel in his book Accidental Billionaires) In this case the way George tells the story, he basically ran into Peter Thiel, and told him about a couple of projects. Thiel said tell me your craziest projects, and he listed a couple of them, and [Thiel] said, ‘the woolly mammoth, that’s the one I want to do.’
Gizmodo: Speaking of other projects, is Church working on anything half as crazy as a mammoth?
Mezrich: Yeah, absolutely, Church and his lab [are] doing the anti-malaria mosquitos, working with the Gates foundation, they’re building domes over villages in Africa and releasing mosquitoes that can’t carry malaria, to test them out. Also, his student Ken Esfeld at MIT is working on transgenic mice to beat lyme disease. The goal is to release 100,000 genetically engineered mice that can’t carry Lyme disease onto the island of Nantucket, which is kind of a wild story. In his lab, they’re also working on the pigs with human-compatible livers. They’ve a couple of pig embryos with livers that can be used in humans. You’re looking at the future of transplantation, which is incredible. They’re working on projects to extend lifespans… but the mammoth the project and the ones with the transgenic species are the craziest.
Gizmodo: Do you think meddling with ecosystems and reviving lost species could have negative effects on living ones?
Mezrich: You have to be very ethical and responsible because you’re working with technology that is very powerful. The same technology that allows you to create a woolly mammoth or an extinct species allows you to eliminate a species if you want. You could eliminate mosquitos (Editor’s Note: Scientists are discussing the possibility of doing this with a controversial and speculative technology called gene drive), but that brings up enormous issues in ecology. I think bringing back an extinct species like the mammoth is generally a good thing, I think that the people who don’t want Church to do that are usually thinking what does it mean for the Asian elephant population, which is endangered. But it’s not a zero sum game—we’re not giving up on these endangered species. We now have the technology to bring back a species we mostly ate out of existence. It’s like a karmic righting of a wrong, and there’s been a lot of talk about the sixth extinction, species are going extinct all over the place, but the fact that we can bring one back is a huge moment, I think, in human history and our ability fix the things we were breaking. We have to live with our environment, but we also have to figure out ways to make it better, and if bringing back a woolly mammoth to help the environment is something we can do, it’s something we should do.
We have to live with our environment, but we also have to figure out ways to make it better, and if bringing back a woolly mammoth to help the environment is something we can do, it’s something we should do.
Gizmodo: Church isn’t the only one working to clone a mammoth. There’s also Hwang Woo-suk’s Korean dog-cloning lab, Soaam Technologies. Can you talk about how you got involved with them?
Mezrich: This is a wild story—this is the story of a disgraced scientist. He was the one who claimed to clone human cells, but it turns out he had been forcing his students to donate their eggs, and secondly that his clone cells are fraudulent, so he’s trying to resurrect his reputation by being the first to clone a mammoth. So, he has supposedly got incredibly preserved frozen mammoths out of the ice [in the Arctic] in conjunction with some Russians, and is going to use those cells to clone [the mammoth]. Church doesn’t believe that is something that’s going to work. Those materials have been in the ice too long and bombarded by radiation, there’s no reason that DNA should be clonable anymore. They’ve bought up tracts of land in Alberta, Canada, and the people think they want to build their own Jurassic Park up there... It’s a very strange company, and it sounds to me what they’re chasing is impossible, but Church says nothing is impossible, so who knows?
Gizmodo: The book makes mammoth cloning sounds like an arms race, but Sooam technologies only show up near the end of the book, was that on purpose?
Mezrich: I think it is. Science is always an arms race, and when you get into bringing back the mammoth, I think Church’s team is leading, but they’re not the only ones trying to do it.
Gizmodo: After the first woolly mammoths are born, the plan is for them to go to Siberia...
Mezrich:...This is the cool is the cool part of the story. Yeah, the tundra has a permafrost that’s like a ticking time bomb that if it went off would be worse than if we burned all the forests on Earth three times, and this permafrost is always getting close to melting (Editor’s Note: Mezrich is talking about the potential for a catastrophic methane release from melting Arctic permafrost). These scientists, the Zimoffs, have been running this experiment since the 80s where they rope off a part of the tundra and repopulate it with Pleistocene type herbivores. They’ve put bison in, reindeer reindeer, horses, a WWII-era tank that they drive to mimic a mammoth, knocking down trees. And they’ve discovered they can lower the temperature by as much as fifteen degrees, which is an incredible thought (Editor’s Note: This is a speculative idea that Mezrich describes in more detail in the book, in which Pleistocene herbivores might help transition the tundra from forests and shrub lands into grasslands, which absorbs less heat.) The idea is to repopulate the area with mammoths. Church’s goal is 80,000 mammoths, and [he hopes that] you could lower the temperature of the permafrost for generations.
Gizmodo: This is your third book to be turned into a movie, (after Bringing Down the House was adapted into 21 and Accidental Billionaires into The Social Network) so you’ve gotta know something about Hollywood by now. Who should play Church in the movie?
Mezrich: I love Tom Hanks for that character, Jeff Bridges is my other first choice. Hanks already grew that big beard in Castaway and Jeff Bridges has that great beard, so Hanks or Bridges.
More Science Posts:By ThinkPol Staff
Constitutional, public safety and human rights experts have extended their cautious support for a new Liberal government bill that will significantly overhaul Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s controversial anti-terrorism legislation Bill C-51, which many see as being unconstitutional.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale introduced Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters, claiming it was aimed at “enhancing accountability and transparency, correcting problematic elements from the former Bill C-51, and updating our national security laws to ensure that our agencies can keep pace with evolving threats.”
The House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU) heard from four witnesses last week, all of whom expressed cautious optimism about the new bill..
Professor Craig Forcese, a Professor at University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law and a vociferous critic of Harper’s Bill C-51, expressed support for Bill C-59 but noted a serious concern with the new legislation.
“From a rights perspective, Bill C-51 lacked nuance. It opened the door to a violation of any charter right subject to an unappealable, secret Federal Court warrant,” Prof. Forcese told the committee. “The regime was radical, and in my view, almost certainly unconstitutional. It was, therefore, unworkable, whatever the strength of the policy objectives that propelled it.”
“Bill C-59 places the system on a much more credible constitutional foundation. It ratchets tighter the outer limit on CSIS threat reduction powers,” Prof. Forcese added. “By barring detention—a power I sincerely doubt the service ever wished—it eliminates concerns about the many charter violations for which detention is a necessary predicate. By legislating a closed list of activities that could be done where a warrant is authorized, Parliament tells us what charter interests are plausibly in play—essentially, free speech and mobility rights. I believe that if threat reduction is to be retained, this new system reasonably reconciles policy and constitutional issues.”
Prof. Forcese was concerned about the new bill’s impact on Canadians’ online privacy.
“To summarize my concern, while engaged in foreign intelligence in cybersecurity activities, CSE incidentally collects information in which Canadians or persons in Canada have a reasonable expectation of privacy,” Prof. Forcese said. “This is done without advance authorization by an independent judicial officer, and thus likely violates section 8 of the charter.”
“Bill C-59 attempts to cure this constitutional issue through a ministerial authorization process, one that involves vetting for reasonableness by an intelligence commissioner, a retired superior court judge,” Prof. Forcese added. “This is a creative and novel solution. It preserves a considerable swath of ministerial discretion and responsibility. It is not a full warrant system. Still, given the unique nature of CSE activities, I believe it is constitutionally defensible.”
“The new system will only resolve the constitutional problem if it steers all collection activities implicating constitutionally protected information into the new authorization process,” Prof. Forcese remarked. “The problem is this. Bill C-59’s present drafting only triggers this authorization process where an act of Parliament would otherwise be contravened. This is a constitutionally under-inclusive trigger.”
Professor Stephanie Carvin, Assistant Professor, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, shared Prof. Forcese’s optimism about Bill C-59.
“I believe that for the most part, Bill C-59 takes Canada a great step towards meeting that elusive balance between liberty and security,” Professor Stephanie Carvin, Assistant Professor, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, said. “In my view, where Bill C-59 defines powers and process, it should enable our security services to carry out their important work with confidence knowing exactly where they stand. Further, the transparency in the bill will hopefully go some way towards building trust between the Canadian public, Parliament, and our security services.”
Prof. Carvin expressed concern about the role of the Minister of Public Safety under the new legislation.
“Canada has an unfortunate history of ministers and prime ministers trying to shirk responsibility for the actions of our security services, which dates back decades,” Prof. Carvin told the committee. “Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau used the principle of police independence to state that his government could not possibly engage in review or oversight of the activities of the RCMP even though the national security roles of the RCMP are a ministerial responsibility.”
“There is simply a tension here with our constitutional requirements and with what has been the practice of our system for decades,” Prof. Carvin added. “If this bill is to pass through, it will be up to members of Parliament to hold the minister to account, even if he or she tries to blame the intelligence commissioner for actions not taken.”
Professor Wesley Wark, a professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, also spoke in favour of Bill C-59.
“Bill C-59 represents a very ambitious and sweeping effort to modernize the Canadian national security framework,” Prof. Wark said. “It should not be seen as just a form of tinkering with the previous government’s Bill C-51.”
Prof. Wark argued that the national security and intelligence review agency, created to provide oversight of intelligence activities, must be adequately resourced.
“Part 1 of the act creates aI fully support this concept and its rationale, and it is exciting to me to see it embraced by the government,” Prof. Wark told the committee. “The challenge will be ensuring that the architecture can be made to work.”
“To bring the legislation to light, it will be important to ensure that NSIRA, as I’ll call it, has the right fiscal and logistic resources, a high-quality talent pool in its secretariat, excellent working relationships with the security and intelligence agencies, and a viable work plan,” Prof Wark recommended. “It will also be important to ensure that the bodies that are to be reviewed have the resources and proper approach to the enhanced scrutiny they will undergo.”
Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada, while generally support of Bill C-59, felt that the proposed legislation did not go far enough towards rolling back the more troubling aspects of Harper’s Bill C-51.
“We strongly welcome and support the provisions in part 1 of Bill C-59 creating the national security and intelligence review agency,” Neve told the committee. “Amnesty International has been calling for the creation of a comprehensive and integrated review agency of this nature since the time of our submissions to the Arar inquiry in 2005. This has been one of the longest-standing and most serious gaps in Canada’s national security architecture.”
Neve felt, however, that Bill C-59 did not strengthen Canada’s commitment to human rights.
“In the review that preceded Bill C-59, we urged the government to use the opportunity of the present reform to adopt a clear human rights basis for Canada’s national security framework,” Never told the committee. “That is an approach that is not only of benefit, evidently, for human rights, but truly lays the ground for more inclusive, durable, and sustainable security as well. Currently, other than the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, none of Canada’s national security legislation specifically refers to or incorporates Canada’s binding international human rights obligations.”
“We recommended that those laws be amended to include provisions requiring legislation to be interpreted and applied in a manner that complies with international human rights norms,” Neve added. “That was not taken up in Bill C-59 except for one very limited reference to the convention against torture. This is important in that it sends a strong message of the centrality of human rights in Canada’s approach to national security. It is also of real benefit when it comes to upholding human rights in national security-related court proceedings.”WASHINGTON — While much of industry would like to see an office that licenses commercial spaceflight activities moved out of the Federal Aviation Administration, a new report finds little support for doing so within government itself.
An Oct. 5 report by the Government Accountability Office found split opinions between government and industry on whether the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST, should be transferred to an independent office under the Secretary of Transportation, where it originally existed.
“Representatives from commercial space launch companies and spaceports GAO interviewed described advantages and disadvantages of moving the Office of Commercial Space Transportation to the Office of the Secretary of Transportation, but most of them favored moving the office,” the report stated. “Conversely, most Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials GAO interviewed did not favor the idea.”
The office was established in the mid-1980s as a standalone entity under the Office of the Secretary of Transportation. In 1995, though, the office was transferred to the FAA as part of an effort to streamline operations.
In recent years, some in the commercial space transportation industry have argued for returning AST to its original position outside of the FAA, arguing that the small office — AST has a little more than 100 employees out of an overall FAA workforce of more than 40,000 — lacks influence on issues such as managing airspace for launches.
“There’s going to be some very challenging issues when it comes to the aviation space and what’s happening in commercial space,” said Mike Gold, chairman of the of AST’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee, in a Sept. 15 speech at a space law forum here organized by the University of Nebraska College of Law. “While there have been synergies and a constructive relationship, the dialogue between the two entities needs to be a dialogue among equals, not one subordinate to the other.”
In the GAO report, unnamed representatives of industry said that they believed that an AST independent of the FAA could better coordinate with the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization as well as serve as a “one-stop shop” for regulatory issues. As a separate office, they argued, “it could facilitate a more ‘level playing field’ for space activities operating in and through the national airspace system.”
However, FAA officials cited in the report argued that moving AST out of the FAA “could make it more difficult for FAA offices to coordinate on commercial space activities” because interactions would no longer be internal within the FAA. They also minimized concerns about airspace conflicts, noting advances in airspace management would minimize airspace closures for launches in the future, lessening conflicts between air and space transportation.
Industry advocates for moving AST also argued in the report that moving the office outside FAA could allow it to develop regulations more efficiently, and also give it more resources. However, officials from the Office of the Secretary of Transportation cautioned that such a move would not guarantee AST additional resources for rulemaking and other activity, and would also require the office to pay for support services that the FAA provides today.
The GAO report was prepared for three members of Congress, including Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), who has been an advocate for commercial space issues and was nominated Sept. 1 to become the next administrator of NASA. The other members were Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House space subcommittee, and Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee also interested in commercial space issues. The report made no recommendations on whether or not AST should be transferred out of FAA.
The report did note that, should the government decide to move AST out of FAA, it could be done through a rulemaking process similar to that used in 1995 to move the office into the FAA. That process would need to take into account several issues, from different pay scales used by the FAA and the Department of Transportation to finding new office space for AST.
Officials with the Office of the Secretary of Transportation told the GAO that there are no plans currently under consideration about moving the office. Industry advocates of such a move, though, are hopeful that that the administration will consider a shift.
“This is an idea whose time has come,” Gold said in his speech last month. “It’s something that I certainly perhaps hope to see as we move forward in the commercial legislation process and something that I think this administration should take a very hard look at if we’re going to prevent bureaucracy and prevent red tape from keeping commercial space and the space industry as a whole from moving forward.”TWO Bosnian sisters who lost track of each other almost 72 years ago met for the first time with the help of Facebook although they lived only 200 kilometres apart, local media reported.
Tanija Delic, 88, and Hedija Talic, 82, had not seen each other since 1941, the Nezavisne Novine daily reported on its website on Saturday.
Talic, aged 11 at the time, got separated from her family while they were fleeing their village in northwestern Bosnia at the start of World War II.
She ended up in an orphanage, while the parents were killed during the war and her brother emigrated to the United States.
"After the war, people were telling me all kinds of things," Talic told the daily. "Some were saying that my family was killed, others that they moved to the US. I lost any hope that I would see any of them again."
She later moved with her family to a village near the northeastern town of Tuzla, while her sister lived in a village in northwestern Bosnia.
They learned of each other and eventually met again after Talic's son got interested in his family tree and contacted his aunt's daughter through Facebook.
The sisters related "tears and disbelief" over the emotional reunion, saying they shared memories of "the smallest events from childhood", the paper reported.
The sisters said they would now try to trace their brother or his family, who are believed to be in the United States.The flood of Chinese imports purchased by Walmart shoppers has cost the U.S. economy about 400,000 jobs since 2001, according to a liberal think tank.
The Economic Policy Institute, which has long been a critic of U.S. trade policies with China, says Walmart (WMT) has been a major factor in the growing trade gap with China. It estimates that Walmart sold at least $49 billion worth of Chinese-made goods between 2001 and 2013, and said that its estimate of 400,000 jobs lost is conservative.
"Walmart has aided China's abuse of labor rights and its violations of internationally recognized norms of fair trade by providing a vast and ever-expanding conduit for the distribution of artificially cheap and subsidized Chinese exports to the United States," the report said.
Walmart doesn't disclose the volume of Chinese imports that it sells. EPI says said it estimated Walmart's Chinese imports using a variety of statistics, including ocean containers going from China to Walmart, and other trade data.
The group estimates that the U.S. has lost a total of 3.2 million U.S. jobs between 2001 and 2013 due to the rise in Chinese imports.
Related: Why Walmart is suing Puerto Rico
Walmart, the nation's largest retailer and private sector employer, criticized the study's methodology and conclusions.
"Unfortunately, this is an old report with flawed economic analysis that assumes that imports equal job losses, and does not take into consideration that countless jobs are added through the global supply chain, distribution and logistics, among other areas of the business," said Walmart's statement.
Walmart has long been criticized for selling so many imported goods, and as a result the retailer pledged in 2013 to buy an additional $50 billion of U.S.-made goods to sell in its stores.
But EPI counters that for every U.S. job that program has created, 100 jobs have been lost to Chinese imports.
Walmart defended the success of its buy American program, and points to an estimate from Boston Consulting Group that it will produce 250,000 direct jobs and 750,000 indirect jobs for the U.S.
"We are very proud of our U.S. manufacturing initiative and the results speak for themselves," said Walmart's statement.Elizabeth Warren launched a blistering takedown Tuesday of Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf during a Capitol Hill hearing about allegations that the bank opened millions of fraudulent customer accounts, calling his leadership “gutless” and demanding a criminal investigation into the scam.
The Massachusetts senator’s line of questioning during the Senate Banking Committee hearing was personally directed at Stumpf.
“Since this massive years-long scam came to light, you have said repeatedly, ‘I am accountable.’ But what have you actually done to hold yourself accountable?” she asked. “Have you resigned as CEO or chairman of Wells Fargo?”
“The board, I serve—” Stumpf began. But Warren interjected.
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“Have you resigned?”
“No, I have not,” he said.
On September 8, the bank paid a $100 million fine to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau—a financial watchdog agency Warren conceived—as well as $85 million to other agencies. It was the largest penalty ever collected by the CFPB, according to the Washington Post. The bank says it has fired 5,300 low-level employees, roughly 2 percent of its workforce, for opening 2 million fake accounts for unsuspecting customers over the last five years. Since at least 2010, the bank had incentivized its workers to open multiple accounts for customers.
Warren said Stumpf’s definition of “accountable” was “to push the blame to low-level employees who don’t have the money for a fancy PR firm to defend themselves.”
“It’s gutless leadership,” she said, adding that Stumpf should resign, give back the money he earned while the fraud was occurring, and face a criminal investigation.
Later in the hearing Tuesday, CFPB Director Richard Cordray declined to say whether the agency had made any criminal referrals.
“Have you returned one nickel of the millions of dollars you were paid while this scam was going on?” Warren asked.
Stumpf pushed back on the use of the word “scam.”
“That was not my question; this is about responsibility,” Warren shot back.
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Stumpf began to explain that the board would decide on the matter.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then,” Warren said.
Warren said that while other banks average three accounts per customer, Wells Fargo pushed employees to aim for an unrealistic goal of eight accounts, as emblemized by the company’s slogan “Eight is Great.”
Earlier in the hearing, Stumpf said he was “deeply sorry” for the scandal, which was first reported by the Los Angeles Times in 2013.
He also said the company would end product sales goals for employees and would begin to expand its review and verification of customer accounts.NEW YORK -- Jaromir Jagr of the New Jersey Devils, Manny Malhotra of the Carolina Hurricanes and Dominic Moore of the New York Rangers are the three finalists for the 2013-14 Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, which is awarded "to the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey," the National Hockey League announced today.
A $2,500 grant from the Professional Hockey Writers' Association (PHWA) is awarded annually to the Bill Masterton Scholarship Fund, based in Bloomington, Minn., in the name of the Masterton Trophy winner.
The local chapters of the PHWA submitted nominations for the Masterton Trophy at the conclusion of the regular season and the top three vote-getters were designated as finalists. The winner will be announced Tuesday, June 24, during the 2014 NHL Awards from Encore Theater at Wynn Las Vegas. The 2014 NHL Awards will be broadcast by NBCSN in the United States and CBC in Canada.
Following are the finalists for the Masterton Trophy, in alphabetical order:
Jaromir Jagr, New Jersey Devils
Jagr's unwavering dedication to the game has allowed him to continue playing at high level when most players his age are retired. The Devils named the 42-year-old right wing team MVP in 2013-14 after he led the club in assists (43), points (67), plus-minus (+16), game-winning goals (six) and shots (231). Admired throughout the League for his rigorous training regimen, Jagr credits working hard in practices to avoiding fatigue, allowing him to stay fresh and maintain an advantage over opponents late in games.
Manny Malhotra, Carolina Hurricanes
Malhotra, 33, was the Vancouver Canucks' Masterton nominee in 2011-12 after returning from a serious eye injury suffered the season before. Refusing to believe his NHL career was over last fall, Malhotra signed a professional tryout agreement with the Charlotte Checkers, Carolina's American Hockey League affiliate, on Oct. 3 and signed as a free agent with the Hurricanes four weeks later. He appeared in 69 regular-season games, assumed a leadership role in serving as an alternate captain and ranked second among all NHL players in face-off percentage (59.4%).
Dominic Moore, New York Rangers
Moore, 33, returned to the NHL this season after taking a leave of absence from the League in the spring of 2012 in order to care for his wife, Katie, after she had been diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer. Katie passed away at the age of 32 in January of 2013. Moore thereafter established the Katie Moore Foundation (katiemoore.org), dedicated to helping patients and families with rare cancers through research, advocacy and community. He resumed his career as an integral part of a Rangers team that earned 96 points and a second-place finish in the Metropolitan Division.
History
The trophy was presented by the NHL Writers' Association in 1968 to commemorate the late Bill Masterton, a player with the Minnesota North Stars who exhibited to a high degree the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey and who died on January 15, 1968.
IMG Productions, a division of the global sports, entertainment and media company, IMG Worldwide, will produce the 2014 NHL Awards, under the helm of executive producer Steve Mayer.
A full line up of presenters and entertainment, as well as information on official 2014 NHL Awards travel packages, will be announced in the coming months. Fans can enter for a chance to win a trip to the 2014 NHL Awards. Full details are available at www.NHL.com/Vegas. Tweet about the event using the official hashtag #NHLAwards.It seems that Google does have an answer to Amazon’s cloud based player for Android and the web. The folks at Tech From 10 somehow managed to get their hands on the developer version of the Android Market which enabled them to download Google Music 3.0 for Android. The site also provides a download link to the application along with some extra screenshots, but looks like the website is down at the moment.
The UI looks almost similar to that of the native Music App, but the player looks much more friendly. Not much can be predicted at the moment, but it also appears that the a new Camera App, a slightly tweaked Android market, and a new clock App could be a part of the next Android release.
Download Link for the Player
Image Credit [DroidLife]Deporting the country’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants would cost nearly $125 billion, but allowing them to remain in the U.S. could cost taxpayers far more, according to a new report being released Thursday by a think tank that wants to see stricter immigration limits.
Steven A. Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, crunched the numbers and found that the current population of illegal immigrants will drain nearly $750 billion from taxpayers over their lifetimes — amounting to six times the deportation costs.
“Sometimes people say look, we couldn’t deport everybody because it’s prohibitively expensive,” Mr. Camarota said. “But if your only concern is fiscal cost, it’s pretty clear that letting them stay is a hell of a lot more expensive.”
The researcher said he doesn’t actually support a mass deportation of all illegal immigrants, but said it’s important to spark a conversation about costs and benefits as President Trump vows to step up removals of illegal immigrants who already in the U.S.
The crux of Mr. Camarota’s analysis is the nature of illegal immigrants, who are far more likely to be low-skilled, less-educated workers than the native-born population. Though they also don’t have access to some services and benefits reserved for citizens and legal residents, they do get other benefits, such as education.
A report last year by the National Academy of Sciences helped put a dollar figure on the lifetime costs and benefits of immigrants, based on levels of education.
SEE ALSO: Trump kept at arm’s length on border wall decisions
Mr. Camarota adjusted that study for illegal immigrants and concluded that those with advanced degrees are a $424,000 boon to the U.S. over their lifetime, but those who dropped out of high school are a $173,000 drain. Overall, it works out to a net cost to taxpayers of nearly $63,000 per illegal immigrant.
Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, said that may not take into account the age of arrival. If an immigrant with less than a high school education arrives before age 24, he can often end up having a positive effect for taxpayers, the analyst said.
Mr. Camarota’s study also focused only on fiscal calculations and did not account for economic effects such as how the drop in millions of low-skilled workers would affect certain industries, and thus Americans’ wages and prices they pay.
A study last year by the American Action Forum concluded that deporting all illegal immigrants and stopping unauthorized newcomers would sap the economy of $1 trillion.
The AAF also said the costs of deporting the universe of illegal immigrants would take 20 years and cost $100 to $300 billion — potentially much higher than Mr. Camarota’s assumptions.
The AAF said the high estimate would happen if ICE has to send its fugitive operations teams out to arrest all of the illegal immigrants.
Mr. Camarota, though, took the average dollar amount for deportations in 2016 and put the cost at $10,854 per person, or $124.1 billion for the 11 million total. Using numbers from 2012, when authorities set a record for deportations while spending less, the total came to under $6,000 per deportation, or $67.6 billion for the total population.
Deportations have ticked up under President Trump, but the rise of sanctuary cities and of migrants choosing to fight their cases every step of the way in immigration courts is making each deportation more expensive as well.
Mr. Trump has asked for a surge in new detention beds to hold illegal immigrants, and for 1,000 new officers next year to boost the deportation force.
Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan told The Washington Times last week that his agency won’t surpass the 2012 record for deportations this year, but “we’re going to get there” in the future.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Ed Miliband will be breathing a sigh of relief this morning, with the news that Labour has held on to the west London seat of Feltham and Heston in a by-election. Candidate Seema Malhotra increased Labour's majority from 4,658 to 6,203, a swing of 8.56 per cent from the Tories.
The seat was Labour's to lose after the death of Alan Keen, who won the seat from the Tories in 1992, meant that a speedy by-election was called, with time only for a short campaign.
The victory should - at least temporarily - shore up Miliband's leadership. Labour says that the results are a verdict on the failure of the coalition government to tackle unemployment and stabilise the economy.
However, it is likely that naysayers within the party will say that the swing should have been greater, as Labour's poll lead remains static and narrow. Predictably, the other parties have already downplayed the success. Alok Sharma, Conservative MP for Reading West, said that if Labour was doing well, it would have got a swing of 15-18 per cent. Sour grapes, perhaps, but it is certainly true that a loss would have been dire for Labour given the current economic situation.
Labour are not the only ones who averted disaster: Nick Clegg will also be relieved that his party did not lose out to Ukip. It had been speculated, based on the polls, that Nigel Farage's party could overtake the Liberal Democrats. But the Lib Dems just about managed to see off this threat, finishing in third place (after the Tories), with 6 per cent of the vote -- just 88 votes ahead of Ukip. The party avoided embarrassment this time, but the tiny gap portends the electoral wipe-out the Lib Dems could face in the next general election.
It's also worth noting the low turnout. At just 28.8 per cent (23,298 votes), this was the worst turnout in a by-election |
apparent space for features that might not make the cut after all, suggests that the company may be relaxing a little more.
Microsoft has a tough job ahead if the company wants to get businesses to adopt Windows 10, with its continuously updated "Windows-as-a-Service" development process representing a particular challenge to organizations that would stick with Windows XP, if only it were safe to do so. Opening up about its future plans and development trajectory feels like a necessary step if the company is to reassure enterprises that getting on the upgrade treadmill is going to provide meaningful benefits. But to do that effectively means being open to the possibility that not all planned features will pan out.
There's sure to be continued skepticism about the value of adopting Windows 10, as it represents a big shift in development approach and deployment. A more open Microsoft won't be enough to swing the decision completely, but it certainly helps make the case that making the upgrade is going to be increasingly beneficial.
Listing image by Valentina PalladinoopenWind: New Open-Source Wind Farm Design Software
October 17th, 2008 by Timothy B. Hurst
>>More on maps at CleanTechnica
We’ve written extensively about the marriage of GIS mapping and renewable energy here at CleanTechnica. Proper testing of the given renewable resource is a critical component of any installation, and the step taken forward with this new openWind project—along with similar such releases from 3TIER and the EPA—will continue to make the process of testing sites more efficient and cost-effective.
The openWind application is built around standard GIS data types and employs a GIS-style interface to allow seamless integration of geographic and modeling data. The application is fully compatible with other leading brands, making cross-platform collaboration much easier.
The advantage of openWind is in its pliability, claim the software’s developers. “openWind is not a black box,” said AWS Truewind chief technical officer Michael Brower, in an article in North American Windpower
($ubscription req’d). “Its calculations can be observed and vetted independently and users can add or modify capabilities as needed.”
Now for the good part: openWind is being released initially as a freely downloadable, open source software package. With this version, users are able to view and modify the code (subject to the terms of the open-source license). A protected version of the software intended for users requiring greater security will be made available in 2009.Don't count on using an interlibrary loan service to get a book from outside your town or county in the future. Services like interlibrary loan may be at risk in the upcoming round of federal budget cuts.
The Trump administration’s proposed budget, released this week, would eliminate funding to the Institute of Library and Museum Sciences, a federal agency that provides significant funding to Missouri’s state, local, and county library systems.
The IMLS, which had a $230 million budget last year, helps local libraries try new projects, develop programs and maintain existing collaborative services.
“It’s a major concern for me," St. Charles County Library Executive Director Jim Brown said. "It’s a major concern for the library community as a whole.”
The agency funds the Missouri State Library’s Library Services & Technology Act block grant program. Its grants fund an online database designed to facilitate interlibrary loan and the courier service that sends books from one library to another within two days. Missouri uses more than $500,000 in federal funds to do that.
IMLS funding also is used to develop library technologies, such as processes that digitize local newspaper archives and historical images, and to create special programs at local libraries. Without the funding, library services could be greatly diminished Brown said.
“It has a direct impact on our ability to provide services to the citizens of St. Charles County and that would be a true statement for people across the state of Missouri,” he said. “Public libraries use these resources to enhance and to, in some cases, offer programs and services that they might not otherwise be able to do.”
The St. Charles Library would lose its interlibrary loan services, and also funding that supports services like Wolfner Talking Book and Braille Library programs that help the visually impaired. IMLS funding also supports the St. Charles County Library’s website and its mobile computer labs that serve people without access to computers.
Brown said the federal agency not only supports local libraries but ensures taxes collected from Missouri residents return to Missouri citizens.
“We all are taxpayers and this is a way to help us bring those tax dollars that we send off to Washington back to the state of Missouri to support programs and services for the citizens of the state of Missouri,” he said.
Jefferson County Public Library Director Pam Klipsch said losing interlibrary loan capabilities would affect her library’s ability to provide patrons with the books they need. In the 2015 fiscal year, the library borrowed more than 3,000 books for county residents.
If the federal government defunds the IMLS, local libraries also would lose additional funding that matches the federal money.
Klipsch said Jefferson County combines $16,000 of federal Library Science and Technology Act funding distributed through the IMLS with $3,000 in locally raised funding to develop a new strategic plan to better serve the community.
The Jefferson County Public Library has also used some of that funding to upgrade technology, like projection systems in the library meetings rooms.
Follow Willis on Twitter: @WillisRArnoldRANGERS International Football Club plc note Rangers First’s decision to seek approval from its members to offer the Club a loan of £500,000.
The Club is not considering further loans at this time beyond what has already been committed and announced. However, any offer from Rangers First will be considered as part of any future fund raising.
Rangers remains committed to forging even closer links with supporters and the Club is working on a new initiative to make this possible. It is hoped all of the Club’s fan groups, including Rangers First, will participate fully in acquiring a larger stakeholding in the company and this initiative by Rangers First could be incorporated into such a proposal.
It should also be understood that Rangers First was not approached by the Club for funding and, despite what has been incorrectly reported, had no discussion whatsoever with the chairman, Dave King, that their funding, if accepted, would be matched by Mr King.Except there are a few stark differences between Johnson and almost every other Republican angling for the White House -- and those differences, more likely than not, will come to define his underdog campaign.
For one, Johnson wants to legalize marijuana, and he likes to talk about it. He first raised the issue as governor, and he makes the fiscal case for drug law reforms with talk about the cost to taxpayers of law enforcement and prisons. He would have signed a bill banning late-term abortions, he told me, but he supports abortion rights until viability of a fetus. He enjoys ripping into hard-line immigration policies, as he has called for more visas for American-educated students and future businesspeople.
Thin and sandy-haired, Johnson talks with a serene focus that seems more Zen-master than politician. He built his own house in Taos, he told me, because the skiing there is great; he climbed Everest in 2003; he injured himself severely in a paragliding accident in 2005. When he talks one on one, he remains wide-eyed, engaged and relaxed.
Johnson is not a typical politician, by any means. He floats above the tensions and constant battles that the big-time GOP 2012 players, for instance, seem caught up in. Perhaps that's because he hasn't attained a status where everything he says is news.
What makes him different will probably keep him from winning the GOP nod in 2012, let alone the White House. His potential candidacy is, without a doubt, a very long-shot.
But his unconventionality is also what makes him fascinating, for this simple reason: Johnson appears poised to inherit swaths of Ron Paul's following -- the campaign-turned-movement that, in many ways, became the story of the 2008 Republican primary.
Of course, that all depends on whether Paul runs for president a second time.
If he does, Johnson's voice will likely echo Paul's onstage at Republican debates throughout the coming year. But if Paul doesn't run, his supporters could very well turn to Johnson, who is the only other GOP presidential candidate offering the same kind of stripped-down libertarianism that has attracted so many supporters to Paul. They share a thoroughgoing commitment to small-government that extends even to social policies and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Johnson vehemently opposes, as Paul did in 2008.
"We're building roads, schools, bridges, highways and hospitals in Afghanistan and Iraq both, and we're borrowing 43 cents out of every dollar to do it," Johnson told me. "I just think that [9/11] was 10 years ago, it's not a threat today.... We should be out of Afghanistan tomorrow, and the issues that we will face getting out of Afghanistan tomorrow will be identical to the issues that we'll face 25 years from now, if that's when we decide to get out."
Paul's 2008 supporters were attracted by the Texas congressman's fierce libertarianism, his willingness to buck the pressures imposed by mainstream Republican politics, his radical side, and his unvarnished way of explaining his positions. Johnson checks all those boxes.European agencies, NSA collaborate on mass spying against European population
By Alejandro López
4 November 2013
New leaked documents by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden reported in the Guardian disclose the close partnership between the European intelligence services and the NSA in mass surveillance of internet and phone traffic over the past five years. They give a glimpse of how a pan-European spying system has emerged, directed at the entire European and world population.
The programs revealed by the Guardian demonstrate why European governments downplayed the initial revelations of Internet monitoring by US and British intelligence agencies in June. A major diplomatic crisis erupted two weeks ago, however, when it emerged that the US was also spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper candidly admitted intelligence services monitor thousands of government and opposition politicians in “allied” countries.
In the escalating international scandal over the NSA, European governments are not acting in any way as defenders of democratic rights. While they object to mass surveillance of their communications by the NSA, they work with the NSA to spy on global Internet traffic and create for themselves the surveillance infrastructure of police states in Europe.
The documents published by the Guardian show that French, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch and German intelligence services are cooperating in a pan-European surveillance system comparable to the NSA’s global spying network. These agencies carry out direct taps into fibre-optic cables and the development of covert relationships with national telecommunications companies, as the NSA has developed with Google or Facebook.
At the centre of the spying network is the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). The UK’s intelligence agency is positioned in a privileged situation due to its location as the gateway of transatlantic cables from the US to Europe, its special relation with the NSA, and its permissive spying environment created by successive Labour and Tory governments’ legislation.
In 2008 the “Tempora” system was developed by the GCHQ, which systematically monitors all outgoing and incoming communications via its access to the fibre-optic cables through which all UK Internet traffic passes. Leaked documents show that some 600 million calls are monitored each day by tapping more than 200 fibre-optic cables.
In the same year GCHQ officials expressed admiration for Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) for its technological capabilities, stating that they had “huge technological potential and good access to the heart of the internet—they are already seeing some bearers [term used for the fibre-optic cables] running at 40Gbps and 100Gbps.” Gbps (gigabit per second) refers to the speed at which data runs through fibre-optic cables.
British officials reportedly admire the BND because they were not able to monitor as many cables as their German counterparts. In 2012 they were still only able to monitor 10 Gbps cables and looked forward to developing the ability to tap new 100 Gbps fibre-optic cables.
The UK’s intelligence agency helped the BND bypass German laws that restricted its ability to use its technology. The report states, “We have been assisting the BND (along with SIS [Secret Intelligence Service] and Security Service) in making the case for reform or reinterpretation of the very restrictive interception legislation in Germany.”
GCHQ also praises France’s General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) and its relationship with an unnamed telecommunications company. “DGSE are a highly motivated, technically competent partner, who has shown great willingness to engage on IP [internet protocol] issues, and to work with GCHQ on a ‘cooperate and share’ basis.”
British intelligence also trained DGSE technicians. The document states, “We have made contact with the DGSE’s main industry partner, who has some innovative approaches to some internet challenges, raising the potential for GCHQ to make use of this company in the protocol development arena.” In 2009, both agencies collaborated in breaking online encryption methods.
The GCHQ also collaborated with the Spanish National Intelligence Centre (CNI), which carries out mass internet surveillance thanks to its ties with an unnamed British telecommunications company, giving them “fresh opportunities and uncovering some surprising results.” Under Spanish law, mass trawl of communications on an indiscriminate basis is illegal.
The CNI, like the GCHQ, is also in a strategic location to intercept and monitor calls. The Columbus III transatlantic underwater telecommunications cable, which connects Sicily with the state of Florida and passes through Conil in Cádiz, is used by millions of people each day.
The reports states, “The commercial partner has provided the CNI some equipment whilst keeping us informed, enabling us to invite the CNI across for IP-focused discussions this autumn [2008].” It concluded that GCHQ “have found a very capable counterpart in CNI, particularly in the field of Covert Internet Ops.”
In the same year, the GCHQ praised the new legislation passed by the Swedish parliament, allowing the National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets Radioanstalt—FRA) to monitor all e-mail and telephone communications that enter, leave or even pass through Sweden. The new law, which resembled the Bush administration’s wire-tapping programme in place since 2001, does not require a warrant to carry out the surveillance. (See: “Swedish government adopts invasive wire-tapping measures”)
“GCHQ has already provided a lot of advice and guidance on these issues and we are standing by to assist the FRA further once they have developed a plan for taking the work forwards,” states the report.
GCHQ also maintains strong relations with the two main Dutch intelligence agencies, but “[t]he Dutch have some legislative issues that they need to work through before their legal environment would allow them to operate in the way that GCHQ does. We are providing legal advice on how we have tackled some of these issues to Dutch lawyers.”
All the European intelligence agencies are complicit in NSA spying, providing the US agency with great quantities of metadata—the origin of calls, to whom the calls are made, time and duration of the calls, and places the calls are made.
Terrorism expert Jean-Charles Brisard told El País, “The Europeans have capabilities which are very similar to the Americans to intercept, but on the other hand they don’t have the same resources to process this information. That is why they pass on this raw material so that it can be deciphered.”
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Same-sex marriage supporters celebrate a federal judge's decision overturning California's same-sex marriage ban on Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2010, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
(CNSNews.com) –While a recent Gallup poll showed that U.S. adults, on average, think homosexuals make up about 25 percent of the entire population, official data reveal that gays and lesbians comprise between 2 percent and 4 percent of the population.
In a May 5-8 telephone survey, Gallup asked more than 1,000 U.S. adults in all 50 states: “Just your best guess, what percent of Americans today would you say are gay or lesbian?”
The adults polled estimated that 25 percent – one quarter of all Americans – are gay or lesbian.
According to Gallup, over half of Americans (52 percent) said that at least one in five Americans is homosexual, and 35 percent estimated more than one in four. Only 30 percent estimated under 15 percent.
However, official estimates of the homosexual population range from 2 to 4 percent – well under the 25 percent “guesstimate.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, which began asking questions about same-sex household information in the 1990 Census, only 581,300 individuals were part of a same-sex household in 2009. That’s less than one-half of one percent (0.5 percent) of the 307 million people living in the U.S. in 2009.
Furthermore, data from the Census Bureau's 2010 Demographic Profile shows that “same-sex spouses” accounted for a mere 2.5 percent of the U.S. population, which is nearly 8 million people out of the total 309 million Americans.
The 2006-2008 National Survey of Family Growth found that 3.7 percent of adults aged 18 to 44 were homosexual or bisexual. The survey is administered by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the federal Centers for Disease Control. It consists of an in-person interview in which the respondent enters his or her own answers into the computer without telling them to an interviewer.
The University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center, which has been conducting scientifically designed surveys on homosexuality for close to 30 years – far longer than the U.S. Census Bureau – found the percentage of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in the United States in 2008 was 2 percent – a number that has been stable since the late ‘80s, according to Tom Smith, director of the General Social Survey at NORC. (pg. 57)
“In general, these figures have changed little from our first studies in the late 1980s through 2010,” Smith told CNSNews.com.
The Gallup poll was a random digit dial telephone interview which surveyed 1,018 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia on May 5-8, 2011. The margin of error was plus-or-minus 4 percentage points.The exact process by which humanity introduced itself to the Americas has always been controversial. While there's general agreement on the most important migration—across the Bering land bridge at the end of the last ice age—there's a lot of arguing over the details. Now, two new papers clarify some of the bigger picture but also introduce a new wrinkle: there's DNA from the distant Pacific floating around in the genomes of Native Americans. And the two groups disagree about how it got there.
Prior to the advent of cheap DNA sequencing, there were all sorts of ideas regarding the peopling of the Americas. While migration across the Bering land bridge was the consensus opinion, it wasn't clear how many migrations took place—or even who, exactly, did the migrating. Because of the physical diversity of modern Native American populations, people have suggested additional migrations across the Pacific or even from Europe or Africa.
The Clovis people, who had what appears to have been the continents' first distinctive technology and culture, caused further confusion. Some argued that these represented the first humans in the Americas, while others argued they represented a distinct migration into a sparsely populated hemisphere. Language groups created their own confusion.
Bit by bit, however, DNA data has been bringing clarity to these questions. For example, it has shown that the Clovis people, DNA-wise, weren't distinct from other Native American populations. Neither was Kennewick Man, who had facial features that some interpreted as similar to different Pacific populations. And, as more Native American populations are studied, they consistently show a shared genetic heritage, largely related to East Asian populations (though with a liberal dose of ancient Siberian, as well).
But these studies have left open the possibility that other populations have made a small contribution to specific groups within the Americas. And so two studies have attempted to nail down the history of Native Americans by adding lots of additional genetic data. One has completed 31 new human genomes and got partial coverage of another 23 derived from bones obtained from archeological sites. The second scanned for DNA variation in 63 individuals from populations native to South America.
One big wave
The first analysis indicated that all Native American populations became isolated from everyone else in Asia about 23,000 years ago. That's roughly the same time as the Last Glacial Maximum, the final time the ice sheets reached their full extent prior to the onset of melting—certainly a period where it would be easy for populations to become isolated.
Within this population, two groups separated out shortly after the time that migration into the Americas seems to have started, 13,000 years ago. One went on to populate the majority of the continent. The second group, called Athabascans, is primarily found in Alaska and northwest Canada. Athabascans appear to have a more complex genetic history, having sporadic exchanges with Siberia until the Bering land bridge went under water 12,000 years ago and also interbreeding with the Inuit.
(The Inuit, while most closely related to Native Americans, are a genetically distinctive group. They arrived in North America later and largely remained separate from Native American populations. Some of them subsequently migrated back to northern Siberia.)
So, on the whole, the data from this paper comes down strongly for a single, major migration into the Americas, followed by a rapid split into two populations. Afterward, minor contributions were made by other genetic groups. Mostly, these genetic groups—the Inuit and Siberians—make geographic sense.
How'd that get here?
The Athabascans and Aleutian islanders also have a rather unexpected contribution from Australo-Melanesians, the natives of Australia, New Guinea, and the Andaman Islands. That, this study found, was absent in populations farther south.
Not so, says the study that focused on South American groups. Here, a strong signal from Australo-Melanesians was present in a number of Amazonian tribes; weaker affinities are scattered through South and Central America. At the same time, there are other groups in this region with no affinity to Australo-Melanesians.
How to explain this? The first paper takes the view that it's a product of a later addition to the already established population in North America, probably brought in by a group that was largely East Asian but had interbred with Australo-Melanesians. Whatever this group was, it appears to have vanished from Siberia and East Asia.
The second paper, however, argues that the Australo-Melanesian DNA couldn't have gotten to the Amazon undisturbed if it were just randomly being spread through interbreeding. Instead, a distinct population must have taken it there. Because the population is still largely Native American on the DNA level, but contains some DNA distantly related to Australo-Melanesians, its authors argue that this population originated in Asia and came to the Americas via a second migration.
Neither of these papers is suggesting that Australo-Melanesians made it to the Americas on their own, much less were waiting here for the arrival of Native Americans. So this doesn't do anything to overturn the general picture of the peopling of these continents. But it's not at all clear how to reconcile the two results, given the current data. It may be that we'll have to wait in order to get more.
But that's sort of missing the big question raised by this finding. DNA from the Americas won't help us understand how a population in Siberia somehow carried DNA from Australo-Melanesians. Our ancestors clearly did not sit still for long.
Science, 2015. DOI: 10.1126/science.aab3884
Nature, 2015. DOI: 10.1038/nature14895 (About DOIs).Eritrea faces societal collapse
By Jean Shaoul
22 June 2015
A United Nations report has exposed the dreadful conditions in Eritrea, located in the Horn of Africa, that have prompted hundreds of thousands to flee the country. By mid-2014, there were nearly 360,000 Eritreans registered as refugees worldwide by the UN, out of a population of just 6.3 million.
Eritreans are victims, alongside migrants from other North African and Middle Eastern countries, of brutal wars stoked by US imperialism and its European allies in their bid to control the region’s energy resources. They are second in number only to Syrians seeking a safe refuge in Europe. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, nearly one in five of the 200,000 migrants who made the crossing to Europe last year were Eritreans.
The 484-page report by the UN’s Office of the High Commission for Human Rights (OHCHR) is the result of a year-long investigation. It was based on 550 interviews in third countries and 160 written submissions because the Eritrean government refused to cooperate. Many people declined to provide evidence to the OHCHR, even anonymously, fearing reprisal. It details “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations, forcing hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee the country.” These abuses were carried out by President Isaias Afwerki’s “totalitarian” government, which rules without accountability or the rule of law.
Afwerki has been in power since independence in 1993. Since then, there have been no elections, opposition parties have been banned and the media suppressed.
The report argued that, collectively, Afwerki’s ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice Party, the military, the national security office, the police, and government departments have operated a system that leads to arbitrary arrests and detention. Torture and even enforced disappearances are the norm. Even those who have committed no crime could end up in arduous and indefinite national service that amounts to forced labour.
Eritrea’s foreign ministry denounced the UN report as a “vile slander” and a “cynical political travesty.” It said that the allegations were “totally unfounded and devoid of all merit.” The report was, in addition, an attack “not so much on the government, but on a civilized people and society who cherish human values and dignity.”
The study found that the government’s policy of conscription can leave young people trapped indefinitely in the army. Some interviewees said they had served long terms as conscripts, including one who had served 17 years. Those who try to flee the country are treated as “traitors.” There is a shoot-to-kill policy on the border. The OHCHR said people were still being shot in 2014, including children, although the government says it has ended the policy.
Conditions at the military training camps are dire, and sexual violence against women and girls is rampant. Many underage students are subject to forced labour under the threat of death, leading the OHCHR to conclude that, “forced labour in this context is a practice similar to slavery.”
“The commission also finds that the violations in the areas of extrajudicial executions, torture (including sexual torture), national service and forced labour may constitute crimes against humanity,” it adds.
The UN report contradicted the controversial Danish report Eritrea—Drivers and Root Causes of Emigration that concluded that many Eritreans were fleeing for economic reasons. The report caused outrage and was widely discredited as politically-motivated, designed to deny asylum status to Eritreans, with the UK using it to argue that Eritreans are no longer in danger if they return home.
The OHCHR said that it was these conditions that caused hundreds of thousands to flee the country: “In desperation, they resort to deadly escape routes through deserts and neighbouring war-torn countries and across dangerous seas in search of safety... To ascribe their decision to leave solely to economic reasons is to ignore the dire situation of human rights in Eritrea and the very real suffering of its people.”
The desperate situation in Eritrea is part of the ongoing fragmentation and disintegration of the countries in the Horn of Africa, which includes Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and Djibouti. The Horn is an arena of intense great power rivalry for the control of oil reserves in neighbouring countries and the sea route through the narrow Bab al-Mandeb straights through which much of Europe’s oil passes. The United States and its European allies are engaged in a ferocious struggle with China for control of the region’s oil resources.
Eritrea became independent from Ethiopia in 1993 after a bitter 30-year long civil war, but without a properly drawn up settlement or agreement about long sections of the borders. Both countries became client states of the US, with Ethiopia, home to 90 million people, becoming the biggest sub-Saharan recipient of US aid. America was one of only a handful of states to establish an embassy in Eritrea, in large part because its sea port Massawa occupies a strategic position immediately opposite Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea, commanding the route to and from the Suez Canal.
The economic paths of Ethiopia and Eritrea soon began to diverge, leading to disputes and a full-scale war—just five years after independence—over Badme, a remote but fertile area said to contain gold and industrial minerals. The war brought economic ruin to two of the poorest countries on the planet, as they spent millions re-arming. This had a devastating impact on living standards, with a widening gap between rich and poor and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.
The war spilled over into neighbouring Somalia, a country that all but disintegrated thanks to the political machinations of competing imperialist powers during the colonial and Cold War eras, and the IMF interventions in the 1980s that wrecked Somalia’s pastoral economy and led to the civil wars and famine that have bedevilled the country ever since. In their search for allies, Ethiopia and Eritrea supported opposing factions in Somalia, leading to a proxy war that was to continue until 2009, involving sponsoring rebel groups in each other’s countries.
Eritrea fell foul of the US, which backed Ethiopia as its key strategic ally in the region.
The Ethiopia-Eritrea war ended in 2000 after the loss of more than 100,000 lives, following an Algerian-brokered mediation and arbitration that largely ruled in Eritrea’s favour. Ethiopia never honoured the agreement, leading to a stalemate, occasional military flare-ups, and heavy militarisation on both sides of the border and the cessation of trade between the two countries, depriving landlocked Ethiopia of access to Eritrea’s Red Sea ports.
The “Ethiopian threat” served as a much-needed justification for Afwerki and his clique’s dictatorship, as they profited from the country’s mineral resources.
In 2008, US President George W Bush declared Eritrea a “state sponsor of terrorism” for its backing of al-Shabab in Somalia, which Ethiopia was then fighting on Washington’s behalf. This triggered US economic sanctions. The following year, at US behest, the UN passed Resolution 1907 imposing sanctions against Eritrea, leading Eritrea to become an international pariah.
This has had a devastating impact on the impoverished country, where the average per capita income is about $550 a year, according to the most recent World Bank figures.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - Slovenia plans to save its dwindling lynx population by importing the wild cats from near neighbors Slovakia and Romania.
Lynxes became extinct in Slovenia about 100 years ago but were successfully repopulated in 1974 when six were imported from Slovakia. Their numbers were on the rise until 2000 when they began to fall due to genetic flaws caused by inbreeding.
There are now only 10 to 20 left in Slovenia’s forests, down from between 50 and 70 about 20 years ago.
An EU-funded project aims to revive the population by importing at least 10 lynxes from Slovakia and Romania between 2019 and 2024, project coordinator Rok Cerne told Reuters.
It will also see the transfer of four lynxes from Romania and Slovakia to Croatia, where the lynx population is also low at about 40.
About 60 percent of the 7 million euro ($8 million) project will come from EU funds.
Around 60 percent of Slovenia is covered by forests, which are also home to relatively stable populations of bears and wolves.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
BLUFFDALE, Utah -- A group of activists from a coalition of environmental, privacy and anti-spying organizations flew a blimp over the NSA's massive Utah Data Center in protest over allegations of domestic spying.
"It's not often that you can get -- literally -- over the NSA," Parker Higgins, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told FOX 13 on Friday.
Taking a selfie with @GreenpeaceUSA above the NSA data center in Utah was definitely necessary. More pics soon! pic.twitter.com/A1Q9ZgjAve — EFF (@EFF) June 27, 2014
The EFF, Greenpeace and the Tenth Amendment Center used the green blimp, which had the words "NSA, Illegal Spying Below" with an arrow pointing down.
"NSA surveillance impacts a lot of us, but it's hard to feel the physical impact of it," said Higgins. "When you see the sprawling, scary data center, it really drives home that this agency is really doing something physical and real that affects Americans and non-Americans' lives."
The FAA and the Utah National Guard told FOX 13 the flight over the Utah Data Center was legal.
"Camp Williams only restricts the airspace when we're under operations with live fire cannon operations or small fire operations," said Lt. Col. Steven Fairbourn.
The protest groups said they took steps to make sure their flyover was legal, even bringing the blimp down by 7 a.m. to ensure it did not interfere with other air traffic.
The event was certainly noticed by commuters.
Another view of the blimp flying near the #NSA facility in Bluffdale Utah #utpol pic.twitter.com/51gPHbJv0F — David Lifferth (@DavidLifferth) June 27, 2014
The NSA did not immediately return a request for comment on the demonstration.
The action is part of a larger campaign the groups have to increase pressure on the NSA over domestic surveillance. Privacy rights groups have called for power and water to be cut off to the Utah Data Center.
In May, FOX 13 published the Utah Data Center's water bill, which suggested the facility may not be fully operational.
Some Utah lawmakers have also renewed plans for legislation to cut off material support for the NSA data center.
YouTube Video:Among children and adolescents, anxiety disorders are the most frequently diagnosed form of psychopathology (Beesdo et al. 2009) and often continue into adulthood, resulting in chronic impairment (Beesdo 2010; Bittner et al. 2007; Kessler et al. 2005; Last et al. 1996; Pine 2007; Pine et al. 1998; Wittchen et al. 2000). For successful prevention and intervention, it may be important to identify early neural markers that distinguish pathological trajectories of development, as well as modifiable environmental factors that impact neural markers of risk.
A considerable amount of research has focused on an event-related potential (ERP) related to error monitoring as a potential neural correlate of pathological anxiety. The error-related negativity (ERN) is a negative deflection in the waveform occurring approximately 50 ms after error commission at fronto-central electrode sites and is thought to reflect the activation of a generic error monitoring system (Falkenstein et al. 1991; Gehring et al. 1993). Research suggests that the ERN is generated in the anterior cingulate cortex (Debener et al. 2005; Dehaene et al. 1994; Hoffmann and Falkenstein 2010) and is evident across a range of response and stimulus modalities (Holroyd et al. 1998; Nieuwenhuis et al. 2001).
Variation in the ERN has been related to individual differences in sensitivity to errors and defensive reactivity following mistakes (Hajcak 2012; Weinberg et al. 2012a). More specifically, an increased ERN has been associated with personality traits that characterize anxiety, such as behavioral inhibition system (BIS) sensitivity (Amodio et al. 2008), worry (Hajcak et al. 2003), high negative affect (Hajcak et al. 2004), and punishment sensitivity (Boksem et al. 2006). Moreover, an increased ERN has been observed in individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD; Endrass et al. 2008; Gehring et al. 2000; Xiao et al. 2011) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; Weinberg et al. 2012b; Weinberg et al. 2010).
Consistent with findings in adult populations, an increased ERN has also been found within a heterogeneous group of clinically anxious children (Ladouceur et al. 2006), children with OCD (Carrasco et al. 2013; Hajcak et al. 2008; Hanna et al. 2012), children with non-clinical symptoms of OCD (Santesso et al. 2006), children with clinical anxiety as young as 6 years old (Meyer et al. 2013a), adolescents with non-clinical anxiety symptoms (Meyer et al. 2012), in children characterized by early temperamental behavioral inhibition (McDermott et al. 2009), as well as unaffected siblings of children with OCD (Carrasco et al. 2013). In light of these findings, the ERN has been proposed as a neurobehavioral trait (Hajcak 2012) and endophenotype (Proudfit et al. 2013) that may be useful in understanding and characterizing developmental risk trajectories associated with anxiety disorders.
Although the ERN magnitude appears to be moderately heritable (Anokhin et al. 2008), a large portion of variance is unaccounted for by genetic influences (between 40–60 %), suggesting that the environment may play a substantial role in the development of the ERN. Recent work indicates that the ERN is increased when errors are punished (Meyer et al., Enhanced error-related negativity is specific to punishment condition in high trait anxiety, unpublished manuscript; Riesel et al. 2012) and that this effect persists after punishment ends. Thus, learning-related experiences surrounding error commission may impact the ERN. One important element of the early childhood learning environment is parenting |
ijn, J. De Maeyer, R. Heynickx, and B. Verschaffel (eds.) Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9789058678423 As a historian of Africa and as a teacher of world history, I am very intrigued by the subject of sacred spaces as a way read more »
A Short History of Film: Second Edition. Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780813560557 Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster’s A Short History of Film provides an excellent starting point into the study of film history. The work read more »
Imagic Moments: Indigenous North American Film. Lee Schweninger. London: The University of Georgia Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780820345154 Lee Schweninger’s book Imagic Moments: Indigenous North American Film is the latest text to examine the cinematic achievements of Aboriginal directors and actors in the rich and increasingly popular field of North American read more »
Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750-1856. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780803238336 Sonya Lipsett-Rivera opens Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico with the assertion that “on a day-to-day basis the aspects of life that most preoccupied people were not read more »
The Feedback Loop: Historians Talk about the Links between Research and Teaching. Antoinette M. Burton, et. al. eds. Washington, D.C: The American Historical Association, 2013. ISBN: 9780872292011 Explaining what I do as a historian is often a difficult task. Much of society -- many of my students included – assume read more »
Inka Human Sacrifice and Mountain Worship: Strategies for Empire Unification. Thomas Besom. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780826353078 The consolidation of the Inka Empire in only 90 years, for Thomas Besom, is one of the most exceptional events in South American history. Most scholars in the field, read more »
Excavating Modernity: The Roman Past in Fascist Italy. Joshua Arthurs. New York: Cornell University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780801449987 Throughout contemporary academic spheres, recent discourse revolving around the history of Fascism has turned towards the regime’s vision of modernism. According to Excavating Modernity, the implication of said scholarly approach necessitates read more »
Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations. Mishuana Goeman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780816677900 Mishuana Goeman’s Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations challenges readers to think about how indigenous North American women’s writing creates maps and spaces that complement and counter colonial, patriarchal, conventionally-considered read more »
Chieftains into Ancestors: Imperial Expansion and Indigenous Society in Southwest China. David Faure and Ho Ts’ui-p’ing, editors. Vancouver and Toronto: University of British Columbia Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780774823692 The scholars whose essays appear in this volume all attempt, in one way or another, to provide a history of southern read more »
The Cuban Revolution: Origins Course and Legacy, 3d ed. Marifeli Pérez-Stable. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780195367089 The Cuban Revolution holds a significant historical place in defining the contours of a society that moved from slavery, through colony, into Cold War, and now into a new global order. read more »
A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade and Societal Development, 100-1500. Kenneth R. Hall. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. ISBN: 9780742567610 In A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade and Societal Development, 100-1500, historian Kenneth Hall offers a useful overview of Southeast Asian history in the era read more »
The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity. Peter Brown. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780674967588 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- for read more »
Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War. Jodi Kim. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780816655922 American interventions in East Asia, Cold War epistemology, and Asian American cultural productions all receive due reconsideration of their interrelationships in Jodi Kim’s 2010 monograph, Ends of Empire. In this read more »
Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881-1938. Mary Dewhurst Lewis. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2014. ISBN: 9780520279155 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- for read more »
Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line. Theresa Runstedtler. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780520280113 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- read more »
Battle Lines: A Graphic History of the Civil War. Ari Kelman and Jonathan Fetter-Vorm. New York: Hill and Wang, 2015. ISBN: 9780809094745 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- for more read more »
Revolutions Without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World. Janet Polasky. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780300208948 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- for more read more »
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press Books, 2014. ISBN: 9780807057834 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- for more information, please see HERE. read more »
Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World. Benjamin Schmidt. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780812246469 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- for more information, please see read more »
Theatre and the State in Singapore: Orthodoxy and Resistance. Terence Chong. New York: Routledge, 2011. ISBN: 9780415584487 As art proves to be a foundational component of culture, interrogating the institution of art sheds light on a culture’s identity. In the detailed and focused cultural study, Theatre and the State of read more »
Borrowed Light: Vico, Hegel, and the Colonies. Timothy Brennan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. ISBN: 9780804790543 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- for more information, please see HERE. Timothy Brennan’s read more »
Genocide Lives in Us: Women, Memory, and Silence in Rwanda. Jennie E. Burnet. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780299286446 In this captivating story of one of the greatest travesties thrust upon the world, Jennie E. Burnet’s work on Rwanda, and the impact of its 1994 genocide casts its read more »
Edible Histories, Cultural Politics: Towards a Canadian Food History. Ranca Iacovetta, Valerie J. Korinek, Mariene Epp, eds. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. ISBN: 9781442644762 (bound) ISBN: 9781442612839 (pbk.) Born out of a 2008 workshop funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and held at Conrad Grebel University read more »
History and Popular Memory: The Power of Story in Moments of Crisis. Paul A. Cohen. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2014. ISBN: 9780231166362 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- read more »
Ambivalent Encounters: Childhood, Tourism, and Social Change in Banaras, India. Jenny Huberman. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780813554068 Jenny Huberman, an anthropologist, provides us with an apt ethnographic study on children, tourism, and the place of power in working class life. Her place of read more »
Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World. Gary Wilder. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780822358503 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- for more information, read more »
Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution. Kathleen Du Val. New York: Random House, 2015. ISBN: 9781400068951 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- for more information, please read more »
Cosmopolitan Africa: 1700–1875. Trevor R. Getz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780199764709 In the late nineteenth century, European leaders such as Jules Ferry, the Prime Minister of France, and Joseph Chamberlain, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, believed the West had a duty to civilize Africans. read more »
Empire’s Children: Child Emigration, Welfare, and the Decline of the British World, 1869-1967. Ellen Boucher. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN: 9781107041387 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- for read more »
Teaching Africa: A Guide for the 21st-Century Classroom. Brandon D. Lundy and Solomon Negash. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780253008213 Teaching about Africa in the American university system can be a daunting task. Students typically arrive to campus with little knowledge of the continent, its read more »
Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245-1510. Kim M. Phillips. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. ISBN: 9780812245486 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- for more read more »
Colonial Africa, 1884–1994. Dennis Laumann. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780199796397 Over the past 5–10 years, African Studies pedagogy has benefited immensely from publications in three book series designed for use in undergraduate classrooms: Ohio Short Histories of Africa (Ohio Univ. Press & Jacana), Africa in World History read more »
Industrial Eden: A Chinese Capitalist Vision. Brett Sheehan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN: 9780674967601 This essay is a part of our series, Using Book Reviews as a Teaching Tool – University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Department of History -- for more information, please see HERE. Industrial Eden: read more »
Gourmets in the Land of Famine: The Culture and Politics of Rice in Modern Canton. Seung-Joon Lee. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780804772266 Seung-Joon Lee’s book is a fine offering in cultural history that expands from the central question of a Cantonese preference for gourmet rice imported from Southeast read more »
Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Towards a New Genealogy of Public History. Denise D. Meringolo. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012. ISBN: 978558499409 Academic history and public history are, at least up to a certain degree, two aspects of dealing with the past that are not only read more »
Island Queens and Mission Wives: How Gender and Empire Remade Hawai’i’s Pacific World. Jennifer Thigpen. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014. ISBN: 9781469614298 In 1820, a ship carrying the first American missionaries to Hawai’i set anchor off the islands’ coast. Even before the travelers disembarked, read more »
Alien Nation: Chinese Migration in the Americas from the Coolie Era Through World War II. Elliot Young. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. ISBN: 978146912966 Young offers in Alien Nation an important counter to dominant narratives of migration by challenging the single trajectory, nation-state centered biases of such read more »
Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love. Simon Blackburn. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. 2014. ISBN: 9780691161426 This essay is a part of our series, Philosophy and the World -- for more information, please see HERE. In our modern era of corporate greed, political deception, and a prevalent me-first read more »
Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots of Global Justice. Carol C. Gould. Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN: 1107607418 This essay is a part of our series, Philosophy and the World -- for more information, please see HERE. The terms freedom, democracy, and human rights resonate significantly within contemporary international politics. They read more »
Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War. Michael J. Sulick. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9781589019263 Even from the preface of Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War, Michael J. Sulick hints read more »
Heroism and Gender in War Films. Edited by Karen A. Ritzenhoff, Jakub Kazecki. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. ISBN: 9781137364531 The very idea of intertwining two contradictory concepts such as heroism and gender in war zones or battle fields, seem to be far-fetched from the onset. The reader, in his/her read more »
Memories of Conquest: Becoming Mexicano in Colonial Guatemala. Laura E. Matthew. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780807835371 The biggest virtue of world history is its global approach, in the sense that it aims to retell human experience from multiple perspectives. As scholars strive read more »
Lessons from an Indian Day School: Negotiating Colonization in Northern New Mexico, 1902-1907. Adrea Lawrence. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011. ISBN: 9780700618071 Adrea Lawrence provides an interesting but limited perspective that does not fulfil the expectations of the title. She examines the educative processes that took place in and read more »
The Sea and Civilization: a maritime history of the world. Lincoln Paine. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. ISBN: 9781400044092 For decades, world history suffered from a Eurocentric crisis. In many now-canonical works, such as William McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples (1976), Alfred Crosby’s Ecological Imperialism (1986), and Jared Diamond’s Guns, read more »
Writing Mexican History. Eric Van Young. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780804768610 In Writing Mexican History, Eric Van Young invites his reader to join him as he revisits the personal, professional and intellectual paths that he has treaded (and opened up) as a scholar of Mexican history. In a read more »
Sovereignty and Struggle: Africa and Africans in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1994. Jonathan T. Reynolds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780199915125 This small volume is yet another contribution to Oxford University Press’s “African World Histories” series. It joins other texts—Transatlantic Africa, 1440-1888; Cosmopolitan Africa, 1700-1875; Colonial read more »
Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea, 1910–1945. Hong Yung Lee, Yong-Chool Ha, and Clark W. Sorensen, eds. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780295992167 If Japan’s imperial domination of Korea lasted less than four decades, Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea, 1910–1945 demonstrates that the debate over read more »
The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War. Mark Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780199575824 Mark Harrison provides insight into the shifts in medical developments and opinions within Britain, which led to the nation’s improved military performances during the First World War. He focuses on read more »
The Idea of Haiti: Rethinking Crisis and Development. Edited by Millery Polyné. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. ISBN: 978081668132 Just before five o’clock on January 12, 2010, the earth under the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince began to violently buckle and shift, causing massive loss of life and billions read more »
Malcontents, Rebels, & Pronunciados: The Politics of Insurrection in Nineteenth-Century Mexico. Will Fowler. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780803225428 Will Fowler has assembled a collection of well-researched and provocative essays that analyze the pronunciamiento (a written protest or petition generally drafted as a list of grievances), in Mexico. read more »
Genocide in the Age of the Nation State, Vol. II: The Rise of the West and the Coming of Genocide. Mark Levene. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. ISBN: 9781845110574 In The Rise of the West and the Coming of Genocide historian Mark Levene explores connections between the rise of the West read more »
Scream from the Shadows: The Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan. Setsu Shigematsu. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780816667581 A self-reflexive exploration of the interconnections between feminism and violence, Scream from the Shadows is more than a historical account of the ribu movement in Japan. It offers a radical read more »
Review Essay: Gaining Understanding with Recent Inter-generational and Developmental Models Abstract The evolution of technology has facilitated improved lifestyles with better health, substitution of energy instead of human power, and better comforts such as temperature control and sanitation. However, there are real and potential problems to the entire population including read more »
Islam and Travel in the Middle Ages. Houari Touati. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780226808772 Touati begins his introduction by stating that “Muslim men of letters were mad for travel” (1). This assertion of the passionate connection between knowledge (‘ilm) and travel (rihla) is read more »
Action and Reaction in the World System: The Dynamics of Economic and Political Power. Thierry de Montbrial. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780774824736 Thierry de Montbrial’s Action and Reaction in the World System: The Dynamics of Economic and Political Power is new to most Americans who read more »
Routledge Handbook of Heritage in Asia. Patrick Daly and Tim Winter (eds). Abingdon: Routledge, 2012. ISBN: 9780415600453 The heritage sector has been witness to significant growth in recent decades, with profound implications for physical heritage resources, their surrounding landscapes and source communities. In turn, a wide range of literature has read more »
The Invisible War: Indigenous Devotions, Discipline, and Dissent in Colonial Mexico. David Tavárez. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780804773287 It is an understatement to argue that the indigenous societies of the New World differed from the societies that existed in Europe during the pre-contact period. In turn, academics read more »
Trans-colonial Modernities in South Asia. Michael S. Dodson and Brian A. Hatcher, eds. London/New York: Routledge, 2012. ISBN: 9780415780629 In recent decades, “modernity” has become one of the most ubiquitous words in the lexicon of scholars of South Asia. It is an essential aspect of the conceptual apparatus on read more »
Brooklyn Boheme. Directed by Diane Paragas & Nelson George. Cinema Guild. 2011, 84 minutes Capturing the synergy and power of a community filled with avant-garde expression, the documentary Brooklyn Boheme leaves the audience with some resounding reflection points. Geographically centered in the neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, the film presents read more »
Do Museums Still Need Objects? Steven Conn. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780812221558 Do Museums Still Need Objects? is an analytical narrative focused on the historical evolution of the use of objects in museum settings. Public Historian Steven Conn of Ohio State University is “more prosaically historical” in read more »
Writing Women in Central America: Gender and the Fictionalization of History. Laura Barbas-Rhoden. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780896802339 Laura Barbas-Rhoden’s first book, Writing Women in Central America: Gender and the Fictionalization of History, is an eloquent and accessible contribution to Latin American literary criticism and a testament to read more »
Mexico in World History. William H. Beezley. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780195337907 As part of the New Oxford World History series from Oxford University Press, William Beezley’s Mexico in World History contributes to our understanding of Mexico’s past and present by examining how internal and external factors read more »
Crafting Mexico: Intellectuals, Artisans, and the State after the Revolution. Rick A. López. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780822346944 López’s Crafting Mexico uses visual aesthetics and popular art as lenses through which to examine the attempts by Mexico’s intellectuals to construct a unified “ethnicized” national culture out of read more »
Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society. Edited by Victoria Lyon Bestor, Theodore C. Bestor, and Akiko Yamagata. London and New York: Routledge, 2011. ISBN: 9780415436496 The editors here present a series of essays on Japanese society which provide a broad spectrum approach including topics as far apart as political read more »
Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006. ISBN: 0742546861 Racial discourse has been viewed as taboo in public discussion after the Civil Rights Movement. It seems that as long as we don’t “see” or mention read more »
The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History. Touraj Daryaee. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780199762159 This volume, part of an expanding line of subject handbooks by Oxford University Press, presents itself as a convenient overview of the history of the Iranian people, from prehistory through the early years of read more »
The Imperial Map: Cartography and the Mastery of Empire. Edited by James R. Akerman. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780226010762 Cartography has a long as well as ongoing history. As James Akerman, the editor of the anthology and director of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center of the read more »
The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History. Emma Rothschild. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780691148953 One of the difficulties of teaching world history is getting students to think in terms of broad historical processes without losing sight of the human element that makes the study of history so read more »
Diplomacy and Nation-Building in Africa: Franco-British Relations and Cameroon at the End of Empire. Melanie Torrent. London: I.B. Tauris Press, 2012. ISBN: 9781848857773 In many ways, the study of decolonization ranks as one of the newest frontiers for historians of Africa. Only in the last decade or so have sufficient read more »
Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History. Trevor Getz and Liz Clarke. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. ISBN 9780199844395 Abina and the Important Men is a graphic history about a real court case from the 1870s in the town of Cape Coast in the British Gold read more »
Slavery and the Enlightenment in the British Atlantic, 1750-1807. Justin Roberts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. ISBN: 9781107025851 In this ambitious and thoughtful book, Justin Roberts advocates historians to make a paradigm shift in slave studies. In the second half of the twentieth century, resistance paradigm, which emphasized agency and read more »
The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War. Updated Edition. Greg Grandin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780226306902 In The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War, New York University Professor Greg Grandin traces the history of Guatemala’s old Left in the Polochic Valley read more »
The Roots of Evil. John Kekes. Ithaca, NY: C ornell University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780801473814 When Elmore Leonard died recently, writer Robert Ferrigno described the late author’s wicked characters as “real and scary and utterly human,” suggesting a tight connection between “real and scary” and the circumstances of being human read more »
The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Todd Shepard. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780801474545 When the French government recognized the independence of Algeria in July 1962, the idea of what it meant to be French changed radically. Todd Shepard explores how this read more »
A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of his Arm a Tiny Bomb. Amitava Kumar. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. ISBN: 978082234578 Amitava Kumar’s book centers around the conviction of two men in the United States for terrorist related crimes. Kumar begins each story signifying the convicted as guilty, slowly revealing read more »
Mau Mau's Children: The Making of a Postcolonial Elite. David Sandgren. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ISBN: 978029928789 David Sandgren's recent book, Mau Mau's Children: The Making of a Postcolonial Elite, could just have easily been entitled, The New Athomi (readers). Athomi is the Kikuyu (one of the largest read more »
Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. Alfred W. Crosby. Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780521546188 Since its initial publication in 1986 Ecological Imperialism has lost little of its original appeal and complexity regarding biological expansion. According to its author Alfred W. Crosby, European expansion was read more »
Europe and the Maritime World: A Twentieth-Century History. Michael B. Miller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012 ISBN: 9781107024557 First things first: this is a splendid book, the product of prodigious research and intelligent reflection. Anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of the world maritime economy created by Europeans from read more »
Vikings Across The Atlantic: Emigration and the Building of Greater Norway, 1860-1945. Daron W. Olson. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. 2013. ISBN: 9780816651412 Transnational history is one of the fastest growing areas of historical study. Daron W. Olson’s Vikings Across The Atlantic: Emigration and the Building of read more »
Taiwan in the 21st Century: Aspects and Limitations of a Development Model. Edited by J. Megan Greene and Robert Ash. New York: Routledge, 2007. ISBN: 9780415666398 Taiwan in the 21st Century: Aspects and Limitations of a Development Model is a compilation of twelve chapters by different authors that read more »
Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State Building, 1954-1968. James Carter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780521716901 In Inventing Vietnam, James Carter attempts to counter “the near-total neglect of state-building efforts that began in 1954 and continued through the…late 1960s” in the historiography of American involvement read more »
The Politics of Iranian Cinema: Film and society in the Islamic Republic. Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad. Oxon: Routledge, 2010. ISBN: 9780415455367 The title of Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad’s book ‘The Politics of Iranian Cinema’ in fact defines the book’s central thesis: the idea that ‘politics in Iran has been effectively inseparable from read more »
China: Its Environment and History. Robert B. Marks. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012 ISBN: 9781442212756 A broad survey of Chinese ecological history that encompasses more than 4000 years, Robert Marks’ China: Its Environment and History provides a much-needed bridge between narratives of China’s political, social, and read more »
The Diplomatic History of Postwar Japan. Edited by Iokibe Makoto, Translated by Robert D. Eldridge. London and New York: Routledge, 2011. ISBN: 9780415498487 The contributors to the edited volume by Iokibe Makoto, The Diplomatic History of Postwar Japan, assert that it is never too early to read more »
Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1912-1923. Ryan Gingeras. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780199698349 Historians have always been interested in the transition from empire to nation-state across the former Ottoman lands, but we have seen of late a remarkable increase in read more »
The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us. Francis Tapon. WanderLearn/Thomas Press (India) Ltd., 2012. ISBN: 9780976581222 I remember many history or politics classes at my college where, together with the professor, we would be trying to constructively talk about issues concerning Eastern Europe. Well, always, after read more »
With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830. LeRoy Ashby. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006. ISBN: 9780813141077 Never One Nation: Freaks, Savages, and Whiteness in U. S. Popular Culture 1850-1877. Linda Frost. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. read more »
Integrated Rural Area Development and Planning: A Micro Level Study. Mukesh Verma. Saarbrucken: Lap Lambert, 2012. ISBN: 9783659142390 Mukesh Verma’s Integrated Rural Area Development and Planning presents a prescriptive techno-economic assessment of Mursan Block in Mahamaya Nagar District (Hathras) of the State of Uttar Pradesh, India including a set read more »
Only Muslim: Embodying Islam in Twentieth-Century France. Naomi Davidson. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012. ISBN: 978080147831 In Only Muslim: Embodying Islam in Twentieth-Century France, Naomi Davidson has written a compelling and timely history of the official French attempt to “manage” Islam within France since World War I. This read more »
Archaeology of Minnesota: The Prehistory of the Upper Mississippi River Region. Guy E. Gibbon. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780816679096 This essay is a part of our series, Graduate Students and The Middle Ground Journal -- for more information, please see HERE. In this ambitious text, read more »
The Family: A World History. Mary Jo Maynes and Ann Waltner. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780195338140 One of the latest volumes in Oxford’s New World History series is The Family: A World History, a slim volume designed for use in classrooms. Both Maynes and Waltner read more »
The Rise of the Atlantic Economies. Ralph Davis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973. ISBN: 9780801491436 Before the rise of Atlantic history, there was The Rise of the Atlantic Economies. Forty years ago, long before historians had come together to champion the transatlantic perspective as a read more »
An Imperial Path to Modernity: Yoshino Sakuzo and a New Liberal Order in East Asia, 1905-1937. Jung-Sun N. Han. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2012. ISBN: 9780674065710 Yoshino Sakuzo is understood to be one of the most influential liberal intellectuals of Taisho Japan (1912-1926). As a professor read more »
Dying for the Truth: Undercover Inside the Mexican Drug War. The Fugitive Reporters of Blog del Narco. Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2013. ISBN: 9781936239573 This essay is a part of our series, Borders in the Classroom -- for more information, please see HERE. For Full Article Edited by read more »
A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution. Jeremy D. Popkin. West Sussex, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2012. ISBN: 9781405198219 The Age of Revolutions – beginning in 1775 by dissatisfied American colonials subjects and ending in the defeat of liberal European revolutionaries in 1848 – is an era of world-change read more »
Review of Documentary: Breaking the Taboo, a film produced by Sam Branson, Sundog Pictures, 2011, and Narcotráfico para Inocentes: el Narco en México y Quien lo U.S.A. Rafael Barajas. Mexico City: Nostra Ediciones, 2011. ISBN: 9786077972037 This essay is a part of our series, Borders in the Classroom read more »
Major Problems in the History of North American Borderlands. Pekka Hämäläinen and Benjamin H. Johnson, eds. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. ISBN 0495916927 This essay is a part of our series, Borders in the Classroom -- for more information, please see HERE. One of the most recent additions read more »
The Pakistan Garrison State: Origins, Evolutions, Consequences, 1947-2011. Ishtiaq Ahmed. Karachi: Oxford University Press Pakistan, 2013. ISBN: 9780199066360 Ishtiaq Ahmed's latest book is another outstanding piece of scholarship by an erudite scholar. This intellectually stimulating work is an important addition to the corpus of writings on modern and contemporary Pakistan, read more »
The Ottoman Age of Exploration. Giancarlo Casale. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780195377828 Enter the Ottomans: The Expansion of the Narrative of Exploration It can be argued that the Age of Exploration’s narrative was shanghaied by Western Europe and their interactions in the Atlantic read more »
Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum. James Cuno. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. ISBN 9780226126777 This essay is a part of our series, Graduate Students and The Middle Ground Journal -- for more information, please see HERE. It is impossible to argue with James Cuno’s title read more »
Keeping My Hope. Christopher Huh. Delaware, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013. ISBN: 9781479348831 When I learned that a 14-year-old author had created a graphic novel about the Holocaust I ordered a copy of the book immediately. I doubted, however, that a young person would have enough historical knowledge or read more »
Ideas and Art in Asian Civilizations: India, China, and Japan. Kenneth R. Stunkel. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2012. ISBN: 9780765625403 This book is designed to serve as a general guide to the cultural history of India, China, and Japan. Following the introduction (pp. ix-xiii), the main part of the read more »
The Banana: Empires, Trade Wars, and Globalization. James Wiley. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780803215771 James Wiley provides a much-needed and thorough overview of the so-called “Banana War” of the 1990s. Before Wiley’s publication, scholars lacked any comprehensive work on the subject. In fact, most read more »
In the Memory of the Map: A Cartographic Memo |
reasonable debate. All we see is denial.
And the time for debate is long since past anyway; the science is in, and it’s sound science. I’m tired of politicians equivocating and hemming and hawing about global warming. We need to stop fiddling while the world burns, and start putting out this fire.
Tip o’ the thermometer to Dave Razowksy.One of my readers left this question on the blog post resurfacing the idea of running BGP between servers and ToR switches:
When using BGP on a VM for mobility, what is the best way to establish a peer relationship with a new TOR switch after a live migration? The VM won't inherently know the peer address or the ASN.
As always, the correct answer is it depends.
Supporting live VM mobility
If you want to support live (hot) VM mobility across ToR switches, don’t run BGP with the ToR switch. Regardless of how well you fine-tune the setup, it will take at least a few seconds before the BGP session with the new ToR switch is established, making your service inaccessible in the meantime.
As I explained in another blog post (yes, it’s almost exactly three years old), you SHOULD run a BGP session with a route server somewhere in your network, preferably using IBGP to make things simpler.
To add redundancy to the design, peer the VM with two route servers.
Supporting physical servers
If your servers don’t move, but you still don’t want to deal with neighbor IP addresses or AS numbers, use one or more of these tricks:
Configure the same loopback address on all ToR switches (I wouldn’t advertise it into the network, and you definitely don’t want it to become the ToR switch router ID);
Establish BGP session between the physical servers and the loopback address using either IBGP (so everyone is in the same AS number) or using local-as on the ToR switch to present the same AS number to all servers.
Deploying Cumulus-enhanced Quagga on the servers is obviously a better option. For more details, watch the Leaf-and-Spine Fabric Designs webinar or the video in which Dinesh Dutt explains the enhancements they made to Quagga.
Supporting disaster recovery
Running BGP between the virtual machines and the network simplifies disaster recovery scenarios (and alleviates the need for crazy kludges like stretched VLANs). If this is your use case:
Run a set of route servers in each data center to support live VM mobility within each data center;
Use the same IP addresses and AS numbers across route servers in all data centers to enable to VM to connect to the route server in the local data center;
Don’t advertise the shared IP addresses between data centers (you don’t want the VMs to connect to a route server in another data center due to a crazy routing glitch).
Need even more details?
I’m sure we’ll discuss them in the Building Next-Generation Data Center course. The September 2016 session is sold out, but you’ll get the recordings even if you register for the April 2017 one.
You can also use ExpertExpress to discuss the details of your design with me.
One ExpertExpress session is bundled with the Professional subscription so you don’t have to ask for the budget approval twice.Three hundred years ago, the British Parliament famously established rewards and funding for improved methods of finding longitude at sea. The longitude (east-west) coordinate of a ship was much more difficult to calculate than its latitude (north-south). The resulting navigational uncertainty endangered maritime trade, travel and defence during Britain’s rise as a powerful seagoing Empire.
The 1714 longitude rewards of up to £20,000 (worth at least £1.5 million in today’s money) attracted diverse intellectuals, inventors, entrepreneurs and daydreamers to develop schemes. These financial incentives rejuvenated the centuries-old ‘search for the longitude’, which had begun to seem hopeless.
Cambridge University historian Dr Alexi Baker has researched the fascinating story of Jane Squire, the only woman to participate openly in the search for longitude. Earlier historians dismissed Squire as ‘nutty’ or ‘strange’ but Baker’s pioneering research reveals a fascinating individual whose life sheds new light on the search for longitude. Squire’s experiences also illuminate the roles played by gender, class and religion in early science and mathematics.
“The vast majority of longitude participants through the ages were men,” said Baker. “It was not considered proper in 18th century Britain for women to pursue subjects such as navigation, mathematics and related money-making endeavours. Astronomy was permissible as a genteel pastime, but only at a more basic and domestic level.”
Rare exceptions included a mother and daughter who supplied Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne with calculations for the annual Nautical Almanac. By connecting archival clues at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Baker has also discovered that one of the sisters of painter Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote about longitude anonymously during the 1780s.
However, Squire is the only woman known to have pursued the longitude without concealing her gender. Her complex and educated (if impractical) scheme drew the attention of learned and influential individuals, from the female intellectuals known as ‘bluestockings’ to the Pope.
Squire’s book is the most common longitude work in collections today. It was published in two editions in 1742 (200 pages) and 1743 (160 pages), the first edition in both French and English. Most copies include a fold-out summary and leather binding uniquely decorated with symbols invented by the author. Cambridge University Library holds three such copies in its Rare Books collections.
“Jane Squire was a fascinating individual in her own right, with her outspoken refusal to bend to society’s expectations for women,” said Baker. “In addition, she is vital to the historical record because her books provide a rare account of the early activities of the Commissioners of Longitude, who mainly acted individually rather than communally until the 1760s.”
Baker's research suggests that Parliament did not clearly establish a standing body or ‘Board’ when, in July 1714, it named 24 individual Commissioners as acceptable judges for the new longitude reward. This lack of clarity generated much confusion and was intensely frustrating for people working on proposals.
Christened in York in 1686, Jane was the second daughter of the affluent and well-connected Priscilla and Robert Squire. Little is known about her youth, she never married, and no portrait of her survives.
By the 1720s, Squire had moved to fashionable London. In 1722, she sued individuals including the powerful Edward Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer and Thomas Lord Harley, over marine salvage efforts (“fishing upon wrecks”) in which she had lost large sums. “It was extraordinary for an 18th-century woman to invest in such risky projects, or ‘adventures’, and to fight for her interests with such confidence,” said Baker.
Squire’s lawsuit appears to have been dropped when the main defendants struck a fatal blow by arguing that her Catholicism barred her from the courts. Catholics faced severe penalties and persecution during this period. They had to take an oath of allegiance, following the Jacobite risings and the failed invasion of the ‘Old Pretender’ James Stuart.
In 1726, Squire was committed to the notoriously harsh Fleet Prison in London because of her substantial debts. Upon her release three years later, she dedicated herself to developing a novel and universal way of comprehending and communicating ‘the celestial and terrestrial spheres’.
Her scheme was intended not only to facilitate the finding of longitude at sea but also to move humanity closer to the state which existed before the fall of the Tower of Babel. “Religious motivations like Jane Squire’s were not uncommon in the search for the longitude, nor were they unusual in 18th-century science in general, and did not preclude proposals from consideration,” said Baker.
Squire worked tirelessly in the 1730s, and again in the early 1740s, to get feedback on her scheme from the Commissioners and other learned and influential individuals. She often expressed dissatisfaction with the reticence of most Commissioners, and with women being discouraged from pursuing natural philosophy and mathematics.
She wrote in 1733: “I do not remember any Play-thing, that does not appear to me a mathematical Instrument; nor any mathematical Instrument, that does not appear to me a Play-thing: I see not, therefore, why I should confine myself to Needles, Cards, and Dice.”
In 1741, the Commissioner Sir Thomas Hanmer ruefully agreed with Squire that gender was an obstacle to her efforts: “You are to expect to lye under some Prejudice upon account of your Sex.” Squire’s gender and religion often hindered her, but occasionally opened doors as well, as did the prestige of her family.
The highly detailed proposal set out in Squire’s books drew upon real astronomical research and intellectual trends. But it was far from practicable. The scheme centred on dividing the heavens into more than a million segments which could be recognised visually, so that young sailors would not need advanced mathematics, and which were described through a new universal language.
Other suggestions included correcting for apparent and mean solar time with a newly-invented clock, announcing the time from church steeples with speaking trumpets, and deploying artificial sea creatures as marine buoys to aid in mapping.
Contemporaries were intrigued by this proposal, perhaps mainly because of Squire’s gender and the comparatively high quality of her publications. The bluestocking poet Elizabeth Carter wrote to a friend in 1743: “You must certainly have seen Mrs. Squire's scheme of the longitude, and I make no doubt understood it; but for my own part I never beheld so incomprehensible a thing in my whole life.”
When Squire died in 1743, the Daily Post memorialised her as “a Lady excellently well vers’d in Astronomy, Philosophy, and most Parts of polite Literature” and suggested that the stress of finishing her second edition was responsible for her demise. Unaware of Jane's death, Pope Benedict XIV and the Bologna Academy of Sciences were meanwhile contemplating the encouragement of such a learned Catholic woman.
In her will, Squire left her friends generous gifts which she expected, ever optimistically, to be paid out of her long-deserved longitude reward. She never received such recognition from the Commissioners of Longitude. But she did leave books which have spread across the world, and which now make important contributions to the historical record.
“Jane Squire uniquely insisted on playing ball with the men, and in doing so as confidently as would a man,” concluded Baker. “However, forging such an untraditional path also brought her great pain, including three years in prison. She appeals so much today because of her outspoken insistence that women should not be barred from traditionally male activities.”
Since 2010, Dr Baker has worked with Professor Simon Schaffer’s project on the Board of Longitude and on the Cambridge University Library’s digitisation of the Board archives. She is a Mellon/Newton Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities [CRASSH]. She is currently writing an entry on Jane Squire for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Dr Alexi Baker will discuss Jane Squire at the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, tomorrow (Monday, 1 December 2014) at 1-2 pm. All are welcome.
Inset images: details from Jane Squire's proposal for determining longitude (Cambridge University Library)Obama has protected more land and water than any other president in history.
By Madeleine Thomas
A sei whale mother and calf. Sei whales are found in the area of the new national monument. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
The first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean was announced by the Obama administration on Thursday, part of a final push to cement President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy before he leaves office in January.
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Just last month, Obama expanded the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, located off the Northwestern Islands of Hawaii. The move effectively created the largest marine sanctuary in the world. Obama has already protected more land and water—over 265 million acres—than any other president in history.
The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, located about 150 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is a 4,900-square-mile sanctuary rich with three underwater canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon. The new marine area is also home to four seamounts, which, at more than 7,000 feet above the seafloor, are higher than any terrestrial mountain east of the Rocky Mountains, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
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“By protecting ecologically sensitive areas of our ocean, the United States is leading on an issue that is important to people on every continent because of the ocean’s connection to food security, shared prosperity, and resiliency.”
The waters of the Northeast United States are particularly fragile — and are on track to warm three times faster than the global average. The new marine monument is also home to hundreds of rare and unusual creatures, including a host of endangered species — like Kemp’s ridley turtles and sei whales — and 15 species of coral only recently discovered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Teddy Roosevelt had the foresight to protect the treasures of America’s landscape,” NRDC president Rhea Suh said in a statement Thursday. “With that same boldness, President Obama is conserving the crown jewels of our nation’s seascape.”
The Obama administration’s push to conserve precious ocean habitat doesn’t stop in the Atlantic. Later this week, at the third annual Our Ocean conference, Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to unveil more than 120 additional ocean conservation projects, which will preserve more than two million square kilometers of marine habitat.
“By protecting ecologically sensitive areas of our ocean, the United States is leading on an issue that is important to people on every continent because of the ocean’s connection to food security, shared prosperity, and resiliency in the face of climate change,” Kerry said in a press release.
This year alone, more than 900,000 square miles of ocean have been protected internationally, according to the White House. It’s an impressive figure; that’s about 730,000 more square miles of preserved habitat than last year.What’s good about online schedulers is that you can get an access to your data from any of your devices. Your schedule will be safe if something happens to your laptop or smartphone. But the overall quantity of available schedulers can confuse you. There are JavaScript and.NET scheduling tools. There are third-party plug-ins for big frameworks and built-in parts of these frameworks. And finally, there are stand-alone tools which can be integrated with other components. This article’s aim is to take a look at the four most popular.NET scheduling components to make clear which of them is worthy of attention and good for beginners.
Here are the scheduling tools:
DayPilot ASP.NET Event Calendar
DHTMLX Scheduler.NET
Devexpress ASP.NET Scheduler
Telerik.NET Scheduler
We’ll use Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 to create demo applications. We will check how the basic calendar looks like and behaves. The other important thing is documentation. Good structured documentation pages with understandable step-by-step guides will be a plus.
DayPilot ASP.NET Event Calendar
DayPilot provides you with different kinds of time management tools:
ASP.NET Event Calendar is an event calendar that allows you to plan your day hour by hour:
ASP.NET Monthly Calendar will help you create a month schedule:
ASP.NET Scheduler is useful if you want to group you events into different categories:
ASP.NET Gantt Chart for those who want to build a Gantt Chart:
Since Scheduler and Gantt Chart are more specialized tools we’ll take a look at something more commonly used. Let’s say, the Event Calendar.
Basic features:
Integrated message bar
Drag-and-drop
Export. Available file formats are BMP, PNG, GIF and JPG
Customizable appearance
The full list of features is available on this page.
If you want to check what you can get from it, check this demo page.
The tutorial page is a little bit messy at first sight. There are pages for different kinds of features for all of the DayPilot components. However, it’s not too hard to find the page you want.
Which is, in our case, this basic calendar tutorial page. It’s a step-by-step guide which shows how to create a project in Visual Studio, create a database and attach it to your project, etc. It’s a little bit hard to get started with it if you haven’t used Visual Studio before. If you’re lazy enough, you can simply download the source code for this example here.
After the job is done, you can check the results:
You can’t do much with this simple event calendar. This testing event can be dragged through the calendar grid to change its beginning date. It was created during the calendar creation and by default, there’s no possibility to create a new one. To add this functionality you should spend some more time with tutorials. And you can’t change the scale of the calendar. Therefore, if you want to get a possibility to create long term events as well, you should use both Event Calendar and Monthly Calendar in your project.
But here’s some good news. There is an open-source version of Event Calendar available.
The cost of DayPilot calendar may vary from $499 to $4999 depending on the license and product version.
Well, let’s move along.
DHTMLX Scheduler.NET
DHTMLX Scheduler.NET is another stand-alone tool that was made to help you create your own online scheduler. Check this demo page to see how it looks like.
Basic features:
Different views: Decade view, Grid view, Year view
Recurring events
Drag-and-drop
Touchscreen support
Easy customizable
Integration with Google Maps and Google Calendar
You can check all its features on this page.
There is more than one possible way to get this scheduler. You can download the package with required files or install them via NuGet or Package Manager Console. This install guide can help you choose the proper way.
Let’s talk about documentation. Since DHTMLX Scheduler.NET is basically a.NET wrapper for this JavaScript scheduler, the documentation consists of two parts: server side and client side articles. There are basic calendar creation guides and a bunch of configuration guides. Moreover, there is a video tutorial available.
But what we’re interested in right now is how we can create a basic calendar. The developer’s blog contains this tutorial explaining how to build a basic calendar in ASP.NET MVC5. It’s quite detailed and contains a bunch of screenshots.
And here’s what we got:
This time we can change the scale. There are “Day”, “Week” and “Month” buttons available. The current day is highlighted and there is a “Today” button that will help you in case you lost yourself within the calendar grid.
There are several ways of how you can create a new task. You can use drag-and-drop with this calendar. So, select the time period you want and the event property window will appear on your screen:
You can also use right click to get access to this window, but in this case you’ll have to set the time period by yourself.
Scale changing feature is useful if you want to create a long term event:
You can drag the event to change its start date.
This is all that you can get by default. The important thing is that, unlike the DayPilot tool, this scheduler can be used to show days, weeks and months. This basic app, as you can see, gives you a possibility to add and change the tasks. Documentation structure is easy to understand, so it’s not too hard to use it to improve your application.
The cost of DHTMLX Scheduler.NET is $299 for Commercial License and $979 for Enterprise license.
Devexpress ASP.NET Scheduler
DevExpress provides you with huge amount of different tools. There are WinForms, iOS, ASP.NET components for desktop and online applications.
Very detailed subscription of Devexpress scheduler is available on this page.
You can get the installation file on this download page. There’s no possibility to install the scheduler separately from other.NET and MVC components.
There’s a lot of documentation. Tons of it. For every single component. The scheduler documentation page is separated into several parts: “Start Here”, Learn More”, “How To” and “Reference”. Each of them consists of chapters that contain a bunch of articles on a specific topic. Everything that you need to know about the every single tool. But if you want to create a basic scheduler fast, you can check two video tutorials available on YouTube: The Project Wizard which will tell you how to create a Devexpress project and Getting Started with the ASPxScheduler which is about the scheduler creation process. This 14 minutes is all that you need to create your first online application.
The result is shown below:
As you can see, there are a couple of scales available: “Day”, “Work Week”, “Full Week” and “Month”. Moreover, there is a Timeline mode, which can help you trace the current week events. A navigation panel on the right side will help you switch between month and years. Drag-and-drop behavior is available, so you can select the proper area of the calendar grid to create a new event. After the right-click you can choose what you want to do:
The properties window will appear. It allows you to set the basic properties (Start time, End time, Subject, etc.) and a couple of additional ones (Label, for example):
According to these properties, different events will look differently, which is pretty handy. Here’s the Timeline mode as an example:
The cost of Devexpress scheduer is $899.99 for the.NET bundle.
Telerik.NET Scheduler
Just like the previous developer, Telerik provides you with a wide variety of tools: a mobile application platform for iOS, Android and Windows Mobile; HTML5 and JavaScript widgets for web applications;.NET components for desktop, mobile and online applications and much more.
But we’re here for one reason. RadScheduler page contains a detailed list of features with a demo page for each of them.
And, like in case of Devexpress, this time we can’t download the scheduler separately. We should get the whole.NET bundle.
The documentation page contains comprehensive information about available components. There are tutorials, API documentation, videos, infographics and other useful stuff. It may be a little bit complicated to define where to start from. But there is a YouTube video tutorial that allows you to dive straight into the action instead of reading tons of docs. First 13 minutes are enough to get required basic information about how the things work.
As a result you will get something like this:
There is something familiar with this one. We can choose between “Day”, “Week”, “Month” and “Timeline” modes. The last one works pretty much the same as the Devexpress Timeline option. This time we have a mini calendar which is useful for navigation. There’s also a “Show full/business hours” toggle button that allows you to separate your work events from the private ones:
New event creation is intuitive and similar to other calendars. This time there is a wide variety of properties that allows you to configure the recurrent events.
And, as usual, drag-and-drop is available.
The cost of Telerik scheduler is $999 for the.NET bundle.
Conclusion
Described schedulers can be divided into two groups. The first two of them are stand-alone tools. In case of DayPilot there’s no possibility to get the calendar you like. The only possible way to get it is to buy the whole bundle. DHTMLX Scheduler.NET is the only component that can be bought separately from any other tool, which is great if you’re not interested in additional components.
The remaining two components are the part of big.NET bundles. And maybe it’s not a good idea to buy them if you want to create a simple online calendar.
DayPilot and DHTMLX Scheduler.NET
DayPilot components look great. The documentation contains detailed tutorials. The bad thing is that the basic scheduler which was built according to the beginner’s guide is kinda low functional. To make something really useful you should spend some more time with it. There’s also no possibility to change the scale of a calendar, so you have to chose either Event Calendar or Monthly Calendar to plan your events properly. The good news is that, besides the paid components, there is an open-source version available. You can get it here.
DHTMLX Scheduler.NET is more attractive, especially for beginners. There are step-by-step guides of different levels of complexity and a video tutorial. The basic app looks pretty useful. It allows you to change the calendar scale, add and configure the tasks. There are Commercial and Enterprise versions available on this page. You can also get the 30-days trial version.
As an alternative, you can try the JavaScript version of this scheduler. You have two options with this one: commercial Pro Edition and open-source Standard edition.
Devexpress ASP.NET Scheduler and Telerik.NET Scheduler
Those two are the components of big and advanced sets of tools. They’re integrated with Visual Studio. As a result, there’s a project wizard for both of them that allows you to configure your application properties. The documentation contains dozens of pages and it may confuse you at the first glance. But you can find an article about the every single property if you spend some time with it. There are video tutorials available as well, so everyone can find the most convenient way of learning.
The Devexpress documentation structure looks more comfortable. Every big theme is separated into several parts which are grouped according to the difficulty level. The basic scheduler is pretty functional. For example, there is a possibility to set a proper label for a task. There are a lot of possible combinations of tools that you can buy. But it’s always good to try some before to make a decision and trial versions will help you with that. Check the details on this page.
Telerik documentation is not so well grouped which can confuse the beginners. Scheduler creation is intuitive and the basic app is pretty usable. Just like in the previous case, Telerik provides you with a wide variety of possible bundles of tools. And, once again, you can try it before buy it. Trial versions are waiting for you.OVH a guest Jul 23rd, 2013 1,240 Never a guest1,240Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 1.04 KB OVH.co.uk E-Mail: customersupport@ovh.co.uk Tel: 020 7357 6616 Hello, Recently, we have discovered a security incident on our internal network at OVH's headquarter. We have immediately secured the infrastructure and started an investigation. We discovered that the database holding European customers's data could have been illegally copied. This database includes the following information: first and last name, NIC, address, city, country, telephone and fax number, and the encrypted password. Credit card information are not stored by OVH and have not been accessed. Even if your password encryption is very strong, we encourage you to change it as soon as possible. To learn more on the security incident: http://status.ovh.net/?do=details&id=5070 Regards, Yours faithfully, OVH LTD 3 Southwark street London SE1 1RQ Tel: 020 7357 6616 Fax: 020 7378 7703 Registered company 5519821 E-mail: customersupport@ovh.co.uk OVH - Customer support Mon-Fri from 9am to 6pm Join the OVH Community at forum.ovh.co.uk
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OVH.co.uk E-Mail: customersupport@ovh.co.uk Tel: 020 7357 6616 Hello, Recently, we have discovered a security incident on our internal network at OVH's headquarter. We have immediately secured the infrastructure and started an investigation. We discovered that the database holding European customers's data could have been illegally copied. This database includes the following information: first and last name, NIC, address, city, country, telephone and fax number, and the encrypted password. Credit card information are not stored by OVH and have not been accessed. Even if your password encryption is very strong, we encourage you to change it as soon as possible. To learn more on the security incident: http://status.ovh.net/?do=details&id=5070 Regards, Yours faithfully, OVH LTD 3 Southwark street London SE1 1RQ Tel: 020 7357 6616 Fax: 020 7378 7703 Registered company 5519821 E-mail: customersupport@ovh.co.uk OVH - Customer support Mon-Fri from 9am to 6pm Join the OVH Community at forum.ovh.co.ukCar show at Roseville cemetery draws complaints
Some family members who have loved ones buried at a Roseville cemetery are expressing anger over a weekend car show to be held on the grounds.
Nicole Roatch said she visits Roselawn Cemetery to mourn her brother-in-law who was killed in a car accident. Roatch says hot rods, a DJ and barbecue have no place in the peaceful cemetery.
"We shouldn't hold car shows where we bury our dead," she said. "It's just inappropriate to me."
Roselawn superintendent Larry Hudella tells KARE-TV that the cemetery received about 20 calls of complaint Monday morning.
"I'm from this area, and I can't think of anyone I know who doesn't have someone here, and we're all upset," Roatch said.
Hudella said he doesn't think the car show is disrespectful.
"It's really not going to be on anyone's graves," Hudella said. "It's just a fun thing. A community event."
Hudella said the idea to hold the "Rods and Stones" car show at the cemetery came after about a founding member of the Minnesota Street Rod Association was buried at Roselawn.
The groundskeeper noticed many classic cars were driven to the burial.
"We found out that a lot of the guys who were members of that have family buried here," Hudella said.
Despite Hudella's reassurances, Roatch said she is still apprehensive and that she and other family members plan to protest outside the event.
"It's still within the parameters of a place that we hold sacred," she said.
Hudella said there are no plans to cancel the show.February 11, 2015 at 3:29 PM
When you’re stuck in a typical Seattle bumper-to-bumper morning commute, it can seem like every single person in the area must leave for work at precisely the same time.
That’s not too far off. Nearly half of King County workers — 46 percent, to be exact — leave home in the two-hour window between 6:30 and 8:30 a.m., according to 2013 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
But what about everybody else?
As our interactive map below shows, it depends on the neighborhood.
SeaTac never sleeps, and neither do airport workers. For nighttime commutes, neighborhoods near the airport have the highest percentage. In one area just east of the airport, almost 1 in 5 workers leave home in the hours after midnight.
Starting at 5 a.m., add to the mix those folks with the longest commutes, like Vashon Island ferry-riders or those who live in far-out areas of King County.
The morning commute is in full swing by 7 a.m. Most of north Seattle is on its way to work within the hour. But folks who live closer to job centers — near the downtowns of Seattle and Bellevue — are more likely to be able to leave home a bit later, after 8 o’clock.
And around the Microsoft campus, sauntering out the door between the 9 and 10 o’clock hours is standard.
Very few of us leave for work in the late morning or afternoon, but it’s not uncommon in areas with a large concentration of people who do shift work, such as food service or retail jobs. The University District has a high percentage, as do Northgate, downtown Seattle and many areas in south King County.
Explore the data for yourself on our interactive map of King County census tracts. The map is color-coded by the percentage of workers in each tract who leave home in each of nine time periods. If a tract has an unusually higher percentage of workers leaving in a time period, it has a dark outline. Click on any census tract to see the underlying data.
Click “Play” to set it motion, or click through each of the nine time periods manually.
Map: Garland Potts/The Seattle TimesYerevan /Mediamax/. U.S.-Armenian rock musician Serj Tankian supports the idea of a mechanism of international investigation of border incidents occurring on the contact line.
Serj Tankian posted it on his Facebook page quoting the statement of Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian:
“Rejecting the proposals of the international community on the establishment of a mechanism of investigation of incidents, Azerbaijan is assuming the whole responsibility for the ceasefire violations".
Serj Tankian noted that Artsakh has been an enclave with a majority population of Armenians given to Azerbaijan by Stalin.
“I've been to Artsakh on a visit to Armenia years ago and have to say that the people living there are gracious, generous, kind and deserve peace and prosperity as we all do”, said Serj Tankian.
The musician also said that until there is a lasting peace agreement on Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan will be both militarily and financially constrained and “fall deeper into corruptive political practices subservient to one superpower or another”.Iris Richards knows what it means to "lend a hand," as the old Brownie motto goes.
The 95-year-old Yarmouth, N.S., resident was presented with a pin for her 75-year membership with the Girl Guides of Canada earlier this month.
Richards told CBC's Information Morning that the presentation was a complete surprise. She received the honour on Nov. 10 during a meeting of the Trefoil Guild, a social group for adult guides.
The three women who drove her to the event kept it secret, she said. When the presentation began, "I thought to myself, 'Darn it all, why didn't they tell me?'," Richards said.
The two-hour event was "very nice," she said, and it helped her remember a rhyme she hadn't recited in years: "We're the Brownies, here's our aim, lend a hand and play the game."
Richards first became a Brownie in Glace Bay in the 1920s. In the 1940s, the school teacher started a Brownie group in Yarmouth. She went on to work for the district and become a division trainer.
Nicknamed 'Gopher'
She used to work at a summer camp for Girl Guides where she was known by the nickname "Gopher." Richards worked in the kitchen, where she did the tasks nobody else wanted to do.
"I was just the garbage person," she said.
Iris Richards (far right) was awarded her 75-year membership pin and (from left) Trish MacDonald, Ruth de Molitor, and Kathy McKay were on hand to celebrate with her. (Crystle George)
Richards's goal was to become a "First Class" or senior guide, but there was one activity that stood in her way: swimming. So, she spent 10 days one summer learning "the dog paddle."
"I was doing fine until they said: 'Come on gopher, come on gopher,' and then I started to laugh," Richards said.
"That was the end of that."
She had to start all over again, but two hours later she said she managed to pass the test.
Met Princess Margaret
In 1958, Richards said the mayor of Yarmouth called her home from vacation in Cape Breton so she could train one of the Girl Guides to present Princess Margaret, who was touring the province, with some flowers.
"That was really funny," she said. "We were all dressed up."
Princess Margaret saw them and came over to meet them.
"I don't think she knew what she was doing either, to tell you the truth."On a recent trip to Tsukiji Market tagging along with Only in Japan, we had an opportunity to interview Hirobumi Morita. A pro buyer at the market and now a part of Tsukiji Sushi Workshop.
Tokyo Cheapo: How long have you been buying at Tsukiji market?
Hirobumi Morita: I have been buying here for about ten years.
Explore the underground food scene of Tokyo's coolest nightlife district, with a friendly local guide. Experience Shibuya like you live there, by sharing a table – click here for details Suggested Activity
See our post 10 Things You Should Know Before Visiting Tsukiji Market
TC: What is your favourite fish to buy fresh at the market?
I often buy mackerel. It’s really easy to buy bad mackerel (known as saba in Japanese) but if you can get it fresh, it tastes kind of amazing.
TC: If I am a visitor in the inner market, what are the rules? How can I avoid the workers or guards shouting at me?
It’s important not to bother or annoy the workers. This is because they are delivering or procuring deals for the day and they have to move so quickly. Any action that causes them to slow down like walking slowly or stopping on a corner has to be carefully avoided.
The 9 best places to Airbnb in Tokyo – read more REThink Tokyo
TC: If I have a limited budget, what seafood is the best value?
For a Kaisen-don (sashimi on rice), it’s usually good to choose akami—the red part of tuna. It doesn’t contain fat, so it’s healthy. It’s also cheaper than other parts of the tuna like o-toro—the fatty part. Akami is almost everywhere in Tsukiji market so it’s easy to find. That’s why it’s cheap.
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TC: Are different fish better value during certain seasons?
Yes each fish has its best seasons. Of course major fish like tuna or salmon are being fished from all over world, so all seasons are okay.
Here are the fish to look out for each season.
Spring: mackerel, horse mackerel, Spanish mackerel, black rockfish
Summer: amberjack, squid, sea bass
Autumn: scabbard fish, scorpion fish
TC: Is it OK to haggle over the price?
Basically it’s not okay, as it’s already discounted. However, after 9:30am or 10am they discount the price further to sell all their fish. At that time, you may haggle. Sometimes the clerks will give you the lower price without even asking.
TC: There are long lines of tourists outside the sushi places next to the inner market. Are |
itself you’ll see both an initial estimate of your anticipated data savings as well as an actual report of the number of megabytes you’ve ‘saved’ every day while using your device. In the case of video streaming services like YouTube or Netflix the results are especially notable: it can reduce your data consumption by up to 50%. In other apps that have a lot of multimedia content the results are equally good, usually saving you some 40% on your data usage.
Initially Opera Max was conceived of as a savings system for 3G/4G smartphone data allowances, but in certain situations it can also be a good idea to limit your bandwidth consumption on WiFi. The app lets you activate the compression in both cases; you can even completely block an app so it consumes no data under any circumstances, ideal if for example you’re using roaming when traveling in another country or using a connection with a fixed monthly limit.
But … is it secure?
The million-dollar question and the one that most concerns users, due to the small matter of having to pass their data over an external network. The VPN is completely private and allows no access to your data. What’s more, under no circumstances are your encrypted data that use a secure HTTPS connection compressed or modified. This means that apps like Facebook or Twitter show no improvement whatsoever when used over Opera Max.
Did you know that Opera also offers a browser for computers? Stay tuned as we’ll share some news about this soon! Visit opera.com/computers for more info. “I have made a movie about thresholds in dog training. It gives a quick overview of the work that I presented in my webinar for the Pet Professional Guild. (Click here for a script of the movie; there is a lot of narrative for which I didn’t put text on screen.)
The threshold webinar is still available as a recording ($10 members/$20 non-members of PPG) and I encourage anyone who is interested in thresholds to view it.
Also, I have previously published a blog post on the topic: Thresholds in Dog Training: How Many?
If you are a visual learner, the movie will probably be helpful. I spend a lot of time explaining the diagrams, and have an animation of what happens to the thresholds as we train. The movie also has video examples of dogs and stimuli over the thresholds. (Plus it has a threshold of hearing test! How cool is that?**)
Thanks for watching!
Coming Up:
BarkBusters: Myths about Barking
Surprising Progress on Thunderstorm phobia
Why Counterconditioning Didn’t “Work”
How Skilled are You at Ignoring? (Extinction Part 2)
What if Respondent Learning Didn’t Work?
Eileenanddogs on YouTube
** For the auditory people, musicians, and nerds among us (I’m all three): I used an iPhone app to generate a high frequency sinusoid (15.5 kHz) and recorded it for the movie. I used an oscilloscope app to make sure that the sound was playing during that part of the movie, through my own computer anyway. It’s just below my threshold of hearing. Younger people can probably hear it, if their computer speakers can generate it.
Like this: Like Loading...Apparently, having Morgan Freeman as your virtual butler is just another perk of being a tech billionaire.
Freeman has been selected by popular demand as the voice of Mark Zuckerberg’s artificial intelligence system Jarvis, Fast Company reported. The system that runs through Zuckerberg’s home has a synthesized voice, but Zuckerberg recently asked the public to weigh in who should provide Jarvis with a proper voice.
Jarvis is named after Tony Stark’s automated intelligence system in the Iron Man movies. Robert Downey Jr., who plays Stark, offered to voice the system if actor Paul Bettany, who voices Jarvis in the Iron Man films, was paid and the remaining money went to charity. However, after receiving 50,000 comments, Morgan Freeman emerged as the clear winner for Jarvis’s new voice.
Zuckerberg told Fast Company he called Freeman and said, “Hey, I posted this thing, and…thousands of people want you to be the voice. Will you do it?” Freeman immediately agreed.
This won’t be Freeman’s first voice acting gig in the tech world. He’s one of the celebrity voices on Google’s (googl) navigation app Waze.
Among other useful domestic skills, Jarvis can turn lights on and off, play music based on Zuckerberg’s personal tastes, make toast, and wake up Zuckerberg’s one-year-old daughter Max with Mandarin lessons.
Facebook (fb) has not disclosed how much Freeman will be paid to voice Jarvis.I have no idea what an “all-new form factor” is, but that is the ridiculous phrase Razer are using to describe something that’s currently dubbed Project Fiona, due to be announced properly on the 10th. Appearing on their incredibly unhelpfully named pcgamingisnotdead.com website (er, yeah, we all knew that thanks) is a deliberately opaque trailer for, um, something. Whatever it is, Razer assures that “it’s not simple, it’s not delightful, it’s not magical”. But it is, they inform, “just badass”.
The last time we were taken through this rigamorale was for the announcement of the Razer Blade, an astonishingly expensive gaming laptop. For nearly $3000 you will be able to get a middling-spec gaming machine, that’s barely 2cm thick and only 3.2kg. Arguments in favour of a standardisation of PC specs are one thing. Expecting people to pay three times the price of a higher specced desktop machine is another. Goodness knows where that one’s heading.
But this is something else, and The Verge reckons it’s going to be the Razer Switchblade, about which we heard much last year, but never saw a release. That was promising what was essentially a gaming netbook, with a touchscreen replacing the need for a mouse. I think. It’s a touch problematic that a year ago they were talking about the Atom chip they’d developed with Intel, and then went completely silent and didn’t release it. Also, I’m not quite sure how having my hand in front of the screen the entire time is going to be entirely conducive to gaming. That did strike me as the dumbest idea of all time. Although the keyboard is flipping ace (see the link above).
If it’s that, I absolutely cannot see it working without some sort of retractable track pad. If it’s not, then it’s something else, and it’s definitely not going to be delightful. They say so.
All these mysteries will be resolved at CES next week."I just fell in love with so many of the queens right from the first preview."
Sam Hatmaker is a Lego superstar—he’s the guy who created Lego displays of The Golden Girls that were featured on Good Morning America and everywhere else.
Now Sam’s turned his expert eye to another beloved show: RuPaul’s Drag Race. Inspired by the creativity and color of the new girls, he’s fashioned Lego sculptures of several Season 8 queens.
“I just fell in love with so many of the queens right from the first preview and watched the “Meet the Queens” segments at least three times each,” he told me.
Below, check out Sam’s incredible creations.
Kim Chi
“I’m in love with Kim Chi’s style,” says Sam. “She has so much thought and creativity in each look, and his nerd influences make me feel we are kindred spirits and would be great friends.”
Acid Betty
Sam Hatmaker
Sam admits his interest in this New York doll is pretty personal.
“I want to go on a date with Acid Betty. I know she comes across as a bitch to some people, but all I see is dedication to her craft, a desire to do great work and a character she becomes. We both live in NYC and if she wants to go out sometime, she should contact me.”
Bob the Drag Queen
Sam Hatmaker
“Bob makes me laugh with just a facial expression and her attitude seems so positive and friendly,” says Sam. “He also has talent oozing out. Did you see the quality of the dress he made from curtains? AMAZING!”
Thorgy Thor
Sam Hatmaker
If your favorite Season 8 contestant didn’t get the Lego treatment, don’t worry—Sam says he may do more figures this season, “if I feel the look calls for it.”
Watch RuPaul’s Drag Race, Mondays at 9/8c, on Logo.Mount Carmel Health Systems and three physicians discriminated against a Columbus doctor who is black, a federal jury concluded. The all-white, eight-member jury awarded Dr. Vincent L. Guinn damages of $3.7 million late Friday in his civil lawsuit against Mount Carmel and Drs. Michael R. Murnane, Barney B. Beaver and Thomas R. Alexis.
Mount Carmel Health Systems and three physicians discriminated against a Columbus doctor who is black, a federal jury concluded.
The all-white, eight-member jury awarded Dr. Vincent L. Guinn damages of $3.7 million late Friday in his civil lawsuit against Mount Carmel and Drs. Michael R. Murnane, Barney B. Beaver and Thomas R. Alexis.
Also, as part of a settlement reached during the trial, the defendants agreed not to appeal the jury�s decision.
�It�s a great outcome; he�s been vindicated,� said attorney James S. Mowery Jr., who represented Guinn.
Guinn sued after a hospital review committee and the board of trustees suspended his privileges with Mount Carmel in 2007 and 2008, claiming that his care of one patient had fallen below standards.
Guinn had his own practice in electrophysiology and cardiac care, and after the suspension he was not permitted to implant devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators at Mount Carmel.
He had been vice chairman or chairman of Mount Carmel Medical Center�s cardiovascular disease department from 1998 to 2002.
Guinn contended that Murnane, Beaver and Alexis conspired to drive Guinn away from Mount Carmel so he would not compete with them.
Guinn argued that the charges against him were trumped up and that white doctors with privileges at Mount Carmel had not been suspended when similar accusations had been made against them.
�We demonstrated that white doctors who were similarly situated did not have this happen,� Mowery said. �This would never have happened to a white doctor.�
The jury found that the hospital system and the three doctors discriminated against Guinn based on race. The jury had found that a fourth doctor, Dr. Medard R. Lutmerding, had not discriminated against Guinn.
The jury also found that Murnane, Beaver and Alexis conspired against Guinn and that Murnane was guilty of defamation by negligence and tortious interference with business relations.
Jurors awarded Guinn $700,000 from Murnane on the defamation and tortious interference charges.
The jury awarded him $1.5 million on the discrimination charge and $1.5 million on the conspiracy charge. The defendants are jointly responsible for the payments.
Guinn, 58, now practices at Grant Medical Center and has his own practice.
Jason Koma, a spokesman for Mount Carmel, said that while hospital officials are disappointed with the jury�s decision, they are pleased that the case is behind them.
�We believe the process in question (peer review) was undertaken in the sincere belief that it was in the best interests of our patients and had nothing to do with race,� Koma said.
kgray@dispatch.com
@reporterkathyRochester Police say training starts in July and by August, officers will be using body worn cameras.
Lt. Michael Perkowski is helping coordinate the program.
"We will be wearing the camera and we will be recording during all arrests, detention, use of force, or any type of pursuit situations," he said. "Part of the reasons that we're going to the program is for transparency and to create better police community relations as well as give better evidence for prosecuting our cases."
Perkowski says on virtually every 9-1-1 call, officers initally will turn on thier cameras.
And depending on the situation, officers have the option to turn it off.
The policy for the body cameras can be found at the city's website, and Police Chief Michael Ciminelli says there will be a learning curve.
"We're doing this program. With this program, we're going from zero to 500 cameras very, very quickly. So a lot of this is going to be learned as we go," he said.
Training for officers starts in late July and August in the Clinton sections, with training each subsequent month in the Central, Goodman, Lake, Genesee and finally the special operations section.
Every day 5 to 10 officers will be trained to use the cameras.
Perkowski says they are tamper proof, and the only way to get files off the camera is through the RPD's docking station.
The goal is to have about 504 cameras out there by Feb. 2017.By attaching short sequences of single-stranded DNA to nanoscale building blocks, researchers can design structures that can effectively build themselves. The building blocks that are meant to connect have complementary DNA sequences on their surfaces, ensuring only the correct pieces bind together as they jostle into one another while suspended in a test tube.
Now, a University of Pennsylvania team has made a discovery with implications for all such self-assembled structures.
Earlier work assumed that the liquid medium in which these DNA-coated pieces float could be treated as a placid vacuum, but the Penn team has shown that fluid dynamics play a crucial role in the kind and quality of the structures that can be made in this way.
As the DNA-coated pieces rearrange themselves and bind, they create slipstreams into which other pieces can flow. This phenomenon makes some patterns within the structures more likely to form than others.
The research was conducted by professors Talid Sinno and John Crocker, alongside graduate students Ian Jenkins, Marie Casey and James McGinley, all of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science.
It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Penn team’s discovery started with an unusual observation about one of their previous studies, which dealt with a reconfigurable crystalline structure the team had made using DNA-coated plastic spheres, each 400 nanometers wide. These structures initially assemble into floppy crystals with square-shaped patterns, but, in a process similar to heat-treating steel, their patterns can be coaxed into more stable, triangular configurations.
[youtube]TYDfzJ7LGkI[/youtube]
Surprisingly, the structures they were making in the lab were better than the ones their computer simulations predicted would result. The simulated crystals were full of defects, places where the crystalline pattern of the spheres was disrupted, but the experimentally grown crystals were all perfectly aligned.
While these perfect crystals were a positive sign that the technique could be scaled up to build different kinds of structures, the fact that their simulations were evidently flawed indicated a major hurdle.
“What you see in an experiment,” Sinno said, “is usually a dirtier version of what you see in simulation. We need to understand why these simulation tools aren’t working if we’re going to build useful things with this technology, and this result was evidence that we don’t fully understand this system yet. It’s not just a simulation detail that was missing; there’s a fundamental physical mechanism that we’re not including.”
By process of elimination, the missing physical mechanism turned out to be hydrodynamic effects, essentially, the interplay between the particles and the fluid in which they are suspended while growing. The simulation of a system’s hydrodynamics is critical when the fluid is flowing, such as how rocks are shaped by a rushing river, but has been considered irrelevant when the fluid is still, as it was in the researchers’ experiments. While the particles’ jostling perturbs the medium, the system remains in equilibrium, suggesting the overall effect is negligible.
“The conventional wisdom,” Crocker said, “was that you don't need to consider hydrodynamic effects in these systems. Adding them to simulations is computationally expensive, and there are various kinds of proofs that these effects don’t change the energy of the system. From there you can make a leap to saying, ‘I don’t need to worry about them at all.’”
Particle systems like ones made by these self-assembling DNA-coated spheres typically rearrange themselves until they reach the lowest energy state. An unusual feature of the researchers’ system is that there are thousands of final configurations — most containing defects — that are just as energetically favorable as the perfect one they produced in the experiment.
“It’s like you’re in a room with a thousand doors,” Crocker said. “Each of those doors takes you to a different structure, only one of which is the copper-gold pattern crystal we actually get. Without the hydrodynamics, the simulation is equally likely to send you through any one of those doors.”
The researchers’ breakthrough came when they realized that while hydrodynamic effects would not make any one final configuration more energy-favorable than another, the different ways particles would need to rearrange themselves to get to those states were not all equally easy. Critically, it is easier for a particle to make a certain rearrangement if it’s following in the wake of another particle making the same moves.
“It’s like slipstreaming,” Crocker said. “The way the particles move together, it’s like they’re a school of fish.”
“How you go determines what you get,” Sinno said. “There are certain paths that have a lot more slipstreaming than others, and the paths that have a lot correspond to the final configurations we observed in the experiment.”
The researchers believe that this finding will lay the foundation for future work with these DNA-coated building blocks, but the principle discovered in their study will likely hold up in other situations where microscopic particles are suspended in a liquid medium.
“If slipstreaming is important here, it’s likely to be important in other particle assemblies,” Sinno said. It’s not just about these DNA-linked particles; it’s about any system where you have particles at this size scale. To really understand what you get, you need to include the hydrodynamics.”
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation through its Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems Division.A missile strike on December 17 in Yemen last year that killed 41 people including 21 children and 14 women was most likely the result of a US cruise missile strike — an opening shot in a US military campaign that began without notice and has never been officially confirmed.
Amnesty International says it has obtained photographs apparently showing the remnants of missiles known to be held only by U.S. forces at the site of the air strike against al Qaeda suspects.
“The Yemeni authorities have a duty to ensure public safety and to bring to justice those engaged in attacks that deliberately target members of the public, but when doing so they must abide by international law,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s Director for the Middle East and North Africa Programme. “Enforced disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment, and extrajudicial executions are never permissible, and the Yemeni authorities must immediately cease these violations.”
“It is particularly worrying that states such as Saudi Arabia and the USA are directly or indirectly aiding the Yemeni government in a downward spiral away from previously improving human rights record.”
The Washington Post now reports that the CIA is likely to have a larger role in President Obama’s expanding war in Yemen.It is expected that a North Korean attack on Japan would involve ballistic missiles. The Japanese government has been bolstering defensive measures against ballistic missiles, including making permanent in August 2016 an order to the Self-Defense Forces to intercept and destroy incoming missiles.
During a series of meetings between Japanese and U.S. officials, the Japanese side asked for advance consultation regarding any U.S. military action against North Korea. The U.S. side is said to have responded positively to the request. This is because Japan would need to take appropriate precautions given that, as an ally of Washington, it could be a target for retaliation should the U.S. military attack North Korea.
The Trump administration is reviewing U.S. policy toward North Korea and has not ruled out military options, including a preemptive strike. Tensions in the region have risen sharply since the United States carried out a missile attack on Syria on April 6.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stressed on Wednesday that the region is becoming increasingly tense. “U.S. President Donald Trump has stated that all options are on the table. It’s a fact tensions are rising,” he said at the Prime Minister’s Office after receiving a written proposal calling for tougher sanctions on North Korea from the Liberal Democratic Party’s Eriko Yamatani, chief of the headquarters for the abduction issue.
“And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.” Matthew 24:6 (KJV)
57,000 Japanese would need rescuing
A difficult issue that would emerge in a contingency on the Korean Peninsula is the rescue and protection of an estimated 57,000 Japanese, including tourists, in South Korea. The government started compiling an evacuation plan in the 1990s and has updated and changed it several times. The government plans to convene a meeting of the four ministers who form the National Security Council to review the strategy for dealing with this issue at an early date.
North Korea may be preparing 6th nuclear test:
Security legislation that came into force in March 2016 newly allows the SDF to take steps to protect, rescue and transport Japanese overseas. The Japanese government plans to use government-chartered aircraft and SDF transport vessels for such evacuations, which would be conducted in cooperation with the U.S. military.
“South Korea’s allergy toward the SDF is still strong, so there has not been much progress regarding concrete talks between the Japanese and South Korean governments,” a senior Defense Ministry official told The Yomiuri Shimbun.
The government must also figure out how to cope with the huge number of refugees expected to descend on Japan from the Korean Peninsula. They would need to be temporarily accommodated, but it also is possible that North Korean agents would slip into Japan with the intention of striking nuclear power plants, heavily populated areas and other targets.
Implementing immigration control procedures for those refugees would not be easy.
The SDF is supposed to jointly respond with U.S. forces according to how a contingency on the Korean Peninsula would develop. The Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation that were revised in April 2015 stipulate the formulation and updating of a joint operation plan.
The U.S. military asked the SDF to provide support during the North Korean nuclear crisis (see below) from 1993 to 1994, such as escorting ships and conducting minesweeping operations. At that time, Japan did not have emergency legislation such as the Law on Response to Armed Attack Situations, and the exercise of the right of collective self-defense was not permitted. Japan had no choice but to refuse the request, according to a former Ground Self-Defense Force general.
However, a senior Defense Ministry official emphasized the difference made by the security legislation, which permit the limited exercise of the right of collective self-defense: “There has been progress regarding Japan-U.S. coordination for role sharing.”
The most realistic SDF activity would be logistics support for the U.S. military. The SDF is permitted to supply ammunition to U.S. forces and refuel ready-to-fly fighter jets, among other measures, in situations that do not constitute an armed attack but are recognized as having an important influence on Japan’s security and safety.
In a situation that could result in Japan sustaining damage equal in seriousness to a direct attack, the government would recognize that the nation’s survival is under threat and permit the use of force by the SDF. Using the right of collective self-defense, it would become possible for the SDF to defend U.S. ships by counterattacking enemies that attacked them, based on the SDF mobilization order. The SDF could also conduct other operations, including minesweeping in the open sea to remove mines laid by North Korea.
Under such a situation, the government would simultaneously recognize that Japan is at imminent risk of coming under attack while likely starting preparations based on the Civil Protection Law, such as evacuating residents.
In 1993, North Korea was suspected of conducting a nuclear development program but refused a special inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). North Korea then announced its withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), leading the United States to consider military action. In 1994, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter visited North Korea and struck an agreement with then leader Kim Il Sung that allowed the IAEA to continuously monitor North Korea’s nuclear facilities. A crisis was averted and the U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework was concluded, under which the United States and other countries promised to offer light-water reactors — which are difficult to convert for nuclear weapons purposes — to North Korea in return for a freezing of its nuclear facilities. sourceDuring the 2010 FIFA World Cup, unknown model Larissa Riquelme became an overnight sensation when a picture of her rooting for her native Paraguay (an underdog during the tournament) made the internet rounds. Oh yeah, did we mention that her shirt was very tight-fitting and it exposed her very ample cleavage? Well, fast forward to the presently ongoing Copa America, and it’s the same situation all over again. This time, however, it’s Venezuela instead of Paraguay, and the model in question is the not-so-obscure Diosa Canales. Following her country’s 2-1 upset win over Chile, Canales treated her fellow countrymen by showing off her charm at the Plaza Alfredo Sadel in Caracas, Venezuela. You might not have been there, but that doesn’t mean you can’t partake in the ogling.
fmartinez Nothing about the author.Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is the winner in the New Hampshire primary, besting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. News networks called the race for Sanders as soon as all the polls closed at 8 p.m.
In his victory speech, Sanders declared his win in New Hampshire, coupled with his strong showing in Iowa, “nothing short of the beginning of a political revolution.”
“The people of New Hampshire have sent a profound message to the political establishment, to the economic establishment and to, by the way, the media establishment,” Sanders said. “What the people here have said is that, given the enormous crises facing our country, it is just too late for the same old, same old establishment politics and establishment economics. The people want real change.”
It’s no surprise Sanders won the state, where he had held a large lead in the polls for weeks. Sanders eclipsed Clinton in New Hampshire polls months ago. Going into election day, he was leading Clinton 55 percent to 40 percent in the TPM PollTracker Average.
In recent weeks, the Clinton campaign characterized his popularity in the state as being product of his representation of a neighboring state. But his victory is nonetheless a setback for Clinton, who scored an upset over then Sen. Barack Obama in the state in 2008’s presidential race. It also comes after Clinton was barely able to eke out a win in Iowa, where she had invested a heavy ground game, perhaps to the disadvantage of her campaign operation in New Hampshire
The pressure is now on Clinton to reassert control of the race in the next Democratic 2016 states, Feb. 20th’s Nevada caucus and the Feb. 27 South Carolina primary that follows. In those places, and in the Southern states that hold their primaries in March, the Clinton campaign has argued that relatively high portions of minority voters will bulwark her against Sanders’ momentum in the mostly white Iowa and New Hampshire.
“I know there are those who want to deny the passion and the purpose you all show every day for this campaign,” Clinton said in her concession speech Tuesday. “But you are the reason we are here and you are the reason we are going to win the nomination and then win this election together.”
The Clinton campaign circulated also a memo written by campaign manager Robby Mook almost immediately after the results were projected, stressing the importance of the March primary states, where a majority of the delegates needed to win the nomination are allotted. The memo argued Clinton, given the states’ demographics and her ground game, was well-positioned to sweep up the nomination then.
Early exit polls pointed to Sanders outperforming Clinton among voters 30 and younger. His campaign has had an appeal among the youth vote throughout much of the race, but recent comments by Clinton surrogates Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright scolding young women for favoring Sanders further antagonized her relationship with young people.
Exit polls also suggested a larger portion of “liberal voters” in this primary than in 2008, when Clinton was victorious.
In the days leading up to the primary, the Clinton campaign amped up its attacks on Sanders. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, slammed him in recent speeches, while Clinton sharpened her criticisms of Sanders in last week’s debate. The efforts, however, were not enough to overcome Sanders’ overwhelming lead in the state.Firstpost Exclusive: No need for a censor board in a democracy, says Shyam Benegal
Shyam Benegal is well acquainted with occupying positions where he has to perform adjudicative duties. The eminent director is equally familiar with censorship, having had to excise portions of his own films on directions from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), a statutory body whose workings he has now been asked to fix – the government announced on Friday that he would head a panel tasked with “recommending a holistic framework for the country's film censor board, and to suggest changes in the Cinematograph Act, so that artistic creativity and freedom are not curtailed”.
Benegal spoke to Firstpost about his new responsibilities and how he plans to go about cleaning up the CBFC.
The CBFC seems mired in controversies. No matter what it does, there is criticism.
See, the tragedy of censorship in our country is that often, personal biases and prejudices come in the way of evaluating films for the Indian audience. As you know, the Indian audience is extremely diverse. You can’t really categorise them and say, “This is your audience.” You can never tell. Also the gulf between the urban and non-urban, the metropolitan and non-metropolitan audience…the guidelines of the censor board are too rigid to be applied to this diverse audience.
So what is the solution?
There should be a basic guideline about whether a film has used obscenity in terms of speech, behaviour or gesture. Or in terms of the situation created by the script. Now, whether these situations are actually awkward or embarrassing for the average moviegoer or whether it affects the audience in a way that’s socially harmful and this is where the depiction of sex and nudity comes in is a moot point. On the other hand you have the use of violence. It has to be determined if the use of violence is much too horrific and intense and does it dull your audiences’ sensibilities towards violence.
So how does one determine whether obscenity and violence are actually detrimental to society?
That is the problem. These are not things that one can sit down in judgement over, at least so easily. This is where we need to address the question of how much philosophical, psychological and sociological wherewithal is possessed by members of the censor board, and in the current scenario, by the chairman of the censor board, because many of the things that he has done have been on the face of it, questionable (CBFC chief Pahlaj Nihalani has invited the ire of the industry for his overbearing ways and for being excessively censorious.) These are problems that have happened in the censor board even in the past.
What is your opinion on this?
Does the censor come in the way of your film or is it of any help? There may be themes and situations in films that could influence impressionable minds. It is up to the filmmaker to be mindful of those situations. I’d rather that the filmmakers themselves exercise restraint in their expression. You cannot stop people from making the films they want to.
So the onus of censorship should be on the filmmakers?
It’s a very difficult responsibility, because at the end of the day cinema is a commercial business. Audiences have to be drawn in to recover investment. It’s a complex situation. But one thing is for certain. The government is not going to get rid of the censor board any time soon. I personally think the need for a censor board shouldn’t be there, particularly in a democracy. If we are capable of changing governments on the basis of our votes, we know what’s good for us. Why can’t we decide what is good for us to watch in the cinema?
You mean self-censorship?
I would rather have gradation rather than censorship whereby audiences are told that a film may not be suitable for someone below 16 or 18, that it may be suitable for a more mature audience. Rather than using scissors, audiences should be told that certain films with violence or sex might not be suitable for children. Why cut up a film? Britain allows its audience to make up its mind about what to see. The idea of using scissors to cut up a filmmaker’s work is a disturbing one.
Have you faced censorship issues with your films?
Oh, yes. Nishant was cut. There was a scene of Anant Nag and a girl making love behind a tree. They wanted it cut so we cut it. Some filmmakers applied a strange logic to get their lovemaking scenes passed. They put so much of sex in a scene that even after the censor board cut it there was some left. It was sad and nonsensical logic. My film Bhumika was snipped. In Manthan there were two cuts. Otherwise they’d have given me an ‘A’ certificate. One cut was where Girish Karnad was explaining artificial insemination in cattle. These cuts never made any sense to me. In recent years I’ve had no problems. Maybe because my recent films are more satirical.
But you accepted these cuts?
I wouldn’t have. But my producers did. It was their money. And I didn’t want any trouble. So I gave up.
Updated Date: Jan 02, 2016 14:35:14 ISTRepublicans have figured out a way to help make sure Mitt Romney is victorious in the presidential election come November: Suppress the vote. New voter ID laws enacted in crucial swing states could make it much tougher for millions of Americans who would likely support President Obama to cast their ballots — and in turn, tip the balance of power toward the GOP and their gaffe-prone White House candidate.
As LOLGOP put it succinctly in this tweet:
REMIND A REPUBLICAN: If you have to stop people from voting to win, your ideas suck. fb.me/1PmXPPQDl — LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) July 29, 2012
Just to clarify, though: The GOP is completely in favor of upholding your constitutional rights–so long as those rights involve guns and not voting.
Here’s more from Politico on Republican efforts to enact stricter voter ID laws:
Supporters of these new laws — spearheaded in six swing states, as well as other less competitive ones — argue they are just trying to stop voter fraud and protect the integrity of the vote. But opponents, mainly Democrats and Obama’s campaign, which is closely monitoring the daily warfare over the new laws, believe they are trying to change the face of the electorate in a way that benefits the Republican candidate for president. Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia and Wisconsin, all viewed as important states this fall, each have enacted stricter ID laws. Florida and Ohio have cut back on early voting. And a whole host of other states have passed new ID laws as well. As a result, millions of voters will find it much more difficult to vote on Election Day in November — some estimates, such as one from the Brennan Center of Justice last fall, put the number of those affected nationwide at more than 5 million. …The laws tend to disproportionately affect young voters and minorities — key Obama demographics — so the new restrictions will have an outsize impact on Democratic turnout. In Pennsylvania, for example, 18 percent of Philadelphia residents, who voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008, don’t have adequate IDs to vote in 2012. Read more
— Posted by Tracy Bloom.Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
If current trends hold, in 2011 China will make and buy more cars than America or the whole of Europe. China is not only adding cars, it has also become the world's second-largest oil consumer.
Over the past three years, we've seen the destructive impact of oil. Its price soared to almost $150 a barrel in the run-up to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and it caused the worst environmental disaster in American history as perhaps 4.1m barrels of oil flooded unimpeded into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico over 120 days.
In 2011 we will learn that the world's most populous country and one of the world's smallest countries have a great deal more in common than anyone would have imagined. China and Israel have both drawn the conclusion that the electrification of transport is a critical step in moving towards a more sustainable future, breaking the inexorable connection between economic growth and oil dependence. That means powering our cars without oil.
Only 2% of China's population today own cars—80% of them first-time car buyers—but the market has been growing by almost 50% a year. By 2020 China will rely on costly foreign oil imports for 65% of its needs.
The solution in the eyes of the Chinese government is to build a nationwide industry around electric vehicles. For China this represents a triple play. First, it wants to avoid the vulnerabilities of an economy built on imported oil. Second, it desperately needs to clean its urban centres of pollutants largely produced by exhaust pipes. And, third, it sees the opportunity to take a page out of America's 20th-century playbook, making a large domestic automobile industry the cornerstone of global economic leadership. This new type of car, powered not by internal-combustion engines but by batteries, power electronics and electric motors, plays to the strengths China has gained in consumer electronics over the past decades.
The Chinese government has set a goal to become the number one producer of electric cars by 2012. When China says it will create a new industry, it means exactly that, and the world will take notice. In August 2010 the country announced that it had commissioned 16 state-owned enterprises to begin building the electric-vehicle industry. These enterprises, led by State Grid (the world's largest utility, which controls 88% of China's electrical grid), also include the leading companies across the automotive, energy, finance, retail and infrastructure industries that are committed to building this framework. HSBC Research predicts that China's share of the global electric-vehicle market will grow from 2.7% in 2010 |
shooting a man, while he's off the clock and under the influence, will avoid jail time.Earlier Thursday night after about three hours of deliberations, a jury acquitted Chauncey Carthan on a charge of wanton endangerment. but found him guilty on the lesser charge of driving under the influence.Carthan, if convicted of wanton endangerment, could have spent several years behind bars.Even, the DUI charge could have carried jail time.But in the end, Carthan ended up only have to pay a $500 fine -- walking away a free man.As a former undercover narcotics detective, Carthan has helped put many behind bars, but Thursday, he waited to learn if he, too, would go to jail.“We the jury find the defendant, Chauncey Carthan, not guilty. Will pay only a fine, avoiding jail time.”“I'd like to thank the courts and the prosecutors also, because I know that they had a difficult task,” said Carthan.But he has no words for the victim, Ishmael Gough. Investigators say on the night of Sept. 4, 2012, Carthan left a friend's house where he had a few drinks, and pulled over a speeding car on Chestnut Street. He told the court he identified himself as a police officer, and while Gough initially complies, he says the man later lunges at him. That's when, he says, he fired off one shot, hitting Gough in the leg.“Had I let him take my gun that night, there is no doubt in my mind he would've used it on me and left me there for dead,” Carthan said.Attorney Steve Schroering has argued from the beginning that his client acted to defend himself. He's relieved with the jury's decision."The jury absolutely got it right in this case, and we essentially conceded he had been drinking and driving and he knew he shouldn't be. But that's the only mistake he made that night,” said Schroering. Prosecutor Nick Mudd says Gough was disappointed by the jury's verdict.“His words to me were something to the effect of, 'How can a drunk off-duty police officer shoot someone that's unarmed and get away with it?'”But Schroering doesn't see it that way. He says his client, forced to resign from a department he loved, paid the price.“He did an awful lot of good in this community that a lot of people will never know about, but that part has ended for him,” Schroering said.While the criminal case came to an end Thursday night, it is far from over. The victim in this case has filed a civil suit against Carthan.Update: Contest has ended! Thanks to everyone who participated! Winners are announced here.
"Scootaloo's Big Adventure." Show Scootaloo doing something adventurous! Paragliding, spelunking, space exploration, crime fighting, pet sitting -- no challenge is too big or too small for the bravest filly in Ponyville!
(Full-size poster here)
Prizes
Rules
April 5
How to enter
Judging
Misc
Good news, everypony!is hosting its second art contest! This time the theme is:First prize winner receives aof their choice, made by. See plush examples. Second prize winner receives aof their choice by. See painting examples. Third prize winner receives 400points (enough for a month of DA premium).We can ship your plush internationally. You willneed to pay any fees or taxes or shipping. Totally free.Artists who create the prizes may set some reasonable limits on commissions' subject matter and complexity.If you'd like to donate/contribute something towards the prize pool (e.g. a third-place prize), send a note toSubmit your artwork by the end of. We will accept submissions that are up to 24 hours late butyou have a very good reason for being late.You can submit digital or traditional paintings/drawings, comics, vectors, collages, and animations. Any visual medium, really!No style restrictions: ponies can be fillies/teenagers/adults, realistic or cartoony, show-accurate or stylized, four-legged or anthro, etc. You may include other characters in addition to Scootaloo.Submitted art must be made by you. If your submission contains other people's work (e.g. vectors), credit the original artist in description.We cannot accept artwork that was published before this contest started (March 18), even if it fits the theme.You may submit more than one entry, but you will receive at most one prize.No cruel or mature content. Keep it nice and G-rated.Go to our "Adventure Contest" gallery folder Click "Submit To This Folder" and follow instructions.Entries will be judged on both creativity of concept and quality of execution.The winners will be decided by a vote, judged by a few Scootastic artists (and) and the moderators ofandIf you have any questions or suggestions about the contest, leave a comment here or send us a note.Check out winners of last year's contest Thanks to(who asked to emphasize that they are not directly affiliated),, andfor helping organize and/or promote this contest.The fate of the internet will determine our future
The Internet is under attack. Free speech, innovation and democracy are all up for grabs.
In Killswitch: The Battle to Control the Internet, Lawrence Lessig, Tim Wu and Peter Ludlow frame the story of two young hactivists,
Aaron Swartz & Edward Snowden, who symbolize the disruptive and dynamic nature of the Internet.
Their lives parallel one another as they free information to millions on the Internet,
putting them directly in the cross-hairs of the most powerful interests in the world.
Will this be a cautionary tale of what happens when you dare to take on elite power structures?
Or will it be the spark that ignites a revolution that will redefine democracy in the digital age?
Killswitch is a call-to-action: It is our hope that you use our documentary as a tool to continue to fight for a free and open Internet.
Killswitchthefilm.com is designed to be a resource to help you communicate and collaborate. What we do as individuals today will shape our collective future.
You have the power.
Do Something - NowEarly season powder days helped the inaugural Dew Video Battle get off to a cracking start.
Transfer Snowboard Magazine | By Russell Holt
The public voting period of the inaugural Dew Video Battle is now half way through. With one week to go till voting closes and till judges hand down their verdict on the overall winner – the social media battles are heating up as teams fight for votes and their share in the $10,000 cash purse prize.
Launched last week, more than 50 people across 10 team videos worked relentlessly over 6-weeks of hard-core filming, riding and editing across the Aussie and Kiwi mountains to create the best team video possible. Assisted by a great start to the snow season in Australia and NZ the entries to this year’s Video Battle are diverse, entertaining and all bring something unique to the contest for the public to enjoy.
From Backcountry jumps, to urban rail sessions, to Taco outfits and one-footed antics all the riders and teams have made this event an instant success. So far the result from the public has been incredible with over 20,000 views on the team videos and over 7000 votes already counted – the race is on and there are some big surprises.
After a small gathering of team riders, filmers and friends last Wednesday night to launch the videos at the Lake Jindabyne Bowling Club, the videos were dropped online the following morning for the public to watch and vote. Each day the public can vote and go in the chance to win $2400 from Mt Dew.
Watch all the videos and vote for your favourite team.
Voting Closes on Wednesday August 8th, 2012 AEST at 11:59pm.
Here are a few screen grabs from the videos.
Watch all the videos and vote for your favourite team.World
Yemeni Forces Hit Saudi Military Positions with over 700 Missiles, Rockets
TEHRAN (FNA)- The Yemeni army and the popular forces pounded targets in Al-Khuba region in Saudi Arabia's Southern Jizan province with hundreds of home-made missiles and rockets.
"The Yemeni forces have attacked Al-Khuba region with Over 700 rockets and missiles," the Arabic-language media outlets quoted an unnamed military source as saying on Tuesday.
Al-Alam news outlet said the attacks were done in the last two days.
The source said that the military operations in Al-Khuba region were the first of a series of strategic steps to confront the joint aggressions by Saudi Arabia and the UAE and their coalition and the continued violation of the seven-day-long fragile ceasefire that has been trampled by tens of Saudi airstrikes.
On Monday, the Yemeni army and popular forces targeted Saudi Arabia's Aramco Oil Company in Jizan with Qaher-I ballistic missiles.
"The (Qaher-I) missile precisely hit Aramco oil company on Monday night," Yemeni Army Spokesman Brigadier General Sharaf Luqman said on Tuesday.
He reiterated that the Yemeni missile attack came in retaliation to the Saudi-led aggressors' violation of UN-sponsored ceasefire, but did not give further details about the damages caused on the Aramco Company.
On Sunday, the Saudi airstrikes continued against civilian targets in different regions of Yemen's Sa'ada province in violation of the seven-day ceasefire announced earlier.
The Saudi-led coalition fired 40 rockets on the regions of Al-Zaher and Shada in Sa'ada province concurrent with the sixth day of peace talks in Switzerland.
Warplanes from the Saudi-led coalition also pounded Ta'iz province in violation of the truce.
The Saudi warplanes also hit the Western parts of the city of Sana'a on Sunday.
Saudi Arabia's violation of the ceasefire comes while the peace negotiations were underway in Switzerland.
Ryiadh has been violating the truce ever since it came into force 6 days ago. In response, the Yemeni army and popular forces respond to Saudi Arabia's daily violations with missile fires.
On Sunday, the Yemeni army and popular forces destroyed the Saudi military positions in the province of Ma'rib with their new Qaher-I ballistic missiles, killing tens of the kingdom's forces.
The first Qaher-I missile hit Al-Tawwal border crossing in Saudi Arabia and the second missile targeted the Saudi-led special forces' military base, destroying several Apache helicopters and spying drones in Safer region of Ma'rib province.
The Saudi-led forces' drone control unit and several armored vehicles were destroyed during the Yemeni missile attack.
On Saturday, the Saudi-led Coalition Forces and pro-Hadi militias suffered another devastating blow when a Tochka ballistic missile hit their camp in Ma'rib province, and killed over 180 troops, including Saudi and UAE officers.
An ammunition depot and two Apache helicopters of the pro-Saudi aggressors were also destroyed in the Yemeni ballistic missile strikes in Southern Yemen that came in response to airstrikes on residential areas by the Saudi-led coalition warplanes on Friday and Saturday.
At least 180 Saudi and UAE military men as well as forces loyal to the former fugitive president Mansour Hadi were killed in the attack on Saudi-led forces' military camp in the Ma'rib province.
Also on Friday, the Yemeni army and popular forces conducted several retaliatory missile attacks against Saudi Arabia's Key military bases and positions in Jizan province, inflicting heavy losses on the kingdom's forces.
Yemen's Tochka ballistic missiles hit the Saudi army's gathering centers in Jizan province.
The Yemeni forces also fired a Qaher-I missile at Saudi forces' bases in Najran on Friday.
The missile attacks came in response to the violation of truce by the Saudi bomb strikes.
On Tuesday, the Yemeni missiles destroyed the command center of Saudi border guards in Asir province.
Meantime, the Yemeni missiles hit the Saudi governmental buildings in al-Rabou'a region of Asir province.
The Yemeni army also fired 52 rockets at the border regions of Alab, al-Sheibani, al-Hazar and al-Thurein in Asir province.
On Monday, Yemeni forces hit Jizan airport in Southern Saudi Arabia with their new surface-to-surface ballistic missiles.
"The Qaher-I missile precisely hit the target, the Jizan airport; the third such missile used in the past 24 hours to target military positions in Southern Saudi Arabia," Yemeni military sources told FNA.
The first Qaher-I ballistic missiles targeted Khalid bin Abdulaziz air base in Asir province in Southwestern Saudi Arabia on Sunday.
The second ballistic missile hit the Saudi-led coalition's command headquarters in Sha'ab al-Jen region near Bab al-Mandeb in Ta'iz province. Over 150 coalition servicemen, including 23 Saudi troops, 9 UAE officers and soldiers, seven Moroccan officers and 42 Blackwater troops were killed in the second attack.
Qaher-I is an updated version of a Russian-made surface-to-surface missile.
The burnt bodies of 146 Saudi-led military troops have been transferred to the city of Aden and Saudi Arabia has sent a warship to Ta'iz to transfer the wounded from Bab al-Mandeb region.
The Saudi-led forces sustained heavy casualties in the Yemeni army's missile attack on the Bab al-Mandeb region in Southwestern Yemen.
Last Friday, the Yemeni army and popular forces conducted several retaliatory attacks against key military bases and positions in two Saudi provinces, inflicting heavy losses on the kingdom's forces.
Yemeni forces fired 13 missiles at al-Jamarak region in the Saudi province of Jizan, killing at least two Saudi military men.
On December 9, the Yemeni forces launched missile attacks on the Saudi military bases in Jizan province with their new home-made missiles named 'Cry'.
The Yemeni missiles destroyed al-Ain al-Harreh and al-Salah military bases in Jizan province, inflicting heavy losses on the Saudi army.
The Yemeni army and popular forces also hit al-Ramzeh military center in Jizan province, killing tens of Saudi military men and their vehicles.
The Yemeni forces also hit several Saudi military centers in the Southern parts of Al-Khuba region.
On December 5, the Yemeni army and popular forces destroyed a large number of military posts and centers in three provinces in Southern Saudi Arabia.
The Yemeni forces' missile and artillery fire has destroyed tens of Saudi military sites in Najran, Jizan and Asir provinces in the last three days.
A large number of Saudi troops have been killed and many more wounded in the Yemeni forces' retaliatory attacks on their positions.
Also on December 5, FNA dispatches said that the Yemeni army and popular forces continued their nonstop advances on the Saudi soil and seized several military bases and sites in Saudi Arabia's Southern provinces after heavy clashes with the kingdom's troops.
The Yemeni forces captured a number of Saudi military bases in Jizan province, Yemeni Army Commander Ebrahim Moussa al-Hamdani told FNA.
Al-Hamdani noted that the army and popular forces also seized the Riyadh government's strategic military positions in Najran province after several hours of clashes with the Saudi forces, seizing heavy machinery and a large cache of weapons and military tools, including mortar-launchers.After having its legal feathers ruffled in court, the federal government says it is moving to protect the endangered sage grouse.
Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq said Tuesday the government intends to introduce an emergency protection order for the bird, which is native to the southern Prairies.
She said the order would impose obligatory restrictions to protect the sage grouse and its habitat on provincial and federal crown lands in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
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The restrictions would not apply to activities on private land, or on grazing on provincial or federal crown lands.
"Through a combination of stewardship measures we are addressing the imminent threats to the greater sage grouse," Ms. Aglukkaq said in a release. "We will be working with provinces and stakeholders over the coming months to implement these measures."
The sage grouse population in Canada has declined nearly 98 per cent since 1988, with fewer than 150 birds remaining in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Last year, environmental groups went to court to force Ottawa to issue an emergency protection order for the bird after the government said discussions about the sage grouse were covered by cabinet confidentiality.
Last month, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled the federal government cannot use cabinet secrecy to hide debate about the endangered bird.
Conservation groups said Tuesday they were cautiously optimistic about the government's decision, but want more details about the plan.
"We have yet to see when — or even if — the emergency order will be implemented, and whether it will provide real, meaningful protection for these prairie birds and their critical habitat," said Melissa Gorrie, lawyer for the group Ecojustice.
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Nature Canada and other organizations expressed similar views, praising the decision but calling on the federal government for more information.
"Some of the key specifics of the order are still unknown at this time, so we're going to have to wait and see all the details before we know what it will mean for this iconic at-risk species," said Ian Davidson, executive director of Nature Canada. "Even so, we are treating this as a very positive development."
Environment Canada said an emergency order under the federal Species At Risk Act can be used when a species faces imminent threats to its survival.Nobody in his right mind would buy a cellphone for a child who’s still learning how to tie his shoes. But you might buy him a FiLIP.
The $200 FiLIP is a clever way for parents to keep a closer eye on their wee ones without having to buy them mobile phones or GPS tracking devices that they will inevitably lose, break, or cover in peanut butter.
Calling all kids
If you’re old enough to remember Dick Tracy’s Two-Way Wrist Radio, you know nearly everything you need to know about the FiLIP. It’s a watch that doubles as an extremely basic phone, made from colorful high-impact rubber and designed to fit the wrists of kids from 4 to 8. It’s water resistant and sturdy enough to take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.
There are just two buttons: a big red one to make calls, and a smaller green one to cycle through the child’s list of contacts. Using a smartphone app, you can add up to five contacts that your nubbin can call via the FiLIP; these are also the only numbers that can call it. To make a call, your child selects a contact and speaks into a small mic below the watch face. Using the app, you can also send a text message of up to 24 characters to your child, which displays on the screen. There’s no way for him to send a text back, however.
FiLIP uses GPS, cell towers, and open WiFi hotspots to locate your child on a map; you can view up to the last 48 hours of his locations on your phone. You can create up to five SafeZones and get alerts when your child enters or leaves one.
Story continuesAccording to a leaked document published by TUT.BY this week, the Belarusian parliament will insert its own special clause when it ratifies the Treaty of the Eurasian Economic Union.
The clause will reserve the country’s right to ignore its treaty obligations if Russia does not agree to lift all barriers of the free trade regime that are harmful to Belarus.
This most recent scandalous development is unfolding only three months before the planned inception of the next stage of the Eurasian integration project – the Eurasian Economic Union.
This is a result of Belarus’s harsh reaction to Russia's plans to reform its taxation system in the oil sector, something more commonly known as a “tax manoeuvre". Belarus will suffer considerable financial losses if this move pushes forward.
The presidents of Belarus and Russia will meet in Minsk on 10 October. Given the current geopolitical climate, Vladimir Putin will surely have to make concessions. The Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has already promised to cushion the effect of the tax manoeuvre for the Belarusian economy.
Oil Tax Manoeuvre
The House of Representatives, the parliament’s lower chamber, plans to discuss the Treaty of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEC) on 9 October. Rather uncharacteristically, a leaked document appeared on the TUT.BY portal before the parliament's planned discussion. According to it, MPs will amend the ratification instrument with an important reservation.
Belarus wants to sign a bilateral (with Russia) or trilateral (with Russia and Kazakhstan) agreement that will lift “barriers, limitations and exemptions” in trade for certain goods and services. The leaked document specifies those goods and services: energy resources, industrial assembly-line products, automobile shipping and others. Without such binding agreements, Belarus will not guarantee that it will strictly adhere to its Eurasian integration obligations.
This is how the Belarusian authorities are reacting to Russia’s previously announced oil tax manoeuvre, a plan to tweak oil taxes by increasing the mineral extraction tax and cutting export duties. The move is part of Moscow’s attempts to improve the competitiveness of Russia’s economy by reforming its tax system.
In particular, it wants to stimulate more efficient consumption of energy resources inside Russia and limit the energy rents that it doles out to its Eurasian partners.
For example, Belarus gets, according to some estimates, about 16% of its overall GDP from Russian subsidies. The manoeuvre will mean a surge in crude oil prices and losses for oil refineries as well as for the country’s economy at large. In other words, it will significantly impact Belarus’s export potential. According to official statistics, mineral resources made up 33% of Belarusian exports in 2013. Agricultural and industrial exports will also suffer.
Belarus Wants Compensation
On 29 September Alexandr Lukashenka met with members of the lower chamber of the Belarusian parliament. He stated that his government would not put up with the Kremlin’s tax manoeuvre.
According to Lukashenka, the tax manoeuvre might cost Belarus more than $1 billion. He underlined that if Russia made such a move it would become a serious problem for the prospective Eurasian Economic Union's (EAEU) ability to function:
First of all, because we had a different agreement. Secondly, if certain actions are taken in one direction then there should be compensation in another direction. This is a significant amount of money and we should, by no means, suffer to lose out on it.
Lukashenka also stressed his position that the country’s accession to any organisation has to bring clear benefits to the state and its citizens:
We need to get more than we currently have. […] We have to take steps that do us good. Otherwise, what is the point if we do not benefit from it?
He called on the MPs to cautiously defend the interests of Belarus when considering the EAEU Treaty and hinted that the tax manoeuvre issue will impact the country’s decision on whether or not to ratify it.
Not the First Time
The Eurasian integration project is currently experiencing new tension between its members. Apart from the tax manoeuvre, other issues are also fouling up the integration project.
Ever since the Russian government introduced an embargo against certain categories of Western goods there have been growing rumours that Belarus has been re-exporting some of those goods and, subsequently, cashing in on the Russian sanctions. During the Customs Union-Ukraine-EU summit in Minsk on 26 August, Vladimir Putin even made a public accusation to that effect.
For its part, Belarus claims that it is suffering financial losses due to the Russian ruble's devaluation. According to the Belarusian Ministry of Agriculture, the country has already seen losses totaling around $160 million.
This is not the first time that similar scandals have arisen since the inception of the Eurasian integration project. Perhaps the incident with the most resonance took place in 2012 and had to do with solvent exports.
At that time the authorities in Minsk and their partners among Russian businessmen actively exploited a loophole in the Customs Union’s legislation. They disguised oil products as solvents and exported them to the EU. The trick helped Belarus to avoid making any payments export duties on oil products into the Russian state budget as the Customs Union’s laws did not classify solvents as oil products. As a result, Belarus saved about $2 billion in 2012.
What is Next for Eurasian Integration?
As with the solvents scandal, the current row will likely end with a compromise. On 2 October, during a meeting with Lukashenka, PM Mikhail Myasnikovich stated that his cabinet had suggested a way to resolve the tax manoeuvre issue.
Today Belarus has to transfer to Russia’s state budget all export duties on oil products made from Russian crude oil and sold to a third party. In 2013, for example, the government handed over $3.3 billion worth of export duties to Russian state accounts. Belarus has long expressed disagreement with this arrangement and even threatened not to sigh the EAEU Treaty was it not changed.
As a result, on 8 May 2014, Alexandr Lukashenka and Vladimir Putin agreed on a compromise formula: in 2015 half of the export duties on oil will go to the Belarusian budget and the other half will go to Russia.
Myasnikovich’s solution to the ongoing row foresees the whole sum going to the Belarusian budget.
Given Russia's difficult geopolitical position at the moment, the Kremlin is particularly interested in demonstrating progress with its Eurasian project. Therefore, it does not want to see any visible prolonged tension with Minsk and will be forced to offer some kind of compensation to its Belarusian partner.
On 7 October, the Russian PM Dmitri Medvedev met with his Belarusian counterpart and promised to cushion the negative effects of the tax manoeuvre. Precise details of what this entails remain unknown. Belarus will hardly get everything it wants but the concessions will likely be lucrative enough for Minsk to ratify the EAEU Treaty and host a peaceful summit of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council on 10 October.
This will not, however, put an end to similar tensions in the future.Off the back of his latest personal rout of Norwich City at Anfield on Wednesday night, Luis Suarez has committed himself to Liverpool Football Club.
The Uruguayan international fired four goals past Norwich keeper John Ruddy in Liverpool’s 5-1 win over the Canaries. It was his third hat-trick against Norwich in his last four games against them.[table id=20 /]After the game, Suarez spoke to reporters about his own career ambitions and that of the club, revealing he is now “happy” at Liverpool and wants to stay.
The 26-year-old told Marca with quotes being translated and picked up by the Guardian, “I think we can achieve what we set out to do. My aim is just to help make the team better. My job is just to score the goals that mean we keep winning games and get as high in the table as possible.
“I am happy to be in the Premier League, the best league there is. I am happy here and I will stay. I don’t know about challenging for the title, but we want to be as high up in the table as possible and do as well as we can. I think we can achieve our target.”
Happy to have you here, Luis.
Brendan Rodgers was equally as enthusiastic about Suarez’s performance against Norwich, which earned him a late standing ovation from the Anfield faithful.
“If you look at the world-class performers at the top of the game their numbers are just exceptional and that is the level he is at,” Rodgers told the BBC.
“To miss the first four games of the season and to be on the number of goals he is now is a wonderful return.
“The football suits him here. We try to play a certain way that allows him the freedom to move and to create the spaces for him to exploit.”New Rangers loan signing Nathan Oduwa was accused of being disrespectful to Alloa with his trick at the end of a 5-1 victory. Do the beaten players have reason to grumble or is the teenager simply trying to entertain?
Rangers boss Mark Warburton said: "I'm not always a big fan of that. But you've got to hope you develop a real talent - and he is a real talent.
"You've got to make sure you create the environment for those boys to flourish. That's the key. I'm delighted with how he played and delighted we've got him. But he has to realise that he's up here to learn.
"There's no lack of respect intended by any of the players, absolutely not. Nathan's just enjoying his football."
Footage available to UK viewers onlyBy: Mitch Hansch (Three Beers) –
[ratings]
Keir Person’s screenplay starts you off right as Cesar Chavez decides to pack up his wife Helen (America Ferrera) and his eight kids and move to Delano, California to be there firsthand on the battlefield of injustice. It’s there where Cesar, Helen, and their trusted comrade Dolores Huerta (Rosario Dawson) fight, nonviolently of course, for migrant workers rights for people that make less than a measly $2 a day for picking grapes in the vineyards. It doesn’t take long before Chavez catches the disdainful eye of not only the law but that of the vineyard owners, including the ‘their rights are costing me money’ Bogdanovich played by John Malkovich. Chavez really starts to cost them money when he starts a strike that would, in total, last for over five years.
A Toast
Watching this at the famous Paramount Theater at SXSW, with a raucous, proud crowd, and only a few blocks from Cesar Chavez Blvd., it was hard not to be infected by all the love surrounding the subject of this movie. With a little time passing after viewing, I can see the flaws, for which there are enough, a little more clearly, but I’m glad to say that the heroic tale and biopic of Cesar Chavez is very much worth a watch.
Actor Diego Luna directs his second feature with an obvious love and weighty sense of duty to tell the story of the life-changing activist Chavez and the movement he championed. Luna’s strengths are knowing when to deliver well-placed moments of levity that help us relate to the people who are making such bold sacrifices.
Beer Two
Luna’s understating tendencies on the other hand make for an at times lackluster viewing experience, failing to be as riveting as it could be. Chavez is played by the tremendous veteran actor Michael Pena (End of Watch) who has to play a quieter lead, much like Mark Wahlberg’s Mickey Ward in The Fighter, but unlike in David O. Russell’s film, there aren’t the lively surrounding characters to spark up drama, which leaves Pena grasping for ways to make scenes bigger.
Beer Three
Aside from Chavez partaking in a 25 day hunger strike that draws national attention, setbacks for the resistance don’t pack the punch to always maximize their struggle. Also, Luna and his script try to paint the full picture that Chavez wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t convinced by the simple highlighting of the point that because of his tireless efforts for equality, his family life, in particular his relationship with his eldest son, often took a back seat.
Verdict
The real life drama of Cesar Chavez is enough to carry more than enough spark for the film’s underwhelming moments.
Drinking Game
Take a Drink: whenever actual historical footage is shown.
Take a Drink: whenever Chavez has a heart to heart with his eldest son.
Down a Shot: whenever Chavez gets really, really mad.Late last week, the City of Oakland made national headlines when it agreed to pay a $4.5 million legal settlement to Scott Olsen, the Marine Corps veteran who was critically wounded by Oakland police during a confrontation with Occupy Oakland protesters in 2011. Yet despite the large payout (which was first reported by the Express on its website), the Oakland Police Department brass promoted two cops who were involved in the Olsen incident. In fact, one of the officers — then Captain Paul Figueroa — is now the assistant police chief, and is the second most powerful person in the department.
OPD dispatch tapes from the night of October 25, 2011 highlight Figueroa's role in the unwarranted use of force by police officers on demonstrators. At about 7:25 p.m., Figueroa told the police officers at the intersection of 14th Street and Broadway that "we're going to stick with announcements, our goal is to allow them to peacefully protest, and we'll facilitate it then best we can...."
But then, just minutes later, at 7:28 p.m., Figueroa ordered officers to put on their gas masks — a preparation for the use of tear gas — and to make announcements to disperse the crowd of demonstrators. At 7:34 p.m., Figueroa told his officers to "watch out for projectiles, we haven't seen any yet, just watch for them." Three minutes later, Figueroa said: "We're going to let them peacefully protest, we're going to continue to make announcements [to disperse]...."
At the time, Figueroa was addressing commanders of OPD's Tango Teams — tactical squads of five officers and one sergeant each, which were armed with shotgun-fired less-than-lethal rounds, tear gas, and flash-bang grenades. As the Express reported in December 2011, those teams also included several OPD officers who had used deadly force in the past and had been involved in numerous use-of-force cases over the years.
Then, at 7:40 on the evening of October 25, 2011, Figueroa ordered Tango Team sergeants Roland Holmgren and Patrick Gonzales to disperse the crowd. "Tango Team deploy gas, deploy gas into the front of the crowd," Figueroa said over the radio.
Eighteen seconds later, an unnamed OPD officer shot Olsen in the head with a beanbag round that consisted of lead birdshot wrapped in cloth. At the time, Olsen, 24, was standing about fifteen feet from the Tango Teams at 14th and Broadway. The firing of the beanbag round was a blatant violation of OPD's crowd control policy. Then, while Olsen lay on the ground, an Oakland cop lobbed a flash-bang grenade into a group of people who had rushed in to help the wounded veteran. Video of a dazed and bleeding Olsen being carried to safety by fellow demonstrators quickly went viral and was seen by people around the world within hours. Olsen, who is now 26, has permanent brain damage.
At the time of the shooting, Figueroa had no business being the incident commander or accepting the position: He was the head of the department's internal affairs division. As such, he would be responsible for investigating any misconduct stemming from that incident. It was a clear conflict of interest. As it turned out, OPD botched both the administrative and criminal investigations into the Olsen shooting. To this day, the department has yet to identify the officer responsible.
Nonetheless, Interim Police Chief Sean Whent, who also had previously been the head of the department's internal affairs division, promoted Figueroa to assistant chief last year. OPD brass then promoted Tango Team Sergeant Holmgren to lieutenant earlier this year.
That promotion came despite the fact that former OPD consultant Thomas Frazier had singled out Holmgren for submitting alarmingly similar reports from officers who were at the scene when Olsen was shot. The officers all said in their statements that they did not see Olsen lying in front of the barricade after he was shot. They also said they did not see the people who came to his assistance or the flash-bang grenade thrown at those people. Frazier said the reports submitted by Holmgren from officers Michael Leite, Todd Martin, Thomas Sotto, Chris Saunders, and Robert Roche were not credible.
Frazier made those comments in a highly critical report on OPD's response to Occupy Oakland. "After review of hours of video footage involving the injured party (who appears to be approximately 15-25 feet in front of the police skirmish line when he was struck and fell to the ground), the fact that no law enforcement officer, supervisor, or commander observed the person falling down or prostrate in the street during the confrontation was unsettling and not believable," Frazier wrote in his report.
Then-City Administrator Deanna Santana attempted to redact portions of Frazier's report that concerned details of OPD's misconduct, including criticisms of the department's inadequate planning before the October 25 raid on Occupy Oakland; the use of internal affairs officers during the raid on the Occupy encampment and during the protest later that day (including Figueroa); failures by the department to follow its own crowd-control policy; a seriously mishandled criminal investigation into the wounding of Olsen; revelations that Olsen was gravely wounded by a beanbag round identical to the ones used by OPD that evening; and serious misgivings from OPD officers who told Frazier's team about the department's lax attitude toward misconduct and discipline.
Holmgren also had been involved in the illegal use of force against anti-war protesters at the Port of Oakland in 2003. And he was involved in a drunken brawl with prison guards at a charity boxing event in 2010. He also was disciplined for turning off his chest-mounted camera during clashes with Occupy Oakland demonstrators on January 28, 2012.
In addition, in 2012, independent investigator Jacob Crawford and I identified Roche (whose report Holmgren submitted) as the Oakland police officer who lobbed the flash-bang grenade toward Olsen and the group of people who rushed to his aid. (Full disclosure: Crawford worked as an investigator for Olsen's attorneys, Jim Chanin and Rachel Lederman, in the case against the city. I was not involved in the lawsuit.) OPD fired Roche for his actions, but he is challenging the termination in arbitration.
Oakland police officials did not respond to questions about why Figueroa and Holmgren were promoted in light of their involvement in the Olsen incident and other use-of-force cases.
In a statement, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan expressed regret at Olsen's injuries and said OPD had since reformed its crowd control policies. "We regret that Mr. Olsen suffered these injuries and hardships," Quan said, "and I want Oakland to know that because of that evening's events we took determined, constructive steps to change our policing procedures."
Although OPD's crowd control policy was recently revised as part of the Spalding et al v. Oakland settlement for a November 2010 mass arrest of Oscar Grant protesters, the department still has tear gas, blast grenades, and less-than-lethal beanbags as part of its crowd control arsenal. Other Bay Area law enforcement agencies, such as the San Francisco Police Department, do not allow the use of tear gas.
The Oakland City Attorney's Office said in a statement last week that the city will pay $1.8 million of the settlement with Olsen, and that the city's insurance carrier will pay the rest of the $4.5 |
thing to forget. But it's most likely been filed away somewhere with all the other internet oddities you come across every day, next to r/DragonsFuckingCars and those photos from Russian dating websites – which kind of makes sense, considering it's a tiny piece of land somewhere near Fiji, full of people praying to the Queen's husband in the hope he'll return to them in spirit form.
But to Matt Baylis, a writer from Southport, it made a slightly deeper impression. Matt grew up with a poster of the Duke of Edinburgh on his wall, admiring the Prince's pragmatic approach to life and presumably choosing to ignore all of that mildly racist stuff he's said about Chinese and Aborigine people. So after learning that there were others who shared a vaguely similar attitude towards Phil the Greek, it made perfect sense to fly to Tanna and experience the cult for himself.
I gave Matt a call to chat about his time with the Tanna cargo cult, nights spent on a psychoactive plant called kava and how the tribe convinced themselves that he was a sacred figure with a spiritual connection to Prince Philip.
Matt Baylis
VICE: Hey Matt. How did you end up on Tanna?
Matt Baylis: It started with a boyhood obsession. I was a big fan of Prince Philip when I was about 10 or 11. I was very fond of him and always thought he got a bit of a raw deal. Later in my life, I ended up studying anthropology at university, and cargo cults crop up on every undergraduate anthropology course. One of our lecturers told us that, on the island of Tanna, there were cults forming and regrouping all the time, and said, "Yeah, and there’s even a Prince Philip cult there." Everyone laughed, but because of my prior interest I was fascinated and wanted to know more. Later in life, I was still interested in the cult, so I thought, ‘I should go.' I had enough money, so I went and did it.
How did they take to you when you arrived?
They were very courteous and very polite, and I was welcomed and told that I could stay as long as I liked. The problem was that, when you go to Tanna as a foreigner and you’re in those types of areas, the people will treat you in a way that is slightly mystical. When you walk into a village, a man will say, "Ah, hello – you’re here to see me, aren’t you?" You’ll say, "Not really," and he’ll say, "Yes you are. I had a dream about you the other week."
So there's an idea that all Westerners are mystical and somehow connected to Prince Philip?
That’s right. They see them as part of an overarching scheme in which Tanna is drawing in foreigners all the time and creating what they call "roads", which are symbolic alliances with an outside power, force or ally. They believe that, once they have created enough roads, the world will be joined up.
Women from the Prince Philip cargo cult
It sounds like quite a complicated belief system. Did it take you a long time to get to grips with it?
Yeah, it very gradually began to slot into place. One of the things that made it difficult is the fact that, in Melanesia [the sub region of Oceania where Tanna is located], knowledge is treated as a commodity. They are very strict about it and people have even been poisoned and killed for stealing myths from other people. I had to keep saying, "Can I ask you this?" – asking permission to ask questions.
What are the core beliefs of the movement?
They believe that Prince Philip is one of the sons of the mountain god. They already had a set of myths involving a light-skinned god who sailed away overseas before worshipping Philip, which might go back to the fact that the island of Tanna is right on the edge of Polynesia, so they would have had contact with lighter skinned people. They have all sorts of myths about Prince Philip sailing away and capturing the heart of an important foreign woman. They say that he's working in various mystical ways for the benefit of Tanna and that every good thing that happens on Tanna is the secret work of Prince Philip. They say that the fact that there are more and more instances of black and white people marrying both on the islands and everywhere else is because of him. They say that the presence of Barack Obama in the highest office in America is because of Prince Philip as well. They believe that he is reuniting everything that has been split apart.
People from Tanna posing for a photo
And they're also waiting for him to return to them, right?
Yeah, they believe that, when the time is right, Philip will simply appear on a little rock just off the coast. The minute he sets foot on it, all manner of good things will happen. The main good things that they say will happen seem to have been influenced by Christian missionaries. The cult say there will be no more sickness and death, and that they will become young again. Free love is another important thing that they believe will come about. When I was there, they believed that you could shag your neighbour’s wife if she was in agreement, but if you got found out then you had to pay quite a hefty fine. They say that, when Philip comes, all the adultery fines will be abolished.
I heard that a psychoactive plant called kava also features heavily in the cult.
Yeah, kava is quite a revolting drink by Western standards when it’s prepared in the way that it’s prepared on Tanna. On Tanna, unmarried, virgin boys have the duty of chewing it and hawking it up onto a leaf. They then squeeze it out and mix it with water from a rusty petrol can. It tastes a bit like mud and is a basically a bowl of spit. It also tastes a bit medicated. The minute you drink it, it makes your tongue go numb and then you feel it going down your body, numbing everything in its path. It’s a very gentle experience really, though.
The kava on Tanna is probably the strongest in the world, and in the south west of Tanna – where I was – their kava was the strongest on the island. It roots you to the spot and puts you in a reflective frame of mind. There are kava bars in the towns, where people drink loads of it just to get fuck-faced, but in the village it was more about this beautiful ritual that they did as the sun went down. The cult lit fires and caught up with each other while the kava was made. They then lined up to get their kava. Once people had drunk it, they went and sat off on their own and watched the sun going down. It was a quiet, charming, meditative experience.
Was that the most memorable thing that you took part in while you were out there?
The most memorable thing was something that many people might think was a result of me taking too much kava. I lost my glasses and couldn’t find them anywhere, and I was summoned to a meeting with some prominent local sorcerers that they called the "clevers", who found them for me. In some parts of Vanuatu [the island nation that Tanna belongs to], the police use the clevers to find bodies and weapons and things like that; they are supposed to have a sort of second sight. The clevers interrogated me at length about being Prince Philip. I was then told that I could go, and then – as I left – I found my specs in the cuff of my shirt. I’ve gone back over it as many times as I can and I can’t work out how the clevers could have slipped my glasses inside the cuff of my shirt, but they were there. That, to me, remains inexplicable, although more rational people have lots of solidly rational explanations for it.
Wait – they interrogated you about being Prince Philip?
Yeah, they constantly accused me of being him, which was quite weird. People said that I was him in disguise or that I was one of his relatives. Some people got quite irate about it.
How did you handle that?
I constantly politely denied it because there wasn’t really much else that I could do.
Do you think you contributed to the cult’s beliefs in any way?
I gather so, yes. When I left, I heard that there were new stories about a person of sacred and dangerous qualities, who ate food from his own sacred plate because he was so powerful that he couldn’t touch theirs. The cult said that no one ever saw me shitting as well, which was interesting because I actually shat constantly. I think I might have been responsible for a ceremony that they do on Prince Philip’s birthday, too. While I was there, I told them when his birthday was and asked them if they did anything on it. They said, "No, why would we do that?" Now they have a big dance on his birthday. I think I sowed the seeds for that.
You can read more about Matt's time on Tanna in his book about the experience, Man Belong Mrs Queen.
More about cults:
Cargo Cults Have Been Eating People
I Joined Three Cults Simultaneously
The Cult Who Kidnap Christians and Are at War with the Chinese GovernmentThere are 1,426 billionaires in the world this year. They are the wealthiest of the wealthy. But only 29 members of this elite list are under 40 years old, with that exciting combination of money and youth.
Those 29 have a total of $119 billion between them. Ten come from the technology sector, including four from social networking giant Facebook. Eleven come from the United States, the rest from countries abroad. Five are newcomers to the billionaire ranks. Read the full list below.
No. 1: Dustin Moskovitz
Age: 28
Net Worth: $3.8 billion
Moskovitz, Mark Zuckerberg's former roommate, no longer works at Facebook, the social networking giant that he co-founded. A signee of Bill Gates' and Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge, Moskovitz bikes to work, flies commercial, and pitches his own tent at Burning Man.
No. 2: Mark Zuckerberg
Age: 28
Net Worth: $13.3 billion
Few CEOs of any age are under more media scrutiny than Zuckerberg (who's only 8 days older than Moskovitz). Since taking Facebook public in May 2012, and getting married days later, the hoodie-wearing founder has seen his net worth rise and fall with every fluctuation of the stock price.
No. 3: Albert von Thurn und Taxis
Age: 29
Net Worth: $1.5 billion
Albert von Thurn und Taxis first appeared in Forbes' billionaire rankings at age 8 but officially inherited his fortune in 2001 on his 18th birthday. The eligible bachelor is also a race car driver and tours with a German auto-racing league.
No. 4: Scott Duncan
Age: 30
Net Worth: $5.1 billion
Duncan is the youngest of the four children who inherited the massive fortune of late energy pipeline entrepreneur Dan Duncan, founder of Enterprise Products Partners. Today the company owns more than 50,000 miles of natural gas, oil, and petrochemical pipelines.
No. 5: Eduardo Saverin
Age: 30
Net Worth: $2.2 billion
Facebook co-founder Saverin renounced his United States citizenship in 2011, news of which broke days before the company's IPO and drew accusations of tax evasion. Saverin, immortalized in The Social Network as Mark Zuckerberg's onetime best friend, settled a lengthy legal battle with Facebook, apparently receiving a 5% stake. A Brazilian citizen, he now resides in Singapore and invests in startups.
No. 6: Huiyan Yang
Age: 31
Net Worth: $5.7 billion
Yang, the daughter of the founder of real estate developer Country Garden Holdings, is once again China's richest woman. Her father transferred his stake to the Ohio State grad before the company's IPO in 2007.
No. 7: Fahd Hariri
Age: 32
Net Worth: $1.35 billion
Hariri is the youngest son of slain Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He graduated from the Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture de Paris in 2004. While still a student, he ran an interior design studio on the outskirts of the city, and sold furniture to clients in Saudi Arabia.
No. 8: Marie Besnier Beauvalot
Age: 32
Net Worth: $1.5 billion
Marie, along with siblings Emmanuel, 42, and Jean-Michel, 45, inherited French dairy giant Lactalis, producers of popular Président brie among hundreds of other cheese, milk and yogurt brands.
No. 9: Sean Parker
Age: 33
Net Worth: $2 billion
Parker is revamping his much hyped start-up, Airtime, with the hopes that the video chat site will have the impact of his other Web companies. At 19, Parker skipped college to disrupt the recording industry with music swapping site Napster. He served as Facebook's first president at age 24.
No. 10: Ayman Hariri
Age: 34
Net Worth: $1.35 billion
Hariri is the son of slain Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He's involved in running Saudi Oger, one of Saudi Arabia's biggest construction companies, and the source of the Hariri family fortune.
No. 11: Yvonne Bauer
Age: 35
Net Worth: $2.4 billion
Bauer owns 85% of her family's publishing empire. She is the fifth generation of the family to run the Bauer Media Group, which was founded in 1875. It publishes 570 magazines in 16 countries.
No. 12: Yoshikazu Tanaka
Age: 36
Net Worth: $1.8 billion
Founder and CEO of social-network game site operator Gree, Tanaka has faced stiff competition this year from archrival DeNA and a game initiative by NTT DoCoMo, the giant cellphone carrier. To get back on track, Tanaka moved to partner with Yahoo Japan and went on a buying spree.
No. 13: Maxim Nogotkov
Age: 36
Net Worth: $1.3 billion
Nogotkov got his start selling computer programs while in school and later began selling cordless phones. He dropped out of college in order to have more time to focus on building his business. He later founded cell phone retailer Svyaznoy.
No. 14: Alejandro Santo Domingo Davila
Age: 36
Net Worth: $11.7 billion
A Harvard history grad, Domingo Davila is the eldest son from his jet-setting beer magnate father's second marriage. Now a managing director at a New York-based investment advisory firm, Alejandro sits on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
No. 15: Jack Dorsey
Age: 36
Net Worth: $1.1 billion
Dorsey made a name for himself as a cofounder and leader of 140-character microblogging company Twitter, but most of his fortune is derived from his stake in mobile payment company Square. The New York University dropout is a certified masseur known for his eclectic interests, which include, among other things, punk music and clothes.
No. 16: Serra Sabanci
Age: 37
Net Worth: $1.3 billion
Sabanci is the daughter of Ozdemir Sabanci who was assassinated in 1996, and a board member of the large conglomerate Sabanci Holding.
No. 17: Nicholas Woodman
Age: 37
Net Worth: $1.3 billion
GoPro founder and CEO Nick Woodman built the first camera prototypes in his bedroom with his mom's sewing machine and a drill. GoPro came out with its first camera, a 35-millimeter waterproof film version, in 2004. Today, the camera shoots full video in cinema quality HD, allowing anyone from professional surfer Kelly Slater to amateur snowboarders to capture their adventures.
No. 18: Chase Coleman
Age: 37
Net Worth: $1.4 billion
The hottest young money manager on the planet, Coleman cooled off a touch in 2012, but his Tiger Global hedge fund extended its impressive winning streak, finishing a third straight year with a net return in excess of 20%.
No. 19: Ryan Kavanaugh
Age: 38
Net Worth: $1 billion
Ryan Kavanaugh joins the billionaire ranks for the first time this year thanks to his movie studio, Relativity. Kavanaugh is making money by hitting singles and doubles like the recent Safe Haven, which cost $25 million to make and has grossed more than $50 million at the box office.
No. 20: Andrey Verevskiy
Age: 38
Net Worth: $1 billion
Verevskiy started trading in grain when he was 19 and founded Kernel Holding a decade later, growing it into Ukraine's largest sunflower oil producer. Last year, Verevskiy was elected to Ukraine's Parliament.
No. 21: John Arnold
Age: 38
Net Worth: $2.8 billion
Arnold shocked the hedge fund world in May 2012 when he announced he was calling it a career at age 38. Arnold and his wife Laura, who are signatories of the Giving Pledge, plan to devote much of their time to philanthropy. The couple have already given away more than $1.2 billion.
No. 22: Gary Fegel
Age: 39
Net Worth: $1 billion
Gary Fegel attained billionaire status in May 2011 in the wake of Glencore's IPO. After earning his MBA from the University of St. Gallen, Fegel joined the alumina and aluminum department at the commodities titan in 2001.
No. 23: Kostyantin Zhevago
Age: 39
Net Worth: $1.5 billion
Son of a mining engineer, Kostyantin Zhevago took over Poltava Iron Ore, the largest exporter of pellets in CIS, at the age of twenty two, and in 2007 he took his mining company Ferrexpo public. An avid soccer fan, Zhevago owns FC Vorska football.
No 24: Dan Gertler
Age: 39
Net Worth: $2.2 billion
An emerging face of irresponsible capitalism in Africa, Dan Gertler took his family's fortune in diamonds and invested it in mining assets in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While in his 20s, he became a friend of Joseph Kabila, who then ran the military and is now the DRC's president.
No. 25: Ana Luia de Mattos Barretto Villela
Age: 39
Net Worth: $1.15 billion
Ana Lucia de Mattos Barretto Villela belongs to one of Brazil's oldest and most distinguished banking families. She is one of the largest individual shareholders of a holding company that controls Unibanco Holding S.A., one of Brazil's largest banks.
No. 26: Lee Seo-Hyun
Age: 39
Net Worth: $1 billion
She is the youngest daughter of Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-Hee. A graduate of the Parsons School of Design, she is vice president of the luxury goods and fashion division of Cheil Industries (part of the Samsung Group), as well as a vice president at Cheil Worldwide, Korea's largest advertising firm.
No. 27: Fang Wei
Age: 39
Net Worth: $1.5 billion
Fang Wei is best known for buying turnaround situations, especially those in the steel industry. Fangda Group now has more than 30,000 employees across more than 10 provinces in China.
No. 28: Sergey Brin
Age: 39
Net Worth: $22.8 billion
The Google cofounder is now director of special projects at the Mountain View, Calif. search giant, leaving his counterpart Larry Page to handle most day-to-day operations. Brin oversees the company's foray into hardware and futuristic endeavors like driverless cars and augmented reality spectacles known as Google Glass.
No. 29: Larry Page
Age: 39
Net Worth: $23 billion
Google's cofounder and CEO since April 2011, Page saw the company through the $50 billion revenue milestone in 2012. The stock rose nearly 30% in the past year, adding more than $4 billion to Page's net worth.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that there are 23 billionaires under 40 years old on the Forbes Billionaires list. It has been updated to reflect the change.Aneesh Pradhan in conversation with Nalini Taneja about his book Hindustani Music in Colonial Bombay and some key issues in contemporary Hindustani art music.
What in your view are the key problems in historiography of Hindustani music, as well as musicology that derives from it?
Until the last two decades or so, historiography of Hindustani music was largely restricted to hagiographies and the study of one or more treatises. Hindustani music was almost regarded as an occurrence in a vacuum, without any reference to the socio-cultural, political and economic contexts within which the music was being made. However, this idea of history has changed greatly, and we have to thank non-Indian scholars and Dr. Ashok Da. Ranade, eminent scholar-musician, for bringing to the subject critical writing and path-breaking analysis. Today, Hindustani music is being written about not just by ethnomusicologists, but also by anthropologists and historians. While this has increased critical inquiry into the subject and has thrown up several important questions, I must hasten to add that there is often a lack of dialogue between the scholarly work and the oral tradition. In other words, the absence of familiarity with the performing tradition and its worldview, often restricts the scholarly work from adopting a multi-layered approach. Likewise, performers are often not informed about recent research, and are therefore content with the myth and legend that they have been conditioned by.
Two related questions. Can one, basing oneself on the pre-medieval and early medieval sources, at all work out the concrete structure and soundscape of shastriya sangeet? To begin with, is the term shastriya a useful analytical or conceptual tool?
The term shastriya is relatively new and is connected to the efforts made to classicise Hindustani music from the second half of the nineteenth century. It suggests that the Indian tradition is based on textual sources and is scientific. These were qualities attributed to Western music by colonial scholars. Attempts were therefore made by sections of the Indian middle class to prove to the Western world and to those Indians influenced by this world, that Indian music was also equally qualified and at par with Western music. To consider the textual and the oral as diametrically opposed would be hazardous, as the Indian tradition is replete with the co-existence of the two. Indeed, performance and pedagogy are primarily oral traditions, but that is not to say that textual sources from various periods in history should not be considered. Until recent, the textual in the Indian context was also largely restricted to Sanskrit sources, but now, we have substantial research on Persian sources too. More work needs to be done in the realm of regional literature on music. A combined study of all these sources, an analytical study of recorded material from 78 rpms brought out in the early twentieth century, and of oral histories, biographies, autobiographies, among other sources, would then possibly help us understand the soundscape of Indian art music. I must mention here that Dr. Ashok Da. Ranade felt that the term shastrokta sangeet was more appropriate than shastriya sangeet. By shastrokta, he meant that which has a shastra or is governed by rules, but rules that are orally transmitted.
Socially speaking, the world of patrons in the metropolis, which came from the emerging commercial and industrial classes, was far removed from the world of the performing artists. The encounter was very different from the norms of feudal patronage and dependencies. However, there are similarities with the era of blues and jazz: the memories of slavery, dismal conditions of life in the past and the present, and a kind of cultural negotiation resulting in recovery of a new self and search for dignity. How did our musicians, male and female, fare in this respect?
Yes, the worlds of the new patrons and the performers were very different. But I would not draw parallels with the situation related to blues and jazz. Those forms did not develop through hereditary musician lineages, whereas Hindustani music did. I am referring to the lineages specifically because these were the networks and the ethos surrounding the hereditary musicians that musicians depended upon to establish themselves in the new urban situation. The living and working conditions were far removed from what musicians were accustomed to under feudal patronage, so it was imperative for musicians to first gain a professional foothold in the city before they could even consider a changed presence in the fraternity and in the larger social environment. Undoubtedly, the urban situation impacted their lives at many levels. First, it provided them with new avenues of patronage, second, it located them in varying and challenging professional circumstances that rose out of technological changes that the period saw, and third and most importantly, it forced them to reinvent performance practice and pedagogy to cope with new performance contexts and spaces and students belonging to the elite class. Needless to say, musicians – male and female – emerged successful in their efforts at negotiating these difficult times and shaped performance and pedagogy as we know it now.
The new era did bring about the changes in the hierarchies, social as well as aesthetic, within the musical tradition. How would you sum them up in a few sentences?
For one, with public patronage came the possibility of democratizing the process of learning, performing and listening. This patronage manifested itself in the form of music clubs and music circles, through gramophone recordings and broadcasting. In other words, musicians were now able to reach out to wider audiences through multiple platforms. In a tradition that was largely restricted to hereditary male and women performers, hear platforms offered opportunities to amateurs, some of whom went on to pursue music as a profession later. Scholars have raised questions about appropriation in the context of non-hereditary musicians taking to the profession and about the ostensible marginalisation of Muslim musicians. But these arguments need to be considered carefully as they often tend to look at musicians as a monolithic entity, whereas the reality is otherwise. Women performers, particularly those from the devadasi tradition, learnt and excelled in the khayal form, hitherto primarily a male preserve. The earlier importance of the vocalists was gradually changing in favour of instrumentalists. This upward social mobility within the musician fraternity did not however favour the accompanying musicians until much later. The equation between the guru and shishya was transformed in cases where the shishya was from a non-hereditary musician family and was from an elite background, but was not wanting to pursue music professionally. However, learning continued to be an arduous process tilted in favour of the guru in cases where the shishya was from a hereditary musician family or was from a non-elite background wishing to pursue music professionally. Thus, earlier hierarchies were challenged, but not entirely so.
You have been concerned with the place of instrument and instrumentalists in the musical hierarchy. What are the changes you notice in the period you studied.
Traditionally, vocal music and vocalists had always enjoyed a position of prime importance in Hindustani music, both in a musical sense as well as in terms of status in the fraternity. However, technology, craftsmanship displayed by instrument makers, musical charisma of instrumentalists, and a gradual democratizing of the tradition, gave a fillip to instrumental music. As a result, there was an increase in instrumental solos, including solo recitals featuring instruments like tabla, pakhawaj and harmonium, which were considered primarily accompanying instruments.
Music and nationalism have intersected each other in the pre-Independence era, particularly from late 1920s. But nationalism, a contested terrain with its multiple strains, also injected into musical sphere certain forms of identitarian politics. How did it impact the actually existing parampara? How did musicians themselves negotiate it.
Hagiographers of music educationist Vishnu Digambar Paluskar have written about his association with the nationalist movement and his presence at Congress sessions where he sang Vande Mataram on several occasions. However, Paluskar’s work through the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya that he founded showed a more layered response to colonial rule. For instance, he did not find it out of place to invite British officials to convocation ceremonies at his school. There were some musicians who included nationalist songs in their concert repertoire. But one does not come across an overt mass-scale political approach among practitioners of Hindustani music that was aligned to the nationalist movement. On the other hand, nationalism threw up issues of cultural identity that led sections of the Indian elite to utilise and project Hindustani music as a symbol of ancient national culture. Modern pedagogy continued along this trajectory. One may be led to believe that hereditary musicians were mute witnesses to this process, but the choices that they made with regard to performance practice and pedagogy tell another story. Undoubtedly, they were participants in this process and shaped the manner in which we view Hindustani music today.
Coming to the question of music education and music syllabi today. What are the problems you see today. What reform are needed?
I think traditional and institutionalised patterns of music education need to be reviewed seriously in view of the massive transformation we have seen in pedagogic concepts and methods elsewhere and to cope with rapidly changing technology. Today, students are accustomed to a multi-sensory perception given easy access to multi-media. Not that such a multi-sensory perception was not present earlier or was not encouraged. But the new form we are experiencing is catalysed by technology, and our education system and syllabi need to take cognisance of this. More importantly, teachers and students need to constantly ask themselves why they are learning music. Is it to enable them to perform, to undertake research, or to be connected with extra-musical activity. The answers that they come up with will help in shaping systems of teaching and syllabi associated with those.
Gharana system, whatever is meant by it, was declared moribund, in fact DEAD. For almost a century one has been hearing of its death. What is this thing that is dead and yet not quite dead?
The idea that gharanas are dead is more to do with what appears in the public discourse. I am not sure if musicians wholly subscribe to this idea. At any rate, I do not feel this is true, if one accepts gharana not merely as a genealogy of teachers and taught but as an aesthetic that underlies performance and pedagogy. To that extent, we all start or are anchored in one or the other gharana ‘ideology’ and aesthetic, but may choose to branch out, deviate, or radically change. Eclecticism has existed in the Hindustani music tradition since the late nineteenth century with musicians often learning from more than one guru and these gurus not always belonging to one gharana. But that is not to say that the gurus and the shishyas gave short shrift to the aesthetic. In many ways, this process enriched their musical persona as would be expected of any tradition that hopes to remain alive and flourish. Briefly, therefore, I do not see gharanas and eclecticism as contrary aesthetic approaches.
Aneesh, this book has evolved out of your PhD thesis for the Department of History, University of Bombay. Tell us briefly something about your apprenticeship as a PhD scholar.
I benefitted greatly as a PhD scholar, as I learnt research methodology and learnt how to problematize concepts and empirical data. The rigour and discipline involved in my doctoral research enabled me to organize not only my immediate research material, but also helped me in approaching my musical learning differently. I had already begun performing on the Hindustani music concert stage when I decided to pursue a doctoral degree. Consequently, it was natural for me to be impacted by both streams, at times colliding with each other causing great confusion in my mind, and at other times extending the initial idea that I may have started with in one of the two areas.
(photographs by Raghav Pasricha)Furry crabs once thought to be damaging the Great Barrier Reef may in fact be helping save the coral by stopping the spread of disease, a researcher said Tuesday.
Scientists at James Cook University studied the impact of furry coral crabs on fragments suffering from white syndrome, a deadly disease that appears throughout the Indo-Pacific and causes coral tissue to slough off.
“I think the crabs are helping by consuming that tissue as it falls off and also by eating any of the other associated microorganisms that could thrive on that dead and dying tissue,” researcher Joseph Pollock told AFP.
Pollock said the crabs did not kill the disease, the cause of which is still unknown, but his study showed they significantly slowed its progress.
“It slows it by about three-fold,” he said, adding that the disease was often associated with warmer water temperatures.
“It could be that these crabs are giving it (the coral) a bit of a chance to stay alive until potentially those water temperatures could come down or the coral could put up a defence to stop the disease progression itself.”
Pollock, from the Queensland University’s School of Marine and Tropical Biology, said he had been working on what causes the destructive disease.
“It can kill two-metre, three-metre coral colonies that are decades old in a matter of just months,” he said, adding that it was a major threat and sometimes overlooked.
Australia is under growing pressure to step up protection of the Great Barrier Reef, a world heritage site, which has been damaged by the predatory crown-of-thorns starfish.
Conservationists also fear the reef is at risk from a gas and mining boom, resulting in increased coastal run-off and more marine traffic, and coastal development.
Pollock said there were links between white syndrome and factors such as warmer water temperatures and coastal run-off.
He added: “Once a crown-of-thorns starfish comes through, even the parts that are still left alive are still very susceptible to the disease…they are all sort of intertwined together.”
Pollock said his study at Lizard Island, about 240 kilometres north of Cairns, involved collecting healthy and diseased coral colonies, adding crabs, and observing the fragments for three weeks.
He said the researchers found the crabs were strongly attracted to colonies hit by white syndrome.
“This means that when a coral is infected with the disease, crabs from nearby coral colonies could migrate to the diseased colony, slowing the disease,” he said.
“This could be a very interesting feedback mechanism whereby these crabs help to slow coral disease on reefs.”To no one's surprise, Uber is seeking to appeal the big court decision from last week that allowed a California employment lawsuit against the company to proceed as a class action.
Judge Edward Chen's ruling to certify the class meant that Uber was pitched into a battle with potentially 160,000 drivers. Uber has suggested that due to restrictions placed on drivers by the specific contracts they signed, only 15,000 drivers are eligible to be included in the class action. Lawyers for the plaintiffs have responded that Uber's estimate "sounds low" (though the company has not released an official estimate of its own).
But even if you take Uber's estimate at face value, 15,000 is still a lot of people. Small wonder then that the company appealed the certification order up to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Uber's arguments are more or less the same they presented at the certification hearing—a handful of disgruntled drivers are too different from the rest to be able to represent the whole. But the rhetoric of the case as a whole has taken an interesting shift. Uber's legal team—which was recently replaced by new lawyers in April—is pushing hard to persuade everyone that Uber is first and foremost a technology company. The Uber service is referred to as a "software application that generates leads." The employment contracts that bind drivers to Uber are called "software licensing agreements."
This can only be viewed as an aggressive doubling down after Judge Chen's opinion in March, which included the scathing line, "Uber is no more a 'technology company' than Yellow Cab is a 'technology company' because it uses CB radios to dispatch taxi cabs, John Deere is a 'technology company' because it uses computers and robots to manufacture lawn mowers, or Domino Sugar is a 'technology company' because it uses modern irrigation techniques to grow its sugar cane."
Uber filed its request to appeal on Tuesday. The 9th Circuit will likely take a few weeks to respond.After warnings from the ACCC, (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) EA has agreed to change its refund policy in regards to games sold on its Origin platform.
As far as digital return policies go, EA became very progressive after it released its ‘Great Game Guarantee’ in 2013. In essence, the guarantee allows users to return games they have purchased and played on Origin for a full refund within 24 hours of the game’s initial launch. Gamers can return purchases within the 24 hour window for a myriad of reasons, from low performance, to dissatisfaction with the story. For more extreme technical problems, there is a 72 hour return window.
The Great Game Guarantee was born in the aftermath of EA’s extremely messy Sim City launch in 2013. Due to issues with the always-online aspects of the title, gamers were subject to an extremely degraded experience, up to being unable to play at all. At that time, EA was not providing refunds, and things got pretty ugly between it, the press, and gamers.
Unfortunately for EA, it seems that even their Great Game Guarantee was not enough to satisfy Australian law. In a statement addressed to the gaming powerhouse, ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said,
It is a breach of the Australian Consumer Law for businesses to state that customers are not entitled to refunds under any circumstances. Where a product has a major failure, consumers can insist on a refund or replacement at their choice. Representations that this right has or can be excluded, restricted or modified are false or misleading.
EA’s new refund policy for digital goods sold in Australia will now extend to all products purchased on its Origin platform going back to 2012. If gamers decide that anything they bought on Origin is “faulty,” they will be able to seek compensation from EA via a new 1-800 number that will soon be put into place. In the mean time, gamers that are after refunds are encouraged to seek compensation via Origin’s website, through normal support channels.
In regards to this development an EA representative told Kotaku |
weren't confident they'd have enough money to live comfortably in retirement, and nearly half said they expected a "less economically secure" retirement than their parents had.
"Many older Americans have been buffeted by skyrocketing health care costs, dwindling home values, shrinking pension and investment portfolios, and employment struggles," AARP executive John Rother said in a statement. "Even if you have a job, this survey demonstrates that you are not immune to the negative effects of the recession."
Even though the unemployment rate for older workers is much lower than for their younger counterparts, 12.4 percent of the 50-plus cohort told AARP they lost their health insurance, 49.5 percent said they delayed medical or dental care because of financial troubles and 13.5 percent said they started to collect Social Security retirement benefits earlier than they'd previously planned.
Take, for example, the case of a 63-year-old tutor, who said she'd been laid off in June 2010 by a private teaching company. The woman, who lives in southern California, asked for anonymity because she feared revealing her name would be "deadly, deadly" for her job search.
The former tutor told HuffPost she opted for early Social Security retirement benefits in January after a fruitless six-month job hunt. Since she opted for benefits before her full retirement age -- which would have been at 66 years old -- she received only 80 percent of her full benefit, which she said amounts to $857 a month. It covers rent, she said, but doesn't leave much for food.
"I eat a lot of apples, bananas, rice, and pasta," the woman said, adding that she tends a garden with tomatoes, cucumbers and cantaloupes.
Laid off older workers have a tougher time than most age groups finding new work. The average jobless spell for workers 55 and up lasts longer than a year, and older workers who lose long-held jobs are much less likely to find new work than younger workers.Authorities in California are now snooping on school students’ social media postings to catch law-breaking, bullying and other harmful activities. But parents worry the move is yet another example of Big Brother prying into ordinary Americans’ lives.
Glendale Unified School District, the third-largest in Los Angeles County, has paid Geo Listening Company over $40,000 to follow its students on social media networks. The stated aim is to prevent law-breaking, bullying and doing harm to themselves and others.
Under the scheme, the online activities of Glendale’s 13,000 middle-school and high-school students are closely monitored.
“All of the individual posts we monitor on social media networks are already made public by the students themselves. Therefore, no privacy is violated,” Geo Listening Company said, adding it does not “monitor email, SMS, MMS, phone calls, voicemails or unlock any privacy setting of a social network user.”
Geo Listening is aiming to become a market leader in aggregating and analyzing publicly available content for educational facilities’ security needs.
Since the company only tracks publicly available posts, students can evade monitoring by posting privately. But anonymous services such as Tor are coming under pressure in the US, raising the possibility that private web surfing could become a thing of the past.
Geo Listening bills its computing capabilities as “providing actionable daily reports to designated school administrators and staff, using a robust tier methodology” that does not interfere with existing school policies or procedures.
It claims it can track “bullying, cyber-bullying, despair, hate, harm, crime, vandalism, substance abuse, truancy” and much more, using popular services like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Picasa, Vine, Flickr, Ask.fm, YouTube, Google+ or anywhere else where people share information voluntarily.
Dick Sheehan, Glendale’s school supervisor, told the Glendale News-Press that the new service is helping the district to go “above and beyond” in matters of security.
School board member Christine Walters told the newspaper that educators simply have to be more “proactive to find ways to protect our students from ongoing harm,” because they are well aware of bullying taking place online.
“Similar to other safety measures we employ at our schools, we want to identify when our students are engaged in harmful behavior,” Walters said.
Glendale opted to learn more about its students after a 15-year-old boy, an alleged bullying victim, committed suicide by jumping out of a school window in plain view of dozens of his classmates, Glendale News-Press reported. The contract with Geo Listening was signed some time ago.
“Our ability to provide a social network monitoring service for each of your respective campuses separates our company from any other in the marketplace,” Geo Listening said, adding that its “unique service model for public and private schools also allows administrators to focus on students rather than technology.”
Cyber security experts warn, however, that students should be made aware of the monitoring, or they will fear trusting anyone.
“As a parent, I find it very Big Brother-ish,” said Yalda Uhls, a researcher at the Children's Digital Media Center at the University of California in Los Angeles.Washington (AFP) – The US agency regulating internet policy said Monday its website was attacked after a TV host urged viewers to pressure officials over plans to roll back “net neutrality” rules.
The Federal Communications Commission, whose chairman last month promised to review a 2015 rule that requires broadband firms to treat all online traffic equally, said it was hit by a denial of service attack, which is a flood of traffic aimed at taking down a website.
“These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host,” the FCC said in a statement.
“These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC.”
The action came after John Oliver, who hosts the widely watched satirical news program “Last Week Tonight,” rebuked the FCC for its action and called on viewers to make their sentiments known to the regulator.
Oliver mocked FCC chairman Ajit Pai’s claim that voluntary measures would keep broadband firms from blocking out rivals as a pledge “as binding as a proposal on ‘The Bachelor.’”
Oliver created a web link where viewers can offer their comments, and also suggested in a tweet that they “urge the FCC to keep strong net neutrality rules.”
The FCC did not respond to an AFP request for comment on whether Oliver’s comments had anything to do with the attacks.
Pai, appointed by President Donald Trump, said in April he will propose a reversal of the 2015 order and seek to return to “a light-touch regulatory framework,” which he argued has “enabled the internet to grow and evolve beyond almost anyone’s expectations.”
Net neutrality has been the subject of legal and political battles for over a decade, with both sides claiming to represent a “free and open” internet.We all have dreams in life. I, like AVB, desire to be a football manager despite never being any good at football.
So I decided to apply for the open position of manager at the Wellington Phoenix. I assure you, I’ve taken the process very seriously.
We’ve already opened up the cause to Twitter. Pascal Bosschaart is on board. And he’s bigger than you. So retweet this and get #BungardforPhoenix trending!
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And here, in all its glory, is my application.
—
Dear David,
I’m writing to you to formerly apply for the position of Wellington Phoenix Manager.
Now you may be wondering why a professional football club would take a chance on an unproven 23-year-old that has never had any experience with the game at an elite level, but hear me out.
For starters, I’ve got youth on my side. Sure, you could go out and get Hugo Sanchez – he may have played for Real Madrid for the better part of a decade, but in terms of experience with the game at an Australasian level, I’ve got him covered.
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And plus, while he would need to retire within 20 years, the Phoenix and I could have an amicable relationship stretching for the better part of a century if my grand plan plays out the way I’ve envisioned.
I played junior and senior football at St Christopher’s Football Club for 17 years. I rose up through their storied youth academy to win premierships in Under 10’s, Under 15’s and in All Age 9’s.
I parlayed this into an administrative role off the field, where I was the president of the club for a three-month period before losing power in a bloodless coup. I don’t want to say it was ALL about my penchant for stealing Zappos and Powerade from the canteen, but that may have been a contributing factor.
In terms of coaching, I was the head coach of the U13’s in 2007 and watched them blossom under my tutelage for four years after that. We never won the title but I made sure everyone was well hydrated and had a go. I feel that workmanlike attitude I tried to instil would transfer effectively into the physical nature of the A-League.
I once signed Paul Ifill in a Football Manager 08 file for Southport, and after a few years of toil in the conference we managed to finally achieve Football League status. He later became my assistant manager as we ascended through the ranks and eventually won the Champions League in 2025.
If this is in any way indicative of reality, I will be coaching the Australian National team in 2026 so you’ll need to act quickly to snap up my services at some point in the next 13 years.
I’ve attached some photos for your perusal and look forward to hearing from you.
Yours in football,
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Matt Bungard
This is a photo of me and my Junior Coaching License. Although it’s not strictly the level of accreditation you sought after, you’ll note the expiry date on the right is June 2014, which leaves me plenty of time for a 2013/14 run at the premiership before I’ll have to attend another course.
This is a photo of me nutmegging someone. It’s the type of skill and guile you can expect our team to produce on a regular basis.
This one is our 2011 Premiership winning St Christopher’s All Age 9’s team. As captain coach I oversaw a glorious season in which we lifted the trophy despite our starting Central Midfielder driving to the wrong park and being 20 minutes late for kick-off.
This one is just a photo of my girlfriend and I with Lightning McQueen at Disneyland. Despite being both a fictional character and not human, he possesses the athleticism and ‘win at all costs’ attitude that I’ll be looking for when signing new players.
—
So there you have it. You know what to do, Roarers. #BungardForPhoenix
@themattbungard
AdvertisementI am not a philosopher. In fact, the two courses I took on philosophy in college (Honors courses on ancient Greek ethics and modern ethics) were the two courses where I received my lowest grades ever in college (B+’s). Nevertheless, I have been thinking about the great divide within libertarianism regarding the concept of ‘rights’.
I don’t want to delve into the concept of ‘rights’ here, largely because I have only a superficial understanding of the notion, but for the sake of non-libertarian readers I’d like to briefly explain that, within libertarianism, there is an argument about whether or not deontological ethics (wiki) or consequential ethics (wiki) is the proper framework with which to analyze the world.
Deontological libertarians argue that each and every individual has natural rights and that any sort of aggression upon these rights is inherently immoral. Consequentialist libertarians argue that the initiation of force is not as important as whether or not a policy makes everybody better off. In some ways, you can see these tensions being played out here on the blog.
Under these strict definitions I am a consequentialist, but I don’t think it’s quite right to label me as such. I think that the two ethical systems are complimentary more than they are antagonistic. For instance, I think the deontological framework is important because the urge of those in power to “do something” for the greater good is often immense. Deontological ethics plays an important role in establishing boundaries that those in power have to respect. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward provides a clear-cut example of what happens when power is unrestrained in the name of a greater good. Ethnic cleansing, famine, and poverty can all be attributed, in one form or another, to the lack of respect for deontological ethics.
On the other hand, deontological ethics is too dogmatic. It is impossible to have a society based completely upon the foundations of non-aggression. Free trade is a perfect example of this impossibility. Deontological libertarians support free trade because in the absence of coercion free trade would be the natural outcome. Yet this does not seem right to me. Free trade is good because it lifts up the overall standards of living for everybody in a society, but there are short-run losers when it comes to free trade. In fact, losers are a natural part of the marketplace as a whole. Without losers there could be no markets. We should all be thanking as many losers as we can, whenever we can (you can start with me; I recently set up a Tinder account).
Free trade, and the losers that it produces, has harmful short-run effects on some individuals and their property. Competition destroys fortunes and job skills alike. Free trade also creates verifiable prosperity for societies, and even the losers – eventually – become better off under free trade. Even the underlying structure of the capitalist order is based on aggressively protecting that “bundle” of individual rights that is so integral to freedom and prosperity (this does not mean that states are a necessity, but only that aggression is unavoidable in social relations).
I am off-base here? Am I knocking down a straw man? It seems to me that the consequentialist position – which is already very deontologically-friendly to begin with – is the better route to take, philosophically, politically, and rhetorically.ART-HOUSE film-makers have never paid much attention to zombies, but they can’t seem to resist giving us their spin on vampire lore. In the past few years we’ve had Tim Burton's “Dark Shadows” (2012), Neil Jordan’s “Byzantium” (2012), Chan-Wook Park’s “Thirst” (2009), and Tomas Alfredson’s “Let The Right One In” (2008). And now we have Jim Jarmusch’s “Only Lovers Left Alive”, a languorous but playful mood piece which is also one of the writer-director’s most engaged and engaging films. It doesn’t have a great deal of narrative momentum—this is Mr Jarmusch, after all—but it does have rich, beguiling characters, a steady stream of dry comedy and a thoughtful vision of what it might be like to roam the planet for a thousand years.
Its protagonists (played by the suitably pallid and slender Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton) are named Adam and Eve. It’s typical of the film’s teasing wit that the question of whether they are the Biblical Adam and Eve is not even raised. Either way, they are now impeccably stylish bohemians who are more interested in philosophy and art than they are in enslaving mankind, or other such vampiric pursuits. They get their blood not from the necks of their victims, but from their contacts in hospitals. They don’t turn into bats, and they aren’t affected by garlic, but their low-level psychic powers do lead them to muddle up the present and the future. “Have the water wars started yet,” asks Eve. “Or is it still about the oil?”
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Key to the film’s muffled and quietly mesmeric atmosphere is that it sees the world from their perspective, which means that it’s set entirely at night. When its ever-youthful protagonists are awake, everyone else is sleeping.
That suits Adam, a reclusive former rock star who lounges around a cluttered mansion on the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan. He is a grumpy, Byronic sort of vampire—indeed, he used to be friends with Byron—and he despairs at the human race’s despoiling of the environment. Drolly, humans are known in vampire parlance as “zombies”.
Eve, Adam’s loving wife, is more positive about the new century: she uses an iPhone, while he prefers caressing his collection of vintage guitars. Eve is also extrovert enough to want to socialise in Tangier with an old acquaintance, Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt)—and he definitely is the famous Christopher Marlowe. But when she hears how gloomy Adam has grown without her, she flies back to America, specifying a night flight when she books her ticket. Together again, Adam and Eve drive around the spookily deserted Detroit, admiring the crumbling industrial edifices which are so beloved of “ruin porn” photographers, and which make the city such an inspired setting for a vampire film. Alas, their domestic bliss is interrupted by a visit from Eve’s younger sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska), an exuberant wild child who resides in Los Angeles. “Zombie central,” sniffs Adam, who still hasn’t forgiven her for a faux pas committed 87 years earlier.
There are some sparks of conflict when Ava barges into their happy home, but at no point does “Only Lovers Left Alive” threaten to blaze up into a plot-fuelled thriller. It is, though, a romantic study of a strong if unconventional marriage, a wry commentary on short-termism and eco-vandalism, and a debate on what makes life (eternal or otherwise) worth living. As long and laidback as it is, it leaves you thirsty for more.When creating a videogame independently with a fraction of the budget of the blockbusters, a major concern is always how your game will look and compare to those popular games. There’s a sort of arms race going on in commercial videogames where big companies try to outdo each other in terms of aesthetics. They continue to up the ante in realism, detail, spectacle, and so on. As an independent developer you can only really stare at that with open mouth in utter awe. This must be how people in Antwerp must have felt like when they first saw Rubens’ work. Or here in Ghent when they encountered the Van Eyck altar piece in Saint Bavo’s cathedral.
The popular solution to the impossibility of competing with that stuff (simply because indies don’t have that kind of money) is to go retro. Making your game look old on purpose is a huge time saver and taps into the audience’s nostalgia. This would have been an interesting area to explore for Sunset, especially given that Sunset is set in the year that Pong was released: 1972. But we decided against that.
The thing is, we absolutely adore Rubens and Van Eyck. And this sort of aesthetics is what drew us to videogames in the first place. We want to make art with places that you can visit and characters you can relate to. We want to feel the lushness of the environment and immerse ourselves in the atmosphere. But could we afford it?
More is less
After paying close attention to our own reactions to aesthetics in videogames and reading about those of others, we discovered something remarkable. For all the effort put into realism, paradoxically it seems that to closer a game gets to it, the less players care about it.
When you think about it, it makes sense. We play videogames to surround ourselves with an imaginary world, to basically get away from reality for a while. So when a game starts looking like that reality, we tend to ignore it. At the initial first encounter, there we may go “wow”. But a few realistic trash cans and true-to life palm trees later, we tend to stop feeling so impressed.
I’m not going to argue that the effort was wasted. The effect of that initial wow-factor is not to be underestimated. But this observation did seem to offer us, underfunded indies, an opportunity.
Art in the cracks
It wasn’t just practical reasons that drove us to stylization in Sunset. Conceptually, realism is easy. This is probably one of the reasons why it’s so ubiquitous in a field where technology dominates. Copying what you see is a straightforward idea and offers a clear goal to compare your efforts to. When done literally, there’s no artistically creative thinking required.
But, as noted above, absolute realism is also absolutely dull. We are human, we like to feel connected to other humans. When we look at a picture, we like to notice the presence of its creator, if ever so subtly. We enjoy noticing how the artist solved a certain presentation problem. Maybe because it tells us something about the person who made the picture, or about what they were trying to evoke. Or simply because it reminds us that the image was created by a human like ourselves, not a machine.
I have this theory, somewhat derived from something that Raph Koster said in Theory of Fun, that art happens exactly where realism is lacking. It is where a picture deviates from reality that the art expresses something, that the cosmic divine is allowed to peak through.
This doesn’t mean that completely unreal images immediately have a better effect. The tension between the abstract and the real seems to be pivotal. I deeply enjoy being fooled into thinking something looks real only to find out on closer inspection that it isn’t at all. Especially when the abstraction is meaningful in some way.
A realistically modeled object is easily identified and ignored. But something that doesn’t look quite real invites investigation. If only because our mind wonders “Why can’t I ignore that thing?”
Stylizing in the Sunset
One of the tricks we use to pull Sunset away from realism is the exaggerated effect of the setting sun. Realistically speaking, when the sun sets its light diminishes and the effect of light from the sky increases. As a result, the world tends to look more bland and blue at sunset. But in our game it looks saturated and orange. Yet any human totally reads it as “setting sun” because it’s the color of the sun itself.
Another style choice is something we’ve developed over years of creating semi-realistic looking games on a budget. Based on something Fumito Ueda once said about Ico, we try to focus our efforts on the elements that are important, while leaving the others very simple, almost symbolic. This approach meshed really well with the particular seventies style that inspired us with its simple modernist architecture contrasted by detailed artworks and antiques.
A side effect of deviating from reality is that photographs look really weird in our world. And there’s lots of family photos of Ortega, and newspapers and magazines. So Auriea developed a style of fudging with photographic collages, halftone effects, and drawings that makes the pictures still read as photographs but look like they belong in our stylized apartment.
This is at the heart of our aesthetic motivation: things should feel real, but don’t have to look real. And in a medium where images are produced synthetically, not photographically, stylization tends to contribute to feeling real. I think this is because stylization is always subjective and as such an artist can guide the viewer to a place where they think the emotion happens.
A little joke
An extreme example of stylization is Sunset’s minimum quality mode. It was created to allow the game to be run on computers without proper graphics processor (ie those pesky integrated things that can only run 3D in theory). By leaving out the shadows and the reflections, the animated character and most of the image effects, we got pretty good performance but the game looked rather bland. So we added a pixellated and slightly posterized effect to that mode. It looks a lot better in our opinion. And as a bonus, it seems to be easier on the stomach of those sensitive to motion sickness in first person.
Escaping reality
Sunset is modeled with mostly realistic proportions, give or take a bit of exaggeration for the sake of realtime 3D videogame presentation. We use reflections, and shadows and shiny materials that have a somewhat realistic effect. But we try to steer clear of anything looking too real. Which, ironically, doesn’t come easy with engines and shaders and scripts mostly created for the purpose of realistic depiction.
But through simplified shapes, generated textures and the extreme lighting conditions that the setting sun allows for, I am quite pleased with how the look of Sunset deviates from reality. And it is precisely the “how” that matters! I hope this means that some art will come out in the process. But that will be your call.
— Michaël Samyn.a cluster object, created by this package or by package snow. If NULL, use the registered default cluster.
Details
clusterCall calls a function fun with identical arguments... on each node.
clusterEvalQ evaluates a literal expression on each cluster node. It is a parallel version of evalq, and is a convenience function invoking clusterCall.
clusterApply calls fun on the first node with arguments seq[[1]] and..., on the second node with seq[[2]] and..., and so on, recycling nodes as needed.
clusterApplyLB is a load balancing version of clusterApply. If the length p of seq is not greater than the number of nodes n, then a job is sent to p nodes. Otherwise the first n jobs are placed in order on the n nodes. When the first job completes, the next job is placed on the node that has become free; this continues until all jobs are complete. Using clusterApplyLB can result in better cluster utilization than using clusterApply, but increased communication can reduce performance. Furthermore, the node that executes a particular job is non-deterministic.
clusterMap is a multi-argument version of clusterApply, analogous to mapply and Map. If RECYCLE is true shorter arguments are recycled (and either none or all must be of length zero); otherwise, the result length is the length of the shortest argument. Nodes are recycled if the length of the result is greater than the number of nodes. ( mapply always uses RECYCLE = TRUE, and has argument SIMPLIFY = TRUE. Map always uses RECYCLE = TRUE.)
clusterExport assigns the values on the master R process of the variables named in varlist to variables of the same names in the global environment (aka ‘workspace’) of each node. The environment on the master from which variables are exported defaults to the global environment.
clusterSplit splits seq into a consecutive piece for each cluster and returns the result as a list with length equal to the number of nodes. Currently the pieces are chosen to be close to equal in length: the computation is done on the master.
parLapply, parSapply, and parApply are parallel versions of lapply, sapply and apply. parLapplyLB, parSapplyLB are load-balancing versions, intended for use when applying FUN to different elements of X takes quite variable amounts of time, and either the function is deterministic or reproducible results are not required.Not to be confused with John Hein
Jon Hein (born November 24, 1967) is an American radio personality and former webmaster. He created the website jumptheshark.com and works for The Howard Stern Show. Hein is an alumnus of the University of Michigan where he appeared in the sketch comedy troupe Comedy Company with Jon Glaser. The two also were a part of the comedy troupe Just Kidding.
Jump the Shark origins [ edit ]
Hein created a website called JumpTheShark.com named after the idiom "jumping the shark" originating from the Happy Days TV Series.[1]
Hein sold his company, Jump The Shark, Inc., to Gemstar (owners of TV Guide) on June 20, 2006[2] for "over $1 million".[3] Some Stern staff have speculated that the site sold closer to $5–$10 million, however.[4] The TV Guide website has since redirected the original jumptheshark.com website. For some time, the website was replaced with a celebrity gossip message board.
Sirius Satellite Radio [ edit ]
The Stern Show staff thought Hein was a good host on Super Fan Roundtable and chose him to be the host of The Wrap-Up Show with Stern producer Gary Dell'Abate as co-host. The show premiered on Howard's first day on Sirius, January 9, 2006, and has received very positive reviews from fans.[5] Hein also hosted The Friday Show along with Gary Dell'Abate and Ralph Cirella on the Friday mornings when Stern took time off, although that show was replaced after a few months by Master Tape Theatre (Master Tape Theatre has since moved to Howard 101 on Sundays, replaced on Howard 100 by the Best of the Week, a montage show with clips from the Monday through Wednesday show).
Hein has become known as a fast food aficionado. He has vocalized his distaste for the fast food restaurant Burger King. Hein was subjected to a blindfolded taste test of burgers on Howard 101's "The Fast Food Show", where he correctly identified a Burger King, McDonald's, and Wendy's burger patty. Hein admitted on the August 17, 2010 Howard Stern Show that he now weighed 255 lbs. but refused to give up fast food.[6] Hein admitted on the January 17, 2008 Stern show that he adjusts his insulin levels to be able to indulge in junk food, such as his favorite Oreo cupcake from Crumbs cupcakes.[7] Hein is also the host of the Friday radio program "Geektime!", "Jon Hein's TV Show" on Thursdays, and the Fast Food Show all featured on Howard 101.[8]
Starting on March 2, 2010, Hein hosts the weekly comedy The Bonus Show with Rachel Fine on Howard TV.[9] Howard TV shut down in December 2013.
Other projects [ edit ]
In 2012, Hein began to host his own television show, Fast Food Mania, on Destination America. In his show, Hein expresses his love of fast food by discussing the history of various restaurants, along with how their food is prepared.[10]
Personal life [ edit ]
Hein is married, has two daughters, and lives on Long Island, New York.[11]
In popular culture [ edit ]
Similar to Howard Stern's producer Gary Dell'Abate, Jon Hein has several media mentions[12] in pop culture with the phrase "Hit em with the Hein". It was initially a phrase by a back-office staff member to mock Jon based on his perceived low-energy level as Jon would leave the office to attend to business unrelated to The Howard Stern Show. The phrase was then popularized by, an often on-air staff member, Jason Kaplan. It has been used on many PGA Tour events, in some cases to the dismay of the announcers.[13]
This phrase has also been referenced by Jimmy Kimmel during the 2016 Emmy Award show.[14]
Based on Jon's statements on The Howard Stern Show, he either enjoys the phrase or is annoyed by it largely based on perceived intent.
Singer Rick Astley produced a song dedicated to the 'Hit em with the Hein' concept on SoundCloud.[15]
Connecticut-based musician Jamey Jasta, frontman of the metalcore band Hatebreed, released a song inspired by the phrase on his SoundCloud.[16] Hit 'em with the Hein is also used in later versions of Sony's MLB the SHOW franchise by announcer Matt Vasgersian during gameplay.
See also [ edit ]The archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, with a flask believed to contain drops of liquefied blood of San Gennaro at Italy's Naples Cathedral in 2013. REUTERS/Ciro De Luca/Files If you thought 2016 was bad, you might want to gird yourself for an even worse 2017.
The dried blood of Saint Januarius failed to liquefy in a ceremony in Naples, Italy, on Saturday, according to a report in Italy's La Stampa, heralding disaster for next year.
Monsignor Vincenzo De Gregorio, the abbot of the chapel, said: "We must not think about disasters and calamities. We are men of faith, and we must continue to pray."
The ceremony of the blood of Saint Januarius, or San Gennaro, is performed several times a year. The blood is kept in special ampules and liquifies during the ceremony.
The miracle has been regularly recorded since 1389. San Gennaro was bishop of Naples in the third century and was beheaded in the persecution of early Christians by Roman Emperor Diocletian, who killed about 3,500 Christians.
If the miracle of liquefaction fails to occur, it can herald disaster for the coming months and years.
The blood failed to become liquid in 1939, the year in which World War II started, and in 1980, the year of the Irpinia earthquake, according to the Stampa report.
2016 has been bad enough. Both the US and the UK have had a year of political turmoil, while a civil war in Syria has destroyed much of the city of Aleppo and resulted in indiscriminate killing.Lindsay Lohan has stepped up her lawsuit against Grand Theft Auto 5 developer Rockstar over the use of a character alleged to be based on her.
Lacey Jonas and Lindsay Lohan.
The Hollywood actress originally began legal proceedings back in July, when she claimed that GTA5's fictional Vinewood actress Lacey Jonas was an "unequivocal" reference to her.
Lohan claims that Rockstar copied her image, voice and clothing style for the character, something which the developer laughed off as a bid for attention.
"Her claim is so legally meritless that it lacks any good-faith basis and can only have been filed for publicity purposes," Rockstar hit back.
The developer has asked for the case to be dismissed and for Lohan to pay its legal fees, but Lohan's lawyers this week submitted new documentation to further the case.
The actress' lawsuit has now been bolstered by a 45-page dossier of GTA5 advertising and promotional images featuring the Lacey Jonas character plastered across billboards and buses, T-shirts, posters and coffee mugs (thanks, Hollywood Reporter).
In particular is a 2007 shot of Lohan in a bikini, which the actress alleges was the inspiration for an image featured on the game's disc and which was also heavily used in the game's promotion - the photo shown above.
Browse the full, updated documentation below.Eston Kohver taken to Moscow and paraded on TV as'spy' two days after Obama's visit to Baltic state
The Estonian-Russia border at Luhamaa does not look like a new Checkpoint Charlie. Set among the wooded plains that mark Nato and the European Union's eastern-most territory, the crossing is more likely to be the site of long lines of idling lorries than machine-gun nests and prisoner exchanges.
But that era of post-cold war calm may have come to an end on Friday morning, when, according to several Estonian accounts, smoke grenades detonated at an Estonian customs post, and all radio and telephone signals were jammed as armed Russian men suddenly materialised and dragged away a local official.
His name is Eston Kohver, a counter-intelligence officer in the Estonian security agency, Kapo, whose job over the past few years has been to keep tabs on the smuggling cartels trying to sneak merchandise through the Luhamaa crossing.
But Kohver's fate has now become entangled in a much bigger issue: the question of just how far Vladimir Putin's Russia is prepared to go to goad the Nato allies on its doorstep.
The capture has been seen as particularly provocative because it came two days after the US president, Barack Obama, visited Estonia, a trip aimed at reassuring the Baltic states of the US commitment to the security of its Nato allies in the face of Russia's role in the Ukraine crisis. It followed the announcement of the creation of a "spearhead force" – a Nato unit of 4,000 soldiers to be tasked with defending Baltic countries including Estonia.
But the immediate reaction of the government in Tallinn was to play down Friday's incident in the hope that it was the work of local Russian commanders who have a record of involvement in the smuggling trade.
The Kapo chief, Arnold Sinisalu, issued a statement saying there appeared to be no political motivation behind the incident. Estonia's president, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, tweeted that: "Kapo, like FBI in US, deals both with counterintelligence *and* organized crime. Just in some places they turn out to be same."
The hope that the affair would turn out to be low-key was initially strengthened when Estonian and Russian border guards performed a joint inspection, which seemed to verify the evidence of an incursion from Russia into Estonia, including multiple footprints in a band of raked sand that runs through no-man's land.
By Sunday, however, it became increasingly clear that Russia had other ideas. The Estonian was taken to Moscow where he was paraded before television cameras. The Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, successor to the Soviet KGB, claimed Kohver had been caught on Russian soil.
The FSB said in a statement: "A Taurus handgun with ammunition, €5,000 (£4,000) in cash, special equipment for concealed audio recording and documents that bear evidence of an intelligence mission were seized from the intruder."
The statement appeared ominous for Kohver, whom the FSB had identified as a Kapo officer as far back as 2011, saying he was one of several agents trying to recruit agents as they crossed the border. The decision to bring him to Moscow and put him on television made it clear that Moscow was not interested in finding a quick and quiet means of resolving the incident.
Kadri Liik, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said: "My first guess was that this was to do with cross-border smuggling which happened to be sponsored by the Russian security services, which wouldn't be that unusual. The lines are pretty blended. It could be that Kohver got in the way of a business deal, but if it is business, it's clearly a business with Moscow connections."
The question of Kohver's future now looks likely to become a lever for a resurgent Russia to work on its small Baltic neighbour, which at last week's Nato summit declared itself in favour of hosting a new Nato base.
"This is not something cooked up the day before yesterday," said Eerik-Niiles Kross, a former Estonian intelligence chief and national security advisor. "I don't know if it was an FSB shady deal that went wrong, but whatever it was, you have to put it in the general context. The timing is either an odd coincidence, or it is a signal."
There is nothing new about Estonia and Russia conducting spy operations against each other. President Ilves recently claimed Estonia had |
with? And what is management going to do with future free cash flow?Those are always the big questions. How much free cash flow is there? How reliable is it? And how long will it keep flowing?You asked how quickly I decide not to invest in a company. It can be pretty fast. I decided I was interested in Western Union and wasn’t interested in Moneygram in a matter of minutes.Some of you may remember Moneygram blew up – from bad investments – during the crisis. That’s true. But that wasn’t my issue.What happened is that I did a quick check of the two company’s competitive positions. And I decided that Moneygram’s ability to attract the very best agents was not as good as Western Union’s. And that its brand name was vastly inferior to Western Union’s.A “good brand” is kind of a vague concept. It’s made up of positioning, recognition, loyalty, etc.The positioning in this business is clear. Moneygram uses direct price comparisons with Western Union – they always undercut on price – in their ads. They position themselves as the cheaper No. 2 offering the same exact service.That’s not what I was looking at. I was looking at name recognition. And Western Union’s name recognition is astronomical. Moneygram can do a lot of things. But they can never close that gap.For that reason, I immediately crossed off Moneygram as a possible buy. This is a fragmented industry. So they may do wonderfully for a long time. But I didn’t want to chance it. Western Union has the inside track.
Stocks Discussed: WU, MGI,
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Options: Reply To This Message•Quote This Message•Report This Message Re What s Your Research Process robertcray (IP Logged) Posted by:(IP Logged) Date: November 17, 2012 12:02AM
Because Western Union's 'product' is money and it has little need to invest in equipment (unlike a railroad for example) it would seem to be a good hedge against inflation.
I bought some in summer 2011 and sold in early 2012 because 5 year sales growth has been negligible in spite of a number of acquisitions. Admittedly much of the slowdown is due to the worldwide economic slowdown but even so....
Also there is the possibility of technological change in the money transfer market (online transactions for example) so it's not a totally safe investment.
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Options: Reply To This Message•Quote This Message•Report This Message Re What s Your Research Process rjstcr (IP Logged) Posted by:(IP Logged) Date: November 17, 2012 02:40PM
Robert, I was involved in handling money transfers a few years ago. What I found was most of the people that used my service didn't have or wouldn't use a computer to transfer money if that is what you were alluding to. They really weren't so concerned about the price either. They just wanted an easy, reputable way of sending their money. They were very loyal and as long as they felt they were being treated fairly they were happy.
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Please Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.Please Login if you have an account or Create a Free Account if you don'tSep 26, 2015; Seattle, WA, USA; California Golden Bears quarterback Jared Goff (16) raises his arms after picking up a first down late in the fourth quarter to seal the 30-24 win over the Washington Huskies at Husky Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jennifer Buchanan-USA TODAY Sports
Tristan Thompson Doesn’t Sign Qualifying Offer: What Does It Mean? by Nick Dudukovich
The Cleveland Browns mock draft silly season is upon us–and why not? The fan base is already depressed with a 1-2 start, and Johnny Manziel is still riding the bench. So when will the Browns pick and whom will they select?
In WalterFootball’s latest mock draft, the website has the Cleveland Browns picking fourth and drafting Cal quarterback Jared Goff.
From WalterFootball.com:
“I expect Cleveland to target a signal-caller in the 2016 NFL Draft. In a previous update, that would’ve been Christian Hackenberg, but he has dropped considerably after some horribly ridiculous performances. Cardale Jones, meanwhile, sunk his draft stock with a poor start. Jared Goff has been better, and he could end up being the top signal-caller chosen even though NFL teams were critical of him going into the season.”
Goff is second quarterback off the board in this mock, with northeast Ohio native and current Michigan State signal caller Connor Cook going No. 1 to the Chicago Bears–who appear to be in all-out tank mode.
Goff had a nice start to the season, but really hit the mock draft radar after his performance against Texas on national television. In that contest, Goff completed 27 of his 37 pass attempts for 268 yards and three touchdowns. It was even more impressive because the game was on the road.
The next week, Goff followed up with a 342-yard, two-touchdown performance at Washington to begin PAC-12 play.
Through four weeks, Goff has completed 69.2 percent of his passes, while tossing 11 touchdowns against three interceptions.
FoS writer Ric McElroy recently made the case for the Browns taking Goff over hometown hero Cardale Jones:
“Some have compared him to Aron Rodgers–but I’m not there yet. Goff looked good against Texas, utilizing a strong arm and good accuracy. He’s a classic drop-back passer who can move around in the packet to avoid the rush. Against the Longhorns, Goff was 27-of-37 for 268 yards and three touchdowns. Goff would fit the offense here in Cleveland better than most. He’s a film rat and football junky. Cal doesn’t employ a huddle, but that can be taught. He does read college defenses and could pick up that in the pros easily.”
A lot can happen, like maybe the Browns will win a bunch more and won’t be picking fourth (one can hope), but until the franchise identifies a franchise quarterback, playing mock draft in October won’t seem so silly.Hal Steinbrenner, Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi have worked together for a decade that has included the building of a new Yankee Stadium, winning a World Series title and an astonishing trip this season to within one game of a return to the Fall Classic.
You would think resolving Girardi’s future would be an easy task. Either the Yankees believe Girardi has run out of track and won’t offer him a contract or Girardi feels after 10 years it’s time for a change. Then there is the possibility Girardi returns.
Well, four days after losing Game 7 of the ALCS to the Astros in Houston there wasn’t an answer to the question being asked throughout baseball: “Is Girardi out?’’
According to a person with knowledge of the situation, Girardi and Cashman are slated to meet Thursday to discuss Girardi’s future.
Because the Yankees would require permission from MLB to make a major announcement Thursday, a dark day on the World Series’ calendar between Games 2 and 3, it’s not likely to be resolved then since as of late Wednesday they hadn’t requested permission.
Cashman and Girardi have contracts that expire at the end of this month. The same goes for all of Girardi’s coaches.
For a third straight day Wednesday, Cashman and Girardi were at Yankee Stadium. Unlike Tuesday when Girardi arrived at noon and left at 1 p.m., he spent more time in the building. Girardi got to the Stadium before 9:45 and left at 1:11 p.m. wearing an unhappy expression for the second straight day. Cashman had departed the River Avenue garage eight minutes earlier waving to a small group of reporters. Each vehicle traveled south.
While Steinbrenner, Cashman and Girardi have opted not to discuss the issue there are several ways of looking at it:
Girardi has received his family’s blessing to continue as the Yankees’ manager but Cashman and Steinbrenner don’t want him back. The perceived lack of movement could be tied to the World Series but also might be because of contract negotiations.
Since Girardi is on the last days of a four-year, $16 million deal he signed following the 2013 season, perhaps he is looking for a significant bump the Yankees aren’t willing to provide. Or is it a simple matter of letting the contract run out and announcing a mutual split?
One thing in the muddled waters that is clear is this: Something is brewing.
And if that something is the Yankees looking for Girardi’s replacement they will be late entrants into the process. The Tigers landed Ron Gardenhire, the Red Sox will get Alex Cora when the World Series is over and the Mets lured Mickey Callaway from the Indians.
The Nationals and Phillies still have openings and the Yankees could make it three clubs looking for a manager.
Since Cashman has a history of hiring people he is familiar with the names of Kevin Long and Rob Thomson may prove to be in play.
Long was the Yankees’ hitting coach from 2007-2014 when he was fired with a year left on his contract. He has been the Mets’ hitting coach since 2015. He interviewed for the job Callaway got and is a candidate for the Nationals’ opening.
Thomson has been in the Yankees’ organization for 28 years and has been Girardi’s bench coach for the past four seasons after serving as the third-base coach for six years.
Another name to consider should there be an opening is Pete Mackanin who was a pro scout for the Yankees in 2013 before coaching third base for the 2014 Phillies. In 2015 Mackanin took over when Ryne Sandberg was fired. A year later the interim tag was removed and Mackanin signed a three-year deal. This past September the Phillies informed Mackanin he wouldn’t return to the dugout. Instead he was shifted to the front office with one year remaining on his contract.
— Additional reporting by Ken DavidoffROME (Reuters) - A suspected Italian mafia boss described as Europe’s most wanted drug trafficker and the world’s biggest cocaine importer was arrested in Colombia on Saturday and deported to Italy.
Roberto Pannunzi, compared to the late drug lord Pablo Escobar by Colombian authorities, was caught in a Bogota shopping center carrying a false Venezuelan identity card, Colombia’s Defense Ministry announced on Twitter.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) worked with Colombian police to find and arrest Pannunzi, the ministry said.
Pannunzi is linked to the powerful Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, a crime syndicate closely associated with Colombian drug cartels. Authorities accuse him of importing two tonnes of cocaine into Europe every month.
Calabria-based prosecutor Nicola Gratteri told Italian daily Corriere della Sera that Pannunzi was “the biggest importer of cocaine in the world”.
He was immediately deported after his arrest and arrived late on Saturday evening in Italy, where he has been convicted for drug trafficking. He was taken into custody by police upon arrival at Rome’s Fiumicino airport.
Pannunzi was arrested in 2004 but managed to flee detention in 2010 during a Rome hospital stay.
Anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano wrote on Facebook that Pannunzi’s arrest could “change the history of drug-trafficking” and reveal the methods behind such criminal networks.Okay, let me start by saying that I read a lot. And by that I mean… A LOT. I read a metric f*ck ton of stuff. Blogs, novels, comics, books, graphic novels, webcomics, tumblrs, twitter. A lot!
I read a shocking amount of online comics. And if you want more recommendations than what I am listing here just let me know. I am just going to specifically talk about some feminist and nerdy ones right here and now.
Maybe you have already heard of some of these online comics. And if you haven’t; then I hope you give them a chance and grow to love them as much as I do.
1. XKCD: I honestly feel like I HAVE to include XKCD in any mention of nerd webcomics. It is probably the most well known and poorly drawn. [https://xkcd.com/385/]
Here’s why you should love it: What it lacks in artistic skill it makes up for in general nerdiness. This is created by a guy who gets it right about women in geek culture pretty often. He’s what I call hard nerdery. Math jokes abound.
Here’s a favorite of mine:
2. Questionable Content: This one is outwardly just a great comic about relationships and dating. However, the creator of this (a guy) has recently done a great job of including all sorts of relationships, genders, ethnicities. [http://questionablecontent.net/]
Here’s why you should love it: The thing that puts it on my list for sci-fi is the development of artificial intelligence in this world. The AI are some of my favorite recurring characters. It’s also very interesting to watch the progress of his artistic skills as time has gone by.
My favorite quote from the comic:
3. Hark! A Vagrant!: This is another comic that is hard nerdery and generally super dorky. The creator is a Canadian and a woman. [http://www.harkavagrant.com/]
Here’s why you should love it: She makes jokes about historical stuff and I really can’t even explain what is going on with her except that she’s hilarious. I own a print and t-shirt of hers and I want more. She is a f*cking genius!
A favorite drawing of hers (and the glow in the dark shirt I own!):
4. The Hues: Okay, this comic is the sh*t! It is created by a very sweet woman I follow on Twitter. [http://thehues.alexheberling.com/]
Here’s why you should love it: Besides having a mostly female cast, multiple genders and sexualities presented and a POC main character. How about women with superpowers fighting robot alien invaders? I feel like this creator basically took that advice that if you want something to exist you should make it yourself.
BEWARE! (Or be excited), thar be adult content ahead!
5. Oglaf: This one is 100% NSFW. Seriously. It starts out pretty slow with an ongoing storyline that I don’t really like. But it soon becomes one of the funniest webcomics I have ever read. [http://oglaf.com/sextiles/]
Here’s why you should love it: It is smutty fantasy, and not like sex fantasy (though it has a lot of sex). More like dragons and magic and shapeshifter fantasy. It is created by a woman. Lots of homoerotica too. The below image is one of the better ones that was not ridiculously indecent. It was tough to find one.
Here’s a favorite of mine:
6. Starfighter: This one does not do so well with the feminist aspect as it appears to take place in some all male dystopian future in space. [http://starfightercomic.com/comic.php]
Here’s why you should love it: There is a ton of homosexual relationships and encounters depicted in this one. Which I excitedly endorse. I can’t really tell where this comic is going. It is fascinating and interesting and I wish it updated more often. I also have no clue who created it. The whole thing is very mysterious and beautiful. A LOT of graphic adult content, yada yada.
7. Chester 5000XYV: Have I spoken about the art of any of the other comics yet? No? I guess I was saving it for this one. This is a NSFW romantic comic set in Victorian times about a woman and a robot. It is created by a woman. [http://jessfink.com/Chester5000XYV/?p=34]
Here’s why you should love it: It is beautifully drawn. There are no words, only gorgeous art. It has a compelling story. I love her use of borders and perspective in her storytelling. And in case you missed it, robot sex!
So there you have it. Yes, I do read more online comics than this. Think I am missing out on something good? Let me know in the comments! I definitely don’t have enough to read in my life.
Maurnas is the barely anonymous alias of a reclusive Floridian fangirl. She has an alleged humor blog at cursitivity.WordPress.com and can also be found at maurnas@cursitivity on Twitter. She writes almost as much as she reads but has done nothing with her debatable talents thus far other than all the blogging and tweeting and writing.
AdvertisementsRussell Street Report Filmstudy Can Defense Keep This Up?
Is the Turnover Level Sustainable?
In the simplest terms, of course not.
I always laugh when a color analyst offers that the team that wins the turnover battle will probably win the game. It could be said more accurately (in terms of causality) that the team that wins the game will probably win the turnover battle. That’s because the trailing team naturally takes more chances to catch up, while the team with the lead is trying to minimize turnover risk as part of closing.
The Ravens have never trailed this season and have held big 2nd-half leads in each game. Paradoxically, the Ravens offense has played a substantial role in the generation of turnovers.
However, this version of the Ravens appears headed to a special year in terms of takeaways.
Last year, the Ravens led the league in interception rate, both per opponent pass attempted (18 of 578, 3.1%) and per pass defensed (18 of 70, 25.7%). It’s probably obvious why the former ratio is meaningful, but since interceptions are also passes defensed, the ratio of INTs/PDs is a measure of team conversion rate on interception opportunities.
In 2016, the Ravens led the NFL with just 3.89 PDs per INT (70 PDs, 18 INTs). Thus far in 2017, the Ravens have 17 PDs (leads the NFL by 5) and 8 INTs for 2.13 PDs per INT. That is a remarkable conversion rate, but the fact the Ravens have 5 more picks than any other NFL team has also been a function of the fact they have moved from 20th to 1st in PDs.
The tennis-ball drill appears to have paid off.
Keeping it Simple
Lots of folks are going to point to yardage as a method to minimize the Ravens defense.
The Ravens gave up some chunks of yardage on pass plays that appeared as if they must have been blown coverages. However, Dean Pees again called a game with minimal deception or scheme for pressure and allowed the combination of 4 rushers and 7 on the back end to maximize turnovers that would determine the outcome.
The pass-rush scheme was similar to that used in Cincinnati:
Pees rushed 4 for most of the game, including 20 consecutive pass plays in the 2nd half. After just 3 deceptive blitzes versus the Bengals [see definition here], Pees called just 2 versus the Browns on 45 drop backs.
Despite the lack of numbers or scheme for pressure, the Ravens allowed the Browns QBs Ample Time and Space (ATS) on just 23 of 45 drop backs, which is very close to Flacco’s 7-year average.
Pees didn’t use a spy to slow down Kizer. He didn’t rush with numbers. He almost did not blitz (6 the entire game, up from 2 in Week 1). He just waited for the Browns to mess up and they did with drops, pre-snap penalties, and another 5 turnovers.
The lone significant scheme change to the Ravens pass rush from Week 1 was the use of an OLB to rush from the inside. The Ravens fielded a 3-OLB package on 20 snaps (plus 1 other penalty). When the Browns passed, that most frequently included Judon rushing from the inside, although Bowser did so as well.
Usage of 3 OLBs accelerated (particularly in the 2nd half) with the injury to Brandon Williams. However, the Ravens had already used 3 OLBs on 8 occasions in the first half.
Individual Notes by Positional Group
Defensive Line
The Ravens again dressed just 5 of their 8 defensive linemen. Willie Henry, Bronson Kaufusi, and Chris Wormley were inactive.
The Ravens used just 1.86 defensive linemen per play, a function of dime snaps that included 3 OLBs, Mosley, and 1 lineman.
Note: Snap totals exclude kneels, spikes, accepted penalties that result in no play and runs/passes from a scrimmage kick formation. As such, these totals will be slightly lower than other published sources.
Michael Pierce (40 snaps) had a solid game. He had just 1 tackle assist, but beat Bitonio for a hard QH (Q3, 11:28), bulled Zeitler for pressure as Hogan overthrew Coleman in the end zone (Q3, 9:35), and made Zeitler whiff to quickly flush Kizer which led to Onwuasor’s sack (Q3, 7:44). He has scary quickness for a big man.
An extended injury to Brandon Williams (19 snaps) would be very serious. Before leaving, he had 1 pressure in 9 pass snaps and 3 tackles in 10 run snaps. The Ravens have significant depth at the 1 and 3-tech spots, but he will be missed.
Brent Urban (50 snaps) again led all defensive linemen in playing time. He got good push versus RG Zeitler and RT Coleman that included the initial flush of Kizer that led to Suggs’ strip sack (Q1, 7:38). He also took down Crowell for a loss of 1 when he pushed past Njoku (Q2, 13:41).
Carl Davis (10 snaps) had 2 nice looking “Oklahoma” plays where he worked off an opponent (Q3, 10:15 and Q3, 8:19), each to take down Crowell for a gain of 2. However, he also gave the Browns a free play when he was on the field as a 12th player (Q2, 6:31) and was unable to maintain position versus a double team which led Crowell’s 17-yard run (Q3, 10:49). The Ravens will rely on him more during any Williams absence.
Patrick Ricard did not play a defensive snap.
Linebackers
The Ravens activated all 8 of their healthy linebackers, with only Za’Darius Smith sitting out.
The 4 OLBs had clarified scheme in Week 2.
Terrell Suggs (44 snaps) had his 2nd sack fumble on a cleanup sack of Urban’s flush (Q1, 7:38). He added 2 other QHs and 2 other pressures (Q4, 2:40 was miscredited as a QH) among 30 pass snaps. He also drew a holding call on RT Coleman (Q4, 1:55). Suggs’ first QH (Q1, 13:48) came when he bulled then shed LT Joe Thomas on his 9,999th consecutive snap.
Matthew Judon (54 snaps) again played well as the primary Sam and expanded his role to rush from the inside on most 3-OLB snaps (see above). He recovered Kizer’s fumble forced by Suggs (Q1, 7:38). He held the edge well versus Coleman to blow up Crowell for a loss of 1 (Q2, 13:41). He also had a brutal QH of Hogan as Bowser was intercepting his pass (Q2, 0:29). On that play, it appeared Judon might be flagged, but referee Gene Steratore was right there, nodded, and Hogan (amazingly) got up to make the tackle.
Tim Williams (21 snaps) made his NFL debut and beat LT Joe Thomas cleanly to the outside for his first career QH (Q4, 0:32). He also flushed Kizer from the pocket and tackled him for a 3-yard gain (Q4, 14:56), narrowly missing his first sack. Surprisingly, only 4 of his snaps came on either 3rd or 4th down, indicating he was used more rotationally than situationally.
Tyus Bowser (34 snaps) was part of the 3-OLB package and payed a higher percentage of passing downs. He was on the field for 4 of the 5 Ravens turnovers as well as all 3 sacks. He registered his first NFL sack when he bulled, then shed RT Coleman despite a hold (Q2, 2:47). On the very next play he pinched the right edge to tackle Johnson for a gain of 2 (Q2, 2:27). He then intercepted Hogan’s pass and returned it 27 yards (Q2, 0:29) to set up the TD that put the Ravens up 21-7. That cycle of contributions (rush, edge set, coverage) is why he has earned more playing time with results.
CJ Mosley played every snap and led the Ravens in tackles with 10. He had a sack washed out by a phantom illegal use of hands call against Jimmy Smith (Q2, 12:28). While he had another fine game making quick tackles after the catch, he was also caught trailing on several long pass plays including:
–(Q1, 8:49): Telfer’s 20-yard catch by the right sideline over Mosley and Onwuasor.
–(Q2, 7:05): DeValve’s 49-yard catch (21 + 28 YAC) by the right sideline.
–(Q4, 13:53): Higgins’ 28-yard catch by the left sideline over Mosley and Webb in zone.
Kamalei Correa (27 snaps), Patrick Onwuasor (17), and Anthony Levine (22 as the dime), split time next to Mosley. None were perfect, but I’ll summarize in tabular form:
Secondary
Pees called the dime on 22 of 66 snaps versus the Browns. For the season, they’ve played 34 dime snaps including 6 turnovers (17.6%!) and 3 sacks (8.8%).
Without following receivers, the Ravens collectively clamped down on the Browns nominal threats, Corey Coleman (1 catch on 7 targets for 9 yards), Kenny Britt (1 catch on 2 targets for 2 yards), and Sammie Coates (0 catches on 4 targets). However, practice-squad call up Rashard Higgins (who did not even make the Gameday program) caught 7 balls for 95 yards, backup TE Seth DeValve had 2 catches for 61, and WR/RB Duke Johnson caught 3 for 59.
Jimmy Smith (66 snaps) played the entire game and helped hold Coleman and Britt in check. The Ravens played a fair amount of press coverage on both sides and Jimmy was effective doing so, despite the ticky-tack IH call that cost Mosley a sack.
Marlon Humphrey (10 snaps) subbed for Carr and Webb (with Carr moving to the slot. He was unable to collect his first interception (Q4, 2:00) by the right sideline. On the same drive (Q4, 1:09) he took down Ricardo Louis for a gain of 3 with an immediate, in-bounds tackle. For the season, the Ravens have now allowed just 27 yards on his 19 snaps (1.4 YPP).
Brandon Carr (65 snaps) was the Ravens best defensive player. His contributions deserve list review:
–(Q1, 3:56): He drew an OPI on Britt to negate a 13-yard completion.
–(Q1, 3:09): He covered Coleman well down the right sideline and was credited with a leaping PD on an uncatchable ball.
–(Q1, 2:27): He and Correa each failed to convert difficult tackle opportunities on Johnson’s 16-yard reception (-4 + 20 YAC) between the numbers and right hash.
–(Q2, 11:37): Carr allowed another interception to pass through his hands in coverage of Britt 32 yards down the right sideline.
–(Q2, 7:12): He stripped DeValve from behind for a PD as Correa prepared to deliver a big hit.
–(Q2, 5:04): He was unable to stop the on-target laser to Njoku for the Browns only TD with Jefferson also converging.
–(Q2, 0:29): He was one of 3 Ravens lined up to between Hogan and his intended receiver Higgins on Bowser’s interception (something I can’t ever recall seeing before).
–(Q3, 9:35): He used the boundary effectively to slow Coleman as Hogan overthrew him in the end zone.
–(Q3, 6:33): Brandon again had tight coverage down the right sideline as Kizer overthrew Sammie Coates.
–(Q4, 14:24): He surrendered a 9-yard catch by Coleman who went unflagged for a flagrant OPI.
–(Q4, 6:35): Kizer again missed Coates 30 yards down the right sideline as Carr again used the boundary well.
–(Q4, 6:21): Kizer rolled right with ATS and threw 25 yards for Higgins, but Carr intercepted as the underneath coverage in a tight bracket with Jefferson.
Carr’s play has exceeded any reasonable expectation and his physical style is an excellent match for the pass-rush strength of this defense.
Lardarius Webb (45 snaps) again played exclusively in the slot and was on for all 5 turnovers and all 3 sacks. His athletic end-zone interception ended the Browns best shot to get back in the game (Q4, 11:47). He had another PD by dislodging a ball intended for Higgins to deny 3rd and 10 (Q2, 2:00). On the Browns first play from scrimmage (Q1,15:00) he navigated traffic to undercut Crowell for a gain of 3 on what looked as if it would be a big gain on a misdirection run.
Eric Weddle (66 snaps) remarkably collected the tip from Johnson (Q1, 0:34) for his first INT. He had 4 tackles and some nice bracket coverage on the back end.
Tony Jefferson (66 snaps) also played every snap and was again active in run defense (5 tackles in total). He delivered a QH on 1 of the 2 occasions he rushed the passer (Q4, 2:14). He and Carr were unable to prevent the TD to Njoku (Q2, 5:04), which is at least the 3rd time in 2 games he’s been late to help on the deep outside.
Anthony Levine (22 snaps) played exclusively in dime. His coverage contributed to the terrific results with 6 DBs (see ILB results above) despite a missed tackle.
The Ravens again had more significant contributors than room on their list of stars, but my 3 stars of the game were:
1. Brandon Carr
2. Tyus Bowser
3. Terrell SuggsLG Electronics staff, mostly product designers in the mobile division, are leaving the company voluntarily due to offers from Chinese tech giants such as Xiaomi, LG insiders say.
Chinese firms are looking to South Korean companies to follow in the tech sphere, one of the sources said, so it was natural for them to headhunt there. The Chinese companies offer substantial pay increases, as well as shorter working hours.
LG recently downsized its mobile communications company due to declining profits, an action that is ongoing since president Juno Cho took over the business in January last year. Cho chose the designs for the flagship leather-backed G4 and metal-backed V10, with many of the "unique" prototype designs dumped, which irked designers.
Samsung has been more aggressive in its group-wide restructuring drive, which saw much of its workforce moved from company to company. Samsung Electronics has also shed many of its non-profitable business process, such as notebooks and fibre cables, forcing many employees to leave for other firms, with China being a favourite destination.
Many of them are leaving for Chinese companies like Huawei, which competes with Samsung in smartphones and network equipment. The two also have a similar vertical office culture that makes it easy for them to adapt, sources say.
China is also pulling many semiconductor experts from Samsung and SK Hynix. South Korea is the largest shipper of memory chips and it is a business designated a "backbone industry" by the government, increasing worries.
A downturn in the South Korean economy is also making it a ripe environment for headhunting by Chinese firms. South Korea is expecting a GDP growth rate of 2.8 percent this year while Japan's central bank recently moved to a negative interest rate in its attempt to boost the economy.
South Korea has notoriously long working hours; according to the OECD, Korea ranked second in working hours behind Mexico in 2014, with 2,124 hours per person a year on average.
Xiaomi shipped over 70 million smartphones last year, while Huawei became the first Chinese handset maker to ship more than 100 million, threatening the dominant position held by Apple and Samsung.
South Korea and neighbouring Japan are highly sensitive of technology leaks to China, as indicated by the Japanese government's opposition to Foxconn's attempts to buy Sharp.
Samsung and LG were unavailable for comment.Staff at Indian outsourcing biz Tata Consultancy Service uploaded a huge trove of financial institutions' source code and internal documents to a public GitHub repository, an IT expert has claimed.
Jason Coulls, CTO of food safety testing company Tellspec and a former banking software developer, said he stumbled upon the collection of sensitive files after they were inadvertently leaked by a Tata developer in Kolkata, India. In the archive he found development notes, raw source, internal reports on web banking code development plans, and records of telephone calls with outsourcing partners.
The documents related to programming work Tata was carrying out for six big Canadian banks, two well-known American financial organizations, a multinational Japanese bank, and a multibillion dollar financial software company. The data is a boon for rival organizations developing similar features, as well as criminals who could exploit any weaknesses in the designs to potentially steal millions.
"The good news is that none of it was banking customers' data, it was mainly auxiliary data," Coulls told The Register late last week.
"But there was still a lot of useful stuff there – not just for hackers but for the firm's competitors. The first bank that gets in to look at it gets to see what everyone else is doing. There was a monumental common sense failure."
More than enough information to cause serious mischief... A screenshot of some of the leaked data, redacted for security reasons
When alerted to the leak, you'd expect the affected businesses to react quickly, however that was not the case, according to our man. Coulls, a Brit now based in Toronto, Canada, said he was rebuffed or ignored when he went to the Canadian banks.
By contrast, the American financial institutions were very receptive, we're told, and responded immediately. The offending archive was taken down in short order from GitHub. Tata did not respond to requests from The Register for comment. The names of the affected clients have been withheld, for now, for security reasons.
What's up with Canada, eh?
Coulls told The Reg that his experience with the intransigence of Canadian banks is no surprise – he has been on their backs about lax security for years and has seen little improvement.
"There is a massive cultural difference between Canada and the US," he explained. "Canadians don't want to pay for security info and I don't work for free. But in the US I've had companies put someone on a plane on the same day for a meet-up in Toronto and they were buying me Guinness and discussing the issue with me that night."
Coulls, who authored a takedown on Canadian banking software entitled "Not my monkeys, not my circus!", said his research has shown nine out of 25 Canadian Schedule I banks are vulnerable to phishing attacks.
One bank's app "vomits out huge chunks of data – 40MB pushed out to the browser with each transaction," he said. Very few mobile banking apps make the effort to safeguard their communications either, he said.
Canuck commercial finance house bank Scotiabank is a particular target of Coulls' ire. The bank's app doesn't always use HTTPS for connections, dropping to HTTP, we're told.
"Right now there are at least a million people walking around with insecure banking apps and it's only a matter of time before there's a massive issue," he said. "It's not a happy situation; I laugh about it because if you don't you'd cry." ®[Presented as received by Missingtoez, with the addition of headings. Enjoy! – rekenner]
Introduction
Hi, I’m Missingtoez. You may know me from memeing poorly in Twitch chats, making Dad jokes on Reddit, or trying vainly to decipher the cryptic messages Scarlatch has carved on the bottom sides of our dresser drawers on Discord. I’m a TCG & CCG vet who started playing competitively in the late 90’s. I’ve played most every game you can think of, several you haven’t heard of, and a couple you thought you’d forgotten. I began playing Eternal shortly after the open beta started. I’ve finished in Masters every season I’ve played, though never at a particularly high rank, usually choosing to meme rather than chase a rabbit that doesn’t have much meaning beyond bragging rights. The truest test of skill in Eternal seems to be the tournament scene, and that means the ETS. The following is the story of how I went from a never ran to the runner-up in the season five Invitational. The events depicted are mostly true, though I’ve never been one to |
not taxpayer funds were used to promote religion during that rally. Haley has also voted for a bill that would require women to have and view an ultrasound, then wait 24 hours before being allowed to have an abortion.
Michael T. Flynn
Michael T. Flynn, tabbed as national security adviser, is a fundamentalist Christian who is openly bigoted toward Muslims, even claiming that Sharia law is spreading in the United States and that fear of Muslims is "rational." The New York Times reports that Flynn has already influenced Trump on several issues.
"During the transition, General Flynn has been present when Mr. Trump has received his daily intelligence briefing," The New York Times reports. "As national security adviser, he would have the last word on how the president should respond to crises such as a showdown with China over the South China Sea or an international health crisis like the Ebola epidemic."In an extraordinary violation of a golden rule about ex-presidents criticizing a successor, former U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both implicitly rebuked Donald Trump on Thursday. But Bush's critique is particularly remarkable, experts say, since it's seen as an attack on a fellow Republican in a civil war over the soul of the Grand Old Party.
That the back-to-back takedowns came from two ex-presidents in rival parties lent gravity to their words, presidential historians say.
Bush represents the establishment Republican wing; Obama is often considered to be the most popular Democrat in the country.
Bush didn't mention President Donald Trump by name, but he did make sweeping statements about the current political climate in the U.S. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
Their veiled swipes at Trump, even without uttering his name, signal how far the rise of white nationalism has pushed politicians from across the aisle, particularly those with no political futures, to speak out.
"It's the old guard in revolt against Trump and Trumpism. This is the battlefield right now," said Douglas Brinkley, a prolific presidential biographer and history professor at Rice University in Houston.
"There's no question that having an ex-president from the same party squaring off on a sitting president, that's not something George W. Bush relishes doing."
Former U.S. president George W. Bush vigorously criticizes current political climate 3:16
In pointed remarks at a forum in New York on Thursday, Bush denounced a national mood that has "emboldened" bigotry and a wave of politics prone to "conspiracy and outright fabrication."
He also defended free markets and international trade, telegraphing more disagreement with the current administration.
"We've seen nationalism distorted into nativism; forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America."
Bannon's war
Before his address, Bush's silence on the anti-establishment forces rattling the party was becoming increasingly conspicuous, Brinkley said. Especially as former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon continues his call to enlist ultra-conservative primary challengers to replace Republicans who support Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell ahead of next year's midterm elections.
"With Bannon declaring war on the Republican establishment," he said, "Bush has decided to enter politics with great reluctance to warn about the danger of continuing on course with Trump."
Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is waging war against the Republican establishment. (Marvin Gentry/Reuters)
States are looking for their candidates, Brinkley said, and the question for Republicans is: "Will it be a Trumpian or an establishment candidate?"
"Bush is telling these people: 'Run — we're on your side, and so are many other Republicans, because we need to stand up to Trumpism."
Rehabilitating Bush
Presidential biographer Jean Smith, who wrote a withering indictment of the 43rd commander-in-chief in 2016's Bush, has no doubt Bush is mindful of repairing his legacy after being vilified for years for his foreign policy on Iraq.
"He realized he messed up. Now he's trying to remedy that," Smith said. "His career as an ex-president has been exemplary."
His statement on Trumpism appears to be working to restore that reputation, Smith said, given the positive press he's seen for Bush's comments.
Obama was more circumspect on Thursday. Speaking hours after Bush, he decried the "the politics of division" at a rally in Richmond, Va. The first black president has for months largely stayed quiet while Trump worked to dismantle his legacy by undermining or abandoning everything from the Paris climate accord to the Iran nuclear deal and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA).
Trump has repeatedly invoked Obama's name and record when challenged about his treatment of Gold Star families of fallen soldiers.
Obama largely resisted commenting on Trump — until a rally Thursday night for a Democrat running for the governor's mansion in Virginia.
"You'll notice I haven't been commenting a lot on politics lately," Obama told 7,500 supporters before decrying what he characterized as a politics of anger that has turned too "nasty."
"We've got folks who are deliberately trying to make folks angry," he said, avoiding Trump's name, "to demonize people who have different ideas, to get the base all riled up because it provides a short-term tactical advantage."
Bush's stinging remarks, despite his partisan alignment with Trump, could have opened the door for Obama.
Former U.S. president hits campaign trail to support upcoming state elections 1:35
"He must feel liberated by having George W. Bush" go on the attack first, Brinkley said. "But Trump is a game-changing character, so all these old-fashioned rules are having to be thrown by the wayside because there's a political crisis going on in America."
He said "it was just a matter of time" before the former statesmen, now unburdened by political ambitions, came out to condemn the ultra-nationalism championed by many Trump supporters.
And the pile-on from ex-presidents may have just begun.
"I think there's going to be historical hostility to the present president for what he's done to the Obama reputation and to the Bush reputations," said Henry Graff, the retired historian who pioneered Columbia University's Seminar on the Presidency, which counted among its attendees presidents Harry Truman and Gerald Ford.
"It's not ordinary. Part of the business of being in what's called the imaginary President's Club is all former presidents remember how difficult the tasks of the White House are, and as a result, very few presidents comment adversely on each other."
Role of a president
Last month, former president Bill Clinton criticized Trump on Facebook for his "cruel" flip-flop decision to end DACA. And Jimmy Carter, offering his assessment of the 45th president's leadership, urged him to "tell the truth." The 39th president also threw cold water on Trump's confidence that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will engineer peace in the Middle East.
Mark Updegrove, the former director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in Texas, said the "unwritten code" of ex-presidents biting their tongues rather than critiquing successors appears to be slipping as those who departed the Oval Office grow wary of a perceived vacuum in moral authority.
Trump, for example, repeatedly stated over the summer that "both sides" deserved blame for the killing of an anti-racism activist in Charlottesville, Va., when clashes with white nationalists became violent.
"This is broader than Donald Trump," Updegrove said. "Clearly, as the president, Donald Trump has refrained from offering moral guidance and clarity, which is the role of a president. That's what we look to our presidents for."Fear Tim Duncan's knees, no matter how fragile or old they are.
Everything seems to be custom-made in the NBA these days, and Duncan's knee braces are no exception.
In addition to a Punisher-themed brace, Timmy has a collection of other airbrushed support systems, according to Trey Kerby of The Score.
Seriously, there are no words—other than awesome.
This is bodily protection at its best. Whether you believe knee braces actually serve a genuine purpose or not, there's no denying Duncan's set is scary, making them too cool.
Tailoring your sneakers to fit your personality is one thing, but designing a trio of knee-bearing props is no joke.
Just looking at the Punisher one sends a shiver down my spine. It (almost) makes me wish I had a need to sport one of these bad boys. I may even get my own to wear to the supermarket or when I play pickup against imaginary opponents. They're that spectacular.
To think, there are those who actually consider Duncan boring and uninteresting. Nothing could be less mundane than customizing equipment that actually intimidates your opponent.
Too bad Duncan doesn't wear a goalie mask when protecting the rim. I'd love to see what he would fashion there.
If only every 37-year-old's knees could be as delicately exciting and elegantly dressed as Duncan's.
Follow @danfavalePrecipitous declines in print advertising rocked the newspaper industry last year. And while The New York Times Company recorded significant growth in subscriptions and promising increases in digital advertising, it nevertheless has not avoided the inevitable.
The company said on Thursday that its print advertising revenue in 2016 fell 16 percent, driving a 9 percent drop in total advertising revenue. For the quarter, print advertising revenue declined 20 percent.
The story on the digital side was positive, underscoring the diverging financial narratives for print and digital that have emerged at the company.
Digital advertising revenue rose 6 percent last year, to $209 million. The Times Company added 514,000 net digital-only subscriptions for its news products during the year, bringing its total to 1.6 million. Buoyed by readers’ intense interest in the presidential election, the company added 276,000 net digital-only subscriptions to its news products in the last three months of the year, more additions than in 2013 and 2014 combined.
Including print and crossword product subscriptions, The New York Times now has more than three million total paid subscribers, a milestone that aligns with the company’s commitment to a subscription-based revenue model that is less reliant on the advertising revenue derived from page views and clicks.
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As for many other legacy print companies trying to adapt to an increasingly digital world, these have been challenging times for The New York Times. Last month, The Times released an internal report that called for swift changes in the newsroom, including more staff training, a commitment to hiring journalists with wider-ranging skills and an elimination of duplicative layers of editing.
That has left employees bracing for staff reductions that newsroom leaders said could be announced in the next several weeks.
Despite positive developments on the digital side, the overall financial results announced on Thursday are unlikely to assuage the tangible anxiety among journalists at The Times.
Total revenue fell about 2 percent for the year, to $1.6 billion, and 1 percent in the quarter, to $440 million.
Adjusted operating profit, the company’s preferred method for assessing performance, fell to $241 million last year, from $289 million in 2015. Operating profit dropped to $102 million, from $137 million.
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For the quarter, adjusted operating profit was $96 million, compared with $118 million in the fourth quarter in 2015. Operating profit fell to $56 million, from $88 million.
On a more positive note, circulation revenue rose 3 percent in 2016, to $881 million. Revenue from the company’s digital-only subscriptions jumped 17 percent in 2016, to $233 million.
For the quarter, circulation revenue increased 5 percent, to $226 million, and digital-only subscription revenue rose 22 percent, to $64 million. Digital advertising revenue rose 11 percent.
In an earnings call on Thursday, Mark Thompson, chief executive of the Times Company, called digital growth “unprecedented” and expressed optimism in the company’s subscription-first growth strategy. He also used the call to needle President Trump over his claims that the publication’s audience and subscriber numbers were “dwindling.”
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“Not so much, Mr. President,” Mr. Thompson said. “We had spectacular audiences in the quarter.”
Times executives said the company expected circulation revenues to increase about 6 percent in the first quarter of 2017 compared with the same quarter last year. The company also expected to see about 200,000 net additional subscriptions to its digital news products in the first quarter.
Total advertising revenue is forecast to fall in the high single digits, though digital advertising revenue is expected to increase 10 to 15 percent.
On Wednesday, The Times announced the promotion of Clifford J. Levy, a top digital editor, to the position of deputy managing editor. On Thursday, the company announced a partnership with Snapchat to create a new daily edition for the app’s Discover section, with the aim of gaining exposure to a younger audience.New or notable science fiction and fantasy entries on the Prime Time TV schedule, also including programs that may be of interest to genre fans. Air dates and times subject to change without notice.
As the holidays are now upon us, there’s not much in the way of new sci fi TV this week. We do get the Doctor Who Christmas Special episode on BBC America and TNT’s The Librarians continues to air new episodes uninterrupted (apparently they want that one to wrap up before The Walking Dead returns in February). For those who have been following the Canadian series The Listener on ION, that show has its series finale on Tuesday which will wrap most of its open storylines. And genre fans may also be interested in tuning in for the Science Channel’s Year in Sci-Tech on Monday. As far as holiday marathons, I didn’t see too many that would be of interest to sci fi fans apart from the ones BBC America will be running. That channel will air the Star Trek movies from Sunday 8:30 AM to Monday 4:30 AM, plus Star Trek: TNG from Tuesday 8 AM to Wednesday 5 AM. And they will have a Doctor Who marathon starting Wednesday 8 AM and going all the way to Monday 5 AM. The Science Channel will air a Mythbusters marathon starting Wednesday 6 AM and going well into next week and the National Geographic Channel will re-air the new Cosmos series back to back starting at 9 AM on Friday. You would think that Syfy would be running something this week, but not much that I could recommend. They are doing a CSI marathon (no, that was no a mistype) starting on Monday morning as well as several mini-marathons of their reality shows like Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and Wizard Wars. Then starting on Christmas Day and going into the weekend they will be airing several of their mega-disaster and critters-run-amok flicks back to back including such “classics” as Christmas Icetastrophe, Chupacabra vs the Alamo, and Ragin Cajun Redneck Gators (you can’t make this stuff up). If you feel like tuning in for any of that, I might recommend some extra-spiked eggnog to go along with it. At least next week they still have their annual Twilight Zone marathon planned.
Prime Time Sci Fi TV for the Week of Dec 21 – Dec 27:
Sunday Dec 21
The Librarians (TNT) 8:00-9:00
Monday Dec 22
2014: The Year in Sci-Tech (SCI) 10:00-11:00
Tuesday Dec 23
The Listener (ION) 11:00-12:00 Series Finale
Thursday Dec 25
Doctor Who (BBCA) 9:00-10:30 Christmas SpecialSpread the love
Mesa County, Colorado – Comedian Nathen Channing was recently arrested and charged with “felony menacing” after he pointed a banana at two police officers as a joke.
According to the police report, officer Joshua Bunch arrested Channing just before noon on Saturday, near Grand Junction.
“I observed Nathen reach into the left side of his coat with his right hand and pull out a yellow object, pointing it in the air then in my direction as I approached him, Nathen drew the object in the same manner someone would draw a standard handgun from a concealed holster,” Bunch said.
Bunch also said in the police report that his partner nearly shot the 28-year-old comedian, and was ready to pull his weapon when the man yelled “its a banana!”
“Deputy Donald Love stated he was in fear for his life at this point, and was in the process of pulling out his hand gun when Nathen yelled ‘It’s a banana!’” Bunch said.
When he was later arrested, Channing told the officers that he was staging a joke for his YouTube channel, but as police noticed, he wasnt actually filming the encounter.
He then told police that he was carrying out a practice run for the prank.
“I informed Nathen his reasoning did not make sense to me since he did not have anything to post on the internet, then Nathen stated he was just completing ‘trial runs’ of the joke,” Bunch wrote in his police report.
Channing now says that he doesn’t think that his joke was the best idea, but him and his friends also say that the charges against him are way too steep. He is currently waiting for his next court date, where he will face felony charges of “menacing” an officer.
John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work he is also the owner of a successful music promotion company. In 2013, he became one of the organizers of the Free Your Mind Conference, which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled “Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance” at bookpatch.com.It’s happened to me. It will happen to you.
It happens to everyone who hustles for a living.
You know what it is…
The dreaded Slow Season.
Things stop coming in. What once was a river of work has slowed to a trickle. And maybe, just maybe, work comes to a grinding halt. The worst thing possible can happen then…
Your hustle feels off the rails.
So, how do you deal when things get slow?
Do you constantly refresh your e-mail? Do you bid on a bunch of new work? There are lots of ways to fight this battle. It can be as depressing as it is temporary, but this struggle is real. A lot of times it’s not your fault. But…
It’s on you as a freelancer to get out of the slump.
So, what do you do when your freelance business is slow? In this blog post, I’m going to share with you some of the tried and tested methods for getting out of a client slump. These are things that I’ve used to get my groove back and that I’m confident you can use as well to get things back on track.
Let’s get to it.
1) Find A Few Events Worth Speaking At & Reach Out
The first way to combat a slow business cycle is to generate new business by flexing your public speaking muscle. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
Public speaking is a super power for freelancers.
For example, let’s say you’re a corporate blogger that knows about SEO, and wants to increase your business from tech companies. I recommend that you take some time, check out Eventbrite, and search for seminars or conferences that would have tech entrepreneurs present. From there, reach out to the conference organizers and see if you can get on a panel, or, better yet, have a solo speech to a captive audience.
Here’s another tip:
Once you’re on Eventbrite, put in your keywords, like “new media.” Then you will filter by conferences and seminars, and be sure to do so in your accessible area. Once you’ve found what you need there, click on the “Contact Organizer” button and reach out via e-mail. Sometimes, if you find the event on Eventbrite but it has its own website, it is good to reach out through their contact page.
Let’s make this even easier:
Download this list of FREE email scripts for freelancers (Click the image below):
They’ll help you land the gig.
2) Plan & Schedule Content Marketing For Months In Advance
Look on the bright side.
You now have time to create all that great content you always wanted.
This is where having a slow time in your hustle can be advantageous. It’s so easy to forget about your social media pages, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or even your blog, when you’re busy on the grind and working with clients.
One great way to ensure that you’re presenting yourself online in the best way possible is to spend time creating lots of content that you can schedule to post for months in advance. You can do it on your blog through WordPress (if that’s your platform), or you can use tools like Crate to schedule content for the next few months on your social media pages.
When you use Crate you are prompted to sign in with your Twitter account. From there, you will build a “Crate” of blogs and influencers that are interesting and pertinent to your hustle. After that, you can easily schedule content and keep your audience abreast of what is most important to them.
3) Build Relationships With Past + Potential Clients
What’s the #1 way you lose business?
It’s not by being bad at what you do, and it’s not because you don’t work hard.
It’s because your treat your clients like clients, and not like people.
Business is all about relationships. A friend of mine once said that your vibe dictates your tribe and I couldn’t agree with more that idea.
Your clients will thank you for calling them to check in on their families, new projects, or just to grab a cup of coffee. If your clients aren’t local, you can still build good relationships with them by a phone call or a Skype or Facetime session.
It’s the little things.
If you’ve always wanted to work with someone, but never been able to pitch them, now is the time to get a casual cup of coffee or start a conversation. If you’re itching for the work, spend some time researching for an introduction or doing a bit of digging to find an issue you can help with immediately.
It’s OK to reach out to an influencer via Twitter or e-mail to someone you think is a “stretch” client.
I’ve done it plenty of times and been met with both failure and success.
You can ask for an informational interview or even a breakdown of their needs. The key here is listening, and creating a relationship that isn’t just about transactional business. You are a person and so are your clients.
Even if your hustle is tailored towards corporations, who works at those?
People.
Planting seeds when business is slow might not bring quick conversions, but it will make certain you have a good smattering of people that feel they can rely on you and that you care about them.
Also, it’s interesting to learn about new projects! Ask people what they are into! Who knows? You might get an idea for a future project that they haven’t even thought about yet.
And, last but not least…
4) Invest Money & Time In The Person In The Mirror
It’s hard to have nothing on the go. It’s difficult to keep your head straight when business is so slow that you’re twiddling your thumbs wondering what’s next.
The best way to fix that is to invest in the person you see in the mirror.
Go to the gym, check out a new yoga class, or contact friends and family to connect.
But don’t forget to invest professionally as well. Invest your time into learning a new skill. Invest your time into learning a new concept. Invest your time into studying a topic that will give you a competitive advantage in the future.
If we show up for ourselves, and make the person in the mirror part of our personal hustle, you increase the chances that you will end out on top.
There’s no way to make your life better than to make yourself better. Treat yourself like you would treat someone you were mentoring or coaching, and realize that you can be your own best example.
When business is slow, you can give speeches, meet new people, check on your past clients, and continue your hustle by building your digital brand and working on the most important piece of this: YOU.
If you’ve made it this far, I know you’re hungry to improve because most people would have stopped reading if they weren’t. You’ve made it this far so I’m going to tell you something that I wish someone told me when business was slow:
Don’t beat yourself up over it.
Use this time to grow. Use this time to improve. Use this time to put yourself into a situation where you’ll never have a slow time like this again.
That’s what I want for you.
That’s why I wrote 100 Tips For Making Your First $100K and have helped entrepreneurs from all over the world take their freelance business to the next level. If you’re looking for more tips to grow your business, download the guide now.
Alright… Now over to you.
Leave me a comment and let me know what you thought of this post. I’d love to hear what things you like to do when business is feeling a bit slower than usual.The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on Saturday celebrated the delayed launch of a new rocket that it hopes will provide a cheaper, more effective way to send satellites into space.
The maiden voyage of the three-stage Epsilon rocket was aired on Japanese television. Epsilon launched from the Uchinoura Space Center in Kagoshima, on Japan's south island of Kyushu, at 2 p.m. local time (0500 UTC) on Saturday.
"The launch vehicle flew smoothly and, at about 61 minutes and 39 seconds after liftoff, the separation of the SPRINT-A was confirmed," JAXA announced on its website.
Watch video 00:30 Japan launches new type of rocket
The SPRINT-A telescope, Epsilon's first ever payload, will be used to remotely monitor planets including Venus, Mars and Jupiter from its orbit around Earth.
Budget ballistics
Formerly called the Advanced Solid Rocket, the Epsilon uses solid fuel, a less powerful but more cost-effective source than liquid-fuel rockets. This throwback prototype is JAXA's first new model since the launch of the first H2A rocket in 2001.
The liquid-fueled H2A remains JAXA's primary rocket, but Epsilon is suitable for delivering items to low-earth orbit with considerably less cost and complexity. Furthermore, an improved four-stage version of the model is planned that should have greater range and be able to carry more load.
Epsilon is half the size of the H2A, and JAXA reported that production and development cost three times less - at 3.8 billion yen (29 million euros, $38 million). The hard-fuel rocket can be assembled and readied for launch within a week, about six times more quickly than JAXA's flagship model. The Epsilon is also considerably simpler to operate, not least because of the onboard computer's ability to autonomously perform some of its own launch checks. To demonstrate that the model no longer required a major mission control room, the Epsilon was launched on Saturday using just a pair of laptop computers.
msh/mkg (AFP, AP, dpa)Knox Grammar: Lawyer says sex abuse revelations have prompted victims from other schools to come forward
Updated
A lawyer representing former students at Sydney's prestigious Knox Grammar School says evidence of abuse given at the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse has prompted other victims from other private schools to come forward.
Former Knox students gave harrowing evidence this week at the royal commission of being molested by their teachers, some of whom were allowed to stay at the school for years.
Lawyer Ross Koffel, a former Knox student himself who now represents a number of former students who were abused, said the revelations at the commission had encouraged even more victims of abuse to speak out.
"Quite a number of people have come forward, particularly seeing their classmates giving evidence," Mr Koffel said.
"They've been encouraged to come forward because they felt they're not alone.
"And that's caused them to say something now when they've never said anything in all these years."
Mr Koffel would not disclose the number of new victims who had come forward but he said other schools would also likely be implicated in abuse allegations.
"I can say quite a number and can I say that the royal commission has also caused boys in other schools to also come forward, because they realise that it occurred in other schools," Mr Koffel said.
"So we've got claims from other schools at the same time.
"We're talking about private schools in Sydney. I'm not at liberty to say what they are, but they're well-known schools, no different to Knox Grammar School."
Former principal should face charges: victims support group
A victims' support group said a former headmaster at Knox should face criminal charges.
Dr Ian Paterson this week made a startling admission to the commission that he misled police to deliberately hinder their investigation, but recanted that statement in the witness box yesterday.
"I mean, he's accountable," Adults Surviving Child Abuse spokeswoman Cathy Kezelman said.
"He's arguably as accountable as the perpetrator in that, had he not lied to police then, people would've been brought to justice much sooner and children would have been protected," Ms Kezelman said.
The commission can decide whether to recommend to the Director of Public Prosecutions that charges be laid.
"They may recommend or they may not," Mr Koffel said.
"It depends on what they say and it may relate to Dr Paterson.
"It may relate to the teachers who have already been named and/or other teachers."
Topics: sexual-offences, education, sydney-2000
First postedIn which one of our critics finds an example of the media using good judgment.
Another installment in our ongoing effort to monitor how politics is covered on prime-time television (and, occasionally, other major media).
Trump’s Taxes
Orchids to the PBS NewsHour for a fascinating discussion of Donald Trump’s tax problems between the program’s economics correspondent, Paul Solman, and Pulitzer Prize-winning economics reporter David Cay Johnston. Johnston actually gives Trump something of a pass on his apparent not paying of any federal income tax. That is on Congress, Johnston says, not Trump, since our tax laws allow rich folks like Trump who own real estate to depreciate almost every expense, real estate-related or not, so long as they spend 15 hours a week managing property.
But here is where it gets interesting. Johnston focuses on another of Trump’s potential tax dodges – his appeal of an audit to New York state tax authorities when he claimed to have made zero revenue from consulting and yet deducted more than $600,000 of expenses without any documentation.
And, wait! There’s more. The tax preparer whose signature is at the bottom of the return, Johnston says, swears he did not prepare it. Johnston’s conclusion: “These are very strong badges of fraud.” And just for good measure, Johnston also cites Trump’s buying jewelry at Bulgari’s, and then having the store send empty boxes to an out-of-state address so he could avoid paying New York sales tax. Trump’s federal tax shenanigans may be unethical, but they aren’t illegal. His New York shenanigans may be both.
And I wouldn’t have known about them if it weren’t for the NewsHour.
Miss Universe’s Past
Onions to Will Rahn – I’d never heard of him either – who is listed as a political correspondent and the digital manager, politics, for the cbsnews.com website. Rahn had a prominently featured “commentary” on the site Thursday where he questioned why more folks in the mainstream media didn’t pick up the story of Alicia Machado, the Miss Universe whom Hillary Clinton referenced in the debate on Monday. The illustrious Daily Mail had reported a number of escapades of Machado’s, from allegedly driving a getaway car after an assassination attempt on a judge to making love on camera on a Spanish reality TV show. Good, salacious stuff – the stuff of Extra, which did pick it up.
“There’s something odd,” puffed Rahn, “about news coverage that avoids easily available and fascinating stories about that person’s life. And it’s especially peculiar when that person is a campaign surrogate for a major party nominee, which is what Machado is now.”
This is wrong in so many ways, it is hard to know where to begin. Machado is no surrogate for Clinton; she was adduced as an example of Trump’s misogyny. She isn’t running for president – at least as far as I know. The issue was Trump’s insults, and her behavior is irrelevant to those. But what is really insidious about this “commentary” is Rahn’s notion that the mainstream media should be covering Machado because there are “easily available and fascinating stories” about her. This is one of the few times the MSM haven’t taken the bait, and when they behave responsibly, a political correspondent actually wants them to take silly detours that have nothing whatsoever to do with anything other than prurient interest.
Even if Machado’s behavior is irrelevant, writes Rahn, “that doesn’t mean that her life, which has been reported on extensively in the Spanish language press, should be sanitized and whitewashed by the press. The political media is not in the beatification business; if it’s out there, readers deserve to know it.” Actually, they aren’t sanitizing a thing. They are ignoring it. Journalists used to call that judgment.The full Marvel Comics solicitations for September 2015 have been released, and in the gallery viewer below, you can now check out all the artwork, synopses and product images for nearly 100 different upcoming releases!
As most readers are probably already aware, the Marvel Multiverse as we know it is no more! Now, all that remains is Battleworld, a massive patchwork planet composed of the fragments of worlds that no longer exist, maintained by the iron will of its God and master: Victor von Doom!
While Secret Wars dominates this month’s Marvel Comics solicitations, the company is also celebrating the 50th Anniversary of S.H.I.E.L.D. with the release of five one-shot comics focused on the comic book counterparts of some very familiar MCU characters. Be on the lookout for “Fury,” “The Cavalry,” “Mockingbird,” “Quake” and “Agent Carter,” all of which can be combined to form the above art by John Tyler Christopher!
Marvel also has some major developments going on in a galaxy far, far away. September sees the release of the first two issues of “Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Shattered Empire,” a four-issue canonical miniseries that is set to bridge the gap between the end of Return of the Jedi and the upcoming The Force Awakens!
If you missed the Marvel Comics solicitations from last month, you can click here to find out what will be hitting the shelves this August and click here to find out what September 2015 is bringing from the Distinguished Competition.Find the right combination! ChessBase 15 program + new Mega Database 2019 with 7.6 million games and more than 70,000 master analyses. Plus ChessBase Magazine (DVD + magazine) and CB Premium membership for 1 year!
Special attention will be paid to Intermediate Moves, Quiet Moves, Sacrifices on Empty Squares, Mating Patterns, Ignoring Opponents Threat, Calculation in Defence and Method of Comparison. Plus 50 interactive examples to test your knowledge.
11/24/2016 – In the tenth game of the World Championship in New York Magnus Carlsen scored his first win to come back into the match. With two games to play the score is now 5-5. In a nervous game with mistakes by both sides Carlsen finally managed to convert a clear advantage into a win. Game 10 annoated by Wesley So. Newsblog, Nov. 24 2016
World Chess Championship News - 2016-11-24
Game No 10 - Notes by Wesley So
02.32 / 20.32: Karjakin resigns! Carlsen equalized the match. This loss might be a heavy blow for Karjakin who could have drawn in about 20 moves. With two games to play the score is now 5-5.
9.00 Mumbai/ 4.30 Hamburg/ 22.30 New York: ChessBase India tries a novel idea of analyzing the tenth game with the new Tactical Analysis feature of ChessBase 14. Check it out here.
02.27 / 20.27: Carlsen solved his biggest problems and reached a rook endgame that looks like a relatively easy technical win. Judit Polgar: "It is impossible that Carlsen does not win."
02.17 / 20.17: A rook endgame is on the board and this endgame is probably won - but Carlsen still might go wrong.
02.10 / 20.10: Karjakin shows tenacious defense again and with 63...Kb8 poses Carlsen unexpected problems. Moreover, Carlsen's clock is ticking down and he suddenly has to find precise moves to secure the win.
02.02 / 20.02: It's an endgame but suddenly tactics flare up and Karjakin might have hopes that Carlsen goes astray in the complications.
01.54 / 19.54: Susan Polgar sums it up:
This is in Carlsen's hands now to even up the match. Karjakin screwed up badly twice on move 20-21 by not finding the draw #CarlsenKarjakin — Susan Polgar (@SusanPolgar) November 25, 2016
01.45 / 19.45: Carlsen's pawn push 57.b5 netted him a pawn and Carlsen reaches the second time-control after 60 moves a pawn up. He is now close to equalizing the match.
Carlsen and Karjakin after reaching the second time-control
01.38 / 19.38: After moving about with his rooks for some time Carlsen finally gets active and advances his b-pawn with 57.b5, breaking open Black's king position. The engines now see Karjakin in serious trouble.
01.03 / 19.03: Does Carlsen have a way to break through Karjakin's defenses? Opinions are divided:
Carlsen should not have said that |
were beyond reproach for the industry.”
Coinbase compliance
Just two months ago Coinbase was in the news due to some issues with their pitch deck (pdf) as it related to marketing Bitcoin as a method for bypassing country specific sanctions.
However two years ago they ran into a slightly different issue:
In order to stay on top of anti-money laundering laws, the bank had to review every single transaction, and these reviews cost the bank more money than Coinbase was brining in. The bank imposed more restrictions on Coinbase than on other customers because Bitcoin inherently made it easier to launder money. (page 203)
[…]
Coinbase had to repeatedly convince Silicon Valley Bank that it knew where the Bitcoins leaving Coinbase were going. Even with all these steps, on several days in March Coinbase hit up against transaction limits set by Silicon Valley Bank and had to shut down until the next day. (page 204)
Not quite accurate
In looking at my notes in the margin I didn’t find many inaccuracies. Two small ones that stood out:
In early December Roger used some of his Bitcoin holdings, which had gone up in value thousands of times, to make a $1 million donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that had been started by a former Cypherpunk to defend online privacy, among other things. (page 270)
Actually, Ver donated $1 million worth of bitcoins to FEE, the Foundation for Economic Education not EFF.
But over time the two Vals kept more and more of the computers for themselves and put them in data centers spread around the world, in places that offered cheap energy, including the Republic of Georgia and Iceland. These operations were literally minting money. Val Nebesny was so valuable that Bitfury did not disclose where he lived, though he was rumored to have moved from Ukraine to Spain. And Bitfury was so good that it soon threatened to represent more than 50 percent of the total mining power in the world; this would give it commanding power over the functioning of the network. The company managed to assuage concerns, somewhat, only when it promised never to go above 40 percent of the mining power online at any time. Bitfury, of course, had an interest in doing this because if people lost faith in the network, the Bitcoins being mind by the company would become worthless. (page 330)
While the two Val’s did create Bitfury, I am fairly certain the scenario that is described above is that of the GHash.io mining pool (managed by CEX.io) during the early summer of 2014. At one point in mid-June 2014, the GHash pool was regularly winning 40% or more of the blocks on several days. Subsequently the CIO attempted to assuage concerns by stating they will make sure their own pool doesn’t go above a self-imposed threshold of 40%.
Probably overhyped:
I spent some time discussing this use-case in the previous review:
On Patrcik Murck: “But he was able to cogently explain his vision of how the blockchain technology could make it easier for poor immigrants to transfer money back home and allow people with no access to a bank account or credit card to take part in the Internet economy.” (page 235)
I think Yakov Kofner’s piece last month outlines the difficult challenges facing “rebittance” companies many of whom are ignoring the long term customer acquisition and compliance costs (not to mention the cash-in/cash-out hurdles). That’s not to say they will not be overcome, but it is probably not the slam dunk that Bitprophets claim it is.
The notion that Bitcoin could provide a new payment network was not terribly new. This is what Charlie Shrem had been talking about back in 2012, and BitPay was already using the network to charge lower transaction fees than the credit card networks.” (page 272)
Temporarily. The problem is, after all the glitzy free PR splash in 2014, there was almost no real uptake. So the sales and business development teams at payment processors now have a difficult time showing actual traction to future clients so that they too will begin using the payment processors. See for instance, BitPay’s numbers.
For example, on page 352 the author notes that:
It might have just been the exhaustion, but Wences was sourly dismissive of all the talk about Bitcoin’s potential as a new payment system. He was an investor in Bitpay but he said that fewer than one hundred thousand individuals had actually purchased anything using Bitpay.
“There is no payment volume, ” he scoffed. “It’s a sideshow.”
Payments again:
“But in interviews he emphasized the more practical reasons for any company to make the move: no more paying the credit card companies 2.5 percent for each transaction (the company helping Overstock take Bitcoin, Coinbase, charged Overstock 1 percent)…”
“This was attractive to merchants because BitPay charged around 1 percent for its service while credit card networks generally charged between 2 and 3 percent per transaction.” p. 134
While I have no inside knowledge of their specific arrangement, I believe the promotional pitch is 0% for the first $1 million processed and 1% thereafter. Overstock processed about $3 million last year. And the BitPay fee appears to be unsustainable (see my previous book review on The Age of Cryptocurrency as well as the BitPay number’s breakdown).
Probably not true:
The potential advantages of Bitcoin over the existing system were underscored in late December, when it was revealed that hackers had breached the payment systems of the retail giant Target and made off with the credit card information of some 70 million Americans, from every bank and credit card issuer in the country. This brought attention to an issue that Bitcoiners had long been talking about: the relative lack of privacy afforded by traditional payment systems. When Target customers swiped their credit cards at a register, they handed over their account number and expiration date. For online purchases Target also had to gather the addresses and ZIP codes of customers, to verify transactions. If the customers had been using Bitcoin, they could have sent along their payments without giving Target any personal information at all. (page 289)
In theory, yes, if users control their own privkey on their own devices. In practice, since most users use trusted third parties like Coinbase, Xapo and Circe, a hacker could potentially retrieve the same personal information from them; furthermore, because some merchants collect and require KYC then they are also vulnerable to identity theft.
For instance,
What’s more, Coinbase customers didn’t have to download the somewhat complicated Bitcoin software and thew hole blockchain, with its history of all bitcoin transactions. This helped turn Coinbase into the go-to-company for Americans looking to acquire Bitcoins and helped expand the audience for the technology. (page 237)
That’s a silo-coin. Useful and helpful to on-ramping people. But effectively a bank in practice. Why not just use a real bank instead?
The more you know:
I thought the short explanation of hashcash on page 18 was good.
Was a little surprised that Eric Hughes was mentioned, but not Tim May.
On page 296, Xapo raised $40 million at a $100 million valuation in less than a couple months and on page 306, was banked by Silicon Valley Bank (which Coinbase also uses).
The Dread Pirate Roberts / Silk Road storyline that Popper discusses is upstaged by recent events that did not have a chance to make it into the book. This includes the arrest of a DEA agent and Secret Service agent who previously worked on the Silk Road case for their respective agencies.
In addition, ArsTechnica recently published an interesting op-ed on the whole trial: Silk Road film unintentionally shows what’s wrong with the “Free Ross” crowd.
On Roger Ver potentially selling his stake in Blockchain.info:
“Roger was constantly getting entreaties from venture capitalists who wanted to pay millions for some of his 80 percent stake in the company. “(p. 330)
In October 2014, after the book was completed, Blockchain.info announced that it had closed a $30.5 million round, half of which was raised in bitcoins.
Germane citation:
An academic study in 2013 had found that 45 percent of the Bitcoin exchanges that had taken money had gone under, several taking the money of their customers with them (page 317)
The citation comes from an interesting paper, Beware the Middleman: Empirical Analysis of Bitcoin-Exchange Risk by Tyler Moore and Nicolas Christin
Federated blockchain:
This JPMorgan group began secretly working with the other major banks in the country, all of which are part of an organization known as The Clearing House, on a bold experimental effort to create a new blockchain that would be jointly run by the computers of the largest banks and serve as the backbone for a new, instant payment system that might replace Visa, MasterCard, and wire transfers. Such a blockchain would not need to rely on the anonymous miners powering the Bitcoin blockchain. But it could ensure there would no longer be a single point of failure in the payment network. If Visa’s system came under attack, all the stores using Visa were screwed. But if one bank maintaining a blockchain came under attack, all the other banks could keep the blockchain going.
While the The Clearing House is not secretive, the project to create an experimental blockchain was; this is the first I had heard of it.
Concluding remarks:
I had a chance to meet Nathaniel Popper about 14 months ago during the final day of Coinsummit. We chatted a bit about what was happening in China and potential angles for how and why the mainland mattered to the overall Bitcoin narrative.
There is only so much you can include in a book and if I had my druthers I would have liked to add perhaps some more on the immediate history pre-Bitcoin: projects such as the now-defunct Liberty Reserve (which BitInstant was allegedly laundering money for) and the various dark net markets and online poker sites that were shut down prior to the creation of Bitcoin yet whose customer base would go on to eventually adopt the cryptocurrency for payments and bets (making up some of the clientele for SatoshiDice and other Bitcoin casinos).
Similarly, I would have liked to have looked at a few of the early civil lawsuits in which some of the early adopters were part of. For instance, the Bitcoinica lawsuit is believed to be the first Bitcoin-related lawsuit (filed in August 2012) and includes several names that appeared throughout the book: plaintiffs: Brian Cartmell, Jed McCaleb, Jesse Powell and Roger Ver; defendants: Donald Norman, Patrick Strateman and Amir Taaki. The near collapse of the Bitcoin Foundation and many of its founders would make an interesting tale in a second edition, particularly Peter Vessenes (former chairman of the board) whose ill-fated Coinlab and now-bankrupt Alydian mining project are worth closer inspection.
Overall I think this was an easy, enjoyable read. I learned a number of new things (especially related to the amount of large purchases in early 2013) and think its worth looking at irrespective of your interest in internet fun bux.
See my other book reviews.
End notes:
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It is not the policy of the Manassas City Police or the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office to authorize invasive search procedures of suspects in cases of this nature and no such procedures have been conducted in this case. Beyond that, neither the Police Department nor the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office discusses evidentiary matters prior to court hearings.
Click here to read the full Manassas Police statement.
Original post: Well, this is just horrible.
A 17-year-old Virginia boy facing two felony child pornography charges for sexting his then 15-year-old girlfriend says he is now fighting an attempt by prosecutors to take their own pictures of his genitalia as evidence — even if it means forcibly injecting him with drugs to induce an erection.
Yes, you read that correctly.
“The prosecutor’s job is to seek justice,’’ the teen’s lawyer, Jessica Harbeson Foster, told The Washington Post. “What is just about this? How does this advance the interest of the Commonwealth? This is a 17-year-old who goes to school every day, plays football, has never been in trouble with the law before. Now he’s saddled with two felonies and the implication that he’s a sexual predator. I don’t mind trying the case. My goal is to stop the search warrant. I don’t want him to go through that. Taking him down to the hospital so he can get an erection in front of all those cops, that’s traumatizing.’’
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Trey Simms told his family that police already took photos of his genitals against his will while in custody, but a magistrate approved a search warrant authorizing additional photographs, this time while the young man is aroused.
Boston.com is naming the juvenile suspect because he has publicly identified himself in other news reports. He has not commented on the case beyond confirming his identity.
Simms was reported to police by the mother of his then girlfriend, after she discovered the explicit video. The girl, who reportedly also sent along pictures of herself in the exchange, has not been charged with any crime.
“They’re using a statute that was designed to protect children from being exploited in a sexual manner to take a picture of this young man in a sexually explicit manner,’’ Carlos Flores Laboy, Simms’s guardian ad litem, told the Post. “The irony is incredible…as a parent myself, I was floored. It’s child abuse. We’re wasting thousands of dollars and resources and man hour son a sexting case. That’s what we’re doing.’’
Simms faces up to four years in prison and a potential lifetime as a publicly registered sex offender.Herb Hand moving from Penn State to Auburn
AuburnTigers.comÃÆ'¢Ã¢'¬- Auburn'shired Herb Hand as his offensive line coach Monday in a move that reunites the two friends who worked together on the No. 1-ranked offense in the country.Malzahn and Hand once shared the title as co-offensive coordinator at Tulsa, and they molded an offense there that was tops the nation two straight seasons. Now, Malzahn and Hand are together again after Hand agreed to leave Penn State after two years of serving as the offensive line coach and run game coordinator.Hand is replacing J.B. Grimes, who left to become offensive line coach at Cincinnati."My family and I are extremely excited to join the Auburn football family and be a part of a program with such great tradition and history," Hand said in a statement. "We're especially excited to rejoin Coach Malzahn and work with him again. It was an opportunity that was way too good for us to pass up. I want to thank Coach James Franklin and the Penn State football program for two great years and I wish them nothing but the best moving forward."Malzahn and Hand worked together at Tulsa in 2007 and 2008. Malzahn called the plays. Hand coached the offensive line."I'm excited to be teaming up with Coach Hand again after working together for two years at Tulsa where we were very successful offensively," Malzahn said. "He's a wonderful person and coach, and we're glad to welcome him to Auburn."Malzahn has hired four coaches since the end of the season, and all of them with SEC coaching experience. Hand was offensive line coach and run game coordinator at Vanderbilt in 2010-12. Malzahn has also hired SEC veterans, as his defensive coordinator; Wesley McGriff, as his secondary coach and co-defensive coordinator; and, a former Auburn player, graduate assistant and defensive analyst.Malzahn wished Grimes well."I want to thank J.B. Grimes for his hard work and dedication the last three years at Auburn. He is a true professional and a big-time coach. We wish him and his family nothing but the best with his new job."2014-15 - Penn State (run game coordinator/offensive line2013 - Vanderbilt (offensive line/run game coordinator)2010-12 - Vanderbilt (offensive line)2009 - Tulsa (assistant head coach/offensive coordinator/offensive line)2007-08 - Tulsa (co-offensive coordinator/offensive line)2001-06 - West Virginia (tight ends/recruiting coordinator)1999-2000 - Clemson (offensive graduate assistant)1997-98 - Concord College (defensive coordinator/special teams)1994-96 - Glenville State College (defensive coordinator1991-93 - West Virginia Wesleyan (defensive graduate assistant)Charles Goldberg is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: Follow @AUGoldMineEvery medical student dreads the USMLE Step 1, and for good reason. Step 1 scores are commonly cited by residency programs as one of the most important (if not THE most important) factors that they consider when ranking applicants. Doing well on this exam can mean the difference between matching into the program of your dreams and having to scramble into a program hours away from friends and family in a specialty you hate. That’s why it’s important to have a USMLE Step 1 Study Schedule to keep you focused and on track to perform your best.
The difference between a good and a poor student is the result.
- ETC Wanyanwu
After the end of the second year of medical school, most programs leave a 4-6 week gap in the schedule before you start clinical rotations. The gap is commonly referred to as your “dedicated” time, which is typically… you guessed it… dedicated to focused study for Step 1. This month and half is filled with long days spent in the library or cramped in study rooms. Many medical students burn out during during the focused study period, and can even develop depression due to the isolation and stress involved. The best way to combat the study fatigue and stress is to enter with a plan.
Why you should have a USMLE Step 1 Study Schedule:
I’m a big believer in breaking up your goals into achievable pieces. To-Do lists, schedules, task lists, whatever. When I was a collegiate athlete, I would never have been able to be consistent in my training without a pre-defined workout schedule. Our coach would put together personalized weekly, monthly, and quarterly training schedules for each member of our team. Each schedule was tailored to focus on each individual’s weaknesses. My personal training plan was a key element in my success, and I have continued to use similar methods throughout my training.
The most common complaints I hear from students during their dedicated period involve study anxiety. Manifestations of study anxiety vary widely, but are usually associated with fixation on question bank performance or loss of focus. Many students do poorly on a block of questions and are then paralyzed by their fears of poor performance. All studying stops, sometimes for an entire day! Other students burn out after three to four weeks and find themselves unable to focus on the material. Half hour lectures take two hours to complete. Untimed blocks of questions drag on for hours… It’ll happen to almost every student at some point during their dedicated study.
The value of a USMLE Step 1 study schedule lies in keeping you out of study paralysis. You always know what you need to accomplish every day. Even when you bomb a UWORLD block (and it’s a when, not an if), you know that you need to finish a certain number of flashcards or Pathoma lectures before you are done.
Things to know before making your Step 1 Study Schedule:
Before you make a USMLE Step 1 study schedule, you need to have a few details nailed down. Most importantly, you need to have a test date. I know, it’s very hard to plan 5-6 months out and pick a date for the most important exam of your life. There will always be drawbacks, and there is no magical day that is better than any other. You need to just bite the bullet and pick a date.
After picking a date, you need to decide which resources you’re going to use. There’s are way too many resources out there to go over here, but we have already gone over some of the most popular ones on our first year medical school guide. [link] I am going to assume that you will be at least using UWORLD, FistAid for the USMLE, and Pathoma. For more information about different resources, check out our First Year Medical School Guide.
Finally, you need to decide on how many NBME practice tests you are planning on taking. We recommend taking at least 3 over the course of your study. Typically, the more recent exams (NBME 15 and 17 etc) are considered the most accurate examples of what your exam will feel like. If you are an Osteopathic student, you will likely want to take a practice NOBME test or two as well.
Once you have your date set, resources chosen, and know how many practice tests you want to do, it’s time to make your USMLE Step 1 study schedule.
How to make your Step 1 study schedule:
I used Microsoft Excel to make my schedule, but you can use Google Sheets or do whatever you want. You could even put individual post-it notes on a calendar if it makes you feel better to take them down. For all of the planning I am assuming you are taking 6 weeks of dedicated study.
1. Figure out how many days you have until the exam.
We recommend a minimum of 4 weeks of hardcore study. If your school schedule allows for it, I personally found 6 weeks to be the upper limit of what I could tolerate. After five weeks of 8-12 hours of daily review, you start to plateau. You want enough to time to just reach your plateau without backsliding. Count the number of days you will have to study and number the rows in your spreadsheet accordingly.
2. Block off special days:
Completely block off the day before your exam. Even if you end up wanting to study a little, you should only be reviewing a few notes or lightly going over UWORLD explanations. By this time you should have finished and reviewed ALL UWORLD questions, and be done with your other resources. You will want this day to zone out or go outside.
I’d also recommend blocking off one other full day off 5-7 days prior to your exam. You will be reaching your burn-out threshold and will need a mental health day. Again, even if you don’t use this off day, you will be glad for the catch up time.
3. Assign your practice tests to specific days
If you are taking 3 practice tests, we recommend taking one after your first week of review to get a baseline. Take your second after week 4, and take your last test 3-5 days before the real exam. Don’t plan anything else on those days, as it will take 6-7 hours at a minimum to take the exam and review the wrong answers. It doesn’t really matter what tests you take, but we recommend taking the most recent one (NBME 17 when I was a wee second year) just before the real deal.
4. Decide on how many hours a day you plan to study
The knee-jerk reaction when making a study schedule is to plan on 8+ hours a day, everyday. On paper, 6AM-6PM with a little passive review from 9-10PM before bed sounds reasonable when preparing for the most important exam of your career. I mean, theoretically this results in the most study time right?
Overscheduling yourself is an easy way to create even more stress when you inevitably fall behind. The biggest strength of my USMLE Step 1 Study Schedule was not planning on more work than I could handle.
We highly recommend not planning on studying for more than 6-8 hours a day, broken up into two 3-4 hour blocks. That way, if you get through the material and have energy/motivation left over, then great! You can keep studying. However, you will find that by week 2 or 3 motivation will be in short supply, and what you think will take 6 hours may take 9.
Additionally, I recommend planning one light day every week (~4 study hours, a.k.a two UWORLD blocks with review). I usually used my light day to catch up if I fell behind that week, and to do any errands that needed to be done. In my sample schedule you will also see a few days dedicated solely to catching up. Every single one was used for that purpose.
5. Divide up your resources.
Figuring out exactly what you are going to do every day is the most tedious part of making a Step 1 study schedule. I figured out which resources I felt were the most useful to me and then split them up based on priority. For example, I felt (and still feel) that the UWORLD question bank is the #1 best thing you can do to prepare for Step 1. Each blocks of 42 questions was assigned to a specific day on my schedule, numbered 1-59(ish). Most days I planned on doing at least one block, with a maximum of two blocks per day.
I then did the same thing for Pathoma videos, and continued to move down my priority list until I ran out of time. The key here is to not overplan. Make every day’s goals achievable, even if it means having extra time at the end of the day. Remember to go easy on your light days.
6. Make your USMLE Step 1 Study Schedule look good.
I color coded my list by week, and highlighted my important days (such as practice tests and the actual step 1. If you’re gonna print out and keep something, might as well make it pleasant to look at. Just kidding, looking at that piece of paper will never be anything other than stressful.
Sample Schedule:
All right, time for the example. As promised, I have included a picture of my USMLE Step 1 study schedule with a link to a google-drive version that you can access. You will not be able to edit the document on the drive, so copy and paste it into your own spreadsheet.
Click here or on the image to access the google sheets version
Do you have any tips for Step 1 Studying? What are your tricks to keep yourself on task? Let us know in the comments!Our recipe of the day is a real treat. Bifes Panados are an unbelievably delicious Breaded Fried steaks made Portuguese style. Whenever my mother would make me these wonderful steaks, it would be a great day. The bursting flavor of the garlic and olive oil in combination with some golden fried breaded steaks can not be described to the full effect in words, you must experience this one yourselves.
Ingredients:
22 oz. or 4 steaks of (Pork, Beef, Veal, or Chicken)
Salt to taste
3 Cloves Garlic
2 Bay Leaves
Piri Piri (Hot sauce) to taste
Lemon Juice to taste
1/2 cup Bread Crumbs
2 Eggs
8 Tablespoons Olive Oil
Directions:
1) Cut the steaks very thinly and season them with salt, chopped garlic, bay leaf, hot sauce and lemon juice to taste.
2) Marinate for a 2-3 hours.
3) Beat the eggs into a smooth consistency
3) Dip the steaks in half the bread crumbs, then dip the steaks in the beaten eggs, then dunk the steaks in the rest of the bread crumbs.
4) Fry the steaks in a pan of olive oil until they reach a golden brown color.
5) Serve them while hot and enjoy!Wednesday Mailbag: ESPN2, Ring of Fire, World Games
Some fun topics this week.
It’s a scorcher today in New York, so I stayed inside and opened up some reader mail.
ASK ME QUESTIONS/SEND ME COMMENTS: Email (charlie@ultiworld.com) or Twitter.
***
Q: Ultimate is set to get its first shot on ESPN2 in a couple weeks at the US Open. What do you think about the decision to put the Mixed final on the air?
– Anonymous
A: It was the safe choice, but it was the wrong choice.
USA Ultimate has taken a great deal of heat over the last few years — some of it deserved, some not — for their decisions about livestreaming, particularly in relation to gender balance in the coverage. They have wisely fought for more equal coverage in their latest three-year deal with ESPN, which guarantees 17 live games from each of the three Club divisions over the life of the contract.
Yet ESPN almost certainly advocated for showing the Men’s Final on ESPN2 in Sunday East Coast primetime. The reason is quite simple: Men’s Division games vastly outdraw Mixed and Women’s games in the ratings department. The difference is stark and has been for years.
USAU convinced ESPN to show the Mixed final instead.
A lot of people are really happy about that decision because of the opportunity to showcase men and women together on the field. And USAU would likely have been crushed by a lot of ultimate players online if they were to put the Men’s game on ESPN2.
They should have made the hard decision.
This is an incredibly important opportunity for ultimate. This is without a doubt the biggest broadcasting opportunity the sport has ever had. Getting live coverage on ESPN2 — a staple cable channel available in over 85 million households — is a huge deal. And the fact is that any future opportunities to be on ESPN or other sports cable networks will be determined by ratings, pure and simple.
For this first broadcast, you have to put the game on that offers you the best chance to maximize your ratings. The deal includes ESPN2 broadcasts from the US Open for each of the next three years, so you can rotate in both the Mixed and Women’s divisions in 2018 and 2019.
But who knows what could change from now until then? Maybe the ratings end up being better than expected and you’re able to tear up the current contract and sign a better one. Maybe ESPN2 decides to pick up the finals from the College Championships.
Future television opportunities could be a massive driver of growth for the sport. Hundreds of thousands of people could be exposed to the game that may have never even heard of it before. That means growth for every level, every division, every gender. So the media strategy absolutely has to take into consideration the raw numbers — and by extension the raw dollars.
You can certainly argue that ultimate’s relatively tiny viewership base means that the ratings difference between Men’s, Mixed, and Women’s is trivial when it comes to the kind of numbers ESPN2 typically draws. That is possible.
But I think that you have to find every edge to maximize the ratings for your first shot at a big time cable TV broadcast, and that means showing the Men’s final.
Q: Thanks for the great coverage of the Pro-Elite Challenge. Did any individual players stand out in Denver?
– Andrew C.
A: I mentioned a few players on the podcast as playing particularly well, including Sarah “Surge” Griffith for Seattle Riot and Matthew “Rowan” McDonnell for Washington DC Truck Stop. But I’ll expand on a few others here.
Shira Stern (Riot)
I think Shira Stern is Riot’s best player right now behind Surge. She has just gotten better and better as an offensive playmaker. There are few players who have a nose for the endzone like Stern. You could make the case for someone like Jaclyn Verzuh as a more versatile, two-way player, but I think Stern’s value is so high for their offense that she should be recognized.
Johnny Bansfield (High Five)
Everyone has long marveled at Johnny Bansfield’s tremendous throwing ability, but it may be time to start talking about him as one of the game’s very best defenders. He made our Top Defenders list in the 2015 club season, so it’s not like this is some new revelation. But his defense has taken steps forward since then. Go watch the tape of High Five against Johnny Bravo (available for Full and Plus subscribers). He takes the Jimmy Mickle matchup a fair amount. Watch him as he guards Mickle with his back to him, watching the disc. This isn’t “head on a swivel;” it’s full-on guarding while being optimally prepared to poach or react to the thrower. It’s some next level stuff.
Kami Groom (Brute Squad)
How Kami Groom didn’t make the World Games final roster is just…I don’t get it. Crazy speed. The anchor for the Brute D-line that remains the best in the Division. Nightmare cover when she’s on offense. I guess Sandy Jorgensen “took her spot” ins much as there is a spot to take? Anyway, she remained a killer at Pro-Elite as Brute ran roughshod over everyone including Riot and Fury.
Harper Garvey (PoNY)
Harper Garvey’s star keeps rising. The creative and dangerous thrower is likely to feature heavily in PoNY’s improved offense this season. A number of opposing players standing with me on the sideline of PoNY games said something to the effect of “Has PoNY figured out that Harper is their best player yet?”
Q: Now that Ring’s roster is out, what do you think of their chances this season?
– Bryan C.
A: So, let’s just take a look here. They add in two world class players in Brett Matzuka and Goose Helton. Most of the roster has been playing together during the AUDL season with the Raleigh Flyers and are currently ranked #1 in the league. They lose only role players.
This is a team that made semis last year at Nationals, almost shocked Revolver but lost on double game point, and has only gotten better. Yet they are also notorious for erratic play. Remember that they lost to PoNY in pool play, got smashed by Ironside, and snuck into prequarters with a 13-10 win over Prairie Fire. Then they stomped Machine in prequarters and stomped Truck in quarters before falling to Revolver.
So there is a real chance that they never really figure it out and flame out at Nationals. However, this is their best roster in quite a while. They have already proven to be a difficult matchup for some top teams like Revolver and Truck. I think no team presents as much of a threat to San Francisco’s coronation as Ring does (and that includes the 2016 champion Ironside).
Ring’s defense is scary. Justin Allen, Hunter Taylor, Terrence Mitchell, Tim McAllister, JD Hastings, Jacob Fairfax. They have a crazy amount of playmakers and athleticism. Sure, they won’t be as technically sound as a team like Revolver on defense, but they are not a D-line that you want to run into in a back alley.
They will get breaks on every team in the nation. The question will be how their O-line holds up. But with Jon Nethercutt, Helton, Jack Williams, and Brett Matzuka holding it down, it’s not exactly a thin lineup.
I love the roster and I love their chances. Revolver remains the clear favorite, but Ring represents a real threat.
Q: Any thoughts on the World Games?
– Sarah L.
A: I hope it’s exciting. It’s a rare opportunity to see the greatest players in the world take the field together with a small rotation. Obviously the United States will be the heavy favorite, especially with Japan missing their best male players. But it feels more competitive than it’s been in the past, and I think Canada, Colombia, and Australia will all be dangerous opponents. There’s not a lot of margin for error, either: the US opens the tournament against Colombia, a team that shocked them in the final of TEP, a warm-up tournament!
I do think the US will take home gold. The depth of talent, particularly of the women, will simply be overwhelming to other teams. While I think most countries will have players that can match up well from 1-3 against both the US men and women, it will be 4-7 where the USA is able to have a serious competitive edge.
Which team represents the biggest threat to the United States? It’d be easy to pick Canada, but I think Australia — where players are more familiar with playing Mixed — is my lean. The Aussies have one of the finest players in the world in Cat Phillips (sadly, her sister Michelle will not be competing) and a well-balanced roster that can physically match up with the US. The problem is that they don’t have their truly top 14 as a number of players either didn’t try out or withdrew from consideration. Still, I like their odds on getting into the gold medal game.
Lots more to come in our preview tomorrow.North Korean leader accepts invitation to take part in 70th anniversary parade, which would make it Kim’s first foreign trip since taking power
The leader of North Korea is among 26 world leaders who have accepted invitations to Moscow to take part in celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday.
North Korea hasn’t officially commented. It would be Kim Jong-un’s first foreign trip since taking power three years ago.
The highlight of the May 9 celebrations will be a military parade on the Red Square overseen by President Vladimir Putin, an annual event that will be expanded this year to include 15,000 troops, cadets and Cossacks, according to Russia’s defense minister.
Several western leaders have snubbed invitations to the military parade because of Russia’s role in the Ukraine conflict. But Lavrov said that some European leaders were still expected to come, including those from Slovakia, Norway, Greece and several Balkan nations.
German chancellor Angela Merkel is among those staying |
replace highly specialized algorithms and data structures in every domain, if they both deserve their place or if they shine if their complementary strengths are combined. Meanwhile the initial enthusiasm for Deep Learning in spelling correction has been followed by some disillusion.
The reason why they resorted to deep learning was what they perceived as the “abysmal” performance of the conventional spell-checking (which was estimated at ~0.1 seconds for spelling a short word).
While so far no correction performance and memory consumption for the deep learning approach were disclosed, I knew that spelling correction can be done much faster than the 0.1 seconds.
SymSpell, based on the Symmetric Delete spelling correction algorithm, just took 0.000033 seconds (edit distance 2) and 0.000180 seconds (edit distance 3) on an old MacBook Pro.
But then again, their approach was able to deal with more complex expressions like “Whereis th elove”!
SymSpell always expected a single input term and could not correct spaces inserted into a word or spaces missing between two words.
My curiosity was aroused and I decided to try if an additional algorithmic layer on top of SymSpell could deal with it.
SymSpellCompound
SymSpellCompound supports compound aware automatic spelling correction of multi-word input strings. It is built on top of SymSpell’s 1 million times faster spelling correction algorithm.
1. Compound splitting & decompounding
SymSpell assumed every input string as a single term. SymSpellCompound supports compound splitting / decompounding with three cases:
mistakenly inserted space within a correct word led to two incorrect terms mistakenly omitted space between two correct words led to one incorrect combined term multiple input terms with/without spelling errors
Splitting errors, concatenation errors, substitution errors, transposition errors, deletion errors and insertion errors can be mixed within the same word.
2. Automatic spelling correction
Large document collections make manual correction infeasible and require unsupervised, fully-automatic spelling correction.
In conventional spelling correction of a single token, the user is presented with spelling correction suggestions.
For automatic spelling correction of long multi-word text the algorithm itself has to make an educated choice.
Examples:
How it works
Individual tokens
The input string is split into tokens. Then the Symmetric Delete spelling correction algorithm is used to get suggestions for every token individually.
Combined tokens
Additionally, suggestions for every bigram (concatenated pair of consecutive tokens) are checked, but only if one of two consecutive tokens provides no suggestions or the best suggestion has an edit distance > 1.
The suggestion for the combined token are preferred, if suggestion(token1+token2).editDistance+1 < suggestion(token1).editDistance+suggestion(token2).editDistance
Split tokens
Additionally, all pairs of subterms from a token are generated, but only if that token was not combined, if the token consists of multiple chars and if the best suggestion of the token had an editDistance >0.
Dictionary generation
Dictionary quality is paramount for correction quality. In order to achieve this two data sources were combined by intersection:
Google Books Ngram data which provides representative word frequencies but contains many entries with spelling errors and SCOWL — Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists which ensures genuine English vocabulary but no word frequencies required for ranking of suggestions within the same edit distance.
Performance
0.0002 seconds / word
5000 words / second (single core on 2012 Macbook Pro)
Applications
Query correction (up to 26% of web queries contain misspelled terms),
Chatbots (e.g. Symptomate and Florence using SymSpell),
OCR post-processing,
Automated proofreading.
Frequency dictionary
The word frequency list was created by intersecting the two lists mentioned below. By reciprocally filtering only those words which appear in both lists are used. Additional filters were applied and the resulting list truncated to ≈ 80,000 most frequent words.
Blog Posts: Algorithm, Benchmarks, Applications
1000x Faster Spelling Correction algorithm
1000x Faster Spelling Correction: Source Code released
Fast approximate string matching with large edit distances in Big Data
Very fast Data cleaning of product names, company names & street names
Todo
If a spelling error is a valid word at the same time (e.g. message vs. massage) it is currently not corrected.
Word frequencies could be used for ranking, but sometimes the rare word might be the correct one in a given context.
Bigram probabilities could provide context, but often context does not come from consecutive terms but is hidden more distant in the text. Collecting and storing co-occurrence probabilities for all term combinations of the vocabulary within a sliding window might be prohibitive.
We could resort to grammar and sentence elements and SyntaxNet.
We could guess author's intent/reason for error by exploiting keyboard proximity, phonetic proximity and authors past personal vocabulary preferences.
False positives can occur when correct, but unknown words are within editDistanceMax of other, known words.Review After years of complacency – and falling sales – Apple has transformed the iPad into something it should have been from the start: a proper computer.
iOS 11, which dropped Tuesday evening, only does a little bit for the iPhone, but a great deal for the iPad. It isn't too much of an exaggeration to say that a mature computer platform has just fallen out of a clear blue sky.
We knew this back in June after Apple's developer conference – normally a sleepy affair, but with the biggest news in almost a decade.
The iPad was Steve Jobs' final contribution to Apple history, and after his death Apple seemed terrified of changing it. The iPad made two promises: sit-back computing at home, and a new kind of mobile productivity tool. But it didn't really keep either promise. It killed off the netbook category pretty rapidly, but then... nothing.
Apple has been phoning it in for the past few years. When it rushed out a smaller iPad in response to a Kindle-induced panic, it used ancient hardware and didn't scale the UI appropriately – leaving tiny tabs in Safari, for example.
So the iPad remained essentially a picture frame that ran apps. And perhaps unsurprisingly, people weren't in a rush to upgrade their Apple picture frame on a regular basis... Because it was still a picture frame with apps.
I've had just two iPads in more than seven years. They spend their time gathering dust. Given the lack of use, I wouldn't have one at all if the school didn't insist that children do assignments on them. All that excitement about "second screening" that the iPad helped generate passed it by. TVs and phones got better, while the iPad stayed the same. People now "second screen" largely from phones that have got much bigger than the 3.5-inch display models of 2010.
In June, at its biggest developer conference in a decade, Apple changed that with iOS 11. It has also given the iPad hardware some long overdue attention. Rather than take iOS 11 through its paces on gleaming new hardware, I wanted to discover how it ran on just about the oldest iPad hardware compatible: the first Air, which is now four years old.
The biggest tweaks to iOS 11 are around making it much more computer-like. If you've tried using an iPad for "real work" with a keyboard cover, you'll know its major shortcomings: rotten multitasking, lack of keyboard shortcuts, and lack of a file manager. iOS 11 attempts to cure all three and adds a very ambitious new feature that harks back almost 30 years to a time when Object Oriented Computing was the rage. But more of that in a moment.
Taking iOS 11 through its pace
After dusting down the iPad Air and discovering the battery still held a charge, I set about the installation process. The 1.8GB upgrade took around half an hour, but your mileage may vary.
The iOS 11 welcome screen tells you about two new features: a revamped Dock and the swipe-from-the-bottom-and-hold. But such is the complexity of the addition, Apple will need to do a lot more in the way of tutorials.
Alas, some gestures don't run on older hardware: you'll need an iPad with 2GB of RAM to see them. But for the first time in eight years there's actually a positive incentive to upgrade. Some new additions in iOS 11 leave my first-gen iPad Air with only 1GB out in the cold, but part of the purpose of this exercise was to see how far I could get.
Multitasking has always been comically awful on an iPad, with a minor tweak introduced three years ago to allow apps to run as a side panel. Cue masses of confused users.
The Dock is now more like the Dock on macOS – namely, something that's trying to do two different things: launch apps and keep track of running apps. That was a huge criticism of Mac OS X for years, and the criticism only diminished because we realised nothing was going to change.
The Dock was previously restricted to five icons, now it takes up to 13 (in landscape mode), with recently used apps tacked to the rightmost three by default. This portion of the Dock can show other things instead, such as suggestions, or you can turn it off and use all the Dock space for your own choices.
The task switcher now brings up a space not only populated by running apps, but the revamped Control Centre too – a strange choice that leaves it looking messy. The Control Centre is pinned to the right, while running apps scroll off to the left – not something immediately obvious. But having surrendered the gesture used for invoking the Control Centre it now has to go somewhere. I prefer the older method.
With multitasking, the intentions are noble but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The problem comes from two similar but not quite identical things, with very ambiguous names: "Slide Over" and "Split View". The split-screen feature "Split View" is intended to make it easy to use two apps side by side. "Split View" is resizing an app down so another can run alongside it in 50:50 or 75:25 (or 25:75) ratios. But wait, what happened to the old view that was split? That's the Slide Over and, as the name implies, it's an overlay. Only now that sliding window is a floating window. So, you can turn a Slide Over pane into a Split View pane and vice versa. A further gesture allows you to replace apps squeezed into Split View.
Officially, iOS on the iPad Air, with its meagre hardware rations, only supports a half-hearted Split View, a kind of old-style Slide Over on steroids.
So confusion abounds.
If you drag an icon from the Dock it's supposed to open the app, position it on the right, and resize everything else nicely. But it's clunky – most of the time it just makes the icon disappear from your Dock. And you close a Slide Over app by dragging it offscreen to the right. I'm not sure who thought these gestures are intuitive – they probably weren't using an iPad Air – and who thought of using these elusive terms, which apply to both.
As one wise observer noted over 20 years ago: "Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked."
Or doesn't work. I welcome the new flexibility as a big leap forward, but not the implementation. Of course, I'm using a crappy subset of the features available to owners of newer iPads, but much of the vast installed base of iPads is older than two years, and it's going to be coerced into this upgrade. I suspect many will be clamouring for the older method. It would have been kinder to be "cruel" and deprive older hardware like mine altogether.
Finally, Files
I've no complaints with the Files, the new file manager. After so many years where apps had to implement a pseudo file system in a database, it's long overdue. Files automatically finds apps (such as Dropbox or your NAS server app) which use their own cloud or local file system. It doesn't turn them all on by default – you'll have to do that yourself.
"Send to File" now appears as a destination in other apps.
Now you may be wondering what's the big deal here. It isn't really the task juggling, although that's nice when it works. It's drag and drop. Given sufficiently modern iPad hardware, drag and drop in iOS 11 is really what turns it into a modern computer.
Objects are back, OLE!
Remember IBM's paperless Workplace office? And all those demos of Bento and OLE from the early 90s? If you don't, it's hard to relate how "the end of apps" was such a big deal at the time. Of course it came to nothing. Big apps companies didn't like the idea of chopping themselves up into soup ingredients and selling features individually. Commercial business apps had huge ecosystems of add-ons (particularly Lotus 1-2-3) and didn't fancy the expense and chaos of this wonderful new object-oriented world.
The world woke up one day and realised Microsoft was not the only game in town, that "objects" were really crappy, and it would all get absolutely nowhere. And the internet had happened: it was a new Gold Rush for software developers. You didn't need to wrap your head around this.
Well, iOS 11 is a bit like those old OLE or CORBA or Bento demos, but it works. You can drag and drop files, pictures, and URLs and the receiving application deals with the relevant data type. It works for multiple items. I said "sort of", since it doesn't try to do anything clever with the data, like set up a fancy IPC pipe between the sender and the receiver. (Microsoft sold OLE almost entirely on the lure of live stock price updates piping into Excel, or from Excel from Word). But conceptually and practically it's a big leap forward. I expect to see more of this.
This is why it isn't an exaggeration to say we've woken up to a "new computer platform" today. Until Tuesday, the iPad was a picture frame. Now it's a wannabe computer. In the case of older hardware, however, it might be neither. ®
Bootnote
I hesitate to draw conclusions on performance after a few hours. Background processes are reindexing content, and you expect a few bumps before things settle down. But, er... 12 seconds to open the Kindle app?Melting Antarctic glaciers that are large enough to raise worldwide sea level by more than a meter are dropping a Mount Everest's worth of ice into the sea every two years, according to a study released this week.
A second study, published Thursday in the journal Science, helps explain the accelerating ice melt: Warm ocean water is melting the floating ice shelves that hold back the glaciers.
The two new pieces of research come as officials of the World Meteorological Organization announced Wednesday that 2014 is on track to be the warmest year on record.
Scientists have long worried that the West Antarctic ice sheet is a place where climate change might tip toward catastrophe. The ice sheet holds enough water to raise sea level by 16 feet (5 meters). The region along the Amundsen Sea is the sheet's soft underbelly, where the ice is most vulnerable. (See "Rising Seas" in National Geographic magazine.)
Earlier this year, researchers at the University of California, Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported that the glaciers flowing into the Amundsen Sea—notably the Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers—were already doomed to collapse, and at the current rate of melting would be gone in 200 years. A study released Tuesday by members of the same team, published in Geophysical Research Letters, confirms those troubling measurements with ones made by other researchers using a total of four different techniques.
The study shows that ice loss from the Amundsen Sea glaciers has accelerated sharply over the past two decades. Between 2003 and 2011 it averaged an eye-popping 102 billion metric tons every year. Mount Everest—rocks, ice, and all—weighs approximately 161 billion metric tons. (See also West Antarctica Glaciers Collapsing, Adding to Sea-Level Rise.)
The decline is driven less by melting on the surface or changes in snowfall, and more by a speeding up of the glaciers' journey to the ocean, the scientists concluded. In some cases, glaciers reached speeds of more than a third of a mile in a year as they approached the Amundsen Sea, where they either merge into a floating ice shelf, or fall into the water and become icebergs.
The momentum behind this moving ice means the glacier loss is unlikely to stop any time soon, said University of California, Irvine geophysicist Isabella Velicogna, one of the authors of the new study. Velicogna likened the process to a ball at the top of a hill. "Once you give the first push, the ball just keeps rolling," she said.
Warming Ocean, Melting Ice
The study published today in Science provides a reason why this conveyer belt of ice might be accelerating. A team led by oceanographer Sunke Schmidtko of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Germany found that the shallow waters in the Amundsen and nearby Bellingshausen Seas have been warming over the last three decades.
Warming ocean water has been a prime suspect for the decline of ice in the West Antarctic. Massive floating ice shelves there act like a cork, bottling up the ice sheets and glaciers behind them on land. Turn up the temperature in this water bath, and the ice shelves start melting faster, loosening the cork.
This study offers new clues about how that's happening. Merging a variety of data sets, along with their own observations, the researchers found that deep and relatively warm ocean water known as Circumpolar Deep Water has warmed at a rate of roughly.1 degree Celsius per decade (.18 degree Fahrenheit) since 1975 around most of the continent. That's thought to be tied to broader climate change that's pouring extra heat into the oceans, Schmidtko said.
At the same time, this warmer water has been shoaling, or rising closer to the surface, in many spots. In some cases it has risen more than 330 feet (100 meters ) in two decades, reaching depths of 1,000 feet (300 meters).
While one-tenth of a degree might not sound like much, it requires a tremendous amount of heat energy to warm that much water—and that heat can then help melt ice that comes in contact with the water, Schmidtko said.
How far that warmer water encroaches toward ice shelves varies around the continent, a difference that appears to be driven by the wind. As easterly winds blow counterclockwise around Antarctica, they create a current of cold water that acts like a wall, blocking much of the warmer water from getting up to the shallow ocean bottom beneath the ice, Schmidtko said. But those winds have shifted or weakened along the continent's western edge, making the current weaker and opening the door for warmer water to reach the ice. It's not yet clear what has caused this change, Schmidtko said.
He and his colleagues found worrying signs that the accelerated melting could spread to bigger glaciers elsewhere on Antarctica. Warm water in the southern Weddell Sea has risen from around 766 yards (700 meters) below the surface in the 1980s to approximately 383 yards (350 meters) after 2010, the scientists found. The ice shelves there connect to glacier systems more massive than the one in the Amundsen Sea. Melting there could cause sea levels to rise up to 10 feet (3 meters).
"If this shoaling rate continues, there is a very high likelihood the warm water will reach the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, with consequences which are huge," Schmidt said.
Current predictions of sea level rise may understate the risk because they don't accurately take into account this shoaling of warm water in the Antarctic, said Sarah Gille, an oceanographer at the University of California, San Diego, who wasn't involved in the study. "This is really driving at the core of our uncertainty about the future of places where people live around the coast," she said.About Mad Scientist Day Jr.
The Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society (SAACS) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham will be hosting its second annual Mad Scientist Day Jr. on May 16th, 2015 from 10:00 am - 4:00 pm in the UAB Chemistry Building. This free event allows elementary and middle school students in the Birmingham community to participate in over 30 hands-on chemistry experiments in order to promote an interest in science.
Whether you are looking for a fun way to spark your child's interest in science or just a fun weekend activity, Mad Scientist Day Jr. 2015 is perfect for you. This fun new experience will hopefully instill a love of learning in your little scientist.
Over 18 and interested in volunteering for this event? Email us at saacsatuab@gmail.com.Surf guide, boat skipper, explorer, tube-snatcher!
What do you call a good job nowadays? A doctor, who earns his bread by foraging around in the putrid holes of humanity? A lawyer, so well-paid, but tied to a job that is menial and tedious?
For a cat like Eric Soderqvist, who set up shop as a 27-year-old boat skipper and surf guide in the Mentawais back in 2004, the concept of “good job” takes a sharp turn.
Eric, and his twin bro Jason, were scooped up by the surf explorer and entrepreneur Martin Daly when The Crossing came by the Turks and Caicos Islands where Eric lived. Eric ran the Indies Trader II for a time. Now he’s working part-time on what used to be called The Indies Trader IV but is now the Ratu Motu after it was sold to Quiksilver founder Alan Green for around five mill.
Eric ain’t rich but he’s got a bitchin’ 48-foot catamaran called Tank Girl. (Watch the movie below.)
He can fix any damn thing that breaks.
He can spin a laptop on his finger, walk on his hands across the entire helipad of the Ratu Motu (12 metres up) and then front-flip into the drink.
He can skipper a boat, whatever size you please around the world, navigate by the stars, stitch a wound (just ask Matt Biolos who was sliced from eyebrow to ear out there and got 19 stitches, including a few internals) and resuscitate a guest who’s gone overboard after several well-prepared cocktails.
And he can surf, man, can he surf.
On the deck of Tank Girl, as the sun peeled behind the horizon, and as Eric showed me star constellations in the equatorial sky using a green laser pointer, I asked Eric to brief me about his fabulous job.
Why work as a skipper out here?
You get a sense of freedom, it’s the wild blue yonder still. If I was working back in the western world, I’d be running some silly white boat, have all these epaulettes and kissing ass to all these people. One of the things, working on a surf charter, I can tell you, ‘Go you soft cock! Fucking go! Scratch! Bite Get into that thing! It’s It’s more salty out here.
How about change, how about crowds, how about the shifting goalposts in paradise?
Change comes everywhere, nowhere likes to see it change. It’s getting busier and we lose one of our secret waves every year. It’s good in a way, you see infrastructure, you see roads, so I’m not against it. It’s good for the people.
Gimme some advice on how to get a gig out here…
The first thing to do would be to get some sort of a captain’s license. It’s pretty easy to do. You need some type of skill. A lot of people want to come out and get barrelled, and I think that those are the guys that never last out here. If you’re a lifeguard or a medic or a captain or have some boating or engineering skills, there are always places for those people.
Tell me about sewing up the guests…
I’ve seen a lot of shit, basically, I do a lot of the sutures, even for a number of the boats. For my captain’s license I did a three-week course called Medical Person in Charge. I sutured fake arms, pretended to deliver babies. Spent a week riding around in an ambulance. I actually learned to suture, in the real world, from another skipper out here, Albert Taylor. A of the times we’ll have doctors on boardand pick up bits and pieces from those guys.
What about the time you stitched Matt Biolos back together?
Matt cut his head from the rail of his board from eyebrow to ear, 19 stitches, a couple of internal ones. I’d just helped do a really bad one on this boat. Fifty stitches, guy duck driving at Pit stops and he literally, pushed into the reef, broke his nose, half his skull was peeled off. Luckily, we had a doctor on board, and I wrote notes down on what he was doing. Matt was a year or two later. I had more confidence because of that bad one…
How would you describe your life? You work on the Ratu Motu, but you’ve got your dreamy cat just moored hither and yon whenever you want to split.
Yeah, if I don’t have a charter going I just get to play on my boat. Go surfing… try and get girls out…
Do you use the miracle of Tinder to recruit gals?
No Tinder, although I should be on it. Id say that, I’m getting creepier and creepier in all honesty. This year is the first I haven’t spent much time in Bali, lately, so my pool of girls is getting smaller and smaller…
Cruel! Y’ever taking this boat back to the Bahamas to run sunset tours?
If I even think of a sunset sail and drinking rum punch I throw up in my mouth a little. The monotony of it!
Raja Ampat from BeachGrit on Vimeo.
Want to die of travel lust? Eric Soderqvist, his twin bro, Jason, and two gal pals sail through the Raja Ampat islands in West Papua on his 48-foot cat Tank Girl. It’ll make you wanna dance!Conservatives are praising Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy speech as "one of her best," after she called Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, “dangerously incoherent” and suggested he should “never have the nuclear code.”
Clinton Bashes Trump In Foreign Policy Speech
Reuters: Clinton Highlighted “Her Approach To Foreign Policy” And “Lambasted” Trump In Speech. Hillary Clinton “lambasted” Donald Trump’s foreign policy proposals during a June 2 speech, according to Reuters. Clinton referred to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee as “dangerously incoherent” and “thin skin[nned].” Clinton also highlighted “her approach to foreign policy” as well as “her own experience as secretary of state.” From the June 3 Reuters report:
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lambasted Donald Trump's foreign policy platform as "dangerously incoherent" in a speech on Thursday that cast her Republican rival as both a frightening and laughable figure. In remarks that at times resembled a comedy roast, Clinton unleashed a torrent of polished zingers and one-liners to attack Trump's policies and character, suggesting Trump might start a nuclear war if elected to the White House simply because "somebody got under his very thin skin." [...] Amid the laugh lines, Clinton cited her own experience as secretary of state, in particular her role advising President Barack Obama during the mission to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, to suggest her approach to foreign policy was the more serious. "He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and picks fights with our friends, including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico and the pope," Clinton said, listing some of the allies with whom Trump has verbally sparred in the last year. [...] Clinton derided these and other positions, promising she would do a better job keeping the United States safe. Standing in front of a backdrop of 19 large U.S. flags, an unusual abundance even by the standards of presidential campaign events, Clinton painted the election as a choice between "two very different visions." "One that's angry, afraid and based on the idea that America is fundamentally weak and in decline," she said, summing up Trumpism. "The other is hopeful, generous and confident in the knowledge that America is great, just like we always have been." [Reuters, 6/2/16]
Conservatives Laud Clinton’s “Powerful” Speech
Wash. Post’s Jennifer Rubin: Clinton “Aptly Captured” Trump’s “Dangerous Combination Of Ignorance, Instability And Lack Of Impulse Control.” Washington Post conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin exalted the speech as “the best speech of her campaign, if not her career.” Rubin wrote that Clinton “aptly captured” Trump’s “ignorance, instability and lack of impulse control.” Rubin noted the speech should be a “comfort” to Republicans who refuse to vote for Trump. From the June 3 post:
Hillary Clinton’s speech in California on Thursday dissecting Donald Trump’s foreign policy was arguably the best speech of her campaign, if not her career. For one thing, she was relaxed, obviously enjoying going after Trump and his harebrained ideas. [...] She aptly captured the dangerous combination of ignorance, instability and lack of impulse control that we’ve come to see in Trump time and again. (“He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and picks fights with our friends – including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico and the Pope,” she recalled. “He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia.”) [...] In sum, her purpose was to paint Trump as a menace to the country and herself as an experienced, sober leader. She succeeded entirely with the former, and to the surprise of many of her critics, made a strong argument for the latter. That should be of comfort to the millions of Republicans and independents who cannot bring themselves to vote for Trump. [Washington Post, 6/3/16]
Commentary’s Noah Rothman: Clinton’s Speech Showed “A Deft Contrast With Her Republican Opponent.” Commentary editor Noah Rothman praised Clinton’s speech in a National Review article, calling her “a defender of the legacy of Ronald Reagan.” Rothman wrote her speech showed “a deft contrast” between Clinton and Trump, which “conservatives should take to heart.” From the June 3 article:
Hillary Clinton may seem an odd figure to serve as a defender of the legacy of Ronald Reagan, a champion of the honor of John McCain, and a critic of the economic prescriptions of Depression-era Democrats, but 2016 has been nothing if not surprising. [...] For Democrats who have spent the past seven years defending Barack Obama’s Keynesian economic interventionism and the efficacy of tariffs on Chinese tires, this attack on the Obama-style Democratic-party policies of the 1930s must have felt like a knife in the gut. Or, at least, it would have — had Clinton’s speech not struck such a deft contrast with her Republican opponent. Conservatives should take heart in the fact that Clinton’s advisers determined that the most effective way to present herself as the antidote to Trump was to sound like a Republican — at least, the kind of Republican that has been nominated to the presidency for the last 40 years. Gone was the hand-wringing about American post–Cold War supremacy. Her speech was bereft of self-indulgent pretentiousness about the sacred sovereignty of Iran or Guatemala, which were cruelly violated by Dwight Eisenhower’s CIA. Clinton’s speech was, by and large, a defense of America’s current role in the world and a pledge to maintain it through robust and preemptive action. [National Review, 6/3/16]
CNN Military Analyst Col. Peter Mansoor: “It Was A Very Powerful Speech.” CNN military analyst and retired Army Col. Peter Mansoor called Clinton’s foreign policy speech “powerful” and said it “reinforced [his] viewpoint,” and his decision to vote for her over Trump. From the June 2edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360:
ANDERSON COOPER (HOST): Colonel, let me start with you. You’re a lifelong Republican. You plan on voting for Hillary Clinton, should she win the nomination, largely because of Trump’s foreign policy acumen, or lack thereof. Did today’s speech by Clinton bolster your decision? COL. PETER MANSOOR: I think it reinforced my decision. She hit upon many of the points I’ve been making for the past couple of days and that I’ve been thinking about for the past six to nine months, the lack of temperament and character to hold the highest office in the land, his endangerment of our alliances and our allies around the world, his diminishment of America's moral standing with his stances on torture and bombing of civilians, and so forth, so I think it was a very powerful speech, and yes, it reinforced my view point. [CNN, Anderson Cooper 360, 6/2/16]
Fox’s Dana Perino: “It Was One Of Her Best Speeches.” Fox host and former press secretary for President George W. Bush, Dana Perino, praised Clinton’s speech as “one of her best.” From the June 2 edition of Fox News’ The Five:
GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): What did you make of it, Dana? DANA PERINO (CO-HOST): Well, agree with most of what's been said. Including with Juan. I thought it was one of her best speeches and I do think she had made the pivot to take Donald Trump on directly as he's been doing with her. He has the luxury of doing that because he was able to dispense of his opponents early on. She tried ridicule without malice, and she didn't yell. [...] PERINO: So this is, this is a speech to appeal to her base and to say this is how I would take Donald Trump on. And I thought if you're a Democrat, judging it by that standards, I thought it was a good speech. [Fox News, The Five, 6/2/16]
Townhall.com: “This Was A Very Tough Speech.” Townhall’s Guy Benson praised Clinton for portraying Trump as a “clownish punchline” and “know-nothing man.” Benson wrote that “this was a very tough speech” and predicted that it will be “fairly effective” with voters. From the June 2 article:
Her tone walked a fine line between serious, informed adult-in-the-roomism, and contemptuous "are you serious?" mockery of the presumptive Republican nominee. She framed her longtime friend and donor as a clownish punchline crossed with a know-nothing madman. Make no mistake, this was a very tough speech, and I suspect its construction and themes will be fairly effective -- and that we'll hear much more of this sort of material in the coming months. [...] As I said on the air, pounding away at Trump's foreign policy incoherence and whiplash-inducing shifting -- and that's what it is, on anti-ISIS ground troops, on ordering illegal torture, on the seriousness of the Muslim ban proposal, etc. -- is fair game for Hillary. These issues are in her wheelhouse, and they're substantive. Trump is allergic to substance. Peppering those criticisms with sharp jabs at his temperament would also be smart; polling shows that he's hugely vulnerable on that front. [Townhall.com, 6/2/16]
HotAir: Clinton’s “Indictment Of Trump” Was “Especially Bruising.” HotAir’s conservative blogger Allahpundit lauded Clinton’s “indictment of Trump,” which was “especially bruising.” The article called Clinton’s criticism of Trump “right,” noting that this is “not a minor thing to be right about.” From the June 2 post:
The indictment of Trump early on is especially bruising. [...] It’s easy to imagine Trump blustering his way into a standoff somewhere in which he’s forced to either act or lose face and concluding that a strongman simply can’t afford to lose face. She’s right, and it’s not a minor thing to be right about. Like I said last night, if Hillary manages to turn this election into a referendum on whom voters would rather see with their finger on the button, she wins in a waltz. Voters will take the crook over the hothead narcissist. The fact that she’s already hammering that point this early in the campaign means that it is likely to be part of her core message. [HotAir.com, 6/2/16]
The Federalist’s Tom Nichols: The Worst Part Of Clinton’s Speech Was “Having To Agree With Her.” The Federalist’s Tom Nichols wrote of Clinton’s speech in an op-ed for the New York Daily News, asserting that the “worst part” of the speech was “having to agree with her when she’s right.” Nichols wrote that her criticisms of Trump were “right” in that he “is not, in any way, qualified to be commander in chief.” Nichols said the speech made Clinton seem like “a far more plausible commander in chief” than Trump. From the June 2 article:
What’s the worst part of having to sit through a Hillary Clinton speech? Is it the smug delivery, the random adoption of cornpone accents, the attempts to mimic normal human reactions? No. It’s having to agree with her when she’s right. And in her speech on Thursday — one of her best in this campaign — she was right. Donald Trump is not, in any way, qualified to be the commander in chief of the United States of America. [...] Trump’s policies, as Clinton said, are not even policies. They are just a series of “bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies.” None of this will matter to Trump’s supporters, who think that sweaty-faced bellowing into a microphone is the same thing as a policy. But Clinton raised the one image that should give everyone else outside the Trump Cult serious pause: the idea of Trump in the White House Situation Room, “making life or death decisions on behalf of the United States.” [...] Clinton would never have been my choice for President. But when the alternative is a raging narcissist with impulse-control problems, the woman who spoke in San Diego on Thursday is a far more plausible commander in chief. And that’s all that matters now. [New York Daily News, 6/2/16]
National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke: “If Hillary Runs Like This She Will Win Big.”
If Hillary runs like this she will win |
square dance." Hall figures that it could take a team of experts as much as a half decade to come up with the first set of algorithms required for the most basic functions.
The utility fog will also be subject to physical limitations. At its strongest configuration, Hall predicts that it will be as tough as balsa wood. As an open lattice, the foglets will occupy only about 3% of the volume they encompass (hence the "fog" like appearance); locked in place, it will appear as a solid structure and exhibit a tensile strength of about 1,000 psi. And while the fog can be programmed to simulate most of the physical properties of any object, such as air and water, it won't be able to exhibit such characteristics as taste, smell, or complete transparency.
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As for other limitations, Hall noted that the utility fog will be unable to take on the form of hard metals (like a drill bit), anything requiring both high strength and low volume (like a parachute), or anything exhibiting high heat (such as a flame). Additionally, the fog won't be able to simulate food (or anything else destined to be broken down chemically).
And in terms of when we can expect utility fogs to make their appearance, Hall says it should come about in the neighborhood of around 2030 — but no later than 2040. "Any later than that," said Hall, "and I would be profoundly disappointed."
Top image via Victor Habbick/Shutterstock.com. Inset images: NanoTechNow, billet-deaux, Orion's Arm.Accountability. We hear a lot about it. It’s a buzzword. Politicians should be accountable for their actions; social workers for the children they are supervising; nurses for their patients. But there’s a catastrophic problem with our concept of accountability.
Baby P: the Untold Story is the anatomy of an establishment cover-up | Patrick Butler Read more
Consider the case of Peter Connelly, better known as Baby P, a child who died at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s brother in 2007. The perpetrators were sentenced to prison. But the media focused its outrage on a different group: mainly his social worker, Maria Ward, and Sharon Shoesmith, director of children’s services. The local council offices were surrounded by a crowd holding placards. In interviews, protesters and politicians demanded their sacking. “They must be held accountable,” it was said.
Many were convinced that the social work profession would improve its performance in the aftermath of the furore. This is what people think accountability looks like: a muscular response to failure. It is about forcing people to sit up and take responsibility. As one pundit put it: “It will focus minds.”
But what really happened? Did child services improve? In fact, social workers started leaving the profession en masse. The numbers entering the profession also plummeted. In one area, the council had to spend £1.5m on agency social work teams because it didn’t have enough permanent staff to handle a jump in referrals.
Those who stayed in the profession found themselves with bigger caseloads and less time to look after the interests of each child. They also started to intervene more aggressively, terrified that a child under their supervision would be harmed. The number of children removed from their families soared. £100m was needed to cope with new child protection orders.
Crucially, defensiveness started to infiltrate every aspect of social work. Social workers became cautious about what they documented. The bureaucratic paper trails got longer, but the words were no longer about conveying information, they were about back-covering. Precious information was concealed out of sheer terror of the consequences.
Almost every commentator estimates that the harm done to children following the attempt to “increase accountability” was high indeed. Performance collapsed. The number of children killed at the hands of their parents increased by more than 25% in the year following the outcry and remained higher for every one of the next three years.
Let us take a step back. One of the most well-established human biases is called the fundamental attribution error. It is about how the sense-making part of the brain blames individuals, rather than systemic factors, when things go wrong. When volunteers are shown a film of a driver cutting across lanes, for example, they infer that he is selfish and out of control. And this inference may indeed turn out to be true. But the situation is not always as cut-and-dried.
After all, the driver may have the sun in his eyes or be swerving to avoid a car. To most observers looking from the outside in, these factors do not register. It is not because they don’t think such possibilities are irrelevant, it is that often they don’t even consider them. The brain just sees the simplest narrative: “He’s a homicidal fool!”
Failure is inevitable in a complex world. The key is to harness the lessons as part of a dynamic process of change
Even in an absurdly simple event like this, then, it pays to pause to look beneath the surface, to challenge the most reductionist narrative. This is what aviation, as an industry, does. When mistakes are made, investigations are conducted. A classic example comes from the 1940s where there was a series of seemingly inexplicable accidents involving B-17 bombers. Pilots were pressing the wrong switches. Instead of pressing the switch to lift the flaps, they were pressing the switch to lift the landing gear.
Should they have been penalised? Or censured? The industry commissioned an investigator to probe deeper. He found that the two switches were identical and side by side. Under the pressure of a difficult landing, pilots were pressing the wrong switch. It was an error trap, an indication that human error often emerges from deeper systemic factors. The industry responded not by sacking the pilots but by attaching a rubber wheel to the landing-gear switch and a small flap shape to the flaps control. The buttons now had an intuitive meaning, easily identified under pressure. Accidents of this kind disappeared overnight.
This is sometimes called forward accountability: the responsibility to learn lessons so that future people are not harmed by avoidable mistakes.
But isn’t this soft? Won’t people get sloppy if they are not penalised for mistakes? The truth is quite the reverse. If, after proper investigation, it turns out that a person was genuinely negligent, then punishment is not only justifiable, but imperative. Professionals themselves demand this. In aviation, pilots are the most vocal in calling for punishments for colleagues who get drunk or demonstrate gross carelessness. And yet justifiable blame does not undermine openness. Management has the time to find out what really happened, giving professionals the confidence that they can speak up without being penalised for honest mistakes.
In 2001, the University of Michigan Health System introduced open reporting, guaranteeing that clinicians would not be pre-emptively blamed. As previously suppressed information began to flow, the system adapted. Reports of drug administration problems led to changes in labelling. Surgical errors led to redesigns of equipment. Malpractice claims dropped from 262 to 83. The number of claims against the University of Illinois Medical Centre fell by half in two years following a similar change. This is the power of forward accountability.
High-performance institutions, such as Google, aviation and pioneering hospitals, have grasped a precious truth. Failure is inevitable in a complex world. The key is to harness these lessons as part of a dynamic process of change. Kneejerk blame may look decisive, but it destroys the flow of information. World-class organisations interrogate errors, learn from them, and only blame after they have found out what happened.
And when Lord Laming reported on Baby P in 2009? Was blame of social workers justified? There were allegations that the report’s findings were prejudged. Even the investigators seemed terrified about what might happen to them if they didn’t appease the appetite for a scapegoat. It was final confirmation of how grotesquely distorted our concept of accountability has become.Bernie Sanders speaks at the Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville last night. (Photo by Cassi Alexandra/For The Washington Post)
THE BIG IDEA:
GREENVILLE, S.C.—The crowd of 5,200 that came to see Bernie Sanders here last night was overwhelmingly white, and most were college students. That’s not the way to win a Democratic primary in South Carolina, where most voters will be older African Americans.
At his first rally after losing the Nevada caucuses to Hillary Clinton, the Vermont senator was introduced by a trio of black activists, including a local councilman, actor Danny Glover and former NAACP leader Benjamin Jealous.
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But Sanders’ biggest applause lines had nothing to do with criminal justice reform. They were for decriminalizing marijuana and free college. In a deeply religious region, he touted his promises of increased funding for Planned Parenthood and for three months of paid family leave to argue that he is the true candidate of “family values.”
-- Even strong supporters of Sanders, though, were quick to acknowledge Clinton will romp here on Saturday. The front page of The State newspaper today declares that she is "poised for redemption” after losing to Barack Obama in 2008.
-- Hillary’s Southern firewall is real, and Nevada suggested it will hold, despite the momentum Sanders got from his big win in New Hampshire.
Clinton won the African American vote three-to-one in the caucuses on Saturday, according to network entrance polls. An NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll last week put her ahead 68 percent to 21 percent among likely black voters in South Carolina.
With that in mind, consider that 55 percent of Democratic voters in the 2008 primary here were black. In both Alabama and Georgia, they accounted for 51 percent of the electorate. Their share was 48 percent in Louisiana, 30 percent in Virginia, 29 percent in Tennessee and 19 percent in Texas.
-- Jealous, who ran the NAACP from 2008 to 2013, acknowledged that it is an open question whether Sanders can peel away enough black voters from Clinton to become viable. “The hard part is getting beyond the Clinton brand,” he told my colleague John Wagner in an interview backstage at the event. “The Clinton brand is a bit like Coca-Cola. You know, it’s a Southern brand. Everybody knows it. It tastes good. The question you have to ask is: Is it the best option for you? … What is certain is Clinton has hit her high-water mark in the black community. The question is how far her support will fall [and] how fast.” Jealous told John he has been traveling to “the blacker parts” of South Carolina to campaign for Sanders, characterizing Greenville, the site of the rally, as “the whitest corner of the state.”
-- Jealous and the campaign insist that African Americans will defect from Clinton once they hear his message. But it ain’t necessarily so.
It is true that a third of black Democrats still don’t have an opinion of Sanders, according to national Gallup polling. But while 82 percent of this constituency views Clinton favorable, only 53 percent say they view Sanders positively.
And just getting in front of African American audiences does not mean he'll get their support. Yesterday morning, for example, Sanders stumped at a historically-black Baptist church outside the capital of Columbia. Multiple reports say he faced a tough crowd, and that his standard applause lines got crickets. Many seemed to ignore him as he talked.
Clinton, of course, is not about to cede this crucial constituency either. Her campaign's advertising and messaging seem almost singularly focused on mobilizing African Americans. Her top surrogate in South Carolina, Rep. James Clyburn, yesterday criticized Sanders’ higher education plan by arguing that it would have a “deleterious effect” on historically black colleges and universities. He said such schools “would not be able to compete” under Sanders’ plan. In that same vein, Hillary campaigned in Texas late Saturday night at a historically-black college.
-- Because of these demographic factors, Sanders will spend minimal time in South Carolina, choosing to focus instead on the 11 states that vote next Tuesday. He is in Massachusetts today and Virginia tomorrow.
-- But if Bernie is going to get blown out in the Palmetto State, how is he going to win in Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas or Tennessee on March 1? The short answer is that he probably won’t. He can hope to exceed expectations, and delegates are awarded proportionally. And he’ll have an incredible Super Tuesday if he beats Clinton in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, Oklahoma and his home state of Vermont. The senator said yesterday that he has “a good shot” in each of those five.
-- Yet while The Narrative has broken in Clinton’s favor, make no mistake: This race will drag on for awhile. Sanders’ fundraising ensures as much. After Super Tuesday, he plans to campaign in Nebraska, Kansas and Maine ahead of caucuses the following weekend. Michigan is the big prize on the following Tuesday, March 8. “We can have a big showdown in Michigan,” Sanders adviser Ted Devine told Karen Tumulty for a story on their strategy. “If we can beat her in Michigan, I think we can go into March 15 with a lot of momentum.”
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:
FBI Director James Comey (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
-- The battle between the Justice Department and Apple continues to escalate from the court of law to the public realm. It’s an epic test of strong wills, pitting the federal government against the country’s largest publicly-traded company. Seeing this as a potential boon for its sales, the tech giant has only become more steadfast in its refusal to help the FBI unlock the county-owned iPhone used by the male terrorist in the San Bernardino attack.
FBI director Jim Comey posted a public plea overnight, saying the nation owes victims a “thorough and professional investigation under the law.” The headline of his piece for the national security law blog Lawfare is: “We Could Not Look The Survivors in the Eye if We Did Not Follow this Lead.”
“We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist’s passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly,” Comey writes. “That’s it. We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land.”
Apple posted an open letter to customers defending its decision, saying cooperating would have "dangerous implications."
Meanwhile, former NSA chief Michael Hayden sided with Apple over the FBI, saying he opposes “back door” requirements on digital devices, according to USA Today.
And some of the San Bernardino victims will file a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the FBI over Apple, a lawyer representing the victims told Reuters.
Tony Blair (Reuters/Brendan McDermid)
-- Tony Blair and Leon Panetta are launching a commission on violent extremism that will aim to help the next U.S. administration counter radicalization among Muslims. "The soon-to-launch effort, which also hopes to guide European leaders, will unite experts to study extremist groups like the Islamic State and recommend ways to blunt their appeal among disaffected youth. It is being sponsored by the CSIS Commission on Countering Violent Extremism," Elise Viebeck scoops. "Commission organizers said they plan to produce a report by the end of July to coincide with the Republican and Democratic political conventions."
“We haven’t been very effective at developing a strategy to reduce the allure of extreme ideologies both at home and abroad, to understand what we can do to undermine this narrative that attracts so many recruits to violence,” the former CIA director said in a phone interview.
“Whoever is the next president is going to have to deal with this,” the former British Prime Minister said during an interview in Washington Sunday. “I want to produce a practical policy handbook … something that, if I was sitting in office today, would give me a comprehensive view of the different dimensions of this issue.”
-- Breanne Deppisch helped prepare this report.
GET SMART FAST:
The man accused of killing six people at random in a Kalamazoo, Mich., rampage, was an Uber driver. Authorities said he was driving passengers as soon as an hour before the attack and may have continued picking up fares during his four-hour spree of violence, which included killing four customers at a Cracker Barrel. (Mark Guarino, William Wan and Missy Ryan) …The incident raises questions about Uber’s background check system. A recent lawsuit alleged that the company does not actually check drivers against sex-offender registries or employ fingerprint identification. (Peter Holley) A recent spike of Guillain-Barre cases in Colombia could be caused by the Zika virus, prompting researchers to examine new and troubling manifestations of the mosquito-borne illness. (Nick Miroff) John Kerry and his Russian counterpart announced a “provisional agreement” for a temporary truce in Syria’s civil war that could start within days. Final details of the agreement will be ironed out by President Obama and Vladimir Putin in a phone call. “Among the unsettled issues are how a cease-fire would be enforced and how breaches would be resolved,” Carol Morello reports from Jordan. The vast majority of states have adopted Common Core, but individual states are still setting very different definitions of “proficient” on annual math and reading tests, one of the key problems the standards were created to address, according to a new study. (Emma Brown) A GAO report says the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency tasked with placing thousands of Central American children into communities while they await immigration court decisions, has virtually no system for tracking what happens to the kids. The Senate Judiciary Committee is going to hold a hearing tomorrow, including testimony from Obama administration officials. (Abbie VanSickle) London Mayor Boris Johnson declared his support for a British exit from the E.U., defying Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and potentially tipping Britain toward a vote to leave in June’s referendum. (Griff Witte and Karla Adam) At least 17 were killed in Tropical Cyclone Winston, a record-breaking storm that hit Fiji’s most populous island. The government has declared a 30-day state of emergency. (CNN) A Megabus went up in flames near Chicago. A New York Times travel reporter happened to be a passenger. (Colby Itkowitz) Facebook and Samsung have teamed up to create social interactions in virtual reality. (AP) …And speaking of groundbreaking technology, the tech industry will showcase its latest and greatest feats this week at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress. Among them: driverless cars, autonomous robots, and 5G wireless technology. (New York Times) Denny Hamlin won the closest Daytona 500 ever. (Cindy Boren) Taylor Swift donated $250,000 to fellow pop star Kesha, who is struggling to break her contract with a producer she says sexually assaulted her. (AP)
Ted Cruz speaks to supporters during a rally outside of Draft Picks Sports Bar yesterday in Pahrump, Nevada. (Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
-- Ahead of tomorrow’s Nevada caucuses, Rubio and Cruz are trying to win the expectations game: “There is less of a horse race underway and more of an argument about whose finish behind Donald Trump will be more impressive,” David Weigel reports from Pahrump, where Cruz addressed hundreds of supporters from the bed of a pick-up truck. “Both Rubio and Cruz have organized in the state, opened offices and hired staff members. Yet neither candidate was talking about a Nevada win.”
“Cruz, stumping in a county that had delivered a landslide 2012 win for Ron Paul, would say only that he needed to ‘do well here.’ Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), a Rubio endorser, crashed the rally to talk to reporters.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), a Rubio endorser, crashed the rally to talk to reporters. Rubio won 11th-hour endorsements from Sen. Dean Heller, plus Reps. Mark Amodei and Cresent Hardy. His surrogates are now trying to spin a third-place finish as a win, but Rubio’s strategists called Nevada a firewall last May. The senator lived in the state as a child, and he had briefly been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, strong among Nevada Republicans.
Rubio in Franklin, Tennessee, yesterday. (Reuters/Chris Keane)
-- Just like Sanders is looking beyond South Carolina, most of the Republicans are looking beyond the Silver State to Super Tuesday, when 535 delegates are up for grabs (1,237 are needed to become the GOP nominee). Neither Cruz nor Rubio argues that they’ll be able to beat Trump outright in the March 1 contests, but they’re hoping to secure enough delegates to stay in the game and position themselves as the strongest alternative to Trump. Philip Rucker and Robert Costa look at each candidate’s theory of the case:
Rubio wants to get delegates from congressional districts that are heavy on suburban and upwardly mobile, more moderate voters around Atlanta, Boston, Minneapolis and Nashville.
wants to get delegates from congressional districts that are heavy on suburban and upwardly mobile, more moderate voters around Atlanta, Boston, Minneapolis and Nashville. Cruz will focus on Southern states with disproportionately high numbers of white evangelical voters, as well as caucus states with arcane rules (Colorado and Minnesota) — because he thinks his devoted network of hard-line activists can be counted on to show up. He’ll also focus on winning his home state of Texas. If he tops 50 percent, the senator would get all 155 delegates. Two public polls last month showed him leading Trump but with way less than 50 percent.
will focus on Southern states with disproportionately high numbers of white evangelical voters, as well as caucus states with arcane rules (Colorado and Minnesota) — because he thinks his devoted network of hard-line activists can be counted on to show up. He’ll also focus on winning his home state of Texas. If he tops 50 percent, the senator would get all 155 delegates. Two public polls last month showed him leading Trump but with way less than 50 percent. John Kasich hopes to come away with delegates by targeting more moderate voters in Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia. The Ohio governor also plans a push in Tennessee, which strategist John Weaver said “has a history of electing problem-solving, common-sense Republicans.
hopes to come away with delegates by targeting more moderate voters in Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia. The Ohio governor also plans a push in Tennessee, which strategist John Weaver said “has a history of electing problem-solving, common-sense Republicans. "Arkansas has emerged as a key battleground. Rubio campaigned Sunday in Little Rock, and Cruz is targeting the state as well.”
Trump speaks in Atlanta last night. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
-- Today brings a fresh round of panic about Trump from leading Republicans:
This is the kicker of George F. Will’s column in the paper: “In 2011, Trump said he had dispatched investigators to Hawaii to unearth the sinister truth about Obama’s birth. He said, ‘They cannot believe what they’re finding.’ No one has seen his astonishing discoveries — or his tax filings, which might illuminate unsavory business practices and exaggerations of his wealth. He thrives by determining the campaign’s conversation. It is time to talk about his tax records.”
The wife of billionaire T.D. Ameritrade founder J. Joe Ricketts, Marlene, has contributed more than $3 million to an anti-Trump super PAC, USA Today reports.
PowerPost’s Kelsey Snell looks at some of the House Republicans who could get wiped out if Trump or Cruz wins the nomination. From Illinois, she hones in on moderate Bob Dold in the Chicago suburbs. “He has done what he can to separate himself from a hugely unpopular House majority,” she reports. “He was one of three Republicans to oppose a bill to defund Planned Parenthood, and voted to renew the Export-Import bank charter. But Democrats are happy to lump Dold with every other House hardliner who threatened to shut down the government... ‘The top of the ticket is going to have a significant impact for House and Senate races,’ said strategist Brian Walsh. ‘Members like Bob Dold and other moderates are the most vulnerable.’”
Supporters listen to Ben Carson during a town hall meeting in Reno yesterday. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
-- More developments in the presidential race—
Ben Carson is weighing whether to continue his White House bid, according to close friend and longtime business manager Armstrong Williams. (Robert Costa)
Trump has been consulting with Rudy Giuliani as he tries to build a political kitchen cabinet, Costa scoops. "Giuliani said there is a growing group of high-profile New York and Washington-based figures with deep GOP ties who are now in regular touch with Trump, quietly connecting his campaign with their own networks … And it underscores how the Republican establishment, which once firmly opposed his candidacy, is beginning to have warmer relations with the candidate, especially as his chances of clinching the nomination grow with each primary win. ‘I could easily list off some names for you,’ said Giuliani. ‘But that’s for Donald to say.’”
Cruz’s communications director apologized after erroneously claiming on Facebook that Rubio had “dissed the Bible” in front of a staffer who was reading it. (Justin Wm. Moyer)
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will endorse Rubio today.
Harry Reid will endorse after he returns to Washington. Seeking to avoid a “drama-free caucus” in his home state, the senator stayed neutral going into Saturday. It is impossible to envision the leader backing anyone but Clinton. (David Weigel)
Hillary, who has been making an active effort on the campaign trail to speak less in the first-person and more in The Royal We, explained yesterday that her goal is to convince Democrats she is not selfish. “I think there’s an underlying question that maybe is really in the back of people's minds, and that is, you know, is she in it for us or is she in it for herself? I think that's a question that people are trying to sort through,” the front-runner said on CNN. “I'm going to demonstrate that I've always been the same person fighting to make a real difference in people's lives. I know that I have to make my case."
WAPO HIGHLIGHTS:
Former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling leaves the Alexandria Federal Courthouse last January with his wife, Holly, after being convicted on all nine counts he faced of leaking classified material. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)
-- “He was fired from the CIA and jailed for a leak. Now he’s trying to hang on,” by Matt Zapotosky: “Locked away in federal prison, Jeffrey Sterling is struggling to keep his demons at bay. The [man] whose case came to signify the Obama administration’s crackdown on leakers concedes he feels low … He was a CIA officer, helping run an operation to sabotage Iranian designs for a nuclear weapon. Now he’s Inmate No. 38338-044 in Englewood, Colorado. Sterling was convicted of giving a journalist classified information about an operation targeting Iran’s nuclear program. The case was perhaps the greatest courtroom success of an administration that has pursued more leak cases than all of its predecessors combined, and one that could have lasting impact. A federal court ruled reporters had no protection against subpoenas to take the stand … giving prosecutors a powerful tool to force journalists to reveal their sources. Sterling said it left him feeling like a sideshow in his own criminal case. ‘There was no real concern that a life, a real person, was being persecuted.’”
-- “There’s the major media. And then there’s the ‘other’ White House press corps,” by Debra Bruno: “Standing at the very back of the James S. Brady Room, Patrick Gavin raises his hand to ask a question, then lowers it. And again … Press secretary Josh Earnest never calls on him. It’s routine for Gavin, an independent filmmaker. Say ‘White House press corps’ to most Americans, and they’ll think: major television networks; national newspapers. Maybe the AP and Reuters wire services. But every day, on the fringes of the 49-seat White House briefing room, another class of reporters shares elbow room, and equal access, with the big guns of journalism. Gavin’s colleagues in this group may include a courtly Indian gentleman whose newspaper doesn’t actually exist at the moment, a 71-year-old freelancer, an Uber driver, and a man who likes to tweet out photos of himself posing in the briefing room. One day in January, there was also a woman who slowly leafed through a book of poetry … Meet the ‘other’ White House press corps.”
Jeb tries to put on a positive face as he concedes defeat and announces the end of his political career on Saturday in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
-- The best autopsy on what happened to Jeb --> “Fall of the House of Bush: How last name and Trump doomed Jeb,” by Ed O'Keefe, Dan Balz and Matea Gold: “For Jeb’s campaign, August was a cruel month. Trump’s attacks as a ‘low-energy’ politician were beginning to stick. … Some advisers argued for an aggressive response, even to the point of challenging Trump to some kind of one-on-one confrontation. Others resisted, believing Trump’s candidacy was unsustainable, while some cautioned against getting ‘into a pigpen with a pig,’ as one adviser recalled. Others described it as ‘trying to wrestle with a stump.’ ‘There was no consensus,’ senior strategist David Kochel said of the discussions about how to combat the threat of Trump’s candidacy…
Beyond underestimating the anger in the electorate, three other problems led to Bush’s downfall.
The candidate and his team misjudged the degree of Bush fatigue among Republicans. “Aides said an internal poll conducted last fall showed discouraging news: Roughly two-thirds of voters had issues with Bush’s family ties. ‘Bush stuff was holding him back,’ said one aide who saw the polling data. ‘We obviously knew it was an issue, but even still, the gap between it and other issues — I don’t think we thought it would be that big.’ “Bush and his team miscalculated the role and power of money and traditional television commercials… “Bush ran a campaign that, whether deliberate or not, was rooted in the past, managed by loyalists who admired Bush and enjoyed his confidence but who, like the candidate, found themselves in unfamiliar political terrain.
How others followed the news—
Politico: “The problem, many say, is that there wasn’t anyone on the team who both recognized his shortcomings and was willing to point them out.”
“The problem, many say, is that there wasn’t anyone on the team who both recognized his shortcomings and was willing to point them out.” New York Times: “By far his biggest liability was a pedigree he could do nothing to erase or dilute: He was a Bush through and through, at a time when voters sneered at the political and economic establishment that his family name embodied.”
SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED READ:
Everyone is drawing big crowds:
Ben Jealous is warming up the crowd for Bernie in Greenville, SC. pic.twitter.com/sqzf6erPfX — James Hohmann (@jameshohmann) February 21, 2016
Only in Vegas: David Osmond, nephew of Donny & Marie, sings the national anthem ahead of Cruz's event in Henderson pic.twitter.com/FaamkZWE9n — Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) February 22, 2016
Trump headed for Nevada:
And he has support in Hollywood:
Just back from a dinner in West Hollywood: shocked the majority of the table was voting for Trump but they would never admit it publicly. — Bret Easton Ellis (@BretEastonEllis) February 21, 2016
And he's leading the GOP delegate count:
On Saturday, Trump retweeted a follower who said Rubio is not eligible to be president:
"@ResisTyr: Mr.Trump...BOTH Cruz AND Rubio are ineligible to be POTUS! It's a SLAM DUNK CASE!! Check it! https://t.co/NjqWP0pP6X" — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2016
Rubio nabbed an endorsement from Donnie Wahlberg of "New Kids on the Block." Notably, Donnie is married to Jenny McCarthy, "who has been so vocal about her stance against vaccinations (she says they caused her son’s autism) that she’s become the celebrity face of the controversial movement — and the focus of the backlash against it, with some casting her as a walking, talking public health threat," as Emily Yahy put it in an unrelated piece last year.
He also posted on Scalia:
Although I did not have the good fortune to get to know Justice Scalia personally, he had a profound impact on me. https://t.co/VXclxhzhXP — Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 21, 2016
The knives came out for Mike Murphy, who led Jeb's super PAC. CNN quoted an unnamed bundler saying that the consultant made a "minimum" of $14 million off the campaign. This led to criticism online and vigorous pushback from Murphy:
Completely untrue. Amazed CNN posted it. Said mystery "donor" should call me and get f#%*ing straightened out. https://t.co/pUeJVLUZnl — mike murphy (@murphymike) February 22, 2016
In an interview Sunday with The Post, Murphy offered this explanation for why Bush lost: “Our theory was to dominate the establishment lane into the actual voting primaries. That was the strategy, and it did not work. I think it was the right strategy for Jeb. The problem was there was a huge anti-establishment wave. The establishment lane was smaller than we thought it would be. The marketplace was looking for something different, and we’ll find out how that ends when we have a nominee.”
Lots of people accidentally mentioned the wrong Mike Murphy on Twitter:
BTW I'm not the Mike Murphy who made $14 million running Jeb's campaign Would have done it for $12 million & given @BernieSanders nice gift — Mike Murphy (@sailvarmint) February 22, 2016
Spotted: the Bernie bus:
Is Sanders looking to recapture some of his Iowa energy? For the first time since January the Bernie bus is back. pic.twitter.com/PY3DxHT2ka — Gabriel Debenedetti (@gdebenedetti) February 21, 2016
There would be nothing that would give me greater pleasure than beating @realDonaldTrump.https://t.co/4L9HoWrDzl — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 22, 2016
Bill and Hillary shared a moment together in Nevada:
In 2015, @Simone_Biles leapt into record books as the world's most decorated woman gymnast. https://t.co/n2sb0AK1lG pic.twitter.com/L4oBBOYMgF — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 21, 2016
Ben Carson is still tweeting about when he's president:
As President, I will make bold reforms in our energy policy, defeat special interests’ attempts to skew the system and promote prosperity. — Dr. Ben Carson (@RealBenCarson) February 21, 2016
Martin Heinrich boarded a plane with red chile and javelina sausage:
GOOD READ FROM ELSEWHERE:
-- L.A. Times, “Murder, torture, drugs: Cartel kingpin's wife says that's not the 'El Chapo' she knows,” by Anabel Hernandez: “As wife of Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, notorious leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Emma Coronel Aispuro seems anxious not to cause a scene. The 26-year-old former beauty queen has never spoken publicly about her marriage to a man who headed one of the world’s most violent criminal organizations … Coronel describes her husband as a loving family man, even if he was imprisoned or on the run for the entire eight years of their marriage. She claims to know little of the details of his professional pursuits, dismissing the oft-repeated reports of Guzman’s brutality towards women. Her husband, she said, calls her his ‘queen.’ Now, she wants to get out an urgent message: Her husband’s life, she says, is in danger. She fears he may not survive his stint in prison. Guzman’s fabled escapes are a source of embarrassment for Mexican authorities, and they appear determined to avoid a third. ‘I am afraid for his life,’ she says.”
HOT ON THE LEFT John Kasich just defunded Planned Parenthood in Ohio. From the Huffington Post : "The bill strips state and some federal funding from health clinics that perform and promote 'nontherapeutic abortions'... While the bill grants an exemption to abortions performed in cases of rape, incest and preserving the life of the mother, it jeopardizes the fate of other vital women's health programs." HOT ON THE RIGHT Fox host goes off on Hillary for refusing interview. From Talking Points Memo : Chris Wallace called out Clinton on-air Sunday for not appearing on his news program. "Wallace said he had sat down with every presidential candidate except Clinton as his show, 'Fox News Sunday,' was drawing to a close... 'But, once again this week, Clinton turned down our request for an interview,' he said."
DAYBOOK:
On the campaign trail: Hillary Clinton is in California. Bernie Sanders is in Amherst, Mass. John Kasich is in Fairfax, Charlottesville and Richmond, Va. The rest of the field is in Nevada:
Trump: Elko, Las Vegas
Rubio: Elko, Reno, Minden
Cruz: Reno, Elko, Las Vegas
Carson: Virginia City, Henderson
At the White House: President Obama speaks and takes questions from the National Governors Association at the White House.
On Capitol Hill: The Senate is in pro forma session. No votes are expected in the House.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: Donald Trump took a victory lap in Atlanta last night. “We won with everything,” he said of the results in South Carolina. “We won with women; I love the women. We won with men. I’d rather win with women, to be honest. We won with evangelicals, like unbelievable. We won with the military. … We won with highly educated, pretty well educated, and poorly educated. … We won with … tall people, short people, fat people, skinny people.” (Jose A. DelReal)
NEWS YOU CAN USE IF YOU LIVE IN D.C.:
-- It will be cold but sunny today. The Capital Weather Gang forecasts a “seasonably cool day as high pressure to the north sends some chilly, but dry air south.” Highs range from the upper 40s to near 50 degrees.
-- Virginia’s House and Senate unveiled dueling two-year budget proposals. Each pours big money into education and economic development but rejects Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s proposal to expand Medicaid. (Jenna Portnoy)
-- Virginia Republicans remain determined pass a ban on abortions after 20 weeks, even after the measure failed this year. (Jenna Portnoy)
Peyton Walton, 10, girds for |
.
Luckman told the outlet it’s possible the new crack, which started branching about 6 miles behind the main fork, veered into a patch of more breakable ice as the shelf has slowly been wrenched apart.
“Because the rift tip was in this area of basically softer ice that is very difficult to fracture, then the stresses have been transferred elsewhere and something has given, i.e. it has fractured in some of the ice that is more vulnerable to breaking which happens to be about 10km further back than the current rift tip,” Luckman said.Before I begin I should mention that the first one was delivered in a terrible state where the bottom of the box was ripped and all corners bashed (looks like it was dropped down some stairs) and when placing the order there is no option to have it concealed like the description says (Even Amazon support acknowledge this and said it would be concealed anyway however did not arrive concealed).
Anyway the product itself is great. The image is sharp and clear, no light bleed or dead pixels and the colours seem very accurate, though I did increase the saturation to 70%. To change the settings you need to select the user mode (default is racing). The brightness has a huge difference between the lowest and highest setting. I like it around 30%.
The first thing of notice is just how sharp the 4K is. I have tried games and they look fantastic at this resolution. If you are running 1080p games or using a console not capable of 4K I recommend turning the Vivid Pixel to 100% otherwise leave it at 50% (EDIT: Best leaving it at 100% all the time as it even makes textures much more detailed even in games at 4K and text sharper). The cool thing is you can save up to 4 profiles on the monitor meaning you can easily change between a setting for different devices. I should also mention the fact that it has 1 display port and 1 HDMI 2.0 and 2 HDMI 1.4 so you can have up to 4 devices.
One thing I did see in previous reviews is the claim no UK lead is included. I DOES come with one. It's hidden in a side compartment on the box but it also includes the other power lead for other countries.
A nice feature with this monitor is the height adjustment which many lack nowadays. The base swivel is an extra but nice to have and the tilt is decent. The display can also rotate making it easy to access the ports. There's 2 USB3 ports but they are not the easiest to access which makes them a little pointless. Would be better if they were located on the side.
The headphone jack is very handy as it allows me to have both the PC and PS4 to use the same speakers which are plugged into it.
The stand is pretty large and only just fits on my desk so if you are like me and have a raised area for the monitor it's worth checking you have enough space.
The interface for the monitor is easy to use and clean. The buttons are located behind the screen keeping it clean but are easy to access and I love the joystick to control the menu. It does have gimmicks like an FPS counter, timer, on screen sights which I don't bother with.
The last thing I want to mention but most people won't care about is the speakers built in are usable but they are pretty terrible for quality but if your speakers go bust you can at least use the monitor as a last resort.
Pros:
Fantastic picture
Adjustable height and angles
Sturdy (using racing wheels on desk)
Display Port and HDMI
Headphone Jack
Cons:
USB awkward to get to
Speakers are low quality but usableFour Johor Darul Ta'zim (JDT) players have pulled out of Malaysia's opening AFC Asian Cup qualifier against Lebanon on June 13.
Defenders Aidil Zafuan Razak, S. Kunanlan and Muhammad Fazly Mazlan and midfielder Mohd Azrif Nasrulhaq Badrul Hisham won't play in the match on JDT's home ground of Larkin Stadium due to injuries.
Aidil and Kunanlan were making their international comebacks after prematurely retiring last year, along with former skipper Safiq Rahim and Amirulhadi Zainal. Safiq and Amirulhadi are still expected to play in the match.
In the places of the missing quartet, Malaysia head coach Nelo Vingada has called up Nazrin Syamsul Bahri (PKNS FC), Faisal Rosli (Pahang), Afif Amiruddin (Pahang) and Nazirul Naim (Perak).
"Calling up these four players will not affect the team's preparations. In fact, it's going well," Vingada told The Star. "Hopefully, there will be no any new injuries as we want to maintain this squad until the match."
Full-back S. Kunanlan is one of the four JDT players to pull out of the Malaysia squad.
Malaysia are in Group B, with North Korea and Hong Kong the other teams. Their opening qualifier against the North Koreans, scheduled for March 28 in Pyongyang, has been postponed until Oct. 5 due to security concerns after strained diplomatic relations between the nations.
Vingada, who began the national camp at Pasir Gudang Municipal Council Stadium on May 30, is pleased with the preparations.
"We still have a couple of days before the match. I'm confident that everything will go according to plan," the former Saudi Arabia head coach said.
"The players must focus on keeping their rhythm in attack and defence. It will not be an easy thing to do but it's my job to make sure that it's done correctly."
Lebanon began their campaign by scoring a 2-0 win over Hong Kong in Beirut on March 28.
Follow @ESPNFC on Twitter to keep up with the latest football updates.A patient died after a consulting Veterans Affairs hospital doctor decided to perform an unnecessary procedure, possibly to give experience in the operation to his wife, one of two residents he was supervising in the operating room.
Besides a temporary suspension, the doctor's only punishment was a letter in his personnel file and having to give a talk about the role of medical consultants. He was subsequently promoted to chief of his medical department at the hospital.
Carlos Rosado is a liver doctor at the VA Caribbean Healthcare System's veterans hospital in Puerto Rico. He was called to consult on another doctor's patient when he decided to perform an unrelated lung operation without asking the primary physician.
"Dr. Rosado, without communicating the plans to the primary team, performed the procedure in which the patient died three hours later, due to complications. The primary provider was not in agreement with the procedure and unaware of it at the time," according to notes from an emergency medical board meeting, obtained by the Washington Examiner.
The lung operation was "not related to the nephrology medical specialty evaluation for which" Rosado was consulted, the notes said.
Most troubling was the concern about the potential motivation for why a liver doctor might perform a lung surgery that didn't appear to be needed.
Some doctors at the hospital said they believed that he was attempting to provide experience in a particular type of operation to his wife, Viviana Valle-Cancel.
"An additional factor in this event is the fact that the procedure was performed by two residents under the supervision of Dr. Rosado, one of which is his spouse. This raised a flag as to Dr. Rosado could be acting out of the scope of our bylaws. It also creates concern from the service in the following areas: patient care, professionalism/interpersonal and communications skills," the notes said.
The hospital declined to comment on the Rosado case or discuss its nepotism policy.
The death occurred in 2012. The emergency meeting led to a professional standards board review, which found that "there is no evidence that this was an emergency procedure which necessitated being performed without the discussion with the primary attending physician. At most, this was an elective procedure."
It found that the procedure, a thoracentesis, "is not considered within the scope of a nephrology consultant" and that he "was told previously not to supervise [his wife] in any clinical activities."
A thoracentesis is a procedure for removing fluid near the lungs. He also inappropriately discarded the yellow fluid drained from the lungs, which should have been analyzed to help doctors diagnose him.
Rosado told the board "he believed that his role as a physician allows him to provide any medical care that he thinks the patient requires."
He "does not appear to fully understand that his role as a consultant is to provide advice," the board wrote. It found that he broke the hospital's bylaws and operated outside of its "standard of care," violations for which other doctors have been fired.
But the board only recommended that "a letter be placed in Dr. Rosado's records indicating the failure to act within the appropriate role as a consultant" and he should give a "talk on the subject of the appropriate role of a consultant."
Since then, he has been promoted to chief of nephrology, one of the top positions at the hospital.
"She was a resident, she was in training, so he was showing her how to perform this procedure," a doctor at the hospital told the Examiner on condition of anonymity. "He's the chief of nephrology at the VA currently, so there were no consequences for his actions."
The Rosados are among numerous married couples who work together at the Puerto Rico hospital, whose director, DeWayne Hamlin, was arrested in Florida with painkillers and refused to tell police their source.
Hamlin later worked to fire department whistleblowers who complained about that and other incidents. In addition, a convicted sex offender is in charge of disciplining poorly performing employees there.
Rosado's case is only the latest in a growing list of examples of VA officials being promoted despite performing poorly on the job or being implicated in wrongdoing. Not infrequently, such officials are promoted to supervisory positions in which they are supposed to make policy or guard against misconduct.
The director of a Vermont hospital who misled Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., about having given recalled drugs to a patient and covered it up for five years is currently in charge of investigating the department's troubled Tomah, Wisc., facility.
And, as the Examiner reported Thursday, only hours after an inspector general reported that the Philadelphia benefits office manipulated data to hide its abysmal administration of pension benefits, its pension manager was promoted to a policy position in Washington.Image caption Dentists recommend brushing twice a day
Scientists say they have established one reason why gum disease may increase the risk of heart disease.
The link between gum and heart problems has long been recognised but it is unclear if poor oral health is simply a marker of a person's general wellbeing.
UK and Irish experts now say bacteria enter the bloodstream via sore gums and deposit a clot-forming protein.
The findings are being presented at a meeting of the Society for General Microbiology.
Earlier this year a Scottish study of more than 11,000 people found people who did not brush their teeth twice a day were at increased risk of heart disease.
It backed up previous findings suggesting a link, but researchers stressed the nature of the relationship still needed further analysis.
Protective platelets
Scientists from the University of Bristol working with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland now suggest it is the Streptococcus bacteria - responsible for causing tooth plaque and gum disease - which may be to blame.
Their work shows this bacteria, once let loose in the bloodstream, makes a protein known as PadA which forces platelets in the blood to stick together and clot.
Research such as this makes a welcome contribution to further understanding the nature of the relationship between gum disease and heart disease Prof Damian Walmsley, British Dental Association
"When the platelets clump together they completely encase the bacteria.
"This provides a protective cover not only from the immune system, but also from antibiotics that might be used to treat infection," said Professor Howard Jenkinson, who led the research.
"Unfortunately, as well as helping out the bacteria, platelet clumping can cause small blood clots, growths on the heart valves, or inflammation of blood vessels that can block the blood supply to the heart and brain."
While maintaining good dental hygiene could minimise the risk, the team is also investigating how the platelet-activating function of the protein PadA can be blocked.
Professor Damian Walmsley, scientific adviser to the British Dental Association, said: "Research such as this makes a welcome contribution to further understanding the nature of the relationship between gum disease and heart disease.
"It also underlines the high importance of brushing twice a day with fluoride toothpaste, restricting your intake of sugary foods and drinks and visiting the dentist regularly in order to maintain good oral health."
The British Heart Foundation said that were other factors besides oral health which had a greater impact on heart health.
But their senior cardiac nurse Cathy Ross added that combining good oral health care "with a healthy diet, not smoking and taking part in plenty of physical activity will go a long way in helping you reduce your overall risk of heart disease".Oregon's public universities have seen a sharp increase in in-state students arriving on campus not as wide-eyed freshmen straight from high school but as transfer students with college credits and experience from a community college.
The main reason is clear: Community colleges offer most of the same foundational courses as the universities -- but at half the cost. So a lot of students who want a four-year degree opt to start out at a lower-cost, closer-to-home two-year college.
In 2006-07, about one-third of Oregonians who were newly enrolled at the state's seven public universities started out in a community college. This fall, nearly half took that path.
Colin Fawcett is one of them. A 2000 graduate of
, he served in the Army in Iraq before deciding to earn a four-year degree to become a Portland police officer. His G.I. scholarship wouldn't cover the tuition at
, so he earned his associate's degree at
before starting as a junior at PSU this week.
"I did it purely because of cost," he said. "But I was very satisfied with the instructors at CCC. The classes were small, and I had some excellent, excellent teachers."
If the trend continues, Oregon's four-year universities will soon issue more baccalaureate degrees to state residents who got part of their education at a community college than those who traveled the traditional university-only path.
That can be a good thing, for students and for universities, said
Community colleges and universities are partners, not competitors, when it comes to getting Oregon students through college, agreed
Students pile up less debt if they choose the less-costly route, Jagodnik said. And students who arrive at PSU from community colleges are well-prepared, having already mastered college coping skills. They also have been well-taught in most cases, by community college instructors who are passionate about teaching and free of the demands to conduct and publish research that university faculty face.
Their success rates are documented by university system researchers. About one in three students transferring in from a community college has earned an associate's degree. Of those, 82 percent go on to earn a four-year degree.
In comparison, 60 percent of students who enter Oregon's public universities as freshmen earn degrees as do 81 percent of those who make it to junior year, said Bob Kieran, the university system's director of institutional research. (Most students who drop out do so during their first year, whether at community college or university.)
"We find that our transfer students know how to navigate college, and they want to get down to business and find the fastest path to their degree," Trifiletti said.
Rates vary tremendously by campus. At Portland State, 70 percent of new Oregon students enter from community college. But at the
, more than 70 percent enter straight from high school. At
, one-third of students from Oregon transfer in from a community college.
Krystonia Katoa, a 2008 graduate of
, was surprised when she showed up for her junior year at Western with two years of credits from
and
-- and found she had plenty of company.
"It was kind of like a security blanket for me. 'Oh, there are lots of students who understand where I am coming from,'" she said.
Attending a university with lots of community college transfers enriches students' experience, Katoa said, because some transfer students are older, and many bring different perspectives and life experiences to class discussions.
"We're not all 18-year-olds.... Diverse ideas and ages are normal here," she said.
Oregon university and community college officials say they have worked to strengthen the pipeline from community colleges to the public four-year universities, to help students like Katoa and also to help the Oregon economy.
They want to help the state boost the share of Oregonians who earn college credentials -- industry certificates and two-year degrees issued by community colleges and four-year degrees from public and private universities.
Educators also are trying harder to help community college students who aspire to a four-year degree make smart choices about which courses they take.
for community college students to see how each course will be treated by a university, for instance that Writing 123 at PCC will count as Writing 222: Research Papers at Portland State. The public universities also send advisers to community colleges to help students eyeing particular majors know what to take.
The increase in students starting their path to a four-year degree at community colleges corresponds with a trio of economic factors:
The economic recession and housing bust that left many parents without the high pay or home equity they counted on to finance college;
Steep tuition increases at Oregon's public universities in the face of eroding taxpayer support;
And
For Juana Valadez, a 2003 graduate of
who aspires to become a middle school teacher, starting at community college made sense for logistical reasons, too.
The
resident works part time as a chiropractic assistant and is mother to a 3-year-old son, demands that made
and its flexible schedules a great way to get two years of college under her belt.
Valadez started at Portland State this week and is confident she can meet the stepped-up demands.
"It's a challenge, but yes, I can."Mises and Rothbard taught that economics is a value-free science. Propositions of economics, such as the law of diminishing marginal utility, neither state nor imply any judgments about what is good or bad, right or wrong. Robert Grant, an Irish philosopher who teaches at Trinity College, Dublin, disagrees. In an article that appeared January 23 on the Irish news website thejournal.ie, Grant claimed that “the view of economics as value-free is, at best, illusory and, at worst, dangerous.” Economics is not value-free, according to him; and the myth that it is helps nefarious supporters of the free market occlude the truth that the free market helps the rich, not the poor.
Grant’s argument against value-freedom in economics is not very good. He points out that economists choose to investigate certain topics rather than others, Their choices reflect the values they hold. “The very decision about what aspect of the world to examine is an expression of what is important to us, ie, an expression of our values..., economists can choose to aim their analysis at the private financial markets and the banking system, or they could focus on public issues such as welfare economics, or how to make healthcare affordable. Each analysis may display incredible intellectual and mathematical sophistication, yet the choice is a normative one. It means that you deem some particular issue to be more worth your time and effort than the myriad of other issues you could investigate. Values are inescapable.”
Grant has fallen into an elementary confusion. Of course he is right that your choice to study something expresses your values. It hardly follows from this, though, the results of your investigation are, in whole or in part, value judgments. When it is claimed that economics is value-free, the claim is about the propositions of economics, not the reasons economists have for studying these propositions.
According to Grant, the false doctrine of value-freedom in economics has horrendous results: “We are told the ‘free’ market is an efficient processer of information, and that if left to its own devices, it will naturally produce efficient results that are better for everyone. But this is simply not the case. The market expresses the values of those who control it. It is no coincidence that our current market structure works better for some rather than others.”
Grant is again confused. Grant disagrees with those who contend the free market is better for everyone. But surely someone who says the free market is better for everyone would realize that he is expressing a value judgment. What then is the relevance of Grant’s claims about value-freedom to this disagreement? Grant has lost control of his own argument. Maybe he means that the free market economists use a notion of “efficient” which they wrongly take to be value-free. If this is what he means, Grant has failed to make his case. He doesn’t show that judging whether an economy is efficient involves value judgments.
In any event, Grant’s counter to the free market supporters misses the point. He wishes to argue against the assertion that the free market works better for everyone. To point out that the market works better for some than others is not a counterexample to the thesis he wishes to refute.President Maduro excoriated ex-President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney, calling them human rights abusers and terrorists and slapping them with entry bans.
© AFP 2018 / Leo RAMIREZ Venezuela Gives US Two Week Deadline to Shrink Its Caracas Embassy
Venezuelan authorities have introduced an entry ban list which includes several top US officials whom the Venezuelan government accuses of human rights abuses. The list includes former US President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney.
“I have decided on a prohibition list for individuals who will not be permitted visas and who can never enter Venezuela, [including] top US politicians who have committed human rights violations. They have bombed the people of Iraq, the people of Syria, the people of Vietnam,” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro stated in a fiery speech on Saturday, according to Venezuelan news portal Venezuelanalysis.com. “They cannot come to Venezuela because they are terrorists,” the president added.
Other individuals making the list include former CIA head George Tenet, as well as legislators accused of anti-government legislation including Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Bob Menendez, Representative Mario Diaz Balart and Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
© REUTERS / Miraflores Palace/Handout via Reuters Maduro Claims Venezuela Detained US Citizens for Espionage
When explaining his decision, Maduro made it clear that the sanctions would not affect ordinary Americans: “You can count on the fact that the people of Bolivar respect the people of the United States, and recognize in you a brother people; these decisions are against the imperialist elite,” the Venezuelan president of the ruling United Socialist Party stated.
On Tuesday, the US State Department announced additional visa restrictions against several Venezuelan officials and their families, accusing them of human rights violations and corruption.
© REUTERS / Jorge Silva US Denies Involvement in Plotting Coup Against Venezuela
Last week Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said that Washington has orchestrated several plots against Venezuela, adding that the opposition is currently plotting a coup with US backing. On Monday, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez stated that the US would have two weeks to pare down its 100-strong Caracas Embassy presence to 17 persons.COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Vigilante Coffee Company, LLC—pioneers of specialty coffee in the Washington, D.C. area, specializing in award-winning single origin coffee and coffee education—will open its second café later this year in College Park. Vigilante Coffee Company's expanded presence in the area is another step forward in the University of Maryland’s Greater College Park initiative, a $2 billion public-private investment to rapidly revitalize the Baltimore Avenue corridor and academic campus.
“The Baltimore Avenue corridor, from the beltway down to Hyattsville, is becoming more vibrant thanks to University leadership, community collaboration and committed business owners like Chris Vigilante," said Ken Ulman, the university's chief strategist for economic development. “This local company embodies the entrepreneurial spirit we work to instill in our students and will be a welcome addition to the many new amenities available to our innovation ecosystem."
Vigilante Coffee Company also plans to help curate and excel student start-ups, while sourcing products from the University. They will lease from the University a now-vacant space located at 8200 Baltimore Avenue, adjacent to campus and the University View and The Varsity apartments.
“We are thrilled to become a part of the University of Maryland community, engage in campus life and create a space where people come together,” said Chris Vigilante, Founder, Vigilante Coffee Company. “By working directly with students and faculty we will be creating opportunities to learn about specialty coffee and the business of specialty coffee, as well as sustainability and direct trade within the industry.”
Vigilante began his career in the coffee industry in the Hawaiian Islands in 2008 where he learned about specialty coffee from farm to cup. Starting in 2012—when Vigilante returned to D.C.—he began roasting coffee to sell at pop-up coffee shops at farmers markets all over D.C., Maryland and Virginia as the Vigilante Coffee Company. That same year, Vigilante Coffee Company made the decision to source their coffees directly and traveled to Colombia. Today, they travel the world purchasing their coffees directly from small farms.
Local leaders see Vigilante Coffee Company as a natural fit for the community as Baltimore Avenue continues to evolve and attract new businesses.
“The City of College Park is thrilled to welcome another local, innovative company to our community, and we are proud of the continued investment by the University and its partners in making College Park a top college town,” said College Park Mayor Patrick L. Wojahn.
“Having a strong City-University partnership is key in helping us attract top amenities to College Park,” said Eric Olson, Executive Director, College Park City-University Partnership. “The collaboration between the City of College Park and the University of Maryland—and investments being made by both—means bringing incredible businesses like Vigilante Coffee Company to the area is just the beginning.”
The company is adamant about an ethical and sustainable approach in specialty coffee and seek to bridge the gap between their customers and producers. Education is the nucleus of their business—an area where they plan to continue to grow. They believe in giving back to the communities they are a part of and supporting the farming communities that make their coffees possible.Update: Police Chief Tom Chapman said Lavallee was behaving erratically. "His behavior was bizarre before and after," Chapman said. "I couldn't tell if it's a mental health issue or drugs or a combination."
The shot was fired from a distance of about 30 feet. Chapman said the "most of "incident was captured on an APD's car cam.
Though he said the firearm use didn't meet the criteria for an investigation by the Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT), he's referring it to the District Attorney's Office, Humboldt County Sheriff's Office and other member agencies for review.
APD officers carry a Glock 22,.40 cal semi-automatic pistol.
According to Chapman, the last time APD fired at anyone was April 1, 1980. He declined to identify the officer who fired the shot.
The APD press release:
City of Arcata
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
HATCHET WIELDING SUSPECT ARRESTED
On Saturday, May 2, 2015, at about 2:24 p.m., police officers from the Arcata Police Department responded to the report of a man vandalizing a vehicle with a hatchet in the 700 block of Bayside Road.
Two witnesses saw a man armed with a hatchet prowling around an apartment complex, trying apartment and vehicle doors, and also looking in apartment windows. The man reportedly broke a car window with the hatchet.
When officers arrived on scene they attempted to contact the man who was still in possession of the hatchet. While an officer was giving orders to drop the hatchet, the man raised and threw the hatchet at the police officer. The officer discharged one round from his firearm. The man was not struck by the round. The man then ran away from the officers.
Officers pursued him on foot and after a brief chase he surrendered and was taken into custody without further incident.
The man, 34-year-old Matthew Adam Lavallee, of Arcata, was transported to the Mad River Community Hospital where he was medically cleared for jail as a precaution.
Lavallee was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility for 245(c) PC - Assault With a Deadly Weapon Upon a Peace Officer, 148(a)(1) PC - Resisting a Peace Officer, and 549(B)(1) PC - Vandalism.The bottom is dropping out for Donald Trump.
While Trump was never popular outside of his loyal slice of GOP voters, a raft of new polls show his national position hitting new lows, including with groups that are supposed to form his base.
America’s widespread loathing for Trump puts further pressure on Republican delegates to deny him the nomination in July if he falls short of a majority, a move that would set off an ugly civil war but that some in the party believe would be necessary to stave off generational damage.
A collection of recent surveys by Real Clear Politics finds, on average, 30 percent of respondents hold a favorable view of Trump versus 63 percent who hold a negative one. Those numbers are roughly parallel to former President George W. Bush’s approval ratings during his final months in office, which set the stage for President Barack Obama’s landslide victory.
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Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton leads Trump by double digits in at least six national polls in March, even as her own favorability ratings appear weak. Using 2008 as a reference point again, Obama’s popular vote margin against Sen. John McCain was just more than 7 percent.
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan election forecaster affiliated with the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, handicapped the general election based on the latest numbers and the results were not pretty for the GOP. According to their best guess, Democrats would begin a race against Trump with states totaling 347 electoral votes already solidly in their camp or leaning that way. They need 270 to win.
RELATED: Donald Trump holds surprise meeting with RNC in DC
Top Democratic strategists have warned that Trump could be a tougher out than he appears. His campaign has emphasized its strength with blue collar white voters, and some Clinton allies and labor officials have expressed concern that Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin might flip under the right circumstances.
Recent polls, however, strongly undermine the idea Trump has the kind of popularity needed to make that approach work. A Washington Post/ABC News poll early this month found a majority of non-college whites (52 percent) and white men (51 percent) disapproved of Trump — a shocking find given their importance to his coalition.
There are red flags at the state level as well. A Marquette University poll of Wisconsin voters this week found 70 percent of respondents disapproved of Trump. Clinton led Trump by 10 points, despite only tying Sen. Ted Cruz in the same poll.
Trump’s numbers are horrific among black and Hispanic voters — two groups that the RNC argued the party needed to aggressively court in its autopsy of the 2012 election. Some Republican strategists have argued, however, that the GOP could still squeak by in 2016 by improving their margins with white votersalone.
That second option looks a lot harder, however, the more Trump exacerbates his already weak position with women.
The Post/ABC News survey found three-quarters of women held an unfavorable view of Trump — and that was before his campaign manager was charged with battery against a female reporter and Trump proposed “some form of punishment” for women who terminate a pregnancy should abortion be outlawed. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll the same month found 70 percent of women nationally held an unfavorable opinion of Trump.
For a worst case scenario, look no further than former Senate candidate Todd Akin who won just 39 percent of the total vote in red-leaning Missouri in 2012 after claiming women rarely get pregnant from“legitimate rape.”
Trump’s remarks on abortion Wednesday infuriated Republicans and pro-life activists who have spent years trying to train candidates to avoid inflammatory rhetoric and positions around the issue. Trumpwalked back his comments the same day, but his frequent blow-ups are heightening fears within the GOP that Republicans down the ballot will spend the entire election reacting to his stumbles.
RELATED: Why Trump’s controversies matter for all Republicans
For the first time this cycle, some analysts are suggesting the Republican House majority — commonly thought to be impregnable until at least 2022 thanks to GOP-friendly maps — could come into play if Trump’s numbers were to hold and the party fractured over his candidacy. As for the Senate, Democrats started the year on offense thanks to an outsize number of vulnerable GOP seats and it’s hard to imagine the majority not changing hands in a crushing Trump defeat.
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Adding to Republican woes, Obama’s approval rating has been perking up and is now consistently in positive territory for the first time since early in his second term. With unemployment at less than 5 percent, gas prices low, and the economy growing at a steady pace, the environment looks more favorable for Democrats than might have been expected even a few months ago.
There’s still a decent chance Trump will not be the nominee. He’s unlikely to win a contested convention thanks to his weak support among party leaders and a complicated set of delegate rules that make it hard for him to pack the room with loyal supporters.
Such a move would come with its own downsides, however. Trump has predicted “riots” from his supporters if he loses, and it seems highly likely he would direct his voters to not support the Republican nominee in November. That would likely do fatal damage to someone like Cruz, whose path to victory is difficult enough without Trump undermining him.
This would normally be the point in an article where all the caveats are listed: It’s early, maybe Trump can improve his standing with voters, perhaps he can heal rifts within the GOP by November, etc.
Unlike past candidates, however, Trump is almost universally well known at this point and respondents to polls indicate strong feelings about his candidacy. He’s also yet to weather any attacks from the left, where Democrats are preparing a massive campaign to drag him down in ways that his Republican rivals cannot. Unless something big changes, Trump could cross a point of no return well before the Republican convention takes place.
This article originally appeared on MSNBC.com.Content note: bullying, sexual slang, taboo numbers
It is no trick question when I ask my audience to take a wild guess at what kids used to shout at me, knowing how obsessed I am with numbers particularly in the 60’s range.
I was eleven at the time, back in 2003. At first, I did not even know that the number carried such a connotation until months after people have been asking me “who is 69” and “is he hot and sexy?” Embarrassingly enough, I did in fact have a character for number 69, and he was considered “attractive” by tabis-cat standards. 1969 was after all a great year for music, not to mention that it was also the year of the trip to the moon. What could be so bad about that?
It wasn’t until an acquaintance on the bus bluntly told me that 69 was a sexual number, and that I would not have figured that out had he had not told me. Turned out he was right, and another teenager told me that it was a specific position that looks like that number.
I was horrified that one of the sixties numbers I love so much has such a nasty connotation. Fortunately, number 69 never had much character development anyway. I knew that I was going to have to factor out that number for the best.
Twelve years later, back in my long-lost world of numbers, I always try to prepare myself to answer the inevitable question “what does number 69 look like?” Because 69 carries such a strong sexual meaning in this culture, I do not even bother trying to make a character out of it. I will tell people that 69 is salmon and purple. “Seems pretty close to the colors of 69ing!”Posted by Nolan Dalla on Mar 7, 2014 in Blog, General Poker |
Mason Malmuth Was Right (Limit vs. No-Limit Hold’em)
On page 86 of Poker Essays, master strategist Mason Malmuth writes the following:
What has happened to the no-limit games? I don’t know of any that are regularly spread in Las Vegas cardrooms or in the Los Angeles area, although some no-limit still gets played in the side action at a few major tournaments….these games have died out. No-limit was too easy to play well (at least many situations seem to me to be very straighforward), and if you didn’t play well, you were quickly cleaned out.
Today, Malmuth’s opinion may seem absurdly wrong, especially given how no-limit has not only exploded worldwide in popularly, but come to dominate the poker landscape over the past decade. No-limit has become so widely accepted, that it’s now limit games which are in danger of dying out. Essentially, the modern poker scene is a complete reverse of the scenario Malmuth once described.
The intent here isn’t to ridicule Malmuth, nor take his opinions out of context (which I admittedly have done). What he wrote in the paragraph above was actually published back in 1991, and was right on the money. Malmuth, nor anyone else, could have possibly predicted what would happen to poker in the future. Moreoever, I’m convinced history has actually proven him right. In this essay, I’ll try to explain why.
Malmuth continued with the following opinion:
Limit play, of course, is not like this. Although it’s true that poor players will go broke in the long run, they can have some fun on the way. The edge that the expert no-limit player had on weak opponents was just too great, because often little doubt exists as to what the corect decision is, and when a weak opponent does not make the correct decision, he has only a slight chance and is usually severely punished for his error.
We can debate whether limit or no-limit is a more skillful game. Years ago, judging by the general reaction among players and strategists to Malmuth’s opinion, most believed no-limit required more skill. Popular opinion probably sides even more strongly with the no-limit side of the argument today. In fact, many of today’s poker players have no experience playing limit at all. This dated game variant seems destined for the same fate as five-card draw and seven-card stud.
Plenty of |
to say, have fun. The idea of a man who can shrink to a subatomic size will only sell if the series can wear its heart on its sleeve. The Atom could go even further into geek mode than the Flash does with his strange science adventures. Ray could visit far-out places like the Micro-Verse, discover microscopic cities and civilizations, and delve into the rich world of comics pseudo-science. And as long he does it with a smile on his face, and maybe a line or two that sorta-kinda explains the science behind everything, viewers will eat it up. Then there’s actor Brandon Routh, who’s long overdue for his second shot at wearing a blue and red costume. Much of Palmer’s success stems from Routh’s energetic portrayal of Ray. Routh has delivered everything that the script has asked of him and more so far, switching between the debonair playboy routine and chiseled warrior with aplomb. It’s clear that he much more comfortable playing devil-may-care, high-fiving characters than stoic messiah figures. He has the acting chops to lure new viewers in, and the recognizability to tempt the comics faithful, giving the CW some serious marketing muscle that they never had when launching then-unknowns Stephen Amell and Grant Gustin in their respective superhero series.Throughout recent history, Russian intelligence services have played chess while other countries have played checkers. Even though the former USSR no longer exists, their government has switched from dictatorial communism, to totalitarian fascism under Vladimir Putin.
America won the Cold War by bankrupting and destabilizing Russia through the Cold War arms race and proxy wars in places like Afghanistan. Now, former KGB officers, including Vladimir Putin, want their revenge against the United States, and they’re using useful idiots like Donald Trump or Jill Stein to carry out that agenda.
Perhaps you haved noticed how 2016 is the first time Russia effectively weaponized social media to influence American elections.
If Russia wanted to undermine our political system with any other presidential candidate, they would have done so in 2008 or 2012, but that didn’t happen. Our relationship with Russia wasn’t as rocky in 2008, and in 2012, Russia hadn’t annexed the Crimea or started their military intervention in the Ukraine.
The Kremlin waited for 2016 and capitalized on decades of right-wing media hatred towards Hillary Clinton, exploited the far-left, manipulated social media, and got their useful idiot into the White House. This isn’t a coincidence, this points to a well-oiled Russian plot that also involves troll campaigns behind Brexit, and other European elections in order to destabilize NATO.
I don’t buy into most conspiracy theory stories. Most legitimate conspiracies have the recurring theme of greed and influence that are eventually hashed out in a courtroom within years, which is what I believe will happen with Donald Trump in the near future.
Here is my purely speculative guess as to the timeline of how everything went down:
After the 2008 financial crisis, was bailed out by Kremlin interests who stroked his fragile ego, knowing that eventually, he could be used as a destabilizing force in the United States. This is a belief also held by John Cassidy at The New Yorker.
In an interview earlier this year, Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of Britain’s spying agency, MI6, said, “What lingers for Trump may be what deals—on what terms—he did after the financial crisis of 2008 to borrow Russian money when others in the West apparently would not lend to him.” Dearlove didn’t provide any evidence to support this theory. Nobody else has, either, although not for the want of trying. A number of news organizations have dispatched reporters to Iceland, Cyprus, and other jurisdictions through which hot money can flow anonymously. So far, these journalistic diggers have failed to identify any hidden Russian lenders to the Trump Organization. At the same time, though, numerous reports have detailed how funds from wealthy Russians and citizens of other former Soviet states have flowed into ritzy Trump-owned or Trump-branded real-estate properties, such as the Trump SoHo building, in New York, and the Trump International Beach Resort, in Florida. (Last month, the owner of Trump SoHo announced that the Trump Organization would no longer be involved with the property.) The Washington Post has revealed how, as recently as late 2015 and early 2016, when Trump was already running for President, a Russian-born business associate of his, Felix Sater, was “pursuing a plan to develop a massive Trump Tower in Moscow.” And The New Yorker’s Adam Davidson has shown how Trump and his family entered into partnerships with politicians and oligarchs in Azerbaijan and Georgia, two countries with close ties to Russia. (The New Yorker)
When President Obama mocked Trump years ago about the birth certificate in a brutal takedown, Trump was noticeably furious. That was when Putin knew it was time to start activating his useful idiot, and exploit Donald’s racism and ego for Moscow’s gain.
Nobody but The Donald was so easy to manipulate. This is a man who allegedly consoled himself with ice cream after a meltdown at Paul Manafort during his campaign. Trump had everything Russia would want. A debt to Russian interests, an ego in need of constant praise, name recognition, and a grudge against Barack Obama.
As I said before, this is purely my own speculation, based on what I’ve read, and my own history of conducting financial investigations for major corporations. Unlike conspiracy peddlers such as Bill Palmer or Louise Mensch, I do not pretend to have any inside sources, nor do I know what Robert Mueller and his investigators have on The Donald.
I am very excited about watching Mueller’s probe, and what will come out of it. It will be interesting to see how far up the food chain the indictments go, as well as who takes a plea deal in exchange for testimony against the Trump family.
Comments
commentsLUXEMBOURG/LONDON (Reuters) - Europe’s highest court ruled Google Inc did not infringe trademark law by selling keywords to trigger ads after Louis Vuitton and others said the practice undermined their brands.
A camera used for Google street view is pictured at the CeBIT computer fair in Hanover March 2, 2010. REUTERS/Christian Charisius
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) said on Tuesday advertisers were free to buy keywords identical to trademarks of rivals as long as consumers were not confused on the provenance of goods and services by the way ads were displayed online.
The court said that in cases where ads could confuse consumers, brand owners should invoke their rights against the advertisers concerned, not against Google — unless Google failed to act on a complaint or actively manipulated keywords.
The ruling validates the AdWords paid-search business at the core of Google’s $23 billion online advertising operations, as well as of competitors such as Yahoo! Inc, and gives brand owners a way to prevent wrongful use of their trademarks.
“It’s a good decision in large parts,” said Fabian Ziegenaus, an intellectual property lawyer at Linklaters.
“It does not forbid Google per se to sell trademark keywords, so the business model is not at stake, and brand owners are also protected through the decision.”
Advertisers often buy brand names of their competitors as keywords to trigger their own ads. Google says the practice is in the interests of consumers, who do not want their search results to be limited to a single brand.
Brand owners can also bid for their own brand names as keywords and the order in which sponsored links are displayed online is determined mainly through this auction process.
Google used to block advertisers from buying others’ brand names as keywords but changed its policy in North America in 2004 and four years later extended that to Britain and Ireland.
It says it will honour valid complaints from brand owners and prevent their rivals from using a trademarked keyword in their ad text.
VICTORY CLAIMS
Both Google and LVMH, the world’s biggest luxury-goods group, claimed the court’s decision as a victory.
“Trademarks... are key for companies to market and advertise their products and services. But trademark rights are not absolute,” wrote Google’s senior litigation counsel for Europe, Harjinder S. Obhi (googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com).
“We believe that user interest is best served by maximising the choice of keywords, ensuring relevant and informative advertising for a wide variety of different contexts.”
LVMH Vice Chairman Pierre Gode told Reuters: “We are very happy with the decision. We consider the decision is very important as the liability of advertisers is well established.”
LVHM shares rose 1.1 percent to 87.74 euros by 11:31 a.m. (British time).
The summary of the court judgement did not explicitly address the issue of counterfeit goods, but it did offer more clarity than expected on the misuse of trademarks in search results displayed to consumers.
“If the trademarks are actually used in the results that are shown to users and the advertiser does not own the trademark, that is likely to be deemed infringement,” said Thomas Vinje, a partner at Clifford Chance specialising in EU and IP law.
“That would seem to defeat counterfeiters... that would be to the advantage of the trademark owners,” he said.
The European Brands Association, which represents 1,800 brand companies in 22 countries, said: “By confirming trademark rights online and holding sellers of keywords liable for illicit material, such as counterfeits, this ruling seems positive.”
The ECJ said the matter of whether consumers were likely to be confused by the way search results were displayed was a matter for national European courts to decide case by case.
LVMH scored a victory last month when a Paris tribunal found eBay Inc guilty of misleading consumers by using misspelt versions of its brand as search engine keywords to redirect users to eBay website links.
Several cases brought by brand owners are pending against advertisers at the ECJ, the first of which will be ruled on this week. Google also faces eight cases in the United States over the sale of trademarked keywords.Ever wondered what it would be like to be a sports photographer at a major sporting event?
Sportsfile photographer Brendan Moran is at his fifth World Cup. This year, he'll be covering the Irish games and a few others throughout the tournament.
"Generally at training sessions you only get 15 minutes, so you have to work quickly," he says, "picking off the guys who are in the news or the lads who will be talking to the media."
Video by Dan Linehan
"Technology has changed so much…We can now send the images out (straight) from the cameras, so what’ll happen here now at the match is internet cables on pitch-side will be plugged into the cameras.
"It takes the pressure off the photographers and they can concentrate on the game."Practice is all about routine, at least with the Steelers.
So it came as no surprise that, during the team phase of the offseason’s first organized team activities Tuesday, the offense huddled near the 20-yard line — that’s what it always does.
Coach Mike Tomlin, however, had other ideas.
The Steelers, coming off their best offensive season in franchise history, gathered as a full unit for the first time in more than five months, and their first drill was practicing 2-point conversions.
“Coach told me we were going to do it, and I was a little prepared for it,” quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said. “It was a little surprising knowing that we haven’t put in red zone yet and they haven’t put in red-zone defense yet. That’s going to be a big part of the game now: teams consciously going for two or at least debating it.”
Tomlin addressed the team before the start of the drill.
“We are not going to talk about it,” he said. “We are just going to do it.”
The NFL last week amended its extra-point rule, pushing back the ball 13 yards. That makes what was a 20-yard kick 33 yards. Kickers converted point-after attempts more than 99 percent of the time last season.
The numbers don’t suggest there will be much difference in converting PATs — kickers made 32 of 33 field goals from 33 yards away last season — but Tomlin could be contemplating attempting more 2-point conversions than longer extra points.
And why not? Tomlin has been successful with 2-point conversions during his eight years as Steelers coach. The Steelers are 10 of 13 converting 2-point conversions under Tomlin, including all four attempts last year.
Since 2001, the Steelers lead the league in 2-point percentage at 72.7 percent, according to ESPN Stats and Info. The New York Jets are last in the league at 27.7 percent.
“It’s a long way in football, especially when there isn’t a long way to stretch the field,” Roethlisberger said. “This new rule is such an advantage to domed teams and fair-weather teams.”
Roethlisberger was one of 90 players in uniform for the start of OTAs. Coming off a season in which he led the league in passing and had his best statistical season of his career that included back-to-back six-touchdown games, Roethlisberger nonetheless pointed out areas in which the offense needs to improve.
“We want to improve on third downs,” Roethlisberger said. “We want to improve in the red zone. We want to score more points. Some guys had some really amazing individual seasons last year, and we had a good season as an offense in general, but there is also room to improve.”
The Steelers would return all 11 starters on offense for the first time since 1982 if Martavis Bryant doesn’t unseat Markus Wheaton as the No. 2 receiver.
That means the Steelers will have the same players in place that put up a team-record 436 points last year.
Roethlisberger, though, isn’t basking in that success.
Three weeks ago, he orchestrated a trip to the University of Georgia with receivers Antonio Brown, Darrius Heyward-Bey, Bryant and Wheaton as well as running back Le’Veon Bell for on-field workouts.
“I think we got a good start on today,” Roethlisberger said. “That was kind of the point to get down there and get a jump on hand signals and getting an understanding. We know the first couple of days are tough for offenses.”
Mark Kaboly is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at mkaboly@tribweb.com or via Twitter @MarkKaboly_Trib.Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and real estate mogul Donald Trump lead the GOP presidential candidates in a new CNN/ORC poll released Wednesday, but the poll shows they both still lag behind former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democrat.
The national poll finds Mr. Bush at 19 percent, up from 13 percent in May, and Mr. Trump at 12 percent, up from 3 percent, CNN said. Both men jumped into the presidential race in mid-June.
After Mr. Bush and Mr. Trump, the poll found former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 8 percent; neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 7 percent; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at 7 percent; and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker both at 6 percent; and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry at 4 percent.
The poll found New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 3 percent, but it was conducted June 26-28, before he launched his presidential campaign on Monday, CNN said.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum also came in at 3 percent, followed by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 2 percent; and former CEO of Hewlett-Packard Carly Fiorina and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham at 1 percent.
On the Democratic side, Mrs. Clinton took 57 percent, followed by: Vice President Joseph R. Biden at 16 percent; Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at 14 percent; former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb at 2 percent; and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley at 1 percent.
The poll was done by interviewing 1,017 adult Americans by telephone. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.APPLE "hides behind a cloak of invisibility," Labor MP Ed Husic testified before Parliament this morning.
"It is interesting that the other week it was revealed that Apple Australia generated over $6 billion in revenue here in Australia but paid only $40 million in tax. Apparently that is two-thirds of one per cent of its turnover," Mr Husic said during a discussion on the International Tax Agreements Amendment Bill.
"People will rightly rush and point out that we tax profits, not revenue, so it might be wrong to needle that firm on this."
Mr Husic said that even though Apple has an Australian head office "you would not know it because they maintain a cloak of invisibility".
"Their key management team dodge any scrutiny and refuse to even engage on public policy issues," he said.
"Given the lack of work they do on that front, you would hardly say that it cost $5.5 billion to maintain a head office here and dodge that limelight.
Mr Husic said he imagined that Apple's costs were tied to pricing arrangements with Apple US.
"It would be great to learn more about what they do, but Apple steadfastly refuses to engage with stakeholders," he said.
"Ask anyone who has sought answers from them about their Australian operations and you will hear a common theme: they will not talk."
Mr Husic also mentioned Google in his testimony, which he said was another firm in the spotlight for its questionable tax practices.
"I think, by way of contrast, Google at least engages with government, is prepared to talk and be a lot more open about issues," he said.
"While they will obviously—and all the major tech firms—be a remaining focus on the impact of transfer pricing and the impact of their tax arrangements and what they do in terms of our tax revenue and our base of tax revenue, at least they are willing to engage.
"Apple, on the other hand, believe that they are above scrutiny, and that is completely unacceptable."
Read the full transcript of Mr Husic's speech here.
UPDATE 1.06pm: Mr Husic told News.com.au that both consumers and the ATO are being "slugged" by Apple who he claims is doing a very good job of hiding their profits in order to reduce their tax bill.
"The consumer is slugged, the tax office is slugged and Apple comes off the big winner," he said.
How has Apple managed to pay so little tax?
Well, in Australia we only tax profit, rather then revenue.
"What they did is they made $6 billion in revenue, and Apple said it had racked up $5.5 billion worth of costs," Mr Husic said. "It reckons it only made $99 million in profit, which led to them having a lower tax bill."
But how on earth did Apple rack up $5.5 million worth of costs?," Mr Husic asked.
"They don't manufacture here, they don't maintain factories, where is the cost?"
Mr Husic theorised that Apple was able to hide its profits through a commonly used tool known as "transfer costs", whereby Apple US would have charged Apple Australia to sell its products overseas.
"That's where the costs come in," he said.
He also said Apple deliberately keeps a low profile when it comes to public inquiries. "It has a head office that never answers any public inquiry into why its costs are so high and taxes are so low."
Mr Husic has been championing a government investigation into the pricing of tech goods and tax avoidance by tech giants including Apple, Microsoft and Google.
Last year Apple made $6 billion worth of revenue in Australia. It paid on $40 million in tax. That's less than one percent tax on its annual revenue.
Apple declined to comment.
Originally published as 'Apple hides behind a cloak of invisibility'I have repeated this stuff dozens of times, but apparently I need to repeat it again.
The Sad Puppies 3 campaign is a separate and different entity than the Rabid Puppies campaign.
I started Sad Puppies a few years ago. My goal was to demonstrate that the awards were biased, represented the likes of only one small part of fandom, and that authors with the wrong politics who got on the ballot would be attacked. All of that has been demonstrated rather conclusively.
Brad Torgersen ran Sad Puppies 3, and I was one of the people who helped. The mission changed, and Brad’s main goal was to get deserving, worthy authors who would normally be ignored onto the ballot, regardless of their politics.
Vox Day ran a separate campaign called Rabid Puppies.
I believe that RP started with most of existing SP3 suggested slate, and then added more works that they liked. But I can’t speak for them.
Vox Day himself was not on the SP3 slate.
I believe 3 short fiction works from his publishing house were on our suggested slate. They were on our suggested slate because we thought they were very good.
Vox Day was on a prior SP suggestion slate, because I liked his novelette that year, and the SP2 slate was pretty much just my personal suggestions.
The Sad Puppies campaign doesn’t endorse anybody’s politics. Our slate had people from everything, left, right, middle, and question mark. We only cared if the works were good.
I personally do not agree with Vox on a wide variety of topics.
I do not speak for him.
I do not control him.
He does what he wants.
We have argued about this topic. You know the situation has gotten weird when I’m the voice of moderation.
I cannot disown what I do not own.
I neither condone nor defend any of his public statements. I did not make them.
Of course I do not like some of the things he has said.
Do you think the existence of Rabid Puppies has somehow made my life easier?
I’m not going to burn anyone in effigy. Stop asking.
I’m not going to condemn anyone by association. Stop asking.
When two assholes collide, I shouldn’t have to take a side, declare one a sainted victim, and the other the devil aggressor. Stop asking me to.
I’ve said all of the above before.
My personal politics are on record. I have been involved in politics. I’ve written about my personal beliefs a lot. I am very opinionated. Those are my personal beliefs. I stand by them. Since this has started reporters have combed through everything I’ve ever written, trying to find something sexist, racist, or homophobic to use against me, and they haven’t found anything. Why? Because they aren’t there. Because I’m not.
I recommended someone’s short story. You do not like his belief. I can defend my liking his short story, but I cannot, and should not have to account for the author’s personal beliefs. A giant group of other authors, who are also not affiliated with him, should not be assigned his beliefs and be attacked for them.
However, I can believe that all authors have the right to free speech. That includes people who say stuff I don’t like or agree with. I have a giant list of authors I disagree with. I have done so, loudly, and often. We should all be free to disagree without the danger of purges, defamation, and career sabotage. As far as I am aware, Vox Day hasn’t ever called for censorship or tried to ruin any author’s career. I cannot however, say that same thing for others.
Authors should not be attacked for the crime of being recommended by someone you don’t like. That is asinine. The only questions should be, is the work good? Is the work award worthy? Yes? Good. Then quit yelling at them. I was told by one of his supporters yesterday that Vox is also a fan of Umberto Eco and China Mieville. Better break out the torches and pitchforks!
I cannot explain his quotes or his public statements because I did not formulate them, do not hold them myself, and I did not write them. Unlike my critics, I do not claim to read minds.
I cannot purge him. First, I don’t believe in purges. Second, I believe in free speech, warts and all. And third, since he isn’t part of my campaign, I’ve got nothing to purge him from.
Let me clarify something. When I say something to the effect about how it would be awful nice to see normal people on the other side condemn the outlandish, racist, stupid, hateful, threatening things that hundreds on their side have said, I don’t actually expect them to. They don’t own other people’s comments either. Normally when I bring that up, it is out of frustration, because I’m expected to ritually shun someone who is nominally on my side of the debate for saying mean things, while all those on the other side saying things just as bad or worse, are given a pass. That is hypocritical.
For the one loudmouth I’m being demanded to account for, just among the award winning and nominated folks on the other side you’ve got NAMBLA supporters, psychopathic trolls, and a whole mess of racists… But Brad and I are the ones who need to anoint ourselves with ash and perform the ritual of shame? No. Buzz off.
Look at it like this. I’m Churchill. Brad is FDR. We wound up on the same side as Stalin.
SP3 has been accused of trying to sweep the nominations. First, we didn’t have 5 in most of the categories, and when we did, it was because we had a ton of good suggestions and honestly thought all of them were awesome. Second, we did not expect to do as good as we did. Our showing was a surprise. Some of the categories were not swept by SP, but rather a combination of SP and RP noms, and SP had no control over that. Note, that isn’t an apology. That is a clarification. They are fans too, they spent their $40 like everyone else, and they voted for what they wanted.
And believe me, if I was surprised by how many fans SP brought, I was really surprised by what RP pulled off.
John C. Wright is also not Vox Day. Sad Puppies did not get him a record number of nominations. I believe we had him for 3 items in novella, short, and related work, and all of them were excellent. Wright picked up more nominations beyond that, which again, my campaign had no control over. He is now tied for most in one year. However, Wright is an excellent author, who has been around about as long as Charles Stross, but he is normally ignored at awards time. So rather than bitch and moan about him getting several noms, why don’t you actually read the works to see how good they are and vote honestly?
My motivation was not to replace one biased clique with a new biased clique, but rather to get an award that everyone—up until two weeks ago—claimed represented all of fandom, to represent more of fandom. I suppose the one way that I do have to accept responsibility for Vox Day is that I’m the one who demonstrated to all the outsiders just how little and cliquish the system actually was.
So in conclusion, we are not Vox Day. Quit trying to make us the same. Vox Day is Vox Day. If you have any problems with him, take it up with him.By Maria Knapp
LONDON—The French national assembly has finally voted on the final text of its new anti-corruption law, which joins the ranks of 20 national anticorruption laws globally. The law is intended as a civil, preventive instrument and has a positive obligation on companies at its core. It does not significantly interfere with existing laws and sentencing guidelines on corruption and “traffic d’influence,” and it doesn’t require a predicate offense to kick in. In short, it looks and feels different from its UK and American counterparts in subtle but important ways.
Michel Sapin, currently the minister of finance, originally promoted a bill in the early 1990s (labeled “Sapin I”) that introduced measures curtailing lobbying. Sapin II was two years in the making and went through substantial back-and-forth amendments along the way. Now that the dust has settled, a few things are clear:
Sapin II expands extra-territorial reach for French prosecutors. The law applies fully to corruption by French companies overseas and foreign companies with a footprint in France (“exercising all or some of its activities on French territory”), and its prosecutors may have authority to investigate acts whether or not an offense occurred under local law.
It establishes a strict positive obligation on French companies to “prevent corruption.” Companies with over 500 employees or an annual turnover in excess of EUR 100m are expected to implement an appropriate internal ABC risk management framework against which the company and its directors will be held accountable by the newly created Agence Française Anticorruption (AFA, see below). This is different from section 7 of the UK Bribery Act, which is in effect a compliance defense for an act of bribery. Under Sapin II, a company may be sanctioned for non-compliance without any predicate offense. Moreover, there is a stick but no carrot: there is no formal mechanism for prevention programs to reduce the severity of penalties for companies prosecuted for corruption.
Section 17 of the law clearly defines eight mandatory measures for a corruption prevention program, and other obligations may be defined in time. The eight measures so far outlined are: a code of conduct that must be integrated into the internal regulations of the company; a whistleblowing line; ongoing risk assessments; due diligence into clients, suppliers and intermediaries; internal and external controls; training; a roster of disciplinary sanctions; and an internal audit of the program. Because of their governance rules, most French companies will need to consult with their employee representative organizations prior to integrating the code of conduct into internal regulations. Companies already complying with UK and US regulations may need to consider how this last obligation affects their existing policy framework.
The law creates a new national anti-corruption agency called Agence Française Anticorruption (AFA). It has a right to obtain disclosure, to conduct interviews and carry out onsite inspections. It does not have investigative powers and it cannot impose criminal penalties. Its mandate is threefold: provide up-to-date guidance and support to companies in relation to prevention obligations; sanction breaches of the prevention obligation including formal warnings, injunctions or fines of up to EUR 1m against companies and EUR 200,000 against individuals; and monitor remediation plans (at the company’s cost). Insiders have questioned the ability of the AFA to effectively fulfill its mandate with only 70 permanent personnel expected on board.
Sapin II introduces deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs referred to under the law as convention judiciaire d’intérêt public). The aim is to increase corruption enforcement by creating a more palatable civil avenue. An agreement doesn’t require any admission of guilt and will be conditional on three things: implementation of an adequate corruption prevention program under monitorship by the AFA for up to three years; a fine paid to the French treasury and capped at 30% of a company’s annual turnover; and in some cases additional compensation for victims. DPAs are only open to legal persons and do not exempt individuals from being investigated separately. Anticorruption civil society organizations had strongly lobbied for DPAs to be conditional on the publication of the decision on the AFA’s website.
The Sapin II regime doesn’t settle the French position on double jeopardy, which preoccupies commentators on the UK Anti-Bribery Act and the FCPA alike. In the absence of a clear agreement between judicial authorities, French DPAs may simply open an avenue for foreign investigation and prosecution, nor is it clear what position French authorities will take on the effect of a settlement. A few French court cases will soon be decided that will help to determine the recognition of US-deferred prosecution agreements in France.
According to a study by Transparency International, 39% of French employees do not blow the whistle due to fear of repercussions, mainly from their employers. By compelling all companies with more than 50 employees to establish a whistleblower mechanism and providing “protection against retaliation” and guaranteeing confidentiality to whistleblowers, Sapin II introduces one of the strongest protection frameworks for whistleblowers. Magistrates may impose fines and prison sentences on individuals found to have revealed a whistleblower’s identity or created an “obstacle” to the process.
A few things differentiate the whistleblower regime from its UK and US counterparts. First, the regime applies only to disinterested parties. The law does not protect or incentivize whistleblowing by implicated parties, i.e. those who have the closest visibility of the facts. The definition, “reporting selflessly and acting in good faith,” precludes implicated parties. Second, the whistleblower must have firsthand knowledge of the facts. Third, with very few exceptions, whistleblowers receive immunity from criminal prosecution. Fourth, the law affords protection to those alleged to be involved by guaranteeing anonymity to named accused persons in a report until the facts are proven. Finally, unlike in the US, whistleblowers may be provided with financial support in an amount to be determined by an existing independent authority, but not rewarded.
Whistleblower activity may be hampered by the hierarchical reporting process: whistleblowers must first use internal whistleblowing channels before blowing the whistle to the relevant regulator and finally to the press. In line with the preventive policy directive behind the law, this is designed to enable companies to react quickly to allegations. Anticorruption campaigners like Transparency International France strongly support this position.
There is disagreement over the independence of the primary enforcer of the policy, the AFA, and the inefficiency this could cause. The National Assembly resisted pressure from the Senate to put the AFA under full judicial authority. Instead, the lower house emphasized the agency’s “functional autonomy” by giving the body sanctioning power. However, while the law specifies that the AFA does not take or seek instruction from any government body, its head is nominated by presidential decree, it is nominally subordinate to the Ministry of Justice, and it has not been granted the status of an independent administrative authority.
The proof will be in the pudding as to whether the AFA’s remit and sanctioning powers are sufficient to compel French companies to make a real commitment to putting in place strong and effective preventive programs and responsive whistleblowing mechanisms. However, there is no question that Sapin II is an innovative law in this space and it marks a watershed in the evolution of regulation of transparency and corporate governance in France.
Maria Knapp is a director for Compliance, Forensics, and Intelligence at Control Risks, the world’s leading political, integrity, and security risk consultancy.Hamilton homebuyers are increasingly being pushed out to places like St. Catharines and Brantford by the pressure of rising prices, experts say.
It's a domino effect from the same pressures that are forcing Toronto buyers to look outside that city and seek bargains in Hamilton.
We are not seeing wages growing fast enough to catch up with the rate at which prices are growing in Hamilton. - Abdul Kargbo, CMHC senior market analyst
And it is one of the issues at play in Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's decision to issue its first-ever "red" warning for the national housing market Wednesday.
The report says that homebuyers are being priced out of markets and warns that the that problem is spreading beyond Vancouver and Toronto into places like Hamilton.
Abdul Kargbo, CMHC senior market analyst for the Hamilton and Brantford areas, says fundamental factors such as jobs or population growth aren't in line with ballooning prices in the region.
"We are not seeing wages growing fast enough to catch up with the rate at which prices are growing in Hamilton. Prices are increasing much faster than the economic drivers would warrant."
Priced out of the city
Realtor James McHardy sees the dynamic playing out in his dailly work.
He say says there has been a significant uptick in buyers from the GTA looking to invest in Hamilton over the last few years, but that has been followed by some homeowners no longer being able to afford living in the city.
"There are some people who have been renting for a few years, and they may not be able to afford the areas where they're living or want to live," he said.
"It's concerning because they have kids in school or they have their roots here, and some of them are, I believe, being priced out."
This chart shows the trend lines for housing and other key economic indicators. (CMHC)
Much of the issue is centred on people who can no longer afford rents in, for example, the Ottawa Street shopping district.
"There are more people looking at St Catharines, Dunnville, Caledonia and Brantford, particularly those four places because they're the next most affordable."
Rental impacts
Kargbo believes rental vacancy rates will drop over the next few years as renters "pull forward" their demand and put off buying homes for another while.
"Once we start seeing interest rates also creeping up, it will erode affordability, so some renters that would jump into home ownership will probably stay a little bit longer."
The red warning announcement is part of CMHC's Fall Housing Market Outlook, which provides a two-year forecast of housing starts, sales, prices and key economic indicators, and its fourth quarter Housing Market Assessment, which identifies potential problems in Canadian housing markets.
The agency looks at four key signs of concern: Overheating, price acceleration, overvaluation and overbuilding.
Hamilton: Strongly problematic
In its July report, CMHC added Hamilton to a list of markets considered to be strongly overvalued, joining the likes of Vancouver, Toronto, Saskatoon and Quebec City.
The new October report upgrades Hamilton's housing market to "strongly problematic" in its overall assessment, with price acceleration going from weak to moderate and overvaluation continuing to be strong.
The other five cities displaying "strong evidence of problematic conditions" are Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, Saskatoon and Regina.
Kargbo added that the "strong evidence" of overvaluation in Hamilton comes thanks in part to buyers from the GTA spilling over, seeking more affordable markets, and outpacing the supply.
This charts shows where Hamilton rates in key indictors of "problematic conditions." (CMHC)
Forecasts using 2013 Statistics Canada data estimated that about 30 per cent of the home sales in Hamilton that year could be attributed to buyers from Toronto and its surrounding areas, who see prices in the city as a "bargain", said Kargbo.
He thinks much of that out-of-town demand has continued, which in turn suggests locals are being pushed further out.
"If you look at Brantford, for example, it's a 20-minute drive into Hamilton," he said. "Those are some of the dynamics that we are seeing, and the pressure as a result of price increases."
Kargbo says one of the highlights of the report is that, even though housing prices are likely to continue to grow over the next two years, the rate of growth is likely to slow down.
In the last year alone, he says, the price of an existing home in Hamilton has increased by about 14 |
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Brent Gardner-Smith
County approvals
A resolution was passed in 1979 by three county commissioners — Joe Edwards, Bob Child and Michael Kinsley — for “an educational and research institute dedicated to the creation of an environmentally aware, holistic, and synergistic center, devoted to raising human consciousness at all levels — individual, social, political and environmental.”
The commissioners approved joining the two properties Denver had purchased into the single, 957-acre parcel that remains intact today.
They approved a campus with up to 40,000 square feet of buildings, including housing for up to 20 Windstar employees and their families. All of the development was to be clustered on the lower end of the property below 7,400 feet.
Parking was to be limited to 12 to 15 spaces, with all visitors being brought to the site in small vans after being picked up at Aspen Village or the Old Snowmass Conoco. And up to 50 people could be on site for seminars, programs and community picnics.
At the time, the Snowmass Capitol Creek Caucus, which advises the commissioners on development in the area, submitted “an enthusiastic, unanimous endorsement of Windstar’s application,” according to the resolution.
The caucus was to be allowed to hold its meetings on the property, and today it still does.
John Katzenberg, a former Windstar managing director, said the 1979 resolution from Pitkin County is “probably the clearest representation of what John wanted to see happen on the land.”
Aspen Historical Society
Whose garden was this?
A 1982 self-guided-tour map of the facility is also instructive about what Windstar achieved.
The map said Windstar’s purpose was “education and demonstration of appropriate technologies, food production techniques, and lifestyles that enable people to operate at their highest potential in an environmentally conscious and gentle manner.”
Windstar modified the ranch house, adding a greenhouse along the front and installing other demonstration solar energy systems. It would later add several dorm rooms in the building.
It erected a $25,000 tent with 5,000 square feet of sheltered space for meetings, seminars and Tom Crum’s akido-based workshops.
Buckminster Fuller, an early Windstar advisory board member, inspired a biodome on the property to demonstrate food production techniques. It still stands today over a pod of carved wooden whales.
“Under Bucky’s tutelage we re-envisioned Windstar less as a model of environmental concern than as a state of consciousness,” Denver wrote in “Take Me Home.”
Windstar did not build any employee housing or put up any other significant structures on the property. Today, the place resembles a quiet, 1950s-era ranch with a far out ranch building, several small cabins and a Bucky dome.
In addition to its activities on site, Windstar also held 10 annual Choices for the Future conferences starting in 1986. The events brought luminaries from many sectors together much as the Aspen Ideas Festival does today. And the Windstar Foundation had grown to include 25 to 30 employees.
“Supporting all that activity became expensive,” Denver writes in his autobiography about his good works. “It would reach the point where I needed to take home more than $2 million a year in order to do it. It would become an enormous treadmill that kept going faster and faster.”
Aspen Historical Society
Two sides of Windstar
Denver wrote his autobiography in 1994 at age 50, three years before his death in a plane crash in California.
In the book, he does not describe the unraveling of Windstar, but Karen D’Attilo, who taught meditation, children’s music and poetry at Windstar, said that as the demands on Denver’s time and attention grew, some poor choices were made.
“Hal Thau never liked Windstar,” D’Attilo said about Denver’s business manager. “He thought it was a bad investment. And the people that Hal Thau brought in did not share the same philosophy that John did.
“The fan base that loved John and his music could have supported Windstar,” she said. “It could have been a great success. It was doing amazing things.”
She said one high point for her was a night at the Music Tent during a Choices conference when the assembled leaders of all the remaining Native American tribes in the U.S. marched in together.
In 1986, RMI’s Amory Lovins spoke at a Choices for the Future event, noting that, “It is critical to remember that our policies must be sustainable. We must devise management schemes with sustainability as the bottom line. Not profit.”
But the Windstar Foundation ran up a sizable debt, taking out loans with local banks and using the property as collateral.
“There was this spiritual side of Windstar and then there was this corporate screw-up side,” D’Attilo said.
Brent Gardner-Smith
The National Wildlife Federation’s role
In 1990 the National Wildlife Federation stepped in and bought half of the Windstar property.
Jay Hair, then the president of the NWF, was a friend and colleague of Denver’s and was willing to help protect the property from development.
The NWF paid $886,000 to the Windstar Foundation for its share of the property, according to Ann Morgan, the director of NWF’s Rocky Mountain office. The NWF then also helped finance ongoing Windstar Foundation programs.
By 1995 the NWF was ready to leave Windstar, and RMI, which had been leasing the property for its offices for several years, stepped up to raise the money to meet NWF’s asking price.
“Windstar had continued in a much reduced way as a nonprofit compared to what it had been in the 1980s,” Katzenberger said. “RMI was the only entity in a position to take care of the land.”
While Windstar had faded over the years, RMI had grown.
In 1985, when Lovins gained county approval to build his energy-efficient compound along Snowmass Creek, he had 12 employees and was allowed three to work with him in the 4,000 square feet of living and office space.
As it grew, RMI bought other properties in the valley to use for employee housing and leased increasingly more office space at Windstar.
As part of its effort to raise the $1.5 million to buy out the NWF, RMI was instrumental in putting a formal conservation easement on the Windstar property, which the Windstar Foundation had not done.
Today, the conservation easement is held by Pitkin County Open Space and Trails and the Aspen Valley Land Trust.
Pitkin County put $250,000 of open space funds toward the purchase of the conservation easement, contingent upon RMI successfully raising the balance of the $1.5 million
In 1997, after a successful capital campaign, RMI paid NWF $1.5 million and NWF recorded a gain of $614,000 on the sale of the property.
“Our goal was to be there forever,” said RMI’s Pickett.
RMI has also spent over $1 million to restore the land and wetlands on the property, according to a 2005 letter it sent to neighbors.
Today, the county assessor values the combined property at $5.3 million. The land itself is valued at $5 million and the main office building, and several other small structures, are valued at $326,900.
Brent Gardner-Smith
Public open space?
Today, the conservation easement is the primary document that guides the future of the Windstar property, although RMI has argued that the 1979 approvals from the county are still relevant and in place.
In addition to agricultural use, the easement allows for “passive, non-motorized, non-commercial” recreational uses “including hiking, horseback riding and cross-country skiing on existing roads and trials …”
The easement also allows that up to 25,000 square feet of housing for 20 nonprofit employees could be built on the 30-acre parcel set aside for development.
Public use has been relatively light with perhaps the most use coming from neighbors who ride horses on the property.
A sign on the land directs visitors to stay on designated trails, but the only trail appears to be a ranch road that leads up a hillside to an irrigation ditch.
There is not, as one might expect, a well-marked trail that loops up and back through the meadow and/or the woods on the property, perhaps with a bench at the top of a ridge with an inspirational view. Instead, a visitor can feel they are on the wrong trail and not welcome on the upper part of the land.
RMI, in a 2005 letter to its neighbors, described the public conservation easement as one that “serves permanently as wildlife habitat, a place for the public (primarily our neighbors) to hike and ride their horses, and a hot-air balloon landing site.”
In 1996, RMI and Windstar submitted an application for funding to Great Outdoors Colorado stating that “RMI and Windstar will maintain and enhance the property’s use as a community park. Guaranteed public access will be limited only as necessary to protect the resource, primarily during muddy elk calving and deer fawning times.”
Brent Gardner-Smith
RMI’s proposal
In 2004, RMI’s leaders decided it would make the Windstar property the organization’s long-term home.
At that time, it had seven employees working in Boulder, 32 employees working at the Windstar office building and about eight employees working at Lovins’ home-office a few miles away.
RMI submitted an application to Pitkin County that it felt was consistent with the 1979 approvals for a small, nonprofit campus.
It proposed to replace the 7,800-square-foot building with up to 25,000 square feet of new office space — big enough for 55 employees.
It proposed to build 15,000 square feet of housing for up to 20 employees.
And it proposed expanding the parking lot from 46 spaces to 51 spaces, formalizing a horse-trailer turnaround area and adding 14 more parking spaces for employee housing.
The plan was approved by the holders of the conservation easement, Pitkin County and the AVLT board.
But it ran into opposition from the powerful Snowmass Capitol Creek Caucus, which had recently completed a master plan for the area.
Brent Gardner-Smith
Caucus suggests otherwise
The Snowmass/Capitol Creek master plan considers the Windstar property, as well as the Aspen Camp of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and St. Bendict’s Monastery, appropriate for “institutional” use, including “summer camps, research facilities and retreat centers.”
But the plan says any new uses on such sites are to be “small-scale” and “fully compatible” with the rural-residential character of the surrounding neighborhoods.
After reviewing RMI’s proposal, the caucus board neither approved nor denied the plan, but it wrote a report to the county that concluded RMI’s proposal was not consistent with the master plan.
” … RMI may have outgrown our rural residential neighborhood as the proper location for all future organizational growth in the next 25-50 years,” the caucus report said. “While the spiritual center of RMI/Windstar would be welcome for the long term in suitable replacement facilities on portions of the 30 acre reserved area, the offices and housing to accommodate substantial future growth should be sited within the urban growth boundary of Basalt, Carbondale or other appropriate community.”
And many neighbors spoke out in opposition, citing traffic, lighting, and the commercial nature of RMI’s consulting business.
“We are vehemently opposed to the proposed Windstar expansion,” wrote Kathryn, Alison and Elizabeth Eastley in a letter to the county. “The rural nature of the Snowmass/Capitol Creek Valley will be irreparably damaged, traffic will increase exponentially, and John Denver’s legacy and affection for this valley will be perverted and twisted into a project that smacks of greed, avarice and total disregard for the nature of this valley.”
RMI also tripped up trouble when it proposed rezoning the land to a “public” designation, which under county regulations might have allowed the property to also be used as a nursing home.
When questioned about this, RMI officials said in a letter, “we would prefer not to deed restrict against it [a nursing home] since it could potentially be a future use that the community could welcome.”
Windstar amended its proposal and shrunk the total development to 24,500 square feet, but it still ran into opposition.
“Your mission is to walk softly across the globe, but I think you are dancing loudly here at home,” caucus member Suzanne Caskey told RMI officials, as reported by The Aspen Times.
Caskey was also critical of RMI’s past use of the Windstar tent, as RMI would rent the tent for outside private events that included amplified music.
RMI eventually folded the tent, once an iconic symbol of the Windstar Foundation, for good.
After a contentious Pitkin County planning and zoning meeting, RMI withdrew its proposal and agreed to work on a code amendment with the county that might simplify a future review process.
The county’s land-use code was later changed to suit a situation like RMI’s, but RMI never filed a new application to develop the Windstar campus.
Today, RMI is ready for change.
“We had so much opposition from the neighbors,” Pickett said. “They didn’t want any future expansion or increased use or traffic.”
Brent Gardner-Smith
Alternative sanctuary
Today, on the lower portion of the Windstar property there is a statue of John Denver holding an eagle and around the statue are bricks carved with messages.
After Denver’s death on Oct. 12, 1997, the property attracted many fans who wished to remember the man and his music.
Today, the John Denver Sanctuary along the Roaring Fork River near downtown Aspen increasingly plays the role of a place to remember Denver, and the area around the sanctuary has recently been rebuilt into a stunningly beautiful riverside garden.
“The fans make their pilgrimage from all over the world to Windstar,” Dopslaff of the Windstar Foundation said. “But that is kind of waning. They have transferred their spirit to the garden in Aspen. They love that garden.”
So even if a home is built on the site, fans will still be able to come to his adopted hometown and have a powerful place to be.
(Although, it should be noted that the stone in the sanctuary inscribed with the lyrics to “Rocky Mountain High” does not include the verse that reads: “Now his life is full of wonder, but his heart still knows some fear/of a simple thing he can not comprehend./Why they try to tear the mountains down to bring in a couple more,/more people, more scars upon the land.”)
Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
Windstar giving away proceeds?
And if the Windstar Foundation does receive half the proceeds from the sale, and gives it to local organizations, won’t that also further Denver’s vision?
“We’ve agreed to support those agencies that are really doing the work,” said Dopslaff. “We don’t want to dilute it.”
When pressed for an example of such a group, Dopslaff said she didn’t want to be specific, but did say the group Aspen T.R.E.E., which teaches sustainable living and farming in cooperation with ACES, would be an example.
“We would be kind of a middle man, making sure John Denver’s vision for the world continues on,” she said. “If it would sell, it would be an advantage to the community, as I see it.”
Should the Windstar Foundation, now enriched with the foresight of John Denver’s land purchase, carry on the vision itself, even though it would have no physical home?
No, says Karen D’Attilo, the former music teacher at Windstar.
“Windstar has so many things in the closet that it would be almost impossible to fix,” she said. “There are a group of people are who literally groupies, who showed up after John died and think they know what is going on. But they don’t have the moralistic timbre, if you will.”
D’Attilo also said that Denver had decided to close the Windstar Foundation six weeks before he died.
“They had moved the stuff out of there and into a garage in Carbondale,” she said. “The land was going to be there, but Windstar per se, John knew it was a done deal.”
Brent Gardner-Smith
Choices for the future
While the status quo at the Windstar property seems OK with the caucus, many neighbors might rather see a single-family home there as it would bring less traffic.
But many in the neighborhood also want to see vehicle access to the site remain intact. They want parking for a few cars and a space big enough to turn a horse trailer around.
The fate of a parking lot is not entirely up to RMI though, as there is no approval for a lot in the conservation easement and it’s not clear if the 12 to 15 parking spaces approved in the 1979 plan are still valid.
A 1979 transportation plan submitted to the county by Windstar said “absolutely no visitor vehicles will be allowed on facility grounds.”
“It is not really meant to be a horse trail for the rich folk up in Snowmass,” said Dopslaff. “But we will work on having some kind of parking lot.”
But public parking lots and single-family homes don’t normally go well together.
RMI has said that 27 homes could once have been built on the 957 acres at Windstar, and so the 927 acres under the protection of the conservation easement may be the best showcase of Denver’s values and aspirations.
So, is one home on the lower end of the property an insult to the man who wrote “Rocky Mountain High?”
“In terms of the single-family residence, it seems like there would be less impact than a campus situation,” said Martha Cochran, the executive director of the Aspen Valley Land Trust, which is responsible for protecting the 927 acres under the conservation easement. “That seems to be a less intense use than what is allowed there now. That is something that we look on favorably because of less impact.”
But is a single-family home even allowed by the conservation easement?
“While it doesn’t speak directly to it, it does not prohibit it,” Cochran said.
Brent Gardner-Smith
Mountain vision
In “Take Me Home,” Denver writes that he first had a vision of a place like Windstar when he was a lonesome kid climbing trees behind his suburban Tuscon home.
“It was in those trees that I first fantasized about Windstar, about having a place up in the mountains where people could come together and talk and not feel alone,” Denver wrote.
He first visited Aspen when he followed Annie, of “Annie’s Song,” here while she was on a college ski trip.
“I was convinced that one day we were going to live in the mountains,” Denver wrote. “People were going to want to listen to what I had to say, and what I had to say to people would be meaningful; I would lead ‘by the hand and by the heart.’ Annie took it all with a grain of salt, as well she might.”
The Windstar Foundation may not have panned out, but the property he purchased will always be protected, and open to the public, even if there is a luxury home at the bottom of the property instead of a nonprofit dedicated to saving the planet.
“I don’t know how John would feel about it all,” said Katzenberger, who worked at Windstar from 1979 to 1989 and now runs the Aspen Global Change Institute. “If Windstar just wants to go along with what RMI wants, who knows, he might go for it. But now it is up to the current people to do the right thing.”
A shed door at Windstar. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith
Editor’s notes:
A version of this story was published in the Perspectives section of the Denver Post on Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012.
A version of this story was published by The Aspen Times on Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012.
An Associated Press version of the story in the Times was published by the Denver Post on Monday, Oct. 1, 2012.
The Aspen Daily News ran a letter about the story on Tuesday, Oct. 2.
On Wednesday, Oct. 3, Aspen Times columnist Andy Stone wrote about Windstar.
On Thursday, Oct. 4, the website Real Aspen posted the story from Aspen Journalism’s website.
Additional photos:
Freelance photographer Dan Bayer took additional photos for the Sunday Denver Post story on Oct. 23, 2012. They are below. They can be used without charge if credit given to Aspen Journalism/Dan Bayer. And please link the photo credit to AspenJournalism.org.
Dan Bayer / Aspen Journalism
Dan Bayer / Aspen Journalism
Dan Bayer / Aspen JournalismA new report from Oxfam identifies Ireland as one of four European Union countries that would be blacklisted as a tax haven if the EU were to apply its own criteria to member states.
The EU is currently drafting a blacklist for tax havens, analysing 92 non-EU countries and jurisdictions against a set of three criteria, which include tax transparency and policies that facilitate large-scale profit-shifting.
However, this process excludes EU member states, meaning they will not be assessed.
Oxfam has applied the EU's own criteria to 92 countries worldwide, as well as to the 28 EU member states and, according to its analysis, at least 35 non-EU countries should be included in the EU tax haven blacklist.
Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Malta also met the criteria for being listed as a tax haven.
In its report, Oxfam says Ireland fails to meet the second criterion on fair taxation and the facilitation of tax avoidance.
The report establishes that royalties sent out of Ireland were equivalent to 26% of the country's gross domestic product in 2015, which is more royalties than are sent out of the rest of the EU combined.
"As Ireland fails the EU's blacklisting criteria, it is clear that the Government has questions to answer with regard to its stated commitment to tackling tax avoidance," said Oxfam Ireland Chief Executive Jim Clarken.
"In the past, the case has been made that because Ireland's tax arrangements fulfilled OECD standards there was no substantiation that Ireland matched the conditions associated with tax haven status.
"The OECD's blacklisting process has been called into question due to the fact that it only listed one country Trinidad and Tobago as a tax haven."
The report - Blacklist or Whitewash: What a real EU blacklist of tax havens should look like - says financial flows are often completely out of proportion with the tax havens' real economic activity.
It states that in the British Virgin Islands foreign direct investment amounts to 90,000% of the country's GDP.
The corresponding figure for the Cayman Islands is 5,400% of the GDP, for Malta it is 650%, and for Luxembourg around 400% of GDP.
Oxfam said it is concerned that EU governments will come up with a weak, or even empty, blacklist and has urged the EU to put rules in place to reform the tax systems of EU countries such as Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Malta.
A spokesperson for the Department of Finance has said "Ireland has no harmful tax regimes."
He described Oxfam's report, which said Ireland would be blacklisted as a tax haven by the EU's own criteria as "totally inaccurate".
Oxfam's 'Blacklist or Whitewash' report stated that Ireland fails to meet the criterion on fair taxation.
However, the Department of Finance says this requirement is failed where a tax regime has been identified as harmful by the EU or OECD or if a country has a zero or almost zero tax rate.
"Ireland has no harmful tax regimes and this fact is endorsed by both the EU Code of Conduct group and the OECD Forum on Harmful Tax Practices," the spokesperson said.Two of the most powerful figures in the Senate have announced they are reimbursing the full amount of their contested expense claims, ahead of Tuesday's highly anticipated release of the auditor general's report.
Senate Speaker Leo Housakos said in a news release sent out Monday morning that he has decided to repay the full amount of his expenses in order to protect "the integrity of the procedures and processes we put in place resulting from the auditor general's report."
It was announced at the same time as Opposition Leader James Cowan's confirmation that he has repaid his expenses.
CBC News has also learned the Senate has changed its meal policy in the midst of the ongoing fallout from the two-year expenses audit. Meals provided by the Senate will no longer be served during committee meetings. The Senate originally provided meals for senators during committee meetings, and also allowed them to collect per diems. Senators will still be able to collect their per diems.
Senate spokeswoman Nancy Durning confirmed the meal policy change, noting however, that "light snacks may still be served when deemed appropriate."
This is in addition to a pending policy change preventing senators from flying business class at taxpayers' expense for trips shorter than two hours. Both policies will come into effect after the Senate rises for the summer.
Last week, CBC News reported that Housakos, Cowan and Conservative government leader Claude Carignan were among those caught in the crosshairs of Auditor General Michael Ferguson's audit of the Senate.
The revelation prompted questions of possible conflict of interest, as the Senate leaders were also involved in creating the process in the upper chamber to handle senators' disputed claims — including the appointment of an independent arbiter.
"I have taken this decision not because I don't believe in every Senator's right to arbitration but because I believe in it so strongly that I do not wish there to be any question surrounding the integrity of the process or the manner in which it was implemented," said Housakos, who represents Quebec. He was found to owe about $6,000 related to a contract.
Skipping arbitration
Cowan's release stated he has repaid his expense claims in full "but (continues) to respectfully disagree with the findings of the auditor general." Cowan, a senator from Halifax, confirmed last week that he had been told to pay back a little more than $10,000 for travel-related expenses in 2011.
Senate Speaker Leo Housakos announced he will be repaying all of his contested expenses in an effort to preserve the integrity of the Senate expenses dispute process. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press) "I stand by my position that all expenses charged by me to the Senate were, and will continue to be, entirely appropriate. I have taken this action solely to remove any lingering perceptions about the integrity of the arbitration process," Cowan said in the release.
Both have also decided they will skip arbitration of the contested claims.
Carignan, who has already reimbursed about $3,000, said the auditor's findings in his case related to expenses by one of his staff.
Housakos, Cowan and Carignan are among 30 former and sitting senators found by Ferguson to have filed ineligible expenses. Nine of the senators' expense files have been sent to the RCMP.
'We're all human'
CBC News has also learned that Senator Don Plett from Manitoba has repaid $2,975 out of $4,095 in ineligible travel expenses. He is contesting the other $1,120.
"There were two claims that had an administrative error," Plett said. "We happened to flag both of these errors prior to [the] auditor and we immediately said 'these are mistakes that should not have been there.'"
Plett said in the period under review, he filed 103 travel expense forms, adding he was worried based on the sheer volume of claims that there could be some human error at play.
"We're all human, my staff is human, I'm human," he said, adding he never once willfully took any money that didn't belong to him.
"I stand by that today, but clearly, yes, this tells me that some of the people — and I'm not wanting to be critical of individuals in the audit team — but... there is a lack of knowledge about what is and what is not Senate business."
Saskatchewan Senator David Tkachuk, former chair of the Senate internal economy committee, confirmed that he has repaid $3,900 out of a total of $7,391 in ineligible expenses. He is contesting the other $3,491.
Independent senators to receive 'talking points'
The detailed finding's of Ferguson forensic audit of the Senate's expense claims will be fully released on Tuesday.
In a bid to control further damage from the potentially damning report, Cowan sent out an email obtained by CBC News to independent Senate Liberals saying it would be "not only unwise but premature" to take a position on any of the auditor general's recommendations.
"Much more study and consultation needs to take place on our part before any recommendations can be accepted or rejected," Cowan wrote. "In this regard, it is critical that we speak with one voice and with one message."
The senators were also told they would be receiving "talking points" during their caucus meeting at noon on Tuesday, where they will read and discuss the report.Continue Reading
Ervin, now 26, didn’t kill anyone — but she drove home the boys who did. Those boys included her boyfriend and a long-lost childhood friend from back when her family lived in public housing a decade earlier. Save for when she voluntarily told the police everything, she has never really talked to anyone, not even her mom, about what happened that night. “Really, I try not to,” she says, “because I know that I’ll be stuck there if I keep thinking about it.”
So in the comfort of metal folding chairs at a wooden table — the same table Dr. Phil once sat at, the prison guard says proudly — she doesn’t talk about it for a while. Instead, she talks about her favorite thing to read: still Chicken Soup for the Soul, her favorite since junior high. She briefly mentions her Mickey Mouse fan-girl bedroom and says she doesn’t know why, but she’s just always liked him. She talks about her job sewing Texas flags and pajamas for people in hospitals with the kind of calm reserved for people who have nothing better to do.
The job falls a bit short of the one she aspired to while in high school: pediatric nurse. She was a little geeky growing up — her mother, Serena Hawkins, calls her a bookworm. Hawkins had wanted her daughter to be a cheerleader or run track, but Ervin always said no: “She said, ‘That isn’t gonna get me a scholarship,’” Hawkins remembers. She stuck to volunteering at blood drives and leukemia walkathons, with the Boy Scouts of America as a “Medical Explorer” scout and with the American Red Cross as an HIV peer educator. She wanted to go to Prairie View A&M because that’s where her mentor, Dr. Emily Bartley, who handpicked Ervin to join Forest Brook High School’s accelerated Health Science Technology program, had gone.
That’s exactly why no one understood what went wrong: How does a college-bound honor roll student end up driving around a group of boys that a Houston police detective once called the “meanest bunch” he had ever seen?
Whatever the case, it didn’t appear so confounding to the prosecution and the jury. Harris County prosecutor Lisa Andrews actually used Ervin’s book smarts against her in the trial, arguing that if she was such a good, smart kid, she should have known better.
The trial lasted two days. Jurors took all of three hours to decide how Ervin would spend the rest of her life.
But since then, attitudes about harsh juvenile sentences have shifted dramatically. In 2006, the mandatory capital murder sentence for defendants under 18 in Texas was life without parole. Once a person was certified as an adult, age did not matter. Degree of involvement did not matter, either. That was just the way it was. Then, in 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that, without first considering individual circumstances, it was unconstitutional to throw away a kid’s life before it had even begun. The justices didn’t say that courts couldn’t impose life without parole on teens — just that the sentence couldn’t be mandatory, which left the United States as the only country in the world that still found this appropriate.
The Supreme Court’s logic applied across the country to anyone under 18 — even in Texas, where 17-year-olds are considered adults. Statewide reforms followed, and in Texas, the new mandatory sentence became life with the possibility of parole after 40 years. To many advocates, though, the problem with this is that it’s still a blanket sentence — meaning that Texas courts still can’t individualize a juvenile’s sentence as the Supreme Court required, even if the kid was just sitting in the car along for the ride. Now, if Texas jurors decide to convict, they must also decide that juveniles shouldn’t have an opportunity for release until they’re old enough to retire, depriving teens of any chance at ever being self-sustaining members of society. And perhaps this is suitable in some cases.
But for many others, like Ervin, the question that is set to drive reform in coming years is this: After how many years should society be ready to forgive a kid killer? What about a kid who’s just friends with one?
*****
Ashley Ervin, standing in front of the factory where she works sewing Texas flags — a job she may have for the rest of her life unless her attorney can help bring her home.
Twenty years ago, the answer to the forgiveness question was, in many cases, never.
The country was on board with a push for harsher juvenile sentencing because the country was scared. Back in the early 1990s, experts began warning of the “rise of the superpredator” — a whole generation of violent maniac kids about to come of age who, experts believed, would wreak havoc on society. The juvenile homicide rate had more than tripled between 1984 and 1993, and experts feared it would only get worse.
Until it didn’t. The year 1993 is, still, the most violent one for juvenile crime in U.S. history; by 1997, the juvenile homicide rate had already been slashed in half. But no matter. By then, slogans like “adult crime, adult time” had already swept through the floors of legislatures like the flu. As a result, nearly every state in the union reacted to the superpredator rhetoric by passing laws that made it easier to try kids as adults, dismantling the rehabilitative principles of the juvenile justice system established a century earlier.
The new attitude also meant that kids were more likely to receive life sentences. In Texas, while only 29 juveniles had ever been sentenced to life for capital murder before 1990, by the end of the decade, they would be joined by 244 more. Some would even be sentenced to death — like 17-year-old Randy Arroyo, who, in 1997, was driving on the morning he and an 18-year-old friend carjacked an Air Force captain, whom Arroyo’s friend shot in the back.
But in 2005, Arroyo’s life — and the lives of 28 other Texas inmates sent to death row as teenagers — would be spared. By then, the superpredator fear had subsided, and the attitude shift began. That year, the Supreme Court, joining the rest of the world, ruled that courts could no longer sentence children to death. (Which, in Texas and many states, simply meant amending the law to allow them to die in prison instead.) Next, in 2010, the Supreme Court said courts could not sentence juveniles to life without parole for non-homicide offenses.
And then came two boys named Evan Miller and Kuntrell Jackson, who were sentenced to mandatory life without parole when each was 14 years old. Their 2012 Supreme Court cases, titled Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs, would launch a new wave of reform that would ultimately make Ervin’s chance of release possible.
Back in 1999, Jackson was on his way with two other boys to rob a video store when he learned that one of the boys had a sawed-off shotgun with him. When they arrived, Jackson decided to wait outside and play lookout. Growing impatient, he entered the store — just in time for his friend to shoot the clerk in the head. In exchange for pleading guilty, unlike Jackson, the 15-year-old shooter was awarded the possibility of parole.
As for Miller, his story starts much earlier than the night he killed his neighbor with a baseball bat. Since he was a toddler, he had been in and out of foster care because his stepfather abused him and his mother was a drug addict and an alcoholic. By 14, he had attempted suicide four times, first at age six. On the night of the crime, his neighbor, Cole, came over to his mom’s trailer for a drug deal, and Miller and a friend followed Cole next door to drink and smoke weed. When Cole fell asleep, Miller tried to steal his wallet — and that’s when Cole woke up and grabbed him by the throat. Miller beat him to death with the bat, then set the trailer on fire to cover it up.
While the Supreme Court’s ruling that their sentences were unconstitutional didn’t seek to justify what they did, it did seek to recognize that sometimes kid criminals are victims, too — of their environment, of peer pressure — in ways that adults are not. And so before deciding that a teenage offender is an incorrigible person who will never change, the court must first carefully consider a host of mitigating factors, as in whether they were abused or mentally retarded, that may have led them to spiral into crime in the first place.
“What [the ruling] really means at the end of the day is that we know that kids are more capable of rehabilitation, and they should have a second chance,” says Elizabeth Henneke, the juvenile justice policy attorney with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.
The decision, overturning the “adult crime, adult time” attitude of the 1990s, was driven by emerging adolescent brain science. Neuroscientists found that the part of the brain that controls decision-making and problem-solving, the prefrontal cortex, is the last to develop, around age 25. In the meantime, adolescents rely more on a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is primarily in charge of orchestrating our emotional responses to fear and danger. Sometimes, this can result in aggressive behavior. “As a result,” says Dr. David Fassler, a clinical child psychiatrist at the University of Vermont who helped prepare the amicus brief for the Supreme Court, “adolescents are more likely to respond impulsively and on instinct, without stopping to fully consider the consequences of their actions.” That’s exactly why teenagers think it’s cool to drive recklessly and steal stop signs.
In court, these findings, somehow both complex and commonsense, have come to mean that while juveniles should still be punished for their criminal behavior, they’re also less culpable for their brash actions and have more capacity for change. Which needs to be taken into consideration when they’re sentenced for serious crimes, Fassler says. “ |
views of Burrard Inlet, the North Shore mountains and downtown Vancouver’s forest of glass condo towers. “They shouldn’t be penalized for owning something that’s valuable,” he says.
So far, Weisman’s concerns seem justified. Whereas Ottawa took several months to develop its latest cooling measures, B.C. rushed its foreign-buyer tax into effect on Aug. 2 after collecting just five weeks of data that suggested offshore buyers, mainly from China, were purchasing one of every 10 homes in the city. The impact of the surprise move was as shocking as it was sudden: foreign nationals accounted for 13 per cent of all home purchases in Metro Vancouver in the seven weeks prior to the tax, but plummeted to less one per cent in the four weeks following. But foreigners weren’t the only ones who stopped buying. So did everyone else. “The market’s gone cold,” says Keith Roy, a local agent. He points to his neighbour’s house across the street. Worth as much as $1.85 million back in May, it was put up for sale several weeks ago for $1.8 million and the price has been dropped twice since. “It’s now down to $1.6 million,” he says. “No action.” Not to be outdone, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robinson has announced plans to begin taxing homes that are left vacant as early as next year.
Toronto homeowners could be next on politicians’ hit list. Although Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa has so far resisted calls to implement a Vancouver-style foreign buyers’ tax in Toronto—at least until he has time to see how B.C.’s levy plays out—Benjamin Tal, the deputy chief economist at CIBC World Markets, argued in a recent note that Ontario has “little choice” but to follow in B.C.’s footsteps as foreign buyers swing their focus away from Vancouver. Some homeowners in Canada’s biggest city are eager to cash in while they still can. Local agent Victoria Boscariol says she now receives at least one call a week from someone with the following message: ‘‘I’ve got this property and I want to sell for a high price to the Chinese.”
To date, the discussion over soaring house prices has mostly been dominated by would-be homebuyers priced out of the market, as evidenced by a recent 200-person rally in Vancouver organized by a group called Housing Action for Local Taxpayers (HALT), and last year’s #DontHave1Million social media campaign (which should be updated to #DontHave1.3Million, based on the 30 per cent price gains Vancouver experience over the past year). But that could change if Canada’s silent majority of bubble beneficiaries feel their prosperity is suddenly at risk. “The trend toward owning versus renting has been powerful and broad-based,” wrote Tom Bradley, the president of Steadyhand Investment Funds, in a recent blog post. “So, do 70 per cent of Canadians really want to see the value of their homes go down? If a [Vancouver] West Side home drops from $2.3 million to $1.5 million, will the owner be pleased with the political leadership?”
It’s also difficult to overstate the degree to which the entire country—both homeowners and renters alike—has become reliant on rising house prices to keep the lights on. Emanuella Enenajor, a senior economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, says residential construction is responsible for a full third of GDP growth over the past two years. “It’s the highest we’ve had, pretty much, on record,” she says.
Rising house prices have contributed mightily to the net worth of Canadians, which clocked in at $9.84 trillion at the end of the second quarter, or $232,000 per individual. That, in turn, makes them feel richer and spend more, giving the economy a boost. According to BMO economist Alex Koustas, there’s been nearly a 40 per cent increase in sales of luxury vehicles that cost more than $90,000 over the past three years. Meanwhile, a stampede of high-end U.S. retailers, from Saks Fifth Avenue to Nordstrom, have rushed to set up shop north of the border to take advantage of a large and well-heeled, if increasingly indebted, clientele. There’s been a cultural shift, too. In recent years, Canada emerged as a centre of reality-TV programs focused on real estate, exporting no-nonsense stars like Mike Holmes and the winsome Property Brothers to U.S. audiences.
The end result is an economy where all roads lead back to home ownership. Just as the post-2009 resource boom reoriented the economy around oil production—workers left the Maritimes for higher paying jobs in Alberta, heavy equipment manufacturers in Ontario pulled back from overseas markets to focus on the oil sands—the housing boom of the last decade sucked in resources from across the economic spectrum. The number of people working as real estate agents in Toronto alone has doubled over the past decade to about 40,000. “Canada doesn’t have a lot of hard, timely information on this,” says Enenajor. “But real estate has been one of the best-performing sectors of the economy from a price and activity perspective. It would be naive to say this hasn’t had an impact on people’s choice of what kind of business they’re setting up, or the types of employment opportunities that people are pursuing.”
Governments are also held hostage. B.C. recently noted that the $2.2 billion it took in from real-estate-related taxes last year was more than it received in royalties from the mining or forestry industries. It even outstripped revenue from gambling.
What benefited from real estate’s rise will suffer if Canada’s housing boom goes bust. Avoiding such a scenario is key. But engineering a fabled “soft landing” of the housing market is like ditching an Airbus A-320 on the water. Sure, Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger piloted Flight 1549 gently into the Hudson River six years ago, saving the lives of all 155 people aboard, but there’s a reason why flight attendants joke privately about the pointlessness of all those life jacket demonstrations.
It’s unfortunate that Ottawa didn’t take more assertive steps to bring the housing market to heel back five years ago when Canada’s economy was still the envy of the world. Now, the country finds itself in the unenviable position of having to explore untested and ever-riskier measures—B.C.’s move to discourage foreign buyers is a good example—to cool house prices at a time when GDP growth is limping along at just 1.2 per cent. “It would be a very bad thing if foreigners were to sell properties in Canada, because all of us—homeowners or not—would experience a very significant slowdown in the economy,” says Cooper, who worries governments are being motivated more by political promises to help the middle class than they are by sound economic judgment.
Of course, that assumes the middle class actually wants to be protected from rising prices. Roy, the Vancouver agent, isn’t so sure. “Everybody believes in affordable housing,” he says, “until it comes time to sell their house.”Stoned to death with her lover: Horrific video of execution of girl, 19, killed by Afghan Taliban for running away from arranged marriage
TALIBAN SPOKESMAN: 'Anyone who knows about Islam knows that stoning is in the Koran, and that it is Islamic law. There are people who call it inhuman - but in doing so they insult the Prophet. They want to bring foreign thinking to this country'
WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT
Horrific video footage has emerged of Taliban insurgents stoning a couple to death for alleged adultery in northern Afghanistan.
Hundreds of villagers can be seen on the video standing around as the woman, Siddqa, is buried up to her waist in a four foot hole in the ground.
Two mullahs pass sentence before the crowd begins to throw rocks at her head and body as she desperately tries to crawl free.
Barbaric: Video footage shows the woman covered completely by a blue burkha, buried up to her waist in the ground as a crowd of people watches on
But the 19-year-old collapses to the ground, covered in blood - but miraculously still alive.
At this point a Taliban fighter shoots her three times in the head with an AK-47The crowd can be heard shouting allahu akbar as she is killed.
Her lover, Khayyam, is then marched in front of the crowd with his hands tied behind his back.
He is blindfolded with his own tunic and crouches down close to the ground as he tried to protect his body from the stones.
Punished: Her alleged lover, Khyyam, crouches down after being blindfolded and having his hands tied behind his back
But he is battered to the floor by a barrage of rocks. He can be heard sobbing before eventually falling silent.
The stoning - the first to be documented on film since the Taliban were ousted from power - took place in the district of Dashte Archi, in Kunduz, last August.
Officials said that Siddqa had run away after being sold into an arranged marriage for $9,000 against her will.
She ran away to be with Khayyam, who was already married and had two children, and the pair eloped to Pakistan.
Charges: Khyyam was marched in front of hundreds of villagers in Dashte Archi, Afghanistan, before they hurled rocks at his head and body
Brutal: Men hurl chunks of rock, some bigger than a fist, during the execution
But it is understand that they returned to their home village after being reassured by leaders that they would be unharmed.
It was a terrible mistake. They were dragged from their families' homes at 2am by Taliban fighters and then put before a kangaroo court before being executed.
The incident took place last October near the Afghan border with Tajikstan, a conservative district with a heavy extremist presence.
The area remains under Taliban control, but regional police have said those behind the stoning will be charged.
Extremist: The sentencing is overseen by Taliban fighters, who also shoot the woman after she somehow survives the stoning
Mob: The crowd continued to throw stones at the couple even after they slumped to the floor
Police chief General Daoud Daoud told the BBC: 'Special police investigators will be sent there, we will find them and they will be brought to justice.'
Most of the video has not been shown because it was too graphic.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid defended the stoning.
He told the BBC: 'Anyone who knows about Islam knows that stoning is in the Koran, and that it is Islamic law.
'There are people who call it inhuman - but in doing so they insult the Prophet. They want to bring foreign thinking to this country.'
Cruel: The stoning took place in the district of Dashte Archi, in Kunduz, AfghanistanHow big is your dick? No, go on, tell us. Some Manchester United fans think Romelu Lukaku’s is rather large. Far too many have forgotten the tragic past and present that particular racial stereotype represents. Ed & Paul dissect the controversy and tell fellow fans to just stop. Now.
In more positive news, there’s a review of United’s thumping win over Burton Albion in the League Cup, and the ugly win at Southampton, where José Mourinho reverted to type, but the Reds came away with the points.
The lads preview United’s trip to CSKA Moscow in midweek, take your very many questions, and in bonus content look at some favourite iconic players from the past 20 years.
If you are interested in supporting the show, and accessing some cool rewards, check out our Patreon crowdfunding page. We are currently running our first stretch goals campaign. Talk to us on Twitter: Paul – @UtdRantCast, Ed – @UnitedRant. Rant Cast is produced by Tom Jenkins – TEEJSOUND / @TeejsoundI bought this because it was on sale for like 4 bucks on clearance. Did some research and this figure may have been a Best Buy exclusive in the beginning but not 100% sure. I see her everywhere now. Mulan was the movie my wife and I saw on our first date. I think I have bought every Blu-ray and DVD home video release since. The direct to video sequel is no where near as good as the original film but it was on the latest Blu-ray I purchased. It is not as bad as other Disney direct to video releases but still no where near as good as the original. I have not taken the figure out of the package yet to try it but I sure hope that they have Ming-Na Wen do the voice work for her. Most likely they lifted clips from the films but maybe there are original voice clips specifically for Disney Infinity as well.
Read moreKit Kat
A Twitter page for Kit Kat, a Nestle candy bar and the name of Google's next mobile operating system, seems to indicate the new version of Androidwill be available later this month.
The Twitter page @KitKat on Tuesday posted an image of an Android logo in full Kit Kat chocolate with the title "Everybody dance now." Earlier on Wednesday, the same Twitter feed posted an image featuring Kit Kats that spell out "This is it."
At first glance, such images might not matter. However, eagle-eyed observers noticed that the first image seems to relate to the song "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" by C+C Music Factory. The band was originally named The 28th Street Crew. In addition, "This Is It" is a Michael Jackson movie that was released on October 28, 2009.
Those two clues have set the Web abuzz with speculation that Android 4.4 KitKat will be launching on October 28.
Rumors have been swirling around KitKat for months. Some details have leaked onto the Web, but Google has so far said only that the platform will "make an amazing Android experience available for everybody." The operating system is expected to launch in conjunction with the Nexus 5. The latest rumors suggest the platform and device will be available at the end of the month.
Late October appears to be the go-to for Google. Last year, the company announced the Nexus 4 on October 29.
(Via Pocket-lint)Published: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 @ 5:48 PM
Updated: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 @ 5:48 PM
— Federal prosecutors disagree with a suggested two-year prison sentence for former Greene County Sheriff’s Maj. Eric Spicer, who was found guilty by a jury of two counts related to the acquisition and possession of a machine gun.
While Spicer is fighting to get his conviction overturned, prosecutors said a 41- to 51-month prison sentence is more appropriate than what’s suggested by the U.S. Probation Office in a preliminary pre-sentencing investigation report. Spicer was found not guilty on five other counts after a December trial.
One of Spicer’s attorneys, Mark Webb, said the prosecutor’s filing was contrary to the court’s rules and may be politically motivated.
Unless he is successful in getting a new trial or his conviction overturned, Spicer ultimately will be sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Barrett in Dayton’s U.S. District Court. Barrett does not have to follow any pre-sentencing report recommendation.
“We’re going to leave it up to the judge and let it go through the process appropriately,” Webb said Wednesday. “But we think that Eric should be exonerated of all of these charges. If it goes to sentencing, this is a case of an individual with no criminal history and with, in fact, a highly decorated record of being a law enforcement officer.”
The government’s filing also listed proposed findings of fact and suggested the judge make his own findings for sentencing on the overall preponderance of evidence despite Spicer’s acquittal on five counts. The filing asked for a two-level sentencing enhancement for obstruction of justice because prosecutors said Spicer lied to federal law enforcement agents on March 28, 2014.
“The defendant’s pattern of deceptive, dishonest, fraudulent, obstructive, unethical and criminal acts associated with his acquisition, purchase and possession of the machine gun directly violated the GCSO Oath of Office, Code of Ethics and the NFA (National Firearms Act),” assistant U.S. attorney Dwight Keller wrote, later adding: “The defendant’s overall conduct highlights his poor character, lack of respect for the law, his need for rehabilitation, the appropriateness of retribution and a legitimate concern for protection of the public.”
Keller declined to comment further.
Webb said he and co-counsel John D. Smith submitted their own objections to the pre-sentencing report, but did not make them public.
“It seems to me to be kind of a grab at propaganda or swaying the public’s opinion,” Webb said of the prosecution filing.
There is no set timetable for Barrett to rule on Spicer’s motions for acquittal or a new trial.While the Religious Right was never fond of Thomas Jefferson, their misplaced disdain for the Founding Father has again come to the surface with the publication of a new "Jefferson Bible." Earlier this month, Humanist Press published A Jefferson Bible for the Twenty-First Century, a book that includes the famously edited version of the Bible Jefferson created for his own use. His version deliberately omitted all the supernatural parts: the miracles, the resurrection, the virgin birth, etc. The new book not only includes everything Jefferson left in, it also includes a section with examples of what he left out as "dross." Then it repeats the same exercise for other major scriptures: the Hebrew Bible, the Quran, the Bhagavad-Gita, Buddhist sutras, and even the Book of Mormon.
Not surprisingly, the Christian Right is howling in protest.
Rev. Bradlee Dean, in his recent commentary in Whistleblower entitled "Enemy of God = Enemy of America," makes the astonishing claim that the Jefferson Bible "is filled with accounts of miracles, raising the dead, healing lepers, multiplying food for thousands, heaven, hell, the resurrection and the Son of God!" Astonishing, because the indisputable fact is that Jefferson's collection contains no miracles, no raising the dead, no healing of lepers, no multiplying food for thousands, and no resurrection.
But don't believe me? Look it up. The exact text of the Jefferson Bible is available free online at numerous locations, including the University of Virginia website. The enhanced edition, highlighting the miracles, what Jefferson chose to cut out and according similar treatment to other major scriptures, is available from www.humanistpress.com. Nary will a miracle be found!
Rev. Dean goes on to characterize humanists as "enemies of America" who "are willing to play the minions to help constitute foreign government (the Quran, etc.) over that of American government (the Bible)." A curious thought, given that the book he condemns gives exactly the same treatment to the Quran as it does to the Bible: listing candidates for both the positive sayings and the outlandish or immoral statements. Both books are well worth the exercise of separating the gold from the dross, as Jefferson did with the Gospels.
Then there is Richard Glickstein, president of the National Bible Association, who blasts Jefferson for dying as a "penniless scoundrel." Glickstein says that his ideal of a president is Theodore Roosevelt, who urged that "no man, educated or uneducated, can afford to be ignorant of the Bible." What Glickstein fails to mention is that it was precisely during Roosevelt's administration that Congress printed 9,000 copies of the Jefferson Bible for its own use.
Then there is the Pennsylvania Pastors Network, bizarrely demanding that "this new attempt to replace God's Holy Word, the Bible, with man's words and still call it a Bible should be rejected." Reproducing Jefferson's 200-year-old effort is hardly "new," and not a single word of the Bible is "replaced," either by Jefferson or in the new edition.
In not-so-distant times, Christian God experts publicly burned books they didn't like. Now the Pastors Network "condemns the re-written version and calls on all who receive it to either return or get rid of it." Why are they so terrified? The truth of the matter, humanists think, is that the Bible, the Quran, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Buddhist sutras, and the Book of Mormon are not the work of supernatural spirits, but of fallible humans. That's why they contain a mix of good ideas and bad ideas. Highlighting the best and worst ideas in that mix helps demonstrate just how human the authors were—which could put those who make their living by claiming otherwise out of business.Home Operation in Syria Reconciliation centre bulletin More
Bulletin of the Russian Centre for reconciliation of opposing sides in the Syrian Arab Republic (July 11, 2016)
Reconciliation of the opposing sides
Within last 24 hours, truce agreement with representatives of 1 inhabited area in the Aleppo province has been achieved.
The total number of inhabited areas, the leaders of which had signed reconciliation agreements, has reached 179.
Negotiations on joining ceasefire regime have been continued with field commanders of armed opposition detachments active in the Damascus, Rif Dimashq, and Homs provinces.
The number of ceasefire application forms signed with leaders of armed groupings has remained 61.
Ceasefire observation
The ceasefire has been observed in most provinces of the Syrian Arab Republic. Within last 24 hours, 4 ceasefire violations have been registered in the Damascus province.
Jaysh al-Islam formations, which had claimed to belong to the opposition, have performed shelling of Harasta, Jaubar, Arbil and Duma with mortars.
Russian Aerospace Forces and Syrian Air Force did not make strikes on opposition armed formations, which follow ceasefire regime and informed the Russian or American Centres for reconciliation about their location.
Humanitarian aid to the population of Syria
Low-income families of Aramo (Latakia province) and al-Reib (Aleppo province) have received two tons of humanitarian cargos with flour, rice and canned products.
Additional information
“Silence regime”, which had been established in the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, is continued until 23.59 on July 11, 2016.
Groupings of Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS international terrorist organizations do not stop making attempts to break the ceasefire regime.
Within last 24 hours, in the Aleppo province, terrorists have shelled al-Hader inhabited area as well as al-Khalidiyah, al-Zahraa, quarters, and al-Nayrab airport in the Aleppo city with improvised artillery and mortars.
Terrorists have also shelled following inhabited areas: Blelije, Huteita al-Jarash, Bahariyah, and Meida in the Damascus province, as well as Bruma and Tauma in the Latakia province.I’ve shot digital for as long as I can remember but for a number of years I have been considering delving into film for my street photography work.
Every time I became adamant about pursuing it, I talked myself out of it.
"What are you going to do with your negatives? How will you print? It’s so expensive! Your hit rate on digital isn’t that great...you have more control with RAW anyway…It will be waste of money"
I don’t think these concerns were inherently false...except for the last one. It’s more difficult these days to get film developed, it’s harder to share physical prints, it is somewhat expensive and you do have an insane amount of control with RAW, Lightroom and VSCO.
So, the question is why bother?Special thanks to Vlad Zamfir, Chris Barnett and Dominic Williams for ideas and inspiration
In a recent blog post I outlined some partial solutions to scalability, all of which fit into the umbrella of Ethereum 1.0 as it stands. Specialized micropayment protocols such as channels and probabilistic payment systems could be used to make small payments, using the blockchain either only for eventual settlement, or only probabilistically. For some computation-heavy applications, computation can be done by one party by default, but in a way that can be "pulled down" to be audited by the entire chain if someone suspects malfeasance. However, these approaches are all necessarily application-specific, and far from ideal. In this post, I describe a more comprehensive approach, which, while coming at the cost of some "fragility" concerns, does provide a solution which is much closer to being universal.
Understanding the Objective
First of all, before we get into the details, we need to get a much deeper understanding of what we actually want. What do we mean by scalability, particularly in an Ethereum context? In the context of a Bitcoin-like currency, the answer is relatively simple; we want to be able to:
Process tens of thousands of transactions per second
Provide a transaction fee of less than $0.001
Do it all while maintaining security against at least 25% attacks and without highly centralized full nodes
The first goal alone is easy; we just remove the block size limit and let the blockchain naturally grow until it becomes that large, and the economy takes care of itself to force smaller full nodes to continue to drop out until the only three full nodes left are run by GHash.io, Coinbase and Circle. At that point, some balance will emerge between fees and size, as excessize size leads to more centralization which leads to more fees due to monopoly pricing. In order to achieve the second, we can simply have many altcoins. To achieve all three combined, however, we need to break through a fundamental barrier posed by Bitcoin and all other existing cryptocurrencies, and create a system that works without the existence of any "full nodes" that need to process every transaction.
In an Ethereum context, the definition of scalability gets a little more complicated. Ethereum is, fundamentally, a platform for "dapps", and within that mandate there are two kinds of scalability that are relevant:
Allow lots and lots of people to build dapps, and keep the transaction fees low
Allow each individual dapp to be scalable according to a definition similar to that for Bitcoin
The first is inherently easier than the second. The only property that the "build lots and lots of alt-Etherea" approach does not have is that each individual alt-Ethereum has relatively weak security; at a size of 1000 alt-Etherea, each one would be vulnerable to a 0.1% attack from the point of view of the whole system (that 0.1% is for externally-sourced attacks; internally-sourced attacks, the equivalent of GHash.io and Discus Fish colluding, would take only 0.05%). If we can find some way for all alt-Etherea to share consensus strength, eg. some version of merged mining that makes each chain receive the strength of the entire pack without requiring the existence of miners that know about all chains simultaneously, then we would be done.
The second is more problematic, because it leads to the same fragility property that arises from scaling Bitcoin the currency: if every node sees only a small part of the state, and arbitrary amounts of BTC can legitimately appear in any part of the state originating from any part of the state (such fungibility is part of the definition of a currency), then one can intuitively see how forgery attacks might spread through the blockchain undetected until it is too late to revert everything without substantial system-wide disruption via a global revert.
Reinventing the Wheel
We'll start off by describing a relatively simple model that does provide both kinds of scalability, but provides the second only in a very weak and costly way; essentially, we have just enough intra-dapp scalability to ensure asset fungibility, but not much more. The model works as follows:
Suppose that the global Ethereum state (ie. all accounts, contracts and balances) is split up into N parts ("substates") (think 10 <= N <= 200). Anyone can set up an account on any substate, and one can send a transaction to any substate by adding a substate number flag to it, but ordinary transactions can only send a message to an account in the same substate as the sender. However, to ensure security and cross-transmissibility, we add some more features. First, there is also a special "hub substate", which contains only a list of messages, of the form [dest_substate, address, value, data]. Second, there is an opcode CROSS_SEND, which takes those four parameters as arguments, and sends such a one-way message enroute to the destination substate.
Miners mine blocks on some substate s[j], and each block on s[j] is simultaneously a block in the hub chain. Each block on s[j] has as dependencies the previous block on s[j] and the previous block on the hub chain. For example, with N = 2, the chain would look something like this:
The block-level state transition function, if mining on substate s[j], does three things:
Processes state transitions inside of s[j] If any of those state transitions creates a CROSS_SEND, adds that message to the hub chain If any messages are on the hub chain with dest_substate = j, removes the messages from the hub chain, sends the messages to their destination addresses on s[j], and processes all resulting state transitions
From a scalability perspective, this gives us a substantial improvement. All miners only need to be aware of two out of the total N + 1 substates: their own substate, and the hub substate. Dapps that are small and self-contained will exist on one substate, and dapps that want to exist across multiple substates will need to send messages through the hub. For example a cross-substate currency dapp would maintain a contract on all substates, and each contract would have an API that allows a user to destroy currency units inside of one substate in exchange for the contract sending a message that would lead to the user being credited the same amount on another substate.
Messages going through the hub do need to be seen by every node, so these will be expensive; however, in the case of ether or sub-currencies we only need the transfer mechanism to be used occasionally for settlement, doing off-chain inter-substate exchange for most transfers.
Attacks, Challenges and Responses
Now, let us take this simple scheme and analyze its security properties (for illustrative purposes, we'll use N = 100). First of all, the scheme is secure against double-spend attacks up to 50% of the total hashpower; the reason is that every sub-chain is essentially merge-mined with every other sub-chain, with each block reinforcing the security of all sub-chains simultaneously.
However, there are more dangerous classes of attacks as well. Suppose that a hostile attacker with 4% hashpower jumps onto one of the substates, thereby now comprising 80% of the mining power on it. Now, that attacker mines blocks that are invalid - for example, the attacker includes a state transition that creates messages sending 1000000 ETH to every other substate out of nowhere. Other miners on the same substate will recognize the hostile miner's blocks as invalid, but this is irrelevant; they are only a very small part of the total network, and only 20% of that substate. The miners on other substates don't know that the attacker's blocks are invalid, because they have no knowledge of the state of the "captured substate", so at first glance it seems as though they might blindly accept them.
Fortunately, here the solution here is more complex, but still well within the reach of what we currently know works: as soon as one of the few legitimate miners on the captured substate processes the invalid block, they will see that it's invalid, and therefore that it's invalid in some particular place. From there, they will be able to create a light-client Merkle tree proof showing that that particular part of the state transition was invalid. To explain how this works in some detail, a light client proof consists of three things:
The intermediate state root that the state transition started from The intermediate state root that the state transition ended at The subset of Patricia tree nodes that are accessed or modified in the process of executing the state transition
The first two “intermediate state roots” are the roots of the Ethereum Patricia state tree before and after executing the transaction; the Ethereum protocol requires both of these to be in every block. The Patricia state tree nodes provided are needed in order to the verifier to follow along the computation themselves, and see that the same result is arrived at the end. For example, if a transaction ends up modifying the state of three accounts, the set of tree nodes that will need to be provided might look something like this:</p>
Technically, the proof should include the set of Patricia tree nodes that are needed to access the intermediate state roots and the transaction as well, but that's a relatively minor detail. Altogether, one can think of the proof as consisting of the minimal amount of information from the blockchain needed to process that particular transaction, plus some extra nodes to prove that those bits of the blockchain are actually in the current state. Once the whistleblower creates this proof, they will then be broadcasted to the network, and all other miners will see the proof and discard the defective block.
The hardest class of attack of all, however, is what is called a "data unavailability attack". Here, imagine that the miner sends out only the block header to the network, as well as the list of messages to add to the hub, but does not provide any of the transactions, intermediate state roots or anything else. Now, we have a problem. Theoretically, it is entirely possible that the block is completely legitimate; the block could have been properly constructed by gathering some transactions from a few millionaires who happened to be really generous. In reality, of course, this is not the case, and the block is a fraud, but the fact that the data is not available at all makes it impossible to construct an affirmative proof of the fraud. The 20% honest miners on the captured substate may yell and squeal, but they have no proof at all, and any protocol that did heed their words would necessarily fall to a 0.2% denial-of-service attack where the miner captures 20% of a substate and pretends that the other 80% of miners on that substate are conspiring against him.
To solve this problem, we need something called a challenge-response protocol. Essentially, the mechanism works as follows:
Honest miners on the captured substate see the header-only block. An honest miner sends out a "challenge" in the form of an index (ie. a number). If the producer of the block can submit a "response" to the challenge, consisting of a light-client proof that the transaction execution at the given index was executed legitimately (or a proof that the given index is greater than the number of transactions in the block), then the challenge is deemed answered. If a challenge goes unanswered for a few seconds, miners on other substates consider the block suspicious and refuse to mine on it (the game-theoretic justification for why is the same as always: because they suspect that others will use the same strategy, and there is no point mining on a substate that will soon be orphaned)
Note that the mechanism requires a few added complexities on order to work. If a block is published alongside all of its transactions except for a few, then the challenge-response protocol could quickly go through them all and discard the block. However, if a block was published truly headers-only, then if the block contained hundreds of transactions, hundreds of challenges would be required. One heuristic approach to solving the problem is that miners receiving a block should privately pick some random nonces, send out a few challenges for those nonces to some known miners on the potentially captured substate, and if responses to all challenges do not come back immediately treat the block as suspect. Note that the miner does NOT broadcast the challenge publicly - that would give an opportunity for an attacker to quickly fill in the missing data.
The second problem is that the protocol is vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack consisting of attackers publishing very very many challenges to legitimate blocks. To solve this, making a challenge should have some cost - however, if this cost is too high then the act of making a challenge will require a very high "altruism delta", perhaps so high that an attack will eventually come and no one will challenge it. Although some may be inclined to solve this with a market-based approach that places responsibility for making the challenge on whatever parties end up robbed by the invalid state transition, it is worth noting that it's possible to come up with a state transition that generates new funds out of nowhere, stealing from everyone very slightly via inflation, and also compensates wealthy coin holders, creating a theft where there is no concentrated incentive to challenge it.
For a currency, one "easy solution" is capping the value of a transaction, making the entire problem have only very limited consequence. For a Turing-complete protocol the solution is more complex; the best approaches likely involve both making challenges expensive and adding a mining reward to them. There will be a specialized group of "challenge miners", and the theory is that they will be indifferent as to which challenges to make, so even the tiniest altruism delta, enforced by software defaults, will drive them to make correct challenges. One may even try to measure how long challenges take to get responded, and more highly reward the ones that take longer.
The Twelve-Dimensional Hypercube
Note: this is NOT the same as the erasure-coding Borg cube. For more info on that, see here: https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/08/16/secret-sharing-erasure-coding-guide-aspiring-dropbox-decentralizer/
We can see two flaws in the above scheme. First, the justification that the challenge-response protocol will work is rather iffy at best, and has poor degenerate-case behavior: a substate takeover attack combined with a denial of service attack preventing challenges could potentially force an invalid block into a chain, requiring an eventual day-long revert of the entire chain when (if?) the smoke clears. There is also a fragility component here: an invalid block in any substate will invalidate all subsequent blocks in all substates. Second, cross-substate messages must still be seen by all nodes. We start off by solving the second problem, then proceed to show a possible defense to make the first problem slightly less bad, and then finally get around to solving it completely, and at the same time getting rid of proof of work.
The second flaw, the expensiveness of cross-substate messages, we solve by converting the blockchain model from this:
To this:
Except the cube should have twelve dimensions instead of three. Now, the protocol looks as follows:
There exist 2N substates, each of which is identified by a binary string of length N (eg. 0010111111101 ). We define the Hamming distance H(S1, S2) as the number of digits that are different between the IDs of substates S1 and S2 (eg. HD(00110, 00111) = 1, HD(00110, 10010) = 2 |
all legislative precautions have been taken to insure optimum results, this is one of those times.Premium Content is full size 8000x5100 PNG.
Patrons get all my pictures early at full size for free. see link below.
This is a special one. I wanted to practice with thinner, more elegant lineart and wanted to make something with deep shadows and highlights. I feel pleasantly happy with the results of this one.I drew this over a live stream and the first half was really good and I had a bunch of viewers and had a lot of fun, the continuation was a train wreck with everything breaking XDbut it went well anyway. Also this canvas is twice as big as I normally make it so, yeah. I was overcautious the whole time of Manga Studio crashing on me so I was like, exporting to a different file every time I saved incase it crashed on me and killed the file.it actually did crash on me once, and I had to do the highlights all over again. oh well.Honestly I really like Celestia. She's a good character and I love the sunny and friendly personality she has all the time. like, for a ruler of a whole kingdom over thousands of years it's pretty cool she's so benevolent.and have you seen her in the comics? Dang, I LOVE the way they write her in the comics. and she's all over them. but they make her such a deep and lovable character, with more flaws and pony emotion than she has in the show and much more determination and noble badassery. actually the end of nightmare moon's story in the fiendship is magic comic inspired this picture lolThis was my first time drawing her so I wanted to capture her regality and majesticness.In a normal year, the bulk of the noteworthy transactions occur at the annual Winter Meetings. After the flurry of moves over the past few weeks, we are unfortunately seeing a much lighter stream of action here in Orlando, although things picked up a bit yesterday with Mark Trumbo, Tyler Skaggs, Brett Anderson and others all on the move. Hopefully that trend carries into today, but in any event we still have the Rule 5 Draft to look forward to on Thursday afternoon. With that in mind, let's give you a rundown of what to watch for and expect in this year's draft.
What is the Rule 5 Draft?
Most of you are probably familiar with the term, Rule 5 Draft, but if you're not we'll start with a quick refresher. Since its inception over 50 years ago, the draft has existed to further the careers of talented players. If not for the Rule 5 Draft, teams would have no motivation to put players on the 40-man roster until they were called up to the big leagues. For example, if the Tampa Bay Rays had a promising young third baseman in the minor leagues, and Evan Longoria never got hurt, the player essentially would need a trade at some point or else he might be stuck in Triple-A Durham until he becomes a free agent after six professional seasons. The Rule 5 Draft, however, gives those players another way out by making them eligible for selection if they have not been placed on a club's 40-man roster and they:
were 18-years-old or younger on the June 5 prior to their signing and this is the fifth Rule 5 draft since or
were at least 19-years-old on the June 5 prior to their signing and this is the fourth Rule 5 draft since.
Teams had until November 20th this year to protect eligible players on their 40-man roster and those that were not are now subject to the draft. Just like the amateur Rule 4 Draft (also known as the first-year player draft in some circles), the order is determined by the win-loss record from the previous season, so the Houston Astros have the top selection this year.
There is a catch to these picks, though. Well okay, maybe a few catches. First, every pick costs $50,000 to make. That's a very small sum of money compared to the free agent deals we'll see handed out this week, but it's not nothing. The second and larger thing to remember is that all players drafted in the Rule 5 Draft are immediately placed on the selecting team's 40-man roster (if a team has no opening they can't make a pick), and the player must stay on that team's 25-man roster for the entire season without being optioned or designated for an assignment. To prevent teams from simply stashing players on the DL, the rules also state that the player has to be active for at least 90 days in a season*. In the event that the player is not kept up all season, he has to be offered back to the original team for $25,000. If a player completes the entire season on the 25-man roster, the following year the team is free to option him to the minors as they would any other player in their organization.
*In cases of legitimate injuries, that 90-day mark carries over to the following season. So if a player was on the active roster for 22 days in 2012, he would have to be on the 2013 active roster for 68 days to complete the Rule 5 regulations.
Why should we care?
There's little argument that the Rule 5 Draft isn't the most exciting annual event in baseball. Due to the cost and the strict rules, many teams pass on making a selection all together and the majority of players taken are fourth outfielders, pinch runners, or little-used relief pitchers. Still, teams have been able to find some real gems over the years.
Photo Credit:Thearon W. Hendrson
Johan Santana, Josh Hamilton, Shane Victorino, Dan Uggla, Joakim Soria, and Everth Cabrera highlight just some of the best players picked in the draft. In fairness, recently the CBA did add an extra year before players have to be protected, but the point remains that quality big league pieces can be acquired for next-to-nothing on Thursday. That in its own right is worth watching, in my opinion. Last year there were no stars taken, but Josh Fields and Hector Rondon pitched in big league bullpens all year and Nate Freiman put up a 101 wRC+ as a platoon option with Oakland.
Who's available?
Now that we know what we're watching and why we're watching, let's take a look at a few of the more interesting names available.
Zach Thornton, RHP, Pirates
Rumored to be among the considerations for the top selection, Thornton is a 6-foot-3 reliever who had a very strong year in 2013. The right-hander pitched his way from Hi-A Bradenton all the way to Triple-A, registering a 2.43 ERA and a 90:12 strikeout to walk ratio over 75.1 innings. Not a flame thrower, Thornton utilizes a low three-quarters cross fire delivery and an average breaking ball to rack up swings and misses and ground balls. He doesn't project to be an elite bullpen arm, but there's a strong possibility the 26-year-old could fill a sixth or seventh-inning role as a ROOGY.
Junior Arias, OF, Reds
Arias is not a name for teams looking to contend in 2014, but he is among the toolsiest position players available and that might interest a rebuilding club. He hasn't spent a day in the upper minors yet, playing most of his games with the Dayton Dragons in the Midwest League last season. Still extremely raw in most aspects of the game, Arias garners attention for the power and speed that allowed him to hit 15 home runs and still 60 bases in 125 games last season. Of course, he also struck out 132 times with just 18 walks against A-ball pitchers, so the assumption is he would struggle mightily if placed in the big leagues right now. Then again, you don't find those tools at his age (22 this year) available all the time, meaning someone might pull the trigger on Arias.
Brody Colvin, RHP, Phillies
After being ranked the 56th best prospect in the game by Baseball America heading into the 2011 season, Colvin is one of the higher profile names available. At that time, Colvin offered quite a dream with a mid-90's breaking ball and the makings of a plus curveball, though seemingly his stuff and command have gone in the wrong direction since. In limited exposure to Double-A (110 IP), Colvin has a 7.77 ERA and he's walked 14.7 percent of the batters he's faced at the level. And his fastball that once sat in the 94-96 range now merely touches those figures once in a while. That said, he has suffered some injuries that impacted his mechanics and he now appears at full health. Just 23 in 2013 Colvin may be the type of lottery ticket worth stashing as the twelfth man in a bullpen in hopes of tapping into the potential we saw not so long ago.
Carlos Perez, C, Astros
Perez was acquired from Toronto in the 2012 trade that sent J.A. Happ and Brandon Lyon north of the border. Perez is far from a finished project, but the Venezuelan backstop has a skillset that makes him a good fit for a team with an established starting catcher. He's hit well over his minor league career, batting.280 with a.365 OBP, numbers that dipped only slightly in the upper minors, but most evaluators like him as an above-average defender with a fringy stick. If his power continues to come along, he could be more than that, but with replacement level so low behind the plate, he would rank highly on my board this year.
Brian Moran, LHP, Mariners
A former seventh round pick, and the older brother of Marlins' 2013 first rounder Colin, Moran has been very impressive in the hitter-friendly PCL over the last two seasons. Over that time he's logged just under 100 innings, tallying a 3.61 ERA and 138 strikeouts. In 2013, his 2.18 FIP was best mark by any PCL hurler with a minimum of 60 innings pitched. Because he's left-handed. Moran has immediate appeal as a specialist, though his arsenal may allow him to be more than that given the chance.
Ryan Tepera, RHP, Blue Jays
Finally, one more arm because, well, as MLB's Jonathan Mayo pointed out, 88 of the last 121 selections have been pitchers. Tepera spent the majority of his professional career as a starter until August of the past season when the Jays moved him to the pen. After the move, his velocity moved from average to plus, working 94-97 with good plane on the pitch. At 6-foot-1, he'll need to work hard to maintain angle to avoid giving up the long ball, but Tepera has shown the ability to do that thus far. He compliments the heater with a slider and changeup, neither of which is a knockout pitch, though both show signs of being above average.
Those just highlight a few of my favorite names for the draft, but there's tons of others that might have a chance to be selected this year. Looking at this list, I doubt we have a future all-star in the group, but the chance that we do is what makes the draft so (relatively) exciting. And in a week like this, we can all use some sort of excitement for sure.
...
All stats courtesy of FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.
Andrew Ball is a writer for Beyond the Box Score and Fake Teams.
You can follow him on twitter @Andrew_Ball.The "AUTHOR" of the book has written one of the two five star reviews. With behavior like this, I must suspect the other 5 star review as well. The other two reviews are one star, from apparent actual readers. Why would this author give a "review" for their OWN BOOK? This is not the kind of behavior that I want to see from an author of a book or a few pages of text. I could tell something was a bit fishy to begin with, due to the way the "review" was written, but I didn't, at first, realize that it was the "author" who had written it. I purchased a copy from Amazon (it was free, but I suppose it could technically be a purchase) before I saw the comment that the review was from the author, because I will buy, and read, almost all books or literature on the holocaust. However, I will be returning this digital copy, because I think an "author" who pads reviews is not the kind of "author" I want to support in any way. Amazon should ban this author for this kind of behavior.
By the way, I don't think the holocaust should ever be forgotten, and I encourage everyone to learn about it. However, behavior like this is abhorrent.Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), an antibiotic-resistant superbug, can cause life-threatening skin, bloodstream and surgical site infections or pneumonia. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine now report that cigarette smoke may make matters worse. The study, published March 30 by Infection and Immunity, shows that MRSA bacteria exposed to cigarette smoke become even more resistant to killing by the immune system.
"We already know that smoking cigarettes harms human respiratory and immune cells, and now we've shown that, on the flipside, smoke can also stress out invasive bacteria and make them more aggressive," said senior author Laura E. Crotty Alexander, MD, assistant clinical professor of medicine at UC San Diego and staff physician at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System.
Crotty Alexander is a pulmonologist who sees many patients who smoke cigarettes. She also sees many MRSA infections, and that got her wondering if one might influence the other. To test the hypothesis, Crotty Alexander and her team infected macrophages, immune cells that engulf pathogens, with MRSA. Some of the bacteria were grown normally and some were grown with cigarette smoke extract. They found that while the macrophages were equally able to take up the two bacterial populations, they had a harder time killing the MRSA that had been exposed to cigarette smoke extract.
To better understand why, the Crotty Alexander team tested the bacteria's susceptibility to individual mechanisms macrophages typically employ to kill bacteria. Once inside macrophages, smoke-exposed MRSA were more resistant to killing by reactive oxygen species, the chemical burst that macrophages use to destroy their microbial meals. The team also discovered that smoke-exposed MRSA were more resistant to killing by antimicrobial peptides, small protein pieces the immune system uses to poke holes in bacterial cells and trigger inflammation. The effect was dose-dependent, meaning that the more smoke extract they used, the more resistant the MRSA became.
MRSA treated with cigarette smoke extract were also better at sticking to and invading human cells grown in the lab. In a mouse model, MRSA exposed to cigarette smoke survived better and caused pneumonia with a higher mortality rate.
The data suggest that cigarette smoke strengthens MRSA bacteria by altering their cell walls in such a way that they are better able to repel antimicrobial peptides and other charged particles.
"Cigarette smokers are known to be more susceptible to infectious diseases. Now we have evidence that cigarette smoke-induced resistance in MRSA may be an additional contributing factor," Crotty Alexander said.Ronald Koeman kicked off his Everton tenure at home to Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham side who were massively impressive last year, and whilst the score represents an even fixture, Koeman’s side began brilliantly and showed signs of the Dutchman’s influence early on.
Koeman opted with a 3 man defence with James McCarthy being pushed out to the right wing-back position and also chose Gerard Deulofeu up front in a fluid trio involving Kevin Mirallas and Ross Barkley.
Pochettino continued with his 4-2-3-1 system and featured debutant Victor Wanyama partnering Eric Dier in the deep midfield area with the usual names lining up elsewhere.
Everton’s Superb Defensive Organization
Prior to kick off it was an assumption that Koeman had opted for a 4-3-3 formation with the players he named, but instead played a trump card by using a 3 man defence. Out of possession, Everton were clearly organized and proved a sterling opponent to thwart Tottenham’s attacking capabilities and positioned themselves in a 5-4-1 formation, which would look to congest the central areas to prevent Spurs’ build-up play through these areas. With Lamela operating out on the right, and Eriksen operating out left, Koeman had done his homework and knew they would play much more narrow, allowing their full-backs to push on.
In initial defensive transitions, the front 3 of Everton would look to apply pressure immediately if their was a slight chance of winning the ball back, but if there wasn’t this window of opportunity they set-up well in a triangular shape to prevent build-up through central areas. Particularly in the opening 10-15 minutes, Mirallas was concentrated on Dier, whilst Barkley looked to keep a hold of Wanyama – if either of the deep Spurs midfielders had an inch of space or indeed receive the ball they were closed down very quickly and prevented from playing forwards if they had received.
As the game grew on, Everton’s forwards pressing became a lot more aggressive, and looked to put the back line under a lot more pressure in Spurs’ own third which allowed the midfield and defending units push further forward to minimize the playing area Spurs had. This was particularly effective as Spurs didn’t have many players running in behind the Toffee’s defence, and would continue with their short passing play.
One Spurs had passed the initial first line of defence, they succumbed to a compact midfield unit of Gueye and Barry, and then usually 10 yards behind another compact unit of the 5-man defence.
Gueye was astute in preventing play through centrally when Spurs’ advanced, and Barkley and Mirallas pressed well in the initial defensive transition. McCarthy and Baines tucked in narrow and ensured that the back 5 would play very close knit and prevent any split passes through their defenders.
Their positioning as a defensive unit was superb – they were constantly and a comfortable defensive line which enabled them to prevent Spurs from making progress centrally, but also not much room to play the ball behind the defence. This forced Spurs to deviate from playing in the central areas and push the ball wider.
With Everton operating with wing-backs, this also proved successful when Spurs did play wide. McCarthy would often double up with Gueye when the ball was with Walker, often preventing Walker from using his pace behind the full-back. This forced him to play centrally again, playing into Everton’s hands or play backwards to his centre-half.
This was pivotal during the first half, and really limited Spurs effectiveness on the game. Alli and Eriksen were particularly quiet and ineffective in possession, whilst Lamela and Eriksen (the two wide players in the 4-2-3-1) avoided making runs in between Everton’s centre-half and wing-back where there was more space to exploit.
Koeman’s initial defending ideas came to fruition in the first half and this put Everton in the drivers seat. They looked thoroughly comfortable out-of-possession, and when regaining the ball they looked fairly dangerous on the ball – however, key signs of training ground work was evident in the opening 45.
Tottenham’s Poor & Slow Passing System
Pochettino has done fantastically well with this side, and has developed an aesthetically pleasing playing style which excelled last season. However today, this style of play was very slow, very predictable and ultimately very poor. The lack of urgency to play passes into players in advanced positions was hugely noticeable and was a major downfall to their poor first half.
Last season, Dier especially, proved that he was capable of making stern, crisp vertical passes into players in central congested zones, allowing them to play forwards on their first move, but today this sort of connectivity was disjointed and poor. In fact, they really struggled to move the ball well in all areas, and sorely missed Moussa Dembele in the middle of the park – a player who can carry the ball under pressure and make decisive passes between opposition players.
Initially, they failed to play quick passes into Dier or Wanyama when Everton’s first line had gone to press the defence, and opted to play through the full-backs.
Minute 7 was a great example of this – Wanyama has lots of space and time in the middle and is already on the half-turn to play forwards – Lloris instead decides to play a lofted ball into Rose who is immediately under pressure from McCarthy. Wanyama may not be terrific in the build up play, but personally, this potential pass may have reaped better rewards, especially with Walker in space and the front 3 of Everton would have been removed from the game.
As mentioned previously, they missed Dembele and it was evident – they didn’t have that player who dropped slightly deeper between opposition 1st and 2nd defending lines and able to link play from defending areas into attacking zones. In fairness, Everton had defended these central areas well, but there was still plenty of moments in the game when Alli, Lamela, or even better Eriksen, could’ve dropped slightly deeper in order to receive on the half-term and progress the play.
Ultimately this pushed Spurs into using wide players more often and attempt to build up through Rose and Walker carrying the ball into opposition areas. Whilst this had a minor effect on the game, they way Everton were structured so well made it difficult to move the ball quickly enough through a carrier resulting in play being forced back towards Lloris.
Another problem was with the poor urgency and intent when switching the ball – this could’ve been an effective tool – momentarily Walker and Rose would be in 1v1 situations against opposing full-backs. However, instead of a direct switch through a long pass method, they tried to do so with short ground passes.
Whilst this could’ve also worked, the aggressiveness of such passes were awful, and weight of pass was slow – allowing Everton to organize and shuffle units effectively to prevent the 1v1 situations.
This, however, was something with Spurs would later become much better at in the second half, and allowed them to get a better hold on the game and prove a lot more dangerous in Everton’s half.
Pochettino’s Key Substitution
Pochettino gave Vincent Janssen his competitive debut in Spurs colours, and was a genius move by the Argentine manager. The 3 Everton centre-halves had dealt well with Kane’s presence, and Gueye and Barry had done well to nullify central exposure so in return Everton were comfortable with the potential threat that was posed by the front 4.
With Janssen introduced for Dier, leaving Wanyama as the lone deep midfielder (and Spurs now showing a sort of 2-3-3-2 shape in possession) it caused further problems for Everton’s defence.
They now had to deal with 2 strikers, 3 supporting attacking midfielders and 2 wide wing-backs when out of possession. With Janssen and Kane looking to occupy the 3 Everton defenders, this brought Holgate, Funes Mori and Jagielka a lot more horizontally compact, whilst Eriksen and Lamela drifted in the centre-half — wing-back gaps, this allowed Walker and Rose to have a larger influence in attacking areas.
With Spurs’ equalizer coming through a cross from Walker, have much more players to deal with in the attacking line, it proved too much for Everton to cope with. On the flip side, Spurs did look more vulnerable on the counter attack, but with Koeman introducing Kone for Deulofeu, this risk was significantly reduced.
Conclusion
Koeman’s 3-4-3 system was thoroughly effective, moreso in the 1st 45 minutes. The spacing’s of individuals in their particular units was impressive – the ball possessor had plenty of options to play and usually had great runs from Mirallas and Deulofeu to pin point. Out of possession, they looked very solid, compact and difficult to break down from Spurs’ point of view, and in transitions they had a clear plan to press quickly and early if possible, and when this wasn’t on they set-up shape quickly and effectively.
Pochettino’s side showed little threat to Koeman’s side, but grew better as the game went on. They stuck to their philosophy which the Argentine manager has implemented, but ultimately should have had much more urgency in their passing, especially looking to work on their vertical and diagonal passing as well as penetrative final third balls.
Early days for Koeman and his Toffee’s side, but these early signs shows potential quality in the coming months and seasons.
@ainsfutbol
Featured image via futbolmirror.com
AdvertisementsSINGAPORE - Get ready to be spell-bound by Harry Potter exhibition Collecting Magic: From Stamps To Wands at the Singapore Philatelic Museum (SPM) from this Wednesday (Nov 2) to June 2017.
The exhibition will feature a comprehensive collection of Harry Potter stamps from all over the world, including Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States.
It will also feature a selection of movie memorabilia and collectibles loaned from local collectors. The items include a collector's edition DVD disc set and a film-making book set.
Collecting Magic - From Stamps to Wands
Venue Singapore Philatelic Museum
Address 23-B Coleman Street, Singapore 179807
Date Nov 2, 2016 to June 2017
Opening hours Monday to Sunday, 10am to 7pm
Admission charges Free for Singaporeans and Permanent Residents. Admission for foreigners: $8 (Adult) and $6 (Child)
Tel 63373888
Website www.spm.org.sg
There will also be photo opportunities with familiar Harry Potter movie backdrops such as the train journey to Hogwarts and a chance to "fly" on a broomstick like a skilled Quidditch player.
Children can play with the interactive multimedia exhibits designed by students from Nanyang Polytechnic's School of Interactive & Digital Media. You can wave a wand to see "magic" happen on a screen, watch portraits that "move", or uncover "spells"at the unique heat-sensitive stamp display.
Ms Tresnawati Prihadi, general manager of SPM, said: "Collecting Magic: From Stamps To Wands honours the tradition of collecting, particularly in the area of philately. Postage stamps, alongside community contributed collectibles, help make the Harry Potter experience more tangible and real for visitors."
The best-selling Harry Potter book series, with over 450 million copies sold to date, was released from 1997 to 2007. It spawned a series of feature films, role-playing games and even theme parks.
The opening of the play Harry Potter And The Cursed Child earlier this year in London and the impending worldwide release of the film Fantastic Beasts And Where to Find Them later this month has reignited Pottermania.With the exception of his father, who still occasionally picks up a pencil or inking brush, nobody has been drawing Spider-Man longer than John Romita Jr.
Over the course of nearly 40 years with the character (longer if you count that he came up with the idea for The Prowler for 1969's Amazing Spider-Man #78), Romita has penciled somewhere in the range of 140 Spider-Man comics. Of course, longevity and productivity aren't the only hallmarks of a great artist, and Romita Jr. has done far more than simply pump out issues. He has changed with the times, adapted his style, and co-created some cornerstone Spider-Man characters.
Romita Jr.'s first Spider-Man work came in a six-page backup story in 1977's Amazing Spider-Man Annual #11. A detour into an Iron Man run kept him away from Spider-Man for a couple years, but a return was all but inevitable, and it happened in 1980, when Romita Jr. kicked off a lengthy run as the semi-regular artist on Amazing Spider-Man. In the course of that run, Romita Jr. co-created Hydro-Man, Hobgoblin, and, of particular interest to fans of the 1990s Spider-Man animated series, Madame Web.
During that run, Romita's art style resembled many other artists of that time --- the Marvel house style, as it were --- though even then the influences of his father's art style and one of the clearest of Romita Jr.'s inspirations, Jack Kirby, were evident. After all, look at that techno-webbing behind Madame Web.
Romita stayed on Amazing Spider-Man off and on through 1987, fitting an Uncanny X-Men run in there, too. Then he took a break from the character for a few years, taking on a Daredevil run with writer Ann Nocenti. In the midst of that run, Romita's style began to evolve from that more traditional Marvel style to something different. For lack of a better term, it got "boxier." It was more angular, more stylistic. It was clearly influenced not only by Kirby, but also by the work of another famous Daredevil artist, Frank Miller. On various Marvel projects, including Punisher/Batman and Punisher: War Zone, Romita Jr. worked with inker Klaus Janson, who often collaborated with Miller as well. In 1993, Romita Jr. would crystallize that style in Man Without Fear, a retelling of Daredevil's origin written by Miller.
Romita Jr. brought that style back to Spider-Man in the mid-90s when he drew some key parts of the Clone Saga: The Lost Years, a look at what clone Ben Reilly was doing while Peter was being Spidey, an issue or two of Scarlet Spider, and, starting with issue #64, the adjectiveless Spider-Man series starring Reilly in the Spider-Man role.
The title changed to Peter Parker: Spider-Man when the title character returned to the red and blues in early 1997. Romita Jr. stayed on the title through the end of the first volume (#98), through a reboot with a new volume with writer Howard Mackie, then switching over to Amazing Spider-Man for a sort of soft reboot with writer J. Michael Straczynski.
All along the way, Romita Jr. made tweaks to his style. Through much of the initial vol. 1 run, Peter Parker mixed lots of sci-fi elements and stories with several "street-level" stories. For example, there was a story about anti-mutant protests on a college campus and one very notable issue (#90) in which Spider-Man battles Blastaar in the Negative Zone. It's quite an accomplishment of art and coloring, as much of the book is in actual negative colors.
When vol. 2 came along, the focus shifted toward bigger superhero stories and Peter's new, more lavish lifestyle. That launch came just around the time Romita Jr. was also relaunching Thor with writer Dan Jurgens, and both books shared a sort of grand scale. (They also crossed over.) Things also took a bit of a supernatural bent, with vampire stories and a big Venom arc. Romita Jr. got to flex a few muscles he hadn't before.
For his Amazing run with Straczynski, Romita Jr. kept the big scale but it turned more mythic than superheroic, as JMS explored the "totemistic" nature of Spider-Man in a series of stories that divided fans. Romita's art, though (with help from colorist Dan Kemp and inker Scott Hanna) looked the best it ever had. It was bright and shiny. It was slick. It was still very recognizably Romita Jr., but there was a little extra panache.
Spidey also seemed to lose a few pounds.
Romita left in 2004 to go work on Wolverine, Kick-Ass and other books, but he did return briefly to pencil a few stories during the Brand New Day era, perhaps most notably the New Ways to Die story which introduced Anti-Venom.
So what's there to say about John Romita Jr.'s Spider-Man? It's undoubtedly distinctive (as is all of Romita Jr.'s art), but it's hard to name any specific traits. He's been bulky and skinny. He's been two different guys. The costume has gone through various tweaks. Romita Jr. has drawn every kind of story you can imagine in nearly 40 years of work. I don't know how to cherry-pick certain elements that describe it. I just know it when I see it. And it's really good.
A lot of fans don't like John Romita Jr., and I'll agree that he's an acquired taste. A lot of people say the same thing about Jack Kirby. Is John Romita Jr. as great an artist as Jack Kirby? Well, that's a high bar. But he is a pretty fantastic artist, a consummate draftsman and a chameleon who has adapted and adapted and adapted over the decades.
And he'll probably do it again. Romita might be drawing Superman and Batman right now, but he'll come back to Spider-Man. He always comes back.So Bill Simmons and ESPN are splitting up. What the fuck?! We asked around at the Worldwide Leader to get water-cooler reactions to the news. This is what we got from our sources at ESPN and Grantland.
—Four sources tell us there’s a rumor going around ESPN and Grantland that Simmons found out about the move via Twitter. (A fifth source denies this.) “Cold-hearted/hilarious,” one person says. “Guy is a massive dickhead. But he’ll just land at Fox Sports with Horowitz now for the same money. Yay.”
—“Ding Dong the witch is dead.” (That’s how one ESPN staffer describes the vibe in Bristol.)
—“Sounds like Skipper’s the one who said ‘Man, fuck this.’”
—“It was pretty clear they haven’t gotten along in a long time.”
—“Can’t say anything right now.”
—“Everything is high school.”
—“Not unexpected.”
—“From everything I heard, [Grantland] was only viable due to Simmons traffic and sponsorship $.”
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—One ESPNer points us to Simmons’s appearance on the Dan Patrick Show yesterday morning. (He took to the show to talk about Ballghazi.) Here’s the clip in question. On its face, nothing he said was too offensive, though he did take a couple shots at NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, saying the handling of the scandal was “pathetic” and that Goodell lacked the “testicular fortitude to do anything until he gauges public reaction.” Not even wrong! Speaking about Ballghazi on another network, however, may have been a final, final, final straw.North Carolina Republican legislators, most of whom voted to racially gerrymander their own districts, hold supermajorities in both the state House and Senate. But despite agreeing to repeal an anti-LGBT law that has been nationally condemned and has cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars and counting, Republicans failed to do so on Dec. 21 during a hastily arranged special session called specifically to repeal it.
Now Republicans in other states including Texas, Washington and Virginia are moving to consider similar legislation, undeterred by the North Carolina law’s failings.
North Carolina’s House Bill 2, known as the “bathroom bill,” prevents transgender people from using the restroom that matches their gender identity and bars local governments from enacting nondiscrimination laws that protect the LGBT community, among other provisions. After its passage last March, businesses, high-profile sporting events and film companies left the state, refusing to operate somewhere that openly discriminates against LGBT people. The GOP governor signed HB2 and vigorously supported it during his campaign, something that may have cost him reelection. He was the first North Carolina governor to lose reelection since 1892.
After months of intense national scrutiny and public outcry over the discriminatory law and its harmful economic effects, the GOP decided to convene its fifth and final special session of the year—fitting, as the first “emergency” special session, called on March 23 to prevent a transgender-inclusive bathroom ordinance passed by the Charlotte City Council from going into effect—to repeal its handiwork.
No intention of a full repeal
Reportedly, incoming Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper had brokered a deal between GOP leaders and the Charlotte City Council: Charlotte would repeal its bathroom ordinance and the General Assembly would repeal HB2. But it didn’t work: on the morning of Dec. 21, the Council fully repealed its bathroom ordinance. Later that day, after many hours of caucus meetings and a bit of political theater from Sen. Pro Tempore Phil Berger, a repeal didn’t pass. Republicans wouldn’t go for a clean repeal of HB2; they insisted on tacking on a moratorium on local nondiscrimination ordinances until next fall, allowing them ample time to concoct another, similar law to replace HB2 before then. Democrats didn’t take the bait.
Legislative leaders blamed everyone but themselves: The Charlotte City Council was untrustworthy. Democrats wanted to keep HB2 on the books for political gain. Cooper sabotaged the whole thing from the start.
But what these North Carolina Republicans—who’ve been ridiculed on the national stage numerous times over the past several years, including for their recent power grab stripping significant authority from the new governor—couldn’t admit was this: They consider transgender people undeserving of equal treatment under the law.
A myth to justify discrimination
Whether they believe it or not, North Carolina politicians, their Twitter minions and conservative Christian groups have consistently claimed that allowing transgender people to use the restroom that matches their gender identity puts women at a higher risk of sexual assault and endangers their privacy.
Right-wing websites such as The Daily Caller, Red State and Breitbart News—the racist “alt-right” hub known for its conspiracy theories, not to mention its sexist content—have posted anecdotes, mainly involving women being assaulted by men in restrooms, as proof that inclusive transgender bathroom laws put women at risk. Many of these accounts had problems: most couldn’t be verified by fact-checkers. Some attackers weren’t convicted. In many accounts, the attackers were not cisgender men (men whose gender is consistent with their gender assigned at birth) dressing up as women; they were cis men presenting as such who went into women’s restrooms with the intent to assault someone. And most of the stories took place in parts of the county without transgender bathroom laws. None of these articles appear to reference legitimate studies proving their point. Even if all were verified, anecdotes don’t make an argument.
But GOP Gov. Pat McCrory repeatedly talked about “boys” in the “girls’ locker rooms” and said that transgender bathroom ordinances could lead to “major public safety issues” and “deviant actions.” Dan Bishop, the state senator who was the prime architect of HB2, wrote, wildly erroneously, “ |
filed.
There are actually more than we have listed here and this is in no way a complete list. The mainstream media blamed “fake news” for Hillary’s loss, and they talk about fake hate crimes every day. They are sad and pathetic.
“Here’s something new,” Tucker said.” Yet another trump-inspired hate crime has been debunked as false. Talk about fake news. It all started last week when a student at north park university in Chicago claimed she was being harassed in the wake of trump’s election.”
“The student said she received several threatening e-mails and a note taped to the back of her door that read back to hell, hashtag trump, and various slurs referring to her sexual orientation.”
“According to a new statement from the school’s president, the woman, quote, fabricated the entire story and is no longer enrolled in the university. No word on whether charges were filed against her for scaring the hell out of everyone and contributing to the division of America because of course no charges will ever filed, nor will they ever be filed.”
The left wants Trump supporters to look like anti-Semites, so they are drawing badly drawn swastikas with a Trump signature.
Fake “Hate Crimes” blamed on Trump voters…
❌Lafayette hijab hoax
❌Northwestern swastika hoax
❌Bowling Green assaults hoax Anybody buy this? pic.twitter.com/yqnlHhVKc8 — Dr. Milton Wolf (@MiltonWolfMD) November 20, 2016
In June, a black student activist got 90 days in jail for fake hate crimes on twitter.
Here’s another four hate crimes.
Four ‘Hate Crimes’ committed by @realDonaldTrump supporters were fake. @CNN, you are setting quite the example. https://t.co/5JTWrqsrLi — Help me expose CNN (@cnnwriter69) November 19, 2016
Robert Spencer talks about another Islamophobic hate crime against a 7-year old which never happened.
Twitchy has a list of another seven.
7 Fake Hate Crimes That The Media Blamed On Trump https://t.co/9ObdHbfThF — Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) November 17, 2016
Brietbart compiled this list of 100 hate cream hoaxes in May and as you can see, it’s escalating:
2007
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2015
2016A Liberal MP incorrectly told his constituents the Coalition's proposed $7 Medicare co-payment would not apply to those who could not afford to pay it.
In an email about the budget sent to his electors on Sunday, the member for Hume, Angus Taylor, wrote: "GP co-payments will not apply to those who cannot afford to pay." When asked by Fairfax Media what he meant by the statement, Mr Taylor, whose NSW seat includes the towns of Goulburn and Cowra, said GPs would retain "the option to bulk-bill for those most in need".
MP Angus Taylor told his constituents co-payments will not apply to those who cannot afford to pay. Credit:Michelle Burrell
While doctors would be allowed to waive the $7 fee under the Abbott government's proposal, a doctor in a country area who did so would receive $14 less than they would for bulk-billing the same patient today. This is because the Medicare rebate for GP consultations would be cut by $5, and the current bulk-billing incentive payment, worth $9 in regional areas, would only be paid when the doctor collects the $7 fee.
The president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Liz Marles, said the government was shifting the cost of providing care for the vulnerable on to GPs.“It’s probably a good idea for us to mingle while they’re clearing the weapons from the last match,” said Sasuke. “Take some time to catch up with old friends… and future enemies.”
Naruto was still watching Tenten regain her bearings. “I’m gonna go see if she’s okay.”
“An entire room filled with nobles and potential opponents, and you manage to find the one defeated commoner.” Sasuke shook his head and smiled wryly. “See you later then, dropout.”
Naruto considered sending clones out so he could talk to the others at the same time, but it was probably not a good idea to waste chakra when he might still have a match himself. He found Tenten sitting on the balcony with her team, eyes closed as she rested against the wall. She looked up when Naruto approached. “Come to make fun of me for running away and crying at the end, have you?”
“Uh, no,” said Naruto. “I encountered the Sand ninjas in the Forest. I know how scary they can be.”
Her gaze softened somewhat at hearing those words, but Hyūga Neji shook his head and sighed. “See, this is why Kunoichi should not be on the frontlines – they are far too emotionally fragile. I am sorry Tenten, but engaging that foe in combat was incredibly foolish. You should have forfeited immediately.”
Naruto was about to angrily protest this, but then he remembered saying nearly the same thing to Hinata.
“You are wrong,” Lee said instead. “Tenten, I thought your performance was most youthful! There is nothing more glorious than fighting on despite impossible odds, no matter how foolhardy it may seem!”
Tenten sighed and turned back to Naruto. “So, why did you say you were here?”
“I wanted to see if you, uhm, you know.” Naruto fidgeted awkwardly. What was he supposed to say? I feel guilty because I knew those Sand ninjas were crazy and I didn’t tell you? “So uh, you like seals too?”
Her eyes lit up. “Oh, you’re a seal user? They’re just fantastic, aren’t they? You can store so many things in them, like food and weapons and scrolls with more weapons in them. I can only create basic seals so far, but if I could get a teacher to take me on as apprentice I just know I could be a true seals mistress!”
Naruto weighted the pros and cons of asking her what she thought about the seals Jiraiya had inscribed upon his palms, but then the examiner spoke again: “Next match, Yakushi Kabuto versus Temari!”
They looked around and found the information card shark in the midst of a deep conversation with Sasuke, despite almost certainly not being a noble. “This should be interesting,” Naruto muttered.
The more he thought about it, the more suspicious the older genin seemed: Failing the exam six times in a row while buying and selling information, and then suddenly breezing through the second round right when the class with all the clan heirs in it was participating? That just made it seem even more likely that he was here to spy on everybody else. But if that was the case then the Anbu and especially Morino Ibiki should have caught on by now… unless, of course, he was their spy. Now there was a scary thought.
The Sand Kunoichi leaped down from the balcony, her black kimono and crimson obi flapping in the breeze. As she landed she shot her foe a cocky grin. “Do try to make this entertaining, will you?”
Her bespectacled opponent ran a hand through his grey hair and smiled ruefully. “I’ll do my best. I have to admit my abilities are not very well suited to single combat, though.”
The examiner slashed his hand downwards. “Begin.”
“Well,” said Temari, “that’s too bad!” She grabbed the object on her back and swung it in one smooth motion, unleashing a hurricane that threw her opponent across the room like a ragdoll.
“What the hell?” said Naruto. “A fan? How the heck can she create that much wind with just a fan?”
“I’ve heard about this,” Tenten said excitedly. “She’s using a Gunsen war fan – Uchiha Madara was said to have one too, but nobody except the Sand Village knows the secret to making them. It’s beautiful…”
Its appearance was not what concerned Naruto. She’s clearly using it to amplify her Wind technique, but how’s she doing it? Are there seals on that thing to generate more force or something? Could I do the same to amplify my earth techniques by throwing a rock, or is there more to it?
On the far side of the arena, the older Leaf genin was standing up, his hand glowing faintly green as he moved it over his body where the wind-chakra had cut into his skin. A moment later he stood up and dashed towards his opponent, blue chakra-scalpels running along his hands, but the wind blew him back once more. The sand genin laughed mockingly at the sight.
“This is ridiculous,” said Naruto, whose frustration was rising like a building pressure behind his eyes. “After all that talk at the academy of the importance of support roles and making sure to pick your battles, they just throw us in an arena and tell us to start fighting? How the heck is that a fair test of our abilities?”
“It’s not,” said Tenten. “They can talk about teamwork all they want, but in the end the only thing that counts is individual strength – that or being born into a noble clan and having skill at politics.”
Down below, Kabuto had managed to raise a wall of earth to block Temari’s attacks, and was now flicking through a number of hand seals. He recognized it as the same genjutsu technique that Sakura could also use. Smart. She can deflect physical attacks, but she won’t be able to see this one coming.
“Watch out!” Kankuro called from the balcony. “He’s about to use genjutsu on you!”
Temari leaped away in a storm of wind, and then she was on top of her fan and floating above Kabuto, who barely had time to look up before she called down a hurricane: The storm bit into him like a scythe, cutting his flesh while also crushing him down into the ground. She landed on top of him and slammed the end of her metal fan into his ribs with a sickening crunch.
Naruto winced, but could not turn away. That whole fight had been wrong, in so many ways. “Hey examiner,” he called out. “Her brother revealed Kabuto’s technique just now! That’s cheating, isn’t it?”
Hayate looked doubtful. “Uhm, it’s not like she asked for his help – anyone could just yell something out. The winner is Temari, but uh… I might disqualify the next person who does that.” As the medics carried Kabuto away, he reached into his box once more. “Okay. Next match: Uzumaki Naruto versus Rock Lee.”
Naruto and Lee stared at each other, wordlessly.
-o-
“I will admit that you are not the person I was hoping to fight,” Lee said while adjusting the bindings on his wrists. “However, I am still more than happy to prove you wrong about the power of youth, Naruto-kun. I will show everyone here that there is no reality which hard work cannot overcome!”
“Okay,” said Naruto. “Then I’ll show everyone that there are pretty big advantages to not being crazy.”
Yet even as he said that, his mind kept going back to the one time when he had seen Lee in action. He moved in front of me so fast I couldn’t even see him… even if he can’t control his chakra, his ability to flare it is insane. “If you want to overcome reality,” he went on, “it helps if you try to understand it first.”
Lee smiled at him, not seeming put off in the slightest. “You may be smarter than I am, Naruto-kun, but that won’t help you. Intelligence is useless if you do not get the time to think.”
He was not wrong: In any other situation, Naruto would have started the fight with shadow clones, but if Lee beat him before he could so much as cast a single technique… the first second of this fight would decide everything.
The examiner raised his hand. “Ready?” Rock Lee shifted into a sprinter’s starting position, the muscles in his body visibly tensing. Naruto’s body burst into life as he flared his chakra pre-emptively, his hands going through the Dog, Boar and Ram seals even as the examiner’s hand slashed downwards. “Begin!”
A blast of chakra from his feet sent Naruto flying backwards as Rock Lee exploded towards him, his speed impossible to track but for Naruto’s chakra-enhanced senses.
His technique completed just in time, and the world flared into light.
-o-
Gasps of shock and pain went up around the arena as the audience tried to make out what was happening while at the same time shielding their eyes from the searing light. Sasuke in particular let out a painful hiss as he covered his eyes with both hands. As for Sakura, she was too busy trying to figure out how Naruto managed to emit that much light to even try and watch the match.
Dog, Boar, and Ram, in that order: Those were the seals for the Transformation technique – Sakura could have remembered them in her sleep. But the Transformation technique was the simplest illusory technique there was, and definitely not something meant for offensive use. She remembered Naruto’s surprise upon learning that it was considered Ninjutsu and not Genjutsu, and she had explained that the technique worked by bending light around the user rather than interfering with the enemy’s chakra flow.
She sucked in a breath as the realization dawned. “Bending Light…”
She turned to stare at her Uchiha teammate, who was still cursing softly as he rubbed his eyes. He had been watching the battle with his Sharingan activated, she realized with a start. Naruto… did you invent that technique just to fight Sasuke in the finals?
When Sasuke managed to open his eyes again, his look of consternation turned into a wicked smile.
-o-
Success! Naruto grinned triumphantly, having forced his blinded opponent to a halt with his repurposed transformation technique, and having gained the breathing space he needed. Half a dozen newly formed shadow clones charged his opponent like a conquering army with the blazing sun behind their backs, yet somehow Lee did not seem fazed.
“Very impressive, Naruto-kun… however, I told you not to underestimate the power of hard work!”
As the shadow clones descended upon him, Rock Lee pulled his forehead protector down and around his eyes. His right foot struck a clone in the chest and dispelled it, while his left hand shot out and tossed one clone into another, dispelling both. A fourth clone made to strike him in the back, but Lee somehow twisted around in time to take it out and headed for the sixth. A handful of shuriken aimed at his feet forced him to leap back, and then Lee was chasing after the clone, who escaped using the body-flicker technique to buy some time.
Naruto staggered, as much from the sudden intake of memories as sheer disbelief at what he was seeing. He’s fighting based on sound alone! What kind of genin learns to fight while blind? How on earth is that a priority? Still, his opponent was hampered by his lack of vision, and if Lee was forced to rely on sound… He created six more clones, and they each pulled out an identical copy of the scroll he carried in his pouch, each of which manifested kunai with explosive tags from the exact same storage space.
Soon the arena resonated with the barrage of explosions that were thrown around Lee’s feet, and with neither sight nor sound available to him, he had no choice but to run and hope to dodge them all.
-o-
“Ahhh, this is so unfair,” cried Tenten. “Poor Lee. He just doesn’t stand a chance against someone who has actual talent for ninjutsu. It doesn’t matter how fast or strong he is if can’t even find his opponent…”
Her sensei, Maito Gai, spoke without turning his eyes from the maelstrom of light and sound below. “You underestimate your teammate, Tenten. Lee has not lost yet! Go Lee, show them the fire of your youth!” Even so, Gai was gripping the railing furiously, as if it were all that prevented him from jumping into the arena and joining the fight himself.
Neji on the other hand looked entirely disinterested, slouched as he was against the balustrade with his back turned to the arena. Only the enlarged veins around his eyes betrayed his use of the Byakugan to watch the battle below. “He is right, you know. In fact, at this moment I would say that Lee is winning the fight. Watch carefully.”
Tenten looked down, squinting against the continuous bursts of light. The whole area was pockmarked with craters from where explosive tags had torn apart the stone tiles. The dust that had been thrown up was compounded by smoke bombs which Lee had scattered around the area in an attempt to negate Naruto’s advantage, reducing visibility to almost zero. Every now and then she picked out a flash of green as Lee sprinted around the battlefield at speeds almost too fast to follow, while his opponent tried to catch him with his clones and thrown weapons. At several points it seemed like Lee would be caught in the crossfire, but then he would wheel around instantly and zoom in to take out one of his attackers. So far the original Naruto seemed unhurt, but if she focused chakra to her eyes she could see that he was sweating profusely, while Lee showed no sign yet of slowing down.
Neji gestured at the scene behind him. “That Naruto has managed to secure an advantage, but he lacks the ability to capitalize on it. If he had properly trained his taijutsu he might have been able to defeat Lee with the edge he has, but as it is all Lee has to do is keep moving until his opponent runs out of chakra to create clones and use that light technique of his.” He smiled ever so faintly. “Perhaps there is something to be said for hard work surpassing natural talent, after all.”
Tenten stared at Neji as if he had grown a third ear, the battle momentarily forgotten.
-o-
This was, without a doubt, one of the most chaotic battles Rock Lee had ever fought.
The world was in darkness. Right from the start, he had been robbed of all vision, and then his hearing had been taken from him as well: His eyes still ached from the initial burst of light, and his ears rang with the constant barrage of explosions that were being sent his way. Only his chakra-enhanced sense of smell still allowed him to track his opponents, and even that was rapidly becoming harder with all the dust in the air. Between his speed and the smoke he had managed to avoid taking any major injuries so far, but it was just a matter of time before his foe got in a lucky hit, and then it would all be over.
No, that’s not how Gai-sensei taught me to think! He remembered what he had told Naruto in the forest, the first time they had met. “If I stopped doing something merely because I realized there was no reason to do it, then I could never trust myself to do anything ever again.” For that was the true power of precommitment: By refusing to accept the impossible, the merely difficult became trivial.
In his mind, Neji cast him a look of withering contempt. “What utter nonsense. It does not matter how much a hare dreams of soaring through the sky, it still cannot grow wings and fly.”
Lee shook his head. No, you’re wrong. I’ll prove it to you, and Naruto-kun, and everyone here… Even if I lack the talent for ninjutsu or genjutsu, I will still win this battle. I have to believe that!
His thoughts were interrupted by another series of explosions that forced him to dodge to the right. Based on his memorization of the arena’s layout, this sent him straight towards the sculpture of the two hands forming the Tiger seal. Rather than stopping for even an instant, he ran up the side of the statue before kicking off it and continuing in the opposite direction.
Sensing two more opponents closing up on him, Rock Lee leaped straight into the air and landed in a crouch directly between the two of them. As his mighty roundhouse kick destroyed the clones, he realized that the intensity of Naruto’s attacks had been decreasing. In fact, with those clones gone the attacks had stopped entirely. He chanced a moment to raise his forehead protector and see what was going on. At first he had to blink as his eyes stung from the smoke and the light of the arena’s torches, but then a sudden gust of wind cleared the area and revealed his enemy at last.
He stared at the sight. “Naruto-kun… what do you think you are you doing?”
-o-
“Would you care for another one of these fine soldier pills, Naruto-sama?”
“Why thank you, Naruto-sama, I would indeed.” Naruto took the foul tasting stimulant and swallowed it quickly. The two of them were sitting seiza on a traditional hanabi picnic mat that he had manifested from his scroll as they waited for their opponent to finally notice them.
He perked up. “Ah, Lee! Don’t mind us, we were just passing the time while you kept yourself busy. Would you like to try a soldier pill? They allow you to fight for three days straight without food or rest, or at least that’s what they say. They’re very premium… not that that’s an issue when your teammate is one of the richest nobles in the Village, and your dad is one of the Sannin and a famous author besides. I like to think of money as just another bloodline-ability, really – just like good looks, smarts and talent.”
Lee furrowed his thick eyebrows, making him look more homely than ever. “You will not manage to provoke me into attacking directly, Naruto-kun. I am not as stupid as you seem to think. The best way for me to win this battle is still through sheer attrition. Now, shall we continue the match?”
Naruto shrugged, making a show of nonchalance as he considered his next move. “I guess.” He stood up, his other self taking position behind him. “Hey, you said you were gonna prove to everyone here that Neji is wrong and that hard work can overcome any obstacle, right? Did you really mean that?”
The boy in green nodded fiercely. “Of course! I mean everything I say.”
“Then take a good look around you, Lee. You’ve proved nothing!” The boy in green turned to look at the audience, who had been watching the battle in awe and had now fallen completely silent. “Who do you think they’ve been watching? I invented Light-release ninjutsu, summoned an army of shadow clones and covered the battlefield in explosives, while all you’ve done is run around like a headless chicken. Who do you think they’ll remember after this? Even if you defeat me somehow, they’ll just call it a fluke! A ninja who cannot use ninjutsu or genjutsu… what a joke.”
Lee gritted his teeth, but it was Tenten who called out from the balcony: “No, that’s not true! Lee, we all believe in you. Don’t listen to him!”
Naruto put on his best sneer, taking inspiration from Sasuke. “Do you hear the fear and pity in her voice? She’s afraid of what my words will do to you – that I’ll crush your dreams and spirit. Is there anything more damning than your own teammate’s pity?”
Neji scoffed loudly. “If Lee is such a failure, and he is beating you, what does that make you Uzumaki?”
“And now Neji, who you were gonna defeat, has to stand up for you. He doesn’t acknowledge you as his rival at all!” The words were pouring freely now, each insult made without needing any time to think.
This time Maito Gai yelled in reply. “My prize pupil does not need defending! Lee, you are only weak if you listen to this nonsense. Now fight him the way I taught you!”
Lee’s eyes lit up once more. “Yes, Gai-sensei! Naruto-kun, prepare yourself. Here I come!”
Naruto cursed inwardly. That teacher has way too much influence over him… wait, that’s it!
“Oh, and as for your teacher? The way he dotes on you is pathetic. It’s obvious just from looking at him that he modelled you after him completely, like he thinks he’s someone to emulate, when in fact he’s a failure of a teacher who couldn’t even teach his students a single ninja technique.”
Rock Lee’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Naruto-kun, I am aware that you are trying to provoke me for the sake of winning the match, and I will not hold that against you. However, I strongly suggest you leave my teacher out of this.”
“I even heard he goes around calling himself Kakashi’s rival, like anyone’s gonna take that seriously. Plus the way he talks about ‘youth’ even though he’s middle-aged… it’s totally obvious that he’s a failure who never accomplished anything in life, and now he needs his loser student to make up for it.”
The entire hall fell silent as the audience waited to see how Lee would react. “Very well,” he said at last. “If that is how it is, I shall give you what you want. You say my sensei cannot teach even a single original technique? Then watch closely, Naruto-kun, because this will only last one second.”
As Rock Lee began unbinding the bandages around his wrist, a surge of energy seemed to build up around him, while a commotion went up from where Maito Gai and Kakashi were standing. Seeing their reactions, Naruto immediately leaped back and summoned four more Shadow Clones, every one of them activating his Candle in the Darkness technique. They hurled their explosive kunai at the same time and the battlefield exploded with light and sound once more. Rock Lee vanished.
What?
Something took out the clone to Naruto’s right, causing the others to stumble as the memory struck them. Behind me? Two of the clones twisted around but were taken out not a second later. Naruto body-flickered to the other side of the arena and created four more shadow clones, each of which raised a stone wall up from the ground around them, coming together at the top to form an impenetrable dome. If I can just last until his technique wears off…
A loud bang reverberated through the structure as something heavy hit it from the outside, and the clones hastily pressed their hands against the dome’s walls to reinforce them with their chakra. A second blow struck the other side, and all four clones vanished from the force of it. Cracks ran all across the stone like cobwebs as dust poured down from the ceiling. With the third blow the ramparts crumbled. Metal objects burst through the walls as everything collapsed around him, and Naruto felt something wrap tight around his arms and legs.
“Naruto! This fight is over!”
Naruto’s body slammed into the ground, and then he was but a memory.
-o-
Rock Lee looked around the battlefield in a daze, one of the aftereffects of opening three of the eight gates that inhibited one’s chakra flow. His heart felt like it was going to burst, his body shook from the adrenaline and the pain from his torn muscles was almost unbearable. The final Naruto was gone, having turned out to be just another clone, yet no matter where he looked he could see no other.
He looked around the arena, confused. “Where did he go? Where is his real body?”
A hollow voice came from below. “Where do you think?”
Lee stared at the stone slabs in confusion, then anger. “No… no! You can’t. That’s not fair!”
“Not fair?” Naruto must have been shouting at the top of his lungs to make himself heard from below ground. “We’re ninja, nothing we do is fair! You wanted to know if hard work and determination could overcome any obstacle, right? Well as you can see, it can’t, and denying it will just get people killed.”
The examiner spoke from his spot near the stairs to the balcony. “Contestants are not allowed to leave the arena, but technically Uzumaki has not done so. Uhm, but if neither side can hurt the other I’ll have to call it a draw and fail you both.”
“Do you get it, Lee? You lost the fight right at the start, when I blinded you and dug into the floor with my earth technique. I kept my shadow clones above ground because I figured I’d have to actually beat you to pass the exam, but it was never possible for you to win.”
“No,” cried Lee. “I reject it!” He threw himself onto the floor and started prying at the stones with a kunai, his torn muscles screaming in protest. “As long as I do not accept defeat, nothing is impossible… that is what Gai-sensei taught me – that is what I have always believed!” His vision was blurring, and it was not just from having opened the gates. “I reject it…”
The examiner coughed. “Since it seems that both sides are unable to hurt each other…”
A searing pain ran down Lee’s side and he dodged instinctively, stumbling away on shaking legs with warm blood running down his side and pouring onto the floor. Naruto was standing before him once more, covered in dust from where he had burst out of the ground, holding a bloodied sword. “Looks like you finally lowered your guard. Sorry Lee, but this fight really is over.”
-o-
Naruto turned to the examiner, who looked about to call the match, but then stopped.
“No, please do not end the match. I can still fight.” With an impossible effort, Rock Lee was standing up. His entire body was shaking, blood dripping onto the ground where he stood, yet there was a desperate determination in his eyes that would not yield. “I… I am not done yet!”
“You can’t be serious.” Naruto stared at the sight in disbelief. “Look, I’m sorry about taunting you, all right? I didn’t mean any of that stuff. I’ll admit that hard work is important, and maybe it’s too easy to dismiss something as impossible when it’s just really hard, so saying we should try to do the impossible isn’t so crazy. But you’ll never be able to do the impossible if you can’t even admit it exists!” He gestured at the stone tiles that he had dug through with the hiding-like-a-mole technique. “The fact is that I didn’t even need to come above ground just now: I could’ve just sent my chakra up through a small gap and kept casting shadow clones, but I didn’t want to drag this out any longer. You’ve lost, Lee.”
Lee’s eyes hardened. “I never asked you to go easy on me, Naruto. It is just like you said: There is nothing more painful than being pitied by your peers. Now, get ready, here I come!”
“Wait, hold on!” Naruto raised his arms just in time to block Lee’s wildly flailing attacks. “Stop, please, just–” His opponent’s hand flashed out and struck his throat, and Naruto staggered back in shock at what could have been a fatal blow. At last a burning sensation rose up within him like bile. “Enough!” He kicked Lee in the chest, sending him reeling. “Why don’t any of you people ever fucking listen to reason?” He drove his knee into Lee’s bleeding wound, forcing him to his knees with a painful gasp. “You all think I’m so stupid, that I’m weak because I try to be nice, but do I look weak to you now?” He stepped forward and kicked Lee in the head, and the older genin tumbled backwards in a heap. “Did that one wake you up, Lee?”
It took Naruto a second to realize his opponent was not getting up again.
The examiner moved over to check Lee’s pulse. “Winner by knockout, Uzumaki Naruto.” He frowned. “Uhm, any harder though, and I would have had to disqualify you instead.”
“Wait,” said Naruto. “That’s not – I didn’t mean to…” He looked up at the audience. Everyone was staring at him, the same way they had stared at the Sand ninjas. “I… I wasn’t trying to…” Medical ninja arrived and carried Lee away on a stretcher, while Naruto just stood by and watched. I didn’t mean it…
He headed to the balcony with rising dread. At the top of the stairs, the others were already waiting for him.
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If you’ve ever played baseball, then you have first-hand experience on what it takes to play the game, one of the major abilities you need is a quick reaction time. Baseball players are in the upper echelons in regards to pitch recognition and ability to process information (Clark et al, 2012).
Some people, however, believe that there is an ‘IQ cutoff’ in regards to baseball; since general intelligence is supposedly correlated with reaction time (RT), then those with higher RTs must have higher intelligence and vice-versa. However, this trait—in a baseball context—is trainable to an extent. To those that would claim that IQ would be a meaningful metric in baseball I pose two question: would higher IQ teams, on average, beat lower IQ teams and would higher IQ people have better batting averages (BAs) than lower IQ people? This, I doubt, because as I will cover, these variables are trainable and therefore talking about reaction time in the MLB in regards to intelligence is useless.
Meden et al (2012) tested athlete and non-athlete college students on visual reaction time (VRT). They tested the athletes’ VRT once, while they tested the non-athletes VRT two times a week for a 3 week period totaling 6 tests. Men ended up having higher VRTs in comparison to women, and athletes had better VRTs than non-athletes. So therefore, this study proves that VRT is a trainable variable. If VRT can be improved with training, then hitting and fielding can also be trained as well.
Reaction time training is the communication between the brain, musculoskeletal system and spinal cord, which includes both physical and cognitive training. So since VRT can be trained, then it makes logical sense that Major League hitting and fielding can be trained as well.
David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene says that he has a faster reaction time than Albert Pujols:
One of the big surprises for me was that pro athletes, particularly in baseball, don’t have faster reflexes on average than normal people do. I tested faster than Albert Pujols on a visual reaction test. He only finished in the 66thpercentile compared to a bunch of college students.
It’s not a superior RT that baseball players have in comparison to the normal population, says Epstein, but “learned perceptual skills that the MLB players don’t know they learned.” Major League baseball players do have average reaction times (Epstein, 2013: 1) but a far superior visual acuity. Most pro-baseball players had visual acuity of 20/13, with some players having 20/11; the theoretical best visual acuity that is possible is 20/8 (Clark et al, 2012). Laby, Kirschen, and Abbatine show that 81 percent of the 1500 Major and Minor League Mets and Dodgers players had visual acuities of 20/15 or better, along with 2 percent of players having a visual acuity of 20/9.2. Baseball players average a 20/13 visual acuity with the best eyesight humanly possible being 20/8. (Laby et al, 1996).
So it’s not faster RT that baseball players have, but a better visual acuity—on average—in comparison to the general population. Visual reaction time is a highly trainable variable, and so since MLB players have countless hours of practice, they will, of course, be superior on that variable.
Clark et al (2012) showed that high-performance vision training can be performed at the beginning of the season and maintained throughout the season to improve batting parameters. They also state that visual training programs can help hitters, since the eyes account for 80 percent of the information taken into the brain. Reichow, Garchow, and Baird (2011) conclude that a “superior ability to recognize pitches presented via tachistoscope may correlate with a higher skill level in batting.” Clark et al (2012) posit that their training program will help batters to better recognize the spot of the ball and the pitcher’s finger position in order to better identify different pitches. Clark et al (2012) conclude:
The University of Cincinnati baseball team, coaches and vision performance team have concluded that our vision training program had positive benefits in the offensive game including batting and may be providing improved play on defense as well. Vision training is becoming part of out pre-season and in season conditioning program as well as for warmups.
Classe et al (1997) showed that VRT was related to batting, but not fielding or pitching skill. Further, there was no statistically significant difference observed between VRT and age, race or fielding. Therefore, we can say that VRT has no statistical difference on race and does not contribute to any racial differences in baseball.
Baseball and basketball athletes had faster RTs than non-athletes (Nakamoto and Mori, 2008). The Go/NoGo response that is typical of athletes is most certainly trainable. Kida et al (2005) showed that intensive practice improved the Go/NoGo reaction time, but not simple reaction time. Kida et al (2005: 263-264) conclude that simple reaction time is not an accurate indicator of experience, performance or success in sports; Go/NoGo can be improved by practice and is not innate (but simple reaction time was not altered) and the Go/NoGo reaction time can be “theoretically shortened toward a certain value determined by the simple reaction time proper to each individual.“
In baseball players in comparison to a control group, readiness potential was significantly shorter for the baseball players (Park, Fairweather, and Donaldson, 2015). Hand-eye coordination, however, had no effect on earned run average (ERA) or batting average in a sample of 410 Major and Minor League members of the LA Dodgers (Laby et al, 1997).
So now we know that VRT can be trained, VRT shows no significant racial differences, and that Go/NoGo RT can be improved by practice. Now a question I |
ominating hit factories.
Max Martin needs no introduction. The 45-year-old Swede has maintained an iron grip on the pop charts since the turn of the century, churning out everything from ‘…Baby One More Time’ and ‘I Want It That Way’ to ‘Shake It Off’ and ‘Can’t Feel My Face’. His songs are saturated with hooks, combining the catchiest parts of Swedish dance-pop, arena rock, ‘90s R&B and millennial electronic music to define the sound of modern pop.
But Martin is not the only Scandinavian hitmaker ruling the charts from behind the scenes: for the last decade, Norwegian production duo Stargate has had dozens of top 10 singles, working from a similar formula as Martin but forging songs more apt for R&B-influenced singers like Rihanna, Ne-yo and Beyoncé. In the last few years you’ve heard Martin’s productions – think the hits of Taylor Swift’s 1989 – on the radio, in commercials and in stadiums; you’re more likely to hear Stargate’s work – including Tinashe’s ‘All Hands On Deck’ and Ty Dolla $ign’s ‘Drop That Kitty’ – in the club. And their different production styles are all over Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman and Fifth Harmony’s 7/27, albums that tell us plenty about both acts – and the state of pop music in 2016.
Grande is the latest in a long line of child star pop princesses, going from Nickelodeon’s Sam & Cat to sex kitten chanteuse in a few short years. But she’s no Auto-Tune-reliant Britney: Grande has long been compared to Mariah Carey because of her four-octave range. Her 2014 album My Everything lived up to its expansive title, roping in a score of producers as Grande skipped from EDM fist-pumpers to hip-hop-flavored ballads to irrepressible pop smashes. The album’s biggest hits – ‘Problem’ and ‘Bang Bang’ – were co-helmed by Martin and protege Ilya Salmanzadeh, so perhaps it’s no surprise that Grande has re-teamed with the Swedish pair for the majority of Dangerous Woman, which has been billed as the 22-year-old’s most “mature” album yet.
But despite its title, there is nothing dangerous about Dangerous Woman. When Grande sings that she made a decision to test her limits, she must be talking about her vocal range – which is as impressive and precise as ever – because the songwriting is as safely middle-of-the-road as we’ve come to expect from Martin and company. There’s the sock-hop slow dance ‘Moonlight’, throwback bluesy (‘Dangerous Woman’), funky (‘Greedy’) and soulful (‘Leave Me Lonely’, ‘I Don’t Care’), and rap-washed tracks that waste their guests (Lil Wayne on ‘Let Me Love You’, Future on ‘Everyday’). There’s a token nod to pop’s current fascination with reggae and dancehall on ‘Side to Side’, a collaboration with Nicki Minaj that pales in comparison to their last team-up, boss bitch anthem ‘Get On Your Knees’.
Grande is more memorable when she sticks with contemporary sounds like on ‘Be Alright’ and ‘Knew Better / Forever Boy’, songs produced not by Martin and company but Tommy “TB Hits” Brown, a protege of Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins (‘The Boy Is Mine’, ‘Say My Name’) Perhaps coincidentally, these are the songs where she’s actually “dangerous,” or at least the strong one in a relationship. ‘Be Alright’ finds her reassuring a doubtful lover, while on ‘Knew Better / Forever Boy’ she claims there “ain’t nobody like me” and maintains that nobody can keep her attention for more than a few months. Contrast this with the message of the Martin tracks: for all the control-taking and decision-making of ‘Dangerous Woman’, the hook (“Somethin’ ’bout you makes me feel like a dangerous woman”) puts the responsibility for her attitude at the feet of her man. The same is true on ‘Bad Decisions’, a song that briefly flirts with edginess (“Ain’t you ever seen a princess be a bad bitch?”) but cedes agency in the hook: “Boy, you make me make bad decisions.”
There are fewer bad decisions, as it were, on Fifth Harmony’s 7/27. Fifth Harmony is a five-member group that was born on The X Factor USA – essentially the American female counterpart to One Direction. Their debut album Reflection was one of the best (if most slept-on) pop releases of the year: wall-to-wall, R&B-flavored dance-pop with gratuitous-but-clever nods to divas past. And rather than streamlining their sound, as Grande did on Dangerous Woman, 7/27 (named after the day the group was formed in 2012) returns to the well that proved so fruitful on Reflection.
Like Grande, Fifth Harmony has re-teamed with the producers responsible for their biggest hit (the horn-heavy, Kid Ink-assisted jam ‘Worth It’), with Stargate responsible for half of the album. The duo do what they do best, bringing ‘Irreplacable’ acoustic guitar to ‘Write On Me’ and piggybacking on contemporary trends. ‘All In My Head (Flex)’ checks boxes for both reggae and Fetty Wap, and if you’re going to do dancehall, you can do worse than covering Vybz Kartel (‘Gonna Get Better’). They also team with younger, zeitgeist-grabbing producers, bringing Fifth Harmony’s soul to Kygo’s usually-bland tropical house and Bloodpop’s dembow-frankensteinage; the ‘Sorry’ co-producer contributes to ‘Scared of Happy’ here.
Fifth Harmony outpaces Grande lyrically as well. Like last time around, there are knowing nods to Girl Power queens (“Destiny said it, you got to get up and get it / Get mad independent and don’t you ever forget it”) and semi-corny sex metaphors aplenty (all of ‘Work From Home’, ‘Write On Me’). There is trite pop fair like ‘Squeeze’, but the group isn’t afraid to dig a little deeper. On ‘Scared of Happy’, the group questions self, love and self-love (“Usually fearless, why am I scared of happy?”), and on the Prince homage ‘Not That Kinda Girl’, they aren’t impressed by fuckboy antics. And as far as Mary J. Blige references go, “How Mary J call it, that real love” on ‘I Lied’ bests Grande’s cringeworthy “hood love” lyric on ‘Bad Decisions’ (Grande might have dated Big Sean, but she’s from tony Boca Raton, Florida).
If Ariana Grande and her team were looking for a 1989-sized showcase of a singer who could very well be the next Mariah Carey or Christina Aguilera, handing the keys to Max Martin was a no-brainer. Unfortunately, you can’t be particularly dangerous – musically or lyrically – when you do that, and on Dangerous Woman, Grande’s mindblowing voice is pressed into service for mostly ho-hum and overly nostalgic songwriting. And while Fifth Harmony might be nostalgic for the days of late ‘90s and early ‘00s pop music, they’ve done a better job of making contemporary sounds – not just retro ones – their own, a trick mastered by Destiny’s Child (and Mariah and Christina) before them. They’ve also done a better job of telling stories about dangerous women, and not just the men that love them.
Stargate’s vision of pop might be more dynamic and dangerous than Martin’s, but the Swedish hitmaker certainly doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Martin currently has five songs in the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with Justin Timberlake’s ‘Can’t Stop The Feeling!’, P!nk’s ‘Just Like Fire’ and Adele’s ‘Send My Love (To Your New Lover)’ joined by the first two Dangerous Woman singles. Stargate isn’t on the chart at all, but Fifth Harmony is, with their single ‘Work From Home’. It’s a song co-written and co-produced by Ammo, a protege of Dr. Luke, the super-producer who himself is a protege of – who else? – Max Martin.
Chris Kelly is on TwitterThe Los Angeles Times reports that the Los Angeles Ethics Commission has a wonderful, tax-friendly idea to draw more voters to the polls: pay them.
Voting on Thursday to send the idea to City Council President Herb Wesson’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee, the plan calls for financial incentives and a random drawing. If the money required is too exorbitant, the city would need a ballot measure to raise the funds.
Commission president Nathan Hochman said, “Maybe its $25,000, maybe its $50,000. That’s where the pilot program comes in…to figure out what…number and amount of prizes would actually get people to the voting box.” He suggested that surplus matching funds allotted to people running for office who consent to certain requirements could be used to fund the vote program.
In the 2013 mayoral election, only 23% of eligible voters cast their votes. On Tuesday, a special school board election only drew 10% of voters.
The idea surfaced on Thursday when Wesson met with the committee. Wesson and Mayor Eric Garcetti had discussed the idea of moving the city’s elections to even-numbered years two months ago.
Although federal law does not allow voters receiving payment for voting, Ethics Commissioner Jessica Levinson, who wants to use a lottery to pay for the voters, contends that because the voters would not be casting their votes for federal positions, the use of funds to stimulate voters is permissible, the Times reports. Another advocate argued that the lottery would only lure people to the voting booth, not ask them to vote a particular way.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Crimeans are facing a stark choice, this poster claims
Residents of Crimea have in effect been isolated from all but Russian news outlets ahead of the 16 March referendum on becoming part of Russia.
Although pro-Russian views have always been strong in Crimea, local residents have until recently had access to a mix of news sources, from both Ukraine and Russia, with television traditionally the most popular.
The situation changed drastically in early March, when Kiev-based TV channels were removed from both terrestrial broadcasts and cable networks in Crimea. Some of them were replaced with Russian stations, which are scathingly critical of the new government in Kiev.
Local newspapers in Crimea are all but unanimous in promoting the pro-Russian message, which is also reinforced by street advertising and leaflets handed out across the region.
Several websites have been launched to promote the referendum and closer links with Russia.
TV
The blackout of Ukrainian TV channels in Crimea started on 3 March, when Black Sea TV, supportive of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, was disconnected from local TV transmitters.
A few days later, other Ukrainian channels were taken off the air and replaced with Russian TV stations. The Crimean authorities said it happened due to "technical problems".
On 9 March, one of Ukraine's largest cable operators, Volya, told its subscribers in Sevastopol and Simferopol that it had removed all Ukrainian TV channels from its analogue cable network following orders from the local authorities.
On 11 March, the Crimean parliament took control of the biggest local state-owned TV company, Crimea (Krym), which was seized by armed men on 28 February.
The blackout of Ukrainian TV channels caused protests from the Crimean Tatar community.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Vote in the referendum to stop fascism, says this billboard
Internet
Referendum2014.org.ua was launched to collect information about the 16 March referendum. It features several video clips purporting to illustrate the opinions of Crimean residents, all of whom are either openly supportive of the referendum as a way of attaching Crimea to Russia, or highly critical of the new Ukrainian authorities.
Another new website, Crimea Together, offers a selection of stickers, leaflets and posters, all promoting Crimea's future as part of Russia. The website encourages users to share these posters on social networks or hand them out to local residents.
Pro-Russian images and leaflets have also been shared on Crimea's pro-Russian forums and blogs. Up to 100 of them are collected on Forum.Sevastopol.info, a popular local social network known for its fiercely anti-Ukrainian position. Some highlight Crimea's "historical" links with Russia, others advertise it as "the last chance" for security and the revival of Crimea.
Press
Popular Crimean newspapers such as Krymskoye Ekho, Krymskaya Pravda and Krymskoye Vremya, traditionally supportive of Russia, have been seen stepping up anti-Ukrainian sentiment and calling on Crimean residents to "choose Russia" in the referendum.
Krymskoye Ekho warned Crimeans against trusting the Ukrainian authorities: "Do not trust anyone! There is a media war going on. They are trying to confuse us. Their task is to prevent a referendum going forward."
Krymskaya Pravda described the referendum as the "last chance".
"We have the last chance to express our opinion at the referendum - we are in unity with Russia. We must have a clear conscience and not be ashamed to look our children and grandchildren in the eye," it said on 7 March.
Image copyright other Image caption Campaign leaflets refer to the authorities in Kiev as "neo-Nazis"
Street advertising
Posters have been put up across Crimea telling local residents that they will be choosing between two stark options: one is illustrated with a picture of Crimea with a swastika superimposed on it, the other is a Crimea painted in the colours of the Russian flag.
Leaflets arguing that living standards are higher in Russia than in Ukraine have reportedly been handed out across Crimea. One such leaflet says Crimea has to make the right choice, or "Ukrainian neo-Nazis will treacherously and gradually take away everything from us through blackmail and bribery".
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. For more reports from BBC Monitoring, click here. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.Image copyright R.Braga-Neto Image caption The vast trunk, used for water storage, of the Cavanillesia umbellata tree is one of the most conspicuous characteristics in a dry forest
Tropical dry forests are among the most threatened habitats on the planet, yet remain overlooked by scientists and conservationists, warn researchers.
Despite being home to many species found nowhere else on the planet, few forests are protected, a study shows.
The extent of these valuable biological hotspots is just 10% of its historical range, as the biome's fertile soil make it an ideal place to grow cash crops.
The findings have been published in the journal Science.
These landscapes, with fertile soils and favourable climate, were utilised by advanced pre-Columbian civilisations, such as the Incas. The forests provided valuable arable land and were the source of important food crops, such as maize, tomatoes, beans and peanuts.
"Neotropical seasonally dry forest is a biome (a large naturally occurring community of plants and animals) with a wide and fragmented distribution, found from Mexico to Argentina, and throughout the Caribbean," the authors wrote.
The team from Latin America and Caribbean Seasonally Dry Tropical Forest Floristic Network (DryFlor), based at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), Scotland, defined dry forest as having a closed canopy, "distinguishing it from more open, grass-rich savanna".
Using data from more than 1,600 inventories of species found in these biomes throughout the regions, they identified that the landscapes contain a "remarkable 6,958 species of woody plants", many of which were not found anywhere else in the world.
Despite the biological and genetic importance of these species, most of the dry forests were not protected.
Image copyright RT Pennington Image caption Just over 1% of the Caatinga dry forest in northern Brazil is fully protected, compared with almost 10% of the Amazon rainforest
The team observed: "In light of probable warmer climates in the tropics, conservation of unique dry forest species that have adaptations to heat and drought should be a global priority."
Co-author Toby Pennington, head of tropical diversity at RBGE, explained that dry forests were often overlooked as a result of more charismatic rainforests.
"If you go to this small area of rainforest, there is fantastic diversity and they have this enormous physical scale that perhaps dry forests do not have," he told BBC News.
"Since the year dot when the first biological explorers went to the region, there has been a focus on this and the drier biomes have tended to be forgotten.
"I think tropical dry forests have also suffered because they were already destroyed, at least in Latin America's pre-conquest areas. These are the areas where [pre-Columbian] civilisation started."
Roots of civilisation
Prof Pennington recalled a time he was carrying out an inventory survey in Bolivia.
"After about an hour, we thought there was something a bit funny about how we kept going up a really steep bit before the land went flat.
"We then realised that we were on Inca terracing, where [the dry forest] had regenerated. This was because a lot of the pre-Colombian civilisations were located in dry forest areas."
The conditions and landscapes provided by the neotropical dry forests played a pivotal role in the emergence of these civilisations, and can be directly compared with the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, which is also known as the Cradle of Civilisation.
The fertile land and the domestication of wild food crop species allowed nomadic tribes, which previously had to follow the seasons and their food, to settle and form early towns and cities.
Prof Pennington identified another factor that probably contributed to the lack of protection for the forests - fragmentation.
"It is not like the Amazon, which is located in one huge block. Dry forests are spread from Mexico all the way down to Argentina, yet it has a different name to what it is called in Argentina or in Brazil so there is quite a problem of people not actually realising that their country houses part of this continental system. This means all the focus was done nationally," he explained.
Image copyright DryFlor Image caption The DryFlor network has produced a short animated film to highlight the history and importance of dry tropical forests
"Part of what we have been trying to do [via the DryFlor network] is to give it a continental scale focus. This is quite important because then, for example, a policymaker in Peru realises they have a landscape that is globally significant rather than just looking at it from a national point of view."
These sites are real museums of diversity Prof Toby Pennington, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh
He said he hoped the findings of the study published in Science would help raise awareness of the plight facing dry forests amongst the scientific and policy communities.
Growing awareness
"In Mexico, its [dry forest] vegetation grows all the way down the Pacific coast, and because Mexico does not have a huge rainforest area, the dry forest is quite well known, recognised and researched, therefore it is quite well protected," he explained.
"However, in other countries this may not be the case," Prof Pennington added.
"I have done some work in Peru where there are some geographically small areas of dry forest. About 15 years ago, I started doing some inventory work and it was shown, as this paper has confirmed, that 40% of the woody species there grew absolutely nowhere else in the world.
"I have also done some molecular research and this has shown that some of these species are incredibly ancient, up to 10 million years old. These sites are real museums of diversity. Yet in that area, there is not a single protected [site]. In my view, Peru has not recognised the importance of what it is holding.
"I hope this paper will highlight the importance to the Peruvian community and say that this is a globally significant piece of forest and perhaps we should do something about it.
"In terms of next steps, we have partners in each of these Latin American countries that have co-ordinated this data accumulation, and we are hopeful that this paper in Science will help give them the leverage to start talking to policymakers. This is the start of a process."
The team has also produced a short animated film that highlights the importance of dry forests in Latin America and the Caribbean, both historically and in the years to come.
Follow Mark on Twitter.Gitmo recruited thousands of terrorists, says US interrogator David Edwards and Joe Byrne
Published: Tuesday January 27, 2009
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A Pentagon report that 61 former inmates from Guantanamo Bay have "returned to the battlefield" doesn't seem to be scaring anyone. Matthew Alexander, a former senior interrogator in Iraq, told Keith Olbermann last night on MSNBC's Countdown that Guantanamo Bay is a persuasive argument for al-Qaeda in recruitment of fighters in Iraq.
Matthew Alexander led the team of interrogators who found Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in August 2006. Since returning from Iraq, he has been outspoken about the tactics that the US military uses to interrogate prisoners. His book, How to Break A Terrorist, outlines his experience with the "deeply flawed, ineffective, un-American way the US military conducts interrogations in Iraq."
The Pentagon report on former Gitmo inmates returning to terrorism has been the subject of much debate since its release. Only 18 former inmates are listed as "confirmed recidivists"; the remaining 43 are listed as "suspected," although the basis of suspicion isn't definitively documented. The activity of one "confirmed recidivist" amounts to being interviewed in a documentary about Guantanamo Bay.
Seton Hall University law professor Mark Denbeaux published a report on Jan. 15 pointing out that the Pentagon has altered its figures on "terrorist recidivism" multiple times, with the latest figure being the most egregiously inaccurate. Denbeaux spoke to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow at the beginning of the month.
"Once again, they've failed to identify names, numbers, dates, times, places, or acts upon which their report relies," the professor asserts. "Every time they have been required to identify the parties, the DOD has been forced to retract their false IDs and their numbers. They have included people who have never even set foot in Guantanamo--much less were they released from there."
Last night, Olbermann asked Matthew Alexander why the Pentagon would use the idea of former Gitmo inmates engaging in terrorism to try to keep the prison open.
"Whether [the number of detainees that are suspected terrorists] is 68 or 100, that number pales in comparison to the number of fighters that have been recruited to al-Qaeda because of Guantanamo," Alexander responded. "That number would be in the thousands. The number one reason that I consistently heard while in Iraq that foreign fighters gave for coming there was 'torture and abuse occurring in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo'... If we seriously want to undercut one of al-Qaeda's best recruiting tools, the best thing to do would be to close Guantanamo Bay."
Olbermann closed his session with Alexander by asking him, "What would you call a compound where you throw people without trial, and then you don't keep track of how they are, or how long they've been there, or what they're charged with? What do you call that?"
This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast Jan. 26, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.comIn October, 1982, three members of the Direct Action "urban guerrilla" group acted upon "their wish to end the arms race"[1] and filled a stolen pick-up truck with 550 kg (1,210 lb) of dynamite and drove from Vancouver to Toronto, Canada planting the bomb outside Litton Industries, a manufacturer of American cruise missile components many feared would increase the risk of nuclear war.[2] Although the militants had phoned to evacuate the building, the bomb was accidentally detonated several minutes before its announced deadline, injuring several bomb squad police officers and civilians in the vicinity.
Litton Industries' role [ edit ]
Litton Industries was conceived as a radio-engineering firm in 1934, but was purchased by Charles Bates Thornton, a Pentagon official with "all the right connections in the government and military", in 1956.[3] Litton transformed into a military producer, building entire naval ships in their private shipyards and installing their privately produced equipment including communications and navigation systems.[3]
Described as "the best known economic link between Canada and the nuclear arms race",[4] the Rexdale, Etobicoke, Ontario plant of Litton Industries was announced in October 1978 as one of two locations in the world that would be responsible for the manufacture of the Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) guidance systems of the American Tomahawk cruise missile.[4][5][6] The Canadian federal government had given Litton a $26.4 million grant, in addition to a $22.5 million interest-free loan specifically to allow them to bid competitively for the contract, drawing complaints from some members of the public for using federal funds to further the arms race.[4][7] The American contract called for approximately 407 cruise missiles to be fitted with navigation systems by Litton Canada,[4][8][9][10]
Planning [ edit ]
I believe that this moral obligation far overrides our obligation to obey man-made laws....I felt that it was necessary to begin the development of a resistance movement that could carry out sabotage and expropriations... —Hansen, in her closing words at trial[11]
On the night of July 27, 1982, a British Columbia Department of Highways explosives storehouse north of Squamish was entered, and 38½ cases of dynamite were stolen. On September 13, a local hunter came upon two wooden structures that had been built in the forests of Garibaldi, near the site of the theft. One contained four reels of detonating cord and three boxes of electric blasting caps, and the other building held 28½ cases of dynamite, as well as explosive gelatins. This indicates that ten crates of dynamite were not stored in the wooden structures, to which Taylor and Hansen held keys.[11]
The three associates stole a GMC van in the Greater Toronto Area on September 30, as well as an Oldsmobile and Chevrolet Chevelle three and four nights later respectively.[11]
On the morning of October 14, just hours before the bombing, the Ontario Court of Appeals ruled that five Litton executives from the plant could not be called to testify by the defence counsel of 22 anti-nuclear activists who had been arrested for trespassing one year earlier.[12][13]
Execution of the bombing [ edit ]
The bombing was carried out on October 14, 1982, using a van that was parked in a location partially concealed by shrubs, with a fluorescent "warning box" duct taped to the hood, displaying a message, a digital clock counting down, and a single stick of dynamite.
DANGER EXPLOSIVES - Inside this van are 550 lbs. of commercial dynamite which will explode anytime from within 15 minutes to 25 minutes after the van was parked here. The dynamite will be set off by two completely separate detonating systems. Do not enter or move the van - it will explode. Phone the police immediately and have them block off Highway 27, Cityview Drive, Dixon Road and other roads surrounding the Litton plants and have the workers inside the plants moved to protected areas. Nearby hotels and factories should also be notified so that no one will be hurt by the blast. On top of this box is an authentic sample stick of the dynamite contained inside the van. This is to confirm that this is a real bomb. The message atop the box[11]
Belmas called the security desk and warned them that a dynamite bomb was placed in a van outside the building, and that it would detonate "in 15 to 20 minutes". She also told the guards to evacuate the plant, phone the local hotels to warn guests to stay away from windows to avoid injury and to have police close down passing roadways to limit the damage to Litton Industries.
...and it will explode in 15 to 20 minutes. Do not enter or move the van because it will explode. This is no prank. We have left for you on the lawn beside the van a box, which is not dangerous. Taped to the box are further instructions and a stick of the same dynamite that we have used in the bomb. This should be ample evidence in confirming to you the severity of our attack. Act immediately to phone the police and have them block off traffic from Cityview drive, Highway 27, Dixon Road and other surrounding areas. Move all the workers from all of your plants to protected areas and notify the surrounding hotels to have people stay away from all windows. I want to be sure that you understand what I just said. Could you repeat the crucial information to me? Belmas's phone call, when the security guard began recording it[11]
The bomb detonated 11 minutes after the phone call. Informal speculation by a local police constable three weeks after the bombing proposed that if responding officers had used radios, their use may possibly have triggered the detonation early.[14] Police radio use was not subsequently identified as a contributing factor.
The explosion injured three members of the police, three passing motorists and five Litton employees, blowing out a 50-foot section of wall on the main two-storey plant,[15][16] and damaging two adjacent buildings. The cost of damages was described by police as being "in the millions".[17] Damages were estimated anywhere from $3.87 million[18] to $50 million.[19]
On October 19, a 9-page communique was mailed to various organisations and media outlets. The first six pages were titled "Direct Action" and explained the philosophy of the group's actions. The remaining three pages were titled "Statement regarding the October 14 Litton Bombing" and included an explanation of the purpose of the bombing, as well as an apology for the injuries.[11]
Aftermath [ edit ]
In Toronto someone blew up A cruise missile warhead plant.
10 slightly hurt, 4 million dollars' damage.
Why not destroy private property
When it's used against you and me?
Is that violence?
Or self-defence?
You tell me You tell me —Lyrics from the 1986 Dead Kennedys song "Where do ya draw the line?]"
Although Litton Industries indicated that the bombing had not slowed production by more than a week,[15] the bombing was hailed as a "massive success" by the anarchist movement who saw it as "an act of sabotage" against the American military machine.[2] Although there was not wide public support for the bombing, Ann Hansen later pointed to the fact that 15,000 people attended a "Refuse the Cruise" demonstration two weeks after the bombing as evidence it had forced the public to confront Canada's role in the military–industrial complex.[20] Others have concurred that the bombing did galvanise the population, who viewed the bombing as controversial or unnecessary, but took to the streets in greatly strengthened numbers to protest Canada complicity in the production of instruments of war. A month after the bombing, 700 people showed up at the Litton Industries plant to engage in "civil disobedience" despite police warnings.[21]
Ronald Keating, the president of Litton Systems Canada, released a statement following the event, stating that "Bombing is madness", a statement ridiculed as hypocritical for a man "overseeing the very profitable construction of U.S. bombs".[22] Following the bombing, Litton increased their security budget by $2 million, money that Keating said "was money which could be put into our business to help make us more competitive".[23]
The day after the bombing, an anonymous male telephoned Garrett Manufacturing, another defense contractor housed several blocks away in the same Toronto neighbourhood, to report that a bomb had been placed in the building; leading to an evacuation of the 15 personnel on-shift.[24]
16 years later, due to purely financial considerations, Litton Industries lost their government contract to build the navigation systems to Kearfott Guidance & Navigation.[4][21]
In October 1984, the Litton headquarters in Brussels were bombed by the Communist Combatant Cells led by Pierre Carette.[25]
Investigation [ edit ]
Sgt. William Deconkey, of the Toronto Police, was put in charge of the investigation; and was said to have accepted offers from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency to help "hunt [the] terrorists".[24]
In the days following the bombing, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police obtained approval for a 90-day Level IV operation against the Cruise Missile Conversion Project, intended to determine the level of influence among known "subversives".[26] The telephones of CMPC members, including Ken Hancock, were wiretapped for "some considerable time" according to Roy McMurtry, the Attorney General of Ontario.[26] Hancock was also the subject of a police raid that seized four bags of documents, after his name surfaced in the diary of Ivan LeCouvie, another man who was arrested and then released by police.[27]
Trials [ edit ]
Maximumrocknroll that he and Belmas pleaded guilty to lessen their sentences since "the evidence was overwhelming, to put it mildly".[28] Gerry Hannah, pictured, later toldthat he and Belmas pleaded guilty to lessen their sentences since "the evidence was overwhelming, to put it mildly".
Taylor, hailed as the "intellectual leader of the group" due to having written about the philosophy of guerrilla tactics and revolution, was sentenced to 9 years for the Litton bombing, to be served concurrently with the 22-year sentence he received for his role robbing an armoured bank truck.[26] Hansen, pleading guilty, was sentenced to 12 years for the Litton bombing, to be served concurrently with her life sentence for conspiracy to rob the bank truck, her six years for the bombing of the power station and several other mixed sentences for the firebombing of the pornography stores in Vancouver.[26] Gerry Hannah and Doug Stewart, although sentenced to six and ten years respectively for other Direct Action activities, were not convicted of playing any role in the Litton bombing.[26]
Some defenders of the group have suggested that the accused plead guilty to ensure the trial was not about who committed the action, but "to turn the trials into a political showcase, trotting out the evils of nuclear power, pornography and cruise missiles for all to see".[29]
The judge ruled that Hansen's life sentence was merited because "[her] only remorse or regret is for the injury you caused the ten Litton Systems victims" and that she did not apologise for any of the group's property damage.[11]
In arriving at the sentencing for the group, the judge declared
I have no doubt that all of these people are well-motivated people working, if not struggling, against unfavourable odds to promote their respective causes...[but] the message must be crystal clear. Our Canadian way of life will not tolerate the use of fire, explosive substances or weapons as a means to furthering even worthy objectives.[11]
Popular culture [ edit ]
The plot of the 1984 film Unfinished Business involves anarchists plotting to blow up a Toronto factory that produces parts for nuclear weapons.
References [ edit ]
Coordinates:This week Brian, John, and Elaine sit down with world renown martial artist and fusion filmmaker, Len Kabasinski of Killer Wolf Films. Len is the mind behind such b movie classics as Curse of the Wolf, Bound by Blood: Wendigo, Angel of Reckoning, and Fist of the Vampire. A regular guest on Red Letter Media’s, Worst of the Worst, Len breaks down his journey thus far as a filmmaker and his vast knowledge of the industry in a career that spans 12 years and 12 features.
Check out Len and Killer Wolf Films!
– Twitter @killerwolffilms
– Facebook- Killer Wolf Films
– Patreon- Killer Wolf Films
Be sure to check out his films on Amazon TODAY!
Check out this episode!
Calling all Indie filmmakers! We Want Your Movies!
As indie filmmakers, we can appreciate the value of a review of your work. Film festivals, distribution companies, sales agents, etc. all look at reviews and press that a film can get when considering picking up a film. If you are interested in submitting your indie film for review, contact us at the links below with a digital screener of your movie and we will do what we can to feature it on a future episode of The Cinema Psychos Show.
Connect with us!NEW YORK/GENEVA (Reuters) - Global experts issued stark new warnings of the scale of West Africa’s Ebola outbreak on Tuesday, with the U.S. government estimating between 550,000 and 1.4 million people might be infected in the region by January.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said its projection was based on data from late August and did not take into account a planned U.S. mission to fight the disease, so the upper end of the forecast was unlikely.
However, it followed research by experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Imperial College, which estimated that 20,000 people risked infection within six weeks — months earlier than previous forecasts. It warned that the disease might become a permanent feature of life in West Africa.
The worst Ebola outbreak on record has already killed over 2,800 people - more than the combined total of all previous outbreaks. The disease has marched across much of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing dozens of health workers and crippling economies recovering from years of conflict.
Outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal appear for now to have been contained. But nations across the region fear contagion and, against expert advise, have shuttered borders and restricted travel, complicating international efforts to fight the disease.
“I am confident the most dire projections will not come to pass,” CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden told reporters.
The worst-case scenario assumes that there are 2.5 times the number of recorded cases, currently at 5,864.
“A surge now can break the back of the epidemic,” Frieden said. “If you get enough people effectively isolated, the epidemic can be stopped.”
Amid complaints from aid workers and regional leaders that the world was doing too little, U.S. President Barack Obama last week announced plans to send 3,000 troops to build 17 treatment centers and train thousands of healthcare workers.
The U.S. move has been welcomed, but it was accompanied by calls for other nations to follow suit, since the disease was still spreading faster than the moves being made to contain it.
Underscoring this gap, a senior U.N. official in Liberia, the worst |
is necessary to convey the drug's rewarding effects. Without it, reward is greatly reduced."
The research team found that blocking the ability of cocaine to bind to TLR4 dramatically reduces the rewarding effects of cocaine. That finding suggests that blocking TLR4 on glial cells could be a therapeutic approach for treating drug abuse.
Previous research in the lab of CU-Boulder Professor Linda Watkins, the senior author of this study, has shown that a drug known as (+)-naltrexone, can be used to keep opioids from binding to TLR4.
"We found the same results when studying cocaine, which means the same drug, (+)-naltrexone, might be useful for treating a wider range of drug addictions," Watkins said. "The exciting news is that this drug is already in development by Xalud Therapeutics."
San Francisco-based Xalud Therapeutics, a CU-Boulder spinoff company based on Watkins' research, is currently moving (+)-naltrexone toward human clinical trials.
The research was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and the Department of Defense, as well as the Australian Research Council.0
The character of Batman has been around since 1939; you may have heard of him. And there’s a good chance that, over the 78 years of Batman’s existence, you may have heard of a fella by the name of Bob Kane, often granted sole credit for the Dark Knight’s creation. This statement has been repeated in comic books, TV shows, movie, after movie, after movie, and more. But that’s only half of the story.
Bill Finger, co-creator of Batman and the hero’s mythology, was never given credit for his work until well after his death. This posthumous acknowledgement for Finger’s efforts came from Kane, but also included his induction into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame and Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, and his name has been given to an annual award for exceptional comic book writing. Now, a new documentary by the name of Batman & Bill aims to tell the untold story of Finger and his contributions to Batman, the character’s rogues gallery, and even DC Comics at large. A new trailer for the Hulu documentary provides a great introduction to this tale, a must-see for comic book aficionados.
Directed and executive produced by Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce, and featuring interviews with Marc Tyler Nobleman, Michael Uslan, Athena Finger,
and Alethia Mariotta, Batman & Bill premieres on Hulu Saturday, May 6th.
Check out the trailer for Batman & Bill below (via Hulu):
Here’s the official synopsis for Batman & Bill:Donald Trump has been in office long enough now to make his leadership style clear. There’s the chaos and daily mini scandals, the rumors and intrigues, the bewildering fire hose of clickbait, yes. But in terms of actual governance, what Trump has done so far can be summed up in two words: lazy and plutocratic.
Trump has always been a performer above all, hungry for approval and ratings. He was performing throughout his candidacy and seems interested mostly in performing the presidency. That is very, very different from being a good president.
Effective presidential leadership often involves working behind the scenes and allowing others (deputies, members of Congress, interested constituencies) to take the credit. But there is no scene Trump wants to be behind. He wants to be in front, getting the credit, unless something goes wrong, in which case he gropes immediately for a scapegoat. Not surprisingly, he has thus far proven abysmal at accomplishing anything that requires trust, cooperation, or consensus — witness health care. Trump is (oh, the irony) a truly terrible negotiator.
That’s why the section on legislation in Trump’s much-touted list of accomplishments is devoid of significant achievements, full of joint resolutions and reversals (through the Congressional Review Act) of minor Obama regulations.
Major legislation requires patience and persistence. Trump has none of those. So instead, the vast bulk of his action has come in the form of executive orders, which amount to declarations that his administration intends to do something. As Jonathan Chait says, this amounts to “making America great again by signing pieces of paper asking people who work for him whether they have any ideas how to make America great again.”
All these EOs may one day result in serious damage, but in terms of substantive changes, so far there’s much more Trump sizzle than Trump steak.
The other theme of the Trump presidency is the utter collapse of any remaining intellectual infrastructure on the right. There is no apparent governing philosophy at work in economic and environmental policy, just a careening and unpredictable combination of populist theater and naked plutocracy. For Trump’s supporters in industry, it is wish-list time — literally, the administration is asking industry groups for lists of regulations they want reversed. If Trump has an overarching take on government, it’s that government is a tool that allows him to dispense favors to loyal constituencies in exchange for good ratings.
Let’s take a look at how these themes have played out in environmental policy.
Performative anti-environmentalism
For Trump to accomplish anything on climate change that outlasts his administration — like, say, amending the Clean Air Act to permanently exclude carbon dioxide — would require cooperation from Congress. Given that Trump and Congress are still locked in a drunken three-legged race on Trump’s first priority, health care, that is rather difficult to imagine. The president and his congressional frenemies would have to get through health care, tax reform, and a budget with time left over to assemble a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for substantial reversals of climate progress. Pulling that off would require a level of competence that is so far nowhere in evidence.
Trump could do serious damage to international climate negotiations if he withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord altogether, but that is an issue on which various Trump whisperers are split. And given that he seems to agree with whoever he talked to last, the signals so far are whiplash-inducing. A long-delayed meeting on Paris is scheduled for Thursday, and a decision, allegedly, is coming in early May.
Again: substantial policy requires patience and consensus building; that has proven beyond Trump’s abilities.
And so instead there are executive orders. I suspect the term “executive order” is pleasing to Trump, which is why he seems to have such a ball signing them and giving away pens. (His list of accomplishments cites 30 EOs, which is quite a few pens.)
Trump doubles down on his concentration during 3rd failed attempt to put the cap back on ceremonial signing pen. "Give me a Bic Click" pic.twitter.com/cbZyT8vEVZ — Mr Ferguson (@youneedapush) January 27, 2017
But the executive branch of the government does not operate according to executive whim. In almost every case, Trump’s EOs are not actions themselves but pledges to launch various reviews and assessments with an eye to taking action upon their completion.
For instance, Trump cannot simply order away the Clean Power Plan. The EO he issued in March simply instructs Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to review the rule. If the EPA decides to rescind the rule, it will have to explain to courts why, and it will have to develop a new rule, which will involve years of planning, comments, and legal challenge. The same goes for EPA’s carbon rules for new power plants and its rules for natural gas methane.
Trump didn’t scrap Obama’s fuel economy standards — he ordered a review of them. He didn’t kill the federal government’s “social cost of carbon” estimate — he ordered a review of it. He didn’t unleash any new oil and gas drilling — he ordered a review of those rules. He didn’t undo any of Obama’s national monument designations — he ordered a review of them. He didn’t open the Arctic and Atlantic Coast back up to offshore drilling — he ordered “a review of the locations available for off-shore oil and gas exploration.”
This kind of review and assessment is the kind of thing Clinton’s team was doing during the campaign, so that it could hit the ground running. Trump could have done the same; he could be making new rules now instead of telling the world he intends to start thinking about how to make new rules. But when it comes to policy, Trump can’t be bothered.
To be clear: All these review processes likely will, in the end, do damage. Nobody, even in the administration, seems to be making any pretense about the fact that they are designed to loosen restrictions on the fossil fuel industry. Eventually, agencies will lumber into action; rules will be weakened, protections undone.
But that will be a long, fraught process, beset at every step by resistance — from agency employees, civil society, and courts. It is impossible to say in advance where the reviews initiated by these EOs will end up. But it is rather odd to tout them as “accomplishments” of Trump’s first 100 days. They aren’t accomplishments; they are promises to eventually accomplish things.
Plutocratic anti-environmentalism
As I wrote in a previous post, Trump shows every sign of being a “disjunctive” president, the one who presides over the final crumbling of an intellectually exhausted movement in politics. The raiment of small-government philosophy that once tastefully concealed the process of rewarding corporate backers has grown tattered and thin; the plutocracy is peeking through.
To be sure, Trump’s assault on Obama’s legacy has been attended by the familiar old ideological slogans. “Level playing field.” “Regulatory certainty.” “Job-killing regulations.” And whatever dime-store version of Kuznets curve has apparently filtered down to Trump for Earth Day:
I am committed to keeping our air and water clean but always remember that economic growth enhances environmental protection. Jobs matter! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 22, 2017
But these rhetorical efforts feel rote and habitual; there’s scarcely even a pretense that any coherent philosophy is being consistently applied.
Trump’s environmental EOs, for instance, are united by one thing: They are intended to make it easier and more profitable for the fossil fuel industry to pollute. Why? What is the public constituency for greater pollution in streams, in the air, in the atmosphere? Majorities of Republicans, like majorities of all Americans, favor limiting pollution from industry. They love renewable energy, which is growing like crazy and creating thousands of jobs. Nobody, aside from fossil fuel executives and donors, is demanding these things.
Even the fealty to fossil fuels is incoherent, untethered to any consistent worldview. The market has turned against coal, mainly because of cheap natural gas. Trump says he wants to revive coal — but he also wants to remove barriers to more natural gas fracking. That... doesn’t make sense.
Trump’s people say they don’t believe in — or, depending on who is talking, don’t worry about — climate change. So what is the point of Trump’s embrace, through Energy Secretary Rick Perry, of “clean coal,” i.e., coal plants that bury their carbon emissions? It makes no sense to bury carbon emissions if climate change isn’t a problem.
Even fossil fuels’ most fervent supporters realize that federal energy research plays an important role in economic development. (The fracking revolution relied crucially on federal research.) So what exactly is the philosophy behind slashing federal advanced-energy research and science in order to pay for gigantic tax cuts for the wealthy? I am aware of no theory of governance in the 21st century suggesting that less science and research is to a nation’s advantage.
Trump and his people say they want a “level playing field” while locking in subsidies for fossil fuels. They say they want “regulatory certainty” while throwing a dozen regulations into years-long legal dispute. They say they want to create jobs while shifting support from labor-intensive energy industries like solar to capital-intensive energy industries like oil.
It doesn’t add up. There is no discernible environmental or economic theory at work, just a mania to reverse anything with Obama’s name on it, driven by massive industry donations ($3 million in lobbying by the oil baron Koch brothers alone). In its desiccated modern form, conservatism has concluded that clean energy is for Democrats and fossil fuels are for Republicans — like everything else, their tribe and ours.
All that remains by way of justification are slogans that were tired when Newt Gingrich was distributing them to the House in the early 1990s. The energy world has changed; Republican energy policy has only devolved, reduced, in Lionel Trilling’s immortal words, to “irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.”
What remains of conservatism: dilatory nihilism
Republican presidents oversaw the creation of the EPA and some of the most important amendments to the Clean Air Act (e.g., 1990). And there was a moment in the early 2000s when it seemed like the GOP might take climate change seriously and seek a solution that fit with its principles.
But the tidal undertow of radicalization and tribal epistemology, which accelerated so disastrously under Obama, has left no room for grappling with reality. Nor has it left any real intellectual superstructure. In its place is a stew of xenophobic populist signaling, reflexive plutocratic policy, and proud ignorance.
Since Obama took office, renewable energy has exploded. The science of climate change has grown more dire. And the entire world has finally rallied to take action. Technology is moving; policy is moving; markets are moving; public opinion is moving.
Though there is plenty of reason to worry about the speed at which global society is moving on climate change, there is no longer reasonable doubt about the direction. Trump can’t stop it. America can’t stop it, certainly not in four years.
At the federal level, the US is going to bench itself for a while. Others — other countries, American states and cities, the private sector — will stay in the game, picking up the slack.
US conservatives are engaged in a hopeless and purely dilatory effort to preserve the hegemony of fossil fuels. They are throwing sand in the gears, as much out of spite and habit as any coherent alternative worldview. They will go down in history as delaying the inevitable climate effort, ensuring marginally more suffering in exchange for a little more time for fossil fuels to operate unrestricted. That will be Trump’s environmental legacy. It is, to borrow a term, sad.WASHINGTON — Officials from the American Legion on Friday slammed the White House's fiscal 2018 budget proposal as "a stealth privatization attempt" of veterans services and an "unacceptable" attack on veterans benefits.
"The administration's budget for (Veterans Affairs) would effectively lower the earnings of our most vulnerable veterans by reducing or eliminating disability payments from veterans who are the most in need," Legion National Commander Charles Schmidt said in a statement.
"This plan breaks faith with veterans."
The comments are the latest shot from veterans groups at what President Trump has billed as a veteran-friendly budget, one that includes a nearly 6 percent increase in discretionary spending and a $54 billion boost in defense funding above congressionally mandated budget caps.
But outside advocates have been critical of the details, saying many provisions in the budget could undermine the promised goals of fixing VA and Defense Department operations.
Earlier in the week, officials from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America, the Military Order of the Purple Heart and Vietnam Veterans of America all voiced opposition to plans to "round down" cost-of-living increases for veterans benefits and end Individual Unemployability payments for retirement-age beneficiaries.
The two proposals combined are designed to save more than $3 billion, money that administration officials have said will be used to offset the cost of an expansion of the VA's Choice Card program, which allows veterans to seek medical appointments with private-sector physicians at taxpayers' expense.
But officials from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America questioned that plan, saying VA officials have focused too much attention and funding on the embattled Choice program.
Legion officials took their criticism even further.
"We are alarmed by the cannibalization of services needed for the Choice program," Schmidt said in his statement. "It is a'stealth' privatization attempt which The American Legion fully opposes.
"Choice should not be advanced to the detriment of cost-of-living increases for veterans."In Texas, powerful women serve as mayor to some of the country's largest cities (for instance, San Antonio and, until last week, Houston). They're sheriffs of some of the nation's biggest law enforcement agencies (see Bexar and Dallas counties). Closer to home, Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson leads criminal prosecutions in one of the largest metro areas in the United States.
Yet when it comes to state politics, Texas still looks like the He Man Women Haters Club, and not just because of the years-long assault on family planning services or the anti-abortion legislation so draconian that, depending on how things shake out at the U.S. Supreme Court this year, it could redefine whether women at the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder have the right to choose.
As the Texas Tribune points out this week, women are still woefully underrepresented at the Capitol. While Texas has elected two women to the governor's seat, never in the state's history have women led either chamber of the Texas Legislature.
Continue Reading
Of course sexism, whether overt or thinly veiled, has always been alive and well under the Pink Dome. Houston Democrat Senfronia Thompson, a state representative for more than four decades and the longest-serving woman state legislator in Texas history, told the Texas Observer that when she first got to the Lege in 1973, “a guy called me his 'black mistress.'” When Debra Danburg, a Democrat who represented Houston in the Texas House for more than two decades, tried to strengthen rape laws in the 1980s, male colleagues stood at the mike and quipped, “If I can't rape my wife, who can I rape?” Flash-forward to 2016, and state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, a Bedford Republican, is apologizing for encouraging someone to rape his spouse in an online forum several years ago (the comment: “Rape is non existent in marriage, take what you want my friend!”)
Even with gains in the House and Senate over the years, the raw numbers certainly don't inspire much confidence that gender equality is on the horizon in Texas. In the 2015 legislative session, a banner year for the Texas Senate with a record-setting eight of 31 spots held by women, only 36 of the 181 members of the entire Texas Legislature were women. Even if every woman incumbent, challenger or even long-shot candidate who's filed wins in the general election this year, women would make up only 65 of 181 spots.
The Trib quotes a bunch of experts and politicians on why exactly this might be, citing “insufficient recruitment, legislative maps benefiting incumbents – most of whom are men – and long-standing institutional inequality in politics.” Whatever the cause, the disparity makes for some depressing political theater out under the Pink Dome. Here are some more recent examples:
“I have trouble with women's voices”
Troy Fraser, in addition to being a notoriously inept legislator, has a hearing problem. That is, he apparently has a hard time listening to women, particularly those who disagree with him.
It was back in 2009 that the soon-to-be retired Republican Senator from the Hill Country was defending his restrictive voter ID bill in a marathon Senate debate when then-freshman Sen. Wendy Davis stepped up to the mike to ask some questions. After a brief exchange, Fraser told Davis he could only pick up about half of what she was saying. Fair enough. Davis said she'd speak up.
Fraser then delivered this brain-twister: “I have trouble with women's voices and I'm just not getting it.” He then went on to mansplain to Davis, since “I know you're new to the legislature,” how fiscal impact statements tied to bills work. Davis's response: “Believe it or not, I understand that a fiscal impact is based on whether there is a cost to the state.”
Men debating = politics. Women debating = meeeow
To see how some men in the legislature view their women colleagues, look no further than how they react when those women decide to...well, legislate.
In 2011, as the House debated a bill cracking down on the predatory practices of payday lenders, Republican state reps Vicki Truitt and Jodie Laubenberg got into it. As the debate grew heated — Truitt for more restrictions on payday lenders, Laubenberg against — the lawmakers, according to the Texas Tribune, “faced literal catcalls” from their male colleagues. After they got meowed at, the chairman scolded the women, saying, “Ladies, please keep this civil.”
It wasn't even an isolated occurrence. During the 2013 legislative session, as the House debated the state budget, Austin Democrat Dawnna Dukes and Brenham Republican Lois Kolkhorst got into a heated discussion over an amendment. As the debate grew more intense, men in the chamber started to meow and make angry cat noises. Here's how Tribune reporter Morgan Smith put it back then:
Part of the #TXLege experience is hearing grown-ups meow like angry kittens. — Morgan Smith (@MorganSmith) April 4, 2013
Smith later tweeted in response to a follower's question: “oh that was a literal comment – they were actually meowing at Lois and Dawnna!”
The “Nanny State”
When she filed it in 2011, state Rep. Senfronia Thompson's House Bill 2093 was about contractor insurance and had nothing to do with childcare or breastfeeding. Yet to target the bill, the super-conservative Texas Civil Justice League passed out flyers of a child nursing from a woman's bare breast, accompanied with text warning about the “nanny state.”
The flyer came amid a legislative session that saw widespread attacks on reproductive rights, from the deep cuts to women's health care and family planning services to a sonogram law that, as one federal judge put it, “compels physicians to advance an ideological agenda with which they may not agree, regardless of any medical necessity, and irrespective of whether the pregnant women wish to listen.”
The flyer brought Thompson to a boil. “During this legislative session, we've spent about 30 to 40 percent of our time kicking the reproductive organs of women down the road,” she said in an impassioned seven-minute speech on the House floor. Female colleagues, including staunch conservatives, lined up at the back mike to decry the flyer as sexist and disrespectful.
“We have not earned this disrespect in this house,” Thompson thundered. “And men, if you don't stand up for us today, don't you walk in this chamber tomorrow.”
It's hard tell whether Thompson's message stuck. The next session, Sen. Judith Zaffirini, a Laredo Democrat, tried to pass a measure creating lactation suites at the Capitol so women could breast feed or pump. As the Texas Observer writes, that's when Kel Seliger, a Republican from Amarillo, “introduced a farcical amendment to make those lactation suites part of Zaffirini's office.”
Apparently breast feeding is still hilarious to some dudes.
Are those “mountains” real?
During the 2011 session, state Rep. Marisa Márquez, an El Paso Democrat, stood on the House floor to push for funding a tramway at Franklin Mountains State Park. So naturally, East Texas's Mike “Tuffy" Hamilton, the same guy who used campaign funds to lunch at Hooters, saw fit to make a crack about her breasts.
As the Observer wrote at the time:
Smirking, Hamilton asked Marquez, “Will the young lady yield?” After she said yes, Hamilton said: “Young lady, would you please tell us why your mountains are better than any of our mountains and are they man-made or are they real mountains?”
“Part of the human condition”
At the start of the 2015 legislative session, it looked like abortion finally wouldn't be an issue for lawmakers — largely because the previous session saw passage of an omnibus anti-abortion bill that, if upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court later this year, is expected to shutter all but about nine abortion providers in the state.
But Rep. Matt Schaefer had other ideas.
In an amendment the Tyler Republican shoehorned into an unrelated bill, Schaefer sought to end the 20-week abortion-ban exception for women carrying nonviable fetuses with “severe and irreversible” abnormalities (such abnormalities often don't show up until after that 20-week window). In effect, Schaefer would have the state force women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term, even against the advice of doctors.
Some Republican lawmakers were even aghast at Schaefer's proposal. Rep. J.D. Sheffield, a Republican and medical doctor from Gatesville, said, “Why should the heavy, blunt hand of the government come into that most heartrending decision?” As we wrote last year, this was Schaefer's response to critics:
Schaefer acknowledged that parents who discover late in a pregnancy that a fetus has severe abnormalities are often grieving and face a difficult decision. That shouldn't matter, Schaeffer said. Because of the Bible. Pain and hardship, Schaeffer told the House, are "part of the human condition, since sin entered the world. We should value what God values, and that's the life of the unborn."
After the debate, state Rep. Jessica Farrar, a Houston Democrat, called the 2015 legislature the most misogynistic she's seen in her 21 years in office. “I won't even go into the level of misogyny I have experienced this session — particularly worse than any other session,” Farrar said, her voice shaking. “Women are leaders of their families, whether some men in this room do not recognize that.”
Schaefer's amendment ultimately proved so toxic lawmakers pulled the entire bill for further review.A proposal to expand the list of crimes that trigger an automatic 10-year ban on gun possession has passed the legislature and has been presented to Gov. Jerry Brown (D) for signature.
The bill, backed by a lawmaker who helped write last year’s gun violence restraining order legislation, would add such crimes as selling ammunition to someone under the age of 21 to current ones that mandate a ban on gun ownership and purchases for a decade. Introduced in April, it passed the Senate by a 24-15 vote and the Assembly 46-30 earlier this month. Confirmed by the Senate, it is now under review by the governor’s office.
The backer of the legislation contends it will help keep guns out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them.
“We know that those convicted of nonviolent firearm-related offenses are more likely than the average person to commit very serious crimes in the future,” said Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara in a statement. “They are five times more likely to be charged with crimes like murder, seven times more likely to be charged with other nonviolent firearm offenses, and four times more likely to be charged with new violent offenses.”
Jackson’s bill, SB 347, adds to the state’s already existing list of misdemeanor crimes that result in a 10-year prohibition on possessing a firearm. These include transferring a handgun without a firearms license; selling or giving possession of ammunition to a minor; selling handgun ammunition to a person under 21 years of age, possession of ammunition by a person prohibited from possessing a firearm; furnishing ammunition to a person prohibited from possessing ammunition; carrying ammunition onto school grounds; receiving stolen property consisting of a firearm; carrying a loaded or concealed weapon if the person has been previously convicted of a drug charges and possession of a firearm that is not registered.
While the measure has the backing of a number of law enforcement lobby groups as well as gun control organizations, including the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and Coalition Against Gun Violence, at least one law enforcement official – Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko – has gone on record citing pitfalls in the legislation that could land law-abiding gun owners in hot water.
“The addition of these misdemeanor offenses to the prohibited category that include the ‘transfer’ of firearms or ammunition could entrap family members that are giving firearms to relatives and are unaware of the requirements for firearms transfers through licensed dealers,” Bosenko told lawmakers in the Assembly last month. “The addition of the ‘giving possession of ammunition to minors’ to the prohibited category could criminalize the simple act of a family member providing ammunition to other family members that are hunting or recreationally shooting.”
Further, the California State Department of Finance is opposed to the bill, which it cites will add an estimated $223,000 in expenditures to the state treasury while adding to the number of inmates in both state and county jails, which are currently approaching 137 percent capacity.
The state is currently under orders from the U.S. Supreme Court to lower its prison population which had led to mass early releases of inmates, large scale transfers to out of state facilities and a voter initiative to drop a number of felonies to misdemeanors.
Presented to Gov. Jerry Brown on Sept. 11, he has 12 days to review the bill before making a decision to sign or veto.The number of businesses approved to accept food stamps grew by a third from 2005 to 2010, U.S. Department of Agriculture records show, as vendors from convenience and dollar discount stores to gas stations and pharmacies increasingly joined the growing entitlement program.
Now, restaurants, which typically have not participated in the program, are lobbying for a piece of the action.
Louisville-based Yum! Brands, whose restaurants include Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silver's and Pizza Hut, is trying to get restaurants more involved, federal lobbying records show.
That's a prospect that anti-hunger advocates welcome, but one that worries some current food stamp vendors and public health advocates.
Federal rules generally prohibit food stamp benefits, which are distributed under the USDA's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), from being exchanged for prepared foods. Yet a provision dating to the 1970s allows states to allow restaurants to serve disabled, elderly and homeless people, USDA spokeswoman Jean Daniel said.
Between 2005 and 2010, the number of businesses certified in the SNAP program went from about 156,000 to nearly 209,000, according to USDA data.
Food stamp use surges Food stamp benefits, (in billions): Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture
There is big money at stake. USDA records show food stamp benefits swelled from $28.5 billion to $64.7billion in that period.
Four states accept restaurants, with Florida the most recent to begin a program.
"It makes perfect sense to expand a program that's working well in California, Arizona and Michigan, enabling the homeless, elderly and disabled to purchase prepared meals with SNAP benefits in a restaurant environment," Yum! spokesman Jonathan Blum said.
The National Restaurant Association supports Yum!, said spokeswoman Katie Laning Niebaum, but the National Association of Convenience Stores does not.
"If the pie's only so big, nobody's going to want to see the pie sliced thinner," said Convenience Stores spokesman Jeff Lenard. "I'm not sure that's in the best interest of public health."
Kelly Brownell, director of Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, says encouraging more fast-food consumption is not good for people's health. "It's preposterous that a company like Yum! Brands would even be considered for inclusion in a program meant for supplemental nutrition."
"They think going hungry is better?" counters Edward Cooney of the Congressional Hunger Center. "I'm solidly behind what Yum! is doing."The Middle Bronze Age rapier from Lissan, Co. Derry
The Lissan rapier is the largest rapier ever found in either Ireland or Britain. Rapiers are bladed weapons made of bronze that developed by elongating the blades of daggers in the Middle Bronze Age after 1500 BC. Shorter rapiers under 30cm, which are very close in size to daggers, are often called dirks. Rapiers are known from Ireland, Britain and continental Europe and continued in use in Ireland until the introduction of the sword after 1200 BC. Rapiers have intricately detailed blades with combinations of mid-ribs, grooves, ribs and channels and were cast in two piece moulds. However all the rapiers share the common failing of a thin butt and poorly placed rivet holes that caused many of the rivet holes to break and the handles to fail. The weak handle meant that the rapiers would only have been suitable for stabbing or thrusting as slashing would tend to damage the handle. Some have questioned how effective they would have been as weapons if the handles were so prone to failure.
The Lissan rapier was found in a bog in the Co. Derry townland a few kilometres north-west of Cookstown while cutting peat by hand in 1867. It is 80cm long and 5.7cm across the shoulder. From the shoulder it narrows rapidly to the blade and then more gradually towards the point. Technically it was one of the most difficult bronzes of the period to cast as it is not only extremely long but also has a fluted blade. However, the handle was poorly made and one of the rivet holes is broken. The handle would have been of bone or another perishable material. The extreme length of the Lissan rapier and the weak hafting suggest that it was not intended as a functional weapon but was a piece of display weaponry. Just how weapons were displayed in the Middle Bronze Age is not known. Perhaps there were mock combats involving a kind of display fencing. What we do know is that once the functional lives of rapiers like Lissan were over they were deposited in lakes, rivers and like the Lissan rapier into bogs.
The Lissan rapier can be seen in the National Museum of Ireland, Kildare St., Dublin.
Above left, image of The Middle Bronze Age rapier from Lissan, Co. Derry. Image after the Guide to the National Museum of Ireland 2007.
Further reading
Burgess, C.B. and Gerloff, S. 1981 The Dirks and Rapiers of Great Britain and Ireland. Prähistorische Bronzefunde, 4.7. München, C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung., No. 387.
View National Museum in a larger map GPS coordinates 53.340508,-6.255351
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Seven months after the 3.0 release comes version 3.1 – the last feature release of the 3.x series. The following high-profile features were added to SharpDevelop:
IronPython Windows Forms Designer
Debugging Support for IronPython Applications
Profiler for Managed Applications
If you haven’t followed the interim test release cycle closely, here is a list of interesting blog post on those new features as well as changes that might impact your work:
http://laputa.sharpdevelop.net/SharpDevelopNowCreatesProjectsAs32bitByDefault.aspx
http://community.sharpdevelop.net/blogs/mattward/archive/2009/05/10/NUnit25Support.aspx
Profiler
http://community.sharpdevelop.net/blogs/siegfried_pammer/archive/2009/04/04/introducing-a-new-tool-in-sharpdevelop-the-profiler.aspx
http://community.sharpdevelop.net/blogs/siegfried_pammer/archive/2009/04/13/merging-of-calls-pinpointing-interesting-methods.aspx
http://community.sharpdevelop.net/blogs/siegfried_pammer/archive/2009/09/02/profiling-unit-tests-made-easy.aspx
IronPython
http://community.sharpdevelop.net/blogs/mattward/archive/2009/05/30/DebuggingIronPythonCode.aspx
http://community.sharpdevelop.net/blogs/mattward/archive/2009/05/12/IronPython2FormsDesigner.aspx
http://community.sharpdevelop.net/blogs/mattward/archive/2009/05/11/ConvertingCSharpVBNetCodeToIronPython.aspx
The Future: 3.1.x and 4.0
SharpDevelop 3.1 is a long-term stable release branch as we are switching to.NET Framework 4.0 with SharpDevelop 4.0 “Mirador”. When new third party releases like NUnit (that target.NET Framework 3.5) are released, we will provide point releases of SharpDevelop 3.1 that are tested against those third-party versions. General bug fixes will be included.
SharpDevelop 4.0 is currently in its Alpha stages – we won’t be releasing a Beta before.NET Framework 4.0 Beta 2 is available. Due to larger infrastructure changes, there are still quite a few areas of SharpDevelop 4.0 that don’t work at all.
A few things you will see in SharpDevelop 4.0: a rehostable text editor (dubbed AvalonEdit) written entirely in WPF, an Entity Data Model designer, more debugger goodness, WPF designer & XAML code completion, and more.
Downloads
SharpDevelop 3.1
Please note that to take full advantage of SharpDevelop 3.x features, you must install the following software too:
Support
Our primary means of support is via our Web-based forum (please do not email team members directly unless they advise you to do so in the forum)If You Missed Dungeon Roll The First Time
If you missed the original Kickstarter for Dungeon Roll, you can buy Dungeon Roll here (Amazon) or at your favorite game store. Additionally, here is the original Kickstarter project if interested.
The Story Of The Winter Promo Pack
The success of Dungeon Roll has taken us at TMG by surprise. We thought that it would do very well, but we couldn't imagine how well received it would be and by how many people. On our drive back from GenCon, Seth and I thought it would be nice if we could do something for the fans of Dungeon Roll.
So, we designed some heroes along the drive, and now they have been tested and are ready to go. Gordon Court has been brought back to bring these characters to life (he previously illustrated Undead Viking, Ranger, Sorceress, and more) and Rob Lundy will once again is acting as the art director for the project.
Jack Frost
We are very excited to be able to make these available to you.
As a supporter, you will be receiving:
Klaus, Saint of the North (Legendary Hero)
Jack Frost (Legendary Hero)
Sugar Plum Faerie (Legendary Hero)
Ebenezer (Legendary Hero)
12 Treasures (Snowball, Cake, Coal, Present)
Multiple Packs!
If you want multiple packs, then please pledge the number of packs times "What You Want". The suggested amount being $5 x number of packs.
With a minimum matching for the appropriate multiple. For example: 3 |
rein? #Bremen#Weserparkpic.twitter.com/JGcneX5SHi — Fachkräftebeobachter (@Urinkellner) 27 июля 2016 г.
Only later that night did local police finally manage to detain the man in a joint effort with the state’s police. He was apprehended at the Bremen railway station.
This latest incident comes as Germany is still reeling from a spate of deadly terror attacks that rocked the country last week.
Last Friday, an 18-year-old Iranian-German teenager who was said to be suffering from a psychiatric disorder killed nine people and injured 35 at the Olympic shopping center in Munich.
On Sunday, a 27-year-old Syrian asylum seeker identified as Mohammad D, who had been denied refugee status in Germany twice, planted a bomb outside a bar in Ansbach. The ensuing explosion killed one person and injured 15. Police found evidence on his phone indicating that he had pledged allegiance to Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
That same day, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee killed a woman and injured five other people with a meat cleaver in an attack that took place in Reutlingen. Police did not find any indications of an Islamist motive in that assault and believe the assailant acted out of jealousy. The suspect was apprehended by police after he was run over by a car and he is now slated to undergo questioning.
READ MORE:Terrorized state: The week of attacks that shocked Germany (PHOTOS)
Earlier in the day, a police force consisting of some 400 officers raided a mosque in Lower Saxony. The premises of the “German-speaking Islam Circle Hildesheim” (DIK) and the apartments of its eight board members were searched. The movement’s leaders are suspected of preaching “hatred toward infidels” during the prayers, the state’s interior minister, Boris Pistorius, said.
“After months of preparation we have taken an important step with the searches conducted today toward a ban on the group,” he added.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ ), which permits for noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not altered in any way.
Sexual pneumoperitoneum is not a bizarre sex accident but a rare and serious patho-mechanism. In cases of atypical non-surgical pneumoperitoneum in sexually active women, a careful inquiry into the medical-sexual history can reveal the cause of pathophysiology without comprehensive, painful and unnecessary diagnostics. Sexual history as a diagnostic tool should always be considered in unclear cases.
Patients are often unaware of the open access between the vagina and abdomen. Insufflation pressure during vaginal insufflation with >100 mm Hg – used as a diagnostic tool in CO 2 -pertubation – can dilate genital organs and push remarkable amounts of air into the abdomen. Gas resorption can take up to several days, and the patient often does not connect the pain to its cause. Embarrassment and modesty often prevent the patient from talking about sexual activity.
A typically young, otherwise healthy woman comes into the emergency department of Stanford University, California, complaining of recurrent chest pain. Free air under the diaphragm disclosed in the X-ray usually leads to intensive, costly and invasive diagnostics sometimes resulting in emergency laparotomy without any results. Finally, after thorough discussion of the sexual history of the patient is taken, vaginal insufflation during sexual activity is revealed as the cause of non-surgical pneumoperitoneum.
Pneumoperitoneum is usually seen after bowel perforations and surgical procedures. An increasing number of cases of non-surgical pneumoperitoneum related to sexual activity has been reported worldwide over the last years.
We reviewed such case reports to reveal the patho-mechanism and to stress the importance of a sexual medical history to prevent unnecessary invasive diagnostics and surgery. The number of publications about this topic demonstrates the danger of (oro-) vaginal insufflation and identifies the groups at risk.
Pneumoperitoneum, often seen in acute gastrointestinal perforation, requires in about 90% of cases urgent surgical intervention. However, in 10% of cases, pneumoperitoneum has a different cause. 1, 2 Possible gynecologic causes are knee-chest exercises, pelvic inflammatory disease, coitus, gynecologic examination procedures, vaginal douching and vaginal insufflation. 1 Due to a trend toward more experimental sexual activity and less taboo in media and society about this topic, an increasing number of reports of non-surgical pneumoperitoneum connected to sexual activities has been described within the last years worldwide.
On further questioning, a complete sexual history was obtained. The patient revealed that she had intercourse, during which her partner forcefully blew air into her vagina prior to all episodes of pneumoperitoneum. She remembered that the pain had started four hours after each occasion.
Her past medical history was remarkable for pneumoperitoneum accompanying similar episodes of pain 6 and 12 months prior to this event. The patient appeared each time with abdominal pain of acute onset and the Xray revealed pneumoperitoneum. On both occasions, the patient underwent laparotomy; but, despite comprehensive diagnostics, no cause was found.
The vital signs were normal: Blood pressure 110/70, Pulse 100/min, Respiration 24/min, Temperature 36.5°C. Her abdomen had decreased bowel sounds and was diffusely tender with rebound tenderness and involuntary guarding in all quadrants. Pelvic and rectal examination, including lab, were normal.
A typical case example is that of a 24-year-old woman, 0 gravid, who appeared in the emergency department complaining of severe abdominal pain of 6 hours duration. The pain was described as sharp, diffuse, initially worse in the right lower quadrant and then becoming generalized. There was no associated nausea, vomiting, chills or fever. Movement aggravated the pain with no relenting factors. The pain was continuous. Her last menstrual period was six days prior to admission with normal flow, timing and duration.
DISCUSSION
Cunnilingus is a common sexual practice all over the world. During such activity, whereby gas can be forcefully blown into the vagina by mouth or insufflated by other mechanisms, unintended large amounts of gas can be forced under pressure into the vagina. The gas can find its way through the uterus and, after dilating the tubes, into the abdomen, thereby causing a non-surgical pneumoperitoneum. The patient often has no knowledge of the open access between the vagina and abdomen, and the medical staff is often inadequately informed on the patho-mechanism. Primarily, pneumoperitoneum — without prior surgery — is normally associated with the potential danger of perforation of intestinal organs and, therefore, often leads to emergency laparotomy.
The publications reviewed show three potential gas paths: 1) Through vagina, uterus and fallopian tubes into the abdomen ( ). Patho-mechanism is usually forceful gas insufflation, but also during sexual intercourse,4 intercourse in rear entry position,5 by hand or during drug abuse via oro-vaginal cocaine insufflation.62) Through openings at the vaginal stump after abdominal7 or vaginal4,8 hysterectomy7–12 ( ). Patho-mechanism is vaginal gas pressure insufflation, which can open small lacerations at the vaginal stump. 3) Through the uterine veins during pregnancy and early post partum ( ). Patho-mechanism is gas that dilates under pressure the uterus-placenta connection, enters the uterine veins, leading to fatal gas embolism,5–6,13–17 fatal also for women early post partum.18–19
In and, the insufflation of gas usually leads only to painful but uncomplicated pneumoperitoneum of limited duration. However, in, gas insufflation can lead to fatal gas embolism.
The potential entrance paths for gas identifies the groups at risk: 1) Forceful (oro-) vaginal insufflation in any woman; 2) Patients who have undergone a hysterectomy, independent of operation technique; and 3) Pregnant and early post partum women. (Oro-) vaginal insufflation is especially dangerous during pregnancy, because large amounts of gas can easily penetrate into the uterine veins and cause lethal gas embolism.
Intra-abdominal gas resorption from pneumoperitoneum takes up to several days, depending on content of gas. Pure CO 2 gas — as used in laparoscopy — is pulmonary completely eliminated within one to two hours at average resorption rates of 37 ml/min with peaks up to 223 ml/min.20 However, pneumoperitoneum resorption of normal room air takes up to one week. An upright chest-abdomen X-ray usually detects pneumoperitoneum, but CT has the highest sensitivity.21 A management for post-coital pneumoperitoneum and an algorithm to avoid laparotomies have been published.22,23
Because of usually unspecific and minor symptoms, the patho-mechanism of gas embolism through vaginal insufflation is rarely identified until post mortem during autopsy. After reviewing the references, this patho-mechanism must be more frequent than so far expected, probably overlooked or unrecognized due to minor or unspecific complaints that are of limited duration until gas resorption is completed. In obstetrics and gynecology, they could be hidden in the group of repeated laparoscopies for adhesiolysis or chronic, unspecific pelvic pain.
Although patients with acute non-surgical pneumoperitoneum are usually first seen by internal or surgical physicians in the emergency room, interdisciplinary consultation with other specialists such as obstetric/gynecologic, ear, nose and throat (ENT) or thoracic surgeons should be considered to eliminate other reasons of non-surgical pneumoperitoneum. Conservative treatment with close observation of vital signs and upright chest-abdomen X-ray with evidence of resorption of pneumoperitoneum is adequate. Prophylactic antibiotics are not necessary. Thorough patient education before discharge from the hospital can prevent a repeat of similar events.
In cases of non-surgical pneumoperitoneum related to sexual activities, a careful sexual medical history might reveal the cause and patho-mechanism of pneumoperitoneum and so help to avoid expensive and unnecessary emergency laparotomy. The different mechanisms of pneumoperitoneum should be explained sensitively to the patient, allowing her to understand the reason for the questioning. Nevertheless, because of the delicacy of this topic, it is advisable for legal reasons to have a colleague or nurse present during the questioning and to document this in the patient charts.
Clarification and open discussion about the risk of vaginal insufflation might prevent sexual pneumoperitoneum. Information about the open access between the vagina and abdomen should be part of sexual education at school and should be elucidated in patient information leaflets. Facts about the patho-mechanism and potentially dangerous consequences of vaginal pressure insufflation should be made available to all sexually active women, especially to patients at risk (eg, during pregnancy, post partum and post hysterectomy). At the present time, mandatory information for all women seems neither necessary nor possible.For any Apple coder, attending the annual Worldwide Developers Conference is a coveted opportunity. But for the young recipients of WWDC 2014 Student Scholarships, a free ticket to the event means more than an adventure in geekery; it’s the crowning achievement of their blossoming careers.
Take Shaan Singh, a 14-year-old developer and designer whose iPhone finance app Budgetize helped him bag a scholarship to WWDC, a prize that’s something like winning a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
“It’s a big honor for me to be selected because I made an app that I feel was creative and smart, and Apple thinks so too,” he told Cult of Mac. “I’ve always admired Apple’s design, and I’m excited that they like mine too.”
For most of the thousands of App Store developers who are lucky enough to attend WWDC each year, it’s the only time they’ll ever get hands-on coaching from Apple engineers on the company’s latest software. It’s a prime learning experience and a great chance to network with other developers.
Despite the high price ($1,599), tickets to the conference are in such high demand that Apple awarded them at random this year using a lottery system. Many devs who can’t land a ticket come to San Francisco anyway to attend indie spinoff AltConf and hit the parties that inevitably accompany WWDC.
WWDC kicks off Monday with Apple’s keynote address. Almost assuredly, iOS 8 and a redesigned version of OS X will be unveiled and put in the hands of developers to beta test with their apps.
For first-time WWDC scholarship winner Indragie Karunaratne, attending the event is a chance to see what Apple has in store for the future of its mobile and desktop platforms. “I’m particularly interested in OS X because we might see a big refresh this year,” said 19-year-old Karunaratne, who studies software engineering at the University of Alberta in Canada.
Karunaratne has made several Mac apps, but it was his instant messaging client Flamingo, which lets you chat using Facebook, Google Hangouts and other messaging services all in one place, that helped him win one of Apple’s 200 scholarships this year.
“It feels incredible to be officially recognized by Apple for the first time.”
“After building software for Apple platforms for over five years, it feels incredible to be officially recognized by Apple for the first time,” said Karunaratne. “I’m happy beyond words that Apple finds my work worthy of their recognition and that they appreciate the time and dedication I’ve put into it.”
Conrad Kramer, another winner, interned with Airbnb last summer and helped the popular startup redesign its iPhone app for iOS 7. One of the 17-year-old Kramer’s Mac apps, called DeskConnect, was featured by Apple in the Mac App Store and has 150,000 users. Thanks to the scholarship, this will be his first year at WWDC.
“My fanboy side is looking forward to hopefully hearing about a new product category, but I am mainly going to see what’s new with Apple’s SDKs and to meet developers I wouldn’t normally get to see,” said Kramer, who plans to study at MIT this fall.
Scholarship winner Adam Bell has seen success not only making apps for Apple’s App Store, but with hacking together jailbreak tweaks. One of his more popular tweaks unlocks the iOS lockscreen by drawing instead of entering a passcode. The Canadian college student was recently hired to make a companion app for Lady Gaga’s latest album.
While his apps have garnered accolades from customers and news sites, getting reviewed by Apple “is on a completely different level,” he said in an email to Cult of Mac. “This is the first time Apple has officially given me the stamp of approval on something I built entirely on my own. That’s what feels fantastic.”Austrian Grand Prix
Venue: Red Bull Ring Date: 20-22 June Coverage: Qualifying live at 13:00 BST on 21 June on BBC Radio 5 live, highlights at 16:45 on BBC One. Race live at 12:30 on 22 June on BBC Radio 5 live, highlights at 19:30 BST on BBC One. Live text commentary of all sessions online.
Nico Rosberg believes he now has the psychological edge over Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton after opening up a 22-point lead in the title race.
Britain's Hamilton, the 2008 world champion, won four races in a row to take the championship lead off Rosberg.
However, his team-mate reclaimed the advantage with victory in Monaco, and second in Canada as Hamilton retired.
"It was really important to bring that run to an end because psychology is a big part of sports," said Rosberg.
Hamilton v Rosberg Australia: Rosberg 1st, Hamilton DNF
Rosberg 1st, Hamilton DNF Malaysia: Rosberg 2nd, Hamilton 1st
Rosberg 2nd, Hamilton 1st Bahrain: Rosberg 2nd, Hamilton 1st
Rosberg 2nd, Hamilton 1st China: Rosberg 2nd, Hamilton 1st
Rosberg 2nd, Hamilton 1st Spain: Rosberg 2nd, Hamilton 1st
Rosberg 2nd, Hamilton 1st Monaco: Rosberg 1st, Hamilton 2nd
Rosberg 1st, Hamilton 2nd Canada: Rosberg 2nd, Hamilton DNF
Hamilton bounced back from a mechanical retirement in the season opener in Australia to win four races in a row and take the championship lead from Rosberg.
But the German reclaimed the advantage in controversial circumstances in Monaco with Rosberg leaving the track in qualifying and denying Hamilton the chance of claiming pole position for the race, which the German went on to win.
Rosberg then extended his lead last time out in Canada by finishing second with Hamilton retiring with rear brake failure.
Hamilton said after the race in Canada that he has no doubt he can catch Rosberg, who has finished in the top two in all seven races, despite the fact that he is now almost a race win's worth of points behind.
"If you have those results behind you, like I do now, it gives you that little bit extra, that little bit of an edge, so it does help," added Rosberg.
Both Mercedes cars suffered identical issues with the energy recovery systems in Canada, meaning Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo was able to snatch victory from an ailing Rosberg in the closing stages and end Mercedes' run of six consecutive wins.
"With reliability problems like that, it's not good," said Rosberg, ahead of this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix. "We need to be bulletproof.
Media playback is not supported on this device Lewis Hamilton v Nico Rosberg: 'This is now a war zone'
"It's a work in progress. We've been good with reliability, but we have had a few problems now, so we have to keep on going and make sure it's 100%."
Despite Red Bull scoring their first victory since last year's finale in Brazil, team boss Christian Horner believes the team still have plenty to do to compete with Mercedes on a regular basis.
"To get a double podium, to get that first win of the year, was a fantastic performance and great motivation for Renault," said Horner.
"But let's not beat about the bush, Mercedes were the quickest car, even though they ran into issues. They were still very, very strong. We have to keep pushing and keep closing that gap down because it is still significant."Buck is a build system developed and used by Facebook. It encourages the creation of small, reusable modules consisting of code and resources, and supports a variety of languages on many platforms.
Why Buck?
Speed up your builds. Buck builds independent artifacts in parallel to take advantage of multiple cores on your machine. Further, it reduces incremental build times by keeping track of unchanged modules so that the minimal set of modules is rebuilt.
Buck builds independent artifacts in parallel to take advantage of multiple cores on your machine. Further, it reduces incremental build times by keeping track of unchanged modules so that the minimal set of modules is rebuilt. Add reproducibility to your builds. Buck only uses the declared inputs, which means everybody gets the same results.
Buck only uses the declared inputs, which means everybody gets the same results. Get correct incremental builds. Buck looks at the contents of your inputs, not their timestamps to figure out what needs to be built. As a result, incremental builds should always be correct, so there's no need to perform a clean build.
Buck looks at the contents of your inputs, not their timestamps to figure out what needs to be built. As a result, incremental builds should always be correct, so there's no need to perform a clean build. Understand your dependencies. With buck query, you can better understand your dependencies and what is required to build your product.
With, you can better understand your dependencies and what is required to build your product. Integrate with your IDE. With buck project, your project can be better understood by your IDE, making you and your team more productive.
Buck can help you and your team in many ways:Superwoman is a great comic book until the last page, and depending on how that last page plays out it’s either going to be a book I’ll be very much looking forward to each month or a book I’ll drop like a hot potato. We’ll see how it goes. I’m certainly hoping for the former, because I really enjoyed the bulk of this issue. We’ll dig into it all, but first:
SPOILER ALERT!!
I mean, it’s kind of spoiled all over the internet right now, but still!
Read the book first!
This honestly isn’t the kind of Lois Lane comic book I wanted. I’ve been arguing that Lois should have her own series for years now, one that focuses on her journalistic adventures tracking down big scoops and taking down evildoers of the non-costumed variety. I basically want Gotham Central set in the Daily Planet newsroom with Lois as the main character. This book is not that. It’s Lois Lane with superpowers, which she gained when the New 52 Superman died a few months back. But while Superwoman is not what I’ve been wanting, it’s a lot of fun.
First, of course Lois Lane would make an awesome superhero. She’s done it a bunch of times over the years, as she actually mentions in the issue, and it’s always a good time. In Investigating Lois Lane, I call Lois a superhero without superpowers; she’s got all of the same values, bravery, and desire to do what’s right that Superman and Wonder Woman do, she’s just a hero in a slightly more down to earth way. So with powers, she’s got the temperament and heart to use them well and be a stellar superhero.
Second, this is one of the first comic books where Lois Lane and Lana Lang are on friendly terms. They’ve been rivals for decades, often to cringeworthy degrees, Superman’s old flame versus his new one. Writers in the Silver Age really leaned into their rivalry and often had them at each other’s throats, literally so on several occasions. This continued when Lana returned in the Bronze Age; in one issue, they got into a fight at work and Lana dunked Lois’s head in a punch bowl. Throughout the Modern Age, Lana became kind of a sad character who was obsessed with Clark and grated on Lois, and in the New 52 era the women haven’t exactly been pals.
But Lois knows that Lana helped Clark with his powers, and that she needs help to learn how to control hers. She also knows that Lana is smart and a good person, and that her advice and input would be invaluable. So she proposes that they work together and after some reluctance, Lana gets on board. They’re not friends, exactly, but they’re friend adjacent, which is a lovely change of pace. Plus the banter is so much fun.
Third, this relationship comes with the exciting twist of Lana having superpowers too! Her energy powers resemble the 1990s Red Superman era, and she and Lois team up to stop Lex Luthor’s mega-warship from taking out a bridge. So Lana’s not just an advisor and trainer; they have a super-team up! I was so on board for that. Two formal rivals that have been so often mistreated in comics teaming up to be super friends? Yes, please!
Then they killed Lois. Or so the last page suggests. It’s a busy page, so it’s hard to tell exactly what happens. Maybe whatever mystery villain the duo is battling turns Lois into stone or some such, or perhaps Lois just burns out in a manner that may have been exacerbated by Lana using her powers. Whatever the case, Lois appears to be dead and the tease for the next issue is “Who Killed Superwoman?”
If Lois is really dead, then I’m out and this book can go right to hell. I’m so sick of dead Loises. The entire 21st century history of Superman comics is dead Loises, in various forms. Lois is why I showed up for this book. I love Lana, but I’m not going to read a Lana book that comes at the expense of Lois. It doesn’t help that I was reluctant to get this book in the first place because serial sexual harasser Eddie Berganza is editing it. Between that and killing off Lois, I’ll drop this book and never look back if the final page reveal holds.
However, this is superhero comics. Fake out death cliffhangers are the genre’s stock in trade. If this is a momentary thing that’s reversed and the book continues to be Lois and Lana: Super Friends, then I’m all about it. This was a very enjoyable opening issue, and I’m excited to read more if Lois stays in the picture.
I’m not sure how to read the tea leaves on this one. This book is called Superwoman, singular, so that hints that Lana might replace Lois since there can only be one. And there’s already another Lois Lane in the universe, a transplant from the pre-New 52 days, so the Superman offices might have considered their leftover New 52 Lois to be redundant. On the other hand, I know that Phil Jimenez loves Lois, and I’m hoping he’s going to stick with the character. Lois is on upcoming covers, too, though I’ve been fooled by that trick before. I’m also hoping that DC is smart enough not to tease us with a Lois book just to kill her off. They can’t be that dumb, right?
So, Superwoman may be the start of an exciting new series, or it may be a straight up pile of garbage! Time will tell. I’m really hoping that Lois is alive, because this was such a fun first issue and I am so down for more Lois and Lana fun. Phil Jimenez did a great job with the writing and the art, particularly with the excellent new costumes, and I’d love to see this new partnership explored for many issues to come. But if Lois is gone, I’m gone. We’ll see how things shake out.
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Tags: Lana Lang, Lois Lane, Matt Santorelli, Phil Jimenez, Review, SuperwomanAlthough you know it when you see it, it's hard to accurately describe Memphis design without resorting to specific 1980s pop cultural references. It's Pee-Wee's Playhouse meets Miami Vice. It's Saved By The Bell plus Beetlejuice. And it's all coming back, in a very big way.
There's an American Apparel line featuring those squiggly graphics. New furniture directly inspired by those outrageous postmodern vibes. An entire show during New York's Design Week that seemed to be ripped from a 1986 copy of Vogue. The world is looking a whole lot more like Delia Deetz's living room these days.
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Ettore Sottsass, Carlton Room Divider, 1981. Plastic laminate. Private collection, courtesy Dixon Gallery and Gardens
The Memphis Group was founded by Ettore Sottsass, an industrial designer you might know best for his lipstick-red "Valentine" Olivetti typewriter. In 1980 he gathered a group of a dozen designers in Milan to form a new collective. The name "Memphis" was supposedly derived from the Bob Dylan song "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" which played during that initial meeting—it had nothing to do with Memphis, Tennessee. Or Memphis, Egypt.
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Michele de Lucchi, Flamingo (bedside table), 1984. Plastic laminate and lacquered wood. Private collection, courtesy Dixon Gallery and Gardens
In the short-lived official period that the Memphis Group was active—technically 1981 to 1987—their work was influential... and polarizing. Memphis was inspired by a few converging, if not particularly similar movements: Art Deco, Pop Art, and the emerging postmodernism (PoMo) which would come to pervade everything from furniture to film to music. The signature Memphis piece combined overtly geometric shapes from a variety of materials in bright, contrasting colors. Graphic patterns—usually black and white—were not unusual. It was a striking departure from the understated modern design that had ruled for decades.
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Marco Zanini, Dublin (sofa), 1981. Plastic laminate, metal, and synthetic fabric. Private collection, courtesy Dixon Gallery and Gardens
A show that closes this weekend at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens—in, yes, Memphis—has collected over 150 pieces of Memphis work, roughly half of the number of pieces that were officially produced by the movement during their short reign. Although many of the period's designers like L.A.-based Peter Shire (below) continue to produce work aligned with Memphis ideals, for the most part, this was a fleeting moment in design history.
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Peter Shire, Bel Air (armchair), 1982, Wood and cotton fabric. Private collection, courtesy Dixon Gallery and Gardens
What's funny about looking back at the Memphis work today is that, more than any other pieces of furniture from any other period, it unmistakably evokes a particular moment. It just looks like the 80s. But even back then critics and commentators loved to poke fun at it.
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From the April 1988 issue of Spy, via Chappell Ellison
This guide to postmodernism from a 1988 issue of Spy magazine is hilarious but also frighteningly accurate when it comes to identifying exactly what postmodern design looks like, particularly Memphis: "Is there more than one piece of furniture in the room with spheres or other geometric shapes for legs?"
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Photo via Dennis Zanone of his private collection of Memphis design in his home
Yep.
Although Memphis officially faded from prominence, the pieces are still prized by collectors. But these are not just seen as novelty items anymore. The look itself has seen a revival in recent years, signaling that something about Memphis still speaks to our culture today.
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Nathalie du Pasquier for American Apparel
The return of Memphis was heralded earlier this year when Nathalie du Pasquier, one of the original Memphis designers, designed a line for American Apparel. The prints are inspired by the work she created in the 80s, although her work has taken a different tack since. She's since been tapped by furniture manufacturer Hay to design 80s-inspired textiles, as well. du Pasquier told Dezeen that she was surprised by the demand to bring back her old style. "I have started from where I stopped and I now have put the machine in motion again," she said. "I'm going to design other things, textiles. If I have requests I am more than happy to do it."
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The Valis table by Matthew Sullivan, who was featured at the LA x Milano Project in 2014
It's not just textiles that are seeing a Memphis revival. At the annual Milan furniture fair in the spring—widely considered to be the premiere design event on the planet—Memphis was in the air this year, especially where a group of Los Angeles designers debuted their brand-new works at the LA x Milano Project. Here, in the birthplace of Memphis, more than 30 years later, young designers from halfway around the globe were taking heavy cues from PoMo style. The designers played with extravagant colors, accentuated shapes, and pedimented detailing that riffed on the more-is-more aesthetic.
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Clocks by Jenny Nordberg, an industrial designer from Sweden, at the Sight Unseen Offsite
The slow drift of Memphis back into everyday culture was best evidenced by the New York Design Week opening of Sight Unseen's Offsite show (which I should mention was curated by two friends of mine, Monica Khemsurov and Jill Singer). As leaders in the design world, Sight Unseen has a track record as a spot-on trend forecaster, so this means what they show will undoubtably soon be trickling into your living room—and your closet. This year, the show could have almost had Memphis as an unofficial theme.
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Lamps by Ladies & Gentlemen Studio at the Sight Unseen Offsite
Dizzying graphics, contrasting colors, and abstract shapes ruled the showroom. Impossible sculptures balanced precariously over chairs that might have been drawn in geometry class. The shades were a bit different—fewer primary colors, more neon and pastels—but the spirit was the same.
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Kelly Behun's furniture at Sight Unseen
What was the most fascinating about Sight Unseen's show was that it wasn't just the furniture and accessories that screamed Memphis, it was also the attire of the show's attendees. A sea of graphic-printed sweatshirts, spatter-painted dresses, polka-dotted pants (all worn together, of course) swarmed the space.
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And over in the corner, Sight Unseen seemed to provide its own approved style guide with a collection of artist-designed, custom-printed clothing created with Print All Over Me.
The Sight Unseen + Print All Over Me collaboration with contributions from Camille Walala, Louie Rigano, Saskia Pomeroy, Damien Correll, Fort Standard, Ellen Van Dusen, Eric Trine, Santtu Mustonen, Dot/Dash, and Will Bryant; photo Mark Vorrasi
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Memphis is back but it's coming from a different place now. There's a whole new generation of artists and designers, born in and of the 1980s, just now coming into their own, who are nodding to snippets of graphics and flashes of colors gathered from their youth, and also branding themselves with this era. Memphis style has become somewhat of a lifestyle itself.
True, these Memphis homages are more like clever winks to the way we think we remember the 1980s—a hazy, nostalgia-tinged Saturday morning cartoon version of the original. Maybe it's even more about nodding to Memphis's pop culture touchpoints—Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Saved By the Bell—than a nod to Memphis itself. Which, if you think about it, is about as postmodern as you can get.
Top image: Michele De Lucchi sofa via Artfinding.comDutch star Roly Bonevacia has agreed a new Wellington Phoenix contract and claims he won't consider leaving until he's won the Hyundai A-League.
The Ajax academy graduate proved to be one of the finds of the season during his first campaign in the competition, helping Ernie Merrick's team to move top the table in March.
The Nix ultimately fell short during the final rounds, losing at home to Melbourne City FC in the elimination finals.
Five depart Wellington Phoenix
But securing the services of 23-year-old Bonevacia until the end of 2016-17 could prove to be a key aspect of a renewed assault on silverware next term.
“I felt comfortable from the moment I arrived at the Phoenix and I like to think I am a loyal person,” the midfielder said in a statement.
“Also I think we are building something special at the club; something that hasn’t been done before at the Phoenix.
“We had a fantastic season and while it was disappointing to slip up over the last few games I believe we will learn a lot from that and come back next season stronger.
“Being so close whetted my appetite and I really want to win the league. If we do that I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable about going closer to home, but for now I am staying to help bring the championship to Wellington.”
Phoenix coach Ernie Merrick hailed the renewed deal as a significant coup for Wellington.
“Roly has been something of a revelation in his first season with us,” he said.
“For a player of his pedigree to commit himself for another two seasons is a feather in the club’s cap.
“Roly came to us as a defensive midfielder, but he became more attacking as the season progressed and I believe he will become a key attacking player and goal scorer next season.”Djokovic had finished runner-up three times in Paris
World number one Novak Djokovic beat Britain's Andy Murray to win his first French Open title and complete the career Grand Slam.
The Serb, 29, won 3-6 6-1 6-2 6-4 to win his 12th major title and become the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to hold all four Grand Slams at once.
Murray had hoped to secure the third leg of his own career Slam, having already won Wimbledon and the US Open.
The Scot, 29, was Britain's first male finalist in Paris since 1937.
Second seed Murray played superbly to win the first set but could not convert a break point early in the second, and Djokovic took control to win in three hours.
He becomes only the eighth man in history to have won all four of the sport's major singles prizes - and could yet match Laver's achievement of winning all four in a calendar year.
Listen to BBC Radio 5 live's commentary on the moment Djokovic won the title
'Biggest moment of my career' - Djokovic
Djokovic fell back on the clay in delight and relief after requiring two breaks of serve and four match points in a desperately tense end to the final.
Murray has now lost eight of his 10 Grand Slam finals
With three-time champion Gustavo Kuerten watching from the stands, Djokovic then emulated the Brazilian by drawing a heart in the clay with his racquet.
"It's a very special moment, the biggest of my career," said Djokovic. "I felt today something that I never felt before at Roland Garros, I felt the love of the crowd.
"I drew the heart on the court, like Guga, which he gave me permission to do. My heart will always be with you on this court."
Murray, who has now lost five Grand Slam finals to Djokovic, had looked capable of causing an upset with an aggressive display in the opening set.
However, Djokovic turned the match around early in the second set and Murray, who had played five hours' more tennis in reaching the final, could not keep pace.
"To Novak, this is his day," said Murray. "What he's achieved the last 12 months is phenomenal; winning all the Grand Slams in one year is an amazing achievement.
"It's so rare in tennis, and for me personally, it sucks to lose the match, but I'm proud to have been part of today."
Murray cannot capitalise on early lead
Djokovic looked determined to make up for losing in three previous Paris finals when he broke the Murray serve to love with a brilliant opening game, but the nerves were soon apparent.
A beautiful lob saw Murray hit straight back in game two and, playing aggressively at every opportunity, he powered into a 4-1 lead as Djokovic misfired with his forehand.
Murray was hoping to emulate Fred Perry's French Open victory of 1936
Murray clinched |
It's universal," he said. "The theatre here of course is not like the theatre Shakespeare used to perform in, but it's still important to try to keep it operating."We've heard many times and from multiple sources that text messaging is declining. There are multiple reasons for this (BlackBerry Messenger, Apple's iMessage, and even WhatsApp), but the biggest one is Facebook (Messenger).
In the last year alone, SMS usage has not only continued to slow, but it has seen a significant drop. So, what happened last year that could have caused this? In August 2011, Facebook Messenger was released for Android, iPhone. In October 2011, it got a significant upgrade, and the BlackBerry version arrived on the scene.
I've mentioned many times that Facebook Messenger has a huge chance of becoming the most popular way to communicate in text form, especially given that in March 2012 it was also released for Windows. Facebook has confirmed a Mac version is coming, and screenshots of an iPad version leaked earlier this month.
Carriers must be very worried about these developments. Messaging services, especially Facebook's, are eating into their text messaging traffic, and thus a huge chunk of their revenue, according to telecommunications consulting firm Strand Consult:
In other words the operators have yet to find a new cash cow that comes anywhere close to their SMS cash cow and now many operators are seeing an increasing number of customers moving their SMS traffic over to Facebook, resulting in their SMS cash cow getting thinner and thinner. In countries like Denmark and Norway this trend is very visible, as an increasing number of customers are reducing their daily SMS traffic because they are moving their communication over to Facebook chat or Instant Messenger. … The biggest difference between Facebook and Google is that Facebook is a communication tool that people use to keep in touch with their family and friends every day. In many ways one can compare Facebook's development in the mobile industry to how the Internet affected the media industry. Market players like Google, Skype, Twitter and MSN are only marginally important to the mobile industry compared to Facebook.
Once you have data, you can use hundreds of free messaging tools, rendering SMS next to useless, especially if you have to pay for it separately. In fact, I think Facebook would completely destroy text messaging if carriers in many countries didn't bundle text messaging into all their plans. I would love to remove texting functionality from my phone and pay less.
Facebook Messenger is the best alternative for three massive reasons: most of your friends already have it (or they at least have Facebook – remember the service has over 901 million monthly active users), it's cross-platform (again, not just mobile), and it is regularly getting significant upgrades (video calling is coming this summer).
Texting isn't going away anytime soon, especially given that carriers make so much revenue from it. Nevertheless, texting is so limited that alternatives have been quickly embraced. As a BlackBerry user and former RIM employee, I love BlackBerry Messenger and all the features it offers. When Facebook Messenger 1.7 came out, however, I called it a BBM killer.
I still use text messages to communicate with friends directly. I also send Facebook messages to individuals when I don't have their number for whatever reason (they lost it, they changed it, and so on).
Even more frequently, I find myself using Facebook Groups, Facebook Events, and a single Facebook or BBM message for communicating with multiple friends. It's just easier than sending a text message to everyone. I believe I would send even more Facebook messages over texts if Facebook was better integrated with my BlackBerry. No wonder the Facebook phone rumor just won't die.
See also:Gujarat Governor O P Kohli and Somabhai Modi, elder brother of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, heaped praises on the Dalit community at a ceremony to felicitate them in Vadnagar on Saturday.
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Speaking at the felicitation ceremony of Balmiki Samaj Sevak, organised on the premises of the old-age home run by Somabhai’s Sarvodaya Sewa Trust, Kohli said Dalits had done a “great favour” to the country by choosing not to convert to Islam during the Mughal rule.
“When there was Islamic rule in India, Muslim rulers tried very hard to convert different castes, but the community that showed the maximum courage and strongly declined to get converted was the Balmiki community. Instead, they accepted to bear the heaviest of pain. What if they had converted? We can imagine what would have happened to our society,” the Governor said.
Kohli added, “Under Jinnah’s leadership, Muslims demanded a different state for themselves, but Babasaheb Ambedkar-led Dalit community never demanded a different nation. This is such a great favour to us.”
“Only Constitution can’t ensure social harmony. The Constitution is only a guide. To make this a reality, we have to bring in more organisations and people like Somabhai Modi,” he added.
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Somabhai said, “There are two saints in the society — one who gives religious and spiritual enlightenment and the other is the Balmiki community. I call them saint because they clean our waste. Because of these two, the world is running. The day they will stop cleaning this, we will be in the hospital.”Oteil Burbridge, left, and John Mayer join three members of the Grateful Dead in Dead & Company. (Jay Blakesberg/Dead & Company)
When bassist Oteil Burbridge got the call in 2015 to join three members of the Grateful Dead and John Mayer in a new incarnation of the band called Dead & Company, he got straight to work learning the group’s vast catalog.
Burbridge, 52, was versed in the Dead — he got his start in the jam band Aquarium Rescue Unit before joining the Allman Brothers Band in 1997 — but he wasn’t quite a Deadhead. As he studied, one of the first songs he connected with was “China Doll,” a haunting, tender ballad sung by the Dead’s late leader, guitarist Jerry Garcia. “It really hits me emotionally,” Burbridge says.
Earlier this month, during Dead & Company’s third tour, the D.C. native started singing the song live, his first time taking lead vocals in the band. The second time he sang the song, it was in a packed stadium full of entranced fans in Boulder, Colo.
“I never thought I would be singing lead at all when I started playing, much less in a stadium, much less with original members of the Grateful Dead, singing one of Jerry’s songs,” Burbridge says. “It’s all very surreal.”
Like Mayer, who takes Garcia’s spot, Burbridge has the unenviable task of replacing bassist Phil Lesh, whose distinctive style defined many Dead songs and who is still alive and playing the music today (just not in this band).
“Fortunately for me, I have a really good relationship with Phil and we’ve had some great talks since I joined the band,” Burbridge says. “The original members [singer-guitarist Bob Weir and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart], they were all like, You have to respond to this music in the way that it makes you feel because that’s the only way it’s going to be authentic.”
On this tour, Burbridge, Mayer, Weir, Kreutzmann, Hart and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti seem to have found a groove. They’re experimenting and breathing new life into songs that, in some cases, are more than 50 years old.
“It’s supposed to go somewhere different,” Burbridge says. “It’s not honest if we don’t take it somewhere different.”
Burbridge, like Mayer, has become a fan of the music later in life — he can now reference live versions of songs from specific dates, like a true Deadhead, he says — and is still finding new surprises within the songs, still soaking in the band’s rich history.
Burbridge recently watched “Long Strange Trip,” Amir Bar-Lev’s new documentary on the Dead, and had a revelation.
“When they get to the part where Jerry is about to die, they play [‘China Doll’] and it just really brought it home for me,” he says. “When did we start this, a year and a half ago? That’s when I zeroed in on that song. I really did connect with something meaningful and important there. It wasn’t just some random [song]. That was pretty heavy when I was watching it.”
For Burbridge, this isn’t just a gig, either. He’s in Dead & Company for the long haul and plans to continue playing Grateful Dead music whenever this band’s trip ends. (He already moonlights in two Dead cover bands and is a member of another, Bureau of Sabotage.)
“It’s just so good that you don’t get tired of those songs,” he says. “I had tears coming down my face at the Hollywood Bowl when we were doing ‘Terrapin [Station].’ I don’t know why — it just hit me so hard. It’s something about where we were that night — it was just magic. When magic happens, it gets you.”
He will get by
Oteil Burbridge has had to say goodbye to several friends and former bandmates this year. Allman Brothers Band drummer Butch Trucks died in January and Gregg Allman followed in May, as did Col. Bruce Hampton, who brought him into the jam band scene. “People ask me, How are you? I don’t even know. These people really changed my life. They really mentored me.”
Jiffy Lube Live, 7800 Cellar Door Drive, Bristow, Va.; Thu., 7 p.m., $40-$149.50.
Read more Express stories on the Grateful Dead:
5 observations from Dead and Company’s Nov. 6 show at the Verizon Center in D.C
Warren Haynes leads two ‘Dear Jerry’ tributes to the Grateful Dead’s Garcia in D.C. this weekend
Gratefully yours: At Dear Jerry, an all-star lineup honored Grateful Dead icon Garcia
Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann on his memoir, ‘Deal,’ new band Billy and the Kids and Dear Jerry at MerriweatherCBCNews.ca is closing comments on all stories for several hours Monday to comply with an elections law that forbids any instance of "premature transmission of results" until the last polls have closed in every electoral district in the country.
The Canada Elections Act affects CBC's coverage of the election, resulting in adjusted broadcast schedules and the changes to the website.
As of 5 p.m. ET Monday, comments on all CBCNews.ca stories are to be closed until all polling stations across the country have closed at 10 p.m. ET.
Elections Canada has issued a warning to Facebook and Twitter users to use caution on election day when communicating and posting voting results, saying the act also applies to transmissions made over the internet. The law was enacted when telecommunications were still in their infancy
Users are also discouraged from posting any advance polling information on any related social networking sites, including Facebook, as broadcasters and publishers go to great lengths to comply with the act when polls close in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Elections Act: Section 329 — No person shall transmit the result or purported result of the vote in an electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the close of all of the polling stations in that other electoral district.
CBC Television and CBC News Network will feature a live election special airing east of B.C. starting at 9:30 p.m. ET, when polling stations are closed elsewhere in the country. A blackout will be in effect in B.C. during that time, from 6:30 to 7 p.m. PT, before the broadcast goes coast to coast.
Online, CBCNews.ca will host a moderated live chat beginning at at 9 p.m. ET and on Facebook at 10 p.m. ET.
After 10 p.m. ET (7 p.m. PT), the online blackout will be lifted and our CBCNews.ca's website, mobile and iPad/iPhone apps will have live results from across the country, live streaming video, full coverage of the regional and national election stories and comments on news stories will be reopened.
And social media users will once again be free to share their reaction to election results.Jalen Hurts didn't see it coming. Around the right edge, Ole Miss' Marquis Haynes arrived like a heat-seeking missile, making direct impact with the Alabama true freshman's upper body.
Hurts dropped to the turf, as the ball tumbled out of his arms before being picked up by the Rebels' John Youngblood and carried 44 yards to the opposite end zone for a touchdown.
It was the second quarter of Alabama's 48-43 victory Saturday, and the Rebels just increased their lead to 21 points. All seemed lost for the top-ranked Crimson Tide.
Hurts retreated to the sideline, and the quarterback would have been forgiven if he were rattled or even dazed. But running back Damien Harris studied Hurts' reaction following the devastating hit.
And, as Harris put it, he was "no different than he was before."
Not even a little bit?
"No," Harris affirmed.
Hurts wasn't the least bit shaken by a physically and emotionally jarring play Alabama coach Nick Saban explained was the result of a "missed execution of a line call."
As center Bradley Bozeman said, the quarterback, who was later named SEC offensive player of the week, didn't seem angry after being rocked because of a blown assignment.
"He was just like, 'I still got y'all's back. Y'all got mine. Let's keep rolling,'" Bozeman recalled. "He didn't let it affect him at all. He got back in the game and kept playing. Lot of maturity out of Jalen."
These were telling comments about Hurts' demeanor and they shed light on why Saban has entrusted the offense of his elite program to a player less than a year removed from high school. Even more illustrative of Hurts' uncanny poise was what he did on the possession that followed the sack-fumble.
Immediately after that crushing moment, Hurts regrouped and led a three-play, 50-yard touchdown drive that took 37 seconds to complete.
The normally hard-boiled Saban was so impressed by Hurts' composure that he went out of his way Monday to praise the quarterback following a question about the team's young defensive backs.
"Think about when you were a freshman in college," Saban told the media. "...These guys are still trying to figure out going to class, how to handle the social aspects of their development, which is a little difficult when you're that age, and come to practice and prepare for a game, and all that.
"So some guys are unique in their ability to do that. Jalen is a little bit like that. He's very focused, nothing affects him, nothing bothers him. Nothing bothered him in the game."
Never was that more apparent than in the most pivotal period of Alabama's victory-- when the Tide's deficit reached its peak and hope seemed to be fading. It was at this critical juncture that the unflappable Hurts may have won the team for good.
"He showed that he's not your typical freshman," linebacker Shaun Dion Hamilton said.
Through three weeks, he's demonstrated he's much, much more. In this era of Alabama football, he's simply an anomaly.Irrational behaviour is common among human beings. We smoke cigarettes, we drink alcohol, we eat unhealthy foods, we support useless football teams and we don’t floss. We all seem to have a compelling reason – conscious or subconscious – to justify what we are doing. We smoke because we want to be cool, we don’t floss because we cannot be bothered, we drink because we want people to like us, we eat bad food because it is easier and we support bad football teams because our friends do. There is twisted rationality in all things irrational… which brings me on to Bernie Ecclestone.
The reason I write about the rational and the irrational, is that Formula 1 is in a phase where very little seems to make sense. There is rampant negativity at a time when there is much to look forward to. F1 decision-makers want to change qualifying when qualifying does not need changing, they wants to cut costs but wants new cars that will push costs up, they want to waste energy on noise when the industrial relevance of the sport is in saving energy, they says the sport is rubbish and would not buy tickets, when they wants people to buy tickets and to subscribe to payTV. What is going on? Where is the rational thinking behind the irrational moves?
I think it is fair to say that some of the recent confusion is to do with misdirection and diversionary tactics. If you light a firework off to the left, everyone looks in that direction and you can get away with all kinds of things on the right.
Misdirection is at the very heart of most magic tricks, which rely on the fact that the human brain has a limited amount of attention and focussing on one thing can make one oblivious to others that should be patently obvious. There is a lovely example of this from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where in 1999 psychologists made a video of six people in a circle bouncing two basketballs between them. Viewers were asked to count the number of bounces and around half of them failed to notice a man in a gorilla suit walking through the middle of the game, beating his chest.
So if Bernie Ecclestone is saying the sport is rubbish and he wouldn’t buy tickets to watch it, what is he really doing? He is, after all, the series promoter, the man charged with making the sport bigger and better. Some think that it is Mr E trying to drive down the value of the business so he can buy it back from the investment types because he has had enough of them ripping money out. This theory makes no sense at all to me. Bernie is an employee and while he and the family trust (over which, of course, he has no possible means of influence because it is all in the hands of trustees) do own some shares but they do not have control. Or do they?
Are there shareholder agreements that mean that CVC Capital Partners have to do whatever its employee wants them to do? That would be odd, wouldn’t it? And what would CVC’s investors think of such a bizarre arrangement? Some say that maybe Bernie funded the CVC Fund and so is secretly the boss, but there seems to be no evidence that this is true. CVC’s Fund IV was raised in 2005 and had a value of $7.26 billion. According to Forbes, Bernie is not worth that much… but then is Forbes reliable?
There is another argument that Bernie has simply gone bonkers from old age and is just making it up as he goes along. I don’t believe that one for a minute.
Conspiracy theorists will tell you that CVC has to do what Bernie tells them to do, because he has videos or dark nasty secrets about the shining white knights at the private equity firm, but let us reject all that and ask why might CVC accept Bernie’s actions, thinking they will lead to the potential to make more money. This, remember, is their only goal in F1, unless one adds that they wish to avoid embarrassment, which is a goal of sorts.
CVC knows that, no matter what they say, they want to sell the business but, despite the best efforts of their sycophants getting front page stories saying that the whole thing is worth more than $8 billion, CVC knows that the Formula One group is not going to be sold at a price it wants. It was all supposed to be done before Christmas, yet it’s been quieter than a Trappist mouse ever since. The price is clearly too high, no matter what the glossary of the Idiot’s Guide to Investment says about enterprise value.
CVC could sell the business for less but there are a couple of things that get in the way with that theory: ego is the first, as PE types generally have fairly sizeable egos and they don’t like to be seen to lose; secondly, there is the question of debt. They have at least $4 billion of it, probably more. In the usual run of things, the debts are paid by the seller from the money delivered by the buyer. The money left over after that is then divided between the other shareholders. And therein lies the problem because a lot of these people signed up for shares prior to the Singapore IPO that never was and they were only doing that because they were promised a decent return on their investment. When the IPO was called off, they were left holding shares that they did not really want. To keep them happy CVC has been sweating the assets and providing regular dividends, often by adding more debt. They may hope that the situation will get better and the value of the business will rise, but there is no sign of that happening. The current commercial rights deals struck between the teams and the rights holder required some fairly serious concessions, both financially and in terms of power. The car manufacturers and the big teams are now in a powerful position and as the sport looks ahead to negotiating new commercial deals from 2021-2030, this group is going to be pushing for yet more money and power. If they don’t get it, they will refuse to stay involved and, so the theory goes, the Formula One group will be unable to fulfil its undertakings to the FIA and their 100-year deal will be broken. Then the teams and the FIA can start a new Premier League-style FIA Formula 1 World Championship without the middle men, or with a promoter who will accept a more restrained percent of the take, rather than the 40-odd percent of today. The problem here is that the debt needs to be paid, or at least serviced, and if the interest payments are more than the revenues the rights holder will not be able to meet its obligations. Borrowing more money will be hard and will not really help, while paying off debt would mean fewer dividends for the investors.
This means that the best option is to try to break up the alliances of those who are now powerful and perhaps try to get rid of the manufacturers and so isolate the non-affiliated teams so that they run to Uncle Bernie for protection. The CRH also wants to make sure that no new players arrive, like reinforcements in a battle, to bolster the ranks of the manufacturers. They don’t want to see Alfa Romeo buying Toro Rosso, or Aston Martin acquiring Force India. They don’t want Volkswagen at all.
In the old days, under different management, Ferrari always played along with the teams and then switched sides when they got the deal they wanted. But now there is a new boss and different ambitions. Perhaps Sergio Marchionne even sees himself as a future commercial boss of F1 after his Fiat days are done. He is trying to get more manufacturers to join the game, to pick off more of the teams and strengthen the position of the players against the promoter. The FIA is sitting back, waiting and watching and will then jump one way or the other when the dealings are done. It would probably prefer to go with the manufacturers because that would allow new deals, far better for the federation than what was agreed by the previous management at the federation.
The last thing that CVC wants is stronger opposition and thus chaos is a better option.
The man from VW said it last week.
“The situation is not predictable enough to make the kind of investment required. On the regulations front, there are a lot of rumours around the engine side and the supporting technology side. Before you commit the kind of money needed you must see five years of rules stability – there can’t be the possibility of rules changes, of more or less engine cylinders coming in, or the hybrid system changing away from technology you are developing on road cars. On the ownership side, there are also big questions the sport must answer. If you are a big business making a big investment you expect to have some influence on the set-up, with an assurance the present ownership will last. In F1, it seems the owners will not be there forever and that creates some instability.”
So, if chaos is the game we are playing, the thing that is required is not only unity and solidarity between the teams but also no daft ideas that will help those who seek to divide and conquer. But then, all these supposed new regulations and the talk surrounding them may all just be delaying tactics to help the clock move onwards towards 2020. In the past the team alliances have always been broken by the rights holder, usually working with the FIA, but this time things are a little different.
Rational irrationality is the order of the day…(CNN) Like many of his counterparts across the world, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was quick to stand with France in the wake of the deadly attack on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
While most people in India were equally disgusted by the events in Paris, others felt it was preventable.
Kiran Bedi, a politician and former senior police officer, tweeted : "France Terror-Shoot-Out sends a message: why deliberately provoke or poke? Be respectful and civil. Don't hurt people's sensitivities!"
But in a post on its Facebook page, the country's Aam Aadmi Party, or the "Common Man's Party" that just swept state elections in Delhi in an unprecedented victory, pointed to an issue much closer to home.
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"A lot of you have expressed shock at the attack on satirists Charlie Hebdo and have shared some of their cartoons as well. But did you know that doing so can get you jailed here in India?"
The use of controversial cartoons had reignited a furious debate about freedom of expression in the world's most populous democracy.
India's Internet crackdown
Take the case of Ambikesh Mahapatra. In 2012, the chemistry professor was arrested for circulating by email a cartoon that poked fun at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The cartoon, which was a parody of a scene in a popular Indian movie, went viral on social media.
He was charged with a range of offenses including defamation, insulting a woman and sending offensive messages from a computer. Mahapatra called the charges a misuse of the law "in the name of surveillance, to curb democratic rights, freedom of speech and human rights of common people."
Cyber law in India stipulates that alleged offenders could face up to three years in jail for posting material that is "grossly offensive," has "menacing character," -- or perhaps even more ambiguously -- causes "annoyance or inconvenience."
Delhi went one step further in its digital crackdown in 2011. The so-called "intermediary guidelines" implicated web platforms themselves. The rules now require Internet companies to take down any content seen as "disparaging," "blasphemous," or "defamatory" within 36 hours of a user submitting a formal request for removal.
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In Mumbai, India's financial center, police spokesman Dhananjay Kulkarni told CNN that some 650 posts and pages were blocked last year under these regulations.
Google says that in the last half of 2013, it removed 540 items from its pages in compliance with orders issued by Indian courts, government agencies, and law enforcement.
It's a similar story with Facebook. The social networking site took down nearly 5,000 pieces of content reported by the Indian government in the first half of 2014.
Meanwhile, MouthShut.com -- an Indian equivalent of Yelp, which allows online users to write reviews of products and services -- has taken its case to the country's Supreme Court to protect what it says are the rights of Indian citizens and consumers enshrined by the Indian constitution. A number of companies had objected to negative feedback and applied to have comments removed under the guise of "harmful speech" in current legislation.
Risks of a 'broadband superhighway'
The question marks over India's Internet freedom come at a time when Modi is planning to splash out $17 billion to build a fiber optic "broadband highway" that will cover the entire country.
If the prime minister's ambitious plan bears fruit, more than a billion Indians will be surfing the web for the first time within three years.
But a rapid rise in access to the web potentially exposes millions of ordinary Indians to a new threat.
"Schemes like this will bring the bulk of Indian communications online and therefore, open to interception, unless we regulate this before we start. Unless we have proper laws," said constitutional lawyer Bhairav Acharya.
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Ultimately India is an important case study in how developing markets deal with regulating an increasingly connected society.
"A lot of people don't see the relationship between free speech and privacy," explained Acharya. "But when you survey communications and intercept private communications... this has a chilling effect on free speech."
In 2013, the Indian government rolled out the Central Monitoring System, a mass surveillance system capable of intercepting all phone and Internet-based communications. Human Rights Watch warned of its potential to threaten civilian rights, given the Indian government's "reckless and irresponsible use of the sedition and Internet laws."
As of the time of writing, India's Telecom Minister had not responded to multiple requests for comment on this issue.
Later this year, an Internet surveillance mechanism called NETRA -- an acronym for network traffic analysis -- is expected to go live. Its exact functions haven't yet been spelled out by the government, but Acharya pointed to its possible use as a tool for untargeted, dragnet surveillance.
The Defense Research and Development Organization -- reportedly the architect of NETRA -- has refused to comment on the project.
Where privacy rules dovetail with Modi's digital aspirations is especially troubling. "If you have Digital India and NETRA hand-in-hand -- in effect, what this scheme will become is a large, massive surveillance project," warned Acharya.
Reading the Modi tea leaves
It's not all necessarily bad news for India's future Internet users. In the latest Freedom on the Net report, of all 65 countries surveyed, India showed the biggest improvement worldwide where Internet freedom was concerned. Relaxed restrictions on access and content -- plus a drop in the number of arrests for social media posts -- pushed India up in the rankings. Behind the gains -- the country was not, as regularly, calling into action its existing Internet controls.
So, it wasn't that policy was being reformed; it's that these controversial provisions were being called upon with less frequency than in past years.
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A more lenient approach was reinforced only last week when Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta -- India's third most senior law officer -- said posts made "on any Internet medium which were not grossly offensive would not be treated as a criminal act." In effect, that could mean dramatically reduced restrictions over what can be freely said in posts made on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
But ultimately, the government is bound only by its written submissions, so it remains to be seen whether these verbal concessions will find their place in ink in the Indian penal code.
For now, this spate of embroiled cyber legislation is under deliberation in the country's highest court.
Cyber security expert, Vijay Mukhi, will be among those looking to see where the anvil falls on digital freedoms. For him, the answer is simple: "Let society or the legal system decide what must be seen on the Internet, not the state or the police."Janet Phelan
Activist Post
A Redlands man has filed a writ of habeas corpus concerning release from confinement ordered under a conservatorship that may not even exist.
When Charles Castle was grabbed off the street by San Bernardino mental health court workers Bob Habel and Wayne Henkelman, almost nobody realized he was missing. Charlie was homeless and while a virtual fixture on the street scene in Redlands, California, he lacked family and social support networks. Some folks, such as Ken Stein with the YMCA, where Charlie went to shower, thought that he was possibly deceased.
Taken
Not deceased, but certainly disappeared, Charlie was taken to Arrowhead Regional Center hospital and held in a mental health unit while powerful parties determined his fate. He reports that he was not present at his mandated court hearing and only found out several months later that he had been placed under a mental health conservatorship.
His conservatorship proceedings were steeped in fraud. Charlie was represented by the same law firm, the law offices of Bryan Hartnell, which also represented the conservator, Melodie Scott. Initially, the Public Guardian was appointed as conservator and Scott quickly petitioned to take over this function.
According to Charlie, his attorney “terrorized” him out of his right to a jury trial. He recalls being told by attorney Ryan Sheehan (who has since left the law firm) that his best recourse was to waive his right to a jury trial. Castle recalls Sheehan saying “It will get real bad for you if you lose the trial. They can put you wherever they want to and you will never get out. Better to go along.”
After being conserved, Charlie Castle was subsequently moved out of San Bernardino County and transferred from facility to facility. He has been on lockdown in Chino Valley Health Care Facility and most recently has been placed into a locked ward at Ramona Valley Nursing and Rehabilitation in El Monte. Neither of these skilled nursing facilities offers a mental health treatment program, which raises questions as to conservator neglect. Since Charlie was deemed by the court to need a mental health conservatorship, one would question why the conservator has persisted in placing him in facilities which do not offer mental health treatment. Charlie has described the facilities as “warehouses for human refuse.”
Charles Castle was first approached by conservator Melodie Scott a few months before he was grabbed in front of the library by mental health workers Wayne and Bob. According to Castle, she asked him if he would like her to be his conservator and “take care” of him. He responded with an emphatic, “No ma’am.”
According to a number of people who knew Charlie Castle, including a local schoolteacher and the pastor at the Blessing Center, he is considered to be eccentric but competent to handle his own affairs.
Police cover up
Reports about Charlie Castle’s plight have been lodged with Adult Protective Services in both Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties. One of those reports was forwarded to the Pomona Police Department for investigation and this reporter was shocked to discover that the report had been altered and did not reflect in any manner the report tendered to APS.
The original report focused on two issues: 1) the fraud inherent in court proceedings where the same lawyer represents both sides and 2) concerns as to why the conservator has repeatedly placed Charlie Castle into facilities which do not have programs to address his alleged mental health problems.
According to Lt. McDonald, watch commander with the Pomona PD, the report that was being investigated by Pomona alleged that the conservator Melodie Scott had misappropriated Charlie’s Social Security check back in July of 2011. As conservator, Scott would by law be the recipient of Castle’s social security checks. The report had been altered so as to make the original complaint into a non-issue, which would then result in a quick closure of the case, while at the same time making the complainant look foolish and ignorant.
An appeal was made to the Pomona PD Chief’s office questioning the genesis of the altered report and an angry Captain Michael Olivieri declined to further discuss the Charlie Castle report. This reporter has learned that the Pomona Police subsequently determined they lacked jurisdiction and sent the altered report back to Redlands Police Department for investigation. The report was then closed by Detective Andy Capps of the Redlands PD, who stated no action would be taken.
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Deaf, Dumb and Blind
Other agencies were quick to follow in vacating their mandated responsibility to address Charlie’s plight. A supervisor at the Long Term Care Ombudsman in Los Angeles County opined that the Ombudsman was prohibited from investigating without the consent of the conservator. When asked for the legal authority (statute) prohibiting her from launching an investigation, she provided an irrelevant Welfare and Institutions code. Follow up phone calls to her were ignored until the agency’s Vice President was contacted and a complaint was lodged.
A similar fate met a report lodged with Rashied Gibri, who is with the Los Angeles County Patients’ rights office. After the initial report went uninvestigated, Gibri was recontacted. He then hunkered down and refused to take the report. Asked again for the legal authority governing his refusal, Gibri became combative and hung up.
On more than one occasion, a Redlands man, Keith Phillips, addressed the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on Charles Castle’s behalf. An initial strong response by Supervisor Josie Gonzales quickly reversed, as the County began to allege that it had no jurisdiction to act. SB County public information officer David Wert has repeatedly stated that the San Bernardino County Public Guardian also lacks jurisdiction to step up and petition to take the conservatorship back from Melodie Scott, as Charlie Castle is now being held in Los Angeles County.
Who is Melodie Scott?
Melodie Scott was the subject of a Los Angeles Times expose back in 2005 and the public outcry as to the revelations of conservator abuse prompted the California legislature to pass the Omnibus Conservatorship reform act of 2006. After Governor Schwarzenegger repeatedly stalled the funding for the nascent organization, the Professional Fiduciaries Bureau finally opened its doors for business in 2008. When Scott applied for her Professional Fiduciaries License with the newly formed Bureau, her license was initially denied on grounds that she lied on her application. A protracted legal battle ensued and Scott finally achieved licensure in 2010 on a legal technicality.
Scott was also the subject of a San Bernardino county Grand Jury investigation a few years back. Five separate county District Attorneys have received criminal complaints against Scott but her Teflon protection has endured each and every attempt to have her indicted. A recent federal lawsuit against Scott was dismissed when the lawyer promoting the suit, Jim Reiss, suddenly had his license to practice law suspended.
Lawyer Lies
American Natural Superfood - Free Sample In an effort to determine his legal standing, Castle also contacted the law firm of Bryan Hartnell, requesting a copy of his legal file. After leaving several voice messages, he did speak with a woman at the firm who told him it would be a “felony” for the firm to give him his file. At that point, several concerned individuals contacted Bryan Hartnell to request that Charlie’s file be given to him. All these calls |
Scheffler argues is an important and distinctive attitude not reducible to desiring or believing valuable. The second essay makes this account of valuing more specific by explaining the three principal objects of our valuing: personal projects, interpersonal relationships, and group memberships. This essay notes the appeal of, and also registers some sensible skepticism for the strategy (notably deployed by T. M. Scanlon) of grounding a conception of moral obligation in the value of a kind of interpersonal relationship. The third essay defends the significance of the commonsense distinction between doing and allowing.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The guiding idea behind the three essays on institutions is that political philosophers should focus on major social and economic institutions -- what Rawls labeled the "basic structure of society" -- because there are distinctive values that can be realized only when these institutions are properly organized. The relevant values are justice, fairness, equality, and the like. Scheffler's distinctive contribution here is to frame this as a claim about value pluralism. In his view there are values, discussed in the context of the essays on individuals, whose realization requires that individuals not give equal concern to everyone's needs. These stand in tension with values like fairness and equality which require that everyone's needs have the same force. These latter values cannot be realized individually without doing violence to values that depend on partiality, and Scheffler suggests this is why they must be realized through the basic structure.
This is a promising suggestion, and it is consonant with the spirit of Rawls's own reasons for focusing attention on the basic structure. As Scheffler notes in the fourth essay, "The Division of Moral Labor: Egalitarian Liberalism as Moral Pluralism", this moves away from the thought that the focus on the basic structure is meant to shield individuals from the burden of responding to the needs of others. It instead grounds this focus in the more appealing thought that there are distinctive values which can be realized only by relating to others through a properly organized basic structure.
One difficulty with this suggestion, however, is that a move to a pluralistic rationale for focusing on the basic structure raises questions about why the distinctive values to be realized through the basic structure should enjoy systematic normative priority over the values that are realized individually. While this worry is not given sustained attention in this collection, Scheffler is in good company in inviting it: Rawls's own account of why justice should enjoy systematic priority with respect to other values is itself somewhat obscure.
In the sixth essay, "Cosmopolitanism, Justice, and Institutions", Scheffler applies his pluralist rationale for focusing on the basic structure to the case of global institutions. He attempts to move past debates about whether there is a global basic structure by arguing that even if there is not, existing institutions give rise to their own requirements of fairness and equality. The moral constraints on these institutions are not the same as those regulating a full-fledged basic structure, and on Scheffler's view the only way to identify these moral constraints is to attend carefully to the actual institutions.
This understanding of the moral constraints regulating global institutions may understate, however, the pressure within moral theory towards a global basic structure. At the national level we need a basic structure for various moral reasons. These include the need to give specific content to moral obligations and entitlements and the need to protect individuals in need from objectionable dependence on benefactors. Scheffler follows Rawls in first asking questions of sociology -- What sorts of institutions do we have? -- and only then asking questions of moral theory -- What sorts of moral constraints regulate institutions like those? Scheffler thus also follows Rawls in leaving unstated specifically moral pressures towards creating a basic structure when we lack one. Indeed, the same moral pressures towards having a basic structure at the national level appear to apply at the global level, since the moral problems at the global level are not of a wholly distinct character. Individuals must have moral obligations and entitlements with specific content if they are to adequately respond to poverty and pollution, for example, and arguably only a basic structure can accomplish this fairly.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The subgroup of essays on society is the longest and most diverse, and I cannot here comment on all the topics Scheffler takes up within it. In two essays on luck egalitarianism he makes a persuasive case that the guiding intuitions behind luck egalitarianism are not those that underlie Rawls's understanding of justice. Scheffler also persuasively argues that: (1) Rawls understands justice to be about the structure of the social relationships by which we produce and distribute goods, rather than about the bare facts about concerning who has goods; and (2) this understanding of justice is richer than its rival. I can also recommend Scheffler's careful and sensitive essay which offers an affirmative response to its title question: "Is Terrorism Morally Distinctive?"
The last three essays focus on whether and how cultures and traditions constitute norms. Scheffler's general claims, here as everywhere, are sensible: he contends we have a tendency to overstate the normative significance of cultural membership, but he allows that such membership is not completely normatively inert. In defending the first claim Scheffler may rest too much weight on the fact that cultures are not, as he puts it, "perceived sources of normative authority" (p. 281) in the way that many moral and religious convictions are. One concern here is that in resting weight on perceived normative authority, which is present even when moral and religious views are unreasonable, we may abandon resources needed to explain why many claims within the moral and religious domains lack genuine normative authority. While Scheffler rightly stresses the fluidity of cultures as a limitation on their normative force, he does not raise the concern that even a conception of cultures as fluid may ascribe to cultures too much normative significance. If it is a pervasive feature of human societies that people are excessively resistant to social change, for example, then it may be problematic to take cultures as sources of norms even where people are not tempted to ossify current cultural forms.
Scheffler presents resources that may blunt this charge in the intriguing eleventh essay, "The Normativity of Tradition", in which he argues that there are normatively significant features of traditional practices. Scheffler enumerates these features with a rare insight into the human condition, though he does not attempt to explain fully their systematic connections. Some of these features are more or less familiar accounts of the social virtues of regularized and conventional action. More distinctive is Scheffler's discussion of the value of routine, of repetitive and familiar activity. He suggests that routine activity gives us a sense of having a home in time and thereby limits our sense of powerlessness in the face of our lack of control over time. (I note in passing that his discussion contains no reference to work on similar themes within the phenomenological tradition.) We can move through space and we can create sections of space -- homes -- that belong to us and have familiar features well-suited to our tastes.
But as Scheffler observes, we are more limited in our ability to domesticate time, since both our position in it and our movement through it are almost entirely -- the exception being the option of suicide -- beyond our control. Scheffler proposes that routines enable us to achieve the closest thing we have to a home in time by making familiar events recur at regular intervals. He proposes further that traditions, which may include rituals and other routine activities shared with other people, including people in the distant past or future, enable us to have a greater sense of what it would have been like to live in other times and places. This limits the otherwise overwhelming powerlessness accompanying recognition of our own finitude and the inevitably of our own deaths.Mahsa’s story begins like any other teenager’s story: She fell in love. The 17-year-old Iranian hoped to marry the boy, but her father opposed the marriage. One day she got into an argument with her father over the romance, got angry, and killed him with a kitchen knife. Now, Mahsa’s brothers are requesting the death penalty for her.
In Iran, the death penalty can be applied to minors, and in 2014, a United Nations report estimated that at least 160 juvenile offenders were on death row in the country. Today Mahsa is one of them, held in a detention center in Zibashahr, near Tehran, with other minors awaiting capital punishment.
Sadegh Souri Mahsa, 17, in Zibashahr, Iran.
Mahsa’s portrait was taken by Sadegh Souri, a 30-year-old Iranian photographer who spent four years researching women and girls in his home country. With rare access to the Zibashahr prison, Souri’s photos tells the stories of several young women between the ages of 12 and 18, convicted of crimes including armed robbery and drug trafficking.
“My main goal in this project was to understand how young girls could end up in jail in the first place,” the prizewinning photographer tells Quartz. “I spent time talking to them, they were nice and kind.”
According to a Jan. 25 report by Amnesty International, 73 juvenile offenders were executed in Iran between 2005 and 2015.
Sadegh Souri Sowgand is 16. She was arrested when police officers entered her house with a search warrant and found 250kg of opium, 30g of cocaine and 20g of heroin. She says the narcotics belonged to her father. It has been almost a year since she has been imprisoned, and none of her family members have come to visit.
Sadegh Souri A girl from Zibashahr detention center playing outside.
Sadegh Souri There is a greenhouse in the prison and inmates are responsible for maintaining it.
Sadegh Souri In the prison’s center for education and pedagogy, inmates learn to make dolls, among other classes.
Sadegh Souri Shaqayeq, 15, has been in prison for almost a year. She was charged with armed robbery of a chain store in Tehran. When the police arrived, her boyfriend, who was also involved, escaped. Shaqayeq was arrested.
Sadegh Souri
Sadegh Souri The clergy goes to the ward of underage girls in the correction centre every day for a congregational prayer. After prayers, he talks about correct upbringing methods for girls and prays to God to forgive them.
Sadegh Souri In a few days, Khatereh will be released.To most people, this past Saturday was just a regular weekend off from work. In far-right circles, however, Nov. 4 was supposed to be the beginning of a civil war.
While the predicted revolution never happened, a number of right-wing internet users have fabricated evidence to make it seem as though the mass shooting that took place in a Texas small town church the following day was somehow related to their conspiracy theory about a violent left-wing uprising.
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Even before law enforcement officials identified the suspected gunman in the Sutherland Springs shooting as Devin Patrick Kelley, far-right social media users were actively spreading misinformation that he was part of the anti-fascist or "antifa" movement, a loose coalition of radicals and anarchists that many on the American right believe to be a massive terrorist group bent on overthrowing the government.
For the past several weeks, conspiracy king Alex Jones and others hyped a series of local protest marches against President Donald Trump organized by a non-antifa leftist group called Refuse Fascism, claiming that instead of being just another bunch of demonstrations, Nov. 4 was to be the day that "antifa launches communist revolution in United States," as Jones' site InfoWars proclaimed.
Many members of the racist "alt-right" movement and their slightly less extreme "alt-lite" counterparts ceaselessly hyped the marches. Lucian Wintrich, a self-described reporter for the notoriously disreputable site Gateway Pundit, wrote an alarmist blog post citing a parody Twitter account which claimed that on Nov. 4, "millions of antifa supersoldiers will behead all white parents and small business owners."
After being mocked for his obvious error, Wintrich published an "update" to his post, acknowledging he'd fallen for a crude, Onion-style satire. But the site kept almost all of his original language in place, likely to continue to get clicks from the highly viral post.
The Saturday protests came and went. They were lightly attended, according to multiple local reports, and did not feature any violence. That's not surprising, considering that Refuse Fascism's organizers explicitly told their attendees to be peaceful.
Instead of admitting how absurdly off-base their predictions were, far-right websites and social media users began scoffing at how the nationwide communist revolution -- which was entirely in their own imaginations -- had not taken place.
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"Will there be another good time for antifa and the like? I think it was now or never for them. They’re doneso," one 8chan poster wrote.
"They are such failures," another 8chan poster gloated, referring to the antifa movement -- which, again, was not even involved with the protests last weekend. "They can't do anything right."
Once Kelley began his rampage, the far-right went into a frenzy of action, desperately trying to blame anyone on the political left for the incident, despite having no evidence from law enforcement officials.
"Mass shooting at The First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, which has a largely white denomination," alt-lite conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich tweeted. "Antifa terrorist attack?"
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Cernovich, who is a favorite inside the Trump White House, kept pushing the angle throughout the day. In one tweet, he claimed that the black body armor Kelley wore during his shooting spree was somehow proof that he was part of the antifa movement.
"Photos of Texas shooter is consistent with profile of Antifa member," Cernovich wrote. "This is looking more and more like Antifa terror."
Others on the far right began fabricating screenshots to make it look as though Kelley supported antifa. The fake news website YourNewsWire began spreading a false Facebook profile of Kelley, which supposedly featured him flying a flag with an antifa logo on it. Still others posted comments on antifa social media pages with fake accounts, claiming to endorse killing Christians and then spread screenshots of those posts as proof that antifa activists support mass murder.
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Jack Posobiec, a friend of Cernovich and a conspiracy-monger in his own right, began posting the fake images on his Twitter account, where his gullible fans ate it up.
Far-right activists posing as antifa and advocating extreme violence has become a frequent tactic in "alt-right" efforts to radicalize ordinary white conservatives.
In New York on Oct. 30, Cernovich fans were revealed to have created a fake antifa sign promoting pedophilia, which they brought to a left-wing protest event. As would be expected, Cernovich and his allies tried to spread a photo of the fraudulent sign on social media. Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, repeatedly applauded the propaganda by "liking" their Twitter posts.
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Despite the hype, however, no major news outlets fell for the hoax.
"While it may trick the rapidly shrinking base of Trump supporters, more and more journalists are stepping up to identify these campaigns for what they are: coordinated disinformation campaigns that serve far-right political purposes," said James Anderson, a representative for It's Going Down, the antifa group that was slimed in the false screenshots spread by Posobiec.
In addition to fabricating evidence aimed at impugning actual antifa groups, activists associated with the "alt-right" have also set up a number of fake antifa social-media pages that encourage violence. Such pages have become a common source of confusion for regular conservative media, as the tech blog Gizmodo noted in August. Fox News host Jesse Watters provided a particularly egregious example of this in July, when he unwittingly invited the Secret Service to investigate an "alt-right" troll who passed himself off as an antifa activist.It’s the story that has the whole industry talking – and it’s unfolding right before your eyes! Today, Marvel is pleased to present your new look inside INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #2, the next can’t miss chapter from blockbuster creators Brian Michael Bendis and Stefano Caselli! Riri Williams has built her own homemade Iron Man armor, and now she has an A.I. to help her – the downloaded consciousness of Tony Stark himself! With Tony Stark mentoring her (okay, a version of Tony Stark) she can’t lose right? Let’s just say Riri Williams just might change the face of the Marvel Universe forever…if she survives the experience first. Easier said than done! Don’t miss the highly anticipated next issue when INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #2 comes to comic shops and digital devices everywhere on December 21st!
Missed Riri’s first outing? Be there when INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #1 returns to comic shops with a new printing on December 28th!
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #2 (OCT160862)
Written by BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS
Art & Cover by STEFANO CASELLI
Variant Cover by ANTHONY PIPER (OCT160863)
Teaser Variant by MIKE DEODATO (OCT160864)
ICX Variant by PASCAL CAMPION (OCT160865)
FOC – 11/28/16, On-Sale – 12/21/16
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #1 2nd PRINTING (OCT168098)
Written by BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS
Art & Cover by STEFANO CASELLI
FOC – 12/05/16, On-Sale – 12/28/16The digital director of Donald Trump's presidential election campaign has revealed how he helped get the businessman elected.
Brad Parscale, a man who's been described as "the genius who won Trump's campaign," by The Washington Post, said that Facebook had helped spread Trump's message to voters.
Speaking at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday, Parscale said that his background in advertising and marketing helped him see that Trump was a "great product" who was easy to promote to the American public.
"I think I had come from a consumer world for a long time and America and eyeballs were moving to social media in huge numbers, especially on mobile phones and devices. And when Donald Trump asked me to work on the campaign I also knew I had a great piece of product that would resonate with Americans," he said.
"You want a great product, you want things that resonate with people and make them dance."
The election of Trump to the U.S. presidency a year ago was largely credited to an internet campaign led by Parscale that utilized social media platforms such as Facebook to spread his political views, a strategy first employed with success by his predecessor Barack Obama.
In October, Parscale credited Facebook with helping to fuel Trump's win last November, saying during an interview with CBS News that the Trump campaign had Facebook employees "embedded inside our offices" to explain how to use the platform to target voters. Facebook said in a statement that it had offered both the Trump and Clinton campaigns "identical support."I wrote about this phenomenon last spring in a post titled “Always Make Promises.” At that point, based on social psychology research, I became convinced that making promises was a great way to set expectations for other people in my life. If I know what’s expected of me, that means less pressure. And I can make sure I’m meeting expectations (making people happy) instead of drifting around in a nebulous cloud of needs and wants and mystery. I promise you we will go on one date this weekend. That’s an example from romance. It keeps a romantic partner from sitting at home waiting for a text thinking, hey, where’s my stupid date. It keeps me from wondering if I’m doing enough date stuff. It’s great romance. It also works well with employers. By promising to complete a certain number of things by a certain date, research says you can actually make your boss more impressed than if you did more things more quickly and there was no concrete expectation in play.
But pretend for a moment that not everyone in your life is as considerate as I am, always making clear and concrete promises and fulfilling them. In that case, Brooks argues that cultivating gratitude is the answer. Indeed, experiencing gratitude has been shown in many studies to improve people’s wellbeing. “Gratitude is a sort of laughter of the heart,” writes Brooks. At this point I became sick, choking it back at first gracefully and then unsuccessfully. He seems to have stolen a line from my novel Laughter of the Heart. Gratitude, he continues, “comes about after some surprising kindness.”
Traditionally, yes. But how do you decide what kindness is surprising? Can you choose to be surprised by any kindness, and receive it with gratitude? Brooks calls this “dispositional gratitude,” wherein people learn to “preserve small expectations.” That is, don’t really expect anyone to do much if anything for you ever, and then it’s always a nice surprise. He offers examples of a world where people have grateful dispositions: “We’re grateful to people who tried to do us favors even when those favors didn’t work out. … We’re grateful because some people showed they care about us more than we thought they did. We’re grateful when others took an imaginative leap and put themselves in our mind, even with no benefit to themselves.” (I don’t know what that last one means.)
Depending on how you look at this argument, and I think it’s the correct way to look at this argument, it could read as super bleak. The bleakest of the bleak is this point:
If you think that human nature is good and powerful, then you go around frustrated because the perfect society has not yet been achieved. But if you go through life believing that our reason is not that great, our individual skills are not that impressive, and our goodness is severely mottled, then you’re sort of amazed life has managed to be as sweet as it is.
So, in sum, human nature is not good or powerful. Remember that, and you’ll be much happier. Never expect a waffle iron, because goodness is mottled. Heaven help you if you expect crepes.All of your wooden spoons, cutting boards, salad tongs, etc. need to be periodically oiled to avoid drying out and cracking. Most cooking oils will oxidize and become rancid after a few days, so don't use olive or vegetable oil for this purpose. Permaculture resource site Rich Soil recommends that you consider using walnut oil as it is completely nontoxic and you won't have to worry about it spoiling.
Walnut oil is normally sold in gourmet shops as a salad dressing, but is also popular with artists who mix their own oil paints. Rubbing walnut oil on a knife handle, cutting board, or other wooden kitchen implement will help preserve the wood.
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Mineral oil is another popular nontoxic finish for wooden kitchenware, but many prefer to avoid ingesting petroleum products and mineral oil is also recommended for use as a laxative.
If you need to protect your wooden kitchenware and you like salad, give walnut oil a try. You can find it in the gourmet oil section at grocery stores, at art supply shops, or from Amazon. Photo by GimmeFood.
Organic care of wooden spoons, cutting boards, etc. | Rich SoilHash Browns Rage! Teacher Arrested For Pelting McDonald’s Worker With Food At Drive-Thru Window Share
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A Florida middle school teacher is facing a battery charge after she threw an assortment of food items back through a drive-thru window following a dispute with a McDonald’s employee, according to cops.
The incident, which was captured by a restaurant surveillance camera, occurred around 9:45 Saturday morning at a McDonald’s in Lakeland. Simone Paolercio, 39, had ordered about $20 worth of food when she got into a dispute with a worker manning the drive-thru window.
The video can be found below.
Jessica Balderas, a McDonald’s worker, told cops that “there was a disagreement over two hashbrowns,” according to a Polk County Sheriff’s Office report. Paolercio reportedly became “irritated” and “wanted them to take the food back and refund her money.”
After a manager arrived to speak with Paolercio, the educator tossed some of the food items back through the drive-thru window when the man refused to provide a refund. Paolercio later admitted that she "chucked it" through the window when her refund demand was rejected.
Some of the airborne grub struck Balderas in the face and chest, according to investigators. When Paolercio denied hitting Balderas with the breakfast items, a deputy advised that footage showed "a hashbrown fly out of the bag and through the air." Paolercio, cops noted, "said she could not argue with the surveillance video."
Paolercio, pictured in the above mug shot, “fled the area in her vehicle” following the confrontation. After being tracked to her residence, she was arrested on the misdemeanor charge.
A sixth grade teacher at Lakeland Highlands Middle School, Paolercio was booked into the county jail Saturday, and released from custody yesterday.
Paolercio has worked as a teacher in Polk County since 2004, according to a school web page. The geography instructor has a history degree from the University of South of Florida “and a Master Degree In Education” from American InterContinental University. In a Facebook posting yesterday, Paolercio’s husband threatened legal action over his wife's collar. “I will never step foot in a McDonald's again,” wrote Chris Paolercio, a long-haul trucker. "A lawsuit will be coming for what they did....."She makes more than I do, but please bring me the check.
Photo by auremar/Shutterstock
My 15-year old son, Nathaniel, went to sleep-away camp this summer and came home with more than just his trunk—while there, he “got a girlfriend.”
Along the way, he learned that having a girlfriend is “expensive.” When they visited Miller’s Landing, the beloved local burger and milkshake joint that older teens are allowed to frequent, he often picked up the tab.
When his 21-year-old sister heard this, she was delighted. “We raised you right!” she exclaimed. When I sent his grandma an email to tell her the story, she promptly replied, but with a decidedly different take: “Ask him if his girlfriend is a feminist and goes Dutch treat or not.”
In fact, I already had. Nathaniel replied that she often paid her own way. But from time to time, he enjoyed buying her a treat. It felt nice.
As we were chatting, it suddenly occurred to me that even though my husband and I have talked to Nathaniel about sex, drugs, and a host of other sensitive topics, we’d somehow managed to miss a common cultural conundrum: Who should pick up the tab? The man or the woman? The boy or the girl?
A recent study presented at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting suggests the answer is far from clear in our collective mind. Modern ideals suggest that gender shouldn’t play a role in who pays for dates. But traditional notions of chivalry die hard.
David Frederick, a psychology professor at Chapman University and one of the study’s co-authors, said the motivation for the research was to understand why some gender-based practices (like the acceptance of women in the workplace) have changed, while others (such as certain courtship rituals) have not.
The study, which surveyed more than 17,000 unmarried heterosexual men and women, found that 84 percent of men and 58 percent of women said men pay for most dating expenses, even after the relationship has been cooking for a while. And, evidently, a lot of women like it this way; 44 percent said they were bothered when men expected them to kick in some cash.
Many women do wind up offering to help—some 57 percent in all—but they’re not exactly sincere about it: 39 percent confessed to hoping that men would reject the overture.
Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of men believe women should contribute, and 44 percent went so far as to say that they would stop seeing a woman who never reached for the bill. Yet they’re also deeply conflicted, with 76 percent reporting that they feel guilty accepting women’s money.
Before women entered the workforce in large numbers, it made practical sense for men to pay for dates. It was a way for them to prove that they could be good providers, and women simply didn’t have their own money. But today, the number of men and women in the workforce is roughly equal, and in most marriages, both husbands and wives are providers.
Yet this courtship ritual persists. Just ask my boy, who seems to have absorbed these gender roles through cultural osmosis.
Still, there is a glimmer of hope. Even though the study found that the same basic patterns held true no matter the participants income or education, younger people in their 20s were the most likely to embrace a more egalitarian approach to dating. That’s good for both our sons and our daughters.
Don’t get me wrong: I was charmed that my son’s instinct was to do something nice for his new girlfriend. But as he moves through high school, college, and life, I want him to know that relationships are best when all of their components—emotional, physical, and financial—are shared.Pittsburgh, PA —
An application by FirstEnergy Generation, LLC to dump more toxic coal ash into a closed power plant landfill in Western Pennsylvania that is already leaking arsenic into groundwater has sparked strong objections from environmental organizations and neighbors who are worried about the potential impact on human health.
Earthjustice and Sierra Club yesterday sent detailed criticisms to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection demanding that the state agency deny the application to dispose of more than 17 million tons of coal ash from the Bruce Mansfield Power Plant at the closed Hatfield’s Ferry Plant’s landfill by barging the coal ash 113 miles on the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. Community members who live around the landfill expressed outrage at the proposal during a May 21 hearing.
The document highlights that arsenic levels in the Bruce Mansfield coal ash exceed Pennsylvania’s maximum allowable limits, which poses a serious risk to air and water. FirstEnergy is also violating state law by not having a plan to assess or abate the pollution from the extensive existing coal ash contamination at the closed Hatfield landfill.
“This proposal is another toxic insult to neighbors in Greene and Fayette Counties,” said Charles McPhedran, an attorney with Earthjustice. “Pennsylvania DEP must deny the permit.”
“Before DEP even considers allowing FirstEnergy to dump more dangerous ash at this site, the company needs to clean up the existing mess,” said Tom Schuster, Senior Campaign Representative with Sierra Club. “We’ve known about this pollution for years, and it still hasn’t been cleaned up, which doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in FirstEnergy.”
FirstEnergy’s permit tries to divert coal ash from one contaminated site to another. Its current coal ash disposal site for the Bruce Mansfield Plant is the infamous Little Blue Run Impoundment, which continues to leach coal ash into local drinking water supplies. EPA recently confirmed the findings of a report by these environmental groups that both Little Blue Run and the Hatfield’s Ferry site are among the forty sites EPA confirmed are “proven” coal ash damage cases, meaning there is documented evidence of damage to health or the environment either off-site or as confirmed by independent sources.
If the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection fails to reject the application, the groups may take legal action.
Read the document.I can understand how the Original Series can be difficult to get in to – even with the digital remastering, it’s still almost 50 years old. The thing you have to keep in mind (across all iterations) is Star Trek is a drama. It has its comedic moments, it has its action scenes, but at the core, it’s a drama. It can be slow paced at times, but if you stick with it, the rewards are often worth the wait. The Original Series article can be found HERE. If you had trouble getting going on the Original Series (like fizzle), I completely understand, and I think this might be more up your alley.
Next on our list is Star Trek: The Next Generation. A critically acclaimed series particularly toward the end of its run, TNG brought Star Trek back into America’s cultural medium and spawned three more spinoffs (DS9, Voyager, Enterprise).
The Next Generation is probably the most fondly remembered of all Treks, especially for those of us between 30 and 45 years old. These episodes will all stand on their own – you don’t need to have seen the series (or the Original Series) to get into what’s going on. On to the list.
1. Encounter at Farpoint (Season 1, Episodes 1-2)
This isn’t the best episode of the series, but if you have any desire at all to watch a few of these farther down on the list, this is where you should start. As a typical pilot episode is wont to do, it gives you a little bit of backstory on the main characters and brings them all together. Overall, it initially aired to an audience of 27 million in 1987. The show was immediately called the "highest-rated syndicated one-hour drama series on television".
2. The Inner Light (Season 5, Episode 25)
Captain Picard is rendered unconscious by an unknown probe and lives out an entire life as a member of a long-extinct civilization. The episode is widely considered by critics and fans as one of the best episodes of the entire Star Trek franchise. In 1993, "The Inner Light" won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. It was the first television program to be so honored since the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" won in 1968. It is the favorite episode of Patrick Stewart and Wil Wheaton.
3. Chain of Command (S6:E10-11)
Captain Picard is taken from command of the Enterprise for a covert mission, and his replacement is assigned to deal openly with a Cardassian military threat. Part 2 is noted for the intense performance of Patrick Stewart and its depiction of brutal torture and interrogation scenes.
4. Q Who? (S2:E16)
In this episode, the omnipotent entity known as "Q" arrives on the Enterprise and decides that Captain Jean-Luc Picard is acting arrogantly. Q then sends the ship across the galaxy where the crew makes first contact with the cybernetically enhanced assimilating race known as the Borg. The critical reception was positive, with the episode described as the first "great episode" of the series. It was nominated for three Emmy Awards, winning two.
5. The Best of Both Worlds (S3:E26, S4:E1)
The Enterprise must battle the Borg who are intent on conquering Earth, with a captured and assimilated Captain Picard as their emissary. The first episode won Emmy Awards for "Outstanding Art Direction for a Series" and "Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series". The storyline appeared in TV Guide's "100 Most Memorable Moments in TV History" (July 1, 1996), ranked number 50. The episode was also ranked #70 on the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time. In 2008, Empire magazine rated Star Trek: The Next Generation 37th on their list of "The 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time" and cited "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" as the show's best episode. The episode was ranked #36 on TV Guide's list of "TV's Top 100 Episodes of All Time".
6. The Measure of a Man (S2:E9)
Android officer Lieutenant Commander Data must fight for his right of self-determination in order not to be declared the property of Starfleet and be disassembled in the name of science. It was not typical episodic television and had a great deal to say about man, humanity, what our problems in the world are today and hopefully what we can do about it in the future. Cast member Brent Spiner (Data) identified this episode as his favorite TNG episode. In an interview, fellow cast member Patrick Stewart (Jean-Luc Picard) concurred that this is "the first truly great episode of the series". On Twitter in April 2013, Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi) names this as her favorite episode.
7. Lower Decks (S7:E15)
This episode is told primarily from the viewpoint of seldom-seen crewmembers. While enduring the Enterprise's promotion evaluation process, four junior officers find themselves involved in a top-secret mission. The episode has proved influential on later television writers. In his "Production Notes: Doodles in the Margins of Time" in 2007, Doctor Who executive producer Russell T Davies cites "Lower Decks" along with the Buffy: The Vampire Slayer episode "The Zeppo" as an influence on his 2006 Doctor Who episode "Love & Monsters". The episode provided a television format which came to be known as the "Doctor-lite episode", an annual tradition for Doctor Who since 2006.
8. Yesterday’s Enterprise (S3:E15)
The crew of the Enterprise must decide whether to send the time-travelling Enterprise-C back through a temporal rift to its certain destruction in order to prevent their own disastrous "alternate" timeline from ever occurring. "Yesterday's Enterprise" was the third most popular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation according to an April 2013 poll issued by startrek.com. The two most popular episodes were "The Best of Both Worlds" and "The Inner Light".
9. Darmok (S5:E2)
The Enterprise is ordered to make contact with the Tamarian race who have been transmitting signals toward Federation space for weeks. The Enterprise makes contact with a Tamarian ship in orbit around the planet El-Adrel. Though the universal translator can translate their words, the Tamarians only communicate through metaphor which baffles the Enterprise crew. This episode features Ashely Judd in her debut acting performance.
10. The Drumhead (S4:E21)
In this episode, an explosion aboard the Enterprise brings a Starfleet Admiral (Jean Simmons as Admiral Norah Satie) out of retirement to investigate the possibilities of sabotage, espionage and treason aboard the Federation flagship. This episode is applicable to our society from the McCarthy hearings to the controversy regarding the NSA. Michael Dorn (Worf) said this was one of his two favorite episodes.
10 + 1. Qpid (S4:E20)
There weren’t a lot of quirky episodes during TNG’s run, but this definitely qualifies. In this episode, "Q" sends the Enterprise command staff to a re-creation of Sherwood Forest where Captain Picard as Robin Hood must rescue his one-time love interest Vash who has been set up as Maid Marian. We get to hear Mr. Worf ex |
ne (0-1 to Vergne) Qualifying: Jean-Eric Vergne (0-3 to Vergne)
Jean-Eric Vergne (0-3 to Vergne) Race: Jean-Eric Vergne (0-5 to Vergne)
Totals:
Race 1: Franck Montagny 9-0 Charles Pic
Race 2: Franck Montagny 1-8 Matthew Brabham
Race 3: Matthew Brabham 0-9 Jean-Eric Vergne
Race 4: Marco Andretti 0-9 Jean-Eric Vergne
Race 5-8: Scott Speed 11-25 Jean-Eric Vergne
Race 9: Justin Wilson 0-9 Jean-Eric Vergne
Andretti: Wilson 0-9 Vergne
Audi Sport Abt:
Lucas di Grassi will probably be in two minds about whether Moscow was a good weekend or not. On one hand, he seems pleased to have proven that they are a fundamentally quick team and that they don’t need to cheat to be at the front of the field. On the flip side, however, the man he needed to beat – Nelson Piquet – was the only man to finish ahead of him in the race, which further increases his deficit to the number one spot. He was only able to pass Vergne in the pit stops, but the gap was already too big to challenge Piquet for the race lead.
Daniel Abt had a much-needed strong weekend after only picking up three points in the last three races. He was outpaced on all three criteria in Moscow, but he’ll be hoping to set himself up nicely for season two by helping his team to the challenge e.dams-Renault for the team’s championship in the final two races.
Fastest Lap: Lucas di Grassi (5-4 to di Grassi)
Lucas di Grassi (5-4 to di Grassi) Qualifying: Lucas di Grassi (18-9 to di Grassi)
Lucas di Grassi (18-9 to di Grassi) Race: Lucas di Grassi (35-10 to di Grassi)
Audi Sport Abt: di Grassi 58-23 Abt
NextEV Team China Racing:
Nelson Piquet becomes only the second driver of the Formula E repeat winners club after leading the vast majority of the Moscow ePrix to extend his championship lead to a healthy 17 points – the biggest advantage he’s had all season – but the fact that there are 60 points available in the final two rounds means that he cannot rest on his laurels.
His team-mate this time was Antonio Garcia, who competed in Punta del Este when original driver Ho-Pin Tung was unavailable. Charles Pic appears to have been dropped by the team, so it remains to be seen if Garcia will compete in London to finish off the season.
As a contest, though, it’s hard to have seen it going any other way than a one-sided win to Piquet, a driver who is in sterling form against a driver in only his second Formula E race. A clean sweep to Piquet for Moscow.
Fastest Lap: Nelson Piquet Jr (1-0 to Piquet Jr)
Nelson Piquet Jr (1-0 to Piquet Jr) Qualifying: Nelson Piquet Jr (3-0 to Piquet Jr)
Nelson Piquet Jr (3-0 to Piquet Jr) Race: Nelson Piquet Jr (5-0 to Piquet Jr)
Totals:
Race 1-4: Nelson Piquet 36-0 Tung/Garcia
Race 5-8: Nelson Piquet 35-1 Charles Pic
Race 9: Nelson Piquet 9-0 Garcia
NextEV TCR: Piquet 9-0 Garcia
Dragon Racing:
It’s been a rollercoaster couple of races for the Dragon Racing team. From the heights of race victory and championship contention, they complete Moscow without a single point and without much hope of challenging for either title.
Loic Duval had a chaotic day with several mistakes and a couple of damaged cars. He was set to qualify quite well until he accidentally put his car into neutral, and had carved his way into challenging for the points until his late collision with Jarno Trulli capped off a woeful day for the Frenchman.
Jerome D’Ambrosio looked like he was going to enjoy a more successful day than his team-mate by running well into the points, but a pit stop delay sent him outside the top ten. He was unable to recover and now requires a lot of extenuating circumstances to win the driver’s championship at the double-header in London.
Fastest Lap: Loic Duval (5-0 to Duval)
Loic Duval (5-0 to Duval) Qualifying: Jerome D’Ambrosio (15-0 to D’Ambrosio)
Jerome D’Ambrosio (15-0 to D’Ambrosio) Race: Jerome D’Ambrosio (25-0 to D’Ambrosio)
Totals:
Race 1-4: Jerome D’Ambrosio 25-11 Oriol Servia
Race 5 onwards: Jerome D’Ambrosio 40-5 Loic Duval
Dragon Racing: D’Ambrosio 40-5 Duval
e.dams-Renault:
There may have only been two places between them on the grid, but that equated to almost a quarter of a second between the e.dams-Renault pair, with Buemi qualifying the higher of the two in fourth place, albeit behind his two main championship rivals.
As far as the intra-team battle went, neither driver saw each other and closest in track position they came was only when Buemi was slapped with a penalty after the race for an unsafe pit release, which dropped him to ninth behind team-mate Prost.
The penalty was hardly Buemi’s fault, and he wouldn’t have picked one up at all if the e.dams team hadn’t misread the minimum pit time. The mistake didn’t cost Buemi any positions, but it lost him a lot of time on his championship rivals. The Swiss pilot has nothing to be ashamed of though, he was close to faultless in Moscow. He gets another clean-sweep after setting a better fastest lap by over one second compared to his team-mate.
Despite their pit stop disaster, their points finish means they’re now the only team to have scored in every event this season.
Fastest Lap: Sebastien Buemi (7-2 to Buemi)
Sebastien Buemi (7-2 to Buemi) Qualifying: Sebastien Buemi (15-12 to Prost)
Sebastien Buemi (15-12 to Prost) Race: Sebastien Buemi (30-15 to Buemi)
e.dams-Renault: Prost 32-49 Buemi
Mahindra Racing:
The Mahindra Formula E team are in freefall right now. Moscow saw them go three events without a point and slip behind the Venturi team into ninth place in the team’s championship. Their qualifying efforts weren’t as bad as the last race in Berlin, but 15th and 16th on the grid put them at a disadvantage at a circuit which became known for not promoting overtaking. Senna took qualifying honours by only 0.009 of a second, but neither were able to progress very far in the race.
Senna was undone by losing the back end of his car at turn one and detaching his rear wing, whilst Chandhok kept his nose clean and finished twelfth following some incidents further up the road. Race points go to Chandhok for having a tidier race, which closes the gap marginally in this particular team-mate battle.
Fastest Lap: Bruno Senna (5-4 to Chandhok)
Bruno Senna (5-4 to Chandhok) Qualifying: Bruno Senna (15-12 to Senna)
Bruno Senna (15-12 to Senna) Race: Karun Chandhok (22.5-22.5)
Mahindra Racing: Chandhok 39.5-41.5 Senna
TrulliGP:
The Trulli team would’ve been hoping to kick on after their improved showing in Berlin, but found themselves out of luck on the streets of Moscow. Jarno Trulli achieved a respectable starting position of ninth place, comfortably beating Vitantonio Liuzzi who failed to put a lap together and started 19th (only after Stephane Sarrazin’s penalty).
If there was an award for determination handed out in a race, then Jarno Trulli would’ve certainly been a candidate in Moscow. Hanging on to the lower reaches of the points-paying positions, Trulli successfully (although unfairly) held off Antonio Felix da Costa for most of the race by bailing out of the chicane every time the Amlin Aguri driver attempted a pass there. Trulli was fortunate to not be penalised there and then, and kept his position until after the pit stops. Through the misfortune of others, Trulli still had the chance of a point towards the end of the race, but a collision with Loic Duval finally ended the Italian’s efforts with three laps to go.
Vitantonio Liuzzi’s race never really got going; he was forced to pit in the first few laps of the race, but still manage to reach the end of the race, albeit one lap down. Problems or not, it’s unlikely he would’ve been able to overtake several cars and challenge his team-mate in Moscow, so the race points go to Trulli.
Fastest Lap: Jarno Trulli (4-1 to Trulli)
Jarno Trulli (4-1 to Trulli) Qualifying: Jarno Trulli (12-3 to Trulli)
Jarno Trulli (12-3 to Trulli) Race: Jarno Trulli (22.5-2.5 to Trulli)
Totals:
Race 1-4: Jarno Trulli 24-12 Michela Cerruti
Race 5 onwards: Jarno Trulli 38.5-6.5 Vitantonio Liuzzi
Trulli: Trulli 38.5-6.5 Liuzzi
Venturi:
The Monegasque team’s slow-burner of a season is finally starting to light up. Incredibly, that was Nick Heidfeld’s and Venturi’s first podium of the season, despite the fact that he wasn’t able to celebrate it on the rostrum.
Despite starting eighth, Heidfeld gradually made his way through the field to fifth with a couple of laps remaining. He passed Jean-Eric Vergne before the chequered flag to take fourth place, which would become third after Buemi’s post-race penalty.
Stephane Sarrazin, meanwhile, was recovering from being put to the back of the grid after breaking parc fermé rules in qualifying. A spin part-way through the race set him back and he finished in 14th place. He set the faster race lap, but team-mate Heidfeld gets the majority of the points this time.
Fastest Lap: Stephane Sarrazin (6-3 to Sarrazin)
Stephane Sarrazin (6-3 to Sarrazin) Qualifying: Nick Heidfeld (18-9 to Heidfeld)
Nick Heidfeld (18-9 to Heidfeld) Race: Nick Heidfeld (30-15 to Heidfeld)
Venturi: Heidfeld 51-30 Sarrazin
Virgin Racing:
The Moscow ePrix turned into Virgin Racing’s poorest event of the year. They were one of only three teams with a 100% points-scoring record prior to the race, but a bad day for both sides of the garage mean that they now fall behind the Andretti team in team’s championship.
Sam Bird’s day was hindered by a wheel coming off in practice and technical problems in practice, qualifying and the race. Remarkably he still managed to out-qualify his team-mate, Jaime Alguersuari, who had to settle for a lowly 17th.
Bird ran ahead for the early laps before he encountered further technical gremlins and Alguersuari was challenging for the top ten before he was penalised for exceeding the maximum power output. As he was running quite far ahead at the time, Bird gets the race points this time, but that’ll be little reward for a man whose championship challenge is barely existent.
Bird is still mathematically in championship contention going into his home race double-header in London, but he requires all available points to him. He would need to win both events, secure pole position in both events and achieve the fastest lap in both events, and hope that Piquet doesn’t score a single point. He would also need huge amounts of bad luck to befall the other championship challengers, ultimately meaning that unfortunately anyone who bets on Bird taking the driver’s crown would either look very foolish or very rich.
Fastest Lap: Sam Bird (6-3 to Bird)
Sam Bird (6-3 to Bird) Qualifying: Sam Bird (15-12 to Alguersuari)
Sam Bird (15-12 to Alguersuari) Race: Sam Bird (35-10 to Bird)
Virgin Racing: Bird 53-28 Alguersuari
Agree or disagree with the verdicts? Comment and let us know!
Follow me on Twitter or Facebook to keep up to date with every Team Mate Battle this season!Share. You're a wizard, Harry! You're a wizard, Harry!
The Unspoken justifies its exclusivity to the Oculus Rift by making great use of the Oculus Touch controllers to believably give you the hands of a spellcaster. It’s a physically engaging urban-wizard duel that challenges you with aim, what spells to cast, how much time it takes to cast them, and where in the dense arenas you’ll cast them from.
“ I felt as though I'd always been a spellcaster.
Having you conjure a library of elaborate spells with hand gestures is a complicated concept that The Unspoken makes simple, easy to pick up, and physically impactful. Smart button mapping makes each unique movement feel natural, whether it’s holding a trigger to grow a fireball, or using a charm to scoop up orbs of green liquid and throw a powerful magic bomb. Each movement is different enough to one another that they’re all individually memorable, and I quickly felt as though I’d always been a spellcaster, and always known the motions. Even if the controls don’t require much aerobic action, I so strongly felt like I was physically directing my fireballs that I consistently worked up a sweat.
Exit Theatre Mode
You have control over the magnitude of most spells, incorporating thoughtful timing and careful aim into what can be a very frantic battle. When you aren’t carefully blocking and deflecting with one hand and spellcasting with the other, there’s an entire playing field to be used to your advantage. You have to collect the mana orbs that float on pedestals around your half of the map in order to fuel your more elaborate spells, and sometimes larger white orbs appear and float between the two of you, with whoever lands the most hits getting the mana. It presents you with the choice of whether to attack them while they go for it, or try to get it yourself. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time scanning the environment and adjusting your location for a line of sight on your enemy as they warp from point to point, or evading their line of attack. The action is fast-paced by design, but big, open arena levels and smart directional audio prevent this from ever feeling too overwhelming.
“ Big, open arena levals and smart directional audio.
The trick of these spell gestures and puzzles is that the more in-depth they get - such as using color-coded keys to unlock a birdcage to unleash a demon on your enemy - the less you’re paying attention to what your enemy is doing while you’re solving them. You’re forced to split your focus, and taking your eye off the ball for a few seconds can give them a chance to smack you in the face with something big and mean.
Thanks to diverse strategic options, you can easily be overwhelmed by the enemy player, or in the matches against the one, pretty basic AI enemy. Whether that’s by having the platforms you need to teleport between destroyed by a Golem they’ve summoned or by your own bad aim with a few time-consuming spells, the tide of a battle can turn quickly enough that every game feels different from the last.
“ Surprisingly deep progression.
There’s some surprisingly deep progression, too, with different unlockable wizard classes that cater to whichever playstyle you favor, and you can choose to start with a variety of different spells. For instance, I eventually swapped out the standard fireball for telekinesis, letting me pull objects from around the map to throw at my enemy. It’s functionally mostly the same, but it looks pretty cool and can change the angle of attack that an enemy has to watch for in order to block. Instead of the default shield-shattering spear, I swapped in a paper airplane that, when thrown, transforms into spirit bomber planes that attack the enemy. While the one game mode is satisfying to play, after around 45 minutes I was wishing for more - like 2v2 multiplayer, or maybe a wave-based mode.
Teleporting from platform to platform is probably the most stressful component of The Unspoken, since it doesn’t always work immediately. It can be tricky to target the exact spot that will light it up to signal it’s ready for you to teleport, and when you’re on one of the platforms in the front and want to retreat backward, sometimes the Oculus cameras will lose track of your hand when turn to look behind you because your body is between the sensor and the controller. That’s really only fixable by buying a third sensor for $80. Those movement obstructions are probably the only thing that reminds you you’re playing a game, because they briefly stop you from creating magic with your hands.
“ The gritty art style is a delight to virtually exist in.
Even your apartment, which serves as simple hub area to house an easy-to-navigate 3D menu that you can teleport around to swap out your skills and view a map of the city, further fleshes out the lore of The Unspoken. It lightly showcases the underground magical society inhabiting an alternate-reality Chicago with aesthetic consistency in each of the handful of maps. Despite some minor visual glitches, The Unspoken’s distinct, gritty art style is a delight to virtually exist in.Pierre Sermanet1*, Corey Lynch1*†, Yevgen Chebotar2*, Jasmine Hsu1, Eric Jang1, Stefan Schaal2, Sergey Levine1
1 Google Brain, 2 University of Southern California
(* equal contribution, † Google Brain Residency program g.co/brainresidency)
This project is part of the larger Self-Supervised Imitation Learning project. It extends the TCN project with Reinforcement Learning and more real robots.
Abstract
We propose a self-supervised approach for learning representations and robotic behaviors entirely from unlabeled videos recorded from multiple viewpoints, and study how this representation can be used in two robotic imitation settings: imitating object interactions from videos of humans, and imitating human poses. Imitation of human behavior requires a viewpoint-invariant representation that captures the relationships between end-effectors (hands or robot grippers) and the environment, object attributes, and body pose. We train our representations using a metric learning loss, where multiple simultaneous viewpoints of the same observation are attracted in the embedding space, while being repelled from temporal neighbors which are often visually similar but functionally different. In other words, the model simultaneously learns to recognize what is common between different-looking images, and what is different between similar-looking images. This signal causes our model to discover attributes that do not change across viewpoint, but do change across time, while ignoring nuisance variables such as occlusions, motion blur, lighting and background. We demonstrate that this representation can be used by a robot to directly mimic human poses without an explicit correspondence, and that it can be used as a reward function within a reinforcement learning algorithm. While representations are learned from an unlabeled collection of task-related videos, robot behaviors such as pouring are learned by watching a single 3rd-person demonstration by a human. Reward functions obtained by following the human demonstrations under the learned representation enable efficient reinforcement learning that is practical for real-world robotic systems.
Self-supervised imitation
Approach
Citation
@article{TCN2017, title={Time-Contrastive Networks: Self-Supervised Learning from Video}, author={Sermanet, Pierre and Lynch, Corey and Chebotar, Yevgen and Hsu, Jasmine and Jang, Eric and Schaal, Stefan and Levine, Sergey}, journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.06888}, year={2017} }
Acknowledgments
We thank Mohi Khansari, Yunfei Bai and Erwin Coumans for help with VR simulations, Jonathan Tompson, James Davidson and Vincent Vanhoucke for helpful discussions and feedback. We thank everyone who provided imitations for this project: Phing Lee, Alexander Toshev, Anna Goldie, Deanna Chen, Deirdre Quillen, Dieterich Lawson, Eric Langlois, Ethan Holly, Irwan Bello, Jasmine Collins, Jeff Dean, Julian Ibarz, Ken Oslund, Laura Downs, Leslie Phillips, Luke Metz, Mike Schuster, Ryan Dahl, Sam Schoenholz and Yifei Feng.HARRISBURG, Pa. — Abby Ross never spent time around guns until a little more than a decade ago. "I grew up on Staten Island," she said. "Hunting or gun use was not part of our family traditions."
Now she handles guns with ease for hunting, sport and training. And she's one of a growing number of women venturing into the world of guns, either as part of the outdoor experience or for self-defense.
Women increasingly have become a profitable new target customer for gun-shop owners and firearms manufacturers.
"Women should not be afraid to know how to handle a weapon when they use them," said Ross, whose husband, an Army Special Forces soldier, taught her when they met 14 years ago.
Ross, who looks far younger than her 36 years, held 5-month-old Mary, the youngest of her eight children, at the Great American Outdoor Show, held here this month.
Dressed in a black T-shirt and blue jeans, and with her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, Ross had taken a break to feed her daughter, who was in pink from head to toe. Her husband manned the booth for their hands-on firearms training company, Rockwell Tactical.
In one of many halls at the Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pa., gun manufacturers and dealers display weapons, equipment and other supplies. An NRA exhibit at the hall's entrance reminds visitors of the Second Amendment guarantee of gun ownership and urges them to stop and ask "what the NRA can do for you." (Photo by Frank Craig / for the Washington Examiner)
The Lancaster-based business offers seminars and smartphone apps among its services.
Throughout the 600,000 square feet of the world's largest outdoor show sponsored by the National Rifle Association, there is evidence everywhere that firearms companies, large and small, are catering to the growing ranks of women interested in tactical training, self-defense, or just making shooting a part of the outdoor culture of their lives.
The marketing approach varies. Smith & Wesson, the firearms giant, uses large interactive weapons displays. Much smaller, boutique companies such as The Well Armed Woman have simple booths. But there is no mistaking the market they're targeting with feminine-cut camo and pink pistols.
There is a lesson within a lesson here. As Democrats continue to make gun control a wedge issue in elections, they underestimate the damage they are doing to their own chances among women, who have been flocking to buy guns in the past few years.
These same voters, whom the NRA calls the "shy voters," also flocked to Donald Trump, and they are unlikely to reverse course before next year's midterm elections. So as wedge issues go, this one is becoming more of a loser for the Left.
The shy Trump voters
Tricia Croney, owner of Pretty Hunter, stood at her booth filled with repurposed bullets turned into jewelry. Over the top of her booth is a quote in black cursive lettering on a pink background. It's from Annie Oakley: "I ain't afraid to love a man. I ain't afraid to shoot him either."
Croney, from Commerce, Michigan, says she did what any smart, driven woman does when she feels passionately about her interests: "I opened my own business."
She loves the adventure of shooting, as well as the discipline, focus and pragmatics. Hunting, she said, "has always been a gender-neutral sport, and I think more and more women are realizing they want to be part of the adventure and the advantages of being able to feed your family with your own hands.
"Women have a tendency... to not only feel but behave much more confidently when they know they are not only able to provide food for the table but also be able to protect ourselves."
Protecting the constitutional right to bear arms has driven women like her to vote for political candidates who are Second Amendment advocates.
"It was the leading reason that I voted for Donald Trump last November," Croney says. "He gave voice to a strong support of Second Amendment rights when he released his picks for the Supreme Court during the campaign [and] he followed that up, true to his word, with his pick of Neil Gorsuch."
She believes public opinion pollsters in the last election "deeply missed suburban women like me, who they thought would vote for Hillary Clinton. They, along with Clinton, ignored us and what was important to our values, which is the ability to protect our home and our children."
Abby Ross holds daughter Mary, the youngest of her eight children, at the Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pa. Ross and her husband run a firearms-training company in Lancaster Pa., although she grew up without a connection to guns. "Women should not be afraid to know how to handle a weapon," she told the Washington Examiner. (Photo by Frank Craig / for the Washington Examiner)
But during 2016 Croney did not boast about her choice for president. That may be why pollsters and Democrats did not understand who was turning against Clinton, especially in Michigan, a long-time blue stat that the Democratic candidate made little effort to secure.
In short, Croney is the legendary " shy Trump voter."
In a large survey of people who voted in November's presidential election, conducted for the NRA by On Message, Inc., pollsters found that nearly 20 percent of those who chose Trump never told anyone they intended to do so. They interviewed voters in Florida, Indiana, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The OnMessage survey of 5,100 battleground voters was fielded in December, and stratified by county to match actual 2016 turnouts, in order to give the most granular view of voter preferences.
Eighteen percent of those interviewed in the battleground states said they were "uncomfortable telling people they supported Donald Trump."
Who were these voters? They were more female than male and twice as likely to live in suburban counties compared to the rest of Trump's vote, according to On Message.
They also were a little more educated than average voters — 24 percent had a post-graduate degree — and, while right-of-center, they're not as conservative as the rest of Trump's voters.
A very important nugget from the poll: Like every woman interviewed at the outdoor show, an overwhelming 80 percent of them support the goals and objectives of the NRA.
So they represent a large chunk of white, suburban, conservative, pro-Second Amendment women who didn't particularly like Trump but couldn't vote for Clinton. They kept their opinions to themselves at dinner parties and pulled the lever for Trump in the voting booth.
Croney said that definitely described her.
"That was also me," said Sarah Cable of Jonestown, Pennsylvania, who tried out a concealed-carry and another holster with her husband, Shawn, at one of the vendor booths.
The 33-year-old Penn State graduate and recent newlywed said she eyed Trump reluctantly at first, "but that didn't last too long. I voted for him. Clinton never once offered anything tangible for me to vote for. He did."
Cable, an office administrator, and her husband, an engineer, both said they are frustrated by the stereotypes and negativity with which Trump and his voters, and gun owners in particular, are viewed on social media.
A losing issue for Democrats
The increase of women buying guns is relatively recent. Women for years could be counted to support gun control. But the gender divide is fading.
It changes the perception of why anyone, male or female, buys a gun, and it has had an impact on local and national politics.
Sarah Cable (center) and her husband, Shawn (left), examine holsters for handguns at the Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pa. Weapons and equipment from a variety of manufacturers are displayed at the show, but no weapons are sold there. Cable said she voted for Donald Trump in November's presidential election based on his support for the Second Amendment's gun-ownership guarantee. (Photo by Frank Craig / for the Washington Examiner)
"As the number of women gun-owners rises, so has the number of women conveying doubts over the virtues of gun control," Cable said.
The gender gap on guns has been huge in the past. But a Pew survey showed that between 2008 and 2012, the percentage of women supporting gun rights rose by nine points.
"As more and more women are connecting gun ownership and self-defense with empowerment, their views on gun control have shifted," said Brad Todd, founding partner of OnMessage.
"I think this is an indication of where Democrats have failed to understand the self-defense aspect of the Second Amendment.
"For a party that invests so much time in intellectually driving the gender gap," he said, "this is something they have completely missed, especially when you get outside the densest urban areas."
And it shows, not just in the presidential election's results but in down-ballot races in many states: As women's pro-gun views have increased, local Democratic seats, especially those where office holders or candidates were required to back the national party's line on guns, have evaporated.
All of that suggests Democrats will need to recalibrate their gun-control message for future elections, as the relationship between women and guns continues to strengthen.The Florida senator, who has tussled with the billionaire since Thursday's CNN Republican debate, joined the #NeverTrump movement on Twitter.
"Donald Trump is a con artist -- and he cannot be our nominee. #NeverTrump" Rubio tweeted on Friday.
Donald Trump is a con artist — and he cannot be our nominee. #NeverTrump https://t.co/3ZYQZraCfN https://t.co/8wm9ToY7El
The Twitter hashtag has supporters from across the political spectrum -- including conservatives -- vowing to oppose Trump should he win the Republican nomination.
"#NeverTrump. Agree? Add your name here" Rubio tweeted. The link brings users to Rubio's campaign site.
And Rubio wasn't letting up Saturday morning as he fired off more tweets using the hashtag.
"It's time to take the mask off Donald Trump. #NeverTrump."
It's time to take the mask off of Donald Trump. #NeverTrump https://t.co/PYazfEzPfy — Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 27, 2016
Rubio made many of the same points at a Saturday press gaggle. He sought to deflect concerns that he's yet to win a contest while Trump has won New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada after a second place finish in the Iowa caucuses.
"Our party, after four states have voted, according to all the polls, is on the verge of being taken over. The party of Lincoln and Reagan is on the verge of being taken over by a con artist named Donald Trump," Rubio told reporters.
Photos: Who's running for president? Photos: Who's running for president? Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, John Kasich, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Hide Caption 1 of 6 Photos: Who's running for president?
"So, ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again," Trump told the crowd at his announcement. Businessman Donald Trump announced June 16 at his Trump Tower in New York City that he is seeking the Republican presidential nomination. This ends more than two decades of flirting with the idea of running for the White House."So, ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again," Trump told the crowd at his announcement. Hide Caption 2 of 6 Photos: Who's running for president?
"These are all of our stories," Cruz told the audience at Liberty University in Virginia. "These are who we are as Americans. And yet for so many Americans, the promise of America seems more and more distant." Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has made a name for himself in the Senate, solidifying his brand as a conservative firebrand willing to take on the GOP's establishment. He announced he was seeking the Republican presidential nomination in a speech on March 23."These are all of our stories," Cruz told the audience at Liberty University in Virginia. "These are who we are as Americans. And yet for so many Americans, the promise of America seems more and more distant." Hide Caption 3 of 6 Photos: Who's running for president? Ohio Gov. John Kasich joined the Republican field July 21 as he formally announced his White House bid.
"I am here to ask you for your prayers, for your support... because I have decided to run for president of the United States," Kasich told his kickoff rally at the Ohio State University. Hide Caption 4 of 6 Photos: Who's running for president?
"Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion -- so you can do more than just get by -- you can get ahead. And stay ahead," she said in her announcement video. "Because when families are strong, America is strong. So I'm hitting the road to earn your vote, because it's your time. And I hope you'll join me on this journey." Hillary Clinton launched her presidential bid on April 12 through a video message on social media. The former first lady, senator and secretary of state is considered the front-runner among possible Democratic candidates."Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion -- so you can do more than just get by -- you can get ahead. And stay ahead," she said in her announcement video. "Because when families are strong, America is strong. So I'm hitting the road to earn your vote, because it's your time. And I hope you'll join me on this journey." Hide Caption 5 of 6 Photos: Who's running for president?
"This great nation and its government belong to all of the people and not to a handful of billionaires, their super PACs and their lobbyists," Sanders said at a rally in Vermont on May 26. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, announced his run in an email to supporters on April 30. He has said the United States needs a "political revolution" of working-class Americans to take back control of the government from billionaires."This great nation and its government belong to all of the people and not to a handful of billionaires, their super PACs and their lobbyists," Sanders said at a rally in Vermont on May 26. Hide Caption 6 of 6
On Friday, Rubio mocked Trump for spelling errors in his tweets, including the word "choker" several times. In his Saturday comments, Rubio went after Trump in the most personal terms.
"He's learning how to spell," Rubio said. "But he's flying around on 'Hair Force One' and tweeting. So here's the one tweet he put out. He put out a picture of having makeup put on me at the debate. Which is amazing to me that the guy with the worst spray tan in America is attacking me for putting on makeup. Donald Trump likes to sue people. He should sue whoever did that to his face with that."
During a Saturday campaign appearance, at Mt. Paran Christian School in Kennesaw, Georgia, Rubio told the audience of several thousand that his office has received calls from former Trump University students claiming to have been defrauded by the mogul.
And Rubio's keeping up his anti-Trump Twitter efforts. He wrote Saturday afternoon: "Donald Trump will never be the nominee of the party of Lincoln and Reagan. #NeverTrump."NASA Aqua Sea Surface Temperatures Support a Very Warm January, 2010
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
When I saw the “record” warmth of our UAH global-average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) product (warmest January in the 32-year satellite record), I figured I was in for a flurry of e-mails: “But this is the coldest winter I’ve seen since there were only 3 TV channels! How can it be a record warm January?”
Sorry, folks, we don’t make the climate…we just report it.
But, I will admit I was surprised. So, I decided to look at the AMSR-E sea surface temperatures (SSTs) that Remote Sensing Systems has been producing from NASA’s Aqua satellite since June of 2002. Even though the SST data record is short, and an average for the global ice-free oceans is not the same as global, the two do tend to vary together on monthly or longer time scales.
The following graph shows that January, 2010, was indeed warm in the sea surface temperature data:
But it is difficult to compare the SST product directly with the tropospheric temperature anomalies because (1) they are each relative to different base periods, and (2) tropospheric temperature variations are usually larger than SST variations.
So, I recomputed the UAH LT anomalies relative to the SST period of record (since June, 2002), and plotted the variations in the two against each other in a scatterplot (below). I also connected the successive monthly data points with lines so you can see the time-evolution of the tropospheric and sea surface temperature variations:
As can be seen, January, 2010 (in the upper-right portion of the graph) is quite consistent with the average relationship between these two temperature measures over the last 7+ years.
[NOTE: While the tropospheric temperatures we compute come from the AMSU instrument that also flies on the NASA Aqua satellite, along with the AMSR-E, there is no connection between the calibr |
. You could try a new question asking for feedback on this paper. It's always better to refer to the actual paper rather than the reportage, because the latter can sometimes be misleading.Beyonce is about to go into multitasking mode. The "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" chanteuse will star in, direct and executive-produce an upcoming documentary about the singer, which will premiere on HBO on Feb. 16, 2013.
The premiere of the yet-untitled documentary will air less than two weeks after Beyonce's halftime performance at next year's Super Bowl.
The project, which will mix "video that provides raw, unprecedented access" to the singer with live performances, was announced Monday by HBO programming president Michael Lombardo.
Also read: Beyonce Knowles Officially Performing at Super Bowl Halftime Show
“Everybody knows Beyonce’s music, but few know Beyonce the person,” Lombardo said. “Along with electrifying footage of Beyonce onstage, this unique special looks beyond the glamor to reveal a vibrant, vulnerable, unforgettable woman.”
“Some of my favorite shows are on HBO, so I am excited that my film will be part of its bold programming," the former Destiny's Child songbird added. "This film was so personal to me, it had to have the right home.”
According to HBO, the film will span from the singer's childhood in Houston up to her return to performing after the January 2012 birth of her daughter Blue Ivy Carter with her husband, hip-hop mogul Jay-Z.Topping a long list of films or TV shows Mr Milonov feels should be outlawed is fantasy series Game of Thrones, based on George RR Martin's 'Song of Ice and Fire' books.
He has appealed to the country's Culture Ministry to devise a system to brand any film or TV show containing what he judges to be heretical Western values as "harmful".
Vitaly Milonov, of President Vladimir Putin's conservative United Russia party, has declared himself a guardian of traditional Russian values.
Every one in 10 characters is a sexual deviant
Commenting on the HBO-produced smash hit, which attracts millions of viewers around the world, Mr Milonov said: "Every one in 10 characters is a sexual deviant.
"It is precisely through these kinds of works and their popularisation in our conscious that a new understanding is being laid down that certain things and phenomena are normal."
Mr Milonov, who is a member of the St Petersburg regional assembly, has previously attracted controversy.
Last year he claimed gay competitors at the Sochi Winter Olympics, hosted by Russia, could be subject to arrest under the country's laws.
And the right-wing politician sparked outrage after commenting on Apple CEO Tim Cook's homosexuality, saying: "What could he bring us? The Ebola virus, AIDS, gonorrhea?
"They all have unseemly ties over there."That evening, Wilkinson and I sit in a bubble tea shop in Koreatown, where I run her through a litany of questions I was pretty sure I already knew her answers to. Does she want the government to defund Planned Parenthood? Yes. "It's not about taking away money for women's health care. It's about redirecting it."Does she support the use of contraception? No. To the pro-abortion-rights view, this stance on birth control seems counterintuitive, to say the least. Considering the vast majority of unwanted pregnancies it actually prevents, one would think the Pill would be an anti-abortion advocate's best asset (says Wilkinson, "It would appear that way, right?"). But again, it's not entirely surprising if you see a fertilized egg and an adult person as 100% equal.Wilkinson explains her take, first by pointing out that one of the ways many hormonal birth control pills work is by thinning the lining of the uterus so that even if — by very slim chance — an egg is fertilized, it will be less capable of attaching to the uterine wall. "So, from a consistently pro-life perspective, once fertilization has taken place, if you intentionally prevent that life from attaching to the wall of the uterus, then that is causing a very early abortion."As for non-hormonal contraception — condoms, IUDs, etc. — she's also against it, believing, as many anti-abortion proponents do, that birth control creates a false sense of security, thereby leading to a greater likelihood of unwanted pregnancy. "The next step," she concludes, "is abortion."The only birth control Wilkinson advocates is fertility awareness — tracking your body's ovulation cycle in order to calculate when you're able to get pregnant. And, to be clear, that's just for married couples. She supports abstinence for single people (though she offers "no comment" on her own sexual status).Finally, I come to the hardest question. So many times that day, Wilkinson had surprised me, revealing herself to be considerate, relatable, and far from a stereotype. I really, really wanted to be surprised again."Do you believe there are any exceptions in which abortion is allowable? If it's a child who's pregnant, in cases of rape, or when pregnancy threatens the life of the woman?"Wilkinson nods. "The usual: rape, incest, life of the mother," she adds, finishing the sentence for me. And, for each, she has an answer.Abortion is never necessary to save the life of a woman, she says. "There's never a medical condition that a woman would be in where, in order make her better, you need to give her an abortion. That just doesn't exist." From a practical perspective, this is patently untrue, given that pregnancy itself is not without risk even to healthy women, and certainly to those with preexisting conditions. In 2012, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists responded to this common anti-abortion argument, stating that "abortions are necessary in a number of circumstances to save the life of a woman or to preserve her health."Wilkinson agrees to disagree, adding that she'd love to read more about it if I can send her documentation of these alleged medical situations. But, for now, "I don't think that situation exists." And that's that.There is one exemption here, though she doesn't really count it as such. In cases of ectopic pregnancy (where the fetus attaches outside the uterus, typically in the fallopian tube), Wilkinson believes it's okay to end the pregnancy — indirectly. These pregnancies aren't viable, and if they're not terminated they will eventually end in a rupture that could seriously injure or kill the pregnant woman. Though there are less invasive ways to terminate — using medication to induce abortion, primarily — one method is to surgically remove the section of the fallopian tube where the fetus is attached.That procedure alone is acceptable, she says, because "you're not going in there with the intent to destroy the life of the baby. It's a secondary effect." From a practical perspective, the overall purpose is the same, and to an outsider may seem like extreme hair-splitting. But Wilkinson says it's an important difference. "With the drug, the intent is ending the life of the baby. So I see it differently from a philosophical standpoint."On to the next exception: survivors of rape. Wilkinson turns somber, holding her eyes firmly on mine. Because of her work, she is familiar with rape in ways that many of us are not. She's watched friends go through with pregnancies after sexual assault, and she has peers who were themselves conceived in rape. It's worth noting this context, for her ultimate answer is not a casual brush-off but the one she truly believes is the most sympathetic."Something that people misunderstand about the pro-life movement all the time is they think we don't care about women and they think we don't care about women who have been raped. And that's so not the case. Rape is one of the most horrible things I know of, and we have a huge problem with rape in our country, obviously." She goes on, expounding on the injustices of rape in the U.S. "We want to provide that woman with resources and compassion and to help her heal and to get justice for her, absolutely." She pauses. "But I don't think that the abortion does that for her."In fact, believing as she does that abortion is an act of terrible violence, Wilkinson says, "I would see it as adding more trauma to the trauma she's already experienced." Furthermore, "now there's another victim."She launches into an impassioned monologue about how she sees the psychological effects of rape and abortion as "almost identical," adding that "in many cases, abortion is used to cover up rape…or incest" and how, in fact, she thinks abortion benefits only the rapist because it "covers up his crime." It's clear she has a lot to say on this topic, but still, I'm pretty sure I haven't heard a direct answer."So, just to clarify, your answer in that scenario is 'no,' right?""Yeah. That'd be my answer. And, I'm sorry, what was the other one?""Children.""Yes, um. Again, super-difficult circumstance. And I'm not…I don't think any person who's against abortion would deny that pregnancy can bring about some really difficult, complicated circumstances."I felt my eyebrows inch up involuntarily, and willed her not to say it."Um, but again," she said, "I don't think that to inflict that on that girl is a good thing."Wilkinson continued in a sober tone: "To ask her to go through something as traumatic as an abortion and to be left with those effects, especially from such a young age, that's not fair to her. And again I think that when someone is pregnant then we have to look at the whole situation — at both people involved. So we have the girl, and we have the child. How can we care for both of them? How can we treat her medically? So that if she needs to be on bed rest or she needs to have a c-section or whatever it is, to be able to safely take care of both patients.""Okay. So the answer to that one is also 'no.'""That's correct."Wilkinson claims to be fighting for a world where "abortion is unthinkable" — a vision so idyllic it goes beyond humanity. If I could muster up the radical compassion with which Wilkinson approaches her own opponents, I'd say she's fighting for the utopia I'd imagined earlier that day, where no pregnancy is unwanted or unsafe. But, no matter what she's fighting for, she's leaving raped and pregnant children among the casualties. In that moment, I felt my own assuredness return more firmly than before.The voice of today's anti-abortion movement is often one like Wilkinson's. It doesn't scream or hurl barbaric insults. It asks and pauses, waiting politely for your thoughts. The greatest mistake the pro-abortion-rights side could make would be not to answer — to resign this movement as one controlled by politicians and extremists. True, they are the most visible leaders, making the headlines and signing the measures into law. But here on the ground, there are people like Wilkinson, working on hearts and minds, and not through demands but questions.Uncomfortable though it may be, we should all find answers to those queries, and soon. Conversations like this are what turn belief into conviction, forcing you to look at what you hold to be true, and why. As Wilkinson said, there is common ground between us, and that's where the battle is being fought. If you don't show up, then the other side has already won.The sign out front says it is a hotel and conference center, but the Fort Rapids Indoor Water Park and Resort will soon become a temporary dormitory for some Capital University students.
"We're trying to make it as fun and as safe and engaging for the students as we can while they're there,” said Nichole Johnson, a Capital University spokeswoman.
Johnson says the situation was caused due to strong enrollment and high demand for living on campus.
"When you look at what your options are, you can either increase the number of beds that you put in each residential space, or you can convert some storage spaces or some student lounges into temporary housing,” she said.
The school says it felt Fort Rapids would be a better option until more beds open.
Capital officials say they typically see about fifty beds become available in the first two to three weeks after classes start.
Until then, about thirty students will be calling the resort home.
"They have suites that are similar to our suite-style living that we offer, and they were willing to step up and help us,” Johnson said of the eastside resort.
The university says it will offer shuttle service between campus and Fort Rapids, so students do not have to worry about making the approximately five mile trip on their own.
"We're also going to have a full-time member of our residential and commuter staff live there while they're there, so it's really going to be the same, to some extent, experience that they would have at a residence hall here on campus,” Johnson said.
Johnson says that students will be finding out in the next week if they are assigned to stay at Fort Rapids.
If a student does not want to stay there, the school says it will work to accommodate that student.
The students will get at least one perk for having to live off campus - free access to the water slides.
Watch 10TV and refresh 10tv.com for the latest news.It's not over until it's over, as those in pale blue who left the Etihad Stadium before full-time on Sunday found out to their own eternal embarrassment. This year's Premier League has seen the title move from one side of Manchester to another, a seismic shift that some five years ago would have seemed improbable.
This console generation's battle of the football titans has, at times, felt equally dramatic, as full of fumbles and moments of flair as anything the Premier League has offered up in the last nine months. It started with Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer as champion elect, but now looks set to end with FIFA in a position of unquestionable supremacy.
"It's been an amazing journey. I think it's been the most exciting journey that I've ever been on. But it's come with plenty of sleepless nights," says EA Sports' executive vice president Andrew Wilson, a fast-talking Australian who's the embodiment of corporate cool.
"We rewrote the engine for FIFA 07, so FIFA 06 was the last game on the old engine. And it was not well-received, as anyone who was around then knew. We were coming into a market where the community didn't really have a lot of respect for what we did, so we knew we'd have to face a challenge to win back the hearts and minds of football gamers."
Attacking Intelligence means that some of the dumb-headed runs of before have been rubbed out - team-mates should now have the smarts to stay in an onside position, and there's a stuttered run animation that helps smooth this into the game.
FIFA started this generation with a Metacritic of 62 - a figure that seems generous in light of our damning 2/10 review of FIFA 06 - but FIFA 07 saw the start of a sharp, steady incline. The series peaked with last year's FIFA 12 and its flat 90 rating.
"It's a challenging place to be," admits David Rutter, line producer and for many the face behind this generation's FIFA. "You're always trying to outdo the previous game."
After last year's effort, one that introduced the Impact Engine and Tactical Defending and changed the face of the soccer sim in the process, that's a harder task than ever before. "Certainly at the end of it we were worried how we'd top it," says Rutter. "But you watch a lot of football and it's clear that there's stuff that we haven't picked up, or we haven't got quite right."
During a lengthy presentation, Rutter and his team outline their vision for FIFA 13, an outing that is clearly more refinement than revolution, and one that's all about ironing out the kinks in systems like the Impact Engine and Tactical Defending.
Initially it's easy to be blinded by the science and difficult to put a finger on exactly what has changed. "It's about creating a true battle for possession plus delivering the freedom for creativity," says line producer Nick Channon. "It's about equalling the unpredictability of real-world football."
So FIFA 13's improvements are holistic rather than headline-grabbing, although they are in fairness plentiful. There's an emphasis on more creative play, introduced to counteract the more nuanced defending in FIFA 12, and it's a fact underlined by a new feature: Attacking Intelligence. This is, to put it drily, new positioning code that improves how players analyse space and subsequently make runs. In practice it's a feature that's evidently been inspired by the fluid attacks of Barcelona and Manchester United.
FIFA Street's a welcome influence on the Complete Dribbling, introducing an element of creativity as well as a little flair.
Barcelona's influence is felt elsewhere with the implementation of Complete Dribbling, a feature that places an emphasis on one-on-one encounters that's inspired by - who else - Lionel Messi. The introduction of 360-degree dribbling in FIFA 10 was one of the series' biggest innovations, and EA Sports hopes this feature will have a similar impact.
Previously, players would face in the direction of their runs, but with Complete Dribbling it's now possible to dance around the ball, facing the goal at all times. There's even a little influence from the pleasantly entertaining FIFA Street reboot, which is noticeable when Cristiano Ronaldo sees off a defender with a flurry of flicks and feints. "It was originally called strafe dribbling," Rutter later explains. "But obviously that's got its own connotations from a different genre. It's totally mimicking the way that real football players dribble."
While Complete Dribbling adds another layer of control, FIFA 13's other introduction wrestles some of that away. First Touch Control reins in the improbable grace with which players would bring down a high ball, and adds a more random element with the first touch.
The ball can pop up a little and is liable to move around more, and the efficiency with which it's brought under control is now more influenced by the skill of the player being controlled. This doesn't necessarily mean you'll be losing control all the time, though; sometimes the movement works in your favour more than a perfectly controlled touch would.
Right now it seems an odd feature to highlight, and there's a slight sense of déjà vu; Personality Plus, a feature introduced in FIFA 11, promised a similar, more random element that would place an emphasis on player attributes. There's also a telling difference in philosophy compared to PES 2013's alternative take on the same thing, Dynamic First Touch, which allows players to stop high balls dead and to flick them past defenders, an approach that, potentially, sounds more entertaining.
The last of FIFA 13's additions is similarly hard to gauge. Tactical Free Kicks allow you to place up to three players on the ball, and gives players on both sides more control of the situation. Walls can be more accurately positioned (it's possible to inch a wall forward, too, although doing it excessively will result in a booking) and players can be sent rushing forward to block the ball.
There's no explicit word on the Wii U version.
If FIFA 13's improvements sound a little underwhelming at first, then that's likely because FIFA 12 was so impressive, and quite likely the best football game this generation has seen to date. It certainly wasn't perfect, however, and FIFA 13's working to resolve some of the more notable problems with its predecessor.
In fact, the earlier assertion that there's no real headline feature in FIFA 13 yet isn't exactly true, because if there's one thing to come away with then it's the wealth of improvements that are being made to the Impact Engine. Or, in short, FIFA 13's big new thing is No More Kissing.
Some of the more notable bugs that plagued FIFA 12 - for better and for worse - have been ironed out, and the Impact Engine's been expanded to have more influence over a match. There's an increased element of push and pull when defenders come up against attackers, and a defender's weight will now have more bearing on a situation, so if a player as stacked as Rio Ferdinand is harassing a more diminutive striker then it's possible that the striker will be forced off-balance and subsequently fluff their shot.
Off-the-ball battles are also more pronounced, and defenders are now more liable to get their body in the way of an attacking run, blocking it off. The referees, meanwhile, have been altered in order to keep on top of the new possibilities that the refined Impact Engine offers.
Even EA admits that this is a less dynamic year, the developers do of course assure us that each small change has its own major impact. "It's an interesting one," says Rutter. "There were some very big changes last year, and they were very easy to summarise as these three big features.
"This year there are some equally big game-changing things in there - First Touch Control and the Complete Dribbling are for me the two very big changes that people will notice - [and] they in and of themselves are probably bigger. One is bigger than Precision Dribbling, for sure, and First Touch Control is probably about the same amount of difference to the game as Tactical Defending. The Impact Engine was a genre-defining moment in video games - the stuff that we're doing around that is probably not quite so revolutionary but it's certainly a big deal."
The Wii U version is currently being worked on by a different team, but how exactly it'll differ from the mainline version remains a mystery.
There are other additions to FIFA 13 that are likely to be a big deal, but as is the way with protracted PR plans they won't be making themselves known until the big trade shows roll around. First there's the implementation of Kinect, a first for the series that was announced at E3 last year. "Yes, we've figured out a way to get it in there," says Rutter. "We'll be showing it off later this year. I'm happy with how it's worked out. When it was announced at E3 last year, everyone was concerned but we said we'd do right by the franchise and I feel that we have."
And there's still news to come on improvements on EA Sports Football Club, the social side of FIFA that, judging from Andrew Wilson's stance, is paramount to the future of the series. "The relationship you have with your club is the most important in your life, aside from your family," he says somewhat dramatically at the start of the presentation, before going on to explains his thoughts further later on.
"I think the expectation for games in the future is for a game that changes as you play, and I can access that gaming experience from any piece of hardware that I've got at the time," he says. "If I've got my phone on me I'll be able to play - maybe that's me managing my Career mode or my Ultimate Team - and if I'm on Facebook maybe I'm doing things there. It's this notion that I'm never away from my experience, and I'm never wasting time. Playing games on my mobile phone is no longer wasting time - it's contributing to my FIFA world."
How that vision plays out in FIFA 13 remains to be seen, and it'll likely nestle within a game that in its journey to supremacy has arguably earned the right to be complacent. With Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 shaping up on the other side of the world in what looks to be a promising year for FIFA's rival, however, we'd be fools to leave this particular contest until the final whistle blows.Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are expected to embark on hunger strikes this week to draw attention to imprisonment without charge and solitary confinement. They will build on a protest that has resulted in deals to release two inmates who refused food for prolonged periods.
At least 11 prisoners are already on hunger strike, three of whom have been transferred to hospital. One began refusing fluids last week, increasing concern about the rate of deterioration of his health.
A wave of hunger strikes is planned to begin on or around Prisoners' Day on Tuesday, held under the slogan: "We will live in dignity." About 1,600 prisoners have agreed to take part in the protest, according to Palestinian prisons minister Issa Qaraqi. "The situation inside Israeli prisons has become very dangerous and serious," he was quoted as saying.
There are around 4,600 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, according to the prisoners' rights group Addameer. More than 300 are held under "administrative detention", meaning they and their lawyers are not informed of accusations or evidence against them, no trial is held, and their term of imprisonment is determined by an Israeli military judge.
Of the 11 prisoners currently on hunger strike, two have refused food for 46 days. Bilal Diab, 27, who has been held under administrative detention since last August, has also refused fluids either orally or intravenously since 8 April, and has lost consciousness a number of times, according to Physicians for Human Rights.
PHR has urged the Israeli authorities to grant Diab's request to be transferred to a civilian hospital and has cited World Medical Association advice that "the body is unable to survive without liquids for more than a few days, and in most cases a hunger striker will die during the first week".
Thae'r Halahi, 34, has been held in administrative detention for 22 months, plus for five separate previous periods of between three months and one year. His condition was described as stable but commensurate with a prolonged period without food.
Khadar Adnan, the first prisoner to begin a hunger strike in the current wave, refused food for 66 days before agreeing to a deal that should see him released this week after four months in administrative detention.
Adnan, 33, was followed by a woman prisoner, Hana Shalabi, who was released and deported to Gaza after 43 days on hunger strike. Her family home is in the village of Burqin, near Jenin, in the north West Bank.
She considered herself "not deported but freed to Gaza", where she had never been before, she told the Guardian. "It's a victory for me." But she acknowledged that she had come under pressure from the Israeli authorities to accept the deal and end her protest, amid fears that her life was in danger.
Hunger strikes were, she said, "a good and effective tool, and the only way prisoners can achieve something". She is still suffering from weakness and swollen legs since ending her protest, and is under medical supervision. "Physically it was hard, but morally I was high," she said.
Shalabi, 30, had previously been held for 25 months under administrative detention, but was freed in October under the prisoner exchange deal struck by Israel to secure the release of the captured soldier Gilad Shalit. She was re-arrested on 16 February.
She denied being an activist with Islamic Jihad. However, the faction had rented an apartment in Gaza City for her, in which a large Islamic Jihad poster was displayed on the wall. Her brother, Samir, who was killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli soldiers in 2005, had been convicted of Islamic Jihad activities.
Under the terms of the deal that ended her hunger strike, she must stay in Gaza for three years, after which she will be allowed to return to the West Bank unless she is found to have been involved with a banned organisation. "The Israelis also threatened me that if I took part in any political or military activity, then I could be targeted [for assassination]," she said.
Addameer described Shalabi's deportation as a "forced displacement". "We consider this a violation of the fourth Geneva convention," said Sahar Francis, director of Addameer. "We're happy she was released but not to be forced to live in Gaza. They have sent her from one prison to another big prison."
Shalabi agreed to the deal when physically and mentally weak and without access to independent lawyers, said both Addameer and Amnesty International. "The deal may amount to a forcible deportation given her medical condition and the denial of access to independent doctors and lawyers," said Ann Harrison of Amnesty.
Israeli government spokesman Ofir Gendelman said Shalabi was deported to Gaza "because she cannot pose from there a clear and present danger to the safety of the Israeli public … If Shalabi was to return to the West Bank, there is no doubt that she would return to her terrorist activities with the Islamic Jihad."
Since being released in October, she had planned attacks against Israeli citizens, he added.
Around one third of the 477 Palestinian prisoners released last October in the first stage of the Gilad Shalit deal were deported to Gaza, 17 for three years and 144 permanently. The Hamas government is now building a new neighbourhood south of Gaza City for them, and is also paying salaries to those not provided for by other factions.
Hamas has said that the only way to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners is by abducting Israeli soldiers to use as bargaining chips. "If the enemy has not learned, we are prepared to give them practical lessons," Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader in exile, told a conference in Qatar this month. "The only way to free prisoners is by exchanging them for [Israeli] prisoners and leaders."
Hamas leaders inside Gaza echoed the call for militants to step up efforts to seize Israeli soldiers.You know, [Lincoln] was willing to reconcile and forgive. And I don’t know what our country might have been like had he not been murdered, but I bet that it might have been a little less rancorous, a little more forgiving and tolerant, that might possibly have brought people back together more quickly. But instead, you know, we had Reconstruction, we had the re-instigation of segregation and Jim Crow. We had people in the South feeling totally discouraged and defiant. So, I really do believe he could have very well put us on a different path.
In reality, Lincoln knew that compromise with the slave South was impossible. In his address at Cooper Union on February 27, 1860, Lincoln correctly emphasized that the demands of the slave owning class in the South were beyond reason and could not be satisfied:
The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them. These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
For many decades after the Civil War, the Lincoln view of the conflict was less popular than the reconciliationist narrative. The reason is not hard to find: compromising with racism has always been easier for most white Americans than fighting it. As the historian Peter Novick showed in his definitive book That Noble Dream (1988), the rise of the Dunning School went hand in hand with the popularity of scientific racism and a desire in the North to live in harmony with the Jim Crow South. “But as the [19th] century drew to a close—as a result of a racist downgrading of the Negro, the need for reconciliation of the sections and the desire to strike a posture of impartiality fairness, detachment, and objectivity—the professional historians worked to revise previous northern views of several related questions,” Novick wrote. “They became as harshly critical of the abolitionists as they were of ‘irresponsible agitators’ in the contemporary world, they accepted a considerably softened picture of slavery, and they abandoned theories of the ‘slave power conspiracy.’”
Under the sway of the reconciliationist narrative, mainstream American scholarship was openly racist. “The majority of slaves were... apparently happy,” Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager wrote in their best-selling 1930 textbook The Growth of the American Republic. “There was much to be said for slavery as a transitional status between barbarism and civilization. The negro learned his master’s language, and accepted in some degree his moral and religious standard.” In that book, Morison and Commager, among the most honored historians of their period, referred to all slaves by one name: Sambo.
“Compromise” sounds like a noble ideal that all reasonable people should aspire to. But as The Atlantic’s Ta-Nahesi Coates noted in a series of incisive tweets inspired by Kelly’s remarks, the American experience on compromise, both before and after the Civil War, has been one of whites agreeing to sideline African-American rights.
Notion that Civil War resulted from a lack of compromise is belied by all the compromises made on enslavement from America's founding. — Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) October 31, 2017
During the Civil War, Lincoln repeatedly sought to compromise by paying reparations--to slaveholders--and shipping blacks out the country. — Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) October 31, 2017
The reconciliationist narrative long dominated how most Americans understood the Civil War, but it was never unchallenged. Even at the height of the the influence of scholars like Dunning and Phillips, there was a counter-school of anti-racist history, often written by African American scholars like W. E. B. Du Bois. In works like Black Reconstruction in America (1935), Du Bois and other anti-racist scholars offered a very different view of history, one that emphasized not the need for reconciliation between North and South but rather the urgency of securing of equality for African-Americans.
Although the anti-racist narrative takes many forms, it is united in key points of disagreement with the reconciliationist narrative. The anti-racist narrative outlines a narrative emphasizing the malignancy of slavery, the obduracy of the slave-owing class in defending its privileges, the attempt to build a multiracial democracy during Reconstruction, and the brutality of the terrorist campaign that destroyed Reconstruction and led to the entrenchment of Jim Crow. Whereas the reconciliationist narrative is a feel-good story for white America—the underlying message being that there are no deep differences in American society that can’t be solved by white people finding common ground—the anti-racist narrative is bleaker but more clear-eyed, emphasizing that racism is deeply embedded in American society and can’t be defeated without a fight.
Ultimately, the debate over the Civil War is not antiquarian, but cuts to the core political question of what sort of society America wants to be: one comfortable in white supremacy, or one willing to fight racism in all its pernicious forms. Trump has only made the stakes of this debate clearer than ever.Please select your country: United States Argentina Australia Austria Belarus Belgium Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Canada Chile China Colombia Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Czechoslovakia (1945-1992) Denmark East Germany (1949-1990) Estonia Finland France Georgia Germany Greece Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Ireland Israel Italy Japan Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Macedonia Malaysia Malta Mexico The Netherlands New Zealand North Korea Norway Philippines Poland Portugal Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Serbia Singapore Slovakia Slovenia South Korea Spain Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Turkey Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Vietnam U.S.S.R. (1922-1991) Yugoslavia (1945-1992) Africa » Cameroon Africa » South Africa Worldwide Other
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"Ultima Underworld 1" -- Origin release
"ウルティマ アンダーワールド" -- Japanese spelling
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According to PC Gamer (July 2000), Warren Spector wasn't involved with Ultima Underworld until about a year into production.
until about a year into production. The programmers' test image for the texture-mapping code was a digitized B&W photo of Abraham Lincoln.
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Computer Gaming World November 1992 (Issue #100) – Role-Playing Game of the Year April 1995 (Issue #129) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #68 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
GameSpy 2001 – #8 Top Game of All Time
GameStar (Germany) Issue 02/1999 – #8 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
Origin Awards 1992 – Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Computer Game
PC Games (Germany) Issue 01/1993– Best RPG in 1992
Power Play Issue 02/1993 – Best Game in 1992 Issue 02/1993 – #2 Best RPG in 1992
Retro Gamer September 2004 (Issue #8) – #62 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
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Ganesh's Website (Walkthroughs, tips, hints, cheats, trainers, backgrounds, wallpapers, desktop themes, music, mp3s, midi, hand-picked *very* funny jokes and much MUCH more!)
After having brought peace to Britannia during his previous journey there, the Avatar returns to our world. However, he is haunted by ghostly dreams that warn him of a great danger in Britannia. The Avatar decides to travel there once again. Upon his arrival, he witnesses the kidnapping of Baron Almric's daughter. Found guilty of the crime, the Avatar is thrown into the Great Stygian Abyss with the choice of either finding the girl or rotting in the dungeon. On his journey he will have to get along with the many inhabitants of the dungeon, who are survivors of a failed colony, and eventually find out that there's much more to this kidnapping than meets the eye.is commonly considered the first role-playing game with fluid first-person movement in a real 3D environment. Unlike earlier first-person RPGs such as Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beh |
ahid when it comes out, you can sign up for the Nineteen Months email newsletter. We’ll send you updates about our newest articles as well as Vahid and other special projects. No spam, and we’ll never share your information with anyone.
At this time, we’d like to open submissions for Vahid: Volume 4. This year’s theme is Seeing the End in the Beginning. When faced with adversity, it can be difficult to envision a way out of the struggle. We are asking writers to imagine and record what lies on the other side of tests and trials, to write through difficulty and beyond it.
As always, we will give preference to poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction that speak to the theme but we will also consider other works. You will find full submission guidelines below.
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Submissions are open through March 31, 2017.
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We consider short fiction and creative nonfiction up to 3,000 words in length. Please send 1 fiction or creative nonfiction piece as a PDF or Word document.
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We like poems of any length, in either free verse or traditional forms. Please send 1 to 5 poems at a time as a PDF or Word document.
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Thanks for all your interest and support! We feel truly honored to be able to read your work and share it with readers from all around the world. Here’s to all the writers, photographers, artists, and readers (and our special designer, Lindsay) who make it happen.
Stay tuned, and feel free to share our call for submissions with any and all of your writer friends.OAKLAND — Workers at a recycling company found a heavily decomposed human skull in a pile of debris early Wednesday morning, police said.
Police were called around 8:46 a.m. to a California Waste Solutions facility at 1820 10th Street, where the skull, which was mummified, was discovered. Investigators were still trying to determine where the recycling load that contained the head was picked up; California Waste Solutions processes recycling material from across the Bay Area.
Officials did not immediately know if the head came from a man or woman, how or how long ago the person had died.
Investigators were still probing the area to see if there were any more remains.
Identifying the remains may take some time considering their condition, police said.
Check back for updates.
Contact Katie Nelson at 925-945-4782 or follow her at Twitter.com/katienelson210.Blake is the content manager for DailyMTG.com, making him the one you should email if you have thoughts on the website, good or less good (or not good). He's a longtime coverage reporter and hasn't turned down a game of Magic in any format ever.
It's hard to believe I've been here just three and a half years. Given my time spent on coverage, my many, many years reading the website, and how much running a daily website has aged me (I'm 72 in editor years), it feels like I've had a connection to this website for a long, long time.
During those three and a half years, our website has undergone a number of changes, some large (a full redesign shortly after I started), some small (new widgets and fonts and image well dimensions—oh my!).
And now it's time for one more.
Starting November 29, DailyMTG is going to look quite a bit different and be quite a bit more useful. For a long time, DailyMTG has been daily in frequency, but not necessarily in how often people have felt the need to visit it. What's more, we've continued with a model that has essentially been the same for like a decade—we write some long articles, you read them, we throw some pretty pictures in, and there's a card of the day. Fin.
It's a model that has worked well for a long time, but it's time to become more flexible, more useful, and truly something people want to visit on a daily basis.
The core concept is that we're turning DailyMTG into a hub of information—a scrollable font of things you need to know today. Think of it as turning the Daily Magic Update inside out and adding all kinds of functionality around that.
So let's take a trip through the upcoming page section by section. Please note these are design documents and do not necessarily represent the final implementation. Some small items may change between when you read this and November 29.
Top Stories
This is my favorite section of the page. Part article widget, part Daily Magic Update, this is where you'll come looking for the latest and most interesting content Magic has online that day. There are several configurations, but this one shows off the most options:
Here's where you'll see our content and links to other cool content. See those little tags in the upper right corner of the content boxes? That means you'll be taken to another website to read some awesome piece of Magic content, exactly like links within the Daily Magic Update. No tag means the article comes straight from the mothership (that's us).
The video player is pretty great as well. Much of the time it will house a recent video—ours or a content creator's—but eventually it will also be able to host live streams. Though that functionality will not go live with the new site on November 29, it will follow soon thereafter. That means that when there's a cool Twitch stream happening, we will be able to switch it to run live so that you can see the latest Magic streamers doing their thing.
Just as cool, if you push play on the video from a desktop browser and then scroll down the page, the video will pop into the lower right-hand corner and follow you down the page. You can, of course, close out of that window to keep it from doing that.
For now, we ditched the pop-out feature on mobile, as page space was an issue. But it's very cool on desktops.
Sometimes, there won't be a video we want to highlight, in which case this section might look like this:
Or this:
In each case, we'll toggle it based on what's important for you to know that day.
Additionally, because it's not a static article like the Daily Magic Update is, we can update it dynamically. That means that ChannelFireball article that gets posted at 4 p.m. doesn't have to wait until 8 a.m. the next day to be spotlighted on the Daily Update, and when an awesome article publishes at 9 a.m. after I finished the Update at 8:30 a.m., I don't have to feel so sheepish about missing it. I just pop it in there and include it anyway. Like a boss.
Informational Panel
Below that (usually) comes the informational panel. This is meant to be a useful widget that's semi-evergreen and points you toward the information that might be most useful.
First and foremost is an events calendar showing the events coming up soonest that might be of interest. Prereleases, Grand Prix, Pro Tours, Draft Weekends, and more will populate this list and give you a better understanding of upcoming events. We'll be calibrating the calendar as we get feedback on what types of events are useful for people to see, so definitely send us your thoughts.
Next up will be the podcast panel. This is where you can find Drive to Work, the Magic Story podcast, and more.
The next slot is the Products tab, where you can see our most recent releases. These will take you to the product pages that currently exist (which have improved greatly as well!) and dive deeper into everything you need to know about each set.
Finally, the Play tab will be semi-evergreen, in that it points you to ways to play. This is where you'll find the store locator, instructions for at-home Leagues, and more.
The Big Story
At least that's what I'm calling it.
This will function much like our carousel does now, but without being so in-your-face. Also, since it's lower on the page, it's not beholden to change every day. So, for instance, if we publish a Prerelease Primer on a Monday, it might sit in this spot until Friday when the Prerelease actually happens. If Mark Rosewater writes another shattering pronouncement on the future of Magic, we might highlight it here to say "No, really, you should read this."
Top Videos
Some things are self-explanatory.
This is where we'll spotlight YouTube and Twitch videos for your enjoyment. Like the topmost section, we will be adding streaming functionality to this block as well, though it will not launch with that capability.
What You Need to Know
This section is labeled "Latest News" in the image you're about to view, but it's pretty far from the old chronological list of previous articles the old version of the website used.
Sometimes, yes, this will be simply a list of recent articles, but the widget is dynamic and will pull through article tagging. What that means is that if, for example, we're releasing Commander (2018 Edition) and we want to talk about Commander, this section might be all articles about Commander. If we just had the World Championship or World Magic Cup or any other Pro Tour, this might pull articles from that event specifically.
Basically, we can highlight cool events, content, or whatever is most relevant to that day, week, or month.
Featured Cards
Card of the Day has been a long-running feature on our website—and one that often goes unnoticed. The day I previewed a card in that space and the internet failed to even notice it was a preview was the day I realized everyone pretty much looked past the section entirely. Occasionally a solid joke or meme would lift the Card of the Day to some short moment of prominence, but, mostly, people ignored it.
I expect the Featured Cards section will be window dressing much of the time as well, but with a few perks. For example, this is a section wherein we'll be able to host recently previewed cards, potentially letting us update the Card Image Gallery sooner and more easily.
Story Presentation
This widget is already in use on our Product pages, but bubbling it up to DailyMTG ensures that there's always a story on our front page. And we think that's a good thing.
If you want to see it in action, check out the Story section of the Ixalan product page.
It also shows where we are in the story much more clearly, along with where you should start for the current arc and how many episodes to expect. It's kind of great.
Social Wall
This is the section I'm most nervous about. Social walls, by their very nature, require some pruning and tending. This is essentially meant to mimic the "What People Are Talking About" section of the Daily Magic Update by, you know, showing you what people are talking about.
The goal with this section is to connect people to larger conversations happening in the Magic community. I hope that's how it turns out! But let's just say I'm glad I have the power to turn it off if things go sideways.
Putting It All Together
The best part of all of this? Everything is customizable. We may shut off sections from time to time, move things around, or change names to show you what the most important stuff for that day is. You'll almost always be greeted by articles at the top followed by the informational panel, but below that we'll make sure the most pertinent stuff bubbles up. Our overall goal is to give you a one-stop shop for everything you need or want to know about Magic on any given day.
But you might have some questions. I'm happy to answer any you might have on Twitter (@blakepr), but let me try to answer a few here.
Q: What about [insert writer here]?
First, Mark Rosewater isn't going anywhere, if that's who you're really asking about, disembodied voice in my head. Second, we'll adjust our content schedule to fit the new concept and setup, but I'm not committing to any drastic content changes just yet. Though those may come. I'm crazy like that.
Q: What about the 8 a.m. PT/11 a.m. ET/3 p.m. UTC publish time?
That's also not changing as of yet, but I do think the added flexibility of the page gives us opportunities to update content at times other than 8 a.m. when it makes sense. For example, maybe during previews we update the Card Image Gallery in the evening well after everything for that day has been previewed. Our content will continue to be scheduled for 8 a.m., but the links we share to other content will change more dynamically. At least that's the plan.
Q: What about signing up for the newsletter or the RSS feed?
They're right at the top!
Q: This is terrible. Why in the name of all that is the internet are you doing this?! Can't we just go back to [insert old version of the website]?
Progress. The forward march of progress. I truly do believe this will be an improved experience for most readers. There are always people who don't like things, and always people who love them more than the old version. That's okay. We don't all have to like the same things.
Q: What's happening to the Daily Magic Update? I loved it and it was the best thing ever and Blake is my personal hero and I want to be him when I grow up.
First of all, thank you. That's high praise. Second, this page basically is the Daily Magic Update given form and function. Posting links in an article was a hacky way of accomplishing what I set out to do when I created the Daily Magic Update nearly two years ago. It has now grown out of control and taken over most of the page. I'm almost certain this is how Skynet began, but who am I to stand in the way of progress?
Feedback Welcome!
As always, I'm happy to take feedback. The actual fact of this transition is locked in stone, but we'll have opportunities to tweak and update it in future builds, so never hesitate to share thoughts with me at NewMagicWebsite@wizards.com or on Twitter @blakepr.We’re not featuring this project because it involves the tiniest exercise bike in the world. It’s on the front page because the speed-control features which this dynamic duo added are hilarious. They call it the Webcycle and it’s actually two hacks in one.
Way back in 2009 [Matt Gray] and [Tom Scott] slapped an Arduino on the bike and used it to measure the revolutions of the cranks (how fast your feet are going in circles). This was hooked up to the laptop which is fastened to the handlebars. This way you can surf the Internet while you work out, but the bandwidth is directly affected by pedal speed. If you want to watch video you’re going to have to sweat…. a lot. Check it out in the clip after the break.
This March they pulled the Webcycle out of storage so that it may ride again. This time it’s connected to the sound system in their exercise room. A record player motor is the victim in this case. You guessed it — pedal speed dictates the rate of the turntable, modulating the pitch drastically. Make sure the boss isn’t around when you watch this clip because it will be hard not to guffaw.
These guys really have fun with this hacks. It was [Tom’s] birthday that prompted that hacktacular mini golf course.
Bandwidth control:
Music speed control:
[Thanks Tom]The American National Security Agency (NSA), and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), similar clandestine intelligence agencies, stole SIM card encryption keys from a manufacturer, allowing the groups to decrypt global cellular communications data.
The effort, according to The Intercept, took place in 2010, with the agencies breaking into a Dutch firm, Gemalto. The hack provides the government agencies the capability to monitor “a large portion of the world’s cellular communications,” according to the report. We are of course supposing that the government’s descriptions of its own capabilities are accurate.
Update: Gemalto said it is investigating the issue and is not immediately able to confirm the report. You can find its full statement at the bottom of this post.
(Gemalto most recently turned up in the technology media as a partner in a new product of Box, a cloud storage and enterprise collaboration provider, designed to bring added encryption to its customers. Box declined to comment on the new matter.)
The Intercept’s reporting is, once again, based on documents released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The firestorm initially ignited by Snowden has dimmed in the past year, waning as the pace of revelations sourced from the information he released has slowed.
The NSA and the GCHQ formed the Mobile Handset Exploitation Team (MHET), according to the report, which was built to do precisely what it’s name suggests.
“This disclosure is incredibly significant,” The Electronic Frontier Foundations’ Mark Rumold told TechCrunch. “NSA and GCHQ basically have the keys to decyrpting mobile communications anywhere in the world, even without the participation of local communication carriers (which, even if not much, acts as some check on intelligence agency behavior). It’s the equivalent of these agencies having printed doorkeys for the front doors to millions or even billions of homes around the world, just in case they one day decided they needed to get in. Frankly, people should have no faith in the security of global mobile communications.”
Today’s revelations harken back to the earlier days of the Snowden saga, when the XKeyscore program was still a cause célèbre among the tech industry: The NSA and the GCHQ managed to infiltrate Gemalto by tracking the communications of its employees, using XKeyscore as their data collection tool of choice, according to The Intercept.
So what was unveiled today is built on the tools that privacy advocates worried would be abused when they were first detailed. The use of presumably innocent peoples’ private communications data to lift the encryption keys of other individuals is precisely the sort of overreach that agencies operating in the dark are suspected of abusing.
We have reached out to the NSA and GCHQ for comment but have not heard back.
Update: GCHQ has released the following statement:
It is longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters. Furthermore, all of GCHQ’s work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the Secretary of State, the Interception and Intelligence Services Commissioners and the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. All our operational processes rigorously support this position. In addition, the UK’s interception regime is entirely compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
The ACLU’s Christopher Soghoian tweeted about the irony of the matter earlier:
Steal millions of crypto keys and then complain publicly that encryption is a problem. The UK and US govs are shameless. — Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) February 19, 2015
The Dutch Members of Parliament has demanded a response from both organizations over the alleged attacks:
Parliamentary questions by Dutch MEP @SophieintVeld (ALDE/D66) on the hack of Gemalto by NSA and GCHQ: http://t.co/eb7ZdlCLbC #NSA — Koen Rouwhorst (@koenrh) February 19, 2015
When asked if there were other groups targeted besides Gemalto, Glenn Greenwald responded in an email to TechCrunch that, “In general, we can’t really comment on things that haven’t yet been reported.”
Standing by itself, that the NSA would break into a private corporation to steal individual encryption key might seem shocking. However, recall that the NSA was more than content to tap the cables that linked private data centers of American technology companies located abroad. That particular program led to firms like Yahoo and Google greatly increasing their use of encryption in its various forms.
Today the NSA and its British cohort have again been shown to have less than minor respect for private property, or privacy.
Also, today’s release indicates that there might be more revelations of NSA activity coming. That fact is worth keeping in mind, as we are racing towards a showdown in Congress over renewing several parts of the Patriot Act — which provides key legal underpinning for parts of NSA surveillance — that are set to automatically sunset. So, there will soon be another national debate about surveillance and privacy. Stories such as today’s report concerning SIM cards, and the integrity of the encryption and data privacy of global citizens will certainly help set that discussion’s tone.
Update: Gemalto has released a statement in which it said that it is unable to corroborate the report at this point, but it intends to investigate the issue:More than 700,000 Florida residents have signed a petition to get medical marijuana on the ballot in the Sunshine State’s 2014 elections.
"The time is now. It works," attorney John Morgan, who contributed $3 to $4 million of his own money to the signature gathering effort, said. "It's going to have an impact positively. It's going to cut down on crime. There's going to be a tax base. It's going to increase real estate. It's all win. All you have to do is look at other states where it's been enacted."
Morgan’s United For Care group was behind the initiative, which gathered 710,508 verified signatures according to the Florida Secretary of State’s Office. The group needed 683,149 to qualify for the ballot.
As Fox reports, the Florida Supreme Court still has to approve wording of the ballot question. Back in December, the court held a hearing on the proposed ballot language, which state Attorney General Pam Bondi has called “misleading” because of what she says would be “lenient” requirements for individuals hoping to obtain a medical marijuana card.
The court has until April 1 to issue a decision on the proposed ballot language.
Marijuana will be a hot topic across several states during this fall’s elections. Several states including Alaska, Arizona, Oregon, California and Washington D.C. are considering measures to fully legalize the drug.
Even Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry this week said his state is taking action to eventually decriminalize, though not legalize, pot.
Louisiana Republican Governor Bobby Jindal also announced this week that he would consider approving a "tightly controlled" medical marijuana initiative.
Morgan said the proposed Florida initiative has bipartisan appeal, citing a recent poll in which 82 percent of Floridians said they approve of medical marijuana.
“People who vote for Rick Scott will vote for this,” Morgan told the Miami Herald. “People who vote for Nan Rich or Charlie Crist will vote for this. Everyone here knows that one day medical marijuana is going to be legal in Florida” whether it’s in 2014 or 2024.”
However, St. Petersburg based Drug Free America Foundation, which opposes the proposed initiative, says they will mount a campaign urging resident to vote “no,” if it makes it past the court.
"We believe that if this gets to the ballot, Floridians will vote wisely and reject it,” Executive Director Calvina Fay told the Tampa Tribune.Pepper-spray drones are now a real thing. South African company Desert Wolf recently unveiled the Skunk (yes, that’s its actual name), which is billed as the first ever “riot control copter.”
The drone, whose target market sounds like it should be evil dictators and dystopian supervillains, fires “pepper balls” and paintball pellets. It is also equipped with “bright strobe lights, blinding lasers and on-board speakers” that can be used to keep crowds under control.
According to Desert Wolf’s website, each of the Skunk’s high-capacity barrels can release 20 pepper balls per second, and multiple drones can be controlled by a single operator.
The first 25 units will be shipped out to a mining company in South Africa, possibly as a means to control strike-related violence at various mining locations. Desert Wolf’s page for the Skunk drone specifically namechecks the South African town of Marikana, where 34 miners were shot by police during a wildcat strike in 2012. The idea of using Marikana to advertise a weaponized drone only adds to the intimidating nature of its capabilities.
Photo via Desert Wolf
Some people are already pointing out that firing “non-lethal” projectiles at civilians and blinding them with lasers and strobe lights may be against human rights laws.
Noel Sharkey, chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, told the BBC that the public availability of this kind of weaponized drone is a sign of “creeping authoritarianism and the suppression of protest”.
“Firing plastic balls or bullets from the air will maim and kill. Using pepper spray against a crowd of protesters is a form of torture and should not be allowed.”
Illustration via Desert Wolf
This isn’t the first time someone has introduced a commercially-available drone with the ability to harm or potentially kill. Taser drones were put on display at this year’s South by Southwest festival, although they were nowhere near as frightening as a drone whose entire purpose is to “control” crowds by shooting at them with pepper spray bullets, all without the need for direct human intervention.
Illustration via Desert WolfIn the vinyl library, there is a RecAll type family, which let's us ask that a partially applied constraint is true for every type in a type level list. For example, we can write this:
myShowFunc :: RecAll f rs Show => Rec f rs -> String
And that's all lovely. Now, if we have the constraint RecAll f rs c where c is unknown, and we know the c x entails d x (to borrow language from ekmett's contstraints package), how can we get RecAll f rs d?
The reason I ask is that I'm working with records in some functions that require satisfying several typeclass constraints. To do this, I am using the :&: combinator from the Control.Constraints.Combine module in the exists package. (Note: the package won't build if you have other things installed because it depends on a super-old version of contravariant. You can just copy the one module I mentioned though.) With this, I can get some really beautiful constraints while minimizing typeclass broilerplate. For example:
RecAll f rs (TypeableKey :&: FromJSON :&: TypeableVal) => Rec f rs -> Value
But, inside the body of this function, I call another function that demands a weaker constraint. It might look like this:
RecAll f rs (TypeableKey :&: TypeableVal) => Rec f rs -> Value
GHC can't see that the second statement follows from the first. I assumed that would be the case. What I can't see is how to prove it for reify it and help GHC out. So far, I've got this:
import Data.Constraint weakenAnd1 :: ((a :&: b) c) :- a c weakenAnd1 = Sub Dict -- not the Dict from vinyl. ekmett's Dict. weakenAnd2 :: ((a :&: b) c) :- b c weakenAnd2 = Sub Dict
These work fine. But this is where I am stuck:
-- The two Proxy args are to stop GHC from complaining about AmbiguousTypes weakenRecAll :: Proxy f -> Proxy rs -> (a c :- b c) -> (RecAll f rs a :- RecAll f rs b) weakenRecAll _ _ (Sub Dict) = Sub Dict
This does not compile. Is anyone aware of a way to get the effect I am looking for. Here are the errors if they are helpful. Also, I have Dict as a qualified import in my actual code, so that's why it mentions Constraint.Dict :Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on March 12, 1952. Her father was Palestinian and her mother was an American. During her high school years she also lived in Ramallah in the West Bank, the Old City in Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas. She has written poetry for children as well as for adults. Her 2002 collection of poems about the Middle East, “19 Varieties of Gazelle,” was a finalist for the National Book Award. Additionally she has edited a number of anthologies which reflect her abiding interest in using poetry to promote cross-cultural understanding.
For many years, she has been a visiting writer all over the world. She sees teaching and writing as separate activities, but ones that serve and feed each other. Writing, she says, travels the road inward, teaching the road out.
In an essay entitled “Lights in the Windows,” available on poets.org, she says, “I can never understand when teachers claim they are ‘uncomfortable’ with poetry – as if poetry demands they be anything other than responsive, curious human beings. If poetry comes out of the deepest places in the human soul and experience, shouldn’t it be as important to learn about one another’s poetry, country to country, as one another’s weather or gross national products?”
This poem was chosen from her 1994 collection, “Red Suitcase,” which was published by BOA Editions, Ltd. It is reprinted with permission of the publisher.
Jerusalem
By Naomi Shihab Nye
“Let’s be the same wound if we must bleed.
Let’s fight side by side, even if the enemy
is ourselves: I am yours, you are mine.”
-Tommy Olofsson, Sweden
I’m not interested in
Who suffered the most.
I’m interested in
People getting over it.
Once when my father was a boy
A stone hit him on the head.
Hair would never grow there.
Our fingers found the tender spot
and its riddle: the boy who has fallen
stands up. A bucket of pears
in his mother’s doorway welcomes him home.
The pears are not crying.
Later his friend who threw the stone
says he was aiming at a bird.
And my father starts growing wings.
Each carries a tender spot:
something our lives forgot to give us.
A man builds a house and says,
“I am native now.”
A woman speaks to a tree in place
of her son. And olives come.
A child’s poem says,
“I don’t like wars,
they end up with monuments.”
He’s painting a bird with wings
wide enough to cover two roofs at once.
Why are we so monumentally slow?
Soldiers stalk a pharmacy:
big guns, little pills.
If you tilt your head just slightly
it’s ridiculous.
There’s a place in my brain
Where hate won’t grow.
I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.
Something pokes us as we sleep.
It’s late but everything comes next.
Photo: Naomi Shihab Nye (commons.wikimedia.org)A new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists shows that driving an electric vehicle can save the average American $770 per year. The study focused on the 50 largest cities in the US and found a range of annual savings between $443 and $1,077 per year, depending on local gasoline and electricity costs, with a median of $770.
Among other findings, it also showed that electricity prices are more stable than gas prices, that EV purchase prices are going down as the industry matures, and that EVs can often be cheaper to maintain than comparable gas vehicles.
The study also tallied up the “gallon-equivalent” cost of electricity, comparing how much a gallon of gasoline would have to be in order to be cheaper than electricity. The median price found in the study was 90 cents per gallon – a gas price which hasn’t been “normal” since around the turn of the millennium, and even then only in some regions of the US.
The US Department of Energy has maintained a similar but less detailed measurement called the “eGallon” for several years, showing that the cost of driving on electricity is not just lower, but also more stable and predictable, and has been rising much less quickly than the cost of driving on gasoline. Here’s a graph showing the price history from 2001-2013:
The main difference between the eGallon and UCS’ findings is that UCS also takes into account “Time of Use” (TOU) plans, which are special rate plans where electricity providers offer discounts for electricity which is used at night. Electricity is generally more expensive to generate during peak hours, so utilities tend to like electric vehicles, since they charge at night and help to flatten out the “duck curve” of electricity generation. Because of this, EV drivers can get cheaper electricity and sometimes additional purchase incentives from their utility.
The UCS study showed that when taking into account TOU rates, “gallon-equivalent” costs can be as low as 25 cents per gallon on the nation’s cheapest electricity providers. Even in the most expensive cases (Los Angeles and Hawaii), electricity is still more than a dollar cheaper on a “gallon-equivalent” basis.
The study also makes recommendations to drivers, utilities, policymakers and automakers. To drivers, it recommends that they find out about available rate options, including TOU rates, and availability of special incentives from states, local governments and utilities, as there are more incentives out there than the public is generally aware of.
To the other groups, it recommends offering special rate incentives to coordinate charging with electricity availability, charging solutions for those who cannot charge at home, and programs to ensure manufacturers offer a diversity of EVs at different price points and vehicle classes.
You can see the full report or executive summary on the UCS website. There’s also a calculator showing the average savings in your city on the study’s main page. There are other calculators with varying levels of detail around the internet, for example there is one on Tesla’s website for Model S and X and a pretty detailed tool at BeFrugal.com which attempts to account for total cost of ownership (for both, it’s beneficial to know your current electricity price).
Electrek’s Take
This may be no surprise to our readers, but some of the public hasn’t gotten the message yet as to how much cheaper driving electric can be. The potential to save up to $1,000 per year for the average driver is pretty significant. For drivers who drive fuel-inefficient vehicles, or who drive more mileage than average, or who live in areas with low electricity rates or high gas prices, the numbers can be even higher.
With purchase prices falling, and with cheap leases available and good prices on the used market, it starts looking like an economic no-brainer to drive an EV. This is probably why 6 of the 10 fastest-selling used cars in the US have plugs.
Add on incentives like California’s $2,500-$4,000 purchase incentive (which applies to cars purchased or leased >30 months) and SoCal Edison’s $450 rebate, or various other incentives which you’ll want to look up in your local area, and it starts to look like it’s not just exhaust coming out of that tailpipe, but hundreds or thousands of dollars of your hard-earned money every year. It’s time to go electric.The State Department on Monday deemed 23 more of former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s emails “secret,” more than doubling the number of messages she sent or received on her special account that have now been given that high level of classification.
Those messages were part of the last batch of 1,700 or so Clinton emails released by the State Department on Monday, closing out a 14-month process in which the department, under a judge’s order, processed and released 30,322 messages from Mrs. Clinton’s secret server.
Of those messages, a total of 45 have been deemed to contain “secret” information and more than 2,000 have “confidential” information — the lowest level of classification. More than 20 other messages were already labeled “top secret” and withheld entirely, bringing the overall classification level for Mrs. Clinton’s account to 6.8 percent, or about one out of every 14 messages she handled.
“On more than 2,000 occasions, Hillary Clinton recklessly jeopardized our national security and sensitive diplomatic efforts by using a secret, unsecure email server to send and receive classified material,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement accusing Mrs. Clinton of “a clear attempt to skirt government transparency laws.”
Mrs. Clinton declined to use an email tied to her department’s official State.gov system and instead created an account on a server she maintained at her home in New York, under the domain name clintonemail.com.
That arrangement, which the department has since said was against its policy, meant many of her messages were not archived and searched as required by law in response to requests from Congress, subpoenas from courts or Freedom of Information Act requests from the public.
After prodding by the congressional probe investigating the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack, Mrs. Clinton in December 2014 turned back to the State Department about 32,000 messages she said she sent or received during her time in office and that she deemed to be public business. She declined to turn over another 30,000 or so messages she said were purely personal.
Of the 32,000 messages she did produce, the National Archives says more than 1,000 of them are not related to government business, and they have been withheld.
Releasing the others has been a major headache for the Obama administration, which missed court deadlines and refereed internal fights over whether, and how, to withhold information that the government now deems classified.
The State Department and the intelligence community reached an agreement Monday on one message, upgrading it from “top secret” to merely “secret” after deciding the original assessment was not correct.
“The information available to diplomats and the judgments they form do not necessarily need to be classified just because there are parallel intelligence sources,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
That’s a small victory for Mrs. Clinton, who has argued that the Obama administration has gone overboard on classification. She has called for all of her messages to be released to the public.
She also says none of the messages she sent or received contained information marked classified at the time she handled the email.
Many of the secret-level emails released Monday contain readouts of conversations other people had with foreign leaders. Several of the messages involved current Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who at the time was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and sent information from meetings he had with |
outlets at ritzy addresses in Tokyo and Milan, and on the island of Bali, with a new shop set to open shortly in Paris.
The artful retail spaces are part cafe, part music club, part hip urban haberdashery. In L.A., locals and tourists buy Deus jeans at $259 and hoodies at $220, and spend hundreds more on Deus-branded surfboards, wetsuits, motorcycle helmets, boots and gloves.
The shop, which calls itself an “Emporium of Post Modern Activities,” hosts a monthly Sunday “Mass,” which draws hundreds of “sinners, winners and hodads” — translation: motorcycle riders and enthusiasts — for a half-day of free music and food.
On a typical weekday, the shop is busy with young men and women who bring their laptops, dogs and children to hang out and drink high-priced java from a local roaster. Julia Roberts is a regular.
“It’s a lifestyle experience,” says Deus General Manager Julian Heppekausen. “If we build a strong community, sales will come with that.”
The privately-held company does not release sales figures.
Clients have included a cable company executive who shipped Woolie two brand-new Kawasaki W650s, to begin taking apart and customizing, and a Disney executive who paid Woolie to completely re-imagine a new $30,000 Ducati.
The line of Hollywood clients began with Reynolds, in 2008, three years before his breakout movie role as the Green Lantern.
Woolie was working on a hand-built custom bike fabricated from all-American parts and components.
Reynolds saw the bike, called “The American,” and wanted it.
“OK, but it’s $60,000,” Woolie recalled telling him. Reynolds didn’t blink.
“It’s a crazy hobby,” Joel said. “But it’s a lot cheaper than cars or boats.”
Making motorbikes for high-end clients invites headaches, the Deus executives said. Some celebs are impatient, like the one who, told by Woolie that his custom build would take at least a year, called a week later and said, “How’s my bike coming along?”
Then there was the big-name musician who ordered a bike in a specific tone of green, insisted on several changes in the exact shade of green, but when he received the motorcycle said, “Why is it green? I wanted it red!”
Some of them, despite their riches, don’t want to pay for the bike at all. “A lot of these people, they already get everything for free,” Woolie said.
“The very first thing we tell them is, ‘You are going to have to pay for this,’ ” Jennings added. “Please don’t tell us this will be good for our careers.”
But it hasn’t hurt Deus’ apparel sales to be connected to cool motorbikes ridden by celebrities.
That’s why the custom bikes are an acceptable loss leader.
Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/1DHLyyOUNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The leading U.S. pro-gun group, the National Rifle Association, has vowed to fight a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global arms trade and dismissed suggestions that a recent U.S. school shooting bolstered the case for such a pact.
David Keene, president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), leads a moment of silence for victims of the December 14 Sandy Hook Elementary school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, before a news conference in Washington December 21, 2012. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
The U.N. General Assembly voted on Monday to restart negotiations in mid-March on the first international treaty to regulate conventional arms trade after a drafting conference in July collapsed because the U.S. and other nations wanted more time. Washington supported Monday’s U.N. vote.
U.S. President Barack Obama has come under intense pressure to tighten domestic gun control laws after the December 14 shooting massacre of 20 children and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. His administration has since reiterated its support for a global arms treaty that does not curtail U.S. citizens’ rights to own weapons.
Arms control campaigners say one person every minute dies as a result of armed violence and a convention is needed to prevent illicitly traded guns from pouring into conflict zones and fueling wars and atrocities.
In an interview with Reuters, NRA President David Keene said the Newtown massacre has not changed the powerful U.S. gun lobby’s position on the treaty. He also made clear that the Obama administration would have a fight on its hands if it brought the treaty to the U.S. Senate for ratification.
“We’re as opposed to it today as we were when it first appeared,” he said on Thursday. “We do not see anything in terms of the language and the preamble as being any kind of guarantee of the American people’s rights under the Second Amendment.”
The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the right to bear arms. Keene said the pact could require the U.S. government to enact legislation to implement it, which the NRA fears could lead to tighter restrictions on gun ownership.
He added that such a treaty was unlikely to win the two-thirds majority in the U.S. Senate necessary for approval.
“This treaty is as problematic today in terms of ratification in the Senate as it was six months ago or a year ago,” Keene said. Earlier this year a majority of senators wrote to Obama urging him to oppose the treaty.
U.N. delegates and gun-control activists say the July treaty negotiations fell apart largely because Obama, fearing attacks from Republican rival Mitt Romney before the November 6 election if his administration was seen as supporting the pact, sought to kick the issue past the U.S. vote.
U.S. officials have denied those allegation.
The NRA claimed credit for the July failure, calling it at the time “a big victory for American gun owners.”
NRA IS ‘TELLING LIES’
The main reason the arms trade talks are taking place at all is that the United States - the world’s biggest arms trader, which accounts for more than 40 percent of global transfers in conventional arms - reversed U.S. policy on the issue after Obama was first elected and decided in 2009 to support a treaty.
Supporters of the treaty accuse the NRA of deceiving the American public about the pact, which they say will have no impact on U.S. domestic gun ownership and would apply only to exports. Last week, Amnesty International launched a campaign to counter what it said were NRA distortions about the treaty.
“The NRA is telling lies about the arms treaty to try to block U.S. government support,” Michelle Ringuette of Amnesty International USA said about the campaign. “The NRA’s leadership must stop interfering in U.S. foreign policy on behalf of the arms industry.”
Jeff Abramson of Control Arms said that as March approaches, “the NRA is going to be challenged in ways it never has before and that can affect the way things go” with the U.S. government.
The draft treaty under discussion specifically excludes arms-related “matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State.”
Among its key provisions is a requirement that governments make compliance with human rights norms a condition for foreign arms sales. It would also have states ban arms transfers when there is reason to believe weapons or ammunition might be diverted to problematic recipients or end up on illicit markets.
Keene said the biggest problem with the treaty is that it regulates civilian arms, not just military weapons.
According to the Small Arms Survey, roughly 650 million of the 875 million weapons in the world are in the hands of civilians. That, arms control advocates say, is why any arms trade treaty must regulate both military and civilian weapons.
Keene said the NRA would actively participate in the fight against the arms trade treaty in the run-up to the March negotiations. “We will be involved,” he warned, adding that it was not clear if the NRA would address U.N. delegates directly as the group did in July.
The NRA has successfully lobbied members of Congress to stop major new gun restrictions in the United States since the 1994 assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. It also gives financial backing to pro-gun candidates.
EXPLOSIVE ISSUE
European and other U.N. delegates who support the arms trade treaty told Reuters on condition of anonymity they hoped Newtown would boost support for the convention in the United States, where gun control is an explosive political issue.
“Newtown has opened the debate within the United States on weapons controls in ways that it has not been opened in the past,” Abramson said, adding that “the conversation within the U.S. will give the (Obama) administration more leeway.”
Keene rejected the idea of bringing the Newtown tragedy into the discussion of an arms trade treaty.
“I find it interesting that some of the folks that advocate the treaty say it would have no impact whatever within the United States but that it needs to be passed to prevent another occurrence of a school shooting such as took place in Newtown,” he said. “Both of those positions can’t be correct.”
Obama administration officials have tried to explain to U.S. opponents of the arms trade pact that the treaty under discussion would not affect domestic gun sales and ownership.
“Our objectives for the ATT (arms trade treaty) have not changed,” a U.S. official told Reuters. “We seek a treaty that fights illicit arms trafficking and proliferation, protects the sovereign right of states to conduct legitimate arms trade, and meets the concerns that we have articulated throughout.”
“In particular, we will not accept any treaty that infringes on the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens to bear arms,” the official added.
Supporters of the treaty also worry that major arms producers like Russia, China, Iran, India, Pakistan and others could seek to render the treaty toothless by including loopholes and making key provisions voluntary, rather than mandatory.
The United States, like all other U.N. member states, can effectively veto the treaty since the negotiations will be conducted on the basis of consensus. That means the treaty must receive unanimous support in order to be approved in March.
But if it fails in March, U.N. delegations can put it to a vote in the 193-nation General Assembly, where diplomats say it would likely secure the required two-thirds majority.ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Yes, it's going to get worse, a whole lot worse... Bill Gross warns this is the "New Normal. Forget 10% returns. Think 5%".... Economist Larry Kotlikoff, author of The Coming Generational Storm, warns: "Let's get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending nor taxing will help the country pay its bills"... Economist Peter Morici warns: "Unemployment is stuck near 10%. Deflation coming. Stock market threatens collapse. The Federal Reserve and Barack Obama are out of bullets. Near zero federal funds rates, central bank purchases, a $1.6 trillion deficit have failed to revive the economy."... Simon Johnson, co-author of 13 Bankers, warns: "We came close to another Great Depression, next time we may not be so lucky." Why? Because Wall Street's already well into the next bubble/bust cycle -- the "doom cycle."
Warning: More bad news ahead. Welcome to a bleak second half 2010, worse for 2011.
It's early morning: In comes economist Gary Shilling's new Insight newsletter, just before I head for the kitchen to make my wife's breakfast. Gary's "Mid-Course Checkup" doesn't raise my spirits. Sure, he's got bragging rights. His January forecasts are still on the money. But don't you just hate guys like him? Brilliant. Honest. Great track record. I guess that's why he's been a long-time Forbes columnist. Investors listen when he talks.
After cooking her breakfast I'm flipping through the L.A. Times' entertainment section, avoiding the business and financial pages. Didn't want to spoil my breakfast too. Suddenly, big headline stops me: "Buy, Sell, Hope." Hope? What's that? Good news about markets? You buy, you sell, you hope? Is "hope" America's last market strategy?
No, "Buy Sell Hope" was a grabber headline. A story about moviemakers buying film rights of bestsellers hoping to sell lots of movie tickets to millions who bought the book. Doesn't always work. A metaphor: Economic theories often fail. The focus: Julie Roberts's new film "Eat Pray Love," based on Elizabeth Gilbert's 8 million copy bestseller, a book filled with New Age advice rivaling the best of Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra.
But that gave me a bright idea: Let's blend the two. See if we can brighten some of Shilling's gloomier forecasts and recommendations for 2010-2011 with some of Gilbert's upbeat advice... imagining "Pretty Woman" Julia, the Eat-Pray-Love lead, doing a voice-over for Gilbert. So here we go: First, Shilling's 6 "buys," then the 11 "sells," 17 strategies for 2010. He admits some mixed results, but he's "sticking with them for the second half" and on into the coming dark days of 2011. I'm sticking with Julia:
1. Buy Treasury Bonds: Stay with this big winner. Stockholders hate them, but this is a safe haven in the coming deflation storm on into 2011. Long maturities. Zero-coupons. Lower commissions. That's "Insight." Now imagine Eat-Pray-Love's Julia's voiceover: "There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey and the Book of Common Prayer." Okay, guys would prefer an NFL game with his buddies and a Bud. Winners all around.
2. Buy Income-Producing Securities: Still viable. Stock market's gone nowhere for 12 years, says Shilling. Pick selective income-producers: utilities, drugs, telecoms, hi-grade munis, preferreds, etc. Buy direct or ETFs. Then Julia reminds us: "God never slams a door in your face without opening a box of Girl Scout cookies."
3. Buy Consumer Staples and Foods: Less volatility than S&P 500. Hey, you gotta eat, brush teeth, wash your clothes. Good bet in good and bad times. Julia agrees: "In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes... the meal is the only currency that is real."
4. Buy Small Luxuries: Stay aboard. Yes, discounts, house brands, frugality's in. But still, we all want the best of the little things, "cheap chic," say Gary and Fred. Not Julia's Girl-Scout cookies, treat yourself with favorite chocolates, wine, cigars.
5. Buy The Dollar: Should continue to rise. Bet on futures, puts, ETFs on the dollar index. Julia is patriotic and spiritual: "Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark."
6. Buy Eurodollar Futures: Unbelievable winner, and more to go. And if you're traveling, Julia tempts with this mouth-waterer: "Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me and tell me that you did." Yes, it's all in your head.
Okay folks, that's it, only six Insight "buys." Here's what our Eat-Pray-Love guru might add when you buy-sell-hope: "You have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light." Yes, even with these 11 "sells."
7. Sell U.S. Stocks in General: Declines likely to continue. In May, Insight warned the recovery was "Four Cylinders, One Firing." Only inventory was firing. Missing? Jobs. Consumers. Housing. Slow growth. All in "secular bear that started in 2000 and has years to run." Yes, years. Can you still be happy? Yes, says Julia's guru: "People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it." Harder in a recession, but you just do it.
8. Sell Homebuilder & Selected Related Stocks: More weakness ahead. And it will get worse. Millions mortgage-holders under water, can't sell, can't refi. Families in stress. Solution: Eat-Pray-Love and listen: "Real, sane, mature love--the kind that pays the mortgage year after year and picks up the kids after school--is not based on infatuation but on affection and respect."
9. Sell Selected Big-Ticket Consumer Discretionary Equities: Still vulnerable: Autos, appliances, hospitality. Rebates gone. Postponing purchases. Save, get frugal, flow with reality. Julia: "Every day a person is presented with not two or even three but dozens of choices... our modern world has become a neurosis-generating machine of the highest order." Stop, make time to eat, to pray, to love.
10. Sell Banks and Other Financial Institutions: Remain vulnerable. Including Fannie, Freddie, regionals, small banks. More regulations. By 2014 bank portfolios have $800 billion mortgages coming due, two-thirds underwater. Huge impact on capital. Sell. What would Julia say: Eat in moderation, love, pray a lot.
11. Sell Consumer Lenders' Stocks: More declines in credit cards, etc. Americans save more, cut their borrow'n'spend binge. Reduce stress says Julia: "The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go." You too.
12. Sell Low & Old Tech Capital Equipment Producers: Falling trend. Mega excess capacity. Capital spending dropping says Insight. Julia worries that you're holding onto the past: "You must find another reason to work, other than the desire for success or recognition." Your passion "must come from another place."
13. If You Plan to Sell Your House, Second Home or Investment Houses Any Time Soon, Do So Yesterday: Too much inventory, and fear. Warning: Down another 20%. Julia says you will survive because "somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace." That's your true home.
14. Sell Junk Bonds: Rally's overdone, warns Gary. Slow growth recovery, deflation fears, "lethal for many junk bonds." The "New Normal" cuts returns in half. We chase junk. Bigger risks. Julia: "That's your problem. You're wishing too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughta be." Accept the New Normal. Stop chasing deals like a teenager in heat.
15. Sell Commercial Real Estate: Got ahead of itself. Hotel occupancies down. Office vacancies up. Refinancing trouble looms. Maybe short REITs and ETFs. Julia knows our "world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses." Are you trusting Wall Street? Or your own life experiences?
16. Sell Most Commodities: Soft economy, soft commodities. Insight warns of "unattractive investments in coming years of weak demand, excessive capacity and soft prices." China's a big importer, aggressively tying up global supplies. Risky bets. So imagine you're lost and listen to your Eat-Pray-Love guru: "When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered a few feet off the path... Then night falls again... you still have no idea where you are... you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore." Are commodities taking you off your path?
17. Sell Developing Country Stocks, Bonds: They depend on exports, are vulnerable to global weakness. China overheating. Risks in India, Brazil, Vietnam, etc. Wall Street pushes overseas investing, they love the commissions. Warning, go slow cautions Julia: "Time, when pursued like a bandit, will behave like one; always remaining one country or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you." The only real winner investing overseas is your Wall Street broker collecting all commissions you pay.
What a combo: Warnings from Gary Shilling's "Buy-Sell-Hope" Insights newsletter. Plus Girl Scout Cookie advice from our Eat-Pray-Love guru, with "Pretty Woman" Julia Roberts' voice-over. Let's top it off with one more of her jewels: "The Bhagavad Gita, that ancient Indian Yogic text, says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly." Get it? The market, the economy, the whole world may crash... but will you crash with it? Or will you still be the "best you?" Will you fulfill your destiny?There are so many phones launching this quarter, it's difficult to keep up. In the U.S., Sony's phones generally get announced and go on sale with little fanfare, largely because they lack carrier backing. This is true of the Xperia XZ1, which is available on Amazon right now for $650, and its smaller Xperia XZ1 Compact counterpart. Here in Canada, things are a little different: for the XZ1, Sony has the support of the country's second-largest carrier, Bell as well as upstart Freedom Mobile. The result is a wider net of potential customers and, mercifully, a lower price on subsidy to offset Sony's traditionally high prices. Oh, and it also has a fingerprint sensor. Canadians can buy the Xperia XZ1 at a carrier, and use its fingerprint sensor. Jealous? The Xperia XZ1 is the company's best phone in years, and finds the company performing at its peak, with few real compromises compared to other flagships on the market, for the first time since 2014 or so. Though the company has frequently brought out great products — everything from the Xperia Z line was, while flawed, pretty reliable — it faltered slightly with the Xperia X series, and only slightly recovered with 2016's XZ. In truth, the Xperia XZ1 does little to further Sony's industrial design, and it doesn't completely resolve its most endemic problem — a camera experience that pales in comparison to leaders like Google, Samsung, Apple, and HTC. Instead, it gets the Japanese company closer than ever to those lofty heights, while providing Sony's famously good battery life, exceptional build quality, and stable software. The whole package
Sony often gets criticized for the glacial pace of its design evolution, but I am content with the subtle ways Sony continues to improve its phones. The Xperia XZ1, for instance, is the perfect size for one-handed use; its 5.2-inch LCD display is quite good, even at its comparatively low 1080p resolution; its audio capabilities are impressive, and work seamlessly; and as Andrew remarked in his review, the phone's camera is demonstrably better than any Sony phone to date — even using the same hardware as its larger XZ Premium counterpart. Then there's something else — a thing I can't quite put my finger on, but it's there nonetheless. It's a kinship with a piece of technology that rarely happens as quickly as it did here. Perhaps it's the perfectly-placed, 100% reliable fingerprint sensor (sorry, Americans) or the two-stage shutter button that, now, actually produces great photos. Or perhaps it's the fact that it ships with Android 8.0 Oreo, the first on a non-Google phone. After the honeymoon
Here's my issue with the narrative about flagships today — their first impression is given more weight than their long-term usability. The Xperia XZ1 has just come out, but I have only had good experiences with Sony phones in the months and years since their release and have no reason to think differently about this one. That's because Sony doesn't encumber its software with useless apps, nor does it generally feel weighed down by the stagnating Android skin it's so often criticized for not updating. Yes, Sony's app drawer scrolls horizontally and requires some awkward finger maneuvering to put an app on the home screen, but if that's the biggest criticism one can levy at it, I think it's in pretty good shape.
Who cares if the launcher feels old-fashioned when it's the first phone running the latest Android version?
Such an affordance to consistency between generations also affords Sony the ability to iterate on its platform updates more quickly than other companies; who cares if the launcher feels old-fashioned when it's the first phone running the latest Android version? Seriously, the latter is far more important to me — especially when it forgoes much of the instability and bugginess that I experienced on the Pixels. It's not perfect, mind you, but I've only been forced to close an app or restart the phone a couple of times. This is a phone that, were I forced to settle down with a single device for a year, I could happily keep in my pocket. Its size, weight, build quality, water resistance, dual front-facing speakers, audio prowess, camera shutter button, performance, and up-to-date software are points in its favor. And its "boring" design, its utilitarianism, happens to be one, too: phones are meant to be used, not admired. The bezel problem
Sony phones have bezels. They're ugly. Their designs are not in the same league as those from Samsung, LG — even Google. I mean, sure. This is not the most modern phone you can buy, not by a long shot. If you're a screen-to-body ratio absolutist, you should probably stay as far from the the Xperia XZ1 (and the Pixel 2, for that matter) as possible. But in this case bezels are useful — holding the phone in landscape in one hand and pressing the shutter button requires pressing one's palm into the bottom portion below the screen. Were that area filled with pixels, it would almost certainly make the shutter button less usable. The bezel problem is also emblematic of the XZ1's other minor issues: the camera isn't great in low light, and the stereo speakers aren't as loud as some of the competition. Indeed, the 2700mAh battery doesn't outlast all the competition (though it handily beats the Galaxy S8, which has a larger cell), and the aluminum back is occasionally slippery. These are all issues I grew to accept in a short amount of time, but they may be dealbreakers for you. That's fine — don't buy the phone. The camera performs
I'm not going to rehash what Andrew wrote about the phone in his effusive piece on the Xperia XZ1's camera, but I'll say this: I haven't felt this comfortable just shooting with a Sony phone in a very long time. In years past, Sony was its own worst enemy, with superlative camera hardware let down by awful post-processing. This year, things are considerably better, with warm and inviting colors, instant and accurate autofocus, and low-light performance that, while not always awesome, is much better than in previous models.
Of course, I haven't mentioned the 3D Creator software — the gimmick that scans your head, or a sandwich, and models it in full 3D. When I tested the phone, it was a neat trick, but since actually getting the phone I haven't once opened the app and likely never will. A sound choice
In addition to very good imaging, Sony's latest phone, as its previous ones did, emphasizes audio quality. It lacks the high-output amplifier and DAC of the LG V30, but Sony makes up for it somewhat we support for a number of impressive proprietary and standard codecs that purport to make streaming audio sound better from any set of headphones. This bears true. Every headphone I tested, Bluetooth or wired, on the phone sounded great, and Sony's ClearAudio+ suite of optimizations actually works, dynamically altering the equalizer based on the headphone type connected. The Sony storyThis is not a drill, we repeat, this is not a drill! A BeaverTails food truck will be in downtown Brampton today, Friday, November 17.
The city’s massive holiday celebrations kick off at 6 p.m. with the lighting of downtown Brampton’s yearly lights display, and the Christmas market will be going on at the same time.
And you can take it all in while feasting on a delicious Beaver Tail. The treats will be available throughout the event from 6 to 10 p.m.
The city has lots going on, with the tree lighting at 6:20 p.m., the market in Garden Square, Daily Times Square and the city hall Atrium. Daily Times Square will have a warm-up zone with Muskoka chairs and marshmallow roasting.
All of it is part of the city’s three-day holiday celebrations. On Saturday the Santa Claus Parade takes over Main Street and the market runs throughout the weekend.
Don’t miss the chance to enjoy a delicious beaver tail and get into the festive spirit.
Get all the details of what’s going on downtown over the weekend here.
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commentsTime and luck ran out for Katie Mullen’s.
The Irish pub in downtown Denver shut down Wednesday night, a move that put the cavernous, 10,885-square-foot restaurant space back in the hands of Chartres Lodging Group, the San Francisco investment firm that owns the Sheraton Downtown Denver Hotel at 1550 Court Place.
The closure was noted Thursday morning on the restaurant’s Facebook page in a post that invited patrons to Katie Eile’s at Orchard Town Center in Westminster.
Katie Mullen’s owner, Northwest Bars Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Jan. 26. Owner Paul Maye told the Denver Post then that Katie Mullen’s fought an uphill battle from the time it opened in early 2009. The recession severely limited financing options and new 16th Street Mall competitors such as the Yard House siphoned away customers.
The restaurant filed for bankruptcy just after Chartres, operating as W2007 MVP Denver LLC, served Maye a notice of default.
Northwest was more than $92,000 behind in rent and penalties after failing to make payments in November, December and January, W2007 attorneys said in a filing made with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Colorado. W2007 sought a forcible entry and detainer action.
Rent payments “dribbled in,” and then the March 31 rent check bounced, W2007 claimed. Additionally, Northwest breached the lease terms by granting liens on the restaurant to other creditors that were in excess of $295,000.
Katie Mullen’s base rent for its first five years of operation was $32,283.33 per month, increasing to $40,818.75 per month for years six through 10, court records show.
“Certainly, debtor’s disappointment for failing to make its business work does not rise to the level of harm W2007 will suffer if it is unable to obtain possession of the premises and is forced to endure debtor’s continued and incurable breaches of the lease,” Matthew A. Morr and Andrew J. Petrie, the Ballard Spahr LLP attorneys representing W2007, wrote in court filings.
W2007 and Northwest hashed out an agreement earlier this month that allowed the restaurant to operate rent-free until June 5, when a large event was scheduled. Maye promised to hand over the keys the following day, Petrie said Thursday in an interview with The Denver Post.
Closing the restaurant on Wednesday breached that agreement, Petrie said.
Sheraton Downtown general manager Tony Dunn said the space is being marketed in hopes of landing a corporate-owned steak and seafood concept with a bar focus that would be appealing to hotel and convention guests. Finding the right restaurant could take a couple of months.
“We’re going to take our time to find the right partner, the right tenant,” he said.
In the interim, the Sheraton will use the restaurant space as a venue for private events, he said.
Maye and his attorney could not be immediately reached for comment.
But according to transcripts of a March 7 court hearing, Maye said Katie Mullen’s needed $6 million to $7 million a year in gross sales to be successful. Court records include financial statements showing the restaurant’s revenue totaled $3.5 million in 2015, down from $3.6 million in 2014.
“To be honest, then, we have struggled probably with the upturn in the economy,” Maye said in the hearing. “Ironically, we have struggled to get good management teams and stuff like that with our people who have moved on to other corporations and stuff with the more corporate culture type.”
Maye also said in the hearing that he had been in discussions with W2007 to sell the restaurant to a “major corporation, a big player here in the United States,” but the agreement wouldn’t allow him to pay off creditors.
Wee Katie’s in the Highland neighborhood and Katie Eile’s in Westminster are not owned by Northwest Bars Inc. Maye told the court he’s looking to sell his interest in Wee Katie’s.
Alicia Wallace: 303-954-1939, awallace@denverpost.com or @aliciawallaceRenewable energy target: Wind turbine producer axes 100 jobs as Government plans to lower RET
Updated
Australia's largest wind tower producer is sacking 100 staff after the Federal Government revealed plans to scale back the Renewable Energy Target (RET).
Keppel Prince Engineering, based in Portland in south-west Victoria, told workers this morning it would be mothballing its tower fabrication division and consolidating other parts of its business.
The Government announced yesterday it wanted to see the RET reduced 41,000 gigawatt hours to around 26,000 gigawatt hours.
Keppel's general manager Steve Garner said while the decision to axe jobs was not a direct response to that announcement, the uncertainty surrounding the decision had hurt the sector.
"The announcement will effectively kill off the industry," he said.
"The way this Government is going on they've been doing nothing but try to destroy the renewable energy sector for the amount of time they've been in Parliament," he said.
The Coalition had been reviewing the RET which requires that 20 per cent of the nation's power come from renewable sources by 2020.
Keppel Prince job cuts Approximately 100 positions will be axed
Tower fabrication division to be mothballed
Warrnambool crane operations to be closed
Some management administrative roles cut
That review, headed by businessman Dick Warburton, presented a range of options to the Government including recommendations to scale back or wind up the RET completely over time.
Mr Garner said the length of time it took to complete the review and the ongoing uncertainty over the Government's plans for the target made investing in the sector difficult.
"Here we are 10 months on and we don't have a decision about where the Renewable Energy Target's going to be," he said.
"That's completely stalled $15 billion worth of investment in wind farms throughout the nation."
Mr Garner said the company it did not have wind tower work beyond November.
State Member for Western Victoria Gayle Tierney said the job losses were devastating for the region.
"My thoughts are with all Keppel Prince employees and their families. This is a traumatic time and the last thing that Portland needed," Ms Tierney said.
"I find this situation totally reprehensible as it was preventable if the Liberal Government didn't use renewable energy and renewable energy jobs as their plaything.
"We need a Government that is attuned to the needs of our economy and provides sustainable local jobs for local people."
Victorian Premier Denis Napthine blamed wind power companies that used overseas towers for the loss of the jobs in his electorate.
"What we're seeing is the wind energy industry failing to use local jobs and local producers like Keppel Prince," he said.
"Fancy building 60 wind towers in Ballarat and importing the wind towers from overseas rather than using locally produced towers."
The director of the Clean Energy Council, Russell Marsh, rejected the Premier's claims.
"I mean to date, something like 80 per cent of the wind towers and steel that are used in Australian wind farms have come from Australian steel and from Australian tower manufacturers like Keppel Prince," he said.
The RET was initially set up by the Howard government to encourage investment in electricity produced from sources such as solar and wind, but the Rudd government expanded the RET scheme to mandate 20 per cent of all electricity would come from renewable sources by 2020.
Topics: wind-energy, electricity-energy-and-utilities, federal-government, unemployment, portland-3305, australia
First postedPopuluxe Brewing will open the doors to their new location this Saturday, September 23. The reopening has been delayed for over year, due to permitting and construction issues. The new brewery has an expanded tasting room, an arcade with games from the Seattle Pinball Museum, and Ballard’s biggest beer garden.
“These seats have been empty for way too long but we finally received word that we can open our doors at our new location (directly across the yard from our old location) this Saturday,” co-owner Amy Besunder tells My Ballard. To celebrate the opening, they’ll be handing out free Populuxe trucker hats to the first 25 people who come through the doors on Saturday.
Populuxe will be serving two new fresh hop beers: the Fresh Hop Citra Pale, and a Fresh Hop Farm House which they describe as a Scandinavian-style farmhouse ale. Peasant Food Manifesto food truck will be on site for the opening party.
The grand opening party is from noon to 10pm on Saturday. Visit their Facebook event page for more information and to RSVP.High-octane trading may be counterproductive to taxpayers, for sure. But not to the speculators who win big when such transactions pay off. And in the case of A.I.G., the speculators got their winnings from the taxpayers.
The certainty that Mr. Bernanke expressed about the S.E.C.’s inquiry into credit default swaps is quaint as well. If the past is prologue, we might see a case or two emerge from that inquiry five years from now. The fact is that |
it completely straight, so you have to anticipate. In this case Marc has anticipated what he needs to do and he’s pushing hard on the right footpeg to bring the bike upright, so the bike doesn’t keep turning left too much, so he will make the minimum distance on the straight.
“Many years ago when I managed the Yamaha France 500 GP team with Niall Mackenzie and Adrien Morillas we did a private test at Paul Ricard. Coming onto the Mistral they were doing the snake on the straight and it upset me to see it! You have to think about the theory of it: if you don’t do the snake you will gain in distance and in speed. We had a speed gun there, so I rode their bikes and when I did what Marc is doing in this photo I would gain four or five kilometres per hour at the end of the straight. Of course, it takes work to do this and it’s complicated!”Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Aug. 25, 2015, 11:35 PM GMT / Updated Aug. 25, 2015, 11:51 PM GMT By Alex Johnson
A federal judge temporarily stopped executions in Mississippi on Tuesday at the request of two Death Row inmates who say the state's lethal injection protocol is "chemical torture."
The state Executioner's Office immediately filed an appeal of U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate's temporary injunction declaring that the state can't use pentobarbital or midazolam — both of them deployed to render prisoners unconscious — in its three-drug lethal cocktail.
Wingate didn't file an explanation for his ruling. The Supreme Court in June upheld the legality of midazolam but didn't address pentobarbital.
Lawyers for the inmates, Richard Jordan and Ricky Chase, argued that the state Corrections Department won't disclose the source of the raw powder it uses to compound pentobarbital, meaning its purity and potency can't be guaranteed. In any event, they said, pentobarbital doesn't meet the state's own standard of an "ultra short-acting barbiturate or other similar drug."Photo by Angela Chen
Stand-up comedy's pretty hot right now…am I right, guys? Ladies? Ladies, can you back me up on this? Yes, folks, it is hot...Hot with a capital H! How hot is it, you ask? Stand-up comedy is so hot, many people are currently attempting to do it, with varying levels of success! Watching the latest Louis C.K. special, reminiscing about how beloved your high school hijinx were (remember when you told Mr. Douglas you didn’t do your homework because you were too busy “doing” his wife? Classic!) and deciding, “Shit, I can be a comedian!” however, does not a comedian make.
As a mediocre comedian myself, I think I know a thing or two about mediocre comedy. This gives me the ability to competently analyze it and inform young dreamers how not to do it.
But don’t take my word for it! In the interest of adding an air of legitimacy to my claims, I’ve sought the counsel of thoroughly competent comedian Andy Kindler, author of the legendary “Hack’s Handbook."
Photo by Susan Maljan
His infinitely more articulate thoughts on the subject follow my Gen-Y friendly bullet points and snarky comments.
Do NOT assume everyone has the same knowledge of pop culture as you.
I—suspend your disbelief—do not have encyclopedic knowledge of the Dark Knight trilogy. Nor have I seen that commercial for dick pills you wrote a tight five about. I—again, suspend your disbelief—am not an anomaly. There are tens of thousands like me. That being said, reference-laden material will not make you a comedic legend (unless, of course, you’re Mort Sahl). If you simply must share your feelings about the latest Michael Bay abortion, might I suggest abandoning public performance and becoming a VH1 talking head? You'll get the attention you crave, from an audience that remembers, and is perpetually amused by, the existence of ABC’s T.G.I.F. line-up.
Kindler says: “In the 80s, it was, ‘What are you people, in the Twilight Zone?’ And in the 90s it would be, ‘What are you people, from Twin Peaks?’ And now, it would be… I don't know, a vampire reference? In a sense, the hackness does not change. If you look back at comedy in the 80s and 90s, you know that it's hack because everyone's doing some version of Seinfeld; some kind of observational, 'What's the deal with this situation?’ You could identify that it's terrible. But today, I think the insidious part of it is that people don’t use the old rhythms of stand-up comedy, but it's no better. It's not hipper because they're doing a Full House reference.”
Do NOT talk about your bowel movements.
Everyone shits. It’s a fact of life. Most people, however, have the good taste to keep their fecal history to themselves. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a grown-ass man tell a “joke” about shitting himself, I’d be knee-deep in fiber supplements.
Kindler says: “Talking about the bathroom, to me, is the hackiest thing I've ever heard of. People act under the guise of being honest—but if you tell a joke, and the only reason people laugh is because you've stretched it out to the hideous degree that people are forced to laugh, then that's probably a reflection that the joke's not amazing. I would invest most of my life in a PR firm that would keep the secret that I shit my pants from people.”
Do NOT bother going to therapy.
A common trope among modern comedians is the long, rambling soliloquy detailing said comedian's inherent shittiness and crippling depression. Comedians have made entire careers out of kvetching about their inability to date, live in their own skin, and relate to other human beings. Ironically these are the same comedians who, at length, talk about attending therapy. But you can't have it both ways, fuck-o. If your entire comedic persona is predicated on your emotional instability, the chances of you actually making a real go at therapy are slim to none. After all, if you were emotionally stable, you'd lose your "edge."
Kindler says: “If you are doing anything that looks like a persona, it just doesn't ring true. So, yes—maybe comedians do go to therapy, but they're going to therapy to look for material. It's not that funny, because they're either not really going to therapy, or it's boilerplate therapy. I think that people are exaggerating what kind of mental problems they have because they figure it will be a good angle.”
Do NOT berate the audience for "not getting it."
It might be—hear me out—that your audience "doesn't get it" because there's "nothing to get."
Kindler says: “Berating the audience is trying to set up a thing where you're a genius and they should be listening to you if they want to get your words of wisdom. It's just another way of distancing yourself and making yourself out to be better than the audience; to be in control of the show, to be cool. A lot of comics still want to be cool. But there's nothing cool about comedy.”
Do NOT shit on the room as soon as you get on stage.
Your material about that basic cable show in which people with weird addictions eat inorganic things may be the best in town—that, however, does not make your booking a compulsory one. Someone, out of the kindness of their heart, decided to put you on their show. Sure, said show might take place in a sparsely populated, unfinished basement, but, by God, it’s still a show. And your audience, regardless of its size, is just that—an audience, filled or unfilled, with people who toil away all goddamned week at their thankless jobs (e.g. running the cell phone kiosk in the mall, running the curling iron kiosk in the mall, etc.). Their lives are hard enough. All they want is to get loaded on a Saturday night and laugh at you, clowner. So why don't you put the kibosh on rippin' the room a new one, OK?
Kindler says: “It’s probably a symptom in general of comedians having an attitude more than having an act."
Do NOT "ironically" denigrate the disenfranchised.
You’re a white male, but one of the “good ones.” Being one of the “good ones,” however, does not give you carte blanche to speak in a cartoonish black cadence, call women that won’t fuck you bitches, or treat everyone from the south as sister-fucking, toothless morons. Your ironic posturing could very well result in you unironically getting your ass kicked.
Kindler says: “The general umbrella I would put this under is shock value comedy. There are comics who think that just because they've upset somebody, that that's good. It doesn't mean you're doing something brilliant. It doesn't make it right. The reason why a lot of this stuff can be insidious is that there are people, like my dad, who can be charming and say things that may not be politically correct. But you can tell when someone is genuinely sexist, and you can tell when they're really getting a laugh on the sexism, even though they might say that it's a comment on sexism."
Do NOT talk about how disorienting it is to be high on drugs.
Drugs alter your consciousness. That is why people use, and routinely abuse, them. This information is commonly known. Marijuana may now be legal, and get you a modicum of cheap applause, but talking at length about getting your weed card accomplishes nothing.
Kindler says: "It's an update of the 'I got my cat high' from the 80s."
Do NOT not write jokes.
There's no harm in relating an amusing anecdote, so long as it's, y'know, amusing. Quoting another person (or, God forbid, a commercial) verbatim, however, is not a joke. It’s stealing material from the woman behind you in line at CVS. If that’s where you get your material, the woman behind you in line at CVS deserves an hour special more than you do.
Kindler says: “I was with my parents last year, and my mother said, 'It looks like things are getting worse for Paterno.’ And he had just died a month before. I was like, 'Mom, he's dead. What more worse could happen? What, are they gonna yell on his grave?' I took what she said, but I added something funny about it. You’ve got to add something."
Do NOT assume that, because you are "big" on Twitter, that you are a comedian.
Congratulations! Your grammatically incorrect musings about gun control, celebrity deaths, and Justin Bieber's lack of tact, combined with your wholesome good looks and inoffensive profile photo, has netted you a few thousand followers. This, however, does not get you a Get Out of Jail Free card. And by “Get Out of Jail Free” card, I mean “Get Out of Doing Open Mics for Eight Years” card.
Kindler says: “Twitter fuels people's egos, which is understandable. A lot of times, I find myself going right to the interactions area; hopefully what saves me is that I'm aware of my own self-absorption and narcissism. But I think other people don't; they use it as a weapon. They think, 'I have however many followers, so I must be funny.' It's another way to create a fake persona. I see it as a dangerous trend. I would favor legislation on that trend.”
Do NOT go over the light because you need to "end strong."
Listen, boss—you can’t win ‘em all. Hell, you can’t win most. That being said, you will not always “kill.” There's a reason why you're flailing. It's because you’re flailing. Embrace the void, come up with some funnier jokes, and get back on that horse at a later date.
Kindler says: “You do not need to end strong. You need to end. By saying you have to end strong, what you're also saying is, 'I have to make sure that the people following me might not do well. Or might not have enough time. Or that the crowd'll just get tired.' Your desire to end strong stops at the person's nose who needs to do a set afterwards. So get off, is what I say."
Do NOT aggressively try to question your audience's belief system.
Sure, God's probably not real, but do you have to make such a big fucking deal about it?
Kindler says: “It's been covered. You don't have to go through every page of the Bible and say, 'Oh, yeah, right, OK. So Moses parts the sea. Oh, yeah, lemme get this straight... yeah, turned into a pillar of salt.' Why don't you go through poetry and start slamming different parts of classic poems? It really is preaching to the converted. And I find it sad, because it's like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It would be like saying, 'Yeah, comedy's terrible. You've got Carrot Top and Larry the Cable Guy. Comedy's terrible! There's no comedy.’ People take the grossest examples of things and treat them like the only example.”
@bornferalNo one wants to be like poor Florida State Sen. Mike Bennett, who was forced to apologize last week after he “was caught on video viewing a picture of four young women in bikinis last week while his fellow senators were debating a bill dealing with abortion.”
Sunshine State News executive editor Nancy Smith later said, “The only thing is if I had to do it over again is I would probably not call the picture porn,” but instead “entirely inappropriate and risque,” yet the damage was already done and Bennett’s name will probably be forever linked to porn on the web due to his perhaps-four-seconds-long blunder.
And since no politician wants to be seen as soft on the politically incorrect subject, wielding pornography as a weapon can sometimes wreak havoc on proposed legislation.
“House Republicans on Thursday unhinged an $80 billion technology bill after forcing a vote that Democrats said would expose their members to election-year attack ads claiming they support pornography,” Jim Abrams reports for the Associated Press.
Democrats had to pull the bill after half their members voted for the GOP measure that, in addition to severely shrinking the technology bill, put them on record as supporting the firing of government workers who view or download pornography on the job. It was the second time in a week that Republicans used such a tactic to their advantage. Last week they brought about major changes to the Cash for Caulkers bill to subsidize people who buy energy-efficient products for their homes by attaching a provision barring building contractors from hiring child molesters.
“You should be embarrassed,” House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., a moderate who works well with Republicans, shouted at the end of the debate. He said Republicans had stuck in a “little bitty provision that means nothing that’s going to gut the entire bill.”
A report at the Chronicle of Higher Education adds,
The chairman of the science committee, Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee, said he understood the federal government faced urgent budget problems but warned that such problems could be even worse in the future if the country failed to invest in its technological pre-eminence. Mr. Gordon said he was especially frustrated by the apparent success of Mr. Hall in using the issue of pornography to help defeat higher spending levels for scientific research. “Nobody seriously thinks that we don’t want to deal with pornography here, for God sakes,” Mr. Gordon told lawmakers at the conclusion of the House debate. “If you vote for this,” he said of Mr. Hall’s amendment, “you should be embarrassed.” Despite the opposition among Republicans, the bill was largely supported by industry, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers among hundreds of organizations writing in support of the measure. The Chamber of Commerce’s senior vice president in charge of education and work-force development, Arthur J. Rothkopf, said he hoped Congress would reconsider the matter, while acknowledging the effectiveness of politically emotional issues such as pornography. “It’s an election year,” Mr. Rothkopf said.
Last week, at Politico, Jake Sherman wrote about the first time House Republicans used the tactic:The US claim that Russian troops will go home in body bags if Moscow doesn't end its Aleppo offensive is absurd, former CIA contractor Steven Kelley told RT. He said Russia is the only answer to defeating ISIS. Other experts also weigh in on the subject.
When asked about State Department spokesperson John Kirby's warning that Russia “will continue to send troops home in body bags” if it doesn't put an end to the offensive, Kelley said Washington is pretending to be fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) when it isn't doing so at all.
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“The US has always been the main sponsor and creator of Daesh (Arabic acronym for IS), so this charade that they are having anything to do with fighting Daesh in Syria is completely a farce, and I think the rest of the world is smart enough to realize that everything that comes out of the mouth of John Kirby or any of the State Department personnel is complete and utter balderdash,” Kelley said.
He advised Russian President Vladimir Putin to focus on "getting the job done," as Russia is the only way IS will be defeated in Syria.
“Russia should sever all relations, and if I had anything to advise Mr. Putin, I would say get the job done, stop participating in any of these peace agreements and destroy Daesh and get the job over with,” he said.
“The US is not going to do anything to help removing (sic) Daesh and is going to do everything possible to reconstruct, rearm, and resupply, and put more personnel into the field. So everything they say is a lie, and Putin really needs to stop playing games with the US State Department and get the job done.”
Kelley went on to credit Russia for getting involved in Syria when it did, stating that the country would have been “completely overrun” by now if it didn't.
“One can only hope that [Russia] will be resolute, they will finish the job, they will stop being distracted by these fake calls for ceasefires,” he said.
Meanwhile, political analyst Chris Bambery slammed the US for failing to realize that there is no separation between moderate rebels and militants on the ground.
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“The Americans can't on the one hand say they want to fight Daesh – the so-called Islamic State – but at the same time be supporting rebel groups like al-Nusra Front, and there is no separation between moderate rebels and jihadists on the ground. They are there together, fighting alongside each other, and in fact the jihadists make up the majority. Much of the arms provided and the recruits trained by the West... have gone over to those groups,” Bambery told RT.
“It's strange to me that America can be almost in alliance with a group which is an affiliate of the organization that carried out the 9/11 attacks in Washington and New York.
"This does not seem a coherent policy.”
Referring to Washington's threat of severing ties with Russia when it comes to Syria, Bambery said the situation is equivalent to a child “throwing their toys out of the pram,” adding that Washington needs Moscow to achieve a successful outcome in the war-torn country via a political process.
“They need the Russians to make a deal over Syria. They need them to bring Assad, as they did, to the table, and to kick off the talks,” he said, adding that US Secretary of State John Kerry “doesn't seem to be actually capable to [rising] to the challenge of Syria, and bringing home an agreement which can end the civil war.”
Jeff Steinberg, senior editor of the Executive Intelligence Review, agreed that the US is failing to differentiate between rebel groups and militants.
“The US does not differentiate between the rebel groups they're backing, with the exception of ISIS...When Kirby says there's going to be Russians going to be going home in body bags and terrorism taking place on Russian soil, I have to scratch my head and say, 'is this a threat coming from a government that's actually backing groups like al-Nusra?'”
Reminding that al-Nusra is a branch of Al-Qaeda, Steinberg said: “We seem to have forgotten every lesson learned from 9/11, and we're back in bed with the same forces who carried out those hideous attacks.”
When it comes to Kerry's call for another ceasefire in Syria, Bambery says that his demand is impossible, as trust has to be rebuilt following the recent happenings.
“Confidence has to be rebuilt, the parties have to be brought back together again, in the way that we got that ceasefire in the first place. And rather than hectoring Russia, rather than hectoring what they seem to regard as opponents in this, they need to be working together to bring back that trust, to bring back the people around the table, where we can get that ceasefire going. And this is not a way of going about it...” he concluded.President-elect Donald Trump is upset that the “dishonest” media won't report as fact that Mexico will pay for a border wall. No such deal is in place. (Evan Vucci/AP)
Mexico has not agreed to pay for a wall along its border with the United States. In fact, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has vowed that his country will never fund such a barrier.
Repito lo que le dije personalmente, Sr. Trump: México jamás pagaría por un muro. https://t.co/IJNVe0XepY — Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) September 1, 2016
Yet President-elect Donald Trump seems to think the media ought to state as fact that Mexico will indeed finance the project. Trump kicked off his Friday by tweeting that the media is “dishonest” because it refuses to report a deal that hasn't happened yet — and won't ever happen, according to Mexico.
The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017
Trump's frustration appears to stem from coverage of an effort by congressional Republicans to construct a wall using taxpayer dollars, rather than money from Mexico.
“This is an important tweet because obviously a centerpiece of Donald Trump's successful campaign was, 'I'm going to build the wall and have Mexico pay for it,' " Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said Friday on Fox News. “That hasn't changed, but Congress is examining ways... to have the wall paid for through their auspices, and then Mr. Trump is making the point — the president-elect is making the point — that he will have Mexico pay it back.”
“I think the tweet was engendered by people in the media — the 'dishonest media,' as Donald Trump calls them — making the suggestion that he's going back on a campaign promise,” Conway added. “That is not true. He is going to build that wall, and Mexico is going to pay for it. That hasn't changed.”
Clearly Trump is confident that he will (a) succeed in building the wall and (b) compel Mexico to reimburse the United States for the cost. Good for him. And, if he turns out to be right, everyone who said it won't happen will eat their words.
But, at the moment, payment by Mexico is far from a sure thing. It would make zero sense for the media to report that “any money spent... will be paid back” because there is no such agreement in place.
Trump told The Washington Post last April that he plans to pressure Mexico to pay up through actions that could hurt the country's economy. Measures include prohibiting Mexican nationals who work in the United States from sending money to relatives at home, imposing tariffs on Mexican imports and canceling visas of Mexicans living in America.
The press has covered Trump's proposal with a high degree of skepticism.
“The feasibility of Trump's plan is unclear both legally and politically, and it would test the bounds of a president's executive powers in seeking to pressure another country,” The Post's Robert Costa and Bob Woodward wrote at the time.
Journalists are not the only ones who doubt that Trump will secure a multibillion-dollar payment from Mexico.
“I don't think Mexico is going to write a check out and say, 'Here, pay for the wall,' " Trump surrogate Ben Carson conceded in a September interview on Fox News.
In a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted that same month, 76 percent of voters said they think Trump will fail to make Mexico pony up. A majority of Republicans, 52 percent, said he will fail, and even 44 percent of Trump's own voters didn't believe in him.
Trump has a lot of convincing to do — starting with Mexico — if he wants the media to report that money for the wall is definitely going to come from south of the border.NYCFC are in third place through nine games, but have a game in hand over first place Toronto FC. Second place Orlando City SC also has a game in hand over TFC. NYCFC might struggle to get a first round bye this year, as TFC and OCSC have been playing better. Also, out of NYCFC’s three losses, two of them were to Orlando.
NYCFC First Quarter Analysis
Offensively, NYCFC scored a lot of goals. They are second in the eastern conference with 17 goals. Defensively, they have been stout, only conceding 10 goals. At this point last year, they scored four less goals, and conceded five more goals. Their defending has started with the play of their wingers, especially Rodney Wallace. It has continued all the way to their center backs, where they have had a solid pairing.
(All statistics from WhoScored unless noted)
Goalkeeper
Sean Johnson entered the NYCFC preseason camp and won the starting job from Eirik Johansen. He has helped NYCFC concede only nine goals, but several of them were not his fault. However, he has let in a couple bad goals.
In distribution, he has been very strong with 77% overall passing accuracy, 47% long ball accuracy, and 95% short pass accuracy. Not bad for someone who never has been asked to be this active in distribution. Johnson’s distribution has certainly an improvement over Josh Saunders 74% overall passing accuracy, 43% long ball accuracy, and 90% short pass accuracy.
Defense
As mentioned above, the defense has also improved this season. Maxime Chanot has slid over to right center back with the addition of Alexander Callens. Ronald Matarrita was playing well at left back before his injury. Rodney Wallace initially filled in, but did a poor job. After the failed experiment, Wallace was shifted back to the wing and Ben Sweat jumped in. He has played well, notching an assist in his first appearance. On the right side, Ethan White beat out RJ Allen after Allen was lackadaisical on defense. Allen has been noticeably absent from the matchday 18.
Midfield
With the departure of Frank Lampard, many questioned how NYCFC would replace his production. Is suffices to say Maxi Moralez has exceeded expectations. He has been the heart of the attack, and has contributed more defensively than Lampard ever did. Alex Ring has also been spectacular replacing Andoni Iraola. His play is a big reason for NYCFC’s defensive strength. However, the third midfield place has been rotating between Andrea Pirlo and Yangel Herrera. Pirlo has seemingly lost a step, and has been poor defensively. With Herrera departing for the U-20 World Cup, manager Patrick Vieira will need to find a solution. Besides Pirlo, Kwame Awuah is available, and James Sands is done with the U17 World Cup. Awuah made a cameo against Atlanta United, and looked energetic. Both Awuah and Sands would add youth and energy to the NYCFC midfield.
Forward
Jack Harrison has improved from last season, while David Villa is still David Villa. Rodney Wallace has been an upgrade as a two-way winger over Tommy McNamara. McNamara is a great player and certainly shouldn’t be traded, but the issue is where to play him. If Jack Harrison gets sold in the next year, McNamara could step right in. However, NYCFC also have added depth to the front line this offseason with Jonathan Lewis, Miguel Camargo, and Ugo Okoli.
Final Thoughts
NYCFC are a much improved team, mostly due to their additions of Callens and Wallace. Also, NYCFC have depth in most positions, so an injury wouldn’t be that big an issue. Claudio Reyna has done a great job of constructing a balanced roster perfect for Vieira’s system. NYCFC need to keep up the energy and intensity, and wins will keep coming in the next three quarters.Definition:
Situational Ethics - A philosophy which promotes the idea that, when dealing with a crisis, the end justifies the means and that a rigid interpretation of rules and laws can be set aside if a greater good or lesser evil is served by doing so.
Any Thought in a Storm
Situational ethics can be dangerous when combined with the distorted, crisis-prone thinking of those who suffer from Personality Disorders. For example, imagine you are invited to dinner at the house of a friend. You arrive, exchange polite conversation, enjoy a few appetizers and sit down at the table. Midway through the main course you suddenly begin shouting at the other guests, overturning the chairs, grab the host out of his chair and begin physically assaulting him.
That would be considered highly inappropriate behavior - unless, of course, you had just observed him choking, took charge of the situation, instructed one guest to call for help, another to wait outside and flag down the ambulance and meanwhile cleared obstructions out of the way and administered the life-saving Heimlich maneuver.
This extreme example illustrates an important point: there is a world of difference in what is considered appropriate and inappropriate behavior depending on the situation. In particular, when dealing with a crisis, many behaviors which most people consider to be highly inappropriate become highly appropriate. In some emergencies, normal ethics are not applicable for a good reason. Where it becomes an issue is where faulty reasoning due to a Personality Disorder manufactures a sense of crisis and therefore justification for unacceptable behavior.
What it Looks Like in Genuine Crisis
Breaking a window - to escape a fire.
Assaulting a stranger - in self-defense.
Killing a person - in war time.
Driving through a red light - when rushing an injured person to a hospital.
Killing an animal - to shorten a painful death (euthanasia).
Situational Ethics are applied in most mainstream legal and religious systems because of a recognition that a strict or fundamentalist interpretation of rules, laws and moral codes can sometimes lead to injustices or may provide a person who has questionable motives with enough cover or justification to behave in an unjust manner. Most court cases are an exercise is evaluating the situational ethics surrounding a case in light of the applicable laws, available evidence and relevant circumstances.
Situational ethics also have considerable limitations and weaknesses. Since situational ethics attempt to justify actions and behaviors based on expected consequences they are dependent on the individual subjective judgment of each person, their interpretation of a situation and their current beliefs about the future consequences of their actions. When Personality Disorders are brought into the mix, and therefore the people involved have vastly different realities, the results can be explosive.
Now imagine you are back at that dinner party, and the same sequence of events takes place - but this time you were mistaken and you only believed or imagined that the person was choking. This time, you are not going to be considered a hero. You may be considered a trouble maker, a liability or a fool. You have brought a crisis response into a non-critical situation. People may begin to question your judgment, your motives, your reactions and your methods.
This is a scenario played out many times in the lives of people with Personality Disorders, as over and over they perceive a crisis and adopt a crisis response, where parents, children, siblings, family members, partners, co-workers, friends, acquaintances and bystanders see no crisis. This difference in perception is at the heart of many of the conflicts in a PD/Non relationship.
How it Looks when Situational Ethics are Applied by Personality-Disordered Individuals
A man’s friendly disposition towards a female co-worker is interpreted by his Personality-Disordered wife as an adulterous intent, triggering a fear of abandonment response and accusations of flirting, unfaithfulness and adultery.
A Histrionic mother consumed by fear feels her children desperately need emergency care and withdraws a large sum of money from the family bank account to get private treatment administered as quickly as possible.
A Narcissistic employee interprets the growing professional accomplishments of a peer as a personal threat, justifying a vindictive response.
A Borderline mother, feeling trapped, alone and draped in a sense of failure in her own life, feels worthless when observing the growing confidence and independence of her teenage daughter, who is younger, smarter, prettier than her, is not bogged down by the same overwhelming heap of constraints and responsibilities and is prone to challenge her mistakes in moments of adolescent pride. Feeling mocked and ridiculed, the mother decides to “hit back in self-defense”.
An Avoidant father, tormented by his children’s incessant demands for attention and praise, withdraws to a place where he feels he can take care of himself.
In all these cases, a change in priorities is justified by a perceived need to address a crisis. It’s not that the Personality-Disordered individual has no conscience or sense of morality. It is more that in their eyes, the lesser of two evils is being chosen.
And since the priorities are different for the people involved - the usual result is conflict.
Examples of Situational Ethics Applied by Nons
Situational Ethics can also play an important role in a Non individual’s responses to typical Personality-Disordered behaviors and the crises which result. In order to protect themselves and prevent further abuse, injury or damage, Nons sometimes have to break cultural protocols or social taboos, for example:
Going “No-Contact” with a parent - to avoid emotional or verbal abuse.
Forcing a person against their will into a mental care facility to get treatment.
Divorcing a spouse - to escape abuse.
Removing a parent’s custody rights or access - in order to protect children.
Avoiding family gatherings - out of fear that a family member will repeat past bad behavior.
These kinds of actions can sometimes lead other bystanders to misunderstand the motivations of the Non. For example, it is not uncommon for distant family members to scold adult children for going “No-Contact” with an abusive parent, or for non-custodial family members to accuse a protective parent of Parental Alienation, or for religious friends to look down on a Non who divorces their spouse.
What NOT To Do
Don't ignore a real crisis where there is one, or play down an abusive situation.
Don't make excuses for a person who is prone to behaving in dangerous, dysfunctional or inappropriate ways.
Don't argue, complain, criticize or condemn. The other person is likely to respond simply by justifying their own behavior.
Don't let yourself get isolated or try to deal with it on your own.
What TO DoAmerican officials hope the summit of the 28-member alliance will set in motion an orderly conclusion of the decade-long war in Afghanistan, a huge undertaking. NATO aims to give Afghan forces the lead in combat operations next year to pave the way for the departure of NATO troops by the end of 2014. The NATO summit will also focus on financing Afghan forces for the next several years.
In a sign of the tensions surrounding Afghanistan, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Chicago on Sunday in opposition to the war and to NATO. The police clashed with some demonstrators who refused to disperse after a march down Michigan Avenue to McCormick Place, where world leaders were meeting.
Mr. Obama and his other tenuous ally in the region, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, huddled together Sunday morning to grapple with stalled reconciliation talks with the Taliban.
It was a measure of just how bad things have gotten between the United States and Pakistan that, by contrast, Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Karzai — which has been rocky ever since Mr. Obama came into office vowing to end what he viewed as former President George W. Bush ’s coddling of the mercurial Afghan leader — looked calm and stable on Sunday.
The two men, fresh off Mr. Obama’s unannounced trip to Kabul this month to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Mr. Karzai that set the terms for relations after the departure of American troops in 2014, presented a united front before reporters after a one-hour meeting on the outskirts of the NATO summit. It was a sharp contrast with the past, when Mr. Karzai berated American troops, threatened to join the Taliban and chastised the American-led NATO mission.
There was none of that on Sunday. During their session, the two men joked about limits in both of their countries that would prevent them from serving more than two terms; Mr. Obama trotted out his familiar “look at all the gray hair I have now” line that he likes using to describe how tough his term has been.
“I want to express my appreciation for the hard work that President Karzai has done,” Mr. Obama said after the meeting, standing next to Mr. Karzai. “He recognizes the enormous sacrifices American troops have made.”
Photo
Mr. Obama quickly added: “We recognize the hardships that Afghans have been through during these many many years of war.”
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Mr. Karzai, for his part, said he would work to make sure that Afghanistan is not a “burden on the shoulders of our friends” in the international community.
“For all the twists and turns in this relationship, we now very much want to get to very much the same place,” one Obama administration official said. He credited the strategic partnership agreement, which he says has given Mr. Karzai a level of reassurance that the United States and NATO will not abandon Afghanistan once combat troops leave the country. “The discussion today was very much about what do we have to do over the next two years to close out our piece of the war.”
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,000 from an initial reading of 368,000.
Weekly applications for new unemployment benefits have ranged from 360,000 to 390,000 since the beginning of 2012. Although they’ve occasionally fallen below that level — claims fell to 330,000 in mid-January, for instance — the number has always bounced back up.
Jim Baird, chief investment strategist at Plante Moran Financial Advisors, said the level of claims “suggest that the sharp decline earlier in January was merely an anomaly and not indicative of sustainable improvement.”
In Thursday trades, U.S. stocksfell after the claims data and a report showing the nation’s productivity fell 2% in the fourth quarter. Read about decline in productivity.
Claims are a rough gauge of layoffs. They fall when the economy improves, hiring picks up and companies cut fewer workers. They rise when growth deteriorates and companies scale back.
The relatively flat trend in claims at current levels show that layoffs have waned, but that hiring hasn’t accelerated very much. The U.S. is adding about 175,000 new jobs a month and that’s been the case for about two years. Over that span the U.S. economy has grown a modest 2% annually.
By contrast, the average of weekly claims totaled 331,000 in 2005 before falling to 312,000 in 2006 during the last relatively strong phase of U.S. job creation. The unemployment rate dipped from 5.4% to as low as 4.4% in that two-year stretch.
Today, the jobless rate stands at 7.9%.
Looked at another way, the monthly average of claims dipped 2,250 to 350,500, marking a nearly five-year low.
Reuters Jobseekers at a career fair. Jobless claims fell slightly last week.
The four-week number smooths out weekly gyrations that can sometimes give a distorted picture of labor-market trends, but the low level partly reflects the plunge in initial claims in January that’s been reversed over the past few weeks. The monthly average is likely to rise in upcoming weeks.
In the week ended Jan. 26, meanwhile, continuing claims rose by 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 3.22 million. Continuing claims reflect the number of people who already receive regular unemployment benefits.
Most states typically offer 26 weeks of unemployment pay.Photo
WHEN I was growing up, my parents always bought shrimp in the shell. Why buy them peeled when the shells, boiled into an intense shrimpy glaze, add such great flavor to risotto and bouillabaisse?
It was a convergence of their thrifty and epicurean tendencies, falling along the same lines as making pâté out of livers collected from the cavities of chickens (back when you could still find the giblet pack in there) and brewing broth from whatever kitchen odds and ends were on hand — lamb necks, pork bones, mushroom trimmings.
Naturally, because of this, as soon as I moved out, I bought only shelled shrimp. I didn’t want to bother peeling the squishy, damp creatures myself. Plus, cooking for one meant that I didn’t need to stockpile shrimp glaze in the freezer. When I wanted shrimp glaze, my parents just brought me some.
I might never have reconsidered my shell-off inclinations if not for Fresh Direct.
Recently, wanting to buy the company’s most environmentally friendly shrimp — wild-caught, from the Gulf of Mexico — I had no choice but to get them shell and all.
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My plan was to use the shrimp in a rustic bisque made with fennel and purchased fish stock. But now that I was getting the shells anyway, I might as well save the $6 and make shrimp-shell stock myself. After years in my parents’ kitchen, I already knew the recipe by heart.Two policemen have died after six law enforcement officers were shot in three different U.S. cities on Friday night, their respective agencies have confirmed.
In central Florida, two officers with the Kissimmee Police Department were shot and killed, according to police chief Jeffrey O'Dell.
Officer Matthew Baxter, a three-year veteran, died from his wound. The other officer, 10-year veteran Sgt. Sam Howard, was initially in "grave critical condition" but died from his injuries Saturday afternoon, O'Dell said.
PHOTO: Officer Matthew Baxter, a three-year veteran of the Kissimmee Police Department, died from his wound after he was shot on Friday August 19, 2017. (Kissimmee Police Department) More
PHOTO: Sgt. Sam Howard, a 10-year veteran of the Kissimmee Police Department, was in 'grave critical condition” after he was shot on Friday August 19, 2017. (Kissimmee Police Department) More
Earlier, the police chief announced they had arrested suspect Everett Glenn Miller for premeditated first degree murder. Miller was booked at Osceola County Jail in Kissimmee, which is located about 23 miles south of Orlando.
Although officers had been investigating other suspicious persons, O'Dell said they do not anticipate any other arrests or charges.
“I am so proud of the sworn and civilian members of our department by acting quickly to identify the suspect and bring him to justice. We will mourn over the next few days," the police chief said in a statement Saturday. "We will get through this and we love them for what they do."
Details of the exchange between the two officers and the suspect prior to the shooting remain under investigation, O'Dell said.
PHOTO: A booking photo of Everett Glenn Miller, who was charged with premeditated first degree murder after two Kissimmee Police Department officers were shot. (Osceola County Jail) More
Florida Gov. Rick Scott said Baxter was a "married father of three and a dedicated law enforcement hero in central Florida."
"My heart breaks for Matthew's family. May Matthew's service and the service of our law enforcement community be a constant reminder of the sacrifice of those who serve to keep us safe," Scott said in a statement Saturday. "Following last night's shooting I have been in touch with local law enforcement and community officials to let them know that our state supports them every step of the way."
President Donald Trump reacted to the shootings in Kissimmee, saying in a tweet early Saturday that the police department is in his "thoughts and prayers," adding "We are with you!"
My thoughts and prayers are with the @KissimmeePolice and their loved ones. We are with you!#LESM — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017
Meanwhile, in northeastern Florida, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office announced that two of its officers were shot by one suspect who was armed with a "high powered rifle" late Friday night.
The officers were responding to 911 call about an attempted suicide at a home around 11 p.m. EDT. They heard gunfire coming from inside the house and attempted to make entry. But as they approached, the suspect began shooting at the officers through the door, according to the sheriff's office.
One officer was shot in both hands, while the other was shot in the stomach. One remains in critical condition and the other is in stable condition, the sheriff's office said.
The suspect was shot and killed by officers.
Three other people inside the house at the time of the incident hid in a back bedroom for safety. They are all safe, according to the sheriff's office.
"Let me be very clear -- last night's violence against our law enforcement community is reprehensible and has no place in our state," Gov. Scott said in a statement Saturday. "Florida has zero tolerance for violence and we will not accept hatred for one second."
Story continuesDevelopment of
Fallout the Story resumed. So yes we are back from the dead.
Description===========(as I don't have access to the facebook page sorry no updates there)Fallout the Story is a work in progress at the moment. It is designed as a mod for the NV base game only (no DLCs needed). It is one of the main design goals to keep the look and feel of this all time classic intact. Which means it is a lot of work and needs every support it can get.Progress level:=============Locations:----------Vault 13 (100% complete)Vault 15 (100% complete)Shady Sands (80% complete)Junktown (50% complete)The Glow (started)Necropolis (started)Raider Camp (claimed)The Hub (started)Travel:-------We made a complete new travel system. Which allows the player to discover the map of Fallout 1, also includes random encounters and the ability to flee (if your character is a coward ;) ). The game will be node based as the original. So you travel from one small worldspace to another. It is not a continues world. We have plans to add one larger worldspace which allows a bit more exploration (as easer egg so to say) but this one will be started at the end of development.Quests:-------Vault 13: (start and revisit 100% complete)Vault 15: (100% complete that was an easy one ;) )Shady Sands (About 30% done)Junktown (About 20% done)Creatures:----------All creatures (except I have forgotten one and "The Master" doesn't count as simple creature here ;) ) from Fallout 1 are complete in their original form. Sure we reuse from New Vegas but if changes are needed (Centaur for example) they are made.Armors & Clothing:------------------To keep the look & fell of the game at the same level as the original a lot of armors got a makeover. Which means Fallout The Story will look a bit more clean then Fallout 3 or NV but this change is intended.Buildings, Objects and other Meshes:------------------------------------We where pretty luck that a lot of modding resources in this field are already made (special thanks to TrickyVein Shady Sands would look a lot different if it weren't for him).Follower & Reputation:----------------------The follower system is different in Fallout 1 then in the newer versions. They aren't mostly the nice guys which can only be used as pack mules. We try to reflect this with several additions to the standard system.Follower:---------Need ammo (100% complete)Are part of factions and react to player actions against them (100% complete)Comment on places that are visited by the player (started)But we also added the newer features like the companion wheel.Reputation:-----------Fallout the story uses the NV reputation system. Which is a bit more complex then the original and maybe a bit more unforgiving but we think it's worth it.Everything is collusion, as an excuse to shut you down.
Via Newsbusters:
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is looking to target right-wing media outlets under the guise that they could’ve helped Russia interfere into our presidential election, reported The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard Tuesday.
The commission will decide at this Thursday’s meeting whether or not to investigate websites like the Drudge Report, Breitbart and others on the right for violating election spending rules by allowing advertising on their Facebook pages by Russian entities.
The call for investigation was spearheaded by the FEC’s Democrat commissioner, Ellen L. Weintraub, who has been trying to accomplish this for months. In May, she told Politico, “I think there is potential there for finding a violation, but I don’t want to suggest that I have prejudged anything that could potentially come before me.”
Keep reading…If you were in attendance for the 2010 Glastonbury Festival and happened to be a fan of long time running science-fiction series Doctor Who, you were given a real treat towards the end of the concert.
Suddenly appearing on stage to re-welcome the electronic dance music duo Orbital was none other than the current incarnation (or rather regeneration) of everyone’s favorite 900 plus year-old Time Lord, Matt Smith.
Smith, however, was not only there to introduce Orbital back onto the stage to play their final number, he also helped them perform it as well. What song did they play? Much to the delight of the crowd, it was nothing other than the Doctor Who theme.
If you weren’t present for this week’s festival at Glastonbury, that’s okay, though. Thanks to several contributors on YouTube, the video of the Matt Smith/Orbital performance is available for viewing so you can fully get your Doctor Who Geek on.
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Causes of gray hair, HDL cholesterol and interval training, ice therapy, obesity tax
Did You Know...
Furci Home / Fitness Channel / Bullz-Eye Home
A column by Mike Furci that brings you research, trends and other info to help you with your fitness, health and nutritional needs.
...wisdom has nothing to do with your hair turning gray? According to European scientists, gray is caused by a massive buildup of hydrogen peroxide due to wear and tear of our hair follicles. The peroxide blocks the normal synthesis of melanin, the hair's natural pigment. All of our hair cells make small amounts of hydrogen peroxide, but as we get older, this process speeds up. We actually bleach our hair from within. ("Science Daily," Feb. 24, 2009)
...high intensity interval training can have a positive effect on high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels? Three dozen untrained men, ages 21 to 36, participated in a study to determine whether an 8-week program of high intensity interval training would significantly raise HDL cholesterol and reduce total cholesterol. Participants were randomly assigned to an interval training group or a control group. The interval training group ran four sets of 800 meter intervals with a 1:1 work-to-rest ratio, at 90 percent of their age-predicted maximum heart rate. The interval sessions were performed three times per week. The control group was instructed not to participate in any vigorous activity during the training period. The results indicate that high intensity interval training with a 1:1 work-to-rest ratio is capable of elevating HDL in young men with normal total cholesterol, but seems to have no effect on total cholesterol. ("Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research," 2009; 23(2): 587-592)
More research should be done to see if men with high total cholesterol would benefit from this type of training. This would only interest somebody who believes in the lipid hypothesis, which implicates cholesterol as the cause of heart disease. Those of you familiar with my writings know I disagree with that notion.
...even though ice therapy is a crucial therapy for reducing edema, inflammation, and pain, timing is very important? Researchers from Old Dominion University measured the immediate and short term effects of three and 10-minute ice bag applications to the hamstrings on functional performance. A total of 42 injury-free recreational athletes participated in the study. Power and functional performance was impaired immediately following and 20 minutes after the 10-minute ice bag application. The three-minute ice bag application had no effect. ("Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research," 2009; 23(1): 40-50)
Cryotherapy prior to an activity will have an adverse effect because of the depressing effects on motor activity. The muscle being cooled becomes less able to generate force. This inability to generate maximum force is caused by decreased nerve conduction. Cooling a muscle prior to an activity also increases your risk of injury.
...the state of New York is considering imposing an "obesity tax" on its citizens or anyone who visits? The obesity tax would place an 18 percent sales tax on non-diet soda and other sweetened beverages with less than 70 percent fruit juice. Of course, Gov. Patterson is for it because it will generate an estimated $400 million. State Health Commissioner Richard Daines made a You Tube video explaining why he thinks it's a good idea. He points out obesity rates and shows a comparison of milk and soda consumption.
I personally think this is BS. It's another example of big brother coming down on Joe Citizen and imposing its will. The state of New York is trying to take away freedom of choice under the disguise they are concerned about our health. What's next, the type of car you drive, the type of meat you eat, what kind of clothes you can buy? Government has no business making decisions for us by taxation. They are legal products and this is a free nation. Don't Tread on Me!
...athletes receive massage post-exercise in order to hasten recovery? In a study, 60 healthy subjects underwent two exercise protocols two weeks apart. After the subjects recovered from the workout they were randomly assigned to a massage group or a placebo group. Saliva samples were taken before and after the training, as well as after the recovery. In both groups, exercise induced an increase in cortisol; a decrease in salivary IgA; and an increase in total saliva protein. Massage had a significant effect on IgA and total protein levels, but no effect on cortisol. Because massage had a significant effect on IgA, one could infer massage would help recovery by improving the immunosuppressive effects of exercise. This is a stretch. ("Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research," 2009; 23(1): 638-644)
Unfortunately, this study showed no effect on lowering post-exercise cortisol levels, and higher cortisol levels are not what an athlete wants in terms of achieving recovery.by Brett Stevens on August 4, 2017
People on the Alt Right are comfortable talking about human differences between races, but not so much about differences between ethnic groups or social castes. The latter issue rears its head again in why the Mediterranean Diet works only for the wealthy and educated:
Participants with post-secondary education saw a 57% decrease in cardiovascular risk after following the diet, and those earning more than €40,000 (about $47,000) a year saw a 61% decrease. Those of lower socioeconomic status saw no benefits. …The foods eaten by subjects of this study varied widely depending on their socioeconomic status. The more educated the participants, the more likely they were to report eating a broader variety of vegetables, plus more whole grains and organic vegetables. More educated participants had daily diets that contained higher proportions of monounsaturated fats like those found in olive oil and nutrients like calcium, vitamin D, and fiber. Meanwhile, higher-income study subjects ate more whole grain breads, fruits, nuts, and fish, and fewer meat products than subjects with lower incomes.
Those who are wealthy and educated are, on the whole, more intelligent than those who are not.
Higher intelligence correlates with longer lifespan and higher educational potential.
Most people exist in a simple world where if you take a peasant, “educate” him and give him an office job, he is suddenly equivalent to one of these people. He is not; he is still a peasant, albeit one with some skills. This means that he will find himself out of his depth on a regular basis, and make bad decisions because he is not competent at the level of critical thinking and analysis, which are higher IQ skills, nor is he morally oriented toward leadership, a trait which seems correlated with some in the higher IQ registers.
But as even dietary differences show, there is more to it than that. Those with higher intelligence know different things, and are generally healthier as a result. They can discern what they should do, and can interpret simple instructions such as the Mediterranean Diet in more accurate ways, much as they are better with law, philosophy, literature and art.
For a humorous take on this, consider the words of the hard rock band Upper Crust:
PSF: You mentioned previously that a lot of your influences happen to be working class rock and rollers like AC/DC. How do you reconcile that with your aristocratic bearings? LB: Well, we’ve always said that rock and roll is just like anything else — it’s something that’s better done by the upper classes, as is almost every other enterprise of human endeavor.
That definitely applies to the Mediterranean Diet, and education at least.
Where this gets complicated is that caste has multiple layers. Looking at the IQ distribution charts that make up the basis of the book The Bell Curve, we can see that roughly 13% of our population is above 120 IQ points, which educators who are honest about this issue consider the minimum for a college education.
Among those, less than one percent are above 130 points, which is where people stop trying to earn money and start trying to change history through the battle of ideas. All of our great works of art and philosophy, and most of our innovations, come from people in this group. When these are also of high moral caliber, they provide our best leaders.
Those who have high moral caliber and high intelligence, as opposed to what we might call “medium-high” or “middlebrow” intelligence, are those who naturally should rule a society because they are more competent.
Even in that bastion of class warfare, Britain, recognition sneaks out that these people are genetically gifted to rule:
A survey published in this month’s Economic Journal proves the point perfectly. Two economists, Professor Gregory Clark and Dr Neil Cummins, have studied 634 upper-middle-class surnames – including Bazalgette, Bigge, Nottidge and Pepys – from 1850 until today. Their findings show how extremely sticky wealth is. Five generations apart, the descendants of the rich of 1850 remain rich today. They are more likely than others to live longer, attend Oxbridge, have nice houses and become professionals.
Naturally, this offends the middlebrow, who tend to be of the Vaisya caste and thus talented with mercantile concerns, but essentially morally oblivious and not capable of seeing through the long-term consequences of their actions. This is why every society dies the same way: the middlebrow merchants, who are accustomed to manipulating people and understand their hidden desires, unite with the proles to overthrow the upper castes.
As we see with every revolution, including the French and Russian revolutions, this initiates a cycle called the Napoleonic arc where the greater incompetence of the middlebrow and prole army leads to a less prosperous civilization, and then the only way to unite the failing nation-state is by perpetual warfare, which means ideological warfare to spread the People’s Revolution elsewhere. Naturally this too ends in disaster, and the states tend to collapse much like post-Revolutionary French government or the Soviet Union.
Ironically, the American Revolution succeeded because it overthrew a king, but not the natural upper-middle-class (high Kshatriya or low Brahmin) aristocracy in America. That was overthrown during the Civil War, when the industrial and as a result, prole-heavy, North invaded the agrarian South in order to plunder its riches and assert the lower-caste Northern “elites” as rulers instead of the natural elites of the South.
They used race as a justification in that war; to the North, the war was hyped for a Gulf of Tonkin type pretext based in the injustice of slavery. To the South, where slaves were prized and often loved, slavery was the natural extension of European feudalism, which since it had been made illegal and replaced with legal systems, could only live on through chattel slavery. In this case, the serfs were black because they could endure the heat of the fields where people whose ancestors came from near the Arctic Circle could not.
Caste relates to race because to the Left they are the same issue. The Left has one and only one idea, “equality,” and they seek places to demonstrate it. This means overthrowing upper castes, or racial or ethnic groups whose higher IQs make them de facto upper castes in a mixed-race or mixed-ethnic society. To the Left, miscegenation and diversity are weapons for overthrowing that upper caste.
Right-wing movements succeed when they emphasize putting society into order so that people are more prosperous, which includes having the invisible leadership of a caste hierarchy, such that the wealth and power belong to the most competent, instead of the actors, celebrities, athletes, politicians, scam artists, merchants and poseurs we have handed it to now, who are neither morally nor intellectually competent to wield it.
On the other hand, the Right fails when it accepts the Leftist proposition that caste is not important and must be inverted, with the lower in power and the naturally higher subjugated, which is the eternally emergent argument from the idea of “equality.” If the Alt Right wants to succeed, it will have to talk about caste and “huwhite” ethnic hierarchy as well as race.
Tags: caste, class, ethnicity, kshatriya, oxbridge, race, upper crust, vaisya
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.'F-bombed' Cramer whines about criticism from Stewart David Edwards and Ron Brynaert
Published: Tuesday March 10, 2009
Print This Email This CNBC's Jim Cramer got defensive when NBC's Meredith Vieira asked him about continued criticism by Comedy Central's Jon Stewart, who on Monday night also dropped a censored 'f-bomb' on the Mad Money host.
"I just saw John Stewart rip Cramer for claiming that he didn't say Bear Stearns stock was a good buy days before it went bust," a blogger at The Daily Banter wrote after Monday's Daily Show aired. "After showing several clips in which Cramer does just that, the brilliant Mr. Stewart simply said 'FUCK YOU!.'"
Cramer admitted he isn't always right with his predictions.
"Did I make a mistake? Okay, first of all, any time you recommend a stock and it goes down, you've made a mistake," confessed Cramer.
The CNBC host tried to defend himself. "I did come on [The Today Show] and tell everyone to sell, and when Stewart makes that call, I'm all over him, but he won't do that, because he's a comedian," he said.
Gawker mocks, "Poor exasperated Cramer doesn't seem to understand why everybody's hassling him when all he's doing is his job, which is to predict the future! 'Jim has to go out every day and make these calls,' said his CNBC colleague Erin Burnett, leaping to his defense. He has to! You can't expect him to be correct all the time."
Last Wednesday, Stewart took aim at Cramer and his colleagues at CNBC, including newly minted populist and former derivatives trader Rick Santelli, by joking, I have to say I find cheap populism oddly arousing.
This video is from NBC's The Today Show, broadcast Mar. 10, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com
This video is from Comedy Central's The Daily Show, broadcast Mar. 9, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com
Get Raw exclusives as they break -- Email & mobile Email - Never spam:Islam in Belgium is a minority religion and the second largest religion in the country after Christianity. The exact number of Muslims in Belgium is unknown but various sources estimate that 4.0% to 6.5% of the country's population adheres to Islam. The first registered presence of Islam in Belgium was in 1829, but most Belgian Muslims are first-, second-, or third-generation immigrants that arrived after the 1960s.
History [ edit ]
The first registered presence of Islam in Belgium was in 1829, a year prior to the country’s independence in 1830.[1]:223 A report by the Turkish consul in Antwerp estimated roughly 6,000 Muslims in Belgium at the time. During WWII, French Muslim soldiers from French West Africa were stationed in the southeast. In 1964, bilateral labour immigration agreement were signed between Belgium, Turkey, and countries in the Maghreb. Over 10,000 workers from these countries moved to Belgium and mostly worked in low-skilled jobs such as coal mining, steelmaking, the automobile industry, etc. This stopped in 1974 when all foreign manual labour was banned from entry into the country and, in the same year, Islam was officially recognised as a religion in Belgium.[1]:224
According to a 2006 opinion poll, 61% of the Belgian population thought tensions between Muslims and other communities would increase in the future.[2]
In 2011, Belgian authorities instituted a ban on face-covering attire in public, which meant the wearing of the Niqāb and burqa were considered incompatible with Belgian society.[3] The ban was challenged by two Muslim women in first the Constitutional Court and then the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), but was upheld.[4]
Demographics [ edit ]
The Belgian government does not collect or publish statistics on religious affiliation, so the exact number of Muslims in Belgium is unknown.[5] In 2014, various sources estimated Muslims to be 4.0% to 6.5% of the country's population.[6] The Centre de Relations Européennes estimated in 2000 that there were around 30,000 converts to Islam in Belgium.[6]
Muslims are unevenly distributed around Belgium with the majority concentrated in the working class districts of major cities around the country. Almost 40% of Belgian Muslims live in the capital, Brussels. Approximately 39% live in Flanders and 21% live in Wallonia.[7]
Religious and ethnic censuses are forbidden in Belgium, so no accurate numbers about the ethnicity of Belgian Muslims can be given. Nationality cannot be used as an indicator of religion, since most people with roots in Islamic countries have taken on Belgian citizenship. Their children are born Belgian citizens and hence cannot be distinguished from non-Muslims in the statistics.
Branches [ edit ]
The overwhelming majority of Muslims in Belgium are Sunni.[8] Isabelle Praille, vice-president of the Executive of the Muslims of Belgium, estimated in 2010 that roughly 10% of the Belgian Muslim were Shia.[9] There is also a small Ahmadi presence.[10]
Identity [ edit ]
A 2011 Open Society Foundation report titled Muslim in Antwerp found that Muslims felt a "strong sense of belonging" to the neighborhood they lived in and the city of Antwerp but less to the country of Belgium in general.[1]:230
Religiosity [ edit ]
Surveys conducted 1994 and 1996 observed a decrease in religiosity based on lowering mosque participation, less frequent prayer, dropping importance attached to a religious education, etc.[1]:242 This decrease in religiosity was more visible in younger Muslims; however, other more recent studies show that while participation in religious activities among young Muslims is reducing, they are more likely to identify with Islam culturally.[1]:243
A 2005 Université Libre de Bruxelles study estimated that about 10% of the Muslim population are "practicing Muslims"[11] A 2009 survey found that the majority of Muslims in Belgium supported "separation between religion and state." A 2010 study found that while Muslims put great emphasis on religious freedom and the overwhelming majority stated people should be free to leave Islam if they wanted, they were less comfortable with the idea of Muslims marrying non-Muslims.[1]:244
Culture [ edit ]
The three most popular music styles among Muslims in Belgium in 2011 were Nasheed, Al-Andalus (a Moroccan musical genre), and hip hop.[1]:247
Education and income [ edit ]
Various studies have concluded that the economic status of Muslims in Belgium is lower than that of non-Muslims. For instance, a 2007 study found unemployment among Turkish Belgians and Moroccan Belgians as 29–38%. A similar study in 1997 observed an under representation of these populations in higher earning jobs (3–17% compared to 25–31% for ethnic Belgians) and an over representation in lower paying jobs (59–60% compared to 38% for ethnic Belgians). Muslims also have less access to higher education with only 6–13% having a university degree.[1]:230 A 2009 analysis of the European 2006 PISA survey concluded inequality between minorities (including Muslims) and native Belgian students was one of the highest in all of Europe. The same analysis observed a “high degree of segregation in Belgian cities,” which they stated was the main cause for the difference in school performance. Several studies have also concluded that high levels of discrimination in the work market is one of the leading causes of economic inequality among minorities in Belgium.[1]:231 Some politicians and commentators have implied economic differences between Muslims and non-Muslims were primarily the result of cultural failing or religion but a 2011 study by Agirdag et al. found no correlation between "religiosity" and "school performance."[1]:232
Politics [ edit ]
Two members of governments formed after the 2014 Belgian federal election have a Muslim background but neither are practicing Muslims: Fadila Laanan and Rachid Madrane. Both are members of the Socialist Party.[12] In 2009, Muslims occupied 19 out of the 89 seats in Brussels Regional Parliament.[13]
In, 2008 Le Centre d'Etude de la Vie Politique (CEVIPOL) published a study using exit polling data following the 2007 Belgian federal election.[14] The study found that among Muslims in Brussels, 42.3% voted for the Socialist Party, 16.7% for the Humanist Democratic Centre, 14.7% for the Reformist Movement and 12.2% for Ecolo. The study also concluded that religiosity among Muslims did not have "a strong impact on their voting behaviour." In addition, the variable related to religious belonging or practice was not enough to explain the vote of the Muslim electorate. Other determining factors related to an often relatively low socioprofessional status, age (more than half of the Muslims interviewed were under age 34) and level of education (lower than the average of the other groups) were more integral to the firm attachment to the political left.[15]
A 2009 study published the journal, Brussels Studies, concluded secondary school students in Brussels of Moroccan and Turkish origin showed a tendency to vote for the Socialist Party.[15]
A September 2016 iVOX survey asked Belgian Muslims in Brussels and Flanders how they would vote in a hypothetical 2016 Belgian federal election. In Flanders, 26.8% of Muslims would vote for the Socialist Party Differently, 16.4% for Groen, 7.3% for the Workers' Party of Belgium, 6.9% for Christian Democratic and Flemish, and 6.9% for the New Flemish Alliance. In Brussels, 14.2% of Muslims would vote for Ecolo, 13.3% for the Socialist Party, 5.0% for the Reformist Movement, 4.2% for the People's Party, and 3.3% for the Humanist Democratic Centre.
A September 2016 iVOX survey of Belgian Muslims found that 53% agreed with the statement: "I have no issues with homosexuality." Approximately 30% disagreed with the statement while the rest refused to answer or were unsure.
Islam party [ edit ]
In the 2012, the party named Islam had four candidates and they were elected in Molenbeek and Anderlecht.[19] In 2018, the party had candidates in 28 municipalities. Its goals are an Islamic state. Its policies include men and women to be separated on public transport, schools must be forced to offer halal meat and anyone must be able to wear a headscarf anywhere.[20] Its policy is to replace the civil and penal laws of Belgium with Sharia law.[21]
Religious infrastructure [ edit ]
In 1974, Islam was recognized as one of the subsidized religions in Belgium and the Muslim Executive of Belgium was founded in 1996. In 2006, the government gave €6.1 million (US$7.7 million) to Islamic groups.[11] There are an estimated 328[11]–380[22] mosques in the country.
In 2017, the Belgian department of justice commenced an investigation into the finances of mosques in Belgium and stated this was a priority.[23]
Controversies [ edit ]
Headscarf [ edit ]
Brussels in 2013
In December 2004, the Belgian government said it was considering a ban on the wearing of any conspicuous religious symbols for civil servants.[22]
In June 2005, the Antwerp Court of Appeal ruled that it was outside the jurisdiction of the state to determine whether Islam requires women to wear a headscarf and that girls in public schools have the right to do so. However, the school board also has the authority to restrict that right for organizational reasons, or for the good functioning of the school, though it must justify any such restrictions.[citation needed]
At the end of 2005, approximately twenty municipalities had issued a ban on walking the streets completely veiled. In a few cases women were fined €150 (US$190) for ignoring the ban.[citation needed] Under a 1993 executive order, persons in the streets must be identifiable. A veil which does not completely cover the body is however allowed.[citation needed]
Two Belgian Muslim women, Samia Belcacemi and Yamina Oussar, challenged a 2011 veil ban, asserting the law infringed on their freedom of religion. Both women said they voluntarily wore the niqab. In 2017, the European Court of Human Rights found that Belgium’s ban on clothes that partially or fully cover the face in public was legal under the European Convention on Human Rights, "necessary in a democratic society," and that the law tried to protect "the rights and freedoms of others." In response to the upholding of the law, Belcacemi told the court that she continued to wear the niqab after it was banned but had eventually stopped because she could not afford fines or jail time. Ousser told the court that she had decided to stay at home and not go out in public anymore following the ban.[24]
Radicalization [ edit ]
In March 2012 Alain Winants, the head of State Security Service in Belgium, estimated there were 1000 jihadist sympathizers in the country, of which about 100 were hardcore supporters.[25]
Jihadists travelling abroad to wage jihad [ edit ]
In March 2012, the head of the security services stated that about a dozen had travelled to fight in jihadist groups overseas.[25] In 2016, Belgium had more "foreign fighter" travellers per capita than any other Western nation.[25] Up to 2018, an estimated 450 individuals had travelled from Belgium to join the civil war in Syria and Iraq.[26] Of those, 75 were linked to the Sharia4Belgium network.[25] In July 2018, courts announced that Belgium had no obligation to bring children of Islamic State members to Belgium.[27]
Terrorism [ edit ]
On 30 September 2003, a Belgian court convicted 18 men for involvement in a terror |
better than none at all.Just keep in mind that it’s really best to get ALL your vitamin D from the sun. It appears that vitamin D plays a crucial role in sulfur metabolism and when you swallow it orally it may not have the same benefit as getting it from the sun. Take High Quality Animal-Based Omega-3 Fats Animal-based omega-3 fat is a strong factor in helping people live longer, and many experts believe that it is likely the predominant reason why the Japanese are the longest lived race on the planet. Avoid as Many Chemicals, Toxins, and Pollutants as Possible This includes tossing out your toxic household cleaners, soaps, personal hygiene products, air fresheners, bug sprays, lawn pesticides, and insecticides, just to name a few, and replacing them with non-toxic alternatives.
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More Info.Rep. Dave Brat complained about the media’s history backing Democrats tying their reported donations overwhelmingly to the liberal side.
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I think more Republicans need to call out the mainstream media like this and some should bring stat sheets with numbers to back up their claims so everyone will hear specific numbers. Most of us already know how the media is in bed with the Democratic Party, but you still have some out there who do not believe it.
Brat said “No one gets to play the innocent here. Hillary raised $2 billion in the Clinton Foundation from foreign money, and CNN and all the biggies never found anything on that.
“The Washington Post is great on Watergate, but they missed Clintongate altogether. Why is that?
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“Well, maybe it’s because 97 percent of the donations from mainstream (media) folks go to the Democrat party. Gee, I wonder if that could, you know, influence the news at all.”
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What do you think about Bray calling out MSNBC and the rest of the liberal media and their association? Share your opinions below in the comment section.
Help support conservative news and views by sharing this post on Facebook and Twitter. Want more of my views? Don’t forget to follow the Wayne Dupree Show social media accounts on Facebook, Spreaker, iHeartRadio, Google Plus & Twitter.DeKalb County police are investigating the death of a man suspected of shoplifting after three Walmart employee reportedly wrestled him to the ground and placed him in a choke hold.
WSB-TV obtained a police report that indicated that that two employees and a security guard attempted to physically detain a man in the parking lot of a Walmart in Lithonia, Georgia because he was seen leaving the store early Sunday morning without paying for two DVD players.
“When police arrived, they found the employees on top of the man,” according to the station. “The officer put the man in handcuffs and said he noticed there was no resistance from him.”
“The officer had the employees get off the man, and noticed the man was unresponsive and bleeding from his nose and mouth.”
The suspect was taken to DeKalb Medical-Hillandale Hospital and later pronounced dead. An autopsy will attempt to determine if a choke hold allegedly performed by one employee contributed to his death.
WXIA reported that the two Walmart employees had been place on paid leave and the security guard was no longer working for the company.
“This is truly a sad situation,” Walmart spokesperson Dianna Gee said in a statement. “Our associates are trained that the safety of our customers and our associates is our first priority. No amount of merchandise is worth someone’s life. Associates are trained to disengage from situations that would put themselves or others at risk.”
Gee promised that Walmart would take the “appropriate action at the appropriate time” if an investigation determined the employees did not follow company policy.
Watch this video from WSB-TV, broadcast Nov. 26, 2012.
[Photo: Shutterstock.com]The last time I played a Sonic game was Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for the Gamecube and that was released a long while ago. I've never been a huge Sonic fan, although growing up I did play Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles quite a bit. As a result I haven't experienced a lot of the series more recent ups and downs. I'm not sure what it was that drew me to this game, whether it was the nostalgia of classic Sonic or just curiosity of how the series has developed over time. After playing the demo I decided that it probably would prove to be an interesting purchase. I have to say, I wasn't disappointed.
The plot isn't terribly complicated; both Sonics and their friends are pulled into a timeless world (known as White Space) by the Time Eater. It's now up to the two Sonics to save their friends and restore everything back to normal. This is how the game explains why the two Sonics interact and traverse through some of their previous locales. The stages are fairly well spread out across Sonic's history, but of the nine stages only three are from the Genesis era. Personally I was hoping for more stages in general. Especially some more from the Genesis games since those have been considered the heyday of Sonic. With nine stages the game isn't terribly long, considering that Act 1 is played as Classic Sonic and Act 2 is Modern Sonic. There are a handful of bosses as well which does help to lengthen the game a little bit, but it still won't take more than six hours to get to the ending. As a result every stage has red star rings to collect as well as stage challenges for each Sonic to undertake. They're not required (although you do have to complete a couple of challenges to unlock the boss stage) but it does give you something extra to do, unlocking songs and artwork or even new powers to customize your Sonics with.
So far my biggest gripes come from the Modern Sonic stages. Sometimes the camera just konks out and can't keep up with where you are, oftentimes showing you an obstructed view of Sonic. The other issue is the homing attack and how it doesn't always lock right on. I've missed more than my share of jumps just because it didn't lock onto a spring or enemy. Oh yeah, the final boss is kind of a joke, I can't forget to mention that. There wasn't as much of a challenge to that I thought.
Yes, Sonic Generations is short, but it does prove to be an interesting and enjoyable game. I'm finding it hard to describe what it is that keeps drawing me in. Maybe that's the best way there; that it keeps me coming back. Usually I beat a game and that's it, I'm done with it. After seeing the credits roll, I still find myself turning it back on to see if I can get that S rank or find that last red star ring. If you haven't played a Sonic game before I think this is a good game to get on board with. If you've been away for awhile (like I have) give it a try. Hopefully you'll be pleasantly surprised as well.About
THE STRUGGLE IS REAL
Do you go on a bottom diet to prep for anal? Detox cleanse? Stay hungry? We all know the struggle between balanced eating and enjoyable sex. And this game is exactly what you imagined. Food + Anal Sex. All In One.
The Struggle Is Real is an iOS mobile sliding-tile puzzle game that challenges the player to dodge poo during anal. Your goal as a bottom is to eat well and enjoy sex - and you don't want poo to get in the way of your happiness.
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Simply drag and drop the food items into the stomach grid. Click on the food item to rotate it. When you're done, hit the mouth button to proceed to the next scene. If the dick touches the poo, the game is over.
WHEN CAN I PLAY
The Struggle Is Real needs your input to make it better! I'm hoping to add a second level to the game, clean up backend code, and include original chiptune soundtracks made by the talented Sound Designer Qinzi Tan. I'm aiming to finish the game by the end of 2016. Currently, there is a playable build that's about 75% complete.
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I've prepared an 11" X 17" digital poster and a limited edition sticker set (including most of the artwork in the game) for backers of this campaign. The stickers are perfectly sized to fit on your laptop and phone case.
Sample Digital Poster. Frame not included.By Andy Weir
I started reading The Martian in 2013, having heard that it had been picked up for what would become the 2015 movie starring Matt Damon (if you haven’t seen the movie, you should, but read the book first!). While being optioned for a movie may not always been a guarantee of quality, in this case someone in Hollywood made the right call, because this is a special book.
The plot is a fairly straightforward one: in the not too distant future, a group of American astronauts become the first humans to walk the surface of Mars. Via a series of unfortunate accidents, team botanist Mark Watney is injured on the planet surface, leading the rest of the team to presume him dead. Now stranded and alone on an inhospitable planet, Watney is challenged to survive long enough to allow someone, anyone, to attempt to perform some kind of rescue.
The Martian ends up being a remarkable story because of the author’s ability to blend two unlikely themes: science and what might be called “heart.” This is very much a “hard science” book — Weir has done meticulous research on what methods and items would be available to someone in Watney’s situation, and quite a bit of the book comes down to Watney musing about technology and biology. However, Weir never loses sight of the fact that the real pulse of story is the degree to which a reader cares about Watney himself, and goes out of his way to make Watney a humorous and relatable protagonist. Make no mistake, this is a funny book, and not just by the normally dour standards of science fiction.
The second half of the book zooms out to incorporate more characters back on Earth, as people in NASA-like agencies work to try to improve Watney’s chances of survival. These interactions can admittedly get a little cheesy (especially in the movie version), and yet, I don’t think I would have it any other way. There’s a lot of gritty, dark writing out there, much of which I love dearly, but there’s also something to be said for an old-fashioned “humanity bands together” story. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself shedding a manly tear or two on the subway.
There are very few people to whom I wouldn’t recommend this book. Maybe if you really, really hate potatoes? (You’ll get it when you read the book.) If you’ve been meaning to get around to reading it, let this be your kick in the pants!
Rating: 4- Mandatory Reading
If you like this, you may enjoy: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Leviathan Wakes.House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke out against purported connections between the White House and the alt-right movement and white supremacists, citing the "poisonous attitudes we are witnessing now" in a speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual conference Tuesday.
Pelosi briefly brought up the 2016 election to note the rise of both movements in a jab against President Trump and the White House. Pelosi's comments were likely directed at Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist, and his work for Breitbart News prior to joining the Trump campaign last summer.
"We come together in the aftermath of an election that left our country divided, but our democracy is strong and God is always with us," Pelosi said. "Our faith tells us that we have not done enough to rid our nation of poisonous attitudes we are witnessing now.
"A presidential campaign where hate speech went unchallenged, an atmosphere that emboldened anti-Semites to desecrate Jewish cemeteries. Hate crimes continuing to increase. White supremacists and the alt-right that feel empowered and connected to the White House. That is unacceptable," Pelosi said to applause in the crowd.
Throughout Pelosi's speech, she talked up the relationship between the two countries and spoke up against a rise in anti-Semitic threats and attacks.
Pelosi was latest in a long line of congressional leaders to address the conference, along with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Vice President Mike Pence also addressed the conference on Sunday night.Exodus International, a Christian group that claimed to be able to “cure” homosexuality though therapy, announced Wednesday that it is shutting down after more than three decades of work following an apology it issued to the LGBT community.
“We’re not negating the ways God used Exodus to positively affect thousands of people, but a new generation of Christians is looking for change – and they want to be heard,” board member Tony Moore said in a press release posted to the Exodus International website.
Just a day earlier, Exodus International’s president, Alan Chambers, wrote a lengthy apology published on the group’s website that lamented his organization’s and the church’s approach to the LGBT community without renouncing his “biblical beliefs” regarding sexuality.
“Please know that I am deeply sorry,” Chambers said in the apology. “I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents.”
Read the full apology here.A new blockchain startup has claimed its software could help track down criminals faster and cheaper than ever.
Sabr.io, one of 42 companies unveiled at 500 Startups’ demo day in San Francisco this Tuesday, aims to shave valuable time off investigations into outfits such as illicit marketplace Silk Road.
The platform, which integrates data from public and proprietary sources, claims to provide law enforcement with intel on digital currencies that’s “otherwise inaccessible”.
It’s unclear exactly what this entails, with CEO David Berger telling CoinDesk he was unable to disclose further details about Sabr.io’s technology, given the “sensitive nature” of the firm’s work.
What is clear however, is that the service is identifying and locating illegal activity happening on blockchains – and a number of agencies are already on board. Berger said:
“Law enforcement has been and continues to be our partner in the development of this technology. They’ve shared their needs with us and we’re building solutions to meet those needs. Our technology enables them to do their very important work.”
Blind spot
Although the wealth of successful prosecutions for bitcoin-related crimes highlight that digital currencies aren’t above the law, it’s an area that still requires highly specific investigative skills, which may be out of reach for smaller agencies.
Besides Sabr.io, a number of bitcoin firms, including Chainalysis and London-based custodian Elliptic, are creating whitelabel ‘blockchain explorers’ designed to bridge this knowledge gap.
Not everyone is happy, however. Companies have come under scrutiny from bitcoin’s pro-privacy factions for offering law enforcement the tools to monitor and ‘unmask’ transactions.
Should running tests on an open, peer-to-peer network such as bitcoin require consent? Others in the space say ‘no’. They see solutions like these as a crucial step towards legitimacy and interoperability for cryptocurrencies more broadly.
Berger said:
“While some have suggested regulatory solutions, we were proud to present a technology-based solution that will lessen the need for regulation.”
Sabr.io’s website notes that the utility of blockchain can only achieve further growth within the bounds of the law.
“I am excited about the future of bitcoin and am determined not to let it be hijacked by criminals. I have no qualms about helping to put child pornographers, terrorists and arms dealers behind bars,” Berger added.
500 Startups
Tuesday’s event, the climax to four months of intensive mentoring as the Silicon Valley accelerator’s 13th batch, was a “terrific experience”, Berger said.
“We were overwhelmed by interest from the investors in attendance. I think the investors realise, as do we, that illicit use of digital currencies is a big problem for society.”
Investors have backed this up with cash, too. Alongside 500 Startups and the Digital Currency Group (DCG), Barry Silbert’s bitcoin seed fund, the company has raised over $1m from Launch Capital, New Fund and Silicon Badia, among others.
Founded in 2010, 500 Startups provides between $10,000 to $250,000 in seed funding to early-stage startups. Since bringing on ex-MySpace VP Sean Percival as a venture partner to specialise in bitcoin, the incubator has moved to mentor the blockchain space.
Previous bitcoin alums include GoGoCoin, Bonafide.io, Coinalytics, Neuroware and Monetsu who each received $100,000 as part of Batch 9.
Sabr.io and the Digital Currency Council were the two blockchain-related startups in its most recent cohort.
Monitoring transactions image via Shutterstock
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Sabr.io claimed its software could have tracked down Silk Road mastermind Dread Pirate Roberts in a matter of days. Berger confirmed this was misreported from the event, and never stated by the company itself.(Reuters) - Kansas is withdrawing from plans to resettle Syrian refugees in the state after the federal government failed to provide security information on them, Republican Governor Sam Brownback said on Tuesday.
Republican Kansas Governor Sam Brownback speaks to supporters after winning re-election in the U.S. midterm elections in Topeka, Kansas, November 4, 2014. REUTERS/Mark Kauzlarich
Brownback said in a statement that he repeatedly asked the administration of President Barack Obama for documentation on the screening of refugees who would be relocated from Syria to Kansas.
“Because the federal government has failed to provide adequate assurances regarding refugees it is settling in Kansas, we have no option but to end our cooperation with and participation in the federal refugee resettlement program,” Brownback said.
Kansas has received a trickle of Syrian refugees. A family of three and two men have been resettled there in the past 15 months, a spokeswoman for Brownback said by email.
Obama pledged last year that the United States would take in 10,000 people fleeing war-torn Syria, under pressure from European leaders who have been inundated with refugees.
But the promise came under fire from Republicans concerned that violent militants could come into the United States posing as refugees.
Despite opposition from some states, the United States remains committed to admitting the promised number of Syrian refugees in the current fiscal year, which ends in September, said a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said state governments can consult on the resettlement of refugees, but the program is administered by the federal government. “Decisions regarding the admissibility of refugees to the United States are made by the Department of Homeland Security after stringent security checks,” the official said, noting that some refugee records are confidential.
Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for the federal Health and Human Services Department, said that “refugee resettlement will continue in Kansas, coordinated by non-profit organizations.”
More than 30 governors attempted to block refugees from their states, but courts and attorneys general have said that it is up to the federal government to screen refugees and settle them.
U.S. officials told a congressional panel in February that the country has tightened vetting of immigrants and refugees after attacks in California and Paris, and put on hold hundreds of applications from Syrian refugees.
More than four million Syrians have fled their war-torn country, according to the United Nations, which calls it the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation.
Almost 2 million Syrian refugees are in Turkey and hundreds of thousands live in camps in Jordan, while others have flooded Greece, according to the U.N.SHELBY TOWNSHIP, Mich. - A man was severely burned Friday during an apparent meth lab fire at his home in Shelby Township.
Officials believe the man had a meth lab in his home, and something happened that caused a fire. Shelby Township police and firefighters were called at 3:41 p.m. to the home in the 8000 block of Wiloray Avenue on the report of a house explosion.
The man drove about a mile to Planet Fitness despite suffering severe burns.
Police said the man was badly burned in the fire, so he got into his vehicle and drove about a mile to the Planet Fitness near 23 Mile Road and Van Dyke to take a shower.
"All I basically saw was a guy running in with no shirt, burns, socks and a pair of gym shorts," a witness said. "Something didn't look right. Then we heard him screaming and everybody started running around. (He was) just in pain, you know, burns. I'd be screaming too."
Police saw him fleeing the home and realized he had started the fire. He was taken into custody at the Planet Fitness.
The man suffered serious burns from the arms and the chest all the way up to his neck and was immediately taken to the hospital for treatment, police said. He's in "very serious condition," police said.
Officials wanted to airlift the man to the hospital, but they weren't able to do so because of the stormy weather, police said.
The area around Planet Fitness is blocked off, and the building was evacuated due to contamination. Officials are considering roping off even more of the area.
Experts said meth is very toxic, which is why everyone inside Planet Fitness had to be evacuated. When the man drove from his home to the gym, he spread the risk of contamination.
Police are working to contact a hazmat team to go into the home on Wiloray Avenue, decontaminate both scenes and investigate the cause of the fire. Residents are asked to stay away from the area.
Shelby Township police are continuing to investigate the incident.
You can see video from the scenes on Wiloray Avenue and Planet Fitness below.
Stay with ClickOnDetroit.com for updates.
Copyright 2017 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit - All rights reserved.Sex and Consent Under the Influence : Legislation: California's revised rape law has many young people wondering just what 'prevented from resisting' means. Even some experts say the language is too vague.
State Assemblywoman Diane Martinez (D-Alhambra) authored the Jan. 1 update, which deleted language that essentially said the accused had to be the provider of the drugs or alcohol. The rest of the law remained unchanged. "The only difference my bill made is that it doesn't matter if you're the person who bought that drink," Martinez says.
The law, enacted in 1872 and updated this year, says a rape is committed (among other circumstances) when "a person is prevented from resisting (sex) by any intoxicating, narcotic or anesthetic substance...."
The issue raised by host Ricky Rachtman on KROQ-FM's sex-talk show "Loveline" has reignited the date-rape controversy as young people ask what the boundary is between sex and rape. A small change in California's rape law cast a spotlight on the 123-year-old statute, which, among other things, restricts sex under the influence.
"I go to a bar, I see a nice woman, I buy her a few drinks.... She says, 'I want you to have sex with me....' Then I have sex with her.... Was I committing rape?"
In trying to clear things up, Martinez inadvertently brought attention to gray areas in the gender-neutral law--gray areas her update didn't create. Many "Loveline" callers thought she was responsible for the entire law. "I was shocked at the way people misunderstood," she says.
The point of the law is to punish those who rape people who are passed-out drunk--or blanked out on other drugs. And while most experts agree that consensual sex after a few martinis doesn't constitute a rape, the words "prevented from resisting" could leave a lot to interpretation, they say.
On the radio, on campus and in bars, young people are asking: How drunk does an accuser have to be to be "prevented from resisting"?
"Any time you find yourself in a 'gray area,' you could be in big trouble," says Mike Chao, president of UCLA's Interfraternity Council. "Students need to be aware that if they engage in any sexual activity, they better be very sure it's consensual."
The fear among some young people, many of whom learned of the law through "Loveline," is that rape will be the charge if someone has sex with another who is woozy beyond her better judgment, even if she did blurt out something sounding like "yes." It is a sobering prospect for some, given the large role alcohol has in young America. (Nearly half the college students in the nation are binge drinkers, according to a study released in December.)
It was the hottest topic last month on "Loveline," a popular, 12-year-old radio show that airs Sunday through Thursday nights. Rachtman emerged as the biggest opponent of the law's vagueness. If he had known about the law when he was younger, "I'd still be a virgin," he said. Off the air, Rachtman proclaimed: "Booze is foreplay."
Some women also questioned the law.
"As women, I think we need to take more responsibility... for our own drinking," said a "Loveline" caller identified as Marilyn, 28, from Claremont. "I'm real tired of people using government as a crutch."
Another KROQ caller asked Martinez to introduce a bill that would clarify the law so that someone feeling vindictive the morning after doesn't try to claim she was drunk beyond her ability to resist. "We need to ask the assemblywoman to make this law stronger," the male caller said, "so this issue of consent and semiconsciousness is brought out and clarified."
Dr. Drew Pinsky, the other "Loveline" host, said he has supported laws that protect women "ever since I had a daughter 2 1/2 years ago.... But," he argued, "this law could be used for malicious intent."
The experts agree.
"There is ambiguity in that language," said UCLA law professor Peter Arenella. "If it was interpreted to mean that the mere fact of intoxication meant the accuser couldn't give consent, that would be a disaster."Get The WHOLE Picture.
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Request the A.R.K. Drive Shipping Instructions using the request form below.On March 25, 1899, a curious article in the Neihart Herald declared that "it has recently been decided by an English court that artificial limbs are weapons when used advantageously in a fight." It wasn't the first time the press had noted that prosthetic limbs could be wielded during altercations.
The Belfast Telegraph of April 17, 1873, mentions that a prisoner "used his wooden leg as a weapon. " A vivid article in an 1893 edition of the Illustrated Police News describes how one Patrick Murphy attacked a constable with his wooden leg, "in the use of which he was most proficient." In the August 22, 1895, Pierre Weekly Free Press, we learn that one Harry Crawford "accidentally ran into...a cripple" while driving. In revenge, the victim attacked Crawford "using his wooden leg as a weapon and inflicting injuries that the doctors say will cost Crawford his life."
If they weren't used as weapons themselves, hollow appendages could contain lethal contraband. In 1904, the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette discussed the case of a man shot to death in Spain. When police apprehended a nearby beggar, "no weapon could be found upon him." But it eventually emerged that the killer had stashed a firearm within one of his wooden legs.
Legs were not the only artificial limbs used as weapons. On October 28, 1871, The Kentish Independent reported that one William Benson, whose hand had been replaced with an iron hook, attacked someone with such force that his victim's face had been "bound up" as a result. An 1885 edition of the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser announced a "Savage Attack with a Wooden Arm." And in Charleston, West Virginia, a 1914 report describes a fight involving both a prosthetic leg and a glass eye. A prankster had used horsehair and glue to give the impression that a man's wooden leg had grown hair. His target, named Alexander James, did not see the humor and attacked the culprit with the leg. The joker responded by throwing his glass eye at the assailant.
A theme runs through such accounts: the idea that by transforming an artificial limb from a tool of medicine to a tool of violence, the attackers have shown themselves to be evil. "Tis well under certain circumstances to have a wooden leg," the Cardiff Times declared in 1893, "but tis tyrannous to use it as a cudgel."
Limb attacks also appear in several notable works of 19th century fiction, where again they are often associated with villainy. In Prosthetic Body Parts in Literature and Culture, 1832 to 1908, University of Leeds research fellow Ryan Sweet notes that Moby Dick's Captain Boomer "is adorned with a prosthetic device that is specially designed to act as a weapon." Sweet also highlights a Sherlock Holmes story in which a character beats a "prison guard to death using his wooden leg" before the limb bogs him down in the mud. (This is another familiar narrative, in which a villain's artificial limb gives him a temporary combat advantage but ultimately defeats him.)
Wooden legs do appear to have been brutally effective weapons. More sophisticated replacements were being developed, but as the University of Georgia historian Stephen Mihm notes, these initially "failed to respond reliably and predictably to the movement and weight of the body." It seems that the simple wooden leg's uncomplicated nature made it suitable both for movement and as a weapon.
World War I, which disabled thousands of soldiers, would transform artificial limbs, however. On November 17, 1922, The Lichfield Mercury declared the "End of Wooden Legs," reporting that every soldier who had lost a leg in the war could have his wooden limb replaced for free with a lightweight metal prosthetic.
This change in technology didn't stop artificial limbs from being used as weapons, nor did it end the tendency in popular culture to associate such tools with knaves. Several James Bond antagonists attempt to kill the hero with artificial limbs. In the film Dr. No, the title character attacks Bond with using bionic hands but—repeating the trope of the prosthetic weapon that carries the seeds of its own destruction—later meets his end because the hands lack dexterity, leading him to slip to his death inside a nuclear cooling facility. In the film version of Live and Let Die, a henchman attacks Bond using pincers. Like Dr. No, he is defeated by his own device. As Lisa Funnell and Klaus Dodds note in Geographies, Genders and Geopolitics of James Bond, the Bond books and movies often contrast their able-bodied hero "with a villain who has a physical impairment that limits him physically and/or socially."
In professional wrestling, meanwhile, it has become something of a cliche for the heel to attack his unsuspecting opponents with weapons. The 1990s wrestler Doink the Clown would hit other wrestlers with a prosthetic arm to reinforce his character's villainous persona. Temple University Professor of Geography Bradley Gardener points out in Critical Geographies of Sport that wrestlers who sustained an injury would sometimes incorporate it into their storyline. This gave the show more "legitimacy," as "it painted the picture that wrestling was based on legitimate competition." It also allowed for villainous tactics. "Cowboy Bob Orton," Gardener notes, "often used his cast to illegally club opponents."
At other times, more heroic characters (or "faces") have worn prosthetics while competing in the ring. Zach Gowen, for instance, uses an artificial limb outside of wrestling. Onscreen, he portrayed an underdog character who was often pitted against towering opponents, and World Wrestling Entertainment emphasized his disabled status to make him likable to audiences. The prosthetic became a symbol of Gowen's never-give-up spirit—and a handy weapon, too.
Despite the growth of the disability rights movement, it remains a trope today for villainous characters to use artificial appendages as weapons. In the Harry Potter books and movies, Peter Pettigrew, who is presented as treacherous and cowardly, receives a silver hand that he uses against the protagonist. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the hand turns against Pettigrew, strangling him to death when he shows a flicker of remorse for his past actions.
Note, though, that the series also presents morally redeemable characters as having heavy disabilities. "Mad Eye" Moody, a veteran wizard who has lost many limbs (and who has been viewed by Mary Baldwin University psychologist Louise M. Freeman as an example of a "post-traumatic stress disorder" sufferer), gets a sympathetic portrayal reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe's 1839 story "The Man Who Was Used Up."
Other sympathetic depictions have made their way onto the silver screen as well. The recent films Kingsman: The Secret Service and Planet Terror feature a strong female antagonist and protagonist respectively with weaponised prosthetics. University of Exeter lecturer Luna Dolezal has noted that the stories "offset female vulnerability by weaponizing their bodies—turning them into weapons."
Although Richard Harrow of Boardwalk Empire does not have a prosthetic arm or leg, he wears a false face after losing an eye and enduring substantial damage to his jaw and cheek during the war. Harrow's implants render him a sad but also terrifying assassin, limiting his ability to show facial expressions and giving him the appearance of a blank stare as he guns down his targets.
Although much contemporary film and literature has tried to move beyond stereotypes of prosthetic users as evil, it remains an enduring and often playful trope. Nowhere, perhaps, is this better exemplified than in Lemony Snicket's tongue-in-cheek sequence of novels, A Series Of Unfortunate Events. The main antagonist, Count Olaf, has a sinister henchman—known through much of the franchise only as the "Hook Handed Man"—who enjoys threatening the heroes with his claws. Later, he is revealed to be a more complicated character than is initially believed, but the hooks remain threatening even in this satirical characterization.
Journalism also continues to link villainous actions and body prosthetics. Consider the media coverage of Abu Hamza, an Islamic fundamentalist who wears hooked prosthetics to replace the hands he allegedly lost experimenting with explosives. Nicknamed the "hook-handed hate preacher" by The Daily Express and others, Hamza's prosthetics were used to represent his generally menacing nature.
But where 19th century journalists saw weaponized prosthetics as a sign of villainy, modern media are more likely to psychologize the subject. On June 3, 2016, The Irish Times reported that a man named Kenneth Parker had been jailed for kicking a law officer with a prosthetic leg. A similar case, that of Patrick Murphy, had been reported over a century before, in 1893. In the earlier case, his use of an artificial limb as a weapon led the attacker to be branded deplorable. But The Irish Times chose instead to focus on Parker's alcoholism, heroin addiction, and the anguish he had felt since losing the limb.
Today, some transhumanists may welcome the chance to discard their fragile human body for a more durable artificial form. And it's not just the hyper-futurists: In Military Medical Ethics for the 21st Century (Routledge), professors Michael L. Gross and Don G. Carrick write that "state of the art prosthetics" can "make warfighters smarter, stronger, alert and confident."
Prosthetics have long been used as weapons. Soon it may be done on an industrial scale. |
Addiction is a disease, and he's got that disease. I hope he gets a handle on it, because he's got a wonderful soul."
But when it comes to getting a handle on it, Sheen may be, oddly, at a disadvantage. "Most people run out of money, they burn out, whatever, and then they finally hit rock bottom," says Eddie Braun, Sheen's stunt double and running buddy of twenty-five years. "Charlie is not going to hit rock bottom financially, because he's got so much money he can't piss it away. He can go anywhere and have instant 'friends.' Just add water and they're there."
Sheen was the best man at Braun's wedding; Braun was a groomsman at Sheen's first two and officiated at the third. Both men have tattoos of stingrays on their left ankles (as do three other friends, Corvette lovers all, who called themselves the Stingrays for a time: actors Nicolas Cage and Cary Elwes and musician Phil Roy). Braun loves Sheen fiercely and agreed to talk to me only after asking the actor's permission. But he doesn't pull his punches.
"Listen, the people closest to him wish we had a solution," says Braun, who, like several of Sheen's close friends, doesn't drink to excess or do drugs. "Charlie apparently is in his own downward spiral. Every time I'm gone on location, I worry. Because there are just three options: rehab, jail, or death."
The first time Charlie Sheen checked into rehab, in August 1990, he was 24. In his quarter century on the planet, he had fathered his first child, Cassandra. He had starred in two motion pictures that would go down in film history—Platoon and Wall Street—and a dozen more movies. He worked hard and played even harder. "I don't know how else to play," he tells me. He'd grown up around the entertainment industry, the third of four children of Martin Sheen and the artist Janet Templeton Sheen.
Martin's surname at birth had been Estevez, but he opted for a stage name. Three of his kids stuck with Estevez—Emilio, Ramon, and Renée. Charlie, born Carlos Irwin Estevez, was the only one to use Sheen. Friends say his father was, and is, his hero.
Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece about the Vietnam War, Apocalypse Now, took the whole family to the Philippines, where Martin—then a three-pack-a-day smoker who was given to getting "so drunk I couldn't stand up," he has said—had the heart attack that almost killed him. He received last rites from a priest who did not speak English. He was 36. "Charlie, of all the kids, was hit the hardest by it," Martin would say later. "He was very sensitive to my condition and really scared that I might die. He felt lost. And very vulnerable."
It was in the Philippines that Charlie first became enamored with make-believe, says his friend Roman Coppola. The two boys spent hours together playing with gory stage makeup. Back in junior high school in L.A., Charlie enlisted his friend Chris Penn's elder brother Sean to be the camera operator on several Super 8 films. "He had one stellar performance as a body in a refrigerator with a blue, frozen face," the elder Penn recalls. But Charlie's real childhood love was baseball. A great pitcher, he had dreams of going pro. To this day, he says, "I would trade an Oscar for one at-bat in the major leagues."
But Charlie lacked both the talent and the discipline to be a pro athlete. A challenging kid, he got arrested for marijuana possession and credit card forgery in his teens. At 15, he used his dad's charge card to pay a Las Vegas prostitute to rid him of his virginity. A few years later, after a dispute with a teacher, he left Santa Monica High School. By then his brother Emilio, three years his senior, was about to become a star in The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire.
Charlie was 18 when he landed his first leading role. It was 1983 when director Penelope Spheeris chose him to star in The Boys Next Door, a little movie about a couple of small-town teenagers who go on a killing spree while driving cross-country to L.A. Just over a decade earlier, Martin Sheen had starred in Badlands, Terrence Malick's classic dramatization of a real-life killing spree conducted by two teen lovers while on a road trip. Spheeris recalls that at one point, Charlie said he wanted to wear a blue jean jacket like the one Martin had worn in Badlands. Spheeris says that when she asked if he was sure, "he admitted to doing it as an homage."
Months later, at a screening of the film, Spheeris and the younger Sheen were sitting next to each other in a Santa Monica theater when Martin took the seat right behind them. "When the violence started, you could hear him back there groaning," Spheeris says. "Ultimately he stood up and said, 'I can't take any of this anymore.' And he left. I looked over at Charlie, and he goes, 'Doesn't he remember he did almost exactly the same thing in Badlands?' "
It wouldn't be the last time that the son would follow in the father's footsteps (or in another context, that the disapproving father would storm out). In 1985, just six years after Apocalypse Now's release, Charlie was chosen to lead an ensemble of young actors playing soldiers in Oliver Stone's autobiographical Vietnam War drama, Platoon. Stone's goal was to make the filmmaking pro- cess as true to life as possible, so the scene in which Charlie's character smokes dope for the first time was filmed with real weed. Sheen has spoken of "the stonosity of it all." Adding to the trippiness was that the film was shot in the Philippines, near where he'd visited as a child.
Both Apocalypse and Platoon were Oscar-nominated for Best Picture; only Platoon won. But Charlie still believes Apocalypse is the better film. "Platoon is okay," he tells me. "It showed the war from the ground level, from the boots up. But Apocalypse isn't just about the war. It's about life. It's the greatest film ever made."
Soon father and son acted together in the 1987 classic Wall Street, also directed by Stone. In one scene, Bud Fox (Charlie) visits his dad (Martin) in the hospital after he's suffered a heart attack. The scene, which closely mimicked what they'd really experienced, was wrenching. "We both knew what that scene was. We'd done it already," Martin says in a documentary about the making of Wall Street, noting that Charlie "wept uncontrollably" that day. "I did, too. I adore him."
But despite their bond, or perhaps because of it, there was friction between them about how Charlie was living his life. Charlie acknowledged as much in that same documentary, describing how he used their conflict to help prepare himself for a key scene, when a tearful Bud is arrested for insider trading. "We did it a couple of times, and it felt stupid and phony," Charlie says, adding that in real life, his dad had written him a letter "about how my priorities were askew and I spent my money like a drunken sailor." He kept the letter with him, and before the next take, he reread it. "The letter found something in me that triggered enough remorse or shame or whatever. It got me to that place."
After Wall Street came out, Charlie was offered more roles than he could possibly accept. In 1990 he starred in four movies and appeared in two more—a staggering pace. But none were of the caliber of his earlier work. Oliver Stone, the man who'd made him a star, had once promised they'd collaborate like Martin Scorsese and DeNiro did, Sheen has said. But then, over time, that idea faded away.
Stone had offered Sheen the role of Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July, and Sheen went so far as to meet with Kovic. But Stone never followed up. The role went to Tom Cruise, who would garner an Oscar nomination. Similarly, Stone and Sheen discussed another idea: a dramatization of John F. Kennedy's assassination that would pivot around Lee Harvey Oswald. According to a source familiar with the discussions, Stone told Sheen he'd play Oswald. Then a buzz started building around Dances with Wolves, starring Kevin Costner. Stone built JFK around him instead.
The second time Charlie Sheen got treated for addiction was in May 1998. He was 32, and he had no choice. Emerging from his first rehab stint in 1990, Sheen felt his life looked promising. Director Jim Abrahams, the king of the film parody, who already had Airplane! and The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! under his belt, tapped Sheen to star in not just Hot Shots! but also its sequel. Abrahams remembers Sheen as the ultimate professional—gracious, prepared, a team player.
The first day on-set of Hot Shots! Part Deux was a case in point. Sheen arrived looking as muscular as Sylvester Stallone, whose Rambo was going to be spoofed in the film. "We all kind of gasped when he took his shirt off. He was really cut," Abrahams recalls, stressing that he had not told Sheen to bulk up. "He just did it. He saw who he was making fun of, so he got himself a trainer. It was very encouraging to the rest of the cast and crew to see what ends he had gone to."
Sheen acknowledged to Abrahams that there were holes in his memory—scenes "in movies he didn't remember making. He was pretty open about it." But if he was using while they were working together, Abrahams says, Charlie kept it at a strict remove.
Other times, however, it bled over. Spheeris remembers getting a call from Sheen not long after she'd directed the 1992 comedy Wayne's World. He wanted her to accompany him to meet with a big-name producer.
"Literally, during the meeting, Charlie passed out," Spheeris says, recalling how his head drooped to one side. As the meeting broke up, the producer asked Spheeris to stay behind. "He looked at me and said, 'There's no way he could do this, is there?' And I said, 'Not if this is the way he's living now, no.' " Charlie's family was noticing, too. During one hard-partying phase, one of his brothers had a get-together, and Martin and Janet showed up, according to someone who was there. When they saw Charlie drinking heavily, Martin said, "I'm out of here." And he left, hitchhiking home. (No family members would be interviewed for this article.)
Around this time, Charlie was writing a lot of poetry, and many of the poems revealed a striking self-awareness. A copy of a book he self-published to give to friends includes one poem called "On the Edge of Forever," which reads in part: "Is it safe? Do you know? This path you have chose, / Or has all of your in- stinct gone straight up your nose? / Is it black, is it white, / Can you tell from your cave? / Or a flash in the night, / Of your own hollow grave?"
Sheen's sex life, meanwhile, still followed a pattern he'd established his first time at bat: prostitutes. In July 1995, he testified at the trial of "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss, acknowledging that he'd paid her more than $50,000. A few months later, Sheen married a model, then divorced the following year. On December 20, 1996, he was arrested for allegedly beating his porn-star girlfriend, Brittany Ashland, who claimed he'd knocked her out and threatened to kill her. (In June 1997, he pleaded no contest and got two years' probation.)
What followed was a period of abject despair. In a no-holds-barred Playboy interview in 2000, Charlie discussed his confusion about "how I went from making multimillion-dollar deals on movies and fucking Playmates to being unemployable and fucking a, um, five-months-pregnant Mexican whore with Cesarean scars." He recalled "just feeling my spirit dying.... Not really wanting to be an active member of the human race." Ultimately he decided that since he couldn't stop using, he would "turn up the volume." On May 20, 1998, he OD'd after injecting cocaine into his arm. Martin went on television and acknowledged his son's overdose, intentionally triggering the revocation of Charlie's probation. A judge mandated that the younger Sheen check into rehab.
At the end of Wall Street, Martin, playing Bud's dad, Carl Fox, had explained why jail was just what the doctor ordered. "It's gonna be hard on you," he told Bud. "But in some kind of screwed-up way, it's the best thing that could have happened to you." Now Martin was saying much the same thing to his real-life son. Still, Charlie committed to his next project—Rated X, a cable movie about two San Francisco porn entrepreneurs—over his father's objections.
Emilio directed Rated X and starred as Jim Mitchell opposite Charlie, who played Jim's self-destructive brother, Artie. The script, based on true events, required both actors to snort huge amounts of faux cocaine and ended with Artie's death. That worried Martin, who told Emilio, "You're going to lead him back into the pit of insanity!" But Charlie saw it differently. Playing an addict who died was "a gift," he has said. "Anytime I even began to think 'Good God, what am I missing?' that thought was replaced with 'I'm playing a dead man.' "
It appears that the third time Charlie Sheen checked himself into rehab was February 2010.
On Christmas 2009, Brooke Mueller told the Aspen police that during an argument, she'd told Sheen she wanted a divorce. According to the police report, Mueller said Sheen became enraged. Holding a knife to her neck, he allegedly told her he would have her killed.
When interviewed by officers that night, Sheen was polite and cooperative. He told police the argument erupted when Mueller got jealous of one of his daughters from a previous relationship. He said he didn't threaten Mueller with a knife. His breath smelled of alcohol.
Friends say that twelve years earlier, fresh out of rehab, Sheen had been determined to stay sober. He resuscitated his career by stepping into Michael J. Fox's shoes on the successful sitcom Spin City. Then, in 2003, he signed on to a new venture, a comedy about a cad named Charlie, his sensible brother, Alan, and Alan's son, Jake: Two and a Half Men.
The show was a huge hit—and friends say at the beginning of its run, Charlie was definitely substance-free. But that wouldn't last. In Tour of the Inferno, a film about the making of Platoon, actor Tom Berenger recalls a day on the set when he gathered his fellow cast members together and issued a warning: "I have the feeling this is going to be one of the great movies. It could be the best film you're ever in. It may be unfortunate if it happens too early in your life, because there's never anywhere else to go." Was that the problem? Did Charlie peak too early?
Sean Penn is skeptical. "We're talking about the son of a movie star, who had a certain realistic irreverence for the business and the way that people were subject to successes and failures," he says, adding that to him, Sheen has always had the personality of a performance artist—self-revealing no matter the cost. "He's so deeply invested in a humor about himself. That's what Charlie is to me: He's an honest public figure."
Friends have a similar explanation for Sheen's liaisons with hookers: honesty. "He doesn't want to mislead women into thinking they're going to be the next girlfriend," Braun says. With a pro, by contrast, there are no misunderstandings: "He'd rather take the heat than take advantage of girls." Which would be easier to, uh, swallow, if Sheen didn't allegedly keep on hiring hookers when he was in committed relationships.
In the period between rehab number two and rehab number three, he would marry and divorce actress Denise Richards and then marry Mueller, with whom he has twin boys. Both women would ultimately accuse Sheen of frightening and violent behavior. In 2006, Richards filed a declaration that listed Sheen's various transgressions—obsessive gambling, pornography, prescription-drug abuse, trysts with prostitutes—and alleged Sheen had threatened to kill her.
Richards also called out Sheen's handlers for "only looking at [his] financial condition and refusing to address [his] emotional and mental condition." In so doing, she raised an issue that simmers beneath any discus- sion of Sheen: What, if any, blame should be placed at the feet of Sheen's managers, not to mention Warner Bros. (which makes the show)? Sheen's contract is said to lack a mo- rality clause that would allow Warner Bros. to fire him for improper conduct. But some have noted that given that the studio loses millions for every episode the actor misses, the ecs there may be loath to punish Sheen even if they could.
For his part, Chuck Lorre, co-creator of Two and a Half Men, has been making reference to Sheen's excesses in the so-called vanity cards he places at the end of each episode. One episode that aired on Valentine's Day, as produc- tion on the show remained at a standstill, was punctuated by a Lorre card that read in part: "I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't do drugs. I don't have crazy, reckless sex with strangers. If Charlie Sheen outlives me, I'm gonna be really pissed."
In Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, the 1991 documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now, Martin Sheen says of his near-death experience in the Philippines, "I just knew: If I wanted to live, it was my choice. If I wanted to die, that was my choice, too." Martin chose the former; he's been sober for more than twenty years. Today his youngest son faces that same crucial choice.
Last August, Charlie pleaded guilty to misdemeanor third-degree assault in the Aspen incident with Mueller. In October he trashed his room at the Plaza Hotel. In November he filed for his third divorce. In mid-January 2011, he reportedly went on a bender in Las Vegas with porn star Bree Olsen, then failed to show up on time to work the following week. Two weeks later, Charlie was assembling his "porn family," coke pipe in hand. Then came the hospital stay and prompt assurances from his handlers that Charlie had entered a rehab facility.
But those initial reports were misleading. Charlie had agreed to undergo treatment, but he was doing it his own way, hiring a sobriety counselor to come to his house. During his first substance-free week, a friend says, he spent more than $1 million on cars, adding to his already large automobile collection with the help of a private dealer. At the end of his second clean week, he called in to the sportstalk radio program The Dan Patrick Show and lambasted his bosses for not resuming production. "I'm ready. They're not," he said. But in the same call, he admitted that a previous stretch of sobriety left him "bored out of my tree."
If only Sheen could slay the shark that is his addiction once and for all, like Quint in Jaws, his friends say. If only he could put his own private Kurtz to rest. "But you cannot preach to somebody. I mean, you can, but then he just secludes himself from you," says Braun, his stunt double and loyal friend, adding that he has talked to Sheen's parents about that paradox. "They say, 'Why not tough love? Just cut him out of your life.' I say, 'Well, that's all well and fine, but then you don't know where to find him when he's passed out somewhere.' "
When my phone rings on that February afternoon, I ask Charlie if he's told the porn stars to lose his number. "No comment," he says, though he cops to being a sucker sometimes. He gets used "a lot," he says, "because here's the thing: I'm not a grifter, so I can't really spot 'em coming. And I won't trade any part of my essence to get better at seeing that, because then I'm in their world, and it's a world I despise."
But all that's in the past, he says. "I spent the first forty-five years living a semi-inauthentic life. Now my promise to myself is that everything I do will be authentic."
Sheen says that for too long he was "being the guy that I thought they needed me to be and always feeling like I was the last person taken care of in the mix, you know. Always. Always the last guy considered. And listen, that's over. It's done. It's pissing everybody off, because they always had an expectation based on predictable reactions. And now they don't, and they don't know what to do."
It's hard to know who "they" are. His ex-wives? His parents? His favorite porn stars? I ask him, after all the hard work he's done getting clean in the past, what is it that keeps luring him back to the party? "All that shit was inauthentic," he says. The partying? I ask. "No," he says. "The fucking AA shit. The sobriety shit. It was always for other people. I just wanted to get a job back and get enough money to tell everybody to go fuck themselves and then roll like Errol Flynn and Frank Sinatra—the good parts of those guys."
Is he saying that this time he's approaching rehab more authentically? I ask. Or is he saying the opposite: that rehab itself is inauthentic? "I'm going to ride the winds of the universe," Sheen says mischievously, and for a moment he sounds like Kurtz's sidekick, the strung-out photographer-philosopher played by Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now. "How about that? How about that? "A friend of mine and I were having a discussion about the existence of God on facebook. And we came to the issue of the moral argument for God. Without posting our entire discussion I will post a comment of mine followed by his response.
My Facebook post: I have to also say something to my friend’s denial of the moral argument. Facebook friend stated “As for the Objective Moral Values and Duties, there is no such thing as objective moral values. There are only subjective moral values. If they were objective, they would be universal to every man, woman, and child on the planet. They are not. Therefore, false.”There are several problems with your critique. First of all you misunderstand what Objective means. To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is right or wrong independently of whether anybody believes it to be so. It is to say this morality is universally binding on everyone whether they believe it or not. And if you argue that there are no such things then you must then be arguing for subjectivity. But there are objective morals. I can give you one. It is wrong no matter who you are or where you live whether you believe it or not to sexually abuse a 2 year old. This is objectively wrong and evil. If you are going to deny objective morality then you have to be open to the possibility that somewhere sexually molesting a 2 year old might be right. Ultimately you would have no grounds for objecting to anyone who would molest a 2 year old other than to say that it is wrong for you but it might be right for them.. No reasonable person would accept this. The reasonable man knows in his heart that there are objective morals even if he may not know all of them.
Now here is his response:
Ok, I’ve thought about it for awhile, and I will now try to present my argument. First of all, I want to say that I would love if not only child rape, but all rape was universally immoral. Unfortunately, not only in our culture in the USA, but all around the world, rape of women is somewhat acceptable. In the USA, we have a ridiculously high rate of blaming the victim or not even believing the victim. In other parts of the world, the victim is completely blamed and often times put to death. Now if morals are objective and created by God, then what is God’s (not Jesus in the New Testament) stance on rape? Here is Deuteronomy 21:10-14,”When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD, your God, delivers them into your hand, so that you take captives, if you see a comely woman among the captives and become so enamored of her that you wish to have her as wife, you may take her home to your house. But before she may live there, she must shave her head and pare her nails and lay aside her captive’s garb. After she has mourned her father and mother for a full month, you may have relations with her, and you shall be her husband and she shall be your wife. However, if later on you lose your liking for her, you shall give her her freedom, if she wishes it; but you shall not sell her or enslave her, since she was married to you under compulsion.” While one can argue that this constitutes a marriage by God, it is still rape, and it is ordered by God. This isn’t even the worst part. There are Bible verses that claim God tells Israeli soldiers when they conquer places to throw babies off the city walls. How is that moral? This may be the Old Testament, but Christians still claim this is the inspired and perfect Word of God. Well, at one point in history, your God condoned and ordered both rape and child murder. These are not moral values you have now, and these are not moral values I have. They are your Objective Moral Values and Duties, though, since they are God’s Word and Law. Isn’t that where you said Objective Morals come from? I can’t accept the morals of a god that orders baby murder.
Because his question is a good one, I want to give it a fair response. Therefore this blog post will serve as that response.
I want to begin by first restating what I mean by objective morals. Objectivity means that it does not depend on human opinion or knowledge. It is simply valid and binding, regardless of human opinion. This means that the objective morals are not dependent upon public opinion or popularity. We also need to be careful to understand what “objective “ does not mean. One of my favorite Christian thinkers William Lane Craig describes objectivity as opposed to absolute:
“The reason I think it preferable to talk about objective moral values and duties rather than absolute moral values and duties can best be seen by considering their opposites. The opposite of “objective” is “subjective.” The opposite of “absolute” is “relative.” Now very little reflection is needed to see that “relative” does not mean “subjective.” Just because one’s moral duties are relative to one’s circumstances doesn’t in any way imply that they are subjective, that there is not an objectively right or wrong thing to do in such a situation.”
He goes on to say :
“Absolute” means “regardless of the circumstances.” “Relative” means “varying with the circumstances.” We can agree, for example, that it is not absolutely wrong to kill another person. In some circumstances killing another person may be morally justified and even obligatory. To affirm that one’s moral duty varies with the circumstances is not to say that we have no objective moral duties to fulfill.
This distinction is important to remember for the moral argument as evidence for God.
Now having said that I want to get into your objection. If I may summarize your objection I think you are saying (correct me if I am wrong) that if there are objective morals then it seems contradictory for God to be commanding the destruction of a people or nation. You would say that God himself is being immoral here. Now the first and easiest way to dismiss your argument would be to say that if you don’t believe in objective morality than you have no real case for saying that God commits an immoral act. Since morality is subjective, you have no real grounds to object to anything. Which is why in my post above I pointed out that you do not have grounds to say that child molestation is wrong. In a way your question betrays your spoken belief in subjective morality.
However, I think it would be fairer to you to say that your objection about God commanding certain things is that they may seem to go against objective morality. It would seem to be an internal contradiction to Christianity and thus based upon the coherence theory of truth, Christianity doesn’t hold up. This is where I want to devote the rest of my time.
I will not be addressing specifically your issue of rape and the legal code for punishment and protection of women. Instead I will just give you a link to a source that I think deals well with that issue. The link to that article gives a fair look at the issue from both a Christian and Jewish perspective. However, while i will not be addressing that issue specifically, what I have to say will still cover it in principle.
This leads us to what I believe to be the core of your argument. It has been called the Moral Monster argument and is often used by the likes of Richard Dawkins. We need build a solid foundation to work with when dealing with this issue. Therefore, I want to go through the Old Testament and pull out some things we can learn from it about God. This section of my argument will also address the idea that the OT God is different from the NT God. I know you didn’t bring up that objection but I might as well kill a couple of birds with one stone.
The first thing we learn from the Old Testament is that God is the creator and lawgiver. It is because God created everything that He has the right to do with His creation as He pleases and to command of it what He pleases. At first glance that could be a scary thing especially if God is this moral monster as Dawkins likes to accuse him of being. However, we learn from the Old Testament that the commands of God issue from Him as a reflection on his character. What does the character of God look like from the Old Testament?
Well, the OT points out that God is good. His goodness causes Him to create good things. In the much maligned first book of the Bible, God says of his creation, Gen. 1:31, “that it is good.” God’s creation not only showcases his awesome power but it also showcases his love for people. Psalm 8 says it like this :
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
I don’t know about you but I find it pretty amazing that the God who created the entire universe of unimaginable scope and measure still thinks of mankind as a special creation. He gives us dominion over His creation. Because of his love for us, he gave mankind such an awesome responsibility. The OT continues on describing the love of God. Here are just a handful of the verses that speak of God’s love:
The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. (Ex 34:6-7) “Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him,” declares the LORD. (Jer 31:20)
I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul. (Jer 32:40-41)
The LORD said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” (Hos 3:1)
The LORD upholds all those who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time.
You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.
The LORD is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all he has made.
(Ps 145:14-17)
He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets prisoners free,
the LORD gives sight to the blind,
the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down,
the LORD loves the righteous.
The LORD watches over the alien
and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
(Ps 146:7-9)
In particular, God’s love and concern for people who are disadvantaged is frequently mentioned throughout the OT. The law contained several rules for treating orphans, widows and foreigners fairly and providing for their needs (e.g. Dt 24:10-22).
But you, O God, do see trouble and grief;
you consider it to take it in hand.
The victim commits himself to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless…
You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.
(Ps 10:14, 17-18)
Craig says, “You can’t read the Old Testament prophets without a sense of God’s profound care for the poor, the oppressed, the down-trodden, the orphaned, and so on. God demands just laws and just rulers.”
God is love but there is also another aspect of God. He is just. In fact, his love demands that he be just. He must punish evil. But even in his justice he is merciful. We see in the OT that He literally pleads with people to repent of their unjust ways that He might not judge them. “As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ez. 33.11).
The story of Jonah is a story of God’s mercy upon a wicked and evil people. God sent Jonah to warn the people of Nineveh that He would punish their evil ways. Jonah didn’t want to go because He knew if the people repented God would spare them.
God’s judgement is anything but whimsical or arbitrary. When God announces to Abraham his intention to destroy Sodom, God is willing to spare the cities for the sake of righteous people.
“Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it?Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Gen. 18.25).
One last verse will suffice to showcase God’s patience and desire to withhold judgment. This verse comes four hundred years before the verses that you pointed out regarding God’s commands to Israel to wipe-out the Canaanites.
“Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.... And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites [one of the Canaanite clans] is not yet complete” (Gen. 15. 13, 16).
This verse shows that God was patient with the people of Canaan and that He would not let Abraham destroy them because of his patience. But the verse also projects forward to a day when the sin or iniquity of these people would be so full that God would punish them.
To summarize all of the above, God as creator is loving, merciful, patient, and just.
This justice then is at the root of the question at hand. Gregory Koukl says this :”Those who are quick to object that God isn’t doing enough about evil in the world (“A good God wouldn’t let that happen”) are often equally quick to complain when God puts his foot down (“A loving God would never send anyone to Hell”).”
In the end of time, God will settle the ultimate judgment. God often judges people and nations here on earth in the present and in the past. God uses several means to carry out this temporal judgement:
He uses natural disasters and other natural means. In the OT we have the flood, the plagues on Egypt, horde of locusts, famines and ect. God uses people. In particular, he gives government the responsibility to punish evil here on earth. God may use people who act righteously but he also uses people who act out of evil intents. God used the Assyrians and the Persian kings to punish the people of Israel. These kings were pagan and evil and often acted out of evil motives yet God uses them to seek punishment on the people of Israel for idolatry. God also promises to punish the Assyrians and Persians for their evil motives.
There is one other foundation that we must look at before we finally put all this together into an answer. That is the fact that every person born is sinful. This means we are all deserving of punishment. The fact that any person |
, Lopes swerved all the way off the road. The vehicle rolled several times after hitting two trees, throwing Lopes and three others out of the windows. Out of the ten souls on board that day, Lisa was the only one to pass on.
At the height of their popularity, TLC was the best-selling female group of all time. With Lisa gone and T-Boz battling sickle cell anemia and later a brain tumor, TLC was history. One super star catches fire while two others are extinguished. These tragedies paved the way for the new wave of hip hop that was destined to be, a new moon child for the masses with a budding monarch to lead the way.
“I see the invisible spirits, walkin' along the physical mind
Of a crazy individual?
Where demons still find it livable?
I need a hug to hold my soul inside my body?
I got the secret here?
Yeah, I should have told somebody?'
Cause ever since I've been sayin' things I never meant
It's like I was speakin' in tongues, the black breath in my lungs?
I won't allow it…
My destiny to overthrow?
Those on top of me fiendin' for currency”
--from the song "Untouchable" by Lisa “Left Eye” ft. Tupac Shakur
Weird Stuff!
Angie Beyince grew up spending her summers with her cousins, Beyoncé and Solange. “They loved Janet Jackson,” she stated. “We’d talk all night and watch Showtime at the Apollo and my snake, Fendi, would just be crawling around. He’d sit on our heads while we watched TV.”
1. Texas Monthly, April 2004
Written by Jamie HanshawLifetime said in February that the recently-concluded season 6 of "Drop Dead Diva" will be its last, but there are signs pointing to another renewal.
"Another" because the series was cancelled after its fourth season in 2013, leaving fans hanging after a massive twist in the finale. This was, however, changed a couple of weeks later, after Sony TV reportedly found a way to make a more feasible financial model for the show. Lifetime than brought it back for a fifth season, and then renewed it for a sixth.
"Drop Dead Diva" is a comedy/drama/fantasy show that follows the life of a model named Deb, who dies in a car accident and finding her soul returning to earth in the body of Jane, a smart, plus-sized lawyer.
"All will finally be revealed in the final season of Lifetime's critically-acclaimed hit series," said Lifetime in an earlier announcement. The show's sixth season was concluded with an episode entitled "It Had To Be You" on June 22, 2014.
Creator Josh Berman is hopeful that like Deb, the show will once again resurrect. He told The Wrap: "We've been canceled before, but with our fan base and already seeing the petitions online and the movement to bring it back, I think anything is potentially possible."
He used American crime drama "The Killing" as an example": I mean look at 'The Killing,' which was brought back to life twice, I mean we've only been brought back to life once."On Sunday, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation rejected a bill to extend Israeli law to the West Bank settlements, but only after most of the committee's members initially voted for the move.
The committee's chairman, Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, himself initially voted for the bill, which had been initiated by MK Miri Regev (Likud ). However, Neeman called a halt to the voting to discuss the matter with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Only after Netanyahu instructed his ministers, through Neeman, to vote against the bill, did they do so. On a second round of voting, the proposal was quashed.
In the second round only Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov (Yisrael Beiteinu ) voted for the bill while nine ministers opposed it. Five other ministers abstained: Neeman, Daniel Hershkowitz, Meshulam Nahari, Yaakov Margi and Yuli Edelstein.
Military law is currently the law applied in the West Bank. Extending Israeli law to the settlements would mean a de facto annexation of the settlements to Israel.
Approval of the bill by the ministerial committee would require the 94-member coalition to vote for it in its preliminary reading in the Knesset, which would assure it would pass that reading. Such a situation could both embarrass Kadima as well as place Israel on a collision course with the United States and several European countries.
Livnat clarification
Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat issued a statement of clarification on Sunday after initially voting for the bill, then voting against it on the second round. On the first vote, Livnat's statement said, she misunderstood and thought she was voting against, not for, Regev's bill, and in support of the prime minister. When it was made clear to her that a vote in favor meant she was supporting Regev's bill, she changed it.
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Sources close to Sa'ar, who also changed his vote, said he also thought he was voting against the bill rather than for it.
"There is no way the committee would have passed the bill. One way or another the prime minister would have brought all his weight to bear to prevent it from moving ahead. So to present matters as if the government was just a step away from annexing the settlements is simply incorrect," a senior political figure said on Sunday.
Another political source said: "The fact that Kadima did not insist on having one of its members on the Ministerial Committee on Legislation could cause them a lot of embarrassment. Ministers could force Kadima to support right-wing initiatives and the party will have no recourse" but to support them.
At Sunday's meeting, Neeman proposed that the bill be brought up again in a month, so the cabinet could discuss the matter in the interim.
Earlier, he had asked the ministers to phone Regev and urge her to agree to a postponement of the vote, but Regev had refused.
Minister Benny Begin, who opposes the bill, said the legislation was "not helpful to the state, because the interpretation could be far-reaching - as if the prime minister is considering such a possibility. Such bills have a cost in the international arena."
Read this article in Hebrew
The West Bank outpost of Migron, August 2, 2011. Daniel Bar-On
Benjamin Netanyahu at the Knesset, March 14, 2012. Olivier FitoussiThe Jackson’s Climbing Salamander (Bolitoglossa jacksoni) was rediscovered recently after being missing for 42 years. The Search for Lost Species project listed it as one of the top 25 most wanted species. It was found in the Finca San Isidro Amphibian Reserve in Guatemala. The reserve is home to other recently re-discovered species such as the Cuchumatan golden toad (Incilius aurarius) and the Black-eyed Treefrog (Agalychnis moreletii).
The Jackson’s Climbing Salamander is part of the family Plethodontidae – the Lungless Salamander family. Not much is known about the salamander because there’s only been a three ever seen. One of the species was taken as a preserved specimen, another was brought to Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley to live in captivity but it either escaped or a staff member stole it.
Source: http://www.amphibians.org/news/jacksons-climbing-salamander-rediscovered/#disqus_thread
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FacebookOpera announced on Monday that its Opera Mini for iPhone was approved by Apple for distribution via the App Store. Though App Store restrictions have so far limited alternate browsers to those that use the built-in capabilities of WebKit, Opera Mini is the first true alternative browser—rendering engine and all—to challenge Mobile Safari. And it's popular right now: it's at the top of the free app charts on the iTunes Store throughout Europe at the time of publication.
Opera Mini gets around Apple's restrictions on downloading and executing scripts—needed to execute JavaScript—by using a proxy server for all connections. When you request a webpage in Opera Mini, the request is sent to Opera's servers, which then download the page. Then Opera's servers prerender and repackage the content into an ostensibly wireless network-friendly package for quick downloading to a mobile device. Opera Mini then renders the content on your iPhone using its own rendering engine.
The idea behind this is that Opera Mini should be faster to download and render Web content, and should look much better than some phones' anemic and/or WAP-only browsers. Opera Mini is quite popular on some other platforms, and Opera claims that it has over 50 million users worldwide. Unfortunately for Opera Mini for iPhone, though, Mobile Safari has raised our expectations of what a mobile browser should be.
When it comes to rendering quality, Mobile Safari wipes the floor with Opera Mini. WebKit is a great rendering engine, and far and away the most popular one on mobile devices—it's in webOS, Android, and Symbian, in addition to iPhone OS. Webpages render about as fast as the iPhone can download them, layouts look the same as their desktop counterparts, and type and graphics look great.
Opera Mini, on the other hand, is pretty hit or miss. Layouts have a number of quirks, like the fact that all text seems to be rendered in Helvetica—not even common "Web safe" fonts like Georgia or Arial are used by Opera Mini. Even using Helvetica, though, most pages are completely unreadable when zoomed out. Clearly Opera Mini isn't using the iPhone OS's built-in text rendering APIs.
Ars Technica as rendered by Opera Mini on the left, and Mobile Safari on the right
That's not too bad, since Opera Mini can quickly zoom in. However, double-tapping on sections showed unpredictable behavior. Sometimes it zoomed in too much, or too little, or just didn't zoom at all.
Once zoomed in, Opera Mini seems fine. Text is easy to read and pages scroll quickly. It's much harder to avoid accidental diagonal scrolling when scanning a page, though, since Opera Mini lacks the vertical scrolling lock that Mobile Safari uses.
You can see Opera Mini's random zooming behavior on the left, and Mobile Safari's zooming on the right.
Another area where Mobile Safari exceeds Opera Mini is in JavaScript execution. Some parts of the Ars homepage, like the scrolling features box, simply don't work with whatever Opera is running on its proxy servers. I found no way to predict what would work and what wouldn't on a particular page.
As for the claims that Opera Mini should be faster than Mobile Safari, I just didn't see it. I restricted browsing to using the fair-to-middling 3G signal I get in my apartment building, and saw no appreciable advantage for Opera Mini over Mobile Safari. Daring Fireball reports that Opera Mini is faster over EDGE, and I did notice that Mobile Safari was a little slower at downloading some larger graphics. However, most pages I tried would render the text and be readable as fast or faster than Opera Mini, even on EDGE. If you're using a first-gen iPhone or turn off your 3G radio regularly, this advantage might be worth looking into. However, you might not appreciate the trade-off in text and image rendering quality.
Left: Opera Mini will offer to store passwords for you. Right: The tap-and-hold gesture for calling up a context popup is nice, but it takes some getting used to. Notice the non-standard text selection mechanism.
Opera Mini does offer some nice interface and usability features. Most prominent is the "Speed Dial" feature, which is basically a set of nine visual bookmarks that opens when you first launch Opera or open a new tab. Opera Mini prepopulates some of the spots with a decent set of common bookmarks, including Twitter, Facebook, The New York Times, AccuWeather, and of course a link to the My Opera portal. To add or edit a Speed Dial bookmark, simply tap and hold to call up a pop-up menu. You can then either enter a URL or select from a list of recently accessed URLs.
The tap and hold method can also call up popup menus when browsing, for selecting or editing text, saving images to your photos folder, or opening links in a new tab. It's a good idea, but it does take a little while to get used to how it works. Tapping and holding causes the popup menu to appear directly beneath your finger, obscuring the options. You have to tap and hold, wait for the popup to appear, and then deliberately pull your finger away to keep the menu from inadvertently disappearing. It's not bad, per se, but quirky.
Left: Opera Mini's tab switcher is a clever improvement over Mobile Safari's. Right: Hitting the "wrench" gives access to a number of settings and options.
Speaking of tabs, Opera Mini has a clever UI for keeping track of them. Tap the "tab" button (second from right) on the button bar, and a little tab switcher pops up, complete with preview icons. Tapping the plus sign opens a new empty tab with a location bar and Speed Dial bookmarks. Tapping any open tab slides it on top of the little stack of open tabs and loads that tab's content in the window. Tapping the big red "x" will close a tab. Tapping in the window or the tab button will dismiss the tab switcher. I found this quicker to use than Mobile Safari's tab switching.
Perhaps the nicest bit of UI flair is the forward and back behavior. Opera Mini keeps as many pages as possible cached in memory. When you click back or forward, it simply slides the previous or next page into view. It's fast and feels natural, and it avoids Mobile Safari's knack for unnecessarily reloading some content.
I was planning to complain about Opera Mini's pixel-wasting title banner until I started experimenting with the Settings menu. (And don't bother with the in-app help, as there's no actual guide in there.) Here, you can change several thing about how the browser works, including enabling a full-screen option. The full-screen mode gets rid of the title bar, and tucks the address bar up out of the way after loading a page (like Mobile Safari does). At the bottom are two translucent buttons: a back button on the left, and a button to bring up the toolbar on the right. This gives you much more browsing screen real estate, and it's the way I preferred to use Opera after I discovered it.
Left: Fullscreen browsing is the way to go in Opera Mini. Right: Mobile View is fast, but certainly not more readable.
There's also a "mobile view," which will essentially strip out most of the CSS style and layout, giving you a view much like the cruddy browsers from yesteryear's feature phones. It will speed up your browsing, but in practical use, even a semantically marked-up webpage will suffer from usability and readability in this mode.
If you really want to speed up your browsing, you can bump down the image quality. This will cause Opera's servers to compress images more before sending them to your phone. The high quality setting looks pretty comparable to Mobile Safari when zoomed in (this doesn't help Opera Mini's inferior image zooming technique, however). "Medium" seems to give a noticeable speed increase, and the image quality difference wasn't particularly bothersome. Low quality images are even faster, but just look bad. You can turn off image loading altogether, if that suits your particular browsing needs.
You can change the default type size, as well. I didn't really notice any useful differences between the settings here, though. A full page of type is still unreadable at any setting, making zooming in the only option to read text. Larger text just means more scrolling.
Left: Settings is where you can tweak your browsing experience. I recommend "Medium" images, "Medium" text, and "Fullscreen" on. Right: Privacy settings are there if you want them.
There's an option to enable Opera Link, which will automatically sync all your bookmarks and browser history between Opera Mini and Opera on the desktop, if that's your browser of choice. Privacy settings also let you turn off the saving of passwords, turn off cookies, or clear your browser's history, saved passwords, or cookies. It's worth noting, however, that all of your browsing passes through Opera's servers—including SSL connections, passwords, and more. If you're concerned enough about privacy to want to use these settings, you would probably want avoid giving Opera potential access to all your browsing as well.
Overall, Opera Mini has some nice UI features that some will really appreciate. Its look and feel is decidedly "Opera-y," which may feel a little out of place on the iPhone, and it also has a few UI and text quirks that deviate from apps that leverage more of the iPhone's built-in frameworks. But it does work pretty much as advertised. Unless you're stuck with an EDGE connection or don't mind turning down the image quality, though, the potential speed advantage just doesn't outweigh Mobile Safari's far superior rendering in our view.
The upside is that Opera Mini for iPhone is free (as in beer), so it won't hurt to give it a try.Domains as collateral
There was a new entry into the twenty most expensive domains ever bought in April 2014 as Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi paid £2.1m ($3.6m) for ownership of Mi.com. Their primary reason for splashing out would appear to be the difficulty many westerners have pronouncing their name and as they look to expand into the English-speaking world, a simplified name and domain was key to their branding.
Linguistic issues aside, the factors that determine the value of a domain name and influence how valuable it is to a business as intellectual property are fairly obvious. Though the internet offers a seemingly infinite amount of space and choice, the reality is, just like with bricks-and-mortar real estate, premium space is limited and highly sought-after.
“domain.pawn”
Although there are now a huge range of domain extensions, from the international – co.uk and co.jp, to the organisational –.gov and.org to newer profession-specific extensions like.diamonds and even.plumbing, ‘.com’ has always and probably will always be the most recognisable and sought after top level domain.
In the past couple of years.co has emerged as a desirable extension, partly based on its use in URL shorteners such as t.co (Twitter) and g.co (Google), but also in the way it was marketed as a domain for tech companies and entrepreneurs, who typically lead where others follow when it comes to online trends.
Finding a domain that is short, memorable, SEO-friendly and that can easily be incorporated into a company’s wider branding becomes more difficult each year and as the importance of domains as collateral increases, so do the opportunities for intermediaries to build an industry around them. Whether it be selling sought-after domains, branding new extensions or using domains as collateral for lending.
As a result there is now a whole industry dedicated to letting firms use domain names as collateral. Much like we at borro offer loans against cars, gold, watches and artwork, companies like inteLend and Domain Capital offer financing in return for the keys to your website. Ownership is transferred until the loan is paid back in full, but with the website operating as usual.
Non-tangible collateral like brand names or logos have been included in balance sheets, traded and loaned against for years, so with domains becoming the primary portal with which many businesses operate it’s likely we’ll see more and more of this type of activity. In fact, say you have an incredibly popular Twitter account or Facebook page, could they be used as collateral? It may be against terms and conditions, but so is selling such accounts and that happens on a daily basis.
There have been countless stories over the years of people buying up domain names and selling them on at a profit, such as back in 2003 when Microsoft forgot to renew Hotmail.co.uk, and those who were lucky enough to be early adopters in the days when sex.com, shopping.com, holidays.com were all available are still busy counting their money. But, what will the next valuable domain extension be?
The examples of.co or.tv seem to suggest that increasing the popularity, and in turn the value of domains, depends on marketing it to organisations and generating awareness amongst in the public consciousness. In the same way that a physical retail location depends on footfall, domain extensions depend on awareness and trust to drive their use.Last week, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s new government introduced legislation to increase the provincial corporate tax rate from 10 per cent to 12 per cent. In addition to funding needed public services and infrastructure in Alberta, this tax reform is a victory for fiscal federalism and our national economic union.
When the former Conservative government slashed Alberta’s rate to 10 per cent in 2006, it provoked costly and unproductive tax competition among provinces. In 2008, British Columbia cut its rate to 10 per cent, with its budget speech identifying Alberta as a “major competitor.”
In 2009, Ontario began cutting to 10 per cent and New Brunswick to eight per cent. In 2012, Saskatchewan’s throne speech proposed a cut to 10 per cent, “to ensure Saskatchewan remains competitive with Alberta and British Columbia.”
But this race to the bottom proved fiscally unsustainable. Ontario’s 2012 budget speech asked “business to do its part to help Ontario balance its budget” and stopped cutting at 11.5 per cent. For the same reason, British Columbia and New Brunswick restored rates of 11 per cent and 12 per cent respectively in 2013.
Saskatchewan quietly stayed at 12 per cent, along with Manitoba and Quebec. The other Atlantic provinces had maintained higher corporate tax rates all along.
Only in New Brunswick and Alberta has the reversal of provincial corporate tax policy reflected a change in government. In each of the other provinces, the same premier who had committed to corporate tax cuts later recognized that the treasury could not afford them. Governments of all stripes have a shared interest in collecting sufficient revenues to balance their budgets.
The parliamentary budget officer estimates that each percentage point of federal corporate tax collects $1.9 billion of annual revenue. A common provincial rate of 12 per cent, rather than 10 per cent, would therefore provide $3 billion to $4 billion more revenue to provinces every year.
This significant contribution to provincial budgets is barely noticeable on corporate balance sheets. Last week, Statistics Canada reported that private non-financial corporations are sitting on $686 billion in cash. It would take about two centuries for two percentage points of provincial corporate tax to deplete that stockpile.
Business decisions about where to invest are subject to many factors that can trump corporate tax rates, such as the location of natural resources, the cost of other inputs, the quality of infrastructure,and the skill of employees. Since corporate tax revenues help to fund infrastructure and training that companies need, it is hard to argue that corporate tax cuts have increased investment.
However, those who believe that investment is highly sensitive to corporate tax rates should welcome the convergence of provincial rates toward a common standard. Surely it is more efficient for capital to be allocated among provinces based on real economic factors, rather than based on tax differences.
Alberta’s move clearly establishes 12 per cent as an interprovincial norm for corporate taxes — with five provinces at that level, two slightly below and three somewhat above. There is no longer competitive pressure for provinces to cut below this threshold.
British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan are parties to the New West Partnership Trade Agreement, which commits them to “not directly or indirectly provide business subsidies that entice or assist the relocation of an enterprise from another Party” and to “jointly encourage non-Parties to eliminate subsidies to business and refrain from bidding wars.”
The same problems arise whether the instrument used to entice business relocation is a higher subsidy or a lower corporate tax. A logical extension of the New West Partnership would be for member provinces to formally agree not to cut their corporate tax rates below 12 per cent.
That would first require British Columbia to raise its corporate tax rate by a point from 11 per cent to 12 per cent. If Ontario were then to round up its corporate tax rate from 11.5 per cent, that would establish 12 per cent as the pan-Canadian floor for provincial corporate taxes.
Those who believe that the overall corporate tax rate is too high would remain free to advocate for corporate tax cuts at the federal level that apply equally in all parts of Canada. Those of us who think that federal corporate tax breaks have contributed more to corporate cash-hoarding than to productive investment will continue advocating for their reversal.
But both sides of this debate ought to prefer a common standard for provincial corporate taxes instead of provinces trying to bid investment away from each other. All Canadians should thank Premier Notley for keeping her 12 per cent promise.
National Post
pawley@uwindsor.ca
Howard Pawley is the former NDP premier of Manitoba.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption German President Christian Wulff: "I have acted without fault and always been honest"
German President Christian Wulff has announced his resignation, after prosecutors called for his immunity to be lifted.
An ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr Wulff, 52, stepped down over corruption claims involving a dubious home loan. He denies any wrongdoing.
Mrs Merkel cancelled a visit to Italy on Friday to deal with the crisis, and said she regretted that he had quit.
German media say the crisis is unprecedented in post-war Germany.
Mrs Merkel had fought to get Mr Wulff, from her centre-right Christian Democrat party (CDU), appointed as president. He had been in the job for less than two years.
She said she accepted his resignation "with respect but also with regret".
"He dedicated himself to the interests of Germany," she said in a brief statement at 10:30 GMT, shortly after his announcement on Friday.
Analysis The presidential post may be largely ceremonial but this is an embarrassing and awkward distraction for Angela Merkel. Christian Wulff was her personal choice, and now she will have to invest political capital to find an acceptable replacement. At a time when her opinion poll ratings are high, this will be a blot on her reputation for reliability and good judgement. The focus on finding a new president will take Mrs Merkel away from her task of trying to lead the eurozone through its crisis. She has already had to postpone a visit to Italy to see Mario Monti, at a time when critical decisions have to be made about Greece and other issues.
She said Mr Wulff was convinced he had "acted legally correctly" but was "stepping back from the office, from service to our people".
Germany's political parties will now seek to agree on a new candidate for president, she said.
In the interim, Horst Seehofer of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of the CDU, will be acting president.
The president's role is largely ceremonial, to serve as a moral authority for the nation.
The BBC's Berlin correspondent Stephen Evans says the affair is just a headache for Mrs Merkel, whose approval rating is high among the German people.
However, she does not need any new problems as Germany wrestles with the eurozone debt crisis, our correspondent adds.
"The developments of the past few days and weeks have shown that [the German people's] trust and thus my effectiveness have been seriously damaged," Mr Wulff said in a brief statement.
"For this reason it is no longer possible for me to exercise the office of president at home and abroad as required."
Controversial loan
Christian Wulff Born in Osnabruck, in then West Germany, in 1959
Studies at the University of Osnabruck, where he meets his future wife, Christiane
Becomes active in the Christian Democrat Union at the age of 20
Challenges Gerhard Schroeder, who would later become chancellor, for the premiership of Lower Saxony in 1990, but loses
Wins control of the state in 2003 polls
Becomes one of four deputy leaders of the CDU in 1998
Picked as president in 2010 by Chancellor Angela Merkel, becoming the country's youngest president at 51
The scandal surrounding Mr Wulff escalated in December.
At the centre of the row is the story - first published by the Bild newspaper - that Mr Wulff received a low interest 500,000 euro loan (£417,000; $649,000) from the wife of a wealthy businessman in October 2008.
Mr Wulff, who previously was premier of Lower Saxony, was later asked in the state's parliament if he had had business relations with the businessman, Egon Geerkens, and said he had not, making no mention of his dealings with Mr Geerkens's wife.
The president was also heavily criticised for trying to force Bild not to break the story in the first place.
It has emerged that he left an angry message on Bild chief editor Kai Diekmann's phone, saying the story must not be published.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Chancellor Angela Merkel: "I have accepted the announcement... with regret"
Mr Wulff has since apologised to Mr Diekmann.
There were also corruption allegations against Mr Wulff, involving receiving political favours and free holidays from business executives.
Prosecutors' suspicions
On Thursday, prosecutors in Hanover, capital of Lower Saxony, said there were "enough actual indications" that the president had acted improperly.
"Therefore they have asked the president of the German Bundestag [the lower house] to lift the president's immunity."
The move is formally required to start proceedings against Mr Wulff, although this does not mean necessarily that he will be charged.
The Bundestag's committee on parliamentary immunity is expected to consider the prosecutors' request at a session starting on 27 February.Archbishop of Southwark tells conference 'I don't think there is an awareness of the positive social engagement'
One of the most senior Roman Catholics in England and Wales has said the sexual abuse crisis is overshadowing the positive social contribution of the church's charities. At a conference in central London, the archbishop of Southwark said the paedophile priest scandal of recent years, coupled with church teaching on issues such as abortion and homosexuality, had not fostered good impressions.
The Most Rev Peter Smith said: "Some people's perception of the church is very negative, [that] it's just there to say no.
"I don't think there is an awareness of the positive social engagement. We don't go around blowing our trumpet. We've been modest and humble."
The conference, at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, drew together a mainly Catholic audience of politicians, peers, clerics and charity workers to explore the idea of building a culture of social responsibility.
One of the issues was also to look at ways of raising the profile of Catholic social action. Smith, who made the comments later to the press, was explaining the impact of the abuse scandal on this mission.
He told journalists: "We need to make people aware of what we're doing, not to put ourselves on a pedestal, but to say the church is not all bad.
"Of course the child abuse crisis has not helped with that. Again it has been taken by some completely out of proportion. When you see press reports every day of child abuse, it is something which is unfortunately and tragically endemic in society.
"It's a misperception of the church. People think because we're the church and Christians, we're somehow above all that and perfect.
"We're the same as the rest of humanity. But at least through our faith and our sacraments and the grace of God we have the opportunity to do a bit better."
The child abuse scandal did not figure in the presentation from the main speaker, Baroness Warsi – the first Muslim woman to serve in the cabinet.
Warsi, fresh from her 48-hour visit to Pakistan, praised the "huge contribution" of Catholic individuals and organisations to society and described her meeting with the pope as "one of the highlights of my time in government".
Quoting from the Bible – James 2:26 – she credited the Catholic church for shaping 'big society' principles.
"Faith is not just a belief, it's not just a theory. It's about how we live, how we shape our lives and how we work together to serve those in need. And particularly in your case this has meant building social institutions to put principles into practice.
"Right throughout the world, the Catholic community's commitment to service and solidarity, to deepening social engagement is expressed most concretely through religious orders, charities, chaplaincies, parishes and schools."A black bear is seen in Lyme, New Hampshire, in August 2007. (Photo: Cheryl Senter, AP)
BATH COUNTY — A woman was attacked by a black bear while hiking in Douthat State Park in Millboro in Bath County, prompting the park to close all hiking trails this week.
Around 1 p.m. Sunday a woman was hiking with two dogs on the Tuscarora Overlook when she was attacked from behind by a bear and wounded in both legs, said Jim Meisner, spokesperson for Virginia Sate Parks. She was able to walk out on her own.
Park staff were notified and they contacted the rescue squad. The Bath County Sheriff's Office was also notified, as well as state police. The woman is expected to make a full recovery.
All trails were closed and will remain closed through Friday, said Meisner. This is the second time a person has been attacked by a bear unprovoked in Douthat State Park. The last time was in August 2015. However, there is no indication that it is the same bear, Meisner said. Usually bear attacks are associated with hunting.
More in the news: Mary Baldwin's 'bad' year, and the plan to get back on track
"You injure a bear it tends to get angry," Meisner said.
There are no orders to kill the bear at this time. Bear traps have been placed on trails throughout the park. If a bear similar to the description of the one involved in the attack is caught, a blood sample will be taken so that scientists from Game and Inland Fisheries can try to match it. If the correct bear is caught, a tracking collar will be put on the bear.
Any bears that are too big or too small will be released, Meisner said.
It is highly recommended that people hiking or recreating in bear country learn about what to do in a bear encounter, according to a press release.
Hiking in groups of two or more is recommended, and always keep dogs leashed. If you see a bear and it has not seen you, calmly leave the area. As you move away, make noise to let the bear discover your presence. Give the bear plenty of room to escape. Bears rarely attack people unless they feel cornered or provoked.
Most importantly, do not run or make any sudden movements. Running could prompt the bear to give chase, and you cannot outrun a bear. If on a trail, step off the trail and slowly leave the area. Carrying bear spray while hiking in the back country is also recommended.
More in the news: School board chairman: 'No comment' on Lee High name change
Read or Share this story: https://stnva.nl/2ybd2AhReal estate agent (illustration) By: Chan Yuan
A phony real estate agent was arrested on a charge of larceny after allegedly selling homes without the permission of the owners, police in New York said.
The New York Police Department said that they have arrested 51-year-old Dan Stern the Bronx, after being accused of stealing the down payments given to him by customers who were interested to purchase properties.
Stern was charged with second-degree grand larceny, third-degree grand larceny and first-degree scheme to defraud.
He was booked into jail, and his bail was set at $500,000 cash.
According to the police investigation, Stern opened Harlem Village Realty at 104-106 East 126th Street, and advertised several properties for sale without the permission of the true owners.
The properties advertised included, 41 West 124th Street, 36 West 128th Street, 52-54 East 126th Street, 342 West 123rd Street, and 175 West 126th Street.
The properties Stern targeted included two churches and several buildings that were facing foreclosure or in need of major repairs.
Once a prospective buyer expressed interest in a property, Stern would have contracts prepared for the fraudulent sale and accept checks for the down payment.
To further the scam, Stern opened a business bank account in another person’s name, listing himself as the signatory. He deposited and cashed the down payment checks he received from the scam into this account.
When the victims contacted Stern, requesting the return of their money, the defendant did not return their phone calls.I’ll start off by making one element of my political views abundantly clear: I believe that the Tory party in the UK offers no hope for the vast majority of people in this country and, with their Liberal Democrat enablers, they have, over the course of this parliament, been responsible for some of the most vile and divisive policies. It has been claimed that these policies bring about a kind of fairness for those homogeneously defined social groups known as ‘hard working families’ and ‘strivers’.
Your wages may be low and decreasing; you may have a stressful life spending so much of your waking life in a job you hate and you may be struggling to simply make ends meets – but don’t worry, the Tories solution to your hardship is to make the lives of those even more hard pushed then you, even worse.
If you’re looking for work, or unable to work due to being mentally ill or disabled, then you will face new taxes, increasing sanctions and a general social stigma (conveniently created by the major Tory allies in the Murdoch press and the overtly neoliberal Daily Mail).
The reality is that this is a classic divide and rule tactic. It’s hard to say if it is deliberate. I’m sure for some Tory politicians it is a well thought out strategy to gradually erode the welfare state and public services, in order to create a so-believed free market utopia. I suspect that for others this is a form of self-deluded well-meaningness born from a disconnect from the socioeconomic realities of their lamented ‘hard working families’ and ‘strivers’.
Regardless of intentions, these policies and their effects are real and increasingly undeniable. And those that support them – whether ignorantly or with volition – are part of a socioeconomic dogma that if allowed to continue will re-institute the kind of class divisions and socioeconomic inequalities last seen in Britain in the 19th C.
Indeed, the economic statistics, as |
we have a radical Legislature right now, and it’s really running the state into the ground in a lot of ways, unfortunately.
AMY GOODMAN: That Reverend Barber is heading up.
JAMES TYSON: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But mainly, I mean, what I’ve been doing is I’ve been working in the grassroots for about the last five years as an unpaid organizer, doing actions like this, you know? Most of them never get nearly as much media attention, but that would be the idea, you know? And we’ve been working specifically within our communities. I work with a group called Charlotte Environmental Action, and me and a handful of other people helped start it. And, you know, I’d like to think that it’s like—you know, it’s done good in our community, you know?
AMY GOODMAN: And, Bree, you’re also involved with—I interviewed the head of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP, and she talked about you being the chair of social media there?
BREE NEWSOME: Yes, yes. So I just joined up with the local NAACP chapter. Corine Mack is her name. And she’s really committed to doing more activism and like on-the-ground work, which I believe in, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: The response that you’ve gotten, I mean, the video went viral all over the world. What is it you think you’ve tapped into?
BREE NEWSOME: I think that a lot of people were really feeling disheartened. If they were like me, I know that there was just something that just like really punched me in the gut, especially specifically after the massacre, because it just felt like, “Oh, my gosh, like are we—we’re still back here relitigating the Civil War.”
AMY GOODMAN: Where were you when you heard about the massacre?
BREE NEWSOME: I was there in Charlotte. I heard about it shortly after it was breaking news. And that was just like a really just awful sleepless night between me finding out about it and the morning, when I knew like most of America would find out about it.
AMY GOODMAN: And did you find yourself resolving something then?
BREE NEWSOME: Well, I mean, I had a crisis of faith, quite honestly. I mean, you know, I’ve been doing this, this work, for a few years now, and for the most part, especially things around like civil rights, a lot of things have felt commemorative. You know, like, yes, we’re still—we’re still fighting over things with voting rights, we’re still—but for the most part it felt like things like, you know, 16th Street Baptist Church, the assassination of our leaders. Those things felt like things in the past. But Wednesday night, it became very real. You know, that was a moment where I really had to think I could die, I could die for doing this work, and am I prepared to do that? And, you know, I called my sister at 3:00 in the morning and talked with her, talked with her about it. And I had to come back to a point of like, yeah, I’m willing to die if I have to.
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve been called Rosa Parks, the new Rosa Parks, who also was a member of an AME church.
BREE NEWSOME: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
AMY GOODMAN: As was Frederick Douglass. What are your thoughts about that? In the case of Rosa Parks, so many people know her name and talked about that tired seamstress who sat down on the bus. But she was a longtime organizer, right? She was secretary of the local NAACP. How do you feel to be compared to Rosa Parks?
BREE NEWSOME: I mean, I think it’s amazing. I don’t know what else to say. I mean, I don’t feel like—but I don’t know if I ever could. You know what I mean? Rosa Parks probably didn’t feel like Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks was probably thinking, you know, “I’m an organizer doing what organizers do.”
AMY GOODMAN: Now, I don’t know if she could sing like you, but how did you get involved with singing?
BREE NEWSOME: Well, that’s actually where I started out. I mean, I started out as an artist like from the time I was a child. I loved being an artist. I had not expected social justice to be a part—such a big part of my life, but it ended up being my calling.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you like to perform anything right here a cappella?
BREE NEWSOME: Sure.
JAMES TYSON: Let’s hear it. Let’s hear it.
BREE NEWSOME: [singing] We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes
Until the killing of a black man, a black mother’s son
Is as important as a white man, a white mother’s son
We who believe in freedom, we cannot rest until it comes.
AMY GOODMAN: Sweet Honey in the Rock.
BREE NEWSOME: Yes, yes, absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you like to share something else with us?
BREE NEWSOME: I don’t know what else I have to share.
AMY GOODMAN: We have been playing—since this happened, we’ve been playing a kind of rap that you do.
BREE NEWSOME: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about that song.
BREE NEWSOME: Yeah, so that one—I wrote that right in the aftermath of Ferguson, which was another moment kind of like the Charleston massacre, where it was like, “Oh, wow!” You know, having been involved in the movement from the time of like Trayvon Martin and all of that, again, we had not faced tanks and tear gas or anything like that, so Ferguson was the first time that that kind of took it to another level in terms of what we might be facing as we continue down this road of challenging racism in our system. And so, I wanted to write something in response to that. And I decided to do “#StayStrong” as just kind of like a song of encouragement to all the other freedom fighters out there. And that was pretty much the motivation.
AMY GOODMAN: Could you perform it for us here?
BREE NEWSOME: Yeah. Like a cappella?
AMY GOODMAN: Yeah.
BREE NEWSOME: Sure.
Weighing heavy on my mind
Tryna find that word to define how I feel
Cause every time I recline
Something goes down to remind me the dream ain’t real
And it’s jolting to me
to realize all the lies
it’s insulting to me
But that’s the burden of the young, black and gifted
tryna stay lifted
in a world that keeps us stinted
just cause we pigmented
They say go be exceptional
and professional
but them khakis can’t fix
what is institutional
So we say bump it
Cause we ain’t got no time for no summit
They tryna wipe us out
cause they don’t want no real republic
and when we broach the subject
they try to deflect
Drag a name through the mud
they ain’t got no respect
and yet
you want me to respect authority
It don’t make you right just cause you majority
Y’all be quoting King while you pushing a button
to drop some bombs on some babies like you ain’t doing nothing
that’s why you aint got no jurisdiction with me
can’t handcuff knowledge, so Ms. Bree stay free
I went through college, in the hood I be
spreading love to my brothers and my sister I keep.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Bree Newsome, “#StayStrong: A Love Song to Freedom Fighters.”
BREE NEWSOME: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about art in resistance.
BREE NEWSOME: Oh, yeah, strong history there. Like, I just—I love to be in that tradition, because artists are such a big part, and always have been, of times like this. And that’s why I love seeing the art that was inspired by the moment. Like it’s just been amazing, because, you know, things happen, and people react to it, and artists have the ability to really kind of like interpret that moment, you know, for the people in a way that we can then digest and discuss with each other. And it’s—yeah, absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: You said people quoting King and dropping bombs.
BREE NEWSOME: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Who are you referring to?
BREE NEWSOME: Well, especially in the aftermath of Ferguson, you know, there was a lot of “What would Dr. King have—how would Dr. King feel about you rabble-rousers in the street?” you know, specifically to like the young people who were out in the street after Ferguson. And I just find that so completely odious and offensive, because a lot of times what people—when people call for peace, what they’re really just calling for is order. What they’re really calling for is just for people to go back to business as usual, which is actually violence. You know, people think that violence is only when something is on fire, only when a gun is being fired. But, you know, Gandhi himself said poverty is the worst form of violence. Poverty is violence. Our kids being shuffled from schools into prison is violence. Kids being hungry is violence. These are all—we live with violence every single day. The violence doesn’t begin just when the CVS is burned.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s next for you, and for you, Jimmy?
BREE NEWSOME: Well, next, I plan to go right back to what I was doing, which is organizing in my community. I’m probably going to do a music video for this song now, since everybody’s noticed it. I would love to do something like that and really pull the kids in my community into that. But yeah, we’re just really—I think a lot of people have been activated. A lot of people want to get involved in the movement. And as an organizer, what I do is I see what skills and talents people have to offer, and I try to plug us all in, in a way that we can work together.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you consider yourself an active member of the Black Lives Matter movement?
BREE NEWSOME: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Jimmy, your plans now?
JAMES TYSON: Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, the first thing I need to do is go back home and take care of my animals. I’ve got a lot of them there, you know?
AMY GOODMAN: On your farm?
JAMES TYSON: Yeah. And, you know, just being a steward for the land, first and foremost, of my family land, is the most important thing to me. But beyond that, yes, absolutely, going back to the community, organizing, you know, putting boots on the ground, that’s probably the very next steps, you know?
AMY GOODMAN: But July 27th, you have a date in Columbia, South Carolina. Would you like to take us out with a song?
BREE NEWSOME: Oh, so much pressure. I’ll do the last verse. How about that? Does that work?
Brown as mahogany
Dreaming what he wanna be
hoping that he gonna be
surviving all this gunnery
So much of his time goes to dodging bullets
And half of the time it was a cop that pulled it
It’s real
It’s hard to know your country never loved you
living like occupied people in the gulf do
Black bodies used up and tossed aside
and when emancipation came, then they broke out the stripes
Now they tryna lock us up and lock us out for life
and they be tryna block us every time we demand rights
Cuz America be fronting as the land of the free
While it’s locking up reporters and suppressing our speech
But we gon keep on speaking,
we’re standing on the freedom side
the light we’re beaming
will shine a light on all the lies
and we ain’t leaving
til every child can sleep at night
and wake up in the dawn
feeling strong
in her human rights.
AMY GOODMAN: “#StayStrong: A Love Song to Freedom Fighters.” Bree Newsome and Jimmy Tyson. Bree scaled the flagpole on the South Carolina state Capitol grounds and took down the Confederate flag, saying, “In the name of God, this flag comes down today.” Well, today, nine days later, South Carolina lawmakers will begin debating whether to remove that flag.ELI Templeton had casually dropped into conversation with St Kilda player welfare manager Tony Brown that he was an admirer of 1966 premiership captain Darrel Baldock.
Templeton, 19, hails from Burnie on the north coast of Tasmania, just a short drive west from Baldock’s home town of Latrobe.
“I mentioned to Browny that I’d be interested in changing to No.4, but only No.4, because of the link with Darrel Baldock and Tasmania,’’ the livewire small forward said. “But I didn’t really pursue it or anything, I left it to the club.’’
NEW JOB: COX SWITCHES CODES TO FILL SAINTS ROLE
Templeton, who played six games in 2014 coming off the rookie list, could have been excused for thinking that the Saints would have handed arguably their most famous jumper number to one of their high-profile draftees, Paddy McCartin or Hugh Goddard.
Instead, when Alan Richardson handed out the numbers at Tuesday afternoon’s team meeting, McCartin and Goddard were handed numbers 32 and 33 respectively. Templeton said he “got a bit of a shock’’ when handed a number made famous by some of the greatest footballers in St Kilda history.
media_camera Eli Templeton during a hill running session at Moke Lake in New Zealand. Picture: Colleen Petch
“Baldock, Tony Lockett, (Barry) Breen and Andrew Thompson. There are a few big names who have worn it and worn it with pride,’’ Templeton said.
He only needed to look on his new locker to discover a few more: players like pre-war full-back Bill Cubbins, who won four club best-and-fairests, and Col Williamson, who coached the Saints in the 1950s after his 165-game career.
“Obviously their pretty big shoes to fill, with the greats that have worn it before me, but I don’t feel like there’s any added pressure,’’ Templeton said. “All I am focusing on at the moment is making sure my performance is good enough to warrant getting picked in the seniors.
Templeton has not played since suffering a spiral fracture of his upper arm in the Anzac Day match in Wellington. “It’s been a pretty long lay-off for me, so I’m hanging out for Round 1,’’ he said.
Templeton dropped about five kilograms following surgery, after which there were complications that kept him in hospital for almost two weeks. But he has regained that weight and added some extra muscle, and has impressed with his running and fitness levels during pre-season training.
“I’ve had a chat with the midfield coaches and they’re keen for me to get up the ground, whether it’s a turn through the midfield or up at half forward,’’ he said. “That’s an aim of mine for 2015.’’
St Kilda today announced its full list of 2015 jumper numbers.
ST KILDA’S NEW JUMPER NUMBERS IN 2015:
4 — Eli Templeton
7 — Luke Dunstan
8 — Blake Acres
28 — Tim Membrey
32 — Paddy McCartin
33 — Hugh Goddard
36 — Daniel McKenzie
37 — Jack Lonie
40 — Jack Sinclair
43 — Brenton PaynePatrice Fitzgerald is an author, attorney, and singer. She’s also recently taking on publishing other writers through her boutique press eFitzgerald Publishing, LLC. A very busy woman, Fitzgerald is a complete inspiration to the rest of us in the indie publishing industry with her amazing talent and dedication to supporting her fellow authors. To find out more about her and her stories you can sign up for her newsletter here.
Pavarti K Tyler: You’ve written a number of stories in Hugh Howey’s Wool Universe. What was it about his series that inspired you?
Patrice Fitzgerald: Hugh Howey and WOOL were my gateway drugs into science fiction writing. Though I read a whole lot of Heinlein, Clarke, and Bradbury in my youth (after jettisoning the notion that if it had “science” in the name, it must be boring and only for boys), I had never written in the genre.
I’ve always been attracted to speculative fiction writing and slightly zany plots, and the larger-than-life aspects of Hugh’s Silo Saga pulled me in and left me saying, “Hey, I want to do that too!” And when he encouraged me to pursue my first story idea, with his permission and express instructions to publish it and charge for it, I did.
PKT: You’re the power behind the Dark Beyond the Stars anthology. I noticed that the collection included exclusively the work of women science fiction authors. Was this a conscious choice?
PF: We certainly are getting a lot of attention because of that aspect of the collection! In truth, we were writers who knew and respected one another’s work, and we thought it would be fun to put out an anthology together. We hit on the notion of using space opera as a broad theme because it gave us a huge canvas on which to create. There was never a moment when we thought much about our genders. I suspect you could find quite a few story collections that included only male writers.
PKT: What inspired you to put together your own anthology collection?
PF: A lot of us have watched the explosion of “Chronicles” titles masterminded by Samuel Peralta, and they are all quality books and lots of fun, so we thought we’d give it a try.
PKT: How was the experience of working as curator as opposed to author different?
PF: Since this first one was more collaborative, I did more gentle nudging of fellow authors and less curating. We have a whole series planned now, which will allow me to do more in the realm of choosing stories from those that are submitted.
PKT: What about science fiction appeals to you as an author? And as a reader?
PF: The same aspect appeals to me both as an author and a reader—the otherness. The ability to create a newly imagined world and populate it with people (or creatures) and stories. As an author, to do this in short story form is tremendous fun and a real challenge.
PKT: You have books in genres from romance to thriller to science fiction, and now I see you’re working on a cozy mystery series! What do you think about the advice that you should stick to one genre or risk alienating your audience?
PF: For the new world of indie writing and indie authors, I think the rules are different. Part of what appeals to our fans is the fact that they are in close touch with writers on a very personal basis. If they enjoy your writing and feel connected to you as a person, they will typically follow you anywhere. That doesn’t mean that you will sell in every genre, or pull every fan successfully into a new area. But it does mean they are likely to give it a look and try it out.
In the same way that I feel in awe of and grateful for the chance to read authors like Hugh Howey, Annie Bellet, A.G. Riddle, Jennifer Foehner Wells, and David Simpson, there are some readers who feel that way about me. Which still astounds me!
PKT: Lately I’ve been seeing you post about a new project tentatively titled Star Crimes. What can you tell us about it?
PF: My bouncing baby book! So fresh I just started it tonight. It’s going to be a very cool sort of space investigator story including mystery, some paranormal abilities, intergalactic space wars, interspecies relations, and who knows what else. At least, that’s what I think it will include. We’ll see! Working title is STAR CRIMES I: Airless.
PKT: What draws you to space opera as a subgenre of science fiction?
PF: I did notice that space opera is getting hot right now, with the new Star Wars movie coming out. But I think, too, that we have dwelled in the land of post-apocalyptic and dystopian books set on a forbidding future Earth for a while, and perhaps it’s time for a change. Something out there is calling to us, and encouraging writers to boldly go… (you know the rest). I know you’re humming the theme in your head now!
PKT: You also sing, and have quite the range, from jazz to opera. How do you find this artistic expression is different from that of an author?
PF: Interesting question! Singing is immediate and visceral… your body is literally your instrument. And your audience is right there at the time you are creating the music for them. Writing is more solitary, long-term, and intricate. But they both involve sharing yourself, communicating, and producing pleasure in both the artist and the audience.
PKT: I heard a rumor that you have other (not-so) secret pen names. What made you decide to write under pen names instead of keeping all your work together?
PF: Well, mostly because my pen name stories are so racy! (Though it’s fair to say they are sexy mostly in the context of Regency-era historical fiction… and are not at all shocking to your typical 21st Century reader.)
I only started writing them three months ago, for fun. But they turned out to be easy, fast, and lucrative. So I’m going to see if I can juggle both for a while.
Quick Five:
PKT: Cowboys or Aliens?
PF: Aliens. Though cowboys are cool. How about cowboy aliens?
PKT: Would you live in a world that was SteamPunk or CyberPunk?
PF: Tough one. SteamPunk.
PKT: Analogue or Digital?
PF: Definitely digital.
PKT: You get one gun. Bullets or Lasers?
PF: Can I have a stun gun that shoots out a quick-acting but temporary paralyzing agent? And also makes the bad guys float in some kind of anti-gravity cloud so they are easy to transport? And maybe smells good. Something slightly spicy but not too sweet. Yes. That kind of gun.
PKT: Would you rather fight Orcs or Terminators?
PF: I think I’d go with a Terminator who looks like Schwartzenegger did a few years ago when he showed up nude in that very first movie. I wouldn’t fight him. I’d get him drunk and we’d have a few laughs. All very civilized.
About the Author:
Patrice Fitzgerald is the bestselling author of a number of books and short stories in the science fiction and speculative fiction realms. She’s the Series Editor for the BEYOND THE STARS space opera anthologies, the first of which, “Dark Beyond the Stars,” was released on August 24th, 2015… her birthday!
Patrice is also an attorney with a background in intellectual property. She heads a boutique publishing company featuring mystery, romance, fantasy, and nonfiction books. She gives courses to those interested in self-publishing, and in April of 2016 she will be presenting the first Big Island (Hawaii) Writers Retreat and Conference.
In her spare time, she’s a singer, performing jazz, Broadway, and opera with her husband. She lives on the water in New England and is thrilled to be making a living as a writer.Published time: 13 Dec, 2016 23:08
The electors, 28 Democrats and 1 Republican, representing 5.4 percent of total members, are calling on Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to disclosure more information about the CIA’s secret assessment over alleged Russian interference in the US elections.
The Senate’s intelligence panel, led by Richard Burr (R, North Carolina) said it will conduct a bipartisan inquiry, according to Senate Majority Mitch McConnell on Monday, as well as a related probe by the Armed Services committee, chaired by Senator John McCain (R, Arizona).
30 more Electors have signed onto a letter demanding an Intel breifing on Russia before the Electoral College vote: https://t.co/5LGp0wEO0D pic.twitter.com/4VECLhQfOS
The move by Electoral College members comes as both Democratic and Republican Congressional lawmakers press for an investigation into the allegation.
The Washington Post reported last week that the CIA concluded in a secret assessment that Russian interference helped President-elect Donald Trump win the election.
On Monday, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R, Wisconsin), in a statement, backed the House Intelligence Committee investigation into cyber threats posed by foreign countries and extremist groups.
The call for investigations, however, runs counter to thoughts expressed by Presidential-elect Donald Trump on Sunday, who called the CIA’s contention “ridiculous” and blamed the disclosures concerning its assessment on Democrats who he said were embarrassed over losing last month’s election.
The Electoral College members challenge first came on Monday when 10 electors, spearheaded by Christine Pelosi, the daughter of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, wrote an open letter to Clapper, demanded more information ahead of next week’s vote.
“The Electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations,” the letter reads. “We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States.”
Not to be left out of the barrage of comment on the alleged hack, netizens took to social media making the hashtag #RussianHack one of the leading topics on Twitter, and making it the excuse of everyday shortcomings with hilarious results.Pope Francis has done numerous revolutionary things during his first four years as pope, but it is hard to top the change he has made to the College of Cardinals. He has changed the system so that an incumbent pope can stack the college with bishops who support his views. This change will have an impact on the church for centuries to come.
This is not the first time the College of Cardinals has been significantly changed by a pope, and it will probably not be the last. One of the most common changes made by popes has been increasing the number of cardinals.
The role of the College of Cardinals in the election of popes goes back to 1059 when the college was made up of senior deacons and priests in Rome plus the bishops of dioceses surrounding Rome.
In the twelfth century, there were positions for about 28 cardinal priests and 18 cardinal deacons in Rome, plus the 7 cardinal bishops for a total of 53. In 1586, Sixtus V set the maximum number of cardinals at 70 in imitation of the 70 chosen by Moses (Exodus 24:1) and by Jesus (Luke 10:1).
John XXIII ignored the 70-member limit, and the college grew to more than 80 cardinals.
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In the early 1970s, Paul VI reformed the College of Cardinals by increasing the number of electors to 120, not counting those over 80 years of age who are excluded as electors.
Excluding those over 80 years of age was considered so revolutionary at the time, that the conclave that elected John Paul I held a "confirmation" vote after he had received a two-thirds vote of those present in order to make sure that over two-thirds of all the cardinals voted for him, even counting those not present. They did not want anyone challenging the election.
John Paul II ignored the 120 limit and the number of cardinals reached 135 in 2001, although it was down to 115 by the time he died in 2005.
Besides increasing the number of cardinals and limiting the electors to those under 80, popes have also changed the population from which the cardinals are chosen.
At the beginning, the cardinal bishops were the bishops of the seven dioceses surrounding Rome. The cardinal priests and deacons were the most important priests and deacons in Rome, pastors of significant churches or directors of the church’s charities. As their curial work grew, their pastoral and social work was taken over by others.
Eventually the distinction among the three types of cardinals became more honorific than real, and Pope John XXIII made all the cardinals bishops.
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In the eleventh century, Leo IX (1049-1054) began appointing prelates in distant lands as cardinals. Such cardinals were usually required to resign their sees and take up residence with the pope. During the Western Schism, it became common for these cardinals to reside with the pope without resigning their sees. Someone else would administer their diocese while the cardinal collected the revenue. The Council of Trent outlawed this abuse.
Beginning in the sixteenth century, as the College of Cardinals became larger, it became more common for cardinals to remain in residence in their dioceses.
Although cardinals were chosen from elsewhere in Europe, most cardinals were from Italy.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, approximately 80 percent of the cardinals named were Italian. Pius IX (1846-1878) and Leo XIII (1878-1903) began to broaden the makeup of the college by having only 58 percent of their appointees Italian. The next largest contingents were French (13 percent) and Spanish (8 percent). In 1875, Pius IX appointed the first cardinal in the Western Hemisphere, John McCloskey of New York. From 1903 to 1939, 53 percent of the cardinals appointed continued to be Italian.
True internationalization of the College of Cardinals began under Pius XII, who was elected in 1939 by a college with 57 percent from Italy and 32 percent from the rest of Europe. The percentage of Italians appointed by Pius XII dropped to only 25 percent, with a third of his appointees from outside Europe. He appointed the first cardinals with sees in Africa, India, and China, although the African cardinal was Portuguese. When Pius XII died, only a third of the college was from Italy with another 31 percent from the rest of Europe. The major winner under Pius was Latin America, which went from 3 percent of the college to 16 percent.
Paul VI continued the internationalization begun by Pius XII, but it was easier for him to do this since he has raised the number of cardinal electors to 120. At Paul’s death, 50 percent of the college was European, including 24 percent Italian. The European character of the college did not change significantly under John Paul (49%) and Benedict (52%), although the Italian numbers fell to 16.5 percent under John Paul but rose back to 24 percent under Benedict. John Paul cut back on Italian cardinals so that he could create more cardinals in Eastern Europe.
So, what has Francis been up to?
Francis has continued to increase the non-European character of the college of cardinals. In his recent batch of appointments, only two of the five new cardinals are European. Europeans now only hold 44 percent of the seats in the college. This is the lowest percentage for Europeans ever.
The percentage of Italians is now 20 percent, which is still more cardinal electors than they had at the death of St. John Paul II. This could significantly change next year when five of the seven cardinals turning 80 will be Italian. No Italians were appointed this year.
Surprisingly, the Latin American contingent has not increased significantly under Francis. It has increased only to 17.4 percent today from 16.2 percent at the conclave that elected him, but still down from 18 percent at the 2005 conclave. Unlike John Paul’s appointments from Eastern Europe, Francis has not been favoring Latin Americans.
Africa and Asia have been favored by Francis. They now have more cardinal electors than ever before. Their percentage of the college has gone up to 12.4 percent each under Francis, from 9.4 percent each at the conclave that elected him. Asia and Africa combined now for the first time have more cardinals than Italy.
But the real revolution in Pope Francis’ selections has been his bypassing traditional cardinalatial sees and simply picking any bishop he likes, even an auxiliary bishop. In the past, only archbishops of major metropolitan sees were selected as cardinals. Some sees had had cardinals so consistently over time that their archbishops were considered shoo-ins for the cardinalate. Francis has ignored this unwritten rule from his first appointments.
It is hard to exaggerate how revolutionary this is. It is certainly the most radical change in the College of Cardinals since the reforms of Paul VI.
Why does it matter? It matters because it gives the pope total freedom to pick whichever bishop he wants to be a cardinal. If he had followed tradition, many of his appointments would have been archbishops appointed by John Paul or Benedict. Most of these men would outlive him and help choose his successor.
Francis consciously chose to bypass them for other bishops, some from "insignificant" sees. He picks the man rather than the see. He looks for bishops who support his own pastoral style and vision for the church. This ensures that those he appoints will be more likely to support continuity at the next conclave, rather than reject the direction in which he is leading the church. It ensures that the conclave will be filled with shepherds who smell like their sheep.
With his latest appointments, Francis will have appointed 40 percent of the college of cardinals, just a little less than the 44 percent appointed by Benedict. The remaining 16 percent are hangovers from John Paul.
Progressive Catholics are undoubtedly cheering the pope on as he chooses new cardinals, while conservatives are gnashing their teeth. I must remind my progressive friends that every change has unintended consequences. If by chance, a conservative pope regained the papacy, he could do the same things Francis is doing now. Or just imagine if John Paul or Benedict had tried the same thing that Francis is doing now.
All of this reminds us that no electoral system is perfect. Over the centuries, the church has made changes in the process of electing popes, and for the last century it has probably been working better than previously. But there are no guarantees. It makes me long for the Coptic system where a young blindfolded boy picks the name of the pope out of a glass urn containing the three nominees.
[Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese is a senior analyst for NCR and author of Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church, from which some of the material in this column is taken. His email address is treesesj@ncronline.org.]
Editor's note: We can send you an email alert every time Thomas Reese's column, Faith and Justice, is posted. Go to this page and follow directions: Email alert sign-up.Before winning the 1960 NFL championship with the Eagles, shown above, Buck Shaw, center, was Nevada's head football coach. (Photo: Handout)
On the surface, the Wolf Pack football team's link with Notre Dame started in 2009 when the two teams faced off for the first time.
But if you go back nearly a full century, you'll see another long-lost link: The Fighting Irish made it a habit of having alums become Nevada's head coach.
Buck Shaw, one of the greatest tackles and kickers in Notre Dame history, was Nevada's head coach from 1925-28. After beginning his career at Creighton, Shaw transferred to Notre Dame and was an All-American who blocked for halfback George Gipp. Shaw was named to the all-time "Fighting Irish" football team.
Shaw began his coaching career at North Carolina State in 1924 but took over Nevada's program in 1925. He posted a 10-20-3 record, going 0-7-1 in his final season at Nevada. He went on to have a great coaching career, leading Santa Clara, Cal and Air Force, where he was the school's first varsity football coach.
Shaw also was the San Francisco 49ers' first head coach, leading that team from 1946-1954, and the coach of the Philadelphia Eagles from 1958-1960. He led the Eagles to the NFL championship in his final season (1960), beating Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers, before retiring.
George Philbrook played at Notre Dame in the early 1900s and competed in the 1912 Olympics, finishing fifth in the shot put, seventh in the discus and competing in the decathlon. Philbrook succeeded Shaw as Nevada's head coach and posted a 6-15-5 record from 1929-31.
Finally, Joe Sheeketski, one of Nevada's most successful coaches, also was a Notre Dame alum. He played for the Irish from 1930-1932. After a stint at Holy Cross, Sheeketski coached Nevada from 1947-50, leading the team to a national ranking in 1948.
He guided Nevada to the Salad Bowl in 1947 and Harbor Bowl in 1948, the first two bowls in Nevada's history, and finished with a 24-18 record. Sheeketski also served as Nevada's athletic director from 1947-51, preceding Jake Lawlor, who was Sheeketski's line coach and eventually the school's athletic director from 1951-1969.
And while Nevada has only played Notre Dame twice (2009 and this season), one well-known Wolf Pack alum did play against the Irish back in the 1940s.
Dick Trachok, the Wolf Pack's athletic director from 1969-1986, played against Notre Dame as a member of Pittsburgh in 1943. Trachok served during World War II after that season and then was lured out to Reno by Sheeketski, where he became a star player, the team's head coach and then AD.
"I don't think we even scored in that game," Trachok said of the Notre Dame-Pit matchup.
Good memory. Notre Dame won, 41-0, at Pitt in its 1943 season opener before winning the national title that season.Photograph by Matt Walljasper
It’s getting hot out there, and while many of us are retreating into |
a sweaty frenzy and forget about all his troubles.
So here’s my takeaway, my Life Lesson from Phish, in brief:
I will dare to embrace the unpredictable, disorderly nature of Phish’s music. It’s hard for me; because of the kids, my life is already full of disorder and unpredictability, and so I like my music tidy. But I know, just as any mother does, that there’s beauty in the chaos. I will do my best to remember this, to be open to the unexpected.
I will let my husband’s devotion to Phish inspire me. His borderline obsessive behavior (he just logged on to his Phish.net account to show me his show stats) is proof that being a parent and having a passion outside of that role are not mutually exclusive. Phish may not be for me, but I do have my own interests- book clubs, blogging, yoga, photography- and it’s okay to be unapologetic about the time I spend nurturing myself and my creativity.
I will make an effort to find meaning in a lyric that my husband has called his “Call to Action”, this repeated line from the song “Chalkdust Torture”:
Can’t I live while I’m young?
Can’t I live while I’m young?
Can’t I live while I’m young?
Can’t I live while I’m young?
I have only been to three Phish shows- soon to be five- but from my limited experience I can still hear the crowd singing along in hearty agreement. All of them, from the itinerant who hawks geodes on Shakedown Street to the tie-dyed frat boy to the suburban dad, are there for the same reason: to be part of a common experience that makes them feel alive.
Or so I’ve heard. I’ll just be there to support a spouse who can’t seem to live without Phish. There are worse things. With this in mind, I’ll try to enjoy it. Who knows, I might even dance.On February 15, the iconic LOVE statue will be removed from its temporary residence at Dilworth Park. That means Valentine’s Day will fittingly be everyone’s last chance to snap a selfie in front of the sculpture before it returns to its original location at LOVE Park across the street later this year.
The LOVE sculpture was removed from its main location at John F. Kennedy Plaza (i.e. LOVE Park) one year ago ahead of the park’s renovations. When it is leaves Dilworth Park on February 15, it will undergo a restoration and debut again in the new-and-improved LOVE Park, which is scheduled to open this spring.
Center City District announced last week that February 14 will be Last Chance for LOVE day at Dilworth Park. The first 200 guests to visit the Robert Indiana sculpture will receive red roses and the America’s Garden Capital Maze will host a floral arrangement class.By Len Lazarick
Len@MarylandReporter.com
The Senate and House on Thursday rushed to enact a new scoring system for transportation projects, sending it to Gov. Larry Hogan. He must act on the legislation by next week, giving the Democrat-controlled legislature enough time to override his expected veto.
“It’s a terrible piece of legislation,” the governor told reporters at a road project announcement Thursday morning.
Hogan not only said he would veto the bill, but the administration would not follow its directions.
“We would have to kill pretty much all the road projects in 22 of 24 jurisdictions,” Hogan said.
Defenders of the legislation and a reading of the bill suggest that Hogan’s doomsday prediction does not reflect what the bill, HB1013, actually does.
The bill adds a new layer of scoring in nine categories that Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn said are weighted toward mass transit. He also told MarylandReporter.com that it will force his department to reevaluate many projects already in the planning stage.
Under the bill, Rahn’s transportation department itself will develop the details of the scoring system. Arguing against several amendments to delay or modify the bill, Sen. Guy Guzzone, D-Howard, floor leader, pointed out that even if one road project scores less than another, the administration could still move ahead with the project by justifying the move.
There are no penalties in the bill for not following any new ranking of projects.
In limited debated in both House and Senate, Republicans argued that the legislature did not know what it was doing.
“This is not well thought out,” said Del. Bob Flanagan, R-Howard, former transportation secretary in the Ehrlich administration.
A few Democrats in both chambers joined Republicans in opposing the measure.
“This bill would have been heresy in the last administration,” said Sen. Jim Brochin, a Towson Democrat. “I think it’s bad public policy.”
Hogan did not say when he would act on the measure.
“They have a process they go through and we have a process that we go through and we’ll see what happens,” Hogan told reporters.Three weeks ago, we invited Alaskans to submit their life stories told in exactly six words. Over the last decade, six-word memoirs have become a popular form used across the country by teachers in classrooms from elementary to graduate school, radio contests, hospitals, prisons and on the Internet.
When we launched the project, we asked the question: Are Alaskans' lives so unique that our six words would be singular?
The answer came back from hundreds of people across the state: Yes.
Forty-two minutes after the call went out on the Alaska Dispatch News' website at 6:30 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 4, the micro life stories started streaming in by email. And they haven't stopped, even weeks after the Oct. 11 deadline.
We received nearly 500 entries from Alaskans in 43 different communities — Bethel, Juneau, Nunam Iqua, Wrangell and so many other places in between. From them, a panel of judges picked three winners and a few dozen favorites. They and others are also published on the Alaska Dispatch News website.
Cold, darkness, fish, moose
Sixty-three of the submitted stories were about the cold and its cousins — snow, ice, and winter. Ten were fixated on darkness. Fish and fishing were the topic of 43 — clearly a significant result in this non-scientific survey on how Alaskans view their lives. Moose strode across 19 of these stories, and dogs were mentioned in seven. Hawaii was critical to four of these memoirs, and duct tape was the subject of one.
Entries from Kodiak seemed to focus on the sea; Juneau residents appeared obsessed with rain. A handful were about the particular exhilaration of having survived a bear mauling or a car crash involving a moose.
Joy ran through many of them: joy in harvesting wild foods, joy in fresh powder under sunny skies, joy in light returning.
READ MORE: Six-word memoir winners and favorites
And pride was at work, too; numerous stories revealed pride in the author's deep cultural roots in Alaska, pride in longevity in the state, in having been born and raised here, and in raising children here. Serendipity was at play as well; for many people, life in Alaska had not been the long-term plan.
Certainly lives here are influenced by factors that affect lives everywhere: love and love lost, work, family, illness and the other hardships life presents. But here, the snow and the sea; the daily sight of jagged mountains and blue glaciers; the presence of tundra and rivers; and the way the seasons dramatically alter how Alaskans live, work and play — these factors shape our home and in turn shape how we live and who we are.
Place matters in Alaska. Hundreds of the smallest stories about life in the largest state make this clear. Not fit to live anywhere else? Maybe. Either way, this is home.
The winning entries told life stories that seemed to echo beyond their six words, illuminating something about what it means to live in Alaska.
Jimmie Evak: No caribou fat. Used lard. Mistake.
Winning author Jimmie Evak, 60, was born in a house his father built at the edge of the sea in Kotzebue. Before the town's sea wall was built. Before pavement. Before plumbing.
An Inupiaq, Evak was one of 19 children, and much of his family's activities centered around subsistence. In the spring, they hunted beluga whales and seal. In the fall, caribou and moose. They set a net in front of their house for salmon and went upriver for Arctic char, which everyone, Evak said, referred to as "trout." They hauled snow and river ice for drinking water and washing.
Evak's family traveled between different berry camps, picking more than 90 gallons to bring home. At fish camp up the Noatak, they dug a ditch along a slough that forked off the river, trapping whitefish that swam into it. Evak's older brothers would walk off into the tundra behind Kotzebue for a few days in search of ducks.
Evak attended high school in Kotzebue and college in Sitka. Then he followed in the footsteps of his father, a union carpenter, and got his journeyman's license in Anchorage. Evak married and had five children, now in their teens and 20s.
Evak's story sprang from an experience when he was living in Anchorage and ate aqutuq — also known as Eskimo ice cream — that friends had made in which lard was substituted for caribou fat.
When Evak was a kid, making aqutuq was his father's job. Evak described aqutuq as a traditional traveling food, something to take on a trip to fish camp or out on a hunt, especially in cold weather. "It heats you up," he said.
Evak's father would melt caribou fat on the stove, pour in a little seal oil and then add berries, fish or meat to the mixture. Evak and his sisters and brothers would help by turning the crank on the grinder to process the fish or meat before they went into the mix. "I looked forward to it," Evak said. "It was something to do."
Evak explained that the word aqutuq comes from the Inupiaq word "to stir," and his father would sit with a bowl on the floor, blending the ingredients together with his hands.
But the modern version with lard, Evak said, is too greasy. "It coats your teeth." Caribou fat is more solid with a consistency similar to that of cheese, he explained.
It wasn't just that the substitution of lard — easy to find in the supermarket — made the mixture taste different from the aqutuq Evak preferred. "A lot of our highly processed foods are not as healthy as subsistence foods," Evak said. Lard, Evak added, is linked to arteriosclerosis and obesity.
Evak describes his own life as the "end of the transition years" between subsistence living and modern life. The family of Evak's mother were reindeer herders, and his parents grew up in a different world, he explained, one in which mushing was utilitarian, skin boats were the norm, and store-bought food was hard to come by.
These days, Evak said he doesn't get any caribou fat. He is too busy working to hunt and will fill his freezer this year with meat given away by sport hunters at the Kotzebue airport. But Evak thinks of the days when he helped his father make aqutuq. "I kind of miss it, I guess, because that was my childhood," he said.
Christine Kulcheski: It all began with a fish.
Christine Kulcheski got her first job in Alaska's fishing industry in 1992 when the owner of a large catcher-processer for gray cod was trolling the Homer Spit in his truck looking for people to fill two dozen deckhand jobs. She had come up to Alaska from Michigan for the first time three years earlier to work at a Denali lodge during her summer break from college. After graduating, Kulcheski, then 24, returned to Alaska by truck with a rider from Boulder, Colorado, who was on her way to Homer. "I just kind of got sucked in," she said about ending up in Homer herself, even though her plan was to return to Denali.
Kulcheski was camping on the Spit and met other campers who worked as deckhands on halibut charters. For campers known as "Spit Rats," those jobs were at the top of the food chain. Slime liners occupied the bottom.
READ MORE: Top six-word memoir student entries
"I had never been on a boat or touched a fish before," she said. But she decided then that even with no experience she wanted to work in the fishing industry. A month on the catcher-processor in the Bering Sea led to three more monthlong stints on the same vessel.
"From then on, I considered myself a professional deckhand," she said.
Kulcheski spent four summers seining for salmon and herring in Prince William Sound and four seasons in the Bristol Bay salmon fishery. She also worked in the halibut and black cod fisheries when they were managed as a derby in 1993. "I just got this fish fever," she said. Although Kulcheski didn't move to Alaska permanently until 1997, she returned summer after summer to work in the fishing industry.
Having grown up in a Midwest college town, "the thought had never crossed my mind that people made a living by taking fish out of the sea," she said. No work, no lifestyle could have been farther from what she knew. In her hometown, "everybody has a 4.0 and everybody goes to college." Heading to Alaska and diving into the fishing industry was a way to be different.
Like many Alaskans, Kulcheski's resume is varied. She has worked as a chef aboard an eco-tour boat in Prince William Sound. She has earned her captain's license, started a business and is now a registered nurse. In the midst of it, she got married and had a daughter, who is now 6.
Although her work uniform these days is scrubs, not bibs, her experience in Alaska's commercial fishing industry is deeply entwined with who Kulcheski is. "It helped me find my home," she said.
Bill Frey: Not fit to live anywhere else.
By his own admission, it's possible Bill Frey, 59, would have never strayed far from the Matanuska-Susitna area, where he was born and still lives, if he hadn't met and married his wife, Shonti Elder. Elder, an Alaska fiddling champion and music teacher with the Anchorage School District, was born in India to American parents and spent time there as a child.
It was Elder who encouraged Frey to travel, he explained. The couple has two children in their 20s, and together they've visited Nepal, Bali, Iceland, Ireland and beyond. For Frey, coming home to Alaska means coming back to the mountains.
Frey's Alaskan roots go back to homesteading days. His mother came from New Mexico in 1955 with her family. They brought 12 head of cattle and three horses to start a beef ranch. They settled in the Mat-Su, seeking land to homestead. His grandfather started the state's quarter horse association and brought horse racing to the Alaska State Fair.
Frey's father came to Alaska in 1946 from Pennsylvania with his brother and his brother's family in a passenger bus outfitted with bunk beds, a stove and a propane tank. The brothers mined gold near Valdez for a time before making their way to the Palmer-Butte area. Frey was born in Palmer's new hospital not long after it moved out of Quonset huts.
After attending Palmer High School and Matanuska-Susitna College, Frey started R & R Refrigeration and Appliance Repair. His business motto is "Keeping Alaska cold since 1984."
Perhaps it's not that Frey is not fit to live anywhere else, but that anywhere else won't fit him. Outside Alaska "there's not enough space," Frey said. He likes to fish, hunt, camp and get out into the wilderness. Frey has put away caribou, halibut, salmon and rockfish this year. He's got two full-sized freezers plus a walk-in cooler he built inside his garage. "I can always get more freezers," he joked.
Frey is looking forward to using his last caribou ticket for the winter hunt of the Nelchina herd. "I can't imagine moving anywhere else," he said.
Miranda Weiss is the author of "Tide, Feather, Snow: A Life in Alaska." She writes about life in Homer in her weekly Northern Lights column on the website of The American Scholar.
Our judges and their 6-word stories
• Rich Chiappone is the author of "Water of an Undetermined Depth" and "Opening Days: A Flyfisherman Writes." Chiappone teaches creative writing for the University of Alaska. His third book will be released in the spring of 2016.
"I wish I hadn't done that."
• Erin Coughlin Hollowell is the author of the poetry collection "Pause, Traveler" and is the executive director of 49 Writers, a statewide organization dedicated to promoting a vibrant writing community in Alaska.
"My life a crumpled paper, smoothed."
• Mercedes O'Leary received her MFA from New England College and is finishing her first poetry collection. Her work has appeared in Calyx, Literary Mama and elsewhere.Email Share +1 281 Shares
LIMA, Peru — The chair of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Saturday said politicians throughout the Western Hemisphere have an obligation to publicly oppose anti-LGBT discrimination and violence.
“Politicians can’t be neutral to tolerance and hatred,” Tracy Robinson told the Washington Blade after she spoke at a meeting of Latin American and Caribbean LGBT rights advocates in the Peruvian capital. “They actually have to create an enabling and a supportive environment in which persons can undertake rights work on behalf of LGBTI persons.”
Created by the Washington-based Organization of American States in 1959, the commission seeks to promote human rights throughout the Western Hemisphere. It works closely with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that the OAS established in 1959.
The commission’s Unit on the Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Persons formed in 2011.
Robinson, a Jamaican lawyer, has been a member of the OAS General Assembly since 2012. Her colleagues elected her chair of the commission in March.
Commission considering 50 LGBT petitions
Robinson told the Blade there are roughly 50 petitions before the commission from OAS member states in the Western Hemisphere that are at various stages of consideration. A number of LGBT rights advocates from the Bahamas, Honduras, Ecuador and other countries approached her after she spoke at the meeting to discuss cases they hope the commission will consider.
“They will help to develop standards, they will help to provide some clarity on what the norms are, what the expectations of states are and what the responsibility states have to remedy and repair violations,” Robinson told the Blade.
Robinson described the 2012 ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in favor of lesbian Chilean Judge Karen Atala who lost custody of her three daughters to her ex-husband seven years earlier because of her sexual orientation “as a landmark case I think for the Americas” and for the world.
The Mexican Supreme Court cited the Atala case in its 2013 decision that said a law banning same-sex marriage in the state of Oaxaca is unconstitutional.
A gay Mexican couple seeking the right to legally marry in their country in May filed a formal complaint with the commission. Three gay Chilean couples who are seeking to exchange vows in the South American country last November filed a lawsuit with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
“The court took a bold step in establishing an even more expansive human rights claims on behalf of LGBTI persons than was immediately before the court in [the Atala] case,” Robinson told the Blade. “More of those cases will help to clarify the situation, clarify the standards and help both activists and states to understand what is now needed to respond to the violations which we do see everyday.”
Anti-LGBT violence persists in spite of legal advances
Same-sex couples are able to legally marry in 19 states and D.C., Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico City, French Guiana, the French islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy and the Caribbean Netherlands that includes the islands of Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius.
Lawmakers in the Mexican state of Coahuila last week overwhelmingly approved a same-sex marriage bill.
A handful of same-sex couples in Colombia have exchanged vows since July 2013, but the country’s anti-gay inspector general has challenged these unions in court.
The Ecuadorian government is currently in the process of implementing a law that will allow same-sex couples to legally register their civil unions. Peruvian and Chilean lawmakers are also considering the issue.
Argentina President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2012 signed what many advocates describe as the world’s most progressive transgender rights law that allows trans Argentinians to legally change their gender on official documents without surgery and an affidavit from a doctor or another medical provider. Cuba in 2008 began offering free sex-reassignment surgeries under the country’s national health care system, but LGBT rights advocates who oppose the Cuban government have previously pointed out to the Blade that less than 30 trans people have undergone the procedure on the island.
Peruvian Congressman Carlos Bruce, sponsor of a bill that would allow same-sex couples to enter into civil unions in the South American country, in May came out as gay. Angélica Lozano, a former councilwoman in the Colombian capital of Bogotá, earlier this year became the first openly LGBT person elected to the Colombian Congress.
Anti-LGBT persecution and violence remain pervasive throughout the Western Hemisphere in spite these advances.
Consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized in Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana.
United Belize Advocacy Movement, a Belizean HIV/AIDS group, in 2010 challenged the Central American country’s law that criminalizes homosexuality. Javed Jaghai, a Jamaican gay rights advocate, last month withdrew his lawsuit against the island’s anti-sodomy law because of concerns over his personal safety and that of his family.
A report from Global Rights, a Washington-based human rights organization, that Robinson and other commissioners discussed during a hearing last November said trans Brazilians accounted for slightly more than half of the 300 reported LGBT murder victims in the South American country in 2012. The group noted figures from the Brazilian Secretariat of Human Rights that estimate 52 percent of them were of color.
Nelson Arambú, an advocate from Honduras, told the Blade during an interview in New York earlier this summer that 176 LGBT Hondurans have been reported killed between a 2009 coup that toppled the Central American country’s president and May. These include Walter Tróchez, a prominent LGBT rights activist, and Erick Martínez, a gay journalist and activist.
Colombian LGBT rights advocates continue to express their outrage over the suicide of a gay teenager, Sergio Urrego, last month. Reports indicate that administrators of the high school the 16-year-old attended allegedly subjected him to anti-gay discrimination after a teacher saw a picture of Urrego kissing his boyfriend on his cell phone.
Robinson acknowledged to the Blade the state of LGBT rights in countries throughout the Americas and in the Caribbean is “really varied.” She said insecurity and anti-LGBT violence are “dominant” issues throughout the hemisphere.
“The initial work of the commission has focused on violence issues and my hope is that we’ll begin to see some results,” Robinson told the Blade. “Now the commission itself doesn’t create the change, but the hope is that we can support the work that defenders are doing, but also strengthening state accountability in relation to violence.”
Robinson conceded the commission has “very limited resources on the table” to conduct its work in support of LGBT rights. She nevertheless said she remains optimistic these issues will gain further traction in the region in the coming years.
“I think we’ll have more clarity on states’ responsibilities where there’s violence and particularly states’ responsibility where the violence is perpetrated both by state actors and by private individuals,” Robinson told the Blade. “My hope is that in the long run we will see a reduction in the levels of violence, we will see a reduction in the impunity which is now widespread for violence against LGBTI persons.”Tandem in freefall
Parachuting, is a method of transiting from a high point to Earth with the aid of gravity, involving the control of speed during the descent with the use of a parachute or parachutes. It may involve more or less free-falling (the skydiving segment) which is a period when the parachute has not yet been deployed and the body gradually accelerates to terminal velocity.
The first parachute jump in history was made by André-Jacques Garnerin, the inventor of the parachute, on 22 October 1797. Garnerin tested his contraption by leaping from a hydrogen balloon 3,200 feet (980 m) above Paris. Garnerin's parachute bore little resemblance to today's parachutes, however, as it was not packed into any sort of container and did not feature a ripcord.[1] The first intentional freefall jump with a ripcord-operated deployment was not made until over a century later by Leslie Irvin in 1919.[2] While Georgia Broadwick made an earlier freefall in 1914 when her static line became entangled with her jump aircraft's tail assembly, her freefall descent was not planned. Broadwick cut her static line and deployed her parachute manually, only as a means of freeing herself from the aircraft to which she had become entangled.[3]
The military developed parachuting technology as a way to save aircrews from emergencies aboard balloons and aircraft in flight, and later as a way of delivering soldiers to the battlefield. Early competitions date back to the 1930s, and it became an international sport in 1952.[how?]
Common uses [ edit ]
Parachuting is performed as a recreational activity and a competitive sport. It's widely considered an extreme sport due to the risks involved. Modern militaries utilise parachuting for the deployment of airborne forces and supplies, and special operations forces commonly employ parachuting, especially free-fall parachuting, as a method of insertion. Occasionally forest firefighters, known as "smokejumpers" in the United States, use parachuting as a means of rapidly inserting themselves near forest fires in especially remote or otherwise inaccessible areas.
Manually exiting an aircraft and parachuting to safety has been widely used by aviators (especially military aviators and aircrew), and passengers to escape an aircraft that could not otherwise land safely. While this method of escape is relatively rare in modern times, it was commonly used in World War I by military aviators, and utilized extensively throughout the air wars of World War II. In modern times, the most common means of escape from an aircraft in distress is via an ejection seat. Said system is usually operated by the pilot, aircrew member, or passenger, by engaging an activation device manually. In most designs, this will lead to the seat being propelled out of and away from the aircraft carrying the occupant with it, by means of either an explosive charge or a rocket propulsion system. Once clear of the aircraft, the ejection seat will deploy a parachute, although some older models entrusted this step to manual activation by the seat's occupant.
Safety [ edit ]
Despite the perception of danger, fatalities are relatively rare. In the U.S. during the 1970's, the sport averaged 42.5 fatalities annually. In the 80's, the average dropped to 34.1, and in the 90's, the average decreased to 32.3 deaths per year. Between 2000 and 2009, the average dropped to 25.8 and over the eight years after 2009, the annual average declined to 22.4 fatalities (roughly 0.0075 fatalities per 1,000 jumps). In 2017, members of one organization, the United States Parachute Association (USPA) reported 2,585 skydiving injuries sufficiently severe to require resort to a medical care facility.[4]
In the US and in most of the western world, skydivers are required to carry two parachutes. The reserve parachute must be periodically inspected and re-packed (whether used or not) by a certified parachute rigger (in the US, an FAA certificated parachute rigger every 180 days). Many skydivers use an automatic activation device (AAD) that opens the reserve parachute at a pre-determined altitude if it detects that the skydiver is still in free fall. Depending on the country, AADs are often mandatory for new jumpers, and/or required for all jumpers regardless of their experience level.[5] Most skydivers wear a visual altimeter, and an increasing number also use audible altimeters fitted to their helmets.
Injuries and fatalities occurring under a fully functional parachute usually happen because the skydiver performed unsafe manoeuvres or made an error in judgement while flying their canopy, typically resulting in a high-speed impact with the ground or other hazards on the ground.[6] One of the most common sources of injury is a low turn under a high-performance canopy and while swooping. Swooping is the advanced discipline of gliding at high-speed parallel to the ground during landing.
Changing wind conditions are another risk factor. In conditions of strong winds and turbulence during hot days, the parachutist can be caught in downdrafts close to the ground. Shifting winds can cause a crosswind or downwind landing which have a higher potential for injury due to the wind speed adding to the landing speed.
Another risk factor is that of "canopy collisions", or collisions between two or more skydivers under fully inflated parachutes. Canopy collisions can cause the jumpers' inflated parachutes to entangle with each other, often resulting in a sudden collapse (deflation) of one or more of the involved parachutes. When this occurs, the jumpers often must quickly perform emergency procedures (if there is sufficient altitude to do so) to "cut-away" (jettison) from their main canopies and deploy their reserve canopies. Canopy collisions are particularly dangerous when occurring at altitudes too low to allow the jumpers adequate time to safely jettison their main parachutes and fully deploy their reserve parachutes.
Equipment failure rarely causes fatalities and injuries. Approximately one in 750 deployments of a main parachute result in a malfunction.[7] Ram-air parachutes typically spin uncontrollably when malfunctioning, and must be jettisoned before deploying the reserve parachute. Reserve parachutes are packed and deployed differently; they are also designed more conservatively and built and tested to more exacting standards so they are more reliable than main parachutes, but the real safety advantage comes from the probability of an unlikely main malfunction multiplied by the even less likely probability of a reserve malfunction. This yields an even smaller probability of a double malfunction although the possibility of a main malfunction that cannot be cutaway causing a reserve malfunction is a very real risk.
Parachuting disciplines such as BASE jumping or those that involve equipment such as wingsuit flying and sky surfing have a higher risk factor due to the lower mobility of the jumper and the greater risk of entanglement. For this reason,[tone] these disciplines are generally practiced by experienced jumpers.[citation needed]
Depictions in commercial films – notably Hollywood action movies[citation needed] – usually overstate the dangers of the sport.[tone] Often, the characters in such films are shown performing feats that are physically impossible without special effects assistance. In other cases, their practices would cause them to be grounded or shunned at any safety-conscious drop zone or club. USPA member drop zones in the US and Canada are required to have an experienced jumper act as a "safety officer" (in Canada DSO – Drop Zone Safety Officer; in the U.S. S&TA – Safety and Training Advisor) who is responsible for dealing with jumpers who violate rules, regulations, or otherwise act in a fashion deemed unsafe by the appointed individual.
In many countries, either the local regulations or the liability-conscious prudence of the drop zone owners require that parachutists must have attained the age of majority before engaging in the sport.
The first skydive performed without a parachute was by stuntman Gary Connery on 23 May 2012 at 732 m.[8]
Most common injuries [ edit ]
Due to the hazardous nature of skydiving, the greatest of precautions are taken to avoid parachuting injuries and death. For first time solo-parachutists, this includes anywhere from 4 to 8 hours of ground instruction.[9] Since the majority of parachute injuries occur upon landing (approximately 85%),[10] the greatest emphasis within ground training is usually on the proper parachute landing fall (PLF), which seeks to orient the body as to evenly disperse the impact through flexion of several large, insulating muscles (such as the medial gastrocnemius, tibialis anterior, rectus femoris, vastus medialis, biceps femoris, and semitendinosus ),[11] as opposed to individual bones, tendons, and ligaments which break and tear more easily.
The percent of injuries caused by an improper landing position.
Parachutists, especially those flying smaller sport canopies, often land with dangerous amounts of kinetic energy, and for this reason, improper landings are the cause of more than 30% of all skydiving related injuries and deaths.[10] Often, injuries sustained during parachute landing are caused when a single outstretched limb, such as a hand or foot, is extended separately from the rest of the body, causing it to sustain forces disproportional to the support structures within. This tendency is displayed in the accompanying chart, which shows the significantly higher proportion of wrist and ankle injuries among the 186 injured in a 110,000 parachute jump study.
Due to the possibility of fractures (commonly occurring on the tibia and the ankle mortise), it is recommended that parachutists wear supportive footwear.[10] Supportive footwear prevents inward and outward ankle rolling, allowing the PLF to safely transfer impact energy through the true ankle joint, and dissipate it via the medial gastrocnemius and tibialis anterior muscles.
Weather [ edit ]
Parachuting in poor weather, especially with thunderstorms, high winds, and dust devils can be a dangerous activity. Reputable drop zones will suspend normal operations during inclement weather. In the United States, the USPA's Basic Safety Requirements prohibit solo student skydivers from jumping in winds exceeding 14 mph while using ram-air equipment. However, maximum ground winds are unlimited for licensed skydivers.[12]
Visibility [ edit ]
As parachuting is an aviation activity under the visual flight rules,[13] it is generally illegal to jump in or through clouds, according to the relevant rules governing the airspace, such as FAR105[14] in the US or Faldskærmsbestemmelser (Parachuting Ordinances)[15] in Denmark. Jumpers and pilots of the dropping aircraft similarly bear responsibility of following the other VFR elements,[13] in particular ensuring that the air traffic at the moment of jump does not create a hazard.
Canopy collisions [ edit ]
A collision with another canopy is a statistical hazard, and may be avoided by observing simple principles, including knowing upper wind speeds, the number of party members and exit groups, and having sufficient exit separation between jumpers.[16] In 2013, 17% of all skydiving fatalities in the United States resulted from mid-air collisions.[17]
Training [ edit ]
Instructor explaining the operation of a parachute to student pilots
Skydiving can be practised without jumping. Vertical wind tunnels are used to practise for free fall ("indoor skydiving" or "bodyflight"), while virtual reality parachute simulators are used to practise parachute control.
Beginning skydivers seeking training have the following options:
Parachute deployment [ edit ]
At a sport skydiver's deployment altitude, the individual manually deploys a small pilot-chute which acts as a drogue, catching air and pulling out the main parachute or the main canopy. There are two principal systems in use: the "throw-out", where the skydiver pulls a toggle attached to the top of the pilot-chute stowed in a small pocket outside the main container: and the "pull-out", where the skydiver pulls a small pad attached to the pilot-chute which is stowed inside the container.
Throw-out pilot-chute pouches are usually positioned at the bottom of the container – the B.O.C. deployment system – but older harnesses often have leg-mounted pouches. The latter are safe for flat-flying, but often unsuitable for freestyle or head-down flying.
A parachutist above Venezuela
In a typical civilian sport parachute system, the pilot-chute is connected to a line known as the "bridle", which in turn is attached to a small deployment bag that contains the folded parachute and the canopy suspension lines, which are stowed with rubber bands. At the bottom of the container that holds the deployment bag is a closing loop which, during packing, is fed through the grommets of the four flaps that are used to close the container. At that point, a curved pin that is attached to the bridle is inserted through the closing loop. The next step involves folding the pilot-chute and placing it in a pouch (e.g., B.O.C pouch).
Activation begins when the pilot-chute is thrown out. It inflates and creates drag, pulling the pin out of the closing loop and allowing the pilot-chute to pull the deployment bag from the container. The parachute lines are pulled loose from the rubber bands and extend as the canopy starts to open. A rectangular piece of fabric called the "slider" (which separates the parachute lines into four main groups fed through grommets in the four respective corners of the slider) slows the opening of the parachute and works its way down until the canopy is fully open and the slider is just above the head of the skydiver. The slider slows and controls the deployment of the parachute. Without a slider, the parachute would inflate fast, potentially damaging the parachute fabric and/or suspension lines, as well as causing discomfort, injury or even death of the jumper.[18] During a normal deployment, a skydiver will generally experience a few seconds of intense deceleration, in the realm of 3 to 4 g, while the parachute slows the descent from 190 km/h (120 mph) to approximately 28 km |
on. And I paper clipped the pages in, enough to make a 2-year-old think that it might be a real book. And I did all this all in one day.
And then I took it over to Bruce, and I asked if I could read him this new book. Then I read him the book. He was patient, and he laughed a couple of times, and then he said, 'Now let's read a book with pictures.' Then I went through some editing.
It was six months on and off of design questions. At first I thought, a book with no pictures, great. No cover question, no title question, no design question. Just put the words out there. But in fact I soon realized when there's nothing to look at but letters on a page, and you're trying to make the youngest of kids stare at the page, it's actually very hard, and you have to be very particular.
CNN: Has your standup experience helped with the book tour?
Novak: The standup is everything. I really do feel that this is a tour of elementary schools. A good comic has the philosophy: Funny is funny, and never blame the audience. More than ever, kids are kids: Newton, Massachusetts; Harlem, New York; Texas; Chicago -- I've never seen crowds react so universally to anything as when they're 5, 6, 7 years old. Whatever age kids become different, it's later than this age.
The later I can delay that, the better. It's really exciting and wonderful. More than ever, I know exactly where a laugh is going to come, where a cheer is going to come, where a call and response is; what line to hold a little longer. It's really stunning how a 5-year-old in one part of the country will be totally the same as kids from a totally different part of the country. And that's very standup-like.Blog » 8th March 2015 Futuristic tires could boost electric vehicles Two futuristic concept tires unveiled by Goodyear at this week’s Geneva International Motor Show could radically change the role of car tires in the future. “BHO3” (left) and “Triple Tube” (right). Credit: Goodyear Although the tires pictured here are only concept products at this stage, the technologies in their designs offer a glimpse of what practical innovations may be on the horizon. The first concept – named “BHO3” – offers the possibility of charging the batteries of electric cars by transforming the heat generated by the rolling tire into useful electrical energy. The second concept – named “Triple Tube” – contains three tubes that adjust tire inflation pressure in response to changing road conditions, delivering new levels of performance and versatility. “These concept tires reimagine the role that tires may play in the future,” said Joe Zekoski, Goodyear’s senior vice president and chief technical officer. “We envision a future in which our products become more integrated with the vehicle and the consumer, more environmentally friendly and more versatile.” Additional details on the two concept tires: BHO3
This tire generates electricity through the action of thermoelectric and piezoelectric materials in the tire that capture and transform the energy created by heat when it flexes as it rolls during normal driving conditions. The materials used would optimise the tire’s electricity generation capabilities as well as its rolling resistance. As demand for electric cars grows, this technology has the potential to significantly contribute to the solution of future mobility challenges. This visionary tire technology could help to alleviate the vehicle-range anxiety motorists may have with electric cars. TRIPLE TUBE
This tire features three internal tubes within the tire. Tubes are located beneath the tread and near the inboard and outboard shoulders of the tire, as well as the centre. The tire relies on an internal pump that moves air from the main air chamber to the three individual air chambers, or tubes. The tire automatically adjusts – on its own – to three different positions based on road conditions. • The Eco/Safety position – with maximum inflation in all three tubes – offers reduced rolling resistance. • The Sporty position – with reduced inflation within the inboard shoulder tube – gives drivers dry handling through an optimised contact patch. • The Wet Traction position – with maximised inflation in the centre tube – provides high aquaplaning resistance through a raised tread in the centre of the tire. Although these tires are future concepts, Zekoski says they represent an essential aspect of Goodyear’s innovation strategy, instilling a forward-looking, market-back mindset in the company’s research and development teams. “It is more important than ever for us to stay firmly rooted in our market-back innovation process, which calls on us to focus on, and anticipate, the rapidly evolving needs of our customers,” said Zekoski. Comments »FOR
There is, of course, an obvious argument that the province should continue to fund Catholic schools as a collective entity separate from our public school system. The problem is that the roots of this argument are borne from the fact that the Constitution Act, 1867 requires Ontario to fund Catholic schools, because in 1867 Catholics in Ontario and Protestants in Quebec were both concerned that Confederation would wipe out their right to exist as religious minorities. However, it is no longer 1867, and Quebec (correctly) repealed this portion of the Act almost 20 years ago, because Quebec realized long ago what Ontario should have realized by now: funding an entire school system for one religious denomination on the basis of the never-realized fears of people who have been dead for centuries does not provide the basis for good public policy. The entire Constitutional argument for Ontario’s separate school system is one lengthy appeal to tradition, and that is not a good enough reason for the system’s existence–particularly when all it would take to amend the Constitution Act, in this case, is a successful vote in Ontario’s legislature and then a second successful vote in the House of Commons. If tradition is not a good enough justification for maintaining a Catholic school system, are there other justifications worth maintaining a system which might cost us as much as 1.2 billion dollars per year [PDF]? This is typically the part where supporters of the Catholic school system will pick one of two options. The first option is to propose that Catholic schools are simply a sort of second choice open to all: one explains how Catholic schools are quietly willing to admit non-Catholics. The second option is to argue that Catholic schools promote moral leadership; something may well be said about school uniforms, or the value of faith-based education in some respects. In either option, the fact that Ontario’s Catholic schools often score better on school rankings than its public schools will likely be mentioned. But: Catholic schools are not a second choice, no matter how many non-Catholics they might admit, because at the end of the day the discretion as to whether to admit or not admit any non-Catholic is up to them, as opposed to being a right available to any citizen or their child. And the “moral leadership” provided by Catholic schools is contrasted by Catholic school boards and administrators who fight against gay-straight alliances and anti-bullying laws, and engage in discriminatory hiring practices. (There is also the third option, which is to pretend that the shift to a single, secular school board will somehow traumatize the province top-to-bottom. The response to this argument is to point out that Quebec–and Newfoundland, for that matter–have already managed to transition to a single, secular school system, and managed to do so without riots in the streets.) This is not to say that religious education does not have a place in Ontario. But it is past time to relegate it purely to private schools and supplementary education like Sunday schooling. Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and practitioners of other religions have all been forced to make the choice of either using public schooling or paying for private school. John Tory was quite correct in the 2007 election to decry this situation as deeply unfair to non-Catholic religious practitioners; the problem was that his solution of “publicly fund all religious schools” was exactly backwards, choosing equality via massive public expenditures rather than the simplest solution: one secular school system for one province, and religious education to be available equally–and privately–to all. Sometimes, and not often, the best public policy is also the simplest. That is the case here. Catholics do not need a separate school system (no matter how much they might want one), and the extra money spent maintaining that system’s bureaucratic redundancies is best spent elsewhere.
AGAINST
Let’s begin with a paradox. The reason we should probably keep the Catholic or separate school system is because it’s not really very Catholic anymore and hasn’t been so for some time. The vision–or is it nightmare?–of heavily habited nuns beating children with rulers as they demand that “God is love” is colossally anachronistic. More than this, even the idea of Catholic schools teaching the church’s catechism and of teachers being committed Catholics is very far from the modern reality of the system. Which is why more conservative Catholic parents send their children to alternative Catholic schools and complain about the religious indifference of the separate system. I’ve spoken in many of those schools, met countless Catholic teachers, and I can say with some confidence that the majority of those teaching in the Catholic system have no problem with pre-marital sex, gay partnerships and marriage, or contraception, and are often themselves involved in all three. Abortion and perhaps euthanasia remain sticking points but even here there is enormous dissent. Catholic in name only, as it were. If teachers are from Catholic families and can convince schools that they’re Catholic they often find it easier to obtain jobs and, frankly, the Catholic schools tend to have fewer challenges, if less money, than the public ones. All of which should, I suppose, be an argument for scrapping them. If a small minority of Catholic schools are still authentically Catholic and if most of the teachers are effectively secular, why bother to continue with the façade? Because if it’s not broken, it’s dangerous and pointless to try to fix it. First, choice is a good thing and there are still myriad Canadians who would prefer their children to be raised in a school where Christmas and Easter are acknowledged, there is a crucifix on the wall, and ideas of charity and God-based community are mentioned, if not always actively pursued. Second, the fact is that Catholics faced discrimination and even persecution in Ontario, and the Catholic system is, even if we have forgotten, a symbol of victory over triumphalism and religious bigotry. Third, it would be profoundly divisive to try to dismantle the system now and would force a battle between the secular left and the Catholic teachers’ union, which may be ostensibly Catholic but is solidly progressive. It rejects much of Catholic teaching, especially around sexuality and female equality, but will fight to maintain jobs and identity. Fourth, the schools and the teachers would still be there, but instead of St. Pius or Sacred Heart would be, oh I don’t know, Dalton McGuinty High. Good Lord, what a thought! It would be impossibly expensive and wasteful to physically move the children and teachers and horribly unfair to both. The financial savings that might occur, and I am always skeptical about this, would be at the administrative and bureaucratic level, but this would necessitate major compensation and subsequent unemployment. Hardly desirable. As for bringing the province or city together, there’s no real division now based on public and separate education. This isn’t Belfast or Glasgow and it’s fatuous to suggest otherwise. If gay kids face discrimination, if teenagers who are sexually active feel condemned, if modern sex education is rejected, we have a duty to intervene. But generally that’s just not the case, much to the chagrin of many priests, bishops and right-wing Catholic laypeople. If the publicly funded separate Catholic system does die it will be through suicide rather than execution. We have far greater issues and problems than this one and, in case you’re wondering, I left the Roman Catholic Church two years ago and would never return.Five presidents took office without winning the popular vote. In other words, they did not receive a plurality regarding the popular vote. They were elected, instead, by the electoral college or in the case of John Quincy Adams by the House of Representatives after a tie in the electoral votes. They were:
Popular vs. Electoral Votes
Presidential elections in the United States are not popular vote contests. The writers of the Constitution made it so that only the House of Representatives were elected by popular vote. The Senators would be selected by state legislatures, and the President would be selected by the electoral college (see How the President Is Elected). The Seventeenth Amendment was ratified in 1913 which made the election of Senators occur through popular vote. However, presidential elections still operate under the electoral system.
The Electoral College is made up of representatives generally selected by the political parties at their state conventions. Since most states except Nebraska and Maine follow a 'winner-take-all' principle of electoral votes, this means that whichever party's candidate wins a state's popular vote for the presidency will win all of that state's electoral votes. The minimum electoral votes a state can have is three since this number is equal to a state's Senators plus Representatives. The Twenty-Third Amendment gave the District of Columbia three electoral votes since they have no Senators and Representatives.
Since states vary in population and many popular votes for different candidates can be quite close within an individual state, it makes sense that a candidate might win the popular vote across the entire United States but not win in the electoral college. As a specific example, let's say the electoral college is only made up of two states: Texas and Florida. Texas with its 38 votes goes entirely to a Republican candidate but the popular vote was very close, and the Democratic candidate was behind by a very small margin of only 10,000 votes. In the same year, Florida with its 29 votes goes entirely to the Democratic candidate, yet the margin for the Democratic win was much larger with the popular vote win by over 1,000,000 votes This could result in a Republican win at the electoral college even though when the votes between the two states are counted, the Democrats won the popular vote.Bill Maher and conservative political commentator S.E. Cupp clashed over the certainty in the scientific community about the relationship between climate change and hurricanes.
As Hurricane Irma wreaked havoc in the Caribbean and later in Florida, Maher declared it time to talk about climate change on Real Time with Bill Maher on Sept. 8, 2017. "If you’re going to accept federal aid for a storm, shouldn’t you also accept the science on climate change?" Maher asked.
Cupp said that while she agrees that humans are causing climate change, it should be acceptable to debate what impact human activity has in causing specific weather events.
"I don’t know if hurricanes are caused by climate change. Every scientist I read this week said they don’t cause them, but they’re probably making them more intense," Cupp said. "What part of the human roots of climate change are responsible for creating intenser storms? I think that’s a question that is unanswered by science."
"No. That’s not right," Maher responded.
The scientific community is indeed wrestling with these questions. Not everything is settled.
We previously wrote about the relationship between Hurricane Harvey and climate change, and none of the experts we talked to said climate change caused Hurricane Harvey, and they’re not claiming it caused Irma either. Instead, they posit that climate change exacerbated the effects of the storm. But there’s some dissent as to what degree.
The verdict on hurricanes overall (rather than specific case studies) was a little more definitive. A draft report on climate science conducted by 13 federal agencies as part of the National Climate Assessment said models showed the number of very intense storms has been rising as a result of a warmer world. But the trend has yet to rise above normal variation. In other words, scientists require more data, which in this case is unfortunately hurricanes.
Share the Facts 2017-09-12 20:19:05 UTC PolitiFact -1 -1 -1 PolitiFact Rating: Not yet settled PolitiFact Rating: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/s-e-cupp-accuses-maher-of-emboldening-blowhards-like-rush-limbaugh-in-clash-over-climate-change/ "What part of the human roots of climate change are responsible for creating intenser storms? I think that’s a question that is unanswered by science." S.E. Cupp Conservative political commentator in an interview Friday, September 8, 2017 2017-09-08 Read More info
Attributing specific weather events to climate change
Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker took part in the same conversation with Cupp and Maher.
"The basis of scientific inquiry is asking questions," Gopnik said to Cupp. "The result of scientific inquiry is having answers. This is a subject on which we now have answers."
"Some answers," Cupp interjected.
"Excuse me, S.E.," Gopnik said, "we have all the answers we need." Maher agreed.
However, that isn’t so clear when it comes to attributing individual weather events to climate change.
"The evidence regarding the influence on individual hurricanes in the present, though I think it is enough to infer some degree of influence, remains subject to much greater debate in the scientific community," said Adam Sobel, a professor of applied physics and applied mathematics and of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University.
The graphic below, from the National Academy of Sciences, shows the consensus in the scientific community on the capability of attributing different types and specific instances of extreme weather events to climate change.
The bottom axis measures how confident scientists are about understanding how climate change is altering a specific type of weather event. The left axis measures how confident scientists are in saying climate change is causing specific weather events.
Tropical cyclones (hurricanes) score pretty low on both scales. In other words, it’s far from settled.
Competing evidence?
Gopnik, in the HBO show, continued making his point with evidence from a scientific paper.
"In 2006, as long ago as that, there was in Science, one of the leading journals, there was a paper saying what will happen if this continues is, you will have an immediate backflow between warming oceans and increasing hurricanes," Gopnik explained. "They made a very, highly specific prediction which turned out to be absolutely true. They made the prediction that as the oceans warmed you would have more and more severe hurricanes."
"Exactly," Maher said
We asked Gopnik and Maher about the paper Gopnik cited, but have yet to hear back. We then turned to scientists, who pointed to Nature and Science articles making a similar point.
Sobel said Gopnik’s statement goes beyond what existing evidence can justify.
"I don't believe these papers made ‘highly specific’ predictions, nor that since 1970 we have had ‘an endlessly growing cycle of more and more severe hurricanes.’ I don't think that is a defensible characterization of the observations," Sobel said.
Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, said Gopnik was likely referring to the Science paper (albeit from 2005) that showed a doubling in the number of Category 4-5 hurricanes from 1970-74 through 2000-04.
Klotzbach reviewed the paper alongside Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center, and said that the frequency increase observed in the paper was too large to be explained by the 0.5 degree celsius increase in sea surface temperature during this time.
He also noticed a large jump in frequency in the late 1980s, which coincided with the period of time when most of the world finally got directly overlooking satellites. Prior to that time, storms looked weaker because they could only be observed at an oblique angle.
Landsea and Klotzbach expect small increases in the frequency of intense hurricanes, but said it was too soon to be able to observe such stark results.
Cupp’s counter also flawed
Cupp rebuffed Gopnik’s argument using anecdotal evidence.
"I’m sorry, we just went through an unprecedented 12-year gap of no Category 3 hurricanes hitting landfall," Cupp said.
"S.E., that is bad science," Gopnik said.
"That’s just bad reporting," Maher said.
But as Cupp responded to further resistance from Gopnik and Maher, "That’s a fact." According to the National Hurricane Center, the last time a Category 3 hurricane made landfall in the United States was Hurricane Wilma in October 2005. That was 11 years and 10 months ago.
No matter, experts say it’s still a problematic counterargument.
Other storms may not have made landfall as above-Category 3 hurricanes in the United States, but they still ravaged other parts of the region. And only about 10 percent of hurricanes worldwide are seen in the Atlantic region.
Scientists looking at the impact of climate change on weather events focus on storms that both made landfall and didn’t – all over the world.
"We (in the United States) got lucky for 11 years, that’s the end of it," Sobel said. "None in 11 years and two in two weeks, but neither proves anything."
Share the Facts 2017-09-12 20:28:20 UTC PolitiFact -1 -1 -1 PolitiFact Rating: Factual but not relevant PolitiFact Rating: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/s-e-cupp-accuses-maher-of-emboldening-blowhards-like-rush-limbaugh-in-clash-over-climate-change/ “We just went through an unprecedented 12-year gap of no Category 3 hurricanes hitting landfall.” S.E. Cupp Conservative political commentator in an interview Friday, September 8, 2017 2017-09-08 Read More info
What’s clear is that there’s more where they came from.
Scientists expect the intensity of storms to rise and overall frequency to decrease slightly as the number of more intense storms (Category 3, 4 and 5) increase slightly. But that’s expected to happen by the end of the century, and until studies are performed on Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, it’s impossible to pinpoint these storms as the result of some climate shift.
Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that instead of waiting for attribution studies to be performed on Irma, we should focus on the vulnerability and resilience of our coastal cities.
As Gopnik echoed, "We don’t have to know everything to know what is vital to do."
"Impacts are not just physical (rain, floods, wind) but also societal – who gets to evacuate, power system vulnerability and outages, hospitals right on the shore line, contamination of water supplies, food availability, property markets, etc.," Schmidt said. "These are the same things that are going to be stressed with 2 or 3 feet of sea level rise, too."A Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia reportedly refused to serve women, a claim that the corporate giant was swiftly forced to deny.
A Twitter user by the name of Manar N posted posted an image of a message posted outside the Starbucks which read, “Please no entry for ladies only send your driver to order – thank you.”
Starbucks vows to hire 10.000 refugees Meanwhile Starbucks in Saudi Arabia… pic.twitter.com/7nPW3duRjH — Jenna Abrams (@Jenn_Abrams) February 6, 2017
“Starbucks star in Riyadh refused 2 serve me just because I’m a WOMAN & asked me 2 send a man instead,” Manar N tweeted.
Under Islamic guardianship laws, women are required to be with male escorts to perform a number of tasks in Saudi Arabia, including voting and opening a bank account. They are also banned from driving.
After the image began to go viral, Starbucks was forced to respond, tweeting, “That was a temporary sign during a store renovation. This store now accommodates all customers in accordance with local law.”
@Jenn_Abrams That was a temporary sign during a store renovation. This store now accommodates all customers in accordance with local law. — Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) February 6, 2017
The message posted outside the store contains no information whatsoever about a “renovation” and it is not explained how this would only affect women.
The controversy is particularly ironic given that Starbucks repeatedly likes to virtue signal about its “progressive values,” including a much derided “Race Together” campaign last year in support of ‘Black Lives Matter’ and a recent vow to hire 10,000 “refugees” as a snub to President Trump’s travel ban.
Don’t expect feminists to kick up much of a fuss over this.
These days, most of them seem to be pre-occupied with wearing vaginas on their heads, praising someone who advocates sharia law and chanting “Allahu Akbar”.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” topped the $500 million mark at the worldwide box office.
Disney’s Marvel superhero sequel, starring Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson, hit the milestone Tuesday, according to Box Office Mojo. It now sits at $502.2 million, with $167 domestic and $335.2 million — two-thirds of its gross — coming from overseas.
Also read: ‘Captain America: Winter Soldier’ Soaring Overseas, Unlike Original
The sequel’s global total is far ahead of the original film, “Captain America: The First Avenger,” which brought in $370 million globally in 2011. Internationally, “First Avenger” only amassed $193 million. “Winter Soldier” has taken in more than $80 million from China alone.
“Winter Soldier” also has benefited from the momentum provided by Disney and Marvel’s 2012 blockbuster, “The Avengers,” which ranks as the third-highest grossing film ever at the worldwide box office. Two other Marvel sequels have seen a similar boost thanks: “Iron Man 3” and “Thor: The Dark World.” Both sequels saw major increases from the films that preceded them in the wake of Marvel’s successful superhero mash-up.This essay is part of a column called The Wisdom Project by David Allan, editorial director of CNN Health and Wellness. He wrote this story in 2014 for the BBC. The series is on applying to one's life the wisdom and philosophy found everywhere, from ancient texts to pop culture. Don't miss another Wisdom Project column; subscribe here.
Have you read the latest study about meditation? Probably not, because even as you read this sentence another has likely come out. There is a steady stream of new research and news stories about the benefits of meditation and other mindful breathing practices. As they report, meditation boosts energy, helps with focus, reduces stress and anxiety, increases resilience and possibly, subtly, changes your life and your brain for the better.
Of course, not everyone believes in the power of meditation, but once converted, the big hurdle is making meditation fit into your schedule. Just the thought of cramming another thing into your day is stress-inducing.
Here's a radical proposal: start your new meditation habit at work. Yup, that work. The office. Busy, stressful, un-meditation-friendly work.
It turns out, the office is actually an ideal place to meditate specifically because of those reasons. To quote one of my favourite films, "The Razor's Edge," in which Bill Murray's character searches for the meaning of life: "It's easy to be a holy man on top of a mountain." It's harder, but more rewarding, to be one in the office.
Not only is work likely one of the major causes of your stress, but it is also a victim of it. A stressed out, unhappy employee is not a productive one. You can counterbalance the negative and even make your office a more peaceful, creative and industrious place with the effect and influence of your meditation practice alone.
Plus, if you're like me, it's hard to fit in meditation or anything else in the busy hum of home, especially with a spouse and children and fewer waking hours to spend with them or on other interests. The solution for me was to practice at work: the place I'm already going five days a week and where meditation is needed most.
It doesn't need to be a big time commitment — 10 to 15 minutes each day is plenty — and even a couple of minutes can be useful. The key is to commit to doing something, otherwise it's not effective. When I lived in San Francisco my apartment was a few blocks from the city's famous Zen Center and I would wake most mornings for the pre-dawn sittings. It was formal, strictly following the Buddhist tradition, right down to which foot you used to enter the room. I loved it and miss it, but never picked it back up because it always seemed too hard to replicate on my own. So that was my challenge — to get back into practice without it being a burden or competing with other priorities.
Find a space
The first person I told of my intention to start meditating at work was the office manager.
"This may be an unusual request," I emailed him, "but I could use your help. I'm looking to find a room in our office without glass, to book for 15 minutes a day, every day. The purpose is to meditate."
Professional but perhaps a bit puzzled, he walked me through a few options in our open-plan office and its meeting rooms with see-through glass walls. We settled on a seldom-used "green room" for talent when the office does studio production. It was perfect: small, quiet, two chairs, no phone. If it's booked, my back-ups include a meeting room with glass just on one side (passers-by see only my back) and a nearby anonymising city park. And if I'm really desperate, I always have that last refuge of privacy: the porcelain sanctuary.
Schedule some time
I book 30 minutes every day though I never use the whole time. Sometimes I'm a little late; I always finish early. Sometimes I need to reschedule for later in the day. But if I can make it, I do. Whatever I'm working on can wait another 10 to 15 minutes without dire consequences. Unless you're an emergency room doctor or caring for young children, the same is probably true at your job. Even if I'm feeling stressed about something I need to get done right away, I always feel better (that is, less stressed) after I breathe.
Now meditate!
Keep it simple and easy. Earlier this year, I attended a SXSW talk by Chade-Meng Tan, who t eaches mindfulness techniques at Google. He recommended giving yourself a goal of "just one good breath" a day. The idea is that even doing a little bit makes a difference. If you love it, you will naturally and happily increase your practice to as many minutes as you can comfortably sustain.
Whether you have never meditated before, need a refresher or are just getting started there is no shortage of books, articles, apps and free videos and podcasts available. So start there. Those meditators are practically giving it away! I re-booted my practice by trying out the following in the green room:
"Search Inside Yourself" by Chade-Meng Tan. In his book on mindfulness and happiness, Meng offers meditation techniques he introduced at Google that range from basic to one (my personal favorite) that asks you to visualize yourself as a force multiplier for goodness, as if you are (my words) some kind of Buddhist superhero.
Subscribe to this column Don't miss another Wisdom Project column by subscribing here.
Stop, Breathe & Think. has a growing library of meditations. These all start the same, which is repetitive, and the narrator's voice so soothing it threatened to put me to sleep. But guided meditations can be useful for beginners and the app tracks your progress, as if you were going to a transcendental gym. This app has a growing library of meditations. These all start the same, which is repetitive, and the narrator's voice so soothing it threatened to put me to sleep. But guided meditations can be useful for beginners and the app tracks your progress, as if you were going to a transcendental gym.
"The Miracle of Mindfulness" by Thich Nhat Hahn. The renowned pacifist Buddhist monk has written many volumes, but this classic has a whole chapter of meditations, some as little as 10 breaths long. The narration contains others, so it's worth reading the entire short book.
"One Moment Meditation" by Martin Boroson. This guide starts with the premise that all you need is one minute. Short chapters help you optimize that minute and learn to take it with you wherever you go. And when you get good at that, it reduces that power minute to a power moment.
Please share your favorite practices or sources and let's encourage everyone meditating in every office, everywhere.A 21-year-old woman died after someone opened fire on the car she was sitting in on a Logan Square avenue early this morning, police said.
Elsewhere in the city, shootings have left at least eight people hurt since late Saturday afternoon.
The fatal shooting happened about 12:25 a.m., after an apparent exchange of words near the intersection of West Fullerton Avenue and North Central Park Avenue, police said.
A group of people on the street apparently provoked a confrontation with an occupant or occupants of a car traveling east on Fullerton, police said. Shortly after, someone in the group yelled gang slogans and opened fire, police said.
A bullet struck the head of Cindy Bahena, who was sitting in the back seat of the vehicle and who may not have been the shooter's intended target, police said.
Bahena, who lived in the 200 block of North Laramie Avenue, was driven to Norwegian-American Hospital and pronounced dead at 12:47 a.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.
As detectives and forensic investigators used flashlights to search for evidence hours later, the sight of a crime scene at a busy commercial intersection caught the attention of many residents walking by. Police found several shell casings in the street near the northeast corner of Central Park and Fullerton, just in front of a corner liquor store and across the intersection from a popular neighborhood supermarket.
chicagobreaking@tribune.com | Twitter: @ChicagoBreakingNEWS
How to Fix KB3110329, Error Code 800705b4
Meet KB3110329, yet another Windows update that failed to do its job, currently causing many headaches.
KB3110329 Official Description
This security update resolves vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. The most severe of the vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if an attacker is able to log on to a target system and run a specially crafted application.
KB3110329 was released on January 12 when the first 2016 Patch Tuesday was rolled out. As we have written already, this particular Patch Tuesday served to fix many security issues in Windows. KB3110329-related problem have appeared only on Windows 7.
Jan 12 Patch Tuesday Full Description
What Is the Problem with KB3110329?
Apparently, the security update has failed to install on machines running Windows 7.
Even though the first problems were registered on January 18, no official fix for the failed installation has been outlined.
This is when a user, Neil and ArlyssNorris, has started a topic about KB3110329 on Microsoft Technet forums, saying that:
Windows 7 update kb3110329 fails with code 800705b4, I have tried 8 or 10 times, even downloadig and it still fails.
Shortly after his publication, other users have confirmed that the update is buggy. The Windows Update Troubleshooter is not of any help either.
Other solutions unsuccessfully tried by other users include:
Running the Windows Update Readiness Tool;
Resetting Windows Updates;
Downloading the update from Windows Download Center;
Running SFC (System File Checker);
Scanning the system for malicious software;
Rebooting the system and then installing the update.
So, what should Win7 users do, if none of the ‘classic’ solutions listed above seem to work?
The only thing to do for now is hide the update, take a deep breath and wait for an official statement by Microsoft. Keep in mind, however, that such a fix may not be released at all, which is a big shame. KB3110329 is a security update and as such, it should be treated accordingly.Heather Callaghan
Activist Post
Do you remember the 2011 lawsuit from the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association 80+ plaintiffs (farmers and small businesses) against Monsanto? They were fighting biotech giant Monsanto’s ability to sue them for patent infringement when genetically modified seeds inadvertently appear in organic/conventional fields.
Yes, were talking about the wind or insects carrying GM seeds onto another farm, which to them is considered contamination. But instead of the ability for the farmers to sue for a ruined field, they can be cleaned out in court for not having permission to plant patented seeds. Monsanto workers have been found trespassing and gathering evidence on farmers’ properties. The lawsuit had sought protection from this overreach, as Monsanto has filed 140 of these suits and settled 700 without suing.
Organic farmer and President of Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA), Jim Gerritsen, had said:
Our farmers want nothing to do with Monsanto. We are not customers of Monsanto. We don’t want their seed. We don’t want their gene-spliced technology. We don’t want their trespass onto our farms. We don’t want their contamination of our crops. We don’t want to have to defend ourselves from aggressive assertions of patent infringement because Monsanto refuses to keep their pollution on their side of the fence. We want justice.
And later:
We don’t think it’s fair that Monsanto can trespass onto our farm, contaminate and ruin our crops and then sue us for infringing on their patent rights.
A June 2013 ruling of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC conceded to the plaintiffs’ argument that contamination from Monsanto seeds would occur, but ultimately dismissed them: “because Monsanto has made binding assurances that it will not ‘take legal action against growers whose crops might inadvertently contain traces of Monsanto biotech genes (because, for example, some transgenic seed or pollen blew onto the grower’s land).” (source)
As Rady Ananda points out, a “trace amount” in this ruling, only means less than one percent contamination of a crop! Those are not the percentages of contamination in the real world – i.e. Monsanto can sue, sue, sue. Furthermore, less than one percent contamination still leaves the integrity of an organic crop ruined. It does not settle the issue of Monsanto trespassing on private land to take samples for infringement cases.
After the federal court threw out the 2011 lawsuit based on Monsanto’s assurances, OSGATA plaintiffs petitioned the |
.
However, predictions are difficult to make because scientists don’t really know what’s happening to oil deep under the water’s surface, he said.
He called underwater oil “the big unknown.”Sprint (NYSE: S) is reaping the rewards of its December promotion in which the company offered to cut customers' bills in half if they switch from Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) or AT&T Mobility (NYSE: T) and buy a new Sprint phone. Speaking Wednesday at the 2015 Citi Global Internet, Media & Telecommunications Conference, Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said that in the fourth quarter the company had a total number of net adds approaching close to 1 million. This compares to the fourth quarter of 2013, when the company added just 477,000 new subscribers.
Claure added that about 400,000 of those new subscribers were prepaid net adds, which surpasses T-Mobile's fourth-quarter prepaid net adds. Today, T-Mobile said it had 266,000 branded prepaid net adds in the fourth quarter.
However, Claure admitted that Sprint still has the highest churn in the industry and said the company is working hard to combat that problem. He said that December was a very strong month for the company and that Sprint dramatically reduced its customer losses.
He added that Sprint will be extending its popular "cut your bill in half" promotion for the rest of 2015 and will be focusing its marketing messaging around that offer. "It has been extremely successful," he noted, adding that the advertising message is simple. "We are going to get away from gigabytes or'my network is better than your network.' Come over and cut your bill in half."
Claure also responded to critics of Sprint's network by saying that where the company has deployed its Spark service, which combines 800 MHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz LTE transmissions, the company's network is getting great reviews from independent third-party monitoring services like Root Metrics. In fact, Claure said that in Chicago Sprint's network is rated No. 2 after Verizon as the most reliable network.
Interestingly, Claure said that the Sprint management team is evaluating the company's 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings and may look at selling some of that spectrum. He said that based upon the money being generated by the AWS spectrum auction, the company is re-evaluating its spectrum holdings. "It wasn't something we had thought of before, but if you look at what we can do with technology [such as carrier aggregation and LTE-TDD technology] to make 2.5 GHz feel like 1.9 MHz spectrum, you can see the value of the Sprint spectrum," he said.
However, he added that this was very preliminary and the company is just in the early stages of looking at this opportunity for monetizing that spectrum.
Claure also praised the company's device leasing program, calling it a disruptive trend for the industry. The iPhone for Life program offers customers a 30-month lease and reduces the monthly cost of the iPhone to $18 for the 16 GB iPhone 6 or $23 for the 16 GB iPhone 6 Plus. Claure said that leasing devices reduces the total cost of ownership of the device but allows the company to sell the existing device that the customer trades in on the secondary market. "It allows us to look at the market differently," he said.
In other news, Sprint today said it has secured three new vendor financing deals for 2.5 GHz network gear totaling $1.8 billion. The deals include an $800 million agreement with Nokia (NYSE:NOK) Networks maturing in June 2021; a $750 million deal with Samsung maturing in December 2022; and a $250 million deal with Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) that will mature in December 2021.
Sprint also expanded its credit relationship with Export Development Canada by $300 million and amended the terms of its existing secured equipment credit facility.
For more:
- see this webcast
- see this press release
Related articles:
Sprint unlikely to hit goal of deploying 2.5 GHz LTE carrier aggregation in 2014
Sprint hits Spark buildout target for 2014, will reportedly focus on 2.5 GHz small cells next year
Sprint to cut 2,000 jobs, postpaid subscriber losses slow
Sprint names SoftBank executive Miyakawa as its new network chief
Sprint's Saw: Spark to hit 120 Mbps peaks at end of 2014, 180 Mbps peaks at end of 2015Our weather will be relatively quiet and seasonable for the holiday weekend, and that pattern will likely last through mid-week. However, after that, the forecast could shift dramatically as models are pointing toward a much colder pattern more favorable for winter storms, though with some uncertainty.
Rain is a good bet on Sunday. Seasonal temperatures will persist beyond Martin Luther King, Jr. Day into mid-week, when there’s a chance of light snow or rain.
After that, the models diverge on the track of the next, more significant winter storm from Thursday into Saturday, and thereby our possible temperature and precipitation type. If it tracks to our north we could see some exceptionally mild temperatures next week. If it tracks to our south, we could stay cold enough to possibly support wintry weather.
After the storm pushes through, colder weather is expected to filter in. By the end of the two week period, temperatures could take a plunge as a strong upper level ridge develops over Alaska and northwestern Canada.
During the past two years, our major cold outbreaks have coincided with similar ridging over western North America. It signals that amplification of the trough to the east is likely to ensue which eventually delivers cold air to our region. If forecast models are on the ball, our snow chances should rise by the end of the month.
Jan. 16 to Jan. 22
Temperature: Near normal to slightly below
Precipitation: Normal
Chances of snow: Below normal
The pattern looks to be a seasonal one with highs in the upper 30s to mid-40s and lows in the 20s to low 30s. Sunday (Jan. 18) looks rainy but the rest of the period appears to be mostly on the dry side. There is a slight chance of a little light rain or wet snow during the day on Wednesday (Jan. 21) as a weak upper level trough moves through.
Jan. 23 to Jan. 29
Temperature: Below normal
Precipitation: Slightly below normal
Chances of snow: Above normal
A big question mark hangs over the forecast from Thursday (Jan. 22) into Saturday (Jan. 24). Wednesday night’s European model pushed a strong low pressure system across the eastern U.S. to our north, and warmed up the D.C. area well into the 50s. But the GFS and more recent European runs have been keeping that same storm to our south and east.
Once the front associated with that low finally presses through, below normal temperatures are expected for the rest of the period as the pattern looks conducive to bringing another shot of Arctic air into the region. The upper-level pattern would also favor above normal chances of getting more snow before the end of the month.
Technical discussion
The 500 mb pattern changes over the next two weeks provide clues to why our temperatures are likely to dive below normal.
During the first five days, the average pattern has a cool (though not frigid) look. The thin black height lines provide a rough estimate of the wind direction at around 18,000 feet. If you follow the lines from west to east, you’ll notice that the lines dip southward as you approach the east coast where a mean trough is located. Such flow suggests our airmasses will track to us from the west-northwest rather than the south. It doesn’t appear terribly cold, but would support near-normal to slightly below normal temperatures pattern while being little on the dry side.
5-day mean 500 mb heights and anomalies from the European model, ending at 7 a.m. on Jan. 20. Thin black lines represent heights. Blues represent below-normal heights, reds represent above-normal. (weatherbell.com)
Beyond that, the pattern evolution is a good one for cold lovers. Contrast the map above with the 5-day mean pattern ending at 7 a.m. on Jan. 24. Note the well-above-normal heights from Alaska eastward to Greenland. The Arctic Oscillation (AO) is forecast to become negative on the later map. Cold air has an easier time coming southward with a negative AO.
The strong ridging over Alaska and northwestern Canada (focus on the red area on the map below) is usually a harbinger of a change to colder weather across the Lower 48. Downstream from the ridge is a prime location for surface high pressure systems to build. Northwesterly mean upper flow is forecast to set up should then steer cold air masses having arctic origins southward into the Plains.
5-day mean 500 mb heights and anomalies from the European model, ending at 7 a.m. on Jan. 24. Thin black lines represent heights. Blues represent below-normal heights, reds represent above-normal. (weatherbell.com)
The 5-day mean temperatures from the 10 closest pattern matches to the map above is shown below. The coldest air is found across the northern tier and Plains but we also end up below normal.
How quickly the cold air might arrive is a question mark as the cold air will initially plunge into the country well to our west so it may take a few days to get to us.
Wednesday night’s operational European model tracks a low to our north putting us on the warm side of the low on Jan. 23. Given this track, the model forecast actually spikes our temperature to 60 degrees ahead of the associated cold front. Similarly, the model analogs of temperature are quite different from the map above given the northern track. Instead, the analogs based on the operational model suggest warmer than normal temperatures will extend from the south across the southeast into the Mid-Atlantic states.
However, the track of next week’s storm is highly uncertain at this point. Thursday morning’s European model run slows down the storm, and shifts it to the east.
Temperatures late next week are cloaked in uncertainty. The figure below shows the ECMWF operational (black line) and ensemble mean (green line) forecasts of the highest and lowest temperatures each six hours through 240 hours. Temperatures are a tad below normal until around the 22nd when the operational European model forecast and ensemble mean forecasts diverge.
The former really warms us up while the ensemble mean keeps the maximum temperatures right around normal (high of 44). The length of the blue vertical lines increases indicating that there is a lot of uncertainty about how quickly to cold air might get to us despite the cold look being shown by the map temperature anomaly map shown above.
The operation European model appears to be an outlier but sometimes the odd model out can be right so it’s too early to dismiss it.
Once the troublesome storm pushes through, another shot of Arctic air is a good bet. If you look at the thin black lines in the image below and pick one that runs through Maryland or Virginia, you can follow it back to northwestern Canada. That is a prescription for getting arctic air into our area.
The 5-day mean have below normal heights across the entire east with center of the anomaly over the Great Lakes. The pattern is a very cold one for the eastern half of the nation. The ridge over western North America and trough and below normal heights over the east are indicative of a positive PNA pattern. The higher than normal heights across the north suggests that the negative AO will still be in place though there is quite a bit of spread among the ensembles.
5-day mean 500 mb heights and anomalies from the European model, ending at 7 a.m. on Jan. 29. Thin black lines represent heights. Blues represent below-normal heights, reds represent above-normal. (weatherbell.com)
Why do you think our chances of getting snow before the end of the month have risen?
In the past, a combination of a positive PNA and negative AO has been a frequent one during 4 inch or greater snow storms that have impacted D.C. Below is a scatter diagram showing the PNA and AO indices for each 4 inch snowstorm from 1950 through 2010. Note that the majority occur when the PNA index is positive and AO is negative. With that in mind, I’ve leaned towards above normal snow chances for week that runs through Jan. 29.
The bottom line is that no prolonged warming is likely before the end of the month. However, next Thursday or Friday could climb into the 40s or even 50s if a storm tracks to our north or temperatures could remain seasonal or even a little below normal if that same low passes to our south. Once that low and its front passes by, the chances of getting another shot of Arctic air increases. If the mean patterns being forecast in the longer ranges by the European and NCEP ensemble are in the ball, always a big if, our snow chances should rise before the end of the month.Packers Blog The Journal Sentinel's team of Packers beat writers provide the latest news, notes and analysis SHARE
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Green Bay --- Just caught up with former Packers defensive tackle Gilbert Brown for a few minutes. Brown is again hosting football camps this summer with one this month in West Bend June 18-20. Here are Brown's thoughts on where the Packers' defense stands, whether or not B.J. Raji deserves a long-term deal and how quarterbacks have changed since he played:
Q: There were some more changes to the Packers' defensive line this off-season. Do you like the addition of Datone Jones and where things are heading?
Brown: "With the Packers' defensive line, I think they're trying to revamp some things and get some different guys in there. Having Nick Perry back this year will probably be a good addition for these guys. Young guys have to pick up the slack. They have a lot of work to do. They have a lot of learning the defense to do, learning their role. But with Clay Matthews and Nick Perry in there, and hopefully Desmond Bishop back, that defense is probably going to be pretty good. They just have to find the attitude to play the games and do what they need to do to win the games."
Q: What do you think went wrong at San Francisco for them?
Brown: "Injuries, of course. Injuries and the run game, trying to find ways to stop other teams' run game. It's hard going against San Francisco when San Francisco is so physical. When they play the game, they really like to punish people. I think that's what the Packers need to get back to, is being physical and establishing their running game. And as a defensive line, with this defense, I think you have to have the right personnel in the right spots to make that defense work.
"This defense requires big, strong linebackers to take on offensive linemen. It requires you to be in a certain way so the guys can contain that offense. Sometimes, a lot of guys get sucked down inside. Some defensive guys, it's a habit to get sucked down inside but you have to force yourself to be able to stay outside. A lot of it goes with coaching and they have some good coaches there to coach them up and to be in the right position. But it all goes back to personnel."
Q: Do you think the Packers should give B.J. Raji a long-term contract extension?
Brown: "B.J. Raji is one of the stout guys in that defense. He's progressing every year. I think he's going to be a bonafide player in this league. That defense requires the nose person to be a phenomenal player because he has to create pressure up the middle to force everything to go outside. I think B.J. Raji is that player to do that. I really do think that he has the size, has the strength, has the knowledge to do it. And I don't think they'd be making a mistake in giving him a long-term deal. I really don't."
Q: Does the defense need to get tougher to take on teams like San Francisco?
Brown: "It goes back to having the right guys in there. Nick Perry, I really do think he's a strong, physical linebacker. I do think they missed him last year as far as getting that pressure from the other side. I think it's getting to be a real nice gain when those guys are in there and they really know what they're doing. This is the time right now for them to really understand that defense and really understand how they can contain quarterbacks like Kaepernick and those guys because when they get on the edge, they're gone."
Q: You had some mobile quarterbacks in the 90's but there are a ton of them today...
Brown: "Oh, absolutely. There's all kinds of quarterbacks out there nowadays. Some of these quarterbacks are fast once they get out in the open. They're not scared to tuck that ball in and take a hit or two. That's the difference with quarterbacks nowadays. They're not scared of getting hit."The human brain does a great job of looking for potential threats. That’s a survival instinct. And in the general interest of making sense of the world, the brain is also good at looking for patterns. Those two tendencies sometimes prompt people to spot what look like unusual clusters of cancer or other illnesses in a small area or group of people and then come up with what seems to be the cause.
Unfortunately, the human brain is also really good at jumping to conclusions about patterns and threats and then stubbornly sticking to those conclusions and the fear they generate — even when more careful investigation reveals that the initial fears about a cluster are unfounded.
Communities across the United States are struggling with a glaring example of the corrosive problem of misguided citizen science right now as residents glance nervously at the artificial turf on their towns’ playing fields.
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A few years ago, artificial turf and the rubber bits spread on it to cushion the impact when athletes fall were linked to cancer. The story began when Amy Griffin, a soccer coach in Washington state, noticed a cluster of cancer cases among soccer players, mostly female goalies, who had spent time playing and diving on artificial turf. Suspecting a link between artificial turf and cancer, she ultimately identified 53 soccer players, many of them goalies, with cancer. The cancer cluster she identified drew nationwide media attention in 2014, which continues today.
But that link hasn’t held up. A careful investigation recently published by Washington state public health officials found no link between artificial turf and cancer. The review compared the rate of cancer among the people on Griffin’s list against the rate of cancer among all soccer players in Washington in the same age range. The numbers weren’t even close. According to the report, “the number of cancer cases reported to us was about two percent of the number expected.”
The investigators looked specifically at the kinds of cancer most frequently reported by Griffin — leukemia and non-Hodgkin and Hodgkin lymphoma — which are more common among younger people. There was no connection between artificial turf and these cancers. They specifically analyzed the risk for goalies, who made up a high percentage of the players on Griffin’s list (she’s a goalie coach). Again, no connection.
To see if something unusual might be going on in Washington state, the analysis compared statewide cancer rates among soccer playing kids against national rates. They were about the same. The investigators interviewed players on Griffin’s list, who said that they actually spent most of their time, between 70 percent and 75 percent, playing on natural grass fields.
And, like any good scientists, the researchers reviewed other studies about this risk, to see how their one brick of evidence fit into the overall wall. Quite well — of 10 review papers that had taken a look at all the research out there, seven of them found no link between artificial turf and crumb rubber infill and cancer.
The conclusions of the report are unambiguous: “This investigation and available research do not suggest that playing soccer on artificial turf causes cancer. … This finding does not suggest that soccer players, select and premier soccer players, or goalkeepers in Washington are at increased risk for cancer compared to the general population.”
The difference between Griffin’s report and the one from the Washington state public health officials is that the latter took a much more careful look at the initial assumptions and the broader data.
Sadly, but not unsurprisingly, this reassuring finding has gotten far less attention in the media than the more alarming news about a cancer cluster among kids who play soccer on artificial turf.
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Some parents of the kids on Griffin’s list have criticized the new study, as have environmental advocates who ardently campaign against artificial turf (and industrial chemicals in general). Griffin also slammed the study, saying that investigators should not have focused only on her list, even though that list is what raised her initial concerns and fed the media coverage that spread those concerns across the nation. “My samples were extremely small and everyone knows it was anecdotal,” she told a local reporter. “There was nothing scientific about it.”
What a perfect statement to capture the larger lesson this episode teaches. Citizen epidemiology can be tremendously valuable, but it is not science. It often lacks the careful critical analysis that can identify with more precision and certainty what the real threats actually are. Citizen science tends to be the product of the instinctive way we perceive the world in our fundamental and constant drive to avoid danger. It’s a hint, a clue, and often an important first step, but it is not the answer.
Griffin identified a possible hazard and a pattern that seemed to make sense and that certainly warranted further investigation. In that regard, she follows in the footsteps of the pioneering citizen epidemiologist Anne Anderson in Woburn, Mass. Her suspicion about a pattern of childhood leukemia in her neighborhood led to scientific investigations that identified polluted drinking water as the cause. That work was portrayed in Jonathan Harr’s book “A Civil Action” and the movie that followed. Or the observations of Michael and Linda Gillick of Toms River, N.J., whose suspicions drove rigorous research that identified polluted water as the cause of a cluster of illnesses in their town, documented in “Toms River,” Dan Fagin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book on citizen epidemiology.
Most of the time, though, quick conclusions about disease clusters and their causes don’t hold up to careful scrutiny. They are based on the leaps and assumptions we are programmed to make quickly and instinctively. They are a first reaction to the initial evidence, which must then be assessed using more careful critical thinking. That takes time and effort and open minds — not the default way the brain prefers to operate.
More rigorous evidence-based thinking will ultimately produce greater wisdom about what actually threatens us and how we can keep ourselves safe. But as examples like the artificial turf and cancer non-cluster illustrate, we have to work to overcome our instinctive knee-jerk cognition if we want to make more informed choices about our health and safety.
David Ropeik is an instructor in the environmental studies program at the Harvard Extension School, a consultant in the psychology of risk perception, and the author of “How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts.”Quote: SeijiSensei
I wasn't impugning your technical abilities; just trying to find out whether you'd ever installed Linux before. Your original post only mentioned using a Mac. People come to these forums with a wide variety of technical experience so I find it helpful to ask where on the experience spectrum someone lies before responding. Originally Posted byI wasn't impugning your technical abilities; just trying to find out whether you'd ever installed Linux before. Your original post only mentioned using a Mac. People come to these forums with a wide variety of technical experience so I find it helpful to ask where on the experience spectrum someone lies before responding.
No offense was taken.. I was simply trying to level set. Amongst Mac folks, I would a the command-line guru (the admins in the Mac HTPC group shuddered every time I tried posting about porting useful stuff over from the linux world.. so I gave up trying to convince them the command line is not a dangerous thing).. amongst a true linux crowd, I'm only one among the unwashed masses, and probably below the mid-line at that(but more than willing to get my hands dirty when needed).FWIW, I have no plans (for now) to run Myth (I have Dish and am pretty happy with it, and am not aware of any simple way to get material out of it.. nor am I strongly motivated to do so).. I simply want a machine co-located with HT that can:- play 480p DVDs- interface to my iTunes library (no DRM'd music to worry about)- connect to internet radio- play ripped movies via LAN using VLC/mplayer- surf (Firefox)- let me wax nostalgic playing some MAME games- run Apache/mySQL and IMAP server (for Squirrelmail and such)fairly light requirements, that my (multiply-upgraded)Mac Mini can handle reasonably enough, but since I want to get rid of my bulky/power-hungry desktop upstairs (gigabit network in the house), I want to have OS X upstairs, meaning I will need something at HT location.. which doesn't need to be OS X.. and since Apple refuses to upgrade their little beastie, I'm off to linux as my happy 2nd choice (no offense to anyone). Should be a fun learning experience.chprpipr, thanks for the positive report on Intrepid Ibex!Justice Department officials pledged to work through the FBI's revived Hillary Clinton email probe "as expeditiously as possible" on Monday amid a backlash over FBI Director James Comey's unexpected public announcement of the investigation on Friday.
"We assure you that the Department will continue to work closely with the FBI and together, dedicate all necessary resources and take appropriate steps as expeditiously as possible," wrote Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik in a letter to lawmakers, according to multiple media reports.
The letter came as both Republicans and Democrats in Congress pressed Comey to provide more information about the nature of his bureau's interest in newly-discovered emails found on a laptop used by Huma Abedin, one of Clinton's closest aides. Those emails emerged through a separate investigation of sexual misconduct allegations against Abedin's estranged husband, Anthony Weiner.The Free Syrian Army’s Supreme Military Council will meet on Friday following the killing of a rebel FSA official, Mohammed Kamal al-Hamami.
An al-Qaeda-linked organization killed Hamami in Syria, highlighting the rift between Islamists and moderates in Syria’s armed opposition.
Hamami – also known as Abu Bassel al-Ladkani – was a member of the FSA’s Supreme Military Council.
The FSA official was meeting with members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the port city of Latakia when they killed him, Qassem Saadeddine – an FSA spokesman – told Reuters.
“The Islamic State phoned me saying that they killed Abu Bassel and that they will kill all of the Supreme Military Council,” Saadeddine said from Syria. “He met them to discuss battle plans.”
This was not the first time that Islamists opposing Assad and other more moderate opposition forces have had disagreements, the Syrian Observatory's for Human Rights leader Rami Abdelrahman told AFP.
"Last Friday, the Islamic State killed an FSA rebel in Idlib province and cut his head off. There have been attacks in many provinces," he said.
FSA’s high-ranking officials will meet on Friday to discuss the killing of Hamami, said Louay Almokdad, an FSA spokesman.
“We must take the necessary measures on all levels, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant brigades should hand us over those who killed Hamami… so we can hold them accountable,” Almokdad told Al Arabiya. “Chief of Staff of the Supreme Military Council of the FSA, Brigadier General Salim Idris, mourns our hero and martyr Mohammed Kamal al-Hamami, who was assassinated by the forces of evil.”
The FSA has been trying to build a network of logistics and reinforce its presence across Syria as the U.S. administration pledged to send weapons to the group after it concluded that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons against rebel fighters.
U.S. congressional committees are holding up the plan because of fears that such deliveries will not be decisive and the arms might end up in the hands of Islamist militants, security sources have said.
While Free Syrian Army units sometimes fight alongside Islamist militant groups such as the Islamist State, rivalries have increased and al-Qaeda-linked groups have been blamed for several assassinations of commanders of moderate rebel units.
(With Reuters)
Last Update: Friday, 12 July 2013 KSA 14:21 - GMT 11:21Tottenham Hotspur are lining up a shock cut-price bid for Sunderland central defender John O’Shea.
With captain Michael Dawson free to leave White Hart Lane this summer, Spurs are looking for a new centre back who could slot straight into the first team.
O’Shea only has a year remaining on his Sunderland contract and Tottenham are ready to test the Black Cats’ resolve to keep the 33-year-old with a bid of around £3million.
Sunderland have had a £4m offer for Swansea defender Ashley Williams rejected and must now decide whether to go back with an improved bid.
Despite fighting relegation and falling out with former manager Paolo Di Canio, O’Shea was one of Sunderland’s best players over the second half of last season.
Although he mainly plays in the centre of defence, O’Shea’s versatility is attractive to Tottenham. He can fill in at both left and right full-back, and can also play in midfield.
O’Shea spent 12 years at Manchester United before moving to Sunderland, where he has made 111 appearances.
Other than looking at O’Shea, Tottenham are also interested in taking back Steven Caulker from relegated Cardiff and have considered Chelsea left-back Ryan Bertrand.
Spurs are prepared to sell striker Roberto Soldado and remain keen on Romelu Lukaku.The BBC is moving worrying close towards becoming an “arm of government”, a former chair of the Corporation has said.
Sir Christopher Bland, who chaired the BBC between 1996 and 2001, said the Chancellor’s plan to offload spending priorities onto the broadcaster could have consequences for the broadcaster’s relationship with the state.
“Rather subtly and unattractively it draws the BBC closer to becoming an arm of government which is always something that the BBC and government have resisted,” he told BBC Radio 4’s World this Weekend programme.
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’s the worst form of dodgy Whitehall accounting. It’s transferring social policy onto the licence fees and it’s shifting from direct taxation where it properly belongs the cost of a Gordon Brown giveaway that was doubtful in the first place anyhow.”
Sir Christopher was commenting on a proposal by George Osborne to make the BBC fund free TV licences, a policy that is usually funded from general taxation.
The move follows the transfer of the cost of the BBC World Service and BBC Monitoring to the Corporation. It amounts to shifting £650m from the Government's Budget to the BBC.
The complaint comes the week after the Government asked the Corporation to change the way it reported stories about the militant group Isis.
Chris Grayling, a member of the Cabinet and leader of the Commons, said the broadcaster should start referring to Isis as ‘Daesh’ – a disparaging Arabic term.
He said the BBC should take the side of the UK in international conflicts.
“During the Second World War, the BBC was a beacon of fact, it was not expected to be impartial between Britain and Germany,” he told parliament.
Shape Created with Sketch. What does five more years of the Tories mean for Britain? Show all 8 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. What does five more years of the Tories mean for Britain? 1/8 Welfare payments will be slashed One of the most controversial parts of the Conservative manifesto was to cut benefits for the working age poor by £12 bn over the next three years. But during the campaign they only said where £2 bn of these savings would come from. That leaves £10 bn still to find. Some experts think the only way they can close that gap is by means testing child benefit – with millions of families losing out Getty 2/8 There will be tax cuts for those in work and those who die The Tories will increase the threshold at which the 40p rate of tax becomes payable to £50,000 by 2020. They haven’t said so but it is also likely that at some point in the next five years they will abolish that 45p rate of tax altogether for the highest earners. They also want to increase the effective inheritance tax threshold for married couples and civil partners to £1m Getty 3/8 There will be an in/out EU referendum in 2017 The next two years are going to be dominated by the prospect of a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. First off David Cameron has the daunting task of negotiating a deal with other EU leaders an acceptable deal that he can sell to his party so he can go into the referendum campaigning for a ‘yes’ vote. This may be unachievable and it is possible that the Tories may end up arguing to leave. Opinion polls show Britain is divided on EU membership, one poll this year showed 51% said they would opt to leave compared to 49% who would vote to stay in Getty 4/8 There will be more privatisation of the NHS Having won the election the Tories now have a mandate to go further and faster reforming the NHS. In order to make cost savings there is likely to be greater private involvement in running services, while some smaller hospitals may lose services they currently provide like A&E and maternity units Getty 5/8 There will be many more free schools – and traditional state schools will become a thing of the past The Tories plans to create 500 new free schools and make 3,000 state schools become academies. They will also carry on reforming the Department of Education and remove more powers from local authorities over how schools are run Getty 6/8 On shore wind farms will be a thing of the past and fracking will be the future Government spending on renewable energy is under real threat now the Lib Dems are no longer in power with the Tories. Subsidies are likely to be slashed for off-shore wind farm and other green energy supplies. Meanwhile there will be generous tax break for fracking as ministers try and incentivise the industry to drill for onshore oil and gas Getty 7/8 There maybe more free childcare – but not necessarily In the campaign the Tories pledged to double the amount of free early education for three- and four-year-olds from 15 hours a week to 30. The extra hours would only be offered to working families where parents are employed for at least eight hours a week. However they have not said where the money will come from to fund the pledge Getty 8/8 Workers' rights could be reduced The Tories want to slash business regulation, merge regulator and cut costs. The Lib Dems stopped them from reducing the employment rights of workers in power – but these are now under threat Getty 1/8 Welfare payments will be slashed One of the most controversial parts of the Conservative manifesto was to cut benefits for the working age poor by £12 bn over the next three years. But during the campaign they only said where £2 bn of these savings would come from. That leaves £10 bn still to find. Some experts think the only way they can close that gap is by means testing child benefit – with millions of families losing out Getty 2/8 There will be tax cuts for those in work and those who die The Tories will increase the threshold at which the 40p rate of tax becomes payable to £50,000 by 2020. They haven’t said so but it is also likely that at some point in the next five years they will abolish that 45p rate of tax altogether for the highest earners. They also want to increase the effective inheritance tax threshold for married couples and civil partners to £1m Getty 3/8 There will be an in/out EU referendum in 2017 The next two years are going to be dominated by the prospect of a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. First off David Cameron has the daunting task of negotiating a deal with other EU leaders an acceptable deal that he can sell to his party so he can go into the referendum campaigning for a ‘yes’ vote. This may be unachievable and it is possible that the Tories may end up arguing to leave. Opinion polls show Britain is divided on EU membership, one poll this year showed 51% said they would opt to leave compared to 49% who would vote to stay in Getty 4/8 There will be more privatisation of the NHS Having won the election the Tories now have a mandate to go further and faster reforming the NHS. In order to make cost savings there is likely to be greater private involvement in running services, while some smaller hospitals may lose services they currently provide like A&E and maternity units Getty 5/8 There will be many more free schools – and traditional state schools will become a thing of the past The Tories plans to create 500 new free schools and make 3,000 state schools become academies. They will also carry on reforming the Department of Education and remove more powers from local authorities over how schools are run Getty 6/8 On shore wind farms will be a thing of the past and fracking will be the future Government spending on renewable energy is under real threat now the Lib Dems are no longer in power with the Tories. Subsidies are likely to be slashed for off-shore wind farm and other green energy supplies. Meanwhile there will be generous tax break for fracking as ministers try and incentivise the industry to drill for onshore oil and gas Getty 7/8 There maybe more free childcare – but not necessarily In the campaign the Tories pledged to double the amount of free early education for three- and four-year-olds from 15 hours a week to 30. The extra hours would only be offered to working families where parents are employed for at least eight hours a week. However they have not said where the money will come from to fund the pledge Getty 8/8 Workers' rights could be reduced The Tories want to slash business regulation, merge regulator and cut costs. The Lib Dems stopped them from reducing the employment rights of workers in power – but these are now under threat Getty
George Osborne justified the accounting change on the basis that the BBC was under public control.
“The BBC is also a publicly funded, public institution and so it does need to make savings and contribute to what we need to do as a country to get our house in order,” he told the Andrew Marr Show.
The news comes amid reports that viewers could be charged extra for tuning in to BBC programmes on iPlayer and other online catch-up services.
We’ll tell |
wonderful because I'm into the Keto lifestyle and this book will be helpful for when my recipes get old. I can't wait to try some of these out. I'm drooling just looking at the pics. The second book is Python Programming. I've been on the edge of buying a raspberry pi for months now and this just might be my kick in the pants to do so. Now to figure out how to talk the wife into me buying it, lol..
I can't think my SS enough. This year more than makes up for last years exchange. Thank you, thank you, thank you.Advanced age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in the U.S. in adults over the age of 60. It affects nearly 2 million people in the U.S., with half a million new cases diagnosed every year. It’s a big problem. And until recently, we didn’t have a very good way of treating it. Patients with end-stage degeneration typically had to rely on cumbersome, low-tech solutions to help them see–relics like handheld magnifying glasses and closed-circuit televisions. But earlier this month, a team of surgeons at the UC Davis Eye Center introduced a promising new solution: a tiny, implantable telescope.
The new implant magnifies the image entering the eye two to three times, thus reducing the relative size of a patient’s blind spot.
To get a sense of how it works, you have to understand the malady it’s intended to treat. As macular degeneration worsens, scarring in the eye creates a foggy black spot in the center of the patient’s vision. The new implant magnifies the image entering the eye two to three times, projecting a larger image onto the scarred macula and thus reducing the size of the blind spot relative to whatever the patient’s looking at. Before, where a patient with AMD might have had a black spot that obscured the entire face of a loved one, rendering them unrecognizable, the telescope magnifies the face so the black spot only takes up a portion of it. It’s not a solution to AMD so much as a workaround for it.
But the eye is a tricky organ to design for. The tiny telescope necessitates ultra-precise manufacturing–it’s comprised of a fused silica capsule that contains the optical elements, a transparent thermoplastic carrier, and a blue light restrictor, all of which have to be “biocompatible” for long-term residence in the patient’s eyeball. A rep at VisionCare, the ophthalmic technology company that produced the implant, told me that in addition to the challenges of designing such a small, complex device, the implant has to be secure enough to move along with the eye it’s implanted in: “The eye moves relative to the head,” she explained, “so once in the eye the device must be secure and stay centered to the optical axis.”
Virginia Bane, an 89-year-old California-based artist, was one of the first to receive the implant. In an announcement following her trailblazing surgery, she reported that she can now see “better than ever.” “Colors are more vibrant, beautiful and natural,” she explained, “and I can read large print with my glasses. I haven’t been able to read for the past seven years. I look forward to being able to paint again.”
Still, patients can’t just take their new bionic eye and go on their way. After the operation, they have to adjust to an entirely new way of seeing, relying on one eye for peripheral vision and mobility and the implant-enhanced eye for up-close detail. “Postoperatively,” Dr. Jennifer Li, one of the surgeons at UC Davis, told me, “the two eyes will have different functions, and the training is to help the patient learn how to use the two eyes separately, each for its specific task.”
Currently, the FDA has only approved the procedure for patients age 75 and older, and the team at UC Davis is currently interviewing applicants for the next round of surgeries. So how much does a miniature sight-giving telescope run you these days? According to the Sacramento Bee, just north of $15,000. The good news? Medicare says they’ll cover it.
Find out more at the UC Davis Health Systems Eye Center page.A man looks over the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) signup page on the HealthCare.gov website in New York in this October 2, 2013 photo illustration. REUTERS/Mike Segar
By Sharon Begley
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. companies are increasingly penalizing workers who decline to join "wellness" programs, embracing an element of President Barack Obama's healthcare law that has raised questions about fairness in the workplace.
Beginning in 2014, the law known as Obamacare raised the financial incentives that employers are allowed to offer workers for participating in workplace wellness programs and achieving results. The incentives, which big business lobbied for, can be either rewards or penalties - up to 30 percent of health insurance premiums, deductibles, and other costs, and even more if the programs target smoking.
Among the two-thirds of large companies using such incentives to encourage participation, almost a quarter are imposing financial penalties on those who opt-out, according to a survey by the National Business Group on Health and benefits consultant Towers Watson (For graphic see http://link.reuters.com/byr73w)
For some companies, however, just signing up for a wellness program isn't enough. They're linking financial incentives to specific goals such as losing weight, reducing cholesterol, or keeping blood glucose under control. The number of businesses imposing such outcomes-based wellness plans is expected to double this year to 46 percent, the survey found.
"Wellness-or-else is the trend," said workplace consultant Jon Robison of Salveo Partners.
Incentives typically take the form of cash payments or reductions in employee deductibles. Penalties include higher premiums and lower company contributions for out-of-pocket health costs.
Financial incentives, many companies say, are critical to encouraging workers to participate in wellness programs, which executives believe will save money in the long run.
"Employers are carrying a major burden of healthcare in this country and are trying to do the right thing," said Stephanie Pronk, a vice president at benefits consultant Aon Hewitt. "They need to improve employees' health so they can lead productive lives at home and at work, but also to control their healthcare costs."
But there is almost no evidence that workplace wellness programs significantly reduce those costs. That's why the financial penalties are so important to companies, critics and researchers say. They boost corporate profits by levying fines that outweigh any savings from wellness programs.
"There seems little question that you can make wellness programs save money with high enough penalties that essentially shift more healthcare costs to workers," said health policy expert Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
FOUR-FIGURE PENALTIES
At Honeywell International, for instance, employees who decline company-specified medical screenings pay $500 more a year in premiums and lose out on a company contribution of $250 to $1,500 a year (depending on salary and spousal coverage) to defray out-of-pocket costs.
Kevin Covert, deputy general counsel for human resources, acknowledged it was too soon to tell if Honeywell's wellness and incentive programs reduce medical spending. But it is clear that the company is benefiting financially from the penalties. Slightly more than 10 percent of the company's U.S. employees, or roughly 5,000, did not participate, resulting in savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Last year, Honeywell was sued over its wellness program by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC argued that requiring workers to answer personal questions in the health questionnaire - including if they ever feel depressed and whether they've been diagnosed with a long list of illnesses - can violate federal law if they involve disabilities, as these examples do. And, if answering is not voluntary.
"Financial incentives and disincentives may make the programs involuntary" and thus illegal, said Chris Kuczynski, an assistant legal counsel at the EEOC.
Using the same argument, the EEOC also sued Wisconsin-based Orion Energy Systems, where an employee who declined to undergo screening by clinic workers the company hired was told she would have to pay the full $5,000 annual insurance premium.
SICK? PAY MORE.
Some vendors that run workplace wellness for large employers promote their programs by promising to shift costs to "higher utilizers" of health care services, according to a recent analysis by Joann Volk and Sabrina Corlette of Georgetown University Health Policy Institute - and by making workers "earn" contributions to their healthcare plans that were once automatic.THE controversial Newman government decision to restrict landholders, community and conservationists mining objection rights has been overturned.
Environmentalists have praised Mines Minister Anthony Lynham's urgent motion to restore community objection rights.
Despite opposition from the LNP, the bill received the backing of Katter's Australian Party and Independent MP Billy Gordon.
The Newman government amended legislation last year so people could not object to mining projects that the Co-ordinator General decided had addressed environmental effects.
Environmental Defenders Office Queensland's Jo Bragg praised the Palaszczuk government's amendment but said more could be done.
"Looking ahead, more legislation needs to be passed to fully restore public objection rights as this Bill only dealt with 'co-ordinated' or major projects," Ms Bragg said.
"These rights are crucially important in the public interest so the costs and benefits of projects with huge impacts can be debated and tested in the independent Land Court.
"Let's not forget that mining resources are the public property of all Queenslanders."
It comes only days after about 4000 Darling Downs residents concerned about the New Acland Coal Mine Stage Three project put forward a petition urging the government to reinstate mining objection rights.
Queensland Resources Council chief Michael Roche said the legislation change would cost the state millions of dollars in lost royalties and allow anti-mining groups to delay projects.
He described it as a deliberate waste of the Land Court's time.
- APN NEWSDESKThe opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.
The Supreme Court announced Monday it will tackle a culture war powder keg – should a Christian baker who opposes gay marriage on religious grounds be forced to participate in a gay wedding?
In other words, do gay rights trump everyone else’s rights?
The justices said they will consider a case involving Jack Phillips, the owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado. The issue: can the government coerce a person to create artistic expression that communicates a message with which he fundamentally disagrees?
“There are a number of artists across this nation who are being coerced into violating their religious convictions or having to choose between their right to create artistic expression that is consistent with their faith,” Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Kristen Waggoner told me. “This kind of government coercion is unconstitutional.”
I wrote extensively about Mr. Phillips in my latest book, “The Deplorables’ Guide to Making America Great Again.”
In 2012, Mr. Phillips was approached by Charlie Craig and David Mullins. The men were going to be married in Massachusetts and they wanted the cake shop to bake a cake for their reception which was to be held in Colorado.
Mr. Phillips politely declined – explaining to the gentlemen that he would make them any other type of baked item they wanted – but he simply could not make a cake promoting a same-sex ceremony because of his faith.
Mr. Craig and Mr. Mullins pitched a hissy fit and filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
It did not seem to matter that the gay couple was able to obtain their rainbow-themed cake for free from another nearby cake artist.
Lower courts ruled that Mr. Phillips discriminated against the gay couple under Colorado law. He was ordered to make cakes for homosexual newlyweds and to file reports for two years to show that he was abiding by anti-discrimination laws. He was also ordered to “reeducate” his staff on discrimination.
It’s hard to imagine a time in American history where Christians were treated with such disregard and shuttled off to reeducation camps so they can be deprogrammed.
Ms. Waggoner said this could be a history-making decision for the Supreme Court.
“At issue is whether an American has a right to speak and live consistent with his beliefs on what marriage is – and consistent with his religious convictions,” she told me.
It’s been a difficult time for Mr. Phillips and his family-owned bakery.
Ms. Waggoner said the state’s civil rights commission compared the baker’s stance to “slave owners and perpetrators of the Holocaust.”
“He lost nearly 40 percent of his business based on what the Colorado courts did,” she told me.
And there are many other Christians across the fruited plain who are suffering much like Jack Phillips has suffered – simply for following the teachings of Jesus Christ.
“I would urge them not to violate their religious convictions because not only is it their duty to God to be acting consistent with their conscience, but it is their First Amendment right secured by the Constitution,” Ms. Waggoner said.
And it is our responsibility as God-loving patriots to stand alongside Jack Phillips as they wage this legal battle. We must stand together in the face of adversity.
First, the LGBT activists came for the flower shops and the photographers. Then, they came for the bakers. And unless we draw a line in the sand, they may one day come for you and your business.The chief executive of Mylan Pharmaceuticals says the controversial price spike of EpiPen allergy medication is just a cost of running a business.
In a Friday interview with The New York Times, CEO Heather Bresch did not apologize for the sharp price increase of the epinephrine injector that is used to counter life-threatening allergic reactions.
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“I think we mean what we say: You can do good and do well, and I think we strike that balance around the globe,” she said.
“I am running a business. I am a for-profit business. I am not hiding from that.”
Bresch justified the price hike — which saw EpiPen costs rise from about $100 to $600 in the last nine years — as a necessary measure to pay for the company's investment in the product.
She also attempted to shift the blame from the company, noting that consumers are likely hit by increasing costs placed on them by the insurers.
“What else do you shop for that when you walk up to the counter, you have no idea what it’s going to cost you?” she said. “Tell me where that happens anywhere else in the system. It’s unconscionable.”
In an effort to offset the price spike of EpiPen, Mylan announced Thursday that it will attempt to decrease the out-of-pocket consumer expenses by providing patients with additional financial assistance.Flooding in West Michigan on Thursday, April 18 93 Gallery: Flooding in West Michigan on Thursday, April 18
GRAND RAPIDS, MI – City officials expect the Grand River to crest near the 100-year flood level this weekend. So they’re adding sandbags near the sewage plant, readying extra pumping capacity and, ahem, sharing this bit of advice: “Shower with a buddy,” Mayor George Heartwell said at a Thursday, April 18, press conference in City Hall, which earlier in the day got
. Residents also should avoid doing laundry or running a dishwasher and minimize showers and toilet flushes to ease strain on city sewer infrastructure, he said. Grandville, which provides sewer service to Hudsonville and Georgetown, Jamestown and Blendon townships, also is asking sewer users to curb water use.
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While the river level is above 18 feet now, Grand Rapids expects it will crest Sunday near 25 feet, just below a 25.5-foot 100-year flood level. “Our flood walls are designed to handle 100-year floods plus a one-foot margin of error,” Heartwell said. “So we don’t expect that the river is going to crest the flood walls, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t already have severe flooding. There will be more. “The real concern is not the water coming over the flood walls and washing us all away. The real concern is this network of waterways underground throughout the entire city just is not built to handle the capacity that’s coming out of the clouds right now.” As for a worst-case scenario? Heartwell said the city is taking precautions to prevent flooding at the sewage treatment plant that serves Grand Rapids and several other Kent County communities. “If the wastewater treatment plant gets inundated, it is not only a horrible inconvenience, but it’s a horrendous expense,” he said.
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Grand Rapids has issued no evacuation orders, as has
. But “we anticipate a much more critical situation Sunday, Monday” as the river crests, City Manager Greg Sundstrom said. Until then, here’s some advice from the press conference:
Heartwell plans to give daily updates at 1:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday
. Also, he urged people to call 456-3232 to report flooding problems.
Email Matt Vande Bunte, follow him on Twitter or be his friend on Facebook.Ospina is the latest in a long line of Arsenal players whose futures at the club are uncertain CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP/Getty Images
Arsenal are facing another battle to keep hold of a first-team player with David Ospina eager to leave the club at the end of the season.
The Colombia goalkeeper is expected to start tonight’s Champions League round-of-16 second-leg tie against Bayern Munich and Saturday’s FA Cup quarter-final against Lincoln City, but has not made a single Premier League appearance all season and is unhappy with his status as a cup specialist.
Ospina is the latest in a long line of Arsenal players whose futures at the club are uncertain, a situation exacerbated by the failure to secure many of them on extended contracts. Alexis Sánchez and Mesut Özil have yet to agree new contracts as they approach the final year of their deals despite opening…One of my recent side projects is Mammoth, which converts docx files produced by Microsoft Word into HTML. It aims to produce clean HTML by using semantic information in the original document, such as the styles applied to each paragraph, rather than trying to exactly copy the font, size, colour, and so on. I wrote Mammoth so that editors wouldn't have to spend hours manually converting Word documents into HTML. Although we're converting XML to XML, there's quite a mismatch in structure. This blog post describes how Mammoth handles the mismatch. If you're interested in trying it out, you can find a Python version (including a CLI) and a JavaScript version.
The docx format stores each paragraph as a distinct w:p element. Each paragraph optionally has a style. For instance, the following docx XML represents a heading followed by an ordinary paragraph [1].
<w:p style="Heading1>A Study in Scarlet</w:p> <w:p>In the year 1878 I took my degree</w:p>
We'd like to convert this to an h1 element and a p element:
<h1>A Study in Scarlet</h1> <p>In the year 1878 I took my degree</p>
This seems fairly straightforward: we take each paragraph from the docx XML, and convert it to an HTML element depending on the style. We can use a small DSL to let the user control how to map docx styles to HTML elements without having to write any code. In this case, we might write:
p.Heading1 => h1:fresh p => p:fresh
To the left of the arrow, we have a paragraph matcher. p.Heading1 from the first rule matches any paragraph with the style Heading1, while p from the second rule matches any paragraph. To the right of the arrow, we have an HTML path. To process a docx paragraph:
Find the first rule where its paragraph matcher matches the current docx paragraph
Generate HTML to satisfy the HTML path. h1 is satisfied if there's a top-level h1 i.e. an h1 with no parents. h1:fresh means generate a fresh (i.e. newly-opened) top-level h1 element. We'll see a little later why this notion of freshness is useful.
Things become a bit more tricky when we'd expect to generate some nested HTML, such as lists. For instance, consider the following list:
Apple
Banana
One way of representing this in docx is:
<w:p style="Bullet1">Apple</w:p> <w:p style="Bullet1">Banana</w:p>
Note that there's no nesting of elements, even though the two docx paragraphs are part of the same structure (in this case, a list). The only way to tell that these bullets are in the same list is by inspecting the style of sibling elements. Compare this to the HTML we expect to generate:
<ul> <li>Apple</li> <li>Banana</li> </ul>
To generate this HTML, you can write the following rule:
p.Bullet1 => ul > li:fresh
The HTML path uses > to indicate children. In this case, the HTML path is satisfied when there's a top-level ul with a fresh li as a child. Let's see how this example works by processing each docx paragraph.
The first paragraph matches p.Bullet1, so we require a top-level ul with a fresh li as a child. Since we have no open elements, we open both elements followed by the text of the paragraph:
<ul> <li>Apple
The second paragraph also requires a top-level ul with a fresh li as a child. We close and open the li since it needs to be fresh, but leave the ul alone:
<ul> <li>Apple</li> <li>Banana
Finally, we close all elements at the end of the document:
<ul> <li>Apple</li> <li>Banana</li> </ul>
The key is that HTML elements aren't closed after processing a docx paragraph. Instead, HTML elements are kept open in case following docx paragraphs are actually part of the same structure. An element will eventually be closed either by processing a docx paragraph that isn't part of the same structure, or by reaching the end of the document.
A more complicated case is that of nested lists. For instance, given the list:
Fruit Apple Banana
Vegetable Cucumber Lettuce
This would be represented in docx by:
<w:p style="Bullet1">Fruit</w:p> <w:p style="Bullet2">Apple</w:p> <w:p style="Bullet2">Banana</w:p> <w:p style="Bullet1">Vegetable</w:p> <w:p style="Bullet2">Cucumber</w:p> <w:p style="Bullet2">Lettuce</w:p>
And we'd like to generate this HTML:
<ul> <li> Fruit <ul> <li>Apple</li> <li>Banana</li> </ul> </li> <li> Vegetable <ul> <li>Cucumber</li> <li>Lettuce</li> </ul> </li> </ul>
In this case, we need two rules: one each for Bullet1 and Bullet2 :
p.Bullet1 => ul > li:fresh p.Bullet2 => ul > li > ul > li:fresh
To see how this works, let's follow step by step. We start by processing the first docx paragraph. This has the style Bullet1, which requires a ul and li element to be open. This generates the following HTML:
<ul> <li> Fruit
The second paragraph has the style Bullet2, which means we need to satisfy the HTML path ul > li > ul > li:fresh. Since the ul and li from processing the first docx paragraph have been left open, we only need to generate the second set of ul and li elements, giving the HTML:
<ul> <li> Fruit <ul> <li>Apple
The third paragraph also has the style Bullet2. The first three elements of the style rule ( ul > li > ul ) are already satisfied, but the final li needs to be fresh. Therefore, we close the currently open li, and then open a new li :
<ul> <li> Fruit <ul> <li>Apple</li> <li>Banana
The fourth paragraph has the style Bullet1. The first element of the style rule ( ul ) is satisfied, but the li needs to be fresh. Therefore, we close the outer li, along with its children, before opening a fresh li :
<ul> <li> Fruit <ul> <li>Apple</li> <li>Banana</li> </ul> </li> <li> Vegetable
The processing of the final two paragraphs proceeds in the same way as before, giving us the HTML:
<ul> <li> Fruit <ul> <li>Apple</li> <li>Banana</li> </ul> </li> <li> Vegetable <ul> <li>Cucumber</li> <li>Lettuce
Since we've reached the end of the document, all that remains is to close all open elements:
<ul> <li> Fruit <ul> <li>Apple</li> <li>Banana</li> </ul> </li> <li> Vegetable <ul> <li>Cucumber</li> <li>Lettuce</li> </ul> </li> </ul>
I've left plenty of details out, such as handling of hyperlinks and images, but this gives an overview of how Mammoth deals with the greatest mismatch between the structure of docx XML and HTML.
Topics: Algorithms, ProgramsThis week, in her keynote address at Austin’s SXSW film festival, Lena Dunham called on Hollywood to change the way it sees women noting that Adam Driver—her male co-star on Girls, the hit HBO series she writes and directs—has been offered a range of substantive and diverse parts in films by notable directors like the Coen brothers. Meanwhile, the four women on the show have had much slimmer and more stereotypical pickings. “There’s just no place for me in the studio system,” she said, while vowing to keep trying to change things.
Sadly, Dunham might just be right about the system.
A new study, published Tuesday, backs up the young director’s complaint. Researchers calculated just how sexist Hollywood still is and the results are depressing: women accounted for only 15 percent of protagonists, 29 percent of major characters and 30 percent of all speaking characters last year, according to a report titled “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World: On-Screen Representations of Female Characters in the Top 100 Films for 2013” from San Diego State University.
Some more shocking statistics from the study:
Only 13 percent of the top 100 films featured an equal number of major male and female characters
The majority of female characters were in their 20s and 30s, whereas the majority of male characters were in their 30s and 40s
Male characters were more likely to have work-related goals than personal life-related goals (75/25), but women were split evenly between the two ambitions (48/52)
In 11 years, female characters have made little progress onscreen. In fact, things have gotten worse. In 2002, 16 percent of protagonists were female. In 2011, 11 percent of protagonists were female. Last year, it bounced back to 15 percent.
And even when movies nominally have male and female co-leads, that doesn’t mean women get as much screen time. Cinemetrics data published in the New York Times on Feb. 27 found that men get double the screen time of women overall. A good example is the ensemble cast for American Hustle: “Christian Bale actually has 60 minutes of screen to Amy Adams’s 46 minutes, a significant difference even in an ensemble movie. Among their supporting category counterparts, Bradley Cooper’s 41 screen minutes double Jennifer Lawrence’s 20.”
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
A lot of this has to do, of course, with the fact that there are even fewer women behind the cameras than in front of them. In another report from San Diego State entitled “The Celluloid Ceiling” and published this year, researchers found that only 16 percent of those in director, writer, producer and editor roles were women — one percentage point lower than in 1998.
And though Hollywood may not care about the dearth of female writers and directors, you would think that the industry would be worried about leaving money on the table. Films like Gravity, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Frozen were among this year’s biggest international blockbusters. Most box office analysts will tell you that Hollywood is losing money by not appealing to half of their moviegoers and rather relying on the old adage that women will go see films by and for men, but men will not see films by and for women. (Women buy 50 percent of movie tickets, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.)
Data that disproves this theory, like box office hits with female leads, are considered flukes. One only needs to look at this year’s Oscars montage of “heroes,” which included only seven women out of dozens of characters shown, to see that Hollywood has a short-term memory when it comes to women. What about Thelma and Louise? Hermione? The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Lara Croft?
What’s a female film fan to do? “As moviegoers, women can vote with their dollars,” says Martha M. Lauzeen, the executive director at the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University who led the study. “They can support films with female protagonists. And if they can go to see those films opening weekend, that’s great. That’s really helpful.”
But there seems to be an irrational sexism at the root of Hollywood that resists economic logic.
“I think people believe that Hollywood just responds to dollars and that all of the decision-making that goes on in that community is rational. And it’s not,” explains Lauzeen. She says Hollywood is willing to gamble on a new idea or unproven talent, just not on women. She points to the studios willing to make the investment in Mark Web who only directed a single feature—the romantic comedy 500 Days of Summer—before taking the helm of the Amazing Spider-Man franchise. “It’s interesting that they would be willing to take a risk on someone like that but not on a female director. But a lot of it has to do with the fact that they are a lot more comfortable with him because he looks like, demographically, the people who are making the decisions.”
In the end, it’s going to have to take a concerted effort to diversify the studios. “They’re going to have to recognize that this is a problem and label it as such. If you don’t see something as a problem, you’re not going to fix it. And my perception is that they do not necessarily see women’s underemployment behind the scenes and women’s underrepresentation onscreen as a problem.”
Frozen Disney
Indeed, some moviegoers might even be surprised to hear women are still underrepresented in film, given the success of movies like The Hunger Games. High-profile hits overshadow the larger problem. “The same thing happened a few years ago when Catherine Bigelow won the Oscar for best director. People said things must be okay now for female directors. And that was not the case.”
And big hits featuring heroines don’t necessarily mean that the status quo is changing. Three years ago, critics, writers and bloggers conjectured that the “Bridesmaids effect” would pave the way for raunchy, female-driven comedies that could appeal to both sexes, like Kristin Wiig’s breakthrough hit. And though The Heat, a female buddy film starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy as cops, was a hit this past summer, the Bridesmaids revolution has yet to come. The upcoming Divergent offers some hope that female heroines won’t sizzle after The Hunger Games wraps up, but audiences shouldn’t hold their breath.
The same holds true, of course, for other kinds of diversity onscreen. The study also shows that various races of women (and Asian women especially) are still grossly underrepresented in movies. (The percentage of Asian female characters actually dropped from 5 percent to 3 percent between 2011 and 2013.) “Media images tell us who matters in society,” Lauzeen says. “If certain groups are routinely omitted in those messages, it suggests that people in that group aren’t important.”
Write to Eliana Dockterman at eliana.dockterman@time.com.Denzel Curry is enjoying the fruits of his labor. Though the Carol City, Fla. rapper is only 21 years old, he's dropped three albums, toured the world and amassed a faithful, devoted fan base -- and he's done it all on his own. Rapping professionally since he was 16, Zel has managed to remain an independent artist in a genre where many of his peers rush into a label deal. Thanks to his talent and a close-knit team, Young Raven Miyagi has earned millions of plays online and nearly 300,000 followers (and counting) on social media.
Curry's been making a name for himself for quite some time, but there's no doubt that 2016 has been his year. In June, he was dubbed a 2016 XXL Freshman alongside Dave East, Desiigner and Lil Uzi Vert, among others. From there, his song "Ultimate" popped up in a national Adidas commercial. And earlier this month, the rhymer announced that after years of doing things his way, he signed a distribution deal with Loma Vista Records and would be re-releasing his 2016 album Imperial.
While he was in New York celebrating the re-release of Imperial, Zel and his managers, Rees Escobar and Mark Maturah, stopped by XXL to break down their new deal, talk about the direction of his next album and explain the power of staying indie.
XXL : So, how have you been since the XXL Freshman cover dropped? It’s been almost six months.
Denzel Curry: Good, goddamn. Shit has been wild.
Wild how?
Denzel: Tour. I’m going to be on another Europe tour again. And you know, all the pandemonium. Getting all these cosigns.
What kind of cosigns have you gotten since Freshman?
Rees Escobar: The Adidas thing. Huge.
Was that in the works before Freshman?
Denzel: Rockstar Games reached out to me. People want me to do acting now.
You gonna be in a movie?
Denzel: I don’t know.
Rees: They want him to read for a movie with Sean Penn.
Wow! So basically, your stock has risen.
Denzel: Yeah.
How has your day-to-day changed?
Denzel: Still hang with the same fools. Had to cut a couple people off but that’s pretty much it. I still hang with the same people, do the same things. I travel a lot now. It’s been a lot of traveling back and forth.
Have you been able to do bigger venues or countries that you couldn’t do before?
Denzel: Yeah, when it comes down to bigger stuff, we just do festivals. Overseas, this year we did Splash Fest. Originally, we were on a smaller stage last year, but they put us on a bigger stage this year. We did FYF Fest. We Made In America, which is huge. We was on a small stage there but they said out of the two days, our set had the biggest [audience] out of everybody.
Have you gotten any cosigns from bigger artists that you’re surprised by?
Denzel: Oh man! At FYF, I ran into the RZA and he like, “Hey, what’s up fellas?” and we said, "What’s up?" and we think he’s going to keep on walking past because I was talking to this other dude, but then he comes back and he looks at me. He’s like, “Can my son have a picture of you?” And I’m like, “Yeah!” That’s when he told me his son listens to my music all the time around the house. Like “He plays it around the house all the time. You’re Denzel Curry right?” And I was like, “Oh hell naw. That shit’s gangsta as fuck.” And I told him, “I just want to say you killed the Kill Bill soundtrack.” That was it.
Was that the first time someone you look up to gave you a cosign like that?
Denzel: Yeah, I think so. That…I flipped my wig that day. Like, Enter the 36 Chambers, that shit’s gangsta.
Is there anyone you started working with now that you don’t think you could’ve been with a year ago?
Denzel: I still work with the same people. That hasn’t happened yet. Pretty much the people is Loomis, Diplo, [Rick] Ross, Joey [Bada$$], Kirk Knight, Raury. Nothing really too big. Just like the relationships are already built from back then. It’s starting to make it’s way now.
What about any of the former Freshmen from your class? You said you wanted to work with Kodak in your Freshman interview.
Denzel: Hell yeah!
What about anyone else on the cover?
Denzel: I mean, I’m cool wit Yachty, I’m cool with Uzi. Me and Uzi seen each other at Made in America and shit. We was chillin’. I seen Anderson.Paak overseas at Splash Festival. He had a stage and I had a stage. We was choppin’ it up, it was cool. I really mess with his people, his band and everybody; they’re cool guys. They seem pretty much down to Earth and everything.
And now that you’re on the other side of it, you’ve gone through the whole experience, been dubbed a “Freshman,” how do you feel about it?
Denzel: It was a great opportunity. I was pretty stubborn at first when I first came in here, acting like I didn’t give a fuck about it. But looking back, it did help me a lot, so I appreciate the fact that it did help me. I’m very appreciative.
And you just got this distro deal. It was inked in September?
Denzel: Right.
How long did it take?
Denzel: July?
Rees: June is when we kind of started open up the doors, like, “Hey, we’re ready.” Between June and July is when we met with everybody. I think by August, the decision was sort of made, but we held it from everybody for a bit, closer to late August. And then the deal finally got inked in September.
You guys were doing so well on your own though. Why even open the doors in June?
Denzel: Because even though we was doing it ourselves and progressing, we still needed that machine |
humans include leptospirosis, rat bite fever and a type of meningitis caused by a virus called lymphocytic choriomeningitis.
Although uncommon, these infections can have serious consequences.
Parrots
Image copyright GERRY PEARCE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Psittacosis is a bacterial infection that affects birds, particularly parrots. It can also affect other exotic species such as budgies, cockatiels and macaws as well as ducks, gulls, sparrows and hens.
It is an airborne disease that can be passed to people who own or work with exotic birds. It causes a high fever, diarrhoea, eye infection and bright red spots - but there are few cases in the UK.
Check where that colourful parrot comes from before you take it home.An Indian environment group has challenged the approval of Australia's largest coal mine, the Carmichael mine in Central Queensland, which will help power the subcontinent's coal starved power plants.
Mumbai-based Conservation Action Trust (Cat) on 9 October moved the Land Court of Queensland, where it raised objections to approvals granted to the Carmichael project, reports said.
The Trust was reportedly represented by Environmental Justice Australia.
The $14.6bn (£9bn, €11.5bn) Carmichael project, managed by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani's Australian mining firm, will excavate and transport some 60 million tonnes of coal a year for export, from the Abbot Point port located near the Great Barrier Reef.
Coal mined is expected to fuel India's power plants, providing electricity to some 100 million people.
But the Trust believes the project will not serve public interest as coal from it will help generate electricity for Indians who cannot afford that electricity.
Pursued by The Guardian, an Adani spokesman did not comment directly on the legal proceedings.
Debi Goenka, an executive trustee of the Cat, told the newspaper: "The coal from Carmichael, when burnt in India, threatens the health and livelihoods of poor, rural people in India.
"These people can't afford the electricity that will be generated – all they'll get will be damage to their health and the air, water, land and natural resource base on which their survival depends."
Adani secured Sydney's approval to mine coal in Queensland in July 2014.
Australia's environment minister Greg Hunt has said the Carmichael venture, in Queensland's Galilee Basin, will be subject to strict conditions to protect groundwater and the environment.
The Carmichael project is already four years behind schedule.Welcome to the midseason assessment of the 2013-14 Syracuse Orange Men's Basketball Team! We will take a look at how each player has performed, compare to expectations, and preview ACC conference play.
Syracuse is off to a stellar 13-0 start to the season, including back-to-back-to-back road wins over formidable foes in Baylor, California and Minnesota en route to a third Maui Invitational Title. Throw in a home dust up over Indiana, a tight bout with St John's at their "home" court of MSG, and a heavyweight win over a top 10 Villanova team and suddenly things are looking pretty good so far.
Whenever taking a look at the Orange, you have to start with the venerable face of the franchise for the past 30 years, James Arthur Boeheim. And Boeheim has been excellent.
Coach: Jim Boeheim - A+
You can't ask for much more from Coach Boeheim so far. With the undefeated start featuring two new starting guards and a tough non conference slate, Jimmy B seems to be hitting all the right buttons. The offense seems as smooth and natural as ever, and while the 2-3 zone may have lost a step from last year, it remains extremely effective.
The keys for Boeheim this year may be the off-the-court issues. Will we finally see a year without players missing due to academic issues? Can we keep three highly recruited freshman happy while they sit on the bench? How can we set expectations for this team short of the Final Four?
Starters:
Point Guard: Tyler Ennis - A+
How can I justify giving Cool Hand Luke anything short of an A?? The fact that Ennis is a frosh sometimes tempers our expectations, but T-Ennis has single handedly pushed Syracuse to victory on multiple occasions, and it's not even January. As Boeheim mentioned, this team would be 10-3 without Tyler.
The stats can speak for themselves, from the impressive assist-turnover rate(70 assists to only 15 turnovers) to his filthy number of steals(35 plus deflections), and then seemingly modest 12 PPG before you consider he is the point guard and fourth scoring option. But what sets him apart is his Benjamin Button demeanor for a freshman; He never speeds up, he doesn't make bad decisions, and he makes big plays. The biggest stat Ennis provides is the 'W'.
One last note about Ennis. He is always touted as a "Pass-First" point guard. One thing that is clear is Ennis never forces a bad shot (I still wake up shouting "SCOOP, NO!! DON'T SHOOT"). Of his four games scoring under 10 points, we won three of those games by at least 22 points. The last was the St Francis Experience, which was a big learning experience for everyone. What this tells us is that Ennis doesn't look to score unless the rest of the team is struggling, and he needs to step up.
Shooting Guard: Trevor Cooney - A
I was beginning to doubt Cooney's mortality before the goose egg at St John's proved he was still human. Trevor has provided this team with a true outside scoring threat by throwing in 43 three pointers with 50% accuracy, in addition to his stellar defense, pure hustle, and raw emotion.
Trevor is still working hard to silence the doubters, but the fact is, a streaky three point assassin that can carry the team on both sides has been missing from the Orange arsenal since his mentor Gerry MacNamara wore jerseys instead of suits.
While Cooney definitely earned an A so far, unlike Ennis, he will need to prove himself all year to avoid hitting a slump or bringing out the ghosts.
Forward: C.J. Fair - B+
Don't get me wrong, the Maui MVP has played every part of the Senior leader and go-to-guy that we had expected (see St John's), but we have yet to see CJ break through to the next level. We see flashes of stardom, one highlight dunk at a time, and while we are spoiled with 17 point, 5 rebound efforts, I was hoping to see more 25-10 nights under his belt.
Fair's shortcoming is his momentary lapses. As soon as he gets hot, he throws in a travel or offensive foul. He is currently averaging more than three turnovers a game, which is tough for a team that thrives off turnover differential. Also, while he has displayed a good shot selection, his long range seems to have taken a hit from last year, and he is shooting a paltry 27.5% from deep.
CJ is the heart of this team, and we will go as far as he takes us. I look at him like my child, in that even though he is doing well, I expect better. And I think he won't disappoint with a terrific second half to his season.
Power Forward: Rakeem Christmas - C+
Welcome to the land of untapped potential! Christmas has the skills and athleticism to play like a lottery pick, but the mindset and temperament of a soccer player. He has the ability and opportunity to be the backbone of one of the top teams in the country, but has struggled to be reliable on either side of the floor.
There's plenty of positives to take away so far. Rak has given us the physical play characteristic of the Orange, and continues to be an effective defender for the most part. While Baye provides defense and Dajuan specializes on offense, Rakeem has the most complete package, which allows Boeheim to keep him on the floor longer.
With Dajuan out, the Orange are going to have to rely on Christmas for more consistent play. Hopefully, the Eastern Michigan eruption was an indicator of things to come, and we don't see him shrink from the spotlight of opportunity that is currently shining very bright.
Center: Dajuan Coleman - C-
Currently Dajuan Coleman is sidelined with a knee injury, with no indication of how long. We hope to see him back soon, because he adds a much needed weapon to Boeheim's tool belt.
While Dajuan is still having trouble operating as the backbone of the 2-3 zone, he is still young. We have already seen terrific improvement from last year, and with his ever-improving physical fitness, it is just a matter of time before it clicks. Unlike Christmas and Keita, Dajuan is not a shot-blocker. He is a physical dominating offensive rebound machine.
Until Coleman's minutes stop getting capped at 10 due to defensive issues, he can only be so effective. Right now, Dajuan is still very much a project for Coach Hopkins.
Rotation
Power Forward - Jerami Grant - B
Jerami Grant has been a terrific asset for the Orange this year. Jerami provides a change-of-pace look with his energetic and physical play. Grant helps to take defense's the focus off of C.J. by driving the ball to the basket with conviction, and knowing how to finish. Jerami is third on the team in PPG, and has come up big in several crucial games, especially in Maui.
Jerami oozes with talent. He can jump and dunk like he's using Flubber, and he absolutely demoralizes other teams with his shot blocking. However, he is still only 70% of the way to becoming an effective professional. There are a couple key areas that he needs to improve in order to make the leap.
Grant needs to develop a jump shot. Even a reliable foul line jumper would force opponents to cover him closer, which would give him more driving opportunities. I don't think he necessarily needs to be able to shoot three pointers, but he needs to find a way to pull his defensive match-up outside the paint. Also, Grant's physical play results in lots of free throw shooting, and Grant seems to be temperamental at the line. He will hit 8-9 FT one game, and then 5-10 the next game. This usually means it's more of a mental issue than a shooting stroke, but it is still probably tied to his poor mid-range shooting.
Grant is going to be key for Syracuse to make a tournament run this year. I just worry that since the NCAA has a microscope on our program, and since Jerami already to sit out the first game due to summer ball and his brother was forced to leave Notre Dame due to his academic struggles, his every move is probably under watch. I think Grant needs one more year to be a top 10 pick, but I hope he doesn't go Fab Melo and push for the NBA early due to the NCAA bothering him with red tape. (Edited thanks to clarification from DPJ)
Center - Baye Moussa Keita - B-
Oh Baye. BMK is truly one of my favorites to watch. He brings passion, energy and a defensive back-bone to the 2-3 zone. Keita is arguably the best defensive center that Syracuse has had this decade. He takes a couple silly fouls at times, but his ability to command the defense is unparalleled.
My issue with Baye is that we have seen zero offensive progression in his game. He is almost able to catch a basketball every time, but he seems to shy away from the offensive glass, where he could be a force. Baye is the same player as last year, good or bad. He is a great senior leader, who can help tighten the defense, but will never hit double digits scoring or rebounding.
Still, gotta love the Matrix. BMK's reliability is necessary for this team to excel.
Guard - Michael Gbinije - C+
Gbinije is an odd case study. He has served very admirably in his backup PG role. In fact, he has done excellently handling the ball, with only 6 turnovers to his 20 assists. The part of his game that I wonder about is his SG abilities. Gbinije can drive, and he can shoot. So why doesn't he? I think he is afraid to take a "bad" shot and fall out of Boeheim's graces. His reliability allows him a lot of minutes for a back-up, and I think his performance will only improve as he finds the confidence he needs to pull the trigger.
One thing Silent G does extremely well is play defense. He picks up too many fouls, but he provides a physical element that Ennis and Cooney can't. He is tall, and has good hands. He can rebound, and he can bang around with the Bigs. He is a very important piece to fill in the gaps of this great Syracuse Team.
Freshman Reserves
Forward - Tyler Roberson - C
Tyler is a traditional Syracuse recruit. He is a very long defensive specialist with tools to make a solid offensive player. He has done a great job rebounding, but we are still waiting for the other areas of his game to come around. Roberson was used to being the tallest player on the court in high school, and now has to work on being the 3rd tallest player on his team at any time. As he gets more comfortable shooting mid-range shots, the rest of his offensive game will come around.
I think Roberson will be the first option off the bench in conference play. He already showed a lot of potential against Eastern Michigan in Dajuan's absence. Let's hope he gets more comfortable, as he's going to be a great Syracuse player for several years.
Guard - Ron Patterson - B-
I like Ronny Patterson. He has a fun game. He shoots the ball, is very active on defense, and doesn't rush himself. I think he's going to be a great volume scorer in the upcoming years, but will probably be resigned to garbage time this year. He's gotta work very hard on his defense to find any minutes for the next few years with Cooney in front of him. Good shooter, Great offensive weapon, project in the making.
Guard/Forward - B.J. Johnson - D
BJ Johnson is shaping up to be more of a project player. His specialty so far has been missing three pointers and defensive assignments. A lot of this can be chalked up to a young player trying to make the most out of limited court time. However, as CJ Fair and Jerami Grant leave, Johnson is going to need to shape into a Kris Joseph type player in order to be effective.
Team Grade - A++
As a fan, I could not be happier watching this team. They are fun, emotional, and competitive. I have no doubt they can contend with any team, although they tend to play down to competition at times. As the team chemistry improves, this team will be a real force in March, and the only challenge will be meeting expectations. Boeheim and the Orange team has done an incredible job as they enter their inaugural ACC campaign.
What more can we expect? Seriously. What more? I love to hear from other people on their thoughts of this team and players, so please feel free to leave me your thoughts!
Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year! Until next time fellow Juicers, Let's! Go! S! U!WASHINGTON (Reuters) - What if the generation that once rocked out to The Who’s “hope I die before I get old” line actually does?
A pair of elderly couples view the ocean and waves along the beach in La Jolla, California in this March 8, 2012, file photo. REUTERS/Mike Blake/Files
Most retirement plans and federal budget projections assume baby boomers — those Americans born between 1946 and 1964 — will live significantly longer than their parents have. That is a logical assumption, given healthcare improvements, new drugs and the long 20th century experience of ever-rising life expectancies.
But there is a counter argument: boomers, beset by factors like elevated rates of obesity, cancer and suicide, could reverse or at least slow the increase in human life spans. A change in trend could have a bearing on everything from Social Security trust fund balances to the number of nursing homes and golf courses supported in the future.
“It does not bode well for the baby boom generation at all,” says S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has been studying boomer longevity under a MacArthur Foundation grant.
One new study, led by Rice University professor Justin Denney, concludes that it would be a mistake to project the longevity gains of the last century throughout this one. Yet that is about what the trustees who estimate the future solvency of the U.S. Social Security retirement program have been doing.
Denney notes a “huge increase” of 30 years in U.S. life expectancy from 1900 to the 2000s. But he and fellow researchers see a mere three-year increase over the next 50 years, with improvements in longevity concentrated among the well-to-do, while poorer people will not share in the same benefits.
To be sure, the trajectory of American lifespans is stirring great debate among epidemiologists, actuaries and other experts. Most say mortality will continue to decline and people will live longer. But some experts believe that trend will slow.
MULTIPLE THREATS
“If you look at the health status of the baby boom versus the generation that just preceded them, they are in worse shape,” says Olshansky.
“There is a whole suite of problems we are now seeing in the baby boom generation that we didn’t see in their parents when they were that age,” Olshansky said, citing greater frailty, increased risk for cardiovascular disease and declining cognitive function.
Baby boomers, now between 48 and 67 years old, have already shown a greater propensity to suicide than previous generations, according to a data analysis from researchers at Rutgers University and Emory University.
Male boomers had abnormally high suicide rates in their teen and early 20s, peaking for many boomers at 26 suicides per 100,000 lives at an age when the rate among next older generations were below 20 suicides per 100,000 lives, data showed. Patterns were similar for women, though their rates are lower, Emory epidemiologist Ellen Idler said.
Even more disturbing to Idler is the fact that suicide rates for baby boomers rose significantly when they were in their 40s, a time when those rates typically plateau or head down. “It’s a troubling scenario all around.” And suicide is not insignificant: Idler says it causes roughly as many deaths in any given year as breast cancer. In 2009, there were 11.8 suicide deaths and 12.5 breast cancer deaths per 100,000 lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
THE BIG ‘C’
Then there’s cancer. The post-war baby boom generation does have higher rates of cancer at younger ages than the previous generation, the National Cancer Institute reported.
In 2009, people 45 to 59 years old saw roughly 570 cases of cancer per 100,000 people. That’s up 7 percent from the 533 cases per 100,000 who were in that same age range in 1985.
Some of that increase may be due to better detection, which - along with new treatments - has resulted in fewer cancer deaths for boomers than for their parents generation. Yet epidemiologists also see baby boomer women falling prey to lung, skin and other cancers.
“Boomer women are about the heaviest smoking cohort in U.S. history and they are suffering big time,” says Samuel Preston, a professor of sociology and demography at the University of Pennsylvania. Like many of his colleagues, Preston believes that a declining rate of smoking will eventually extend women’s life expectancy; however, he isn’t projecting that until today’s young women turn 40 in 2020.
OBESITY
And what about obesity? It’s still not completely clear.
By 2040, obesity will reduce life expectancy by 0.733 percent for men, and 0.677 percent for women, according to Preston. Those are trends that he believes will be offset by other gains as people stop smoking.
Richard Suzman, director of behavioral and social research at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging, puts it this way: “Obesity is a little more complicated.”
So far among boomers serious weight gain appears linked to rising disability and all the costs associated with that, but because of modern medicine’s ability to treat complications like diabetes and heart disease, the impact on longevity is there, just not as much, he says.
Additionally, some experts say obesity’s true impact on longevity won’t be seen until current youth get older since they are more likely to have been obese as children than today’s elders.
And Chris Ruhm, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Virginia, sees another shoe ready to drop: severe obesity. He expects high rates of obesity to be a drag on life expectancy and severe or morbid obesity, even in the baby boom generation, to be a much bigger problem.
‘RICH PEOPLE LIVE LONGER’
Even pessimists like Olshansky do not believe that all or even most baby boomers will die at younger ages than their forbears. But he sees a future in which the rate of improvement slows overall and some groups - boomers who are from lower socio-economic strata and are black or Latino - see actual declines.
“Rich people live significantly longer than poor people do,” says John Bailey Jones, an associate professor of economics at the University of Albany, State University of New York. In the United States, the wealthy live nearly five years longer on average than do the most destitute, according to Denney’s research.
NIH’s Suzman sees a “very uneven” picture when it comes to U.S. mortality: “It’s a combination of public health, lifestyle and medical treatments, and there are still very large gaps.”
Furthermore, people facing economic stress seem to die younger than those who are comfortable, and job loss worries could push more boomers into that low-income, high-stress group with higher death rates than their well-to-do peers, suggests Rice University’s Denney.
Many people in developed countries overseas outlive Americans.
Overall those in Japan, Singapore, Canada and even beleaguered Italy and Spain live longer than those in the United States, which ranked 50th in latest CIA World Factbook. Even with that gap, it’s important to note that other countries fund their retirement plans differently and face unique distributions of age and wealth.
THE SOCIAL SECURITY MATH
In April, the Social Security board of trustees predicted that the funds that finance the retirement, disability and survivors programs will be exhausted in 2035. At that point, benefits would need to be cut or new funds found. Over the next 75 years, the shortfall in the Old Age, Survivors and Disability (OASDI) fund would amount to 2.67 percent of U.S. payroll.
This projection has triggered much political infighting over whether the United States should be cutting Social Security benefits or raising taxes to pay for them.
But those calculations are based on the expectation that the constant improvements in mortality (fewer deaths at every age) would continue unabated. The trustees project mortality declining by roughly 0.77 percent a year for every year going forward as far as the eye can see.
“We’re simply projecting that improvements will occur at roughly the same... (rate) as in the past,” Stephen Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration, told Reuters.
The agency’s math relies on this assumption: the average 65-year-old in 2020 can be expected to live 19.4 more years if a man and 21.3 more years if a woman. By 2030, when the last baby boomer turns 66, the average 65-year-old woman could expect to live to 87.9 and the average 65-year-old man would live to 86.
What if the trustees are wrong? If mortality rates stopped improving, and remained constant over the next 75 years, that would cut the OASDI actuarial deficit by about 0.45 percent of payroll, about one sixth of the projected shortfall over the next 75 years, a Social Security spokesperson told Reuters. That won’t completely save the trust fund from shortfalls, but it would help.
Medicare is trickier to assess, Goss and other experts say.
“The net effect (of slower longevity improvements) might not be large,” agrees Ronald Lee, director of University of California, Berkeley’s Center for the Demography and Economics of Aging. “There will be fewer elderly people to provide health care for... (but) those elderly people who are alive will be less healthy and have higher healthcare needs.”
Some insurance companies selling annuities — firms like Metlife Inc, Prudential Financial Inc, New York Life Insurance Co and TIAA CREF — could also benefit.
For individuals planning their futures any surprising shifts in life expectancy really wouldn’t change their course. Some children of boomers could inherit money earlier than expected.
Still, retirees will have to manage their money expecting it to last 25, 30 or even 40 years, because no individual could count on being one of the unlucky few dying younger. Keith Moon and John Entwistle - two of the four original The Who band members - did indeed die before they got old. But the others -Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey - are still going strong.RALEIGH — Contentious behind-the-scenes negotiations on coal ash spilled out into the open this week as the House took up and ultimately passed new legislation despite threats of a veto and lawsuit from Gov. Pat McCrory.
The new bill reconstitutes an oversight commission for coal ash and would re-open the public comment period on the risk and remediation of more than 30 coal ash basins in 14 sites around the state. It also would require Duke Energy to pay for water lines to residents with contaminated wells.
The on-again-off-again bill has been a goal of Rep. Chuck McGrady, the Henderson County Republican who authored much of the state’s coal ash legislation passed in 2014 after a pipe failure sent the contents of two Duke Energy coal ash ponds into the Dan River near Eden.
McGrady wants to reinstate an additional layer of state oversight over coal ash cleanup after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the governor in a suit challenging the constitutionality of the Coal Ash Management Commission, which was given the job of reviewing administration proposals for cleanup.
Based on the ruling, McCrory disbanded the commission earlier this year, moving all coal ash oversight under the state Department of Environmental Quality.
McGrady said at the time that he would introduce a bill to reconstitute the commission in the upcoming short session, this time with the number of appointments skewed toward the executive branch to avoid the separation of powers issue.
What followed was a back and forth with the McCrory administration over not just the composition, but whether a new commission is needed at all.
Speaking to reporters this week, McGrady said remains a basic disagreement over final say on how to deal with more than 30 coal ash basins in 14 sites throughout the state.
DEQ and the governor want to push ahead with their recently released evaluations of the site, he said, but legislators want an independent review.
“We think there needs to be a two-level process to review coal ash determinations made by the department,” McGrady told reporters this week. “That’s what the intent originally was and that’s what this legislation is intended to do.”
He said DEQ shouldn’t have the last say in the process.
“The reason we put the Coal Ash Management Commission in place is because frankly there wasn’t a lot of public confidence in the department at that time,” he said. “I’m not aware that we suddenly have a lot more public confidence in the department.”
Duke Energy officials backed the bill. “We support this bill because it strengthens North Carolina’s Coal Ash Management Act by providing broad safeguards that protect people, pocketbooks and the environment, as legislators envisioned when they first passed the law,” a statement issued by the company on Wednesday said.
Another round in court
The bill was scheduled to be introduced May 11 in the House Rules Committee, a key gateway for legislation in the short session, but it was pulled at the request of the governor, according to McGrady.
Another planned debut was also rescheduled. Last week, the House completed its work on the state budget and began the weeklong push toward passage of the $2.21 billion spending plan.
With the budget handed over to the Senate and the short session looking like it actually will live up to its name, McGrady, who is one of four main budget chairs for the House, got the green light to move ahead with the new coal ash bill.
On Tuesday afternoon, he huddled with staff in the Rules Committee meeting room waiting for the House to recess for a hearing to introduce the bill.
It was clear by then that no deal had been struck. Moments earlier aides to the governor had handed representatives a statement strongly opposing the bill as they filed into a caucus meeting.
In introducing the bill, McGrady noted an extensive set of legislative findings. The large number of “whereas” phrasings were in anticipation of a legal challenge, he said, and intended to give the courts clarity on the legislature’s intent.
The Rules Committee hearing drew a large crowd of lobbyists along with top officials from the McCrory administration including DEQ Secretary Donald van der Vaart and Robert Stephens, the governor’s top legal counsel. Both men underlined the governor’s objection to the bill.
Stephens, who threatened legislators with a lawsuit over the commission during a hearing on the 2014 legislation, promised another round in the courts. While the governor had more appointments on the proposed commission, Stephens said, the governor still did not have adequate control over it as well as two other commissions with a similar appointment structure that were included in the original lawsuit.
“My message is let’s don’t relive history,” Stephens told the committee. “We know what happened the first time. Let’s don’t do it again. Nobody wants that. The governor does not want that, but if this bill continues on with these three commissions structured the way that they are, he will veto the bill and file a lawsuit.”
Coal ash site rankings influence debate
Although the governor’s position didn’t change in between the first attempt to introduce the bill and this week’s passage, the regulatory landscape did.
DEQ issued its proposed set of rankings for the sites around the state. All of them were listed as either high or intermediate risk, which means that Duke is required to excavate all the basins and move the coal ash to a hazardous waste landfill.
DEQ’s decision was applauded by environmental organizations, which have pushed for moving the coal ash to lined landfills since before the Dan River spill. Despite the victory, there was some concern with DEQ’s request to revisit the rankings in 18 months.
Van der Vaart told committee members at Tuesday’s hearing that DEQ had a difficult time cutting a deal with Duke officials, saying the company had practiced “ extreme brinkmanship” in negotiations. He said only after Duke had been told that all the sites would be listed as intermediate or high risk did the company offer up a plan to run water lines to the residents. He said DEQ wants the additional 18 months to allow for water lines to be hooked up and he also asked for additional flexibility to reconsider the classification of the sites as a result.
But van der Vaart said he objected to addition of the commission and the additional time it would take for it to get up to speed. “The problem is that this bill is far too open ended,” told the committee. Sticking to the existing timetable, he said, would keep pressure on the company.
McGrady said the new site rankings had complicated the discussion. He said he would have preferred the bill be filed at the start of the session, prior to the rankings and reiterated his position that there are some sites where excavation and removal isn’t the right solution.
McGrady said the total volume of ash that would have to be moved is still an unknown, but moving all of it by deadlines set out in the original coal ash legislation may be impossible. That means that sooner or later the aggressive timetables in the original coal ash bill will have to be adjusted, he said. “We shouldn’t have schedules that people can’t rely on.”
Support splits
There were several attempts to amend the bill, including proposals by Buncombe County Democratic Reps. Brian Turner and John Ager. Ager’s amendment would have required the state to set a standard for hexavalent chromium, the contaminant that triggered many of the initial do-not-drink notices. Turner’s would have establish an extensive set of new rules on issuing drinking water advisories. Both were ruled out of order.
In the end, the major change was a provision aimed at resolving the the drinking well contamination issue.
It would require Duke Energy to pay for connections to public water systems and mandates that the company come up with a plan for so by December 1. In cases where there is no feasible way to connect to a public system, company would be required to provide whole house water filtration systems.
The addition won over some legislators who had concerns that residents in their districts who were caught up in the controversy over do not drink notices would ever know if their water was safe.
Rep. Craig Horn, R-Union, said residents in his district are growing impatient.
“They’re looking for a permanent solution rather than plastic bottles,” he said. “When can they expect to have a solution to their problem so we don’t have a Flint Michigan or any other type of problem with contaminated water?”
Reaction among environmental groups varied. The Southern Environmental Law Center, which has represented Mountain True and other organizations in coal ash related lawsuits issued an extensive rebuttal to the bill Thursday, saying it adds further delays and gives Duke too much leeway in determining who might be at risk.
“In short, this bill does nothing to improve the odds that Duke will be required to replace anyone’s contaminated drinking water,” the statement said. “Rather than bickering about a Coal Ash Commission, the General Assembly should allow the existing law to be implemented that requires Duke to move forward with cleanups, as thousands of North Carolinians have demanded.”
The North Carolina Sierra Club also blasted the additional delay, but praised the bill for the added provision on water connections.
“The House today took a step in the right direction to offer relief to residents of communities impacted by coal ash,” Sierra Club communications director Dustin Chicurel-Bayard said in a statement released after passage. “But for the second time in two years, the disagreement between the legislature and the governor over separation of powers issues has interfered with and delayed the state taking action to clean up the millions of tons of coal ash stored in unlined pits across North Carolina.”
The split was also evident in the House itself. Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, the Democrats’ point person on environmental issues, announced during debate that she would support the bill to gain back additional oversight.
“Recent actions by our Department of Environmental Quality have left some of our citizen with some lack of confidence in their ability to protect the public health,” she said, citing DEQ’s move to rescind the do-not-drink advisories to hundreds of residents near coal ash sites.
“Those residents need to have confidence that they have the kind of oversight that they need and the protections coming,” she said.
Harrison said she is also concerned about setting a dangerous precedent that could affect other environmental oversight agencies.
“We have other important oversight commissions such as the Environmental Management Commission, the Coastal Resources Commission and other commissions whose role in providing some kind of independent and objective oversight of the agencies is really important,” she said. “We do not want to put that at risk.”
The bill passed by a veto-proof margin of 86 to 25 on second reading and by voice vote on third reading. It now goes to the Senate.
Senate Rules chair Sen. Tom Apodaca, R-Henderson, said the bill would likely be taken up on Tuesday.SpongeBob SquarePants is one of the most popular cartoons of recent times. According to USA TODAY, SpongeBob is the most-loved series on TV, web traffic and social media. In addition, SpongeBob has now starred in two major motion pictures.
Although SpongeBob has been regularly televised for 15 years, only ONE of those years did they produce the animation cels and backgrounds by hand! That was SpongeBob's very first season - 1999/2000. By the second year of production, SpongeBob had become a fully computer-animated series.
That fact makes SpongeBob production animation a great (and extremely rare) collectible, as well as great fun to own and frame!
All of our SpongeBob production cels and animation backgrounds are 100% genuine! In addition, each animation cel comes with an attractive matte and a Certificate of Authenticity. These are truly unique, one-of-a-kind items that are widely sought by collectors of animation art.
In addition to SpongeBob animation art, we also carry an array of cels from other animation studios (Disney, Hanna-Barbera, etc.).Steve Grogan:
RRM: Manning said he didn't watch either of the game films from last year's two meetings between the Patriots and Denver, but rather the last time he played against the Patriots back in 2010. As a former quarterback, did that seem a little strange to you? SG: No, I don't think so. I think you want to see how teams play against you and the offense you're running, and the offense he's running in Denver is very similar to what they did in Indianapolis. So I think that probably would give him a better feeling for what the Patriots were going try to implement against him as opposed to what they did against Denver the last couple times when he wasn't there.
RRM: Despite rolling up 35 first downs, you could make the argument that if Willis McGahee had been able to hold onto the ball in the fourth quarter, this game could have gone right down to the wire. Would you have liked to have seen them put this game away a little earlier than they did? SG: Well, they had it put away and I think they took the foot off the gas pedal in the fourth quarter and were just trying not to make any mistakes to let Denver back in the game and by doing that they became less aggressive and they almost let them back in. You know, when you've got a good football team like Denver is with a great quarterback like Peyton Manning is, you've got to keep your intensity level up and I think defensively I saw the intensity level drop just a little bit in the fourth quarter, figuring that they had the game pretty much in hand and all they had to do was not let Manning make a big play. But he took them down the field in 3 minutes and scored a touchdown to get them within 10, and that could |
of its PackBots — basically a lawnmower-size tank with an articulated arm and a couple cameras — to help search for survivors. The smaller Multi-Function Agile Remote-Controlled Robot, or "MARCbot" (pictured) is essentially a remote-controlled toy truck meant for combat. Brookings Institution analyst Peter Singer, author of Wired for War, recalls one Army unit that strapped mines to its MARCbots -- and used them as robotic suicide-bombers against enemy ambushers. "Of course, each discovered insurgent meant $5,000 worth of blown-up robot parts, but so far the Army hasn’t billed the soldiers," Singer wrote. Efforts to form official man-robot combat squads faltered. The Army sent three armed Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System, or SWORDS, to Iraq in 2007. The ATV-size, tracked, machine-gun-equipped SWORDS were meant to patrol, with a soldier controlling the 'bot from a safe distance using a handheld terminal. But the Army didn't trust the SWORDS squads to avoid killing the wrong people, and kept them confined to base. Photo: David Axe/Wired.com
Warplane Whisperer Before the U.S. invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq, ground and air forces fought what were essentially separate wars, each trying its best to stay out of the other's way. But after 9/11, badly outnumbered U.S. ground forces desperately needed the close support of fighters, bombers and drones. GPS and satellite communications made possible unprecedented coordination, and helped boost a brand-new career field: the Air Force Joint Terminal Air Controller, or JTAC. Now thousands strong, they're the "warplane whisperers," accompanying the Army, Marines and Special Forces into battle, translating the chaos of close-quarters battle into specific instructions for pilots and drone controllers. Hit this, don't hit that. Use this bomb, don't use that one. "If I'm doing my job, it means the shit has hit the fan," said Staff Sgt. Kevin Rosner, a JTAC in eastern Afghanistan. Photo: David Axe/Wired.com
Online Combat Cartoonist The terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, not only changed the way we wage war — it changed how we depict war, too. A generation of young reporters weened on comic books brought their graphic sensibilities to war correspondence, while the military turned to comics as a communications tool and therapy aid. The result is a genre of war comics that arguably began in the 1990s with Joe Sacco, but truly blossomed after 9/11. Ted Rall's war memoir To Afghanistan and Back was first. Sacco himself contributed a short tale about Iraq. I added two comic books of my own, War Fix and War is Boring, while Anthony Lappe imagined an endless Iraq conflict in Shooting War, and Matt Bors toured the war-torn Afghan countryside. Meanwhile, the Pentagon discovered that comics could help introduce trainees to the duties of a combat medic, and provide a therapeutic outlet for survivors of war trauma. U.S. forces teamed up with Afghan commandos to hand out crude propaganda comics (pictured) portraying the commandos as heroic protectors of Afghan security. Photo: David Axe/Wired.com
Improvised-Bomb Hunter To attack heavily defended, highly trained U.S. forces, insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan unleashed a decade-long barrage of improvised bombs: 1,300 a month in Afghanistan alone, as of this spring. Improvised explosive devices are the biggest killers of U.S. troops in both wars. To beat the insurgent bombers, the U.S. and its allies mobilized a huge force of counterbomb specialists, from "route-clearance" patrols trained to spot bombs on roads to explosive-ordnance disposal techs who can defuse the devices themselves. These fearless men and women, tens of thousands in all, ride in special armored vehicles, sometimes wear bizarre armored suits and command an incredible array of robots, supersecret sensors and even bomb-sniffing dogs. But mostly, they're just skilled... and patient. "We’re slow and methodical,” said Capt. Brandon Drobenak, commander of a route-clearance unit in Afghanistan. Photo: David Axe/Wired.com
War-Zone Community Organizer The Pentagon quickly discovered that firepower alone couldn't win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A smarter approach was needed — one that blended combat action with economic development and governance reform. Think of 'em as the rough wartime equivalent of community organizers. Soldiers and Marines were ill-equipped for these "softer" tasks. So the State Department, the Department of Agriculture, the Army Corps of Engineers and even the Drug Enforcement Agency, among other nonmilitary agencies, mobilized thousands of bureaucrats, slapped on helmets and body armor, and dropped them into the war zones. Take Ron Barkley, an experienced State Department diplomat. He arrived in the troubled Baraki Barak district of Afghanistan's Logar province in 2009. With the help of a small team, Barkley rebuilt the district's government from the ground up over a period of two years. Departing in early 2011, he left behind one of eastern Afghanistan's most prosperous and lawful districts. Photo: David Axe/Wired.com
CSI Kandahar Every one of the ten thousands of bombs that insurgents have detonated in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade is unique. Tracking down the bombers' support networks requires careful investigative work, sifting through bomb shards, cratered earth and even body parts — like a far nastier, battlefield edition of CSI. That's the job of the U.S. military's expanding forensics corps, pictured collecting chunks of flesh from a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2005. Using DNA sampling, blast-pattern analysis, money trails and tips from informants, the blast investigators strive to move "left of boom," understanding bomber networks so that the military can dismantle them before they launch more attacks. Photo: David Axe/Wired.com
Killer-Drone Pilot Between 2001 and 2011, the U.S. military's arsenal of aerial drones expanded more than 1,000 times, from just a tiny number of 27-foot-long Predators to some 5,000 flying 'bots ranging from hand-launched Ravens to Global Hawks the size of airliners. And the robot air force isn't done growing. The Pentagon anticipates doubling it over the next three decades. Some are spies. Some are attackers. The one thing all these drones have in common is that somewhere on the ground, a team of human pilots and sensor operators guides their actions, while mechanics keep them fit for duty. It can take 80 or more people to support one four-drone Predator patrol. In that sense, unmanned aircraft are "anything but that," said Air Force Gen. Norton Schwartz. Photo: David Axe/Wired.com
Human-Terrain Social Scientist The idea looked great on paper. In 2005, a Harvard social scientist named Montgomery McFate proposed sending academics like her to Iraq and Afghanistan to help U.S. troops understand the cultures of their allies and enemies. “What you’re trying to do is understand the people’s interests, because whoever is more effective at meeting the interests of the population will be able to influence it,” McFate said. With strong support from the Pentagon, McFate recruited scores of so-called "human terrain" social scientists and rushed them into combat. The results were mixed. Three social scientists died in attacks. Turnover was high amid opposition from the academic community. The Army discovered that its own soldiers could do much of the same work, given adequate training. Today, the Human Terrain System maintains a lower profile. But its war-zone researchers are still out there, risking their lives for a little knowledge. Photo: David Axe/Wired.com
Prosthesis Chopper Prosthetic limbs are nothing new. But before the last five years or so, they amounted to little more than hinged, rigid posts with hooks or shoes on their ends. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan changed all that. More than a thousand battlefield amputations and billions of dollars in Veterans Affairs funding opened a floodgate of innovation. Today prosthesis designers can "chop" increasingly sophisticated artificial limbs just as you would a custom motorcycle, modifying the limb for the wearer's unique shape and needs. The socket can be molded around the residual organic limb using a kind of flexible plastic, resulting in a firmer, more comfortable fit. The joints, designed around tiny computer "brains" and adjustable servos, can be programmed to flex according to the wearer's unique gait. The result is better quality of life for amputee service members and, for some, a return to military duty with artificial limbs that are amazingly close to natural ones. But Hugh Herr, an MIT prosthesis designer who wears two artificial legs of his own, is looking beyond even that. "The even longer-term goal is to beat nature," Herr told Danger Room. "It's been done in many many areas except robotics. In this century, we're going to fundamentally change human capability." Photo: David Axe/Wired.comRiders To Watch for 2013 – What Happened?
Last year I nominated a dozen riders to watch in 2012, from promising neo-pros to Chris Froome and Vincenzo Nibali. It’s been a mixed year and now it’s time to check in on their performances this year, starting with the big names today.
Vincenzo Nibali had a great year with a win in the Giro as well as Tirreno-Adriatico and the Giro del Trentino. But he was left wondering what could have been, a crash in the worlds surely cost him a medal? Last year I was wondering about his professionalism and in Tirreno-Adriatico a brief quip about SRM powermeters saw some paint him as a traditional rider. There was eveb talk he’d coach himself but he’s been getting professional support and leaving little to chance.
Another concern was cohabitation with sprinter Andrea Guardini but no problems there, at least for Nibali because Guardini’s hardly raced this year. But you still wonder about Nibali’s tactical sense. For all the flair and attacks, he’s probably someone you’d want to play poker against because he doesn’t hide his game. Take the Vuelta where his early attack on the Angliru was exciting but surely the wrong tactic when he only needed to steel a few seconds on Horner and a time bonus was waiting for him. He can win big and animate a race. All the better for viewers.
It’s mission accomplished for Chris Froome. Wins in the Tour of Oman, Romandie, the Dauphiné and the Tour de France made 2013 the year of Chris Froome and he scooped up various awards including the Vélo d’Or. Sky copied the 2012 Wiggins “we’ve trained for that” pattern of giving Froome leadership in stage races so he could learn how to cope with its burdens and duties before starting the Tour. It worked but at times it seemed his greatest rival was Bradley Wiggins. Yet Sky’s copying of the 2012 programme included sending Froome into the 2013 Tour unprepared for questions about doping, a subject that had been simmering all year on forums and even on French TV so it was odd that the team was taken aback and had to spend the second half of the race inviting journos for private briefings on the Sky bus.
A year ago I wondered if he could improve his style but no, those elbows still stick out as if he’s pushing a supermarket trolley, the head cocked to one side like he’s on the phone. But he did visit a windtunnel this year for the first time. There could be more gains to come but ask Wiggins just how hard repeating something can be.
It was make or break for Sylvain Chavanel. I feared he’d play second-fiddle to Tom Boonen. There’s nothing shameful in supporting one of the best classics riders ever but Chavanel is capable of winning something for himself. In the end Boonen sat out the classics with a saddle sore but the vacuum was filled by others. The rest of the squad stepped up and Chavanel stepped aside. He’s still a very valuable rider and is IAM Cycling’s gain for 2014 and even if he doesn’t win much next year he’ll earn the Swiss team a wildcard entry for the Tour de France.
Did Cadel Evans have a good year or a bad year? A podium finish in the Giro is a great result but he started the year as an outsider for the Tour de France. I can still remember opening La Gazzetta on a Saturday morning last March to see Evans announcing he would ride the Giro. The decision looked rushed, as if he was no longer in charge of events. But the gamble paid off, a podium place was valuable and, after Tejay van Garderen’s win in the Tour of California it was arguably BMC’s highest quality result of 2013. He’ll be back to the Giro in 2014 but now with the long-term goal of winning the race.
I wondered what kind of rider Edvald Boasson Hagen should be. A classics contender, a bunch sprinter or a lieutenant to Team Sky’s GC generals? We’re probably left with the same question. Like the rest of Team Sky his classics campaign didn’t work out. They tried a “new” idea of training in Tenerife instead of doing some early season races. It’s actually been done by many before but this time it didn’t work for the whole team. Whether we blame Tenerife or something else is hard to know. “EBH” won the Tour of Norway and took a stage win in the Dauphiné where he was a revealing sixth in the time trial too. But it’s been a relatively lean year if you look at his personal win rate.
After a string of solid placings in 2012, I tipped Andrew Talansky for 2013. Only if I believed in him, perhaps he believed too much in himself? His big attacks on the Montagne de Lure whilst wearing the Paris-Nice yellow jersey were exciting Nibali-esque and just allowed Richie Porte to play him like a fish on the end of a line. I think the Australian was the stronger rider but Talansky probably learned plenty that day. Another good year, he was second to Chris Froome in the Romandie prologue, a mini mountain TT. He was ill in the Dauphiné but emerged Roche-like from the fog on the summit finish in Risoul and later was tenth overall in the Tour de France, helped by a strong sixth place on the final climb of the Semnoz. We can expect more progress in 2014.
Tomorrow I’ll cover the neo-pros.Was. You save £-14.95 (Liquid error: divided by 0%).
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Said beloved series eventually lands on Hulu, and the TV-centric portions of the internet rejoice, while also bemoaning Netflix’s apparent shift away from its original status as a gigantic back catalog of shows and movies to stream.
The latest iteration of the cycle concerns 30 Rock, the much-loved Tina Fey comedy that aired on NBC from 2006 to 2013. Fans sounded the alarm when news broke that the show would leave Netflix at the end of September — but before the month was out, Hulu stepped in to scoop it up (along with a handful of other shows owned by NBCUniversal, which is an investor in Vox Media).
On some level, this cycle simply reflects the ongoing theme of what could be called “phase two” of the streaming revolution; as studios and networks realize just how much more valuable their catalog titles are to streaming services, they can charge more for them, which means Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon have to be more selective about what to invest in. (I’ve written much more on this topic here.)
But the 30 Rock shift — or the earlier shift of numerous 20th Century Fox titles from Netflix to Hulu — only serves to underline how both services increasingly view their role in a TV industry that’s moving more and more toward streaming first. It also helps explain why the brand new Star Trek: Discovery is exclusive to CBS All Access, and why I strongly suspect that all of these developments will lead to the eventual return of the cable bundle that many people have cut the cord to get away from.
Netflix seems more and more focused on original programming; Hulu wants to be a giant repository of stuff
In 2015, I wrote about how I thought Hulu had become the best streaming service out there, even though it couldn’t compete with Netflix in the original programming game. I based much of my opinion on the way Hulu was scooping up interesting shows from other networks, meaning it was always possible to find something new to watch that was actually worth watching. And while I had enjoyed many of Netflix’s original series, the company’s hit-to-miss ratio had always been spotty enough to give me pause.
These trends have only continued in the two years since, with a couple of different wrinkles. For one thing, Netflix’s hit-to-miss ratio remains spotty, but no more so than that of any other network, and I think you could make a real argument that a show like Fuller House isn’t meant for me anyway. (I’ll take it if its success means I get more weirdo experiments like American Vandal.) Additionally, Netflix has started actually canceling some of its more expensive shows, only increasing the sense that it’s become just another TV network.
At the same time, Hulu’s originals have finally started to click. The Handmaid’s Tale debuted to great reviews and recently won the first Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series awarded to a streaming service. Hulu is still light-years behind Netflix when it comes to producing original series, but with shows like Handmaid’s and the upcoming Marvel’s Runaways, it’s at least making a good-faith effort to catch up.
But Hulu will always lag behind Netflix in many ways. A recent Variety article on ballooning TV budgets revealed that Netflix will spend $7 billion on programming in 2018, while Hulu has spent $2.5 billion in 2017 (though it’s worth noting that Hulu, unlike Netflix, operates only within the US). Sure, neither of these services is hurting for cash, but Netflix can outspend Hulu any time it wants to.
So why is Netflix letting so many shows slip away to a chief competitor? The answer lies in how both services increasingly seem to view themselves, as driven by the proprietary data they use to make decisions.
Netflix is clearly fueled more and more by a belief that its subscribers want the kind of content they can only find on Netflix, and the service increasingly pays handsomely for the privilege, shelling out millions to land series and specials you can only watch there. Many early Netflix series eventually became available on DVD. This is less and less true with every passing year. It’s not that Netflix won’t pick up older shows; it’s seen plenty of success with everything from Friends to The Blacklist, and in 2016 it closed a blockbuster deal to keep the shows of The CW streaming on its service (and off of Hulu). But in any case where Netflix has to choose between an original series and an older title — one that might not even be on the air anymore — it will usually pick the original. (It’s also moving into the movie sphere more and more — though with somewhat mixed results so far.)
Hulu, meanwhile, appears to view its mission as being TV Central. And that’s perhaps to be expected, given that it’s co-owned by NBC, ABC, and Fox, with a minority share owned by Warner Bros. It still gets next-day reruns of many popular TV shows, and if you were to subscribe to just Hulu and CBS All Access, you would have next-day access to most of the shows on the big four broadcast networks. Hulu will program originals, sure, but it’s also interested in trying to collect as many of your favorites as possible in one place. It even lets you subscribe to live TV, from all sorts of networks (including premium channels like HBO and Showtime) through its service. (Hulu, unlike Netflix, also seems to have almost no interest in becoming a movie studio, at least not yet.)
Neither service is wholly built atop originals or catalog titles. Each, by necessity, must cultivate a mixture of both. But these separate emphases even extend to the services’ marketing, with Netflix’s ads almost always playing up all of its original series and Hulu’s ads playing up its status as a service that knows TV really well and offers you a place to watch The Handmaid’s Tale and Parenthood and Casual and How I Met Your Mother.
Thus, it makes sense to think of Netflix as attempting to become HBO on steroids — a one-stop shop for all your entertainment needs, with a little bit of everything. Hulu, meanwhile, hews closer to an FX or AMC: It has some critically acclaimed original programming, but it knows it can make just as much money (if not more) off reruns of older shows. And whom did Hulu just hire as its new chief content officer? Joel Stillerman, formerly of AMC.
What happens when phase two becomes phase three? Nothing good, probably.
I’d define “phase one” of the streaming revolution as beginning with the launch of Hulu in 2007 and concluding with the debut of House of Cards on Netflix in 2013. Phase two has been ongoing ever since, and it’s impossible to say when it will end because we’re still living in it.
But The Handmaid’s Tale dominating the Emmys might end up being a good demarcation point, especially coupled with the debut of Star Trek: Discovery as a CBS All Access exclusive, which seemed to prompt lots and lots of viewers to say, “I need to pay for another service?!”
The more companies that enter the TV space, seeing all of the money that could be made if they emerge as one of the ultimate victors of the streaming wars, the more chaotic things become. Just look at Amazon, which started out with a bunch of quirky oddball series that almost certainly drew very low ratings and is now a streaming service in seeming chaos, with a few modest hits and a new stated goal of finding “the next Game of Thrones,” as if that idea hasn’t occurred to anybody else in TV.
Throw in players like HBO, Showtime, and Starz, along with up-and-coming services from FX and AMC, plus niche services like Shudder or Sundance Now or [insert niche streaming service of your choice], and the whole enterprise feels more and more like an ever-expanding bubble that will surely pop at some point.
And yet everybody in the television industry seems aware that streaming is the future, so there’s really no reason to hold back. When even staid, stodgy CBS has jumped into the pool, there’s little motivation to sit out.
Currently, though, only Netflix and Hulu seem to really know what they’re doing — and it’s interesting that the two have bet on fairly different versions of the future of streaming. Will new streaming services of the future primarily be places to watch lots and lots of new shows, with all kinds of original content you can’t see anywhere else? Or will they become massive repositories of film and TV, ever-expanding libraries of stuff?
The two approaches can exist side by side, and I feel more confident than ever that when everything shakes out, Netflix and Hulu will both remain standing. But the road to that point looks a little more chaotic every day.Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association announced Friday four rule changes aimed at improving pace of play. News of the changes were first reported by FOX Sports’ Jon Morosi and Ken Rosenthal.
● Managers must make instant replay challenges from the dugout, rather than the field. This should eliminate the on-field delays that occurred in 2014 while managers chatted with umpires while waiting for coaches or video coordinators to recommend whether a play should be challenged.
● Hitters must keep one foot in the batter’s box between pitches, unless an established exception occurs. It’s not clear how many exceptions will exist, but during a trial run in the 2014 Arizona Fall League, those conditions included foul balls, foul tips, time being granted by the umpire, and wild pitches.
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● Play will resume promptly once television broadcasts return from commercial breaks.
● Timed pitching changes.
Penalties for all violations will start in May and will include minimal fines, not balls, strikes. The idea is to change players’ habits, not penalize them. As with replay, rules will be adjusted as needed during the course of the season.
"Players are willing to consider certain things relating to improving the game," MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said. "Players are always interested in doing that. But they are always sensitive to making adjustments that will adversely affect the game. They love it, respect it too much to try and reinvent the wheel in such a way that will damage the game."
With a number of pace-of-play measures in effect — including a pitch clock, which MLB won’t implement for 2015 — games at the test location for the 2014 Arizona Fall League (Salt River Fields at Talking Stick) were 10 minutes shorter, on average, than AFL games the previous year.
MLB also announced other changes to its replay system, allowing a manager to retain his challenge after every call that is overturned. In 2014, a manager kept his challenge only after the first overturned call.
In addition, managers will have two challenges per game during postseason play, regular-season tiebreakers and All-Star Games.Documentary on Numbers in Houston begins to take shape
Rollins Band Rollins Band Photo: Soren McCarty, Soren McCarty/WireImage.com Photo: Soren McCarty, Soren McCarty/WireImage.com Image 1 of / 78 Caption Close Documentary on Numbers in Houston begins to take shape 1 / 78 Back to Gallery
In less than two weeks the team behind a gestating documentary about a legendary Houston dance club will kick off a Kickstarter campaign to finish production.
"Friday I'm In Love" is about Numbers, the Lower Westheimer nightlife haunt and music venue that has seen everyone from Iggy Pop, Pixies, Oasis, The Cure, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails, and even drag star Divine grace its stage. On Friday nights you can still see people of all ages dancing to club classics from The Normal, New Order, and the newest hipster cuts on the giant dance floor while sipping Long Island Iced Teas.
Director Marcus Pontello is helming the picture, which already has a Facebook page up and running, posting constant updates on the documentary's progress. He's been at work for two years, recently teaming up with local film company Dinolion.
"We've been filming interviews of customers, bands, and staff and we still have a lot of work ahead of us," Pontello says. "The Kickstarter is our next big goal."
The Kickstarter campaign begins Feb. 2 and the hope is that enough money and interest will be raised to push the film forward.
Pontello estimates that he has roughly a year of filming and production work ahead of him but they are not rushing anything.
"We want to make sure the film feels complete and fully realized. There are a lot of stories and experiences that we still need to capture," he says.
Interviews already in the can include Erasure, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Douglas McCarthy from Nitzer Ebb and Bliss Blood from Houston's The Pain Teens.
"There are so many more bands we would love to interview as we continue filming," he adds.
"We would like to interview all of the classic industrial and electronic acts associated with Numbers such as Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Front 242, Skinny Puppy, Nine Inch Nails, and so on," says Pontello.
There are local acts like The Hunger, The Judy's, and the Mydolls still to capture as well.
The music and archival rights will be a big expense, he says, especially if they decide to use music or concert footage from major bands that have played the venue on their way up the ladder of stardom.
The production has also recorded interviews with local luminaries attached to the club like former Bruce Godwin, promoters Richard Tomcala and Carmina Bell, resident DJ Wes Wallace, general manager Rudi Bunch, and the late Beverly Wren, who was the original owner.
Pontello says they also reached to friends and family of Robert Burtenshaw (aka Robot), the late owner of Numbers who passed away in July 2013.
In terms of the Kickstarter, Pontello and others are still trying to pinpoint a dollar amount needed to finish the documentary.
"We would like to raise more than $50,000 for the film, but how much of that is from Kickstarter we are working out," he says. The crowd-funding campaign will be the production's first attempt at a budget. So far it has been flying without one.
"Our first goal will be a premiere in Houston for the community. We also want to submit the film to festivals, in which the music rights will be a little more affordable," Pontello says.
His first Numbers experience was seeing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the venue as a 15-year-old back in Nov. 2003. Later he went to "Classic Numbers" on a Friday night with some older friends and fell in love with the place.
"I was exposed to music that I had never heard, and a culture I had never experienced. I was wearing a hot pink sequin jacket, platform boots and a lot of metallic eye shadow," Pontello says.
"Needless to say, I was embraced and felt at home."The stoning of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was a public execution carried out by the Al-Shabaab militant group on October 27, 2008 in the southern port town of Kismayo, Somalia. Initial reports stated that the victim, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, was a 23-year-old woman found guilty of adultery. However, Duhulow's father and aunt stated that she was 13 years old, under the age of marriage eligibility, and that she was arrested and stoned to death after trying to report that she had been raped. The execution took place in a public stadium attended by about 1,000 bystanders, several of whom attempted to intervene but were shot by the militants.[1][2][3]
According to Amnesty International, Al-Shabaab had formally charged Duhulow with adultery.[4]
Background [ edit ]
In 1991, the government of then President of Somalia Siad Barre was overthrown by a coalition of armed factions.[5] The Islamic Courts Union (ICU) took control of the southern half of Somalia in 2006, imposing Shari'a law.[6] In 2006, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) assisted by Ethiopian troops re-captured the capital Mogadishu, largely driving the ICU's leaders out of the country. Al-Shabaab, the ICU's militant and youth branch, subsequently took up irregular warfare and guerrilla tactics against the allied forces.[5][6] In 2008, the group was designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, which launched missile strikes against the militants early in the year.[7] Several thousand local civilians were killed by the militants during the height of the insurgency between December 2006 and October 2008. In the months leading up to Duhulow's execution, Al-Shabaab had been gaining strength, as it had seized control of the Port of Kismayo, essentially shut down Mogadishu's Aden Adde International Airport, and dismantled pro-government roadblocks.[5]
Incident [ edit ]
Duhulow and her family moved to the southern city of Kismayo, Somalia from the Hagardeer refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya in July 2008.[8] According to one of her teachers, Muno Mohamed Osman, who had taught Duhulow for a few months and did not remember her well, she struggled during class and "didn't look mentally fit[...] She was always in trouble with students, teachers[...] She was just a child." Three months after her arrival in Kismayo, Duhulow was reportedly raped by three armed men while travelling on foot to visit her grandmother in Mogadishu in October 2008.[8] Her aunt took her to a police station to report the incident to the Al-Shabaab Islamist militia in Kismayo, which at the time controlled the city's court system. They were asked to return to the station a few days later, having been told that two suspects had been apprehended. Duhulow was subsequently arrested by the insurgents under charges that she had "chatted up" the men and committed adultery. She was then sentenced to death by stoning. The militant tribunal asserted that Duhulow had come to it with an admission of guilt, and that she was repeatedly asked to reconsider her confession but that she instead insisted that she wanted Sharia law and the attendant punishment to be applied.[4] One militant, Sheik Hayakalah, stated that "the evidence came from her side and she officially confirmed her guilt[...] She told us that she was happy with the punishment under Islamic law."[11] No attempts were made by the insurgent group to apprehend Duhulow's purported attackers.[12]
Execution [ edit ]
On October 27, 2008, during the afternoon, several militants transported Duhulow to a public stadium in Kismayo containing around 1,000 people.[4][12] She reportedly struggled with the insurgents and at one point screamed, "What do you want from me[...] I'm not going, I'm not going. Don't kill me."[4] Four militants subsequently forced Duhulow into a dug out hole, burying her up to the neck.[12] Around 50 militants participated in the ensuing execution, throwing rocks at her head.[13] According to witnesses, nurses were then instructed to verify whether Duhulow was still alive.[12][14] After ten minutes, she was dug out of the hole and two nurses confirmed that she was still alive, after which point Duhulow was put back in the hole and the stoning resumed. Although many witnesses to the event were too afraid of the armed militants to intervene, several bystanders attempted to save her. The insurgents responded by opening fire on them, in the process killing an eight-year-old boy.[2][12] An Al-Shabaab spokesman later apologized for the child's death, and pledged that the shooter would be punished.[ |
not change much in the Syrian equation.
The problem continued to be intractable, given that the parties of Geneva II undermined the Syrian people, who grew tired and seek any solution to stop the killing. Today, the conflicting parties are not being supplied with additional arms, but there are no new negotiations on the horizon.
Today, there seems to be an effort to open the doors for the coastal battle, which pro-opposition states were trying to prevent a few months ago. The sectarian tension will escalate through social media, only pushing any solution away and setting the stage for further group migrations and the division of the country.
It currently seems inevitable that Syria will be divided and fragmented. Syria has embarked on a path that cannot be stopped, as Syrians are sectarian by nature, as many describe them. Their Sunni rhetoric is rigid but used to hide behind moderate speeches. Some claim they are violent by nature, but their violence was repressed, and their sense of belonging to Syria is fragile.
However, there is nothing inevitable in history. What is happening today is not the result of the madness of the authorities or the weakness of the opposition symbols alone. This is happening because both regime and opposition have become prisoners of an old logic of radical changes. Both parties refuse to yield to the other. Both have lost their popular support. The majority of the Syrian people want one thing: an end to this chaotic war. They want to end the destruction of the country, as well as the starving and displacement.
The question that needs to be posed: Who will have the courage to stand up against the parties destroying the country for the sake of their homeland and people? Who will prove that the majority of Syrians are not sectarian by nature, as many malicious sides have claimed? Who will prove that the Sunni Islam in Syria is tolerant and true, and is a far cry from extremist Islam? Who will demonstrate that Syrians do not like violence and that the Syrian identity is strong because it represents a country with a great heritage?
This initiative will not be launched by the Syrian regime or the current opposition. This initiative will come from among normal Syrian citizens, such as the lady who set herself on fire before her children in an angry gesture over the fate of Syria, to awaken the minds of people who are suffering everywhere. This initiative should come from among the fighters who have become aware that they are pointing the gun at their family and their own people, and that their enemies are actually their brothers.Gary Anderson, Peter Wright and James Wade will headline the opening night of the 2017 BetVictor World Matchplay a week on Saturday.
The schedule of play for the major tournament, which this year features a record £500,000 in prize money, has been released, with the trio of major winners all set to be in action at Blackpool’s famous Winter Gardens on the first day on Saturday, July 22.
Former world youth champion Michael Smith will face World Matchplay debutant Steve West in the opening game of the tournament, before 2007 champion James Wade takes on Darren Webster.
World number two Gary Anderson then gets his campaign started against debutant Christian Kist, before UK Open champion Peter Wright, the number three seed, faces another debutant James Wilson in the last game of day one.
The following day includes a double session of first round matches, starting in the afternoon with Premier League ace Jelle Klaasen facing two-time Blackpool quarter-finalist Justin Pipe, who snatched the final qualification spot in the tournament last weekend.
Former UK Open and World Grand Prix champion Robert Thornton then plays Spanish debutant Cristo Reyes, emerging talents Benito van de Pas and Daryl Gurney clash before last year’s European Championship runner-up Mensur Suljovic meets John Henderson.
Phil Taylor, a 15-time winner of the World Matchplay, begins his final challenge in Blackpool before retirement in Sunday’s evening session when he takes on UK Open finalist Gerwyn Price.
Sunday night will also see Premier League stars Dave Chisnall, Raymond van Barneveld and Kim Huybrechts all in action, as they take on Mervyn King, Joe Cullen and Alan Norris respectively.
The first round reaches its conclusion on Monday, July 24 with the reigning World Matchplay champion Michael van Gerwen beginning his bid for a third successive title in Blackpool against Stephen Bunting.
The final night of first round action begins with the all-Australian clash between Simon Whitlock and Kyle Anderson, before Adrian Lewis takes on Steve Beaton and Ian White meets fast-emerging debutant Rob Cross.
The second round then takes place across the next two days (July 25 and 26), with the quarter-finals following on July 27 and 28, before the semi-finals and final are held over July 29 and 30, with the eventual champion taking home £115,000.
2017 BetVictor World Matchplay
Saturday July 22 (7pm)
First Round
Michael Smith v Steve West
James Wade v Darren Webster
Gary Anderson v Christian Kist
Peter Wright v James Wilson
Sunday July 23
Afternoon Session (1pm)
Jelle Klaasen v Justin Pipe
Robert Thornton v Cristo Reyes
Benito van de Pas v Daryl Gurney
Mensur Suljovic v John Henderson
Evening Session (7.30pm)
Dave Chisnall v Mervyn King
Phil Taylor v Gerwyn Price
Raymond van Barneveld v Joe Cullen
Kim Huybrechts v Alan Norris
Monday July 24 (7pm)
Simon Whitlock v Kyle Anderson
Adrian Lewis v Steve Beaton
Michael van Gerwen v Stephen Bunting
Ian White v Rob Cross
Tuesday July 25 (7pm)
Second Round
Suljovic/Henderson v Klaasen/Pipe
Wade/Webster v Smith/West
Anderson/Kist v Van de Pas/Gurney
Wright/Wilson v Thornton/Reyes
Wednesday July 26 (7pm)
Chisnall/King v Huybrechts/Norris
Lewis/Beaton v White/Cross
Taylor/Price v Van Barneveld/Cullen
Van Gerwen/Bunting v Whitlock/Anderson
Thursday July 27 (7pm)
2x Quarter-Finals
Friday July 28 (7pm)
2x Quarter-Finals
Saturday July 29 (7pm)
Semi-Finals
Sunday July 30 (7pm)
Final
Format
First Round – Best of 19 legs
Second Round – Best of 21 legs
Quarter-Finals – Best of 31 legs
Semi-Finals – Best of 33 legs
Final – Best of 35 legs
* Each game must be won by two clear legs, with up to a maximum of five additional legs being played before the sixth additional leg is sudden-death. For example, should a First Round game (best of 19 legs) reach 12-12, then the 25th leg would be the final and deciding leg.
Prize Fund
Winner £115,000
Runner-Up £55,000
Semi-Finalists £30,000
Quarter-Finalists £17,500
Second Round Losers £11,000
First Round Losers £7,000
Total £500,000
* Should any player achieve a nine-dart finish, a £10,000 bonus will be on offer, which would be shared on a pro-rata basis should more than one player hit a perfect leg.
AdvertisementsThe complete Waffle Crew!
Did (most) of this whilst on holiday. Wanted to do a group shot of the Waffle Crew, and decided to do a campfire scene, so picture this as before Curse of Strahd - possibly the night when they were taken.
Close up shots of each character to see detail, so you can see Strix playng with Stinky, Juniper mimicking Evelyn’s clapping, Paultin’s many flasks and Diath’s shoulder and boot daggers.
A few notes:
Each character is doing something specific to them - Strix is playing with Stinky, Paultin is drunkingly singing, Evelyn trying to clap along. Diath’s planning their journey, trying to keep them on track.
Evelyn has her javalin in the ground next to her axe. Also, every part of her armour has a sun on it (not that you can see all of it). Her boots did havve wings, but they got obscured by the fire. Her shielf is resting on Strix’s bag.
Paulitn’s red cup is on the log beside him. I also gave him a big floppy hat with a feather in it - beneath the hat is another (empty) wine bottle.
All of the characters were styled to have some resemblance to their actors, except Evelyn, and only because Anna’s descripton of her was exceptionally vivid (cherubic, curly hair, southen-belle type).
I cannot draw fire. And I gave up on the background.
Characters are owned by their actors - Strix belongs to
@commanderholly
, Diath belongs to
@projared
, Evelyn to Anna Prouser and Paultin to Natewantstobattle (I don’t know if they have tumblrs to link to…)
Once I have the time, I might do a digital painted version. Got some deadlines and a day job to deal with first, though.
2H pencil on A4 paper.Charles Darwin was not yet 30 when he got the basic idea for the theory of evolution. But it wasn’t until he turned 50 that he presented his argument to the world. He spent those two decades methodically compiling evidence for his theory and coming up with responses to every skeptical counterargument he could think of. And the counterargument he anticipated most of all was that the gradual evolutionary process he envisioned could not produce certain complex structures.
Consider the human eye. It is made up of many parts—a retina, a lens, muscles, jelly, and so on—all of which must interact for sight to occur. Damage one part—detach the retina, for instance—and blindness can follow. In fact, the eye functions only if the parts are of the right size and shape to work with one another. If Darwin was right, then the complex eye had evolved from simple precursors. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote that this idea “seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”
But Darwin could nonetheless see a path to the evolution of complexity. In each generation, individuals varied in their traits. Some variations increased their survival and allowed them to have more offspring. Over generations those advantageous variations would become more common—would, in a word, be “selected.” As new variations emerged and spread, they could gradually tinker with anatomy, producing complex structures.
In Brief Conventional wisdom holds that complex structures evolve from simpler ones, step-by-step, through a gradual evolutionary process, with Darwinian selection favoring intermediate forms along the way. But recently some scholars have proposed that complexity can arise by other means—as a side effect, for instance—even without natural selection to promote it. Studies suggest that random mutations that individually have no effect on an organism can fuel the emergence of complexity in a process known as constructive neutral evolution.
The human eye, Darwin argued, could have evolved from a simple light-catching patch of tissue of the kind that animals such as flatworms grow today. Natural selection could have turned the patch into a cup that could detect the direction of the light. Then, some added feature would work with the cup to further improve vision, better adapting an organism to its surroundings, and so this intermediate precursor of an eye would be passed down to future generations. And, step-by-step, natural selection could drive this transformation to increased complexity because each intermediate form would provide an ad–vantage over what came before.
Darwin’s musings on the origin of complexity have found support in modern biology. Today biologists can probe the eye and other organs in detail at the molecular level, where they find immensely complex proteins joining together to make structures that bear a striking resemblance to portals, conveyor belts and motors. Such intricate systems of proteins can evolve from simpler ones, with natural selection favoring the intermediates along the way.
But recently some scientists and philosophers have suggested that complexity can arise through other routes. Some argue that life has a built-in tendency to become more complex over time. Others maintain that as random mutations arise, complexity emerges as a side effect, even without natural selection to help it along. Complexity, they say, is not purely the result of millions of years of fine-tuning through natural selection—the process that Richard Dawkins famously dubbed “the blind watchmaker.” To some extent, it just happens.
A Sum of Varied Parts
Biologists and philosophers have pondered the evolution of complexity for decades, but according to Daniel W. McShea, a paleobiologist at Duke University, they have been hobbled by vague definitions. “It’s not just that they don’t know how to put a number on it. They don’t know what they mean by the word,” McShea says.
McShea has been contemplating this question for years, working closely with Robert N. Brandon, also at Duke. McShea and Brandon suggest that we look not only at the sheer number of parts making up living things but at the types of parts. Our bodies are made of 10 trillion cells. If they were all of one type, we would be featureless heaps of protoplasm. Instead we have muscle cells, red blood cells, skin cells, and so on. Even a single organ can have many different cell types. The retina, for example, has about 60 different kinds of neurons, each with a distinct task. By this measure, we can say that we humans are, indeed, more complex than an animal such as a sponge, which has perhaps only six cell types.
One advantage of this definition is that you can measure complexity in many ways. Our skeletons have different types of bones, for example, each with a distinctive shape. Even the spine is made up of different types of parts, from the vertebrae in the neck that hold up our head to the ones that support our rib cage.
In their 2010 book Biology’s First Law, McShea and Brandon outlined a way that complexity defined in this way could arise. They argued that a bunch of parts that start out more or less the same should differentiate over time. Whenever organisms reproduce, one or more of their genes may mutate. And sometimes these mutations give rise to more types of parts. Once an organism has more parts, those units have an opportunity to become different. After a gene is accidentally copied, the duplicate may pick up mutations that the original does not share. Thus, if you start with a set of identical parts, according to McShea and Brandon, they will tend to become increasingly different from one another. In other words, the organism’s complexity will increase.
As complexity arises, it may help an organism survive better or have more offspring. If so, it will be favored by natural selection and spread through the population. Mammals, for example, smell by binding odor molecules to receptors on nerve endings in their nose. These receptor genes have repeatedly duplicated over millions of years. The new copies mutate, allowing mammals to smell a wider range of aromas. Animals that rely heavily on their nose, such as mice and dogs, have more than 1,000 of these receptor genes. On the other hand, complexity can be a burden. Mutations can change the shape of a neck vertebra, for instance, making it hard for the head to turn. Natural selection will keep these mutations from spreading through populations. That is, organisms born with those traits will tend to die before reproducing, thus taking the deleterious traits out of circulation when they go. In these cases, natural selection works against complexity.
Unlike standard evolutionary theory, McShea and Brandon see complexity increasing even in the absence of natural selection. This statement is, they maintain, a fundamental law of biology—perhaps its only one. They have dubbed it the zero-force evolutionary law.
The Fruit-Fly Test
Recently McShea and Leonore Fleming, a graduate student at Duke, put the zero-force evolutionary law to the test. The subjects were Drosophila flies. For more than a century scientists have reared stocks of the flies to use in experiments. In their laboratory homes, the flies have led a pampered life, provided with a constant supply of food and a steady, warm climate. Their wild relatives, meanwhile, have to contend with starvation, predators, cold and heat. Natural selection is strong among the wild flies, eliminating mutations that make flies unable to cope with their many challenges. In the sheltered environment of the labs, in contrast, natural selection is feeble.
The zero-force evolutionary law makes a clear prediction: over the past century the lab flies should have been less subject to the elimination of disadvantageous mutations and thus should have become more complex than the wild ones.
Fleming and McShea examined the scientific literature for 916 laboratory lines of flies. They made many different measures of complexity in each population. In the journal Evolution & Development, they recently reported that the lab flies were indeed more complex than wild ones.
Although some biologists have endorsed the zero-force evolutionary law, Douglas Erwin, a leading paleontologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, thinks it has some serious flaws. “One of its basic assumptions fails,” he argues. According to the law, complexity may increase in the absence of selection. But that would be true only if organisms could actually exist beyond the influence of selection. In the real world, even when they are pampered by the most doting of scientists, Erwin contends, selection still exerts a force. For an animal such as a fly to develop properly, hundreds of genes have to interact in an elaborate choreography, turning one cell into many, giving rise to different organs, and so on. Mutations may disrupt that choreography, preventing the flies from becoming viable adults.
An organism can exist without external selection—without the environment determining who wins and loses in the evolutionary race—but it will still be subject to internal selection, which takes place within organisms. In their new study, McShea and Fleming do not provide evidence for the zero-force evolutionary law, according to Erwin, “because they only consider adult variants.” The researchers did not look at the mutants that died from developmental disorders before reaching maturity, despite being cared for by scientists.
Some of the insects had irregular legs. Others acquired complicated patterns of colors on their wings. The segments of their antennae took on different shapes. Freed from natural selection, flies have reveled in complexity.
Another objection Erwin and other critics have raised is that McShea and Brandon’s version of complexity does not jibe with how most people define the term. After all, an eye does not just have many different parts. Those parts also carry out a task together, and each one has a particular job to do. But McShea and Brandon argue that the kind of complexity that they are examining could lead to complexity of other sorts. “The kind of complexity that we’re seeing in this Drosophila population is the foundation for really interesting stuff that selection could get hold of” to build complex structures that function to aid survival, McShea says.
Molecular Complexity
As a paleobiologist, McShea is accustomed to thinking about the kind of complexity he can see in fossils—bones fitting together into a skeleton, for example. But in recent years a number of molecular biologists have independently begun to think much as he does about how complexity emerges.
In the 1990s a group of Canadian biologists started to ponder the fact that mutations often have no effect on an organism at all. These mutations are, in the jargon of evolutionary biology, neutral. The scientists, including Michael Gray of Dalhousie University in Halifax, proposed that the mutations could give rise to complex structures without going through a series of intermediates that are each selected for their help in adapting an organism to its environment. They dubbed this process “constructive neutral evolution.”
Gray has been encouraged by some recent studies that provide compelling evidence for constructive neutral evolution. One of the leaders in this research is Joe Thornton of the University of Oregon. He and his colleagues have found what appears to be an example in the cells of fungi. In fungi, such as a portobello mushroom, cells have to move atoms from one place to another to stay alive. One of the ways they do so is with molecular pumps called vacuolar ATPase complexes. A spinning ring of proteins shuttles atoms from one side of a membrane in the fungus to another. This ring is clearly a complex structure. It contains six protein molecules. Four of the molecules consist of the protein known as Vma3. The fifth is Vma11 and the sixth Vma16. All three types of protein are essential for the ring to spin.
To find out how this complex structure evolved, Thornton and his colleagues compared the proteins with related versions in other organisms, such as animals. (Fungi and animals share a common ancestor that lived around a billion years ago.)
In animals, the vacuolar ATPase complexes also have spinning rings made of six proteins. But those rings are different in one crucial way: instead of having three types of proteins in their rings, they have only two. Each animal ring is made up of five copies of Vma3 and one of Vma16. They have no Vma11. By McShea and Brandon’s definition of complexity, fungi are more complex than animals—at least when it comes to their vacuolar ATPase complexes.
The scientists looked closely at the genes encoding the ring proteins. Vma11, the ring protein unique to fungi, turns out to be a close relative of the Vma3 in both animals and fungi. The genes for Vma3 and Vma11 must therefore share a common ancestry. Thornton and his colleagues concluded that early in the evolution of fungi, an ancestral gene for ring proteins was accidentally duplicated. Those two copies then evolved into Vma3 and Vma11.
By comparing the differences in the genes for Vma3 and Vma11, Thornton and his colleagues reconstructed the ancestral gene from which they both evolved. They then used that DNA sequence to create a corresponding protein—in effect, resurrecting an 800-million-year-old protein. The scientists called this protein Anc.3-11—short for ancestor of Vma3 and Vma11. They wondered how the protein ring functioned with this ancestral protein. To find out, they inserted the gene for Anc.3-11 into the DNA of yeast. They also shut down its descendant genes, Vma3 and Vma11. Normally, shutting down the genes for the Vma3 and Vma11 proteins would be fatal because the yeast could no longer make their rings. But Thornton and his co-workers found that the yeast could survive with Anc.3-11 instead. It combined Anc.3-11 with Vma16 to make fully functional rings.
Experiments such as this one allowed the scientists to formulate a hypothesis for how the fungal ring became more complex. Fungi started out with rings made from only two proteins—the same ones found in animals like us. The proteins were versatile, able to bind to themselves or to their partners, joining up to proteins either on their right or on their left. Later the gene for Anc.3-11 duplicated into Vma3 and Vma11. These new proteins kept doing what the old ones had done: they assembled into rings for pumps. But over millions of generations of fungi, they began to mutate. Some of those mutations took away some of their versatility. Vma11, for example, lost the ability to bind to Vma3 on its clockwise side. Vma3 lost the ability to bind to Vma16 on its clockwise side. These mutations did not kill the yeast, because the proteins could still link together into a ring. They were neutral mutations, in other words. But now the ring had to be more complex because it could form successfully only if all three proteins were present and only if they arranged themselves in one pattern.
Thornton and his colleagues have uncovered precisely the kind of evolutionary episode predicted by the zero-force evolutionary law. Over time, life produced more parts—that is, more ring proteins. And then those extra parts began to diverge from one another. The fungi ended up with a more complex structure than their ancestors had. But it did not happen the way Darwin had imagined, with natural selection favoring a series of intermediate forms. Instead the fungal ring degenerated its way into complexity.
Fixing Mistakes
Gray has found another example of constructive neutral evolution in the way many species edit their genes. When cells need to make a given protein, they transcribe the DNA of its gene into RNA, the single-stranded counterpart of DNA, and then use special enzymes to replace certain RNA building blocks (called nucleotides) with other ones. RNA editing is essential to many species, including us—the unedited RNA molecules produce proteins that do not work. But there is also something decidedly odd about it. Why don’t we just have genes with the correct original sequence, making RNA editing unnecessary?
The scenario that Gray proposes for the evolution of RNA editing goes like this: an enzyme mutates so that it can latch onto RNA and change certain nucleotides. This enzyme does not harm the cell, nor does it help it—at least not at first. Doing no harm, it persists. Later a harmful mutation occurs in a gene. Fortunately, the cell already has the RNA-binding enzyme, which can compensate for this mutation by editing the RNA. It shields the cell from the harm of the mutation, allowing the mutation to get passed down to the next generation and spread throughout the population. The evolution of this RNA-editing enzyme and the mutation it fixed was not driven by natural selection, Gray argues. Instead this extra layer of complexity evolved on its own—“neutrally.” Then, once it became widespread, there was no way to get rid of it.
David Speijer, a biochemist at the University of Amsterdam, thinks that Gray and his colleagues have done biology a service with the idea of constructive neutral evolution, especially by challenging the notion that all complexity must be adaptive. But Speijer worries they may be pushing their argument too hard in some cases. On one hand, he thinks that the fungus pumps are a good example of constructive neutral evolution. “Everybody in their right mind would totally agree with it,” he says. In other cases, such as RNA editing, scientists should not, in his view, dismiss the possibility that natural selection was at work, even if the complexity seems useless.
Gray, McShea and Brandon acknowledge the important role of natural selection in the rise of the complexity that surrounds us, from the biochemistry that builds a feather to the photosynthetic factories inside the leaves of trees. Yet they hope their research will coax other biologists to think beyond natural selection and to see the possibility that random mutation can fuel the evolution of complexity on its own. “We don’t dismiss adaptation at all as part of that,” Gray says. “We just don’t think it explains everything.”
This article was produced in collaboration with Scientific American and printed in the August 2013 issue of the magazine.possession +
One of India's major two-wheeler manufacturers, Bajaj Auto Ltd (BAL), is likely to announce acquisition of the European performance motorcycle brand - Ducati At the company’s annual general meeting on Thursday, Rajiv Bajaj, managing director of BAL, told shareholders that the company is close to settle a new alliance.“We are very close to finalising a very promising alliance. It’s not certain that it will happen, but if it happens, it will open up enormous possibilities for the company,” Rajiv said.He also told that if things go in the ballpark, an official announcement will be made within the next two weeks. However, any Bajaj official declined to name the brand that the company is in talks with.Around a month back, Harley-Davidson and Bajaj were reportedly in talks with Volkswagen group to takeof its Audi-controlled Ducati motorbike brand. The reports also suggested that there are numerous other groups bidding for its acquisition, including the Indian manufacturers - Hero MotoCorp and Royal Enfield A recent update on Reuters news agency suggests that Italy's Benetton family seeks to make Ducati motorbikes Italian again. "Ducati has received several tentative bids with the Benetton family's investment vehicle Edizione Holding valuing the Monster motorbike maker at $1.2 billion," one of the sources told Reuters.At the same time, an Italian news website reported that KTM AG, 48 per cent of whose equity stakes are owned by Bajaj Auto, is closing in on the Ducati brand.So, the possibility of Bajaj closing the deal to acquire Ducati and announce another iconic international brand under its umbrella is rather high.The Pune-based auto major is already making good use of the technology provided by its Austrian partner in making advanced motorcycles at an economical cost. Now, it will be interesting to see how the performance brand Ducati gels with the Indian automaker, if the acquisition is concluded successfully.I had an interesting study brought to my attention recently (ht/ Robert Burriss) and I thought I’d get back to a nuts and bolts post with something useful I found in it.
Women Selectively Guard Their Desirable Mates From Ovulating Women.
As you might expect, much of the findings in this study reinforce many Red Pill principles founded in evo-psych, but there are a few new angles to consider here. Before I start to riff on this study, bear in mind that the concept of female mate guarding behavior centers on what the researchers define as ‘desirable mates’ to women. This subjective assessment of desirability will play into all this analysis.
For women, forming close, cooperative relationships with other women at once poses important opportunities and possible threats-including mate retention. To maximize the benefits and minimize the costs of same-sex social relationships, we propose that women’s mate guarding is functionally flexible and that women are sensitive to both interpersonal and contextual cues indicating whether other women might be likely and effective mate poachers. Here, we assess one such cue: other women’s fertility. Because ovulating (i.e., high-fertility) women are both more attractive to men and also more attracted to (desirable) men, ovulating women may be perceived to pose heightened threats to other women’s romantic relationships. Across 4 experiments, partnered women were exposed to photographs of other women taken during either their ovulatory or nonovulatory menstrual-cycle phases, and consistently reported intentions to socially avoid ovulating (but not nonovulating) women-but only when their own partners were highly desirable. Exposure to ovulating women also increased women’s sexual desires for their (highly desirable) partners. These findings suggest that women can be sensitive to subtle cues of other women’s fertility and respond (e.g., via social exclusion, enhanced sexual attention to own mate) in ways that may facilitate their mate retention goals while not thwarting their affiliative goals.
Right from the start here we have two Red Pill foundations confirmed; the influence that perceptual SMV plays in women’s sense of passive Dread and the fundamental influence that menstruation dictates to sexual arousal and concurrent motivations for sex appeal during women’s ovulation phase.
I’ve previously gone into the dynamics that play out between men and women with regard to perceived SMV of a partner versus the other partner’s self-perception of their own SMV and how this determines secure vs. insecure attachment. This post was more of an outline of results of SMV imbalance rather that the motivations for the characteristics of those personal attachments. This study illustrates these underlying motivators very well.
Anyone who’s heard my Man in Demand talk on Hypergamy understands the (menstrual cycle) biological root for women’s personal and sociological behavior, and this study provides yet another confirmation of it. I’ve also written in the past about men’s propensity for mate guarding and the behavioral cues women, both subtly and not so subtly, display that prompts them to mate guarding. However, I’ve yet to explore women’s mate guarding behaviors.
I’m bringing up the SMV ratios and Mate Guarding posts here because it’s important to bear in mind the subjectivity that perceived SMV plays in regard to motivating mate guarding. Depending on that balance (or imbalance) one partner will be more motivated to mate guard than the other. Which of course then brings us back to the Cardinal Rule of Relationships. Mate guarding impulse is contextual to the comparative value of both individuals and the value of others in their social environment (potential sexual competitors).
Thus, it is a significant challenge for women when other women attempt to poach their partners. For instance, over 50% of women admit to attempting to poach another woman’s partner, and over 80% of men admit to having been the object of another woman’s poaching—with about half of men admitting to “going along” with the poaching attempt (e.g., Schmitt et al., 2004; Schmitt & Buss, 2001). Women have good reason, then, to mate guard.
I’m going to encourage readers to take the time to, at the very least, read the introduction, premise and results of this comprehensive study. Naturally there will be incredulous women who will insist that men tend to overestimate the displayed sexual interests of women towards them. This is a common social convention that serves a very specific purpose for women; plausible deniability.
If the common group-think is that men are egotistical, think they’re “all that” and stupidly believe they’re seeing sexual cues from women because “that’s just how men are”, then we have a pre-established condition in which women can believably deny interest. Thus, should a man not find a woman attractive, or opt for another, this then serves as a rejection buffer as well as a precondition for her own rejection of a man should he make an approach and not be found attractive.
The Schmitt & Buss studies account for this, but even if they didn’t there would still need to be a functional reason for women’s mate guarding behavior. That reason puts the lie to the social convention of women presuming men aren’t as perceptive of their sexual cues as they’d like to believe.
[…] whereas men have at times physically isolated and sequestered their female partners to restrict other men’s access to them (e.g., in harems), women may analogously socially isolate their partners from potential poachers—keeping them apart so as to preclude potentially costly competition for their romantic partners. The usefulness of this strategy depends on women being able to identify those who might be likely and effective mate poachers, and then excluding them (but not others) from their social circles. If a woman indiscriminately distances herself and her partner from potential poachers (i.e., all other women), she is assured of his fidelity but at the cost of eliminating her access to the numerous benefits of female–female friendships.
Spoiler alert: The study confirms that women will covertly exclude themselves and their lover’s company from women who A.) outclass them in comparative SMV (hotter women than they perceive themselves to be) and B.) happen to be in the proliferative phase of ovulation.
This indicates that not only are women subconsciously (if not consciously) aware of intrasexual rivals ovulatory states – as evidenced by dress, ornamentation, vocal intonation, scent, sexual proceptivity, etc. – but they are aware enough to orchestrate covert methods to protect their sexual investments in a ‘high value’ male while ensuring future intrasexual friendships.
That may seem like an overly scientific way of saying women watch out for other women slutting it up, but the subcommunications of ovulation are so subtle that women’s subconscious, peripheral awareness of those cues evolved for a sensitivity that goes beyond the obvious slut. That’s how important retaining a better-than-self SMV optimal mating choice is to women in an evolutionary scope. That sensitivity is part of women’s psychological firmware.
[…]In addition, if a woman were to consistently and indiscriminately exclude other women from her own and, by extension, her partner’s social circle, she might gain a reputation for being non-communal and non-nurturing, and thus, for being an undesirable friend. This might not only thwart her ability to form future friendships with other women, but might also lead her partner to perceive her as highly difficult, uncooperative, controlling, and non-trusting. Thus, on one hand, the costs of indiscriminately avoiding other women are high because women reap important benefits from making new same-sex friends, On the other hand, women can and do mate poach with frequency, and those women deeply embedded in one’s social circle may have increased access, motivation, and ability to poach successfully.
There’s a few things to unpack here before we can make this information Red Pill / Game applicable. The most important metric that female mate guarding indicates is her genuine assessment of a man’s SMV and how valuable his participation and investment in their LTR (or even STR sexual value) is to her.
I’ve seen this mate guarding play out in my own relationships before, both as a Red Pill husband who happens to work with beautiful women in the liquor industry and prior to my Red Pill awareness of it in my libertine 20s. Back then it was easy to pass off as ‘bitches be crazy’ when a girlfriend or a short term sex partner “just got jealous”. But in hindsight the timing of those fits of jealousy seemed a bit to regular.
I’m going to suggest that developing an awareness of a woman’s bouts of jealousy or her subtle timing in wanting to spend time alone with you, or her being more sexually proceptive (she wants to fuck more) with you at times you may think odd. These are Alpha or Beta Tells. A woman’s preoccupation with guarding you from other women is a prime indicator of your SMV worth to her. It stands to reason that only ‘desirable’ men deserve the effort of her mate guarding.
This is an important Red Pill sensitivity to have as it also allows you to determine a woman’s unspoken understanding of where she and you stand in relative SMV comparison. As I was saying in the introduction here, that ‘desirability’, that SMV ratio, that Alpha impression that makes you worth mate guarding is subjective to what a woman’s self-perceived SMV is in respect to your own. When we interact with women in the long term it’s very easy for men to lose sight of this balance and think that their frumpy wife is the best they can do. There is a definitive psychological game that women of low SMV will play with men they know are of higher value – they will continually devalue that man as a form of mate guarding.
That devaluation may take the form of browbeating, nagging or accusing him of being attracted to other women in an effort to get her higher value LTR man to self-limit his being poached by endlessly qualifying himself to his low SMV wife/girlfriend. It’s far easier, and far lower an investment of resources if a low SMV woman can convince her higher SMV man to mate guard himself.
Just as an aside here, there may be a few readers who’ll think women will rationally consider that their long term provisioning is virtually assured in a feminine-primary social order. Alimony, child support or pro-female government will assure her and her offspring a baseline of security, so why mate guard any man?
The answer of course is that women |
together, these findings show that δ‐CB 1 heteromerization expands the signalling repertoire of individual receptors.
Controversial. One study showed no internalization of the heteromer but another study showed internalization of the heteromer and cross‐desensitization by α 2 adrenoceptor or μ agonist via p38 MAPK.
Several lines of evidence have suggested interactions between δ‐opioid receptors and CB 1 receptors. These included studies showing that (i) δ receptor agonists decrease CB 1 receptor signalling, (ii) δ receptor antagonists attenuate CB 1 receptor‐mediated anxiolytic effects, (iii) CB 1 receptor levels and signalling increase in the substantia nigra of δ receptor‐knockout mice and (iv) δ receptor activity increases in the caudate putamen of CB 1 receptor‐knockout mice (Shapira et al., 1998 ; Berrendero and Maldonado, 2002 ; Berrendero et al., 2003 ; Uriguen et al., 2005 ). Direct interactions between δ and CB 1 receptors were suggested by BRET assays carried out in heterologous cells coexpressing luciferase‐tagged CB 1 receptors and yellow fluorescent protein (YFP)‐tagged δ receptors showing both receptors in close proximity in live cells (Rios et al., 2006 ). This was further supported by co‐immunoprecipitation studies using epitope‐tagged receptors and by immunofluorescence studies showing colocalization of δ receptors with CB 1 receptors in cortical neurons (Rozenfeld et al., 2012 ) (Table 2 ).
Although studies have shown that the analgesic potency of spinally administered morphine is decreased in mice lacking α 2A adrenoceptors (Stone et al., 1997 ), very little is known about the physiological relevance of μ‐α 2A heteromers. Thus further studies, using either heteromer‐selective ligands/antibodies or agents that disrupt the heteromer, are needed to elucidate the role of the μ‐α 2A heteromer during normal physiology and pathology in particular during pain attenuation.
Examination of G‐protein and MAPK activation in cells expressing the μ‐α 2A heteromer shows that the morphine‐mediated signalling is enhanced compared with cells expressing only μ receptors; however, this enhancement of signalling is not seen when a combination of morphine with clonidine (α 2 adrenoceptor agonist) is used (Jordan et al., 2003 ). Furthermore, the G‐protein as well as MAPK activation by noradrenaline (α 2A adrenoceptor agonist) is decreased in the presence of morphine (Vilardaga et al., 2008 ). Similar findings were made with spinal cord neurons (Jordan et al., 2003 ), suggesting that the interactions between μ receptors and α 2A adrenoceptors also take place in endogenous systems and that the signalling of μ receptors can be modulated by α 2A adrenoceptors (Table 2 ). This is also supported by studies carried out in mouse dorsal root ganglion neurons which show that prolonged treatment with the μ receptor agonist, DAMGO, or the α 2 adrenoceptor agonist, clonidine, induced cross‐desensitization between μ and α 2A receptor‐mediated inhibition of voltage‐gated Ca +2 current and this was associated with the co‐internalization of μ and α 2A adrenoceptors (Tan et al., 2009 ).
Studies showing functional interactions between μ receptors and α 2A adrenoceptors suggested that these two receptors could form heteromers. These included studies showing that a combination of μ receptor and α 2A adrenoceptor agonists resulted in antinociceptive synergy and that the potency of morphine‐mediated antinociception is decreased in mice lacking α 2A adrenoceptors (Drasner and Fields, 1988 ; Ossipov et al., 1997 ; Stone et al., 1997 ). Several lines of evidence support heteromerization between μ receptors and α 2A adrenoceptors. For example, immunohistochemical analysis using Flag‐tagged μ and hemagglutinin‐tagged α 2A adrenoceptors demonstrate colocalization of both receptors not only at the plasma membrane but also within intracellular vesicles (Jordan et al., 2003 ). In addition, co‐immunoprecipitation studies detect the presence of interacting μ‐α 2A complexes in heterologous cells and in primary hippocampal neurons, and BRET and FRET assays show that the two receptors are close enough to form interacting complexes in live cells (Jordan et al., 2003 ; Zhang and Limbird, 2004 ; Vilardaga et al., 2008 ). Moreover, FRET analysis revealed that binding of an agonist to μ receptors suppressed the α 2A adrenoceptor agonist (norepinephrine)‐induced FRET signal probably through a conformational change transmitted from the μ receptors to the α 2A adrenoceptors (Vilardaga et al., 2008 ) (Table 2 ). Interestingly, while treatment with agonists to individual receptors, such as morphine (μ receptor) or clonidine (α 2A adrenoceptor), leads to an apparent increase in the levels of μ‐α 2A complexes, a combination of agonists to the two receptors leads to a decrease to below the basal levels (Jordan et al., 2003 ). This suggests that either co‐occupancy of both protomers disrupts heteromer formation or makes the latter more susceptible to the effects of detergents used for cell lysis.
Very little is known about the physiological relevance of κ‐β 2 heteromers. Thus further studies are needed to evaluate the role of this heteromer pair in normal physiology and pathology and particularly in cardiac pathology, given the presence of both receptors in the heart.
Examination of trafficking properties show that treatment with a β 2 adrenoceptor agonist, that induces β 2 adrenoceptor internalization in cells expressing only this receptor, does not induce β 2 adrenoceptor internalization in cells expressing the κ‐β 2 heteromer (Jordan et al., 2001 ) (Table 2 ). This suggests that heteromerization between κ receptors and β 2 adrenoceptors modulates the trafficking properties of the β 2 adrenoceptors.
The signalling properties of the κ‐β 2 heteromer were investigated using the AC and the MAPK phosphorylation assays. In the case of the AC assay, in cells expressing the κ‐β 2 heteromer, there were no changes in the ability of κ receptor agonists to inhibit and of β 2 adrenoceptor agonists to stimulate enzyme activity compared with cells expressing individual receptors (Jordan et al., 2001 ). In the case of agonist‐mediated MAPK activation, it was observed that in cells expressing the κ‐β 2 heteromer, the κ receptor agonist but not the β 2 adrenoceptor agonist could induce ERK1/2 phosphorylation. These findings suggest that while heteromerization with κ receptors does not significantly affect the functional G‐protein coupling properties of β 2 adrenoceptors, it may promote biased signalling at β 2 adrenoceptors by preserving G‐protein‐mediated signalling (i.e. AC activity) but impairing MAPK signalling (Jordan et al., 2001 ) (Table 2 ).
Examination of the ligand‐binding properties of κ‐β 2 heteromers shows that there are no changes in binding affinity of individual receptor ligands, such as U‐69593, nor‐binaltorphimine and isoprenaline, when comparing with cells expressing either κ receptors or β 2 adrenoceptors (Jordan et al., 2001 ); this suggests that heteromerization between these two receptors does not lead to alterations in the pharmacological properties of individual receptor protomers (Table 2 ).
Studies showing that κ receptors and β 2 adrenoceptors are present in the heart, and that a β 2 adrenoceptor agonist modulates radiolabelled ligand binding to κ receptors suggested possible heteromerization between these two receptors (Ventura et al., 1989 ; Tai et al., 1991 ). Co‐immunoprecipitation studies carried out in HEK‐293 cells coexpressing myc ‐tagged κ receptors and Flag‐tagged β 2 adrenoceptors detected the presence of interacting complexes at the cell surface (Jordan et al., 2001 ). Furthermore, BRET assays show that the two receptors are close enough to directly interact in live cells (Ramsay et al., 2002 ) (Table 2 ). Taken together, these studies indicate that κ receptors and β 2 adrenoceptors can form heteromers in cells coexpressing both receptors.
Very little ‘direct evidence’ is available about the physiological role of δ‐β 2 heteromers. Studies suggest that interactions between δ receptors and β 2 adrenoceptors may play a role in pathological conditions such as myocardial ischaemia (Huang et al., 2007 ). Thus further studies, using either heteromer‐selective ligands/antibodies or agents that disrupt the heteromer, are needed to elucidate the role of the δ‐β 2 heteromer during normal physiology and pathology.
Examination of the trafficking properties of the δ‐β 2 heteromer shows that treatment with either δ receptor or β 2 adrenoceptor agonists induces heteromer internalization (Jordan et al., 2001 ), while in cells expressing individual receptors, δ receptor agonists do not induce β 2 adrenoceptor endocytosis and β 2 adrenoceptor agonists do not induce δ‐receptor endocytosis (Jordan et al., 2001 ). These findings suggest that heteromerization between δ receptors and β 2 adrenoceptors leads to alterations in the trafficking of individual receptors (Table 2 ).
Examination of the ligand‐binding properties of the δ‐β 2 heteromer shows that heteromerization between these two receptors does not lead to alterations in the pharmacological properties of individual protomers (Jordan et al., 2001 ) (Table 2 ). In addition, the signalling properties of δ receptoragonists (inhibition of AC activity) are similar in cells expressing either δ receptors or the δ‐β 2 heteromer (Jordan et al., 2001 ). Similarly, the signalling properties of β 2 adrenoceptor agonists (stimulation of AC activity) are similar in cells expressing either β 2 adrenoceptors or the δ‐β 2 heteromer (Jordan et al., 2001 ). Moreover, the activation of MAPK induced by δ receptor or β 2 adrenoceptor agonists in δ‐β 2 heteromer‐expressing cells was similar to that observed in cells expressing individual receptors (Jordan et al., 2001 ) (Table 2 ). These results indicate that heteromerization of δ receptors with β 2 adrenoceptors does not significantly affect signalling by agonists to individual protomers (Table 2 ).
Studies showing that [Leu]enkephalin (a δ‐receptor agonist) modulates β 2 adrenoceptor signalling and contraction in the heart suggested possible heteromerization between these two receptors (Pepe et al., 1997 ; Xiao et al., 1997 ). Co‐immunoprecipitation studies showed that these receptors form interacting complexes at the cell surface of HEK‐293 cells (Jordan et al., 2001 ). In addition, BRET studies showed that δ receptors and β 2 adrenoceptors were in close proximity and could directly interact in live cells. Moreover, the BRET signal was not changed in the absence or presence of agonists to both receptors leading to the suggestion that δ‐β 2 heteromers are constitutively formed in cells coexpressing both receptors (Ramsay et al., 2002 ) (Table 2 ).
The physiological relevance of probable δ‐α 2A heteromerization was examined by investigating agonist‐mediated neurite outgrowth in Neuro 2A cells. These studies showed that coexpression of α 2A adrenoceptors could increase deltorphin II‐(a δ receptor agonist) mediated neurite outgrowth in Neuro 2A cells. This suggests that α 2A adrenoceptors could allosterically modulate δ‐receptor function (Rios et al., 2004 ). Another study examined the effects of δ receptor and α 2A adrenoceptor agonists on antinociception and found that a combination of agonists to the two receptors resulted in ∼30‐fold increase in antinociceptive potency compared with administration of individual receptor agonists (Overland et al., 2009 ). Moreover, this increase in antinociceptive potency by a combination of δ receptor and α 2A adrenoceptor agonists was blocked by a PKC and not by a PKA inhibitor, whereas when each agonist was individually administered its potency was blocked by a PLC and not by a PKC inhibitor (Overland et al., 2009 ). The PKC isoform involved in these interactions between δ and α 2A adrenoceptor agonists has been recently identified as PKCε (Schuster et al., 2013 ). The antinociceptive synergy observed with a combination of δ and α 2A adrenoceptor agonists is thought to be due to the synergistic inhibition of the release of calcitonin gene‐related peptide (CGRP) from the terminals of primary afferent neurons in the spinal cord (Overland et al., 2009 ) (Table 2 ). Together, these studies suggest a role for δ‐α2A interacting receptor complexes in pain modulation but additional studies showing that disruption of the heteromer pair leads to changes in associating complexes and pain modulation would further support this point.
Functional interactions between δ and α 2A adrenoceptors suggested possible heteromerization between these two receptors. This included studies showing that attenuation of substance P‐mediated antinociception was potentiated by a combination of α 2A adrenoceptor and δ receptor agonists (Fairbanks et al., 2000 ), and that synergistic antinociceptive interactions between these two receptors were observed in μ receptor‐knockout but not in α 2A adrenoceptor‐knockout mice (Stone et al., 1997 ; Fairbanks et al., 2002 ; Guo et al., 2003 ). Colocalization studies suggested that δ and α 2A adrenoceptors could form interacting complexes as these receptors were extensively colocalized to the same cells in the terminals of capsaicin‐sensitive substance P‐expressing primary afferent neurons (Riedl et al., 2009 ). In addition, BRET assays show that these two receptors were close enough to directly interact in live cells (Rios et al., 2004 ). Furthermore, co‐immunoprecipitation studies using epitope‐tagged receptors show that the two receptors form interacting complexes (Rios et al., 2004 ) (Table 2 ). Although a combination of colocalization, co‐immunoprecipitation and BRET studies suggest the formation of δ‐α 2A heteromers, not much is known about how interactions between these two receptors modulate the binding, signalling and trafficking properties of individual protomers. Such information is necessary in order to consider this receptor pair as a bona fide heteromer.
Other heteromers involving opioid receptors
δ opioid and chemokine receptor heteromers The formation of heteromers between δ opioid receptors and the chemokine receptor CXCR4 (δ‐CXCR4 heteromer) is suggested by FRET and co‐immunoprecipitation studies carried out using heterologous cells and primary monocytes from healthy donors (Pello et al., 2008) (Table 3). The FRET signal and the level of interacting δ‐CXCR4 complexes did not change in the presence or absence of receptor‐selective agonists such as DPDPE (δ receptor agonist) or CXCL12 (CXCR4 agonist), suggesting that these heteromers are constitutively formed (Pello et al., 2008). Table 3. Heteromers involving opioid receptors and GPCRs other than cannabinoid or catecholamine receptorsa Heteromer pair In vitro heteromer properties (binding, signalling, trafficking) In vivo effects of reagents targeting heteromers References δ‐CXCR4 Detection Co‐IP, FRET Binding No change. Signalling Inactivated by δ + CXCR4 agonists. No association with G‐proteins in the presence of δ + CXCR4 agonists. Trafficking No change. Pello et al., 2008 δ‐SNSR‐4 Detection BRET Binding Remains to be determined Signalling Preferential Gα q signalling and attenuation of Gα i signalling. Trafficking ↓ in δ receptor endocytosis by BAM22 in the presence of SNSR‐4. Breit et al., 2006 κ‐APJ Detection Colocalization, Co‐IP, BRET Binding Remains to be determined. Signalling ↑ in heteromer‐mediated PKC signalling. Trafficking Remains to be determined. Li et al., 2012 μ‐CCR5b Detection Co‐IP Binding Binding affinity for a ligand to one protomer not changed in the presence of ligand to partner protomer. Signalling ↓ in μ receptor ‐mediated G‐protein activation by CCR5 receptor agonist and vice versa. Trafficking μ receptor internalization by μ and not by CCR5 receptor agonists and vice versa. Bivalent ligand (Bivalent ligand 1) More potent inhibition of viral entry compared with naltrexone + maraviroc in antiviral activity assay. Suzuki et al., 2002 et al., 2004 et al., 2012; 2013 μ1D‐GRPRc Detection Co‐IP Binding Not reported. Signalling μ receptor‐mediated Ca+2 signalling only in cells expressing the heteromer. Trafficking ↑ in μ receptor ‐mediated GRPR internalization. TAT‐fusion protein (TAT‐μ1D CT ) TAT‐μ1D CT disrupts μ1D‐GRP receptor heteromers and blocks morphine‐induced scratching without affecting analgesia. Liu et al., 2011 μ‐mGlu 5 d Detection Co‐IP Binding No change in binding affinity for μ receptor agonist. ↑ in binding affinity for mGlu 5 receptor antagonist. Signalling No change in μ receptor agonist‐mediated inhibition of adenylate cyclase activity. mGlu 5 receptor antagonist ↓ μ receptor agonist‐mediated phosphorylation and desensitization of μ receptors. Trafficking mGlu 5 receptor antagonist ↓ μ receptor agonist‐mediated internalization of μ receptors. Bivalent ligand (MMG22) MMG22 antinociception (i.t. and i.c.v.) is equipotent to morphine in naïve mice, and more potent in LPS‐treated mice with less tolerance and respiratory depression. MMG22 shows antinociception (i.t.) in CFA‐induced inflammatory pain or bone cancer pain model. Schroder et al., 2009 et al., 2013 μ‐5‐HT 1A Detection Colocalization, Co‐IP, BRET Binding Remains to be determined. Signalling Transactivation of G‐protein fused to 5‐HT 1A receptor by μ receptor agonist. Activation of ERK1/2 by μ receptor agonist is blocked by 5‐HT 1A receptor agonist pretreatment. Trafficking No co‐internalization by protomer‐selective agonists. Daval et al., 1987 et al., 1992 et al., 1998 et al., 2000 et al., 2001 et al., 2012 μ‐NK1d Detection Colocalization, Co‐IP, BRET Binding ↑ in affinity for μ receptor agonist. No change in affinity for NK 1 receptor agonist. Signalling Pre‐incubation with μ agonist ↓ NK 1 receptor‐mediated ERK phosphorylation and vice versa. Trafficking Co‐internalization by protomer‐selective agonists. Bivalent peptide Assay shows that the peptide exhibits μ agonist and NK 1 receptor antagonist activity. Small molecule ligands Assay shows that the ligands exhibit μ agonist and NK 1 receptor antagonist activity. Multifunctional μ/δ agonist/NK 1 receptor antagonist compound (TY027) TY027 exhibits antinociception (i.c.v., i.t.) in naïve mice. TY027 exhibits antinociception (i.t., i.v.) against spinal nerve ligation‐induced hyperalgesia. TY027 produced antinociception with low tolerance, dependence or rewarding effects and was not accompanied by opioid‐related emesis or constipation. Aicher et al., 2000a,b et al., 2003 et al., 2007 et al., 2011 et al., 2013 μ‐sst 2A Detection Colocalization, Co‐IP Binding ↓ in binding affinity for sst 2 receptor agonists. No change in binding affinity for μ receptor agonist. Signalling ↑ inhibition of adenylate cyclase activity. No change in ERK1/2 activation. Pretreatment with the protomer agonist causes cross‐desensitization. Trafficking sst 2 receptor agonist induces heteromer internalization. μ agonist internalizes μ receptors but not sst 2A receptors. Pfeiffer et al., 2002 Table 4. List of ligands targeting opioid receptor heteromers Target Heteromer Pair Ligands Pharmacophores Spacer length References δ‐μ Bivalent ligand MDAN21 δ antagonist: DN‐21 μ agonist: MA‐19 21‐atom (Daniels et al., 2005 et al., 2013b et al., 2012 Bivalent ligand L2 δ antagonist:ENTI μ agonist: oxymorphone optimized for the heteromer(19–22‐atom) (not exactly mentioned) Bivalent ligand L4 δ agonist: DM‐SNC80 μ antagonist: naltrexone Biased agonist CYM51010 δ‐μ agonist: CYM51010 Not applicable (N/A) δ‐κ Bivalent ligand KDN‐21 δ antagonist: naltrindole (NTI) κ antagonist: 5′‐guanidinonaltrindole (5′‐GNTI) 21‐atom (Bhushan et al., 2004 et al., 2005 Heteromer targeting agonist 6′‐GNTI* δ‐κ agonist: 6′‐guanidinonaltrindole (6′‐GNTI) N/A μ‐κ Heteromer targeting agonist NNTA μ‐κ agonist: N‐naphthoyl‐β‐naltrexamine (NNTA) N/A (Yekkirala et al., 2011 μ1G‐NOP Heteromer targeting ligand IBN tx A μ1G‐NOP agonist: iodobenzoylnaltrexamide (IBN tx A) N/A (Majumdar et al., 2011 μ‐CB 1 R Bivalent ligand μ agonist: α‐oxymorphamine CB1 antagonist: SR141716 20‐atom (Le Naour et al., 2013 μ‐CCR5 Bivalent ligand Bivalent ligand 1 μ antagonist: naltrexone CCR5 antagonist: maraviroc 21‐atom (Yuan et al., 2012 μ‐mGluR5 Bivalent ligand MMG22 μ agonist: oxymorphone mGluR5 antagonist: m‐methoxy‐2‐methyl‐6‐(phenylethynyl) pyridine (M‐MPEP) 22‐atom (Akgun et al., 2013 μ‐NK1 Bivalent peptides Opioid agonist: H‐Tyr‐D‐Ala‐Gly‐Phe NK1 antagonist: Pro‐Leu‐Trp‐O‐3,5‐Bzl(CF 3 ) 2 N/A (Largent‐Milnes et al., 2013 et al., 2011 et al., 2007 Bivalent ligands small molecule μ agonist: fentanyl NK1 antagonist: L732138 N/A Multifunctional μ/δ agonist/NK1 antagonist compound TY027 μ‐NK1 agonist: H‐Tyr‐D‐Ala‐Gly‐Phe‐Met‐Pro‐Leu‐Trp‐NH‐3,5Bn(CF 3 ) 2 (TY027) N/A Examination of intracellular signalling shows that although selective agonists (DPDPE or CXCL12) lead to Gα i/o ‐protein activation in cells that coexpress both receptors, a combination of these two agonists inhibits receptor association with Gα i/o protein (Pello et al., 2008). These observations suggest that while δ‐CXCR4 heteromers are fully functional when activated by agonists to either protomer, a combination of agonists to both protomers inactivates the heteromer. Furthermore, CXCR12‐induced phosphorylation of CXCR4 (or desensitization of CXCR4) was not altered by cotreatment with DPDPE (Pello et al., 2008) (Table 3), suggesting that the simultaneous activation of both protomers in δ‐CXCR4 heteromers does not promote heterologous desensitization. Very little is known about the physiological role of δ‐CXCR4 heteromers. However, both δ receptors and CXCR4 are widely distributed in brain tissues and immune cells, and play key roles in inflammation processes and in pain sensation. As activation of both protomers in the δ‐CXCR4 heteromer appears to result in a ‘silent’ receptor complex, further studies to evaluate the role of this heteromer in vivo, particularly under inflammatory conditions are needed.
δ opioid and sensory neuron‐specific receptor (SNSR4) heteromers The sensory neuron‐specific receptor 4 is a GPCR with many names including SNSR3, SNSR4 and the official name of MRGPRX1 receptor; for brevity here it will be referred to as SNSR4. Heteromerization between δ receptors and SNSR4 was investigated based on studies showing that both receptors are present in dorsal root ganglia, and are activated by the bovine medulla adrenal peptide 22 (BAM22; a cleavage product of proenkephalin) although δ receptors mediate antinociceptive responses while SNSR4 mediates nociceptive responses (Lembo et al., 2002; Grazzini et al., 2004). BRET assays carried out in heterologous cells coexpressing δ and SNSR4 show that both receptors are in close proximity to one another and could directly interact in live cells (Breit et al., 2006) (Table 3). While δ receptor‐selective agonists activate Gα i/o ‐mediated signalling, SNSR4‐selective agonists activate Gα q ‐mediated signalling in cells expressing either δ receptors or SNSR4 or in cells coexpressing both receptors; this suggests that each receptor in the heteromeric complex acts as an independent signalling unit (Breit et al., 2006). Interestingly, naltrexone, an opioid receptor antagonist, can block BAM22‐mediated Gα q activation (Breit et al., 2006) suggesting transinhibition of SNSR4 signalling by δ receptors within the δ‐SNSR4 heteromer. Furthermore, costimulation of both protomers in the δ‐SNSR4 heteromer leads to preferential activation of Gα q ‐mediated signalling (PLC activation) and inhibition of Gα i/o ‐mediated signalling (Breit et al., 2006) (Table 3). This regulatory influence of SNSR4 on δ receptor signalling is not due to the PKC‐mediated δ receptor desensitization (Breit et al., 2006). Similar observations were made with cultured dorsal root ganglia from rat embryos (Breit et al., 2006), indicating that these changes in δ receptor coupling and signalling because of heteromerization with SNSR4 also occur in vivo. As both δ and SNSR4 contribute to the regulation of pain sensation (antinociception and nociception, respectively), further investigation on the role of the δ‐SNSR4 heteromer in normal physiology and pathology is needed.
κ opioid and apelin receptor (APJ) heteromers Studies have suggested the formation of heteromers between κ receptors and APJ receptors. Immunocytochemical studies in heterologous cells coexpressing both receptors show that both are colocalized predominantly at the plasma membrane (Li et al., 2012). Co‐immunoprecipitation studies show that both receptors form interacting complexes and BRET assays show that they are in close enough proximity to directly interact in live cells (Li et al., 2012). Interestingly, treatment with receptor‐specific agonists such as dynorphin A1–13 (for κ receptors) and apelin‐13 (for APJ receptors) increased the BRET ratio, indicating that either the heteromerization between these two receptors was facilitated by receptor occupancy or that the latter induced conformational changes that decreased the distance between the epitope tags on individual protomers (i.e. between luciferase and YFP tags) (Li et al., 2012) (Table 3). Signalling by the κ‐APJ heteromer was examined in heterologous cells and in cells that endogenously express both receptors. These studies show that treatment with an agonist to either receptor induces a PKC‐dependent ERK1/2 activation that is two‐ to threefold higher in cells coexpressing both receptors compared with cells expressing individual receptors (Li et al., 2012). In addition, heteromerization between κ and APJ receptors leads to an increase in PKC‐mediated signalling and a decrease in PKA‐mediated signalling compared with cells expressing individual receptors (Li et al., 2012) (Table 3). Taken together, these studies show that heteromerization between κ and APJ receptors leads to modulation of signalling by individual protomers. The functional consequence of κ‐APJ heteromerization was observed at the level of cell proliferation where treatment with either dynorphin A1–13 or apelin‐13 significantly increased the proliferation of cells expressing the heteromer compared with cells expressing individual receptors (Li et al., 2012). Although not much is known about the role of the κ‐APJ heteromer in vivo either in normal physiology or during pathology, the distribution of the dynorphin/κ receptor system and of the apelin/APJ system in the nuclei of the hypothalamus involved in regulation of arginine vasopressin release as well in the cardiovascular system (Sherman et al., 1986; Tsushima et al., 1993; Reaux et al., 2001), suggests a potential role for κ‐APJ heteromers in cardiovascular regulation.
μ opioid and chemokine receptor CCR5 heteromers Studies showing that μ‐opioid receptors are present in immune cells and that morphine treatment increased the expression of the chemokine receptor CCR5 in lymphocytes led to investigations on heteromerization between these two receptors (Chuang et al., 1995; Miyagi et al., 2000). Co‐immunoprecipitation studies show that CCR5 forms an interacting complex with μ receptors in cell lines that coexpress both receptors and that this is not modulated by treatment with receptor‐selective ligands (Suzuki et al., 2002; Chen et al., 2004) (Table 3). Examination of the pharmacological properties of the μ‐CCR5 heteromer shows that pretreatment with the μ receptor agonist, DAMGO, did not change the binding of radiolabelled CCL4 (MIP‐1β) to CCR5. Similarly, CCL5, another CCR5 ligand, did not change the binding properties of radiolabelled ligands to μ receptors (Chen et al., 2004) (Table 3). Interestingly, pretreatment with either DAMGO or CCL5 reduced CCL5‐ or DAMGO‐mediated [35S]GTPγS binding respectively (Chen et al., 2004). These results indicate that pretreatment with agonist to one protomer in the heteromeric complex reduces the ability of the partner receptor to activate G‐proteins. Examination of the trafficking properties of μ‐CCR5 heteromers shows that the μ agonist, DAMGO, induced internalization of μ receptors and not of CCR5 while the CCR5 agonist, CCL5, induced internalization of CCR5 and not of μ receptors (Chen et al., 2004) (Table 3) suggesting that agonists selective for one receptor do not affect internalization of the other receptor in μ‐CCR5 heteromers. Interestingly, pretreatment with either DAMGO or CCL5 can enhance the phosphorylation of both receptors in the heteromer, suggesting heterologous desensitization or cross‐desensitization (Chen et al., 2004). In this context, activation of PKCζ has been reported to be involved in the cross‐desensitization between μ and CCL5 (Song et al., 2011) (Table 3). The cross‐desensitization between μ receptors and CCR5 within the heteromeric complex may modulate the physiological effects of opioids and chemokines in pathological conditions such as HIV infection or opiate addiction (Table 3). A bivalent ligand targeting the μ‐CCR5 heteromer that comprises a μ‐selective antagonist pharmacophore, naltrexone, tethered through a 21‐atom spacer to the CCR5‐selective antagonist pharmacophore, maraviroc, has been developed (Yuan et al., 2012) (Table 4). This bivalent ligand is reported to be twice as potent as an inhibitor of viral entry, as a mixture of both antagonists in vitro (Yuan et al., 2013) (Table 3), suggesting a possible clinical usefulness of bivalent ligands targeting the μ‐CCR5 heteromer against infection by HIV.
μ opioid 1D (μ1D) receptor and gastrin‐releasing peptide (GRP) receptor heteromers μ1D is a μ receptor isoform comprising exons 1–3 and 8–9 of the Oprm gene and μ1D receptors colocalize with GRP receptors (also known as bombesin BB 2 receptors) in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord (Liu et al., 2011). Co‐immunoprecipitation studies with heterologous cells coexpressing both receptors or with spinal cord membranes show that μ1D and GRP receptors form interacting complexes (Liu et al., 2011) (Table 3). Examination of the signalling properties of the μ1D‐GRPR heteromer shows activation of the PLC‐mediated Ca2+ signalling pathway by either morphine or GRP in cells coexpressing μ1D and GRP receptors (Liu et al., 2011). Moreover, morphine or GRP receptor‐induced calcium spikes are blocked by the GRP receptor antagonist or by naloxone, indicating that morphine cross‐activates GRP receptors through μ1D receptors (Liu et al., 2011) (Table 3). The μ1D‐GRPR heteromer exhibits unique trafficking properties in that morphine treatment induces GRP receptor internalization in cells coexpressing both receptors but not in cells expressing only GRP receptors while a GRP receptor agonist did not induce μ1D receptor internalization in cells coexpressing both receptors (Liu et al., 2011). Taken together, these results suggest that heteromerization leads to modulation of protomer signalling and trafficking properties. In order to elucidate the physiological roles of μ1D‐GRPR heteromers, a membrane‐permeable peptide consisting of TAT fused to μ1D CT (TAT‐μ1D CT ), that disrupts heteromer formation, has been developed. Intrathecal administration of TAT‐μ1D CT specifically blocks morphine‐induced scratching without affecting morphine‐induced analgesia (Liu et al., 2011) (Table 3). This suggests that the μ1D‐GRPR heteromer may play a role in morphine‐induced scratching. Moreover, the uncoupling of morphine‐induced analgesia and morphine‐induced scratching by the TAT‐μ1D CT peptide underscores the necessity for elucidating the function of individual μ receptor isoforms, which could be useful in the development of novel analgesics without side effects.
μ opioid and metabotropic glutamate mGlu 5 receptor heteromers Co‐immunoprecipitation studies show that μ and mGlu 5 receptors can form interacting complexes in HEK‐293 cells coexpressing both receptors (Schroder et al., 2009). Interestingly, treatment with 2‐methyl‐6‐(phenylethynyl) pyridine (MPEP), a mGlu 5 receptor antagonist, increases the levels of interacting complexes (Schroder et al., 2009); this suggests that occupancy of mGlu 5 receptors by MPEP affects the conformation of μ receptors which either facilitates the formation of μ‐mGlu 5 heteromers or stabilizes the heteromer under the conditions used for receptor solubilization. Examination of the pharmacological properties of μ‐mGlu 5 heteromers shows that the binding affinity of the μ receptor agonist, DAMGO, is not changed when compared with cells expressing only μ receptors, while the binding affinity of the mGlu 5 receptor specific antagonist is increased when compared with cells expressing only mGlu 5 receptors (Schroder et al., 2009). In addition, while the |
right either. You see, when onions are dehydrated, a lot of the volatile, sulfurous compounds that give them their pungency get evaporated, so what you're left with is onion pieces that exhibit mostly sweetness, with a very faint, underlying onioniness.
100 percent dehydrated-then-rehydrated onions are pretty lacking in flavor and texture, but what if I were to just dehydrate my own onions partially in order to concentrate their flavor and cut down on some of their pungency?
I placed a paper towel-lined plate of minced onions in the microwave and zapped them on low power for 10 minutes in order to drive off their moisture. The result was onions with a distinct sweetness and just a touch of the sharp pungency of fresh onions. Perfect.
The Beef
Here's where we can really improve matters. McDonald's may use 100 percent beef, but it's pretty awful stuff with an odd, mash-like texture. We're much better off starting with fresh meat and grinding it ourselves. While most of my burgers get the Blue Label Burger Blend, this time I opted for 100 percent straight-up short rib, figuring that the sharpness of the pickles and sauce would cut through the otherwise overwhelmingly beefy and rich ribs.
Obviously, no additional fat was necessary, due to the insanely high amount of marbling in these ribs.
McDonald's Big Mac patties are the same patties used on the regular hamburgers, known in McD's lingo as "10 to 1's"—that's ten patties per pound of beef, or 1.6 ounces per patty. The amount of beef may seem tiny (even two patties is less than a single quarter-pound Shake Shack patty, for instance), but after trying to increase the amount of beef, I found that any more, and the sandwich's flavor balance went way out of whack. Don't get me wrong—a bigger burger can certainly be delicious, but it loses its essential Big Macness when the beef overwhelms the other ingredients.
Cooking and Construction
McDonald's uses a proprietary double-sided griddle to cook both sides of their burgers simultaneously. The cooked patties are then held in a temperature and vapor-controlled warming drawer until your sandwich gets assembled. This is clearly sub-optimal.
Much better is to sear the thin patties over insanely high heat in order to build up a substantially browned crust. With 1.6 ounce patties, there's no way to expect a medium-rare center, but with beef this heavily marbled, even well-done meat stays plenty juicy.
You could go all fancy-pants and use "real" cheddar cheese, but that'd be missing the point. We're not trying to build a fancy-pants Big Mac, just a better one, and there's really no way to improve upon the glories of good, well-seared, well-seasoned beef and perfectly melted, gooey American cheese. The one improvement we make here is to actually melt the cheese on top of the patty as it cooks rather than placing a cold slice on top of cold lettuce and pickles like the Clown does it.
My only guess as to why they perform this logic-defying move is that it's an artifact of the assembly-line style construction process at the store.
As for bun placement and stacking, toasting is essential, and I'm in 100 percent agreement with their decision to place the sauce, onions, lettuce (ours is freshly shredded), and pickles (I use four chips instead of their two) underneath the patties. Not only does it protect the buns from burger juices, it also keeps everything crisp and fresh longer, allowing the hot beefy steam from the patties to be absorbed by the buns instead of by the lettuce.
The final result is a sandwich that's truly worthy of the title of American Icon. Two all-beef patties diminutive in size but massive with flavor potential. A special sauce that need not hide behind an of artificially colored mask with no problems dripping out wherever it wants to go. Fresh, crisp lettuce shredded just before serving. American cheese melted to its gloriously gooey fullest. Sharp pickles. Onions carefully guided to tame their pungency and bring out their natural sweetness. All on a soft triple-decker sesame seed bun made with precisely the right number of seeds.
If this isn't the American dream, then I don't know what is.
Your move, clown. Your move.
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WEBVTT KETV NEWSWATCH 7'rtS MICHELLENDUR INVESTIGATES.MICHELLE: BARRICADES NOWSURROUND THE SPOT OF THEPERILOUS POTHOLE.>>rt IT WAS LIKE MY LIFE WAS JUSTABOUT TO BE GONE.MICHELLE: MAY SOUND A BITDRAMATIC, BUT CHRISTOPHERGOODMAN ISN'T JOKING.rt>> ONCE I HIT THAT POTHOLE, IHIT THE BREAAKE,rt AND MY WHEELSWENT FROM SIDE TO SIDE.IT TOOK EVERYTHING I COULD TOKEEP FROM HITTING THAT POLE.>> PEOPLE GOT HURT OUT HERE.DUDE FELL OFF A MOTORCYCLE.rtPIECE OF A BUMPER OUT HEREMESSING UP THEIR CARS.MICHELLE KEIVES MCGAUH LIVES ONTHE CORNER OF 29TH AND PARKER,AND SAYS HE WATCHED THE POTHOLEGET BIGGER THIS SUMMER.>> IT COULD HAVE BEEN FIXED.MICHrtELLE: HERE'S WHAT IT LOOKEDLIKE AUGUST 19, THE DAY GOODMANHIT THE HOLE.>> IF YOU COMING UP THAT HILLOVER THERE, IT'S A BLIND SIDEUNTIL YOU GET ON TOP OF THEHILL.rtMICHELLE HE GOT TWO ESTIMATESON THE DAMAGE TO HIS RIM ANDTIREONE ESTIMATErt WAS $449.I GOT ON FOR $470.MICHELLE: AND TURNED IT IN TOTHE CITY'S LEGAL DEPARTMENT ASPART OF HIS CLAIM, ONE OF ABOUTrt100 THE CITY RECEIVES EVERYYEAR.>> IT'S UP TO THE CITY TOCOMPENSATE FOR THE DAMAGE I DIDTO MY CAR AND MY TIRE.rtMICHELLE: THE CITY DISAGREESWITH GOODMAN, SENDING HIM THISLETTER, DENYING HIS CLAIM,SIGNED BY DEPUTY CITY ATTORNEYMICHELLE PETERS.>>rt IN THE LAST TWO YEARS, WEHAVEN'T PAID ANY CLAIM RELATEDTO POTHOLES.MICHELLE:rt SHE SAYS THE CITY HASTO KNOW ABOUT THE POTHOLE, ANDINTENTIONALLY NOT FIX IT WITHINA REASONABLE TIME TO BERESPONSIBLE FOR DAMAGES.rtWE HAVE TO BE ON NOTICE THATTHERE IS AN ISSUE, AND WE HAVEREASONABLE TIME TO MAKE REPAIRS.UNDER THAT STANDARD, WE HAVEMADE DETERMINATION WE ARE NOTLIABLE FOR THOSE.rtMICHELLE: PETERS TELLS US STATELAW PROTECTS THE CITY.GOODMAN WANTS TO KNOW WHOPROTECTS HIM.>> IT AIN'T MY FAULT THE CITYFAILED TO DO THEIR JOB.MICHELLE PETERS SAYS IF THEYrtDON'T KNOW ABOUT A POTHOLE, THEYCAN'T FIX ITSO IF YOU SEE A PROBLEM, CALLTHE MAYOR'S HOTLINE AND PUT THECITY ON NOTICE.rt
Advertisement City of Omaha hasn't paid any pothole claims in the past two years An Omaha man is upset the city denied his claim for damages to his tire and rim after hitting a pothole. Share Shares Copy Link Copy
If you hit a big pothole, good luck getting the city of Omaha to pay for repairs to your car.In the past two years, the city hasn't paid out one claim filed by hundreds of drivers. The city receives about 100 claims a year dealing with potholes.Christopher Goodman filed a claim after hitting a pothole August 19th near 29th and Parker."When I got up the hill, all of a sudden I hit the pothole and it took everything I could to keep from hitting that pole," Goodman said.He said the large pothole is difficult to see on the incline. Goodman said the damage to his tire and rim is estimated at about $470."It's up to the city to compensate for the damage I did to my car and my tire," Goodman said.He turned in his claim to the city, one of about 100 the city receives every year. The city sent him a letter, signed by Deputy City Attorney Michelle Peters, denying his claim."In the last two years, we haven't paid any claim related to a pothole," Peters said.Peters said the city is protected under a state law called the political subdivision tort claim act."Under that act, it gives the city the ability to determine whether there is a problem, " Peters said. "We have to be on notice there is an issue and we have reasonable time to make repairs. Under that standard,we have made determination we are not liable for those claims."Goodman wants to know who is protecting him and other taxpayers."What am I paying taxes for? Just for the city to do something else with," Goodman said.Peters said it's also up to drivers to bear some responsibility, knowing they live in a pothole laden city.She said they can't fix a pothole, if they don't know about it."The city has 5,000 lane miles of roadway and we can't be everywhere at once. We have to be able to have notice of the defect and fix it in a reasonable amount of time, " Peters said.Peters encourages residents to report potholes when you see one. Call the Mayor's Hotline at 402-444-5555.Atlas wipe is always a good design choice, even if you dont like it, i wish i could go deeper into this but i am at work and can only type so fast on a tablet. Posted by Eldubs
on on Quote this Post
Your Atlas progression will merge to your standard Atlas. Your Atlas will not be reset but there are other changes that it would be prudent to be aware of.
You'll still have the same number of completed maps on your Atlas and at the same tiers as you completed them. However, some maps in 3.1.0 will be changing tier which means that which map is marked as completed may change.
When your Atlas migrates, you'll still retain the same number and level of bonus objectives completed in their respective tiers of map. For example, if you have two Tier 5 maps with completed bonus objectives but the maps you originally completed have changed tier, you will still have two Tier 5 maps with completed bonus objectives when your Atlas merges, but what the bonus objectives are will have changed. This is also true of Sextants that have been applied. However, Sextant blocking rules will also still apply so any invalid Sextant mods on your Atlas will be lost.
If you complete a Legacy map (a map that was dropped before 3.1.0), it will complete a chain of maps from the start pointing on the Atlas up until the tier of map you completed.
Legacy maps will not drop Shaper or Elder items. You also cannot meet Elder Guardians in these maps. Posted by Bex_GGG
on Grinding Gear Games on Quote this Post
" Sarno " Bex_GGG If you complete a Legacy map (a map that was dropped before 3.1.0), it will complete a chain of maps from the start pointing on the Atlas up until the tier of map you completed.
That’s not something I’d anticipated...
Thanks Bex. :) That’s not something I’d anticipated...Thanks Bex. :)
The same thing happened when AoW was released so using lego maps was basically an easy to way instantly complete a series of maps without going through them with ridiculous overgeared chars on STD. The same thing happened when AoW was released so using lego maps was basically an easy to way instantly complete a series of maps without going through them with ridiculous overgeared chars on STD. IGN: Arlianth
Check out my LA build: 1782214 Posted by Nephalim
on on Quote this Post
" Bex_GGG
You'll still have the same number of completed maps on your Atlas and at the same tiers as you completed them. However, some maps in 3.1.0 will be changing tier which means that which map is marked as completed may change.
When your Atlas migrates, you'll still retain the same number and level of bonus objectives completed in their respective tiers of map. For example, if you have two Tier 5 maps with completed bonus objectives but the maps you originally completed have changed tier, you will still have two Tier 5 maps with completed bonus objectives when your Atlas merges, but what the bonus objectives are will have changed. This is also true of Sextants that have been applied. However, Sextant blocking rules will also still apply so any invalid Sextant mods on your Atlas will be lost.
If you complete a Legacy map (a map that was dropped before 3.1.0), it will complete a chain of maps from the start pointing on the Atlas up until the tier of map you completed.
Legacy maps will not drop Shaper or Elder items. You also cannot meet Elder Guardians in these maps. Your Atlas progression will merge to your standard Atlas. Your Atlas will not be reset but there are other changes that it would be prudent to be aware of.You'll still have the same number of completed maps on your Atlas and at the same tiers as you completed them. However, some maps in 3.1.0 will be changing tier which means that which map is marked as completed may change.When your Atlas migrates, you'll still retain the same number and level of bonus objectives completed in their respective tiers of map. For example, if you have two Tier 5 maps with completed bonus objectives but the maps you originally completed have changed tier, you will still have two Tier 5 maps with completed bonus objectives when your Atlas merges, but what the bonus objectives are will have changed. This is also true of Sextants that have been applied. However, Sextant blocking rules will also still apply so any invalid Sextant mods on your Atlas will be lost.If you complete a Legacy map (a map that was dropped before 3.1.0), it will complete a chain of maps from the start pointing on the Atlas up until the tier of map you completed.Legacy maps will not drop Shaper or Elder items. You also cannot meet Elder Guardians in these maps.
What about shaped maps? my atlas still has the same shaped maps from when the atlas first came out and I was experimenting. It is extremely expensive to unshape maps, even in standard. It would be nice if we had the option to reset our shaped maps atleast. What about shaped maps? my atlas still has the same shaped maps from when the atlas first came out and I was experimenting. It is extremely expensive to unshape maps, even in standard. It would be nice if we had the option to reset our shaped maps atleast. Posted by gameweiver
on on Quote this Post
20 chisels and 5 regret, thats like doing 5 maps or less, I wouldnt call that expensive, if you were playing the game you would hve heaps of wealth in standart. Last edited by Eldubs on Dec 4, 2017, 7:34:35 AM Posted by Eldubs
on on Quote this Post
" Nephalim " Sarno " Bex_GGG If you complete a Legacy map (a map that was dropped before 3.1.0), it will complete a chain of maps from the start pointing on the Atlas up until the tier of map you completed.
That’s not something I’d anticipated...
Thanks Bex. :) That’s not something I’d anticipated...Thanks Bex. :)
The same thing happened when AoW was released so using lego maps was basically an easy to way instantly complete a series of maps without going through them with ridiculous overgeared chars on STD. The same thing happened when AoW was released so using lego maps was basically an easy to way instantly complete a series of maps without going through them with ridiculous overgeared chars on STD.
Its also what ruined my Standard Atlas, as i ran my couple tier 15s i had without knowing that at the time.
Why i was hoping for a reset option, the cost in Sextants to fix things would be insane Its also what ruined my Standard Atlas, as i ran my couple tier 15s i had without knowing that at the time.Why i was hoping for a reset option, the cost in Sextants to fix things would be insane Posted by BiggestAl
on on Quote this Post
An optional reset (like the skill tree) would be a great start that also gives players a choice on the matter. Certainly won't be that hard to implement? Posted by uglym
on on Quote this Post
If shaped maps are going to change then how about giving standard and option to reset atlas...? IGN: Drusek Posted by Drusek
on on Quote this PostCleverCoin opened its bitcoin exchange to the wider European market today, while adding MasterCard and Visa credit and debit cards to its list of available payment options.
Founded in January, CleverCoin had been serving customers solely in the Netherlands for two months prior to the announcement. The company notably garnered more international notice for its attempts to help relaunch troubled Norwegian bitcoin exchange Justcoin, though it is no longer involved in the effort.
CleverCoin now offers its EUR/BTC order-book exchange in more than 30 countries, including France, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.
Speaking to CoinDesk, CleverCoin CEO Karsten Nilsen described the move as one that would help bring bitcoin to more general consumers in its target markets.
Nilsen said simply:
“There are a lot of European countries where everything is done with credit cards.”
With the announcement, credit card payments join Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) bank transfers and Netherlands-based e-commerce payment system iDEAL as available funding options for CleverCoin customers.
CleverCoin pledged to continue to add payment options to its exchange, provided they support its larger goals of making bitcoin buying more convenient and secure.
The company charges 0.3% trading fees and has formed a partnership with payments-as-a-service provider Lemon Way, which helps facilitates transactions via credit and debit cards.
Verification process update
In addition to the updated funding options, CleverCoin has also altered the way it will seek to verify the identities of exchange users pursuant to know-your-customer (KYC) regulations.
Customers must still provide proof of ID and proof of address, but they can now satisfy the second portion of these requirements with a ‘selfie’ photograph.
Customers can now elect to have a letter mailed to their place of residence, which they must then include in a photograph of themselves and upload to the exchange.
Nilsen went on to explain that customers must provide additional information in order to connect their bank accounts for purchases, though Dutch residents can simply send a payment via the iDEAL network.
Overcoming obstacles
The announcement is a step forward for CleverCoin, which had reported experiencing trouble when seeking a banking partnership earlier this year.
Although local startups have arguably struggled to gain regional support, bitcoin has maintained a strong presence in the Netherlands, with a number of notable merchant partnerships seeking to highlight the utility of the technology taking place already this year.
Most recently, Dutch startup BitStraat teamed with BitPay to giveaway 100 bitcoin point-of-sale (POS) terminals to Amsterdam merchants, as part of a campaign to turn the city into the “bitcoin capital of the world“.
The project notably followed Bitcoin Boulevard, which this summer united 10 merchants to accept bitcoin in the Hague.
Amsterdam image via ShutterstockIf you hang out long enough with a certain crowd (in my case, it was the ECMAScript TC39 committee), you will probably hear the term membrane tossed around. And eventually, you will start to wonder, “Well, what is a membrane, anyway?”
As is the case with many clever but simple ideas, membranes were first introduced as a footnote [1] in a PhD thesis. Suppose that you are building distributed system, in which you pass references to objects between two separate nodes. If I want to pass a reference to foo in process A to process B, I can hardly just hand over an address—the memory spaces are not the same! So instead, I need to create a wrapper object wrappedFoo representing foo in B, which knows how to access the original object in A. So far so good.
Now here’s the catch: what if I pass a reference to wrappedFoo back to process A? If I were not very clever, I’d do the same thing as I did originally: create a new wrapper object wrappedWrappedFoo in A which knows how to access wrappedFoo in B. But this is silly; really, when I cross back over to A, I want to get back the original foo object.
This wrap-unwrap behavior is precisely what a membrane is. We consider the original object foo to be “inside” the membrane (a so-called wet object), and as it exits the membrane, it is wrapped with its own little membrane. However, when the object returns to its original membrane, the wrapper goes away. Just like in biology!
There is one last operation, called a “gate”: this occurs when you invoke a method on a wrapped object. Since the wrapper cannot actually perform the method, it has to forward the request to the original object. However, the arguments of the method need to get wrapped (or unwrapped) as they get forwarded; as you might expect.
While I used an RPC-like system to demonstrate the basic principle of membranes, a more conventional use is to enforce access control. Membranes are quite important; Mozilla relies on them extensively in order to enforce access restriction between objects from different websites which may interact with each other, but need security checks. (Actually, did you know that Mozilla is using a capability-based system for their security? Kind of neat!) It’s important to notice that when we unwrap, we are skipping security checks—the only reason this is acceptable is because the only objects that will be able to access the unwrapped object are precisely those objects in the same domain. For a more modern treatment of the subject, check out a more recent paper, Trustworthy Proxies: Virtualizing Objects with Invariants, which includes a lucid explanation of membranes.
[1] Well, actually it was a figure; figure 9.3 on page 71, to be precise!There wasn't room on the billboard to explain how.
Oklahoma proves that the primary motivating force for Republicans in political life is fear. Last year, voters in that state passed a ballot measure that banned state courts from considering Islamic law, or other international law, when deciding cases. That was blocked by a federal judge for because it violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
Well, constitution be damned, the issue is back, now in the state legislature.
Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern (R) introduced House Bill 1552 this month — a reinvention of SQ 755 that addresses the legal issues holding up SQ 755 by banning the use of all foreign law in Oklahoma courts: State Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City, is the author of House Bill 1552, which would ban the use of foreign law in Oklahoma courts. It declares that any court action will be “void and unenforceable” if the decision is based “on any law, rule, legal code or system that would not grant the parties affected by the ruling or decision the same fundamental liberties, rights, and privileges granted under the United States and Oklahoma Constitutions.” Kern said the bill is similar to SQ 755, and is written to address some of the legal issues used to challenge it. To address one of them, HB 1552 declares “The Legislature fully recognizes the right to contract freely under the laws of this state, and also recognizes that this right may be reasonably and rationally circumscribed pursuant to the state’s interest to protect and promote rights and privileges granted under the United States or Oklahoma Constitutions.” strong>Kern said the change will prevent activist judges from undermining the rights of American citizens. She noted that similar proposals have been filed in at least 20 other states. Kern’s bill still violates the free exercise and establishment clauses of the First Amendment — the violation that compelled a federal judge to block SQ 755 in the first place. CAIR-OK Director Muneer Awad notes that "in an attempt to target Islam without using the wording" of SQ 755, HB 1552 "will actually target all religions" by denying "people the use of Jewish Law, Catholic Law, or any other religious law" in private contracts "while also jeopardizing international business contracts that include forms of arbitration, choice of law clauses, or foreign law clauses" — just like SQ 755. Indeed, SQ 755 is so poorly written that would ban the long-standing rights and sovereignty of Native Americans.
Of course, supporters of the ban haven't been able to statutorily cite a case in which Oklahoma courts have applied Sharia law in any ruling. Undeterred, Kern will let stupidity and fear reign. And will ignore inconvenient facts like how bans on gay marriage and abortion are awfully Sharia-like. Maybe Sharia is creeping into America, after all.This was a commission and isn't for sale!
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(I'm picky~)
Be sure to check out my commission and trade status over on my front page.
Commission info and Pricelist :
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This beanie is made of Charcoal, Lemon, Canary, Magenta, Amethyst, Turquoise, Dusty Rose, Chocolate, Kelly, Ash Grey, Ivory and custom hand-dyed "Faded Gold" Shannon Cuddle 3 Minky and grey and snow white minky. The tip of the tail is made of Shannon Luxury Faux Fur. It lays at about 17 inches long from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail.
The eyes and cutie mark are machine embroidered. This little one contains ABSOLUTELY NO wire, however does contain poly-pellets to help weight some of the body.
Many elements of this plushie are hand sewn, so please handle with care and love!South Dakota First State in 2017 to Pass Anti-LGBT Legislation
Today, Governor Daugaard signed Senate Bill 149 into law, making South Dakota the first state in 2017 to pass anti-LGBT legislation. The bill will allow taxpayer funded agencies to refuse to provide any service, including adoption or foster care services, on the basis on the agency’s religious or moral convictions.
The American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota has led the opposition to SB 149 through both lobbying efforts and by organizing affected communities. In a state facing a labor and talent shortage, this bill has sparked national interest and local questions as to whether South Dakota welcomes diversity and values the rights of individual citizens.
This bill was opposed by local and national child welfare experts that sent letters in opposition including The Adoption Exchange, Child Welfare League of America, National Association of Social Workers, and Voice for Adoption, as well as family law experts, South Dakota pediatricians, and local and national LGBT rights organizations including the Movement Advancement Project, the Human Rights Campaign, and more.
“We’re deeply disappointed by Governor Daugaard’s decision to green light Senate Bill 149. This discriminatory legislation takes South Dakota in the wrong direction, and sends the message that our leaders are more concerned with the desires of religious agencies than the rights of individuals and children in our state,” said Libby Skarin, Policy Director of the ACLU of South Dakota.
Added Skarin, “In the end, this bill was never about religious freedom. It has always been about allowing private organizations that discriminate to receive state contracts and taxpayer dollars to carry out their religions missions. We’re particularly concerned about how this bill could impact vulnerable kids in our foster care system that deserve to have their best interests considered above the desires of private agencies.“
The ACLU is examining legal options, and encourages anyone who is negatively impacted by this law, especially families and children, to reach out at www.aclusd.org, southdakota@aclu.org, or 605-332-2508.This is a list of characters from the Cartoon Network animated series, Courage the Cowardly Dog.
Main characters [ edit ]
Courage [ edit ]
Courage
Courage is the title character and protagonist of the series. An overly frightened pink beagle dog who lives in Nowhere, Kansas, Courage was abandoned as a puppy after his parents were sent into outer space,[2] but was adopted by Muriel Bagge. Her husband Eustace regularly mistreats him. Ironically, given his name, Courage is a genuine coward, and often expresses his distress with over-the-top, piercing shrieks, but still goes to great lengths to protect his owners; to the end, he often gets injured, sometimes quite brutally, or almost killed and only surviving through his determination and/or pure luck. Despite his cowardice, Courage is very clever and resourceful when the situation demands it, outsmarting the villains most of the time. He also often displays super strength which is uncommon to dogs; carrying Eustace and Muriel in one episode with ease. Aiding him at saving the day is a self-aware, sarcastic and seemingly omniscient Computer that he keeps in the attic with which he could consult for information in how to remedy any predicament he faces, though it never fails to badmouth him in one way or another. He got his name when Muriel found him as a puppy alone in an alley and remarked that he must be quite brave to be there by himself.[2]
Muriel [ edit ]
Muriel Bagge
Muriel Bagge is the series' damsel in distress, the kind owner of Courage and the friendly, hard-working wife of Eustace. She is an overweight, elderly Scottish woman who took Courage in when he was an abandoned puppy.[2] Muriel often carries a rolling pin that she hits Eustace with whenever he harasses Courage. She also likes tea and usually tends to her garden (which in truth is not much of a garden), as well as being an accomplished sitar player. Muriel also has a great fondness for cooking; however, her recipes tend to include an excessive amount of vinegar (which she swears by), much to the distaste of both her dog and husband. Most of all, she loves sitting in her rocking chair with Courage on her lap and watching television. Due to her kindness and sweet, naive nature, Muriel is an easy (and often attractive) target for villains.
Eustace [ edit ]
Eustace Bagge
Eustace Bagge is Muriel's disgruntled, grumpy, and greedy husband. An old, skinny farmer obsessed with money and his truck, Eustace is also the current owner of the farmhouse which was previously owned by his now deceased brother, Horst. Eustace frequently mistreats Courage and calls him a "stupid dog". Eustace wears glasses identical in appearance to Muriel's, and his brown hat shields his bald head. Eustace often refers to Courage simply as "Dog" and rarely (in only 2 episodes: "The Hunchback of Nowhere" and "Ball of Revenge") addresses him by name. He regularly demeans Muriel as well; in one episode, Muriel develops amnesia and Eustace convinces her that she is a "slave woman".[3] Still, he does love his wife, as evidenced by his concern for her well-being in a few episodes. Eustace is commonly the subject of an unpleasant ending, whether it being a backfire of his get-rich-quick scheme or the villain of the episode going after him.
Lionel Wilson originally voiced the character, but left midway through the third season (and eventually died 5 months after the show ended[4]) and was replaced by Arthur Anderson. However, some vocals and sounds of grunting, laughing, screaming and catchphrases from Wilson have been used while Anderson was recording. In the 2014 short titled The Fog of Courage, Wallace Shawn replaced Anderson as the voice of Eustace.
Supporting characters [ edit ]
Computer [ edit ]
Courage's computer that speaks with an English accent and gives him advice on how to deal with crazy situations. He is very cynical and sarcastic towards Courage (frequently ending sentences with "You twit!") and has a habit of regularly cracking jokes in any situation.
Dr. Vindaloo [ edit ]
Dr. Vindaloo is an Indian doctor with a thick accent, whom Eustace and Muriel see when something is wrong. He is one of the very few characters in the series who can perfectly understand what Courage is trying to say. He diagnoses his patients as not having serious problems or that there is nothing that he can do, but has, on occasion, been a great help, as in "Invisible Muriel", where he managed to discover how to return Muriel to normal.
Ma Bagge [ edit ]
Ma Bagge is the mother of Eustace and Horst and Muriel's mother-in-law, who shares a love-hate relationship with the farmer. She also lives in a trailer. She is also the widow of Icket Bagge. Like Eustace she is actually bald but wears a wig and looks almost identical to her son, but much shorter. Like Eustace, Ma is insecure due to being bald, but she does have her teeth. It is learned that Ma and Horst's ill treatment was part of Eustace's negative personality.
Horst Bagge [ edit ]
Voiced by Peter Fernandez
Horst Bagge is Eustace's deceased older brother and Muriel's brother-in-law, who was a hunter. The cause of his death is unknown. He was the former owner of the farmhouse as seen in a flashback in the episode "Farmer Hunter, Farmer Hunted".
Professor Frith [ edit ]
Voiced by Simon Prebble
Professor Frith is a man with a thick moustache and thick eyebrows who appears in several roles throughout the series. He first appears as a police officer in "Dr. Le Quack, Amnesia Specialist", a role which he reprises in several episodes. He also appears as Professor Frith, an archeologist and historian in the episode "King Ramses' Curse".
General and the Lieutenant [ edit ]
General and the Lieutenant (the former of which is a major general) are two American military officers in Nowhere, who deal with various (paranormal) problems, usually involved in cover-ups of those issues. They take pleasure in fighting each other (i.e. by firing artillery or dropping sixteen-ton weights), and are usually doing so while trying to solve an important problem.
Nowhere Newsman [ edit ]
Voiced by John R. Dilworth
Nowhere Newsman is a local TV news reporter. The Nowhere Newsman introduces every episode stating, "We interrupt this program to bring you the Courage the Cowardly Dog show."[5] He is also seen in some episodes when the television is on, conveying news about the antagonist.
Charlie the Mouse [ edit ]
Charlie is a delivery mouse and a personal friend of Courage's. He usually helps Courage out which would usually lead to the dialogue between one another. He is usually referred to as Mr. Mouse, but his first name is revealed as Charlie in the episode "The Mask". His interaction with Courage often end with Courage exclaiming "Thanks, Mr. Mouse!", to which he replies "No prob."
Shirley the Medium [ edit ]
Shirley the Medium is a small green Chihuahua garbed as a stereotypical Gypsy fortune-teller with a Romanian accent who resides in a dilapidated caravan. She has a strong dislike of Eustace (whom she always refers to as "the stupid one") because he is greedy and selfish and she places Eustace under curses a lot to get him to be a better person. Shirley is one of Courage's three confidants, the others being the Computer and Dr. Vindaloo, and helps him occasionally by casting and reciting spells and playing the saxophone in-between verses.
Major antagonists [ edit ]
The Chicken from Outer Space [ edit ]
Voiced by Howard Hoffman
The Chicken from Outer Space is the show's first villain, introduced by the pilot episode of the same name. His eggs are mutagenic and whoever eats them will turn into one. In his first appearance he tries to take over the farm, he lays eggs in the chicken coop and are eaten by Eustace and turned into one and ends up being shot by his own laser gun, turning into a headless roast chicken. He later returns in "The Revenge of The Chicken from Outer Space" where he wants to use a plunger to rip off Courage's head and put it on his roasted body. He ends up ripping off Eustace's head and tries to destroy Courage but is then blown up in his space ship when a rocket blasts into it. In "Son of the Chicken from Outer Space", his three-headed son is sent to Earth by their mother to avenge him and kill Courage. Unfortunately, like their father, they are no match for the timid dog and fear that they will never be able to go home until Courage is dead. Feeling sympathy for them, Courage helps them by taking fake pictures to make it look like they succeeded in destroying him in order to fool their mother into thinking that their mission was a success, and the plan worked perfectly.[6]
Katz [ edit ]
Katz is a red, lanky anthropomorphic cat, complete with a posh English accent and his own background music whenever he appears. He is Courage's nemesis and the show's most recurring antagonist, though Muriel and Eustace consistently fail to recognize him. He specializes in scam businesses, including: a vacation resort, a candy shop, a motel and a submarine cruise line. He is extremely sadistic and many of his businesses involve torturing or outright killing his customers; for example, in "Night at the Katz Motel," he fed his motel residents to flesh-eating spiders,[7] and in "Klub Katz," he transformed the vacationers into anthropomorphic machines to fight for him gladiator-style.[8] All of his businesses enforce a strict "No Dogs Allowed" policy, forcing Courage to sneak in. He often challenges Courage to ironically banal games such as wall-ball and staring contests, which Courage invariably loses; nevertheless, he is always defeated in the end.
Le Quack [ edit ]
Le Quack is a French con-artist duck and he is the show's second most recurring |
proportions of pomelo ancestry.[32]
Inaccurate labeling [ edit ]
Marketing classifications often do not correspond to taxonomic ones. The "Ambersweet" cultivar is classified and sold as an orange, but does not descend from the same common ancestor as sweet oranges; it has grapefruit, orange, and mandarin ancestry. Fruits are often sold as mandarin, tangerine, or satsuma (which may be synonyms[38]). Fruit sold under these names include many which are, like Sunbursts and Murcotts, hybrids with grapefruit ancestry.[39][40][35] The diversity of fruits called limes is remarkable; some, like the Spanish lime and Wild lime, are not even citrus fruit.
In some countries, citrus fruit must be labelled with the name of a registered cultivar. Juice is often not so labelled. Some medical literature also names the cultivar tested.
Other fruit and vegetables [ edit ]
The discovery that flavonoids are responsible for some interactions make it plausible that other fruit and vegetables are affected.[27]
Apple juice [ edit ]
Apple juice, especially commercially produced products, interferes with the action of OATPs.[41] This interference can decrease the absorption of a variety of commonly used medications, including beta blockers like atenolol, antibiotics like ciprofloxacin, and antihistamines like montelukast.[41] Apple juice has been implicated in interfering with etoposide, a chemotherapy drug, and cyclosporine, taken by transplant patients to prevent rejection of their new organs.[7][medical citation needed]
Pomegranate juice [ edit ]
Pomegranate juice inhibits the action of the drug metabolizing enzymes CYP2C9 and CYP3A4.[42] However, as of 2014, the currently available literature does not appear to indicate a clinically relevant impact of pomegranate juice on drugs that are metabolized by CYP2C9 and CYP3A4.[42]
Affected drugs [ edit ]
Researchers have identified over 85 drugs with which grapefruit is known to have an adverse reaction.[43][1] According to a review done by the Canadian Medical Association,[1] there is an increase in the number of potential drugs that can interact with grapefruit juice, and of the number of fruit types that can interact with those drugs. From 2008 to 2012, the number of drugs known to potentially interact with grapefruit, with risk of harmful or even dangerous effects (gastrointestinal bleeding, nephrotoxicity), increased from 17 to 43.[1]
Traits [ edit ]
The interaction between citrus and medication depends on the individual drug, and not the class of the drug. Drugs that interact usually share three common features: they are taken orally, normally only a small amount enters systemic blood circulation, and they are metabolized by CYP3A4.[1] However, the effects on the CYP3A4 in the liver could in principle cause interactions with non-oral drugs,[citation needed] and non-CYP3A4-meditated effects also exist.[27]
Cytochrome isoforms affected by grapefruit components include CYP3A4, CYP1A2, CYP2C9, and CYP2D6.[19] Drugs that are metabolized by these enzymes may have interactions with components of grapefruit.
An easy way to tell if a medication may be affected by grapefruit juice is by researching whether another known CYP3A4 inhibitor drug is already contraindicated with the active drug of the medication in question. Examples of such known CYP3A4 inhibitors include cisapride (Propulsid),[citation needed] erythromycin, itraconazole (Sporanox), ketoconazole (Nizoral), and mibefradil (Posicor).[44]
Incomplete list of affected drugs [ edit ]
By enzyme [ edit ]
Drugs that interact with grapefruit compounds at CYP3A4 include
benzodiazepines: triazolam (Halcion), orally administered midazolam (Versed), orally administered nitrazepam (Mogodon), diazepam (Valium), alprazolam (Xanax) and quazepam (Doral, Dormalin) [45]
amphetamines: dextroamphetamine and levoamphetamine (Dexedrine, Adderall) [46]
ritonavir (Norvir): Inhibition of CYP3A4 prevents the metabolism of protease inhibitors such as ritonavir. [47]
sertraline (Zoloft and Lustral) [48]
verapamil (Covera-HS, Calan, Verelan, and Isoptin)[49]
Drugs that interact with grapefruit compounds at CYP1A2 include
Drugs that interact with grapefruit compounds at CYP2D6 include
Research has been done on the interaction between amphetamines and CYP2D6 enzyme, and researchers concluded that some parts of substrate molecules contribute to the binding of the enzyme.[53]
Other interactions [ edit ]
Additional drugs found to be affected by grapefruit juice include, but are not limited toAbout Us
Joshua Kissi and Travis Gumbs are the faces and voices behind the popular mens lifestyle website turned Creative Agency Street Etiquette. Founded in 2008, Street Etiquette showcases style using a cultural, historical and urban perspective. With sartorial influences stretching from all parts of the world and eras, Street Etiquette has managed to assemble a truly unique view of fashionable menswear and story-telling.
Among other accolades, Street Etiquette has been featured in magazines such as GQ, Complex, Essence and Fantastic Man. The New York Times published an article, “ Serious About Cool” that told the story of Street Etiquette’s cultural success and the duo that founded it. As a multi-disciplinary agency they are now building a strong client base with clients such as Adidas, Starbucks and the U.S Open.The irresistible NEAFL form of Brayden Fiorini was too much for Rodney Eade and his match committee to overlook, with the midfielder handed an AFL debut against Collingwood this Saturday night at Etihad Stadium.
Fiorini collected 40 disposals in a best-on-ground performance last week for the SUNS reserves and was given the good news by Gold Coast’s senior coach before Thursday morning’s open training session at Ikon Park in Melbourne.
“Rocket came in before training and told all the boys and myself as well so pretty stoked and can’t wait to get out there,” Fiorini told SUNS TV.
It’s been a long road to senior football for the Northern Knights product, who ruptured a lateral collateral ligament early in the season and was forced to sit on the sidelines as the rest of the SUNS 2015 draft crop received their opportunities.
An opportunity that has finally arrived for last year’s No. 20 draft pick who becomes the club’s 40th player used in 2016.
“Played in the first couple of rounds of the NEAFL and then got injured in round three so it’s been a long year,” Fiorini said.
“Out for 13 weeks that was so good to get back, playing some footy and finally my chance has come and hopefully take it with both hands.”
The SUNS are looking to bounce back after their round 21 loss to Essendon and the message from the coach’s message to the players is simple - take the game on against the Magpies.
“Just take the game on, nothing to lose now so hopefully we get the win and finish off the year well.”
Brayden Fiorini after Thursday's training session at Ikon Park0 POLL: Ossoff leads Handel by less than 2 points
ATLANTA - With just a few days to go before Georgia’s 6th Congressional District runoff, Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel are still very, very close.
Our latest WSB-Landmark Communications poll of 800 likely voters has Ossoff leading Handel 49.7 percent to 48 percent.
The poll has just 2.3 percent of people saying they’re undecided. At this time last week, 3.3 percent said they were undecided.
With the poll's margin of error at nearly 3.5 percent, pollster Mark Rountree believes the race is still up for grabs.
"Ossoff has the lead. He's right at the edge of 50 percent. Handel is very close behind him, essentially a point and a half behind. So either candidate could win," Rountree said.
As we know, the 6th District stretches from DeKalb County through North Fulton County and into Cobb County. President Donald Trump won this district in November, but not by much.
Now, the numbers show that while his name is not on the ballot, he's a factor in the race.
The poll shows 91 percent of Ossoff voters have an unfavorable opinion of President Trump. On the flip side, 78 percent of Handel voters have a favorable opinion.
The 6th District election is sort of a referendum on the Trump presidency.
According to Rountree, early voting seems to favor Ossoff. Numbers seem to show Handel could do better on election day.
HANDEL RESPONSE
"It's about where we would've expected. It's a dead heat, neck and neck, and is all about turnout. We're working hard to get people to the polls," Handel said.
OSSOFF RESPONSE
"This race is neck and neck, and over the next four days our campaign is going to continue to work as hard as we ever have to ensure we don't send another career politician to Washington," Ossoff said.
On Election Day, count on WSBTV.com and Channel 2 Action News for coverage throughout the day. We’ll be with both candidates and have live, real-time results as they come in.
CLICK HERE for complete coverage of the 6th District runoff!
© 2019 Cox Media Group.CLOSE Keaton, a sixth-grader at Horace Maynard Middle School in Maynardville in Union County, sparked a national conversation about bullying after a video of him went viral over the weekend. Angela Gosnell/News Sentinel
People are pouring out support on social media for Keaton Jones, a Union County boy who appeared in a viral anti-bullying video. (Photo: Screenshot from video posted by Keaton's mother, Kimberly Jones)
The mother of a Union County boy caught in backlash over social media posts featuring the Confederate flag after her son's bullying video went viral said the posts were meant to be "ironic" and "funny" and not racist.
"(Those were) the only two photos on my entire planet where I am anywhere near a Confederate flag," Kimberly Jones told CBS News in a segment that aired Tuesday morning, saying the photos had nothing to do with racist intent.
"I've spent most of my life being bullied and judged because I wasn't racist."
More: Fake fundraisers, racism allegations against mother follow Tennessee boy's anti-bullying video
Jones declined to comment to the USA TODAY Network - Tennessee when approached by a reporter at the University of Tennessee on Tuesday following a visit with members of the football team and tour of Neyland Stadium.
More: Keaton Jones visits with UT Vols football team, Fulmer after viral bullying video, backlash
Her comments to CBS come a few days after Jones posted a now viral video of her 11-year-old son, Keaton Jones, talking about how he was bullied at school and afraid to go to lunch.
Buy Photo Horace Maynard Middle School, on Monday, Dec. 11, 2017. Principal Greg Clay said the bullying issue with Keaton Jones was resolved last week and action was taken with the other children involved. (Photo: Michael Patrick/News Sentinel)
The video sparked outreach from around the globe, including dozens of celebrities and professional athletes, some of whom offered to fly Keaton and his mother across the country to attend movie premieres, sporting events and exclusive tours.
Backlash over Confederate flag photos
But it also sparked backlash over unrelated social media posts by Kimberly Jones and her daughter, Lakyn Jones, featuring photos of Confederate flags; and a wave of fake social media accounts from people trying to cash in on Keaton's fame.
More: Crying East Tennessee boy's viral anti-bullying video attracts attention of Vols, Titans
The images sparking the backlash included a photo of Kimberly Jones holding up the Confederate flag and a family photo including Keaton where the Confederate flag was pictured hanging alongside the American flag.
Lakyn Jones, on Twitter, said the posts were not intended to be racist. She also responded to allegations on social media that her brother used the "N word," saying he does not and "we don't condone that behavior."
She has not responded to requests for an interview from the USA TODAY Network - Tennessee.
Keaton never said those things. He’s not a racist and we don’t condone that behavior — Lakyn 🎄 (@Lakyn_Jones) December 11, 2017
I reached out to Keaton’s sister and this was the response... before people start assuming remember there are people in this world that pose as others and use viral events for money. Just keep an open mind. pic.twitter.com/HdV36r38mc — Tyler (@14Tydemedeiros) December 11, 2017
Still, the images prompted some celebrities to rethink their support of Keaton Jones. R&B singer Chris Brown, for example, shared the family picture of Keaton that included the Confederate flag on his Instagram.
"I HOPE THE PEOPLE DEALING WITH BULLYING TOOK THE KIND WORDS AND POSITIVITY AS A STEPPING STONE," Brown wrote. "THEN PEOPLE WONDER WHY THERE IS NO TRUST. I WAS GONE SAY SOME FUNNY HATEFUL (expletive) BUT LIKE I SAID.... LOVE WORKS BOTH WAYS! STAY HUMBLE, BE CLASSY."
Rapper T.I., who earlier in the week had posted on Instagram that Keaton Jones should, "Hit me if u need me Lil bro," later said the public had been misled and should not be donating money to him. He said that he still supports Keaton, though.
"While his family is spewing hatred around him... he himself will be able to speak from experience how much LOVE was shown to him on the gram by the very ones he's been taught to DISPISE (sic)!!! That's how we unlearn racism," the rapper wrote.
Lakyn Jones tweeted that the family hasn't started any GoFundMe accounts to raise money.
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Over the weekend, a man named Joseph Lam started a GoFundMe campaign titled "Stand up for Keaton." A spokesman for GoFundMe described Lam as a "stranger" who "wanted to help Keaton after the video was posted online."
The campaign raised more than $57,000 — its goal was $20,000 — before Lam "turned off donations," the spokesman, Bobby Whithorne, said in an email Monday.
GoFundMe is working with Lam "to ensure the funds go to Keaton," Whithorne said.
'I knew it could be great and I knew it could be awful'
Kimberly Jones made her Facebook page private amidst the attention the bullying video began getting and the backlash.
More: Union County school district, parents respond to viral Keaton Jones bullying video
Her son told CBS that it was his idea to make the video, and his mother said she wasn't sure what to think prior to posting it.
"I knew it could be great and I knew it could be awful, and it has been," she said.
Meet Keaton Jones a very smart little boy who is being bullied at school. This video is heartbreaking!! I want to bring Keaton to Vegas and hang out at UFC Headquarters. If anyone knows how i can reach the family please let me know. Thank u everyone pic.twitter.com/BR8c4ldDFc — Dana White (@danawhite) December 10, 2017
In the video, Keaton, crying in the passenger seat, describes having milk poured on him and ham put down his clothes, and having kids at school make fun of him and call him ugly.
"Just out of curiosity, why do they bully?" he says. "What's the point of it? Why do you find joy in taking innocent people and finding a way to be mean to 'em? It's not OK."
Read or Share this story: http://knoxne.ws/2Bhm6sJIntro
We’re cutting the ribbon on the 2017 MLB Draft Sortable Board. The board will evolve and expand as we approach the draft, and Future Value grades will be added as the cement dries on player evaluations. For info on the 20-80 scale, by which the players are evaluated and, ultimately, the board is governed, bang it here. For info on Future Value, it’s strengths and flaws as a shorthand measurement, read this.
Thoughts on the Class Quality
The 2017 class is about average on overall talent and perhaps a bit below average as far as depth is concerned. The strength atop the class, despite Florida RHP Alex Faedo’s slightly diluted stuff, remains the terrific group of college pitchers who all have a chance to go in the top half of the first round. Faedo, Oregon LHP David Peterson, Louisville LHP Brendan McKay, Vanderbilt RHP Kyle Wright, and North Carolina RHP J.B. Bukauskas are all fairly easy to project as starters and have a chance to make up 33% of the top 15 picks. UCLA righty Griffin Canning also has consensus starter projection but lacks the stuff of those ahead of him and has been used heavily, at times throwing 120-140 pitches in a single start.
The tier of college pitching beneath those top six is rife with question marks. For some, it’s a question of health: Tristan Beck of Stanford hasn’t pitched due to a back issue, and the two South Carolina arms (Wil Crowe and Clarke Schmidt) both have a Tommy John on their resume. For others, it’s repertoire depth and command: that includes LSU’s Alex Lange, Mizzou’s Tanner Houck, and the two JUCO arms (Nate Pearson and Brendon Little). Exiled Houston LHP Seth Romero is going to fall because of off-field issues. There are several parallels between this group and the 2014 crop of college pitching. This draft also has a glut of high-upside prep athletes, but many of them have bat-to-ball issues.
Why This Class Is Weird
All drafts have their own idiosyncrasies (last year had arguably its top three talents fall because of off-field issues or injury), but this year is especially bizarre. The landscape of college hitters is parched and dry, with many considering McKay — who has told scouts that hitting is more or less a hobby he gets to do when he isn’t pitching — the best in the class. Several of the college hitting prospects likely to be selected early project as first basemen (often a damning distinction, as few college first basemen pan out) or were draft eligible last year but not well regarded and thus returned to school.
Perhaps the most bizarre college hitting prospect and draft microcosm is Kentucky 1B Evan White, whose backward Bats/Throws profile is a rarity in the majors. (Jason Lane, Ryan Ludwick, and Cody Ross represent some contemporary examples of left-throwing, right-hitting big leaguers.) White is a plus runner and some scouts would like to see him tried in center field, but others think he’s a potentially elite defensive first baseman and won’t entertain that idea.
Two-Way Players
Drafts often have several players with two-way pedigrees because, especially at the high-school level, where the best athletes are tasked with as many impactful roles as possible. It’s also fairly common to see a few college players who hit and also pitch out of their team’s bullpen. (Will Craig, Jake Cronenworth, and Sheldon Neuse were examples of that in last year’s draft.) There are others who play first base on days they don’t start (such as A.J. Reed, Carlos Rodon, and Joe Savery in recent years).
Perhaps because of what San Diego is attempting to do with Christian Bethancourt, Madison Bumgarner’s offensive exploits, and because we’re approaching the posting of Japanese phenom Shohei Otani, there’s more public discourse about the viability of a true two-way Major League player than at any time in baseball’s era of quantification. While both I and most of the industry personnel with whom I’ve spoken are skeptical of the viability of a true two-way player (teams haven’t yet harnessed the power of time dilation and nobody has seen a Time Turner since the 1990s) and there’s general agreement that the prospects I’m about to discuss will all eventually settle into a single role, there’s more disagreement this year about which side of the ball these prospects will ultimately fall.
The most prominent of these is obviously Louisville 1B/LHP Brendan McKay. Some teams atop the draft have McKay turned in as a pitcher, some as a hitter, and some have disagreement within the org about which course of action is best to take.
McKay has big raw power and gets to it with a comfortable, low-effort swing, and there are scouts who think he could be a plus hitter with plus game power if he focuses on hitting full time. That would make him the best college bat, and arguably the best hitter overall, in this entire draft class. Of course, McKay’s projection as a hitter exists at least partially in abstraction. He has little margin for error because he’s a first-base-only prospect as a bat and at least one statistical red flag has emerged for me — namely, that McKay’s power splits against conference and non-conference foes are very disparate.
As a pitcher, McKay has been 88-93 with his fastball this year and mostly in the low end of that band as the season has gone along. He has a plus curveball (though some scouts have a 50 on it), commands both of those pitches to both sides of the plate, and he has changeup projection based on his short, deceptive arm action. That’s a great pitching prospect but one who isn’t that dissimilar from Oregon lefty David Peterson, who is also mostly 88-92 (and it’s heavier than McKay’s fastball) with a chance for two above-average secondaries. While I think he deserves to be, he’s hardly been discussed as a top-10 pick.
There’s general agreement that McKay is a top-seven prospect in this draft as either a pitcher or hitter, but it’s hard for anyone to definitively say that one or the other is clearly the best course of action for his development — certainly not in the same way it’s easy to say that Hunter Greene is a far superior prospect on the mound than he is as an infielder. And while I don’t think McKay has a future as a two-way player, I do think, because his innings are likely to be limited during the summer’s dog days, the team that drafts him has an opportunity to continue to evaluate him as both a hitter and pitcher. McKay could pitch once a week or out of a bullpen while he’s assigned, aggressively, to an advanced affiliate, where his team can evaluate him as a hitter against upper-level pitching. It would allow teams more time to evaluate him on both sides of the ball without curtailing his development on either side by giving them a few more months to send in front-office types to have a look, gather Trackman data, etc.
The only two-way whom I have personally evaluated against the general consensus is Huntington Beach RHP/C Hagen Danner. Most scouts like him on the mound, as he’ll touch 96 and has an above-average curveball. I like him behind the plate, however. He has plus raw power, I’d like to see how his receiving (which is not good right now) improves if he focuses on catching full time, and I think it’s far easier to move a prospect like Danner to the mound if he flops as a hitter than the other way around.
The Trackman Factor
Data continues to creep into our precious draft, and I think it’s important to start paying attention to draft-related trends as far as batted-ball data is concerned. The Sortable Board has max spin rates recorded for high-school players during various showcase events over the last year (the data is publicly available on Trackman’s website and on our board it appears as Max Fastball rpms/Max Curveball rpms), and MLB teams have access to incomplete but growing data at the college level. Some Collegiate National Team data is available to the public and many schools (including North Carolina, UCLA, Missouri State, and Virginia who all have large-looming prospects in this year’s draft) have a Trackman set up and put their data into a bucket that MLB teams pay to access.
Some teams look at this data more than others (the Yankees, Pirates and Dodgers are three data-thirsty teams and you can probably make educated guesses as to the identities of many others), but the number is growing as the quantity and quality of the data expands.
Click here for the 2017 Draft Sortable Board.Drew Cannon photo via Raleigh News Observer Drew Cannon stood courtside in Cameron Indoor Stadium before a 2012 Duke-Carolina game.
ORLANDO — There was a time when Drew Cannon might have tended bar in Chicago’s North Side at a place near Wrigley Field named Merkle’s Bar & Grill. That time was about one year ago.
It was partially owned by a family member, and it was looking like a steady gig last summer when Cannon moved to Chicago, partly to get away from North Carolina, where he grew up and went to college at Duke University.
But then Brad Stevens, an admirer of the in-depth basketball analytics articles that Cannon had been writing, reached out and offered the 22-year-old a job at Butler University, ultimately making Cannon the first pure statistics-based hire on a college basketball staff.
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A year later, Cannon, now 23, will follow Stevens from Butler to the Celtics, though it’s unclear exactly what his role will be. “I’m anxious to add him to our staff to see what he’s all about,” Danny Ainge, the Celtics president of basketball operations, said Monday at the Orlando Summer League.
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Stevens knows full well what Cannon is all about — and the coach is a huge fan.
“He’s really talented because he’s really ambitious,” Stevens, who was hired last week as the 17th head coach in Celtics history, told the Globe.
“He’s really bright, and he’s really naive — and when I say that, it’s that he doesn’t have any preconceived thoughts on what the world should look like. He’s just trying to figure out what he thinks fits.”
At Butler, Cannon fit right into a program that, under Stevens, leaned on advanced statistical metrics, using data to help find any and every edge. His in-depth research — on lineups, substitution patterns, and more — made him an invaluable resource (a “secret weapon,” stated the headline of a Sports Illustrated article in March that first shed light about Cannon).
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“What Drew has a great ability to do is not only to analyze but communicate it,” Stevens said. “He can break things down into the simplest terms. He’s got a sense for the basketball side of things and he’s a good communicator to me with it.”
In terms of Cannon’s role with the Celtics, Stevens added, “Again, I like the idea that it’s not really defined. I don’t want that. I don’t want it to be restraining at all.”
Of course, that Cannon will become a member of the Celtics and a front office that believes strongly in analytics marks a new beginning for him and concludes an interesting journey from where he was at around this time last summer.
“It’s been basically one year since he was really kind of up in the air about what he was going to do — to this,” said Jim, his father. “That’s just unimaginable.”
A true passion
It was around Christmas, the break between Cannon’s first and second semesters of his senior year at Duke, that he approached his parents to have a serious sit-down.
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Cannon asked, according to Jim, “When do I have to start looking for a real job?”
On one hand, his father thought that Cannon ought to have one pretty soon after graduating from a good (and expensive) private school in Durham.
On the other, Jim realized that Cannon had spent the past several years interning with recruiting analyst Dave Telep, writing about basketball analytics and doing it quite well, too.
And Jim believed that his son had earned the right to see that passion all the way through.
“If it didn’t work out, fine,” Jim said. “He could go do another job. He still had a very useful degree from a very good school.
“And we were fortunate that if he had to live in the basement for a year, we could feed him. He would’ve had to share the basement with the dog, but so be it.”
After graduating, Cannon had moved back in with his family in Raleigh for a short time. But he made it clear that he also wanted to move out, just to get away from the nest, and from North Carolina.
So, he moved to Chicago and lived with family.
“If nothing had worked out,” Jim said, “he was going to get a bartending job and work for College Basketball Prospectus and Kenpom.com and maybe ESPN Insider on the side until something materialized.”
Of course, something materialized — the job at Butler under Stevens, who called Telep one day last summer and said, simply, “I’ve got to take your intern away.”
A year later, Telep said, “The most important thing is, in one year, Brad Stevens had someone to trust and value his opinions in this field — and that’s a big deal.”
Learning experience
For the better part of the past seven years, Cannon interned with Telep.
“Over that time, he went from a guy that just crunched numbers to a guy who developed a feeling for evaluating players, and then eventually was able to blend all those things together with an analytical slant,” Telep said in a phone interview.
“The evolution of Drew, it doesn’t surprise me at all. He’s just one of those guys, he’s an idea guy, and the field that he works in, he has a great zest for testing his theory.”
Telep added, “I think in his own way, he’s almost a basketball savant, because of the way he looks at the game and his approach to breaking it down.”
For the Celtics, and for Stevens, Telep believes that Cannon will be a great asset, in no small part because of his ability to, as Stevens said, explain complex and exhaustively researched information in a simple way. But learning to explain the data in such a way took time.
“When Drew first started working for me, he turned in a report, and it was straight out of a scientific journal,” Telep said. “And the first time he did that, I had to call him over to my house and say, ‘Bud, you’ve got to explain this to me. I have no idea what it means.’
“Since then, he’s worked exceptionally hard on what I call ‘communicating to the common man.’ I think a lot of times people will read analytics and get lost in the numbers.
“Drew has a gift for being able to extrapolate it, break it down and put it into layman’s terms from a basketball perspective. And it’s something he’s worked on a great deal.”
And, Telep said, calling Cannon “thorough” doesn’t quite capture it.
“He’s not thorough. He’s obsessive,” Telep said. “Drew is that guy that, an idea pops into his head, time stops and he just starts cranking out ways to test his theory.”
Telep added with a laugh, “It’s healthily unhealthy.”
During the Celtics’ 93-63 summer league win against the Detroit Pistons at the Amway Center Monday afternoon, Stevens sat on the baseline near several members of the Celtics’ front office.
And a few seats away, in a red polo shirt, hunched over with an intense focus on the game, sat Drew Cannon. They united once before in Indianapolis, the coach and the so-called “secret weapon,” and so they will again in Boston, as members of the Celtics.
Baxter Holmes can be reached at baxter.holmes@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BaxterHolmesIn making La Biblia, Vox Dei became a triple anomaly. In the wide world of rock where bands were regularly making a business out of being 'cool', Vox Dei was making pure, unadulterated music by way of instinct, and even deeper, from the soul. At a time when sex and drugs were routine subjects for rock songs, Vox Dei doubled back and made an ambitious conceptual album based on Bible stories. Yet, more surprising was the fact that none of its members had any affiliations with Christianity. So, instead of being put off by the title in thinking that you'll be converted, you can expect your ears to be caressed by nearly an hour's worth of earthy, soulful folk-rock and pungent hard rock tinged with psychedelia and blues.
Right from the start, the music rises softly and swells, blanketing the listener with a hazy, enigmatic sound that's further enhanced by the sonorous, spiritual vocals of Ricardo Soulé. The guitar-induced song increases to a fevered pitch, then breaks into the soft and gentle harmonics of "Moises". This track is quick to wield a sort of lullaby effect on the listener, and when it reaches the 4 minute-mark, the guitars have already assembled into a dreamy little arrangement, and the song once again resumes its earlier melody. A beautiful piece. At first, "Las Guerras" sounds too deliberate and green for this otherwise adventurous recording, but soon transforms into something jam-like and progressive, at times sounding stylistically reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac's Then Play On. "Libros Sapienciales" has a catchy beginning that later ushers in a light, funky rhythm, which acts as an escort for one of Soulé's most moving vocal parts on La Biblia. Neither "Profecias" nor "Cristo y Nacimiento" are too remarkable other than sounding like sleepytime soundtrack material for almost any movie of the time. The album picks up again with the bluesy, multi-faceted, and climactic "Cristo - Muerte y Resurrección", a song ending in an explosion and crowned by an angelic chorus. The finale, "Apocalipsis", is a funky, blues-rock track that spins off-course, then regroups to become something of an improvisational jam. However, the song fades out abruptly and La Biblia comes to a premature close as if the disc was plum out of run-time.
(Important notes: 1) The track listing for 4 and 5 are inverted and have been that way for most, if not all musical formats. 2) Unfortunately, the sound quality is a bit less than adequate in some areas of the recording due to primitive, ill-suited studio equipment. If you're not one to nit-pick regarding sound quality, then consider adding La Biblia to your collection.)Adobe, the creators of creatives favorite tools have sponsored Behance's Bully Project Mural, a social action campaign inspired by the award-winning film BULLY. Ironically, this is now getting them bullied on twitter.
We are vehemently opposed to bullying of any kind and would never support any group that bullies. — Adobe (@Adobe) October 22, 2014
Adobe, who brought us GSP's "woo woo" which practically spoofed ello before it even existed, and who are rapidly becoming the suits' favorite tool too with the marketing clouds apps available, are no strangers to the rapid waves of the internet and technology, but this may have caught them by surprise. All it took was this tweet stating "we are not an advertiser with Gawker," for hordes of people to charge them in response.
@theLEOpirate We are not an advertiser w/ Gawker. We asked Gawker to remove our logo. Adobe stands against bullying. https://t.co/uj3HrHJqi3 — Adobe (@Adobe) October 21, 2014
Yes, they've stumbled into #Gamergate, the mess I warned y'all about in insulting consumers shrinks the market over a month ago, and that I compared to the moral panic that killed my comic career in the 90s just last week. You see, Gawker writers are cracking bullying jokes on twitter, and being dismissive/offensive to feminist authors, and people are taking notice. So much so, that Mercedes pulled their ads last week which they confirmed, and then told Washington Post that they reinstated them this week. Meanwhile Gawker Internal Memos asks writers to stop joking around on twitter, and Max Reid told Agency Spy that Mercedes wasn't an advertiser at all. How confusing! Either way, it's damned if you do, and damned if you don't at this point, and it doesn't matter what your statement reads - take it from Intel - the feeding frenzy on twitter will interpret it any way they want. My advice is don't do what Raspberry Pi did, when they entered the piranha-pool for no apparent reason. Instead, make sure you know what to reply once the flurry of activity reaches your brand. Do what that guy in the holding cell of "Mean Streets" (below) does. Now, you better check, is your logo being used by Gawker media? We know Jaguar worked with Gawker for last years super bowl and the image (below) shows all brands that Gawker had on their advertising partner page just a few days ago.
Adobe - Mean Streets variant (Edit Wed Oct 22 16:00 added embed of Adobes tweet at start of article)Lynne Sladky/Associated Press
Tom Thibodeau’s gotten a lot out of rental point guards since joining the Chicago Bulls in 2010. D.J. Augustin, Nate Robinson, John Lucas III and C.J. Watson have all yielded surprisingly significant returns under his watch. But his next act will involve maximizing the skills of his franchise’s largest investment: Derrick Rose.
Given that Rose has played 10 regular-season games over the last |
as Reid’s sourcing for Romney’s tax history. Petraeus has already shot it down. Clearly the agenda here — that of the Romney camp, known for its close synergy with Drudge — is to keep people believing that some sexy surprise might yet imbue Mitt’s static campaign with at least a trace of drama, let alone excitement. It’s like the bogus Condi-as-veep balloon the Romney camp floated a few weeks ago. No one should be surprised if Clint Eastwood rumors surface next.
Last week in Texas, tea-party favorite Ted Cruz trounced Rick Perry–endorsed David Dewhurst in the GOP senate primary. A lot of pundits saw this as confirmation that the tea party is still very much alive and well. Do you think that’s true?
All the journalistic talk that the tea party was dead or in remission, some of it inspired by polls showing a waning of tea party popularity, has always been wrong. The radical-right tea party has co-opted the GOP, enforces its ideological bent, and in each internecine battle (of which the Texas primary is only the latest) is consolidating its control. The only thing about the tea party that has changed is its brand: It is now the Republican party.
Do you expect all the tea-party noise to play into Romney’s VP selection?
The tea party — the Republican base, that is — is a real problem for Romney. They are not his kind of people, and they loathe him and the now-obsolete establishment Republicanism he once stood for. At best they tolerate him as a necessary inconvenience, a sort of impotent prince regent, who will serve as a malleable front man for their agenda if he somehow gets into the White House. Meanwhile, he needs to flatter them in any way possible, however disingenuously, because he needs them to turn out in November. But unless he picks a right-wing firebrand for VP, they will be more enervated than energized. So if he thinks he can win them over with a Pawlenty or Portman, he’s kidding himself. But as we’ve seen so far, Romney is so isolated in his own bubble his capacity for kidding himself knows few bounds.
And lastly on the veepstakes, you’re something of an expert on the vice-presidency as one of the producers of HBO’s Veep. Any advice you’d give Mitt on his selection based on your experience with Selena Meyer?
Only that if Romney picked Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the GOP might have an unexpected crack at carrying California. But I seriously doubt she would accept the nod, and besides, playing Selena Meyer is a better job than actually presiding over the Senate of Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell.
Two great cultural observers, art critic Robert Hughes and New York’s first film critic, Judith Crist, died this week. Could they have had the same career paths if they were coming up today?
This has been a sad week when it comes to losses in our cultural ranks: the Lincoln Center titan Martin Segal, the composer Marvin Hamlisch, the playwright Mark O’Donnell, as well as Bob and Judy, both of whom I knew in my early days as a film critic when I was at Time magazine (where Bob was then art critic) in the late seventies. That was the last era when print cultural critics had such clout — not just Hughes and Crist, but Pauline Kael at The New Yorker, Clive Barnes, Walter Kerr, Vincent Canby and Hilton Kramer at the Times, among others. The fractionalization of news media in the digital age has ended all that without diminishing the supply of good critics. But let me just add one personal point about Bob Hughes. He was this larger-than-life figure, Falstaffian (without the girth) in his personal and literary style, wildly arrogant, hilariously witty, contemptuous of all authority (including at Time), and fearless. When we cohabited a corridor in the Time-Life Building, I was a fairly green kid, but he was never less than encouraging to me, when he certainly had no obligation to even acknowledge my presence. As a writer, he taught me a lot about art (among other subjects), but he taught me even more about what it is to be a generous colleague in real life. I still remember him turning up in the office the morning after my first son was born — and Bob was no morning person — with a bottle of Champagne in hand. We drank every drop.City lawyers have agreed to pay $1.6 million to the family of Alberta Spruill, a 57-year-old Harlem woman who died after the police threw a stun grenade into her apartment during a mistaken raid, officials said late yesterday.
The settlement was notable not so much for the amount as for the speed with which it was reached. It came a mere five and a half months after Ms. Spruill, a longtime city employee, died of a heart attack induced by the use of the grenade in a no-knock raid on her apartment, which the police had been told was used by a drug dealer. At the time, the drug dealer was already in custody.
Derek S. Sells, a lawyer for the Spruill family, declined to comment on the settlement.
City officials suggested that the speed of the settlement showed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's determination to lower legal costs and speed up the resolution of cases.
Settlements in wrongful death cases usually do not come until after preliminary proceedings, like the taking of depositions, a process that takes about two years, said Sanford Rubenstein, a lawyer who has represented plaintiffs in several such cases. ''I think it's a signal perhaps that the city is doing the right thing where it's appropriate,'' he said.
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In the Spruill case, the city was unusually frank about its culpability. ''Clearly, the police made a mistake,'' Mayor Bloomberg said 10 days after the shooting in May. The Police Department quickly issued a report detailing the communication failures and a failure to follow its own procedures.
The settlement was only monetary, said Kate O'Brien Ahlers, a spokesman for the city's corporation counsel, in a written statement. ''Changes to warrant procedure were voluntarily made by the N.Y.P.D. in the incident's immediate aftermath,'' she said.In 1973, Oregon rode the hippie wave to became the first state in the country to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. Within five years, eight other states had followed, but momentum soon lagged, and then reversed in the Reagan era.
Lately, however, it's beginning to feel like the '70s again, with numerous polls showing a majority of Americans in favor of legalizing marijuana and the recent referenda in Colorado and Washington to do just that.
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Earl Blumenauer voted on that first decriminalization bill 40 years ago in Oregon -- as a “child legislator,” he jokes -- and now that he’s in Congress representing the state, he thinks we’re approaching a moment where things are about to speed up very quickly for drug policy reform advocates.
“It’s just come to a head,” he told Salon Thursday afternoon. “This is largely going to be resolved in the next five years.”
Blumenauer, along with Colorado Democratic Rep. Jared Polis, introduced legislation this week to make the federal government treat cannabis like alcohol and let states decide whether to keep it illegal. And they think they have a real chance of getting somewhere this time.
This is hardly the first time lawmakers have introduced legislation to decriminalize or legalize marijuana in Congress. Massachusetts liberal Democrat Barney Frank and Texas libertarian Republican Ron Paul worked together on a number of legalization bills, but both have now left Congress and passed the torch.
“They were very busy people with financial reform and running for president, and I think we have an opportunity this time for some added focus from a number of members of Congress,” he said, noting Frank was a lead author of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill and Paul was busy being Paul.
“I think we are in a position now to have a group of members of Congress who are able to spend a little more time and energy in a focused way on this. I think we’ve got a little bit more running room; I think our coalition is broader, and we’ve got people who have not normally been involved in this,” he added, pointing to more conservative members from Colorado who now care about marijuana after the state legalized it in the fall.
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On top of his and Polis' bills (which tax marijuana and end the federal prohibition on it, respectively), he said he anticipates “about a dozen” different pieces of legislation dealing with drug policy reform moving forward. With "a number of folks” already working together in an informal working group, he explained, "We’ve got more people working more systematically.” He declined to elaborate on other members, saying they would be making public statements in the coming months.
More modest goals include ending the federal prohibition on industrial hemp production (it's legal to make things out of hemp, but illegal to grow it, so the fiber has to be imported), and changing the federal government's classification of marijuana as more dangerous than cocaine or meth.
The long-term goal, however, is to get the federal government to end the prohibition on marijuana and leave it to states to regulate the drug, just as Congress did when the prohibition on alcohol ended, something that two-thirds of Americans seem to support. “I honestly think that in their heart of hearts, most members of Congress would support that,” Blumenauer said.ARSENAL and Leicester will get the Premier League football season underway tonight and to celebrate FIFA 18 has got a brand new trailer following their successful Beta demo release earlier this week.
In a matter of hours, Arsenal and Leicester will walk out under the lights of the Emirates Stadium to kick off the new Premier League football season. Football fans from around the world starved of top quality matches throughout the summer (pre-season doesn't count) will no doubt be tuning in to watch the season opener before plenty more teams begin their new Premier League campaign this weekend. In celebration, the developers from EA Sports, creators of the official FIFA 18 football game, have released a brand new trailer which showcases the new Premier League presentation package that appears during the start of each Premier League match up. You can take a look at the trailer above, which for no reason what so ever, has opted to show Chelsea taking on Manchester City, with one of last year's ambassadors, Eden Hazard, slotting away against the sky blues. It follows on from EA Sports surprise roll out of the FIFA 18 beta release codes earlier this week, but only for a select few players as chosen by EA Sports. Writing on the FIFA 18 forums, officials told fans: "This year we've removed registration. We're emailing selected players with their Beta codes. "We only have enough codes for the players that we sent emails to. If you didn't get an email with a code, our Advisors won't be able to give you one, nor do we have any available on the forums." Beta invites have already started being sent out and while it's by no means definite, there might still be time for you to get yours. The information shared by EA Sports reps released last night also suggests how players can opt in to get their emails, which could mean there's still hope to actually sign up for the beta. Below you'll find the official info released by EA Sports, but the gist is that you need to opt into the service with EA and if you haven’t already, you'll want to do that right away!
FIFA 18 FUT Icons Stories - Ultimate Team Stats, Cards and More FUT ICONS Stories - play with iconic legends of football at three unique periods of their career. FUT ICONS are new to FIFA 18 and will bring the greatest names in football to FUT like Ronaldinho, Ronaldo Nazario, Maradona, and Pelé. FUT ICONS will be available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch. 1 / 16
EA SPORTS FIFA 18 BETA ADVICE Check that you get our emails Make sure you’ve opted in to get our emails. Go to the EA Sports FIFA Contact Preferences pageand check the first box.
If you’ve changed your email address or no longer have access to the one you used to create your account, swap emails from one account to another.
You can also add a secondary email address to your account. A secondary email helps you reset your password if you’re locked out of your EA Account and primary email address. You can find the Secondary Email section under the EA Account Security tab.
Can I get a few more FIFA 18 beta details?
The email
• Selected FIFA players in the US and the UK who opted in to get EA emails will get an email at the email address that’s linked to their EA account.
• Because of limited space in the Closed Beta, not everyone will get an email with a code.
• We only have enough codes for the players that we sent emails to. If you didn't get an email with a code, our Advisors won't be able to give you one.
• The email will include a Closed Beta access code for PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.
o Redeem your PlayStation 4 code.
o Redeem your Xbox One code
The rules
• You must be 18 years or older.
• You’ll need to have an Internet connection, an EA Account, and have accepted the User Agreement and the FIFA 18 Beta Agreement.
• Live streaming and image capturing of Closed Beta gameplay or forums is against our rules as is discussing the content of the beta on the forum.
We send all Beta communication from EA@e.ea.com. Add this address as a safe sender to receive emails. Check your spam, junk, or social folder for any missed email messages from EA@e.ea.com.
FA/EA SPORTS Premier League football is BACK as FIFA 18 release new trailer following Beta demo launch
Even if you don't manage to get yourself a code from EA to play the closed beta, then you’ll likely have to wait for the FIFA 18 demo, which will probably drop a few weeks later. In past years the FIFA 18 demo arrived in and around September 15, two weeks before launch and we suspect the same will happen with FIFA 18. And if you seriously can't wait to play the full game (not just the limited demo) before the game officially drops, then there's also EA Access. The Electronic Arts subscription service costs £3.99 for a month and gives players access to a huge vault of EA games, but five days before FIFA 18 is released, it'll also become available (for a 10-hour trial) on EA Access. Should you have missed any of the key FIFA 18 announcements over the last few months, then worry not, because the majority of the most important info about the game can be found just below.
FIFA 18 - EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW FUELED BY THE WORLD’S BEST To deliver innovation in FIFA 18, Cristiano Ronaldo’s data was recently recorded during a training session at a mobile EA Capture studio in Madrid. Data capture of Ronaldo’s acceleration, run cadence, skills, and shooting technique were all recorded to bring veracity to his likeness and personality in FIFA 18. His data also informed important gameplay elements including fluidity, player responsiveness and explosiveness. FIFA ULTIMATE TEAM FUT ICONS The Best of the Best are coming to FIFA 18 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. More details on ICONS to be revealed soon. NEW LEGENDS Ronaldo Nazario: Explosive pace, lethal finishing and dazzling skill. Legendary Brazilian Striker and two-time FIFA World Cup winner Ronaldo Nazário headlines FUT ICONS. More recently, EA Sports also announced the addition of Diego Maradona, Thierry Henry, Lev Yashin and Pelé. FIFA 18 PRE-ORDER BONUS FIFA 18 pre-orders are live right now and there are some good offers depending on which package you go for, including three days early access with the Ronaldo (Deluxe) and ICON (Super Deluxe) Editions. Plus, FIFA fans who love nothing better than online matches will be able to get a head start on the FIFA Ultimate Team season early with special bonuses and items. You can find more information by visiting the FIFA 18 website, but below you'll find all the details about each package
EA SPORTS
FIFA 18 ICON EDITION • Play from September 26th with 3 Days Early Access
• Up to 40 FIFA Ultimate Team Jumbo Premium Gold Packs (two per week over 20 weeks – worth up to $120)
• 3 match FUT Team of the Week loan player (one three match loan player for 20 weeks)
• Cristiano Ronaldo FUT loan player for 5 matches
• Ronaldo Nazário FUT Icon loan player for 5 matches
• 8 special edition FUT kits The FIFA 18 Icon edition is only available digitally as a download. Pre-order FIFA 18 Icon Edition for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
EA SPORTS
FIFA 18 Ronaldo Edition • Play from September 26th with 3 Days Early Access
• Up to 20 FIFA Ultimate Team Jumbo Premium Gold Packs (one per week for 20 weeks – worth up to $60)
• Cristiano Ronaldo FUT loan player for 5 matches
• 8 special edition FUT kits Pre-order FIFA 18 Ronaldo Edition for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
EA SPORTSJim Obergefell and his late husband, John Arthur. Via Facebook
Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments inObergefell vs. Hodges,the landmark civil rights case that will likely determine whether states should be forced to recognize gay marriage, or at least recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
This fall, it seemed like the same-sex marriage movement was actually pushed backward for the first time since the Supreme Court overturned the federal Defense of Marriage Act back in 2013. In November, a US Court of Appeals upheld state-level bans on same-sex marriage in Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Michigan.
That decision conflicted with other rulings in the lower courts, and so what seemed like a step back actually turned into a step forward for marriage equality. Because of the inconsistency in the lower court rulings, the Supreme Court agreed to step in, rolling all of the suits from those four states together into a case that is expected to decide the issue once and for all.
The lead plaintiff, 40-year-old Jim Obergefell, was merely the first to file an appeal—a decision he made as his partner of more than 20 years was dying of ALS. Although his partner, John Arthur was bedridden, the couple managed to fly out of Ohio—which does not recognize same-sex marriage—to Maryland, where the two married on the tarmac at Baltimore International Airport.
Although Arthur has since passed away, Obergefell will now have the privilege of listening to the Supreme Court's oral arguments Tuesday over whether or not Ohio should recognize their marriage. Right now, Obergefell is not listed on his spouse's death certificate.
There are three possible outcomes to Obergefell vs. Hodges.The judges could decide that all states must issue licenses to gay couples—a result that would mean the question of same-sex marriage in America would be put to rest, forever. The second possibility is that the judges could decide solely that other states must recognize marriages performed in other states where it's legal. Or, the justices could decide to let the states continue to do their own thing.
Of course, people have tons of opinions about this. As such, a huge list of parties submitted amicus briefs to the court in an attempt to influence the justices. Groups like PFLAG and the Family Research Council obviously had their say, although some interested parties were much less predictable, such as the group of gay Mormon men married to women who said gay marriage would make their lives "meaningless."
The court's decision will depend in part on whether the judges view gay people as a certain kind of people or people who engage in a certain act. Classes of people are constitutionally protected, and acts aren't necessarily. Groups like the American Psychological Association have pointed out in briefs that homosexuality is an immutable characteristic, and that thereforedenying gay couples the right to marry "stigmatizes them" as a group.Opponents, needless to say, have argued the opposite.
But more than science, the case is about states rights and the Fourteenth Amendment—specifically, whether the definition of "marriage" should be decided by each state, or whether the federal government has the right to step in and end a debate that's been raging for years. Gay couples and their supporters argue that they simply want equal access to a right that's been established in every state. Opponents claim this amounts to asking the Supreme Court to establish a new constitutional right—essentially contending that "gay marriage" is a completely separate entity than "traditional marriage."
So yes, it's really kind of complicated. Or at least, a lot more complicated than sticking a Human Rights Campaign sticker on your car and declaring tautologies like "love is love."
To Obergefell, though, it really is that simple. Before he headed to Washington D.C., he told NBC News that he and his husband didn't really focus on the upcoming court cases in the final months of his life, but that Arthur would have wanted him to be recognized on his death certificate.
"I would like everyone to think about the end of their life and their death certificate, their last official record as a person," he said. "Do they want that record to be accurate or not? Do they want that record to reflect their life, their love and their commitment?"
Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.The Boston Bruins dominated just about every aspect of the game Monday night and skated their way to a 6-1 victory over The Pittsburgh Penguins to give them a 2-0 series lead heading back home to Boston.
The first period was the most action packed period in this series with a total of 5 goals scored. The first came 28 seconds into the game as Brad Marchand stole the puck off of Sidney Crosby and skated down the ice on a breakaway to score. The Bruins sustained a lot more offensive pressure than the Penguins throughout the first resulting in a large lead in shots. At 14:37, Torey Krug made a great play to keep the puck in the offensive zone by snapping it towards the net, where Nathan Horton was there to tip it in and give the B’s a two goal lead. It didn’t take long for them to find the back of the net again when just under two minutes later David Krejci sniped another one home off a pass from Nathan Horton. After giving up three goals in one period, the Pens decided it was time to pull Vokoun out of the net and put Marc-Andre Fleury back in between the pipes. Once it looked like the Bruins were completely running away with the game, Brandon Sutter sniped in a shot in the last minute to give Pittsburgh a reason to cheer and gain some energy. It looked like the worst possible time to give up a goal and let the Penguins have some momentum going into the second period, but Marchand was ready with an answering goal at 19:51 to silence Pittsburgh once more before heading to the Locker Room. Shots in the first period were 13-6 in favor of Boston.
The second period had a much slower pace than the first leading to no goals from either side despite a few chances from each team. Marchand received a penalty for tripping Sidney Crosby at 11:54 and the Penguins’ Power play took the ice for the first time this game. Unlike what we’ve seen throughout this year, Pittsburgh looked slow on the man advantage and were unable to set up any real good chances against the B’s Penalty Kill. Boston was able to successfully kill off a penalty for the 5th time this series. Both goaltenders had some strong moments and were able to keep the puck out of their nets throughout the period. Pittsburgh lead in shots 7-5 in the second period.
Boston wasted no time in coming out strong in the third period as Patrice Bergeron shot one past Fleury just 27 seconds after the puck was dropped to give the Bruins a 5-1 lead. Any energy that Pittsburgh may have had stored seemed to be gone by the time Boston lit the lamp a 5th time on the Penguins’ ice. They were given one more chance to jump start their offense as Lucic headed to the box for interference, but they couldn’t find a way to shake the Bruins Penalty Kill or sneak one past Tuukka Rask. When it seemed like this game would wind down slowly to the final horn, Johnny Boychuk slapped one more past Fleury at 18:36 in the third to seal up the final score of 6-1. The Penguins lead in shots 14-11 during the third period.
The Bruins have seemed to steadily improve their game throughout the playoffs by each series they play. They were half a period away from being eliminated in Game 7 of round one on their own ice, and now they may be just two wins away from the Stanley Cup Finals. One positive aspect of this series is that there have been no power play goals scored through 2 games, meaning Boston has been able to beat Pittsburgh at even strength on many occasions. This game seemed to be a combination of good teamwork from the Bruins with a bad game overall played by Pittsburgh.
The Penguins once again lead the physical portion of the game as they lead in hits 37-19, but this didn’t help their offense as they had 12 giveaways in the game as opposed to only 2 given from the Bruins.
Faceoffs were much closer than in game one as Boston only lead wins 29-28.
Once again there were no power play goals, the Penguins couldn’t convert on two chances while Boston failed on one.
The Bruins lead in total shots for the night 29-27.
Brad Marchand was named the player of the game with 2 Goals, 4 Shots, and a +4 Rating.
Follow me on Twitter for Bruins and College Hockey updates: @GreggyC92A new study, published today in Nature Climate Change, suggests that – if current trends continue – food production alone will reach, if not exceed, the global targets for total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2050.
The study’s authors say we should all think carefully about the food we choose and its environmental impact. A shift to healthier diets across the world is just one of a number of actions that need to be taken to avoid dangerous climate change and ensure there is enough food for all.
As populations rise and global tastes shift towards meat-heavy Western diets, increasing agricultural yields will not meet projected food demands of what is expected to be 9.6 billion people - making it necessary to bring more land into cultivation.
This will come at a high price, warn the authors, as the deforestation will increase carbon emissions as well as biodiversity loss, and increased livestock production will raise methane levels. They argue that current food demand trends must change through reducing waste and encouraging balanced diets.
If we maintain ‘business as usual’, say the authors, then by 2050 cropland will have expanded by 42% and fertiliser use increased sharply by 45% over 2009 levels. A further tenth of the world’s pristine tropical forests would disappear over the next 35 years.
The study shows that increased deforestation, fertilizer use and livestock methane emissions are likely to cause GHG from food production to increase by almost 80%. This will put emissions from food production alone roughly equal to the target greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 for the entire global economy.
The study’s authors write that halving the amount of food waste and managing demand for particularly environmentally-damaging food products by changing global diets should be key aims that, if achieved, might mitigate some of the greenhouse gases causing climate change.
“There are basic laws of biophysics that we cannot evade,” said lead researcher Bojana Bajzelj from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who authored the study with colleagues from Cambridge’s departments of Geography and Plant Sciences as well as the University of Aberdeen's Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences.
“The average efficiency of livestock converting plant feed to meat is less than 3%, and as we eat more meat, more arable cultivation is turned over to producing feedstock for animals that provide meat for humans. The losses at each stage are large, and as humans globally eat more and more meat, conversion from plants to food becomes less and less efficient, driving agricultural expansion and land cover conversion, and releasing more greenhouse gases. Agricultural practices are not necessarily at fault here – but our choice of food is,” said Bajzelj.
“It is imperative to find ways to achieve global food security without expanding crop or pastureland. Food production is a main driver of biodiversity loss and a large contributor to climate change and pollution, so our food choices matter.”
The team analysed evidence such as land use, land suitability and agricultural biomass data to create a robust model that compares different scenarios for 2050, including scenarios based on maintaining current trends.
One scenario investigated by the team is on the supply side: the closing of ‘yield gaps’. Gaps between crop yields achieved in ‘best practice’ farming and the actual average yields exist all over the world, but are widest in developing countries – particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The researchers say that closing these gaps through sustainable intensification of farming should be actively pursued.
But even with the yield gaps closed, projected food demand will still require additional land – so the impact on GHG emissions and biodiversity remains. Bajzelj points out that higher yields will also require more mineral fertiliser use and increased water demand for irrigation.
Food waste, another scenario analysed by the team, occurs at all stages in the food chain. In developing countries, poor storage and transportation cause waste; in the west, wasteful consumption is rife. “The latter is in many ways worse because the wasted food products have already undergone various transformations that require input of other resources, especially energy,” said Bajzelj.
Yield gap closure alone still showed a greenhouse gas increase of just over 40% by 2050. Closing yield gaps and halving food waste still showed a small increase of 2% in greenhouse gas emissions. When healthy diets were added, the model suggests that all three measures combined result in agricultural GHG levels almost halving from their 2009 level – dropping 48%.
“Western diets are increasingly characterised by excessive consumption of food, including that of emission-intensive meat and dairy products. We tested a scenario where all countries were assumed to achieve an average balanced diet - without excessive consumption of sugars, fats, and meat products. This significantly reduced the pressures on the environment even further,” said the team.
The ‘average’ balanced diet used in the study is a relatively achievable goal for most. For example, the figures included two 85g portions of red meat and five eggs per week, as well as a portion of poultry a day.
“This is not a radical vegetarian argument; it is an argument about eating meat in sensible amounts as part of healthy, balanced diets,” said Cambridge co-author Prof Keith Richards. “Managing the demand better, for example by focusing on health education, would bring double benefits – maintaining healthy populations, and greatly reducing critical pressures on the environment.”
Co-author Prof Pete Smith from the University of Aberdeen said: “unless we make some serious changes in food consumption trends, we would have to completely de-carbonise the energy and industry sectors to stay within emissions budgets that avoid dangerous climate change. That is practically impossible – so, as well as encouraging sustainable agriculture, we need to re-think what we eat.”
“Cutting food waste and moderating meat consumption in more balanced diets, are the essential ‘no-regrets’ options,” added Bajzelj.
Inset image: cattle_feedlot_09 by NDSU Ag Communication (Att-NC-SA)On September 11th, Wafah Binladin, a twenty-six-year-old graduate of Columbia Law School, was finishing the summer holidays with her family in Geneva. Wafah’s father, Yeslam, is the Geneva-based head of the Binladin family’s European holding company, the Saudi Investment Company. When she learned of the terror attacks on America, Wafah, who lived in a rented loft in SoHo, became frantic. She knew several people who lived and worked in the area of the World Trade Center, and she repeatedly tried to reach friends in New York. “I was in shock,” she recalled, when I reached her in Switzerland recently. “All I thought about was the people in those buildings. I couldn’t get hold of my friends.... I live only ten blocks away. Every night, I’d walk home, down West Broadway, looking up at the Twin Towers. I have pictures of myself there with my friends. We went to Windows on the World. I kept thinking, How can anyone do such a thing?” Later, she says, she heard the news that the prime suspect was her uncle Osama bin Laden. (Some members of the family prefer “Binladin.”) “I thought then, Oh, no! I’ll never be able to go back to the States again.” In Cambridge, Massachusetts, meanwhile, another uncle, Abdullah bin Laden, a handsome, slightly built graduate of Harvard Law School, learned about the attack while ordering coffee at Starbucks. Abdullah, who is thirty-five and a half brother of Osama bin Laden, rushed back to his apartment to watch the news, arriving just in time to see the second plane crash, into the south tower of the World Trade Center. By mid-October, Abdullah, who was ordinarily clean-shaven, started to let his beard grow. People who knew him well realized that he was preparing to shed his Western ways. (He lived in an apartment overlooking the Charles River, spent leisure time piloting private planes at nearby Hanscom Airfield, and dreamed of working at a Manhattan law firm.) Instead, he said not long ago, over lunch at an Afghani restaurant in Boston, he was returning home to Saudi Arabia. His mission was to persuade other members of his family—fifty siblings among them—that they had to publicly put more distance between themselves and Osama or risk losing their reputation as honorable businessmen. The bin Laden family owns and runs a five-billion-dollar-a-year global corporation that includes the largest construction firm in the Islamic world, with offices in London and Geneva. Abdullah is still conferring with many of his siblings at family compounds in Riyadh and Jidda. He has yet to get the family to agree upon a joint public statement. The reason, according to some people who have been in touch with the bin Ladens, is that the family, despite its pro-American reputation, holds loyalties that are more complicated than either Abdullah or the family’s many influential American friends, defenders, and business partners might have known. (The family keeps tens and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars invested in American companies and financial institutions.) “There’s obviously a lot of spin by the Saudi Binladin Group”—the family’s corporate name—“to distinguish itself from Osama,” Vincent Cannistraro, a former C.I.A. counter-terrorism chief, told me. “I’ve been following the bin Ladens for years, and it’s easy to say, ‘We disown him.’ Many in the family have. But blood is usually thicker than water.” A Washington business partner of the bin Ladens, who does not want his name used, out of fear that his family might be harassed, said, “People keep asking me, ‘Why aren’t they on TV denouncing him? Are they really separate?’ ” Some relatives, such as Wafah and her mother, Carmen, who are estranged from the family (Carmen is seeking a divorce from Yeslam), issued personal statements of grief and regret. But, last week, plans by Yeslam to speak to an American audience through Dan Rather, of CBS, were put on hold, apparently when an older brother counselled against it. There appear to be two related difficulties in the bin Ladens’ response. According to a knowledgeable source, the Saudi royal family, whose patronage and favor are at the foundation of the bin Laden family fortune, is concerned about possible political repercussions from any statements. As President Bush demands that the countries of the world choose sides, and declare whether they are with the United States or with Osama bin Laden, for some members of the bin Laden family—and for many other conflicted Saudis, too—the situation is so complex that they would have to respond “Both.”
“The Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family are walking the same fine line,” the Washington business partner of the bin Ladens said. “On one hand, the family should hire a great P.R. firm and a great lawyer, and take out ads, like Bayer”—a reference to the pharmaceutical company and its antibiotic Cipro. “But to do that they’d have to denounce Osama.” Some American and European intelligence officials told me that several members of the bin Laden family sympathize with Osama. These officials also acknowledged that with a family that large—it may number as many as six hundred, when one counts all the relatives—conflicts are inevitable. “This war in a way is really about himself, and the values of his own family,” said Adil Najam, a professor of international relations at Boston University, who has studied the rise of Osama bin Laden. “His rampage is against the Saudi establishment, which he says is not Islamic enough. But his own family is the Saudi establishment.” Yossef Bodansky, the director of the congressional task force on terrorism and unconventional warfare, and a biographer of bin Laden, sees the situation slightly differently. “Osama isn’t at war against his family,” he said. “He is fighting to save his family. He sees the corruption of his family as one of the manifestations of the reach of the West.” Bodansky continued, “Look, bin Laden is probably right—a value system he cares about dearly is succumbing to the onslaught of Western civilization.... He’s absolutely correct in principle. But his conclusion that there is no escape but provoking world war leaves a lot to be desired.” When, in a 1998 edict, bin Laden commanded his followers to kill Americans and their allies, military and civilian, this presumably included his niece Wafah. She was born an American citizen when Yeslam was studying at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. She was raised for the most part in Switzerland—her father recently became a Swiss citizen—and she grew up so removed from the family’s roots that her first language was French. Last year, she completed an internship at the New York law firm of Schulte Roth & Zabel. A partner at the firm, who asked not to be quoted by name, describes Wafah as “conscientious, serious, and quite ambitious.” In conversation, she sounds much like any high-spirited and opinionated young American. “I love American movies,” she told me. “I love American music, like Destiny’s Child and Mariah Carey. I love Madonna. And Michael and Janet Jackson, too. I like modern men. I love Jennifer Lopez—I think she’s the most beautiful woman in the world!” Around two dozen other American-based members of the bin Laden family, most of them here to study in colleges and prep schools, were said to be in the United |
sense that there’s a movement— aborning all over the country, burgeoning in every state in the country. Because we don’t see it every day.
Bill Moyers: You know polls show a large majority of Americans favor raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Yet President Obama called on Congress to raise it from $7.25 an hour only to $9 an hour. Do you consider him a progressive?
Peter Dreier: I think President Obama, a former community organizer, understands that he is a president in a moment of crisis and he’s torn between trying to be a moderate and to get things done and to be a progressive and move the country in an entirely different direction. And he’s making some gestures about moving in the right direction with as you said the $9 an hour minimum wage. It’s not good enough. And just like FDR, you know, said I believe you, I agree with you. But go out and make me do it.
Obama is a community organizer, right. He should understand better than anyone that he needs people out there protesting not only the protesting against Wall Street and the right, but protesting some of the moderate Democrats that are also obstacles to change. And I would like to see him encourage activists to be in the streets and protesting. And he did that a little bit a few months ago when he encouraged students on college campuses to get involved in the divestment movement over fossil fuels because he remembers when he was at Occidental College—
Bill Moyers: Your college.
Peter Dreier: His first political act was a speech he gave against apartheid and encouraging my college, Occidental College, to divest itself from stocks doing business in South Africa. And unfort—
Bill Moyers: 1981.
Peter Dreier: —unfortunately my college didn’t listen to Barack Obama—
Bill Moyers: — and many of them— most of them are not listening to Bill McKibben and the divestment movement on fossil fuels.
Peter Dreier: But many colleges did divest from companies doing business in South Africa eventually. And that helped to dismantle the apartheid government and brought us Nelson Mandela as president and changed that country forever for the better.
And I do think that the fossil fuel movement, the movement against global warming that’s— of which this is just one tactic to divest from these companies that are causing global warming like ExxonMobil, that’s going to happen.
And more and more of us have to learn that history happens when you realize that change is possible. Being angry, being upset, being frustrated is not enough. People have to have hope. They have to believe that change is possible.
People won’t remember this crisis unless they— unless we see it in the historical context of a moment in American history, a turning point in American history where America’s decided, “Enough of Wall Street, enough of the widening gap between the rich and everybody else, enough of this destroying our environment, enough of college students going into huge debt just to get an education and being in debt for the next 30 or 40 years.” That’s untenable and it’s uncivilized and we have to move in a different direction. And Americans are fed up.
Bill Moyers: Can you think of some small victories that progressive have won this year?
Peter Dreier: Sure. In Los Angeles— has the dirtiest port in the America, the dirt— it’s high rates of asthma among children all around the port. And a coalition of the Teamsters Union and the Sierra Club and local community groups forced the Port of Los Angeles to clean up its act, to create a clean trucks program, to clean up the environment and to make it possible for the mostly immigrant truck drivers to improve their health and their working conditions. And now that is spread to ports all over the country. And so there are tens of thousands of truck drivers and residents who live near these dirty ports that are going to be healthier because of this victory in California. Another example of that is you might remember that in 2008, right after Obama got elected president, about 300 factory workers in Chicago at Republic Windows and Doors were being fired from their jobs arbitrarily and unceremoniously. And most people in that situation would say, “I guess I’m fired. I better go home and find another job.” But the union led by a guy named Robles and a young organizer named Leah Fried said, “We’re not going to take this.”
And they organized the workers to take over the factory just like in the 1930s in Flint, Michigan and other places. And the owners of the factory eventually sold the business and the workers bought it. And now there’s a factory there called New Era Windows. And it’s a worker owned company that’s thriving. And that’s because the workers stood up.
And in a little town south of Seattle, Washington called SeaTac, Washington where the Seattle airport is located, the city council is about to vote on a $15 minimum wage for the people that live in that town and that’s mostly— and that work in that town. And that’s mostly going to be people at the Seattle airport.
Now, the Seattle airport is not going to move to Mexico, it’s not going to move to China. And so they have the Seattle airport where they want them. And they’re going to have to raise their wages and $15 an hour isn’t even middle class, right. And so in Richmond, California and in SeaTac, Washington and in Florida with the Dreamers and in North Carolina with the Moral Mondays and all over the country on college campuses there are these victories happening.
Small colleges are starting to divest from these fossil fuel companies. And so, you know, there are these hopeful signs. And if the media gave more attention to them, Americans would realize change is possible. So it’s only because people are ignorant of them, they don’t know about them because they’re not in the mainstream media that people think that things are hopeless.
But they’re not hopeless. People are on the ground are making change and they’re building a movement that’s going to have lasting impact. And we need to spread that message.
Bill Moyers: Are unions hopeless? Because as you know unions have been losing members and political clout for years now.
Peter Dreier: Well, we would all hope that President Obama would’ve supported labor law reform. Because we have the most—
Bill Moyers: He said he would in the campaign.
Peter Dreier: Right, we have the most pro-management federal labor laws of any country in the world. And the labor movement has suffered as a result of that. But only a few weeks ago in a suburb— a rural suburb of Atlanta, in DeKalb County, 500 sanitation workers signed a contract with the county through the representation of the Teamsters Union.
Five-hundred garbage workers now have a union voice that they didn’t have two months ago. And that is a sign that the labor movement, it’s not thriving. But there are lots of experiments and initiatives happening all over the country.
That one day strike in cities around the country by fast food workers a couple of months ago— and the growing— activism among Walmart workers who are taking on the biggest corporation in the world and saying, “We’re not going to take poverty wages anymore,” those things are signs that the labor movement is starting to stand up and be counted and I’ve been to lots of meetings with labor leaders and labor activists where they realize they’ve got to change the paradigm, they’ve got to change the way they do organizing, or else the labor—
Bill Moyers: How so?
Peter Dreier: —movement’s going to die. They’ve got to mobilize young people, they’ve got to mobilize immigrants. They’ve got to go into workplaces where they hadn’t gone before. They have to spend more of their budgets on grassroots organizing. They have to build alliances with the Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood and the civil rights organizations and with community organizations. In Richmond, California SEIU is a key player, the Service Employees Union, in this battle against Wall Street. And so here you have the largest union in the country standing up without Wall Street on behalf of homeowners in this little small city of Richmond, California. And that’s a sign that the labor movement recognizes it has to change the way it operates and save itself from extinction and become the kind of player it needs to be to move the country in a different direction.
Bill Moyers: One of the progressive heroes in your book is Dr. Seuss. How did that happen?
Peter Dreier: You know, Dr. Seuss’ real name was Theodor Geisel. What people don’t realize about him was that— you think of him as a kindly old man who wrote children’s books. But in fact he was a progressive and a moralist. And when he became a children’s author, many of the themes, the progressive themes that he’d written cartoons about, drawn cartoon about, became prominent in his children’s stories.
So if you think about The Butter Battle Book which is about the Cold War, the stupidity of the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. And The Lorax, that was made into a movie recently, is about how corporate America is destroying the environment and we need people to stand up to them.
And then Ted Cruz was on the Senate floor reading Green Eggs and Ham on behalf of a filibuster to stop Obamacare which hadn’t even started yet. And he didn’t even realize what is the message of Green Eggs and Ham?
Ted Cruz: Say! I like green eggs and ham! I do!
Peter Dreier: It’s don’t criticize something until you’ve tried it. The message that Dr. Seuss is sending in his books to young people is to stand up to arbitrary authority and take back your own life and be a fighter for justice and for your own integrity. And I think that Dr. Seuss would be very pleased with a lot of the movements we’ve been talking about today because these are people standing up to arbitrary authority and big power and trying to take the country back just like he argued and wrote about in Yertle the Turtle.
Bill Moyers: Tell me briefly the story of Yertle the Turtle.
Peter Dreier: Dr. Seuss wrote Yertle the Turtle about a turtle that wanted to be the empire, he wanted to be the king of all he could see. He wanted to be the most powerful person in the land. And he was living in this little dirty pond. And he convinced a bunch of turtles to pile on top of each other so that he could be on top, he could have his throne.
And the more turtles that piled up on top of each other, the more difficult and suffering was going on underneath, but he was getting to see the whole world and he was feeling very powerful. And then on the bottom, a little turtle named Mack said, “It’s really bad under here. Can you let up a little?” And Yertle said, “No.”
And so eventually Mack, the turtle at the bottom burped intentionally. And the whole pile of turtles came tumbling down. And Yertle fell off of his throne into the mud pond. And the turtles looked around, they realized, “He’s just like us. He’s no more powerful than the rest of us.”
And that’s really what the story’s about. It’s really— it was a metaphor for Hitler, but it was a broader story about the need for ordinary people to challenge people in power, to realize that people in power are only there because we allow them to be there. In a democracy you can take back power.
Bill Moyers: So what would Yertle the Turtle’s message be to us today?
Peter Dreier: That we can win, that we can topple the Wall Street titans, we can topple the big corporations, we can change America in a more democratic direction if we’re willing to fight back and we’re willing to challenge the powers that be and also realize that throughout history there are always moments when it looks like Yertle is winning, right.
But at the end Mack had more power than Yertle did because he was able to topple him just by burping. And that really means speaking truth to power, having your voice heard. And Americans are beginning to feel like their voices now can be heard. And that’s why I’m optimistic, not because I walk— I get up in the morning with rose colored glasses. Because I really do think that we’re at this transformational moment in our history.
Bill Moyers: Peter Dreier, thank you very much for being with me.
Peter Dreier: Thank you, Bill. It’s been a pleasure.The no-huddle offense has become a staple of the NFL in 2013, but Sam Wyche, who introduced the system to the league in the 1980s, has revealed that the NFL tried to stop it when he was coaching the Cincinnati Bengals.
Sam Wyche says the NFL tried to put a stop to his no-huddle offense with the Bengals just hours before the AFC title game. George Gojkovich/Getty Images
Wyche, whose Bengals used the no-huddle during the 1988 season to reach the AFC Championship Game against the Buffalo Bills, told Newsday that then-commissioner Pete Rozelle told him two hours before that game that his team would be penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct if it ran the hurry-up.
"We'd been using it for five years, that's all we used all season long, we had the No. 1 offense in football, that's all we practiced all week long, that's how we got to the AFC championship," Wyche said. "And then two hours before he said, 'You can't use that.'"
Wyche said the league had previously informed then-Bengals owner Paul Brown and NBC, which was televising the game, of its plans. Wyche was to be one of the last to know, but one of NBC's commentators, who Wyche said was a former teammate of his but didn't identify by name, informed him that the NFL wanted to end the no-huddle, so he was prepared when he got Rozelle's message.
"I immediately told the NFL delegate along with the referee who was in the office there with me and [now-Bengals owner] Mike Brown, I said 'Go get Pete Rozelle on the phone right now because I want to tell him that he's interfering with the competitive balance of this game, and if we get penalized and lose this ballgame, the first thing I'm bringing up in the press conference is this conversation and there are a lot of gamblers out there who aren't going to be very happy.'
"It wasn't 20 seconds before he came back, he left the room and came back, I'm not exaggerating, I bet it wasn't 20 seconds. 'Uh, commissioner says go ahead and use the no-huddle, no problem,'" Wyche said.
The Bengals won the AFC title game 21-10 to reach Super Bowl XXIII, where they lost to the San Francisco 49ers 20-16.Vegan and Cruelty Free All of our products are cruelty free and vegan. There are no animal products or parts in any product we make. Also, no animal testing on anything we do. We also do not add any wheat gluten or refined sugar into anything! Global Impact We attempt to minimize our global impact in all areas of business. We’d like to see the Earth in a great state of health for our future generations, this includes basic ideologies like fair labor, community development, and sustainable business development. And some of the simplest things; re-using boxes, paper, limiting unnecessary packaging, etc. Read more. Recycle We use recycled and up-recycled wherever possible - many of the fabrics we use are made from recycled plastic bottles. Our sail flops use up-cycled sails that have sailed the globe for years… Organic Cotton Used where it makes sense, which is wherever cotton is needed (currently in t shirts and hats). We also use other sustainable fabrics like hemp and rpet. Read more. Waste Management This is one of the most pertinent in our opinion to the manufacturing process. If not properly managed, waste material can easily fill landfills from manufacturing. We developed our “no scraps left behind” program as way to use up scraps and create more work for the down time. Almost all of our rope waste is reused into other rope art. Read more. Sandals Sandal With Sole No Scrap Left Behind Program Hammocks T-Shirts • Organic Clothing Accessories • Fair Trade Coffee Our Favorite Picks
About Nomadic State of Mind Picture yourself… anywhere. We at Nomadic State of Mind believe that while it may not always be possible to take your physical body to new and exciting destinations, you certainly can find small doses of time to let your mind wander into unknown territories. Whether you fancy physical travel (time travel or within this dimension), sense expansion (ever tried an unfamiliar cuisine?) or going for a ride with google earth into the depths of the globe to discover a small town in the other hemisphere– you have tapped into your Nomadic State of Mind… Now, take a peek into ours. LEARN MOREAustralia and a bicycle parking facility
I am currently in Australia where I am meeting a lot of interesting people, my family, some good friends and last but not least the Queensland Minister for Main Roads, Road Safety and Ports, who is also Minister for Energy, Biofuels and Water Supply; the honourable Mark Bailey MP.
It is a good thing that this is again the none short post week, because I have been too busy preparing everything for this Australia trip to write a longer post. For those of you who do not follow me on Twitter I will explain a bit what I am doing in Australia. Last year I gave a presentation for the Summer Course of the Amsterdam University in Zwolle. In the audience was PerthBiker who asked me if I would be willing to do that same presentation in Perth. I said yes and sure enough, here I am on an Australian tour. First up was Brisbane where I have relatives. I spent a nice weekend with them and last Monday, 20 March, I started the real work. The day was organised by Adam Rogers and opened with a talk over coffee with the Queensland minister for Transport, Mark Bailey, who is an avid cyclist himself. In the Australian fashion, so we would call him a ‘wheel runner’. The talk lasted a bit longer than planned and we had a very nice conversation. I must admit I never directly talked to such a high-ranking official, before, but being the Bicycle Ambassador of the Dutch Cycling Embassy does open doors. It was a bit intimidating, but I told him that he shouldn’t dismiss advocates who ‘glorify’ Dutch cycling and protected cycling infrastructure, because I feel he couldn’t take his self – a younger able man – as the measure of things. It is a different story for elderly people and women, particularly mothers who would like to ride. He seemed very focused and open to my suggestions. He immediately discussed an interesting plan for a street in the city center. But he has all sorts of parties to take into account, not least the city council, so it is uncertain if and when such plans materialise.
The minister later tweeted he had a great chat with me. At lunch time, I gave a presentation for people of the Department of Transport and Main Roads that was well visited. In the afternoon we had planned to cycle around in Brisbane to see some infrastructure that I would comment on. Being a guest of the government I had no other option but to adhere to the law (it would go too far to say I “respect” it) and for the very first time in my life I had to wear the silly plastic hat! Luckily, Brisbane’s shared bicycle system has some really dorky complementary helmets and I got to wear one of those. A historic moment that was photographed, but that should in no way imply I changed my stance on helmets. Unfortunately, it was raining cats and dogs for a long time, so the bike ride had to be cut short and I didn’t get to see the newest infrastructure in Brisbane. Some other time perhaps.
In the evening I repeated the presentation for a different group of people; transport professionals united in the BikePedTrans organisation. The response was very enthusiastic, so I had a great first day! Tomorrow I will fly to Canberra for the next leg of the trip. Wednesday I fly on to Perth for the conclusion.
Meanwhile in ’s-Hertogenbosch (and this completely unrelated) people keep using the bicycle parking facility at central station. I made a short video right before I went to Australia and I would like to share that with you now.
Entrance to the ’s-Hertogenbosch bicycle parking facility.Are You Having a Difficult Time Finding an Emergency Dentist in Bethesda MD - Repairing Broken / Fractured / Chipped / Partially Dislodged Teeth- Replacing Teeth that are Knocked-Out- Restoring Lost Crowns / Caps / Fillings- Removing Objects Stuck in Between the Teeth- Treating Dental Abscesses, Loose Teeth, ToothachesWe can also perform on-site extractions, oral surgery and root canals.Our dentist office is located approximately 5-6 miles north of Bethesda MD. Our office has set business hours and is not open 24/7. For dental emergencies after our normal business hours, we will arrange for a dentist to come into the office if you so choose. Call our 24-hour emergency dental services phone number at 240-205-8141 and we will gather any important information, determine when the dentist can meet with you, and give you directions to our exact location. The map to the left provides a general sense of how to get to us.
Providing Emergency Dental Care Near the Following Bethesda Maryland Neighborhoods:
Bethesda Metro Center, Bethesda Row, Bethesda West, Downtown Bethesda, Fernwood, Georgetown Village, Lone Oak, Marymount, Stratton Woods, Wildwood, Wisconsin North, Woodmont Triangle, 20015, 20016, 20812, 20814, 20815, 20816, 20817, 20818, 20852, 20895Some See Extreme 'Anti-Theism' As Motive In N.C. Killings
Enlarge this image toggle caption Durham County Sheriff's Office/AP Durham County Sheriff's Office/AP
Outrage over the murder of three young Muslim Americans in North Carolina last week has gone international. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation said Saturday that the killings reflected "Islamophobia" and "bear the symptoms of a hate crime," but local authorities say they don't yet know what motivated the murders.
The man held responsible for the killings is an avowed atheist. Whether that's relevant in this case is not clear, but some experts see a new extremism developing among some atheists.
The North Carolina killings have unnerved U.S. Muslims in large part because the victims, Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and her sister Razan, were model Muslim Americans, devoted to public service, with friends throughout their community.
The guest worship leader this past Friday at the Dar al-Noor mosque in northern Virginia was Dr. Esam Omeish, a prominent lay Muslim leader in the D.C. area.
"And so if it's about patriotism, then I know who the real patriot is," Omeish said. "And if it's about loving America and embodying its ideals, then I know for sure."
The victims, Omeish said, were the real Americans, honoring everything we believe is good about this land.
On his Facebook page, Craig Hicks, the alleged gunman, criticized all religions. His wife said he had nothing against Muslims in particular, but Hicks described himself as a gun-toting atheist.
Religion scholar Reza Aslan says ordinary atheists just don't believe in God. Hicks, Aslan says, was an anti-theist.
"An anti-theist is a relatively new identity, and it's more than just sort of a refusal to believe in gods or spirituality; it's a sometimes virulent opposition to the very concept of belief," Aslan says.
The anti-theists have their own heroes; people like the outspoken writer Richard Dawkins, who appears often on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher condemning religion generally and Islam in particular.
"I mean these people have a holy book that tells them to kill infidels," Dawkins once said on the show.
Reza Aslan says the anti-theists are few in number. But just as mainstream Muslims must confront the extremists in their communities, Aslan says, it's time for mainstream atheists to do the same.
"To recognize that there is a small fringe element that has a belief system predicated on the inherent nature of religion as insidious, as needing to be removed from society," he says.
Writer Asra Nomani, herself a Muslim woman, says the North Carolina case doesn't yet answer the question of whether anti-religion extremists can be motivated to kill, just as religious extremists sometimes are. She thinks concern about anti-theism — or Islamophobia generally — is going too far when Muslim leaders start feeding a culture of fear.
"A safety campaign has been started to escort Muslim women in headscarves around college campuses, making it seem as if their lives are in danger, that Muslims are just sitting ducks [and] that we have targets on our backs," Nomani says.
When Muslim Americans see themselves as victims, Nomani argues, they're less likely to take charge of their own lives and communities.
But right now the feeling among Muslim Americans seems to be that the North Carolina killings were clearly a hate crime.
President Obama on Friday released a statement, saying no one in America should be targeted because of who they are or how they worship. That statement followed a decision by the FBI to launch its own hate crime investigation in North Carolina.Prima Facie Feces (Shit on the Face of It)
I don’t use pejoratives because I can do no better. Our situation is so poor today that I know no other way to make the dire situation clear. It should be obvious to anyone working in a middle-management position or above with any real charitable organization who spends about 10 minutes reviewing the Clinton Foundation’s own website and documents, that the organization does little to nothing with measurable outcomes or deliverables. Its reported revenues are wildly at variance with what it says it does. The organization is about the same revenue or budget size as the March of Dimes, which has a 2-star out of 4-star rating from Charity Navigator. Clinton Foundation? UNRATED by Charity Navigator. In other words they would be NO STAR if Charity Navigator could rate them by its criteria that apply to all other charitable organizations.
Note Line 5: Employees
It’s gone now but two months ago the Clinton Foundation proudly announced it has more than 1,000 employees. Not in the Coachella Valley. I don’t have any idea what that UBIT (Line 7a) or “Unrelated Business Income” that is taxable is, but likely the bookstore or gift shop at the Clinton Museum in Little Rock. This organization’s accounting is the worst but I’m sure they don’t neglect to declare a loss on UBIT: wouldn’t want to have to pay any taxes.
The Clinton Foundation website is a Pandora’s box of horrors to those who have worked in legitimate nonprofits. There is no employee doing “Prescription Drug Abuse Reduction” — it’s exactly the same as Coachella Valley. So this reminded me of something. Recently, I saw Patrick Kennedy and Newt Gingrich on television promoting use of an unnamed medication for “opioid addiction and treatment.” So here is Newt’s thing doing the exact same as Clinton Foundation has been promoting: Advocates for Opioid Recovery.
Clinton Foundation way out ahead.
The drug is called naloxone. The program is intended to enforce purchase agreements. The private Big Pharma companies are called kaléo and Adapt Pharma. The price is fixed, paid by taxpayers. It is intended to replace street drugs or other prescription drugs and guarantee revenue for Big Pharma. That’s it. There is no social or other benefit. It is about keeping addicts on a specific drug and out of people’s sight and mind.
They’ve compared my work to Philip K. Dick. Neither he nor I could come up with shit like this.
Do you understand what you just read? Clinton Foundation expends zero dollars in this endeavor. They just put out press releases. Patrick Kennedy and Newt Gingrich push it from another angle. Neither of those two puts out any money either. They just use their notoriety to go on TV and tell people how great this is. If they could not take money out of your pocket another way they will do it this way. More dollars will be transferred to the wealthy, fewer required to be spent elsewhere. Awesome! Perfect! No worries.
Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
No PDF report from 5 years ago here: just a “signup”
There is no “Healthy Schools Program” conducted by the Clinton Foundation.
The Alliance for a Healthier Generation that DOES THE ACTUAL PROGRAM does not use Clinton Foundation funds — they just take credit for it — #1 in their annual “report”
This vague portion of the Clinton Foundation website lists the Alliance for a Healthier Generation as an “affiliated entity.” No money changes hands. It is located in Portland, OR. It was co-founded with the American Heart Association ten years ago.
However, the Clinton Foundation does like to issue press releases. One of its outcomes listed in its 2014 annual report caught my eye.
Another great program from the Alliance for a Healther Generation (no Clinton Foundation funds or work required)
Just read it. That’s the first featured page in the Clinton Foundation Annual Report covering 2013. Like #1, what they want everyone to see they “accomplished.”
McDonalds promises to do what it has to do to keep customers coming in the door.
CLINTON FOUNDATION STOPS CHILDHOOD OBESITY BY TAKING CREDIT FOR WHAT MC DONALDS HAS TO DO TO KEEP THE DOORS OPEN!!!!
I learned from whistleblower, investment executive and financial expert Charles Ortel that the Foundation charges $20,000 and up for people to attend the events that serve as the sole basis for its claims of doing work or achieving outcomes.
Below is probably my favorite Bill Clinton press release, documenting 9% increase in milk and juice purchases from McDonalds thanks to him and the donations of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the UAE, some Swedish lottery scam, Frank Giustra, Carlos Slim and unknown other sources.
This is what they say is an “outcome” of the Foundation: ZERO donated dollars spent — on something the company is doing because it must or customers will continue to go elsewhere.
These are not unique. The same situation is present on every page of the Clinton Foundation website. The Foundation takes credit for impossible or nebulous outcomes, having done no work whatsoever. In many cases the agreements it touts as “outcomes” or “commitments” (its whole rationale for the reason it gives few, if any ‘grants’ to other organizations) are signed at events for which the businesses or other charitable or government organizations pay to attend in the first place.
What Others Say
Americans have already largely ignored in-depth, meticulously reported articles on the problems of the Foundation’s activities overseas, including related organizations like the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI).
The New York Times reported extensively on the Foundation’s “programs” in Rwanda. You know. The land-locked African nation where one of the worst genocides of the 20th century occurred. So did the Boston Globe.
Sometimes I think about how hard reporters work for low pay. I wonder, what do they feel like when they work their tails off and reveal amazing truths and no one gives a rat’s ass?
Either one of those two reports I linked to above would have launched an Iran-Contra style Congressional hearing were it, oh, say, the George W. Bush Foundation doing this. The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) isn’t part of the Clinton Foundation.
Once you get into auditing anything related to the Clinton Foundation, it’s a Rube Goldbergian structure of pure madness. This is what Charles Ortel has been doing. They are so bad it may never be fully-analyzed or understood.
You know how “forthcoming” Mrs. Clinton was about her email server? That is how “forthcoming” the Foundation and any of its entities or affiliates are with anything related to their operations.
As one example, the various reporters for the New York Times, Boston Globe and others were told that CHAI (the separate, ginormous international health organization) had government grants of less than $700,000 through the CDC for AIDS / HIV efforts in Africa and that was it — the only government funding received.
This is a similar statement to “I never sent or received classified emails via my email server.”
The actual amount is much larger, the programs were noncompliant and perhaps this is how their unbelievable greed and venality will finally stop them (I’m fantasizing — I’m a sci fi writer — I probably will end up like barbell strangulation guy). They couldn’t help taking Federal money which triggers one of the few checks or balances this organization might encounter: the Federal Single Audit requirement. I knew right off just glancing at the materials that this organization could never pass a real Single Audit (formerly known as OMB Circular A-133 and similar requirements — which changed in 2014). They did not, do not, have never, and could never, meet those requirements.
But so as a side note, the government contracts with the CDC listed “David Conteh” as the principal reporter. This gentleman is located in Ethiopia. His Linked In profile does state he works for the Clinton Foundation. But as far as his actual work?
The Geneva Foundation is not part of the Clinton Health Access Initiative or Clinton Foundation
Charles Ortel is doing the heavy lifting with the records of the Clinton Foundation and their web of interrelated organizations. However, I am pretty solid with programs and government grants. The newspapers were told less than $700,000 in government grants in recent years.
This list I just pulled off the Federal government’s own website by EIN for CHAI totals more than $9.2 million.
Some parts of the Obama Administration were/are honest and transparent, enabling individuals to pull down legally mandated Single Audit reports for Federal contracts.
As I stated, I knew there was no way based in my actual work experience that the Clinton Foundation/CHAI or any of them could even vaguely pass a real Single Audit.
The various entities have audit exceptions for every year that appears in the Federal database — Clinton Foundation, the William J Clinton Foundation (Little Rock-based ‘programs’ using the term loosely) and CHAI, for every year covered by this clearinghouse (2011–2014).
These range from serious deficiencies and severe deficiencies to material weaknesses, noted at least once per year per contract. Those are the management, accounting and government contracting versions of the FBI investigation of Secretary of State Clinton’s home-based email computer server system.
Legally, the Clinton Foundation entities are obliged to provide copies of their Federal Single Audits to the public. These are not the same as the “audited financial statements” provided to the public via the various websites. Those are prepared by Pricewatershouse Coopers (PwC).
Aside: I knew there was rotten fish when I saw the auditor’s statements on the regular financial statements for Clinton Foundation and CHAI. It is a classic “CYA” auditor statement and not suitable for any legitimate organization receiving government funding.
As to who prepared the single audits for the $100-million+ revenue organization CHAI? BKD, LLP — Little Rock, AR branch.
Keep in mind, this Arkansas-based firm already uncovered audit exceptions that would bar any other organization from receiving Federal funding, repeatedly, year after year.
#1 on the sanction list? Good Old BKD, LLP!
For the average person still reading, this means that not only is the auditing firm that does the real audits for the Clinton Foundation entities based in Little Rock, Arkansas — with ties to Clintons for many years, it’s also one that has been sanctioned for violations of auditing rules. And even with all that, the crooked auditors were still finding severe accounting and program violations (i.e. they did not spend the money received from the government for what it was supposed to be spent on).
Clinton Foundation is going to say “but we have no audit exceptions for CHAI for 2014”. That’s right. You just didn’t fill out that tab on your Excel form at all so it says nothing. It’s so amazing! No one said anything and they accepted it!
Again, to the common reader this is the identical situation to what you just heard about the Hillary Clinton email server and State Department and FBI. No one else would get away with it, but …
Foreign Countries, Who Cares?
People may have already read about how a complex transaction related to Canadian mining billionaire Frank Giustra resulted in a Russian-owned company owning 20% of US uranium reserves.
Mr. Giustra is partners with Bill Clinton in a separate initiative called CGEP-Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership.
Indeed, it is!
This one — you have NO idea who gives to it but what it says it “does” is bitterly funny
So these awesome guys are going around giving lots of money. In 2008, generous Bill Clinton gave $10 million to the President of Peru to provide money for cataract surgeries in that country.
Once again we have a great press release.
Carlos Slim says there have been FIFTY THOUSAND cataract surgeries completed!
They cannot get their numbers straight. I sure can’t tell how many cataract surgeries were completed. One part of Clinton Foundation website says 20,000, another says 5,000. This one says 7,000. Carlos Slim — he thinks he provided the money. He’s often cited as the world’s richest man. He controls all of Mexico’s telecommunications.
Not only have more surgeries been performed through this amazing donation than ever before, it’s more surgeries than there are people who need it in the entire country!
Meanwhile, the actual organization that does the surgeries? They are all-volunteer and raise money painstakingly — one surgery at a time, at a cost of about $250 each. They are called A Promise to Peru.
A Promise to Peru volunteers and staff — they don’t get money from Clinton Foundation
We all know that if it occurs in a foreign country, no one in the U.S. cares.
Like this school that has been educating 20,000 Colombians to work … this is pretty damn funny. Clinton Foundation website touted the school as educating more than 20,000 Colombians and getting them jobs in nebulous positions.
It sincerely said they were giving them jobs and listed a whole lot more than $750K the first time I saw this.
So seriously — this small job training center in Cartagena, Colombia is the result of business doings there on the part of Giustra and Clinton. They really cannot scrub all their press releases fully. I have no idea what year this the release refers to, but it’s been around for a while.
The center does operate. Its two-story building appears to be able to accommodate perhaps 100 to 200 students at a time.
Local newspaper reports from Cartagena refer to about 700 students graduating after three years of operations.
And a visitor from the Canadian government was unaware of the grossly exaggerated claims of |
of Savoy (Italy,) House of Wettin (Belgium), House of Wittelsbach (Germany), House of Württemberg (Germany), House of Zogu (Albania)."
Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley & James Higham in an article "The Venetian Black Nobility and the Concept of Oligarchy"
"The forerunners of the Freemasons - the Knights Templar - founded the concept of banking and created a "bond market" as a means to control European nobles through war debts... The Crusader Knights Templar looted a huge store of gold and numerous sacred artifacts from beneath the Solomon Temple. (King Solomon was the son of King David)... The claimed lineage to the House of David is what the Illuminati use to justify their global control."
Dean Henderson in his book "Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"
"The bulwark of the British financial oligarchy lies in its ageless and self-perpetuating nature, its long-range planning and prescience, its facility to outwait and break the patience of its opponents. The transient and temporal statesmen of Europe and particularly of Britain itself, who have attempted to curb this monstrosity have all been defeated by their limited tenure of confidence. Obligated to show action and results in a too short span of years, they have been outwitted and outwaited, deluged with irritants and difficulties; eventually obliged to temporize and retreat. There are few who have opposed them in Britain and America, without coming to a disgraceful end, but many, who served them well, have also profited well."
E.C. Knuth in his book "The Empire of The City", 1946
"Queen Elizabeth II, head of state of the United Kingdom and of 31 other states and territories, is the legal owner of about 6,600 million acres of land, one sixth of the earth's non-ocean surface. She is the only person on earth who owns whole countries. The value of her land holding is approximately $28,000,000,000,000. This makes her the richest individual on earth."
from the book "Who Owns The World" by Kevin Cahill
"The British royal family rules the world, but they do not rule it alone. There are at least three other actors: central banks, the legacy of Cecil Rhodes, and the immense financial power of the biggest international banking family, the Rothschilds."
"Who Runs The World And Controls The Value Of Assets?" an article by Joan Veon
"Club of the Isles is a European cartel - centered within the City of London and headed by the House of Windsor - which controls every aspect of the global economy -- banks, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, raw materials, transportation, factories, major retail groups, the stock and commodities markets, politicians and governments, media, intelligence agencies, drugs and organized crime."
"The Windsors' Global Food Cartel: Instrument for Starvation" an article by Executive Intelligence Review, 1995
ROTHSCHILDS
" The name "Rothschild" cannot be found in the publication's list of the 500 wealthiest people on Earth because the family's wealth has been distributed amongst hundreds of heirs throughout the years. Although it is difficult to estimate exactly how much this powerful family is worth due to their renowned secrecy and the scale of their operations, the net worth has been estimated at anywhere between $US1 trillion and $US100 trillion.
The Rothschilds are thought to control the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements. They own most of the world's gold and the London Gold Exchange and, according to an estimation made by Credit Suisse, the $US231 trillion is controlled by Evelyn Rothschild, the current head of the family."
www.australiannationalreview.com, 2014
"The combined wealth of the Rothschilds in 1998 was appriximately $100 trillion."
Gaylon Ross Sr. author of "Who's Who of the Global Elite"
"James Rothschild's wealth had reached the 600 million mark. Only one man in France possessed more. That was the King, whose wealth was 800 million. The aggregate wealth of all the bankers in France was 150 million less than that of James Rothschild. This naturally gave him untold powers, even to the extent of unseating governments whenever he chose to do so."
David Druck in his book "Baron Edmond de Rothschild"
[James de Rothschild (1792-1868) was the youngest son of Rothschild dynasty founder Mayer Amshel Rothschild (1744-1812)]
[Edmond de Rothschild (1845-1934) was the youngest son of James de Rothschild]
"The Rothschilds have a majority stake in nearly all the central banks in the world."
Dean Henderson in his book "Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"
"Although the Rothschild family now generally keep a very low public profile, they still have significant business operations across a wide spectrum of sectors. While you may not find any one particular Rothschild on the Forbes' most rich list, the family is estimated to control $1 trillion dollars in assets across the globe, thus having a strong voice across the geopolitical spectrum that many perceive as a hidden hand manipulating events silently from behind a veil of secrecy and silence."
Jay Syrmopoulos, 2017
"Seven men in Wall Street now control a great share of the fundamental industry and resources of the United States... These powerful men were themselves answerable to a foreign power which had been steadfastly seeking to extend its control over the young republic of the United States since its very inception. This power was the financial power of England, centered in the London Branch of the House of Rothschild. The fact was that in 1910, the United States was for all practical purposes being ruled from England, and so it is today [1911]."
"The Seven Men" an article by John Moody - McClure's Magazine, August 1911
"Rothschild-controlled Barings Bank bankrolled the Chinese opium and African slave trades. It financed the Louisiana Purchase. The House of Rothschild financed the Prussian War, the Crimean War and the British attempt to seize the Suez Canal from the French. Nathan Rothschild made a huge financial bet on Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, while also funding the Duke of Wellington's peninsular campaign against Napoleon. Both the Mexican War and the Civil War were gold mines for the family."
Dean Henderson in his book "Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf"
"The Rothschilds rank among the wealthiest lineages in the world. It is estimated that the Rothschild family controls more than $2 trillion worth of assets. Today, their holdings span a number of diverse industries, including financial services, real estate, mining and energy."
www.investopedia.com, 2016
" Bernard Baruch a New York agent of the Rothschilds at the turn of the 20th century set up the tobacco trust, the copper trust and other trusts for the Rothschilds. He became the grey eminence of the United States atomic bomb program when his lackey J. Robert Oppenheimner became director of the Los Alamos bomb development, and his Washington lackey James F. Byrnes advised Truman to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
Eustace C. Mullins "The Secret History Of The Atomic Bomb"
"There has been a well-founded notion since America's inception that the European Rothschild-led Illuminati bankers have sought to bring America to its knees and return it to the fold of the Crown of England."
Dean Henderson in his book "Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf"
"The Rothschilds control the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the IMF, the World Bank and the Bank of International Settlements. Also they own most of the gold in the world as well as the London Gold Exchange, which sets the price of gold every day. It is said the family owns over half the wealth of the planet-estimated by Credit Suisse to be $231 trillion."
Pete Papaherakles, americanfrepress.net
"The Rothschild family... accumulated its vast wealth issuing war bonds to Black Nobility for centuries, including the British Windsors, the French Bourbons, the German von Thurn und Taxis, the Italian Savoys and the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs."
Dean Henderson in his book "Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"
"The Rothschilds had several agents in America who their money got started and who still serve them well - the Morgans and the Rockefellers... It was the Rothschild capital that made the Rockefeller's so powerful (oil and banking). They also financed the activities of Edward Harriman (railroads) and Andrew Carnegie (steel)."
"The Rothschild Bloodline" an article from www.theforbiddenknowledge.com
"Near the end of the 19th century, the Rothschild bank, was the biggest concentration of financial capital in the world."
Andrew Gavin Marshall, Global Research
"Although the Rothschild family now generally keep a very low public profile, they still have significant business operations across a wide spectrum of sectors. While you may not find any one particular Rothschild on the Forbes' most rich list, the family is estimated to control $1 trillion dollars in assets across the globe, thus having a strong voice across the geopolitical spectrum that many perceive as a hidden hand manipulating events silently from behind a veil of secrecy and silence."
Jay Syrmopoulos, 2017
"Rothschilds own Reuters and Associated Press...They have controlling interest in ABC, CBS & NBC...Rothschild's Swiss banks hold the wealth of the Vatican and the European black nobility."
David Icke
"The British royal family rules the world, but they do not rule it alone. There are at least three other actors: central banks, the legacy of Cecil Rhodes, and the immense financial power of the biggest international banking family, the Rothschilds. "
"Who Runs The World And Controls The Value Of Assets?" an article by Joan Veon
"The Rothschild family combined with the Dutch House of Orange to found Bank of Amsterdam in the early 1600's as the world's first central bank. In 1694 [British King] William III teamed up with the Rothschild's to launch the Bank of England."
Dean Henderson in his book "Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"
"The House of Rothschild financed the Prussian War, the Crimean War and the British attempt to seize the Suez Canal from the French. Nathan Rothschild made a huge financial bet on Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, while also funding the Duke of Wellington's peninsular campaign against Napoleon. Both the Mexican War and the Civil War were goldmines for the family."
"The House of Rothschild" an article by Dean Henderson
"It is believed that the Rothschilds hold 53% of the stock of the U.S. Federal Reserve."
David Allen Rivera in his book "Final Warning: A History of the New World Order", 2010
"The Rothschild, Rockefeller and Warburg banking combines control Big Oil... Royal Dutch/Shell is controlled by the Rothschild, Oppenheimer, Nobel and Samuel families along with the British House of Windsor and the Dutch House of Orange."
Dean Henderson from his book "Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"
"The power and wealth of the House of Rothschild grew to such proportions that by 1900 it was estimated that they controlled half the wealth of the world."
Des Griffin in his book "Descent Into Slavery?"
"The Rothschild's control a far-flung financial empire, which includes majority stakes in most world central banks. The Edmond de Rothschild clan owns the Banque Privee SA in Lugano, Switzerland and the Rothschild Bank AG of Zurich. The family of Jacob Lord Rothschild owns the powerful Rothschild Italia in Milan. They are members of the exclusive Club of the Isles, which provides capital for George Soros' Quantum Fund NV, which made a killing in 1998-1999 destroying the currencies of Thailand, Indonesia and Russia."
Dean Henderson in his book "Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"
" Over the centuries, the Rothschilds have amassed trillions of dollars worth of gold bullion in their subterranean vaults and have cornered the world's gold supply. They own controlling interest in the world's largest oil company, Royal Dutch Shell. They operate phony charities and offshore banking services where the wealth of the black nobility and the Vatican is hidden in secret accounts at Rothschild Swiss banks, trusts and holding companies"
www.helpfreetheearth.com/articles_2.html
"If you look back at every war in Europe... you will see that they always ended up with the establishment of a balance of power. With every reshuffling there was a balance of power in a new grouping around the House of Rothschild in England, France or Austria. They grouped nations so that if any King got out of line, a war would break out and the war would be decided by which way the financing went. Researching the debt positions of warring nations will usually indicate who was being punished."
Professor Stuart Crane from Dean Henderson's book "Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf"
"The Rothschild cabal have infiltrated your government, your media, your banking institutions. They are no longer content with committing atrocities in the Middle East, they are now doing it on their own soil (Europe), desperate to complete the plan for a one world government, world army, complete with a world central bank."
Russian President Vadimir Putin told a Kremlin tour group, 2017
ROCKEFELLERS
"John D. Rockefeller was a Machiavellian who boasted that he hated competition. Whenever he could, Rockefeller used the government to promote his own interests and to hinder his competitors. Monopoly capitalism is impossible unless you have a government with the power to strangle would-be competitors.
The easiest way to control or eliminate competitors is not to best them in the marketplace, but to use the power of government to exclude them from the marketplace. If you wish to control commerce, banking, transportation, and natural resources on a national level, you must control! the federal government. If you and your clique wish to establish worldwide monopolies, you must control World Government."
Gary Allen in his book "The Rockefeller File"
"It was a relatively simple matter for the American public to accept the "fact" that the Rockefellers were the preeminent power in this country. This myth was actually clothed in the apparel of power, the Rockefeller Oil Trust becoming the "military-industrial complex" which assumed political control of the nation; the Rockefeller Medical Monopoly attained control of the health care of the nation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, a web of affiliated tax exempt creations, effectively controlled the religious and educational life of the nation. The myth succeeded in its goal of camouflaging the hidden rulers, the Rothschilds."
Eustace Mullins, 2008
"The Rockefellers control Metropolitan Life, Equitable Life, Prudential and New York Life. Rockefeller banks control 25% of all assets of the 50 largest US commercial banks and 30% of all assets the 50 largest insurance companies... Companies under Rockefeller control include Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco, Marathon Oil, Freeport McMoran, Quaker Oats, ASARCO, United, Delta, Northwest, ITT, International Harvester, Xerox, Boeing, Westinghouse, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, International Paper, Pfizer, Motorola, Monsanto, Union Carbide and General Foods... The Rockefellers own one-half of the U. S. pharmaceutical industry."
Dean Henderson in his book "Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"
"Some believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure 'one world', if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."
David Rockefeller, in an address to a meeting of The Trilateral Commission, in June, 1991
"The combined wealth of the Rockefeller family in 1998 was approximately (US) $11 trillion."
Gaylon Ross Sr. author of the book "Who's Who of the Global Elite"
"The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining super-Capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control.
... The Rockefellers and their allies have, for at least fifty years, been carefully following a plan to use their economic power to gain political control of first America, and then the rest of the world. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent."
Congressman Larry P. McDonald, November 1975
"John D. Rockefeller had become America's first billionaire, yet when he died, he only left a taxable estate of $26,410,837, which after Federal and State taxes were levied, left about $16 million. The remainder of his fortune had been left to surviving relatives ($240 million), his sons ($465 million), and his foundations."
"The Enemy Within" an article from www.scribd.com/
"For the first time in its history, Western Civilization is in danger of being destroyed internally by a corrupt, criminal ruling cabal which is centered around the Rockefeller interests, which include elements from the Morgan, Brown, Rothschild, Du Pont, Harriman, Kuhn-Loeb, and other groupings as well. This junta took control of the political, financial, and cultural life of America in the first two decades of the twentieth century."
Carroll Quigley
"Confronted with stagnating domestic markets, declining absolute profits and the need to invest huge sums in order to bring their domestic US industries up to world standards, the Rockefeller circles opted instead to walk away from renewing their domestic US economic base, leaving it to become what their think-tanks called a 'post-industrial society'."
F. William Engdahl in his book "Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century"
"The Rockefeller clan reportedly has worked with the Rothschilds and their agents since the 1880s."
Gary Allen in his book "None Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"The Rockefeller Foundation, working with John D. Rockefeller Ill's Population Council, the World Bank, the UN Development Program and the Ford Foundation, and others had been working with the WHO [World Health Organization] for 20 years to develop an anti-fertility vaccine using tetanus as well as with other vaccines."
F. William Engdahl
VATICAN
"The Vatican has large investments with the Rothschilds of Britain, France and America, with the Hambros Bank, with the Credit Suisse in London and Zurich. In the United States it has large investments with the Morgan Bank, the Chase-Manhattan Bank, the First National Bank of New York, the Bankers Trust Company, and others. The Vatican has billions of shares in the most powerful international corporations such as Gulf Oil, Shell, General Motors, Bethlehem Steel, General Electric, International Business Machines, T.W.A., etc. At a conservative estimate, these amount to more than 500 million dollars in the U.S.A. alone.
... In a statement published in connection with a bond prospectus, the Boston archdiocese listed its assets at Six Hundred and Thirty-five Million ($635,891,004), which is 9.9 times its liabilities. This leaves a net worth of Five Hundred and Seventy-one million dollars ($571,704,953). It is not difficult to discover the truly astonishing wealth of the church, once we add the riches of the twenty-eight archdioceses and 122 dioceses of the U.S.A., some of which are even wealthier than that of Boston.
... Some idea of the real estate and other forms of wealth controlled by the Catholic church may be gathered by the remark of a member of the New York Catholic Conference, namely 'that his church probably ranks second only to the United States Government in total annual purchase.' Another statement, made by a nationally syndicated Catholic priest, perhaps is even more telling. 'The Catholic church,' he said,'must be the biggest corporation in the United States. We have a branch office in every neighborhood. Our assets and real estate holdings must exceed those of Standard Oil, A.T.&T., and U.S. Steel combined. And our roster of dues-paying members must be second only to the tax rolls of the United States Government.
... The Catholic church, once all her assets have been put together, is the most formidable stockbroker in the world. The Vatican, independently of each successive pope, has been increasingly orientated towards the U.S. The Wall Street Journal said that the Vatican's financial deals in the U.S. alone were so big that very often it sold or bought gold in lots of a million or more dollars at one time.
... The Vatican's treasure of solid gold has been estimated by the United Nations World Magazine to amount to several billion dollars. A large bulk of this is stored in gold ingots with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, while banks in England and Switzerland hold the rest. But this is just a small portion of the wealth of the Vatican, which in the U.S. alone, is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations of the country. When to that is added all the real estate, property, stocks and shares abroad, then the staggering accumulation of the wealth of the Catholic church becomes so formidable as to defy any rational assessment.
... The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe. The pope, as the visible ruler of this immense amassment of wealth, is consequently the richest individual of the twentieth century. No one can realistically assess how much he is worth in terms of billions of dollars.
...The Vatican has billions of shares in the most powerful international corporations... The Vatican has large investments with the Rothschilds of Britain, France and America, with the Hambros Bank, with the Credit Suisse in London and Zurich. In the United States it has large investments with the Morgan Bank, the Chase-Manhattan Bank, the First National Bank of New York, the Bankers Trust Company, and others."
from the book "The Vatican Billions" by Avro Manhattan, 1983
"During a war you will never see the Vatican, City of London or Switzerland get attacked. On the grand chessboard these are considered neutral ground because it is where all the money flows. Without money to fund war, there is no war."
from an article "Bank of England, City of London and The Queen" http://wideshut.co.uk
"Created in 1942, the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR), is commonly known as the Vatican Bank... The bank remains a sovereign financial agency within a sovereign state. It is an entity unto itself, without corporate or ecclesiastical ties to any other agency of the Holy See. As such, it cannot be forced to release the source of any deposit. The bank resides under the direct jurisdiction of the pope. He owns it; he controls it. Swiss guards are stationed to guard the entrance to the bank, and the hermetically sealed bronze doors open only to select members of the Roman Curia-the governing body of the entire Roman Catholic Church.
... Because of its clandestine workings, millions can be deposited into the IOR on a continuous basis and channeled into numbered Swiss bank accounts without the possibility of detection. It was the perfect place for the CIA and the Sicilian Mafia to launder their ill-gotten gains of the narcotics trade and for the Roman Church to fund its political mission. And [according to Moneyval the anti-money-laundering committee of the Council of Europe] it remains one of the world's leading laundries for dirty cash."
Paul L. William in his book "Operation Gladio", 2015
"The Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), commonly referred to as the Vatican Bank, is a privately held financial institution located inside Vatican City. Founded in 1942, the IOR's role is to safeguard and administer property intended for works of religion or charity. The bank accepts deposits only from top Church officials and entities, according to Italian legal scholar Settimio Caridi. It is run by a president but overseen by five cardinals who report directly to the Vatican and the Vatican's secretary of state. Because so little is known about the bank's daily operations and transactions, it has often been called "the most secret bank in the world"
Ari Jorish, Forbes, June 26, 2012
"Early in the 19th century the Pope came to the Rothschilds to borrow money... The Rothschilds over time were entrusted with the bulk of the Vatican's wealth.
... The Rothschilds took over all the financial operations of the worldwide Catholic Church in 1823. Today the large banking and financial business of the Catholic Church is an extensive system interlocked with the Rothschilds and the rest of the International Banking system."
Fritz Springmeier, 2003
"Throughout the 1950s, money for the activities of the Catholic Gladio - Catholic Church units of the CIA stay-behind operation in Europe - was provided by the CIA, which annually allocated $30 to $50 million to covert operations in Italy. These funds were not only washed by the Vatican but also funneled by the pope to groups and organizations that met with his approval."
Paul L. William in his book "Operation Gladio", 2015
"Operation Condor is the code name given for intelligence collection on leftists, communists and Marxists in the Southern Cone Area. It was established between cooperating intelligence services in South America in order to eliminate Marxist terrorist activities in member countries with Chile reportedly being the center of operations. Other participating members include: Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia. Members showing the most enthusiasm to date have been Argentina, Uruguay and Chile.
... Operation Condor, a program intended to eradicate Communist groups and movements throughout South America, got underway in the early 1970s, when Opus Dei elicited support from Chilean bishops for the overthrow of the democratically elected government of president Salvador Allende.
... Every phase of the operation, including the purging of the left-wing clerics, received the tacit approval of the pope (Francis)."
US Department of Defense Document, October 1, 1976
"At the present time (1905) the Rothschilds are guardians of the papal treasure."
The Jewish Encylopedia, 1905
"In 1982 Reagan met with Pope John Paul II... At the meeting the two agreed to launch a clandestine program to tear Eastern Europe away from the Soviets. Poland, the Pope's country of origin, would be the key. Catholic priests, the AFL-CIO, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Vatican Bank and CIA would all be deployed."
Dean Henderson in his book "Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"
"The Vatican held major interests in the Rothschild Bank in France, the Chase Manhattan Bank with its fifty-seven branches in forty-four countries, the Credit Suisse in Zurich and also in London, the Morgan Bank, the Bankers Trust, General Motors, General Electric, Shell Oil, Gulf Oil, and Bethlehem Steel."
Paul L. William in his book "Operation Gladio", 2015
COVERT GLOBAL POWER CENTERS
ROUND TABLE GROUPS
"Beginning approximately in the early 1890s, a group of British elites, primarily from the privileged colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, formed what was to become the most influential policy network in Britain over the next half century and more. The group denied its existence as a formal group, but its footprints can be found around the establishment of a new journal of empire, the Round Table, founded in 1910.
The group argued that a more subtle and efficient system of global empire was required to extend the effective hegemony of Anglo-Saxon culture over the next century.
... In place of the costly military occupation of the colonies of the British Empire, they argued for a more repressive tolerance, calling for the creation of a British 'Commonwealth of Nations.' Members nations were to be given the illusion of independence, enabling Britain to reduce the high costs of far-flung armies of occupation from India to Egypt, and now across Africa and the Middle East as well. The term 'informal empire' was sometimes used to describe the shift.
... The idea of a Jewish-dominated Palestine, beholden to England for its tenuous survival, surrounded by a balkanized of squabbling Arab states, formed part of this group's [British Round Table Group] concept of a new British Empire.
... The Round Table group's grand design was to link England's vast colonial possessions, from the gold and diamond mines of Cecil Rhodes and Rothschild's Consolidated Gold Fields in South Africa, north to Egypt and the vital shipping route through the Suez Canal, and on through Mesopotamia, Kuwait and Persia into India in the East.
... The great power able to control this vast reach would control the world's most valuable strategic raw materials, from gold, basis of the international gold standard for world trade, to petroleum, in 1919 emerging as the energy source of the modern industrial era."
William Engdahl in his book "A Century of War"
"It is one of the least understood realities of modem history that many of America's most prominent political and financial figures - then as now - have been willing to sacrifice the best interests of the United States in order to further their goal of creating a one-world government. The strategy has remained unchanged since the formation of Cecil Rhodes' society and its offspring, the Round Table Groups. It is to merge the English-speaking nations into a single political entity, while at the same time creating similar groupings for other geopolitical regions. After this is accomplished, all of these groupings are to be amalgamated into a global government, the so-called Parliament of Man."
G. Edward Griffin in his book "The Creature from Jekyll Island"
"In 1888 [Cecil] Rhodes made his third will leaving everything to Lord Rothschild, with an accompanying letter to form a'secret society', which was to devote itself to the preservation and expansion of the British Empire. The central part of the secret society was established by March, 1891, using Rhodes' money. The organization [The Round Table] was run for Rothschild by Lord Alfred Milner. The Round Table worked behind the scenes at the highest levels of British government, influencing foreign policy."
Frank Aydelotte in his book "American Rhodes Scholarships"
"There grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy. In England the center was the Round Table Group, while in the United States it was J. P. Morgan and Company."
Carroll Quigley in his book "Tragedy and Hope"
"Think tanks are created with the intent to bring elite interests together from a wide array of institutions: financial, industrial, corporate, academic/intellectual, media, cultural, foreign policy and political spheres. In think tanks, top officials from these sectors are gathered in a single institution where they work together to plan strategies for economic and foreign policies, for establishing consensus between elites, and to serve as training and recruitment grounds for officials to enter the political and foreign policy establishment, where they are capable of enacting the very policies developed within the think tanks. Notable think tanks with immense influence specifically in the United States include the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Larger, international think tanks have been increasingly common during the era of globalization, uniting respective elites from across the powerful western industrial states, instead of simply the elites within each respective state. Notable among these institutions are the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group and the World Economic Forum."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"One of the most important secret societies is called the Round Table. It is based in Britain with branches across the world, and it is the Round Table that orchestrates the network of the Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and the Royal Institute of International Affairs."
"Tales from the Time Loop" an article by David Icke
"The Round Table Groups were semi-secret discussion and lobbying groups. The original purpose of these groups was to seek to federate the English-speaking world along lines laid down by Cecil Rhodes and William T. Stead, and the money for the organizational work came originally from the Rhodes Trust.
Since 1925 there have been substantial contributions from wealthy individuals and from foundations and firms associated with the international banking fraternity, especially the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and other organizations associated with J.P. Morgan, the Rockefeller and Whitney families, and the associates of Lazard Brothers and of Morgan, Grenfell, and Company."
Carroll Quigley in his book "Tragedy and Hope"
" Cecil Rhodes' secret society incited the Boer War and spawned the Milner Group (1902), the Milner Group spawned the Round Table Group (1909), the Round Table Group incited World War I and spawned the Royal Institute of International Affairs (1919) and the Council on Foreign Relations (1921), and the CFR and the RIIA spawned the Bilderberg Group in 1954, and the Trilateral Commission in 1973."
Stanley Monteith
COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS (CFR)
"In the beginning, the Council on Foreign Relations was dominated by J.P. Morgan. It is still controlled by international financiers. The Morgan group gradually has been replaced by the Rockefeller consortium. It is the most powerful group in America today. It is even more powerful than the federal government, because almost all of the key positions in government are held by its members. In other words, it is the United States government."
G. Edward Griffin in his book "The Creature from Jekyll Island: a second look at the Federal Reserve"
"The CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), established six years after the Federal Reserve was created, worked to promote an internationalist agenda on behalf of the international banking elite. Where the Fed took control of money and debt, the CFR took control of the ideological foundations of such an empire - encompassing the corporate, banking, political, foreign policy, military, media, and academic elite of the nation into a generally cohesive overall world view."
Carroll Quigley in his book "Tragedy and Hope"
"The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) took control of the ideological foundations of the American empire, encompassing the corporate, banking, political, foreign policy, military, media, and academic elite of the nation into a generally cohesive overall world view. By altering one's ideology to that of promoting such an internationalist agenda, the big money that was behind it would ensure one's rise through government, industry, academia and media. There are divisions within the elite, predicated on the basis of how to use American imperial power, where to use it, on what basis to justify it, and other various methodological differences. The divide amongst elites was never on the questions of: should we use American imperial power, why has America become an Empire, or should there even be an empire? If one takes such considerations to heart and questions these concepts, be it within the foreign policy establishment, intelligence, military, academia, finance, corporate world, or media; chances are, such a person is not a member of the CFR."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"The CFR's goal is to impose a benign stability on the quarreling family of nations through merger and consolidation. They see the elimination of national boundaries, the suppression of racial and ethnic loyalties as the most expeditious avenue to world peace. Their rationale rests exclusively on materialism.
... When we change presidents, it is understood to mean that the voters are ordering a change in national policy. Since 1945 three different Republicans have occupied the White House for a period of sixteen years. Four Democrats have held this most powerful post for seventeen years. With the exception of the first seven years of the Eisenhower administration, there has been no appreciable change in foreign or domestic policy direction. When a new President comes on board, there is a great turnover in personnel but no change in policy."
Senator Barry M. Goldwater, wrote in his memoirs
"The Council on Foreign Relations remains active in working toward its final goal of a government over all the world - a government which the Insiders - a global financial elite - and their allies will control."
Gary Allen in his book "None Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"The CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) was founded for purpose of the submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government."
Harper's magazine, July 1958
"I am delighted to be here in these new (Council on Foreign Relations) headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it's good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department.
We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won't have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's opening remarks during her speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, July 15, 2009
"[The goal of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is] to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the United States... Primarily, they [CFR] want a world banking monopoly from whatever power ends up in the control of global government."
Admiral Chester Ward, longtime Council on Foreign Relations member - from the book "Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"
"The CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), dedicated to one-world government, financed by a number of the largest tax-exempt foundations, and wielding such power and influence over our lives in the areas of finance, business, labor, military, education and mass communication media, should be familiar to every American concerned with good government and with preserving and defending the U.S. Constitution and our free-enterprise system. Yet, the nation's news media, usually so aggressive in exposures to inform our people, remain conspicuously silent when it comes to the CFR, its members and their activities. The CFR is the establishment. Not only does it have influence and power in key decision-making positions at the highest levels of government to apply pressure from above, but it also finances and uses individuals and groups to bring pressure from below, to justify the high level decisions for converting the U.S. from a sovereign Constitutional Republic into a servile member state of a one-world dictatorship."
Rep. John R. Rarick of Louisiana, 1971
"Of some 1600 CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] members, 120 either own or control the nation's major newspapers, magazines, radio and television networks, as well as the most powerful book publishing companies. The interlock with academia |
. And if I visit the Sands casino and I predict that the little bouncing ball will land on a red or black, and it ends up on the green 0 or 00, I’ll stand by my prediction that red or black were the most likely outcomes. That I made a wise prediction.
In most areas of life we judge competence by track record. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. But that doesn’t work for market forecasters. Track record tells us nothing about the competence of stock pickers. It doesn’t tell us whether their future predictions will be better than those with a poor record. And I think that really frustrates people. It goes against common sense than past performance is not an indicator of competence. But it just isn’t. I think that might be why Bob is exasperated by my placid agnosticism.
PS. Obviously I do know that volatility is serially correlated. I hope readers don’t think I’m THAT stupid. Thus it goes without saying that for the Chinese market a “more of the same” prediction two weeks ago implies a prediction of continued high levels of volatility. Which is what happened. You may disagree with me, but please don’t assume I’m a complete moron.
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This entry was posted on August 28th, 2015 and is filed under Efficient markets hypothesis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.City government officials from around the state are mounting a charge again opioid drug companies, following the state’s announcement to sue manufacturers of powerful painkillers. And a gubernatorial candidate is helping lead the charge.
The cities of Dayton and Lorain are filing suit against nearly two dozen drug manufacturers and distributors.
Democratic Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley says the drug companies misled doctors in thinking that the pills were not addictive.
A similar argument in the lawsuit Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine filed last week. But DeWine chose not to go after drug distributors and Whaley is.
“We’ve always had the plan to hold everyone accountable and definitely distributors and manufacturers are culpable in it.”
DeWine is expected to run for governor next year. Whaley mentioned action against drug companies in launching her campaign last month.The project is United for Iran‘s most ambitious to improve civil liberties in Iran. Imagine, victims of domestic violence being able to ask for immediate help no matter where they are in the country. Imagine, voters having access to balance news and information about presidential and city council candidates. Imagine every Iranian woman having an always-present companion that offers them advice on sexual health, contraception and their legal rights.
IranCubator has built apps that turn these ideas and others into reality.
IranCubator connects skilled app developers outside Iran with Iranian civil society leaders and is creating a suite of apps designed to empower Iranians and enhance civic engagement. The winning apps were chosen by IranCubator’s Advisory Board through the IranCubator contest. They received financial and institutional support to create their apps.
All IranCubator apps will be developed by the end of 2017.
Questions or concerns? Contact us to learn more! Or email us at info@united4iran.org.14-year-old left in serious condition after being poisoned by methane while clearing cow feces.
Who said that cows were harmless? A 14-year-old boy was left in serious condition on Wednesday after inhaling copious quantities of methane gas while helping his father to clear cow feces at Kibbutz Tzora, located near Beit Shemesh.
The poisoned youth lost consciousness while sitting on a truck; medics who arrived on the scene transferred him via tractor to a Magen David Adom (MDA) and United Hatzalah crew for treatment.
He was then evacuated to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem while in stable condition.
Yanki Shkol, a United Hatzalah paramedic, recounted "when I reached the scene with other medics, we started resuscitation while on the truck until he was evacuated by tractor with the help of a firefighting team."
"The youth apparently inhaled poisonous gas while working and lost consciousness; the circumstances of the event are being checked by the police," added Shkol.Posted by Don Severs on Jun 18, 2013 in Uncategorized |
Nothing requires religion, except religion
Until recently, I said stuff like this:
“I am a religious atheist. I’m a recovering Christian and open to God; I just can’t find one worth following. I share the ultimate concerns of religious people, but my search for God has led me away from gods.”
My views have evolved. Now, I’d put it more like this:
I am an atheist. I’m a recovering Christian, and if God were possible and real, I would be very interested. I simply have no reason to think he is.
I’m dropping the term ‘religious atheist’. I’m doing so because it finally has occurred to me how this must sound to my atheist friends. If I’m a religious atheist, what does that make them? ‘Mere’ atheists? Atheists who are missing some kind of depth, fervor or devotion?
No. Fervor and devotion don’t require religion. Nothing requires religion, except religion. Religion has always been a hijacker, a parasite of what is best about being human, and so is, at best, unnecessary. All the good things in life can be had without it, including all the subjective mystical experiences many call religious. Calling them ‘religious’ has an exclusionary effect, as if they are only available to people with connections. They’re not. Such experiences are everyone’s natural heritage as human beings. If an afterlife were real, it, too, would belong to everyone. Using ‘religious’ as an adjective adds nothing apart from marking something in a caste system I’d like to outgrow.
I have kept the word ‘religion’ around this long because there is much good in what we call religion. But that is only because religion absorbed those things. Religion is an ancient impulse, sort of the first science. As a religious atheist, I worked to get it back from the supernaturalists. The first religions were likely some form of nature-worship. Then, relatively recently, kings and other politicians hijacked religion by inserting their favorite deity. This happened so long ago that everyone thinks religion is about pleasing gods.
But the good things in religion aren’t good because they’re religious. They’re just good. That’s why religion claims them.
For years now, I’ve been trying to remind people, especially atheists, that religion doesn’t rely on gods. I have also clarified that what is best about humanity precedes religion, that religion works by planting its flag on the best stuff, stuff that belongs to everyone, and then charging admission.
But if that’s all religion is, an imperial move to claim humanity’s best, why keep it around at all?
So now, I’ve changed my mind. The historical point that religion doesn’t require gods or faith means little if the general public thinks it does. We have to start from where we are, which is today. And today, to most people, religion means God.
I’m done with religion, even liberal religion. But little else will change. I will still work with people who call themselves religious. And I’ll still lend my efforts to my UU church. I just won’t try to set them apart by calling them religious. It’s an empty word.So a friend of mine had the misfortune of dealing with rape culture from a police officer. She gave me the permission to post this on Tumblr so the name of this officer and her story can spread.
So let’s be serious for a second guys please -
Last night around 2 a.m. my friends and I decided to take a drive around Hutchinson island, and when upon returning into Sewall’s Point we made a stop underneath the causeway. We decided to stop, listen to music, and stand outside the car. Not intoxicated, not under any substance abuse, and not in the possession of any weapons - we were having clean wholesome dumb teenage fun. Without doing anything incriminating it still was unfortunately interrupted by Officer Scott Donlon, when he drove around the causeway and approached us with his lights on. We turned down the music and waited for him to approach us outside my friends car. The lights almost made it impossible for us to see his face or communicate with him without holding my arm in front of my face.
He walks up to us and says,
"I sure as hell can’t wait to hear this story."
I took the liberty to talk for my friends, because they were visibly intimidated and frightened by this officer.
I responded,
"Honestly officer, we were on our way to the beach when we decided that it was probably too late and unsafe. We decided on our drive back to stop here and enjoy ourselves. We are good people. None of us are under the influence or intoxicated we are more than willing to take a breathalyzer if you have any suspicion that we are."
That’s when he made the most disturbing comment of all,
"Yeah because running around in your underwear -"
I couldn’t believe it, he decided that my outfit of choice constituted as underwear to him. My floral top that showed my mid-drift and my high-waisted shorts was something he was going to demean and call “underwear”?
I tried my hardest not to be rude to him, but I responded with,
"That’s extremely rude and offensive sir. I don’t think my outfit should be considered underwear."
He continued to walk around my friends car trying to be intimidating and aggressive, so I spoke again:
"Sir, are you detaining us?"
Which he responded, “Yes.”
So I said, “What for?”
"For wearing underwear."
I was fuming. I was disgusted. I was baffled. I couldn’t believe that right before my very eyes rape culture was brought to light by this officer.
Again everyone - Scott Donlon, Officer of Sewall’s Point, who’s name I asked for because I was not going to let this white old privileged male think he could demean the four of us.
Luckily another officer, rolled up to us in the middle of this, he who was much kinder and diffused the situation by saying,
"Do not try him, you need to just give him respect. You could make things so much worse for yourself."
I wanted to say,
"What!? Excuse me? It’s your job to protect us, not to make us feel like our lives are threatened because he decided that he wants to be intimidating?"
Instead I said to the other officer,
"Officer, I mean no offense, and I’m sorry if I upset him, but he told us we were being detained for wearing underwear. Look at the four of us, we may be showing our stomachs, but we’re fully clothed and that’s by no means okay."
He responded,
"Well if he says you’re being detained. You’re being detained."
We were never detained.
It was all an intimidation tactic, and because of course it wasn’t worth the fight, I apologized for MY behavior and for disrespecting HIM. I let him continue to say I was running around in my “underwear.” I continued to let him say, “If I was in a bad mood tonight, I could have got you in so much more trouble.” I continued to let him discriminate my age by saying “I don’t need some 19 year old giving me attitude thinking she knows the law better than me.” I continued to let him completely dominate the situation and degrade us.
I’m not okay with this, I’m not okay with another officer fluffing his ego because he has some fucked up authoritative mentality.
Below I’ll add the photo of the outfit I was wearing, you guys let me know if I missed out on the memo of what defines underwear now.
If you actually took the time to go through my terrible grammar and read all of this ridiculous nonsense - thank you so much thank you thankyoouuu.The war in Syria is taking a toll on everyone in the region, but for the estimated 50% of refugees under age 12 growing up amidst the violence and displacement, the uncertainties of daily life can be unbearable. Now a non-profit is looking to harness the power of comics to offer a small but tangible comfort to refugee children who have lost everything.
The organization, Arlington, MA-based Comics for Youth Refugees Incorporated Collective (CYRIC), has produced an all-ages comic called Haawiyat, employing the talents of a multinational team of creators and translators (English version here). The comic features well-known Syrian folk tales illustrated in a variety of kid-friendly styles by Rob Croonenborghs, Sajad Shah, Jim Shaw, Joseba Morales, and Ursula Murray Husted. Taylor Hastings’s Ghost Glyph Studios handled the lettering and Farrah Hamza translated the text into Arabic.
The stories in the comic were created in conjunction with mental health professionals and onsite experts, according to CYRIC. “Haawiyat consists of timeless Syrian folklore adapted into comics form and cultivated for its potential healing content,” said Project Leader A. David Lewis. “These tales, in standard Arabic for readers ages 6-12 or with supervision, are intended to deliver some measure of solace or narrative stability in their current situations.”
Lewis said the goal is to restore some small sense of value or control to children who have lost everything. We in the west tend to view the Syrian conflict through the lens of geopolitics and ideology, but CYRIC’s mission is to bring focus to the problems of the most vulnerable population.
According to CYRIC, the 8-page black and white issue that was distributed this week to refugees in Gaziantep, Turkey was a proof of concept for a more deluxe edition that the organization is seeking to finance via the crowdfunding platform Razoo and individual donations.
“For phase one, all production and services were donated or volunteered,” explained Lewis. “In phase two, we hope the expanded incarnation of the title will have more stories, be in full color, AND go out to many more deserving children!” Costs of production and distribution for phase two will be the ultimate goal of the upcoming Razoo campaign.
The organization is also looking for artists and writers interested in participating in the ongoing efforts, and partners to improve production and distribution.Media distribution service Crunchyroll announced at its New York Comic Con panel on Thursday that it has licensed the Arakawa Under the Bridge, Gugure! Kokkuri-san, and Cuticle Detective Inaba manga series.
Hikaru Nakamura's Arakawa Under the Bridge manga centers on an upper-class young man named Ko "Riku" Ichinomiya. He meets a beautiful homeless girl named Nino from the banks of Arakawa River, where many of Tokyo's most unusual residents live.
Nakamura ( Saint Young Men ) launched Arakawa Under the Bridge in Square Enix's Young Gangan magazine in 2004, and ended it in July. Square Enix will publish the manga's 15th and final compiled book volume on November 20. The manga was adapted into a 13-episode TV anime series in April 2010, with a second 13-episode season airing in October of the same year titled Arakawa under the Bridge × Bridge. NIS America acquired the first and second seasons of the anime and released both on DVD and Blu-ray in 2011 and in 2012, respectively. The manga was also adapted into a live-action television drama in 2011, and a live-action film in 2012.
Midori Endō's Gugure! Kokkuri-san manga revolves around Kohina, a little girl who ends up summoning a Kokkuri-san, a lower-ranking ghost in Japanese folklore. The Kokkuri-san she calls ends up being a white-haired handsome young man. Although he had intended to merely haunt her at first, he becomes worried about her terrible eating habit of cup ramen for every meal, so he decides to haunt her in order to protect her.
Endō began the manga in 2011 in Square Enix's Gangan Joker magazine, and Square Enix shipped the ninth compiled volume in Japan on May 22. The manga inspired a 12-episode television anime series that Crunchyroll streamed as it aired in Japan. Sentai Filmworks licensed the series for home video in North America.
Mochi's Cuticle Detective Inaba ( Cuticle Tantei Inaba ) manga centers on Hiroshi Inaba, a part-man, part-wolf detective with a hair fetish who begins his own detective agency alongside his cross-dressing secretary Yuuta, and his assistant Kei. Together, they try to foil the schemes of Don Valentino, a goat and leader of an Italian mafia group.
Mochi launched the manga in Square Enix's G Fantasy magazine in 2007. Square Enix published the manga's 15th compiled book volume on April 27. The manga inspired a 12-episode television anime adaptation in 2013. Crunchyroll streamed the anime as it aired in Japan, and Sentai Filmworks licensed the anime for home video in North America. Sentai Filmworks released the series on DVD and Blu-ray in April 2014.
Thanks to Deb Aoki for the news tip.Bahrain unrest 'nothing to do with us', says F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone
Darkness had just fallen on the Bahrain international circuit when the air was shaken by a rapid series of explosions. It was a false alarm – officials had chosen this hour to launch a firework display to celebrate the opening of a new go-kart track by the main circuit – but the horrified expressions on the faces of motor racing teams on the first of three "days of rage" called to coincide with Sunday's Bahrain grand prix spoke volumes.
On the north side of the island, an estimated 50,000 pro-democracy demonstrators had gathered. Here the explosions came from tear gas rounds and guns as police fired at protesters to try to disperse them.
"It's terrible up here," one eyewitness said. "The police are using a combination of tear gas and pepper spray. There are also rubber bullets. The crowd is huge, tens of thousands. It seems there will be lots of trouble tonight. There is going to be a big protest in Manama, the capital, and also in the villages."
One of the country's leading activists said: "Thousands of us were on the Budaya Highway trying to get back to the track but we were driven back by the police using teargas."
Another protester said: "The big group was broken down into several smaller groups. And the police were very heavy-handed as soon as they knew there was no media around. A lot of protesters were beaten."
Ala'a Shehabi, one of the country's most prominent protesters, claimed last night: "Abdulhadi Alkhawaja [the hunger striker] has called his lawyer to ask him to come and take his will as he prepares for death. It seems the government are hell bent on letting him die than releasing him."
At the circuit's media centre, pictures started circulating among the gathered journalists of protesters on the highway running north being attacked by police. Out in the paddock, meanwhile, the mood was sullen, with members of the 12 Formula One teams unhappy that the race will take place against a background of violence and oppression.
The Force India team left first, refusing to take any part in the second practice session in the afternoon after four of the team were involved in a petrol bomb incident on Wednesday night.
Beside them in the paddock is the Sauber team, who reported that a number of the personnel had been confronted by masked protesters on Thursday evening.
Another team reported that a protester had entered their hotel and screamed: "Do you know that by being here you have killed 80 people!"
If this weren't enough to unsettle them, the hackers' collective Anonymous on Friday announced its own attack on the grand prix: "We have watched this tyrannical government teargas its own people literally to death, with over 30 fatalities so far.
"We have watched as thousands of innocent protesters and activists have been jailed," the organisation said in a statement.
"The king of Bahrain be warned, we are about to unleash the worst shitstorm you have ever seen – and your time as dictator is over."
Anonymous added a personal message to Bernie Ecclestone, the sport's commercial rights holder: "Anonymous will turn your web site into a smoking crater in cyber space.
"We will also jam your phone lines, bomb your email inboxes – and wreck anything else of yours we can find on the internet."
Formula One's renowned bubble was putting on a bullish face against the onslaught. Ecclestone, who recently described Bahrain as "quiet and peaceful", told journalists that he couldn't call off the race.
"It's nothing to do with us," he said, shrugging. "The national sporting authority in this country can ask the FIA if they want to call the race off.
"You guys love it," he said to the throng of journalists. "What we really need is an earthquake or something like that, so you can write about that now.
"I think you guys want a story and it is a good story. And if there isn't a story you make it up as usual. So nothing changes."
The crown prince of Bahrain, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, standing alongside Ecclestone, said: "I hope by coming here you understand that unlike what has been reported, we are not trying to say we are perfect. We are a real country with real issues.
"I hope you get a chance to see us for all our complexities, all our shades."
Jean Todt, president of the FIA, the sport's ruling body, was also at the paddock on Friday, though he said nothing. His son, Nicolas, shares ownership of the Lotus ART GP2 team with the crown prince.
Meanwhile team principals looked like stooges when asked to justify their presence in this unhappy land.
Martin Whitmarsh, of McLaren, said: "Ultimately we're a race team. We're here to go motor racing and that's our number one priority."
Norbert Haug of Mercedes nodded: "Absolutely the same."
Christian Horner, of Red Bull, said: "Martin's summed it up perfectly, I think. Formula One is a sport at the end of the day and it's wrong for it to be used politically."
Some might argue that is exactly what the Bahrain government is doing with their "uniF1ed" posters.I am pleased this week to post a guest article from Will Ruth, also known as “Strength Coach Will.” Coach Ruth writes this week about keeping a positive “mindset” when recovering from an injury. Enjoy!
Stay Positive to Beat the Injury Blues
by “Strength Coach Will” Ruth
Injury risk is an inevitable part of life and competitive sport. The first step to developing a positive mindset is accepting this risk and destigmatizing injury should it occur. Getting injured is uncomfortable and inconvenient, but it is a risk that we all take as athletes and active people. In this article, I’ll explain how you can do everything you can to prevent injury and how to keep your cool should injury occur.
I do want to include a disclaimer here to say that sports are often a huge part of people’s lives, personal identity, and self-esteem, as well as a method for coping with stress, and it can be very difficult when an injury takes this away. If you or one of your athletes or teammates is struggling with depression-like symptoms, please refer to a mental health counselor or sport psychology counselor. The Applied Association of Sport Psychology is a great resource and maintains a list of certified consultants.
Control the “Controllables,” Discard What Remains
Maintaining physical readiness to train is at the forefront of every responsible athlete and coach’s mind. Even though we all accept a risk of injury training and competing in sport, injury prevention is a critical part of maintaining this readiness. Here are the core tenets of injury risk reduction that are 100% under your control:
1. Understand your sport, its injury risks, and safe training practices.
2. Learn how to prevent those injuries and then take action to do so.
3. Learn how to lift correctly to avoid compromising positions, then strength train to prevent imbalance injuries and teach correct motor patterns.
4. Stick to a regimen of warming up, cooling down, and stretching and mobility work to make sure your body is prepared for training and competition.
5. Hydrate and eat well to give your body the fuel and nutrients it needs to sustain hard training and achieve excellent performance.
6. Know your body and be honest with yourself. Know when to push and when to hold back in training to avoid sickness, injury, and over training.
While freak accidents do occur, the vast majority of sports injuries can be traced back to failure to adhere to those six tenets. Think of when you’ve been injured—were you consistently practicing all six at the time?
The next thing that can really derail an injured athlete’s mindset is the ensuing shock and surprise, often followed by disappointment and sometimes depression. This is where it really becomes critical to maintain a mindset of acceptance, positivity, and improvement to focus on the activities that you are able to do while recovering from injury.
Physical discomfort and inconvenience will always remain a part of injury, and what a positive approach seeks to eliminate is mental discomfort and frustration. The mental mindset to adopt is that your sport is now recovering from injury and getting back to rowing. Successful athletes who overcome injury apply the same determination, self-motivation, and drive to their rehab protocol as they did to sport training.
Remember, you’re only focusing on things you can control and positive action that you can take. Don’t get bogged down in the “can’t do’s,” such as, “I can’t row,” “I can’t lift,” “I can’t run.” Think about what you CAN do and apply yourself fully to that. Find ways to train around your injury. Can you use the stationary bike, run, or focus on one half (upper/lower) of your body with weights? Can you use this extra time to improve mobility and flexibility on a non-injured area? PT’s or athletic trainers will be able to provide specifics on what you can do to be as productive as possible during recovery.
You’re Still Part of the Team
An injured athlete is still an athlete and a teammate, so every effort should be made to keep them engaged with the sport and team. So long as it will not negatively impact their recovery, injured rowers can still attend practice and ride the launch, be there for their teammates during erg sessions, and stay involved in the team at social occasions. Often, athletes who are allowed to isolate themselves just fade away and find it hard to return to the team even when healthy. This is also where peers and team captains are relied upon to keep their teammates feeling engaged. A text or phone call of, “hey, we really miss you at practice, will we see you at _____?” can be very meaningful for an injured teammate struggling with motivation to return. Think about how you would you want your teammates to respond if you were the one injured.
Injured athletes are often worried about being in the way at practice. Here’s a list of some things rowers can help with while they’re recovering from an injury:
Checking gas and loading the launch
Holding a camera from the launch for filming
Holding the spotlight if it’s dark
Help out by writing down times during erg sessions
Is your team short on coxswains? I had snapping hip syndrome and could not row. I showed up for practice anyway. I was heavy for a coxswain, but when one of the coxswains didn’t show up to practice, I was able to jump in and allow that boat to get out on the water.
Collecting shoes, oars, and water bottles
Benefit from the instruction at practice. Look at your teammates and try to see what the coach sees and it will make you a better rower when you get back in the boat.
Have a Plan to Get Back on Board
One of the hardest things for eager athletes to avoid is rushing back from injury. After days or weeks away from practice, it’s hard to not want to scratch that itch right away. However, there needs to be a plan to return to training in progressive increments. Check out this graphic for an illustration of why this is—in the study, athletes who returned to do 100% of their normal training workload after only doing 40% of that workload during rehab had a 28% chance of re-injuring during their first week back from practice.
Source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CB708wHXIAAmqrB.jpg
While an athlete with a week long sickness or slight muscular strain may be able to return relatively quickly, a fracture, broken bone, torn muscle, or serious illness will need a more gradual progression. A general rule of thumb is to start with 50% of your pre-injury volume and add 5-10% (meters or minutes) from there. For example, if you were doing five two-hour practices per week before your injury, start with five one-hour practices for the first week back. This requires the coach to not only monitor training minutes, but to have a plan to swap in another rower for your place. If an erg session was prescribed 3×18’, start with 3×9’ the first week back. Your goal is to leave each session feeling like you could have done more. This may be frustrating to some athletes, but it’s a much better path than re-injury.
One final step that can be difficult for many athletes is mentally moving on from the injury after returning to rowing. A key tip here is to focus on what you DO want to have happen, not all the possible negative outcomes. With great dedication to the rehab protocol, a gradual progression to return to practice, and a positive mindset upon return, athletes can go on to put the injury behind them and focus on performance.
Will Ruth (BS, NSCA-CSCS, USA-Weightlifting L1, US-Rowing L2) is the strength coach for the Western Washington University men’s club crew team and is the author of “Rowing Stronger: Strength Training to Maximize Rowing Performance,” the only comprehensive strength training manual just for rowers published by Rowperfect UK. Will posts new articles every Monday on his website, www.strengthcoachwill.com, where you can find more resources for physical and mental training for youth, collegiate, and masters rowers. A former rower, Will keeps his own competitive fire going with the sport of Strongman and also coaches high school lacrosse.
Thank you Coach Ruth! For more info on AthleteDISC, and the Process Communication Model® follow my blog or like me on Facebook at RUFO OPTIMAL WORKOUTS.It's been four days since an asteroid tore a hole in the sky over Chelyabinsk, scaring the crap out of the city's inhabitants and pretty much everyone else around the globe. Details are finally starting to emerge about this jaw-dropping incident, so we've prepared a round-up of the preliminary findings.
The asteroid made its low angle descent into Earth's atmosphere on February 15 at 03:20 GMT, and was the largest in more than a century. In fact, events of this magnitude are believed to occur only once about every 100 years or more.
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Based on extensive video evidence, the Chelyabinsk asteroid flew in at a shallow angle of 20° above the horizontal (NASA called it a "grazing impact through the atmosphere"). When it reached Earth, it was moving at about 11 miles per second, or 40,000 miles per hour (18 km/s, 64,000 km/h). It streaked across the Russian sky moving from the northeast to the southwest.
Image at left shows the meteor's vapor trail — click to enlarge (via ESA).
Peter Brown of Western University has calculated that the asteroid was about 56 feet across (17 meters), which is roughly the size of a school bus. For comparison, asteroid 2012 DA14 (which paid us a visit later that same day) measured 150 feet across (45 meters), and the Tunguska asteroid of 1908 is estimated to have been about 330 feet across (100 meters).
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Brown also estimates that the Chelyabinsk asteroid weighed about 7,000 to 10,000 tons when it entered our atmosphere. Given what we know about other near-Earth objects (NEOs), it was likely comprised of densely packed iron and nickel. It may have also contained carbon dioxide or water, which would have accentuated the impact of the sonic boom.
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Image at left shows the estimated orbit of the object around the sun (via Peter Brown).
So, given its size and speed, along with the measurement of low-frequency sound waves detected by a global network (the infrasound frequency of.4Hz to 20Hz could be heard halfway round the world), the asteroid unleashed a torrent of energy equivalent to nearly 500 kilotons of TNT. That's about 30 times the energy released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The bolide was about nine to 12 miles (15-20 km) above the ground when it disintegrated — immediately above the city of Chelyabinsk.
The resulting sonic boom let loose a shockwave that shattered windows across an extensive area, injuring over 1,200 people. Windows tend to break when air pressure exceeds about five times normal, but based on the evidence, it's likely that the air pressure in Chelyabinsk reached about 10-20 times normal.
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And indeed, most of the damage was caused by the airburst, and not by falling fragments. Much of the object burned up on entry as the tremendous air friction ripped it apart; the asteroid would have experienced an incredible rate of deceleration. At one point, the meteor was brighter than the sun. But prior to disintegrating, air pressure accumulated in front of it, eventually releasing as a sonic boom.
The entire event, from atmospheric entry to the meteor's disintegration, took 32.5 seconds.
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According to astronomers working for NASA and the ESA, the Chelyabinsk asteroid had no connection to DA14, noting that the trajectory, the location of entry, and the time delay all indicate no relation.
Sources: NASA, European Space Agency, B612 Foundation, iopblog.
Images: Discover Magazine, Mirror.Before an experiment could be devised where a CD would be rotated to complete failure, a proper motor had to be obtained that would be capable of achieving those high rotational velocities with the load presented by a CD. Although a CD is very light and aerodynamic, when it starts to spin at a couple tens of thousandths of rotations per minute the drag created by air around its surface can be sufficient to slow the motor down considerably. High torque motors are very common and cheap, as are small high speed motors. Unfortunately however, high speed, high torque motors are a much rarer and expensive find.
My choice was to use a Dremel tool as the motor. It was cheap, easily available, and, more importantly, the rated 35000RPM spindle speed meant that it had some real potential for spinning things to destruction. At 35000RPM very small imperfections and balancing errors can lead to extreme vibration; so much, in fact, that it would be possible to damage the bearings or bend the axle on the tool if something as heavy as a CD was to start wobbling (bear in mind that the Dremel tool was designed for very small, light weight loads and even then many of its attachments carry warnings not to be used at full speed). One of the first challenges of the research was to find a means to secure the CD perfectly in the middle of the tool. A custom made CNC lathe spun aluminum holder was considered but before I ever left the room I realized that the cylindrical sanding attachments Dremel makes not only fit a CD hole perfectly, but also have adjustable width so that the CD could be gripped in place.
With the CD in place and the dremel plugged in, it was time for the fun to begin! The Dremel was switched on and the rotational velocity was gradually increased to its maximum, at which point the CD hummed and whined in a very menacing manner. Mildly disappointed that it had not exploded, I realized that it wanted out; a quick jerk at the tool and the CD slid out of the holder and contacted the carpet whilst spinning at ungodly speeds. It peeled out a bit in front of me and proceeded to make its way to the door at a very high speed. On contacting the closed door, the CD did a most unexpected thing: it first bounced back a few inches, and then, when it hit the door again, it jumped straight up the door and struck the ceiling, exploding into thousands of fragments which rained down on the entire room. This first experiment was unfortunately not videoed, but it served to get everyone in the room to put glasses on and cower away behind pieces of furniture, whilst people in the hall corridor quickly made their way to my door to ask what was going on. Now, with an audience, the camera was taken out and the real experimentation began...
A standard compact disk has a diameter of 12cm. If this disk is to spin at 35000RPM, the peripheral velocity at the edges of the disk (.377m circumference x 583.3 turns per second) will near 220m/s, or 722fps, or 792km/h or 492miles per hour. That is one fast CD-Rom! At those speeds the CD is storing over 150joules of energy. Conversely, if the CD was to explode at that velocity, the pieces would escape at a similar speed. Although a Dremel tool does not have the required power to sustain its maximum RPM with a load as big as a CD-Rom, the CDs did go very fast; fast enough to blow all the foil off from one of them, explode another, and launch several across the room at speeds high enough that they exploded on impact, or flew up to the ceiling. Videos are available below for your amusement.Several of the famous swimming pigs that draw tourists to the Bahamas’ Big Major Cay were found dead over the weekend from an undetermined cause.
Wayde Nixon, one of the pigs’ owners, told the Nassau Guardian that seven of the pigs had died, and about 15 were still alive.
EyesWideOpen via Getty Images One of the famous swimming pigs in 2012.
“The pigs were given the wrong food,” Nixon told the news outlet. He didn’t specify who gave the passel of pigs the food, or what it was. But he did say there have been problems with tourists acting inappropriately.
“Right now, it’s blowing out of proportion with people, anybody bringing food there, anybody doing what they [want to] do,” Nixon said. “We have people coming there giving the pigs beer, rum, riding on top of them ― all kind of stuff.”
Kim Aranha, president of the Bahamas Humane Society, told Tribune 242 it’s not clear if the pigs’ deaths were accidental or intentional.
“It could just be a horrible accident, where they ate something poisonous,” Aranha said. “It could be malicious |
all the killer features of pure Reducers like hot-reloading just to have my domain logic in one place and easily testable. I have found that keeping API calls in Reducers has such strong advantages in terms of maintainability that it's not really worth putting them into Action Creators just to improve our DX.
Reducing state... and side effects
Ideally we would like to keep our side effects in Reducers while preserving their pureness.
This sounds like an oxymoron: if the Reducers have side effects then by definition they are not pure. However there is a way: reduce both state and side effects.
Potentially, API calls can be expressed as an Event or Action with some payload. This doesn't apply only to API calls but to any side effect in general. We can thus describe a Reducer as follows:
reduction = actions.reduce((reduction, action) => reduction, initialReduction)
...where reduction is {state, List<Effects>}. In other words, instead of reducing only application state, we reduce a pair of application state and a list of Effects. Once all the reducers are processed, we can have Effect Handlers that take each Effect (composed of type and payload) as input and produce a side effect that potentially dispatches another action.
For example, our action might include an Effect that retrieves a list of todos from the server asynchronously. Our Reducer would still be pure since it would just reduce the Effect into a list for later processing. Once the Reducers have done their job, the Effect Handler would pull that Effect out of the list, call the API and dispatch a new Action with the list of todos as its payload.
The cool thing is that we can simply ignore this step in replay process. We don't have to worry about the side effect of the first Action since the second Action (with the appropriate payload) is in the Action Log as well. That's right, we have recovered our beloved time travel!
Writing tests with this approach is also pretty straightforward: we can write tests as before. Because the reduction contains a list of effects, it's easy to check if handling an Action results in specific side effects with specific payloads. It sounds like we might have achieved our original goal: a pure Reducer capable of API calls and other side effects.
Some have argued that if you keep your API calls in Reducers/Stores, it is too easy to misuse the callback and directly mutate application state without dispatching a new Action. This is simply not possible with our approach, because the Reducer takes only the reduction and an Action as parameters. It's not even possible to do action chaining (say goodbye to the "Cannot dispatch in the middle of a dispatch" Exception) since it doesn't have access to the Dispatcher.
On the other hand, the Effect Handler has only the Effect itself and the Dispatcher as parameters, which means that direct state mutation is impossible there as well. This approach also prevents users from Flux worst practices such as treating an Action as a Command instead of an Event.
But enough reading, you might be keen to try out this approach on your own. Because I love coding as much as you do, I have prepared an example. By they way, the screencast above uses this boilerplate with a few minor modifications. Be aware: it's not a framework, it's just a fully hot-reloadable example of Atomic Flux with an innovative approach to handling side effects.DALLAS (AP) — Hank Hunt's granddaughter tried calling 911 from the East Texas hotel room where she could hear her mother dying, just as she was taught to do in an emergency. She didn't know she had to dial 9 on the hotel phone first.
DALLAS (AP) — Hank Hunt's granddaughter tried calling 911 from the East Texas hotel room where she could hear her mother dying, just as she was taught to do in an emergency. She didn't know she had to dial 9 on the hotel phone first.
"Papa," Hunt remembers the 9-year-old telling him later. "I tried, but it wouldn't work."
Now Hunt has launched a national push to require hotels and other businesses to do away with dialing anything before calling 911. So far, an online petition for a federal law has gotten 390,000 signatures, and one 911 advocacy group says Hunt has hit on a perhaps under-documented issue.
"I never dreamed that it would take a life of its own like this," Hunt said this week. "There's been a lot of good people out there helping us."
Hunt's petition calls for "Kari's Law," in honor of his daughter, Kari Hunt Dunn, who was stabbed to death inside a Baymont Inn hotel, allegedly by her estranged husband. The law as described by the petition would require hotels and motels to upgrade to "Enhanced 911" systems that would let guests call for help just by dialing 911 and give the operator the caller's exact location.We've Been Kissing Since Vedic Times, So Why Are We So Awkward?
We've Been Kissing Since Vedic Times, So Why Are We So Awkward?
sensualblissvoyager
Last weekend, couples took to the streets of conservative Kerala to shake up a hardline Hindu stance against kissing. They did it the most obvious way possible - by kissing. Not surprisingly, they got arrested for it. But we've been kissing since forever, so why the drama? Of course, anyone can quote the Kama Sutra to prove this, but desi tongue action is much older.
Kissing in the Vedas
Yes, the Vedas - they mention the custom of rubbing and pressing noses together, possibly an early form of kissing.
Kissing in the Mahabharata
500 to 1,000 years after the Vedas, the Mahabharata also mentioned lip kissing, taking the aforementioned nose-rubbing a step ahead.
How India exported the kiss
The zero is not the only thing we can brag about inventing. According to academics, kissing spread across the world as Alexander the Great conquered Punjab in 326 B.C., and his troops learned the practice, taking it across the world! Even the word "kiss" came from the word "kus", once used for the act in northern India.
Our first on-screen kiss
Don't Miss 1.4 K SHARES 1.1 K SHARES 4.4 K SHARES
It wasn't the 1970's Rishi Kapoor era, but the 1929 silent film “A Throw of Dice” which saw our first on-screen kiss. 4 years later, Devika Rani kissed Himanshu Rai in “Karma” - a 4 minute kiss. Somewhere between then and now, we went crazy about morals. This was obvious when outrage resulted from a 75 year old Nelson Mandela kissing Shabana Azmi on the cheek.
Cut to now - when India gets so ridiculously excited about an on-screen kiss that actors have made careers from the act!
(Research sourced from 'A Short History of the Kiss in India', Wall Street Journal India, 1 November 2014)There's certainly no shortage of carbon fiber super-bikes to choose from these days, but it's slim pickings when it comes to high-end full-suspension bikes made out of steel. For those riders who enjoy something a bit different, we have Production Privée's 140mm-travel Shan N°5. Intended to be a do-it-all, bash-around bike, the steel N°5 can be fitted with a fork that has anywhere between 140mm and 160mm of travel, and it also has room for a plus-sized rear tire.
''We wanted the Shan N°5 to be an excellent performer, to be fun, simple, reliable and with maintenance reduced to a strict minimum,'' so says the spiel on Production Privée's website, which is the same brief as their popular Shan hardtail but in a more forgiving package.
Shan N°5 Details
• Intended use: enduro / all-mountain / trail
• Rear wheel travel: 140mm
• Fork travel: 150mm
• Wheel size: 27.5''
• Frame material: 4130 steel
• 1X drivetrain only
• BB92 bottom bracket
• Single-pivot design
• 12 x 148mm Boost hub spacing
• Room for 27.5'' x 2.8'' rear tire
• Ant-rust coating
• Weight: 31lb 15oz
• MSRP: €2,915.83 - €4,165.83 (exc. VAT)
• www.production-privee.com
• Intended use: enduro / all-mountain / trail• Rear wheel travel: 140mm• Fork travel: 150mm• Wheel size: 27.5''• Frame material: 4130 steel• 1X drivetrain only• BB92 bottom bracket• Single-pivot design• 12 x 148mm Boost hub spacing• Room for 27.5'' x 2.8'' rear tire• Ant-rust coating• Weight: 31lb 15oz• MSRP: €2,915.83 - €4,165.83 (exc. VAT)
This early Shan test mule has me wishing for an unpainted, clear coated color option. Who's with me? This early Shan test mule has me wishing for an unpainted, clear coated color option. Who's with me?
Design Details
The Shan's alloy dropouts and forward shock mount are both bolted onto the steel frame. The Shan's alloy dropouts and forward shock mount are both bolted onto the steel frame.
There's enough clearance for you to roll through wet cement without it clogging up or, in a more likely scenario, run a 2.8'' tire. There's enough clearance for you to roll through wet cement without it clogging up or, in a more likely scenario, run a 2.8'' tire.
The 'Bahama Yellow' paint job is pretty polarizing, I suspect, and it's actually a homage to Singer, the legendary Californian brand that ''re-imagines'' Porsche's 964-chassis 911 cars into $400,00 USD (and up from there) dream machines.
Nosella and crew at Production Privée are fans of classic cars and auto racing, which explains
People who want to run a 170mm-stroke dropper post will appreciate the short-ish seattube, and those that like plus-sized meat will be stoked to see that the slim steel seatstay and chainstay tubes leave plenty of room for up to a 2.8'' wide tire. What you won't be able to run, though, is a front derailleur, with the N°5 being a dedicated 1X drivetrain bike. Front derailleurs are silly anyway.The 'Bahama Yellow' paint job is pretty polarizing, I suspect, and it's actually a homage to Singer, the legendary Californian brand that ''re-imagines'' Porsche's 964-chassis 911 cars into $400,00 USD (and up from there) dream machines.Nosella and crew at Production Privée are fans of classic cars and auto racing, which explains their adjustable sweep grips that are modeled after the notable Dunlop CR65 Formula One tire, and that theme can be spotted throughout their catalog. Those who prefer a more subdued look than Bahama Yellow can go with a black frame.
The Shan employs a single pivot design with an aluminum clevis to drive the shock and deliver 140mm of rear wheel travel. The Shan employs a single pivot design with an aluminum clevis to drive the shock and deliver 140mm of rear wheel travel.
Suspension Design
The Fox shock is driven by an aluminum yoke that helps to isolate it from side loads, and Nosella says that while he could have gone with some sort of wildly varying leverage rate that would have sounded impressive on paper, he's designed a linear-progressive setup that he says is about creating a predictable and easy to understand suspension system.
In the name of less maintenance and more riding, the main pivot is sized the same as a Press Fit bottom bracket shell, with alloy cups and angular contact bearings that he said makes it reliable and easy to service. I like big bearings and can not lie. I like big bearings and can not lie.
Specifications
Specifications Release Date 2017 Price $2915.83 Travel 140 Rear Shock Fox Float Factory series 210x55mm Fork Fox Factory series 34, FIT4, 150mm Cassette SRAM Eagle GX 12spd Crankarms SRAM Eagle GX w/ 30t Bottom Bracket SRAM Rear Derailleur SRAM Eagle GX Chain SRAM Eagle GX Shifter Pods SRAM Eagle GX Handlebar Production Privee LGB 780mm Stem Production Privee R2R 50mm Grips Production Privee CR35 Brakes SRAM Guide RS Wheelset Stan's Flow MK3 Tires Maxxis HR2 EXO TR 2.4'' / Minion EXO TR 2.3'' Seat SDG Duster Seatpost Bike Yoke Revive 160mm Compare to other All Mountain/Enduro/XC
2 Questions With Production Privée's Damien Nosella
Mike Levy:
Damien Nosella: We wanted the Shan Nº5 to be our perfect all-arounder / mountaineer. Either it’s for a lunch ride, a full enduro race weekend, a day in the mountain, or a day at the bike park. More than anything, the Nº5 is designed to give you fun and confidence for day-long rides and that in a simple package.
The non-orthodox travel number is a result of geometry and engineering requirements and not an answer to a "marketing” segment. Again, what we wanted to achieve is a fun but forgiving ride, strong and reliable. That’s why we choose a single pivot design, a low damping ratio, and steel over other materials in order to work on the “mechanical” grip notion with the means at hand for the size of our company. What I mean is that if our main target was to design a race bike, we would have done it differently. Is there a classification for a bike that takes you by the hand and carries you to the next turn and obstacle for hours and hours?
Levy:
Nosella:
Climbing
The yellow bike is efficient, sure, but it makes no apologies for not being a KOM hunter. This just isn't that type of bike. The yellow bike is efficient, sure, but it makes no apologies for not being a KOM hunter. This just isn't that type of bike.
The Shan's heft and angles keep it from matching lighter weight, sharping handling competition, but I suspect that the guys at Production Privée are well aware of that and don't really give a damn. If your attitude towards climbing matches theirs, you'll get along just fine with the N°5. If you feel more invested in your ascents, however, this bike probably isn't suited to your needs.
It's probably not fair to compare this rig to other 140mm-travel bikes, such as the carbon fiber Devinci Troy, as the large majority of those are surely more trail oriented; instead, think of the Shan as a short-travel enduro bike and get on with your climb.
The key to success is to keep your weight low and forward to fight the bike's front-end length, have an attentive approach to steering, and be aware of where your pedals are at the ends of the regrettably long 175mm cranks to keep them from striking the ground. Do all that while having a no-f*cks-given attitude about climbing, and you'll get on just fine with the N°5.
Descending
Nailing a corner is pretty high on the list of things that feel good, and it's a common occurrence on the Shan. Nailing a corner is pretty high on the list of things that feel good, and it's a common occurrence on the Shan.
If you're more into sessioning jumps and corners than racing the clock or all-day death marches, the Shan might be a good match for you. If you're more into sessioning jumps and corners than racing the clock or all-day death marches, the Shan might be a good match for you.
Predictability is the key, really, as there are relatively few oh-shit moments on the N°5 that would call for a dropped foot or even big steering corrections. Production Privée might have something special here with these numbers and this frame material.
While not quite as much of a hooligan as it looks like it would be, the Shan is still a fun bike to be a goon aboard. While not quite as much of a hooligan as it looks like it would be, the Shan is still a fun bike to be a goon aboard.
Technical Details
• Tire Clearance:
With 160mm of stroke, the BikeYoke Revive dropper post is an interesting spec choice that performed well. With 160mm of stroke, the BikeYoke Revive dropper post is an interesting spec choice that performed well.
• BikeYoke Revive Dropper:
• Stealth Shan:
Pinkbike's Take
It's difficult for me to not try and slot the N°5 into some sort of classification, but I think that avoiding that really is the key to understanding Production Privée's first full-suspension bike. Sure, it could be an enduro machine or a park bike, or even a burly trail bike, but more than anything it's an example of a small bike company doing something different. That in itself is going to appeal to some riders, and it also doesn't hurt that the bike is a hell of a lot of fun to ride. — Mike Levy
About the Reviewer
Stats: Age: 37 • Height: 5'10” • Inseam: 33" • Weight: 165lb • Industry affiliations / sponsors: None • Instagram:
Mike Levy spent most of the 90s and early 2000s racing downhill bikes and building ill-considered jumps in the woods of British Columbia before realizing that bikes could also be pedaled for hours on end to get to some pretty cool places. These days he spends most of his time doing exactly that, preferring to ride test bikes way out in the local hills rather than any bike park. Over ten years as a professional mechanic before making the move to Pinkbike means that his enthusiasm for two wheels extends beyond simply riding on them, and his appreciation for all things technical is an attribute that meshes nicely with his role of Technical Editor at Pinkbike. Age: 37 • Height: 5'10” • Inseam: 33" • Weight: 165lb • Industry affiliations / sponsors: None • Instagram: killed_by_death
If you want some steel in your life, a Shan N°5 frame and Fox Float DPS EVOL shock goes for € 1,499.17 to € 1,749.17 (exc. VAT), and complete bikes run between € 2,915.83 - € 4,165.83 (exc. VAT) depending on the build. The bike shown here sports a one-off build, however, and it weighs 31lb 15oz. At 8.37lb for a frame (sans shock), this is one machine that's probably not for those concerned with how much their bike weighs.Production Privée is best known for their steel hardtail, a bike that we were big fans of when we reviewed it back in 2012, so it's not a surprise to see their first full-suspension frame also using steel tubing. That being said, it wasn't a'steel or nothing' sort of decision when Damien Nosella, one of the main minds behind the company's bikes, penned the new N°5.They were open to using other materials, he said, but, in the end, steel was the go-to choice: ''We decided to go the 4130 CrMo route for the chassis. Since the advent of mechanical sports, CrMo chassis contraptions have been winning car and motorcycle races every weekend,'' Nosella said when the N°5 was first released. ''Steel is a magical material with impeccable strength and very high levels of elasticity and fatigue resistance. When used on a bike, incredibly high levels of tolerance and grip are obtained compared with an alloy or carbon chassis.''The small diameter steel tubing gives the N°5 a classic, clean look, even with the external cable routing and bolt-on guides. And speaking of bolting things on, the location of the Fox shock means that the only place you'll be bolting a bottle cage on is the underside of the downtube, and most of you know how I feel about that...The forward shock mount is also bolted onto the frame rather than welded, and two ISCG tabs sit under the BB92 bottom bracket shell that let you attach some sort of taco-style protection if you make a habit out of smashing into things.Production Privée talks a lot about simplicity and reliability, so it makes sense that they've gone with a relatively straightforward single-pivot layout rather than employ a bunch of links or something novel for the N°5's back end. The design delivers 140mm of rear wheel travel, and the custom tuned Fox Float DPS EVOL metric shock is said to provide a ''low ratio that guarantees the best possible performance: sensitivity at the beginning, perfect rebound performance, and great efficiency throughout its entire suspension travel.'' Hmm, heady claims for sure, but can an uncomplicated single-pivot system deliver on that marketing-speak?And why the middle-of-the-road 140mm of travel? ''This travel size was not chosen so as to meet the criteria of a specific category, but purely as a way of extracting the maximum amount of pleasure and performance out of the Shan N°5,'' he said of the hard to pin down number.The Shan N°5's 140mm of travel isn't quite long enough to call it an enduro bike, and I'd argue that it's a bit too much for it to be a trail bike. How would you classify the N°5, and where has it been designed to excel?The Shan N°5 is a lot of fun, but there are many carbon and aluminum bikes on the market that are also fun. Why should a rider choose your steel bike over one made using carbon or aluminum? What does steel offer?Engineering-wise, steel offers remarkable properties in strength, tunable stiffness, fatigue, and resilience. Playing on section sizes, butted lengths, thicknesses, and heat treatment let us work on what we call the “mechanical” grip, a dynamic concept which car and bike racing companies laid on for their GP, MXGP bikes to give that right amount of flex to maximize traction, grip in corners, off-cambers, etc... I can’t speak for the top athletes of our sport, but I believe they will probably need an incisive chassis to hit their lines to the millimeter; at the opposite end, the average rider or the enduro rider needs a forgiving and confidence-giving bike to let him enjoy the ride or racing for hours.That’s what steel can offer; the right amount of flex and dynamism. And last but not least is the superiority in terms of fatigue resistance that steel offers: a frame made out of steel will keep its dynamic and strength characteristics longer than any aluminum frame without the cost of a carbon frame (a well engineered one, and that’s another big topic).You don't need a degree in bikeology to know that the boys at Production Privée didn't put ascending at the top of their priority list; this just isn't that kind of machine. But while the steel banana performed as expected in the handling department on tricky climbs - that is, not awesomely - it's surprisingly efficient when you're on the gas. Hefty rubber only adds to the N°5's weight, which is an entirely different battle, but the bike scoots along nicely under power once you're past walking speed, and it does so without the need to reach down for the Fox shock's swindle switch. You might expect that from a 140mm-travel bike, but I'd argue that this particularly rowdy example could be excused for feeling a bit squishy and slow when the rider is on the gas. Even so, there's no justification needed here.When it comes to scrabbling up a technical pitch, it's decidedly less rosy. Or maybe I should say that the Shan performs about how you'd expect a chunky steel bike with big meat and angles designed to excel in the opposite direction. Does the bike get a free pass, then? I'm not sure, to be honest. With patience and precision, you can get the Shan up all sorts of nastiness, but it's also not exactly going to be doing you any favors and helping you along in those moments.The Shan's heft and angles keep it from matching lighter weight, sharping handling competition, but I suspect that the guys at Production Privée are well aware of that and don't really give a damn. If your attitude towards climbing matches theirs, you'll get along just fine with the N°5. If you feel more invested in your ascents, however, this bike probably isn't suited to your needs.Every mountain bike is a rolling compromise; it's really a matter of what you want to give up in order to gain in other areas. But when it comes to the N°5, thoughts of what you gave up on the climb will be forgotten soon after you drop into the descent. That's especially true if said descent is full of corners; tight and slow or fast and wide open, this is a bike that doesn't care, and it's the N°5's defining quality. The last rig we had in that cornered as well as the Shan was Devinci's much longer-travel Spartan, and the fact that the yellow bike equals that beast - but with less travel - is really something.But unlike the Spartan, the N°5 can perform in more than just fast, rough terrain, with it slicing and dicing all shapes of corners and at all speeds. You can come in too fast, chop your way through, and the Shan will spring out of the corner as if it's late for a first date. But the traction, holy mother of grip, does it deliver traction, and that lets it carry immense speed through the kind of fast, low-purchase corners that might usually upset a bike of this travel.Predictability is the key, really, as there are relatively few oh-shit moments on the N°5 that would call for a dropped foot or even big steering corrections. Production Privée might have something special here with these numbers and this frame material.Steel has a rep as a forgiving material, much more so than aluminum or carbon, but I'd also argue that it really comes down to how that material is used. Production Privée says that it's the best choice for the N°5 because it has ''the right amount of flex and dynamism,'' and while I'm not convinced that's the primary reason for the bike's traction and otherworldly cornering abilities, I'm also not going to rule it out. It's simple, single-pivot suspension design also delivers loads of grip through an immensely sensitive setup that responds to the ground regardless of where the shock is in its stroke. Yes, the N°5 could use a bit more end-stroke ramp-up (a volume spacer would do the job), but the eager travel is surely one of the causes of the near-never-ending ability of the rear-end to hold onto the ground.I would usually associate less travel with more playfulness, but that's not that case with the Shan. Yes, it can out-corner pretty much everything on the market, but I suspect that its weight keeps it from being the hooligan that I thought it would be. That said, its predictability inspires a load of confidence that can get you in trouble, but it's also just enough bike to get you out of said trouble... most of the time.Okay, time for some comparisons because that's what we do at this point, even though the N°5 is a hard bike to pin down. Most recently, it was Rocky Mountain's Instinct Carbon 90 BC Edition, a bike with 155mm of travel, similar intentions, but more all-around capability than the Shan. That Rocky weighs less, has more travel, climbs better and, to be straightforward, would be my choice over the Shan if I needed a forgiving bike for long rides. But it in no way can rival the Shan in the corners, that much is for sure, and there's a certain unexplainable allure to the steel frame tubes that's hard to explain.Okay, what about Devinci's Troy? Same travel numbers front and back, and same intentions, but the Troy is also lighter and more all-around capable. Again, I'd choose the Troy before the Shan, but I'll admit to caring just as much about the climb as the descent that it leads you to.I'm conflicted. A full-blown enduro bike with another 20mm of cush is going to be faster for most riders when things get scary hairy, and a lighter and faster rolling machine will cover more ground when some horsepower is required, both being facts that leave me asking why and where the N°5 makes the most sense. But maybe it doesn't matter if the bike is fun as hell to ride, and the yellow Shan is exactly that and then some - it's forgiving, changes direction obscenely well, and it puts a smile on your face even though there are more pragmatic ways to spend this kind of money. Maybe mountain biking doesn't need to be a well-thought-out, practical exercise?The slim, steel seatstay and chainstays provide enough clearance to ride the N°5 through wet cement without it clogging up, and also enough room to run a 2.8'' wide rear tire if you want to add even more weight and go even slower up the climbs. Stick to regular size meat to get the most out of the Shan, though.RC had good things to say about the BikeYoke Revive dropper that he reviewed not too long ago, and that's mostly the case here as well. Rather than employ a closed design, the post mixes air and oil in a twin-tube setup, but if the bike is upside down, that air can go where it's not supposed to and the post will feel a bit squishy. This is inherent in the design, and it's why BikeYoke incorporated the 'Revive Valve' at the top of the post. The valve works as advertised, and the dropper was back to 100-percent in seconds.I want to bitch about the sole bottle location on the underside of the downtube, or the 175mm cranks that don't play nice with the bike's relatively low bottom bracket, but I suspect that many riders won't care too much about those points. One thing that I can't moan about, though, is the noise - this thing is quieter than a thirteen-year-old Mike Levy at a parent-teacher meeting.The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) officially began Wednesday, housed at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Maryland, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. While the American Conservative Union’s annual gathering has long served as a veritable who’s-who of far-right conservative movements, this year’s guest list is particularly star-studded, with nearly a dozen speakers from across the Trump administration scheduled to appear. Vice President Mike Pence will address the crowd tonight, and President Donald Trump will take the stage Friday morning, reportedly to “say appreciation and to drive this movement forward,” according to White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.
So then perhaps it’s fitting that the first full day of CPAC speakers channeled the president’s rhetorical style, rapidly firing off half-truths and bold-faced lies that reframe core American principles into a format that’s convenient for “the most conservative cabinet in decades,” as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called the current administration.
Playing fast and loose with objective facts has long been a norm for modern American politicians, but in the wake of Trump’s electoral victory—and his campaign built on fear, misogyny, racism, and xenophobia—the use of “alt-facts” seems to be spreading like a dangerous virus for which our culture has not yet developed a vaccine. Read on for some of the most egregious untruths told to CPAC attendees today, complete with accurate information to contradict the claims made in the videos below.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had a “conversation about the Constitution” with Conservative Review radio host Mark Levin.
During last year’s presidential campaign, Sen. Cruz adamantly opposed Trump’s candidacy, frequently unleashing his own breed of firebrand rhetoric against The Donald. But now that Trump is in the White House and Republicans control the House and Senate, Cruz has changed his tune—bigly, one might even say. Now, it seems Cruz’s primary goal is antagonizing Senate Democrats…right up until they threaten to follow Cruz’s own obstructionist playbook. Democrats, Cruz said, are “living in an alternative universe.” He continued:
They are in denial, and they’re angry. … The anger on the left, I’ve never seen anything like it. They’re right now opposing everything. Democrats in the Senate are filibustering absolutely everything. … The cabinet is still not confirmed—this is the longest we’ve been since George Washington without confirming a cabinet.”
But, as the BBC has reported, this is demonstrably false. One doesn’t even need to go very far back to find a historical example of a president’s cabinet being confirmed at a glacial pace. In 2009, President Obama’s final cabinet appointee wasn’t confirmed until April 28, reports the BBC. In fact, the only president who has seen his full cabinet confirmed by the end of January was George W. Bush.
“The Democrats took that the lesson of this election was that Hillary was too moderate,” Cruz continued, smirking as the audience laughed. “And so their lesson is, they need more Bernie Sanders, more Elizabeth Warren—that’s where Senate Democrats are. What that means, is I think it is likely that they will continue to oppose everything. Now that means, for us, the answer can’t be ‘OK, shut down the Congress.'”
It is deeply hypocritical for a sitting Senator, who rose to national prominence during his (successful) campaign to literally shut down the federal government, to suddenly be so deeply concerned with the efficacy of Congress.
Nevertheless, he did thank former Majority Leader Harry Reid, who in 2013 deployed the so-called “nuclear option” in the Senate to require a simple majority vote to approve most cabinet-level confirmations. “It is a direct result of Harry Reid that we now have the most conservative cabinet in decades,” Cruz said to enthusiastic applause. “Harry Reid, thank you for Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And also, we should be thanking Harry Reid for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and very, very soon, for Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch.”
Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon: Everything The Media Tells You Is a Lie
Two of Trump’s top advisors, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Senior Advisor to the President Steve Bannon, took the stage together in an unusually cordial 30-minute discussion moderated by ACU chairman Matt Schlapp.
Then again, reports of a tense working relationship between Priebus, a longtime establishment Republican who most recently served as director of the Republican National Committee, and Bannon, the self-avowed white nationalist who formerly ran right-wing site Breitbart News, are greatly exaggerated, both men said. Asked to address the biggest misconceptions about the tenor inside Trump’s White House, Priebus wasted no time in declaring “everything that you’re reading” is untrue. But, he said, “The truth of the matter is, Donald Trump showed, President Trump, brought together the party and the conservative movement. And I’ve got to tell you: if the party and the conservative movement are together, similar to Steve and I, it can’t be stopped.”
Bannon, for his part, reiterated his headline-grabbing proclamation that members of the media are “the opposition party,” and are inherently dishonest. Contrary to numerous reports, Trump’s inner circle has been running smoothly since Bannon came on board in mid-August, he said.
“I think if you look at the opposition party, and how they portrayed the campaign, how they portrayed the transition, and how they’re portraying the administration—it’s always wrong,” Bannon said. He went on:
That’s what the mainstream media won’t report…Just like they were dead wrong on the chaos of the campaign, and just like they were dead wrong on the chaos of the transition, they are absolutely dead wrong on what’s going on today. Because we have a team that is just grinding it through on [what] President Donald Trump promised the American people. And the mainstream media better understand something: All of those promises are going to be implemented.
When Schlapp asked each man to detail the most critical accomplishments in the first 30 days of Trump’s presidency, Priebus pointed to traditional Republican goals, including the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch, which he framed as an example of Trump establishing “trust” with the American people, pointing to the list of 20 names (including Gorsuch’s) that the Trump campaign released as potential nominees last summer. Priebus went on to complain that Trump’s January 30th executive order on deregulation had been underreported, neglecting to mention any of the coverage from The New York Times, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, or NBC News and Reuters.
But the former RNC chairman stepped well outside the realm of reality when he claimed that “80 percent of Americans agree” with putting a wall along the nation’s southern border. Aside from the fact that there is already a wall along the vast majority of the U.S.-Mexico border, a January report from the Pew Research Center found that less than half of Americans consider Trump’s much-touted “border wall” to be a priority for immigration reform. It is unclear where Priebus got his information that “80 percent” of Americans want a taller, thicker border wall, but no one onstage today challenged his claim.
Among other dubious claims that cannot be objectively debunked was Bannon’s assertion that Trump is the “greatest public speaker since Williams Jennings Bryan,” the late 19th-century Democrat and fervent populist who also had a penchant for gold. To his credit (and our panic), Bannon was surprisingly straightforward about his ideological goals for the next four years. He repeatedly called himself (and by extension, the president) an “economic nationalist,” point-blank admitting that the goal of Trump’s picks for regulatory leadership positions is “the deconstruction of the regulatory state.” In other words, it’s no coincidence that the newly confirmed administrator of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, has spent the past decade suing the very agency he now leads. Bannon framed all these advances as zero-sum goals, stressing that those supportive of the Trump agenda will have to “fight” to take their country.
“I’ve said that there’s a new political order that’s being formed out of this [moment],” Bannon added |
”
“The Only Way Out” from “Ben-Hur”
“Still Falling For You” from “Bridget Jones’s Baby”
“F That” from “The Bronze”
“Torch Pt. 2” from “Citizen Soldier”
“Drift And Fall Again” from “Criminal”
“Take Me Down” from “Deepwater Horizon”
“Land Of All” from “Desierto”
“Sad But True (Dreamland Theme)” from “Dreamland”
“Angel By The Wings” from “The Eagle Huntress”
“Blind Pig” from “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”
“One Frame At A Time” from “Floyd Norman: An Animated Life”
“I’m Crying” from “Free State of Jones”
“Gold” from “Gold”
“Champion” from “Hands of Stone”
“Dance Rascal, Dance” from “Hello, My Name Is Doris”
“I See A Victory” from “Hidden Figures”
“Runnin” from “Hidden Figures”
“Sixty Charisma Scented Blackbirds” from “How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change”
“My Superstar” from “Ice Age: Collision Course”
“Seeing You Around” from “Ithaca”
“The Empty Chair” from “Jim: The James Foley Story”
“Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” from “La La Land”
“City Of Stars” from “La La Land”
“Start A Fire” from “La La Land”
“Cateura Vamos A Soñar (We Will Dream)” from “Landfill Harmonic”
“Better Love” from “The Legend of Tarzan”
“Never Give Up” from “Lion”
“Equation” from “The Little Prince”
“Turnaround” from “The Little Prince”
“Moonshine” from “Live By Night”
“Loving” from “Loving”
“Hurry Home” from “Max Rose”
“Gone 2015” from “Miles Ahead”
“Wish That You Were Here” from “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”
“I’m Still Here” from “Miss Sharon Jones!”
“How Far I’ll Go” from “Moana”
“We Know The Way” from “Moana”
“Even More Mine” from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2”
“Waving Goodbye” from “The Neon Demon”
“I’m Back” from “Never Surrender”
“Find My Victory” from “Olympic Pride, American Prejudice”
“On Ghost Ridge” from “100 Years: One Woman’s Fight for Justice”
“Ordinary World” from “Ordinary World”
“Devil’s Girl” from “Outlaws and Angels”
“Levitate” from “Passengers”
“Ginga” from “Pelé: Birth of a Legend”
“Nobody Knows” from “Pete’s Dragon”
“Something Wild” from “Pete’s Dragon”
“Dancing With Your Shadow” from “Po”
“I’m So Humble” from “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping”
“Stay Here” from “Presenting Princess Shaw”
“Celebrate Life” from “Queen Mimi”
“Back To Life” from “Queen of Katwe”
“Let The Games Begin” from “Race”
“Think About It” from “The Red Pill”
“The Rules Don’t Apply” from “Rules Don’t Apply”
“The Great Beyond” from “Sausage Party”
“Faith” from “Sing”
“Set It All Free” from “Sing”
“Drive It Like You Stole It” from “Sing Street”
“Go Now” from “Sing Street”
“The Veil” from “Snowden”
“Hymn” from “Snowtime!”
“Kiss Me Goodnight” from “Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four”
“Holdin’ Out” from “Storks”
“Heathens” from “Suicide Squad”
“Flying Home” from “Sully”
“Montage” from “Swiss Army Man”
“Petit Metier” from “They Will Have to Kill Us First – Malian Music in Exile”
“Letter To The Free” from “13th”
“Down With Mary” from “Too Late”
“Can’t Stop The Feeling” from “Trolls”
“Get Back Up Again” from “Trolls”
“Smile” from “The Uncondemned”
“We Will Rise” from “Veeram-Macbeth”
“LA Venus” from “We Are X”
“New Dogs, Old Tricks” from “What Happened Last Night”
“Runnin’ Runnin'” from “What Happened Last Night”
“What’s Happening Today” from “What Happened Last Night”
“Who I Am” from “What Happened Last Night”
“The Ballad Of Wiener-Dog” from “Wiener-Dog”
“Try Everything” from “Zootopia”
All voting members of the Academy’s music branch will receive a reminder list of works submitted in the category and a compilation of the song clips. They will be asked to watch the clips and then vote in the order of their preference for not more than five songs in the category. The five receiving the highest number of votes will become the nominees in the category.
Per Academy rules, no more than two songs can be nominated for one film. To be eligible, a song must consist of words and music, both of which are original and written specifically for the film. A clearly audible, intelligible, substantive rendition of both lyric and melody must be used in the body of the film or as the first music cue in the end credits.
Damien Chazelle’s musical “La La Land” would appear to be a solid bet for maxing out its potential nominations here with bids for “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” and “City of Stars.” Both songs were nominated by the Broadcast Film Critics Assn., along with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “How Far I’ll Go” from “Moana,” Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” from “Trolls,” “The Rules Don’t Apply” from “Rules Don’t Apply” and “Drive It Like You Stole It” from “Sing Street.”
The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., meanwhile, nominated just “City of Stars” from “La La Land,” as well as the “Trolls” and “Moana” tunes,” plus Stevie Wonder’s “Faith” from “Sing” and Iggy Pop’s title track from “Gold.”The chemist has kept a diary most of his life. His daily habit is to record where he went, whom he talked to and what he ate. At the top of each entry, he scrawls his blood pressure.
Two of his hardback journals, each embossed with the calendar year and filled with handwritten notes from a Waterman pen, are now among the critical pieces of evidence that could result in Russia being absent from the next Olympic Games.
The chemist is Grigory Rodchenkov, who spent years helping Russia’s athletes gain an edge by using banned substances. His diaries cataloging 2014 and 2015 — his final years as Russia’s antidoping lab chief before he fled to the United States — provide a new level of detail about Russia’s elaborate cheating at the last Winter Games and the extent to which, he says, the nation’s government and Olympic officials were involved.
His contemporaneous notes, seen by The New York Times and previously unreported, speak to a key issue for Olympic officials: the state’s involvement in the massive sports fraud. In recent days, it has become clear that the International Olympic Committee is convinced of the authenticity of the notes and that they are likely to contribute to the group’s decision to issue severe penalties.ANAHEIM, CA – MAY 25: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally on May 25, 2016 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a regular contributor to PostEverything
Over at Foreign Affairs, Timothy Frye talks about how political science is having a devil of a time predicting Russia’s future trajectory. One theory of political science says that because Russia is a personalist autocracy, it is less likely to experience a successful regime transition to democracy (there’s a lot of other problems with personalist autocracies — click here for more). Another theory of political science says that Russia’s comparatively high per capita income and educational attainment makes it ripe for more democratization.
Frye’s summary:
In short, Russia is either on a dangerous path, or not. It is either primed for change from below or through a coup. Or neither. The consensus of experts suggests that change is unlikely. Predicting Russia’s future is particularly challenging because both theories have merit. The danger is to blindly follow one. Instead, observers need to keep an open mind about Russia’s political future.
Or, to make it even shorter: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It was impossible for me to read Frye’s analysis and not think about just how much political scientists don’t know about politics. For example, what is it exactly that makes American democracy tick? How has a 230-year old political compact managed to persist as well as it has? What in the Constitution has put a stop to permanent despotism or division?
Many people and an awful lot of political scientists would answer with “rule of law” and “separation of powers” and “a republic, not a democracy.” Indeed, that’s pretty much the gist of James Madison’s answer in Federalist 10:
It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole. The inference to which we are brought is, that the causes of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.
Madison goes on to argue that the Constitution’s checks and balances prevent the existence of factions from crippling the United States. And this is what I’ve always been taught — that the genius of the American Republic is that even majorities face constitutional limits on their ability to implement their will.
As political polarization has increased in the United States, however, a lot of commentators have raised a significant objection: what if this system can only function with the presence of strong norms as well as laws? This is a point that Jonathan Chait has made repeatedly, most recently this past February:
It turns out that what has held together American government is less the elaborate rules hammered out by the guys in the wigs in 1789 than a series of social norms that have begun to disintegrate. Senate filibusters were supposed to be rare, until they became routine. They weren’t supposed to be applied to judicial nominations, then they were. The Senate majority would never dream of changing the rules to limit the filibuster; the minority party would never plan to withhold all support from the president even before he took office; it would never threaten to default on the debt to extort concessions from the president. And then all of this happened.
Indeed, a disturbing fraction of Americans are growing skeptical about democracy itself. Can a constitutional democracy persist if the norms and beliefs that traditionally uphold it are eroding and eroding fast?
Which brings me to the prospect of Donald Trump somehow becoming president. There’s been an emergent literature warning about the possibility of Trump inheriting the awesome powers of the executive branch that legislative gridlock has managed to engender. I’ve written on this problem as well.
But as Brookings’ Benjamin Wittes notes, much of this is premised on the notion that the executive branch has poached too much extraordinary power, and that this enhanced power would turn a president Trump into a tyrant. That may or may not be true, but as Wittes writes, that’s not the biggest problem of a President Trump:
Let me be blunt: The soft spot is not NSA and it’s not the drone program. The soft spot, the least tyrant-proof part of the government, is the U.S. Department of Justice and the larger law enforcement and regulatory apparatus of the United States government. The first reason you should fear a Donald Trump presidency is what he would do to the ordinary enforcement functions of the federal government, not the most extraordinary ones…. What would a president need to do to shift the Justice Department to the crimes or civil infractions committed—or suspected—by Trump critics and opponents? He would need to appoint and get confirmed by the Senate the right attorney general. That’s very doable. He’d want to keep his communications with that person limited. An unspoken understanding that the Justice Department’s new priorities include crimes by the right sort of people would be better than the sort of chortling communications Richard Nixon and John Mitchell used to have. Want to go after Jeff Bezos to retaliate for the Washington Post‘s coverage of the campaign? Develop a sudden trust-busting interest in retailers that are “too big”; half the country will be with you. Just make sure you state your non-neutral principles in neutral terms…. The presidency’s very virtues as an office—relative unity and vertical integration—make it impossible to render abuse-proof. It is vested with a truly awesome thing:“the executive power” of the entire federal government. There are simply too many ways to abuse that power to imagine we can denude the office of the ability to behave tyranically. There is, in fact, only one way to tyrant-proof the American presidency: Don’t elect tyrants to it.
The political scientist in me wants to see a Donald Trump presidency, because it would be the greatest natural experiment in American politics about whether norms are as important as laws in constraining authoritarian impulses. The American in me is frightened about what the answer would be.The Descent-like first person space blaster Miner Wars 2081 is now in closed beta. It's only available to pre-order customers at the moment, but it's a sure sign that it's nearing a full release. It's taken developers, Keen Software House, three years to reach this feature-complete build, which currently contains 31 missions and a multiplayer mode that supports 16 player co-op. "We're disclosing much of the game content in this update. It's no longer a technological demo; it's got those things you've been waiting to sink your teeth into," they say on the Miner Wars site. Catch a sneaky snifter of some four-player co-op carnage in the beta trailer below.
Miner Wars 2081 is due out towards the end of the year, and is a prelude to a Miner Wars MMO. That's due to warp in late next year, and promises an open universe of asteroids to mine and carve bases into. It's an ambitious project, but the developer have already built from scratch an engine that can render destructible a destructible universe to blow up, so they're well on the way.
If you're not keen to buy into the beta, you might want to check out the demo, available from the downloads section of the Miner Wars site.David J. Phillip/Associated Press
It took a minute for Indianapolis Colts fans to recover from shock when general manager Ryan Grigson drafted Dwayne Allen during the third round of the 2012 draft.
Grigson had just spent the team's second-round pick on tight end Coby Fleener, and the Colts had a wide variety of holes to fill after they purged the roster of veterans from the Peyton Manning era. Tight end isn't exactly a high-impact position unless you have one of the two or three elite guys in the league. Drafting two in the early rounds? There was plenty of confusion.
But with the Colts' desire to run two-tight end sets and the talent that both Allen and Fleener possess, the move has worked out.
Though neither have broken out as stars just yet, they represent a core piece of the Colts offense, especially under offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton. The two tight ends combined for 16 touchdowns in 2014 and became the first tight end teammates to each catch at least eight touchdowns, per Director of AFC Communications Jon Zimmer.
Certainly, the Colts still hope that one or both of the two tight ends can emerge as a star, but core offensive pieces is a decent enough return on investment.
Now, however, the Colts are approaching a crossroads. Both tight ends enter the final year of their rookie deal in 2015, and both have significant questions remaining. The Colts certainly want to keep both around, but it might not be financially feasible to keep both.
Consider the contract former Miami Dolphins tight end Charles Clay received this offseason, for example.
Now, Clay is a touch more established than Fleener and Allen, but if either has a strong season in 2014, reaching that level wouldn't be surprising.
So with the final year remaining, where does each player stand in Indianapolis, and what is most important for both of their 2015 campaigns?
Coby Fleener: Staying Consistent
Though criticized heavily by many due to high-profile drops and a collection of disappointing performances in fantasy football, the Colts' main receiving tight end has certain skills that made him a key part of Pep Hamilton's offense last season.
Fleener's size and speed combination is unique among NFL tight ends, and it showed with Hamilton's usage. Fleener led the league in deep targets (20 yards or more) among tight ends in 2014 and subsequently led the league in both deep receptions and yards among tight ends, per Pro Football Focus.
But it wasn't just a bulk of attempts for Fleener; his deep targets were fairly efficient as well.
Deep Passing for Tight Ends in 2014 (10+ Targets) Player Team Deep Tgts Catches Yards Yards/Target Coby Fleener IND 18 9 291 16.17 Antonio Gates SD 10 6 161 16.10 Jared Cook SL 13 5 183 14.08 Delanie Walker TEN 14 4 183 13.07 Luke Willson SEA 11 3 128 11.64 Rob Gronkowski NE 13 5 150 11.54 Zach Ertz PHI 16 7 173 10.81 Jimmy Graham NO 10 3 72 7.20 Jason Witten DAL 10 2 59 5.90 Pro Football Focus
The Colts also tried to use Fleener's size to their advantage in the red zone, where he received 13 targets, the third most on the team (and more than T.Y. Hilton, Reggie Wayne or Dwayne Allen). At 6'6", Fleener was one of the few receivers whom Hamilton felt comfortable throwing jump balls and fades to in 2014.
But while Fleener's role was important for Indianapolis, he was very inconsistent in that role.
Those red-zone opportunities? Fleener had just the eighth-best catch rate in the red zone on the team, nearly 25 percent worse than Dwayne Allen's red-zone catch rate. Though eight touchdowns on the season is great, three drops on potential touchdowns and two poor routes or adjustments to the ball meant that Fleener really should have had 12 or 13 on the season.
In addition to two drops on deep passes (leading to a below-average deep-drop rate of 18.2 percent), Fleener had four other drops on the season and was 29th among 39 qualifying tight ends with a 10.53 drop rate, per Pro Football Focus.
Fleener has struggled with drops and contested catches throughout his career, leading to a low catch rate. According to Pro-Football-Reference.com, Fleener caught just 55.4 percent of his targets in 2014, ranking 39th out of 49 tight ends (min. 30 targets).
Though Fleener raised his yards per catch to over 15 in 2014, making a low catch rate more acceptable, he still remained below average (as adjusted for yards per catch) over the last three seasons.
Pro-Football-Reference.com
Each of Fleener's three seasons have fallen below the line, as his inability to consistently get adequate separation creates more difficult situations, situations he struggles with.
He still gets numbers under Hamilton with Andrew Luck throwing him the ball, but he'll need to create more favorable situations for himself against man coverage, take advantage of accurate throws by Luck and hold on to the football in 2015.
The problem with Fleener isn't that he's a bad football player, it's that he has the potential to be a stellar receiving tight end, but he ends up looking mediocre because of the missed opportunities left on the field. Under Pep Hamilton, with Luck throwing the ball, Fleener could earn himself a huge contract in 2015.
But make no mistake, it would have to be earned. The inconsistencies of 2012-2014 won't cut it for a top tight end.
Dwayne Allen: A Glass Jaw
The Colts have seen far too many promising young players crash and burn because of injuries in the last 10 years.
Bob Sanders. Austin Collie. Marlin Jackson. Ben Ijalana. Donald Thomas.
This isn't a new phenomenon.
But man, oh, man, are they praying that is not Dwayne Allen's fate.
Don Wright/Associated Press
Allen was spectacular as a rookie, with dependable hands, stellar blocking and an insightful demeanor. Dropping just three passes as a rookie, according to Pro Football Focus, and finishing with a catch rate of 68.2 percent, Allen wasn't much of a deep threat, but he didn't need to be.
With Pro Football Focus' second-highest pass-block grade and highest run-block grade for a tight end, Allen finished second only to New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski in the total grades that season.
Injuries awaited him in 2013, however, as Allen injured his hip in the Colts' Week 1 win over the Oakland Raiders (in which he caught a 20-yard touchdown). Needing surgery, Allen was forced to sit out for the remainder of the season.
Coming into 2014, it was clear Allen wasn't quite the player he seemed to be becoming back in 2012. But once the regular season started, he appeared to be assimilating well.
He wasn't a huge receiving threat, but he caught at least three passes in seven of the Colts' first nine games and caught a touchdown in seven of nine games as well. That included a 41-yard touchdown catch-and-run in Week 1 that was reminiscent of a similar play in his rookie year against the Detroit Lions.
But in the Colts' blowout loss to New England in Week 11, Allen was carted off the field early with an ankle injury. The high ankle sprain would keep Allen out for two more weeks, and he was never the same upon returning. Allen caught just three passes for the rest of the regular season, and his efficiency plummeted.
Remember that yards per catch vs. catch rate chart?
Let's go back to that, this time with Allen highlighted in yellow.
Pro-Football-Reference.com
Allen was right on line with his rookie year's efficiency before the injury, with a catch rate of about three or four percent higher than the average when considering his 14.38 yards-per-reception average. But after the injury, his stats plummeted, as he caught just three of 10 targets for 21 yards on the back half of the season.
Allen also added two drops, which killed his drop rate and brought him down to 35th out of 39 qualifying tight ends, per Pro Football Focus.
Now, Allen did recover in the playoffs a bit, catching an astounding 85 percent of his targets, albeit for less than nine yards per reception, including one touchdown.
If Allen can stay healthy in 2015, he could earn himself a nice pay day. Even with his injury woes, Allen finished the season as Football Outsiders' sixth-most efficient tight end by DVOA, and his eight touchdowns trailed only Julius Thomas, Rob Gronkowski, Antonio Gates and Jimmy Graham among tight ends. Prior to his ankle injury, Allen was 13th among tight ends in yards per route run as well.
Especially effective as a red-zone target, Allen's ability to block effectively made defenses susceptible to play-action passes when Allen was on the line, accounting for three of Allen's red-zone touchdowns. Allen also was dependable to catch passes in traffic, a useful skill in the congested red zone.
Top Red-Zone TEs, 2014 (min. 10 targets) Rank Player Target Catches Catch% TD TD% 1 Julius Thomas 15 13 86.7% 9 60.0% 2 Dwayne Allen 9 7 77.8% 5 55.6% 3 Rob Gronkowski 17 11 64.7% 9 52.9% 4 Antonio Gates 19 10 52.6% 9 47.4% 5 Mychal Rivera 9 7 77.8% 4 44.4% 6 Jimmy Graham 21 12 57.1% 9 42.9% 7 Travis Kelce 13 10 76.9% 5 38.5% 8 Jermaine Gresham 13 9 69.2% 5 38.5% 9 Coby Fleener 13 7 53.8% 5 38.5% 10 Jason Witten 9 4 44.4% 3 33.3% 11 Greg Olsen 18 10 55.6% 5 27.8% 12 Martellus Bennett 22 12 54.5% 6 27.3% 13 Larry Donnell 22 11 50.0% 6 27.3% 14 Owen Daniels 15 9 60.0% 4 26.7% 15 Delanie Walker 12 4 33.3% 3 25.0% Pro-Football-Reference.com
Few tight ends boasted Allen's red-zone prowess in 2014, and he may regress in touchdowns scored in 2015.
But make no mistake, if Allen is healthy, he's a weapon in both passing and blocking, and that's something the Colts will value, especially in Pep Hamilton's schemes. Hamilton used Allen often as a tackle in the Colts' unbalanced line schemes.
Allen's ability to block defensive linemen, whether it was at the end of the line or on the move as a fullback or H-back allowed Hamilton much more creativity than he'd have with somebody like Fleener. It also allows the Colts to eschew having a fullback on the roster, giving them another spot for more critical positions.
Above all else, the Colts have valued versatility under Hamilton, and Allen may be the most unique, versatile tight end in the game outside of Rob Gronkowski.
Of course, that's assuming he's healthy.Image copyright AFP Image caption Luis Almagro (right) has met members of Venezuela's National Assembly in recent weeks
Venezuela's government came under renewed pressure on Tuesday when regional body Organization of American States called for an emergency meeting.
OAS head Luis Almagro wants members to evaluate whether Venezuela has suffered an "unconstitutional alteration of the constitutional regime that seriously impairs the democratic order".
Venezuelan opposition politicians had urged the OAS to call the meeting.
The move could lead to Venezuela being suspended from the OAS.
"The secretary general considers that the institutional crisis in Venezuela demands immediate changes to the Executive power," a statement by Mr Almagro read.
Read: What has gone wrong in Venezuela?
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro reacted angrily, accusing the OAS of "foreign intervention" and ordering it to leave Venezuela and the Americas.
He also said he would bring charges against the leaders of Congress who had requested the OAS to intervene, saying they had betrayed the nation.
The government of President Nicolas Maduro has been coming under increasing pressure to work with the opposition-controlled National Assembly to ease the political and economic tension in the South American country.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused the OAS head of being a "CIA agent"
The two sides have been engaged in a stand-off ever since the MUD opposition coalition won control of the National Assembly in parliamentary elections in December.
MUD politicians say their every move is thwarted by the Supreme Court and the National Electoral Council, bodies they allege have been stacked with supporters of President Maduro.
OAS
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The OAS headquarters are in Washington, DC
Founded in 1948 as a body to promote regional solidarity and co-operation
Has 34 participating member states in the Caribbean and North, Central and South America
Current Secretary General is Uruguayan former foreign minister Luis Almagro
They say there is no separation of powers and that under the leadership of President Maduro and his predecessor in office, the late Hugo Chavez, the judiciary has become a willing enforcer of the executive branch.
They point to the fact that the Supreme Court blocked key legislation, such as an amnesty law which would have freed jailed opposition politicians, as evidence of what they say is a misuse of power by President Maduro.
Opposition politicians also accuse the president of trying to block a recall referendum which could see Venezuelans vote on whether they want Mr Maduro to serve out his term or be removed from office.
A National Assembly delegation met Mr Almagro in recent weeks to ask him to invoke the Inter-American democratic charter.
Inter-American democratic charter
Adopted in 2001
Can be invoked when there is a forcible overthrow of a democratic government, when the democratic order has been unconstitutionally interrupted in a member state, or when the democratic order is seriously impaired
Can lead to the suspension of the member state if two-thirds of the OAS member states vote in favour
In 2009, the clause was invoked and OAS member states voted in favour of Honduras' suspension following the ousting of President Manuel Zelaya
Under the charter, the OAS secretary-general can call a meeting of the OAS Permanent Council to address situations where he or she considers that a member state's democratic order is at risk.
If two thirds of OAS members consider that Venezuela's government has undermined democracy, the country will be suspended from the OAS.
The meeting is expected to be held sometime between the 10 and 20 of June and is expected to coincide with the meeting of the OAS General Assembly in the Dominican Republic between 13 and 15 June.
Relations between the OAS and Venezuela have been tense for years but worsened in recent months as Mr Almagro and Mr Maduro traded insults.
Image copyright Twitter Image caption Mr Almagro wrote on Twitter that not letting a recall referendum go ahead made Mr Maduro "another petty dictator"
Mr Maduro accused the OAS head of being a CIA agent, while Mr Almagro said that not letting the recall referendum go ahead made Mr Maduro "another petty dictator".
The Venezuelan government has called its supporters to take to the streets on Wednesday to protest against the OAS' "vulgar and brutal interference".Then, in the summer, as we’re finishing the book, Glenn Beck announces he’s going to have this rally and Jon says, “We should have a rally of our own. We should go out there and have a Rally to Restore Sanity.” And I thought, “please let him forget this” – because he’ll do that sometimes, he’ll say something then [drop it]. I thought it sounded like the worst possible idea. A comedy rally? Do not let this happen.Then I didn’t hear anything about it for a couple months; I thought, “Thank God, he forgot.” Then the Beck rally starts to come closer and Jon’s like “We’re going to do that rally,” and I was like, shit.I grew up going to a lot of rallies and protests and I thought you can’t do comedy bits like we do on the show for such a large crowd. I was thinking, “This is going to be such a catastrophe.” And then, again, as it came closer I was like, “Holy shit.” It was incredible; it was an amazing experience. I know it had some dissenters, which is alright. It should.
While the gang over at Reddit may have taken some of the credit for convincing the Daily Show and Colbert Report crews to have a rally in DC to rival Glenn Beck’s rally, it turns out that Jon Stewart had been planning the Rally to Restore Sanity since even before Beck had his. According to Full Stop’s interview with Daily Show writer Daniel Radosh, the rally was a long time in the making:Here’s the original post on Reddit that supposedly inspired the whole shebang; it was posted on August 31st, three days after Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally. If Radosh’s timing is accurate, Stewart had already been planning the rally for a while at that point.
That’s not to say Reddit had nothing to do with the rally. The huge amount of money they donated to Donor’s Choose clearly had a big effect on Colbert, and they helped whip the internet up into a fervor about the idea of a satirical political rally. But to say that the initial idea was theirs doesn’t seem to be the case.SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – The current claim from court bureaucrats that a big IT project is “finished” runs counter to budget documents showing plans to spend $242,000 on the project every single day from now through mid-2014.
A memo entitled “Fact Check” was sent by the Administrative Office of the Courts to reporters and legislators earlier this month, saying the IT system called the Court Case Management System is completed.
“CCMS is finished and works,” said the fact check.
California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye referred to the same memo two weeks ago in telling her audience of about 100 judges and court executives that they had the facts in their hands showing “no direction being taken on CCMS in 2011, except to confirm that it works.”
But a set of budget figures, prepared last summer by the same central court bureaucracy, shows that the “finished” endeavor is expected to continue generating extraordinary expense for California’s public purse, and will do so for years to come.
Those budget numbers show the administrators expect to spend $91 million on the IT system in fiscal year 2011-2012. The number rises slightly the following fiscal year to $92 million and tapers off a bit to $87 million in 2013-2014.
An accountant broke those numbers down to daily averages for each budget year. The overall daily average comes to $242,500 per day, including weekends and holidays, from now until June 2014.
“It doesn’t look like they intend to let go of the monster they’ve created,” said Karen Covel, a partner with Lauer Georgatos & Covel in San Diego. Covel provides accounting services to Courthouse News Service and was asked to prepare an analysis of budget figures for the IT project, called the Court Case Management System.
“It is astounding that they would keep pouring money into CCMS given the cutbacks,” Covel added. “And if prior history is any indication, their cost figures are probably vastly understated.”
The attempt by the administrators to defend the IT project is bound up with the State Assembly’s passage of AB 1208, a bill that would sharply curtail the ability of bureaucrats to spend such enormous sums of public money. The bill faces an uncertain future in the state Senate where the administrators are mounting a fierce lobbying campaign to keep their prerogatives of power and money.
The Hold That Never Was
The same bureaucrats presented their plans to spend another $265 million on the problem-plagued IT project in July 2011.
The numbers were given to a governing council of judges in the alternative, with higher numbers for continued development and deployment of the IT system and lower numbers if the project was put on hold. The Judicial Council then voted to put the project on hold.
That vote, however, had no effect on the bureaucracy or the project.
At the very next council meeting, one month later, the bureaucrats told the council judges that the project was in fact going ahead. “It was originally referred to as the one-year pause,” said the project director at the time, Mark Moore. “We’re now relabeling it. It’s not necessarily a one-year pause.”
This means the first alternative budget is in effect, the one with no pause, the one that totals $265,600,000 from June 2011 to June 2014.
Those budget numbers can be put together with a recent announcement of plans by the administrators to insert CCMS into 10 more trial courts. Together, they point to the conclusion that the bureaucracy is going full-steam ahead on the project.
All in all, the system is projected to cost a total of $1.9 billion, a figure now widely considered an under-estimate.
By way of contrast, Seattle’s trial courts spent $4.7 million to complete and install a new IT system a little over a year ago.
Context of Lay-Offs
With respect to the wisdom of California’s expenditures, judges and programmers familiar with the software remain deeply skeptical.
“It’s my personal view as a judge who does not use or need CCMS in my courtroom is that it has been an enormous expenditure of money that warrants every bit of criticism that the State Auditor used in describing the project,” said Orange County Judge Andy Banks in an inteview on Wednesday.
Banks is referring to a blistering rebuke delivered by the State Auditor a year ago, saying the administrative office had significantly understated the full cost of the system in statements to the Legislature.
“In addition to planning inadequately for the state case management project, the AOC has consistently failed to develop accurate cost estimates,” said the Auditor.
The AOC’s reputation for difficulty in making accurate financial statements continues with its current “fact check.” It says the IT project was developed “at a cost of $315.5 million.”
A report by the reform-oriented group called the Alliance of California Judges documents a much higher figure of $546 million spent on the project up through last summer.
The idea of spending a further $265 million on the project by 2014 falls in a context where the Legislature’s budget allotment for California’s courts has been cut severely two years in a row.
During the upcoming years that money is budgeted to pour into the IT project, Los Angeles Superior Court, the biggest trial court in the nation, expects to lay off 1,000 workers.
E-filing and Efficiency
In addition to the issue of cost, there is a second, technical aspect to the claim that the IT project is “finished.”
The ultimate technical objective of the project is to allow lawyers to email documents to the court rather than deliver paper documents by hand. The administrators say the latest version of CCMS software, called V-4, has achieved that final objective |
is melting, take one of your matches and, starting just below the tip (make sure you can see a short bit of the match stick) wrap around the stick one complete turn with the cotton. Take your second match place it up against the first, then wrap the cotton once completely around the two together. Add your third and then fourth matches in the same manner, wrapping the cotton around all three, then all four matches, creating a square, not a line. This way of wrapping creates necessary air space between the matches to allow for easy ignition. (Remember fire requires fuel, heat and oxygen to establish combustion.) After all 4 matches have been wrapped together continue to wrap the remaining cotton around all 4 sticks until you have completely covered the match sticks all the way down to the bottom. Strive to make the wrap nice and even all the way down, as if you were wrapping a mummy for Halloween. Roll the now completely wrapped matches tightly between your fingers to really squeeze down the cotton wrapping. Give the BASE of your Uber Match a quick dip in the melted wax and allow to cool and harden slightly. (For the sake of domestic relations, lay down a piece of aluminum foil for a cooling station — wax can be very difficult to remove from counters, stove tops and plates!) Once the base is cool enough to handle, give the top of your matches a quick dip in the wax far enough that the entire Uber Match is now completely coated in wax. Set it aside and allow to cool. When the wax is cool enough to handle but still warm enough to mold, use your fingers to press the wax-covered cotton into the matches and shape each Uber Match to a nice smooth cylinder. After the wax has hardened on all your Uber Matches, place several into an old pill bottle (along with the box striker if you have been forced to use strike-on-box types) and put this in with your camping gear/emergency kit/GO Bag. Allow the remaining wax to cool in the tuna can and it will be ready to melt again for your next set of matches! These Uber Matches will strike even when wet. And be careful, they have a much bigger flame than a regular match!
Until next time, enjoy the comfortable weather of Fall,
and Have Fun!
Want to learn more about being prepared for an emergency?
Come on out to our Preparing For Emergencies: House Kits, GO Bags & Being Ready When the Lights Go Out workshop
and check out our What Am I Preparing For??? and The GO Bag DVDs!PLYMOUTH, Minn. - Drivers wearing headphones or earbuds -- listen up. The Plymouth Police Department will be watching for you.
It is illegal to drive while wearing headphones in both ears, according to Minnesota Statute 169.471, Subd. 2.
The law states, "No person, while operating a motor vehicle, shall wear headphones or earphones that are used in both ears simultaneously for purposes of receiving or listening to broadcasts or reproductions from radios, tape decks, or other sound-producing or transmitting devices.”
The Plymouth Police Department says they will focus on motorists who drive while wearing headphones for its February education and enforcement efforts, to help reduce crashes and raise awareness.
“Every month, the Plymouth Police Department has a traffic initiative that we try and focus on one statute across the entire department, not just our traffic unit, and this month we have selected earbuds or headphones in both ears while operating a motor vehicle,” said Plymouth police officer Scott Kirchner.
They say drivers can use an earbud but they must make sure one ear is available to listen for traffic-related noises, sirens, a honking horn or squealing brakes.
“Since Jan. 1 of last year, just over a year of data, we have had contact with 608 drivers who have used dual earbuds while driving,” said Lt. Tiffani Nielson with the Minnesota State Patrol. “One earbud is acceptable, but as soon as you have obstructed the hearing in both ears by and earbud, then that violates the state law.”Iowa and New Hampshire had their turns in the spotlight, and Nevada comes this Saturday. And a week after that, my state, South Carolina, will host its own Democratic primary. Compared to those first two states, ours is highly diverse. Battle ground, trial phase—call it what you will—South Carolina, once a crucible of the civil rights movement and Barack Obama’s surge, can help vet the candidate best aligned with the black community.
Bernie Sanders is not that candidate—not next to Hillary Clinton. From his bouts with the president to the laws he contested to the company he keeps, Sanders raises alarm bells for Obama supporters, especially those from the African-American community.
Back in 2012, while still a proud Independent, Sanders took a page from the Republican playbook and called for a primary challenge to Obama’s presidency. His aim: to contrast “a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama is doing,” as if to say affordable health care and safe cities are not “progressive” enough goals. The Democrats I know would disagree.
That anti-Obama jab followed an earlier resistance to the Affordable Care Act, now considered President Obama’s greatest legacy. Back in 2009, coming from the far left wing, Sanders held out on voting “yes,” hoping instead for an impossible ideal. Over 200,000 South Carolinians now have quality, affordable health insurance through Obamacare. If Sanders fulfills his campaign promise and starts those talks from a blank slate, then he risks undoing years of progress.
Improving health care matters greatly to our community. It’s no secret that African Americans die earlier than whites and suffer in larger numbers from diseases like diabetes and heart disease. We also die twice as often from gun violence. In Charleston County alone, blacks accounted for 29 percent of the population in 2014 but claimed 78 percent of gun violence deaths. We demand equality where our lives are at stake, and on that note Sanders has a mixed record on gun safety, having opposed reforms that Obama now pushes.
The Vermont senator once voted for legislation that allowed the Charleston shooter to buy a gun despite a clerical error—the now-infamous “Charleston Loophole.” More recently, he voted down legislation meant to shield gun makers from victim lawsuits. When President Obama last month refused to back “any candidate, even in my own party, who does not support common-sense gun reform,” he may well have been referring to Sanders.
In what perhaps struck the candidate as an act of solidarity, Sanders also chose Cornel West as liaison to South Carolina’s black voters. As The Washington Post puts it, West serves as Sanders’s “controversial traveling companion” and “has been highly critical of President Obama.” That’s an understatement. Cornel West hates President Obama. He once called the president “a brown-faced Clinton,” “a Rockefeller Republican in blackface,” and a “counterfeit” progressive.
My own father, Cleveland Sellers, was a real civil rights-era activist, as were Jesse Jackson and Rev. Joseph A. Darby. All of them are alive and well with deep South Carolina roots and could have been surrogates for Sen. Sanders. So of all the black leaders Sanders could have chosen, why West? West is a scholar, sure, but his views are extreme, and they clash with much of the pro-Obama black community.
Bernie Sanders means well, and his calls for income equality rightly resonate with Democratic voters. But certain issues—gun violence and health care among them—and certain viewpoints—Cornel West’s not among them—appeal specifically to most African Americans. My vote goes to someone who supports President Obama and intends to wholly and ambitiously build on his legacy. That someone is not Bernie Sanders.There is a controversial question placed before California voters today, Proposition 8 which will legally impede same-sex couples to marry if it passes. Plenty of money has been placed to pass the measure, most prominently, the Mormon Church which poured approximately 20 million dollars into the campaign to pass it. The progressive viewpoint is to champion the cause of same-sex marriage, and at first I would be so inclined, as it isn’t fair to discriminate how people choose to unite regardless of their sexual orientation. The deeper problem is the word “marriage” itself. This issue will not go away, and the best way to transcend it, is to give the word “marriage” to religion and have the state only perform civil unions for ALL couples.
I am not a fan of marriage as an institution to begin with. I’ve already argued that it has nothing to do with love, yet I can concede that there are potential reasons why two people would want to get married: children and property. Civil unions can provide the identical protections without calling it marriage.
Giving religion the word, will dismantle the lever which those who wish to project their religious morality through the mechanism of the state. Those who get the religious ceremony would still need to get a civil union to be recognized by the state. Those same-sex couples of faith who still wish to get married, may need to wait for a while, yet surely there will be some progressive religious groups who would perform the ceremony, since the freedom of religion is inviolate.
Additionally, by giving the word marriage to religion, it gives greater clarity to the division of church and state.
All this time and energy fighting over a word is pointless, attention that keeps us distracted from more important issues, like the economy, the environment and questions of war and peace. Those with progressive secular values could simply abandon the quibble over one word, it simply isn’t worth it. Religion can even take the words “husband” and “wife” and we can embrace the inclusive gender neutral “spouse”.
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Like this: Like Loading... RelatedAn old face is returning to Merlin this week. When Arthur (Bradley James) uses magic to contact his late father Uther (Anthony Head), the tyrant's vengeful spirit begins lashing out at those his son holds closest...
There's a ghost running amok in the court of Camelot - with the help of Merlin (Colin Morgan) and Gaius (Richard Wilson), can Arthur lay the old king's spirit to rest, or will Uther's wrath destroy the dream of Albion forever?
Merlin continues on BBC One this Saturday (October 20) at 8.25pm.
> Merlin: 'The Death Song of Uther Pendragon' - pictures
> Alexander Vlahos Merlin Q&A: 'Mordred might not be the villain'
1. Expect a not-so-happy reunion between father and son.
2. "No-one could accuse you of being predictable, Merlin."
3. Don't expect much Mordred this week, though the young druid seems to be fitting into Arthur's court nicely!
4. "I would rather not rule at all than rule alone."
5. Morgana's also absent this week, though someone else has it in for Gwen...
6. "I'm twice the size of you, little man."
7. At one point, Arthur wields a most unusual weapon.
8. "What do you know about ghosts?"
9. Merlin and Arthur indulge in some "horseplay".
10. "I am not my father."
Are you excited for the next episode of Merlin? Let us know below!On the 21st of July 2016, starting from 8:00 AM CEST (EU server) and 0:00 PDT (NA server), the Open Beta servers will not be available for four hours (until approximately 12:00 CEST - 4:00 AM PDT) due to the application of Hotfix 0.16.2386.
List of Hotfix 0.16.2386 Changes
Gameplay Mechanisms
Fixed the graphic settings auto-detection mechanism
Fixed an issue where the reticle would not follow the cannon's rotation while pressing the right mouse button
Fixed the bug where it was not possible to sell a vehicle with retrofits equipped
Fixed the bug where it was not possible to install a previously purchased retrofit if the player didn't have enough credits to purchase the same retrofit as new
User Interface
Fixed an issue where players could not swap in retrofits they already owned unless they also had enough credits to buy them
Fixed an issue where completed Daily Challenges could reappear partially completed
The "Widowmaker" commendation will no longer appear as "Windowmaker" in-game
Vehicles
Main Battle Tank Armor Changes
The underbelly armor of all Main Battle Tanks has been adjusted to not take as much damage from HE splash or HE direct hits as it had when the Update 0.15 armor changes were introduced. The amount of HE damage MBTs were taking from HE splash was more than intended.
T-15
Increased Hit Points from 2375 to 2900
Lowered ATGM salvo Reload Speed from 23s to 18s
Raised the 30mm AP Penetration value from 240 to 294
Increased the 30mm Clip Size from 20 to 25
Raised Damage value for 30mm AP from 99 to 111
Raised Damage value for 30mm HE from 74 to 83
Raised Damage value for Thermobaric ATGM from 327 to 376
Raised Damage values for stock Shaped Charge ATGM from 605 to 696
Raised Damage values for upgraded Shaped Charge ATGM from 635 to 730
Fixed several gaps in the T-15's textures
AMX 10 RCR
Reduced the vision range from 395m to 385m
PTL-02 Assaulter
Fixed an issue where the Assaulter's rear lights didn't work
Sound
Updated the AP penetration sound effect
Added a new unique 'no penetration' sound effect for ATGMs
Please note that the maintenance can be extended beyond the abovementioned timeframe. We apologize for the inconvenience.If you’re reading this at home, pause and put on a song you can’t resist dancing to. Go on, bop your head to the beat. Let yourself wiggle a bit. Throw in some arms and legs. If you’re reading this at work, maybe imagine these things at your desk.
As you’re dancing, pay attention to where and how you’re moving. How much are you swaying your hips? Are your legs moving together or independently of each other? How vigorously are you moving your torso?
You should note those movements, because very specific patterns may make some people appear to be better dancers than others. That’s the conclusion of a study published on Thursday in Scientific Reports, in which researchers asked 200 people to rate 39 female dancers. A few features stood out as contributing to higher-quality dance: big hip swings, and the right and left limbs moving independently of one another (which the researchers describe as asymmetric arm and thigh movements).
The researchers speculate that those moves serve two purposes for heterosexual women. “One is, they’re showing off their reproductive quality, perhaps their hormonal status, to males,” said Nick Neave, an associate professor of psychology at Northumbria University in England and an author of the paper. “Another is, they’re showing off how good they are to female rivals.”Opponents of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad are reportedly considering action to stop a large gathering the government plans to hold on April 18Ahmadinejad’s critics -- who accuse him of attempting a power grab akin to what Russian President Vladimir Putin did when he stepped down to become prime minister for one term before retaking the presidency -- believe the meeting will be used by the Iranian president and his close circle to influence the June 14 presidential vote.The dispute is just the latest episode in an ongoing power struggle between Ahmadinejad and hard-liners aligned with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whom he has repeatedly challenged.The Iranian president’s second term ends in four months and the country’s constitution prevents him from running for a third term.Some critics have referred to the gathering at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium, which has a capacity of 100,000, as an election meeting. They say Ahmadinejad will use the occasion to unofficially announce the man he has groomed to succeed him, believed to be close aide Esfandiari Rahim Mashaei.A presidential deputy was quoted last week as saying that the gathering is simply aimed at thanking the committee that facilitates travel inside Iran, an event that has been held before in other cities.Ahmadinejad’s opponents are not convinced, however, and some appear to be moving to either cancel or control the event.Earlier this week, the judiciary’s parliamentary adviser, Hojatoleslam Mohammad Banayi, said the judiciary is looking into the gathering.if any election-related behavior takes place, the judiciary’s “prevention body” will take action.The “Arman” daily reported on April 8 that senior lawmaker Mohammad Reza Pourebrahimi has asked Iran’s Supreme National Security Council to cancel the gathering. The daily added that the parliament’s National Security Committee is planning to look into the reasons behind the gathering and its possible dimensions. That,, could result in its cancellation.But the daily also asks whether it’s not too late for such a move, writing: “Will the government allow such an important and vital meeting, on which it has certainly spent a lot of money, to be so easily canceled?”-- Golnaz EsfandiariJonathan Blow, the developer behind Braid, has confirmed that his upcoming puzzle adventure game The Witness will support VR headset technology.
He confirmed this news on the game's official website, saying that he's been working with Valve to make this a reality. "Last year I was pessimistic about VR systems in the near future," Blow explained. "But I was fortunate enough to get a sneak peek at Valve’s virtual reality system. It is so much better than anything else I had used that I was instantly very excited by it."
He then went on to add:
In late November I spent a few days at Valve’s offices working with Atman Binstock and Doug Church to adapt the HMD’s input system more thoroughly for The Witness and to build a few scenes that are playable on the device. So, we will be supporting [Valve's] device (and any similar devices) with The Witness. But I am really looking forward to see what gets designed specifically for devices like this.
This is certainly exciting news, as a game like The Witness will most definitely work beautifully with virtual reality tech. I just hope it doesn't make me motion sick…
[Via Gamasutra]ANALYSIS/OPINION:
America doesn’t know it yet, but we have entered a new chapter in our history. Things have changed and not for the better. Security is going to be paramount from here on out, a new world awaits unfortunately, in my humble opinion.
After 9/11, we were scared that more attacks would follow. We knew the country had to rally, and rally we did. We came together and supported what had to be done to deal with the threat from “over there.”
But we were different back then. We were more united. We were stronger. We had a certain faith in our leadership that doesn’t exist today. For whatever brief period of time, we became Americans, not Left or Right, Republican or Democrat.
This time it’s different. The enemy is not “over there.” The enemy is here, among us. They could be our co-worker, our neighbor. Our president doesn’t even want to acknowledge this fact. His agenda and motivation are shrouded in mystery, with disturbing conclusions drawn by many. I think it’s safe to say his agenda is not the national security of the United States and our allies. The administration is pushing to bring in as many immigrants as possible regardless of the security risks that entails, damn the security of ordinary Americans, whether they be black, white, Christian, Jew or yes, even Muslim. Whether it be for some dastardly scheme to increase the Democratic vote or some misguided, progressive, multicultural agenda, who cares. The result is the same.
For the foreseeable future, Americans are going to be afraid, afraid for their personal safety and that of their families. We don’t have faith that our government is there to protect us to the best of its ability. We don’t think the Obama administration is serious. We think it has something else at the top of its list.
This is why gun sales are soaring. For the first time in recent history, Americans across the board have lost faith in our federal government. This change has been coming slowly but has picked up speed in the last few weeks and months, with the obvious indifference of the Obama administration to the threat to our lives and well-being.
The recent Oval Office address is representative of this feeling. President Obama lectured us about being “true to our values.” That’s insulting. American’s were insulted, not reassured. We’ve fought wars for Muslims around the globe. We’ve stopped the genocide against Muslims in Kosovo, in one example. We’ve stopped the murderous oppression of Saddam Hussein. We’ve pushed back the medieval Taliban in Afghanistan. White boys and girls, black, Latino, Asian, et cetera, from farms in Iowa and all over America, have died in the thousands and many more maimed for Muslims. Muslims here are able to lead the type of life they want to lead. They are not persecuted. I can’t help to think that if they were persecuted, if they felt pressure, if they felt uncomfortable, or at least confronted about the issue forcefully, maybe we would see more Muslims speak out against the atrocities that some followers of Islam commit in the name of their religion.
There will be more attacks in the coming year, before President Obama leaves office and another leader, who can be trusted by the public, comes into office. In the mean time, America is vulnerable. The people are vulnerable. Your children are vulnerable. The wolves are here. They are next door. They are mothers of 6-month-old babies.
It is legitimate and OK for Americans to be concerned about their security. It is not hateful. It is logical and to be expected. A good leader would find a way to allay those fears as best he could. President Obama could care less.
I believe America has a bright future and its decline has been greatly exaggerated. I believe we are in for another American century. We will be the shining city on the hill once again. But it won’t be under this president.
So take care of your family. Stay away from crowded places. Buy a gun.
Because, it’s not OK.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.BILL DWYRE Manning leaves hole up middle
The injured Indianapolis quarterback is the ultimate star, with his excellence on the field and regular-guy attitude and sense of humor off it. The winless Colts, of course, miss him most.
With all due respect to Drew Brees, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, they aren't Manning. They have their own strengths, their own sensational abilities, their own great successes by which we can measure their excellence. But Manning has had similar or better successes as well as a flair that sets him apart.
There are other greatly talented players, calling signals, throwing passes and leading their teams. But the real field general, the George S. Patton of the NFL, was nowhere to be found, except if you caught a highlight segment of Peyton Manning, clipboard in hand along the sidelines of the once proud and now dreadful Indianapolis Colts.
Missing was that quarterback, standing in the shotgun formation, dissecting the defense, spotting the openings, then flapping his arms and shouting directions like a traffic cop on a busy corner. Nobody in the NFL has ever tapped the baton on the lectern the way he does.
A rainy, chilly Sunday in Los Angeles was a perfect day to catch up on the NFL. A fireplace and a TV remote were the perfect tools.
It is more than just the hand-waving and play-changing at the line of scrimmage, more than the frequent realization that Manning has spotted a shifting linebacker and completed a pass in the space that shift created.
It is his ability to do all that and also be a huge media star, while laughing at himself and coming across as a regular guy who just happened to win four MVP trophies, lead his Colts to 11 straight playoff appearances and win the Super Bowl in 2007. Sports is entertainment, and if the wittiest, most genuine guy in the room also happens to be the best player, you have the ultimate package.
This isn't Joe Garagiola or Bob Uecker, parlaying decent baseball careers into stardom in front of the TV cameras. This is Joe DiMaggio, hitting in 56 straight games and getting ready for his close-up.
Manning hosts "Saturday Night Live" and is a hit. Manning appears in commercials that leave other athletes looking like functioning robots and comes off like Jay Leno.
Manning goes to Baltimore a few years ago to face the Ravens and the Colts become the Christians, entering the Colosseum. It is the first time that the Indianapolis Colts have returned to play in the city where they were once the Baltimore Colts, to the fans who once embraced them and were jilted in the middle of the night by owner Bob Irsay, who loaded up the vans and sneaked out of Dodge. The game stirs up the anger anew in Baltimore, and has the feel of an ambush.
Manning, who was 8 years old when Irsay backed up the vans in 1984, somehow directs a narrow victory in the most hostile atmosphere, then tells the media afterward, with all sincerity, "I was scared out there. I thought I was going to get shot."
Such anti-macho honesty does not play well in the NFL, unless you are Peyton Manning.
Now, of course, Manning is out, probably for the season, because of an injury. He has had three surgeries in 19 months on a bulging disk in his neck and, at age 35, there are questions about whether he will ever be back behind that line of scrimmage, pointing, orchestrating and driving opposing defenses to drink.
His loss has had startling consequences. Before this season's opener, the last time somebody else had started at quarterback for the Colts was Dec. 21, 1997. That was a guy named Jim Harbaugh, who, rumor has it, has done well in the next phase of his life. From the opener in 1998, until this season's opener, Manning made 227 consecutive starts.
Manning's absence has made the hearts of some Colts fans grow fonder; with others, the fickle ones, it has made them look elsewhere. Interestingly, the replacement talk is about a player helped to become special by Harbaugh, who coached probable Heisman Trophy winner Andrew Luck at Stanford the last two years before leaving to become the San Francisco 49ers' coach.Blood In The Skies
by G.D. Falksen
G.D. Falksen's steampunk epic launches with Blood In The Skies.
In 1908, the world ended in fire.
Humanity, always bad at following orders, refused to die. Now, two hundred years later, what remains is divided between civilized order and lawless frontier. For the citizens of the Commonwealth, the brave pilots of the Air Force are all that stand between them and the dreaded pirate lords of the Badlands. For generations, the two forces have struggled back and forth in an endless cycle of invasion and reprisal. Now that is about to change, and flying ace Elizabeth Steele is about to find herself dragged into a web of intrigue aimed at the downfall of the civilized world.
Nothing that a clever girl with a trusty aeroplane and a charming spy at her side can't handle.
Get it here.Hours after President Trump tweeted out an allegation that former President Barack Obama tapped Trump Tower during the election, the president might be hitting the golf course.
According to a press pool report at 9:26 a.m. on Saturday, Trump, who is in Florida again this weekend, traveled to Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach to conduct meetings and phone calls.
He "might hit a few balls" too, the White House press office told the press pool, who reported that they are waiting on the names of who Trump might speak with and who may join him for golf.
Meanwhile, the presidential entourage in Florida...(via pool reporter) pic.twitter.com/4rgMSBwXjd — Olivier Knox (@OKnox) March 4, 2017
Trump's weekend schedule doesn't list any events until 4 p.m. when the president will participate in a National Security Council meeting at the Mar-a-Lago. At 7:30 p.m., the president is slated to eat dinner with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
Early Saturday morning, Trump sent out a stream of tweets accusing Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower in New York City in October, before the election, comparing the 44th president to President Richard Nixon, who resigned amid fallout from the Watergate scandal.China will not agree to carry out normal cooperation on hydrological data with India unless it agrees to withdraw troops from Doklam, the Global Times quoted him as saying. (IE)
China will not share hydrological data with India until it withdraws its troops from Doklam, an expert at a Chinese think-tank has said. Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said China cannot be expected to fulfil its obligation when India has no regards for its neighbour’s sovereignty. China will not agree to carry out normal cooperation on hydrological data with India unless it agrees to withdraw troops from Doklam, the Global Times quoted him as saying.
The two sides have been engaged in a three-month military stand-off at Doklam in the Sikkim section of the India-China border. “Although China is a responsible country, we can’t fulfil our obligations to India when it shows no respect to our sovereignty,” Hu said. India on Friday said China had not shared the water related data so far this year.
The Brahmaputra River originates from China’s Tibet and flows flow into Arunachal Pradesh and Assam. “There is an existing mechanism named India-China Expert-Level mechanism which was started in 2006 to share hydrological data during the flood season for Brahmaputra and Satluj rivers.” India’s Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar had said.
“Under the MoUs signed in 2013 and 2015, the hydrological data is to be shared between May 15 to October 15 every year, but from May 15 till now, we have no data from China. The last meeting of the mechanism was held in April 2016,” he said, but held that linking the sharing of hydrological data with heavy floods in the northeast would be premature.
The upper reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo (the upper stream of the Brahmaputra) are in Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, so China agreed to share hydrological data with India to help it prevent hydrological disasters such as flooding and drought, and carry out cooperation on the development and utilization of hydrological resources, Zhao Gancheng, director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, told the Global Times.
Zhao said India has always voiced concerns over China’s development of the river, and tried to hype these projects “in order to incite their people’s anti-China sentiment”.Mohandas K. Gandhi was no fan of the pomp and pageantry of Viceroy’s House (now Rashtrapati Bhavan). He would rather have converted it into a hospital. However, his views would change—as Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins note in their celebrated book Freedom At Midnight—upon seeing the transformation of Viceroy’s House into a centre for managing the murderous migration that Partition had unleashed. He declared to Louis Mountbatten, the first governor general of independent India: “Here is where India is governed from. This is the sanctuary in the storm. We must keep it up and all your successors must live here."
While much of the colonial-era glory still remains, Rashtrapati Bhavan today is definitely not the place India is governed from. It houses the president, who serves as the titular head of the government of India and acts on the advice of the council of ministers. The power of the indirectly elected president increases suddenly when there is no leader who enjoys a clear majority in the lower house of Parliament. It is in those moments that Rashtrapati Bhavan is supposed to be “the sanctuary in the storm". But those are also the times when the president’s assertive—and possibly partisan—behaviour may raise questions of propriety and constitutionality. Later this month, Rashtrapati Bhavan will welcome a new president; this is an appropriate occasion to briefly revisit the history of the office.
Presidents have been criticized for two contrasting sins: 1) being a rubber stamp for the government of the day, and 2) exploiting constitutional ambiguities to exercise greater influence than their position warrants. The most egregious example of the first trait was president Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (1974-77) signing prime minister Indira Gandhi’s Proclamation of Emergency on the night of 25 June 1975. The sycophancy of president Zail Singh (1982-87) knew no bounds; after being nominated by Indira Gandhi, he said: “If she hands me a broom I shall start sweeping the floor." While the president has the power to return the cabinet’s recommendation at least once for reconsideration—he/she is bound to give assent to the reconsidered recommendation with or without any change—not many chose to exercise it for a long time when the Central governments routinely abused their powers to dismiss unfriendly state governments.
The behaviour on the other side of the spectrum—presidents asserting their own powers under questionable pretexts—did increase in the coalition era (1989-2014), when no single party could boast of a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha. The tenure of K.R. Narayanan (1997-2002) was especially eventful. Narayanan won praise for becoming the first president in 1997 to return the I.K. Gujral government’s recommendation to impose president’s rule in Uttar Pradesh but he also courted controversy for giving speeches and interviews which could be legitimately interpreted as criticism of the policies of the succeeding Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. In another instance, Narayanan chose the state banquet held in the honour of visiting US president Bill Clinton to criticize Washington for behaving like a “headman" of the “global village".
The role of presidents has come under special scrutiny at times of transition between governments. Singh’s decision to invite Rajiv Gandhi to take over as prime minister after Indira Gandhi’s assassination was seen as firm leadership by some and as an overreach by others. President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (1977-82) calling fresh elections on the advice of Charan Singh, a prime minister who had himself not won the trust vote in the Lok Sabha, was seen by several observers as an attempt by the former to increase his own powers as the election was expected to return a hung house. In different accounts, admittedly with little evidence, both president S. Radhakrishnan (1962-67) and president R. Venkataraman (1987-92) have been accused of planning to get themselves into the prime minister’s seat.
The confusion regarding the scope of presidential powers is as old as the office of the president itself. India’s first president, Rajendra Prasad (1950-62), often used to complain—as Fali Nariman writes in his book The State Of The Nation—“to Minoo Masani, his friend and a compatriot in the Constituent Assembly, that (Jawaharlal) Nehru did not allow him to exercise the powers which he was sure he had under the document they together had got passed in the Constituent Assembly".
Most of the doubts Prasad had were cleared in the years that followed but some constitutional questions still remain. In a chapter on “The Presidency" in Rethinking Public Institutions In India (edited by Devesh Kapur, Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Milan Vaishnav), James Manor notes that a decision taken by the incumbent President Pranab Mukherjee (2012-present) in January 2017 could have triggered a constitutional crisis had the Narendra Modi government decided to confront him. Mukherjee commuted the death sentence of four convicts against, apparently, the reiterated advice of the Union ministry of home affairs. He was possibly influenced by a 2014 Supreme Court ruling that allows for commutation of death sentence if a mercy petition has faced inordinate delays.
The constitutional ambiguities allow “the sanctuary in the storm" to turn into—in H.N. Pandit’s words—a “quiescent volcano". The next incumbent should be ready to navigate similarly tricky situations.
Should the president be allowed greater flexibility in uncertain times? Tell us at views@livemint.comA group of hackers going under the name Shadow Brokers has claimed it has infiltrated the NSA and obtained a number of its ‘cyberweapons’, which are now being put up for auction.
Deep within the digital vaults of the NSA is an entity referred to as the Equation Group, which was responsible for some of the US government’s most damaging cyberattacks against nations and groups, including Stuxnet and Flame.
On 13 August, however, a group of hackers of unknown origin calling itself the Shadow Brokers – named after a group found in the video game Mass Effect – claimed in a now-deleted Tumblr post that it had hacked into the Equation Group.
Coined by Kaspersky Lab in 2015, the Equation Group described it as the most organised and advanced hacking group it had ever come across.
‘We find many, many Equation Group cyberweapons’
While the Tumblr page is gone, the group’s message and demands were also posted across the software-sharing site GitHub and Pastebin.
In broken English, the group said of its latest claimed breach: “We follow Equation Group traffic. We find Equation Group source range. We hack Equation Group. We find many, many Equation Group cyberweapons. You see pictures. We give you some Equation Group files free, you see. This is good proof no?”
What followed was a series of screenshots, as well as links to a number of the alleged NSA files, many of which were included among the leaked files obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
These file names included “BANANAGLEE”, “JETPLOW” and “EPICBANANA”, as well as some other scripts and tools that would be used to hack another system.
The Shadow Brokers team is now putting up the entire set of files online for auction with a starting price of 1m bitcoins – which in today’s price comes in at more than €500m.
Despite it being difficult to determine whether these files are 100pc legitimate, a number of security researchers have said that this certainly looks like it could be genuine.
Speaking to Motherboard, a security researcher known as The Grugq said: “If this is a hoax, the perpetrators put a huge amount of effort in.
“The proof files look pretty legit, and they are exactly the sorts of exploits you would expect a group that targets communications infrastructure to deploy and use.”
Kaspersky Lab thinks it’s legit
The original discoverers of the |
Trump Deutschland sued the city of Stuttgart, and lost. In 2004 Trump's German corporate partner brought suit against the Trump Organization for failure to pay back a EUR 200 million pre-payment as promised. In 2005, the German state attorney prosecuted Trump Deutschland and its partners for accounting fraud.[63][64][65]
In 2004, Donald Trump sued Richard T. Fields in Broward County Circuit Court (in Florida); Fields was once Trump's business partner in the casino business, but had recently become a successful casino developer in Florida apart from Trump. Fields counter-sued Trump in Florida court. Trump alleged that Fields misled other parties into believing he still consulted for Trump, and Fields alleged improprieties in Trump's business.[66] The two businessmen agreed in 2008 to drop the lawsuits when Fields agreed to buy Trump Marina in Atlantic City, New Jersey, for $316 million,[67] but the deal was unsettled again in 2009 because Trump resigned his leadership of Trump Entertainment after Fields lowered his bid.[68] Fields never bought the company, which went into bankruptcy about the same time and was sold for $38 million.[69][70] Trump's lawsuit was dismissed after a hearing in 2010.[71]
In 2004, the Trump Organization partnered with Bayrock Group on a $200 million hotel and condo project in Fort Lauderdale Beach, to be called Trump International Hotel & Tower. After proceeding for five years, real estate market devaluation stymied the project in 2009 and Trump dissolved his licensing deal, demanding that his name be removed from the building. Soon after this, the project defaulted on a $139 million loan in 2010.[72] Investors later sued the developers for fraud. Trump petitioned to have his name removed from the suit, saying he had only lent his name to the project. However his request was refused since he had participated in advertising for it.[73] The insolvent building project spawned over 10 lawsuits, some of which were still not settled in early 2016.[74]
In 2006, the Town of Palm Beach began fining Trump $250 per day for ordinance violations related to his erection of an 80-foot-tall (24 m) flagpole flying a 15 by 25 feet (4.6 by 7.6 m) American flag on his property. Trump sued the town for $25 million, saying that they abridged his free speech, also disputing an ordinance that local businesses be "town-serving". The two parties settled as part of a court-ordered mediation, in which Trump was required to donate $100,000 to veterans' charities. At the same time, the town ordinance was modified allowing Trump to enroll out-of-town members in his Mar-a-Lago social club.[75]
Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago
After the 2008 housing-market collapse, Deutsche Bank attempted to collect $40 million that Donald Trump personally guaranteed against their $640 million loan for Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. Rather than paying the debt, Trump sued Deutsche Bank for $3 billion for undermining the project and damage to his reputation.[76] Deutsche Bank then filed suit to obtain the $40 million. The two parties settled in 2010 with Deutsche Bank extending the loan term by five years.[77]
In 2008, Trump filed a $100 million lawsuit for alleged fraud and civil rights violations[78] against the California city of Rancho Palos Verdes, over thwarted luxury home development and expansion plans upon part of a landslide-prone golf course in the area, which was purchased by Trump in 2002 for $27 million.[78] Trump had previously sued a local school district over land leased from them in the re-branded Trump National Golf Club, and had further angered some local residents by renaming a thoroughfare after himself.[78] The $100 million suit was ultimately withdrawn in 2012 with Trump and the city agreeing to modified geological surveys and permit extensions for some 20 proposed luxury homes (in addition to 36 homes previously approved).[79][80] Trump ultimately opted for a permanent conservation easement instead of expanded housing development on the course's driving range.[81]
In 2009, Donald Trump sued a law firm he had used, Morrison Cohen, for $5 million for mentioning his name and providing links to related news articles on its website. This lawsuit followed a lawsuit by Trump alleging overcharging by the law firm, and a countersuit by Morrison Cohen seeking unpaid legal fees.[82] The suit was dismissed in a 15-page ruling by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Eileen Bransten, who ruled that the links to news articles concerned "matters of public interest."[83]
In 2009, Trump was sued by investors who had made deposits for condos in the canceled Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico.[84] The investors said that Trump misrepresented his role in the project, stating after its failure that he had been little more than a spokesperson for the entire venture, disavowing any financial responsibility for the debacle.[85] Investors were informed that their investments would not be returned due to the cancellation of construction.[84] In 2013, Trump settled the lawsuit with more than one hundred prospective condo owners for an undisclosed amount.[86]
Lawsuits 2010–present [ edit ]
Construction and property law matters [ edit ]
In 2011, Donald Trump sued Scotland, alleging that it built the Aberdeen Bay Wind Farm after assuring him it would not be built. He had recently built a golf course there and planned to build an adjacent hotel. Trump lost his suit, with the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom unanimously ruling in favor of the Scottish government in 2015.[87][88]
In 2013, 87-year-old Jacqueline Goldberg alleged that Trump cheated her in a condominium sale by bait-and-switch when she was purchasing properties at the Trump International Hotel and Tower.[89]
In 2015, Trump initiated a $100 million lawsuit against Palm Beach County claiming that officials, in a "deliberate and malicious" act, pressured the FAA to direct air traffic to the Palm Beach International Airport over his Mar-a-Lago estate, because he said the airplanes damaged the building and disrupted its ambiance.[90] Trump had previously sued the county twice over airport noise; the first lawsuit, in 1995, ended with an agreement between Trump and the county; Trump's second lawsuit, in 2010, was dismissed.[90]
Trump is suing the town of Ossining, New York, over the property tax valuation on his 147-acre (59 ha) Trump National Golf Club Westchester, located in Briarcliff Manor's portion of the town, which Trump purchased for around $8 million at a foreclosure sale in the 1990s and to which he claimed, at the club's opening, to have added $45 million in facility improvements.[91] Although Trump stated in his 2015 FEC filing that the property was worth at least $50 million, his lawsuit seeks a $1.4 million valuation on the property, which includes a 75,000-square-foot clubhouse, five overnight suites, and permission to build 71 condominium units,[91] in an effort to shave $424,176 from his annual local property tax obligations.[92] Trump filed the action after separately being sued by Briarcliff Manor for "intentional and illegal modifications" to a drainage system that caused more than $238,000 in damage to the village's library, public pool, and park facilities during a 2011 storm.[92]
In October 2016, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that Trump, together with two principals of a connected developer, could be sued for various claims, including oppression, collusion and breach of fiduciary duties, in relation to his role in the marketing of units in the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto, Canada.[93] A subsequent application for leave to appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court of Canada in March 2017.[94] Also in October 2016, JCF Capital ULC (a private firm that had bought the construction loan on the building) announced that it was seeking court approval under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to have the building sold in order to recoup its debt, which then totaled $301 million.[95] The court allowed for its auction[96] which took place in March 2017, but no bidders, apart from one stalking horse offer, took part.[97]
Defamation matters [ edit ]
Also in 2011, an appellate court upheld a New Jersey Superior Court judge's decision dismissing Trump's $5 billion defamation lawsuit against author Timothy L. O'Brien, who had reported in his book, TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald (2005), that Trump's true net worth was really between $150 and $250 million. Trump had reportedly told O'Brien he was worth billions and, in 2005, had publicly stated such.[98] Trump said that the author's alleged underestimation of his net worth was motivated by malice and had cost him business deals and damage to his reputation.[99] The appellate court, however, ruled against Trump, citing the consistency of O'Brien's three confidential sources.[100]
In 2014, the former Miss Pennsylvania Sheena Monnin ultimately settled a $5 million arbitration judgment against her, having been sued by Trump after alleging that the Miss USA 2012 pageant results were rigged. Monnin wrote on her Facebook page that another contestant told her during a rehearsal that she had seen a list of the top five finalists, and when those names were called in their precise order, Monnin realized the pageant election process was suspect, compelling Monnin to resign her Miss Pennsylvania title. The Trump Organization's lawyer said that Monnin's allegations had cost the pageant a lucrative British Petroleum sponsorship deal and threatened to discourage women from entering Miss USA contests in the future.[101] According to Monnin, testimony from the Miss Universe Organization and Ernst & Young revealed that the top 15 finalists were selected by pageant directors regardless of preliminary judges' scores.[102] As part of the settlement, Monnin was not required to retract her original statements.[101]
On January 17, 2017, Summer Zervos, represented by attorney Gloria Allred, filed a defamation suit against President-Elect Donald Trump for claiming that she had lied in her public sexual assault allegations against him.[103]
Financial matters [ edit ]
In July 2011, New York firm ALM Unlimited filed a lawsuit against Trump, who ended payments to the company in 2008 after nearly three years. ALM was hired in 2003 to seek offers from clothing companies for a Trump fashion line, and had arranged a meeting between Trump and PVH, which licensed the Trump name for dress shirts and neckwear. ALM, which had received over $300,000, alleged in the lawsuit that Trump's discontinuation of payments was against their initial agreement. In pre-trial depositions, Trump and two of his business officials – attorney George H. Ross and executive vice president of global licensing Cathy Glosser – gave contradictory statements regarding whether ALM was entitled to payments. Trump, who felt that ALM had only a limited role in the deal between him and PVH, said "I have thousands of checks that I sign a week, and I don't look at very many of the checks; and eventually I did look, and when I saw them (ALM) I stopped paying them because I knew it was a mistake or somebody made a mistake."[104]
In January 2013, a judge ordered that the case go to trial, after Trump and ALM failed to settle the lawsuit.[105] During the trial in April 2013, Trump said that ALM's role in the PVH agreement was insubstantial, stating that Regis Philbin was the one who recommended PVH to him. Trump's attorney, Alan Garten, said ALM was not legally entitled to any money.[105][106][107] The judge ruled in favor of Trump later that month because a valid contract between him and ALM was never created.[107]
Trump University litigation [ edit ]
In 2013, in a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Trump was accused of defrauding more than 5,000 people of $40 million for the opportunity to learn Trump's real estate investment techniques in a for-profit training program, Trump University, which operated from 2005 to 2011.[108][109][110] Trump ultimately stopped using the term "University" following a 2010 order from New York regulators, who called Trump's use of the word "misleading and even illegal"; the state had previously warned Trump in 2005 to drop the term or not offer seminars in New York.[111][112][113] Although Trump has claimed a 98% approval rating on course evaluations, former students recounted high-pressure tactics from instructors seeking the highest possible ratings, including threats of withholding graduation certificates,[114] and more than 2,000 students had sought and received course refunds before the end of their paid seminars.[114]
In a separate class action civil suit against Trump University in mid-February 2014, a San Diego federal judge allowed claimants in California, Florida, and New York to proceed;[115] a Trump counterclaim, alleging that the state Attorney General's investigation was accompanied by a campaign donation shakedown, was investigated by a New York ethics board and dismissed in August 2015.[116] Trump filed a $1 million defamation suit against former Trump University student Tarla Makaeff, who had spent about $37,000 on seminars, after she joined the class action lawsuit and publicized her classroom experiences on social media.[85] Trump University was later ordered by a U.S. District Judge in April 2015 to pay Makaeff and her lawyers $798,774.24 in legal fees and costs.[85][117]
Breach of contract matters [ edit ]
2013 [ edit ]
In 2013 Trump sued comedian Bill Maher for $5 million for breach of contract.[118] Maher had appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and had offered to pay $5 million to a charity if Trump produced his birth certificate to prove that Trump's mother had not mated with an orangutan. This was said by Maher in response to Trump having previously challenged Obama to produce his birth certificate, and offering $5 million payable to a charity of Obama's choice, if Obama produced his college applications, transcripts, and passport records.[119][120] Trump produced his birth certificate and filed a lawsuit after Maher was not forthcoming, claiming that Maher's $5 million offer was legally binding. "I don't think he was joking," Trump said. "He said it with venom."[119] Trump withdrew his lawsuit against the comedian after eight weeks.[121]
2014 [ edit ]
In 2014, model Alexia Palmer filed a civil suit against Trump Model Management for promising a $75,000 annual salary but paying only $3,380.75 for three years' work. Palmer, who came to the US at age 17 from Jamaica under the H-1B visa program in 2011,[122] claimed to be owed more than $200,000. Palmer contended that Trump Model Management charged, in addition to a management fee, "obscure expenses" from postage to limousine rides that consumed the remainder of her compensation. Palmer alleged that Trump Model Management promised to withhold only 20% of her net pay as agency expenses, but after charging her for those "obscure expenses", ended up taking 80%.[123] Trump attorney Alan Garten claimed the lawsuit is "bogus and completely frivolous".[124][125] Palmer filed a class-action lawsuit against the modeling agency with similar allegations.[126] The case was dismissed from U.S. federal court in March 2016, in part because Palmer's immigration status, via H1-B visa sponsored by Trump, required labor complaints to be filed through a separate process.[123][127]
2015 [ edit ]
In 2015, Trump sued Univision, demanding $500 million for breach of contract and defamation when they dropped their planned broadcast of the Miss USA pageant. The network said that the decision was made because of Trump's "insulting remarks about Mexican immigrants".[128] Trump settled the lawsuit with Univision CEO Randy Falco out of court.[129]
In July 2015, Trump filed a $10 million lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court for breach of contract against Spanish celebrity chef José Andrés, claiming that he backed out of a deal to open the flagship restaurant at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.[130][131] Andrés replied that Trump's lawsuit was "both unsurprising and without merit"[132] and filed an $8 million counterclaim against a Trump Organization subsidiary.[131][133]
Also in July 2015, Chef Geoffrey Zakarian also withdrew from the Washington, D.C., project with Andrés in the wake of Trump's comments on Mexican illegal immigrants, and is expected to lose his own $500,000 restaurant lease deposit as a result.[132] Trump denounced and then sued Zakarian in August 2015 for a sum "in excess of $10 million" for lost rent and other damages.[134] Trump's lawsuit called Zakarian's offense at his remarks "curious in light of the fact that Mr. Trump's publicly shared views on immigration have remained consistent for many years, and Mr. Trump's willingness to frankly share his opinions is widely known".[134][135]
Disputes with both chefs were eventually settled in April 2017.[136]
In 2015, restaurant workers at Trump SoHo filed a lawsuit that from 2009 to at least the time of the filing, gratuities added to customers' checks were illegally withheld from employees. The Trump Organization has responded that the dispute is between the employees and their employer, a third-party contractor. Donald Trump has been scheduled to testify in court on September 1, 2016.[137][138]
2018 [ edit ]
In 2018, Noel Cintron, the personal driver for Donald Trump before he became the President of the United States, filed a lawsuit Cintron v Trump Organization LLC with the Supreme Court of the State of New York (Manhattan). The lawsuit claims that during his 25-year employment by Trump, he was not compensated for overtime and the second time his salary was raised he was induced to surrender his health insurance, an action which saved Trump approximately $17,866 per year.[139] The lawsuit seeks $178,200 of overtime back pay, plus $5,000 in penalties that are seen under the New York State Labor Law.[140]
Assault claims [ edit ]
In September 2015, five men who had demonstrated outside of a Trump presidential campaign event at Trump Tower in New York City sued Donald Trump, alleging that Trump's security staff punched one of them. They also allege that Trump's security guards had been advised by city police that they were permitted to protest there. Several people videotaped the incident.[141][142]
In June 2015, the Culinary Workers Union filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), alleging that the owners of Trump Hotel Las Vegas "violated the federally protected rights of workers to participate in union activities" and engaged in "incidents of alleged physical assault, verbal abuse, intimidation, and threats by management".[143] In October 2015, the Trump Ruffin Commercial and Trump Ruffin Tower I, the owners of Trump Hotel Las Vegas, sued the Culinary Workers Union and another union, alleging that they had knowingly distributed flyers that falsely stated that Donald Trump had stayed at a rival unionized hotel, rather than his own non-unionized hotel, during a trip to Las Vegas.[5][143]
Poll watching controversy [ edit ]
On October 31, 2016, a New Jersey federal judge, John Michael Vazquez, ordered the Republican National Committee (RNC) to hand over all communications with the Trump campaign related to poll watching and voter fraud. He asked for testimony and documents relating to Kellyanne Conway, RNC officials Ronna Romney McDaniel of Michigan, and Rob Gleason from Pennsylvania.[144] It is claimed Gleason, McDaniel, and Roger Stone recruited poll watchers to check for voter fraud. The state Democratic parties of Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Ohio filed lawsuits against Trump for encouraging illegal voter intimidation. The states' Democratic parties are also suing their respective Republican party counterparts, along with Roger Stone, who is allegedly recruiting poll watchers and organizing ballot security efforts in a number of states. Stone runs the group "Stop the Steal." It claims Trump supporters yelled at voters outside Las Vegas area polling places when they said they weren't voting for the Republican nominee, and that Stone is asking supporters to conduct an illegitimate "exit polling" initiative aimed at intimidating voters of color.
Pat McDonald, the director of Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in Ohio, reported that "Trump supporters have already visited the county elections board identifying themselves as poll observers, even though they did not appear to be credentialed as poll observers as required under Ohio law." Election officials have expressed concern about "instability on Election Day," one lawsuit claims, and discussed the possibility of bringing police to polling sites to address conflicts. In Clark County of Nevada, a lawsuit claims: "A Trump supporter harassed and intimidated multiple voters outside of the Albertson's supermarket early voting location on Lake Mead Boulevard, repeatedly asking voters for whom they were voting, and then yelling at them belligerently and attempting to keep them from entering the voting location when they stated they were not voting for Donald Trump." When poll staffers told the Trump supporters to stop harassing voters, "the Trump supporter told poll workers that he had 'a right to say anything he wanted to the voters.'" Poll staffers called police, and the Trump supporter left. The lawsuit also claims similar incidents took place in neighboring Nye County as well. In Pennsylvania, Murrysville City Councilman Josh Lorenz supposedly posted instructions for the way Clinton supporters could vote online, even though there is no online voting in Pennsylvania. Eight registered electors, mostly from the Philadelphia area, challenged the portion of the state Election Code that prevents poll watchers from observing elections outside of the counties where they live.[145][146][147]
In Pompano Beach, Florida, police asked two poll watchers to leave a polling site. Two precinct clerks were also fired for not adhering to policy and training. No arrests were made. No other incidents were reported in South Florida.[148][149]
Nevada early voting Latino turnout controversy [ edit ]
On November 8, 2016, Trump filed a lawsuit claiming early voting polling places in Clark County, Nevada, were kept open too late. These precincts had high turnout of Latino voters. Nevada state law explicitly states that polls are to stay open to accommodate eligible voters in line at closing time. Hillary Clinton campaign advisor Neera Tanden says the Trump campaign is trying to suppress Latino voter turnout. A political analyst from Nevada, Jon Ralston tweeted that the Trump lawsuit is "insane" in a state that clearly allows the polls to remains open until everyone in line has voted. Former Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller, posted the statute that states "voting must continue until those voters have voted". Miller said: "If there are people in line waiting to vote at 7 pm, voting must continue until everyone votes.... We still live in America, right?"[150]
A Nevada judge denied Trump's request to separate early voting ballots. Judge Gloria Sturman, of the District Court for Clark County Nevada, ruled that County Registrar of Voters Joe P. Gloria was already obligated by state law to maintain the records that the Trump campaign is seeking. Sturman said: "That is offensive to me because it seems to go against the very principle that a vote is secret."[151][152] Diana Orrock, the Republican National Committeewoman for Nevada and a vocal Trump ally, said she was unaware of the lawsuit before Politico contacted her. "I know that the [Clark County] registrar was on TV this morning saying that anybody who's in line was allowed to participate in the voting process until all of them came through," she said. "If that's what they did, I don't have a problem with that... I don't know that filing a suit's going to accomplish anything." Orrock doubts the lawsuit will have any impact.[153]
Lawsuit for inciting violence at March 2016 campaign rally [ edit ]
During a campaign rally on March 1, 2016 in Louisville, Kentucky, Trump repeatedly said "get 'em out of here" while pointing at anti-Trump protesters as they were forcibly escorted out by his supporters. Three protesters say they were repeatedly shoved and punched while Trump pointed at them from the podium, citing widely shared video evidence of the events. They also cited previous statements by Trump about paying the legal bills of supporters who got violent, or suggesting a demonstrator deserved to be "roughed up."[154][155][156][157]
The lawsuit accuses Donald Trump of inciting violence against protesters in Louisville, Kentucky. The plaintiffs are Kashiya Nwanguma (21), Molly Shah (36) and Henry Brousseau (17). The suit is against Trump, his campaign, and three Trump supporters (Matthew Heimbach, Alvin Bamberger and an unnamed defendant). One defendant, Bamburger, who was wearing a Veteran's uniform in the video, apologized to the Korean War Veterans Association immediately after the event, writing that he "physically pushed a young woman down the aisle toward the exit" after "Trump kept saying 'get them out, get them out."[154]
Trump's attorneys requested to get the case dismissed, arguing he was protected by free speech laws, and wasn't trying to get his supporters to resort to violence.[156][158] They also stated that Trump had no duty to the protesters, and they had assumed the personal risk of injury by deciding to protest at the rally.[154]
On Friday, April 1, 2017, Judge David J. Hale in Louisville ruled against the dismissal of a lawsuit, stating there was ample evidence to support that the injuries of the protesters were a "direct and proximate result" of Trump's words and actions. Hale wrote, "It is plausible that Trump's direction to 'get 'em out of here' advocated the use of force," and, "It was an order, an instruction, a command." Hale wrote that the Supreme Court has ruled out some protections for free speech when used to incite violence.[159]
Defendant Heimbach requested to dismiss the discussion in the lawsuit about his association with a white nationalist group, and also requested to dismiss discussion of statements he made about how a President Trump would advance the interests of the group. The request was declined, with the judge saying the information could be important for determining punitive damages because they add context.[154]
Hale also declined to remove the allegation that Plaintiff Nwanguma, who is African-American, was victim to ethnic, racial and sexist slurs at the rally from the crowd. The judge stated that this context may support claims by the plaintiffs' of incitement and negligence by Trump and the Trump campaign. The judge wrote, "While the words themselves are repulsive, they are relevant to show the atmosphere in which the alleged events occurred."[154]
The judge stated that all people have a duty to use care to prevent foreseeable injury. "In sum, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have adequately alleged that their harm was foreseeable and that the Trump Defendants had a duty to prevent it." The case was referred a federal magistrate, Judge H. Brent Brennenstuhl, who will handle preliminary litigation, discovery and settlement efforts.[160]
Heimbach filed a separate counterclaim in April 2017, arguing that Trump was "responsible for any injuries" he [Heimbach] "might have inflicted because Mr. Trump directed him and others to take action". Heimbach, "a self-employed landscaper", and a member of the Traditionalist Youth Network, "which advocates separate American 'ethno states', "spends much of his time" online writing "against Jews, gays and immigrants and urging whites to stand up for their race." He wrote his own lawsuit which requested that Trump pay Heimbach's "legal fees, citing a promise Mr. Trump made at an earlier rally to pay legal costs of anyone who removed protesters."[161] Heimbach's "counterclaim" against Trump has "probed the limits of free speech and public protest while confronting the courts with a unique legal argument".[161] On May 5, Trump's lawyers submitted legal filings that argue that Heimbach's "indemnity claim should be dismissed on the same grounds". According to a University of Virginia law professor, Leslie Kendrick, this indemnity or "impleader" case is "highly unusual."[161] New York University's Samuel Issacharoff, a professor of constitutional law, argued that care must be taken to not allow speech, in the "context of a political rally" to be "turned into something that is legally sanctionable."[161]
Payments related to alleged affairs [ edit ]
Adult film actress Stormy Daniels has alleged that she and Trump had an extramarital affair in 2006, months after the birth of his youngest child.[162] Just before the 2016 presidential election Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was paid $130,000 by Trump's attorney Michael Cohen as part of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), through an LLC set up by Cohen; he says he used his own money for the payment.[163] In February 2018, Daniels filed suit against the LLC asking to be released from the agreement so that she can tell her story. Cohen filed a private arbitration proceeding and obtained a restraining order to keep her from discussing the case.[164] According to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump has denied the allegations.[165]
On March 6, 2018, Daniels sued Trump in California Superior Court, claiming among other things that the NDA never came into effect because Trump did not sign it personally.[166] On March 16 Cohen, with Trump's approval, asked for Daniels' suit to be moved from state to federal court, based on the criteria that the parties live in different places and the amount at stake is more than $75,000; Cohen asserted that Daniels could owe $20 million in liquidated damages for breaching the agreement.[167] The filing marked the first time that Trump himself, through his personal attorney, had taken part in the Daniels litigation.[168] In early April 2018, Trump said that he did not know about Cohen paying Daniels, why Cohen had made the payment or where Cohen got the money from.[169] On April 30, Daniels further sued Trump for defamation.[170] In May 2018, Trump's annual financial disclosure revealed that he reimbursed Cohen in 2017 for expenditures related to the Daniels case.[171]
In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance laws, admitting paying hush money of $130,000 and $150,000 "at the direction of a candidate for federal office", to two women who alleged affairs with that candidate, "with the purpose of influencing the election". The figures match sums of payments made to Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal.[172][173] American Media, Inc. had reportedly in 2016 bought for $150,000 the rights to a story by McDougal alleging an affair with a married Trump from 2006 which lasted between nine months to a year.[174][175][176] David Pecker (AMI CEO/Chairman and friend of Trump), Dylan Howard (AMI chief content officer) and Allen Weisselberg (chief financial officer of The Trump Organization) were reportedly granted witness immunity in exchange for their testimony regarding the illegal payments.[177][178]
In response, Trump said that he only knew about the payments "later on"; Trump also said regarding the payments: "They didn't come out of the campaign, they came from me."[179]
The Wall Street Journal reported on November 9, 2018 that federal prosecutors have evidence of Trump’s "central role" in payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal that violated campaign-finance laws.[180][181]
In a December 7, 2018 sentencing memorandum for Cohen, federal prosecutors implicated Trump in directing Cohen to commit the campaign finance law felonies for which Cohen had pleaded guilty. Shortly after the memorandum court filing, Trump tweeted, “Totally clears the president. Thank you!”[182] Cohen was sentenced to three years in federal prison.[183]
On December 13, 2018 Trump denied directing Cohen to make hush payments.[184] That same day, NBC News reported that Trump was present in an August 2015 meeting with Cohen and David Pecker when they discussed how American Media could help counter negative stories about Trump's relationships with women, confirming previous reporting by The Wall Street Journal.[185][186]
Special Counsel investigation [ edit ]
The Special Counsel investigation is a United States law enforcement investigation of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and any Russian (or other foreign) interference in the election, including exploring any possible links or coordination between Trump's campaign and the Russian government, "and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation."[187] Since May 2017, the investigation has been led by a United States Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, a former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Mueller's investigation took over several FBI investigations including those involving former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
It has been noted that Trump has experienced a high turnover with respect to the attorneys handling this matter, as well as a large number of prominent lawyers and law firms publicly declining offers to join Trump's legal team.[188][189] Attorneys known to have been approached include Robert S. Bennett of Hogan Lovells,[190] Paul Clement and Mark Filip, both with Kirkland & Ellis,[191][191] Robert Giuffra Jr. of Sullivan & Cromwell,[190] Theodore B. Olson of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher,[192] and Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. of Williams & Connolly.[191] Other firms with attorneys who have decided not to represent Trump include Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan,[193] Steptoe & Johnson,[193] and Winston & Strawn.[citation needed] Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing were briefly slated to join Trump's legal team, but withdrew their services from Trump in March 2018, citing conflicts of interest.[194]
In an article describing the "unique circumstance" of Rudy Giuliani's unpaid leave of absence from Greenberg Traurig while representing Trump, possibly because of "potential conflicts", Christine Simmons said some other law firms may have turned down representing Trump in the Russia case due to "public relations headaches or business and recruitment concerns".[195] Trump has called such views a "Fake News narrative".[196][197]
In a National Law Journal article, Ryan Lovelace described how white-collar lawyers must weigh the "risks" and "stigma" of joining the Trump team. He quoted a prominent defense attorney's concerns about "the constant shuffle of attorneys in and out of the president's legal team", and the possibility that an attorney could invest resources and reputation in such representation "only to find yourself on the sidelines a short time later because the president saw someone he liked better on Fox News".[197] The quoted attorney also noted "a stigma to being linked to this president" that might impact business with other clients.[197]
A list of other reasons for not wanting to represent Trump is provided by Jill Abramson for The Guardian:
The problem for the white-collar defense bar's crème de la crème is that Donald Trump is so blatantly the client from hell. He won't listen. He won't obey instructions. He is headstrong. He is a bully. Sometimes, he doesn't pay his bills. Most of all, it's possible that he isn't capable of discerning fact from fiction. This last foible could get any lawyer who represents him into very deep legal hot water. No one wants to get disbarred for the fame and fortune of representing President Trump. Then there's the justifiable concern over all the unforced legal errors that the defense side, led by Trump himself, has already committed.[198]
An Above the Law article states that some law firms have refused to represent the President of the United States because "Donald Trump has somehow turned POTUS into a dog of a client self-respecting lawyers do not want to touch", expressing concern that "[i]f all the good attorneys — the ones with reputations to preserve and ethics to uphold — refuse to represent the president, what's left are the 'bad' attorneys. The ones who don't have the slightest idea what a moral and ethical principle is".[199]
Journalists David Cay Johnston and Wayne Barrett, the latter of whom wrote an unauthorized 1992 Trump biography, have claimed that Trump and his companies did business with New York and Philadelphia families linked to the Italian-American Mafia.[200][201] A reporter for The Washington Post writes, "he was never accused of illegality, and observers of the time say that working with the mob-related figures and politicos came with the territory."[202]
Trump helped a financier for the Scarfo family get a casino license, and constructed a casino using firms controlled by Nicodemo Scarfo.[203] Trump also bought real estate from Philadelphia crime family member Salvatore Testa, and bought concrete from companies associated with the Genovese crime family and the Gambino crime family.[200][201][202] Trump Plaza paid a $450,000 fine leveled by the Casino Gaming Commission for giving $1.6 million in rare automobiles to Robert LiButti, the acquaintance of John Gotti already mentioned.[29]
Starting in 2003, the Trump Organization worked with Felix Sater, who had a 1998 racketeering conviction for a $40 million stock fraud scheme orchestrated by the Russian mafia, and who had then become an informant against the mafia.[204][205] Trump's attorney has said that Sater worked with Trump scouting real estate opportunities, but was never formally employed.[206]
Use of bankruptcy laws [ edit ]
Trump has never filed for personal bankruptcy, but hotel and casino businesses of his have been declared bankrupt four times between 1991 and 2009 to re-negotiate debt with banks and owners of stock and bonds.[207][208] Because the businesses used Chapter 11 bankruptcy, they were allowed to operate while negotiations proceeded. Trump was quoted by Newsweek in 2011 saying, "I do play with the bankruptcy laws – they're very good for me" as a tool for trimming debt.[82][209]
According to a report by Forbes in 2011, the four bankruptcies were the result of over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City: Trump's Taj Mahal (1991), Trump Plaza Hotel (1992), Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts (2004), and Trump Entertainment Resorts (2009).[210][211] Trump said "I've used the laws of this country to pare debt.... We'll have the company. We'll throw it into a chapter. We'll negotiate with the banks. We'll make a fantastic deal. You know, it's like on The Apprentice. It's not personal. It's just business."[212] He indicated that many "great entrepreneurs" do the same.[210]
1991 [ edit ]
In 1991, Trump Taj Mahal |
, but it often comes with a host of complications, and children in particular usually still need glasses afterward. But now some researchers have shown that it's possible to skip the replacement lens and get stem cells to repair the damage, a procedure that results in fewer complications.
Researchers in China noticed that the eye contains lens epithelial stem/progenitor cells (LECs) that continue to divide, even in forty-year-old adults. Injury can stimulate them to grow into three-dimensional, transparent, light refracting, lens-like structures. Rather than using artificial lenses, these researchers thought, maybe they could get infants to regrow their own new lenses.
First they tried their new procedure in rabbits and baby macaques. Normally, the surgical procedure involves making a large wound and removing most of the LECs with the cataract, as has traditionally been done in order to insert the artificial lens. But if the LECs hold the very key to regenerating a functional lens, this might not be the best way to go about things.
So instead, they made a small wound that preserved the LECs that were already in place while removing only the clouded native lens. By seven weeks, the eyes of the animals that had surgery looked the same as those that hadn’t.
Next they tried their procedure in twelve infants—or, as they helpfully note, twenty-four eyes. Their results in terms of visual acuity six months after surgery were as good as those achieved with the traditional method. But the artificial implants almost always result in complications that further restrict vision—ironically, these problems are due to the abnormal growth of the few residual LECs.
This new, minimally invasive technique reduced the most common complication twenty-fold—only one out of their twelve patients ended up with it, compared to 24 out of 25 control infants who got the traditional procedure at the same time.
Adult cataracts are not the same as the pediatric variety, but since adult LECs have regenerative capacity, perhaps this procedure could be modified to deal with age-related cataracts as well. This first instance of human lens regeneration could well be a step on the path toward using endogenous stem cells to repair other tissues that need regeneration.
Nature, 2016. DOI: 10.1038/nature17181 (About DOIs).Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
A Liverpool FC employee admitted the football club does have a problem with ticket touts while defending claims of malpractice.
Scott Richardson, the club’s head of customer relationship management, addressed the issue at the employment tribunal of the reds former chauffeur.
Dave Sloan, 50, is bringing a case of constructive dismissal against the club he worked at for four years.
Mr Sloan claims he was victimised after he blew the whistle over alleged malpractice at the club including a senior official.
But Mr Richardson denied the allegations of malpractice.
Mr Sloan, of Garston, claims player liaison officer Ray Haughan touted tickets originally intended for circulation within the club and sold them on at a profit.
Speaking at the tribunal today Mr Richardson said: “We do have a problem with ticket touts at Liverpool.
“Like all premiership clubs demand outstrips supply for tickets.
“During my five years at the club we have tried to tackle the issue by getting rid of paper tickets wherever possible.
“However touts are becoming increasingly wise on how to beat the system and we’re trying constantly to outsmart them.”
Mr Richardson claimed he made enquiries after the allegation came to light and Ray Haughan was completely exonerated. He said: “Ray became upset and frustrated during the meeting I had with him where I was asking him about the allegations.
“He talked me through the ticket process and I was completely convinced by his rational explanation of how the system worked.
“I felt I didn’t need to look at any other evidence other than what I had looked at already.”
Mr Sloan claimed he was left feeling ostracised and isolated after he raised his concerns with senior management last year.
He said his already strained working relationship with Mr Haughan, who was his line manager, deteriorated further after he made the allegations against him.
His frustrations came to a head at a Christmas party held at the city’s upmarket Hope Street hotel when he confronted Mr Ayre over his concerns.
The next day Mr Sloan was suspended by the club pending an investigation, and shortly afterwards he was signed off sick with stress.
Mr Richardson – under cross examination by Angela Brennan – said he had repeatedly asked Mr Sloan to attend meetings and said: “I wanted to hear from Dave first hand what had happened, in his own words, but he repeatedly refused to come to meetings.”
Mr Sloan said he had “lost faith” in the club and handed in his resignation on March 7.
The tribunal continues.LOS ANGELES -- Quinton “Rampage” Jackson has fought on three continents over his long mixed martial arts career. In the process, he was exposed to a wide variety of fight fans.
But when the former UFC light heavyweight champion steps into the cage with Chael Sonnen in the first round of the Bellator heavyweight tournament on Jan. 20 in Inglewood, Calif., he won’t be competing for his favorite audience.
The way Jackson sees it, fans in the United States are the worst in mixed martial arts.
“I’ve fought a couple different places in the world,” Jackson told reporters on Wednesday. “I love America, I’m American, but I have to say that American fans are the worst. I have to say it. They can get mad at me. I said it, and it’s something they can work on.”
Jackson believes American fans are quicker to turn on fighters than around the rest of the world, and that their negativity is amplified on social media.
“In America, you’ve got a lot of fair-weather fans, who be cheering for you hard and as soon as you lose a fight, you’re a bum and then they come at you on social media and they give you a lot of slack.”
Jackson contrasts this to his experiences in Japan, where he has some of the best memories of his fighting career from the days he competed in PRIDE.
“When I was fighting in Japan, we didn’t have social media, and if they did talk shit on me, it was in Japanese, so I wouldn’t have known anyway,” Jackson said. “So I still have that type of fighting spirit, I’m still, when I’m fighting for the Japanese fans, when I go there and fight, I want to give an exciting fight, no matter what. I risk losing all the time just to excite the fans. But in America, the fighters are game planning and they’re scared to make mistakes, and everything is super methodical and they fight just to win, they don’t fight to entertain, and it’s making for boring fights a lot.”
Jackson used his decision loss to “King Mo” Lawal at Bellator 175, a rematch of a bout Jackson won via decision three years prior, as an example.
“Fans turn on me whenever I lose a fight,” Jackson said. “Or even my last fight with King Mo, I thought that was a really close fight, all my fights with King Mo were really close.... I didn’t get my hand raised, but the fans talked crap, they talked sh*t, when they can’t do half of what we do. They probably couldn’t even make it through a training camp, nevermind get in there and fight another man.”
“Rampage” finished his critique with a bit of constructive advice, saying that fans can use social media to pick fighters up when they suffer defeats.
“If you’re a fan of a fighter, as soon as they lose, don’t jump ship. That’s when a fighter needs their fans the most. So lift him back up, tell him to get back in the gym and train harder, not jump ship and talk sh*t about us.”There can be no doubt that Japan is the country of vending machines, and this newest model is perhaps the most advanced yet. Developed by Japan-based tech companies Sanden and Okaya (and Intel), this “vending machine 2.0” features a 65-inch see-through display with full HD resolution as the biggest selling point.
When there are no potential customers around, the display shows a digital clock and various animations to attract people. Once a person is standing in front of the machine, a facial recognition system determines the gender and approximate age and serves up personalized ads.
Maker Sanden says the machine’s display can produce text, pictures or animations in HD quality.
The company commands a 30% global market share for vending machines and is also active in the US, meaning this prototype could also make its way over to North America one day.
This video, provided by Diginfo TV, shows how the vending machine works (in English):Henry Chang Wo Jr. learned the Hawaiian cultural practice of limu gathering from his grandmother, mother and aunt. Their primary limu harvest area encompassed the entire Ewa Beach shoreline, from the mouth of the Pearl Harbor channel to Barbers Point.
Young Henry was a reluctant participant in his family’s limu gathering practice when he was recruited (forced?) to be their “bag boy.” He described tedious hours spent collecting, cleaning and preparing limu for their family parties.
It was from all of this hard work that he learned the names of many of our native limu as well as their uses as medicine and uses in Hawaiian cultural and religious practices. It wasn’t until much later in his life did he realize the value of that knowledge.
Kuaaina Ulu Auamo
As his three limu mentors became older and started to slow down, the limu responsibilities fell on his shoulders. Having no one in his family to pass on this important cultural practice, he decided to share his knowledge with anyone and everyone.
Henry Chang Wo Jr. became affectionately known as Uncle Henry. He hosted community groups, school groups as well as individuals to shoreline walks along his beloved limu grounds and inspired an entire generation of limu gatherers, practitioners and researchers.
Uncle Henry started to notice that limu was becoming less and less abundant. The limu along the Ewa Beach shoreline was dying and the decrease in limu abundance correlated with the transition of the Ewa plains from agriculture to urbanization.
Housing development, shopping centers, golf courses and other construction projects were causing the collapse of an important ecosystem that provided food for us, for fish and provided the ability for Uncle Henry and other limu practitioners the ability to continue their traditional Hawaiian practice of limu gathering. Uncle Henry stepped up and stood between his precious limu and the corporate polluters.
Protecting The Ecosystem
Uncle Henry taught us that the story about limu was not confined to the shoreline. He always talked about the importance to malama that “first raindrop on the top of the mountain until that water reaches the ocean.” Limu depends on that freshwater. Urban development prevents the recharging of the underground aquifer and contributes to surface runoff which carries so many pollutants detrimental to limu.
Kuaaina Ulu Auamo
Uncle Henry filed a lawsuit to protect and preserve the fragile ecosystem of Hau Bush (Oneula Beach Park) so limu can once again thrive in that area. Unfortunately, Uncle Henry passed away after battling cancer. He was a selfless champion of bringing back limu to that area and he fought for this literally until his last breath.
Just days before his passing, Uncle requested that the nonprofit organization Kuaaina Ulu Auamo substitute where he left off. This request underscored his abiding commitment, how meaningful this work was to him, and the legacy he hoped others would carry forward. That kuleana is not his alone to fulfill but everyone’s and not just during his lifetime, but for all time.
Uncle Henry’s ashes were spread out at Ewa Beach on Sept. 4. Some of the parties involved in the contested case hearing that Henry took on to protect the Ewa limu patches are now challenging KUA’s standing as a substitute to carry his case forward.
The essence of their argument is that because Henry was a human (and not an institution) who passed away, his claim was personal and died with him. The Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation argues that Henry’s case was for our communities’ interests and for the rights of all Hawaiians to gather from and malama their place.
Uncle Henry’s fight to protect limu and the Ewa shore from the effects of development continues in the Circuit Court through the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation. In 2012 the Board of Land and Natural Resources granted a permit to Haseko Development to lower a berm that would allow increased runoff from development to enter the ocean. Uncle Henry passed away while the BLNR was deciding whether to require a supplemental environmental impact statement for the project as the original EIS was conducted over a decade ago in 2005.
On Sept. 20, the Court will hear argument as to whether KUA can continue to stand in Uncle Henry’s shoes. If successful, the Court will hear argument on the entire appeal on Sept. 29.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption At least two men stormed the hotel, which is popular with tourists
Militants have attacked a hotel in the Libyan capital Tripoli, killing at least nine people including five foreigners, officials say.
Several gunmen stormed the Corinthia Hotel and opened fire in the reception area. A car bomb also exploded nearby.
Unconfirmed reports say some of the assailants have blown themselves up. The officials say the dead include one US and one French citizen.
The security forces say the stand-off has now been brought to an end.
The US state department has confirmed the death of a US citizen, without giving any further details. The dead American is believed to have been a security contractor.
The French national is reported to have been working for Libya's Buraq Air.
There are conflicting reports as to the total number of attackers.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption The security forces say that the operation against gunmen who attacked the hotel is now over
A Twitter account linked to Islamic State said the militant group had carried out the attack.
There has been strong evidence to suggest an IS presence in the eastern Libyan city of Derna since October, with a group there publicly declaring allegiance to its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
However, the command structure is still a mystery to most foreign observers.
The BBC's Rana Jawad in Tripoli says that in the past month there has been a string of incidents in western Libya, including abductions and bombings, that have been claimed by IS social media accounts.
But she says it has not been clearly established whether these groups are IS foot soldiers or people inspired by them.
Attack threat
A civilian who witnessed the attack told the BBC: "I suddenly heard shots and saw people running towards me, and we all escaped from the back [of the hotel] through the underground garage. The hotel did a lockdown after that."
Analysis: BBC's Rana Jawad in Tripoli
The militant group Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack on the Corinthia Hotel, which was housing Omar al-Hassi, prime minister of Tripoli's self-proclaimed government, and the makeshift offices of an unknown number of foreign companies. Although this cannot be verified with absolute certainty, the brutality and style of the siege suggests it was the work of extremists targeting foreigners.
Libya is in a state of political chaos with a security vacuum and there are few reliable sources with whom to check facts. On a day when Tripoli witnessed this brazen and deadly attack, reporters were faced with statements from competing political blocs who seemingly tried to capitalise on the incident.
Mr al-Hassi claimed he was the target. The elected government in the east will use it to make the case for broadening their crackdown on Islamist groups - which some blame for further radicalising some of them.
What it has shown is that this lawless land is making it easy for extremist groups to mushroom.
Different sources at the scene said there were between three and five attackers - footage released later on Tuesday showed the body of a man reported to be one of the militants.
A security source told the BBC that one gunman had been arrested. Four security guards are among the dead and several people are reported to be injured.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Security forces and emergency services surrounded the hotel at the height of the stand-off on Tuesday
One hotel employee told the Associated Press news agency that the hotel was mostly empty at the time of the attack.
Meanwhile, a hotel security source told the BBC that the hotel had received a threat "a few days ago" warning managers "to empty the building".
'Revenge attack'
Housing the few foreigners who remain in the Libyan capital has long been known to be risky, our correspondent says.
The Corinthia Hotel is used by foreign diplomats, government officials and foreign companies. The UN Support Mission in Libya (Unsmil) has hosted several workshops at the hotel.
Libyan internationally recognised Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Thinni condemned the attack and pledged that those responsible for it would be brought to justice.
Federica Mogherini, the EU's foreign affairs chief, also condemned the attack which took place as a second round of peace talks between Libya's warring factions ended in Geneva in what the UN described as a "positive atmosphere".
Image copyright AFP Image caption The hotel is popular with foreign diplomats and government officials
The Twitter account linked to IS said the group had carried out the attack in revenge for the death of Abu Anas al-Liby, a Libyan jihadist who was suspected of involvement in the bombings of two US embassies in East Africa in 1998.
Liby died in a US hospital on 2 January, days before he was due to stand trial.
Libya has been hit by instability since the overthrow of long-time ruler Col Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011.
Numerous militias govern their own patches of territory, with competing governments in Tripoli and the east struggling to exercise control.The Florida Keys partially reopened Tuesday, giving Florida Sea Base staff their first look at the facilities after Hurricane Irma made landfall over the weekend.
We already knew that, thankfully, the Sea Base staff evacuated well before the storm hit. Now we know how the main Sea Base facilities fared.
The damage at the main Sea Base in Islamorada, Fla., is “minimal given the severity of the storm,” says general manager Mike Johnson. “There are many downed palm trees, palm fronds everywhere, downed fences, lots of trash from across the street that has washed into and through our fence, mud on everything, stains on buildings from wind-driven trash, and Sargasso weed all over.”
Damage at the Brinton Environmental Center, located on Summerland Key right near where Irma made landfall, still is not known. The road is closed at mile marker 73 — nearly 50 miles up the keys from Summerland, meaning nobody is allowed down there.
“We can’t get down there,” Johnson says. “As soon as I have some information I will provide it. We’re expecting a lot of cleanup.”
Also still unknown: How Sea Base programs will be affected in 2017 and beyond. I’ll share those updates as soon as I have them.
Read on for more details on the current condition of the Sea Base.
Overview of status of Sea Base
After taking a first look around, here’s Johnson’s report:
Buildings with no damage visible: Thomas Building, scuba dorms, sailing dorms, Adams Building (administrative building), the scuba complex, ship’s store (couldn’t see the roof), T-dock (no visible damage)
Buildings with minimal to moderate damage: Annex (missing roof panels, some siding damage), commissary/ice house (fallen tree on the commissary, missing siding on both buildings), registration building (siding damage), galley (siding damage), maintenance shed (one of the roll up doors is heavily damaged)
Buildings with significant damage: The scuba chickee hut
Staff housing: The four staff houses sustained moderate to severe roof damage. The fence around the property is 50 percent destroyed.
Vehicles: “It doesn’t seem like the storm surge was high enough to have washed into the interiors,” Johnson says.
Fuel: Neither the gas nor the diesel tanks were damaged. There is still no power at the Sea Base, but the fuel will allow staff to run generators soon.
Boats: The Dusky boats at Sea Base are undamaged.
Next steps
Once the Sea Base has power and water, Johnson will contact Philmont to get a crew that can help with cleanup. The teams at each of the BSA’s national high-adventure bases are one big family, and families help each other in times of need.
“There are easily weeks of chain sawing, power washing, basic repair, cleaning and organizing ahead of us,” Johnson says.
As I mentioned on Monday, troops or crews with Sea Base reservations for fall or winter 2017 or spring or summer 2018 should not call or email Sea Base at this time. The base’s staff is extremely busy and has no power. Also, because the mail service has been impacted, crews should not send Sea Base payments at this time.
As for those volunteering to help or send supplies, the time for that will come as well. I’ll share those needs and next steps as soon as I get them from Johnson and his team.The German police have their panties in a bunch over a highly inflammatory sculpture of a urinating policewoman by artist Marcel Walldorf. Entitled "Petra", the hyperrealistic figure depicts a female officer crouched, peeing with buttocks exposed. The most chilling detail is her riot baton casually propped on the wall next to her.
Awarded the 1,000-euro prize by the prestigious Leinemann Foundation for fine arts, the piece has created quite the controversy:
"[The foundation's jury stated], 'It shows very well the difference between the public sphere and the private sphere.'
But Saxony interior minister Markus Ulbig, who is responsible for the state's security services, told the German press he was shocked by the sculpture, which he branded an insult to police officers.
The GdP police union also blasted the piece, saying 'it breached the limits of artistic freedom.'"
Read more.Central District carjacking ends in crash
An armed carjacking went awry Friday morning when the suspects crashed into a power pole about a mile away from where they stole a woman's care, police say.
About 5:30 a.m. four men approached a woman as she was fueling up her car at a gas station at East Cherry Street and 23rd Avenue in Seattle.
The men took the woman's car at gunpoint and drove off, leaving her behind.
A few minutes later, officers went to 25th Avenue South and South Plum Street after receiving a report of a car crashing into a power pole.
Witnesses told police that four men jumped out of the car after the crash and ran away.
Meanwhile, the woman whose car was stolen walked home and called 911 to report the carjacking, and officers determined that the crashed car was hers.
Officers are looking for the suspects.
The woman was unhurt, but her car was damaged in the crash.
The utility pole was broken off by the impact of the crash, causing a power outage in the neighborhood.Translator's note: In this discourse, the Buddha refuses to answer the question of whether there is anyone or anything lying behind the processes described in dependent origination. When his interlocutor asks, for each factor in the causal process, "Which is the X, and whose is the X?" the Buddha equates this with the assumption that " X is one thing, and it is the X of someone/something else." He then equates this with the proposition, which he has rejected many times elsewhere in the discourses, that the life-principle is one thing, and the body is something else, i.e., that there is something unseen lying behind the visible processes of life. However, the Buddha has also rejected, in as many times, the proposition that the life-principle is the same as the body, i.e., that there is nothing unseen lying behind the visible processes of life. Avoiding these two extremes, he simply drops the question and focuses attention on what is directly perceivable — the way one factor in dependent co-arising functions as a prerequisite for the next. If one were to focus on what might or might not lie behind these factors, one would be tied up in speculations about what, by definition, can never be experienced. But by focusing on the interplay of the factors that are directly perceivable, and — by so doing — developing dispassion for them, one can overcome the craving and ignorance that keep producing stress and suffering, and in that way gain release.
Staying at Savatthi... [the Blessed One said,] "From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications... From birth as a requisite condition, then aging-&-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair come into play. Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress & suffering."
When this was said, a certain monk said to the Blessed One: "Which aging & death, lord? And whose is this aging & death?"
"Not a valid question," the Blessed One said. If one were to ask, 'Which aging & death? And whose is this aging & death?' and if one were to ask, 'Is aging & death one thing, and is this the aging & death of someone/something else?' both of them would have the same meaning, even though their words would differ. When there is the view that the soul is the same as the body, there isn't the leading of the holy life. And when there is the view that the soul is one thing and the body another, there isn't the leading of the holy life. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata points out the Dhamma in between: From birth as a requisite condition comes aging & death."
"Which birth, lord? And whose is this birth?"
"Not a valid question," the Blessed One said... "From becoming as a requisite condition comes birth."
"Which becoming, lord? And whose is this becoming?"
"Not a valid question," the Blessed One said... "From clinging as a requisite condition comes becoming."
"Which clinging, lord? And whose is this clinging?"
"Not a valid question," the Blessed One said... "From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging."
"Which craving, lord? And whose is this craving?"
"Not a valid question," the Blessed One said... "From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving."
"Which feeling, lord? And whose is this feeling?"
"Not a valid question," the Blessed One said... "From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling."
"Which contact, lord? And whose is this contact?"
"Not a valid question," the Blessed One said... "From the six sense media as a requisite condition comes contact."
"Which are the six sense media, lord, and whose are the six sense media?"
"Not a valid question," the Blessed One said... "From name-&-form as a requisite condition come the six sense media."
"Which name-&-form, lord? And whose is this name-&-form?"
"Not a valid question," the Blessed One said... "From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-&-form."
"Which consciousness, lord? And whose is this consciousness?"
"Not a valid question," the Blessed One said... "From fabrications as a requisite condition comes consciousness."
"Which fabrications, lord? And whose are the fabrications?"
"Not a valid question," the Blessed One said. "If one were to ask, 'Which are the fabrications, and whose are the fabrications?' and if one were to say, 'Fabrications are one thing, and these fabrications are something/someone else's,' both of them would have the same meaning, even though their words would differ. When there is the view that the life-principle is the same as the body, there is no leading the holy life. And when there is the view that the life-principle is one thing and the body another, there is no leading the holy life. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata points out the Dhamma in between: From ignorance as requisite condition come fabrications. Now from the remainderless fading & cessation of that very ignorance, every one of these writhings & wrigglings & wigglings — 'Which aging & death? And whose is this aging & death?' or 'Is aging & death one thing, and is this the aging & death of someone/something else?' or 'The soul is the same as the body,' or 'The soul is one thing and the body another' — are abandoned, their root destroyed, made like a palmyra stump, deprived of the conditions of development, not destined for future arising."A White House press release congratulating Exxon Mobil Corp. for its recent investment in U.S. manufacturing repeats an exact paragraph from the oil company’s own release, CNN reported Monday.
White House press release plagiarizes paragraph from Exxon press release. pic.twitter.com/hHEKVWUsDn — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 6, 2017
“ExxonMobil is strategically investing in new refining and chemical-manufacturing projects in the U.S. Gulf Coast region to expand its manufacturing and export capacity. The company’s Growing the Gulf expansion program, consists of 11 major chemical, refining, lubricant and liquefied natural gas projects at proposed new and existing facilities along the Texas and Louisiana coasts. Investments began in 2013 and are expected to continue through at least 2022,” both releases read.
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The oil company plans to invest $20 billion in manufacturing in the U.S. Gulf coast region. The White House, following Exxon Mobil's announcement, praised the move by the energy company.
“This is exactly the kind of investment, economic development and job creation that will help put Americans back to work,” Trump said in the White House press release.
Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump railed against trade deals that he said took jobs away from American workers, vowing to bring manufacturing jobs back to he United States.
“Many of the products that will be manufactured here in the United States by American workers will be exported to other countries, improving our balance of trade. This is a true American success story. In addition, the jobs created are paying on average $100,000 per year,” the president added.
Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, previously served as the CEO of Exxon Mobil from 2006 to 2016. Tillerson retired from his position with the company before going through the Senate confirmation process for the Cabinet post.For other people named James Tobin, see James Tobin (disambiguation)
James Tobin (March 5, 1918 – March 11, 2002) was an American economist who served on the Council of Economic Advisers and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and taught at Harvard and Yale Universities. He developed the ideas of Keynesian economics, and advocated government intervention to stabilize output and avoid recessions. His academic work included pioneering contributions to the study of investment, monetary and fiscal policy and financial markets. He also proposed an econometric model for censored endogenous variables, the well-known "Tobit model". Tobin received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1981.
Outside academia, Tobin was widely known for his suggestion of a tax on foreign exchange transactions, now known as the "Tobin tax". This was designed to reduce speculation in the international currency markets, which he saw as dangerous and unproductive.
Life and career [ edit ]
Early life [ edit ]
Tobin[4] was born on March 5, 1918, in Champaign, Illinois. His father was Louis Michael Tobin, (b. 1879) a journalist working at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. His father had fought in World War I, was a member of the first Greek organization at Illinois (Delta Tau Delta fraternity Beta Upsilon chapter), and was credited as the inventor of 'Homecoming'. His mother, Margaret Edgerton Tobin (b. 1893), was a social worker. Tobin followed primary school at the University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois, a laboratory school in the university's campus.
In 1935, on his father's advice, Tobin took the entrance exams for Harvard University. Despite no special preparation for the exams, he passed and was admitted with a national scholarship from the university. During his studies he first read Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936. Tobin graduated summa cum laude in 1939 with a thesis centered on a critical analysis of Keynes' mechanism for introducing equilibrium involuntary unemployment. His first published article, in 1941, was based on this senior's thesis.[5]
Tobin immediately started graduate studies, also at Harvard, earning his M.A. degree in 1940. In 1941, he interrupted graduate studies to work for the Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply and the War Production Board in Washington, D.C. The next year, after the United States entered World War II, he enlisted in the US Navy, spending the war as an officer on a destroyer, including, among possible others, the USS Kearny (DD-432).[6] At the end of the war he returned to Harvard and resumed studies, receiving his Ph.D. in 1947 with a thesis on the consumption function written under the supervision of Joseph Schumpeter.[7] In 1947 Tobin was elected a Junior Fellow of Harvard's Society of Fellows, which allowed him the freedom and funding to spend the next three years studying and doing research.
Academic activity and consultancy [ edit ]
In 1950 Tobin moved to Yale University, where he remained for the rest of his career. He joined the Cowles Foundation, which moved to Yale in 1955, also serving as its president between 1955–1961 and 1964–1965. His main research interest was to provide microfoundations to Keynesian economics, with a special focus on monetary economics. One of his frequent collaborators was his Yale colleague William Brainard. In 1957 Tobin was appointed Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale.[8]
Besides teaching and research, Tobin was also strongly involved in the public life, writing on current economic issues and serving as an economic expert and policy consultant. During 1961–62, he served as a member of John F. Kennedy's Council of Economic Advisors, under the chairman Walter Heller, then acted as a consultant between 1962–68. Here, in close collaboration with Arthur Okun, Robert Solow and Kenneth Arrow, he helped design the Keynesian economic policy implemented by the Kennedy administration. Tobin also served for several terms as a member of the Board of Governors of Federal Reserve System Academic Consultants and as a consultant of the US Treasury Department.[9]
Tobin was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 1955 and, in 1981, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. He was a fellow of several professional associations, holding the position of president of the American Economic Association in 1971.
In 1972 Tobin, along with fellow Yale economics professor William Nordhaus, published Is Growth Obsolete?,[10] an article that introduced the Measure of Economic Welfare as the first model for economic sustainability assessment, and economic sustainability measurement.
In 1982–1983, Tobin was Ford Visiting Research Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.[11] In 1988 he formally retired from Yale, but continued to deliver some lectures as Professor Emeritus and continued to write. He died on March 11, 2002, in New Haven, Connecticut.
Tobin was a trustee of Economists for Peace and Security.[12]
Personal life [ edit ]
James Tobin married Elizabeth Fay Ringo, a former M.I.T. student of Paul Samuelson, on September 14, 1946. They had four children: Margaret Ringo (born in 1948), Louis Michael (born in 1951), Hugh Ringo (born in 1953) and Roger Gill (born in 1956). In late June, 2009, the family announced via a private email that Tobin's wife had died at the age of 90.
Legacy [ edit ]
In August 2009 in a roundtable interview in Prospect magazine, Adair Turner supported the idea of new global taxes on financial transactions, warning that the "swollen" financial sector paying excessive salaries had grown too big for society. Lord Turner's suggestion that a "Tobin tax" – named after James Tobin – should be considered for financial transactions made headlines around the world.
Tobin's Tobit model of regression with censored endogenous variables (Tobin 1958a) is a standard econometric technique. His "q" theory of investment (Tobin 1969), the Baumol–Tobin model of the transactions demand for money (Tobin 1956), and his model of liquidity preference as behavior toward risk (the asset demand for money) (Tobin 1958b) are all staples of economics textbooks.
In his 1958 article Tobin also led the way in showing how to deal with utility maximization under uncertainty with an infinite number of possible states. As Palda explains "One way to get out of the mess of figuring out asset prices using a model of maximizing the expected utility of investing in stocks is to make assumptions about either preferences or the probabilities of the different possible states of the world. Nobellist James Tobin (1958) took this line and discovered that in some cases you do not need to worry about the utility of income in thousands of states, and the attached probabilities, to solve the consumer's choice on how to spread income among states. When preferences contain only a linear and a squared term (a case of diminishing returns) or the probabilities of different stock returns follow a normal distribution (an equation that contains a linear and squared terms as parameters), a simple formulation of a person's investment choices becomes possible. Under Tobin's assumptions we can reformulate the person's decision problem as being one of trading off risk and expected return. Risk, or more precisely the variance of your investment portfolio creates spread in the returns you expect. People are willing to assume more risk only if compensated by a higher level of expected return. One can thus think of a tradeoff people are willing to make between risk and expected return. They invest in risky assets to the point at which their willingness to trade off risk and return is equal to the rate at which they able to trade them off. It is difficult to exaggerate how brilliant is the simplification of the investment problem that flows from these assumptions. Instead of worrying about the investor's optimization problem in potentially millions of possible states of the world, one need only worry about how the investor can trade off risk and return in the stock market."[13]
Publications [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
CNET
Being rich is wonderful.
At least that's the assumption the whole world seems to |
ude at its finest (or worst…)
Select from three different modes.
Then choose from 12 characters, including two felines. Right away that tells you the developer (NCS, who also made Cybernator) didn’t take themselves too seriously. Keep in mind back in the mid ’90s golf games tended to be a little dull. This game, however, was packed with personality and charm.
After selecting your character you get to pick your theme. There are six themed worlds in all, with each having 8 courses. That makes 48 total courses. They range from a beach setting to even outer space. My personal favorite has to be the second world. Here you are mysteriously shrunken down to size and have to work around everyday objects such as coffee mugs, ink spills, giant cereal boxes, tomatoes and more. It’s absolutely bonkers…
What makes this game so much fun is the amount of options you have. Just look at the process of hitting the ball. First, you get to select from a power meter ranging from 1 to 100. This becomes oddly compelling in its own right. It almost becomes like a game within a game. For instance, do you use 47 or 52? 77 or 79? 91 or 94? Sometimes one point off can prove to be the difference between glorious victory and crushing defeat. It’s a thrill to see your ball barely make its way into the hole. On the flip side, nothing is more embarrassing than misjudging the power meter by one point and seeing your ball stop a mere centimeter shy of the goal!
After selecting your power, you then get to choose from one of 17 (!) different strike points on the ball. Much like pool, these strike points will determine the trajectory of your shot. While you’ll be using the dead center shot most of the time, there are times where using the trajectory shots skillfully is essential to winning. Like I said, it’s kind of like a game within a game. You’re not only battling three rivals… you’re battling yourself as well. And it works like gangbusters!
There are even weather effects and power-ups. There are at least 11 ranging from controlling your ball after hitting it to randomly switching all the balls in play. That means you can possibly swap places with a rival who is near the cup and send them way back to the beginning of a course! Sabotage never felt so sweet.
Also, each of the 48 courses have four randomly generated cup destinations. This prevents you from mastering a course simply by memorizing a certain playbook. It speaks to the game’s brilliance that there are nearly 200 possible scenarios. Add in the 17 strike points, the power meter, the wind factor, the power-ups and you get a game that feels slightly different each time you play it.
BS Out of Bounds Golf is a total riot with three friends. Expect a lot of cursing, laughing, cheering and taunting. It brings out the best and worst in people — it’s amusing to see individual personalities come out in their truest forms. There’s no other game quite like this on the SNES. And that’s why this is my favorite obscure Super Famicom game of all time.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
There are a lot of good games that didn’t quite make this list, like the Parodius games. You probably didn’t agree with all of my choices but I hope this list was helpful in some way. If you found even just one new game to love from this list, then I’m happy. And remember, I purposely excluded all the awesome Super Famicom only (action) RPGs! The library is amazingly diverse and deep. Some of these games I listed are fairly well known in SNES circles, but I feel there’s still a good bunch of them that remains rather obscure. I hope this Top 50 list serves as a good resource for you and that it helps you to unearth a few new favorites. Until next time, happy gaming!16 Posted Mar 27, 2013, 3:17 PM ThaLoveDocta Registered User Join Date: Oct 2010 Posts: 170 Quote: JM1 Originally Posted by I am not opposed to tall buildings in this area but several things spring to mind.
1. Some of these buildings are on very small footings. I look at the footprint for the Claridge Icon and wonder how it will ever support 40+ stories. I believe this area used to be swamp, so I wonder how easy it will be to keep these buildings straight.
2. The infrastructure is not there. Roads are definitely not there so all these people better take transit. But this leads to other problems. Try catching a bus from Carling and Preston to go East. The 101 and 102 make all sorts of irritating twists and turns before they get on the transitway. The Carling intersection with Bronson is already a nightmare at rush hours.
3. Expansion of the O-train is still years away, and accomodating this kind of population probably requires a direct connection to downtown (no transfer at Bayview).
4. Blasting required to (eventually) twin the O-train track will wreak havoc on the foundations of these tall condominiums (which are already supported by very small footings).
5. A tall building at the Dow Honda site and/or the Civic Parking lot (champagne and Carling) will likely make it very difficult to make a future connection between the Bayview/Carling O-train and a Westbound Carling LRT (which would likely need to be a no-transfer connection).
Where there's a will, there's a way.
Q#2: Not to mention the "get out and push" routine at Bronson and Carling in a snow storm. I would like to see the city address a solution to this asap as well.
Q#3: This might be a 'chicken and egg' scenario. and unfortunately the 'build access and they will come' mentality doesn't usually pan out. (example: Mirabel airport) Usually the density comes first, with the right plan in place, and the access will follow after several years of headaches for the early adopters. Can you imagine the uproar if the city built a train to service, for example, Carp or Russell today in anticipation of future development?
Q#4: I would be more concerned about the older buildings to be honest. The new earthquake and deflection requirements will more than cover the new buildings from the blasting (structurally). The noise and annoyance is another issue altogether though.
Q#5: I have no expertise here - but certainly seems like a valid point. Q#1: probably piles and caps, or a combination of piles, caps, rock anchors, and grade beams, depending on the geo-technical details.Where there's a will, there's a way.Q#2: Not to mention the "get out and push" routine at Bronson and Carling in a snow storm. I would like to see the city address a solution to this asap as well.Q#3: This might be a 'chicken and egg' scenario. and unfortunately the 'build access and they will come' mentality doesn't usually pan out. (example: Mirabel airport) Usually the density comes first, with the right plan in place, and the access will follow after several years of headaches for the early adopters. Can you imagine the uproar if the city built a train to service, for example, Carp or Russell today in anticipation of future development?Q#4: I would be more concerned about the older buildings to be honest. The new earthquake and deflection requirements will more than cover the new buildings from the blasting (structurally). The noise and annoyance is another issue altogether though.Q#5: I have no expertise here - but certainly seems like a valid point.Immediately following the passage of a California proposition that would dramatically curtail the online, First Amendment rights of registered sex offenders, two civil rights groups filed a lawsuit to block parts of the overwhelmingly approved measure.
*UPDATE: Citing First Amendment concerns, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson in San Francisco agreed with the plaintiffs, and late Wednesday tentatively blocked enforcement of the measure (.pdf) pending further litigation. *
Proposition 35, which passed with 81 percent of the vote Tuesday, would require that anyone who is a registered sex offender – including people with misdemeanor offenses such as indecent exposure and whose offenses were not related to activity on the internet – would have to turn over to law enforcement a list of all identifiers they use online as well as a list of service providers they use.
The Californians Against Sexual Exploitation Act would force sex offenders to fork over to law enforcement their e-mail addresses, user and screen names, or any other identifier they used for instant messaging, for social networking sites or at online forums and in internet chat rooms.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed their suit (.pdf) on behalf of two registered sex offenders, say that although the measure is vaguely worded, in practice it likely means that registered sex offenders would have to provide user and screen names that they use for participation in online political discussion groups, forums about medical conditions, and even the comment sections of online newspapers and blogs.
"Requiring people to give up their right to speak freely and anonymously about civic matters is unconstitutional, and restrictions like this damage robust discussion and debate on important and controversial topics," says Hanni Fakhoury, an EFF attorney. “When the government starts gathering online profiles for one class of people, we all need to worry about the precedent it sets."
The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco federal court, is demanding that a judge immediately block the measure's internet-reporting provisions. No hearing has been set.
Michael Risher, an ACLU attorney, said Californians should be concerned that even though the bill only affects registered sex offenders now, the law creates a slippery slope for the same requirements to be applied to others.
He points, for example, to a California DNA-collection law that has expanded dramatically beyond the people it first targeted. Initially, the law required only those convicted of sex offenses and serious felonies to provide authorities with a DNA sample to be included in a state and federal database. But in 2004, this expanded to anyone convicted of a felony, and in 2009, to anyone simply arrested for a felony.
While voters might have passed the measure because they don't care about the rights of sex offenders, Risher says, "The ability to speak freely and even anonymously is crucial for free speech to remain free for all of us."
The measure would currently affect some 73,000 sex offenders registered in California, but the law also requires those convicted of human trafficking to register as sex offenders, thus widening the pool of people affected.
Those who breach the new requirements could be found in violation of their post-prison supervision requirements or in breach of sex-offender registration laws that require offenders to provide authorities with their residential address whenever they move. Sex offenders must turn over their online information to the law enforcement agency where they are registered, but those agencies may share the data with the California Department of Justice.In the six years since Oprah Winfrey's syndicated talk show went off the air, she has missed hearing from Americans.
"The thing I miss the most is the connection to the audience," Winfrey tells 60 Minutes Overtime's Ann Silvio in the video above. "I prided myself on having my finger on the pulse of what people are thinking."
Now Winfrey's back in the conversation, as she joins 60 Minutes for the broadcast's 50th season premiere. For her first 60 Minutes report, Winfrey interviewed a diverse group of voters to talk about the deep political divide in America.
"The thing I miss the most is the connection to the audience. I prided myself on having my finger on the pulse of what people are thinking."
The panel of 14 participants was assembled by Frank Luntz, a pioneer in the use of focus groups and a contributor to CBS News. Seven participants voted for President Trump; seven did not. Their conversation took place last month in a converted power plant in Grand Rapids and aired on 60 Minutes this week in a story titled "Divided." Filmed with nine cameras around a table hand-made by the 60 Minutes crew, the story was produced by Graham Messick and Tanya Simon.
Executive producer Jeff Fager says "Divided" is expected to be the first in a series panel discussions with diverse groups of American voters about the country's political divide. Throughout the season, Winfrey and a team of 60 Minutes producers will go on the road to other cities and towns across America to host similar panel discussions, which will air on the broadcast.
"The plan is to do it at least three times a year," Fager tells 60 Minutes Overtime. "We'll decide where we want to go, what we want to talk about, but it doesn't feel like it's going away—this sort of divided America—and we want to stay on it."
Winfrey and 60 Minutes Executive Producer Jeff Fager CBS News
For Winfrey, the 60 Minutes shoot in Grand Rapids is a return to her roots as a news reporter.
"I started out in news, roaming the streets, looking for stories, covering courts and fires, and chasing ambulances," Winfrey tells Overtime's Silvio. "Going out with the 60 Minutes crew for the very first time, I had all of these sense memories of sitting with the crew, setting up the interview that I hadn't done since my 20s. So it felt like a full circle moment."
60 Minutes producers did not tell the Grand Rapids roundtable participants—which included a farmer, a drug counselor, and a former auto factory worker—that Winfrey would be moderating their discussion. When she first walked into the room, the table erupted in reaction at the sight of Winfrey. But as soon as the conversation got underway, turning to President Trump and his policies, it became serious, intimate, and, at times, heated.
60 Minutes talks immigration with a farmer
In her interview with 60 Minutes Overtime, Winfrey acknowledges that viewers of the story may be aware of her own political stripes. In fact, one of the participants of this week's panel told a 60 Minutes producer that he would not have participated had he known in advance that Winfrey would moderate the discussion. But Winfrey says he changed his mind after speaking with her.
Winfrey tells Overtime, "There is a certain level of credibility and trust that I bring to the table, because regardless of who I voted for or didn't vote for, I'm gonna try to be fair."
What 60 Minutes means to Oprah
The mission of the story was to hear from both sides of the divide, and what Winfrey and Fager aim to do with the series is to encourage regular Americans to keep talking politics — and, more importantly, to listen to those who may disagree.
"One of the things that happens when you're in this kind of a divide is that people aren't talking to each other who disagree," says Fager. "So even in your own family, there is a reluctance to bring it up. It's good— I think it's healthy to hear it."
After the 60 Minutes crew left Grand Rapids, a mix of roundtable participants from across political lines continued talking. Some of them also gathered at a shooting range to talk about gun rights. Winfrey found that news encouraging.
"What would be my great hope is that somebody else sees this [60 Minutes story]…and says, 'Maybe I'll try that in my church, in my community,'" Winfrey says. "'Maybe I will just be a little more open to say, Why do you think that way?'"
Video of Oprah Winfrey reporting in Nashville courtesy of WTVF
Photos of The Oprah Winfrey Show courtesy of Harpo, Inc./ George BurnsReport says true scale of trafficked children who have gone missing is unclear as many local authorities lack data on how many are in their care
Child trafficking victims and unaccompanied children are going missing from local authority care at an “alarming” rate according to a new report, which reveals that in one year, nearly 30% of all UK child trafficking victims and 13% of unaccompanied children disappeared from care services.
New research by child trafficking NGO Ecpat UK and the charity Missing People has found that 167 of the 590 children suspected or identified as child trafficking victims in the year from September 2014 to 2015 vanished from foster and care homes across the country.
An additional 593 of the 4,744 unaccompanied children placed under the protection of local authorities also went missing at least once in the same time period. Of the 760 trafficked or unaccompanied children who disappeared from care, 207 have never been found.
The new data, drawn largely from freedom of information requests to 217 local authorities across the UK, shows that Thurrock, Hillingdon, Croydon, Kent County Council and Surrey had the highest numbers of trafficked and unaccompanied children who were unaccounted for. One local authority reported that 22 child trafficking victims had gone missing in the recorded time period.
The majority of child trafficking victims who vanished from care are from Vietnam, Albania and the UK. Most of the unaccompanied children who went missing are from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Albania and Vietnam.
Despite the high numbers, Ecpat says that the real scale of the UK’s missing child trafficking victims is still not accurately reflected in the data.
Chloe Setter, Ecpat UK’s head of advocacy and policy, said there was “huge concern” that only 45 of the 217 local authorities asked for information were able or willing to provide data on the numbers of children whose whereabouts were still unknown.
“I think what is most alarming about this survey isn’t the data we’ve received, it is the data that we haven’t,” said Setter.
“Twenty per cent of the local authorities we contacted could not even report how many children in their care were [formally] identified or suspected of being trafficked. Only 10 local authorities could report the nationalities of the trafficked children who had disappeared. It is unacceptable that we can’t get a clear picture on how many exploited children are simply falling off the radar and, in the case of trafficked children, presumed to be back in the hands of their exploiters. These are hundreds of children who have simply vanished from places where they should have been protected.”
It is unacceptable that we can't get a clear picture on how many exploited children are simply falling off the radar Chloe Setter, Ecpat
The report also underscores issues with identification and recording practices. Despite London being a prime destination for human traffickers, 10 of 33 local authorities reported zero trafficked children, and an additional four local authorities were unable to provide any information.
“There has to be an improved data recording system put in place for trafficked and missing children,” said Setter. “Many of the authorities we asked couldn’t even search for these children in their existing databases.”
The report cites various reasons for the children going missing, from the failure of the government to identify trafficked children, to the influence and control of traffickers, lack of trust in adults and lack of consistent support. Poor protection measures, as well as asylum and immigration concerns, were also noted.
Ecpat and Missing Children say that in order to stem the flow of exploited children disappearing from care services, the child protection system must be expanded to introduce specific training on child trafficking and unaccompanied children and investment in appropriate accommodation and support services.
3,000 children enslaved in Britain after being trafficked from Vietnam Read more
Lynne Chitty, UK care director at the anti-trafficking charity Love146, said she was not surprised by the findings of the report and expected the numbers to continue to rise if urgent safeguarding policies were not implemented immediately.
“Every week we see children going missing, most within 24 hours of arriving in care, and we know child trafficking victims are largely going back to their traffickers,” she said. “Many are in debt bondage or have been given a number to call as soon as they get taken into care. They aren’t getting the protection, services or support they need to stop them from believing that their traffickers are the only option for them here.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: “It is vital that children in care are protected from harm. We have already strengthened regulations on children’s homes, and local authorities have a duty to tell us about all incidents of young people going missing.
“But we know trafficked and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are especially vulnerable. That’s why we have commissioned specialist training for those caring for them, committed to an independent advocate in each area to help champion their rights and outlined clear plans for a new government strategy to look at their particular needs, including reviewing the accommodation available.”Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen joins Matt Barrie to discuss his preparation for Monday's Boston Marathon and the music he'll be listening to during the race to stay motivated. (1:52)
Mississippi State Bulldogs coach Dan Mullen is running in Monday's Boston Marathon, despite never having even run a 5K. He arrived in Boston on Sunday after coaching in Mississippi State's spring game on Saturday, and picked up his bib, identifying him as runner 29,394, from Starkville. Starkville, Michigan, that is.
The postal code for Mississippi is MS, not MI. It's an easy mistake to make, but Michigan and Michigan State fans might be a bit concerned that they suddenly have an SEC team in their backyard. Then again, maybe Starkville's sudden relocation is just a way for Mullen to get around the NCAA's ban on satellite camps (OK, probably not).
Mullen, who went to high school in Manchester, New Hampshire, about 70 miles north of the race's starting line, is running on a sponsor's exemption to help raise money for his family's foundation.History Edit
Hamina (80) (80) The vessels were built in the late 1990s, early 2000s, and are the fourth generation of Finnish missile craft. The first vessel was ordered in December 1996 and the fourth was handed over on 19 June 2006. Since the launch of the Helsinki-class missile boats, all fast attack craft have been named after Finnish coastal cities. The class was previously known also as Rauma 2000 following its predecessor the Rauma class. The four vessels form what the Finnish Navy calls Squadron 2000 (Finnish: Laivue 2000). Initially the Finnish Navy considered several different compositions for the new squadron, and at one point only two Hamina-class vessels and four Tuuli-class ACV were to have been built. After a strategic shift of the Finnish Navy's role, the composition of the Squadron 2000 followed suit. The Tuuli-class prototype was never fully equipped, nor fitted for operational use and its three sisters were cancelled, instead two more Hamina-class boats have been built; with some of the equipment intended for the Tuulis being used in the Haminas. The fourth and final Hamina-class vessel was delivered in summer 2006. The squadron reached its full operational capability in 2008 and have greatly improved the surface- and air surveillance as well as air defense capability of the Finnish Navy. Their electronic surveillance suite also increases the quality of information available to military leaders. All ships were built at Aker Finnyards in Rauma, Finland. The vessels have their home base at Upinniemi. In March 2014 it was announced that the Hamina-class missile boats will be upgraded in the near future.[2] |
Modernization of the four Hamina-class ships began in 2018 and will complete in 2021, The MLU programme will enable the Haminas to continue their service into the mid 2030's. The main gun armament is being changed from 57mm to 40mm in order to save weight. The vessels were already at maximum weight and in order to introduce torpedoes this had to be changed. Weaponry Original After modernization 1 × Bofors 57 mm dual-purpose gun (transferred to Pohjanmaa class) 1 × Bofors 40 mm Mk.4 dual-purpose gun 2 x 12,7mm machine guns 1 x Saab Trackfire remote weapon station with a 12,7mm machine gun none Initially Torped 45, later Torped 47 RBS15 SFIII anti-ship missile Gabriel Mk.5 anti-ship missile Atlas ANCS 2000 combat system Saab 9LV combat management system none Kongsberg ST2400 towed sonar (from Rauma class) Saab Ceres 200 radar and optronic tracking fire control director updated Saab Ceres 200 radar and optronic tracking fire control director TRS-3D phased array C-band radar updated TRS-3D phased array C-band radar [3][4]
Design Edit
The vessel's hull is constructed of aluminum and the superstructures are constructed of re-enforced carbon fiber composite. The vessels have a very low displacement and are very maneuverable. They are equipped with water jets instead of propellers, which allow them to operate in very shallow waters and accelerate, slow down and turn in unconventional ways. The Hamina class are very potent vessels, boasting surveillance and firepower capacities which are usually found in ships twice the size. Stealth technology Edit Hanko, photographed in the Gulf of Finland in 2009, photographed in the Gulf of Finland in 2009 The Hamina class has been designed and constructed as stealth ships with minimal magnetic, heat and radar signatures. The shape of the vessel has been designed to reduce radar signature. Metal parts have been covered with radar absorbent material, and the composite parts have radar absorbent material embedded in the structure. Radar transparent materials have been used where applicable. Unlike glass fiber, carbon fiber blocks radio waves. This protects ship's electronics against electromagnetic pulse. In addition, it stops any radio frequency signals generated by ships electronic devices escaping outside. Except for the bridge, the vessel has no windows that would allow the signals to escape. The vessel contains hardly any steel parts, thus generating very low magnetic field. The remaining magnetic field is actively canceled with electromagnets. Exhaust gases can be directed underwater to minimize thermal signature, or up in the air to minimize sound in submarines direction. 50 nozzles around the decks and upper structures can be used to spray seawater on the vessel to cool it. In addition, the nozzles can be used to clean the ship after chemical attack or radioactive fall-out. Weapons Edit The Hamina class have the latest in surveillance and weapons technology all integrated into an intelligent command system. A Hamina class vessel can monitor about 200 kilometres (120 mi) of air space and its Umkhonto surface-to-air missile system can simultaneously engage a maximum of eight aircraft, up to 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) away, while the vessel's anti-ship missiles have a range in excess of over 250 kilometres (160 mi). The Hamina class' primary weaponry is four RBS-15 Mk.3 anti-ship missiles. The vessels are further equipped with a Bofors 57 mm gun against surface and aerial targets as well as the Umkhonto-IR surface-to-air missiles, MASS decoy system and two 12.7 mm heavy machine guns. It is also possible to use the ships for mine-laying. The software of the centralized combat control system is COTS oriented, built on top of Linux running on redundant x86 rack servers, which makes maintenance and future updates and optimizations simpler. In early 2018, Finland announced the mid-life upgrade program, which will equip all four boats in the class with new Swedish lightweight anti-submarine warfare torpedoes in the years 2023-2025 and extend the life of the boats to 2035 [5].
Vessels Edit
FNS Hamina Pennant number: 80 Builder: Aker Finnyards Ordered: December 1996 Commissioned: 24 August 1998 Home base: Upinniemi Current status: In active service. FNS Tornio Tornio (81) (81) Pennant number: 81 Builder: Aker Finnyards Ordered: 15 February 2001 Commissioned: 12 May 2003 Home base: Upinniemi Current status: In active service FNS Hanko Pennant number: 82 Builder: Aker Finnyards Ordered: 3 December 2003 Commissioned: 22 June 2005 Home base: Upinniemi Current status: In active service Pori (83) (83) FNS Pori Pennant number: 83 Builder: Aker Finnyards Ordered: 15 February 2005 Commissioned: 19 June 2006 Home base: Upinniemi Current status: In active service
Similar ships Edit
References Edit
Further reading EditAwesome Stuff: Earbuds Are So Last Decade
from the moving-on... dept
Okay, this first one isn't just about the sound, but it's the sound part that stands out. Ever since the Pebble smartwatch became the most successful Kickstarter project ever, a number of other smartwatches have popped up on Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and some other crowdfunding platforms as well. I got one of the original Pebbles, and it's really made me rethink the watch as a computing device/accessory to a smartphone. I'd stopped wearing watches years ago, but the Pebble has actually made my phone much more useful, and I already realize that we're only seeing the very, very early stages of what can be done with smartwatches. In fact, many of the crowdfunded watches that have followed have raised the bar with cool new features. The latest, the HOT Watch, takes things to a new level: with a bizarre speaker/projection system built into the watchband that lets you cup your hand over your ear and use your hand as if it were a phone. This picture shows how it works: The little thing sticking out of the watchband projects the sound up, and (they claim) it's just like holding a regular phone conversation -- private to you so others can't hear it. The video also demonstrates how it works, though I'd imagine some people might question the quality. The smartwatch itself has some other cool features, including multitouch screen, gesture commands and a variety of other stuff. Basically, if it's been in another smartwatch, it's in this one too. Of course, if you thought that people looked goofy talking on those tiny bluetooth headsets, I'd imagine that you might think holding your empty hand up to your ear might look fairly goofy as well. Also, I'd imagine that this won't suffice as a "handsfree" option while driving, though it might confuse the hell out of police if they pull you over. Either way, this project shot past its initial goal very quickly and still has about a month left.
, and I already realize that we're only seeing the very, very early stages of what can be done with smartwatches. In fact, many of the crowdfunded watches that have followed have raised the bar with cool new features. The latest, the HOT Watch, takes things to a new level: with a bizarre speaker/projection system built into the watchband that lets you and use your hand as if it were a phone. This picture shows how it works: The little thing sticking out of the watchband projects the sound up, and (they claim) it's just like holding a regular phone conversation -- private to you so others can't hear it. The video also demonstrates how it works, though I'd imagine some people might question the quality. The smartwatch itself has some other cool features, including multitouch screen, gesture commands and a variety of other stuff. Basically, if it's been in another smartwatch, it's in this one too. Of course, if you thought that people looked goofy talking on those tiny bluetooth headsets, I'd imagine that you might think holding your empty hand up to your ear might look fairly goofy as well. Also, I'd imagine that this won't suffice as a "handsfree" option while driving, though it might confuse the hell out of police if they pull you over. Either way, this project shot past its initial goal very quickly and still has about a month left. Next up, we've got the Sound Band, which is designed to be a direct replacement for today's earbuds, but without putting anything in or over your ears. Instead, it uses surface sound technology, touching your head right behind your ears, to make it work. The contraption hangs over the top of your ears, but wraps around the back of your head with the actual surface sound touch part hiding behind your ears. Basically, if you see someone wearing it from head on, you probably won't even notice that they're wearing a form of headphones. The benefits of this are that you can still hear other stuff out of your ears -- which can be a real problem with earbuds that shut off all the sound around you. Of course, there are some situations where people like using earbuds or headphones to block out all other sounds, but you could see areas where this would be cool. Though, again like the project above, there are elements about using this where people might look at you like a crazy person because it will look like you're talking to yourself with nothing in your ear. Also, from behind your head, it definitely has a fairly dorky look to it, with a giant rectangle dangling on your neck. Still, I'm guessing many people might just think you've got hearing problems and have a hearing aid. The project hasn't quite reached its goal of $175,000, but it's not that far away, and still has well over a month left, so will almost definitely surpass the goal.
out of your ears -- which can be a real problem with earbuds that shut off all the sound around you. Of course, there are some situations where people using earbuds or headphones to block out all other sounds, but you could see areas where this would be cool. Though, again like the project above, there are elements about using this where people might look at you like a crazy person because it will look like you're talking to yourself with nothing in your ear. Also,, it definitely has a fairly dorky look to it, with a giant rectangle dangling on your neck. Still, I'm guessing many people might just think you've got hearing problems and have a hearing aid. The project hasn't quite reached its goal of $175,000, but it's not that far away, and still has well over a month left, so will almost definitely surpass the goal. And, finally, we've got the Syphon Soundwrap. It is what it says, basically. It's a "wrap" that acts as a sort of headphone, without having to use earbuds. The target market is people involved in action sports -- so you would put this wrap inside a helmet or a hat while you ride a motorcycle, a bike or go snowboarding or something -- and be able to listen to your music, without having to have earbuds sticking in the whole time (which can start to hurt if you wear them too long). These guys had a much more modest goal of $20,000, and are already just a bit over it with about a week and a half left to go. The market may be a lot smaller and more targeted than the general use market, but it seems that within that market, there's pretty good interest.
If you're of a certain age, you'll remember what the headphones for the original walkmen looked like. Of course, nowadays they look pretty dated. How long will it be until today's earbuds face the same fate? Today's awesome stuff post looks at three crowdfunding projects that look at rather different ways to get sound into your head.And that's it this week. Go spend some quality time with your earbuds, because they might soon be a thing of the past.
Filed Under: awesome stuff, earbuds, smartwatch, sound, surface soundMark Saunders of Thought Catalog thinks there's such a thing as "female privilege," and he's pretty angry about it, angry enough to publish 18 ways women benefit from being women.
As a fellow white male (I'm also straight and cisgender), I can't help but cringe at Saunder's apparent lack of education on the concept of privilege, a term meant to describe the way in which people who are born a certain way wholly benefit from a system that specifically defaults to catering to them.
The site Everyday Sexism, created by Laura Bates, has done a remarkable job of bringing the concept of privilege we see every day to a wider audience while also helping all, regardless of gender.
Because Saunders and many other white men can't see (or refuse to see) how this system benefits them doesn't mean privilege isn't there. Further, instead of recognizing how patriarchal values hurt everyone, regardless of gender, Saunders — without taking the time to educate himself or evaluate the enormous field of research and analysis on privilege — feels free to appropriate the term and cloak himself as a victim at the hands of women who have the audacity to demand equality in a society that routinely classifies them as second class citizens.
So, Mr. Saunders, here's a realistic take on your list of "Oh my gosh, I am so oppressed as a white male" grievances:
1. Male privilege is being able to walk in public without being sexually harassed on a regular basis. It's the ability to largely not consider one's own safety as a priority in any public environment because Mark, here's a clue on rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment: It happens everywhere, not just dark streets at night in which you're inconvenienced for five seconds by having to move across the street because the woman walking toward you has become conditioned over a lifetime to be aware of your presence and assess the potential threat you bring. And why is that? Because she's been taught from a young age that not all men are like the infallible Mark Saunders and will assault her if they believe they can get away it.
2. Male privilege is the ability to occupy any space and not be inundated with attempted flirting, catcalling and outright sexual harassment and assault. Let's see you encounter flirting from creepy men on a consistent basis since being a teenager and not become annoyed or threatened by it when any man attempts to get your number. And you would know this if you had bothered to spend a few minutes asking the women in your life about their experience with harassing or "creepy" behavior.
3. Male privilege is claiming that men are oppressed because they can't have sex with drunk women — even if men are drunk — without being labeled rapists, despite the fact that we know consent is not a difficult concept and that male predators — even drunk ones — know what they're doing. Rape and sexual assault are not accidental; you don't trip into taking advantage of someone.
4. Male privilege is turning on the television to watch programs that are nearly always male-produced and male-written with male leads supported by male crews on networks owned by men. But don't worry, women: You should be honored that you get to either play sexy or intelligent characters but rarely a comforting mixture of the two and are always vehicles for the |
erys and Rattleshirt’s Raiders to remove Bodyguard attachments so your military claim can be more impactful. Other times, you can simply burn a well-protected character with Dracarys! or Plaza of Punishment, because terminal burn (which kills a character at zero strength) cannot be prevented by most saves. Finally, be careful with Summer Harvest. Sometimes you’ll counter an opponent’s Trading with the Pentoshi or Noble Cause and earn a hefty income, but you could walk into Varys’s Riddle, which sets your X to only 2 if the opponent decides to be first player.Other options in your card pool include House Maester for a cheap bicon character, Tears of Lys and Put to the Sword for additional surprise kills, and Tourney Grounds to help afford (or bluff) your events.Further purchases could include a 3rd Core set (for Daenerys, Rhaegal, Dracarys! and Targaryent Loyalist) and There Is My Claim, which includes the board clearing plot Valar Morghulis, the assassin Jaqen H’ghar, the search engine Pyat Pree, and the power-stealing location Vaes Tolorro.If these decks don't feel right, check back next week for another installment of Budget Builders! In the meantime you can also check out the Community FAQ, which includes more information about the competitive scene, including tournament data, podcasts, and more.Android L‘s flashy new “Material Design” stole the spotlight at Google I/O last week, but the company’s new Project Volta may make an even bigger difference when it comes to improving your Android experience. The battery-saving update includes a handful of new features and tweaks designed to keep your phone running longer than ever on a single charge, and according to a new report from Ars Technica it really works.
In a simple experiment the tech blog compared two Android handsets, one running Android 4.4.4 and one running the L preview. Both devices were left to refresh the same webpages over Wi-Fi every 15 seconds to see which battery would give out first. In the end Android L was the clear winner, lasting almost 8 hours (471 minutes) compared to under 6 hours (345 minutes) for Android 4.4.4. That’s a 36-percent difference, and Ars Technica even disabled Google’s new “battery saver” feature, which automatically kicks in on L once you hit 15 percent battery life.
So how does Project Volta work? Like Project Butter, which kept animations running smoothly on Android Jelly Bean, and Project Svelte, which got KitKat running on mid-range smartphones, Volta is made up of a handful of improvements across the operating system. The biggest may be a new “JobScheduler” API, which lets Android batch together smaller app requests instead of hitting each one separately.
Moving along, there’s that new Battery Saver feature, which cuts down on background activity and lowers the screen brightness when your battery life starts running out. Google’s also introducing an improved battery-tracking tool called “Battery Historian,” which lays out all that data in an easy-to-read chart. Finally, Android L switches from Dalvik to ART for its virtual machine, meaning it can run faster, more efficiently, and compile apps less frequently.
The average Android fan won’t notice most of these changes, but behind the scenes Project Volta will be buzzing along saving them battery life. Two hours of extra juice may not be enough to get you through an entire day depending on how much time you spend glued to your phone, but for most people it should make a huge difference. We also can’t wait to see how Android L and its new battery saving techniques work on the next generation of smartphones, particularly the still-rumored Nexus 6.But with its basket-case economy and unpredictable leaders, North Korea is a difficult friend, and just how far Mr. Putin could take the relationship is unclear. It’s one thing if he exploits North Korea for economic purposes. It’s quite another if his quest for collaborators makes him unwilling to work with the West in pressing North Korea to end its nuclear program; so far, that is not the case.
Mr. Putin’s courtship of North Korea has not distracted him from his continuing efforts to build closer relationships with China and India. China’s president, Xi Jinping, made Russia his first foreign trip after taking office, and he attended the Sochi Olympics while President Obama and European leaders boycotted them. In May, as the West imposed sanctions on Russia, Mr. Putin completed a $400 billion, 30-year deal providing natural gas to China.
For decades, people speculated about some kind of China-Russia alliance, but one never really materialized. The gas deal is viewed in Washington as much more favorable to Beijing than to Moscow, and over the long term, China’s economic and political strengths seem certain to ensure that Russia will always be the junior partner — a position that is unlikely to please Mr. Putin.
As for India, Mr. Putin was warmly welcomed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit there this month and given assurances that Russia would remain India’s top weapons supplier. The two sides also signed billions of dollars in nuclear power, oil and defense deals. The outcome was a reminder that expectations in America of more trade and political cooperation with India have fallen short since the two countries signed a nuclear deal in 2008. Mr. Obama plans to visit India in January.
Mr. Putin is also seeking closer ties with Turkey — a NATO ally that aspires to membership in the European Union — in part to dilute the effect of sanctions. To that end he is also trying to persuade Serbia and Bosnia that integration with the West is not their only option and that close ties with Russia could yield them big returns. He is unlikely to have much success portraying Russia as the more reliable friend, especially since the United States, again the engine of global growth, and Europe offer more attractive economic and political visions. But as Ukraine proves, he can be skillful at causing problems.A combination of factors is forcing the issue of US torture back into the international spotlight and there are even hints that progress on some fronts is occurring. Consider, for instance, James Risen’s report this morning that the American Pyschological Association, greatly embarrassed by the revelations in Risen’s just-published book, has re-opened an investigation into the role the association played in giving cover to pyschologists who lent their credentials to the torture program in an effort to pronounce it medically ethical. We also have gotten the first official hint from Mark Udall himself that he has not ruled out using the Senate’s speech and debate clause to enter the Senate Intelligence Committtee’s report on torture into the record (the way that Mike Gravel disclosed the Pentagon Papers), bypassing the two year old debate about redactions.
We should pay special attention, though, to word filtering out of Geneva as the United Nations Committee Against Torture reviews the report submitted by the US. As a signatory to the Convention Against Torture, the US is required to make periodic reports to the committee. The process, however, is exceedingly slow. The current report from the US (pdf) is finally getting around to answering questions submitted to the US in 2006 and 2010. A New York Times story from Charlie Savage shows that the committee has been paying close attention both to what the US is saying and to what the US is doing. Consider this blockbuster:
Alessio Bruni of Italy, a member of the United Nations committee, pressed the delegation to explain Appendix M of the manual, which contains special procedures for separating captives in order to prevent them from communicating. The appendix says that prisoners shall receive at least four hours of sleep a day — an amount Mr. Bruni said would be sleep deprivation over prolonged periods and unrelated to preventing communication. Brig. Gen. Richard C. Gross, the top legal adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that reading the appendix as intended to permit sleep deprivation was a misinterpretation. Four hours is “a minimum standard; it’s not the maximum they can get,” he said, adding that the rule had to be read in the context of the rest of the manual, including a requirement for medical and legal monitoring of treatment “to ensure it is humane, legal and so forth.” Mr. Bruni was not persuaded. He said that calling the provision a minimum standard still meant four hours a night for long periods was “permissible.” He suggested that Appendix M “be simply deleted.”
This exchange counts as a huge victory for the community of activists who have fought hard to abolish all forms of torture by the US. When it comes to the Appendix M battle, though, perhaps nobody has been more determined to expose the torture still embedded in Appendix M practices than Jeff Kaye, and he is to be congratulated for the support he provided in getting this question to the forefront.
The most important part of the proceedings, though, pertains to the questions about US investigation of torture since it now openly admits torture took place. Returning to Savage’s report:
A provision of the treaty, the Convention Against Torture, requires parties to investigate and provide accountability for past instances of torture. The American delegation said that the United States had investigated the C.I.A. program, and that the coming publication of a Senate Intelligence Committee report would add to the public record. /snip/ The American officials pointed to a criminal investigation by John H. Durham, an assistant United States attorney in Connecticut, whom Michael B. Mukasey, then attorney general, appointed in 2008 to look at whether the C.I.A. had broken the law by destroying videotapes of its interrogations of Qaeda suspects. In 2009, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. expanded Mr. Durham’s mandate to look at C.I.A. torture that went beyond what the Justice Department had said was legal. Mr. Durham eventually closed the investigation without indicting anyone. Another member of the United Nations panel, Jens Modvig of Denmark, pressed for details. He asked if Mr. Durham’s team had interviewed any current or former detainees.
It is clear from Modvig’s question that he feels the US investigation fell short of what is required. To get a good feel for that, we can look to this terrific “shadow report” (pdf) to the UNCAT prepared by “Advocates for US Torture Prosecutions” at Harvard Law School.
The report does an excellent job of framing the questions at hand, beginning with the observation that “The U.S. Government’s criminal program of torture was authorized at the highest levels” (fitting nicely with Marcy’s post earlier today about it being authorized by the President). But when we get to inadequacy of Durham’s investigation, we see this (footnotes removed):
The United States seems not to have criminally investigated senior officials for involvement in torture and ill-treatment of detainees. The United States’ Periodic Report was either vague or referred to investigations that, based on statements made by the government, would seem to exclude those in command. In particular, the investigation called by Attorney General Eric Holder in August 2009 and led by prosecutor John Durham, seemed to have an excessively limited mandate. According to Holder, Durham investigated only “possible CIA involvement” and focused primarily on CIA interrogators, and whether they used “unauthorized interrogation techniques.” In 2009, the Attorney General said that officials who “acted reasonably and relied in good faith on authoritative legal advice” (emphasis added) from the Justice Department, and conformed their conduct to that advice, would not face federal prosecutions for that conduct. For reasons that are unclear, the Attorney General’s stated rationales for declining to prosecute have been a moving target. By 2011, the Attorney General’s view of what merited prosecution had narrowed even further. He began to refer to his prior statements regarding the OLC’s legal memos as promises of protection to those who “acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel” (emphasis added). In dropping the references to reliance and reasonableness, Holder may have been suggesting that any behavior falling within the OLC’s outlier definition of legality (whether done with knowledge of this legal guidance or not) would be protected, irrespective of whether an individual relied upon, reasonably believed in, or even knew of or had access to the contents of the memos.
But the shadow knows. It knows that the sophistry engaged in by Holder and the Obama administration is in direct violation of the CAT. After noting that “Reliance on severely flawed legal advice cannot be invoked as a defense to torture”, the report goes on to describe how the prohibition against torture is absolute:
The United States’ shielding of senior military and civilian officials who authorized, acquiesced or consented to torture violates the principle of non-derogability as understood in the Committee’s General Comment No. 258 and places the United States in continued breach of its obligations under the Convention. The Convention provides that neither exceptional circumstances nor an order from a superior officer may be invoked as a justification of torture. In elaborating on the absolute character of the prohibition in its General Comment, the Committee described it as “essential that the responsibility of any superior officials … be fully investigated through competent, independent and impartial prosecutorial and judicial authorities.”
The process will be long. It will be slow. But make no mistake that in questioning just how the US carried out its investigation into the torture it readily admits took place, the committee is on a path that will lead it directly to a finding much like that in the paragraph above from the shadow report. Holder and Obama cannot simply brush the events under the rug and claim they were investigated. Under the CAT, those responsible for torture must be held to account.
The process will get even longer and slower should the committee eventually come to the conclusion that the US has fallen short of its requirement to hold those responsible accountable, because the committee then would ask the UN Security Council to refer the issue to the International Criminal Court. Of course the US would not allow the referral to happen, but the mere activation of that pathway would stand as a ringing rebuke to the utter failure by the US to live up to the standards of a treaty to which it is a party. And there will forever be the threat that someday, somehow, the balance of power could shift and those who authorized these heinous acts will find themselves standing before a judge.It’s certainly refreshing to see the coming of all sorts of bitcoin-related apps to the iOS mobile platform since Apple had a change of heart, and bitcoin traders in China will be pleased to know yet another is available.
It’s BTC China’s official application, and it’s available for download internationally right away iTunes link.
As one would come to expect from a trading application, the mobile interface allows traders to buy and sell their bitcoins, but also view orders, charts, and so forth.
The application also supports three trading pairs: BTC/CNY, LTC/CNY, LTC/BTC. Market and limit order options are also available (and let’s be honest, why would they not be?).
Outside this BTC China app, the exchange continues with their ambitious plans to expand. Behind the curtains is a new app awaiting approval from Apple called Picasso.
Picasso isn’t quite the trader’s application. Rather, it’s aimed to the traditional consumer who happens to have an interest in bitcoin. In essence, it’s a wallet, and users are able to sell bitcoin at their leisure, as if it were a mini-ATM in the palm of their hands.
At one point, BTC China was the largest bitcoin exchange in the world (thanks to Chinese interest in bitcoin late last year). It still remains a top trading platform — particularly in China — but plans to expand internationally.
Can they conquer BitStamp and BTC-e?
[textmarker color=”C24000″]Source[/textmarker] CoinDeskMILLERSBURG, Ohio - Amish farmer Emery Miller has spent the past four years scrambling to help his friends recover from the biggest investment scam to hit his community, a multimillion-dollar fleecing of widows, struggling families and the elderly.
He has written to scores of Amish and Mennonite churches and community groups across the Midwest and asked for help, hoping to offset the losses inflicted by investment adviser Monroe Beachy. All told, Beachy swindled $16.8 million, most of which came from Amish investors.
The one place Miller refuses to go for money is a courthouse.
Since Beachy was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison in 2012, not one of the hundreds of Amish families who lost their money has filed a lawsuit against him. The reason is simple: The Amish, citing their deep religious beliefs, refuse to file civil cases against others, no matter how badly they have been burned.
And that raises a key issue in a contentious society: How can the Amish, with their beliefs, avoid being duped?
"Why don't we sue? Because we just don't,'' Miller said. "That's how we live and what we abide by.''
As society becomes more litigious, the Amish remain invested in their traditions. Ohio has the largest Amish population in the country, with more than 67,000 people. Their beliefs are tested daily, and the temptation to sue has never been greater.
Distracted drivers have plowed into buggies, injuring parents and maiming their young. Oil and gas companies have reached questionable deals with Amish farmers over leases. Some businesses have tried to bamboozle them in everyday dealings that range from the sale of heifers to small-scale construction projects.
Miller and others victimized in Beachy's scam say they believe filing a lawsuit is too aggressive. They also admit that their views have made them vulnerable to being ripped off in business dealings, as many businesses realize that they can take advantage of the Amish without facing repercussions, according to court records and interviews.
"It is highly unusual for the Amish to bring a suit,'' said Charles Kennedy, an attorney in Wooster who has counseled Amish. "They just don't believe in it. They will defend themselves (if they are sued), but they don't sue.''
Donald Kraybill has studied the Amish for years as a professor at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.
"To many Amish, (a lawsuit) is forbidden,'' Kraybill said. "It's viewed as the way the government or the world solves problems, not how the Amish solve problems.''
"I'd rather be short on money'
In the past five years, Ohio residents or their attorneys filed 2.7 million lawsuits in county courthouses, according to state records. In Cuyahoga County, residents filed 153,061.
The Amish don't want to be a part of that.
"We're vulnerable. We understand that,'' said a young dairy farmer who asked not to be identified. He stressed that the Amish have worked to become savvier. They often consult with attorneys before making major business decisions. But they remain trusting.
Miller, for instance, agreed to sell two heifers to a farmer he met at an auction several years ago. He gave the man the cows on the promise that he would be paid later. The farmer never paid Miller, despite his attempts to collect.
Miller refused to take the issue further, even after he had been hospitalized and needed to pay medical bills.
"I would rather be short on the money than be him,'' Miller said.
He realizes that not all cases are as simple. His dealings with Beachy are a testament to that.
From 1990 to 2010, Beachy, 81, operated A&M Investments in Sugarcreek, a small community in Tuscarawas County in the heart of Amish country, about two hours south of Cleveland. One of the portfolios he handled was for the Amish Helping Fund, established to assist members of the community pay for land, buildings and other expenses. The fund invested hundreds of thousands of dollars with Beachy.
Records show Beachy lied to his 2,700 investors about where he placed their money. Instead of low-risk U.S. bonds and securities, he placed their investments in junk bonds and high-risk investments that fluctuated greatly, records show. Investors, many of whom were Amish, gave Beachy $33 million. By the time he filed for bankruptcy in 2010, Beachy lost $16.8 million of it.
Miller leads a committee that has spent years seeking to help the people Beachy hit the hardest. He said the committee has scraped together tens of thousands of dollars from churches and community groups to help those who lost life savings. He said he lost about $5,000 in the scheme.
"I regret that this happened,'' he said. "But I hold nothing against Monroe. I have forgiven him.''
A horrific accident
Rachel Yoder's family forgave, too.
In December 2011, the 15-year-old girl from Fredericksburg, near Millersburg, was returning home from a Christmas party in a family buggy. As she peeked out of the buggy at an intersection to check for oncoming traffic, she was struck in the top of her skull by a shot fired from a.50-caliber muzzleloader, according to published reports. She later died.
Marion Yoder, no relation, fired the shot from more than a mile away as he was trying to clean the weapon following a hunting trip. He later pleaded guilty to negligent homicide, after Rachel's family requested a reduced charge.
Marion Yoder spent a month in jail. The girl's family did not file a wrongful-death suit.
The Plain Dealer interviewed Amish farmers, businessmen and even a bishop. They said the community of about 33,000 in Holmes and Wayne counties bases its core belief system on the biblical teachings in the gospel of Matthew.
The bishop pulled out a worn King James edition from a cabinet and quoted from it: "If any man will sue thee at the law and take thy coat, let him have the cloak also.''
The oil and gas blitz
In 2010, an oil company approached Lloyd and Edna Miller and asked the Millersburg couple whether they would be interested in a lease deal that would allow the company to drill on their 150-acre property. The company offered to pay $10 an acre, or $1,500 annually for five years.
Lloyd Miller said he and his wife jumped at it. Within weeks, other companies advertised more, as much as $1,000 an acre to drill, and the couple realized that they had missed out on hundreds of thousands of dollars. He said he believes that he was taken advantage of because he is Amish.
His story was the lead example in a New Republic story in 2013 that bore the headline, "The Amish are getting fracked: Their religion prohibits lawsuits -- and the energy companies know it.''
In an interview with The Plain Dealer, Miller said he knows that he was not alone.
"It was happening left and right, really,'' he said. "Left and right. I'm sure other people faced a similar situation.''
Lloyd Miller said he spoke with a lawyer about possible options. The attorney talked about suing and making a point of what had happened. Miller said he stopped the conversation.
"That's not who I am,'' he said. "It takes stronger character to forgive than it does to file a lawsuit. Life is too short. Even the financial gain is small compared to the mess that is made with a lawsuit.''
But not all Amish have lost in the oil and gas push. Samuel Mullet, the Amish bishop who was convicted by a federal jury in 2012 in beard-cutting attacks, made millions of dollars involving leases on his property in Jefferson County, according to interviews with attorneys.
Crashes and forgiveness
Across Ohio, a sizable portion of lawsuits filed each year stem from traffic accidents, ranging from scratch-and-dents to serious crashes. The Amish, driving buggies, have suffered some of the most severe injuries.
Ohio State Highway Patrol records show there have been 295 accidents in Holmes and Wayne counties involving buggies since 2010. Nearly half involved injuries. Few were as tragic as the crash involving an 11-year-old Amish girl named Sarah Zook.
In August 2011, a drunken driver rammed his pickup truck into a wagon in which Sarah and her family were riding, according to court records and published reports. The family had left a produce auction and was headed home on Ohio 301 in Wayne County when the accident took place.
Sarah was thrown from the wagon and killed. The truck driver, Brian Reed, had a breath-alcohol content of 0.207 percent, more than two times the legal limit. He pleaded no contest to a charge of aggravated vehicular homicide. Reed was ordered to pay the family $8,608 in restitution.
Sarah's family forgave and never sued.
How do the Amish explain such tragedies? Lloyd Miller, the farmer who signed the oil company's minimal lease offer, explained it simply:
"We look to a higher power to protect us and to be with us when something does happen,'' he said.
To the Amish, that power reigns well above a judge and jury.The fixture, which was played in three 30 minute intervals, saw Wolves take a 2-0 lead thanks to two Rajiv van La Parra goals.
But Walsall hit back with Jordan Cook scoring a spectacular strike from the half-way line, before midfielder Reece Flanagan then brought the scores level.
But Wolves took home the bragging rights with a goal from new signing Sylvain Deslandes, who arrived on a free transfer this summer.
The visitors line-up featured a number of first-team stars alongside van La Parra with Matt Doherty, James Henry, Ethan Ebanks-Landell and Jack Price all featuring.
The Saddlers side included a number of trialists, as they look to bolster their squad in time for the season kick-off on August 8.
Walsall manager Dean Smith said: "We were able to try out three different formations, have a look at a few trialists and also try out players in various different positions.
"It was a terrific work-out for us and I am thankful to Wolves for providing the opposition. It was a competitive game with some good football from both teams.
"I'm pleased with where we're at fitness-wise and the two training games we've had over the past couple of weeks have certainly benefitted us.
"We're not far off where I want us to be. The Wolves game gave us plenty of positives and also saw us score two excellent goals."A new tourism product 'AyurBodha', which blends tourism and learning about ayurveda for those visiting Kerala, was launched at the World Travel Mart (WTM) in London on Tuesday.The programme was launched by state Tourism Minister Kadakampally Surendran, said a release issued in Thiruvananthapuram by Kerala Tourism.This new offering comes from the Kerala Tourism Development Corporation (KTDC) and those opting for this programme can stay at any of the KTDC resorts located in captivating and pristine parts of Kerala, and learn about the ancient medicinal stream.The focus would be on basic home remedies and diet regimes, ayurvedic practices for the rejuvenation of body and soul, secrets of pressure points, basics of 'panchakarma' treatment and the history and use of medicinal plants.The visitors will also get a certificate of having gained the knowledge of ayurveda."Ayurveda, as a wellness system and a mainstay tourism product, has been largely confined to treatments and massages. While Kerala is known as a destination for spending serene and peaceful holidays, our time-tested tradition of the ancient ayurveda can enrich every visitor's experience," said Surendran.Labor to back adults-only games classification
Updated
The Federal Government has announced it will support a push for an adults-only classification for video games.
A decision on the matter is expected on Friday at a meeting of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General.
A recent Galaxy survey has found strong support for an R18+ classification, with 80 per cent of people surveyed saying they believed an adult classification was needed, while a government public consultation on the matter received close to 60,000 responses - with 98 per cent in favour of an adult rating.
Currently in Australia, games classed above MA15+ are refused classification and cannot be brought into the country.
Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor says an adults-only classification would include games with excessive violence or adult themes.
"We need a better classification system to protect our teenagers from accessing certain information, and we need a similar arrangement like film because both forms of entertainment are converging," he said.
"We want to provide guidance for parents and remove unsuitable material from children and teenagers."
The decision has been welcomed by online freedom advocates.
Colin Jacobs from online advocacy group Electronic Frontiers Australia says an R18+ rating would be a huge improvement.
"Right now games that are borderline at best are often pushed into the lower category so that they can be sold in this country," he said.
Topics: games-industry, games, nintendo-ds, nintendo-wii, pc, playstation-3, playstation-psp, xbox360, australia
First postedFred Magdoff is professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont. He is coauthor, with John Bellamy Foster, of The Great Financial Crisis (2009) and What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism (2011)—both published by Monthly Review Press. This article is based on notes from a presentation to the annual meeting of the Rural Sociology Society, in New York City on August 7, 2013.
Land grabs—whether initiated by multinational corporations and private investment firms emanating from the capitalist core, sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, or state entities such as China and India—are now in the news constantly.1 For example, in July 2013 the Colombian ambassador to the United States resigned over his participation in a legally questionable effort to help the U.S. corporation Cargill use shell companies to amass 130,000 acres of land. This land was supposed to be used for agricultural production, but there is also land being grabbed for other purposes—such as mining or to construct roads, buildings, and dams. In human terms, land grabs mean real people and families are dispossessed. When people lose access to their land, they also lose their means to obtain food, their communities, and their cultures.
What is going on today must be placed in the historical context of the continuous development of capitalism. This is not meant to be a history of the last three centuries, but rather an overview in more or less chronological order. Specific examples of the dispossession of people from the land will emphasize the various techniques used by capital (or nascent capital) that have resulted in a continuous stream of people moving to the cities. The examples discussed below are but a small sampling of the dispossessions that have occurred, and are occurring, around the world.
The commodification of land—that most basic of resources, the source of terrestrial life, and the foundation of human civilization—was essential for the development of capitalism. And from the early modern capitalist era until the present, it is the commodification of nature—with land bought (or obtained by other means) and sold, speculated upon, and used to produce human food, animal feed, fiber, or fuel and with crops selected based on climate and soil type but also on what would bring the greatest returns—that is the underlying basis of the dispossession of people from their lands.
As we discuss these events let us remember the lines from Woody Guthrie’s song about the outlaw Pretty Boy Floyd: “Some will rob you with a six gun, and some with a fountain pen.”2 Dispossession of people from the land over the last three centuries has formed an important pathway for the accumulation of capital—or, as some have put it, capital accumulation by dispossession. There have been many variations of means used, including both force (the “six gun”) and swindling by using a variety of laws and agreements or outright chicanery (the “fountain pen”). Sometimes the two are used together. And at other times, farmers and peasants lose their lands as a result of capitalist economic relations—usually through not being able to compete in a cutthroat marketplace, or to afford the rents that the larger more highly capitalized farmers can pay.
Dispossession by Enclosures: Primary Accumulation and the British Agricultural Revolution
In order for capitalism to develop many changes were needed in feudal society. Attitudes toward society, money, and obligations to others had to be changed. Money (capital) had to be retained, instead of solely used for consumption, as was the norm during feudalism. And last, a group of people had to be created that were forced to sell their labor in order to stay alive. The agricultural revolution in Europe, and especially in Britain, was the starting point for these changes, constituting the basis of primary accumulation, out of which arose the industrial revolution.3
By 1700 something new was happening in English agriculture; the pace of production increased, lowering the occurrence of famines. By 1750 England had enough of a grain surplus to export 13 percent of the crop.4 By the beginning of the nineteenth-century it had a reliable excess of grain production.
Rather than one miraculous change, the rapid increase in food production and productivity was the result of a number of factors, such as the use of clovers in rotations and eliminating fallow years—practices promoted by the “improvement movement.” “Improve,” a word that we now use so generally in the sense to make things better, comes from the Anglo-French emprouwer, meaning “to turn to profit.”5
The greater agricultural productivity and change in attitudes toward the land—now a source of greater and sustained income to landowners—became the impetus that began the long and continuing process of the development of industrial capitalism. Ellen Meiksins Woods described the early connection between agriculture and the development of capitalism in Britain:
From the standpoint of improving landlords and capitalist farmers, land had to be liberated from any…obstruction to their productive and profitable use of property. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, there was growing pressure to extinguish customary rights that interfered with capitalist accumulation. This could mean various things: it might mean disputing the communal ownership of common lands and claiming private ownership; it might mean eliminating various use-rights on private land; or it might mean challenging the customary tenures which gave many smallholders rights of possession without unambiguous legal title. In all these cases, traditional conceptions of property had to be replaced by new, capitalist conceptions of property—property as not only “private” but also exclusive, literally excluding other individuals and the community, by eliminating village regulation and restrictions on land use, by extinguishing customary use-rights, and so on.6
As enclosures and dispossessions occurred, the dispossessed found work in small factories in rural areas and later in the cities; migrated to colonies in North America, Australia, and Africa; or became paupers, as the homeless and destitute were referred to at the time. The role of colonial migration as a relief valve cannot be stressed enough: in the last half of the nineteenth century, tens of millions of people migrated out of Europe.
Dispossession by Force: Nineteenth-Century Cotton
The first mills and factories of the industrial revolution were built to spin, and later weave, cotton into fabric. Cotton was obtained from India and later Egypt, but in the mid-nineteenth century the market for cotton exploded. And the U.S. Southeast was one of large areas developed to service this market.
Land-taking in the colonies of European powers (and the countries eventually derived from these colonies) was generally one of “removing” the original inhabitants to what were variously called “reservations,” “tribal areas,” and “bantustans.” This removal of native peoples left what had mainly been the “commons” now “open”—and available for European settlers, who converted the land into government or private ownership. Walter Johnson described the process as it related to the U.S. South and cotton:
By the end of the 1830s, the Seminole, the Creek, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw and the Cherokee had all been “removed” to lands west of the Mississippi. Their expropriated land provided the foundation of the leading sector of the global economy in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the 1830s, hundreds of millions of acres of conquered land were surveyed and put up for sale by the United States. This vast privatization of the public domain touched off one of the greatest economic booms in the history of the world up to that time. Investment capital from Britain, the Continent and the Northern states poured into the land market.7
It was cotton—produced by slaves torn from their own land in Africa to work land taken from dispossessed Indian tribes—that provided the basic raw material for the textile mills that came to dominate northwestern English towns and led to the rise of Manchester and the mill towns in Lancashire county. This was the “golden era” of the mills, as workers, who would have previously been farming, were now available for low-wage labor. Johnson succinctly summarized the developments: “Thus were Indian land, African-American labor, Atlantic finance and British industry synthesized into racial domination, profit and economic development on a national and a global scale.”8
The tribes of the Southeastern United States—forcibly removed in the scramble for cotton lands to what is today the state of Oklahoma—were displaced once again by a variety of means, including massive swindling after the passage of the Dawes (General Allotment) Act in 1887.9 Part of the act’s justification was that private ownership of land would help Indians adjust to U.S. society and economy. Instead it resulted in large losses of Indian-owned land.
Dispossession by Force: The Colonization of Africa
The greatest areas of dispossessions of sub-Saharan Africans were in the countries with large agricultural settler populations—especially South Africa, Namibia (South-West Africa), Zimbabwe (South Rhodesia), and Zambia (North Rhodesia). For example, beginning in the late-nineteenth century and continuing into the mid-twentieth century a large portion of Zimbabwe’s farmland was taken over by European settlers, so that by the time of formal independence about one-third of agricultural land was owned by Europeans.10 In South Africa, white settlers controlled about 90 percent of the total land area by the 1930s, and took the country’s best farmland. And about half the land in Namibia was controlled by whites in 1990.11
Land grabs in colonies continued in the twentieth century up until independence. U.S. and UK corporations were involved in some of these such as: Firestone in its quest for rubber plantations in formally independent Liberia, Brooke Bond (now owned by Unilever) for tea production in Kenya, and Del Monte for fruit production in Kenya. Some land was alienated as more white settlers arrived in countries such as Malawi, Angola, and Mozambique.
Economic Dispossession: U.S. Monopoly-Capitalist Agriculture
For much of the twentieth century the practice of actually producing food—farming—was a poor investment for capitalists, because of low prices for both crops and animals. Although there were profits to be made in some farming sectors, there was little reliable profitability; some years prices were high and farmers did well, while in others low prices might |
racing series, and IMSA drivers who want to race prototypes at a lower level are being directed to the Prototype Challenge Presented by Mazda series, which has two classes: The venerable four cylinder-powered Mazda Prototype Challenge cars, which use an open-cockpit Elan chassis, and the closed-cockpit LMP3 cars, offered by several manufacturers and powered by spec V8 Nissan engines. (Though since Nissan doesn’t pay a royalty, the engine is regarded as generic.) The 2018 season is the second for the LMP3 cars.
GT Daytona
Easily the largest class in the IMSA WeatherTech series, GTD consists of the cars that most closely resemble their street-going counterparts. One of the few controversies IMSA faced last year, and so far a minor one, was that GTD is supposed to be a privateer class, while GT Le Mans is the class almost entirely made up of factory-backed entries.
When Acura and Lexus entered GTD for 2017, each two-car team seemed awfully close to a full factory effort, over which a couple of manufacturers, Porsche being one, cried foul: How are privateers supposed to compete with entries that are fully financed by the factory? So far, IMSA has kept this from becoming a crisis, but the situation had some IMSA teams looking hard at the rival Pirelli World Challenge. Whether it causes any substantial movement between the two sanctions remains to be seen.
Regardless, it was a very solid season for GTD. Christina Nielsen and Alessandro Balzan repeated as champions in their No. 63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari, finishing 20 points ahead of the No. 33 Riley Motorsports-Team AMG Mercedes driven by Jeroen Bleekemolen and team principal Ben Keating. The Ferrari team won only once, at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, but notched one podium finish after another to take the title.
At this writing, despite two straight championships, Nielsen is without a ride for 2018, as her spot on the Ferrari team will be taken by Cooper MacNeil, son of the owner of series sponsor WeatherTech. MacNeil finished 11th in driver points after starting the season in the new-for-2017 Mercedes, but finishing in a Porsche.
Of the two, Acura had a better freshman season than the Lexus, with the two Michael Shank Racing Acuras finishing fifth and tenth in the points with two wins, while the winless Lexus team, 3GT Racing, was 11th and 12th. Even so, Jeff Segal and Andy Lally are leaving their Acura rides–Lally is rejoining car owner and co-driver John Potter at Magnus Racing, likely for a GTD entry–and it appears Acura will be less of a factory-financed effort in 2018.
Bottom line: GT Daytona won’t be the newsmaker it was for 2017, but expect strong fields and good racing.
GT Le Mans
Though team manager Doug Fehan insisted for most of 2017 that IMSA’s Balance of Performance rules did not favor his Corvettes, drivers Jan Magnussen and Antonio Garcia still took home the championship in their No. 3 Corvette Racing entry. They parlayed three wins and a consistent performance in the rest of the races into a 17-point lead over the No. 25 BMW Team RLL car of Bill Auberlen and Alexander Sims. Third and fourth were the Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GTs.
With guest driver Kuno Wittmer, the No. 25 BMW closed out the season with a win at Petit, significant because it was the swan song for the BMW M6 GTLM, as it will be replaced, starting with the Rolex 24 At Daytona, by the new BMW M8 GTE.
Prototype
This is where the Big News is for IMSA’s 2018 season, leading with a brand-new car from a returning manufacturer, and a much-massaged car from an existing manufacturer, fielded by a new team.
The new car is, of course, the Acura ARX-05, powered by a twin-turbo 3.5-liter V6. But the headline here is that the car will be fielded by Team Penske, with an all-star lineup that includes IndyCar stars Helio Castroneves and Juan Montoya. Montoya will be paired with former Action Express driver Dane Cameron, and Montoya’s teammate will be Ricky Taylor, who won the 2017 Prototype championship with his brother, Jordan. Two more IndyCar drivers, Simon Pagenaud and Graham Rahal, will help out in the longer races, including the first two events, Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.
To get a head start on 2018–even though the Acura wasn’t ready–Penske acquired an Oreca LMP2 chassis and a Gibson engine, which is essentially the spec car and engine for the World Endurance Championship and its 24 Hours of Le Mans, and entered it in the Petit Le Mans with Castroneves, Montoya and Pagenaud. Montoya put it on the pole, and the car led often during the race before finishing third, on the lead lap.
GRM was there for the first public test of the new Acura at Daytona International Speedway, and it was fast. “It’s good enough to race as it is,” said Ricky Taylor. “But, knowing Penske, we have a lot more development work to do before the Rolex 24.”
Dutch driver Renger van der Zande, who spent 2017 in the No. 90 Visit Florida Ligier-Gibson, will replace Ricky Taylor in the family-owned No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac DPi in 2018. The Taylor brothers won the 2017 championship with a dominating five-race win streak to start the year. Second, and 19 points back, was the No. 31 Action Express Cadillac of Cameron and Eric Curran. They were seven points ahead of third place, the No. 5 Action Express Cadillac of Joao Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi. Felipe Nasr will replace Cameron in the No. 31.
The other major story in Prototype is the return of the beleaguered Mazda Prototype, which has gone winless since it debuted in 2014 with an uncompetitive diesel engine. Mazda was sufficiently disheartened that the team shut down for the last seven races, announcing that it was replacing longtime stalwart partner SpeedSource with Joest Racing, the German team that had so much success with the Audi prototypes.
Joest and Multimatic have made major changes to the team’s RT24-P and Mazda has been tweaking the four-cylinder engine in preparation for a Daytona debut. Holdover Mazda drivers Jonathan Bomarito and Tristan Nunez will be joined by Oliver Jarvis and Harry Tincknell; for the longer races, Spencer Pigot and Rene Rast will be added to the roster.
In other Prototype news: JDC-Miller, which ran a single Oreca-Gibson in 2017, is expected to add another car for 2018. CORE Autosport, which ran in GT Daytona in 2017, will move up to Prototype, also in an Oreca. BAR1 and Performance Tech, which ran in Prototype Challenge, are expected to race in Prototype in 2018, BAR1 in a Riley LMP2, Performance Tech in a Dallara. And Ian Dawson’s D3+ Transformers Racing will field a Ligier/Gibson, with sponsorship from Hasbro’s Transformer toy line.
And finally, likely just for the Rolex 24, Formula 1’s Fernando Alonso will be part of a United Autosports Ligier Prototype team, along with Paul Di Resta and Lando Norris. And don’t look now, but martial artist Jackie Chan, whose team very nearly won the 2017 24 Hours of Le Mans, may be coming with not one, but two Jota-fielded Oreca/Gibsons.
Comments
Devilsolsi Reader
12/18/17 3:01 p.m. Cannot wait for Daytona. The prototype category is going to be really interesting with Mazda returning and Penske joining. 759NRNG Dork
12/19/17 10:46 a.m. " And for many of the manufacturers, that cost is partly offset by the business of selling customer cars for the GT Daytona class, a big business for, in particular, Porsche, Audi, Mercedes, Ferrari and Lamborghini." Yes the Corvette is in GTLM, but for me, to have Cadillac jettison the ATS-Vr program (yes different series) makes little or no sense from a marketing/selling product stand point(yeah corporate has it all figured out). Will DPi caddys be available at a location near you???? bmw88rider SuperDork
12/19/17 12:27 p.m. Let's be honest though. They get more visibility for the Cadillac brand from IMSA than they ever would from PWC. 3-4 X the TV viewers and more fans in the stands. At least with IMSA, it's not the creation of a completely different car for 1 team to promote a car that sells 25K units for all of the variations (Plain Jane 2.0T to ATS-V) on a good year with this year looking more like 14K for the entire line. What was the V take rate of that? Maybe 3-5%? I've never seen one in the wild outside of areas of a cadillac sponsered event. They never did a customer program in the US as the Corvette was the only customer car they ever sold and that was really rare until this year. All said, I give Caddy credit for staying in PWC for as long as they did.
You'll need to log in to post. Log inNeed to know What is it? A Star Wars shooter with big multiplayer modes, dogfighting, and a brief campaign.
Price: $60 / £55
Publisher: EA
Developer: DICE
Reviewed on: Windows 10, Core i7-6700K, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 980
Multiplayer: Online competitive modes with up to 40 players.
Link: Official site
There is a right way to play Star Wars Battlefront 2's 40-player Galactic Assault mode. I haven't mastered it, but it's about maximizing the point value of each life and spending those points in the right way at the right time. It's made me a crappy sitcom's caricature of a gamer. "Man, I need more points to unlock Yoda" is definitely something someone would say on TV to indicate they're a gamer. I've said that multiple times. I'm a mockery, but I do enjoy it. I do want those points. If the campaign's story were better and the progression system not so irritating, I might have really liked Battlefront 2.
I'm mostly talking about Battle Points, which are earned and spent mid-match to spawn as X-wings, AT-STs, jump troopers, wookiees, and all sorts of other Star Wars combatants, including heroes and villains like Yoda, Rey, and Kylo Ren. Your primary goal in any multiplayer mode is not your team's objective, whether that's blowing up a giant transport tank in Theed or stealing an AT-AT on Endor. It's earning those points so you can do some real damage.
When I have too few points to spawn as anything cool, the race for more pushes me impatiently at objectives like the fodder I am. Playing as a regular trooper really feels like being an extra in the movies, as you're going to get smushed by walkers and have your guts cauterized by lightsabers near the end of a match. It's fun to be part of the spectacle, but the third time Darth Maul murders you the joy wears off. Conversely, once I've spent points to spawn as a special droid or a guy on a speeder bike or Rey herself, my life becomes precious and I become cautious—heroes are strong, but not unkillable.
I feel like a god who just found out he's mortal and is extremely pissed about it.
That push and pull rhythm is enthralling at times. Every little killstreak: more points! Every objective play: more points! I'm excited, sometimes frustrated, as I work to earn a powerful character, and then I get there and I feel like a god who just found out he's mortal and is extremely pissed about it—terrified to die, but eager to smash stuff.
Most of my time is spent as a regular trooper, though, and the basic shooting is really more fun in the campaign, where the focus is all on spectacle (because it definitely wasn't on the story). There, most enemies are weak enough to kill in one headshot, while in multiplayer shields can take a beating, making most kills feel incidental: my shot happened to connect with someone whose shields were already at 20 percent. And the map design, though beautiful, can make for some dull battles. In the confined spaces most maps eventually push both teams into—a room to defend, such as the Mos Eisley Cantina—it's a lot of reckless charges and grenade spamming, or stacking up on walls and playing peek-a-boo.
Each class has three special abilities, which vary in utility and fun. The Officer class can drop an auto-turret, but it's a puny little machine that makes very little difference—it really feels pointless. Most fun are the Assault and Heavy abilities, especially the Assault's shotgun, a secondary weapon that can be briefly equipped to one-shot droid heads at close range. The pulsing sound effect loop that plays while it's equipped is audio adrenaline, and its lethality makes it a lot more entertaining than the stock blasters.
The worst thing about the Battle Points grind is its effect on teamwork. Making a careful approach as a squad is not a reasonable thing to do in Battlefront like it is in the Rising Storm and Battlefield series. It's a race for points, and in a race you run, usually directly at the objective (a jog that takes too long on most Galactic Assault maps) to lob a grenade and try to score some frantic kills before dying. In the Starfighter Assault space dogfighting mode, I find that players also tend to focus on player eliminations before objectives, which include fleets of AI controlled ships to attack and mines to destroy. Everyone wants to spawn in Poe Dameron's X-Wing or the Millennium Falcon, so everyone prioritizes earning points.
DICE makes an effort to solve this: when you respawn, you're automatically placed into a squad, and playing near your squadmates earns you double Battle Points. But usually my squadmates break off and do their own things anyway, or die too quickly to help. They are hungry for those points, but it's a personal quest. I'm annoyed when someone grabs an Ion Cannon before I can to blast the MTT on Theed, because playing the objective earns points and those points should've been mine. It doesn't make for cohesive teams.
Unlocking Luke
I don't want to fight someone whose TIE-fighter is numerically stronger than my ship.
There are even more points, called Credits, a non-cash currency you earn by playing matches and achieving milestones—the better you play, the more Credits you get. You can use Credits to unlock loot boxes which contain randomized awards, mainly Star Cards.
Star Cards are a largely dull way to make your classes, ships, ground vehicles, and heroes stronger (I'll refer to all these things as 'classes' from here on to make it simpler). They're like Call of Duty's perks, except you can equip three at a time per class so long as you've sufficiently leveled up that class, and a lot of them are direct buffs. More health. Abilities recharge faster. Increased primary weapon damage.
I don't like it, and I doubt I will no matter how much EA tweaks the rate I earn Credits, or the cost of unlocking heroes like Luke Skywalker. I don't want to quit matches to go to the 'career' page to slowly redeem Credits for every little milestone. I don't want to sit through the loot box animation to get a Star Card I don't care about. I don't want to fight someone whose TIE-fighter is numerically stronger than my ship.
Some of the Star Cards are trade-offs—trade your grenade for a missle that locks on to vehicles, for instance—and I don't have an issue with those. I also don't mind that new guns and attachments require earning kills with a class, though it sure takes a long time. But I don't want to poke through a hundred menu screens (not an exaggeration) equipping little upgrades that make my weapons cooldown faster, and I don't want to fight a player who has.
It's a system that instills doubt and resentment when an enemy kills you. Did they beat you with their skill? They probably did, but how can I know their upgraded Star Cards weren't the difference maker? Did I mention you can upgrade them? Sometimes you'll earn Crafting Parts in loot boxes which can be used to create specific Star Cards you want, and upgrade existing ones to make them more powerful. It's too much.
When the premium currency was still available (microtransactions were temporarily removed on November 16), I didn't feel much pressure to buy anything, because I earned those Credits I don't want at a decent enough pace (I can unlock Luke if I want) and, truthfully, I probably wasn't really getting crushed because I had fewer Star Cards than more-skilled opponents. But my issue isn't just that players could buy power, though that is frustrating. It's that, to facilitate microtransactions, progression is slow, overcomplicated, and unfun. I'm skeptical that it will get more interesting and less burdensome before the premium currency comes back, unless it's overhauled and the returning microtransactions apply only to cosmetics.
The campaign
It feels like a comic book that was drawn before it was written.
Outside of multiplayer and all that progression nonsense, the four-to-five hour campaign is a pretty good time. Its snappy levels run through all the best Star Wars moments: piloting TIE fighters, exchanging blaster fire down too-white corridors, force pushing Stormtroopers. The story is bland, but well-acted and there are some funny lines and entertaining cameos.
You primarily play as Imperial hero Iden Versio, leader of special forces team Inferno Squad, a ruthless villain who has awfully malleable morals—so much that she's largely unbelievable. There's one particular smash cut meant to show that Versio made a moral choice that I thought was a bug at first, because of how little convincing she needed. It feels like a comic book that was drawn before it was written. Every other page features an exquisitely-inked battle we need to get to, so in between a few speech bubbles are filled in to explain why our characters are involved in it.
After a few missions, the characters all do exactly what they say they're going to do, and all agree with each other all the time. Their big decisions are made whimsically and they largely grow off-screen as we leap between the galaxy's famous battles. The dialogue itself can be funny and clever, but the larger story is erratic, as if big chunks were cut—except in one particular mission that slows things down. In it, you play as a certain Force user and get to wipe out a squad of Stormtroopers with a lightsaber (fantastic), and it's a keen little look at how Empire lifers view the power of the Rebels, and vice versa.
Using the Force with a lightsaber is appropriately easy, and I dug how it made me worry more about defeating an army with style than dying. As a hero of the galaxy, it wouldn't make sense for a Stormtrooper to even scratch me, and there's a fun game to trying to make my playthrough canon, mixing up cool abilities the way I think the character would. Holding down the right mouse button to auto-parry the same blaster fire I'd been hiding from in the previous mission feels badass.
Even in missions without space magic, though, Battlefront 2 isn't too hard. In both singleplayer and multiplayer, the speedy fighter ships are hard to maneuver, but get close enough, and my main weapon will soft-lock on an enemy—so I feel skilled at dogfighting, but I'm not expected to do it without a targeting computer. It's a lot of fun to blow up an X-wing and careen through its debris.
On the ground, I'm neither pinned to cover nor allowed to run around wherever I want. Only a few enemy types are spongy, and the rest often go flying through the air with a single grenade or headshot, which makes for proper-looking Star Wars battles. It strikes a fun balance between fragility and power, allowing me to play with enough bravado to experiment, but not so much that I don't have to eye my shield meter and retreat to cover when flanked.
The main annoyance is the checkpointed saves, especially in space. Slightly too slow at destroying all the bombers because you went off to explore before the prompt showed up? Do the entire segment over. Did a great job with the bombers but accidentally clipped some debris? Start over. And because there's no ammo to find on the ground—guns generate heat which must be dissipated—there's disappointingly little to explore off the main path. In the first mission's light stealth segment, for instance, corridors I wasn't supposed to go down just led to closed doors.
I have encountered a couple bugs, as well. The most egregious was when I defended my grounded ship from endless waves of enemies for several minutes—I wasn't counting—before realizing something must be wrong. I reloaded the checkpoint, and sure enough, a boarding ramp was supposed to drop a couple minutes in so I could escape. At least it happened on the second try.
A mode for everything
There's also a singleplayer Arcade mode, which basically is a series of bot matches. In some of the scenarios you can play as a hero or villain, for instance as Han Solo single-handedly defeating 40 troopers on a timer. The bots aren't very smart, and I spend a lot of time running around looking for them, but these are briefly entertaining ways to practice with heroes, and it's nice that you can set up custom challenges.
Aside from the Galactic and Starfighter Assault multiplayer modes I've mentioned, there are three others—one in which everyone spawns as a hero or villain character, a smaller objective-based 'Strike' mode, and close-quarters team deathmatch. Strike, in which teams of six fight to steal or defend a package, is the most fun. The smaller teams and focus on one objective make teamwork incidental, as we're all getting into a fight around one object and eliminations, which everyone goes for in every mode anyway, are what helps. When my team has a breakdown, I love chasing down the package carrier alone to save the day.
Look in the background, and there's always something happening: civilians running for their lives, ships fighting, ewoks scattering.
Heroes vs Villains is fun, too, if an absolute mess of superpowers. I am disappointed by the lightsaber combat, though. It makes sense to swing wildly when easily slicing through regular soldiers, but if I'm gonna fight Kylo Ren as Rey I want a real clash, with deflections and moves other than'swing like crazy.'
That's the only non-Star Wars thing about Battlefront though. In multiplayer and the campaign, it's gorgeous and hilariously faithful—I especially love how anyone in the vicinity of an explosion goes flying, arms and legs flailing. The way my character's uniform flaps and folds, the foliage on Endor, even the lumpen cow creatures waddling around are delightful. Every map is supremely detailed. Look in the background, and there's always something happening: civilians running for their lives, ships fighting, ewoks scattering. DICE has outdone itself, and aside from the very long loading times, I've had no problem running Battlefront 2 at 2560x1080 with ultra settings on a GTX 980. It's not a lightweight game, but it's certainly easier to run than Assassin's Creed: Origins, and just as gorgeous. I also appreciate that it swaps between keyboard and controller prompts on the fly, since I switch whenever I hop into a fighter.
The progression system is the biggest disappointment, but it hasn't ruined my enjoyment of the multiplayer. I get to fly the Millenium Falcon in the best-looking game where one can fly the Millenium Falcon. And flying through a bigger ship as a smaller ship is as thrilling as it always is in the movies. That's what I want, and other players having better Star Cards hasn't made me a punching bag—though I still hate being matched against more powerful players on principle.
The Battle Points system has a greater effect on how Battlefront 2 plays than anything you'll find in a loot box. It's got me prioritizing assists, because they count as eliminations, and rushing around recklessly to play objectives—not to win, but to get my points. It can be fun, but it's always a little lonely. With everyone, even teammates, competing for personal glory the objectives and squads are secondary concerns. Everyone wants to be the hero.I must be a horrible person if I find a crying result a good sign? lol It's nice to know that my work is appreciated by those I give them to. That's for sure.
: Basswood
: 8" x 11"
: ~6 hours
This was another really fun one to wood burn and I think it turned out pretty darn good!!Sorry for the title... can't really think of a great name for this one lolI made this as a grad gift for my adopted baby sister. It ended up being a late gift cause her Grad was in June but either way, she will be receiving it today and I can't wait for my sister (a different sister) to send me the video (if she remembers to record it...) of her opening this gift. I know she will love it and she will probably even start crying (in a good way).I did not draw the original image! I used the following image by: rachaelm5 Her line arts are like perfect for wood burning and for coloring (just follow her outlined rules for them). I did do another one as a birthday gift for a family member but it cannot be posted until after the 28th of July. Chances are I might end up doing more though! These are just sooooo detailed and simply amazing. (OBVIOUSLY ONLY FOR EITHER MYSELF OR GIFTS).But yeah! EnjoyIf there's something special someone would like to see me woodburn, just let me know and I'll try my best to fit it in/do it wellPeta Credlin's wish to be able to use her own voice is about to come true with one of the most talked about figures of the Abbott government set to join Sky News as an election commentator ahead of an expected double dissolution election on July 2.
Tony Abbott's former chief of staff has told News Corp she has been offered several media jobs since departing the prime minister's office in September but chose Sky because she respects their team of journalists, which includes David Speers, Kieren Gilbert and Laura Jayes.
In the immediate days after the change of leadership to Malcolm Turnbull, Ms Credlin expressed a desire "to move on with my life and do something where I get my own voice". Sky CEO Angelo Frangopoulos confirmed Ms Credlin's appointment as a political commentator and said: "We welcome Peta to our unrivalled coverage of Election 2016."Sheriff officers walk past crushed cruisers at the Orleans County Sheriff's Department in Newport, Vt., Thursday, Aug. 2, 2012. Authorities say 34-year old Vermont farmer Roger Pion, angry over a recent arrest last month on charges of resisting arrest and marijuana possession, used a large tractor like a monster truck, destroying seven police cruisers. (AP Photo/Northland Journal, Scott Wheeler)
MONTPELIER, Vt. - Working in a stout former bank building with windows closed and air conditioners humming, Orleans County sheriff's deputies didn't know what was happening in their parking lot until a neighbour called 911.
A man on a big farm tractor, angry about his recent arrest for resisting arrest and marijuana possession, was rolling across their vehicles — five marked cruisers, one unmarked car and a transport van.
By the time they ran outside, the tractor was down the driveway and out onto the road.
With their vehicles crushed, "We had nothing to pursue him with," said Chief Deputy Philip Brooks.
Thursday afternoon's incident ended when city police in Newport, the county seat of the northern Vermont county, caught up with Roger Pion, 34, a short distance away.
No one was injured. At least two deputies had gone inside a few moments before after washing their vehicles, officials said.
"Nobody was hurt. That's the thing everybody's got to cherish," said Sheriff Kirk Martin.
Vermont State Police said in a statement that Pion would face seven counts of felony unlawful mischief, one count of misdemeanour unlawful mischief, one count aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, one count of gross negligent operation, and one count of leaving the scene of an accident.
Pion was being held at the Northern State Correctional Center in Newport on $15,000 bail.
Sheriffs said they did not know if Pion had a lawyer. A phone number for him could not be located.
Martin estimated damage to the vehicles at more than $300,000; state police put it at more than $250,000.
Not only were their roofs and hoods caved in, but "the radios are ruined, the radar detectors, the cages in the cars... We're going to have to get the jaws of life up here to pry the trunks open and see about the rifles and shotguns," Martin said.
Brooks said the destroyed vehicles constituted more than half the fleet of sheriff's cruisers in the rural county on the Canadian border. Others were out on patrol at the time of the incident.In order to standardise the quality of food served on long-distance trains, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) will soon provide ready-to-eat meals to passengers. The ready-to-eat meal, manufactured by established companies, can be served to passengers after adding boiling water to it. Officials said this would offer consistency and improve the quality of food served on trains.
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The ready-to-eat food packets will minimise the manual interference and catering staff will only require to add boiling water to food items before serving them. Passengers are already being served vegetable biriyani, rajma chawal, hakka noodles, pulav, idli sambar and dal from such packets on an experimental basis. “We wish to promote the ready-to-eat food menu across trains. It will replace the existing menu and also add variety,” a senior IRCTC official said.
Last week, 24 passengers had taken ill after being served soup and breakfast on the Karmali-CSMT Tejas Express. While the preliminary inquiry report said the food served on the train was of satisfactory quality, it recommended a check on the quality of omelette and soup served for breakfast. “We are awaiting the food test reports to ascertain if there was any deficiency in the food served on the Tejas Express… The ready-to-eat food packets can be served within eight minutes after mixing with hot water. We had tested the same in the breakfast menu of the Tejas Express in May and received positive feedback from passengers,” the official added.
Stressing that food packets will be bought from established brands, the official said: “Such food products are manufactured in a mechanised process with emphasis on quality standard. They are cheap, easy to use and store.”
“The food served in the Vistadome coach attached with the Jan Shatabdi includes a ready-to-eat menu. We are awaiting approval from the corporate office in Delhi to implement the process in any of the premium trains. The food menu on board the Shatabdis or Rajdhanis could have ready-to-eat food menu,” the official added.
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Food packets could be stored in the base kitchens of railways, official said. Compete mechanised base kitchens at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) and Mumbai Central are already on the planning board.
neha.kulkarni@expressindia.comFrozen Synapse has been announced for both iPad and Android tablets.
Developer Mode 7 Games released a new trailer for the mobile version, showing a demonstration of how the game's controls have been adapted for touchscreens.
"It has been a challenge condensing such a complex interface into a form that makes it viable on tablets," Mode 7's Paul Taylor said.
"However, the major attractions for many people - like zooming around the map with pinch-to-zoom and dragging waypoints around with a fingertip - are all present and correct."
The game will arrive first on iPad in May, with the Android tablet version launching soon after that.
No price has been set yet for the mobile version.
The iPad and Android versions will offer cross-platform play, allowing users to start a game on one device and continue their turns on another device or even in the PC, Mac or Linux versions.
A PlayStation 3 and Vita version of the game called Frozen Synapse: Tactics is also in the works, and is expected to release later this year.The Economist developed the Big Mac index, in a light hearted vein, with no grounding in to economics or reality. Big Mac is not something that is a universal meal outside the USA and definitely not in India. In fact, India does not have ONE uniform item that is consumed across the country. McDonalds are in an early stage in this country. And the Big Mac as available in the US is certainly not the same as is available in India.
A weak rupee is a sign of chronic illness.
According to the Big Mac Index, the US Dollar should be worth around Rs.26 or so or say Rs.30/- if we go by what is the considered view of the author Sree Iyer, on his article titled Why the Rupee exchange rate should be 30 to a dollar.
As against this, the official exchange rate is around Rs.67/-. In other words, the rupee is undervalued. This topic arose from a Question and Answer session with Dr. Subramanian Swamy at the Indian Merchants Chamber (IMC) meeting in Mumbai on June 16, 2016. According to Dr. Swamy, Rupee is undervalued for 3 reasons:
Participatory Notes (PN) allowing withdrawal of Hot Money and distorting the Stock Market Speculation in the Stock market due to forward trading of commodities, PNs Black Money
I hold a contrary view. The rupee, to my mind, is overvalued. The reason is simple. Today, with trade borders very thin, global prices for various commodities are more or less on par, except that some items could be costlier through a tariff imposition or made cheaper by a government subsidy.
One factor that is important, to my mind, is the difference in inflation between two countries that drives the exchange rates. Going back to the sixties, except for one spell around the 1974 oil shock, inflation in India has been always higher by around five to six percent every year.
Indians have two major pressures on the dollar rupee rate. The imports of Oil and the import of Gold…
In the early days, we had ‘administered’ exchange rates. This means that foreign exchange was rationed. Indian exports were tiny and finding $$ to pay for imports was an issue. So the demand for $$ was artificially kept down.
In 1947 the $ was around Rs.3.30. We were linked to the Sterling. In 1949, the Sterling was devalued and the $ fetched Rs.4.75. This rate was maintained till 1966, when India had its first devaluation. The $ was now worth Rs.7.75. If I take an inflation differential of five percent from here, the $ becomes worth around Rs.86, today. At a six percent differential it is worth Rs.138/-.
Demand and supply of $ vs the Indian rupee is what in reality sets the rates. If there is an excess supply of $$, it becomes cheaper and vice versa. If we look at the structure of our demand and supply, our exports always lag imports. Thus, fundamentally, we are a deficit nation, which means that the rupee will keep sliding in to the pits, till the rupee cost starts deterring imports.
However, the rupee slides a little slowly because we get an inflow of $$ from some other sources – Our NRIs who remit foreign currency are probably our saviors. At some point, it will slow down as the third generation NRIs seek to make homes abroad and not remit anything. The other factor that helps India is the attractiveness as an investment destination (FII plus FDI). This keeps getting messed by successive politicians, so we get trickles as opposed to a flood that China received in the eighties and nineties.
Indians have two major pressures on the dollar-rupee rate. The imports of Oil and the import of Gold are the main reasons for the dollar getting relatively more in demand. So, we have to pray that Indians start detesting gold and Oil becomes an unnecessary import if technology for alternative energy is allowed to bloom.
Taking the price of Big Mac or comparing rentals of a 1 BHK in New York vs Mumbai will give some gossip worthy numbers, but ignore reality. Our per capita is around $2000 and the US per capita could be around $50 to 60 thousand. So if we take the number of days of per capita income spent on food, clothing, rent, housing, etc we will get a better picture. And in any one country, these costs will vary from city to city and within the city, from place to place.
Big Mac Index is a nice cocktail conversation topic.This article is about the chemical. For other uses, see Nicotine (disambiguation)
Nicotine is a stimulant and potent parasympathomimetic alkaloid that is naturally produced in the nightshade family of plants and used for the treatment of tobacco use disorders as a smoking cessation aid and nicotine dependence for the relief of withdrawal symptoms.[4][6][7] Nicotine acts as a receptor agonist at most nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs),[8][9][10] except at two nicotinic receptor subunits (nAChRα9 and nAChRα10) where it acts as a receptor antagonist.[8]
Nicotine constitutes approximately 0.6–3.0% of the dry weight of tobacco.[11] Usually consistent concentrations of nicotine varying from 2–7 µg/kg (20–70 millionths of a percent wet weight) are found in the edible family Solanaceae, such as potatoes, tomatoes, and |
requires those of us far away from the east coast to splurge on overnight shipping, though I've had kava arrive fine in 2-3 days).
Another theory regrading liver toxicty is that the use of "non-noble" tudei kavas (" noble " kava implies a tried and true time tested strain) may possess constituents, such as kavaflavone B, not found in noble varieties. Kava researcher Chris Xing, PhD states "Kava was used as an anxiolytic for quite a number of years, and it was pulled out of market because there were rare hepatotoxic cases observed among kava users. Recently it was found that... its hepatotoxic risk is probably due to a wrong cultivar, not recommended for traditional use... these tudei kavas contain a higher level of a certain type of chemical that can deplete glutathiones that compromise liver function, or detoxification function, which may contribute to the observed hepatoxicity among kava users." Another kava researcher, Mathias Schmidt, offers slightly different reasoning for avoiding non-noble/tudei kavas, related to both the possible liver toxicity of flavokavain B and the kava "hangover" which gives rise to the name "tudei" (two-day) kava:
" Why avoid two-day kava? Simply because there is enough evidence to stick to the experience with roots and peeled rootstock of noble kava, which has been proven safe:
Two -day kava causes hangover, headaches and nausea
As soon as two-day kava entered the EU markets, the cases of liver toxicity appeared out of nowhere, all related to the same product, the one containing the two-day kava material.
When two-day kava was exported to New Caledonia in huge quantities, case reports of liver toxicity were observed there as well.
For me that’s convincing enough to use noble-kava only, and to orient myself at the traditions in the countries of origin. Why should we use varieties, which have been avoided by the local people for Centuries? Two-day has only been marketed for about 18 years, with accumulating reports of having untoward effects. Isa has been used for less time, and was never intended to be spread for consumption when it reached Hawai’i for research purposes... So for me the question is: Why should we drink second rate junk instead of the good stuff?"
So yeah: avoid regular use of non-noble/tudei kavas and the variety Isa.
My suggestion is that if you use kava, stick to noble kava kava varieties from reputable sellers (adu lteration of noble kavas with Isa is not uncommon), or herbal extracts that you know are made from these. I find water, fatty liquids like cream and various "nut' milks, oils for topical use and ethanol (though this will concentrate flavokavain B in tudei kavas, so again don;t use those) acceptable menstruums.
While I have no fears whatsoever about the kava kava I use, it’s up to each individual to decide for themselves what they feel comfortable with. I hope this information helps you make more educated decisions.
additional links...
(and yes, I know some of these need fixing...)
Hawaiian 'Awa: Views of an Ethnobotanical Treasure Part 1 Part 2
New Science may Boost Kava Market (chris xing, phd)
Kava and the Risk of Liver Toxicity:Past, Current, and Future (rolf teschke, md)
Herbal hepatotoxicity by kava: Update on pipermethystine, flavokavain B,and mould hepatotoxins as primarily assumed culprits (teschkea, qiub, lebot
W.H.O. Says Kava is Safe! (Kona Kava Farm)
W.H.O. Says Kava is Safe, Australia Bans It (Kona Kava Farm)
More Evidence Against Liver Toxicity! (Kona Kava Farm)
Update on the Alleged Liver Toxicity of Kava (HerbPharm)
Kava-Kava doesn't seem to be liver-toxic at all (guido mase)
Safety of ethanolic kava extract: Results of a study of chronic toxicity in rats
Effects of kava alkaloid, pipermethystine, and kavalactones on oxidative stress and cytochrome P450 in F-344 rats
In Vitro Toxicity of Kava Alkaloid, Pipermethystine,in HepG2 Cells as Compared to Kavalactones
Emerging controversy around tudei kava (kava guru)
Kava Kava (wikipedia)
Kava lactones & the kava-kava controversy (***note that this appears to have been written before the understanding of adulteration of kava root with leaves/stems)
Kava Kava in King's American Dispensatory (Felter & Llyod)
Kava Kava in American Materia Medica (Finley Ellingwood)
Properties and Uses of Piper Methysticum (John King)
Kava Kava in Boericke's Homeoapthic Materia Medica
You can purchase fresh kava root from Tane Data at Adaptations. Ask which varieties are available and don't buy Isa (or other tudei) kavas.651 Bracketeers voted in Batch 151, and 5.60m votes have been cast so far.
Visual results are here and today’s results are:
Lotus Petal defeats Blinding Beam with 92.05% of the vote
Sword of Fire and Ice defeats Thran Lens with 89.86% of the vote
Soul of Ravnica defeats Fevered Strength with 88.10% of the vote
Shape Stealer defeats Fleet-Footed Monk with 85.81% of the vote
Aethersquall Ancient defeats Krosan Avenger with 84.97% of the vote
Knotvine Paladin defeats Leonin Armorguard with 83.25% of the vote
Nemata, Grove Guardian defeats Centaur Rootcaster with 82.34% of the vote
Waterspout Elemental defeats Votary of the Conclave with 82.20% of the vote
Oblation defeats Smart Ass with 81.66% of the vote
Angel of Jubilation defeats Blustersquall with 81.46% of the vote
Rally the Ancestors defeats Ooze Flux with 81.43% of the vote
Stand Firm defeats Evaporate with 81.16% of the vote
Drownyard Behemoth defeats Nearheath Stalker with 79.78% of the vote
Crumbling Vestige defeats Endoskeleton with 78.48% of the vote
Boonweaver Giant defeats Battle Strain with 76.81% of the vote
Skull Rend defeats Maggot Carrier with 74.03% of the vote
Kalastria Highborn defeats Talus Paladin with 73.19% of the vote
Vhati il-Dal defeats Marshaling Cry with 73.14% of the vote
Gut Shot defeats Chaos Confetti with 69.24% of the vote
City of Ass defeats Goblin Bully with 68.86% of the vote
Azure Mage defeats Oracle’s Insight with 68.40% of the vote
Ashnod’s Coupon defeats Arcbound Lancer with 67.70% of the vote
Hateflayer defeats Hidden Herd with 66.93% of the vote
Kalemne’s Captain defeats Mana Vapors with 66.77% of the vote
Dance of the Dead defeats Hypnox with 66.24% of the vote
Dark Depths defeats Door to Nothingness with 64.25% of the vote
Savage Silhouette defeats Fatal Fumes with 63.07% of the vote
Chimeric Staff defeats Herdchaser Dragon with 61.08% of the vote
Eldrazi Displacer defeats Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury with 57.97% of the vote
Scourge of Nel Toth defeats Elephant Guide with 56.98% of the vote
Petalmane Baku defeats Faith’s Shield with 51.58% of the vote
Reef Pirates defeats Cathar’s Shield with 50.47% of the vote
Full results to date can be seen here.If you could avoid aging by refusing to have a birthday party, most adults would never celebrate again. Balloons and cake are a small price to pay for eternal youth.
To grown-ups, this all sounds like a big joke. We all know you can’t manipulate time that way. But to kids, it’s not such a wild idea.
Children as old as four and five think that the actual purpose of a birthday party is to increase your age. It’s not a celebration—it’s a ritual. A recent study supported this finding, which had actually already been established by previous papers.
And honestly, it makes sense when you think about it. Kids are told that they’re not three years old until Saturday, because that’s when their birthday is. Once their birthday hits, they’re suddenly three. They’ve got remarkably consistent data to support this hypothesis. It only follows that the party is what’s causing them to age. And then it seems reasonable to conclude that if you don’t have the party, you don’t get a year older. How could you? The party is the key, guys. Some kids in these studies even thought that deliberately celebrating birthdays backwards could make you younger.
Even when confronted about how this could be possible, children are often still convinced this is how aging works. They’re just not quite sure how. Some of them have started to grasp the idea that time is an unstoppable, irreversible march forward, but still have trouble reconciling how they could age without throwing a party.
By age seven, more kids understand that we age continuously, and that the party is just an associated event. You turn eight regardless of whether you throw a birthday bash. Even as late as age nine, though, studies suggest that a small percentage of children still think parties cause aging.
All of this is an adorable misunderstanding of how time works, and it illustrates something that might be easy for us to forget: we’re not born with an inherent understanding of hours and minutes. Yes, babies have a sense that time passes. They seem to be able to anticipate the next step in a pattern where lights turn on and off, which suggests that they can identify time intervals. But their internal biological clock still isn’t all that precise. If you ask a six year old whether three minutes is longer than two hours, for example, they’ll struggle to give the right answer. Three feels bigger than two. And this is true even if they can tell you what an hour means.
Knowing the definition of the word hour is different from really understanding the concept. It’s not until we internalize that—how many minutes and seconds are inside of an hour, and how that passage of time feels—that we start to organize our memories that way. Until then, our past is sort of a mish-mash of events that all happened in the ambiguous “yesterday.” Lots of kids use that word to mean anything that came before today. They don’t have the mental organization to project backwards and forwards in time. A three-year-old has right now, everything that came before, and everything that hasn’t happened yet. There’s no sense of how far away this weekend is versus the next, or how long it’s been since last weekend. They’re both just vaguely in the future.
So at a child’s fourth birthday party, that kid isn’t thinking that he’s been slowly aging from three to four over the past year. He’s thinking: I am four today. Today is the day it happened. The preceding and forthcoming years aren’t a continuum for him the way they are for adults, so it’s not until we start to understand that concept that we also grasp the idea that birthdays aren’t the thing that ages us.
It’s so easy to forget that someone literally had to teach you how long a minute is. Once you internalize the idea of a minute, you can just kind of feel it. Your brain is amazing like that. Childhood is like one big exercise in training your brain how to think, which is why those years are so formative. If no one ever teaches you that time moves forward linearly, you might never realize that just because you say you’re turning 29 again doesn’t make it so. But hey, we can keep on pretending.Call it “Exile on Maim Street”: Twice in a span of two years, Antonio Margarito was banished from boxing after an agonizing defeat.
Margarito’s chosen profession is a temperamental mistress that both saves and savages him. Like so many boxers, he accepts — and at times embraces — the physical pain. He will gladly take a punch in order to land one. And there is nothing more frustrating to a man like Margarito than to be held out of either side of that equation.
But that has been his reality. Twice.
Between January 24, 2009 and May 8, 2010, Margarito did not engage in a professional fight. It wasn’t the whipping laid upon him by Shane Mosley that sidelined him. It was the wrapping laid upon his own fists. In the Staples Center locker room before that fight, Margarito’s trainer, Javier Capetillo, was caught trying to load hardened inserts into the fighter’s hand wraps. The bout went ahead with Margarito’s hands wrapped properly, Mosley hammered him into a TKO defeat, and three weeks later the California State Athletic Commission revoked Margarito’s license. For 15½ months, Margarito did not box.
Those trials represented a complete reversal of fortune from where Margarito stood coming into the Mosley fight. He had become one of boxing’s hottest attractions and was climbing the pound-for-pound lists after handing Miguel Cotto his first defeat in a dramatic 2008 tilt. On that night in Las Vegas, Cotto soundly outboxed Margarito for the first six rounds. But Cotto’s facial features morphed curiously quickly once the Mexican pressure fighter began landing punches, and in the 11th round, a battered Cotto surrendered.
Margarito and Cotto will meet again Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, in part to answer questions about what really happened in Vegas. When they do, it will end another lengthy layoff for Margarito.
That’s because on November 13, 2010, after just two fights back from his time in the wilderness, Margarito was cast out of boxing again. This time it was another man’s fists that expelled him. Manny Pacquiao picked up where Mosley left off and battered the once-feared Margarito. By the fourth round, Pacquiao’s punches had raised a nasty welt under the former welterweight king’s right eye. From that point on, Pac-Man’s straight southpaw money punch couldn’t miss that glowing target, zipping in and repeatedly striking an already fractured right orbital bone. A cut opened up on the welt, the eye nearly swelled shut, and the beatdown continued. In the 11th, Pacquiao looked to referee Laurence Cole to stop the fight, but neither Cole nor Margarito’s cornermen complied.
Pacquiao eased up in the 12th. In his mind, he’d punished the most hated man in boxing enough. Margarito needed surgery to repair his orbital bone and nine stitches across two cuts on his discolored, lopsided face.
Villainous behavior sells in most sports, and nowhere is it more bankable than in boxing, where fans crave retribution against the athletes they hate. The defeated fighter feels pain — not just the pain of a loss, but actual pain — and people will pay specifically to watch it be inflicted. So a man like Margarito, who attempted to cheat (and is suspected to have successfully sneaked the plaster-like inserts into his wraps on at least one prior occasion), can reap financial reward as the black hat opposite a hero like Pacquiao. Margarito earned $6 million for the Pacquiao fight. Another seven-figure payday awaits after his rematch with Cotto.
That fight was supposed to happen in July, but with Margarito struggling to recover from two separate surgeries on his right eye, it was bumped back to September and then December. This month, the New York State Athletic Commission threatened to scuttle the fight, or at least force it to relocate to another state, because of Margarito’s continuing optical issues. The complications caused by the Pacquiao fight — Margarito’s worst beating in a 46-fight career not exactly constructed on a foundation of slickness and defensive savvy — continue to pile up.
Margarito will receive little sympathy. We’re talking about an attempted cheater whose entire career has giant “were his gloves loaded in that fight?” asterisks attached to each result. He committed boxing’s gravest offense. He paid for it. Then he paid some more. And he might continue to pay for the rest of his life.
When will he have paid enough?
And what does it say about boxing fans that Margarito’s brutal punishment was precisely the outcome many of us were rooting for?
I didn’t follow boxing when I became associate editor of The Ring magazine in September 1997. I was a 22-year-old with the ring from my graduation cap still imprinted in my hair when I accepted the position. I took it because (a) it’s better than no job at all, and (b) I hoped it might lead to an eventual editorial role at Sports Illustrated or a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Maybe it’s unwise to admit this in a public forum, but the same company that published The Ring also published a family of pro wrestling magazines I’d read growing up, and I took the boxing job in part to position myself for a lateral move to the rasslin’ department. Such was my level of disinterest in boxing.
Then I attended my first live fight. Atlantic City. October 4, 1997. Some junior lightweight I’d barely heard of named Arturo Gatti seemed out on his feet after eating a barrage of uppercuts in the fourth round, then roared back to knock Gabriel Ruelas out with a thunderous left hook in the fifth. When he won, Gatti fell to his knees, as if in slow motion — triumphant, relieved, drained. I’d witnessed the Fight of the Year. On my first live boxing card. I was hooked.
It’s not that I disliked boxing as a kid. But ours was the last house on the block to get cable, and by the time we did, in 1992, it was too late. Since the mid-’80s it had been nearly impossible to be a fight fan with only rabbit ears atop your TV set. I’d seen Ray Mancini fight, knew who Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler and Larry Holmes were, and remember exactly where I was when I heard Buster Douglas had knocked out Mike Tyson. I was certainly aware of boxing. I just didn’t watch it much and didn’t have a formed or informed opinion on anything pugilism-related.
All my life, I’ve been a pacifist. Actually, first I was a wuss, and that led me to later declare myself a pacifist. I loved movie violence as much as the next guy, but real violence with real consequences? That was something that wasn’t going to slide right off of me.
After more than 13 years in the business — seven as an editor at The Ring and six as a freelance fight writer — I watched Antonio Margarito take the prolonged beating he deserved last November, and my feelings were as wildly conflicted as they were on my first days on the job. I found myself asking, “What’s a nice boy like you doing in a sport like this?” The humane decision would have been for Margarito’s corner to throw in the towel between the 10th and 11th rounds. But the man known as “Marga-cheat-o” had long ago waived his right to be treated humanely. In the 11th, ref Cole called timeout to take a close look at Margarito’s grotesque right eye, and HBO’s Max Kellerman scolded Cole, “The issue is not Margarito’s eye at this point; it’s his brain.”
From a purely sporting perspective, those last two rounds shouldn’t have happened. But they did, and Margarito was presented with the opportunity, at a potentially lethal price, to say he finished on his feet. And all those viewing were presented with a maximally heightened example of the moral dilemma that fans of violent sports rarely stop to consider.
Boxing can be deadly. The goal is to beat the crap out of your opponent. In a dangerous sport such as football, hurting people is a byproduct of trying to move or prevent the movement of the ball. In boxing, there is no ball. So as fans, we use professionalism as a buffer against the sport’s brutality: I don’t want to see anyone get hurt, but these guys are getting paid well and they understand the risk.
It’s a perfectly valid rationalization. Most of the time, boxing saves a life before it shortens or diminishes one. Take welterweight contender Devon Alexander, for example. Among a group of 30 kids with whom Alexander grew up in St. Louis, he says that eight are dead and 10 — including his own brother — have spent time in prison. What kept Alexander off the streets? Boxing. Go to any city and you’ll hear stories like this. Look at the bout sheet for any fight card and you’ll find several boxers with similar tales to tell. You can make the case, if you really want to, that a life of low-wage labor is preferable to a life of getting punched for pay. But you cannot reasonably argue that anyone who chooses to box for a living would be better off getting shot to death or getting his exercise in the prison yard.
At the same time, you can’t use the perils of not boxing as an excuse to ignore the sport’s perils. Newsflash: The human head is not intended to be punched. Very rare is the man who enjoys a lengthy career in boxing and comes away with no damage to his mental capacity. Sometimes it’s just a barely noticeable slurring of speech; sometimes it’s full-on pugilistic dementia. And it isn’t always predictable based on the number of punches a man has taken. If it were, Jake LaMotta wouldn’t have made it through his 80s with reasonable lucidity, and Wilfred Benitez wouldn’t have lost most of his short-term memory function before his 50th birthday.
At its worst, boxing is the most unwatchable sport in the world. (At least among sports that are, without debate, actually “sports” and not just activities that you can do sitting down or while smoking a cigarette.) But at its best, there’s no other sport that quite compares.
OK, that’s an opinion, but it starts to feel like a fact when you sit down and watch the Gatti-Micky Ward trilogy. Or the Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez battles. Or Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo I. Or Julio Cesar Chavez-Meldrick Taylor I. Or Marvin Hagler-Tommy Hearns. Or Ray Leonard-Hearns. Or George Foreman-Ron Lyle. Or the Thrilla in Manila. I could fill another thousand words just listing the amazing fights that are more rewatchable from start to finish than any Super Bowl, any March Madness game, any Masters Sunday.
And it’s not just the high-contact, high-plasma, multiple-knockdown punchouts that offer a taste of the magic. Bernard Hopkins’ winning the light heavyweight championship of the world at age 46 earlier this year was magic. The first glimpse of Mike Tyson emerging in the arena, the white towel with the hole cut in it draped over his chest, was always magic. Joe Louis’ knocking out Max Schmeling in half a round was magic, as was your grandfather’s misty-eyed delivery as he told you the story. Mixed in with the blood and brutality is beauty — not just in the form of the grace and technique exhibited at the highest levels, but in the honor and respect shown between combatants. (Well, at least those who aren’t loading their gloves.)
I realize that I’m perceived as a freak of nature by virtue of the fact that I’m under the age of 40 and I love boxing. But the older I get, the less I find myself to be such an anomaly. People may say that “boxing is dead,” but at every fight I attend, press row is loaded with young writers — most of them working for websites and showing up because they desperately want to be there, not because their editors made them go. The crowds aren’t lacking for young faces, either. Kellerman and I aren’t the only guys under 40 who know that Cristobal Arreola is a heavyweight contender and not a budding porn star. I trade tweets and e-mails every day with 18- to 34-year-olds who have discovered the magic that boxing offers. These are people who will have my back when I say that, at its best, boxing can’t be touched.
As journalists, we’re trained to keep a professional distance from the athletes we cover. But there were moments early on when I slipped; when you’re 23, it’s hard not to feel a little puffed up when Fernando Vargas greets you with a handshake-hug or Ivan Robinson picks up the phone and says, “What up, E?” But by the time I’d seen each of them absorb a punishing defeat, the lesson had fully taken hold: You can like the athletes you cover, but it’s dangerous to let yourself care about them. Especially if they’re boxers. It may be uncomfortable to discuss, or even to think about, but these are people who engage in sporting events that sometimes end in death. Since those early missteps, I’ve developed some solid relationships with boxers, but nothing that went beyond cordial, nothing that could really be construed as friendship.
I’ve been lucky enough never to witness a ring death. I should have been there in 1999, the night Stephan Johnson died in Atlantic City, but for whatever reason, that was the one major East Coast fight I skipped that year. I could have been aboard the U.S.S. Intrepid in 2001 when Beethavean Scottland was killed, but I chose to stay home. For years I attended nearly every meaningful card at the Blue Horizon in North Philly, but by the time Francisco “Paco” Rodriguez died there in 2009, I was married with two little kids, and my standards had changed for which fights were worth a night out.
So I’ve never stood witness to the very worst result boxing can produce. But I’ve seen more ring deaths unfold on television than I care to recall. I know they almost always come as the result of an accumulation of punishment, not a single punch. As spectacular and horrifying as Pacquiao’s second-round knockout of Ricky Hatton was, fighters don’t get killed or permanently debilitated that way. But what Pacquiao did to Margarito in Rounds 9, 10, and 11? That was worrisome.
A few weeks before the fight, Margarito upped his evil quotient by performing an impression of Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach, suffering from Parkinson’s tremors. As the fight neared, Margarito’s goatee continued growing and his resemblance to Ming the Merciless became unmistakable. Again: evil personified. But the beard became a point of discussion beyond just its sinister superficiality. In boxing, a fighter is allowed only so much facial hair, as it can theoretically cushion the opponent’s blows. So Roach asked the Texas State Athletic Commission to make Margarito shave.
But Pacquiao stepped up and said to let Margarito keep his pointy goatee. Manny said he wanted to use it as a target.
It was the sort of cold and heartless decree we don’t normally expect to hear from the good-natured Philippine congressman-slash-boxer. And when he had the opportunity, Pacquiao chose not to back up his tough talk. He asked the ref to stop the fight in Round 11. He carried his opponent across the finish line in Round 12. When it came down to it, Pacquiao showed mercy. He’d done enough damage to satisfy his own personal bloodlust, and enough damage to ensure that Margarito would remember the occasion forever.
The Pacquiao-Margarito fight may have been satisfying to the public, but it wasn’t a great fight. Margarito-Cotto was. There was a classic swinging of the pendulum, a dramatic rally, a shocking conclusion. Violence overruled science as the 11 rounds of action wore on, and that’s how fans usually like it.
Both Cotto and Margarito have been diminished as fighters in the three years since. That means the punches should be landing at an even greater rate the second time around, given that defensive reflexes traditionally fade long before offensive firepower does. Saturday’s rematch at the Garden could be another classic, this time without the hand-wrap asterisks attached. But there are other asterisks in play. Will Cotto melt down emotionally if Margarito’s punches feel the same as they did in ’08? Will Cotto make it personal and risk everything for revenge? Will Margarito risk his own well-being to save his legacy and prove he can win with legal hand wraps? Will Cotto target Margarito’s right eye? Is that eye putting Margarito at a dangerous disadvantage before the first punch even lands?
We live in a world where public figures who question the celebration of Osama bin Laden’s death are ostracized. So it shouldn’t be surprising that we live in world where a boxer with a busted moral compass can get mutilated and there will be those who say he got off easy. I’m not sure where I fall on that spectrum. In their first fight, Margarito very well may have used plaster wraps to break Cotto’s spirit and turn his face into ground chuck. I wanted to see Margarito lose to Pacquiao, and I wished it could have been arranged without a $6 million payday coming the victim’s way.
But I also stopped to think about the callousness of what I was quietly rooting for. I don’t believe that makes me better than anyone else. It just means animal instinct hasn’t completely taken control of me. It means I love this sport unconditionally but not unconsciously.
Part of me doesn’t want Margarito to ever fight again. Part of me is endlessly intrigued by the plotlines surrounding Margarito-Cotto II and by the potential for a legendary action fight. With the way these fighters’ styles mesh, that elusive pugilistic magic is in play. On the basis of that alone, when the bell rings, I will be watching. I know that much. And though members of the media are not supposed to root for fighters, I will be silently pulling for Cotto to exact revenge. I’m certain of that.
What I don’t know is what it will take Saturday night for me to decide that enough punishment is enough. Margarito is a disgrace to the sport of boxing. But he’s also a human being. I hope I never lose sight of that. I hope I continue to periodically ask myself that question, “What’s a nice boy like you doing in a sport like this?”
I’ll ask the question, and I’ll do so knowing that boxing, on its better days, will give me precisely the answers I need to hear.
Eric Raskin is a former managing editor of The Ring magazine. He co-hosts the twice-monthly boxing podcast Ring Theory and can be found on Twitter: @EricRaskin.
Previously from Eric Raskin:
Old Dogs: Bernard Hopkins, Dewey Bozella, and Their Separate Quests for Boxing Glory
Oral History: “Sugar” Ray Leonard vs. “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler
An Imperfect Path to Pacquiao-Mayweather
Klitschko vs. Haye: Why you should care
To comment on this story through Facebook, click here.Demagogy and duplicity: The Democrats in the 2010 elections
13 October 2010
With less than three weeks remaining in the 2010 election campaign, President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are seeking to stave off a major electoral defeat by making a last-minute, fraudulent appeal to popular hostility towards Wall Street and big business.
In his remarks Sunday to a rally in Philadelphia, largely drawn from the ranks of the trade union bureaucracy, Obama attacked “millionaires and billionaires,” “Wall Street banks,” “corporations”, the “oil industry,” the “insurance industry” and “credit-card companies.”
He charged that “a former lobbyist for AIG and Exxon Mobil” helped draft the “Pledge to America” adopted by the Republican Party. He then declared that “the centerpiece of the pledge is a $700 billion tax cut that would only go to the top 2 percent, the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.”
The business-bashing demagogy has been combined in the past week with an ugly dose of American chauvinism, with Obama and congressional Democrats claiming that their opponents are benefiting from money from “foreign-owned corporations,” supposedly funneled through the US Chamber of Commerce, the biggest single fundraiser for the Republican Party.
The charge of foreign money allows the Democrats to wrap themselves in the flag and compete with the Republicans in appeals to nationalism and anti-immigrant prejudice. It has no factual basis. The Republican Party, like the Democratic Party, is an instrument of American banks and corporations that operate all over the world.
Obama and the Democrats combine pseudo-populist rhetoric with right-wing policies that benefit the financial-corporate elite. For the tens of millions of working people facing unemployment and the specter of homelessness and destitution, they have nothing to offer.
While Obama claims that his administration is “finally holding accountable” the financial interests that caused the greatest economic crash since the Great Depression, the Obama-Bush bailout has put the entire financial resources of the federal government at the disposal of Wall Street.
The administration has rejected any effort to create jobs directly through a major public works program, or any serious measures to alleviate deepening poverty and mass suffering in a crisis which is now completing its third full year, with the average duration of unemployment the highest ever recorded.
This week, even as Obama was mouthing utterly hollow populist-sounding slogans, his spokesmen were taking to the airways to reject calls for a nationwide moratorium on home foreclosures, despite mounting evidence of systematic fraud by banks and mortgage lenders.
The basic outcome of next month’s congressional elections is assured, regardless of whether the November 2 vote puts the Republicans in control of Congress or leaves a reduced Democratic majority in power. The Obama administration will move even further to the right, supposedly in response to public opinion.
The official narrative of the 2010 election campaign, promoted in lock-step by the corporate-controlled media, both openly right-wing and nominally liberal, is that Obama has tilted too far to the left. His supposedly massive federal spending has, according to the media, aroused deep anger in the public at large, reflected in the growth of support for the Tea Party campaigns.
The received wisdom is that the American people, who repudiated Bush and the Republicans just two years ago, are now, in the midst of a social crisis without precedent in the post-war period, clamoring for more of the very pro-corporate policies—tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, the dismantling of social programs—they voted to end in 2008.
In this conception, American politics is divided along partisan lines between the Republican right and the Democratic “left,” with most of those who are dissatisfied with the existing parties residing somewhere in between these two supposed polar opposites. Summing up the conventional wisdom, Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times wrote of the elections: “The party that seizes the center will win.”
Besides grotesquely distorting the actual right-wing record of the Obama administration, this portrait of American political life leaves out a decisive fact: the actual sentiments of the working people who constitute the vast majority of the population.
Never in history has a deep-going economic crisis of the capitalist system produced a shift in the masses in favor of the capitalists. On the contrary, opinion poll after opinion poll shows growing popular hatred of Wall Street speculators and corporate CEOs, who are—absolutely correctly—held responsible for the destruction of jobs and living standards. The masses in America are moving to the left, not to the right.
Within the peculiar political structure of the United States, limited to two officially recognized parties, both controlled by corporate interests and offering only right-wing policies, this shift in mass sentiment has as yet found no political outlet. But even the opinion polls conducted in the current election campaign, skewed as they are by the assumption that the existing political and social structures are unalterable, rebuts the claim that the enormous and growing dissatisfaction with the Obama administration has produced a surge of support for the policies of the Republican right.
A Zogby International poll of independent voters found that only 13 percent gave a favorable rating to congressional Democrats and only 5 percent to congressional Republicans, staggering figures that give a glimpse of the deep dissatisfaction with both of the major capitalist parties.
A Bloomberg poll conducted October 7-10 found that more than 40 percent of those who had once supported Obama said they were either less supportive or did not support him at all, two years after the 2008 presidential election. While Obama’s recent populist rhetoric has been attacked by the Republicans and sections of the media as “anti-business,” a majority of those interviewed by Bloomberg rejected this criticism, and more felt that the Obama administration had been too soft on Wall Street than too harsh.
A majority of those polled by Bloomberg rejected cuts in nearly every significant federal program: Social Security, Medicare, roads and public transportation, funding for disease research, education. They flatly opposed either privatizing Social Security or raising the age of eligibility. Most opposed the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
Millions of working people in the United States are moving into a collision with the policies of the financial aristocracy and both of its parties. The November election will be followed by a turn to austerity policies, including attacks on Social Security, Medicare, public education and access to health care. It will signal an intensification of the war in Afghanistan and a continuation of US military interventions in Iraq and elsewhere. The attacks on democratic rights at home will be stepped up.
The emergence of an independent political movement of the working class is the only way to defend jobs, living standards and democratic rights against this corporate onslaught. The Socialist Equality Party advances a political program for the defense of the social rights of working people on the basis of socialist policies. We call on the readers of the WSWS to consider this program and make the decision to join and build the SEP.
Patrick Martin |
wind up in Manhattan,” Greenspan offers. This past March, as a skewering public-art stunt, the downtown-based collaborators set Bridge & Tunnel Traps, fake-steel foothold-trap jaws baited with PATH train tickets, Drakkar cologne, hair-spiking glue-gel, a Long Island Rail Road schedule, and a gold chain. “Everything [B&T kids] do becomes cartoonish,” explains Greenspan. They laid B&T traps outside notorious hot spots like Pacha, the Hotel Rivington, and the since-shuttered Mason-Dixon Bar. Some observers assumed they were Jersey Shore traps, despite the LIRR nod. The targeted behavior was the same. “Putting on some cologne is fine; bathing in it, not so much,” Greenspan reasons. “A little bit of yelling is fine, but everything they do is on 11. Again, a limousine is fine. A Hummer limo? It’s ostentatiousness, but without any class. They’re just amplifying horrible taste.”
About her experience deflecting the bridge-and-tunnel crowd, Vice fashion editor Annette Lamothe-Ramos, who also DJs Fridays at the West Village’s Jane Hotel, says, “They’re always the snobbiest, most stuck-up people at the bar! They’re pushing rank at the door, trying to take pictures with their friends on their cell phones, posing in the middle of a room.” A Manhattan native, the 25-year-old has driven through Staten Island only after a wrong turn. “It’s annoying,” she says about B&T kids. “They just ruin the night for everyone.”
This reputation for bad manners, however deserved, is exactly what drove Bridge & Tunnel. “These kids are so misunderstood,” says executive producer Naomi Bulochnikov. “You tune in because you hate them. You stay tuned because you start falling in love with them.”
Michelle Ippolito, 24, had never heard the pejorative “bridge and tunnel” before she got cast in the show. An alum of Staten Island’s St. Joseph Hill Academy High, a private Catholic school with a 14-acre campus and a token gazebo, Michelle very quickly became Gabriella’s onscreen arch-nemesis last summer. She was also a stunning, stick-thin brunette with a pharmacy-aisle tan. She, too, cavorted with a blond sisterly sidekick, a Canadian model named Natalie, which fostered a tag-team rivalry with the DeBartolis. Michelle had also briefly dated Gabby’s ex Joseph Bonomo, Bridge & Tunnel‘s self-appointed Brody Jenner, and the two continued to be close friends.
Bonomo is known for his “mouth, my abs, and a few other parts of me that we can’t talk about,” he jokes when we meet for an afternoon drink at the Murray Hill location of Caliente Cab Company, the local Mexican chain owned by his close friend’s uncle, where Joe bartended last summer. The 23-year-old St. John’s grad doesn’t lift his powder-blue polo shirt to unveil his abs (or anything else anatomical). Though there are photos of him shirtless on Facebook—in one, he’s holding a giant bottle of Dom Perignon and a Super Mario hat—and his rock-ribbed stomach is, admittedly, impressive, more like a Ken doll’s plastic six-pack than that aggressively dented tummy of that other MTV guy whose solar plexus is internationally famous. For that comparison, Joe already has a cheeky sound bite. “I’m not the Situation, I’m more like a Solution.”
Michelle and Bonomo both sought to become white-collar professionals; they viewed Bridge & Tunnel as an adventure, not an endgame. She’d studied pre-med at NYU; he’d been accepted to New York Law; she’d decided to do post-grad work this fall. No matter what, her plan was that “even if I was famous on Oprah, I was still going to school in 2011.” Together, Michelle and Bonomo represented another side of the Staten Island class divide, which became another subtext of B&T‘s narrative arc: the difference between a “goon” and a “guido”/”gumba.” As a Bridge & Tunnel one-sheet broke it down, “The goons are considered street kids who hang out on the stoops, while the gumbas are the club-hoppers.” Brianna and Tim, who sat under bridges and could barely afford the cigarettes they smoked, were the goons. Michelle wasn’t exactly a club-hopping guidette, but she could pass. Recently, she says, “when I was at Forever 21, a woman asked me—she had a daughter going to college—and she’s like, ‘What did you study?’ I told her, and she’s like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, you don’t look like you’re smart.’ ”
Michelle and Bonomo were not Jersey Shore, they reminded each other, and they were going to behave respectably on camera. And then Michelle found herself getting pegged with water balloons on the Fourth of July.
The DeBartoli sisters were born in Brooklyn, but have lived in Staten Island as long as they can remember. Just 18 months apart, they are best friends and perfect foils. “Gabby was always a prissy diva,” says their 22-year-old cousin Angelo DeBartoli. “Brianna was a tomboy. She was a little gangsta, sweatpants and tanktops and shit like that.”
The elder, Gabby, went to Moore Catholic High School for two years, where, according to the younger, she was a “straight-A, I-do-everything-right” type of student. (Gabriella disagrees, pointing out that she was so frequently in private-school detention for silly violations like chewing gum that she eventually transferred to the nearby public Tottenville High.) Meanwhile, Brianna couldn’t stop getting suspended. “I was a bad child,” she concedes. “My first fight was the fourth grade because someone stepped on my new Skechers. Punched them right in the face, and then it never stopped. I got punch-happy, I guess.”
“Yes, she did have a couple problems like that,” her mother admits. “Brianna’s the type that she doesn’t take crap from nobody.”
So one can only imagine what Brianna’s response would be when catty strangers saw cameras trailing her at clubs and, sensing a hater-cameo opportunity, threw ice chunks at her head.
Or when after years she spent filming MTV pilots that treated her as an intriguing specimen of Manhattan-commuter youth, suddenly a bunch of flimsier, cheesier fifth-borough reproductions of her and her friends are famous, and people heckle her for being the copycat.
Brianna can’t talk about it, but there it is in the trailer: her getting carried out of a club, lunging; her slugging a dude in the face. “People would come up and call Brianna ‘Snooki’ because of the way she was doing her hair,” cousin Angelo recalls. “Brianna was pretty cool with it at first, but I’m so protective of her. I was, like, ‘Snooki is a piece of trash. How are they calling you Snooki? They don’t know anything about you.’ ”
It’s called Drama Island for a reason. During filming last summer, Timmy and Brianna would hook up, then argue, then talk. Michelle and Gabby seethed in each other’s general direction, water balloons got lobbed at Michelle one night, and eventually they ended up in an all-out pushing fight. Gabby and Jimmy made out in an Atlantic City pool. At home, Gabby constantly reminded Brianna, “Every time we get ready, we’re not getting ready for the people we’re seeing tonight. We’re getting ready for America!” Brianna’s cell phone broke. She didn’t care; she just thought, Soon I’ll be the Sprint spokesperson.
“I could just see the premise, and what they were looking for there was probably going to be no different than the Jersey Shore,” says Johnny Feva, a local DJ at Rhythm & Brews—a Dongan Hills bar where, Jimmy says dismissively, “you can catch the 50-year-old single mother chilling out.” Feva refused to sign release forms when the camera crew came to his night. “People who were getting off the island? That’s probably a good way of them saying, ‘All train wrecks in Staten Island, please apply.’ ”
Feva was so disgusted that he made a YouTube video last August asking MTV to stay off Staten Island. Too late. Bridge & Tunnel‘s premiere date was Tuesday, October 26, 2010, at 10:30 p.m. Strategic timing, since the Miami-based finale of Jersey Shore‘s second season would air the previous Thursday. To ensure that this information didn’t leak, bodyguards shadowed the B&T cast to Atlantic City. Linda Vitale planned to fly into New York for the kickoff to be with her two daughters. The production crew threw a wrap dinner with the entire cast. Gabriella, who’d been skeptical about the show’s future not just because a psychic told her it wouldn’t air, stood up and squealed, Is this really happening?!?
The psychic was right. On September 22, 2010, producers learned that Bridge & Tunnel was officially shelved. One week later, longtime MTV execs Tony DiSanto and Liz Gateley announced their departure from the network.
As the president of programming, DiSanto oversaw the zeitgeists of Jersey Shore and 16 and Pregnant. The former had just wrapped shooting its third season; and now the latter’s second season would debut on Tuesday, October 26, 2010, filling Bridge & Tunnel‘s time slot.
“It was probably the best thing that it didn’t air,” says DJ Johnny Feva. “The show is pretty much what you would expect,” wrote the blog Staten Island Dump. “Staten Islanders acting like assholes. Thank Jesus that your children don’t have to grow up in a world where these people represent their hometown.” (The Staten Island Borough President’s Office would not respond to requests for comment.)
Reportedly, the reasoning behind dismissing Bridge & Tunnel at the eleventh hour was that the premise was now too similar to Jersey Shore‘s. The network supposedly didn’t want to be the next Bravo, a business built on programming franchises like Real Housewives and Top Chef. Then, this past April, under a new regime, MTV would announce that it had greenlit two 12-episode Jersey Shore spin-offs, one starring Pauly D and one co-starring Snooki and JWoww. The following month, the Situation landed a separate development deal with the station. (MTV representatives could not be reached for comment.)
At first, the DeBartoli sisters bought a laptop and started a Bridge & Tunnel Facebook fan page. They gained 10 pounds. They didn’t realize they were still contractually forbidden from talking publicly about Bridge & Tunnel even though it didn’t air, so they spoke about it on camera. “The trailer does look like all we do is hook up with a bunch of guys and punch people in the face,” Brianna told Chance TV. “I look like the bitch, it’s terrible,” Gabriella acknowledged grinning.
But they’re innately stars. Brianna was recently approached for another reality show. “It was about this guido girl trying to not be a guido anymore,” she recalls. “She had to stop drinking, stop smoking, start covering up her boobs—and I had to be the best friend that was like the bad influence on her.” The idea was stupid, Brianna thought, but she couldn’t consider it either way. Both Gabriella and Michelle have been approached to model, but had to refuse. Even though the show wasn’t broadcast, contracted B&T cast members did get paid between $1,500 and $2,000 an episode. But the DeBartolis still had to find jobs. Brianna called and confirmed food orders at MyPizza.com until quitting this past Saturday. “That’s pretty much what I’m doing with my life since the show has left. I just went downhill.” (Within two days, she scored a new job as a restaurant bartender.)
“I just recently completely left the hair industry—I’m over it,” Gabriella says. We’re back at E Squared. “Until I figure out my next move,” she explains, “I’m an executive assistant … CEO … some administrative—some pretty word for a secretary.”
“Administrative assistant?” offers Brianna helpfully.
“CEO is in it!” Gabriella insists. “Whatever it is, I like it—it sounds classy!”
Gabby and Michelle Ippolito are now famous friends. Michelle works in a Manhattan entertainment law office. She just got engaged to 27-year-old Adam, a Duke grad who once had a blowout and says he frustratingly gets mistaken for the Situation even though he’s far better looking; so far two reality dating shows have solicited the couple, including the one that hatched Snooki. Joe Bonomo attends New York Law full-time, clerks for a Kings County judge, hits the gym twice a day, and recently bought a Harley. Jimmy Gambardella, whose Twitter handle is @LadykillerJMG, toils away in construction, earns $150 plus tips a night to dance at sweet-16 parties, and recently auditioned for an American Pie reunion, but didn’t get the part.
Brianna still aspires to be a music producer. Her MTV persona would have made that easier. “Now I have no connections. I have no money. I’m working a dead-end job to get the money to live my dream. I’m back to before I got that phone call. Screaming at the mall. I should have kept my job.” She’s all too aware of her situation. “It was all a big tease.”
Gabriella believes this is just a temporary setback. “We still have these dreams. We’re still gonna get them. It’s just a slower process.”
Brianna is engaged, not to Timmy, but Billy Bonamo. They met last December 4, her birthday eve, at Staten Island’s Lava Lounge. Billy was drunk, he hit on her, and she thought he was cute. Four months later, Billy proposed. They were arguing about a male buddy she’d kissed before they met. She tried to drive away in her Scion but had an anxiety attack. “I’m in the midst of breaking up with him,” Brianna remembers. Standing by her headlight, Billy beckoned her over. “I’m like, ‘Why do you need to see me right now? I’m yelling at you!’ ” Billy descended to one knee, pulled out a ring, and said, verbatim: “Shut. The Fuck. Up. And Marry Me.” Brianna said yes.
“We’re going really, really fast,” she admits. “Whole new life.” The couple has matching tattoos: His name inked on her ass, her name stamped “right above his penis,” she says, “where it belongs.”
We say our goodbyes at E Squared and head in separate directions until Brianna realizes her interviewer is hoofing back to the Staten Island Railway on foot and circles back. “I’m so sorry! I went off blasting my music, not realizing that you were walking!” They offer up the backseat.
Driving past banners for BLOWOUTS and BOOZE (specifically liquor-store eye-opener discounts, from 8 a.m. to noon on Monday through Thursday), Brianna switches on LMFAO’s “I Am Not a Whore,” the party-rock club-jam that repeats I! Am Not! A Whore 20 times. “This is me defending myself from Staten Island girls,” jokes Brianna from the driver’s seat, then singing along with the subsequent disclaimer, “But I like to do it.” (There is a 2011 YouTube video of Snooki, JWoww, Deena, and Ronnie duck-faced voguing to this very song.)
The white Scion turns the corner to the Nassau station; the train is already there. Like a tongue-waggingly hot poodle, Gabby sticks her head out the window and screams loud enough for Manhattan to hear, “Hold the TRAAAAAAAINNNN!” New York railways do not wait for people who aren’t even on the platform, but Brianna is insistent. “No—quick, quick, quick—seriously, go!”
Like on TV, the train waits. Holding the door, the smiling conductor says, “Just for you girls.” What he means: just for those girls.The California state senate on Thursday passed a UFC-backed bill that allows the commission to withhold 40 percent of a licensee’s pay in the event of a positive drug test. Previously, the commission could take up to $2,500.
If, for example, January’s UFC 183 had been regulated by the CSAC, the commission could have withheld $520,000 following the positive tests of ex-champ Anderson Silva and Nick Diaz, though the seized money is separate from the CSAC’s general fund and can’t be used to bankroll future testing.
SB 469, introduced Feb. 25 and lobbied to the tune of $30,000 by the UFC, also gives the commission authority to drug test fighters while they are licensed by the state, formalizing an out-of-competition strategy employed over the past year. (UFC Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Lawrence Epstein told MMAjunkie that while the promotion supports legislation that increases penalties for drug offenders, its primary aim was to back the portion of the bill that extends CSAC operations until 2020.)
While the Nevada State Athletic Commission wants the UFC to foot the bill of enhanced drug testing, the California commission will pick up the tab, according to the bill, which still needs to pass the full assembly. But the commission also will have a fairly sizable bank account to cover costs for out-of-competition drug testing – $115,000 is earmarked for anti-doping measures in fiscal year 2016-2017 and $107,000 is allocated on an ongoing basis.
As drug failures have become more commonplace, the CSAC has ramped up its anti-doping efforts, though out-of-competition test have yet to snag any high-profile fighters as in Nevada, which caught Jon Jones, Silva and Diaz over the course of one month.
Still, the commission is considered a key ally in the UFC’s efforts to ramp up punishments for banned substances. In February, the industry-leader pushed commissions to increase suspensions and fines in connection to positive tests, recommending a two-year ban for first offenders. The program was backed by the Association of Boxing Commissions, of which the NSAC and CSAC are members.
A state analysis of the commission’s expenditures predicts it will stay in the black for fiscal year 2015-2016, bringing in $1.7 million in fees on $1.45 million in expenses. A reserve of $1 million is also expected.
For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.
Updated May 30 at 7:27 ET to include additional information from UFC executive Epstein.)Image copyright Getty Images
Bankers will not have to prove their innocence under new rules being proposed by the UK government.
The Treasury has abandoned a requirement for top bankers to prove they did not know about wrongdoing or had tried to prevent misconduct.
The "reverse burden of proof" rule is now described as a "duty of responsibility" on such employees.
The proposal is part of legislation that will cover the entire financial sector, rather than bankers alone.
Senior managers will still be required to take appropriate steps to stop rules being broken.
However, it will now be up to regulators to prove that managers failed to take reasonable action to prevent breaches.
The new rules come into effect in March 2016 for all banks operating in the UK.
'Process not substance'
Andrew Bailey, deputy governor of the Bank of England and head of the Prudential Regulation Authority, said the move would make little difference.
"This change is one of process, not substance. The focus for firms and individuals should be on complying with both the letter and the spirit of the rules, rather than considering ways to circumvent them," he said.
The Bank proposed the more stringent rules following a review earlier this year.
Image copyright Getty Images
Softening the way senior managers will be treated is likely to be seen as a significant softening by the Chancellor, George Osborne.
He said in his Mansion House speech in June that he wanted a "new settlement" with the financial sector, which was regarded as an end to bashing bankers.
Bigger buffers
Meanwhile, UK banks will need to hold billions of pounds of extra capital when they are forced to separate their High Street operations from riskier activities, the Bank of England said.
New rules that come into effect in 2019 will require retail banking operations that serve the public to be "ring-fenced" to ensure the government is not forced to bail banks out in the event of a future financial crisis.
The Bank said the changes would require big banks to hold between £2.2bn and £3.3bn of extra capital.
Any bank with deposits of more than £25bn will be affected, including HSBC, Lloyds, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander UK and Co-operative Bank.Candidate For DNC Chair Refuses to Answer When Asked if Democrat Primary Was Rigged (Video)
Candidate For DNC Chair Dodged Question 3 Times
Former Secretary of Labor Tom Perez refused to answer when asked if the 2016 Democratic primary was rigged during Wednesday nights debate for the DNC Chair position.
The former Obama administration official dodged the question 3 different times when asked by CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
Below are the responses Perez gave when asked by Cuomo three different times on whether the primaries were rigged:
DODGE #1 “Well, you know, here are the facts, Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary. Hillary Clinton also won the popular vote. At the same time, because of the absence of transparency in the Democratic primary, there was a crisis of trust that ensued. And what we need in the chair of the Democratic Party is to make sure that in fact, and in perception, every single day, you are fair and neutral. That’s why when you asked a question before about primaries, you have to let that primary process go. If I were the chair–if I have the privilege of winning, for instance, one of the things I would recommend would be that we set the primary debate schedule long in advance of when we know who the candidates are, we have to do everything to make sure we’re fair and transparent. And it’s not only in how we set the primary process; the DNC is black hole. And we have a crisis of confidence because it is. And that’s why the leader of the DNC needs to make sure–” DODGE #2 “Again, the process, because of the absence of transparency, it created that crisis of relevance and it created the distrust that people didn’t trust the outcome.” DODGE #3 “Well, again, you know, we meet every single day as leader of the Labor Department, leader of the Civil Rights Division, and I hope to be leader of the Democratic Party. We have to do everything in transparent fashion and when you do that, you earn trust, trust isn’t something you’re given. It’s something you earn.”
Video
H/T: Stephen Obregon
Follow Ryan Saavedra On Twitter @NewsRevoltRyanThis is the unearthly beauty that the Globohomoists want to deface and expunge from the world under a torrent of mass migration and miscegenation. If you have to put your finger on what you’re fighting for, this image will easily suffice as your Coat of Charms.
***
Anonymous White Male writes,
Why don’t more people notice the fundamental difference between White and black music? The dindus’ music exists solely on the physical plane. It is body oriented, rarely rises above primitive rhythm, and crude to the point of contempt. White music, not what passes for music today, is concerned with higher themes, more melodic and harmonious music, higher lyrical quality, and very little “Look at me! Look at me! See my hand jive? Watch me bust a move!” Children vs. adults.
As evidenced in all modes of expression, northern latitude whites on the whole are the transcendent race.
Whites: transcendent
asians: mystical
latins: celebratory
blacks: primitiveQuestion:
My mother was Protestant. My father's father was Catholic, but his mother was Jewish. My family survived the holocaust in Europe, with great struggle.
I know that by traditional Jewish law I am not Jewish, but I feel that I more than qualify to be a Jew. I read books about Jews. I support Israel. I even had a bar mitzvah. The worst part is that the people who tell me I am not Jewish are rabbis! They said I would have to convert to Judaism. I do not understand why they say this. My family survived the greatest atrocities in the history of the Jews. How can I convert, when I feel that I already am Jewish....
Response:
In Biblical Israel, every citizen was landed. If you were a descendant of one of the twelve tribes, you owned a plot of land. If you sold it, it came back to you—or to your inheritors—on the jubilee year, which occurred every 50 years. You were tied to the land and the land was tied to you. Inheritance of land was through the paternal line—just as tribal affiliation is patrilineal.
I'm mentioning this because, in Torah law, a very similar relationship exists between the Torah and a Jew, between a Jew and his Jewishness. A Jew can abandon the Torah, but the Torah never abandons him—eventually it will return, if not to him, then to his children, if not to his children, then to his children's children. So too, a Jew may imagine that he has abandoned his Jewishness, and yet always remains a Jew—as do the children of that Jew, and the children of those children.
There are two distinctions, however, between the relationship of a Jew to his share of the land and the relationship of a Jew to Torah and Jewishness. One is that it is possible to sell one's plot of land—although it will still return, for that period of time, it is sold. Torah and Jewishness, on the other hand, are not for sale. No matter how hard a Jew may try, he never truly can let go of either.
The other distinction is that Jewishness—and therefore the relationship to Torah—is not patrilineal, but matrilineal. Perhaps these two distinctions are related: The maternal line strikes much deeper to the essence of who you are, and that essence is something that not only will always return, but can never truly be abandoned.
Despite all this, the child whose father married out of his people can still claim his father's heritage. His challenge is greater than the child whose Jewish mother brought him by default into her people. In his case, it is up to him to decide whether he wants to make the commitment to join his father's people and to fulfill all the obligations the Torah places upon this nation. He must also become circumcised and immerse in a mikvah before a qualified bet din.
If this is the path you wish to follow, I am willing to assist to whatever degree is within my capacity. If not, it is good to have you as a friend of the Jewish People. The righteous of humankind, no matter to which family, tribe or nation they belong, all have a share in the world to come.Australia's neighbourhood faces a "substantially" increased threat from Islamic State with the current battle against militants in the southern Philippines serving as a sharp wake-up call, head of the US Pacific Command Admiral Harry Harris has warned.
Speaking on board the visiting American warship USS Bonhomme Richard, Admiral Harris told Australian journalists that "ISIS is trying to gain a foothold in the Indo-Asia Pacific and I think it behooves all free nations to take a stand and play a part in defeating ISIS."
On board the visiting American warship USS Bonhomme Richard, where the opening ceremony for Talisman Sabre was held. Credit:John Feder
He said the situation in Marawi city, where the Philippines army has been bogged down in a ferocious battle against Islamic militants, was a "wake up call for the region."
Australia's Chief of Joint Operations, Vice Admiral David Johnston, confirmed that the ADF had contributed three aircraft to assist Philippines forces with intelligence and surveillance support.When I picked up Metro 2035 in a local bookshop a few weeks ago, I could hardly wait to rush through the book – which I did, in three days.
It has been quite some time since Metro 2034 and even longer since Metro 2033. But after I had finished my nearly uninterrupted binge, I paused and looked up Dmitry Glukhovsky, the author of the by now famous Dystopian novels from Russia. I wanted to know what it was that made him write the novel the way he did.
So I looked him up and found this interview on diezukunft.de, a German website – Glukhovsky speaks German fluently (along with English, French, Hebrew, Spanish and of course Russian). I’ll translate some of the juicier quotes. For example, when asked about his stance on Science Fiction, Glukhovsky answers: “For me, Science Fiction is a tool to express things that move me. However, out there are a lot of Science Fiction fans who only want to read adventure novels. That is understandable when you think about the fact that not all, but some of them are teenagers who want an adrenaline kick.”
There’s also the whole issue of the monsters. I’m not spoiling very much (it’s mentioned in the first chapter) when I say that in Metro 2035, there are no monsters. Or, as Glukhovsky puts it, “this novel is about humans. […] He [Artjom] gets to meet a few mutants, but those aren’t the monsters.”
But why is that? Isn’t the Metro series about the aftermath of civilisation, about the human will to survive even in the post-apocalyptic mess they put themselves into, as put by Hunter in his speech to Artjoms step-father in the beginning of Metro 2033? Aren’t the monsters kind of important for that? Well, yes, kind of. As for the monsters, Glukhovsky explicitly says that for him, they are a “metaphor for ‘the Other’”; Metro 2033 becomes a novel about the fear of all variations of it.
This is the power of Science Fiction, as Glukhovsky himself notes: “When you write a book, it shouldn’t be too direct, not too much drawn from the particular period. It has to stay readable for another ten, twenty or fifty years, and for that everything needs to stay a bit abstract.” This is where the Metro franchise goes beyond genre fiction – “Forget tension”. The whole story of Hanza, Artjom and D-2 is beautiful enough already, but there is something more behind it.
With that out of the way, how does this explain the sudden changes of Metro 2035? Well, the Dark Ones were a topic that moved Glukhovsky back in 2002, a topic that has stopped moving him now.
But what is it that made him write Metro 2035?
By the way, this is the point where you stop reading if you haven’t read the novel yet.
“That the banks, the government and the press are all partial to a conspiracy against the people – there are only hints to that end in Europe. In Russia it is direct, obvious and clear. The church is a part of a company that governs the country, the parliament is another, as is organised crime. […] When you discover that, you feel helpless. […] And I wrote Metro 2035 to blow off steam.”
According to Glukhovsky, he made this discovery three years ago, when he participated in a series of protests against the Putin government. “But this protest movement lost. Obviously the intelligenzja is incapable of creating a revolution.” Or, with a bit of self-derision: “I always thought I would want to live in Artjoms home station, the WDNCh. But by now, I’d rather live in the Polis. I guess I’m turning into one of those coddled, spoiled intellectuals who loves his books and always needs more of them.”
However, the production circumstances of the Metro franchise could also have helped inspire him. Metro 2033, the original novel, was originally published in parts on Glukhovskys LiveJournal site and then by a Russian publisher, as were the other novels. The successful video game series, however, is developed by 4A Games – a Ukrainian company.
And Glukhovsky has quite an original take on the ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine: “The purpose of this civil war is […] the creation of a controllable conflict, as Russia did it in Georgia, for example. That way the loyalty of the governments of these small countries is controlled. […] On the other hand, they wanted to present the Russian viewers a TV series that shows and explains what happens to a country that doesn’t follow its leaders anymore: chaos and civil war. […] For more than one and a half years, Russians got to watch daily what happens when Putin isn’t in power anymore. […] Only Putin, this beacon of civilisation, keeps Russia from falling apart as well.”
Here, I want to cite a research paper by Ulrich Schmid, a Prefessor for Russian Culture and Society at St. Gallen University. “Thus the implicit Manichean and post-apocalyptic world view of Russian pop culture products in their various intermedial manifestations fosters political passivity, social distrust and reliance on the leader in power.” Harsh words, aren’t they? The paper was published in 2013 – and the example is the Dystopian novel Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky.
Things seem to have changed. Glukhovsky in 2016: “I have my differences with Russian Science Fiction authors, a few of them really indulge in their desire for the lost Empire […] They’ve evolved into full-blown Putin supporters”.
Can you still recommend anyone? “A good author is Leonid Kaganov, but that’s about it.”In April last year, four killer whales were found trapped among ice floes in the frigid water off the coast of Russia – the baby was separated from its mother and at risk of drowning while a young young male, wedged in shallow water, cried relentlessly to his family.
It must have been a daunting task, yet rescuers eased themselves into the water and went to work. Worldwide, people do what they can to help stranded whales and dolphins – but this story reflects both the courage and preparedness needed to help these large and stressed whales in dangerously inhospitable conditions. In December they were each awarded well-earned medals for their efforts.
Here is their story, as recorded and shared by rescuer Peter van der Wolf:
A pod of at least 4 orcas got trapped near shore in very shallow water, surrounded by a dense amount of ice floes. Orcas usually appear this time of the year at the edge of sea ice, hunting for seals.
“During the night from 18-19 April, the wind had changed and blew sea ice straight towards the shore. A vast pack of an about 5 km wide ice field had piled up at the shoreline of the village Starodubskoye ( which means “Old Oak village).
Officers had been in the water from 12.30 (almost right after their arrival) til 6.30 PM in dry suits, trying to keep the ice away from the orcas and even preventing the baby from drowning.
The young whale almost got crushed between ice floes and one officers manged to keep the ice away, using his legs and a long wooden pole and thus creating a window for the baby to join with his mum in more open water.
Later that night we all at some point got sandwiched between these ice floes which apparently just seem to float, but due to their mass are so inert and difficult to stop when they are coming your direction. Especially in shallow water, ankles and knees got often stuck and almost squashed by the hardened, sharp edges of the ice. I think that is what we all felt as the most scary and dangerous part.
They spent the whole day keeping the ice as far away as they could from the orcas and in the afternoon of April 19 at around 15.30 hrs, a mother with calf and another young whale managed to find a way out through the shifting ice floes.
The [young] male of about 10 years old remained the closest to the shore in a pool of shallow water, partly blocked by rocks and ice floes. Two divers from Dive Club Sakhalin volunteered and were keeping the whale wet, avoiding dehydration of the vulnerable skin.
I was called by local people to come over and help at about 16.00 hrs and I contacted my friends at Klub Bumerang, a very active environmental orientated – Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk based NGO, to find out what we could do.
When we all arrived on scene at 19.00 hrs we assessed the situation while we still had a few hours of daylight and we tried to spot for an escape route. At 21.40 hrs it became low water and high water was expected at 4.00 hrs the next morning, so we knew we had a small window. The EMERCOM officers were tired and needed rest after being out on the ice the whole day.
Klub Bumerang sent a truck with additional volunteers, equipment and dry suits to the village Starodubskoye. I was in contact with Russian marine mammal expert Olga Sphak in Moscow, and discussed treatment and medication.
When Klub Bumerang arrived, quickly a big tent with a propane heat canon was deployed and volunteers started making soup and tea.
At the same time we received medication from Yuzhno and together with para medic Ekaterina I prepared a mild dose of dexametazone, a drug that (amongst others) stabilises breathing and heart rate. The male orca had been trapped already for more than 12 hours and his frequent crying sounded like distress calls. We knew we had to keep him out there that night, because another days in shallow water might be fatal.
We all dressed in dry-suits and waded about 100 meter through the chest deep water (-1 Celsius) [30 F] to the orca. It was already dark by then. Andrey, one of the volunteers (electrician by profession) had installed a huge flood light that gave us enough light to work in.
Ekaterina and I prepared the injection, we had to use a huge syringe |
. He affirmed that he was there during that tragedy.
I asked him to describe the incident, which he was happy to do. I also asked if the incident was, as widely reported, McCain’s fault. He said the incident was not McCain’s fault, that a static charge had ignited a Sidewinder missile on a nearby aircraft, not McCain’s, which caused other explosions. Shrapnel punctured the fuel tanks of nearby aircraft, causing the deck to be soaked in jet fuel and igniting into a massive fire, which in turn, exploded more ordnance, taking more lives and creating more fires and explosions.
John McCain may be a treasonous scumbag, but he bears no responsibility for the Forrestal tragedy. I received this report from a firsthand witness.DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — It's a dirty job, and somebody wants to do it.
N.C. Central University researcher Julie Horvath has examined the microbes living in our armpits, and now wants to look at earwax. Horvath and other researchers are investigating how modern personal hygiene habits may affect microbes living on our skin.
Horvath and a research partner will be swabbing study participants on Aug. 2 at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh; on Aug. 3 at N.C. Central in Durham; and Aug. 4 at N.C. State in Raleigh.
Participants are asked to not clean their ears or use deodorant or anti-perspirant for 48 hours before the test to give the microorganisms an opportunity to flourish. Swabs will be taken from armpits, ears, noses and ankles to compare bacteria and other microorganisms.The man charged in connection with a 2013 assault on two lesbians who were exiting a Hastings Street bus will return to court March 4 for a pre-sentencing report and to set a date for his sentencing, a justice of the peace ordered Jan 12.
Andrew Joseph Walko, 46, pleaded guilty Nov 12 to assault and assault causing bodily harm. A pre-sentencing report was requested, but Crown prosecutor Jenny Machek tells Xtra there was a misunderstanding about the completion of the report, necessitating a new date and an extension of Walko’s bail by Justice of the Peace Laura Caporale.
An unshaven Walko, clad in a T-shirt and windbreaker, appeared in court with his lawyer, David Tarnow.
The Vancouver Police Department announced the charges against Walko on Jan 14, 2014. TransLink surveillance footage shows a man boarding a Number 135 bus westbound at about 5:15pm on Sept 18, 2013, at Hastings and Kensington in Burnaby; Ali Matson and her girlfriend, Jacqueline Clarke, boarded the bus 45 minutes later at Hastings and Renfrew.
The couple allege that the man followed them as they left the bus at Commercial Drive and attacked them.
“He grabbed me by the shoulder, and he punched me in the face with all his body strength,” Matson told Xtra soon after. “My nose was bleeding everywhere, and he gave me two black eyes. He was not holding back at all.”
Clarke, leaving the bus behind Matson, yelled at the approximately six-foot-three, 200-plus-pounds man to stop. She says she attempted to pull him off, but he overpowered her and allegedly punched her multiple times in the head as well.
“It was so terrifying because I remember I just sort of watched it all happen and then he turned on me,” she said.
Matson and Clarke believe they were attacked because of their sexual orientation after they exchanged a kiss and were flirting during the bus ride. “He just did not like to see two girls kissing,” Matson suggests.
An accused found guilty in a summary conviction of assault causing bodily harm is liable to imprisonment for a maximum of 18 months.Searching for a new home in a different city is hard, especially if you want a sense of the neighborhood and a true picture of what prospective properties look like. Wouldn’t it be great to have a close-up view of that seemingly perfect house on the market from all angles, as well as a bird’s-eye view of the yard? Good news: Drones are making that possible.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the amazing potential of these flying robots (or, as industry folks like to call them, unmanned aircraft systems [UAS]). With drones, a groom can get the perfect group shot of his wedding party; a coach can closely monitor the progress of their athlete as she races a marathon; emergency responders can survey larger swaths of territory during disaster relief efforts; and a farmer can monitor crops in a remote corner of their land.
Drones, much like smartphones and tablets before them, have the potential to revolutionize our lives in many ways. However, as with any new technology, some people have concerns. In the case of drone technology, one we hear often is the possible invasion of privacy.
That’s why stakeholders from the UAS industry, civil liberties organizations and government agencies have been working together to help facilitate the safe, responsible and ethical use of drones, while still supporting the growth and development of this cutting-edge technology.
In February 2015, President Obama directed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to convene a multi-stakeholder process to develop a set of best practices for privacy, accountability and transparency regarding both commercial and recreational UAS use. In other words, create guidelines for “neighborly” drone use. Together, we have worked to do just that.
We can all agree that privacy must be protected without stunting the growth of the still-nascent UAS industry.
After months of discussions, this collaborative process resulted in a consensus set of voluntary best practices that balance people’s rights to operate drones with all of our rights to privacy. These best practices represent clear, common-sense guidelines for anyone wishing to operate a drone, from a general hobbyist to an entrepreneur with an innovative business model.
The guidelines discourage drone operators from invading people’s personal space by flying without permission over private property. They encourage those using UAS technology to not collect or record unnecessary information and to ensure that any data collected is used only for its intended purposes. Importantly, the best practices also promote transparency of usage — tell those around your drone that it is there and why.
These best practices complement existing UAS privacy recommendations already developed by and for government agencies. Additionally, they provide a streamlined set of federal recommendations to commercial and recreational drone operators.
It is estimated that UAS sales could top more than 2.8 million units in 2016, and already more than 5,500 businesses have been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fly. Now that the FAA has finalized long-awaited rules for small, commercial UAS, which will take effect on August 29, even more businesses will be taking flight. The time was clearly right for these guidelines to be created and we encourage all drone operators to adopt the recommendations we set forth.
We can all agree that privacy must be protected without stunting the growth of the still-nascent UAS industry, just like many other technologies before it. Clear, consistent, national guidelines such as these are critical for the timely and safe integration of drones into the national airspace and unlocking the economic benefits of the technology. An economic impact study by AUVSI found the industry is projected to create more than 100,000 jobs and provide more than $82 billion in economic impact in the first decade following UAS integration into the national airspace.
These best practices are not the end of our collaboration. By continuing to work together, civil society, government and industry can ensure that civil liberties are protected, while taking full advantage of the economic and societal benefits that UAS offer.Last week’s guilty plea by former Iowa State Sen. Kent Sorenson wasn’t the end of the federal investigation into the 2012 Iowa caucus payola scandal — not by a longshot.
OpenSecrets Blog has learned that FBI agents have been interviewing a slew of witnesses connected to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign and grand jury subpoenas have been issued for email records from campaign officials. And in addition to payments to a Maryland video company that were routed to Sorenson in exchange for his endorsement, OpenSecrets has identified an additional suspicious payment by Paul’s campaign that may be linked to a $25,000 check to Sorenson from a jewelry store connected to a Paul operative.
Sources say two grand juries are looking into the 2012 campaigns of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), whom Sorenson originally endorsed, and Paul, to whom Sorenson switched his support just days before the Iowa caucuses. A number of individuals confirmed to OpenSecrets Blog that they had been interviewed by FBI agents, the grand juries, or both.
In late July, one of the grand juries issued subpoenas for emails and financial transactions between at least seventeen individuals, including Paul, Bachmann and Jesse Benton, who was Paul’s campaign chairman at the time and who resigned as campaign manager for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s (R-Ky.) re-election bid late last week after news of Sorenson’s plea broke. A focus of the probe appears to be Dimitri Kesari, Kesari’s brother and several Maryland audio/video companies they are connected to. Kesari was a Paul operative who later was employed by the McConnell campaign.
An earlier Iowa Senate Ethics Committee investigation found that a Maryland documentary film company called ICT Inc. had paid Sorenson $73,000 in a series of transactions through early 2012. As first reported by OpenSecrets Blog last week, the Paul campaign sent ICT $82,375 in payments that almost exactly match payments to Sorenson. Sorenson’s plea agreement acknowledges that he took payments from a campaign, made to him through a film production company, in exchange for changing his endorsement,.
Kesari Connection
In Sorenson’s plea, he admits that the film company that paid him had never done any actual work for the campaign. The company’s involvement was purely as a pass-through — and $9,300 appears to have stayed with ICT, FEC records indicate. The company’s owner, Noel “Sonny” Izon, has at least one connection to Kesari: Kesari’s brother, Pavlo, who allegedly tried to convince a former associate in a separate video production firm to work for his brother, Dimitri, and the Paul campaign.
The former associate, Carroll Platt, of Washington, D.C., told the FBI Pavlo Kesari tried to convince him in August 2011 that their company, Performance Video, should work for the Paul campaign. Platt provided OpenSecrets Blog with a copy of a statement he gave to FBI agents, who interviewed him in June. According to the statement, Platt refused to get involved because the work didn’t seem entirely legitimate. That led to a fallout with Pavlo Kesari.
According to Platt, at an annual meeting of the firm’s co-owners, Pavlo Kesari announced that Dimitri had been hired by the Paul campaign and “Dimitri has work for us.” Platt says he told Kesari and their other partner that any political work had to be legitimate and paid in advance. The details of the proposed work were never shared with Platt, but he said it was clear to him that something unusual was afoot.
“We don’t have to do anything and we make money doing it,” Pavlo Kesari told Platt, according to the statement he provided to the FBI.
“The three of us got into a screaming match over this with [the third partner] eventually saying, ‘We will work with Dimitri Kesari — with you or without you.”
Shortly after, Platt said his two partners pushed him out of the business by abruptly transferring the company’s assets to a new company, Control Video. Neither Performance Video nor the new company are listed in Paul campaign records, but Izon’s ICT Inc. is. Platt said that he is sure Pavlo Kesari is the link between the Ron Paul campaign and ICT.
“The only way Sonny knows Dimitri is through Pavlo,” Platt said.
In a brief interview, Pavlo Kesari said he knew Izon, but knew nothing about Sorenson, Iowa or any payments from the campaign.
“I don’t do political stuff,” Pavlo Kesari told OpenSecrets Blog.
Izon’s attorney, James P. Ulwick, said his client is “just a witness” in the investigation. He noted that Izon had cooperated with federal investigators but declined to say if he has testified before a grand jury.
Grand Jury
Federal investigators appear to be examining the connections between the men. A copy of a subpoena issued by a grand jury in the Southern District of Iowa, obtained by OpenSecrets Blog, confirms Platt’s claims that federal investigators are looking into the Kesari brothers and the company Platt previously owned with Pavlo Kesari. The subpoena, which appears to have gone to a number of individuals, covers any correspondence between 17 individuals, including both Kesari brothers, about any relationships between the Paul campaign, Sorenson, ICT, Performance Video and Control Video.
A number of Bachmann campaign officials are also listed on the subpoena, such as Guy Short, a campaign consultant, and Andy Parrish, who was her chief of staff and later said publicly that Bachmann’s campaign paid for Sorenson’s support. Bachmann’s spokesperson did not return calls seeking comment.
Below is a partial copy of the subpoena.
SorensonSubpoena (PDF)
SorensonSubpoena (Text)
The subpoenaed records include “the contents of all emails associated with the Subject Accounts.” That supports a post earlier this month by libertarian blog EconomicPolicyJournal.com claiming that sources close to Ron Paul said that his personal email account had been subpoenaed; those sources denied Paul had engaged in any wrongdoing. Paul did not respond to attempts to contact him, nor did his daughter, Lori Pyeatt, who is listed as the treasurer of his 2012 presidential campaign. A spokesman for the Department of Justice would say only that “an investigation is ongoing.”
The subpoena lists several possible crimes being investigated including false reporting of campaign finance data by federal campaign committees, false statements to the FEC, obstruction of justice and concealing a federal crime.
The subpoena also demands emails showing any discussions between Jesse Benton — Ron Paul’s grandson-in-law who was chairman of the 2012 campaign and until last week ran Mitch McConnell’s campaign — and John Tate, Paul’s campaign manager, who now runs Campaign For Liberty, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit set up by Paul. Megan Stiles, a spokesperson for Campaign For Liberty, did not respond to a call seeking comment.
Last August, OpenSecrets Blog and TheIowaRepublican.com published several internal emails from the Paul presidential campaign and a proposal from a Sorenson surrogate asking for money from the campaign. Aaron Dorr, Sorenson’s representative, wrote to Tate, the campaign manager, saying that Sorenson would need $8,000 a month from the Ron Paul campaign to replace money he was paid by the Bachmann campaign and a donation of $100,000 to a PAC he would start up. Dorr also writes that Sorenson could not switch his endorsement until after Nov. 10, 2011, because that was the date of a meeting of the Iowa state senate GOP caucus and Sorenson was considering running for a leadership position during the meeting.
On Nov. 14, Benton wrote to Dorr: “I hope the senate leadership meetings went well for Sen. Sorrenson [sic]. With those meeting in the rear-view mirror, I though [sic] now might be a good time to revisit Kent and your brother joining our team.”
The email from Benton does not mention any payment, but a reply from Dorr 10 days later makes it clear that Benton was aware that negotiations were occurring:
“Considering that Dimitri had dinner with Kent at his home over the weekend, I’ll assume that you guys are taking a more direct role in this process. As I’m no longer needed to facilitate a conversation at this point, I’ll bow out and let you, John, Dimitri and Kent work this out. “
Benton did not return requests for comment. In a statement accompanying his resignation from the McConnell campaign, he wrote: “Recently there have been inaccurate press accounts and unsubstantiated media rumors about me and my role in past campaigns that are politically motivated, unfair and most importantly, untrue.”
More Secret Payments?
In Sorenson’s plea agreement, he admitted having met with an operative from Ron Paul campaign on Dec. 26, 2011 at a restaurant in Altoona, Iowa, and said the operative gave him a check for $25,000, written in the name of a business owned by the operative’s wife. That matches with an audio recording of Sorenson saying that Kesari tried to give him a check for $25,000, written in the name of his wife’s jewelry story — Designer Goldsmiths Inc. — at a restaurant in late 2011.
Sorenson said in his plea agreement that he never cashed the check, but it was later used as security to ensure that other payments — those from ICT — were made. A copy of the uncashed check was turned over to the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee investigator.
While Sorenson may never have cashed that check, it appears that the campaign did in fact paid Kesari’s wife’s jewelry store $25,657, OpenSecrets Blog has found. The payment was made on Feb. 16, 2012, just eight days after the campaign’s first check to ICT — bound for Sorenson — was written.
The recipient is listed as DGI — the same initials as the jewelry store — and the address is a post office box in Washington D.C. that Kesari used as his personal address in earlier election cycles. The P.O. box turns up once again in federal campaign records for the 2014 cycle. A company called Hyllus LLC, which was paid $73,000 by the Mitch McConnell campaign, is at that address. The McConnell campaign later confirmed that Hyllus was Kesari.
Kesari was also paid $162,000 under his own name by the Paul campaign; $124,000 of that was salary and $38,000 was reimbursement for expenses, according to FEC records.
Neither Kesari nor his attorney responded to calls asking for comment.
FEC Complaints Led to Investigation
The investigations seem to have been launched following formal complaints made to the FEC by Peter Waldron, a political operative who was employed by the Bachmann campaign. Sorenson was initially the co-chairman of the Bachmann campaign in Iowa, and Waldron, who was the national faith-based coordinator for the Bachmann campaign, worked closely with him in 2011 to connect the campaign with religious voters.
Waldron initially filed a FEC complaint against the Bachmann campaign in February of 2013, alleging that it had paid Sorenson $7,500 per month for his endorsement. Waldron later filed a complaint with the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee. It is illegal for an Iowa state senator to accept payment from a presidential campaign for an endorsement. This year, he filed yet another complaint with the FEC, detailing his concerns that Sorenson had been paid by the Paul campaign as well.
Since making his complaints to the FEC, Waldron said he has been interviewed by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents “two or three” times, and was informed by multiple people he knew from the Bachmann campaign that they had been subpoeaned to testify before at least two grand juries — one in Washington, D.C. and one in Des Moines, Iowa.
When Sorenson abruptly announced his departure from the Bachmann campaign and endorsed Paul, Waldron told OpenSecrets Blog, he and others on the campaign were blindsided.
“It was more than a big deal, it was an epic moment,” Waldron said of Sorenson’s switch on Dec. 28, 2011, six days before the caucuses. “He betrayed Michele. It was a shock to Michele, devastating to the campaign and earth-shattering to the supporters.”
Waldron — who spent time in a Ugandan prison in 2006 after being arrested there with assault rifles — said the final days of the campaign were spent trying to manage the crisis and calm supporters.
At the time, Bachmann publicly said that Sorenson had privately told her he had been paid by the Paul campaign to switch parties, a charge he denied publicly. Waldron said he and other staffers were never paid by Bachmann’s campaign for the final weeks of work, and after the campaign tried to have him sign a nondisclosure agreement, he decided to go public with concerns over the campaign’s internal workings.
“The commandments say ‘Thou shall not bear false witness’, which means more than thou shall not lie,” Waldron said. “It was my obligation to report a crime to which I was a witness.”
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In his law enforcement trainings and public appearances, John Guandolo, of the consulting company Understanding the Threat, promises to explain how Islam operates and why it is a political philosophy, not a religion. His promotional video features a black ISIS flag waving against an ominous beat, above which Guandolo describes “the global Islamic movement and what they’re doing here in the United States.” Understanding the Threat is, he says, “the only organization which is training leaders, elected officials and law enforcement as well as citizens” and showing them “how to locate…jihadis.” He also asks that you buys his books or make a donation over text.1 Ad Policy
In congressional testimony and on conservative talk shows, Guandolo dishes up conspiracy theories involving a prominent Muslim professor and organizations, implying that they are enabling Muslim terrorists. In one Columbus, Ohio, training, he accused a local professor of having ties to terrorism. (A Columbus Joint Terrorism Task Force member and an FBI agent told attendees that this individual had absolutely no ties to any such thing.) He has argued that former CIA director John Brennan is a secret Muslim and that Barack Obama was in league with Hamas. He’s said that Muslims don’t have First Amendment rights. And when Cedar Valley College in Lancaster, Texas, canceled his signature three-day law-enforcement training seminar, Guandolo claimed it was the work of “suit-wearing jihadis.”2
Guandolo usually appears in a rumpled suit himself, concealing a middle-age paunch, and sports a crisp, military-grade haircut sometimes accented with a trimmed beard. He served in the Marines until 1996 and then was an FBI agent until 2009, when he was forced to resign in disgrace after having a sexual relationship with a confidential informant and amid claims that he had solicited money from sources. (The whole sordid affair was revealed by the local news.) There are also other disputes as to the specifics of his employment history and education.3
He is so outlandish that he would seem easy to dismiss. Except that for the past decade, anti-Islamic “trainers”—including John Guandolo, his employee Chris Gaubatz, and others who claim, on dubious grounds, to have insider information on terrorism—have proliferated, providing sessions (for a fee) across the country to local police forces and district attorney offices promising to help them catch the latest in-vogue threat: would-be terrorists. Guandolo and his associates have done about 13 law enforcement trainings in 2016 and has several scheduled for 2017. Guandolo also appears regularly on alt-right programs.4
A report by Center for New Community released on February 14, provides a timeline of anti-Islam trainings across the country. The non-profit attempts to trace the roots of this specific strain of officially-sanctioned Islamaphobia and present a disconcerting picture of unaccredited, self-proclaimed “experts” (none of them are, say, students of Islamic studies or have PhD in religious studies) who take taxpayer dollars to spread hate.5
The contents of the sessions themselves are kept largely under wraps, particularly since groups like the ACLU and CAIR have identified the trainings’ anti-Islamic message, and organized protests against many sessions. (Guandolo argues these protests show how important the trainings are.) But according to Guandolo’s website, the training provides necessary information involving the funding apparatus of terrorism as well as where to find potential people to profile for arrest. Many of Guandolo’s talking points in his recorded public appearances reiterate half-regurgitated facts that are misinterpreted and dipped in the poison of association and rumor. For example, Guandolo and his colleagues argue that the Holy Land Foundation trial provides evidence that CAIR and other American Muslim Associations are in some way associated with Hamas. These statements have been proven to just not be true.6 Ready to Fight Back? Sign Up For Take Action Now
Because these trainings are being sponsored by local police forces, FBI task forces, and district attorney offices across the country, the risks of spreading this misinformation are high and have drawn vocal opposition. Just last year, Bill Montgomery, the County Attorney for Maricopa County, sponsored a training by Guandolo. The consequent protests led even the Maricopa County sheriff’s department to withdraw from participation. The costs of the training added up to nearly $40,000, including copies of Guandolo’s own self-published book for every attendee. (Other Guandolo trainings in Arizona have been funded through RICO funds from law enforcement offices.) Despite this, Montgomery defended Guandolo’s training, calling it “factual” and arguing that CAIR and the ACLU were unfairly censuring a law enforcement officers right to information. Other agencies have dropped Guandolo’s training sessions, from a sheriff’s office in Kansas to a criminal justice academy in Virginia.7
The other so-called trainers reviewed in the Center for New Community report are equally insidious. One, Ryan Mauro, was a featured speaker at a “homeland security conference,” sponsored by Security Solutions International, a private company that facilitates trainings for law enforcement. SSI alludes to a strategic partnership with the Department of Homeland Security in its materials, stamping the official DHS logo all over their pages. Its 2017 conference will be held in Orlando, Florida, and is titled “Taking the gloves off: re-igniting US counter terrorism,” in reference to the current administration’s promise to exterminate terrorists.8
Security Solutions International has an official publication called “The Counter Terrorist,” which gives articles such as “Honor Killing of Women in America” and “Lone Wolf Myths.” SSI claims the readership is as high as 25,000 people, nearly 40 percent of which are in the Department of Defense. They advertise the magazine to the military directly.9
Links between anti-Islamic trainers, like Guandolo and Mauro, and the federal government tapered off under the Obama administration, though as recently as 2009, the federal government was also using anti-Islamic handbooks to train its FBI agents that included Guandolo as a source. Unofficial anti-Islamic trainers were rooted out of federal agency trainings after the White House ordered a full review of them in 2011. People like Guandolo responded by focusing on the less-scrutinized business of training local law enforcement agencies, which are fragmented and inconsistent in applying policy and techniques.10
Of course, under Trump – who has taken up the mantle of open Islamaphobia – this could all change. Guandolo’s ideas and conspiracy theories are showing up in the recent spate of Customs and Border Protection agents harassing Muslim travelers (both US citizens and valid green card holders): these people have been asked about their religious beliefs, had their electronics searched for evidence of terrorist associations, and have even been asked absurd questions like whether they know anyone who participated in a beheading. And Guandolo’s theories have a lot in common with those espoused by Trump during his first weeks in office. Trump’s Muslim travel ban, his insistence on using the phrase “Islamic extremists,” and his new push to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group are all manifestations of fringe conspiracy theories, like those held by Guandolo, have moved to the center of conservative politics. 11CLOSE Consumer travel reporter Dawn Gilbertson does a live Q&A with Southwest Airlines president Tom Nealon on March 8, 2017.
Southwest Airlines passenger planes. (Photo: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images)
Southwest Airlines is getting closer to adding Hawaii flights, a vacation destination travelers have been begging the nation's largest domestic airline to add for years.
Southwest CEO Gary Kelly, in Phoenix on Wednesday for Southwest's annual shareholders meeting, said flights to Hawaii are a high priority for the airline. In contrast, he said Canada flights are on the airline's radar but not a priority.
"We're deciding what our plans are for 2018 and Hawaii is important to us,'' Kelly said in a meeting with reporters after the shareholder event in downtown Phoenix.
For the first time in a few years, Kelly said, Southwest had a wide open agenda for 2018. The airline focused on new Dallas flights in 2015, added international flights in Houston in 2016 and this year is adding a new international terminal in Fort Lauderdale.
Asked if Hawaii flights could begin as early as 2018, Kelly didn't rule it out but didn't sound promising.
"I doubt it,'' he said. "We have not decided exactly what we want to do for 2018 yet.''
He said Southwest must take several steps to prepare for the launch of Hawaii service, including Federal Aviation Administration certification for flights over the Pacific, flight crew training and technology support.
"We still have a lot of work to do and we don't have a committed work plan yet on Hawaii... but it's pretty high on the priority list,'' Kelly said.
The airline plans to use the new Boeing 737 Max to go to Hawaii. The airline's first Max arrives in October and it will have 14 of the planes, which offer an extended flight range, by the end of the year.
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The first batch of Hawaii flights would be from the West Coast, Kelly said, but did not say where. Phoenix and Las Vegas are seeking non-stop service to Hawaii on Southwest, but those cities would not be in the first batch of flights because a different Boeing 737 MAX plane not yet in the fleet would be needed on the route.
American and Hawaiian airlines offer non-stop flights between Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and Hawaii.
Discounter Allegiant Air tried Hawaii flights from Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in east Mesa but they were short-lived.
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Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/2rrVxJlUpcoming virtual reality (VR) compatible thriller Private Eye has officially launched a Steam Greenlight campaign. The title, headed up by programmer Jake Slack, is hoping to secure enough votes to be approved for sale on Valve’s digital storefront upon release. Private Eye supports the Oculus Rift VR headset. A trailer for the title can be seen below.
Private Eye casts players as detective Sam Sunderland, a wheelchair-bound amnesiac that observes the actions of his neighborhood from the window of his apartment. Witnessing certain events will unlock playable memories as Sam pieces together a mystery involving a high profile murder. It’s set in the 1950’s and takes many of its queues from movies and media surrounding the period.
An early build of Private Eye is currently available to play on the Oculus VR website. A Kickstarter campaign for the title is also expected to be launching in the future. VRFocus interviewed Jake Slack about the title at the Rezzed event in Birmingham last week and will be bringing you the full video shortly.SUMMIT TWP., MI – A Summit Township dentist accused of writing prescriptions for narcotics for people who were not patients was a “significant supplier of narcotics,” police said.
About 7 a.m. Wednesday, March 19, Jackson Narcotic Enforcement Team members and Jackson County sheriff’s deputies searched the 59-year-old dentist’s office in the 2000 block of Spring Arbor Road and his house on Hazelwood Boulevard.
Sheriff Steven Rand said the dentist has been under investigation for about two months. Police believe they’ve taken down a major narcotics supplier.
“There are a lot of prescription drugs on the street, and we were able to track back some of the people’s prescriptions to the dentist. Some of the people were not in his care,” Rand said. “We believe he has been a significant supplier of narcotics in this area.”
Rand said prescription drugs, such as Vicodin, are often a gateway drug into heroin.
The dentist’s name is being withheld, pending arraignment.
During the search, computers, paperwork and documents were taken for evidence, Rand said.
Assisting with the investigation was the Drug Enforcement Administration, which has a unit to assist with cases involving doctors, Rand said.The Americans: It’s good. Sure, FX’s hit series, currently in its fifth season, has recently featured a lot of talk of crop yields and invasive pests (not a metaphor; they’re talkin’ about midges). But the spies and intrigue and shadowy Washington underworld and spangled ’80s fashion and fully actualized Matthew Rhys–Keri Russell shipping? It’s all a lot of fun.
I’d like to ruin it for you.
The Americans, you see, goes to great lengths to build the rich soundscapes that give the show its distinct, smoky feel. Lead mixer and co-supervising sound editor Ken Hahn has spoken about layering audio so that episodes sound representative of the Cold War era, and of using equipment so advanced that it allows the show’s editing team to remove the clicking of Russell-as-Elizabeth’s high heels from the vocal track. It stands to reason, then, that the sounds that make the cut are left in deliberately. This approach has produced a clap that reverberates so intimately that you, like a captured KGB paper-pusher, may jump in your seat. It has made possible this season’s 10-minute-long, nearly entirely wordless hole-digging sequence.
It has also facilitated … mouth noises. Gross ones. Loud ones.
We’re talking lip smacks, gulps, and slurps galore; gargles, throat clearings, and indeterminate suction. In The Americans, it’s not enough just to know that Elizabeth is licking her lips as she prepares to smoke ganja with her husband, Philip (Rhys); we’re going to bear aural witness to her deploying the eight muscles in her tongue to gather up saliva and rub it around. She is going to put way too much spit on the thing. We will know this.
At times these noises are incredibly distracting. Here’s a scene in which Elizabeth and Philip discuss their plans for the evening, and what they’re going to do about Martha (Alison Wright), the poor, lonely FBI secretary whom Philip conned into fake-marrying him. Martha has just been informed that she, in fact, has long been unwittingly assisting Mother Russia and will be shipped off to the motherland — a country where she knows nobody — for her own safety. Philip, meanwhile, has realized that he’s developed feelings for Martha, and is sorry for her in a way that a murderous Soviet spy classically should not be. Elizabeth, sensing this, tells Philip to spend a final, tender night with Martha. It’s tragic! You could forgive the guy for having a little dry mouth. Or maybe more than a little. This, after all, is what happens midway through his conversation with Elizabeth:
You see, Philip has a lot to gulp about. Like affairs:
And affairs again:
And Soviet spy sex training:
And ugh, seriously, this thing with Martha:
But sometimes Philip and Elizabeth get along just fine — so much so that they smooch at length, like teenagers.
Speaking of teenagers — you know what really makes you want to purse and then defiantly smack your lips? You guessed it: negotiating with teens.
When it comes to The Americans, these abrasive sound effects come by design. In what I can only assume was the result of a dare among the show’s sound designers, Season 3 showcased a dental mishap that was handled at home, culminating in three uninterrupted minutes of gasps, whimpers, plier-in-mouth noises, and the muffled words “oh, God” — in whom, we are frequently reminded, Elizabeth does not believe. Come scream with me. Really get your throat into it. Waggle your tongue. Oh, God.
“I needed tones that drive people nuts,” sound effects re-recording mixer James Redding told Mix Online of using “pitch-shifted sounds of screaming monkeys” (?!?!) to amplify that scene’s tension. “We also had Foley do extra scrapes on pliers, for the feeling of more tearing and scraping on teeth.”
In the end, we’re left with a luxuriously upholstered spy thriller that happens to double as a menagerie of mouthly horrors. If it makes you feel squeamish, you’re not alone — it makes FBI agents gulp too.The symptoms of anxiety are awful. While everyone experiences anxiety a little differently, for most people it’s like a sense of dread that never fully goes away, but looms over you like a cold, wet blanket. For you, there may be periodic spikes in panic or fear that can come on seemingly out of |
. In the 1998 elections, Andal Sr. was elected as governor.[10]
Members of Lakas-Kampi-CMD, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo lists Andal Sr., as a major ally in Mindanao. Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) regional governor Zaldy Ampatuan was the party's regional chairman. Andal Sr., the family patriarch, has been provincial governor since 1998; he has been elected three times, unopposed. Eighteen of the mayors in Maguindanao belong to the clan. The elder Ampatuan attributed his popularity to "popular support," adding "Because I am so loved by the constituencies of the municipalities, they ask me to have my sons as representatives." In the 2004 presidential elections, Arroyo won 69% of Maguindanao's vote; three years later, the party-backed coalition scored a 12–0 sweep of the senatorial elections in the province. Unable to run for a third term, he is currently grooming his son, Andal Jr., to succeed him as governor.[11][12]
With escalating tensions in the province, Arroyo, as head of the Lakas-Kampi-CMD, mediated between the Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus (both are from the same party) to prevent election-related violence. Three meetings were held in mid-2009, with one meeting hosted by then Secretary of National Defense and 2009/2010 party chairman Gilberto Teodoro, who ran to succeed Arroyo as president but was defeated by Noynoy Aquino. Arroyo's adviser for political affairs Gabriel Claudio, disclosed that there was an initial agreement "in principle" that no Mangudadatu would contest Ampatuan Sr.'s gubernatorial post.[13]
Attack [ edit ]
Location of Buluan, the origin of the convoy, in Maguindanao.
Location of Shariff Aguak, the destination of the convoy, in Maguindanao.
Location of Ampatuan, the location where the massacre took place, in Maguindanao.
Buluan Vice Mayor Esmael "Toto" Mangudadatu invited 37 journalists to cover the scheduled filing of his certificate of candidacy (COC) at the Commission on Elections provincial office in Shariff Aguak. He said reports had reached him that his rivals had threatened to chop him into pieces once he filed his COC, and felt the presence of journalists would deter such an attack.
A local report stated that at about 5:00 PM, a convoy of six vehicles carrying journalists, lawyers, and relatives of Vice Mayor Mangudadatu left Buluan to file his COC at the Comelec office in Shariff Aguak. The convoy was composed of six vehicles: four Toyota Grandia vans (one grey, one green, and two white) owned by the Mangudadatu family; and two media vehicles – a Mitsubishi Pajero owned by DZRH broadcast journalist Henry Araneta, and a Mitsubishi L-300 van owned by UNTV. There was a seventh vehicle, a Grandia boarded by mediamen, but it lagged behind and decided to turn around once the passengers sensed what was happening. There were two other vehicles that were not part of the convoy but happened to be traveling on the same highway: a red Toyota Vios and a light blue Toyota Tamaraw FX. The Vios had five passengers: Eduardo Lechonsito, a government employee who was bound for a hospital in Cotabato City after suffering a mild stroke Monday morning. He was with his wife Cecille, co-workers Mercy Palabrica and Daryll delos Reyes, and driver Wilhelm Palabrica. The FX was driven by Anthony Ridao, employee of the National Statistics Coordination Board, and son of Cotabato City councilor Marino Ridao.
Before reaching its destination (about 10 km from Shariff Aguak, four on other versions), the convoy was stopped by 100 armed men, who abducted and later killed most or all of its members.[9] There is evidence that at least five of the female victims, four of them journalists, were raped before being killed,[14] while "practically all" of the women had been shot in their genitals[15] and beheaded.[16] Mangudadatu's youngest sister and aunt were both pregnant at the time of their murders.[17]
In a text message sent by Mangudadatu's wife to him, she identified the people that blocked their way as the men of Ampatuan Jr, and that he himself slapped her.[18]
An excavator located in the immediate vicinity of the carnage at Ampatuan town was identified as the instrument that was used to dig the graves of the victims two days beforehand, and then to bury them, including the vehicles.[19] The perpetrators were not able to complete the job when a military helicopter was spotted circling above the excavation area. The excavator, emblazoned with the name of Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr., was later identified to belong to the Maguindanao provincial government.[20]
As of November 25, the death toll had risen to 57, as confirmed by Chief Superintendent Josefino Cataluna of the Philippine National Police.[21][22][23] Reporters Without Borders announced that at least 12 of the victims were journalists, making this the deadliest such incident in the history of news media.[24] The National Union of Journalists in the Philippines originally estimated that a total of 20 journalists were killed, including an undisclosed number of NUJP members.[22] The Philippine Daily Inquirer later updated the number of journalists killed to 34.[9]
On November 24, Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo responded to the news of the massacre by declaring a state of emergency in Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat and Cotabato City.[23] Speaker of the House Prospero Nograles called on the police to quickly identify the perpetrators of the massacre and disarm private armies.[25] The Philippine Department of Justice created a panel of special prosecutors to handle cases arising from the massacre.[26]
Aftermath [ edit ]
Nueva Ecija Rep. Eduardo Nonato N. Joson said the massacre might affect, or even lead to the cancellation of, the scheduled 2010 presidential elections.[25] Candidates in the election condemned the massacre.[27]
On Wednesday, November 25, 2009, the executive committee of the Lakas-Kampi-CMD political party unanimously voted to expel three members of the Ampatuan family – Maguindanao Gov. Datu Andal Ampatuan Sr. and his two sons, Gov. Datu Zaldy Ampatuan of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. – from the party for their alleged role in the Maguindanao massacre.[28] An emergency meeting of the Lakas-Kampi-CMD was held in Pasig, during which the Ampatuans were stripped of their membership.[8]
On Thursday, November 26, 2009, Ampatuan Jr. surrendered to his brother Zaldy, was delivered to adviser to the peace process Jesus Dureza, then was flown to General Santos on his way to Manila, where he was taken to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) headquarters.[29][30] Police in the Philippines charged Andal Ampatuan Jr. with murder.[31] Ampatuan denied the charges, claiming that he was at the provincial capitol in Shariff Aguak when the massacre took place. He instead blamed the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), specifically Ombra Kato, as the mastermind, a charge the MILF dismissed as "absurd."[32][33]
Declaration of martial law [ edit ]
On December 4, 2009, through Proclamation No. 1959, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo officially placed Maguindanao province under a state of martial law, thereby suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.[34] Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the step was taken in order to avert the escalation of "lawless" violence in the province and pave the way for the swift arrest of the suspects in the massacre.[35][36] Following the declaration, authorities carried out a raid on a warehouse owned by Andal Ampatuan Jr.[37] The raid resulted in the confiscation of more than 330,000 rounds of 5.56×45mm NATO ammunition, a Humvee, and an improvised armored vehicle. Twenty militiamen were arrested on the premises. Captain James Nicolas of Special Forces was able to retrieve more high powered firearms and ammo after the incident.[38] The state of martial law in Maguindanao was lifted on December 13, 2009.
Media fundraising [ edit ]
UNTV-37 arranged a fund-raising concert at the Araneta Coliseum for the families of 32 members of the media who perished in the attack.
Legal proceedings [ edit ]
At least 198 suspects, including Andal Ampatuan Jr. and Andal Ampatuan Sr. and several other members of the Ampatuan clan, were charged with murder. In April 2010, the government dropped murder charges against Zaldy Ampatuan and Akhmad Ampatuan, who had presented alibis. This led to protests by family members of the victims.[39]
Senator Joker Arroyo remarked that with nearly 200 defendants and 300 witnesses, the trial could take 200 years.[40] Prosecution lawyer Harry Roque computed that it would last more than 100 years.[41] In a statement commemorating the massacre, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility remarked that the trial was "ongoing, but is rather moving slowly."[42]
Andal Ampatuan Sr. was arraigned in a special court inside a Manila maximum-security prison on June 1, 2011, 18 months after he and a dozen family members were arrested over the killings. After a court clerk read the names of the 57 victims, he was asked to enter a plea and responded in English, "Not guilty."[43]
As of November 23, 2011, two years after the massacre, only Andal Sr. and his son Andal Jr. had been charged, and some 100 of the 197 persons listed on the charge sheet were still unaccounted for.[44]
On June 28, 2012, the Court of Appeals dismissed the petition of Anwar Ampatuan to have the murder charges against him quashed.[45][46] Anwar Ampatuan is the grandson of former Maguindanao governor Andal Ampatuan Sr., and is charged with 57 counts of murder. He was arrested in August 2012. In September 2012, the Quezon City Regional Trial Court deferred his arraignment pending resolution of a pending motion to determine if there is probable cause to prosecute him for the charged 57 counts of murder.[47]
In November 2012, acting on a motion filed by Andal Ampatuan Jr., the Supreme Court set guidelines disallowing the live media broadcast of the trial but allowing the filming of the proceedings for real-time transmissions to specified viewing areas and for documentation. This ruling was in reconsideration of an earlier ruling which had allowed live media coverage.[48]
On March 4, 2014, the prosecution rested its case against the 28 suspects listed below:[49]
Datu Andal "Unsay" Ampatuan Jr
P/CInsp Sukarno Dicay
Moktar Daud
Zakaria Akil
Manny Ampatuan
Misuari Ampatuan
P03 Gibrael Alano
SP02 Badawi Bakal
Mohamad Balading PO3 Ricky Balanueco
PO1 Michael Macarongon
SPO1 Samad Maguindara
PO1 Abdulbayan Mundas
PO1 Badjun Panegas
PO1 Samir Solaiman
PO1 Datu Jerry Utto
Armando Ambalgan
Mohades Ampatuan Salik Bangkulat
Macton Bilungan
Maot Dumla
Nasser Esmael
Edres Kasan
Nasser Talib
Salipad Tampogao
P/Supt Abusama Mundas Maguid
Ibrahim Kamal Tatak
Rakim Kenog
The prosecutors said at that time that they were not ready to rest their case against 76 other accused due to pending appeals.[49]
In August 2014, private prosecutors alleged that state prosecutors were compromising the case in exchange for bribes, saying that some of the state prosecutors were receiving bribes as large as PhP 300 million.[50] The Department of Justice issued an official statement reporting that Supervising Undersecretary Francisco Baraan III and the Department of Justice Panel of Prosecutors handling the Maguindanao massacre case vehemently denied having received any bribes and expressing Justice Secretary Leila De Lima's full trust and confidence in, and continuing support for Undersecretary Baraan and the panel of prosecutors.[51]
Also in August 2014, several teams of defense lawyers representing the accused withdrew from the case, citing conflicts of interest among their clients and other reasons.[52] On August 13, the court assigned a public lawyer to represent accused affected by the withdrawals, including Andal Ampatuan Sr. and his son Andal Jr.[53]
Datu Sajid Islam Ampatuan was granted bail in January 2015 as the prosecution failed to present strong evidence warranting his detention during trial. In September, the court denied the bail petition of Ampatuan Sr's other son and one of the main accused, former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) governor Zaldy Ampatuan. The death of Andal Ampatuan Sr. on July 17, 2015, due to complications brought about by liver cancer, removed him from the legal proceedings. The Department of Justice started the probe of 50 new suspects with a preliminary investigation in March 2015.[54]
In a landmark ruling reported on July 6, 2017, the special court handling the trial dismissed for lack of evidence the multiple murder case filed against three suspects: Kominie Inggo, Dexson Saptula and Abas Anongan.[55] On November 22, 2017, the Public Information Office of the Supreme Court said in a briefing that around a third of the 103 accused who remain on trial had finished presenting their evidence and that, under the guidelines issued by the Supreme Court specifically applying to this case only, the court may render judgment separately and not wait for all the accused to conclude presenting their evidence.[56] On June 21, 2018, Philippine Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said that he expected the case to be concluded in 2018.[57] In a later statement on November 21, he said that he was hopeful of a decision within the first half of 2019.[58]
Victims [ edit ]
Monument, National Press Club of the Philippines
Mangudadatu family and associates [ edit ]
Name Description Genalyn Tiamson-Mangudadatu Wife of Esmael Mangudadatu. Eden Mangudadatu Municipal Vice Mayor of Mangudadatu, Maguindanao, sister of Esmael Mangudadatu. Rowena Mangudadatu Cousin of Esmael Mangudadatu. Manguba Mangudadatu Aunt of Esmael Mangudadatu.[59] Faridah Sabdulah Lawyer[60] Farida Mangudadatu Sister of Esmael Mangudadatu.[59] Farina Mangudadatu Sister of Esmael Mangudadatu. Concepcion "Connie" Brizuela, 56 Lawyer.[61] Cynthia Oquendo, 36 Lawyer. Catalino Oquendo Cynthia Oquendo's father. Rasul Daud Driver of Sultan Kudarat Rep. Pax Mangudadatu.[59]
Journalists [ edit ]
Thirty-four journalists are known to have been abducted and killed in the massacre, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer as of November 2009, only 25 had been positively identified.[9]
Other civilian casualties [ edit ]
Red Toyota Vios
Number of casualties: 5. They were supposedly mistaken as part of the convoy.[64]
Name Description Eduardo Lechonsito Tacurong City, Sultan Kudarat government employee. Cecille Lechonsito Wife of Eduardo Lechonsito. Mercy Palabrica Co-worker of Eduardo Lechonsito. Daryll delos Reyes Co-worker of Eduardo Lechonsito. Wilhelm Palabrica[64] Driver.
Blue Toyota FX
Number of casualties: 1. Mistaken as part of the convoy.[5]
Name Description Anthony Ridao National Statistics Coordination Board employee and son of Cotabato City councilor Marino Ridao.
Human Rights Watch report [ edit ]
On November 16, 2010, the international non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch issued a 96-page report titled "They Own the People", charting the Ampatuans’ rise to power, including their use of violence to expand their control and eliminate threats to the family’s rule.[65] The report links the Ampatuans to at least 56 other killings over the last 20 years, apart from the November 23, 2009, massacre.[66]
In popular culture [ edit ]
History Asia premiered a documentary on the Maguindanao massacre entitled The Maguindanao Massacre on September 26, 2010.[67]
In July 2014, in memory of the five-year anniversary of the massacre, Sacramento-based author Victoria Conlu also released a novel titled Portraits of a Massacre, a fictionalized telling of a province similar to Maguindanao, reviewed as "a stirringly severe literary intervention".[68]
Filipino-American rap artist Bambu's 2012 album,...one rifle per family., features a song titled Massacre detailing the massacre from the point of view of a journalist who witnessed the rape, mutilation, and murder of his family.[69]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Racing Miku 2013 is now out for pre-order! Like all the Racing Miku Nendoroids the only way to get her is to become a sponsor of Good Smile Racing! By becoming a sponsor you have different tiers of sponsorship available to you!
In the photos here however these are the past Racing Miku Sponsorship Nendoroids! Racing Miku 2011 and 2012 version! While photos of the prototype of Racing Miku aren’t out yet you can be certain she’ll be just as cute if not cuter than there two versions!
Each version also comes with it’s own car and a set of decals you can use to decorate the car yourself! It’s really easy too! I am normally terrible at lining things up but placing these decals was easy and the cars look awesome! This is my handwork you see here on 2011′s car!
As you can see the designs are similar but also quite different each year as apparent here by 2012′s car!
Past Nendoroids even came with adorable umbrellas for them to hold as well! Racing Girls are standing outdoors all day, so they need to protect themselves from the sun too!
There are 4 different ways you can get the Racing Miku Nendoroid and I’ll break it all down for you here! As mentioned the way it works if you become an Official Sponsor of Good Smile Racing. As a thank you for being a sponsor you get certain perks. The perks increase depending on how much you sponsor!
The first of the sponsorship Package is Course A, with Course A you get;
・Nendoroid Racing Miku 2013 Ver.
・Personal Sponsor Card
・Ticket Holder
・Racing Miku 2013 Ver. Tote Bag
・Original Cap
This set is ¥10,000
Course A Order Page
The second is Course B, with Course B you get;
・Nendoroid Racing Miku 2013 Ver.
・Personal Sponsor Card
・Ticket Holder
・Racing Miku 2013 Ver. Tote Bag
・Original Cap
・Racing Miku 2013 Ver. Graphic Design Wallet
・GSR Original Waist Bag
This set is ¥30,000
Course B Order Page
The third course is Course C, with Course C you get;
・Nendoroid Racing Miku 2013 Ver.
・Personal Sponsor Card
・Ticket Holder
・Racing Miku 2013 Ver. Tote Bag
This set is ¥7,000
Course C Order Page
Last but definitely not the least is Course D, with Course D you get;
・Nendoroid Racing Miku 2013 Ver.
・Personal Sponsor Card
・Ticket Holder
・Racing Miku 2013 Ver. Tote Bag
・Original Cap
・Racing Miku 2013 Ver. Graphic Design Wallet
・GSR Original Waist Bag
・Racing Miku 2013 Ver. Microfleece Tapestry
・GSR Hatsune Miku BMW Racing-Suit Replica Jersey Size：M-XXL
*M (U.S. size S), L (U.S. size M), XL (U.S. size L) and XXL (U.S. size XL)
This set is ¥50,000
Course D Order Page Size M, Size L, Size XL, Size XXL
Each Nendoroid is adorably designed and the extra goodies are really all amazingly made! Everything is made of top quality materials! Nothing but the best for our sponsors!!
But please do keep in mind, these are only available for a short period! Once the Sponsorship Period if up you won’t be able to order these Nendoroids! Plus you can ONLY get them by becoming a sponsor! The Sponsorship period is available from now until May 7th 2013 12pm JST! So also please keep in mind what time this is in your time zone!
Good Smile Racing Sponsorship Page
-Mamitan <3Yo yo yo! Chozen be in the hizzy or off the hizzy or whatever one does with a hizzy! The new animated comedy from FX drops or falls or whatever on Monday, January 13 at 10:30pm after the rizz-turn of Archer. If the knowledge of Chozen is only now landing upon your dome, it's about a white, gay rapper who gets sprung from prison and battles his way up the game. It also comes from the executive producers of Eastbound & Down and Archer, and features the voices of Bobby Moynihan, Michael Peña, Method Man, and Kathryn Hahn.
But the only way to get a good idea of what Chozen is like to watch the show's Red Band trailer, where all the naughty words and talk about sex and butt-stuff are uncensored. So if you aren't of age, DO NOT click play on the video below until you've pretended to ask your mom if it's okay. If you don't have a mom, then just go for it! Life is too short.
<br>
Okay well I don't think I will be watching this. What about you?Originally published October 26, 2014 at 5:03 AM | Page modified October 27, 2014 at 1:42 PM
Ornithologist and UW professor John Marzluff writes in his new book, “Welcome to Subirdia,” that the suburbs around Seattle provide habitat for a greater diversity of bird species than either the city or nearby forests. And after 12 years of study, he has some theories as to why.
The author of “Welcome to Subirdia” will appear at 7 p.m. Wed., Oct. 29, at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, 17171 N.E. Bothell Way; free (206-366-3333 or thirdplacebooks.com ).
Lit life
John Marzluff bought two acres in suburbia 17 years ago. Marzluff and his wife, Colleen, are world-renowned wildlife researchers, and they purchased the forested tract in Snohomish County as a home for their nine sled dogs, their partners in previous research on raven behavior in the brutal Maine winter.
The dogs have passed to their reward, but Marzluff has turned his piece of suburbia into Subirdia, using knowledge gleaned from a life’s work with birds to turn his land into a haven.
The Marzluffs allow dead trees to stand — they’re visited by pileated woodpeckers, who dine on the termites within. (On one recent August day, Marzluff saw three of these majestic black, red and white birds.) Salmonberry hedges shelter Pacific wrens. Though the hum of the highway a block away is audible through the trees, the brush piles and feeders the Marzluffs have installed have attracted 60 bird species in all, including western tanagers, Pacific wrens, sparrows, towhees, juncos, Anna’s hummingbirds and owls, plus native red squirrels, Townsend’s chipmunks, tree frogs and coyotes.
Marzluff’s academic work and his lifelong passion for birds have merged in his beautiful and informative new book, “Welcome to Subirdia: Sharing Our Neighborhoods with Wrens, Robins, Woodpeckers, and Other Wildlife”(Yale University Press, 303 pp., $30). His conclusions offer hope in an era of despair at what humans’ destructive habits are doing to wildlife: Given a little help from human hands, birds can thrive in the midst of development.
An ornithologist, University of Washington professor and author of several previous books, including two on crows and ravens with local wildlife artist Tony Angell, “Welcome to Subirdia” offers a similar words-and-pictures combination — it’s beautifully illustrated with bird and wildlife art by Jack DeLap, one of Marzluff’s doctoral students at the UW.
The book’s conclusions represent decades of study by Marzluff and other researchers in areas as close as Seattle and as far afield as London, Berlin, St. Andrews in Scotland, and Auckland, New Zealand.
In urban Seattle, Marzluff’s research crew found birds even in degraded areas like the industrial neighborhood along the Duwamish River, where they spotted Caspian terns, peregrine falcons and belted kingfishers. But the greatest bird diversity occurred not downtown, or even in forest reserves, but in outlying suburban neighborhoods — “the jumbled collection of houses, allotments and gardens, derelict and vacant land, golf courses and other recreational sites, and by the cemeteries, schoolyards, highway and railway verges, business parks and shopping centres, situated amid the greenways that comprise suburbia,” Marzluff wrote in a recent opinion piece for Aeon Magazine. These areas offer shelter and food, including both bird feeders and a rich mix of plant species that birds rely on.
Bird surveys from more than 100 locations in and around Seattle, Marzluff writes in his book, revealed that “the greatest diversity was not in the most forested setting. Instead, bird diversity rose quickly from the city center to the suburbs and then dropped again in the extensive forest that eases Seattle into the high Cascades. We had discovered subirdia.”
Marzluff’s teams conducted studies of selected areas before, during and after development; birds were displaced during development, but many species came back.
“This is not an observation that comes from a quick and dirty look,” he said in a recent interview. “This is 12 years of research. Birds can thrive in our presence.”
Not all bird species are equally resilient. Marzluff classifies birds as “adapters,” “avoiders” and “exploiters.”
Adapters learn to live side by side with humans. Scientists have even documented changes in coloration and gene makeup that they attribute to adaptation to an urban environment. Adapters include red-winged blackbirds, killdeer, American goldfinches, Bewick’s wrens, barn owls, Cooper’s hawks and white-crowned sparrows.
Avoiders, birds that need habitat that only relatively wild places can provide, don’t fare so well. They include the yellow-billed cuckoo, the marbled murrelet, the pygmy owl, Wilson’s warbler, Swainson’s thrush and the Pacific wren. The Pacific wren needs a thick native understory usually removed by development, and is often shoved out by its larger Bewick’s cousin.
Exploiters include birds who we all know well — Canada geese, European starlings, house sparrows, mallards, rock pigeons and crows. These birds thrive side by side with humans — crows “love grass and a little garbage,” Marzluff says.
Why are birds so adaptable? “Flight, for one,” Marzluff says. A bird can escape threat through flight — a salamander or toad cannot. Also, birds don’t threaten people — large mammals tend to bring out a defensive response in humans.
Marzluff is relatively optimistic about the future of birds in the Seattle area, but he does worry about the gangbuster pace of development in the city and the suburbs. Right now Seattle sustains between 40 and 60 percent of its tree cover, depending how it’s measured — if that number drops below 30 percent, the fragile balance of “subirdia” will be threatened, according to landscape-ecology theory.
For the health of this system to endure, people must pitch in. Subdivisions can be designed with less lawn and more forest. On a recent walk in his own neighborhood, Marzluff showed off a subdivision laid out with smaller lawns and tracts of forest that undulate in belts behind the houses. His neighborhood surveys have showed high bird counts in these areas; not so much in another nearby neighborhood, platted out with maximum lawn and minimum trees.
As an academic who has spent his life’s work immersed in the animal kingdom, Marzluff has harbored plenty of dark thoughts about the rate of habitat extinction worldwide. But he also knows firsthand that birds can thrive, with a little help from humans, one block at a time. “Where you live is a great place to start,” he says.
Mary Ann Gwinn: 206-464-2357 or mgwinn@seattletimes.com. Gwinn appears every Tuesday on TVW’s “Well Read,” discussing books with host Terry Tazioli (go to www.tvw.org/shows/well-read for archived episodes). On Twitter @gwinnma.
Four weeks for 99 cents of unlimited digital access to The Seattle Times. Try it now!Isabelle Lagace jailed for more than seven years for trying to smuggle cocaine off cruise ship
Updated
Canadian woman Isabelle Lagace cried in the dock as a Sydney judge sentenced her to seven-and-a-half years behind bars for attempting to smuggle almost 30 kilograms of cocaine into Australia.
Key points: The cocaine was estimated to have a street value between $17 million and $21.5 million
The court was told Lagace had debts of $5,000
Lagace said her decision would "haunt her for the rest of her life"
Lagace, 29, had pleaded guilty in the NSW District Court of attempting to bring the drugs into the country on the Sea Princess cruise ship in August 2016.
Judge Kate Traill told the court Lagace's role as a courier was central to the drug importation.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) estimated the cocaine had a street value between $17 million and $21.5 million.
The court heard Lagace had been attempting to repay a debt, and was convinced to courier the drugs after meeting some people on a two-month round-the-world cruise.
Lagace's case has grabbed plenty of negative headlines in her native Canada, where media reported she was a "softcore porn star".
Judge Traill read out comments from Legace indicating her remorse.
"I fully take responsibility for my error in judgment," she said.
"It pains me to know my defining moments of womanhood will be spent in prison.
"This will haunt me for the rest of my life."
The court heard Lagace had a $5,000 debt to an unknown person, and took possession of the drugs the night before her ship docked in Sydney.
The court heard her role was to provide her bag to another passenger who would put an illegal substance inside.
The judge read out comments from Lagace suggesting her family was being threatened over the debt, and she was presented with an ultimatum to pay off her loan.
"I don't accept she had no choice," Judge Traill said.
"Many choices were open for her to pay the debt."
Judge Traill said there was no evidence of fingerprints on the bag but said she was satisfied Legace knew there were drugs inside.
"I am satisfied her motive was profit whether it was forgiving of loan or financial reward," she said.
Judge Traill said she had "good prospects" for rehabilitation and set a non-parole period of four-and-a-half years.
Topics: community-and-society, drugs-and-substance-abuse, law-crime-and-justice, crime, drug-offences, police, sydney-2000
First postedFor most people, chocolate is purely tasty — but some of its history can be hard to swallow.
One reason to explore that history launched this week when chocolatier Jacques Torres opened a museum dedicated to the history of chocolate at his store in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. Dubbed “Choco-Story,” the exhibit is the latest branch of chocolate museums curated by Belgian chocolatier Eddie Van Belle, who collected various pots, mortars and other materials that Mayans, Aztecs and 16th-century Spaniards used to make and serve hot chocolate before the industrial revolution, around the mid-19th century, led to the creation of a process by which chocolate could be turned into solid pieces. Though the exhibit hits the high points too, it doesn’t shy away from the most surprising tidbits about the dessert on display.
The first known use of cacao is believed to have been discovered in southern Ecuador near Palanda at Santa Ana La Florida in the region of Zamora Chinchipe, where 5,500-year-old ceramic pots and a piece of a mortar were found to contain traces of theobromine, a marker for cacao. Shamans among the Shuar Indians are said to have used this equipment to prepare hallucinogenic potions. At the first chocolate factories, workers crushed cacao beans by using a heavy cylindrical stone called a “mano” to crush the beans on a grinding stone known as a “metate,” equipment featured in the exhibit. A fire would be going underneath to soften the cacao to form a paste that, after being left to dry, was grated or diluted in water to make hot chocolate.
The cacao beans themselves, which also grew in the equatorial region of Veracruz and Mexico, were used as currency until 1737 (proof that money did grow on trees, at least in some parts of the world). “A turkey was 100 cacao beans,” says Cameron L. McNeil, author of Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao and an archaeologist at The Graduate Center at The City University of New York.
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In the 14th century, only merchants, warriors, the nobility, and members of royal families could obtain cocoa drinks, and drank them out of golden cups and engraved or painted goblets.
According to the museum, after the Spanish colonized Mexico in the 16th century, they acquired the recipe for this hot chocolate and tried to keep it a secret from others. Jacques Torres says he believes it’s only logical that Hernán (or Hernando) Cortés — the Spanish conquistador who led the conquest of the Aztec kingdom — must have been the one who discovered this concoction and brought it back to the European continent. In a 1520 letter to Charles V, Cortés is believed to have described their currency as beans that are “somewhat like almonds” and to have said the natives caffeinated with the hot chocolate. Christopher Columbus is also said to have remarked on the trading of “almond-like” beans during his Fourth Voyage and after landing in what is now Nicaragua about two decades earlier, where he saw the beans and was greeted by the indigenous people with a bitter, spicy chocolate drink.
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However, historians say it’s hard to say that Cortés was definitely the first.
“Everyone assumes it was Cortés, but there was not functional proof of who brought it,” says Howard-Yana Shapiro, Chief Agricultural Officer of Mars, Incorporated, who co-wrote Chocolate: History, Culture with Louis Gravetti, an expert on the history of nutrition at UC Davis.
“He may have done so, but cacao is not in the inventory of goods that he took to show to Charles V,” echoes McNeil. She notes that The True History of Chocolate, by Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, traces the first evidence of cacao brought to the Spanish court to the friars who escorted Kekchi Maya to meet Prince Phillip. The friars would have had regular access to chocolate, she says, because many Mesoamericans continued their pre-conquest tradition of bringing cacao as a religious offering to places of worship. According to some sources, she says, “the friars would turn around and sell the offerings and make a lot of money doing this. They could also consume a certain amount of the offerings themselves. Let’s be honest, the friars were often as greedy as the conquistadors.”
Another reason to believe that clergymen rather than conquistadors brought chocolate across the ocean is timing. “By the time chocolate is coming back from New Spain or Mexico, the era of conquistadors was long gone,” says Marcy Norton, author of Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World. Members of the clergy, however, were regularly making the transatlantic journey to build churches. “One of the things that facilitated its spread is that chocolate is very much a social practice, a feature of hospitality, something you offer friends and colleagues, so people got into the habit of offering it.”
Eventually, chocolate spread across Europe, perhaps thanks to Jewish traders who were expelled from Spain and ended up going to the Netherlands.
By around 1580, regular deliveries of cacao began to cross the ocean. (The exhibit also traces the first chocolate shop to Spain around the same time, but historians disagree on whether that one can be proved, too.) “You start seeing it in trade records in 1580s, the shipping of chocolate and its paraphernalia,” says Norton, who adds that any imports before then were more like souvenirs or samples. |
Phone can be accessed either via the Security and Location section or by going to Settings > Google > Security.
You still have granular control over the app permissions granted to each app on your phone, either by permission category or on a per-app basis. But you can now also monitor special app access settings, like the ability to display over other apps, have unrestricted data access, use PiP mode or modify system settings. Again, these settings will not appeal to everybody, but as with everything else in Oreo, it’s a power user feature safely tucked away where it’s accessible but not confusing to the casual user.
Which brings us to Vitals. Announced earlier this year, Vitals is another initiative by Google to improve system performance and stability. It includes security tools, OS optimizations and various tools for developers to monitor their app’s usage on your device. Again, what all this analytics means is that app developers can optimize their apps for your device, giving you better battery life and app performance.
And finally, Android’s Accessibility options get a nifty new Settings menu area where you can enable an accessibility shortcut – including from the lock screen. Simply choose your preferred accessibility service, either Talkback, Select to Speak or Switch Access, and press and hold both volume buttons to activate and deactivate the service. You can even add a preset accessibility button to the on-screen navigation area.
The new settings have been kept largely out of sight to avoid cluttering up what has traditionally been a daunting OS for beginners
Like most of the other settings we’ve seen so far, Oreo still provides power users with the advanced tools and options they’ve come to expect from Android. But they are again kept largely out of sight to avoid cluttering up what has traditionally been a daunting OS for beginners. Google has also added a lot of stuff in the background to get you better battery life and performance than ever before, and that’s always a welcome addition.
3. Quicker access
From Google Now to Google Assistant, Google wants to deliver the most pertinent information when it is needed, if not just before. Each successive Android iteration has become more intuitive, with increasingly greater attention paid to helping you get things done faster. Nowhere is that more evident than in Android Oreo.
We’ll start with notification dots. Notification dots are Google’s answer to unread badges. A small dot, with a color matched to the app icon on which it appears, will alert you to any notifications you may have missed. Dots are visible in both the app drawer and on the home screen, and a long press of the app icon will reveal a condensed version of the available notifications. These can swiped away as per normal or opened up for action.
Notification dots are Google's answer to unread badges, nicely paired with app-specific launcher shortcuts.
When you long-press an app icon anywhere in Android 8.0, you’ll also get app-specific launcher shortcuts for each app. These are available whether or not a notification dot is present and can jump you straight into a variety of common actions.
For Twitter it might be search, post a tweet or send a DM. For Gmail you can compose an email or jump straight into one of your accounts and Photos will offer to free up space or take you to the search results for a particular set of your photos. Long pressing an app icon is also the quickest way to access the App Info page for each app or to add a widget.
Another speedy Oreo feature is smart text selection. This will be pretty familiar to anyone that regularly translates foreign words in Marshmallow or Nougat, but in Oreo it’s even smarter. Whereas Translate and Web Search were previously relegated to the overflow menu when you highlighted a section of text, Android 8.0 will not only anticipate the phrase you’re trying to highlight, but it will also predict which app you’re likely to want to use next and put it at the front of the copy/paste menu.
Following on from this, Oreo can learn your sharing habits too. On a basic level, Smart sharing connects apps with activities. So, for example, it will know to pair a photo of a receipt with an expense app or a selfie with messenger and social media apps. But Smart sharing will also begin to learn your habits and adapt to the apps with which you typically share specific types of content. It works with images, video, audio and text.
Android Oreo also introduces an improved Ambient Display. The familiar time and notification icons still ‘breathe’ on screen when you lift your device up, but now you’ll get larger notifications when a notification first comes in. Sadly, the ability to customize the lock screen shortcuts, present in the first developer preview, didn’t make it in the final build.
Further adding to the time-saving aspects of Android 8.0 is the new Autofill API, which promises to save you bucketloads of time on the web. Simply grant a service like Google’s Autofill or a password manager like LastPass permission to collect your passwords, credit card information and personal details and Oreo can offer to automatically complete web forms and log you into various accounts in future. Obviously, keeping your device safe and lock screen protected is essential here, but it’s a huge time saver.
One of the least touted features of Android Vitals is faster boot times. On the Pixel the boot up process is noticeably faster – twice as fast in fact. What used to take ages is now done in seconds, complete with a ‘powered by Android’ logo.
Whether it's through home shortcuts to popular app functions, smarter text selection, autofilling forms or simply booting your phone up twice as fast, Oreo will have you doing what you need to do in record time.
Meanwhile, Project Treble, which separates the vendor implementation from the Android OS framework, allows each to be updated independently. This means that OEMs can simply update the Android part of their phones without requiring anything from silicon vendors, which theoretically means you’ll get updates faster (I’ll believe it when I see it). Treble will be a part of all new devices launching with Oreo, although current Pixel phones are also supported.
As with other recent Android versions, Oreo wants to help you get to the things that matter quickly. Whether it’s through home shortcuts to popular app functions, smarter text selection, autofilling forms or simply booting your phone up twice as fast, Oreo will have you doing what you need to do in record time.
4. Being smarter
Android 8.0 is also the smartest of all Android versions, benefiting from the impressive Google Assistant and all the machine learning Google’s software has done over the last years. But there’s still room for some good old-fashioned man-made improvements too. Here are a few of the smarter decisions Google has made with Android Oreo.
High performance Bluetooth audio was one of the first Oreo features to capture the attention of the Android masses. Sony donated its LDAC codec to Google for inclusion in Oreo, opening up the mobile OS to superior audio connections on supported hardware. I won’t go into detail here, as Rob’s LDAC explainer and Oreo audio feature articles do the topic much better justice, but suffice to say Oreo supports audio quality that surpasses both what the human ear can discern or what the vast majority of high-end audio equipment can even reproduce.
High performance Bluetooth audio was one of the first Oreo features to capture the attention of the Android masses.
Bluetooth 5 support is another well-publicized feature of Android 8.0. Offering such enticing benefits as double the data throughput over short distances or quadruple the range with less throughput, Bluetooth 5 is a big deal.
There has been a lot of confusion surrounding the tech though, so much so that our very own Gary Sims has published several articles outlining what Bluetooth 5 does (hint: it has nothing to do with streaming audio), how effective it is and how many devices can make use of it yet (hint: close to none). Like HDR display support for full gamut color apps, Bluetooth 5 is an investment in the future. Fortunately, the first devices to launch with Bluetooth 5 hardware and Oreo out of the box are very likely right around the corner.
Oreo also delivers a new multi-display mode, which allows you to pick up on a large screen whatever you were just doing on the small screen. Your phone will also be able to detect which display it should be running on and switch back and forth seamlessly. TextView auto-sizing will allow app developers to let Oreo automatically resize the text in their apps according to the available screen real estate.
Mouse pointer capture is another forward-thinking addition in Android 8.0, which opens up Android-powered devices like Chromebooks and others to mouse input (physical keyboard support, including for navigation, has also been added). I tried it on the Pixel and it absolutely works as advertised but as you can probably imagine, it’s super weird to use a mouse with a smartphone.
Android Instant Apps are another new introduction we’ve covered in greater detail elsewhere, but the ability to use select functionality of apps you don’t actually install on your phone is a revolutionary idea. AIA will massively reduce the need for keeping those occasional-use apps on your device, freeing up storage space for things you want, like photos or music, while still allowing you to access all the benefits of app-based activities. Check out Adam’s great video on the significance of AIA.
Downloadable fonts are yet another under-the-radar Oreo feature that most people will never think about twice. The short version is that 800 Google supported font libraries can now be accessed via a ‘provider’ app. This means that rather than every app on your phone requiring its own font library, naturally resulting in duplicates, apps can now simply call upon a shared library in the provider app, further reducing app file sizes. The best news is that this feature has been back-ported to API 14 (Android 4.0). Upgradable graphics drivers also make their debut on devices that ship with Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box.
Pushing the memory management in a different direction now, Android 8.0 includes disk space limits for cached data too. Under this new system, each app on your phone gets a certain amount of storage space for cached data. But whenever the system needs to free up disk space, any cached files above that per-app threshold will be purged. The good news for users is smaller cached file sizes overall.
Android 8.0 Oreo expands the capabilities of the OS by baking in additions like Bluetooth 5 and Wi-Fi Aware – neither of which are even supported by any hardware yet.
On the Wi-Fi front, Oreo makes use of a service called Wi-Fi Aware, also known as Neighbor Awareness Networking. Wi-Fi Aware basically lets you create micro Wi-Fi networks with other devices around you without using a traditional internet access points. Apps will be able to communicate in both directions between connected devices, although at this moment no supported hardware is available, so stay tuned.
Android 8.0’s Wi-Fi Assistant allows you to enable the Assistant to automatically connect you to high quality public wireless networks. The setting is disabled by default but it can be flipped with a switch, accessible via your Wi-Fi preferences in Settings.
While some of these Oreo features are more behind the scenes, niche-level stuff, like Sony’s LDAC codec for high quality Bluetooth audio connections, others, like Android Instant Apps, have the potential to dramatically change the way we think about apps. At the same time, Android 8.0 Oreo expands the capabilities of the OS by baking in additions like Bluetooth 5 and Wi-Fi Aware – neither of which are even supported by any hardware yet.
Android Oreo features: final thoughts
I can confidently say that I’ve never been as impressed with a new Android version as I am with Android Oreo. Even the bugs that typically plague a new update in the days immediately following its release haven’t settled on my trusty Pixel. Unlike some, I even managed to get through the developer previews with barely a hiccup, certainly an encouraging experience for the now-public version I’ve been enjoying these past few days.
Editor's Pick Android emoji – everything you need to know Emoji seem to have taken over the world, with emoticons quickly becoming a dying tongue around the inter webs. And for good reason; these little icons offer a convenient and friendly way to express emotions. …
A lot of features first introduced in Android Nougat and before have found their true home in Oreo, which finally seems to get everything right. It will surely have its detractors, but even they will have to admit this is easily the most polished and reliable version of Android Google has ever released.
Like its namesake, Oreo very much strives to be the OS for everybody, and Android finally seems to get everything right.
As we mentioned at the beginning, and like its namesake, Oreo very much strives to be the OS for everybody. I can easily see how an iPhone user could pick it up and run with it, just as easily as I can see Android fans adoring all the new advanced features and customization options.
The fact that HTC, OnePlus, Lenovo/Motorola and even the Essential Phone are all basically using stock Android these days is a testament to great software. If you’re in the market for a new phone this year, rather than recommend this device or that, my suggestion would be to buy whatever will get you Android Oreo. Because for the first time in a long time, the software is the real star here, the hardware is simply the stage on which it shines.Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes has fired the head of his Gang Bureau for using homophobic language and calling a top prosecutor “the head n—-r,” The Post has learned.
Deanna Rodriguez had been suspended since March for using terms including “faggot” and “dyke” to insult interns, paralegals and assistant DAs, as The Post had exclusively reported.
But further investigation found the fiery Rodriguez had also used a racial slur.
“When this issue first arose, Deanna Rodriguez was immediately suspended for 90 days without pay,” Brooklyn DA spokesman Jerry Schmetterer said yesterday.
“Today, after complete review of her conduct, she was terminated effective immediately,” he added.
Rodriguez, who earned about $160,000 a year, had run the office’s gang unit since 1996.
The Post reported in March that she had been suspended after allegedly sending an e-mail to a female paralegal that contained physical threats and the homophobic slurs.
Assistant DAs in the Gang Bureau spoke highly of Rodriguez’s leadership, but several Brooklyn prosecutors said she had a reputation for tirades.
“She’s a wild woman. She’s nuts,” one law-enforcement source said when she was suspended.
Employees of the DA’s Office filed several complaints against Rodriguez, including one with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity, sources said.
“A lot of people have had incidents with her,” the law-enforcement source said.
In the course of the internal probe, it was discovered that she had referred to one of Hynes’ top prosecutors, an African-American man, as “the head n—-r” in a conversation with another employee in the office, a source with knowledge of the investigation told The Post.
She was talking about Lance Ogiste, counsel to the district attorney, the source said.
The district attorney’s Web site lists him third among Hynes’ senior staff.
The firing comes as Hynes’ office is the subject of a reality-TV show, CBS’s “Brooklyn DA,” and while he faces African-American and Indian challengers in a tough re-election campaign.
Asked by a reporter yesterday about her firing, Rodriguez — wearing a white sweat shirt printed with the words “Law Diva” — said, “You’re writing the wrong story.”
“This is about vilifying me,” Rodriguez said. “It’s not the right story. I’m not prepared to talk.”
“The majority of what was written the last time was not accurate.”
Rodriguez refused to comment on whether she felt wrongfully terminated and whether she would dispute the firing.
The acting head of the Gang Bureau is now Executive Assistant District Attorney Edward Carroll.The Prime Minister will within days make the historic pledge of a national vote after the next general election in his postponed speech, which senior sources said last night they believe will satisfy most Eurosceptic Conservatives.
However, he will not promise to pave the way for the referendum by introducing legislation in the current Parliament - something which will disappoint harder-line Eurosceptics.
Senior Government figures are understood to see such a move as a potential coalition-breaker - with the Liberal Democrats likely to vote with Labour in the Commons to block it.
Mr Cameron is now expected to make the long-anticipated speech in Britain. He was due to deliver it last Friday in Amsterdam but was forced to postpone it because of the hostage crisis in Algeria.
In extracts of the address already released in advance, the Prime Minister warns of the a growing “gap between” The EU’s institutions and its citizens. He says there is: “a lack of democratic accountability and consent that is – yes – felt particularly acutely in Britain.”
He warns: “If we don’t address these challenges, the danger is that Europe will fail and the British people will drift towards the exit.”
Mr Cameron faces a difficult balancing act between the demands of his own party and shoring up Britain’s influence in the world.
President Barack Obama has warned Mr Cameron against leading Britain out, while German politicians have warned him against opening a “Pandora’s box” with his demand to renegotiate Britain’s terms of membership of EU by repatriating swathes of powers from Brussels to Westminster.
Mr Cameron will use his speech - which could be on Tuesday or Wednesday - to spell out his plan to use future EU Treaty changes to claw back powers if the Conservatives win the next general election in 2015. The aim would be for Britain to keep its membership of the EU as a trading bloc, but with bureaucracy, laws and regulation scaled back considerably.
A referendum would then be held on the new terms of Britain’s membership - probably in about 2018 - with the “clear option” of the UK exiting the EU in the event of a 'No’ vote.
Some Eurosceptics want Mr Cameron to “lock in” his referendum plan by introducing legislation before the next election, set for May 2015, paving the way for the national vote.
However, the Prime Minister is understood to have ruled this out because of an inability to force the Liberal Democrats to back the move. It could even see the party lining up with Labour to vote against it in the Commons - something that would break the coalition because of the importance of the issue.
Last week the Fresh Start Group, supported by more than 100 Conservative MPs, published a manifesto demanding the return of swathes of laws from Westminster to Brussels and the reduction of Britain’s EU membership bill by billions of pounds.
Those close to Mr Cameron believe this week’s speech will “broadly satisfy” the Fresh Start Group, seen as the more mainstream face of Tory Euroscepticism, although they accept there is a hardcore of Conservative MPs which is unlikely to be happy.
Sources believe the plan to be outlined will even satisfy Liam Fox, the Eurosceptic former defence secretary, who wants the party to campaign at the next election under the slogan: “Back to the Common Market.”
Nick de Bois, the Conservative MP who wrote of the section of the Fresh Start manifesto on trade, said last night: “I believe a paving bill will give the public the right to choose their own future.
“The PM will, I am sure, set out plans for a reformed EU that focuses on trade and does not have the right to interfere in our domestic affairs.”
Bernard Jenkin, the Tory chairman of the Commons public administration select committee, is pushing for a “mandate referendum” - to be held before the next election - with the question: “Do you want the UK government to negotiate a new relationship with the EU based on trade and political cooperation? Yes or No?”
If passed, there could still be a main referendum at a later date on whether to leave the EU. Mr Jenkin said: “The least we owe the PM is to hear the whole of his speech - but the question which continues to nag is whether anything promised in this parliament can settle the debate as effectively as a clear statement in a manifesto referendum about what sort of relationship in with the EU that we want.”
Tracey Crouch, another Conservative MP, said: “People need clarity about what it is that the government is saying because there are so many mixed messages. One of the advantages of having a referendum is that we can have an informed debate on our future relationship.”The Los Angeles County district attorney has charged Kings defenseman Slava Voynov with one count of felony domestic abuse, as first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
Voynov has been suspended since the incident in late October; his lawyer said his client did not hit his wife, Marta Varlamova, but did confirm, without offering specifics, that she was injured and needed medical attention.
MORE: The NHL had to suspend Voynov — quickly
Thursday's charge, which includes willfully inflicting bodily harm, suggests that the evidence does not support that claim.
If the 24-year-old Voynov is convicted as charged, he could face up to nine years in prison under California law, and his immigration status would be in jeopardy. His arraignment is Dec. 1.
From the police press release:
During an argument at their Redondo Beach home on Oct. 19, Voynov caused his wife to suffer injuries to her eyebrow, cheek and neck, prosecutors said. The injuries were serious and required medical attention at a local hospital where the defendant was arrested, prosecutors added.
Voynov, per a statement from lawyer Craig Renetzky, is disappointed in the decision, "maintains his innocence and looks forward to clearing his name in court. We remain confident."
Varlamova's lawyer released a statement via Yahoo's Nick Cotsonika:
Marta was stunned by the news today and she is devastated. She did not believe, and does not believe, that her husband intended to injure her and she believes that he is not guilty of any crime. She is worried about her family's privacy and concerned that she and her family are going to be subject to ridicule, embarrassment and hatred because of this decision. In fact, she has already seen that beginning to happen. It is unfortunate that no one seemed to care what she wants, and that the authorities gave little or no weight to her view of the facts of the case. Despite this unwelcome news, she still expects her husband to be cleared of any criminal wrongdoing.
The Kings have supported Voynov's suspension, but GM Dean Lombardi was outspoken earlier this week over the fact that Voynov's $4.1 million salary still counts against the salary cap. Commissioner Gary Bettman defended the decision on Monday.
"(Bettman) says issue of cap relief not warranted and is just cap management," Lombardi told the Times in an email. "I need to create some space in case (a player) robs a bank."
That same day, Lombardi pointed out to the Orange County Register that teams get cap relief for other issues, like PED suspensions. He also touched on something else.
“Quite frankly, I’m beyond caring about reinstatement or cap relief,’’ Lombardi said. “My biggest concern is that if he is charged with a felony, this one incident could jeopardize Slava’s entire career.’’
The Kings released a statement later Thursday: "We maintain our support of the NHL’s indefinite suspension of Slava Voynov. As an organization we will continue to closely monitor the developments of the legal proceedings and work in partnership with the NHL to determine the proper course of action in the future."Socrates, a dead white male philosopher. (Dreamstime)
Defending a critique of the politicization of academic philosophy
In my July 5 National Review Online column, “The Gender Academy,” I argued that left-wing activism over gender issues is detrimentally politicizing academic philosophy. Its publication spurred criticism on three philosophy websites, Daily Nous, Leiter Reports, and Digressions & Impressions. Here I wish to respond to my critics.
The most heavily criticized passages were my descriptions of philosophy of race and feminist philosophy as “sub-disciplines that exist to promote left-wing ideology” and again as “insurgent, newfangled sub-disciplines that critics are likely to dismiss as political imposters.” Many took me to be categorically dismissing all the work done on these topics, but I took myself to be arguing a more modest point.
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I am critical of giving feminism and race the extra attention and insulation from criticism that comes from designating these topics as “entire sub-disciplines of philosophy.” Given that it’s considered impolitic to criticize “entire sub-disciplines of philosophy,” we should vigorously debate what deserves to be considered as such. Knowledge, ethics, and being-qua-being deserve that distinction. It’s not obvious that feminism and race do.
As many suspected, I am an expert in neither philosophy of race nor feminist philosophy. I need not be. One could have principled reservations about a discipline called “conservative studies” without being an Edmund Burke scholar. If you know that conservatism is a position in political philosophy, you might reasonably think it shouldn’t also be a discipline unto itself.
That is essentially the point I’m pressing against feminism as a sub-discipline of philosophy. Let feminism be discussed alongside conservatism, libertarianism, liberalism, fascism, and socialism in political-philosophy classes. Why must feminism, alone among these “isms,” also have its own brand of epistemology, ethics, literary theory, and biology? I doubt feminists would tolerate libertarian counterparts to any of these.
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The objection to philosophy of race is different. It’s not that the work is necessarily ideological but that it is the Left alone that favors prioritizing race as a subject of intellectual curiosity. When conservatives address race, as Thomas Sowell does in his book Intellectuals and Race, it’s generally to contest liberal claims of its importance for policy and identity.
Even if the work that takes place in philosophy of race is entirely non-ideological — which I doubt — the existence of the sub-discipline legitimates the idea that it’s terribly, terribly important to keep the “national conversation about race” going. Like most conservatives, I think that conversation, and liberal policies generally, are more likely to make old wounds fester than to heal them.
My criticisms of the University of Colorado Boulder philosophy department’s “Best Practices” document also came under fire. Some readers raised the point that its guidelines are not binding, but that hardly makes my criticisms irrelevant. It’s worthwhile to discuss whether these are the guidelines that graduate students should be encouraged to abide by. I regret not making clear that my criticisms are quite limited — only a few sentences in a nine-page document. I completely support the recommendation that teachers acquaint themselves with the scientific literature on implicit bias and I apologize to the authors for giving the impression that I condemn their efforts wholesale. Here are the guidelines I found problematic:
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“We should attempt to gender balance class discussions.”
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“We should pay special attention to the philosophical promise of female students and students from other underrepresented groups” (emphasis mine).
“We should take steps to assist female students and students from underrepresented groups in expressing themselves in class, by, for example, intervening when such students are interrupted or spoken over while attempting to contribute.”
Do I have a problem with recognizing the philosophical potential of female students? Would I let someone interrupt a woman in class? Of course not. But I see no need to specify women and minorities when a blanket policy of civility would obviously cover them. Nor do I think it is wise to implement policies of favoritism for students with certain demographic features in an attempt to counteract historical discrimination.
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#page#
For one thing, the Best Practices document doesn’t make it clear whether the goal of the “special attention” is to counteract the implicit bias in each teacher, or to counteract the effects of discrimination in society as a whole. Even if we knew this, the guidelines would provide little guidance. How much longer than a male student should I let a female student speak in a class of ten men and two women? When is “gender balance” achieved?
The subtle and diffuse nature of implicit bias means that no one can be sure exactly how much is present in any given interaction. There’s no way for the teacher who gives “special attention” to know that she’s not overcorrecting. What she can be sure of is that she is making a conscious decision to treat some of her students differently on the basis of irrelevant demographic features when all have an equal claim to her attention and support. This is clearly wrong.
In addition, dialogue tends to be more natural among participants who aren’t constantly thinking of each other in terms of group membership. Adherence to these guidelines — which ask us to keep demographics ever in mind — could render the classroom experience artificial for students of both sexes alike.
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I conclude with two points about the prevalence of sexual harassment in philosophy.
First, it’s uncharitable to attribute obviously fallacious arguments of the form “I did not see X, therefore there is no X” to Michael Tooley, a trustworthy philosopher who claimed he had not witnessed sexual harassment, or others who have made similar reports. The point is that such testimony constitutes some evidence that the problem might not be as pervasive as feared. The possibility that one can fail to recognize instances of sexual harassment shouldn’t lead us to discount testimony entirely.
Second, we should keep Socratic wisdom in mind and remember what we don’t know. Last year, Jennifer Saul, who runs the blog What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy?, wrote,
When I talk to people about [the sexual harassment problem in philosophy], I am invariably asked whether sexual harassment is worse in philosophy than in other fields. The short answer is that we don’t really know: It’s very difficult to get good data on something that is drastically underreported and often kept confidential even once reported. But to me, the most important thing is this: Sexual harassment harms its victims greatly. It’s wrong, and we need to get rid of it. We don’t need to know about relative frequency to see this.
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Trouble is, without this knowledge, we cannot be sure that the philosophy gender gap is driven by high rates of sexual harassment. The unknown information is also relevant to the question of how we should go about resolving the harassment. If departments with large proportions of women have similar rates of harassment, then we have some reason to think that an influx of women to our field may not resolve our issues.
There is much more that needs to be said than I can say here. A proper development of my position would be as long as a dissertation and read by as many people. I hope my sins of omission can be forgiven.
— Spencer Case is a philosophy graduate student at the University of Colorado. He is a U.S. Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and an Egypt Fulbright alumnus.I'm continuously updating the list of men's human rights sites that O2/Symantec falsely declare to be "hateful" and people may have missed some of the newer additions. Below are the more recent entries into the hall of fame, I strongly recommend people browse some of them or even help promote their favourites so the censorship backfires.
http://www.avoiceforboys.com
http://www.egalitariste.org - French Canadian equality site
http://f4jquebec.org - the first Fathers4Justice site to be censored
http://www.fathers.bc.ca - Canadian men's advcate who sued the government for defamation.
http://www.federgen.org - A major Spanish men's equality group.
http://www.hommedaujourdhui.ca - Another Canadian site in French
http://hommesquebec.org
http://j4mb.wordpress.com - Justice for Men and Boys Political Party.
http://www.lapresrupture.qc.ca
http://www.liamsdad.org - Fanstastic site documenting one's father's struggle to see his son
http://manamongoaks.com
http://maskulinist.no - Now even Norway knows about Symantec's antics!
http://www.mensrights-help.com
http://mensrightswiki.org - The Wiki used by the extremely popular Reddit men's rights community.
http://www.stopfeminazis.org
http://www.vancouvermra.com
http://www.wolfpackwarriors.com
http://www.woolybumblebee.com
I send out a notification email to all sites affected by this. As you can see there are a number of foreign language sites above, if anyone is fluent in Spanish I'd appreciate it if they could translate the document for me so we can reach a global audience with the campaign.
By the way, congratulations to J4M&B for successfully raising £1,000 to fund another candidate. No doubt they'd receive even mroe donations if O2/Symantec didn't try to stop people from accessing the site!
By John KimbleThis illustrated compilation is a series of short essays for fans of Byzantium and students first dipping into the subject. Because of the scant source material available some of the subjects while important are often skipped over or only briefly mentioned elsewhere.
Subjects are:
Byzantium in brief
A Roman or Byzantine Empire
The most Byzantine village in Greece
Thomas Hodgkin, historian
The East Roman navy – Dromons and Greek fire
Byzantine medicine
Byzantine dualism – Paulicians, Bogomiles, and Cathars
Arnold Toynbee on Constantine Porphyrogenitus
Procopius on Justinian's building projects
The chain across the Golden Horn
Byzantium and Aksum on the Red Sea
Digenes Akrites
The age of Justinian (excerpt from Antonina)
The 8th century background to Count No Man Happy
Writing fiction about Byzantium
The Nike Insurrection fictionalized
Byzantium in brief
Roman or Byzantine Empire
Olymbos, the most Byzantine village in Greece
Thomas Hodgkin, historian
The East Roman navy – dromons and Greek fire
Byzantine medicine
The chain on the Golden Horn
Byzantine dualism – Paulicians, Bogomiles, Cathars
A. Toynbee on Constantine Porphyrogenitus
Procopius on Justinian’s buildings
Byzantium and Aksum on the Red SeaI've had a long and happy artistic association with my favourite TV programme since the first comic strips I drew for Doctor Who Monthly/Magazine in the late 1980s.
I became particularly associated with Dalek stories which pleases me no end, as I've been a fan of the programme and the Dalek strips since their beginnings, and through the samples here you'll see how my style and approach has changed over the (gulp) decades since then.
Along the way I've also produced strips about the Time Lord for the Radio Times; developed a new Doctor for an abandoned SF comic project; painted a cover for Paul Cornell's 'Love and War' which featured my original visual interpretation of Benny Summerfield; a Dalek calendar; supplied art for three of BBCi's Webcast animations and preview illustrations for the early Big Finish audio adventures and cover art for two of their New Worlds books. In 2009 I completed a 3-year, 64-issue run on Fabbri's 10th Doctor adventures in 'Doctor Who - Battles in Time' and provided illustrations for the 'Flashback' pages of 'Doctor Who DVD Files' which I designed and inked.
With the celebration of Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary - and incidentally my own 25th as a professional Who artist - I've returned to the strip format with the Second Doctor episode of IDW's Prisoners of Time story arc; provided two posters for Pyramid Posters Prestige Box Set and an illustration for the next Doctor Who Annual; drawn my smallest strip ever - featuring the current incarnation - for Royal Mail's hugely successful stamps issue (in the Prestige Stamp Book); returned to DWM with a colour illustration featuring the Daleks and will hopefully complete the TV21 saga 'The Dalek Chronicles'. Two versions of my first Dalek strip are being reprinted either side of the Atlantic; I've begun working for Titan on variant covers for their Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor Who comic titles.
Each image below will take you an album of work relating to the different areas of Who I've worked on.Devastated Parents Speak Out After 1 Piece of Holiday Cake Killed Their Son More
When 11-year-old Oakley Debbs ate a piece of cake over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, his family had no idea that it had the potential to kill him. Oakley had a peanut allergy and when he realized his mistake, his family was alarmed but gave him Benadryl, which seemed to do the trick. His mom, Merrill, explained to WMTW that the allergy medicine had always worked in the past after an accidental consumption of nuts. She also shared that he felt "great" for the rest of the evening after taking the medicine. However, his condition took a drastic turn later that night and he went from playing with cousins and his twin sister to vomiting. Within minutes the child could no longer breathe. "He wasIt's a Stallion Baby!
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti G1 gaming Benchmarked & Reviewed
In this review we take the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti G1 Gaming for a test-drive, the product is superb as it has awesome cooling, it's silent, it's factory overclocked (and not a little) and combined with the default variables like the 6 GB graphics memory this product oozes performance and awesomeness.
And then the GPU that resides on inder the hood, big Maxwell oh man it's a freak of nature with that kind of game rendering powah! In this review we look deeply into the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti G1 gaming. You'd expect a product with '980' in it to have a similar slightly tweaked GPU, but no Sir. Nvidia shifted a thing or two around, the 980 Ti is based on the BIG Maxwell GPU, the same GPU that is powering the Titan X. Obviously the product has been trimmed down a tiny bit, but trust us when we say, there's plenty performance to be found. This product comes with a luxurious six Gigabytes of graphics memory and with these specs, the GTX 980 Ti should be fetching a lot of interest for the true gamers among is. The GPU empowering the GeForce 980 Ti is big, this one has a massive transistor count; it is a slightly revised GM200 A1 GPU that currently feeds the Titan X its horsepower. So yes, a slightly different iteration of the GM200. The card has five display outputs: three DisplayPorts, HDMI and DVI-I. Where the GTX 980 has 4 GB, this product has a nice 6 GB frame buffer, and close to a third more shader processors when compared to the GeForce 980, accumulating up-to 2816 of them playing the binary game in a GPU that has a whopping 8 Billion transistors (GeForce GTX 980 has 5 Billion). The card looks pretty identical to previous models with subtle changes here and there and with that familiar cooler shroud. Memory wise NVIDIA equipped its GeForce GTX 980 Ti with 7 Gbps memory, the fastest GDDR5 memory |
observed adverse effects in the mother and fetus.35,38 In summary, most studies show that chlorpromazine is not teratogenic.39,40 The bulk of the clinical evidence with chlorpromazine treatment during gestation indicates no adverse effects on fetus, although there have been occasional reports of congenital anomalies during first trimester of pregnancy. Thus, it should be used with caution during pregnancy when its benefits outweigh the potential risks involved. Risks related to breast-feeding. Chlorpromazine is excreted in the breast milk in low concentrations, depending on maternal dosage.41–43 Based on data obtained from five lactating women, the amount of chlorpromazine that the breastfed infant is expected to ingest is between 0.03 to 1.3 percent of the lowest pediatric dose (less than 10% of the normal dose is considered to likely be safe) and thus no adverse effects were reported with it.44,45 Another study found no adverse effects on infants whose nursing mothers were on chlorpromazine.30 More studies are needed to determine the effects of chlorpromazine on nursing infants. Thus, Chlorpromazine should be used in lactating mother only if risk benefit assessment justifies the potential risk to the infant.
Fluphenazine Exposure during pregnancy. In animals. Fluphenazine, a piperazine derivative readily crosses the placenta and accumulates in the fetal tissue.4,9 Two studies in which rats were treated with oral fluphenazine used many times the maximum recommended human daily dose (MRHD), during pregnancy found no adverse effects in the offspring.46 However, a third study demonstrated a significant increase in the incidence of dilated ventricles of the CNS, skeletal defects, reduction in fetal weight and length.47 In addition, multiple abnormalities in embryo chicks and cleft palate in fetal mice have been reported elsewhere.48 In humans. Although there have been no well controlled studies to determine the risk to the fetus during pregnancy with fluphenazine use, few cases of severe rhinorrhea, respiratory distress49 and delayed extrapyramidal symptoms27,50 have been reported. On the other hand, a retrospective study found the incidence of spontaneous abortion, perinatal mortality, premature birth and twinning to be similar in 244 patients who received fluphenazine during pregnancy and in 150 patients in the control group.51 Although there have been some reports of congenital anomalies associated with using fluphenazine during pregnancy, the majority of the clinical experience with it indicates that pregnant women can be treated with fluphenazine with no ill effects to them or their infants.52,53 However, the potential benefits should always be weighed against the possible hazards when prescribing this drug to pregnant women. Risk to the infant during breast-feeding. As seen with other phenothiazines, fluphenazine should be expected to pass into breast milk. Although its effects on the nursing infant are unknown, the possible potential for the risk of adverse effects from exposure to fluphenazine in the breastfed infants should be weighed against its potential benefits to the breast feeding mother.
Haloperidol Exposure during pregnancy. Haloperidol, a butyrophenone-derivative, readily crosses the placenta. It is used in the treatment of psychosis, mania, Tourette syndrome, nausea and anxiety. Haloperidol is approximately 100 times as potent as chlorpromazine in blocking dopamine receptors.54 In animals. Congenital malformations associated with Haloperidol use in animal reproduction studies at doses higher than the recommended human dose include cleft palate, micromelia, fetal death in rats,48,55 increased rates of central nervous system and skeletal malformations and reduced fetal and postnatal growth in mice,48,56,57 as well as increased rates of embryonic death, brain and skull malformation in hamsters.58 Long lasting behavioral changes have also been noted among the offspring of pregnant rats treated with haloperidol in doses similar or greater than those used in humans.59,60 Even though delay in implantation in mice and rats at the time of conception was noted, normal-weight newborns were delivered at term.61 In humans. Lack of adequate and well-controlled studies preclude determination of the fetal risk during pregnancy. Two isolated cases of infants with severe limb reduction defects were born to women who used haloperidol (concomitantly with other drugs) for hyperemesis gravidarum during the 1st trimester, though causal relationship could not be established.62–64 Kopelman and colleagues65 reported multiple upper and lower limb defects, an aortic valve defect, and subsequent death in one infant; whereas, phocomelia was reported in another infant with use of haloperidol in the first trimester,66 no teratogenic effects have been reported with the use of haloperidol in the second and third trimester. However, a retrospective study by Hanson and Oakley67 found no association between limb deformities and exposure to haloperidol. The first report of fetal cardiac toxicity secondary to the combination of haloperidol and chlorpromazine was reported as transient fetal heart block. Within two days after delivery, the heart rate was within normal limits, and ECG showed normal sinus rhythm.68 There is also a report of haloperidol overdose in a 34-week pregnant female. After ingesting 300mg of haloperidol, she was found aphasic and unable to follow commands (69). Her brain CT scan and EEG were normal and the fetus had a biophysical profile (BPP) score of 2 (out of 10) with minimal long and short-term heart variability and no evidence of fetal movement, breathing, or flexion-extension. Within 16 hours, the mother had full recovered, however the fetuses BPP score remained persistently low. At 48 hours, the BPP score was only 6, but by day 5 post-ingestion, the BPP score reached 10 and the baby was subsequently delivered at 39 weeks with no cardiac sequelae. This case illustrates delayed fetal recovery compared with that of the mother after intentional overdose of haloperidol possibly due to increased fetal CNS sensitivity and impaired fetal hepatic metabolic capacity. In a large retrospective study of 100 pregnant women with hyperemesis gravidarum, 6 mg of haloperidol was administered orally twice daily. Ninety-two women received haloperidol during the first trimester, eight during the second trimester. Less than 10 percent of the women also received meclizine, pyridoxine, prochlorperazine, and dexchlorpheniramine.70 Haloperidol was found to have no effect upon duration of gestation, perinatal or neonatal survival, birth weight, or congenital malformations.70 Similarly, Van Waes and Van de Velde found no association between haloperidol use for hyperemesis during the first trimester and fetal anomalies.71 Pregnant women should thus be treated with haloperidol with caution because of some reports of teratogenicity with it. Risk to the infant during breast-feeding. Haloperidol has been detected in unquantifiable amounts in breast milk, though some animal studies have found haloperidol in sufficient quantity in milk to cause drowsiness and motor function impairment in breastfeeding offspring.72–74 There are also reports of quantifiable amounts in breast milk with haloperidol.75,76 Whalley and colleagues75 found upto 23.5 micrograms/L of haloperidol in breast milk when the breastfeeding mother was on 5mg twice daily oral dose of haloperidol for puerperal psychosis with no adverse effects observed in infant. Thus, the possible benefits of haloperidol administration to breastfeeding mother should be weighed against the potential hazards to the infant.
Clozapine Exposure during pregnancy. In animals. Clozapine, a dibenzodiazepine derivative, is an atypical antipsychotic agent that readily crosses the placenta.72 No evidence of impaired fertility or harm to the fetus due to clozapine has been noticed in rats and rabbits at two to four times the human dose.77 In humans. Presently, there are no epidemiologic studies demonstrating an association between congenital anomalies and gestational clozapine therapy. There are three clinical case reports demonstrating no apparent fetal adverse effects associated with the use of clozapine before and during gestation.78–80 One of the three reports described 14 women who were exposed to clozapine during gestation with no known adverse sequelae in their newborn.80 Dickson and Hogg81 reported on a healthy infant born at 38 weeks to a schizophrenic mother treated with clozapine along with metformin and later insulin for her history of “high sugars.” In a report by Stoner and colleagues82 two full-term pregnant females with continuous clozapine therapy delivered normal, healthy infants. In this report, specifically, the first patient who received clozapine (300mg/day) for 17 months total along with lithium till her first trimester, delivered an infant by vacuum extraction with cephalohematoma, hyperpigmented folds and coccygeal dimple all of which resolved by Day 2. The infant had a seizure episode on Day 8 but was healthy at two years of age. In the second case, a healthy infant weighing 2.5kg was born to a patient who had been taking clozapine (600–625mg/day) for 35 months in combination with lithium before becoming pregnant and subsequently stopped taking it during her pregnancy. In a case illustration of fetal accumulation, Barnas and colleagues reported that a mother was treated with clozapine (100mg/day), throughout most of her pregnancy. The dose was reduced to 50mg/day during the last nine weeks with a level of 15.4ng/mL.83 On the day of delivery, maternal level was 14.1ng/mL, fetal concentration was 27ng/mL and amniotic fluid level was 11.6ng/mL. Two possible explanations for this fetal accumulation given were increased fetal albumin causing increased clozapine-albumin binding or ion trapping producing a pH gradient in the fetus. Thus, doses of clozapine should be kept to minimum possible doses and further reduction in dose just prior to delivery should be attempted in order to avoid adverse effects such as withdrawal seizures and CNS depression. While available data suggests that clozapine does not cause major fetal malformations, Pinkofsky and colleagues have raised the issue of potential clozapine-induced fetal agranulocytosis.84 Thus, white blood cell counts of all newborn infants whose mothers are receiving clozapine during pregnancy or while breastfeeding, should be monitored weekly for first six months to detect agranulocytosis that may result in fatal infection. Clozapine can be used during pregnancy if the clinical benefit justifies the conceivable risk to the fetus. Clozapine should only be used during pregnancy for the treatment of severely ill schizophrenic patients who fail to respond to other neuroleptic agents or who cannot tolerate the adverse effects from those other agents. Risk to the infant during breast-feeding. Clozapine is concentrated in the breast milk72,77 and has been known to cause sedation, decreased suckling, restlessness or irritability, seizures, and cardiovascular instability in the breastfeeding infant.72 Given the potential for serious adverse consequences to infants who are exposed to clozapine, breast-feeding should be avoided when maternal clozapine therapy is indicated.
Risperidone Exposure during pregnancy. In animals. Risperidone, a benzisoxazole-derivative, is chemically unrelated to other atypical antipsychotic agents. In three teratogenicity studies in rats and rabbits, the incidence of malformations was not increased as compared with controls after being given 0.4 to 6 times the maximum recommended human dose (MRHD) of risperidone. Nevertheless, one other study found a significant increase in the number of stillborn pups of rats receiving risperidone at doses of 1.5 times the MRHD.72 In humans. Ratnayake and Libretto85 report two cases of risperidone use during pregnancy. Both infants were delivered without complications by cesarian section and no postnatal developmental abnormalities were noted. In the first case, the 36 year-old mother had been taking risperidone (4mg/day) for two years and was continued on it during pregnancy for risk of relapse. In the second case, a 30-year-old mother had been taking risperidone (6mg/day) throughout pregnancy. Additionally, Mackay and colleagues86 reported on nine women receiving risperidone during 10 pregnancies. Three pregnancies ended with therapeutic abortions, but of the seven live births, no malformations were reported. Since no adequate and well-controlled studies of fetal effects using risperidone in pregnant women have been done, risperidone should be used during pregnancy only if the benefit to the mother justifies the potential risk to the fetus. Risk to the infant during breast-feeding. Caution should be exercised when risperidone is administered to breastfeeding women, since it has been found to be distributed in breast milk in greater than or equal to plasma concentrations in animal studies.72 It may thus also pass into human milk causing unwanted behavioral changes in breastfed babies.87
Quetiapine Exposure during pregnancy. In animals. Quetiapine, a dibenzothiazepine derivative, is an atypical antipsychotic. Embryo/fetal toxicity in the form of skeletal ossification delays, reduced fetal body weight, and increased incidence of carpal/tarsal flexure in rat fetuses and in rabbits at 1.2 and 2.4 times the maximum human dose was observed. An increase in fetal and pup death, and decrease in mean litter weight at three times the maximum human dose were also found.77 In humans. There are two reports of quetiapine use during pregnancy. In one case, the 24-year old woman was treated with lithium (1500mg/day) for bipolar disorder, (which was discontinued on her getting pregnant) and with quetiapine, which was maintained at 25mg/day throughout pregnancy. She delivered a healthy infant with no malformations. In the second case, 38-year-old woman with schizophrenia who received unknown dose of quetiapine delivered a healthy infant at 38 weeks with APGAR scores of 9 and 10 at 1 minute and 5 minutes, respectively.88 Since no adequate and well-controlled studies in pregnant women have been done, quetiapine should be used during pregnancy only if the benefit justifies the potential risk to the fetus. Risk to the infant during breast-feeding. Quetiapine has been found to be excreted in milk of lactating animals.77 However excretion in human milk may be possible. Therefore, caution should be exercised in prescribing quetiapine during lactation.
Olanzapine Exposure during pregnancy. Olanzapine, a thienobenzodiazepine-derivative, is chemically and pharmacologically similar to clozapine, but differs pharmacologically from other currently available antipsychotic agents (e.g., phenothiazine, butyrophenones) and is thus, considered an atypical antipsychotic. In animals. Olanzapine crosses the placenta in rat pups.77 In reproduction studies in rats, no evidence of teratogenicity was reported, though early resorptions and nonviable fetuses were observed at doses of 9 times the maximum recommended human daily dose (MRHD), while gestation was prolonged at five times the MRHD. In rabbits, no teratogenic effect was noted, though increased resorption and reduced fetal weight occurred at 30 times the MRHD.77 In humans. Prospective and retrospective cases of in-utero olanzapine exposure through October 1, 1998, have been provided by The Lilly Worldwide Pharmacovigilance Safety Data Base, which reports 37 prospectively identified cases during this period. Fourteen of the 37 pregnancies were electively terminated without fetal abnormalities. Of the 23 remaining pregnancies, 16 healthy infants without complications were born, where exposure was limited to first trimester in eight infants, first and second trimesters in one infant and all trimesters in seven infants. Here, one infant was delivered by cesarian at 30 weeks of gestation whose mother was treated for gestational diabetes, hypothyroidism, preeclampsia, and elevated liver enzymes along with schizophrenia throughout her pregnancy. A second infant weighing 3.66kg, whose mother received olanzapine throughout pregnancy (10mg/day), with fetal distress was delivered by labor induction 10 days after term and had a normal postnatal development. The third infant whose mother received unknown dose of olanzapine during first trimester of pregnancy had meconium aspiration during a cesarian section for postmaturity. Whereas, three pregnant women of these 23 pregnancies had spontaneous abortions (13%), at a rate consistent with historical data (15%) but no malformations were noted in any of these abortuses.89 Kirchheiner's report of a schizophrenic women treated with olanzapine from the 18th week of gestation through delivery showed no complications, as the infant was found to be healthy at birth. The plasma levels in the infant was approximately one-third of that of the mother and the female infant weighed 3.19kg with APGAR scores of 9, 10, and 10 at 1 minute, 5 minutes, and 10 minutes respectively.90 More studies are needed to determine the effects of olanzapine on pregnant women. Thus, olanzapine should be used in pregnant women only if risk benefit assessment justifies the potential risk to the infant. Risk to the infant during breast feeding. Olanzapine is excreted in the milk of treated rats during lactation but similar effect in humans is not known.77 Therefore, caution should be exercised when olanzapine is administered to breastfeeding women.
Ziprasidone Exposure during pregnancy. In animals. Ziprasidone is an atypical antipsychotic drug. Increased time to copulation in rats in two fertility and early embryonic development studies at doses of 10 to 160mg/kg/day (0.5 to 8 times the MRHD). Fertility rate was reduced at eight times the MRHD, though no effect was found at two times the MRHD.72,77 Studies in rabbits suggest that ziprasidone is associated with anomalies such as ventricular septal defects, other cardiovascular malformations, and kidney alterations. However, there is no evidence that these resulted from maternal toxicities.91 In humans. There are no adequate and well-controlled studies in pregnant women. Ziprasidone should be used during pregnancy only if the benefit justifies the potential risk to the fetus.72,77 Risk to the infant during breast-feeding. Ziprasidone's excretion and that of its metabolites in human milk is not known at present. Therefore, it is recommended that women receiving ziprasidone should not breast feed.
Aripiprazole Exposure during pregnancy. This drug is different from other antipsychotics since Aripiprazole is a partial agonist at D2 and 5-HT1A receptors and antagonist at 5-HT2A receptors. In animals. Aripiprazole showed developmental toxicity including teratogenic effects in rats and rabbits. When pregnant rats were treated with 10 times the MRHD, slightly prolonged gestation, stillbirths, decreased fetal weight, undescended testes, delayed skeletal ossification and increased incidences of hepatodiaphragmatic nodules and diaphragmatic hernia along with postnatal effects of delayed vaginal opening and impaired reproductive performance have been observed. Similarly, pregnant rabbits treated with 11 times the MRHD of aripiprazole during period of organogenesis were found to have decreased maternal food consumption and increased abortions along with increased fetal mortality, skeletal abnormality and decreased fetal weight.92 In humans. There are no adequate and well-controlled studies in pregnant women. It is not known whether aripiprazole can cause fetal malformations when administered to pregnant women or can affect their reproductive capacity. Thus, it should be prescribed during pregnancy only if the benefit outweighs the potential risk to the fetus.92 Risk to the infant during breast-feeding. Aripiprazole is excreted in milk of lactating rats, but its excretion in human milk is not known. Thus, it is recommended that women receiving aripiprazole should not breast feed.
Conclusion Currently available information indicates that there are no antipsychotic preparations on the market that can be considered entirely appropriate or completely safe for expectant and nursing mothers. On the other hand, there have been some studies and case reports of fetal malformations, such as congenital heart disease, perinatal deaths, neurological dysfunction with extrapyramidal manifestations, respiratory distress, rhinorrhea, jaundice, hypotension, and neonatal withdrawal associated with the use of antipsychotics. However, the extensive review of congenital malformations in the infants of women who received antipsychotics during pregnancy reveal the occurrence of only very few cases of congenital defects, the incidence of which are neither higher nor lower than the control groups. Furthermore, some of these antipsychotic drugs (e.g., olanzapine, ziprasidone, aripiprazole) are newer agents and there may not be much experience with them during pregnancy and breastfeeding, unlike that with older agents such as haloperidol or chlorpromazine, where there appears to be an increased risk of congenital malformations on exposure to phenothiazines between Weeks 4 to 10 of gestation.93 Therefore, while conclusive elucidation await well controlled studies, the use of antipsychotic drugs during pregnancy and lactation can be justified only if its benefit outweighs such potential risks.
Contributor Information Mohammad Masud Iqbal, Dr. Iqbal is Clinical Director, Central New York Psychiatric Center, Auburn Satellite Mental Health Unit, New York, Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York. Alka Aneja, Dr. Aneja is a resident in the Department of Psychiatry, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York. Atiq Rahman, Dr. Rahman is a resident, Department of Medicine, Mehary Medical College, Tennessee. James Megna, Dr. Megna is an Assistant Professor, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York. Wanda Freemont, Dr. Freemont is Assistant Professor, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York. Mohammed Shiplo, Mohammed Shiplo is with Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. Nikil Nihilani, Dr. Nihilani, MD is a resident with the Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester, New York. Kathy Lee, Dr. Lee is the Clinical Director, Central New York Psychiatric Center, Marcy, New York.WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - Kansas is facing the prospect of a “brain drain” as fewer people who graduate from an in-state college or university choose to stay in the state, according to Board of Regents President Blake Flanders.
It’s unclear whether people are leaving because the higher education system is failing to align itself with the Kansas economy, or whether the local economy is failing to offer the opportunities college graduates seek.
“I think we can put the blame in a lot of places,” Flanders said Wednesday when he addressed the board during its annual retreat, which was held in Wichita. “I think it’s something we can work together on.”
Flanders said that from 2010 to 2014 the percentage of Kansas college graduates employed in the state within one year of finishing school has remained relatively flat. But he said the number employed here five years after graduating has been declining, The Lawrence Journal-World reported (https://j.mp/2bbeHiF ).
That’s true for all post-secondary graduates, including from technical colleges, community colleges, or one of the six universities governed by the board, he said.
Those earning bachelor’s and graduate degrees are the most likely to leave the state, Flanders said.
In 2014, 47 percent of the people who’d earned bachelor’s degrees five years earlier were still employed in Kansas, Flanders said. That was down from 52 percent in 2010.
People earning master’s and doctoral degrees have had even more difficulty finding jobs in Kansas.
In 2014, only 45 percent of people earning master’s degrees and just one-third of those earning doctoral degrees were employed in Kansas in their first year after graduating, according to Board of Regents data.
Flanders said college graduates are in high demand and are recruited by companies outside Kansas.
“Our institutions are beginning to take that lead to connect students,” he said. “We welcome any partnership from the economic development community as well.”
___
Information from: Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World, https://www.ljworld.com
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Russian scientists are preparing for a manned moon landing using a communist-era gravity machine that simulates walking in space.
They are using the 1970s Selen technology to run experiments testing how easy it would be for cosmonauts to walk on the lunar surface and get out of a rover vehicle.
Space agency Roscosmos also revealed that experts from RSC Energia are working on a new spacesuit to make walking on the moon easier.
CGI footage appears to show to cosmonauts standing on a hill viewing over a large lunar settlement.
The company’s deputy head of research Alexander Poleshuk said: “We conduct these experiments in order to see if there’s anything we can recommend to the system developers in terms of streamlining work on the moon.
(Image: Russian Space Agency)
“After all, walking on the moon in a spacesuit is not easy – rovers or special forms of transport are needed, and you need to be able to get into them and sit in a comfortable position, then find space to fit all your equipment.
“In order to get all of this right, practice is needed.”
After finishing their experiments experts will plan the mission logistics before developing lunar bases, runway facilities and other critical parts.
(Image: Russian Space Agency)
(Image: Russian Space Agency)
Roscosmos has revealed plans to send a manned mission to the moon between 2025 and 2045 – some 60 years after Neil Armstrong's Apollo mission ended the space race between the US and Soviet Russia.
Russian Academy of Cosmonautics member Yury Karash previously said: “Back in the 1960s the Soviet Union was competing head-to-head with the United States.
“But it is hard to find a better way to hurt Russian prestige and emphasise Russian technological backwardness than by sending cosmonauts to the Moon around 2030, 60 years after Apollo.”Christians burnt alive in Pakistan violence
Posted
Six Christians, including four women, were burnt alive in clashes with majority Muslims in a town in central Pakistan, officials said.
Tension has been running high between the two communities in Gojra town in central Punjab province over allegations that Christians had desecrated a Koran.
Clashes erupted early on Saturday (local time), with an exchange of fire from the members of the two communities.
Television footage showed burning houses and streets strewn with blackened furniture and people firing at each other from their rooftops.
Shahbaz Bhatti, minister for minorities, said a mob "misled by religious extremists" attacked a Christian neighbourhood and torched dozens of houses.
"We have received six bodies of people who died of burn injuries. They included four women, one man and one child," said Abdul Hamid, a Health Ministry official in the town.
Rana Sanaullah, provincial minister for law, who is also responsible for security matters of Punjab, condemned the attack and said an inquiry had been ordered.
However he said a preliminary investigation showed there was no desecration of the Koran.
- Reuters
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, community-and-society, religion-and-beliefs, christianity, pakistanCompliance only works if your enemy is the compliance auditor. Compliance has proven time and time again to be an ineffective approach to security. Consider an analogy from elsewhere in the healthcare industry: HIPPA has become the de facto security standard in the industry, yet it misses the mark, focusing only on patient privacy and not adequately considering patient health. Yet, because healthcare organizations must comply, they allocate most or all of their security resources to ensuring they are not in violation of HIPPA, and can’t or won’t allocate additional resources to focus on the much more important mission: protecting patient health.
Given all of that, guidance documents could still be simply ignored. However, even if some organizations ignore it, such guidance nevertheless continues to be useful for the industry overall, in that it helps align the various stakeholders — including device manufacturers, hospitals, patients, and the government — as to what is important. It provides a common language around which the discussion of security can be centered. This fosters productive dialogue that empowers the purchasers of medical devices to ask the right questions and make well-informed purchasing decisions accordingly.
However, this only works if the guidance itself is useful, practical, and valid. The importance of this condition cannot be overstated, and warrants a follow-up analysis of the effectiveness of the guidance itself. Although that analysis is beyond the scope of this article, a crucial takeaway is that the FDA post-market guidance is not inherently revolutionary; much of it focuses on already well-established security paradigms, now framed in a medical device context. It is from this perspective that it is critical to note that in many cases, the security challenges inherent with connected medical devices do not pertain to a new defense paradigm, but rather to the (in)effective implementation of an existing, well-documented, well-understood paradigm. Better adherence to secure design principles — the collection of well-established, universally accepted truths about how to build systems resilient against attack — would be very effective in reducing risk associated with connected medical devices. The primary challenge in the status quo is in fact attributable to the success or failure of adherence to those principles, and not to the lack of existence of an effective paradigm.
There is a common misperception in healthcare overall and in the medical device community in particular that the software elements of a medical device cannot be modified without going through a new lengthy and expensive FDA approval process, often slated at over 7–10 years. That is not true. FDA allows for updates to the software elements for the very use case of patching for security updates. This empowers medical device manufacturers and the healthcare systems who deploy them to adapt over time as adversary techniques evolve, new attack techniques are invented, and previously unknown flaws with operating systems are discovered.
Overall, the publication of the FDA’s guidance is a good thing. It is getting the industry talking about a very real problem that is going to require a substantial amount of effort and time to address. However, the industry is very far away from a point where end users can be fully relaxed and confident in the security posture of medical devices.
I am optimistic that this will improve over time, but only with the continual commitment to pursuing this mission by all stakeholders across the industry. Device makers should build security into their own devices, perform regular security assessment, and should ensure they are utilizing a sufficiently rigorous methodology in the pursuit of those assessments. Device makers must consider their devices with the same mindset as malicious adversaries do. Hospitals also have a role in this, as medical device security is a shared problem. Hospitals need to invest resources, understand their own threat model, properly segment networks, have a firm inventory of devices they manage, and must be vigilant in managing user provisioning while also implementing least privilege. The FDA’s role should be to require device manufacturers to build security into the solution and ensure that they can articulate how they’ve done so and that it is sufficiently adequate; but the FDA’s role should not to prescribe the specific controls manufacturers should deploy nor develop regulation that manufacturers must comply with.
If medical device manufacturers and healthcare systems can together tackle this shared security challenge, they will be well on the way to creating a safer environment for patients, with or without guidance from the FDA. Which is to say, whether or not FDA guidelines are enforceable should be immaterial; if the root problem is proactively addressed in the design, implementation, and ongoing maintenance phases of medical device roll out, patients will be well safeguarded, and both medical device manufacturers and hospitals will be well positioned to pursue their respective security missions.
PS — For further reading, CSO Magazine recently wrote a compelling analysis on this topic, for which I provided one of the expert opinions. Read the article here."The Buck Stops Here" Desk Sign The sign "The Buck Stops Here" that was on President Truman's desk in his White House office was made in the Federal Reformatory at El Reno, Oklahoma. Fred A. Canfil, then United States Marshal for the Western District of Missouri and a friend of Mr. Truman, saw a similar sign while visiting the Reformatory and asked the Warden if a sign like it could be made for President Truman. The sign was made and mailed to the President on October 2, 1945. Approximately 2-1/2" x 13" in size and mounted on walnut base, the painted glass sign has the words "I'm From Missouri" on the reverse side. It appeared at different times on his desk until late in his administration. The saying "the buck stops here" derives from the slang expression "pass the buck" which means passing the responsibility on to someone else. The latter expression is said to have originated with the game of poker, in which a marker or counter, frequently in frontier days a knife with a buckhorn handle, was used to indicate the person whose turn it was to deal. If the player did not wish to deal he could pass the responsibility by passing the "buck," as the counter came to be called, to the next player.* On more than one occasion President Truman referred to the desk sign in public statements. For example, in an address at the National War College on December 19, 1952 Mr. Truman said, "You know, it's easy for the Monday morning quarterback to say what the coach should have done, after the game is over. But when the decision is up before you -- and on my desk I have a motto which says The Buck Stops Here' -- the decision has to be made." In his farewell address to the American people given in January 1953, President Truman referred to this concept very specifically in asserting that, "The President--whoever he is--has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That's his job. The sign has been displayed at the Library since 1957. Mitford M. Mathews, ed., A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1951), I, pages 198-199.When it comes to shooters, the whole Napoleonic era would appear to be a veritable goldmine of untapped potential. Perhaps a lot of studios feel that manually reloading your musket for half an hour while someone slowly walks up to you and turns you into kebab meat isn’t a big seller. But there’s no denying that some of history’s most legendary battles were fought on the fields and seas of Europe at the turn of the 19th century. It is those very battles which Holdfast: Nations At War intends to deliver to your PC.
If you prefer your war with a little more 20th century then check out our list of the best World War II games.
Shooting up to the top 100 on Steam Greenlight in just over 24 hours, Holdfast: NaW has caused quite a stir, with many commenters dubbing it a spiritual successor to 2010’s Mount & Blade: Warband. Holdfast promises heated multiplayer combat on both land and sea. Naval battles will allow the player to choose for multiple roles, including surgeon, captain, sailor and officer, forcing a focus on teamplay and co-operation to keep your vessel afloat. Land battles will take place on a multitude of maps, allowing you to storm enemy fortifications, support the fight from the rear with artillery fire or participate in line battles at the heart of the skirmishing.
There also appears to be some degree of factional affiliation, allowing players to choose between French emperor Napoleon’s army or take the King’s shilling and fight for the limey Brits!
There is no release date at the moment, but you can check out the Steam Greenlight page for more info and give it an upvote if you want to see it pushed through to the store.Dr. Zaius is breaking his long silence on Charlton Heston.
The “Planet of the Apes” orangutan who served as Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith ― or at the very least someone who looked an awful lot like him ― told Turner Classic Movies film host Ben Mankiewicz about the legendary actor’s behavior on the set of the film.
As it turns out, Heston, who was president of the Screen Actors Guild at the time, was a champion for his fellow actors. He hiked a mile to get straws so those in ape costumes could drink water while working under the hot desert sun. And he arranged a helicopter to get them to the set faster so they could sleep later.
The unusual interview was to help promote an upcoming Fathom Events showing of the original 1968 version of “Planet of the Apes” in movie theaters later this month. The screening will include the full conversation between Mankiewicz and Dr. Zaius.
While the interview might seem like it was filmed in jest, the stories about Heston were previously documented.
In the book “Planet of the Apes Revisited,” Lou Wagner, who played Lucius in the film, was quoted as saying:
“It was like 100 degrees and people were fainting all the time on the crew and cast. We needed straws to drink because our mouth was so far behind the appliance we would ruin everything if we tried to drink. Chuck wasn’t in a couple of scenes and he hiked about a mile all the way back to base camp and brought us back straws so we could have some water.”
Kim Hunter, who played Zira, confirmed the helicopter story in the same book.
No word yet on whether the Fathom Events version will include the “Planet of the Apes” musical.
TCM didn’t reveal the identity behind Dr. Zaius in the new clip, but it appears to be comic/”Apes” fan Dana Gould, who posted images of himself putting on the costume for the network back in April.A new general management plan, including a marine reserve zone, was approved for Florida’s Biscayne National Park at the end of August, according to a National Park Service press release. The marine reserve zone, which will prohibit fishing in |
rules that suburbs use to keep lower-income residents from moving in. By only allowing only single-family homes to be built on many lots, even rather large ones, these rules can dramatically increase the cost of housing. In one study we surveyed, minimum lot sizes were found to be the type of regulation most responsible for increasing housing costs in the Boston area.
Like minimum-lot-size rules, maximum-density rules limit the amount of housing that can be built in a specified area. Maximum-density rules often take the form of limits on floor-area ratio, or FAR — the ratio of total floor area (with each story of the building counted separately) to the area of the plot. For example, the maximum allowed FAR for office buildings in downtown San Francisco is 9:1, meaning that if a building took up an entire plot, it could have a maximum of nine floors. (If it took up half the plot, it could have 18 floors, and so on.) Washington, D.C.'s Height Act is another example of a maximum-density rule; it effectively prevents the city's tallest buildings from exceeding 160 feet.
Maximum-density rules are often a binding constraint in urban areas, as evidenced by developers' tendency to take advantage of every square inch of floor area permissible under local laws. In a 2003 paper, economists Edward Glaeser, Joseph Gyourko, and Raven Saks find that restrictions on building supply account for up to 40 percent of the housing costs in some of the nation's most expensive cities.
2. Parking Requirements
While driving through a typical American shopping center, most shoppers probably think that stores provide huge expanses of parking lots for their customers' convenience. However, in his extensive research on parking policy, Donald Shoup finds that gigantic parking lots are often built simply to comply with arbitrarily determined parking requirements.
These rules are intended to make life easier for drivers, and to keep businesses' customers from parking on the streets of nearby neighborhoods, but they also have the effect of devoting land to parking lots that could be better used as housing or commercial developments. In a study of parking requirements in Los Angeles, Shoup finds that required parking at apartment buildings contributes $104,000 to the cost of an apartment. This isn't to say that all Los Angeles apartments would be devoid of parking without the rules requiring it. However, in a freer market, some developers would very likely cater to apartment dwellers without cars, who could save money by not paying for land dedicated to other residents' parking spaces.
3. Urban Growth Boundaries
An urban growth boundary (UGB) is a greenbelt preserved around a city for open space or farmland. Commercial and residential development is permitted only inside the boundary. UGBs are a type of "smart growth" regulation. In reaction to some of the negative effects of traditional land use rules such as minimum lot sizes, maximum-density rules, and parking requirements, smart growth emerged as an alternative framework of regulation. The objectives of smart growth include reducing sprawl and creating more walkable cities.
Portland has the most famous UGB, which has been in place since the 1970s. Studies have found that UGBs increase the price of land inside the boundary, in turn increasing housing costs. While some of smart growth's objectives are to counter the effects of traditional zoning rules, the two have this in common.
4. Historic Preservation
Historic-preservation rules reduce potential housing supply by preventing old buildings from being replaced with denser housing. Additionally, historic preservation limits "filtering" in the housing market. Typically, we expect to see a city's wealthiest residents living in new construction. As these new buildings age, high-income people move to newer buildings, leaving older buildings available for middle-income people, and leaving even older construction available for low-income people. When new construction is prevented, wealthy residents stay in older buildings that may have plenty of charm, but lack the conveniences of newer construction. These preserved buildings remain unaffordable to low-income tenants, who are then shut out of a neighborhood or city entirely. In Manhattan, people who live in historic districts are 74 percent wealthier than those who do not, indicating that the filtering effect is stifled for some of the country's most desirable neighborhoods.
All of these rules may have some beneficial effects, such as facilitating the development of leafy suburbs, making car transportation easy, or preserving architecture. And rules that increase housing costs are very popular with homeowners, for obvious reasons. However, they come at the expense of people who may not be able to live in an expensive city, and these costs are hard to see.
The burden of land-use regulations largely falls on renters. Renters tend to have lower incomes and are on average younger than homeowners. Land-use regulations have effects similar to those of a sales tax in that they raise the cost of all rental housing in a city. Because lower-income people tend to spend a higher proportion of their income on housing, they bear an unfair share of the costs of these land-use rules, while established, high-income households reap an unfair advantage at their expense.
Aside from these regressive effects, land-use regulations have broader implications for the economy. Research from economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti finds that land-use regulations not only harm low-income people and reduce income mobility, but also reduce economic growth. Because the cities with the most restrictive land-use rules are also some of the most productive places in the country, the rules prevent people from living where they can contribute the most to economic growth. Hsieh and Moretti find that reducing land-use regulations in New York, San Francisco, and San Jose to the level of regulation in the median American city could increase GDP by an astonishing 9.5 percent.
These striking findings demonstrate the importance of reforming land-use regulations. However, homeowners are a powerful political force who benefit from the current policy environment. In our paper, Sandy and I summarize some of the proposals for liberalizing zoning rules, including municipal commitments to permit a given amount of development and proposals to allow homeowners to benefit financially from the increase in the tax base that new development can provide. Others have proposed state limits on municipalities' ability to restrict development. Liberalizing land-use regulations is crucial to increasing income mobility and economic growth.TORONTO – The amount of government funding for science and technology in Canada is expected to decline for another year.
Statistics Canada estimates that federal spending for the 2013/2014 fiscal year will drop to $10.5 billion, down 3.3 per cent from 2012/2013.
Spending on research and development is expected to comprise around two-thirds ($6.8 billion) of total science and technology spending.
StatsCan defines research and development is as “creative work, undertaken in a systematic manner to increase the stock of knowledge.”
The remaining will be spent on things such as the gathering and processing of data, feasibility and policy studies, information services and museum services.
The amount of federal spending on science and technology in Canada has been on the decline since the 2010/2011 fiscal year.
Canada’s higher education institutions will continue to lead all other sectors in the amount of spending received from the federal government, at an estimated at $3.3 billion. The second largest beneficiary is the business enterprise sector, which is expected to receive $1.1 billion in funding.
StatsCan’s estimates come from what federal departments and agencies reported what they intend to spend.Untitled a guest Aug 11th, 2015 6,151 Never a guest6,151Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 7.15 KB I grabbed the handle and pushed forward. The inside of the room was dimly lit by candles, and all the curtains were drawn closed. It was someone's office, but it was in complete disarray. There was a smell of must, but it had been covered up by a pleasant incense. Why would anyone be here? CCP closed down over twenty years ago, who would still be lurking in their corporate office in Reykjavik? "G-globby? Is that you?" A familiar and weak voice came from behind a desk in the corner of a room. "Yes, I'm here CCP Falcon." I walked over to his desk and saw him laying on the floor, covered in paper cuts. "Why are you here?" "I did it, I told you I would find it." He handed me a flash drive. "This is it. This is the back up right before Phoebe. I recovered it from another broken flash drive after months of hard work." "Does this mean-" "Yes. We can fix it. We can go back, and make sure it never happened." CCP Falcon whispered. "It's all up to you... Make sure you stop *him*." "My friend, I will go back and save not only you, but the entire world." CCP Falcon smiled, and exhaled his last breath. I shut his eyes and stood up, I knew what I had to do. I backed away, and put a knee and a fist to the floor. I set my watch to November 3rd, 2014 and braced myself. Lights started spinning all around me and the room began to blur. A roar of static deafened and drowned out all noise and climaxed in an intense burst of light and the sound of thunder. I was thrown into the same room, but it was very different. It was brightly lit, well maintained and clean. I stood up and looked behind me- and a young CCP Falcon looked right back, mouth wide open. I put my hands up "Friend, it's me, Globby. We worked together in the future, I came back to save Eve!" He moved back in his chair and picked up the phone. He kept mumbling in some odd language and panickingly tried to dial a phone number. Remembering what the old Falcon said to me, I said "Remember the blue dragon dildo you bought for a friend?" He completely stopped moving. He looked at me and after several seconds of silence he stuttered "W-what?" "Before you joined CCP, you RMTed by buying your friend a blue dragon dildo. He paid you 50 billion ISK and you bought him a $150 sex toy." "How could you know?" "Because you told me. I am from the future, you sent me here to save Eve online, and if we don't act fast, we wont be able to stop *him*. He wont stop until he ruins Eve, Albion, and every other game he works on. He later launches into politics and becomes president and causes a nuclear war. We cannot let him start his campaign of destruction." Falcon understands what I'm saying. He has obviously seen the warning signs coming from the evil I'm talking about. "Even if I believed you, how can we stop him? He deleted all the previous iterations of the game up to this point and it would be nearly impossible to unwrite his code. It would take years to decompile all the data in order to get the game back to where it was!" "Yes it would, but luckily we've had years." I reveal the flash drive. "This is a pre-Phoebe patch version for Eve. If we can get this into the main server before down time, which is in two hours, we can avert the crisis that is about to happen." CCP Falcon held eye contact with me and after a tense few seconds put the phone down. "Alright, I'm in. I can't have my family and friends thinking I made a shit game." -scene- I went to the lunchroom with a guest pass given to me by Falcon. I grabbed a kitchen knife and stashed it in my sock. I figured you could never be too prepared, and the fate of the world, and Eve Online might depend on it. Me and Falcon met back together in his office. "He was there. Greyscale has the key, and he's keeping it on him. I asked him for it, using the excuse that I left my wallet in there but he said that searching for it can wait until tomorrow. I don't know why he's acting strange." "It doesn't matter, we need to confront him. Let's go to his office right now." We took the elevator to the third floor and approached Greyscale's office. Before we knocked, me and Falcon looked at each other. "You know what must happen if he doesn't willingly hand over the key." I said sternly. "He needs to be stopped." Falcon repeated. I opened the door and looked forward. There was CCP Greyscale, with his back to us, looking out of his window. "Ah, will you look who finally showed up. I've been waiting for you." "What?" I exclaimed. "How could you know we were coming? "You're not the only one capable of time travel, Globby." I was sent a message by myself that I should be ready for you. Greyscale pulled out a handgun and aimed it at myself. "Why don't you two have a sit?" Me and Falcon sat down ten feet away from Greyscale. There was a desk between us, so there was no way I could make it to him in time. "This patch is going to go though, no matter what either of you do, it's just paradoxically logical. I will however, still kill you because I can't risk anything happening after that." Greyscale pointed his gun at me and I jumped out of my seat and lunged at him. He fired off two shots and hit me once in the chest. Falcon followed up with me and wrestled the gun away from Greyscale, and threw it on the floor. I had stabbed Greyscale in the stomach. "Are you okay?" Falcon cried. "I'm fine for now, get to the server room and-" The door to Greyscale's office opened. A man with a terrible shirt walked through the door and pointed his gun at Falcon. I moved my body in between him and the man with a terrible shirt and three more gunshots went off. I fell to the floor, and a speechless Greyscale stumbled away. "S-Sort Dragon? What are you doing here?" Falcon said. But it wasn't just Sort Dragon, it was a much older Sort Dragon. "I came here to stop Globby. If I can't have the game my way, I'll burn it down, and I'll burn down the whole world if I cannot be satisfied. CCP Greyscale, get out of here and get the key secure, I'll take it from here." I was slowly bleeding out on the floor but still conscious. Sort Dragon shook Falcon up and took the flash drive that I had given him. He threw it to the floor, and stepped on it. He started punching Falcon over and over again, maniacally shouting about Null Wormholes, or some other nonsense. I figured all was lost, until I realized Greyscale's gun was still on the floor. "Fix the game you goddamn Developer!" Sort shouted as he kneed Falcon in the chest. Every single wound on my body pulsated in pain with the beat of my heart, and every single movement I made needed to be fully calculated. "Wormholes are fucking stupid, Pandemic Legion's wormhole force projection is so fucking dumb fix this shit!" Sort kept shouting at a confused and scared Falcon. I grabbed the gun, rolled out into the open, and opened fire on Sort Dragon. I emptied the entire magazine, and he dropped. Falcon ran over to my body. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, we couldn't stop him." Falcon said. "It's okay friend. Find my younger self. Approve the changes to the Bowhead, take that flash drive, and fix it, just do it better than this time around." The room went black as I saw CCP Falcon take the flash drive and run.
RAW Paste Data
I grabbed the handle and pushed forward. The inside of the room was dimly lit by candles, and all the curtains were drawn closed. It was someone's office, but it was in complete disarray. There was a smell of must, but it had been covered up by a pleasant incense. Why would anyone be here? CCP closed down over twenty years ago, who would still be lurking in their corporate office in Reykjavik? "G-globby? Is that you?" A familiar and weak voice came from behind a desk in the corner of a room. "Yes, I'm here CCP Falcon." I walked over to his desk and saw him laying on the floor, covered in paper cuts. "Why are you here?" "I did it, I told you I would find it." He handed me a flash drive. "This is it. This is the back up right before Phoebe. I recovered it from another broken flash drive after months of hard work." "Does this mean-" "Yes. We can fix it. We can go back, and make sure it never happened." CCP Falcon whispered. "It's all up to you... Make sure you stop *him*." "My friend, I will go back and save not only you, but the entire world." CCP Falcon smiled, and exhaled his last breath. I shut his eyes and stood up, I knew what I had to do. I backed away, and put a knee and a fist to the floor. I set my watch to November 3rd, 2014 and braced myself. Lights started spinning all around me and the room began to blur. A roar of static deafened and drowned out all noise and climaxed in an intense burst of light and the sound of thunder. I was thrown into the same room, but it was very different. It was brightly lit, well maintained and clean. I stood up and looked behind me- and a young CCP Falcon looked right back, mouth wide open. I put my hands up "Friend, it's me, Globby. We worked together in the future, I came back to save Eve!" He moved back in his chair and picked up the phone. He kept mumbling in some odd language and panickingly tried to dial a phone number. Remembering what the old Falcon said to me, I said "Remember the blue dragon dildo you bought for a friend?" He completely stopped moving. He looked at me and after several seconds of silence he stuttered "W-what?" "Before you joined CCP, you RMTed by buying your friend a blue dragon dildo. He paid you 50 billion ISK and you bought him a $150 sex toy." "How could you know?" "Because you told me. I am from the future, you sent me here to save Eve online, and if we don't act fast, we wont be able to stop *him*. He wont stop until he ruins Eve, Albion, and every other game he works on. He later launches into politics and becomes president and causes a nuclear war. We cannot let him start his campaign of destruction." Falcon understands what I'm saying. He has obviously seen the warning signs coming from the evil I'm talking about. "Even if I believed you, how can we stop him? He deleted all the previous iterations of the game up to this point and it would be nearly impossible to unwrite his code. It would take years to decompile all the data in order to get the game back to where it was!" "Yes it would, but luckily we've had years." I reveal the flash drive. "This is a pre-Phoebe patch version for Eve. If we can get this into the main server before down time, which is in two hours, we can avert the crisis that is about to happen." CCP Falcon held eye contact with me and after a tense few seconds put the phone down. "Alright, I'm in. I can't have my family and friends thinking I made a shit game." -scene- I went to the lunchroom with a guest pass given to me by Falcon. I grabbed a kitchen knife and stashed it in my sock. I figured you could never be too prepared, and the fate of the world, and Eve Online might depend on it. Me and Falcon met back together in his office. "He was there. Greyscale has the key, and he's keeping it on him. I asked him for it, using the excuse that I left my wallet in there but he said that searching for it can wait until tomorrow. I don't know why he's acting strange." "It doesn't matter, we need to confront him. Let's go to his office right now." We took the elevator to the third floor and approached Greyscale's office. Before we knocked, me and Falcon looked at each other. "You know what must happen if he doesn't willingly hand over the key." I said sternly. "He needs to be stopped." Falcon repeated. I opened the door and looked forward. There was CCP Greyscale, with his back to us, looking out of his window. "Ah, will you look who finally showed up. I've been waiting for you." "What?" I exclaimed. "How could you know we were coming? "You're not the only one capable of time travel, Globby." I was sent a message by myself that I should be ready for you. Greyscale pulled out a handgun and aimed it at myself. "Why don't you two have a sit?" Me and Falcon sat down ten feet away from Greyscale. There was a desk between us, so there was no way I could make it to him in time. "This patch is going to go though, no matter what either of you do, it's just paradoxically logical. I will however, still kill you because I can't risk anything happening after that." Greyscale pointed his gun at me and I jumped out of my seat and lunged at him. He fired off two shots and hit me once in the chest. Falcon followed up with me and wrestled the gun away from Greyscale, and threw it on the floor. I had stabbed Greyscale in the stomach. "Are you okay?" Falcon cried. "I'm fine for now, get to the server room and-" The door to Greyscale's office opened. A man with a terrible shirt walked through the door and pointed his gun at Falcon. I moved my body in between him and the man with a terrible shirt and three more gunshots went off. I fell to the floor, and a speechless Greyscale stumbled away. "S-Sort Dragon? What are you doing here?" Falcon said. But it wasn't just Sort Dragon, it was a much older Sort Dragon. "I came here to stop Globby. If I can't have the game my way, I'll burn it down, and I'll burn down the whole world if I cannot be satisfied. CCP Greyscale, get out of here and get the key secure, I'll take it from here." I was slowly bleeding out on the floor but still conscious. Sort Dragon shook Falcon up and took the flash drive that I had given him. He threw it to the floor, and stepped on it. He started punching Falcon over and over again, maniacally shouting about Null Wormholes, or some other nonsense. I figured all was lost, until I realized Greyscale's gun was still on the floor. "Fix the game you goddamn Developer!" Sort shouted as he kneed Falcon in the chest. Every single wound on my body pulsated in pain with the beat of my heart, and every single movement I made needed to be fully calculated. "Wormholes are fucking stupid, Pandemic Legion's wormhole force projection is so fucking dumb fix this shit!" Sort kept shouting at a confused and scared Falcon. I grabbed the gun, rolled out into the open, and opened fire on Sort Dragon. I emptied the entire magazine, and he dropped. Falcon ran over to my body. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, we couldn't stop him." Falcon said. "It's okay friend. Find my younger self. Approve the changes to the Bowhead, take that flash drive, and fix it, just do it better than this time around." The room went black as I saw CCP Falcon take the flash drive and run.The death toll from the “Twin Peaks” shootout was greater than the total number of homicides Waco police investigated in all of 2014 – And all of the “Twin Peaks” dead were shot by police.
Previously Waco Police Spokesman W. Patrick Swanton stated 22 members of law enforcement were present prior to the outbreak of the shooting. Including 10 members of the Waco SWAT unit, 2 sergeants, 1 rookie, the Asst. Police Chief and 4 state troopers.
Newly released information today includes the Waco Police stating 14 Waco PD officers were involved in firing shots which killed 9 bike club members and wounded 18 more.
The 14 officers involved in the gun battle are all now on administrative leave, which is standard protocol in officer-involved shootings, Swanton said. (link)
In addition Sgt Swanton previously stated that all of the 170 arrested bikers were known “criminal gang members”. However, a review by the Associated Press of court records finds at least 115 of the 170 had no police records:
Waco police have said that all those arrested after the shooting belonged to criminal motorcycle gangs. Most of them were being held on $1 million bonds Thursday, charged with engaging in criminal enterprise. Nine people were killed in Sunday’s shootout. Records searched by The Associated Press show more than 115 of the 170 people arrested in the aftermath of a motorcycle gang shootout outside a Central Texas restaurant have not been convicted of a crime in Texas. (link)
After previously saying he had not watched the CCTV video from the restaurant/bar yesterday (Wed) -which was reviewed by Associated Press reporters- Swanton now says he has watch the CCTV video.
He said he has viewed surveillance videos of the violence, and said they tell a different story from the some of the accounts being spun online. “We can’t wait to show you what truly happened,” he said. (link)
Which is a disingenuous statement at best because all they need to do is authorize the restaurant to release the video, and the public can decide for ourselves.
One of the bikers the police killed, Jesus Delgado Rodriquez (65), was a purple heart recipient.
Family members of a man killed in a biker shootout at a Texas restaurant say he was not part of an outlaw motorcycle gang. That contradicts police claims that all nine bikers who died were members of criminal gangs. The son of 65-year-old Jesus Delgado Rodriguez, of New Braunfels, told the San Antonio Express-News that his father did not lead a life of violence. An Associated Press review of court records and a database maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety found no criminal history in Texas for Rodriguez. Family members said Rodriguez had belonged to two now defunct motorcycle clubs but was not part of any club when he was shot and killed at Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco. Waco police spokesman Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton told the AP on Wednesday that all those killed were members of the Bandidos or the Cossacks. Swanton did not immediately return a message Thursday. (link)
In addition from a lawsuit filed against Twin Peaks by the neighboring restaurant Don Carlos it is claimed the police fired “thousands of rounds” toward the bikers; striking not only bike club members but also Don Carlos customer vehicles.
Summary and personal thoughts: It is entirely possible that some of the bikers were criminals; and it is also entirely possible that twitchy police responded excessively and overreacted to a perceived threat. These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.
Who shot at whom first; who did or did not pull the trigger; and what might have spurred the 14 police officers to fire “thousands of rounds” at a group of 3 to 5 potentially armed bikers when the downrange backdrop was a patio filled with hundreds of unarmed bikers is not yet known.
Look closely at this picture:
You can see bullet holes in the customer vehicles in the Don Carlos parking lot.
♦ NOTE: Direction of fire from Don Carlos toward Twin Peaks.
♦ NOTE: The downrange backdrop of that fire (for the bullets that miss their target) is the patio of Twin Peaks.
However, apparently pointing out a strong possibility for an overreaction by twitchy police is now considered “Conspiracy Theory”, or something. A radio broadcast today calls our previous outline (which quoting MSM information) as conspiracy theory. [Listen at 8:15]
I find it interesting how intelligent people cannot bring themselves to believe the police may have influenced, initiated, created and/or worsened the events with their militarized (SWAT) presence at a bike club meeting.
Ruby Ridge?… How about M.O.V.E (Philadelphia)? … Or maybe Waco 1.0? … or perhaps more recently “Baby Bou-Bou” ringing any bells? Cops make mistakes too!!
Doesn’t anyone else find it curious that an Asst. Police Chief was on scene at Twin Peaks along with the SWAT unit, presumably as scene commander prior to the shootings, and yet no-one has heard from him/her?
Doesn’t anyone else find it curious that initial police statements claimed they had “an active intelligence operation” on the “Bike Gang” which customarily would include monitoring (camera’s, video, etc) and yet the police release NO VIDEO to support their “we were under fire” claims?
A previous comment by J.D. sums up the strange sniff of it all nicely:
I’m former law enforcement for over 20 years. I have ridden with 2 different LEMC clubs. I worked undercover back in late 80’s and have dealt with 1% clubs many times. I have friends in 1% clubs. I’m pro law enforcement but have a funny feeling that there is lots of horseshit in the story that Waco PD is telling. I have family living and Working in that area. They have had interaction with the clubs and never felt scared or intimidated. Always felt safe. Now are we going get the truth or more bullshit? I’m tending on believing the bikers sides on this deal more with every day that passes. Too many people arrested and charged with RICO that were just spending time at TP. I think LE has overstepped it’s authority on filing these type charges on most these people. $1,000,000 bonds??? BS…
Even if you find reasonable excuses for all the LEO contradictions (fight in bathroom, shots inside, all killed were inside/dragged out etc.); even if you ignore all the misleading statements by law enforcement spokesman Patrick Swanton (100 weapons, 50 weapons, 1000 weapons etc); even if you ignore the lack of willingness to produce factual data to support their claims, ….you are still left with a ridiculous assertion that 170 non-criminal people deserve a million dollar bond because they rode a motorcycle last Sunday to a meeting, and possibly witnessed what happened.
The total number of bikers on scene, according to Swanton, was 200. 170 are arrested, 18 were wounded, 9 were killed, that totals 197. So only 3 people were non-conspirators?
This nonsense about weapons found in vehicles etc. is just that, nonsense.
If you go to a Waco Texas Wal-Mart on Sunday, rope off the parking lot, arrest the first 200 people you see and search their pick-up trucks, suv’s and various vehicles you’ll probably come up with a similar set of statistics.
50 out of 200 people captured at Wal-Mart with prior arrest records; some with pocket knives, chains, handguns, and even rifles in their vehicles etc.
So what? None of that is illegal or unlawful. Ridiculous. Go to a Bass Pro shop on Saturday and you’ll probably find even better stats if that’s the goal.
Another factor which makes it all the more curious is these are the ACTUAL talking points Sgt. Patrick Swanton is relying on to justify the shooting. This innocuous nonsense is what they are focused on. That itself indicates -to a reasonably discerning person- there’s something uncomfortable about the narrative the LEO responders are trying to avoid.
That’s not conspiracy, that’s just common sense.
It is not conspiracy theory the incident occurred at 12:24pm Central Time (1:24 pm Eastern) and in around 90 minutes, 2:04pm CST (3:04pm EST) this press conference was held, giving the specifics of 9 dead and 18 wounded and a restaurant owner who needs to be shut down for non-compliance.
Published at http://theconservativetreehouse.com by sundancePolish president Andrzej Duda has vetoed ratification of climate change laws one day before he visits Paris, in a sign of the “new political situation” in Warsaw.
The veto covers Poland’s compliance with the so-called Doha amendment to the Kyoto protocol on CO2 emissions.
Duda due in Paris one month before climate change summit (Photo: Andrzej Hrechorowicz)
The Kyoto deal, from 1997, obliges signatory states to cut emissions by 5 percent between 2008 and 2012, compared to 1990 levels. The Doha accord extends the binding target to 2020.
But Duda’s office said on Tuesday (27 October) that “binding Poland to an international agreement affecting the economy and with associated social costs should be preceded by a detailed analysis of the legal and economic impact … these effects have not been sufficiently clarified”.
Kyoto underpins an EU political deal to cut emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and by 40 percent by 2030, with the European Commission, next year, to table laws on how to divide the cuts between member states.
Kyoto also underpins plans for a climate change summit, in Paris on 30 November, designed to create a binding mechanism which covers all UN states.
Duda wielded the veto ahead of his visit, on Wednesday, to the French capital in what Polish pundits see as a sign of new assertiveness on the dossier.
He also wielded it two days after the Law and Justice party, to which he belongs, swept to power in parliamentary elections in Poland in what Duda’s spokesman, Krzysztof Szczerski, described on Tuesday as “the new political situation”.
Law and Justice has promised to protect Poland’s coal industry, which employs 100,000 people and supplies over 85 percent of its electricity.
The party, on Tuesday, officially nominated Beata Szydlo, a 52-year old coal-miner’s daughter, to be prime minister.
But the party's chief, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a former PM with a history of nasty confrontations in Brussels, is widely seen as pulling the strings on both Duda and Szydlo.
Szczerski, the Duda spokesman, listed priorities for the French visit as: migration; the Middle East security situation; next year’s Nato summit in Warsaw; the EU’s eastern neighbourhood; climate change; the economy; and energy security.
He described France as a “strategic partner” and said Duda will call for more frequent meetings in the “Weimar” format of French, German, and Polish leaders.
He said a Paris climate summit deal “will only make sense … if it doesn’t bring harmful effects to the Polish and European economies, for instance, by undermining competitiveness or reducing energy security”.
Meanwhile, Duda, during Law and Justice’s election campaign, repeated Kaczynski’s controversial claim that Syrian refugees might bring exotic diseases to Europe.
He has, in the past, criticised France and Germany for excluding Poland from Ukraine peace talks and has urged Germany to drop opposition to new Nato bases in Poland.
But for Konrad Szymanski, a Law and Justice MEP who is tipped to be Szydlo’s EU affairs minister, climate change will be the biggest irritant in future Polish-EU relations.
“I thought that migration is the most difficult issue in Europe, but now it looks like it’s going to be climate policies,” he told the Bloomberg news agency last Friday.
He said Poland has a “strategic problem” with the EU deal on CO2 targets “because even with all the things in the box [EU financial aid mechanisms] we are not in a position to compensate the Polish energy sector and industry for the losses they will have to bear.”A new chief rabbi, a national centre boasting appearances by some of the country's most admired cultural figures, and a BBC2 history of the Jews by Simon Schama – the Jewish community is celebrating New Year in good heart. Ned Temko surveys the huge changes of recent years
Head north-west from central London, past Lord's Cricket Ground and St John's Wood, and a mile or so farther along, you'll find a new, low-slung, glass-fronted building tucked just off the Finchley Road. If your eyesight isn't perfect, or if you're paying more attention to your driving, you could be forgiven for assuming that it's just an office building, or even for missing it altogether.
Yet the modest sign on its third-floor window announces what could prove to be a dramatic new departure for the Jews of Britain: JW3 – the London Jewish Community Centre. Nearly 10 years in the making, at a cost of £50m, and named for the postal district (NW3) in which it sits, it is due to open this month.
Its initial menu of nearly 1,000 events features well-known figures including Kevin Spacey, Nicholas Hytner, Zoë Wanamaker and Ruby Wax, as well as the former editor of the Times, James Harding, who is now head of BBC news.
These are heady days for British Jews. On the religious calendar, they are emerging from the Yamim Noraim – the "Days of Awe" beginning with Rosh Hashanah and culminating with the fast of Yom Kippur. They're starting the Jewish New Year with a new chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, after his predecessor, Jonathan Sacks, was given a communal send-off replete with tributes from assorted prime ministers, fellow faith leaders and Prince Charles.
BBC2 has just begun airing a new series called The Story of the Jews, narrated by the acclaimed – and unabashedly Jewish – historian and broadcaster Simon Schama.
Yet the significance of – and, according to its founders, the need for – JW3 is that the Jewish community of Britain has changed seismically in recent years.
For one thing, it has grown much smaller. The numbers have shrunk by nearly half since its high-water mark immediately after the second world war, with tens of thousands of Jews marrying out, or just opting out, of the faith, while others emigrated to the new state of Israel.
Despite their major impact in areas such as the professions, science, culture and the arts, the Jews of Britain now comprise a grand total of some 260,000 souls – less than 0.5% of the population. Outwardly, they are more self-confident, especially younger Jews who have grown up in an increasingly multicultural Britain.
But you need only to have visited any synagogue for Saturday's Yom Kippur observance – with young security volunteers checking each arrival and patrolling the |
in 2013/14, and contributed £3.4bn to the UK’s Gross Value Added.On the eve of Jon Stewart’s retirement from Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show’, a Hidden Remote staffer looks back at her experience with the fake news outlet, and what the show meant to a generation.
I can say with 100% certainty that Jon Stewart changed my life.
Teenage me was an avid watcher of late night talk shows. In the late 90’s, Conan was totally my jam. While I was waiting for Conan’s show to come on, I would flip around on my teeny tube TV, trying other shows like some sort of late-nite Goldilocks. Eventually, the original Daily Show with Craig Kilborn grabbed my attention.
To be completely fair, the first time I tuned in to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart it was to see if Stewart was going to continue on with Kilborn’s popular ‘5 Questions’ schtick. He didn’t; but what he did have was so much more.
ALSO ON HIDDEN REMOTE: 50 Best Dramatic Male Characters In TV History
Where Kilborn had a droll and dismissive attitude, Stewart had a vibrant and energetic zest. He presented the ‘fake’ news in a funny, approachable way in a format that even a teenager could love. I had always dreaded watching the news. Even in a pre-9/11 world, it was a place for fear mongering, and a platform for stories of violence and hate. Whenever I watched the news it ultimately resulted in the most depressing hour of my day.
Jon Stewart changed all of that.
By the time I got to college, I found myself watching The Daily Show faithfully every night. I didn’t have a TV of my own so I squished into musty common room couches and vaulted onto illegally lofted dorm room beds in order to to gain access to my beloved show.
“[Jon Stewart] taught a generation how to voluntarily seek out the news without making it seem like a chore.”
Then something funny happened. My friends and I would talk after the show. In an era before Facebook and YouTube (yep, young friends, The Daily Show is older than YouTube) we would rehash and reenact parts of the show, not only discussing our favorite moments, but also debating over the ramifications of the news stories we had just seen. Even though Stewart was unabashedly partisan, he left room for discussion. He encouraged young viewers to think outside of the traditional media cycle, and actually care about world events.
I am not ashamed to say that in my youth Jon Stewart was frequently my sole source of news. He’s our generations Walter Cronkite and Johnny Carson all rolled into one. He’s the voice we trust because he doesn’t make us fear the news – he makes us laugh in the face of it. The news shouldn’t be feared. It should consist of a passing on of knowledge, a passionate debate, and maybe (just maybe) be a bit entertaining to watch. To this day, Jon Stewart is the reason I follow the news.
When Stewart leaves, who is going to make me laugh at the ridiculous clown car of Republican Presidential candidates? Who is going to lend perspective on ISIS? Who’s going to rank on Arby’s?! Guess it’s now up to me. After a decade and a half of obsessive Daily Show watching, I think I’m ready. Jon Stewart’s voice will be the beacon in my head, for better or worse.
Cheers to you, Mr. Stewart. You taught a generation how to voluntarily seek out the news without making it seem like a chore. Thank you for your contributions. You will be terribly missed.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart says goodbye to Jon Stewart tonight, Thursday, August 6, at 11/10c on Comedy Central.A state of emergency has been declared in Ethiopia for the first time in 25 years following ongoing anti-government protests by the country’s two largest ethnic groups, which have at times turned violent.
Speaking on state run television on Sunday the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn said the state of emergency is effective immediately and will be in effect for a period of six months because “the situation posed a threat against the people of the country.”
The announcement is an escalation of a crackdown against protesters that has been taking place since November 2015. In an official statement Attorney General, Getachew Ambaye said it will allow authorities to stop and search suspicious individuals, detain suspects without a court order, and carry out house searches. It also prohibits the “preparation, distribution and exhibition of material that could incite chaos.”
The unrest has mainly been centred on the country’s two largest ethnic groups, the Oromo and Amhara, who are demanding social and political reforms, and the release of jailed activists and journalists.
Some protests against illegal land seizures have caused serious damage to factories and equipment, threatening the country’s economy which has become one of the fastest growing in Africa thanks to a state-run industrial drive.
The Ethiopian authorities have responded to protests with force and been criticized domestically and internationally for using excessive force. Human rights and opposition groups say that over 600 people have been killed since the start of the crackdown, but the government claims this figure is not accurate.
Condemnation and blame
Following the announcement of a state of emergency, human rights experts at the United Nations urged the government to end what they called a “calculated campaign to eliminate opposition movements and silence dissenting voices.”
Human Rights Watch also condemned the violence and said the government must end the unrest by holding talks with the protesters and ensure that future protests are not met with excessive force. The group also called the response from the nation’s international partners in the west inadequate.
“For too long Ethiopia’s major international partners have not adequately raised serious concerns about the complete closure of political space in Ethiopia that has led to an inability to express dissent. At this point they need to take urgent action to ensure that the situation does not further spiral out of control.
“They should push for an independent international investigation. They should push for those arbitrarily detained to be released. And they should reiterate in the strongest way that lawful, peaceful protests should be allowed to occur without the threat of bullets and mass arrests. They have leverage, and they should use it more effectively.”
Ethiopia’s government blames much of the unrest on foreign governments. The country’s information minister, Getachew Reda told journalists in the capital city, Addis Ababa that elements within the Egyptian political establishment are involved in the arming and financing of opposition groups but are “not necessarily directly linked with the Egyptian government”. He also accused Eritrea of being a contributor.
Violence at Irreecha
One of the most severe confrontations between security forces and protesters took place on October 2, in the Oromia region when police attempted to disperse a large crowd of anti-government protesters at a major religious festival. Witnesses said police fired tear gas into the crowd, sparking panic and triggering a stampede that left more than 50 dead and many more injured.
The government claims the final death toll at the Irreecha celebration was 54 but opposition parties have claimed it was in the hundreds. The Vice-President of the Oromo Federalist Congress party told Voice of America that the number was as high as 678.
It is extremely difficult for any organisation to gain an accurate number due to the tight restrictions the government has imposed on NGOs and journalists, restrictions that are sure to get worse with the newly declared state of emergency.
(Writing by Steve Shaw; Editing by Dejan Scepanovic & Robyn Hunter)Read more articles by
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MILLIONS expected to see the Sugar Ray Leonard of old, but Hector “Macho” Camacho battered him into a humiliating fifth-round stoppage defeat before 10, 324 shocked fans at the Atlantic City Convention Center. The time was 1-08.
Camacho was hardly fantastic, but he stunned everyone by flooring the betting favourite earlier in the round, then jumped right on him again as the dazed legend was trying to survive along the ropes. As lefts and rights crashed home, shaking the once-invincible Leonard like a cheap rag doll, referee Joe Cortez jumped in to protect him.
“Ray played me cheap”, said Camacho, but if Leonard did anything, it was to overestimate his once-formidable ability.
“I’m not like everyone else. I can come back,” Leonard said beforehand. The 1991 brutal beating at the fists of Terry Norris should have told him otherwise, but Leonard, despite his exceptional intelligence, let his massive ego and desperate craving for the spotlight overrule his normally sound judgement.
Leonard’s balance was so atrocious that he looked like a six-round novice. Camacho is hardly a puncher, but this vintage Ray couldn’t take any sort of a shot. He was wobbling like a willow in the wind, even from glancing blows.
“I never could get into it,” Leonard admitted. “I was trying to establish my jab and just couldn’t get going. I fought a better fight than I thought I’d fight after being absent so long from the ring, but I didn’t have the balance I once had.
“I don’t want to take anything away from Camacho (which of course, is exactly what he did), but the rumours that I was in the hospital were true. I had a calf injury. I couldn’t spin off, but my career is definitely over in the ring.”
Ray’s obvious reluctance to commit himself clearly didn’t come from any injury. He was simply “bailing out.” He didn’t want to get hit. It is natural fear, once conquered, that re-emerges when you have been out of the ring.
Leonard, 36-3-1 (25), looked in superb condition at 11st 5lbs. His stomach was rippled. His biceps were huge. But none of that helps if you are not in “boxing shape”. You can hire all the “strength coaches” and “nutritionists” in the world, but there is no way to tell until you get tagged in the ring.
Camacho, a podgy 11st 4 3/4lbs from Orlando, Florida, had won his previous 19 in a row, including a controversial points decision over Roberto Duran last June.
Garbed in a cheap Roman Gadiator outfit that looked pinched off the set of a B-movie, the round-faced Puerto Rican was hoisted aloft on a hand-held platform and carried through the crowd. Boos broke forth, but as Camacho peered out, in his mind he was Julius Caesar (not Chavez) arrogantly looking down on the clamouring minions of ancient Rome.
Camacho, who revels in these theatrics, still couldn’t unnerve Leonard, from Washington D.C., who waited a good 15 minutes before Camacho finally climbed through the ropes.
Leonard, the darling of the 1976 Olympics, brought boxing into the colour TV age, but only seconds after the first bell it was obvious he was finished. Leonard zipped out one beautiful jab, but Camacho sent him clambering from a light left. Sugar Ray stumbled all over himself, then dangled his left and tried to find his old self, but it was sad to watch him sling a slow, sloppy lead right.
Ray’s rhythm was horrible, but he did score with a nice lead right and for the briefest of seconds there was hope. A quick follow-up right, again very amateurish, dashed it.
Beforehand, Camacho promised: “I’m going to be on his ass. I ain’t gonna run from him. He won’t be no better than the Norris fight. This is his last ‘comeback’, I guarantee it”.
As Hector advanced, Leonard grew warier. Suddenly their feet got tangled and Camacho, 34, proving far stronger, pushed Ray down where he landed heavily on the deck. It was a strong psychological message.
Leonard, once so silky smooth and quick, was sputtering like an ancient Model T in the second. Leonard handled Marvin Hagler brilliantly, but 10 years later he looked befuddled by his southpaw opponent. Ray jiggled his left at his side or pawed.
As Leonard back-pedalled and circled, he was trying to buy time, which was running out fast. Leonard’s body and face still looked much the same, but he was present in name only. Camacho was warned for pulling down Leonard’s head as it became sloppier.
Camacho went right after Leonard in the third. Ray tried to throw long rights, but he still wasn’t bending into his punches. He was pulling back before he got hit. Leonard looked bad, but Camacho, in “walking-around shape,” was beginning to jar him. The once-flashy Puerto Rican may be a blown-up light-welter – he won his first ‘world’ title at a super-feather – but speed is power and Camacho’s hands were still quick.
As Leonard floundered, having little control over his legs, it was hard to believe he had gone back this far. Leave us with our memories, ringsiders seem to say, but Sugar Ray kept lunging as he tried to catch Camacho with his right.
The punches had no power. Finally, a sharp Leonard right penetrated, but Camacho shook it off easily and a left to the body knocked Leonard off balance at the end of the round. Ray hadn’t won 20 seconds of the match. The only question was when the roof would fall in.
Leonard dipped and stabbed some jabs, but the old maestro couldn’t get going, let alone explode. Ray’s instincts were so badly corroded that all he could do was emit a sad smile when Camacho started scoring repeatedly.
Late in the round there was a hard clash of heads that opened a bad gash under Leonard’s left eye. He began to bleed. Who would have thought that Camacho would make Leonard run?
By the fifth, the “Macho Man” looked cocky. He started to rough Ray up in close. Leonard tried to cuff, hold and skitter away, but Camacho, 64-3-1 (32), is much better than he is given credit for. In close, the brawny 5ft 6in underdog shook Leonard along the ropes. Suddenly, the old man was lurching.
Camacho shouldered him in tight and came up with a hard left uppercut to the chin. A second left uppercut caught Leonard flush as he tried to slide away and the former five-time ‘world’ champ ended up flat on his back.
Leonard, who has been dropped repeatedly since his prime, stumbled up, but it was painfully obvious Camacho had plenty of time to wreak more havoc.
Eyes wary, as the crowd screamed, Leonard backed to the ropes. A hard left to the jaw hurt him as Hector exploded in close. As Leonard tried to fire back, Camacho rocked him with another left. A third left to the temple forced the Hall of Famer to falter as he slumped forward. A powerful right to the body made Leonard grab Camacho’s head with both hands. Camacho broke loose with a right hook to the jaw, a cracking left to the chin and another right to the jaw.
Still on the ropes, badly disorientated and trying to cover, Leonard took a slamming right uppercut to the chin. Camacho pawed briefly and faked, then staggered the tarnished legend with a left uppercut, wobbling Leonard badly.
Leonard sat on the second rope to prevent himself going down again. It all happened quickly but Cortez jumped in to protect him as he was so close to being floored again.
“I enjoy performing. I enjoy defying the odds,” Ray had said beforehand, but even then his voice sounded ominously weak and hoarse, like an old man’s.
With seven fights in the last 15 years, it was painfully obvious that the once-great fighter should no longer have been in the ring. Incredibly, talks had reportedly started on a rematch with Norris. Then Ray was going to bridge the generation gap by facing Pernell Whitaker or, more likely, Oscar De La Hoya.
The whole scheme was far-fetched.
READ Sugar Ray Leonard: ‘If I saw blood, I went at you like Dracula’Alex Hartley says there will be "magic" in the island project The Arts Council has awarded Devon artist Alex Hartley £500,000 to tow part of an Arctic island to the UK. Rocks from the island in the Svalbard archipelago north of Norway will be dug by excavator and placed on a barge. They will then be brought to the UK where they will be put on a floating football pitch-sized platform to create the work, to be called Nowhere Island. It will be in Weymouth for the Olympic sailing in 2012, before a tug tows it around the South West coast to Bristol. Gillian Taylor, from Arts Council England, said there would be an environmental education programme linked with the artwork. The donor island was found by Mr Hartley in 2004 She said: "We wanted something big and special and thought-provoking on an environmental issue. "Good art is about ideas. And it's going to be a fantastic piece of art work. "Lots of people will think it is worth the money." Mr Hartley, from Dunkeswell, fought off a number of competitors to win the race to the £500,000 commission from London 2012 and the Arts Council. It is one of 12 arts projects chosen nationally to represent each of the UK regions as part of the Cultural Olympiad to run alongside the sporting events in 2012. It is slightly absurd... but when you see the island there will be magic in it
Artist Alex Hartley Mr Hartley found the unnamed island on a climate change expedition in 2004. People will be invited to become citizens of Nowhere Island, although no-one will be allowed on it except Mr Hartley. After the project finishes the island will be towed back to Norway. He said: "I'm not going to get rich from this project." He maintained that the environmental cost of towing the island was outweighed by the "poetry of the project". "It is slightly absurd, but it is really easy to engage people with. "When you see the island there will be magic in it."
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionSunderland AFC has confirmed the club’s retained player list for the 2017-18 season.
The list shows all players who remain under contract with the club after June 30, 2017.
While Sebastian Coates appears on the retained list, a permanent move was agreed with Sporting Lisbon earlier in the season, which is ratified as of July 01.
Loan players Adnan Januzaj, Jason Denayer and Javier Manquillo have returned to their parent clubs.
RETAINED PLAYERS OVER 24 AS OF JUNE 30, 2017.
BORINI, Fabio
CATTERMOLE, Lee
COATES, Sebastian
DEFOE, Jermain
DJILIBODJI, Papy
GIBSON, Darron
JONES, Billy
KHAZRI, Wahbi
KONE, Lamine
LENS, Jeremain
MANNONE, Vito
MATTHEWS, Adam
OVIEDO, Bryan
RODWELL, Jack
DOMINGUES, Mika
RETAINED PLAYERS UNDER 24 AS OF JUNE 30, 2017.
ASORO, Joel
BROTHERON, Sam
EMBLETON, Elliot
GAMBLE, Owen
GOOCH, Lynden
GREENWOOD, Rees
HONEYMAN, George
KRUSNELL, Oscar
LEDGER, Michael
LOVE, Donald
MAJA, Joshua
McNAIR, Patrick
MOLYNEUX, Luke
NDONG, Didier
NELSON, Andrew
PICKFORD, Jordan
POAME, John-Yves
ROBSON, Ethan
ROBSON, Thomas
ROBSON, Joshua
STOREY, Alexander
STRYJEK, Maksymilian
TALBOT, James
TAYLOR, Brandon
WATMORE, Duncan
WOUD, Michael
WRIGHT, Daniel
SCHOLARSHIP.
ALLAN, Christopher
BALE, Adam
CONNELLY, Lee
CONNOLLY, Jack
DIAMOND, Jack
HACKETT, Jake
HICKEY, Jordan
McAUGHTRIE, Fergus
MGUNGA-KIMPIOKA, Benjamin
PATTERSON, Anthony
YOUNG, JacobWhether it be by the media or opposing defense, Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler often finds himself getting tossed around and hit hard. Cutler was sacked a NFL high 51 times in 2010 and he was behind an offensive line that ranked 30th in the pass protection in 2011. It is clear that the Bears need to protect Cutler more.
Now, thanks to Mike Tice’s new offense, the team is looking to protect Cutler more by eliminating seven step drops. Right tackle Gabe Carimi told Sirius XM Radio of the change.
The change should help the offensive line in pass protection, since they will not need to hold off the defenders for as long. By doing so, it will save Cutler from getting knocked on his back more than he would like to.
It is definitely news that will make Cutler happy, so if it brings his play to the next level and allows him to perform at the top of his game without fear of getting smacked around in the pocket, then the fans should be thanking Mike Tice.
To stay up to date on the latest from NFL Spin Zone, become a fan on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.Fishing and hunting continues to be a dominating sector in Greenland. All kinds of fishes, ranging from shrimps to cod, are found in Greenland. Fishing exports account for a large share of Greenland’s income. Tourism sector is the next best contributor to Greenland’s economy.
Greenland GDP
As per CIA’s World Factbook estimates, total GDP of Greenland amounted to $1.1 billion in 2001. GDP per capita in 2001 was around $20,000. GDP growth in Greenland is about 2 percent.
Inflation
According to 2005 estimates, inflation in Greenland was around 1 percent. Greenland Home Rule Government has played a major role in maintaining low inflation in Greenland. Tight fiscal policies have ensured that inflation remains low and under control.
Imports and exports
In 2006, commodities worth $712 million were imported into Greenland. Major import commodities included machinery, transport equipments, food, petroleum products, and manufactured goods. Denmark accounted for more than 65 percent of Greenland’s imports.
In 2006, an estimated $480 million worth of commodities were exported from Greenland. Ninety-four percent of Greenland’s total exports included fish products. Major export partners of Greenland included countries like Denmark, Japan, Canada and China. Denmark accounted for 62.2 percent of Greenland’s exports.
Weaknesses
Greenland’s economy continues to be heavily dependent on the fishing industry. Nearly half of Greenland’s revenues come from Danish Government’s support. Tourism sector is affected by short seasons. High costs also that affect tourism in Greenland.
Future of Greenland
Future of Greenland depends on how air transportation and telecommunications can be improved. Less dependence on fishing industry can also help in modernizing Greenland. Tourism sector, though faced by numerous challenges, can lead to better economic prospects for Greenland.On Monday, the NYT had a story on former Senator Bob Graham’s continuing efforts to shed light on the Saudi role in 9/11. The article cast Graham’s obstinance on the Saudi role in 9/11 against FBI efforts to get him to shut up, noting for example that the recent 9/11 follow-up report dismissed FBI’s former interest in a Florida couple that had ties to some of the hijackers (though the NYT did not note how hackish the report is).
Against FBI’s insistence the Saudis had no role on 9/11, NYT balances the comments of Graham’s former colleagues about his judgement. And they point to his prescience.
Mr. Graham’s refusal to drop what many in the intelligence community consider to be long-settled issues has stirred some private criticism that the former senator has been out of the game too long and is chasing imagined conspiracies in an effort to stay relevant as he lectures and writes books. Intelligence officials say the claims in the secret 28 pages were explored and found to be unsubstantiated in a later review by the national commission. Former colleagues are not so ready to write off a lawmaker they remember for sounding the alarm against the invasion of Iraq. He warned that shifting attention to removing Saddam Hussein would debilitate efforts to rid Afghanistan of Al Qaeda, which Mr. Graham said posed a far greater threat to the United States. “Bob Graham has proven to be prescient about many things,” said Jane Harman, the former California congresswoman who once served as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Never one of the flashiest members of the Senate, Mr. Graham was seen more as a cautious, conscientious lawmaker eager to dig into the dry details of policy. His unglamorous reputation no doubt contributed to his inability to catch on during an abbreviated run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2003. But his colleagues also saw him as a man who would not be easily dissuaded. “Bob is kind of quiet, but once he is on to something, he is like a dog with a bone,” said Tom Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader.
The NYT only raises Graham’s prescience on the Iraq War, not the “many things” Jane Harman raises (who didn’t overlap in the Gang of Four with Graham, but closely followed him).
But it’s worth reminding that, in addition to being right about the Iraq War, Graham was right about torture. Indeed, in his last months as ranking member on Senate Intelligence Committee, he made initial moves to learn more about CIA’s detention program, only to have Pat Roberts agree to stop the effort in early 2003. And, interestingly, Graham (and Nancy Pelosi, Graham’s counterpart on the Gang of Four) linked the two, tying the erroneous claims about Iraq to the non-briefings on torture they were getting in September 2002.
Now that they are explicitly stating that CIA lied in its September briefings on torture, Nancy Pelosi and Bob Graham are also both linking those lies with the lies they were telling–at precisely the same time–in the Iraq NIE. Here’s Pelosi: Of all the briefings that I have received at this same time, earlier, they were misinforming the American people there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and it was an imminent threat to the United States. I, to the limit of what I could say to my caucus, told them, the intelligence does not support the imminent threat that this Administration is contending. Whether it’s on the subject of what’s happening in Iraq, whether it’s on the subject of techniques used by the intelligence community on those they are interrogating, every step of the way, the Administration was misleading the Congress. And that is the issue. And that is why we need a truth commission. And here’s Graham: Yes, they’re obligated to tell the full Intelligence Committee, not just the leadership. This was the same time within the same week, in fact, that the CIA was submitting its National Intelligence Estimate on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which proves so erroneous that we went to war, have had thousands of persons killed and injured as a result of misinformation. Now, it’s quite possible Graham and Pelosi are tying these two lies together just to remind reporters how unreliable the CIA is. Perhaps they’re doing it to remind reporters of how they got burned leading into the Iraq War, trusting the spin of the Administration. But perhaps they’re trying to say there’s a direct connection, an explicit one, between the NIE and torture. We know Ibn Sheikh al-Libi’s claims appeared in there. Did anything that came out of Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation? Or Ramzi bin al-Shibh?
Graham would have also been briefed on Stellar Wind, including in briefings with Harman, though he has been less outspoken about that.
None of this is to say these four issues — Saudi support for an enormous attack on the US, spying on Americans, torturing detainees, and trumping up the Iraq War — are connected (though all have ties). It just seems like Graham copped onto the larger project of obfuscation during his tenure on SSCI, in a way that is rather interesting.Researchers in Cologne, Germany have developed a test for the 'fitness in a pill' drug called AICAR, Deutschlandfunk.de reported today. Related Articles Testosterone, epitestosterone and the doping tests
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The substance was linked to cycling in 2012 when a Colombian doctor, Alberto Beltrán Niño, who worked with teams including the former Xacobeo-Galicia squad, was arrested in Madrid with AICAR and another experimental drug TB-500 in his possession.
AICAR is used to decrease body fat and was intended to reverse diseases such as type 2 diabetes, but a side-effect of the drug was increase endurance, at least in laboratory animals.
The UCI has already sent samples from the Tour de France and other races to Cologne to be tested for the substance, a UCI spokesman confirmed to Cyclingnews.
Mario Thevis, a professor from the Cologne Center for Preventive Doping Research, developed the analysis, which uses carbon isotope ratios to distinguish synthetic AICAR from substances found naturally in the body, much like the WADA-approved test for synthetic testosterone.
"In nature there are two versions of the carbon. There is carbon 12 with a mass of 12, and carbon with a mass of 13, and the ratio reflects exactly that of the carbon we ingest in food," Thevis explained. "If you produce a synthetic product, this ratio, the signature of the carbon, is different and that can be distinguished with the help of modern analytical methods."
Because there is already an existing test approved by WADA for testosterone, it stands to reason that the AICAR version of the test would be easily implemented in WADA-approved laboratories.× 1 of 5 Expand Shawn Scallen × 2 of 5 Expand Tyler × 3 of 5 Expand Shawn Scallen × 4 of 5 Expand Shawn Scallen × 5 of 5 Expand Shawn Scallen Prev Next
ODD FUTURE at the Fader Fort at SXSW. Rating: NNNNN
Tyler the Creator is claiming that he broke someone's nose with a stage dive.
Of all the things the figurehead of Odd Future has to boast about - a killer new single, just getting signed to XL Recordings, capturing the attention of everyone in music - that's what he's choosing?
But after seeing Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Em All, the ragtag collective of Los Angeles teens better known as Odd Future, at a sunset show at the Fader Fort, it's obvious these guys are more interested in anarchy than attention.
The water bottle-throwing, crowd-surfing, camera-smashing, police-taunting Tyler did his best to incite a riot. He was whipping full bottles of water at the audience, hitting a the girl next to me in the head. She actually started to cry. I saw another guy get hit with one while texting or updating Facebook or whatever. He wasn't even in the show, but standing by a video screen on the other side of the venue.
The water bottle launching is part of the appeal of Odd Future. Unpredictable, volatile, on the scary side. At one point, he threatened to smash all the cameras in the front row. When a young woman got on stage with a camera, I was nervous for what might happen to her (she got off stage safely).
×
Tyler raps the same way, teetering over a cliff. His menacing lyrics are matched by this unhinged look on his face. And then he'll spin around and run laps on stage.
He's dissed so many people at SXSW, it's hard to keep track (though his most famous target has been Kanye West). And at the Fader show, it was no different, as he sent shots at Pitchfork and rap blogs - some of his biggest supporters. He spit venom.
This show is not something anyone stumbles upon; they have the most hype of any other new band at this festival. They're close to overexposure.
But seeing Odd Future at this stage in their career felt like discovering the next frontier in rap. As much as these guys don't care much for the rules of society, they obviously care about their music - they matched the electricity of the whole festival. No flashing lights or backup dancers, just raw, unvarnished energy.Trump’s remarks appear to conflict with those of James Mattis, the retired Marine Corps general who is his nominee for defense secretary, who said last week during his confirmation hearing that “if NATO didn’t exist today, we’d have to create it.” Mattis accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to break up NATO—and it’s that possibility that many European officials fear, as well. Russia’s invasion and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, its continued support of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, speculation that it has territorial designs over the Baltic states and Scandinavian countries, and its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, have all led to the belief that Russian interests are at odds with Western interests. Traditionally, it was the U.S. that was the bulwark against possible Russian aggression in Europe—and European leaders fear Trump will not keep that commitment. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Trump’s remarks “caused astonishment and excitement, not just in Brussels,” where both the EU and NATO have their headquarters. NATO, he said, had heard the comments “with concern.” He added: “This is in contradiction with what [Mattis] said in his hearing in Washington only some days ago and we have to see what will be the consequences for American policy.”
Trump’s past remarks about Russia haven’t elicited much confidence, either. He’s suggested he’d recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, praised Putin as a strong leader, and appeared for a time to take Russia’s word that it didn’t interfere in the U.S. election though the intelligence agencies that he’ll soon be running have repeatedly said the opposite. He appeared to suggest in his latest interview that he’d be open to lifting sanctions against Russia in exchange for “some good deals.”
“For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it,” he said. “But you do have sanctions and Russia’s hurting very badly right now because of sanctions, but I think something can happen that a lot of people are gonna benefit.”
Then there’s the future of the EU.
The political establishment in Europe and the U.K. are still reeling from last summer’s vote by Britons to leave the EU. Although the nature of the U.K.’s future relationship with the bloc is unclear, and the source of much political debate, the economic impact, so far, has been far from the catastrophe that was predicted before the vote. Trump was an early supporter of Brexit—and his interview this week with the Times was given to Michael Gove, the U.K. lawmaker who was a lead campaigner for the “Leave” movement. He doubled down on his earlier comments in his interview.
“People don’t want to have other people coming in and destroying their country,” he said. Adding later: “People, countries want their own identity and the U.K. wanted its own identity but, I do believe this, if they hadn’t been forced to take in all of the refugees, so many, with all the problems that it, you know, entails, I think that you wouldn’t have a Brexit. It probably could have worked out but, this was the final straw, this was the final straw that broke the camel’s back.Here’s something a lot of Canadiens fans might not know: P.K. Subban used to be a forward.
There’s a great video on YouTube of Subban playing forward with the Toronto Toros as a 7-year-old at the 1996 Lakeshore Thunder Tournament. The Toros beat the Toronto Bulldogs 13-3 in the championship game and Subban scored three goals while wearing No. 51. Teammate Steven Stamkos scored once while wearing No. 77.
After practice Thursday in Brossard, Subban was asked what was the highest number of goals he ever scored in a season as a young forward.
“Oh, no … I don’t remember,” he said. “I switched over to defence at maybe 11 or 12 years old, so I’m not sure. But I always liked to score.”
Subban, who has only three goals this season along with a team-leading 30 assists, was asked if he misses playing forward.
“You know what … I don’t really miss it because I always feel that I get involved offensively, so I kind of get my fix that way,” the defenceman said. “But it would be interesting to play centre for a couple of shifts.”
What would Subban say if coach Michel Therrien asked him to play forward?
“I’d do anything, yeah,” Subban said with a big smile. “If he wants me to play goalie, I’ll play goalie.”
Therrien didn’t speak with the media Thursday after getting a strong vote of confidence from general manager Marc Bergevin, so he couldn’t be asked about the possibility of giving Subban a shot at forward.
It might sound crazy, but on a team that can’t score goals it’s hard to rule anything out at this point.
The Canadiens spent much of Thursday’s practice working on shooting drills, three-on-twos and even shooting pucks into an empty net. Anything to try and remind players what it feels like to actually score a goal after averaging less than two goals per game during this dispiriting 4-16-1 slump.
“What we did today … trying to have three-on-twos, finding ways to create space for ourselves, looking for ways to create scoring opportunities and score goals … you feel good about ourselves in practice,” said Lars Eller, who has eight goals and six assists this season. “We do that enough, it will transfer into games.
“We’re doing all the right things in practice,” Eller added. “I think we are doing a lot of things well in games, too. We do create a lot of scoring chances. We create enough scoring chances every game to score three, sometimes four goals. If we score three or four, we’re going to come out on the winning side most of the time. But the puck hasn’t gone in the net lately for us.”
Like most players in the NHL, Eller said he scored a |
marriage equality -- the only queer cause anyone talked about -- I must present as a straight-acting, masculine gay man.
I felt panic, flashbacks to my days in a church basement on West 33rd street when religious zealots tried to beat anything feminine out of me. Sure, not all gay guys come "with feathers," as they say in Spain, but many of us were bullied for being sissies long before anyone accused us of liking other guys. Having the bitter taste of oppression still fresh in my mouth, I despaired at the thought that I escaped the ex-gay movement only to end up in the anti-fem gay community.
Fortunately at this same time I also met a vast cross-section of LGBTQ people who did not fit the mold, who allowed the many parts of themselves to get integrated into their identity -- Black bisexual gardening grandparents who quoted the Bible and Audre Lorde, justice-minded gender queer community organizers concerned about economic inequality, and an elderly trans woman who fulfilled her dream of going to the holy land to pray with the other women at the Wailing Wall -- in short people who lived their lives on their own terms.Despite an impressive number for the opening of new Mosaic Stadium, the early television ratings for the CFL continue to underperform compared to last season.
An average of 502,000 viewers watched the four games on TSN last week, with a high of 726,000 tuning in to watch Winnipeg’s thrilling overtime victory in Regina on Canada Day. The league added in the RDS numbers and initially trumpeted it as the “most-watched sporting event on Canada Day”
That claim, however, proved to be inaccurate and Sportsnet’s Arash Madani went all Donald Trump on them.
Fake News. The Blue Jays game on July 1 drew a television audience of 822,000. Not sure how 769,000 surpasses that. https://t.co/7psE6PKcDv — Arash Madani (@ArashMadani) July 4, 2017
And the CFL was compelled to correct itself.
Apologies, Canada. In error, we didn’t include an additional Sportsnet360 number to total average. Congrats @BlueJays on a great #Canada150! — CFL Communications (@CFL_PR) July 4, 2017
This isn’t the first time Madani has questioned the league’s TV accounting and the debate surrounding viewership and reach – which are both used by broadcasters and leagues to measure audience – has flared from time-to-time on Twitter.
Overall, ratings on TSN are down 13.3 per cent from 2016’s average of 592,000 viewers. And while viewership is likely expected to increase after Labour Day, when the games are more meaningful and people have returned from vacation, the 364,000 who tuned into the B.C. Lions game in Toronto is a concern given the importance of both those markets to the CFL’s overall health.
Week 2 English language CFL ratings
Thursday
Ottawa at Calgary: 432,000
Friday
B.C. at Toronto: 364,000
Montreal at Edmonton: 486,000
Saturday
Winnipeg at Saskatchewan.: 726,000A £2.35bn agreement to pay back the British government after it stepped in to guarantee UK deposits following the failure of online bank account Icesave has split public opinion in Iceland ahead of a critical referendum this week.
Iceland goes to the polls on Saturday over the Icesave settlement after opposition to the agreed deal prompted president Ólafur Grímsson to call a plebiscite. He took the unusual step despite the agreement having been passed by the Icelandic parliament.
Latest indications suggest a narrow but shrinking majority in favour of the latest agreement, with 55% of voters who have made up their minds intending to back it. A significant proportion are yet to make up their minds. The agreement offers Iceland less severe loan terms than a previous proposed settlement but is still unacceptable to many Icelanders. The earlier agreement was rejected by more than 90% in a similar vote 13 months ago.
Frosti Sigurjónsson, an internet entrepreneur and leading "no" campaigner, said: "It is going to be very, very close. We have 45% at the moment but we are hoping perhaps, when it comes to turnout, people who don't want to pay are more motivated than those who want to open their purse."
He claimed voters were becoming increasingly emboldened, despite the prospect of a jump in Iceland's cost of borrowing because of probable credit rating downgrades. "In the beginning there was a lot of fear. People felt, although the agreement was not great for them, not to say 'yes' would mean something terrible would happen. That's just not the case."
Landsbanki, the bank behind Icesave, failed at the height of the international banking crisis in October 2008 along with much of Iceland's over-heated financial sector. The meltdown left the island in effect bankrupt, forcing it to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
Under pressure from the British and Dutch, bailout loans required Iceland to accept some taxpayer liability for Icesave deposits from overseas. The two government's had stepped in to guarantee their domestic retail depositors with Icesave after a run on savings. Savers had feared – rightly, it turned out – that Landsbanki was heading for bankruptcy and an Icelandic guarantee fund could not meet its promises.
Web pages had told UK savers: "You can also rest assured that with Icesave you are offered the same level of financial protection as every bank in the UK." As a result, retail depositors, charities, councils and other public institutions, lured by market-beating interest rates, poured £4.52bn into Icesave before Landsbanki went bust.
Of these, the UK Treasury ended up guaranteeing in full deposits from 229,000 retail savers. Britain then effectively billed Iceland £2.35bn plus interest for a the partial guarantee that had not been honoured.
The British government – and Dutch counterparts who agreed a £1.3bn settlement – are believed to be dreading a "no" vote, which would probably see the dispute thrashed out in court under the auspices of the European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA) authorities.
Many in Iceland believe a court judgment could ultimately shatter the assumption at the heart of the Icesave settlement – that, under European law, a state must make up for any shortfalls in deposit guarantee funds.
A clear legal ruling on this point would be extremely unwelcome internationally as it would throw a spotlight on huge funding shortfalls in depositor guarantee schemes in Britain, the Netherlands and indeed around the world.
In May last year, however, EFTA's Surveillance Authority provisionally ruled that Iceland was legally required to stand behind its woefully underfunded guarantee scheme. Nevertheless, legal opinion remains split on whether such a finding could be challenge.
Sigurjonsson said: "The risk of accepting the current Icesave agreement [which involves an exposure to currency market movements and bankruptcy recoveries] is much greater than taking this matter to court, which is our civil right."Competitive play get’s real serious!
As you may have heard, Team Trash took home the gold and $600 when they won the Prep Phase League Championship Tournament, ending with an impressive 28 and 0 record. They even bested Trion’s team, Final Boss, in a best of 3 exhibition match. We want to commemorate the results with this awesome recap video for your viewing pleasure.
Season 2 of the Prep Phase League is already underway but you can still sign up now! Don’t miss out because this next season has increased it’s prize pool to $2500 and is even dishing out money to 4th place this time!
First: $1200
Second: $700
Third: $400
Fourth: $200
Who will be the team that steps up and takes down Team Trash?
It could be you and 3 of your friends, so sign up and jump in the Prep Phase League Discord to start your journey to to top!
Join the Beta
– The Atlas Reactor Team
For all the latest Atlas Reactor news make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and come discuss the state of the game in our Forums. Join in with the Community Missions and help everyone earn more cool stuff!When it comes to conspiracy theorists, Alex Jones is king. He’s built a multi-million dollar empire proclaiming that, among other things, 9-11 was an inside job and that mass shootings are staged by the government as a pretense to pass stricter gun laws.
But like all good showmen, you have to understand his early work to truly appreciate him as an artist. Like that time around New Year’s Eve 1999, when a 25-year-old Alex Jones just started making shit up about the chaos that was supposedly going on around the world.
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Many people were concerned that the Y2K bug would unleash a torrent of confusion when some of the world’s computers thought it was the year 1900 instead of the year 2000. The Y2K panic was in many ways like Christmas for conspiracy nuts. And Jones was happy to play Santa Claus, even if he had to stretch the truth during his 3-hour show.
Bill Cooper, a competing conspiracy theorist, played extended clips from the Alex Jones show just a few days later. Cooper seemed to believe that the Y2k bug and Jones himself were a kind of false flag operation to stir panic in the populace.
If you listen to the Y2K broadcast, it’s clear that Jones spent his entire show trying to whip his listeners into a frenzy of panic and confusion. We’ve pulled some choice quotes below, but you can listen to large portions of the broadcast on YouTube.
Nobody can get cash in Europe! Putin is a demon of the New World Order! Tens of thousands will perish!
Cash machines are failing in Britain and now other European countries. They’re finding large amounts of explosives in France. Vladimir Putin, who is known as Vladimir the Ruthless, using all his profanity on national TV, you name it. We won’t read the profanity here but we’ve got it — this person is on an unbelievable power trip and resembles a demon. He is a creature of the IMF and the World Bank and International Communism. He is a former KGB head and this information is vital ladies and gentleman. We’re seeing the New World Order really come out in full force. More wars than have been in the past 50 years are going on right now. The war in Chechnya is raging in Rosney with reports of hundreds to thousands dying. Twenty to forty thousand civilians trapped in the city. Russian hinds are being shot down, tanks are being blown to bits. Massive grod unguided rocket attacks are being launched from the city indiscriminately right now. Air and artillery bombardments as well. It’s absolutely out of control, it is pandemic ladies and gentlemen.
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Pandemic, indeed. More wars in that moment during December 1999 than in the previous 50 years? Not quite.
Alex Jones first landed on the national radio scene in 1996 when his Austin-based show The Alex Jones show was syndicated to 140 stations around the country. From there his empire grew, and he has profited greatly from the fear and paranoid thinking of others. It’s unclear if Jones even believes half of the things that he says. But given the reality that so much of it is untrue or a wild distortion of the facts, it doesn’t really matter.
During the show, Jones became fixated on the fact that a lone power plant in Pennsylvania had gone offline. This was somehow a conspiracy theory that was surely related to Y2K, according to Jones. And don’t even bother going to the store for supplies. You’re already too late.
I’ll give you the news first on Y2K, the newest developments: a Pennsylvania nuclear plant has been shut down. One of the main systems transferring the power from it failed, but they say it’s not a Y2K problem. And the things happening here in Austin, Texas. The shelves are empty of water and some gas stations are running out of fuel. Here in central Texas and in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the shortwave is basically down, ladies and gentlemen. It went off right as I went on the air.
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That nuclear plant that was shut down? Jones insisted that it was sign of a terrible calamity or conspiracy. But according to the Associated Press, an insulator had simply failed, which is a relatively minor problem when it comes to nuclear power plants. One of the two reactors had been temporarily shut down out of an abundance of caution. But Jones was having none of it—he seemed to want to make it appear like every nuclear power plant on the planet was about to melt down.
But wait, there’s more! The government FEMA camps are going to house the “troublemakers” soon! Because of all the riots! And they’re going to shut down the airwaves so that the real news can’t get out!
Thanks Obama! I mean, thanks Clinton!
The occupational government in Washington, D.C. has setup a huge $50 million dollar command bunker hooked into all the FEMA boxes that can take over all the shortwave broadcast and commercial AM and FM stations, as well as television broadcast stations. And we hope they do not activate that, ladies and gentlemen. Police and military are on high alert, running around, looking for supposed boogie men and terrorists under every rock. Military are highly visible now. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there are trains of military equipment moving into Austin. Two nights ago, on Wednesday night, Fox News reported that the airport will be used as a massive holding facility for troublemakers or rioters here in Austin — that has no history of riots.
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Not only that, but world economies were collapsing! And vital supplies are being withheld! They’re turning off the gas! And don’t forget the Russians! They’re threatening to blow us up with nuclear weapons!
Their currency is plunging, the Egyptian pound is plunging against the dollar, the Japanese yen, the Deutsch Mark, and the, uh...just all of it. It’s... and the same thing is starting to develop here in America. Many of the gas stations here in Austin have the little gloves over the pumps saying they’re out of fuel. You never see this in Austin, Texas. Right there in south Austin, I’ve seen several stations. We don’t know. This is just Y2K that was here. Just bizarre behavior. Americans standing up as Russia threatens to attack us with nuclear weapons, as nuclear power plants — at least one — are being shut down. And the military runs around with the police and the FBI, saying terrorism is eminent. And some would characterize us as dangerous because we report the facts.
Jones was very much a product of the 1990s, fixating on the massacre in Waco when the federal government stormed a cult compound run by David Koresh in 1993. To Jones it was a gross example of the government abusing powers it didn’t rightly have. Jones even helped rebuild the Branch Davidian’s church in 2000, helping raise money for it through his radio show.
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Everywhere Jones turned, he saw examples of government abuse. The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 by Timothy McVeigh was another event that would set Jones off, this time because he believed that McVeigh hadn’t actually carried out the bombing—to him, it was another false flag operation perpetrated by the government.
The Alex Jones conspiracy machine really kicked into high gear after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. And he’s spent the better part of the past two decades insisting that there is a conspiracy around every corner.
Fluoride? A government conspiracy to cause cancer.
Contrails? They’re actually chemtrails used for weather control.
The Sandy Hook shooting? The Boston marathon bombing? The shooting at a black church in Charleston? They were all orchestrated by the government to spread fear and further manipulate the American population.
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It seems in the world of Alex Jones, practically every atrocity is a product of the government’s evil machinations.
Jones profits from the paranoia of the masses, and has plenty of products for sale at his website to help you prepare for the apocalypse. But next time you hear him spouting something about impending global chaos and catastrophe, remember where he came from. To truly understand Jones and his ilk, start with his early catalogue of calculated hysteria.
Image: Alex Jones in 1999 via YouTubeWARSAW – From the start, it was a South Bend kind of night. The visiting South Bend Roller Girls took control from the opening whistle, building a 51-point lead quickly and continuing that pace to a 233-103 victory over the Lake City Roller Dolls Saturday night at the Dollhouse.
South Bend wasted no time, using the slick skating of jammer Ice Ice Abby to rack up big points early. Lake City didn’t run much interference on Abby in the first half as the speedy skater helped the Roller Girls post 51 points before Lake City could mount any offense.
On the other end of the bout, South Bend’s blocking kept Lake City from mounting any sustained attacks. The trio of Legs Fordays, Block & Deckher and Buckwyld Barbie were muddled within the walls of South Bend defenders, and weren’t able to rack up many high-scoring jams.
Fordays and Abby were named MVP jammers of the bout; MVP blockers were Spiteful for Lake City and Elbow Nita for South Bend.
A standing-room only crowd witnessed the mayhem at the Dollhouse.
The next bout for Lake City will be at home June 6 against Battle Creek, a 5 p.m. start.
For more information on the Lake City Roller Dolls, visit lcrollerdolls.com or find them on Facebook.The World Anti-Doping Agency [WADA] issued a statement Sunday saying that it does not believe doping should be made a criminal offense for athletes. Responding to “recent commentary via the media suggesting that doping in sport should be made a criminal offence for athletes,” WADA stated that the organization “does not wish to interfere in the sovereign right of any government to make laws for its people.”
Pointing to the existing process, which includes a right of appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport for every athlete, as well as a longer, four-year period of ineligibility for serious doping offenses, WADA stated that the current system has “been globally accepted by sport and government,” while acknowledging that, “countries that have introduced criminal legislation for doping have been effective in catching athlete support personnel that possess or traffic performance enhancing drugs.”
The announcement was made in conjunction with the start of Play The Game, a biannual international conference, held in Denmark, focused on “strengthening the ethical foundation of sport” and “promoting democracy, transparency and freedom of expression in sport.”
Earlier this year, the German government passed draft legislation making it illegal for athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs inside Germany’s borders. The law cites jail terms of up to three years for professional athletes caught using or possessing performance-enhancing drugs. The law, which still must be approved by Germany’s parliament, would affect the approximately 7,000 elite athletes who are subject to the regulations of Germany’s National Anti Doping Agency (NADA). It does not apply to amateur athletes.
Several of Germany’s neighbors — France, Italy, and Austria — have passed legislation that has also criminalized doping.
The German Olympic sports association has voiced reservations, saying the authority of sports federations’ own disciplinary bodies could be affected. A December 2014 Vice Sports editorial, titled “Germany’s Absurd New PED Law and Why It Won’t Fix Anything,” argued that pressure on athletes, whether based on financial incentives or performance, is overwhelming and all encompassing.
On Monday, The Daily Mail reported that Colin Moynihan, Lord of the British Olympic Association, has proposed a new law that would see those caught using performance-enhancing drugs sent to prison for up to two years. The article reports that Moynihan hopes the law will be in place for the 2017 world athletics championships in London, the Sunday Times reported. The law would be framed so any athlete, regardless of nationality, caught doping in the UK could be arrested and made to stand trial in the United Kingdom.
WADA’s statement on Sunday echoes a sentiment expressed by its president, Craig Reedie, in November of 2014, in advance of Germany’s anti-doping law.
The full statement:
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has noted the recent commentary via the media suggesting that doping in sport should be made a criminal offence for athletes.
WADA does not wish to interfere in the sovereign right of any government to make laws for its people. However the Agency believes that the sanction process for athletes, which includes a right of appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), is a settled process, accepted by all governments of the world, and further that the sanctions for a doping violation by an athlete, which now includes a longer, four-year period of ineligibility, have been globally accepted by sport and government. As such, the Agency does not believe that doping should be made a criminal offence for athletes.
WADA and its partners in the anti-doping community do however encourage governments to introduce laws that penalize those who are trafficking and distributing banned substances; those individuals who are ultimately putting banned substances into the hands of athletes. This is a commitment that governments made in ratifying the UNESCO International Convention against Doping in Sport in 2005.
The Agency acknowledges that countries that have introduced criminal legislation for doping have been effective in catching athlete support personnel that possess or traffic performance enhancing drugs. It seems that, given the threat of being imprisoned, these personnel are often more cooperative with anti-doping authorities. We have seen evidence of this in Italy, for example, with a large number of Italian nationals currently listed as having ‘disqualifying status’ under the Prohibited Association clause of the Code – a list that was first issued by WADA in September.The Seattle Police Department has released the preliminary report on Thursday night’s hit and run incident. The report confirms the driver’s assertions that he was being robbed and was driving to get away from a hold-up. But it also clarifies the sequence of events that police believe transpired. While a male was apparently carried up the Hill on the hood of the vehicle, that person fled the scene as another pedestrian was struck as he crossed at Bellevue and Denny. That man, the 53-year-old described below, suffered serious injuries. Police have not found the man who is believed to have been carried on the hood of the vehicle. According to the report, the car’s driver was placed under arrest. Police say the man was arrested but not booked into jail as the investigation continues. The full SPD narrative report and our original report on the incident are below.
{On 11-14-13 at 1951 hours I was dispatched to Bellevue Ave E and E Denny Wy to investigate a collision involving a vehicle and two pedestrians. The vehicle left EB on E Denny Wy. The vehicle was described as a black Cadillac,. A male was reportedly riding on top of the vehicle, then fell off. He was now unconscious in front of 420 E Denny Wy. Upon my arrival, I observed —on the north side of the roadway in front of 420 E Denny Wy. Citizens were with him covering him up. SFD arrived right after I did and transported him to HMC for treatment. I was unable to speak with him at the scene. Witnesses I spoke to at the scene did not see the collision. A citizen handed me the suspect vehicle’s license plate. Witness stated she observed someone on the hood of the suspect vehicle at Bellevue Ave E and E Denny Wy. She saw a person running away SB on Bellevue Ave, possibly the person who was on the hood. Suspect drove his vehicle, a green Cadillac lic to the East Precinct at 1519 12 Ave and stopped. —flagged down Ofc Bourdon. He told Ofc Bourdon that he was sitting in his parked vehicle near the sobering center at 1930 Boren Ave. Two unknown white males walked towards his vehicle staring at him—- stated they looked homeless. Suspect #1 tried opening — driver’s door but it was locked. He then walked around the front of the vehicle— observed that Suspect #1 was holding a large butcher knife in his hand. Suspect #2 then jumped on the hood —-vehicle and yelled something to the effect of, “You’re not getting away with this!” In fear for his safety, —drove off with Suspect #2 on the hood. When asked if he knew he hit anything with his vehicle, he said he might have. He said he couldn’t see because of the person on his hood. He said he didn’t stop because he was afraid the person on his hood would get it his vehicle through the passenger door which didn’t lock. He stated he did not know these two suspects. Computer check showed —was DWLS 3.
I transported Witnesses to the EPCT for a showup. They positively identified the Cadillac as the vehicle they saw driving away from Denny Wy and Stewart St with something on its hood. Ofc Pendt transported Witness — to the East Precinct. He identified the suspect vehicle as the vehicle that had a person on its hood when it struck a pedestrian at E Denny Wy and Bellevue Ave E. —was placed under arrest. Ofc Lovanhill photographed the vehicle. His vehicle was towed to the Lincoln Tow lot. It had scratches down the driver’s side, it’s drivers side mirror was broken, the driver’s side window was shattered, the windshield in front of the driver side was shattered and there was a dent in the hood on the driver’s side. Ofc Bourdon Mirandized —and obtained a recorded statement from him. I responded to HMC to speak with —. He was was getting x-rayed so I was unable to speak with him for awhile. At that point I did not know if he was a pedestrian struck by — or if he was one of the suspects riding on the hood of the vehicle up from Stewart St. The decision was made to release — pending further investigation. When — was finished getting x-rayed I spoke to him. He told me he was walking NB across E Denny Wy at Bellevue Ave when he was struck by a vehicle. He sustained a contusion and abrasion to his forehead and a broken lower left leg. Ofc Medlock provided me with witness info including Witnesses —–who observed a male riding on the hood of the suspect vehicle and then fall off. This male told them they should call 911. He then limped away SB on Bellevue Ave. He was not located. Ofc Medlock took the suspect license plate to the Lincoln Tow lot and left it with the vehicle.
Original Report: Seattle Police are investigating a peculiar car vs. pedestrian incident that reportedly involved a person ending up on the hood of a vehicle and being carried up Capitol Hill where he was tossed to the pavement near E Olive Way and Denny.
Details at this point are still being collected by investigators at the scene of the incident that went down around 7:50 Thursday night. CHS has no information about the male victim or victim’s condition at this time. UPDATE 9:03 PM: Seattle Fire reports its medics transported a 53-year-old male with multiple fractures and in serious but stable condition to Harborview.
The car and its driver reportedly left the scene and police are following up on witness information. One description of the suspect car is of a light colored, large American sedan like an Oldsmobile Cutlass. Police have found a possible suspect vehicle nearby parked on 12th Ave. UPDATE 8:40 PM: Police contacted a man believed to have been the driver in the incident after he drove to the East Precinct. According to police radio dispatches, the man told police he was the victim of a robbery attempt and was trying to flee in his vehicle. UPDATE Friday, November 15th, 9:50 AM: Still no confirmation from SPD on details but we’ve learned that there was a report of a robbery dispatch in West Precinct’s David 2 sector at 9th and Stewart following Thursday’s incident.
A witness said a person was seen on the hood of a vehicle being carried up Denny Way from near the Orion Center across I-5 before the person ended up on the ground at E Olive Way and Denny. UPDATE Friday, November 15th, 10:54 AM: Police now believe the original man on the hood fled the scene as a 53-year-old man crossing Denny at Bellevue was struck by the speeding vehicle.
Seattle Fire responded to the scene with multiple units. Another witness reported via Twitter that the person on the hood may have walked up from Bellevue Ave after falling from the car. That witness and others say there was a second pedestrian involved in the incident who was also struck by the vehicle.
UPDATE Friday, November 22, 10:51 AM: It appears the incident will pass without any criminal charges despite a 53-year-old man ending up in the hospital with serious injuries and an alleged robbery attempt. Police tell us the driver in the incident was “interviewed and released” and police were apparently unable to track down the alleged robber who witnesses said ended up riding the car’s hood up Denny Way before the vehicle slammed into the 53-year-old pedestrian.How does cancer know it's cancer?
This is the question that cancer researcher, Jay Bradner and his colleagues have focused on in their research, and they think they may have found the answer: a molecule, which they call JQ1. But unlike the corporatocracy and its minions, which operate in secrecy, Dr Bradner and his colleagues chose to do something different. Engaging in an enlightened social experiment, they shared the news of this molecule by publishing their findings -- and they mailed samples to 40 other labs to work with. In short, they open-sourced the information about this molecule and they crowd-sourced the testing and research.
As a person who worked in cancer research for several years and whose brother now has a cancer with no known cure, I find this story not only refreshing, but deeply moving as well. This video captures Dr Bradner telling the story of JQ1 and sharing his inspiring ideas about the future of open-source medical research:
Read more:
Panagis Filippakopoulos, Jun Qi & Sarah Picaud, et al. Selective inhibition of BET bromodomains Nature 468, 1067–1073 (23 December 2010) doi:10.1038/nature09504
Jay Bradner is a chemist and medical doctor who conducts research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the Department of Medicine at Harvard University in Boston. Dr Bradner can be found on twitter @jaybradner
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is on facebook and can be found on twitter @DanaFarber
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twitter: @GrrlScientist
facebook: grrlscientist
email: grrlscientist@gmail.comSince I started automatically testing my Rust crate with Travis, I had always wanted to test on iOS as well. Unfortunately, the default Rust compiler on Travis doesn’t support iOS, and compiling one from scratch takes a prohibitively long time. With Rust’s improved cross-compilation support, it’s now possible!
Travis configurations
We’ll be running our tests on Xcode’s iOS simulator, which means that these tests have to run on Travis’s OSX image. We’ll start with these Travis configurations for iOS builds:
language : rust rust : nightly os : osx osx_image : xcode7.2
If you’ll be testing your library on OSX and iOS, I’ve found it convenient to use an IOS_ARCHS environment variable; this variable lists all the iOS architectures we should build, and will be empty for our OSX builds. To build for all currently supported iOS architectures, IOS_ARCHS can be defined as IOS_ARCHS="i386 x86_64 armv7 armv7s aarch64".
By using an IOS_ARCHS environment variable, we can take advantage of Travis’s build matrix functionality to have separate iOS and OSX builds:
env : - IOS_ARCHS="" - IOS_ARCHS="i386 x86_64 armv7 armv7s aarch64"
This will trigger two separate builds in Travis’s matrix: one for no iOS architectures (i.e. an OSX build) and one for all iOS architectures.
Setting up the cross compiler
The Rust compiler included on Travis is not able to compile for iOS. With Rust’s cross compiler support, though, compiling for iOS is just a matter of downloading the iOS versions of the standard library.
Following the rust-cross guide, we can add a Travis install step to install all the architectures we’ll be building for:
for arch in $IOS_ARCHS ; do ios_stdlib = "rust-std-nightly-${arch}-apple-ios" curl -O "http://static.rust-lang.org/dist/${ios_stdlib}.tar.gz" tar xzf "${ios_stdlib}.tar.gz" "./${ios_stdlib}/install.sh" --prefix = $( rustc --print sysroot ) done
Building an iOS library
The trickiest part about testing Rust on iOS currently is that you cannot directly run the #[test] s you’ve written in Rust. Rust’s testing infrastructure compiles tests into an executable to be run, but executables on iOS have to be packaged as apps and signed properly, a process best handled by Xcode.
I chose to extract some of my testing code into a library that could be called from iOS, and then wrote a simple iOS test project that would link and call these tests. The objc crate actually has a Python script to parse out the tests from the project to be included in a crate for external tests; ideally this will someday be replaced with a custom test harness.
The code we’d like to test on iOS has to be compiled to a static library, as support for dynamic libraries on iOS was only added recently and Rust does not yet support them. To compile to a static library, simply add the crate-type key to the lib section of the Cargo.toml for your test library:
[ lib ] crate-type = [ "staticlib" ]
The test code that will be called from our iOS app must be properly exposed like any Rust code called from C:
#[no_mangle] pub extern fn rust_lib_test_functionality () -> c_int {... // Returns a non-zero code for test failure if success { 0 } else { 1 } }
Great! Now we have a static lib exposing some test functionality that we’ll call on iOS.
One last thing: iOS libraries support multiple architectures, so to test on multiple architectures we’ll want to combine the different builds of our library using the lipo tool:
for arch in $IOS_ARCHS ; do cargo build --target "${arch}-apple-ios" done lipo -create -output "${LIB}" target/*-apple-ios/debug/ "${LIB}"
iOS test project
Now that we have our library of test code to call from iOS, we can create an iOS test project. Starting out from an empty project in Xcode, we’ll add a new iOS unit testing target:
Next, drag your compiled library of Rust tests into the “Link Binary With Libraries” section of the “Build Phases” for your test target.
Now we’re ready to write an XCTestCase verifying the functionality of the Rust library:
int rust_lib_test_functionality (); @interface RustLibTests : XCTestCase @end @implementation RustLibTests - ( void ) test { int result = rust_lib_test_functionality (); XCTAssertEqual ( result, 0, "Test failed with a non-zero code" ); } @end
At this point, we can run our tests from within Xcode and should see a nice green checkmark if it’s passing on the iOS simulator!
Running on Travis
The last step is simply adding a Travis script step to run our iOS tests.
One caveat, first: running tests from a script requires a shared scheme, so make sure the test target scheme is shared and the.xcscheme file committed. This can be done in Xcode from the “Product” > “Scheme” > “Manage Schemes…” menu:
Now, we can add a script step using xcodebuild. xcodebuild takes a multitude of options, but if your project and scheme were named RustLibTests, running your tests on an iPhone 5 and 5s simulator (32 and 64-bit, respectively) could be done with the following command:
xcodebuild \ -project RustLibTests.xcodeproj \ -scheme RustLibTests \ -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone 5' \ -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone 5s' \ test
And there we have it! Now, Travis will run our tests on an iOS simulator to verify that our crate is working.
For an example of this in action, check out the objc crate. It may seem like a lot of hoops to jump though, but I am impressed with the ease of setting up Rust itself for cross-compilation.COLUMBUS, OH—Describing the fact that he had not caused her any physical harm as a mark of true gentility, sources confirmed Friday that local man Thomas Lowell had been a “perfect gentleman” the night before by not assaulting 25-year-old Leah Pace while she was inebriated. “Leah had a bit too much to drink, but Tom was an absolute gentleman the whole night,” said Pace’s friend Amber Cohen, bestowing the highest standards of chivalry and honorability upon the man for refraining from endangering Pace’s personal safety or exploiting her drunken state to engage in sexual acts without her consent. “Nothing bad happened at all. He’s a really good guy.” Sources later reported that the man who did not harass Pace with aggressive and lewd text messages the following day was a total sweetheart.On Wednesday, NBCNews.com published an Associated Press dispatch on the bribery trial of Democratic Senator Bob Menendez (N.J.), but there was one huge problem in that Menendez was labeled a Republican. Translation? NBC News saw no reason to engage in basic proofreading or got caught red-handed in the act of liberal bias.
The unauthored post sat for well over two hours before being changed. NBCNews.com offered a correction at the bottom of the story: “CORRECTION (Sept. 6, 2017, 5:35 p.m.): An earlier version of this article misstated the party affiliation of Menendez. He is a Democrat, not a Republican.”
Seeing as how NBC’s Today wasn’t interested in the trial, it wasn’t shocking that they’d punt coverage to AP wire stories. Again, it’s still troubling that this liberal network didn’t engage in any serious proofreading.
Here’s a screen-cap of the NBCNews.com story with a time-stamp of 3:31 p.m. Eastern:
Likely attempting to stop the verbial bleeding from this embarrassment, NBCNews.com edited the story by changing the time-stamp to 5:26 p.m. Eastern and correcting Menenedez |
We were on tour when Ferguson happened. When they decided not to prosecute the cop [responsible for Michael Brown’s death], I broke down crying.
There were all these protests in Chicago I wasn’t able to be there for. All I could do was lend my hand on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, venting, but I couldn’t be there with my people.
I realised, ‘Wow. If I really want to make a difference, I can’t be in this band. I have to be on the ground in Chicago working with all these organisations locally.’
It’s tough. And I think that’s where a lot of the apathy come in: it can feel almost impossible to make that change.
There was an assumption that because Bernie didn’t get the vote, his young supporters would automatically back Hillary. How widespread was the disillusionment?
There was a lot of it. A big part of his campaign was acknowledging that even Democrats and the ‘liberal’ side of American politics are still very corrupt.
People got so into the righteousness of Bernie’s cause that it turned into resenting him for endorsing Hillary – which I can understand. You want to stick to your guns and only vote if it’s right inside your heart.
But if you think, ‘They’re not going to embrace my ideals, so I’m just going to ignore the system and not vote’ – then that’s a vote for the wrong side.
Young people have good intentions for not wanting to back Hillary but there’s a reality there that you have to accept: if we want any positive change, we have to take the small steps we can and then keep pushing it.
There are 2,000 candidates in my state, Illinois, up for election. Ninety per cent of voters have no idea who those people are.
They don’t realise they could be voting for the likes of State attorney and that’s just as important in the long run.
A lot of our fans are turning 18 for the first time and we’re trying to get them to register.
But it works in the favour of the powers that be to have people not aware of all those politicians because if you really get things going at a local level, that’s where real change begins.
What are the most pressing issues for you personally? What things could go either way as a result of the election?
You hear the soundbites where Trump is making Chicago sound like the worst place ever and it is a problem; but a lot of it’s just because politicians don’t invest in the south side.
They don’t give a shit about black people. Chicago is still one of the most segregated cities and that’s not something you’ll see change from getting the right people in office this time, which is frustrating.
But I’m a positive cynic because I also have faith in the power of the people.
We have access to so much information and communicate with each other more than ever.
So I think things are slowly moving in the right direction in some places and that we can hopefully become more socially conscious decisions as a nation.
Check out Twin Peaks’ website, follow them on Twitter or find them on Instagram.
Enjoyed this article? Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.A man was arrested twice in two days after police say he was masturbating in front of passengers on the Metro and a Metrobus on Monday and Tuesday.
Metro Transit Police say they first arrested Alex Thomas-Dorsey, 27, of D.C. after a he was seen masturbating on a Silver Line train between Metro Center and L'Enfant Plaza at around 8:45 p.m.
He was arrested at L'Enfant Plaza but was later released on a citation.
According to police, Thomas-Dorsey was on a Metrobus on Tuesday in the 2000 block of Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, SE when, at around 8:15 a.m., police say he "began masturbating and completed the act on the floor of the bus" in front of passengers, including a juvenile.
Thomas-Dorsey got off the bus and fled the scene after a passenger told the bus driver. Police identified him in a video from the bus' onboard camera and later arrested Thomas-Dorsey while he was at work on Tuesday.
He has been charged with indecent exposure on the transit system which is a misdemeanor in D.C.Featured image: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley supplies what she says is Iran’s destabilizing influence in Yemen during a news conference at Joint Base Anacostia-Boling in Washington, D.C., Dec. 14. (Source: DoD photo by EJ Hersom)
On December 12, America’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, gave a press conference on the grounds of Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington, D.C. The subject of this briefing: the threat posed by Iranian-supplied missiles employed by the Houthi rebels of Yemen in their ongoing fight against a Saudi Arabian-led coalition.
As a backdrop for this dramatic presentation, Haley had assembled various components and debris recovered from two previous missile attacks by the Houthi on Saudi Arabian targets.
“If we do nothing about the missiles fired at Saudi Arabia, we will not be able to stop the violence,” Haley warned. “There is clear evidence that the missiles that landed on Saudi Arabia come from Iran,” she said, adding: “The evidence is undeniable. The weapons might as well have had ‘Made in Iran’ stickers all over it.”
The facts of the matter, however, are quite different.
According to Haley, the weapons in question were Iranian-made Qiam-1 missiles, possessing a range of up to 800 kilometers. Haley was parroting the claims of the Saudi Arabian government, which had previously released a press statement about the Houthi missile attacks and their links to Iran. The Commanding General of U.S. Central Command, Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigian, backed up the Saudi claims, without providing any new evidence. Haley’s press conference, with its dramatic show and tell, was the first time the Saudi Arabian claims had been backed up by anything remotely resembling proof. Moreover, Haley’s comments were designed to set up a report by a panel of United Nations experts, who had travelled to Saudi Arabia to examine the missile parts in question and ascertain their origin. The findings of that report, scheduled to be released two days after Haley’s press conference, were mixed. “Design characteristics and dimensions of the components,” it read “inspected by the panel are consistent with those reported for the Iranian designed and manufactured Qiam-1 missile.” However, the panel also noted that “as yet has no evidence as to the identity of the broker or supplier.” Haley’s press conference was designed to eliminate any uncertainty on the matter.
A closer look, however, reveals the opposite. Rather than the Iranian-manufactured Qiam-1 missiles Haley and the Saudi Arabian government claimed, the debris presented by Haley were of a modified Soviet-manufactured SCUD-B missile; the airframe and engine are original Soviet-made components, and many of the smaller parts on display bear Cyrillic (i.e., Russian) markings. The transformation to the Burkhan 2-H design required the Houthi engineers to increase the size of the fuel and oxidizer tanks, and lengthen the airframe accordingly. This is done by cutting the airframe, and welding in place the appropriate segments (this also required that the fuel supply pipe, which passes through the oxidizer tank, be similarly lengthened.) The difference in quality between the factory welds and the new welds is readily discernable. The increased fuel supply permits a longer engine burn, which in turn increases the range of the missile. The Burkhan 2-H uses a smaller warhead than the SCUD B; as such, the guidance and control section had been reconfigured to a smaller diameter, and an inter-stage section added to connect the warhead/guidance section with the main airframe.
The warhead of the Burkhan 2-H, unlike the SCUD-B, is designed to separate from the main body of the missile during the final phase of its descent; this aids in accuracy and survivability, since most anti-missile radars (such as that used by the Patriot system used by Saudi Arabia) cannot readily distinguish between the smaller warhead and the larger mass of the airframe, sending the interceptors to the latter while the former falls unimpeded to its target. The bottle-nose shape produced by this smaller warhead, however, increases the missile’s overall drag coefficient, which reduced its range. To compensate for this, the Burkhan 2-H eliminates the tail fins found on the SCUD-B missile. This, however, creates stability and trajectory control issues at launch, for which the Burkhan-2 adjusts for by incorporating a more sensitive and responsive guidance and control system, which in turn is linked to similarly responsive actuators controlling the SCUD-B style jet vanes that steer the missile via thrust vectoring.
The reality is that the Burkhan 2-H is neither a completely indigenously-produced Houthi missile, nor is it an Iranian-manufactured Qiam-1. Instead, the Burkhan 2-H is a Soviet SCUD-B that has been significantly modified using Iranian design concepts and critical components (the guidance and control and thrust vector actuators stand out.) The ability to carry out the necessary modifications is not beyond the technical capability of the Houthi, who have assimilated most of the Yemeni missile engineers under their control. While the design aspect of this modification program appears to be Iranian, the actual technical modifications are more akin to a similar missile modification effort undertaken by Iraq in the 1980’s to 1990’s, where SCUD-B missiles were modified to become the longer-range Al Hussein missile used during the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. Iraq and Yemen had a significant program of cooperation before the Gulf War, where Iraqi missile experts collaborated with their Yemeni counterparts to modify Yemen’s SCUD-B missiles to Al Hussein configuration. Iraq’s defeat at the hands of a US-led coalition, followed by the UN-directed dismantling of its long-range missile program, aborted this effort before it could be consummated, but not before a considerable amount of coordination had taken place, including a survey of the specific engineering resources needed to carry out the necessary modifications.
The missile debris in question actually contradicts the finding of the UN panel, which held that the missiles launched against Saudi Arabia had been transferred to Yemen in pieces and assembled there by Houthi missile engineers; it is clear that the missiles in question had been in the possession of Yemen well before the Saudi Arabian-led intervention of 2015, and that their source was either Soviet or North Korean. The modification kits, on the other hand, appear to be of Iranian origin, and were transported to Yemen via Oman. The UN panel claims not to have any evidence of “external missile specialists” working alongside the Houthi; indeed, the simplicity of the Burkhan 2-H modification concept is such that anyone already familiar with the SCUD-B missile system would be able to implement the required processes without outside assistance.
The fact that what is being discussed is the modification of existing Yemeni missiles, and not the provision of a new missile system, means that the already tenuous claims made by the Saudi Arabian and American governments that the Houthi missile attacks on Saudi Arabia represented a de facto violation of UN Security Council resolution 2231 (and, by extension, the Iran nuclear agreement) simply does not hold water. The entire Saudi-US effort in this regard was little more than a not-so-sophisticated propaganda exercise designed to bolster the Trump administration’s efforts to cobble together some sort of international consensus on doing away with the Iranian nuclear agreement. To this end, the Saudis and their American co-conspirators seem to have had little success.
As bad as that result may have been, it paled in comparison to what this entire charade could not obviate—that there has been little progress, if any, in the capability of nations armed with modern weaponry and advanced intelligence gathering systems to locate and interdict a mobile, relocatable ballistic missile force. The efforts of the Saudi Arabian-led coalition to neutralize the Houthi ballistic missile capability have been a dismal failure—there is no evidence of a single Houthi-controlled mobile missile launcher having been destroyed by coalition forces, despite hundreds of air sorties having been flown for just that purpose. The Houthi have displayed the capability to launch missiles targeting the most sensitive of Saudi Arabia’s political and economic infrastructure at will. Moreover, the unique characteristics of the Burkhan 2-H missile—a small, separating warhead, combined with a reduced radar cross section (by eliminating the tail fins of the SCUD-B) and a more responsive guidance and control system—have made it virtually impossible to intercept using the US-made Patriot anti-missile system. In many ways, the Saudi-led efforts against the Houthi mirrors the Great SCUD Hunt carried out by the United States during the Gulf War, where the Iraqis were able to continue launching missiles against Israel and Saudi Arabia up until the end of the war, without the loss of a single mobile missile launcher. Moreover, the inability of the Patriot missile to successfully intercept Iraqi-modified SCUD missiles seems to be the case today, with Saudi Patriot batteries impotent in the face of the Burkhan 2-H.
If a relatively unsophisticated foe such as the Houthi, using Iranian-modified Soviet and North Korean missiles derived from 40-year-old technology, can evade an enemy force using the most modern combat aircraft backed up by the most sophisticated intelligence gathering systems available, and successfully launch ballistic missiles that threaten the political and economic infrastructure of the targeted state, what does that say about the prospects of any U.S.-led coalition taking on the far more advanced mobile missile threats that exist in North Korea and Iran today? The fact of the matter is that no military anywhere has shown the ability to successfully interdict in any meaningful way a determined opponent armed with mobile ballistic missile capability. If the Saudi experience in Yemen is to teach us anything, it is that any military plan designed to confront nations such as North Korea, Iran and Russia that are armed with sophisticated mobile ballistic missiles had better count on those capabilities remaining intact throughout any anticipated period of hostility. No amount of chest-thumping and empty rhetoric by American political and/or military leaders can offset this harsh reality. This is the critical lesson of Yemen, and the United States would do well to heed it before it tries to foment a crisis based upon trumped-up charges.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War (Clarity Press, 2017).WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed the possibility of curbing a popular tax-deferred U.S. retirement savings program to help pay for his sweeping tax cuts, and voiced doubts about adding another top bracket targeting the wealthiest Americans.
The potential scaling back of 401(k) plans, which for four decades have helped millions of workers save for retirement, is one of several important details yet to be ironed out in a major tax overhaul that Trump promised as a candidate and wants his fellow Republicans who control Congress to pass by year’s end.
The White House and its congressional allies have floated the idea of paring certain tax deductions to make up for revenue that would be lost because of their proposed tax cuts, the centerpiece of which is a sharp reduction in the corporate income tax rate.
The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported on Friday that Republicans were considering an annual cap of about $2,400 on pre-tax contributions to 401(k) plans, roughly 13 percent of what workers under age 50 currently can contribute on a tax-deferred basis. That would slash the amount of money that workers can save for retirement in 401(k) plans, which typically are invested in a portfolio of mutual funds.
“There will be NO change to your 401(k),” Trump wrote on Twitter. “This has always been a great and popular middle class tax break that works, and it stays!”
Tampering with 401(k) plans, which have largely replaced defined benefit pensions in the United States, would risk alienating tens of millions of workers as well as Wall Street, which generates fees from managing the plans. Many companies match a percentage of their employees’ 401(k) contributions.
It also would provide ammunition to Democrats, who have painted Trump’s plan, with its $6 trillion in tax cuts, as a gift to the rich and corporate America that would balloon the federal deficit.
Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the tax-code writing Senate Finance Committee, criticized Republicans for not making decisions on issues related to middle-class taxpayers, while having already decided to cut taxes for corporations.
“I am really struck with how the Republicans are handling this question of retirement accounts, which are a real lifeline for working families and as of this moment, it is still not clear whether they are going to include a really bad idea that would make it harder for working families to prepare for retirement,” Wyden said.
More than 94 million Americans are covered by defined contribution plans like a 401(k), according to a recent study by asset manager Vanguard. Total assets in such plans exceed $7 trillion.
NEW TAX BRACKET?
Securing congressional passage of his tax plan is critically important to Trump, who has yet to get major legislation through Congress since taking office in January, including a healthcare overhaul he promised as a candidate last year.
The White House argues that tax cuts are needed to boost economic growth and create jobs, but has shown sensitivity in recent weeks to arguments that it is endangering America’s long-term fiscal health.
Based on the outline of the plan that was unveiled last month, independent experts have concluded that corporations and the highest earners would benefit the most, and many upper middle-income people would face higher taxes.
There are signs Republicans may add a fourth income tax bracket for high earners to the tax blueprint, which envisions reducing the number of brackets to three from the current seven.
The idea of an additional top tax bracket was floated by Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan.
In an interview broadcast on Fox Business Network on Monday, Trump appeared to pour cold water on the idea.
“It may not happen,” Trump said. “The only reason I would have (it)... is if for any reason I feel the middle class is not being properly taken care of.”
There is also pressure from investors to pass the tax overhaul. The expectation of deep tax cuts has helped fuel a stock market rally during Trump’s first year as president, with the broad S&P 500 index up more than 13 percent.
The index hit record highs every day last week, although it retreated on Monday.
U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres (not pictured) for a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
“The question becomes what happens if tax reform doesn’t happen in 2017, does the market sell off into the year-end?” said Andrew Slimmon, portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management in Chicago.
Trump is expected to participate on Tuesday in Senate Republicans’ weekly policy lunch. He said he would press the lawmakers to act on taxes and that he thinks there are enough votes to pass the plan. While its broad parameters have been made public, the detailed legislation has not yet been unveiled.
Democrats have urged Trump to include them in the development of the legislation. The Republican blueprint was devised without Democratic input. The last major tax restructuring, Republican former President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 overhaul, received significant input and support from Democrats.Iran is sharing its experience of operating UAVs with Russia, including three years of operations over Iraq and Syria. The cooperation started in October 2013, when Russian air force commander General Victor Bondarev visited Tehran and was presented with a local copy of the Scan Eagle UAV.
Both Iran and Russia have operated small UAVs over Syria, but a new dimension to Iran’s activities there became apparent on June 8, when a U.S.Air Force F-15E shot down an Iranian-made UAV “similar in size to the MQ-1 Predator.”
This medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) vehicle was later identified as a Shahed 129 UCAV. Operated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), the drone had attacked Syrian rebels operating around At-Tanf who are trained and supported by the U.S. The Shahad 129 has a claimed range of 1,700 km and a 24-hour endurance, and can carry various air-launch munitions including guided missiles. It was not the first Iranian UAVto be shot down by rebel fire, but all previous incidents involved relatively small and inexpensive Ababil and Mohajer series drones for close-in tactical reconnaissance and surveillance.
The Russian expeditionary forces in Syria are also operating a total of 80 small UAVs, such as the Orlan-10, Granat, Eleron, Zala-426-16 and Forpost (which is a licensed copy of the IAI Searcher Mk.2). Some time after Bondarev’s visit to Tehran, the Russian MoD stated that Iranian drones, along with those from Israel (IAI Bird Eye-400, I-View Mk150 and the like acquired in 2012), were being used for evaluation and for the training of Russian UAV operators. Recently, Russian media has reported the testing of a United 40 Block 5 UCAV with claimed 100-hour endurance that was acquired from the UAE’s Adcom Systems.
Although there is no information on whether Moscow has acquired any MALE UCAVs from Tehran, practical experience of operating such equipment, especially in a war zone, is of great interest to the Russian military and industry as they are in the early phase of testing new drone types.
No UCAVs are known to have entered service with the Russian military yet. RAC MiG demonstrated the Skat UCAV back in 2009, but the Russian MoD opted for proposals from other makers. In 2011 the ministry awarded contracts. Last year, Gromov’s Flight Test and Research Institute (local acronym LII) began flight trials of the Orion made by RET Kronshtadt. It has a gross weight of just over one tonne. Also undergoing testing is the five-tonne Altius-M developed by Sokol design bureau.
Deputy defense minister, procurement, Yuri Borisov said that four Russian UCAV projects “that solve their tasks in tactical, operative and strategic depth” are nearing completion, while “we have closed down several other projects.”
The Sukhoi design bureau has been working on heavyweight UAVs, including one with an mtow of 20 tonnes that is expected to fly next year. The Yakovlev design bureau is developing a pilotless version of the Yak-130 armed trainer.
Source: AIN Online“Although we appreciate the Intelligence Committee’s efforts to improve the bill and willingness to engage in a dialogue with privacy advocates, the changes in its most current draft do not come close to addressing the civil liberties threats posed by the bill, and some of the proposals would actually make CISPA worse. Therefore, Congress should not pass CISPA” – Sharan Bradford Franklin, of the Constitution Project
“To date, the authors of the bill have been unresponsive to these criticisms, offering amendments that are largely cosmetic. Dismissing the grave concerns about how this bill could undermine the core privacy rights of everyday Internet users, Rep. Mike Rogers characterized the growing protests against CISPA as ‘turbulence’ and vowed to push for a floor vote without radical changes.” – Rainey Reitman, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
“The authors of CISPA have made some positive changes recently. Unfortunately, none of the changes gets to the heart of the privacy concerns that Internet users and advocacy groups have expressed.” – Kendall Burman of the Center for Democracy and Technology
“essentially means CISPA would override the relevant provisions in all other laws—including privacy laws.” – Electronic Frontier Foundation
“we must do everything within our power to safeguard the privacy rights of individual Internet users and ensure that Congress does not sacrifice those rights in a rush to pass vaguely-worded cybersecurity bills.” – Electronic Frontier Foundation
“using the Sony Hack as a hook is a cynical political ploy for a losing idea that is designed to harm the public and take away their privacy.” – TechDirt’s Mike Masnick
“CISPA 2015 would provide for an even cozier relationship between Silicon Valley and the US government at the detriment of civil liberties and privacy for everyone else” – writer Rachael Tacket
“More needs to be done to protect cyberspace and enhance computer security. But President Obama’s cybersecurity legislative proposal recycles old ideas that should remain where they’ve been since May 2011: on the shelf ” – Electronic Frontier Foundation
“We must do everything within our power to safeguard the privacy rights of individual Internet users and ensure that Congress does not sacrifice those rights in a rush to pass vaguely worded cyber security bills,” – Lee Tien, staff atty EFF
“I do worry about its chilling effects if enacted into law. Unless there is a carve out for research, the liability for clicking on links to security tools alone is worrying…even more so if RICO style laws are applied due to their broad nature and potential for abuse by aggressive prosecutors. We have had many decades to get used to prosecuting organized crime, but prosecuting technical computer crime is newer and harder to explain to juries. In that regard clear and easy to understand ‘red lines’ while more simplistic might be a better place to start” – Jeff Moss, the founder of Black Hat and DEFCON conferences
“the expansion of the definition may impact researchers who commonly scan public websites to detect potential vulnerabilities. These researchers should not have to face a felony charge if a prosecutor thinks they should have known the site prohibited scanning” – Mark Jaycox, of the EFF
“I fear we may have taken the wrong lesson from these recent high-profile attacks. These attacks were not the result of a missed opportunity to share information, but rather caused by substantial and obvious security failures and a culture of treating cyber security as an afterthought” – CA Democratic representative, Zoe Lofgren
“CISPA (1) fails to comprehend the ways in which existing laws allow sharing, but with accountability; (2) runs roughshod over federal and state laws protecting privacy; (3) could inadvertently immunize retaliatory hack-back security techniques; and (4) creates an “inner circle” of private entities willing to share and share alike with the government, but leaves disfavored service providers in the cybersecurity dark” – Jennifer Granick
“The bill amends the National Security Act of 1947 to grant access to any data regarding a so-called cyber-threat to not just the government but also private security agencies” – Jackie CohenImage copyright Science Photo Library Image caption Prof John Ashton called for a national debate on lowering the age of consent
The prime minister has rejected a call from a leading expert on public health to lower the age of consent to 15.
Faculty of Public Health president Prof John Ashton said society had to accept that about a third of all boys and girls were having sex at 14 or 15.
He said the move would make it easier for 15-year-olds to get sexual health advice from the NHS.
Downing Street said the current age of 16 was in place to protect children and there were "no plans to change it".
Official figures suggest up to a third of teenagers have sex before the age of consent.
Age of consent Australia: 16 or 17 (depending on territory)
Canada: 16
Germany: 14
Ireland: 17
Italy: 14
Romania: 18
Sweden: 15
Prof Ashton said lowering the age by a year could "draw a line in the sand" against sex at 14 or younger.
'Recognise the facts'
He said: "We need a debate here. It's time the adults started talking about the situation to take these enormous pressures off children and young people from becoming sexually active too early.
"Also to recognise the facts of what's going on by the age of 14 or 15 so that we can respond helpfully to them and support them on this journey into adult life."
He said lowering the age to 15 might make teachers and other people who work with teenagers "feel on a firmer footing" about telling them where to get advice on issues like contraception and disease.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Prof Ashton says society needs "open discussions in a sensible environment"
And he said in countries with a lower age of consent, young people got involved in sex at a later age and teenage pregnancy rates were lower.
"They are doing it and we need to be able to support them and protect them," he told the BBC's Breakfast.
"The negotiation of your first adult relationship in your mid-teens some time is something that will set the record for the rest of your life.
"At the moment youngsters are getting the most incredible messages from pornography, from social media. What we are seeing is more physical abuse and mental abuse in relationships."
Do I think simply a blanket reduction in the age of consent is the answer to this difficult dilemma? No Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister
He said pornography was causing young people to have "strange expectations" of their relationships and this needed to be "corrected" by open discussion in a sensible environment.
He also called for more resources to go into sexual and relationships education in schools.
'Bombarded'
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said he was concerned about "high levels of teenage pregnancy" but he said lowering the age of consent was not the answer.
"I'm worried, like everybody's worried, about the sexualisation of the culture and the information that so many young people are bombarded with at the moment. That's why I do want see action," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.
"I'm constantly urging (Education Secretary) Michael Gove and the Department for Education to update and modernise sex education in schools which hasn't kept up with the internet age.
"But do I think simply a blanket reduction in the age of consent is the answer to this difficult dilemma? No."
Luciana Berger, Labour's shadow public health minister, said the party opposed lowering the age of consent.
She said it was "not the way to tackle teenage pregnancy" and said the government had failed to support Labour amendments calling for mandatory sex and relationship education in schools.
The Faculty of Public Health, part of the Royal Colleges of Physicians, gives independent advice to the government.
'Legitimacy' warning
David Tucker, head of policy at the NSPCC, said it would be prepared to engage in debate on the issue after considering Prof Ashton's arguments.
But Mr Tucker added: "Has there really been a significant change in the amount of young people having sex over the past 20 or 30 years? If it has changed, then is reducing the age of consent the most sensible way to deal with it?"
A lawyer representing 72 of the victims of Jimmy Savile warned against any move to reduce the age of consent.
Liz Dux said: "Predatory adults would be given legitimacy to focus their attentions on even younger teenagers and there is a real risk that society would be sending out the message that sex between 14- to 15-year-olds is also acceptable."
A police report has said former TV presenter Savile, who died in 2011, was a "prolific, predatory sex offender".
The age of consent for sexual activity in the UK is 16.
In England and Wales, the age of sexual consent for women has been set at 16 since 1885, when campaigners fought to raise it from 13 to prevent child prostitution.
Other countries have set the legal age at anything from 12 to 20.
In 2001, the age of consent for gay men in England and Wales was reduced from 18 to 16, bringing it in line with heterosexuals for the first time. Lesbians, who until then faced no statutory age of consent, were also included in that legislation.
Scotland and Northern Ireland made 16 the age of consent for gay and straight men and women later that decade.“Occupy Oakland” sentimental figure Scott Olsen, the Iraq war veteran badly injured by a police tear gas canister in late October, appeared on Countdown Friday evening to discuss his improved health.
“Every time I run into somebody new I haven’t seen in a while, they are surprised with how much I’m doing better,” Olsen said to host Keith Olbermann. “Every time I check in with my doctors, every time I check with anybody – any friends – they see the change faster than I do.”
When Olbermann asked him about the support nationwide, Olsen indicated how grateful he was.
“It’s frustrating at times, but the support has been such a great help to me,” he said. “Just going home and reading a new card, I still got a whole sect to get though. And support from vet groups like VFT or IVAW has been outstanding. And it’s been helping me get way better.”
Olsen vowed once again that he would rejoin the protests the minute his health improved enough for him to do so. And he described to Olbermann the reason why he joined “Occupy Oakland” in the first place.
“The community involved and the diversity of opinions,” he said. “Everybody you talk to there is going to have a different opinion, and you can always learn something new by talking to someone else.”
WATCH: Video from Current TV, which was broadcast on December 2, 2011.OSEN via Nate1. [+368, -14] Throwing his image in the washing machine~~~~~~~~~~~~2. [+349, -14] He'll never talk about drugs even if his life depended on it. Highly likely that the scriptwriters won't even include questions about it.3. [+286, -9] What does he have to heal?4. [+28, -0] I wonder how much media play he'll get out of this ㅋㅋ5. [+28, -0] Can't leave out the talk about his artists and their drug issues6. [+25, -0] We won't get any healing out of this ㅋㅋㅋ he's going to give us cancer ㅋㅋㅋ1. [+3,834, -166] Is it necessary for him to be on it twice.....2. [+3,568, -134] He better give us a clear explanation on Park Druggie's drug scandal3. [+2,517, -66] ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ What is he going to talk about4. [+566, -19] This show really needs to be taken off air5. [+555, -20] Probably out to shield all the drug stuff because of the drop in image6. [+480, -21] He should clarify all of the scandals before coming on this show ㅋㅋ7. [+436, -41] Clearly he's trying to shield kids like G-Dragon.8. [+366, -14] Honestly, as a fan, I really hope he mentions Park Bom;Global Collaborative Patents
NBER Working Paper No. 21735
Issued in November 2015
NBER Program(s):Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
We study the prevalence and traits of global collaborative patents for U.S. public companies, where the inventor team is located both within and outside of the United States. Collaborative patents are frequently observed when a corporation is entering into a new foreign region for innovative work, especially in settings where intellectual property protection is weak. We also connect collaborative patents to the ethnic composition of the firm's U.S. inventors and cross-border mobility of inventors within the firm. The inventor team composition has important consequences for how the new knowledge is exploited within and outside of the firm.
Acknowledgments
Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX
Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w21735
Published: Sari Pekkala Kerr & William R. Kerr, 2018. "Global Collaborative Patents," The Economic Journal, vol 128(612), pages F235-F272. citation courtesy of
Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded* these:Next on my list for our “Cosplayer Interview Series” an Elesis Crimson Avenger Cosplayer who comes from the country which I am currently residing. They say you should save the best for last, but for me, personally, these cosplayers are the best.
Her name is Lisanna of DrawMeaCosplay, I have discovered her accidentally in one of the conventions that I have attended. It was this year in FACTS, I was wandering in the midst, whilst of taking photos around the site.
I just found her surrounded by a bunch of photographers taking photos of her. Inquisitive with the notion in the middle of the place, I went t see her and guess what? She was flawless. She was wearing her red costume with her enormous sword.
I thought I was dreaming of seeing Elesis in real life, She was just brilliantly sumptuous with her sublime style of cosplay.
She is doing cosplay since 2011 and work with her mother (Bibi) and boyfriend (Setheal) and together they are the DrawMeaCosplay team! Be sure to be present at Made In Asia 2018 (Brussels) this year because she has a HUGE project to show you us all.
I’m sure you are all excited to know her more, so here it is!
Elesis Crimson Avenger Cosplayer
Discovering Cosplay
I discovered cosplay at my very first con: Made In Asia 4th edition, in 2011. Saw these crazy and talented people, ran after them to have a picture, and immediately fall in love with this ambiance.
I decided, this day, that I would like, as they do, make people happy by just seeing their favorite character IRL.
First convention as a Cosplayer
So, my first con as a cosplayer was at Made in Asia in 2012, but it was not a “real” cosplay. Just a Lolita dress that I’ve bought. And it was awesome, I really had fun to wear this dress and act like a “princess”.
I remember back then there was a group a young girl running after me just to tell me that I was SO cute and beautiful and I was like “Wow, You just stopped what you were doing just to tell me that? That’s crazy?!”
So I thanked them and thought that finally I CAN be beautiful, and the way to be was in cosplay. So I never stopped after that and it helps me to be more confident!
Costume/Gear/Props/Armor Making
Well, my first cosplay sewn was my very first cosplay ever: my Dovahkiin from Skyrim. One good thing to know about DmC is that we’re sewing everything by hands and because of that it was long and difficult.
But it works! and Still today! (Even if we finally decided recently to buy a sewing machine. It’s still hard for us to use it haha, we take the habit of being hurt by the needles!)
I always hate sewing (yes I’m definitely more a “crafter” cosplayer than a “fabric’’ one), it’s still the case. This is why |
pose the greatest threat, trying to fulfill the demand for meat for human consumption, hides for leather, and livers for vitamin rich oils. Abundances of adolescent and adult sandbar sharks in Virginia have declined dramatically by nearly two-thirds, highlighting the need for effective fishing management.SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA—Each year at VMworld, the questions about Microsoft become a little more insistent. With the maker of Windows Server providing virtualization that’s cheaper and good enough for many IT shops, how long can VMware remain king of the hill?
The questions at the latest VMworld conference that began today have been as frequent as ever. But like always, VMware has answers. After VMware this morning announced it’s dumping a controversial pricing scheme, reporters asked if the move was in response to advances that bring Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization platform and the System Center management tools closer to parity with VMware.
“Everyone in this room knows you cannot compete against Microsoft on price,” VMware Chief Marketing Officer Rick Jackson said in a press conference. “They are the world’s most profitable for-free company ever. You compete against Microsoft on value.”
Simply put, VMware killed its new pricing model (which charged customers for use of virtual memory rather than physical resources) because customers hated it.
“It is an admission that we made things overly complex and we are rectifying that mistake. So, mea culpa,” said VMware’s Paul Maritz, who spent the last four years as CEO and is handing off the position to Pat Gelsinger.
With the pricing fiasco out of the way, VMware has to contend with the real technological advances made by Microsoft. While Hyper-V has traditionally lagged behind VMware in features, Microsoft is beginning to push the envelope.
With the third major version of Hyper-V recently released alongside Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8, Microsoft allowed live migration of virtual machines from one host to another even if they don’t share the same storage.
On this one feature, VMware had to play catchup, and did so today with the announcement that vSphere 5.1 will allow live migration (or vMotion) regardless of what storage a virtual machine’s host server is attached to. The advance was announced as part of vSphere 5.1, which will be available on September 11.
But VMware argued that it has lots of other stuff Microsoft doesn’t have, particularly in the realm of managing virtual machines and automating data center operations.
Maritz, a former Microsoft Windows executive, said “[Microsoft’s] strategy for the last seven years has been to say 'our products are good enough,' not that it’s the leading product but it’s good enough. The reality is people’s expectations of what is needed are rapidly changing.”
“Everybody has a hypervisor today and everybody gives it away for free,” Maritz continued. “What it’s all about are the automation layers on top of it,” and extending the benefits of virtualization from servers to the entire network.
How is VMware achieving that? The company today explained it wants to make “virtual data center” a phrase just as commonly uttered as virtual machines. Instead of merely virtualizing CPU capacity, a virtual data center brings CPU, storage, network services, security, load balancing, and other characteristics together into a single profile that can be easily reproduced and provisioned.
This is part of vCloud Director 5.1, which can create the so-called virtual data centers consisting of up to 30,000 virtual machines and associated resources. The software doesn’t really automate every aspect of data center management, but it should make things quite a bit easier.
VMware Product Manager Michael Adams explained in an interview that an IT shop might create a virtual data center with certain storage, security, and availability characteristics, and be able to provision it to different business units. Not all business units’ needs are the same, so the IT shop could create several versions, with higher or lower performance and cost. It’s similar to the concept of creating standard virtual machine images, but expanded to encompass storage, networking, availability, and security characteristics instead of just the virtual machine itself.
VMware executives claimed that the software can reduce the time it takes to set up entire virtual networks from days to minutes.
vCloud Director is one of those automation layers referenced by Maritz, available for an extra fee beyond what you pay for vSphere (the core virtualization platform). vSphere 5.1 makes numerous improvements in addition to the live migration enhancement mentioned earlier.
Virtual machines created by vSphere can now be twice as big, with up to 64 virtual CPUs, and 1TB of virtual RAM, putting vSphere on par with Hyper-V 3.0. Hyper-V can support bigger hosts, though; up to 320 CPUs and 4TB of RAM, compared to vSphere 5.1’s limits of 160 CPUs and 2TB RAM. VMware claims to be able to pump out one million input/output operations per second on a single virtual machine.
More important for most regular users are improvements to everyday operations. Adams said VMware’s distributed switch has added a network health checker which searches for potentially unstable network configurations and recommends fixes. The virtual switch’s configuration can now be backed up and restored, and rolled back to a previous state, while support for the Link Aggregation Control Protocol helps with failover and network utilization, he said.
Other new features include data protection that relies on EMC Avamar technology to back up virtual machine data, with de-duplication as a standard feature. This replaces the previous vSphere data recovery product.
Some pre-existing features that required purchase of separate products have been integrated into vSphere 5.1. For example, a virtual machine replication service that was part of the separate Site Recovery Manager software is now part of vSphere. vShield EndPoint, a security product that monitors traffic going into and out of a virtual machine instead of relying on traditional antivirus software inside the VM, is also now a part of all versions of vSphere.
vSphere comes in several editions that vary by features and price. A breakdown of each can be found in this VMware document.
It's clear that virtualization is becoming more important. VMware and Microsoft will remain major players in the data centers of both the world’s biggest companies and the smallest IT shops for many years to come. Already, more than 60 percent of the world’s x86 server-based applications are running on virtual machines, VMware said, citing numbers from IDC. VMware also cites research from Gartner indicating that 81 percent of virtualized workloads run on VMware.
But that latter statistic is from mid-2010—Microsoft and other competitors such as Citrix XenServer and KVM may have gained some share in the meantime. After being pretty much the only game in town a few years ago, VMware is being forced to explain why it should still be considered the best in the business.As the largest EU member state, Germany enjoys unmatched influence in the bloc. But Europe isn't a topic in the country's parliamentary election campaign, something which German political thinker Ulrike Guerot lamented in a recent interview with EUobserver.
"There isn't much debate about anything, actually. [Incumbent chancellor] Angela Merkel seemed to have won before she even began campaigning. It could be a generational factor: for the first time in German history, more than half of the electorate is over 50. These people like stability," said Guerot, a professor of European affairs and a writer, whose provocative books about Europe and democracy have won her a growing following.
German political thinker and writer Ulrike Guerot in her Berlin apartment. (Photo: Ulrike Guerot)
"But stability could in a way be the worst for Europe. Everything needs to change in Europe, and especially the Germans," she added.
Voters in the federal republic will head to the polls on 24 September, in a year rich with elections in the EU - often taking Europe as a key theme.
Most recently, Emmanuel Macron won the presidential race in France on a pro-EU ticket, promising eurozone reform and a more social Europe, while the runner-up, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, campaigned on anti-EU messages.
Macron's triumph has helped dissipate much of the fears surrounding far-right populism, but Guerot said it was too early to celebrate.
"He wasn't elected because of his programme, but because people didn't want Le Pen's dark visions," she said. "Despite a good start, his support remains fragile."
The EU still needed an overhaul, she insisted, to become more social and democratic - reforms that would require Berlin's backing.
"Unfortunately, we see close to no will to change, at least not substantially."
She said some of it may be linked to the fact that the German economy is doing well. In this situation, "it is easier for German elites to pressure politicians into the discourse that it's enough for others should just do whatever Germany does to be successful."
A European republic
"It's just that what works for us doesn't work for others and it cannot work for others because the euro zone is flawed in its set-up. There is no model to copy," she added.
In her first book "Why Europe Should Become a European Republic", which was written in the wake of the Greek debt crisis, Guerot argued that Europe is almost completely integrated in terms of economic and monetary policy, but lags behind in democracy.
She called it "a single market and a currency without a democracy behind it", unable to care for people.
"Merkel has famously said that if the euro fails, Europe fails," Guerot told EUobserver.
"But I believe this sentence should be: keep the euro as it is and democracy fails in Europe. And this is what is happening."
The bloc's inability to go forward had led to resistance from within, in the form of right-wing populism directed at the EU and the common currency.
It did not matter if populists win elections or finish second, she said.
"When they reach critical mass, say 30 percent, it starts to get systemic. Their arguments win even if they don't win elections. The whole system shifts to the right and that is what we experience all over Europe," Guerot said.
She stressed that anti-EU feelings initially didn't come from the people - "what people want has never mattered that much" - but from business and political elites, who instrumentalised frustrations over material inequalities. She traced the emergence of Germany's populist party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), to the German liberals (FDP).
"AfD wasn't formed by globalisation losers in east Germany or the Nazi party and their sympathisers. It arose when half of the Liberals in 2012 decided to go against their own government and oppose a bailout of Greece and parts of Europe's bourgeois establishment u-turned on Europe," she said.
They had managed to convince voters that Germany was already shouldering its responsibility for Europe.
"I think many realise that, without restructuring, the eurozone is a looming disaster and that Germany won't survive as a happy island if there is an economic downturn," she said.
"However, many Germans think they are already doing enough, because we took in a million refugees in 2015, German tax payers are footing the bill for the Greek bailout, or that we started playing a more active role in European foreign policy, especially in the relations with Russia where Germany was previously accused of being too close to president Vladimir Putin."
"All this is true. But it hides other aspects, especially that the eurozone was skewed to their country's benefit to start with."
'Europe is made by the right'
The German intellectual said the case for a social Europe must come from Germany's centre-right.
"The German social-democrats (SPD) have a very interesting campaign on everything social: the growing income gap and increasing rents. But it seems as this isn't credible to voters, out of which some 85 percent are happy with their social situation, according to recent polls," she argued.
"The nurse earning €50,000 a year would rather distance herself from the poor. She doesn't think she would benefit from a tax raise; she sees herself as part of the up-and-coming, even if we know that this doesn't happen... wealth today comes from capital and not work."
"This is why social Europe must come from the centre-right, from Macron who is neither right or left, but social-liberal, or from the conservatives. When they propose social programmes it is seen as the general interest, rather than stealing people's taxes."
The question was what Angela Merkel would do if she wins another term as chancellor.
"She has been pretty quiet on this. Maybe she's smarter than we think and will use her four years to u-turn the whole thing: set up a parliament for the euro-zone, build up its fiscal capacity, introduce Franco-German bonds for a start, strengthen European democracy and build a European security union with Macron," Guerot speculated, adding: "But I am not sure she will do it, and part of it will be very difficult if she enters a [coalition] government with the FDP."
Guerot said, however, that things could change more quickly than one may think.
"The Volkswagen scandal, the unravelling of Germany's automobile industry and all the sectors that depend on it, could kick Germany out of complacency," she said.
"And if not that, something else could suddenly come up. Europe is fragile. Germany could lose its leading role very quickly - for the better or for the worse."
Ulrike Guerot is a Berlin-based German political thinker and founder of the European Democracy Lab, a think-tank dedicated to the future of European democracy as well as professor of European studies at the Danube University Krems. She is the author of two books: "Why Europe Should Become a European Republic" and "The New Civic War: Open Europe and its Enemies", which have been translated into many European languages.A pair of Saudi airstrikes in northern Yemen’s Saada Province have killed at least eight civilians, according to officials familiar with the situation. The strikes are the latest in an ever-growing number of Saudi attacks which hit civilian targets.
The larger of the two strikes destroyed a vehicle in Razah, killing five, which an official from the pro-Saudi Hadi government described as being hit “by mistake.” The second strike also hit a vehicle in Shadeh village, killing three more civilians.
This is the second time this week that incidents of civilian deaths have been reported in Saudi airstrikes, with previous attacks against the city of Ibb killing nine civilians. Last week, a major attack in Hodeidah killed dozens more civilians, targeting an area near the presidential palace.
A study released earlier this month on data from the 18-month long Saudi air war showed that approximately one in three airstrikes hit a civilian target, and that in many cases, obvious civilian gathering points in the Shi’ite north of Yemen were hit multiple times in succession.
Last 5 posts by Jason DitzThat phrase.
We’ve all received it personally gift-wrapped by well-meaning friends, caring loved ones, and kind strangers. It usually comes delivered with the most beautiful of intentions; a buffer of hope raised in the face of the unimaginably painful things we sometimes experience in this life.
It’s a close, desperate lifeline thrown out to us when all other words fail:
Everything happens for a reason.
I’ve never had a tremendous amount of peace with the sentiment. I think it gives the terrible stuff too much power, too much poetry; as if there must be nobility and purpose within the brutal devastation we may find ourselves sitting in. In our profound distress, this idea forces us to run down dark, twisted rabbit trails, looking for the specific part of The Greater Plan that this suffering all fits into.
It serves as an emotional distraction, one that cheats us out of the full measure of our real-time grief and outrage. We stutter and stop to try and find the why’s of all of the suffering, instead of just admitting that maybe there is no why to be found and that perhaps this all simply sucks on a grand scale. May you feel permission to fully acknowledge that profound suckness.
Any even if somewhere beneath all of it; far below all the dizzying trauma that we experience here there is a fixed, redemptive reason for it all, it’s one that will likely remain well beyond our understanding so long as we inhabit flesh and blood.
Deep within the background operating system of my faith there’s a buried, fiercely protected trust in a God who is good and in an existence that matters. But this core truth doesn’t come with the assumption that all things (including all the horrors we might encounter here), have a purpose. It doesn’t come with a hidden silver lining always knitted into the fabric somewhere, if only we can uncover it.
To believe that, is to risk painting the picture of a God who is making us suffer for sport; throwing out obstacle and injury and adversity just to see what we’ll do, just to toughen us up or break us down. I find it hard to reconcile that with the perseverant hope in a God who is not out to squash me.
It’s exhausting enough to endure the dark hours here and not lose our religion, without the addition of a Maker who also makes us bleed. Instead, I prefer to understand God as One who bleeds along with us; who sits with us in our agony and weeps, not causing us our distress but providing a steady, holy presence in it. This still leaves me with the nagging question of why this God can’t or won’t always remove these burdens from me, but it does allow me to better see the open opportunity provided in tragedy.
There’s an oft-misused excerpt from a pastor’s letter to his faith community found in Scripture, where the author Paul writes:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28
This isn’t a Heavenly insurance policy paid with faith and exempting us from anything unpleasant, but the promise that if we choose to respond to all things from a place of love and goodness; that we, not necessarily our circumstances will be better for it.
In this way, I believe in suffering as a sacred space; one where we get to choose.
It’s not a supernatural cause-and-effect experiment from the sky, specifically designed to do something to us or in us, but it is a time and place where we can respond and as we do, we are altered. Our pain does not have a predetermined purpose, (otherwise we would be straddled with the terribly complicated task of figuring it out in a billion small decisions every single day), but that pain will always yield valuable fruit.
As much as I hate to admit it, my times of deepest anguish have almost always been the catalyst for my greatest learning, but I could have easily learned different lessons had I chosen differently. Yes, I certainly grew tremendously in those trying times, but I could have grown in another direction altogether with another choice. In that way, those moments of devastation held no single, microscopic needle-in-the-haystack truth to hunt for while I grieved and struggled, but there was still treasure to be found in the making of my choices and in their ripples.
No I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason, but I do believe there is meaning in how we respond to all things that happen to us, even when they are not at all good things.
Be encouraged as you suffer and choose.
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EmailIn a flash of grease and sugar, junk food staples like Bugles, Hot Pockets, corn dogs and fast-food chicken “poppers” have infiltrated the exclusive world of food art. An anonymous Instagram chef going by the pseudonym Jacques LaMerde is making a splash on social media by plating and photographing lowbrow food, switching out edible flowers and artisanal pancetta for preservatives and pink slime.
A lot of work goes into each unlikely preparation. Colorful arrangements are finished with reductions and garnishes of coleslaw ash, Miracle Whip crema, and even “raw cake batter romanced with charred Rice Krispies.” Real, slow-poached egg yolks grace some plates.
Each image is captioned with the obsessive detail of a tasting menu description, with a maniacal twist. ”I CALL THIS DISH ‘BUGS ON A STICK B/C THE CRAISINS R THE ‘BUGS’ AND THE CHEEZE WHIZ/CELERY IS THE STICK,” writes LaMerde, lampooning elite kitchens’ exotic re-interpretations of childhood favorites. ”KINDER EGGS ARE ILLEGAL IN THE US,” he notes on another image, in imitation of the restaurant scene’s prized forbidden foods, from foie gras to ortolan.
With hashtags like #gastroart #foodporn #artofplating #cheflife and #wildchefs, the mad chef’s account has drawn a sincere Instagram following. In only 24 posts, the mysterious LaMerde has gained nearly 44,000 followers.
That’s the last, delicious layer of joke. Foodies can’t help but follow the feed, even as it mocks foodie culture. Junk or not, these plates are perfect.
This article is part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and big thinkers.Carnegie Mellon University is gearing up for a four-wheeling lunar mission to explore newly discovered caves on the moon’s surface–along with pits and polar ice that scientists speculate may be the perfect shelter for future human inhabitants.
On Monday CMU rolled out its robot Andy for a test drive, a feisty all-terrain bot that takes its name from university namesakes Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon. The rover is a key player in the effort led by Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology to win the Google Lunar XPrize, a race that pits scientists from around the world against one another in an effort to be the first to put a robot to the moon. The winner takes the $20 million-plus purse, which goes to the first team that lands on the moon, successfully drives a robot for at least 500 meters and transmits a “mooncast” back to Earth.
Red Whittaker
But Andy isn’t trolling the moon for dollars just to win money, says Dr. William “Red” Whittaker, founder and director of the Field Robotics Center at CMU. “After the heat is off, we’re going to do something while we’re up there. You can’t explore caves from a satellite–you’ve got to be there on the ground. We will be exploring greater questions. Where is the ice? What are these caves?” he says.
Whittaker, 63, has been dreaming of putting robots on the moon his entire life, although in his humility he points to the teamwork involving students, faculty, and staff at CMU who have plodded along together through the decades to make it happen.
Andy will be the first robot rover developed in the United States to land and explore the moon, following in the tracks of two Russian rovers and a more recent lackluster Chinese rover mission. The four-wheeler resembles a four-foot high Tonka toy, but don’t be deceived. Andy’s wide stance, low center of gravity, and high clearance give it superior agility, enabling it to get under and over “whatever the moon throws at it,” says Whittaker. Invisible technology is found in four “power-rich” computers on board that will collect data and record video that will relay back to a Earth and mission control, essentially a laptop run by the team at CMU.
Carnegie Mellon’s Andy
The moon landing will be the spine-tingling part of the mission, says John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic. The CMU spinout is building the lander that will take the rover from the SpaceX Falcon 9 to the moon sometime in 2015, if all goes as planned. Astrobotic has been raising money for the venture by turning a profit with a payloads to the moon business, selling shipping space to scientists, artists, and a Japanese soft drink company. ($2 million gets a two-pound package to the moon.)The outfit was pretty straight-forward for the most part, but it was interesting making the wolf ears and tail since I've never attempted to make either before. I used Wonderflex for the ears, which was great since I could just heat it up and curve it however I wanted. Then I hot-glued the fur on top of that - I used brown with cream for the tips and a mirabou boa for the inner fluff - and glued them to a copper wire which slips into my wig.
I'm not entirely happy with the tail, and would like to find a longer fur to make it out of, so it looks more realistic and wolf-like and less like a plushie tail. Places online always seem to have a "fox red" or straight brown fur, and I don't like either for Horo. Horo's tone has always seemed, to me, to be a warm-toned light-medium brown, so I'm very picky with getting the color to match what I have envisioned.
The little wheat pouch is made up of individual 1"x1" red and light pink squares that I sewed together in a patch-work-like way, and is strung with suede string.Voters in Kentucky do not know enough about Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE (R-Ky.) to say if they would like to see him run for president in 2016.
According to a New York Times-Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Wednesday, only 31 percent of voters there would like to see the freshman senator run for president.
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Another 34 percent say they would not, while 32 percent say they do not know enough about him to say.
Paul, who is considering a run, has recently been near the front of the pack nationally in early polling of the GOP presidential primary.
A majority of voters in Kentucky, however, do approve of the job Paul is doing in the United States Senate. Fifty-three percent approve, while 34 percent disapprove. Another 14 percent do not know.
His approval rating is 13 points higher than Kentucky's other senator, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
It is not uncommon for state voters to say they do not want to see their own lawmaker run for president. A recent Quinnipiac poll showed only 43 percent of New Jersey voters would like to see Gov. Chris Christie (R) run for president. That number was largely unchanged from last year, when he garnered high approval ratings.
The New York Times poll surveyed 900 registered voters in Kentucky and has a 4-percentage-point margin of error.2.33
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- @lokyst: This fixes the tooltip not updating when moving items between bank/bags, and moving stacked items or non-stackable items of which there are multiple in the bank/bag.
2.30a
----
- Fixed Minion issue
2.30
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- Global
- Dutch language support, thanks to @NelDaSi
- Portugese language support, thanks to @NelDaSi
- [Enhanced Guild Store]
- Fixed bug with (A) and (X) sorting swapping not working
- Removed the "Seller" Column, replaced with a "Stat" column
- Fixed bug that hides the fields in the search menu
- [Enhanced Inventory]
- Now auto-loads inventory rather than crafting bag
- Fix items not appearing when added to inventory
- Fix using misc. items
- Fixed an issue with "Character attributes" not disappearing
2.26
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- General Interface
- Option to destroy mail instantly
- [Enhanced Inventory]
- Fixed keybind unbind issue when leaving the inventory
- [Enhanced Guild Store]
- Fixed init bug where name filter doesn't appear
- Removed DD integration
- Refactoring and large improvements of old code
2.25
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- [Enhanced Inventory]
- "Mark as Junk" is now functional again
- "Consumable" -> "Quickslot"
- Fixed item "Attribute Icons" not displaying (enchanted item, stolen item, etc.)
- Category list position is now remembered upon re-opening the inventory menu
- [Enhanced Guild Store]
- Fixed "Reset Filters" crashing
- Removed debugging message "Building List"
2.20
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- Redesigned categories for [Enhanced Inventory] which gives a VASTLY better experience
- You can now view Quest Items (again)
- The crafting bag is now integrated, with great new features:
- Crafting bag has categories, and the "type" column is much more descriptive
o For example, items now have "Style Material", "Tannin", and "Temper" instead of
the generic category listed. I am still fine-tuning this, but it's a remarkable improvement
from a usability standpoint
o this will also be integrated into [Enhanced Bank] very shortly, watch this space
- You can now use the mouse scroll on the left hand item tooltip!
- Fixed [Enhanced Inventory] keybinds not appearing automatically
- The option to "Destroy" an item is now hidden for items that are "Locked"
2.11
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- Fixed equipping 1H-weapons and Shields
o Also fixed "Ring 1" and "Ring 2" dialog displaying
- Fixed "New" icon being a white square
- More fixes incoming...
2.10
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- Repositioned the left tooltip to display a LOT more information per item
- Native Russian language included, thanks to @Ckau
- [Enhanced Inventory]
- Now displays the equipped items in the current slot
o There are now 3 new icons next to the equip slot type
- Fixed Issues with item's descriptions crashing the game
- "Mark Item as Junk" is now displayed correctly
- [Enhanced Banking]
- Now includes many updates that were applied to the Inventory interface
- [Enhanced Guild Store]
- Merged a pull request to allow the "Listings" page to display the MM price (if enabled in the options of [Enhanced Inventory])
2.04
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- Corrected the "Scales from... X to Y" text on items with Champion Level scaling
- Replaced the "Junk" icon with one provided by @Ckau which fits in with the rest of the icons. Thanks!
- Rings and Necklaces are now displayed in the "Type" column
2.03
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- Fixed issue with MasterMerchant values in Inventory not working
- Fixed issue with broken "Split Stack" of items
- Fixed "Destroy Item" dialog
- Enabled Russian fonts
2.02
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- More bug fixes
2.01
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- Fixed "Retrieve" item crashing
- Removed debug messages
V2.0
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- [Enhanced Inventory] has been updated, ready for the Dark Brotherhood.
- I have essentially redeveloped the existing [Enhanced Inventory] for future compatibility,
and for the Crafting Bag
- Fixed a ZOS error with the removal of Vet Ranks, the sorting function now correctly determines the
champion points required for the item
- [Enhanced Banking]
- Minimal changes from the previous version, as the interface is based on my own library
- Will have to check into adding a new category for the Crafting Bag, was unable to test without
having ESO Plus membership (will be fixed VERY soon!)
- Localization support! Put your language strings into "lang/*.lua", and it will be hooked into BetterUI
- If you complete a translation, please send them to me - I will put them into the "lang" folder by default
V1.81
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- [Enhanced Inventory]
- Disabled the list animation when switching between categories. The whole interface feels a LOT more responsive
- "Link in Chat" is functional
- [Enhanced Banking]
- Fixed an issue with item stack transfers not updating correctly
- HUD frames
- New option to alter the account name color independently of the character name
V1.80
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- [Enhanced Banking]
- the interface responds INSTANTLY to withdrawals and deposits!
-> this fixes the problems encountered if you tried to transfer lots of items quickly
- "stack slider" now WRAPS
-> you can go from the max value of a stack to the min with a single button press! :)
- withdrawing and depositing a stack now disables the list
-> changing the item whilst transferring a stack has been disabled: a lot less errors!
- Fixed an anchoring issue with the footer, it is now attached correctly to the bottom keybind strip
- Issue with Tel-Var stone withdrawal fixed
- Keybind issues are sorted, had to re-develop the Keybind system but it works without error now
V1.75
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- [Enhanced Banking] is here! Massive improvements to the original Banking interface, based entirely on my own code (the "Window" API will be released pretty soon). See the attached screenshots, I'm very happy with how this has turned out :)
- Added "Stack Bank Items" into the menu, something that was lacking in the original gamepad interface
- It is still rough around the edges, so if there are any issues, report them in the comments
- Credit to ScotteYx for the code here: If you have multiple items with the same trait, it will come up as "Duplicate" in the interface, something requested by *many* people
V1.68
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- Fixed costume / disguise equipping in the Enhanced Inventory menu
- Fixed Guild Store issue where item category would reset upon searching
- Moved "Name Filter" to below the item category list for efficient Guild Store browsing
- Filtered out "Bound" items from appearing in the Sell Item tab of the Enhanced Guild Store
V1.65
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- Now includes a "Filter by Name" in the Guild Store browse panel!
- Fixes Main/Backup 2H weapon equipping
V1.6
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- Added status indicator icons to the [Enhanced Inventory], now new items can be distinguished!
- New option for [Enhanced Inventory]; you can now press the triggers to skip item types (like the default interface)
- Fixed group unit frame displaced background
- Fixed offline group members having "1 (100%)" health
- Fixed a major [Enhanced Guild Store] tooltip width issue
- Addon is automatically initialized if you turn the gamepad mode on during play
- no need to reload UI when switching between KB and gamepad now!
V1.58
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- Fixed the "Mark as Junk" item action not appearing
- Enabled the "Assign" button on the Quickslot panel in the Enhanced Inventory
- Fixed Guild Store Listings panel width issue
V1.57
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- Fixed a bug in ZOS' code to allow displaying individual stacks of items in tooltips!
- This fix makes selling stacks at the Guild Store *much* easier!
- Fixed "Split Stack" dialog in inventory
- Inventory categories are improved for armour, displaying the equip type, eg. "Chest", next to "Heavy" or "Medium"
- The stack number is now displayed next to the item name instead of as a seperate column
- Option to replace the inventory's "Value" with either MasterMerchant or dataDaedra's market price (the prices show up in yellow)
V1.55
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- Overhaul of the SavedVars system, which will enable future updates go much smoother!
- Causes the addon to reset to it's default values, so don't forget to re-enable the features you wish to use! :)
V1.51
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- Fixed SavedVariable issues. Your settings will be replaced with the default ones due to extreme changes in the recent versions.
V1.5
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- A completely redesigned Guild Store, which vastly improves upon the amount of information displayed
- dataDaedra integration (identical in my implementation to MM's, at vastly reduced resource usage! strongly recommend!)
- Fixed an issue where you couldn't "Use" quest items in the inventory
- Updated the API version to support the Thieves' Guild
V1.25
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- Altered the category list of the inventory to be identical to the keyboard's design (with an extra "All" category)
- New categories added: Consumables, Miscellaneous
V1.2
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- Major change to the interface's scale, now it will be a lot larger and easier to see! :)
V1.16
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- Fixed an issue where going into the Main Menu -> Inventory wouldn't allow you to use items
- Fixed an issue where you couldn't equip a necklace
V1.15
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- Redeveloped the Improved Inventory module to be compatible with other addons which use keybinds.
- Votan's Fisherman and Fish Fillet (among others) are now compatible with the new inventory!
- "General Interface" -> "Max Chat History Size" allows you to alter the buffer of the chat window
V1.1
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- New option (in the "Inventory" module) to reduce the font size of the LH tooltip, allowing you to see a lot more item information at once!
V1.05
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- Guild Store browse filter saving, with additional keybind "Left Stick Click" to reset them manually!
V1.01
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- Fixed empty "Junk" category crashing
V1.0
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- *Brand new Inventory interface* based on SkyUI, completely replacing the old Gamepad inventory
- Completely new modular design: each part of the mod is able to work independently, allowing you to completely customize the addon
- Mark as "Junk" functionality in the inventory, just like in the keyboard interface!
- Removed "Condensed GS listings" for future replacement :)
V0.69
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- Fixed non-updating reticleover unit frame text
V0.68
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- Fixed UI error on grouping
V0.67
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- Fixed "100/100 (100%)" displaying on the target frame when the option to display it is disabled.
V0.65
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- Group frame now has Character Name and health text
V0.61
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- Fixed crash when displaying "Ring" (no traits)
- Hides the trait tracker when the item doesn't have a trait
V0.6
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- The item tooltip now displays the item's style and whether the trait has been researched or can be used in research! The basics of a trait tracker have been scaffolded in :)
V0.51
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- Fixed an issue where the attribute bars wouldn't initialize correctly.
V0.5
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- Condensed guild store listings: much more information in one page!
- Can now swap A and X ("Sort" and "Select") in guild store, as having A = select is a lot more intuitive!
- Health, Stamina and Magicka attribute bar have text labels!
- All options toggle-able within Addon Settings!
V0.33
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- Fix location of health text (not over compass now!)
- Fix which allows the disabling of health text and doesn't disable the character name text
V0.32
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- Allow the health text functionality to be disabled (in Addon Settings -> BetterUI -> Target Frame Display)
V0.3
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- Health text display overlaid on the top of |
so they usually play down that flank. They don't really have a permanent right-winger – no single player has started there more than six times this season.
Stoke's right-sided is slightly more surprising, because Matthew Etherington has enjoyed a better campaign than Jermaine Pennant, and generally stays wide on the left. The right of the Stoke side is the one area of the team where places are up for grabs, so it's surprising so much of their play is focused down that flank.
Fulham's central tendencies have an obvious cause – the wide players generally come inside into the centre of the pitch, because few are natural wingers. Bryan Ruiz, Clint Dempsey and Moussa Dembélé are obvious examples, and even Damien Duff has been fielded more frequently on the right than the left, despite being left-footed. Fulham's style in this respect hasn't changed too much from their days under Roy Hodgson in 2009-10, despite changing coach twice since then.
Everton's reluctance to play down the centre owes much to playing so many passes down the left. Despite being a left-back, Leighton Baines is one of their more creative, technically gifted players, and playing through him is a key part of their approach. The return of Steven Pienaar maximises this effect.
Arsenal's right-sided bias was mentioned earlier, though it would be interesting to see how this has changed based upon which full-backs they've had available – their play down the flanks suffered significantly when they had to play centre-backs out of position there.
Blackburn's left-sided bias can be attributed to Junior Hoilett, their best attacking performer this season. Like Wolves, Blackburn don't have a permanent right-sided player, with no one starting more than eight games this season on the flank.
Finally, it's worth considering whether league position is related to attacking approach. This graph shows the top seven sides in green, the bottom five in red, and the eight other sides in orange (using the clear splits in the league table to form the three groupings):
Graph four. Image: Zonal Marking
It's notable that the sides in green are all broadly in the centre of the spectrum.
The three sides closest to the average (35%-29%-36%) are Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City. It's dangerous to form too many conclusions based upon a small sample size, but this may indicate that the best sides offer a threat from all three angles, and are less predictable than the likes of Wolves and Stoke.
This is an article from our Guardian Sport Network. To find out more about it, click here.
This blog first appeared on Zonal Marking.Saskatchewan is to have an election in three months, and Premier Brad Wall appears to have achieved the impossible: he’s still popular.
In fact, very popular. At 59% approval rating, he’s 31 points ahead of the nearest opposition. One pollster says the election has the look of a “cakewalk”.
Wall has been premier for eight years. He’s the most popular premier in Canada. He may be the only
popular premier in Canada. He’s the only remaining conservative premier as well, which makes it doubly remarkable. He won the 2011 election by a 32-point margin, which he could match when this year’s vote is held on April 4. While the country has been struggling through an avalanche of bad news, and governments have been falling left and right, he may be more popular than ever.
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How has he managed this remarkable feat? Prudence might have something to do with it. A sound grasp of the people he represents may be another. And personality could be a third. While being quizzed by a local columnist during a year-end interview, Wall laughingly started a response, “You jerk…”
Imagine any other premier being able to kid a journalist without sending the Internet into cardiac arrest. Imagine any other premier on good enough terms with the press to even try.
Wall is fortunate in leading a province with a resilient economy that benefited from the commodity boom and has managed to resist – so far – the worst effects of the bust. But his Saskatchewan Party deserves credit for refusing to pretend the good times would last forever. While the Tories in next-door Alberta were borrowing and spending their way into chronic deficits, Wall kept a wary enough eye on spending to keep the budget close to balance. The latest provincial update projects a deficit of $262 million, which pales next to neighbouring Alberta, which has four times the population but 22 times the shortfall.
His plans are for more of the same, promising a “Spartan campaign” in a recent CBC interview.
“We are not going to be making promises that we can’t pay for. Fiscal responsibility’s been a cornerstone for our government, it continues to be … and so we’re not going to make promises that would drive deficits to try to get elected.
That puts him at odds with just about every other leader in the country. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can’t wait to get borrowing so he can dole out the infrastructure funds. Ontario spends $1 billion a month on debt interest alone and is adding billions every year. Alberta’s NDP government aims to borrow even for operating expenses.
Wall was the only premier to insist that climate change policy must take into account the pain it causes people whose livelihood is severely impacted by the oil crunch. Saskatchewan similarly stands out from the other provinces in questioning Ottawa’s plan to expand the Canada Pension Plan, calling it “a payroll tax on the business community” that could cost jobs and hurt small businesses.
Saskatchewan plans to privatize 40 government liquor stores, but telephone and power utilities will remain publicly owned.
Wall says he’ll accept Saskatchewan’s share of Trudeau’s infrastructure money-pot, but wants to spend it on more pressing needs than transit. When Trudeau’s Liberals were pledging to hustle 25,000 Syrian refugees into the country by Christmas, he called for caution, which went against the mood at the time but has been borne out as the Liberal quota has been whittled away by practical realities.
He’s willing to take risks: rather than build a new natural gas power plant the province opted for the costlier $1.5 billion Boundary Dam carbon capture project – “the world’s first and largest commercial-scale CCS project of its kind” – which it hopes will make a viable case for the continued use of coal. But while Ontario is selling off its power distribution utility to make ends meet, Wall says Saskatchewan won’t be following suit. The party’s plans call for privatizing 40 government liquor stores, but telephone and power utilities will remain publicly owned.
Wall says it’s all essential to maintain growth. “Growth is our North Star,” he says. “We have a growth plan. That’s the lens through which we make decisions.” He argues for the diversity Alberta has long talked of, but never managed to achieve.
He also says there’s no chance he’ll be seeking the federal Conservative leadership, despite ongoing pressures. “I’m not running,” he told the Regina Leader-Post, and he’s not taking French lessons, despite what one Toronto paper claimed. He’s less forthcoming about whether a victory in April would be the start of his last term. Tipping his hand at this point wouldn’t be the prudent thing to do, and prudence has paid off in a big way since he was first elected in 2007. Why change the game plan now?
National Post
KellyMcParland<“What we’re saying is, other countries have to ask themselves some hard questions,” McMaster said. | AP Photo McMaster: U.S. eager for regime change in Syria By Colin Wilhelm By | 04/09/17 10:50 AM EDT
White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster says that while the U.S. would push for regime change in Syria, “We’re not the ones who are going to effect that change.”
“What we’re saying is, other countries have to ask themselves some hard questions,” McMaster said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday." “Russia should ask themselves, ‘What are we doing here?’ Why are we supporting this murderous regime that is committing mass murder of its own population and using the most heinous weapons available?’”
Story Continued Below
..
McMaster characterized Thursday’s U.S. airstrike on a Syrian airfield as an opportunity for Russia to reevaluate its continued support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, adding that addressing both Assad’s actions and routing ISIS could be done simultaneously.
“I think, as you saw with the strike, that there has to be a degree of simultaneous activity as well as sequencing of the defeat of ISIS first,” McMaster said. “What you have in Syria is a very destructive cycle of violence, perpetuated by ISIS, obviously, but also by this regime and their Iranian and Russian sponsors.”
Asked about reports that Syria’s government began conducting bombings using the same base struck by the U.S. on Thursday, McMaster pushed back.
Eliminating operations from the airfield was “not the objective,” he said. Rather, the U.S. Tomahawk missile strike was meant to be “a strong signal” to Syria not to use chemical weapons again.
U.S. goals in the region, McMaster said, are “the defeat of ISIS” and “a significant change in the nature of the Assad regime and its behavior in particular.”Krisztian Adorjan: Set to take in a loan spell in the Eredivisie
The 20-year-old midfielder has spent time training with the Eredivisie outfit this summer and a short-term deal has been mooted for some time.
Liverpool consider the Hungarian starlet to be a hot prospect for the future, but are aware that he needs regular games at a competitive level if he is to fulfil his potential.
With his route to the first team currently blocked at Anfield, a loan switch would appear to suit all parties.
Groningen are confident Adorjan will be with them for the 2013/14 campaign, with a deal having been struck with Liverpool.
All that is required now is for the player to agree to a switch, with talks planned early this week.
Groningen general director Hans Nijland posted on his personal Twitter account: "Krisztian Adorjan will re-join our first team squad on Monday.
"There is an agreement with Liverpool and now negotiations with Adorjan have to take place."all human knowledge for posterity. It is all-important. Preservingfor posterity.
This page, a catalogue of catalogues of all human knowledge, is only 316,657 bytes in size. It can be stored on a 5¼-inch floppy disk
The 1 billionth edit for all Wikimedia projects took place on April 16, 2010. ( )
The idea of compiling all human knowledge in a single work, although not in a single place,[3] is highly seductive. In this project, we attempt to study how many articles are needed to cover the sum of all human knowledge. As of 25 February 2019, English Wikipedia has 5,810,588 articles and Wikidata includes 27,721,774 items.[4] This page still in expansion estimates that the total notable articles figure is over 104,701,020. At current creation rate, 8,000 new items per day,[5] Wikidata singularity will occur in 2040s, in the same date range of technological singularity.[6] It will be the first time in history that all human knowledge is stored in a machine-readable format and ready to be consumed, understood and used by computers or any device.
“ This is a work that cannot be completed except by a society of men of letters and skilled workmen, each working separately on his own part, but all bound together solely by their zeal for the best interests of the human race and a feeling of mutual good will. ” — Denis Diderot, L'Encyclopédie (1751–1766)
Many individuals devoted their lifes to different efforts of knowledge compilation and preservation. Some inspiring cases are Vivian Maier, a nanny that took 150,000 photographs during her lifetime primarily of people and architecture;[7] Paul Mawhinney, who archived a copy of every sold album growing a 3 million vinyl collection;[8] Henry Spencer, a computer scientist that preserved over 2 million Usenet messages onto magnetic tapes[9] or Marion Stokes, who recorded hundreds of thousands of hours of television news footage spanning 35 years.[10]
Before Wikipedia, there were many attemps to compile all human knowledge in a single work. Some examples sorted by date include:
Also, hypothetical cases exist:
There are imaginary examples:
Furthermore, there are thousands of archives, libraries and museums all over the world preserving human knowledge in several formats: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings and more. Some of the largest ones are: the British Library in the United Kingdom (170 million items[11]), the Library of Congress in the United States (155 million items[12]), the Russian State Library in Russia (43 million items[13]), the National Diet Library in Japan (35 million items[14]), the National Library of China (31 million items[15]) and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (31 million items[16]).
“ There is no practical obstacle whatever now to the creation of an efficient index to all human knowledge, ideas and achievements, to the creation, that is, of a complete planetary memory for all mankind. ” — H. G. Wells, World Brain: The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopaedia (1937)
This project is focused in those entities which are notable and deserve an article in Wikipedia. For completeness of sister projects, see § Sister projects. For an estimate about lost knowledge, see § Destroyed knowledge and Wikipedia:There is a deadline. There is available a userbox {{User All Human Knowledge}} and a shortcut WP:AHK.
You are welcome to improve this page, be bold!
Summary [ edit ]
Arts [ edit ]
The arts are composed of many endeavors (or artforms) united by their employment of the human creative impulse.
Architecture [ edit ]
Architecture (Latin architectura, from the Greek ἀρχιτέκτων – arkhitekton, from ἀρχι- "chief" and τέκτων "builder, carpenter, mason") is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements.
Note: some of these items may overlap
Monuments [ edit ]
A monument is a type of structure either explicitly created to commemorate a person or important event or which has become important to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, or simply as an example of historic architecture.
For more monuments figures, see Commons:Monuments database/Statistics. For a map, see Wiki Loves Monuments map.
Cinema and television [ edit ]
A film is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects. The process of filmmaking has developed into an art form and industry. See also Category:Film-related lists.
This section excludes biographies.
Crafts [ edit ]
A craft is a branch of a profession that requires some particular kind of skilled work. In historical sense, particularly as pertinent to the Medieval history and earlier, the term is usually applied towards people occupied in small-scale production of goods. See also Outline of crafts and Category:Glossaries of crafts.
Literature [ edit ]
Literature (from Latin litterae (plural); letter) is the art of written works. The word literature literally means: "things made from letters". Literature is commonly classified as having two major forms—fiction and non-fiction—and two major techniques—poetry and prose.
Theatres are counted in #Architecture.
This section excludes biographies and libraries.
Performing arts [ edit ]
Performing arts are a form of art in which artists use their voices and/or their bodies, often in relation to other objects, to convey artistic expression. It is different from visual arts, which is when artists use paint/canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Performing arts include several disciplines, each performed in front of a live audience.
Visual arts [ edit ]
Visual arts are a form of art in which artists use paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects.
Geography [ edit ]
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. This section covers every human geography settlement and every physical geography location in the world.
See also Category:Geography-related lists, Category:Lists of places, GEOnet Names Server[73] and Geonames.[74]
Worldwide density of geotagged Wikipedia entries
Worldwide density of GeoNames entries
Human geography [ edit ]
Human geography is the branch of the social sciences that deals with the study of people and their communities, cultures, economies and interaction with the environment by noticing their relations with and across space and place.[75] As an intellectual discipline, geography is divided into the sub-fields of physical geography and human geography, the latter concentrating upon the study of human activities, by the application of qualitative and quantitative research methods.
Africa [ edit ]
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most-populous continent. At about 30.3 million km² (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers six per cent of Earth's total surface area and 20.4 per cent of its total land area. With 1.1 billion people as of 2013, it accounts for about 15% of the world's human population. The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, both the Suez Canal and the Red Sea along the Sinai Peninsula to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos. It contains 54 fully recognized sovereign states (countries), nine territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition.
Africa hosts a large diversity of ethnicities, cultures and languages. In the late 19th century European countries colonized most of Africa. Africa also varies greatly with regard to environments, economics, historical ties and government systems. However, most present states in Africa originate from a process of decolonization in the 20th century.
Asia [ edit ]
Asia
Asia is Earth's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres and sharing the continental landmass of Eurasia with the continent of Europe. Asia covers an area of 44,579,000 square kilometres (17,212,000 sq mi), about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population,[77] was the site of many of the first civilizations. Asia is notable for not only its overall large size and population, but also dense and large settlements as well as vast barely populated regions within the continent of 4.4 billion people. Asia has 49 recognized states, 5 partially recognized and unrecognized states and 6 dependent territories and other territories.
Given its size and diversity, the concept of Asia—a name dating back to classical antiquity—may actually have more to do with human geography than physical geography.[78] Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties and government systems. It also has a mix of many different climates ranging from the equatorial south via the hot desert in the Middle East, temperate areas in the east and the extremely continental centre to vast subarctic and polar areas in Siberia.
Europe [ edit ]
Europe
Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. The eastern boundary with Asia is a historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them; Europe is generally considered as separated from Asia by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways of the Turkish Straits.
Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the migration period, marked the end of ancient history and the beginning of an era known as the Middle Ages. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era. From the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at various times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania, and the majority of Asia.
Europe has 50 recognised states, 6 partially recognised states, 6 dependent territories and 2 special areas of internal sovereignty.
North America [ edit ]
North America
North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea.
North America has 23 sovereign states, 11 dependent territories and 16 other areas.
South America [ edit ]
South America
South America is a continent located in the western hemisphere, mostly in the southern hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the northern hemisphere. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east by the Atlantic Ocean; North America and the Caribbean Sea lie to the northwest.
Most of the population lives near the continent's western or eastern coasts while the interior and the far south are sparsely populated. The geography of western South America is dominated by the Andes mountains; in contrast, the eastern part contains both highland regions and large lowlands where rivers such as the Amazon, Orinoco, and Paraná flow. Most of the continent lies in the tropics.
The continent's cultural and ethnic outlook has its origin with the interaction of indigenous peoples with European conquerors and immigrants and, more locally, with African slaves. Given a long history of colonialism, the overwhelming majority of South Americans speak Portuguese or Spanish, and societies and states commonly reflect Western traditions.
South America has 13 sovereign states, 2 dependent territories and 1 integral territories of states outside of South America.
Oceania [ edit ]
Oceania
Oceania is a region centred on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. The term was coined as Océanie circa 1812 by geographer Conrad Malte-Brun. The history of Oceania in the medieval period was synonymous with the history of the indigenous peoples of Australasia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia. The arrival of European settlers in subsequent centuries resulted in a significant alteration in the social and political landscape of Oceania.
Opinions of what constitutes Oceania range from its three subregions of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia to, more broadly, the entire insular region between Southeast Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago.
Oceania has 14 sovereign states, 2 states not members of the United Nations and 26 other territories.
Antarctica [ edit ]
Antarctica
Antarctica is Earth's southernmost continent. It contains the geographic South Pole and is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean.
Physical geography [ edit ]
Physical geography is that branch of natural science which deals with the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and geosphere, as opposed to the cultural or built environment, the domain of human geography.
Canals and navigations are human-made channels for water conveyance (supply), or to service water transport vehicles.
and are human-made channels for water conveyance (supply), or to service water transport vehicles. A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter.
or is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants.
is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees.
, also referred to as a or the, is an area with a high density of trees. A glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation (melting and sublimation) over many years, often centuries.
is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation (melting and sublimation) over many years, often centuries. An island is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water.
is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. A lake is a body of relatively still fresh or salt water of considerable size, localized in a basin, that is surrounded by land.
is a body of relatively still fresh or salt water of considerable size, localized in a basin, that is surrounded by land. A mountain is a large landform that stretches above the surrounding land in a limited area usually in the form of a peak.
is a large landform that stretches above the surrounding land in a limited area usually in the form of a peak. A river is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river. There are 17 countries without rivers.
is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river. There are 17 countries without rivers. A sea generally refers to a large body of salt water.
History [ edit ]
History (from Greek ίστορία - historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation") is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. See also Outline of history.
GLAM [ edit ]
GLAM is an acronym for "galleries, libraries, archives, and museums", although other versions of the acronym exist, such as LAM, which incorporates only libraries, archives, and museums. More generally, GLAMs are publicly funded, publicly accountable institutions collecting cultural heritage materials.
An archive is an accumulation of historical records, or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of that person or organization.
A library is an organized collection of information resources made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing. It provides physical or digital access to material, and may be a physical building or room, or a virtual space, or both.
A museum is an institution that cares for (conserves) a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary.
For books and publications, see § Literature
Science [ edit ]
Science – systematic effort of acquiring knowledge—through observation and experimentation coupled with logic and reasoning to find out what can be proved or not proved—and the knowledge thus acquired. The word "science" comes from the Latin word "scientia" meaning knowledge.
Astronomy [ edit ]
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects (such as stars, planets, comets, nebulae, star clusters and galaxies) and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth (such as the cosmic background radiation). It is concerned with the evolution, physics, chemistry, meteorology, and motion of celestial objects, as well as the formation and development of the universe.
Space exploration is the discovery and exploration of outer space by means of space technology. Physical exploration of space is conducted both by human spaceflights and by robotic spacecraft.
Biology [ edit ]
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. See also Category:Biology lists.
For zoos and aquaria, see § Architecture
Chemistry and physics [ edit ]
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. See also Category:Chemistry lists.
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter. See also Index of physics articles, Outline of physics and Category:Physics-related lists.
Health [ edit ]
Health is the level of functional or metabolic efficiency of a living being. In humans, it is the general condition of a person's mind and body, usually meaning to be free from illness, injury or pain. See also Category:Health-related lists.
Hospitals are counted in #Architecture.
Mathematics [ edit ]
Mathematics (from Greek μάθημα máthēma "knowledge, study, learning") is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. See also Outline of mathematics and Lists of mathematics topics.
Planetary science [ edit ]
Earth and planetary sciences are the sciences that study the material and dynamics of Earth and other celestial bodies.
Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. See also Index of meteorology articles.
Society [ edit ]
A society is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. See also Index of sociology articles and Category:Society-related lists.
Technology [ edit ]
Technology is the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, modifications, arrangements and procedures. Technologies significantly affect human as well as other animal species' ability to control and adapt to their natural environments. See also Category:Technology-related lists.
Special pages [ edit ]
Further knowledge [ edit ]
Some further knowledge and estimates.
Destroyed knowledge [ edit ]
Practically every day, distinct forms of knowledge are lost forever and no copies are available. When a natural disaster hits a region or a war breaks out, libraries, archives, museums, monuments and other artifacts of heritage, valuable buildings, incunabula and unique objects are destroyed or face the threat of destruction. These events usually remove pieces of human knowledge and sometimes entire cultures.
Furthermore, hundreds of websites are closed every day on the Internet. Web archiving initiatives like Internet Archive or WebCitation and volunteers groups like Archive Team save copies of some of them, but much others are lost forever.
There is a deadline. This is a battle against time.
See also book burning (incidents), lost films, lost objects, lost work (cat), lost artworks, List of destroyed libraries (WWII), the Digital dark age and Historical revisionism (negationism). And finally Deletionpedia (deletionism).
Knowledge organization [ edit ]
The original "figurative system of human knowledge" tree, in French.
Lists of missing articles [ edit ]
Many users compile huge lists of missing encyclopedic and notable articles to be developed (search results for intitle:missing articles). If you have any list plenty of red links, please add yourself:
See progress for WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles.
New knowledge [ edit ]
These are some estimations of new knowledge generated every year:
New albums in US: 75,000 (2010), 96,100 (2009), 106,000 (2008), 76,000 (2006) [68]
New books globally: 2.2 million approx [229] (See Books published per country per year)
(See Books published per country per year) New notable persons, people in office, etc.
New events: some recurring (elections, awards, sports competitions, etc.), some spontaneous (disasters, wars, etc.)
New scientific discoveries: species, astronomical objects (planets, stars, solar systems, asteroids, comets), particles, mathematical principles, etc.
New inventions
New institutions, campaigns, and organizations
New social trends, cultural movements, theories, philosophies, and perspectives
New discoveries of human and natural history: pre-history of the universe, decoding of old languages (e.g. Linear A and Linear B), archaeological discovery of artifacts and manuscripts, fossils of extinct species, geological insight into the Earth's formation, etc.
Please, add more
Preservation [ edit ]
Wikimedia projects aims to compile all human knowledge, they are focused in the quantity and quality of the contents, but what about preservation? How are we going to preserve all the knowledge for the future generations? There are several organizations working on the preservation of information and weak heritage, some of them are the following:
Sister projects [ edit ]
Sections aboved are focused in those entities which are notable for Wikipedia. Sister projects include the following ones.
TODO: stats by sister project, langs, wikidata sitelinks, structure data for commons, wikidata wiktionary lemmas, etc, the future!
5.3M geolocated images in Wikimedia Commons. As you can see, some areas coverage is highly biased
Some examples [ edit ]
If you don't think that there are still millions of missing topics, here you have some odd examples. Add yours!
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Academia
Documentaries
Essays
News
OtherUS Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday phoned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and apologized to him in the name of the Obama administration for the comments made by an anonymous US official who called the prime minister “a chickenshit.”
On Thursday, Kerry had publicly distanced himself from the comments, stressing that neither he nor US President Barack Obama were behind the remarks, which he said were “disgraceful, unacceptable, and damaging.”
American officials were quoted Friday night as saying that the Kerry-Netanyahu phone call was a “good conversation” and that they discussed ways to improve relations between the US and Israeli leaderships. The two were also said to have discussed other regional issues, including efforts to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions. (Kerry said later Friday that the gaps between the P5+1 and Iran had narrowed ahead of a November 24 deadline on a deal. “We’re closer than we were a week ago or 10 weeks ago,” Kerry said in an interview Friday, “but we’re still with big gaps.”)
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Nonetheless, analysts on both of Israel’s main news shows Friday night, on Channels 2 and 10, said ties between the American and Israeli leaderships were extremely bad — with a Channel 10 commentator speaking of “unprecedented loathing” between the two administrations.
Kerry also telephoned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday, to discuss the escalating tension in Jerusalem. On Thursday, Kerry had urged Israel to reopen the Temple Mount compound — which was closed for the day after the attempted assassination of right-wing activist Yehudah Glick, and the killing of Glick’s alleged shooter Mutaz Hijazi — and warned against any changes to the status quo at the contested site. Israel reopened the compound to worshippers on Friday.
The anti-Netanyahu comments were published Tuesday by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in the American magazine The Atlantic, in an article which portrayed the rift between the United States and Israel as a “full-blown crisis.”
Speaking at a forum hosted by The Atlantic on Thursday, Kerry condemned “anybody who uses language such as was used in this article,” and added that the vulgar comment expressed by the unnamed official did not reflect the views of either Obama or his administration.
On Wednesday the White House also denounced the derogatory remarks against Netanyahu, saying the comments had the potential to cause serious harm to Israel-US relations.
“Certainly, that’s not the administration’s view, and we think such comments are inappropriate and counterproductive,” said National Security Council spokesman Alistair Baskey, according to the Washington political journal The Hill. “Prime Minister Netanyahu and the president have forged an effective partnership, and consult closely and frequently, including earlier this month when the president hosted the prime minister in the Oval Office.”
The Atlantic report quoted a senior Obama administration official calling Netanyahu “a chickenshit,” with Goldberg adding that officials had previously called the prime minister “recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and ‘Aspergery.’” He said US officials increasingly see the Israeli leader as acting out of a “near-pathological desire for career-preservation,” rather than in Israel’s national interest.
Netanyahu rejected the criticism Wednesday, saying in the Knesset plenum that he was “personally attacked purely because I defend Israel, and despite all the attacks against me, I will continue to defend our country; I will continue to defend the citizens of Israel.”
Lazar Berman and AFP contributed to this report.WASHINGTON - Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is responsible for lead contamination in Flint, Michigan's water supply and would likely face criminal charges if he were running a business, a Democratic lawmaker said Thursday.
"There is no doubt in my mind that if a corporate CEO did what Governor Snyder's administration has done, he would be hauled up on criminal charges," Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said of the Republican governor.
"The board of directors would throw him out. And the shareholders would revolt," Cummings said.
Snyder told the panel at a contentious hearing that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality repeatedly gave him assurances that water being piped in from the Flint River was safe, when in reality it had dangerous levels of lead.
Complete Coverage: Flint Water Crisis
But Cummings said the governor should have done more to push back against state experts. The committee has obtained documents "showing that people all around the governor were sounding the alarms, but he either ignored them or didn't hear them," Cummings said, citing emails showing that Snyder's top legal adviser warned in October 2014 that Flint should "get back on the Detroit (water) system" as soon as possible "before this thing gets too far out of control."
Watch: Rep. Cartwright tells Gov. Snyder to resign over Flint water crisisA CAMPAIGNER has appeared in court charged with threatening a judge who gave the go-ahead to evict a campsite of independence supporters from outside Holyrood.
Lord Turnbull was allegedly threatened with being hunted down and executed, along with the Queen, in a legal statement issued by a group supporting a second referendum.
It followed the judge’s decision at the Court of Session in July that backed the Scottish Parliament’s Corporate Body’s attempts to evict the group.
Read more: Bob Dylan biographer speaks out over Nobel Prize snub claims
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