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. THE FOLLOWING OPTICS ARE AUTHORIZED FOR ART:
ITEM/NOMENCLATURE TAMCN
AN/PVQ-31A RCO, RIFLE,
COMBAT OPTIC (A4) E1710
AN/PVQ-31B RCO, RIFLE,
COMBAT OPTIC (M4) E0017
SPECTER DR,
ELCAN OPTIC (CQBW) SFE16
SU-258/PVQ SDO,
SQUAD DAY OPTIC (M27) E0082
AN/PEQ-15 ATPIAL E1798
AN/PEQ-16A MIPIM E0058
AN/PSQ-18A (M203) E1779
8. THE FOLLOWING WEAPON ATTACHMENT IS AUTHORIZED:
ITEM/NOMENCLATURE TAMCN
M203A2 GRENADE LAUNCHER E0892
9. THE FOLLOWING US SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND (USSOCOM) APPROVED UPPER RECEIVER GROUPS (URG) ARE AUTHORIZED FOR ART:
ITEM/NOMENCLATURE NSN/PART NUMBER TAMCN
URG 10.3” BARREL 109001D120980 SFE09
URG 10.25” BARREL 109001D120982 SFE09
URG 14.4” BARREL 109001D120984 SFE09
10. THE FOLLOWING MODULAR ATTACHMENTS ARE AUTHORIZED FOR ART:
ITEM/NOMENCLATURE NSN/PART NUMBER WEAPON SYSTEMS
MAGAZINE, CARTRIDGE
(TAN FOLLOWER)** 1005015617200 M16A4, M4, M4A1, M27
MAGAZINE, CARTRIDGE
(GREEN FOLLOWER)** 1005009215004 M16A4, M4, M4A1, M27
SLING, SMALL ARMS
(VICKERS TWO POINT)*** 1005-016-040-627 M16A4, M4, M4A1, M27
SLING, 3-POINT COMBAT 8465015248847 M16A4, M4, M4A1
BUIS, KNIGHTS ARMAMENT
200-600M 1005014996868 M16A4, M4, M4A1
BUIS, KNIGHTS ARMAMENT
200-600M 1005015815324 M16A4, M4, M4A1
BUIS, KNIGHTS ARMAMENT
300M 1005014496306 M4, M4A1
BUIS, MATECH 600M 1005014848000 M16A4, M4, M4A1
SIGHT, FRONT FLIP LOW 1005014731410 M27
GRIP, RIFLE 1005014536655 M16A4, M4, M4A1, M27
GRIP POD, RIFLE 1005015411772 M16A4, M4, M4A1
GRIP, GRENADE LAUNCHER 1010015790712 M203
BIPOD IWNS-911/3A703 M27
FLASHLIGHT**** 6230015523289 M16A4, M4, M4A1, M27
SUPPRESSOR 1005014370324 M4A1 (CQBW) ONLY
**NOTE: THESE ARE THE ONLY TESTED, APPROVED, AND AUTHORIZED MAGAZINES FOR USE IN THE WEAPONS INDICATED FOR BOTH TRAINING AND COMBAT.
***NOTE: THIS IS THE MARINE CORPS COMMON WEAPONS SLING. THE WEB SLING IS NO LONGER AUTHORIZED FOR ANNUAL TRAINING; THE THREE POINT SLING WILL BE AUTHORIZED UNTIL UNITS COMPLETE A FULL REPLACEMENT WITH THE COMMON WEAPONS SLING.
****NOTE: THE VISIBLE LIGHT ILLUMINATOR (VLI) (AN/PVS 29) IS THE PROGRAM OF RECORD WHITE LIGHT FOR THE M16A4 AND M4 RIFLES, SIMILAR WEAPONS MOUNTED FLASHLIGHTS ARE ALSO AUTHORIZED.
11. THE FOLLOWING ARE AUTHORIZED MODIFICATIONS:
ITEM/NOMENCLATURE NSN/PART NUMBER MI NUMBER
TACTICAL LATCH,
CHARGING HANDLE 1005015237358 MI-1005-OR/1
M84 “GAS BUSTER”
CHARGING HANDLE 1005015370026 MI-05538/10012A-OR/1A
ACTUATOR, GUN SAFETY
(AMBIDEXTROUS) 1005015369963 MI-05538/10012A-OR/1A
MAGAZINE RELEASE
(AMBIDEXTROUS) 1005015376498 MI-05538/10012A-OR/1A
ADJUSTABLE BUTTSTOCK
(M16A4) KIT 100501569638 N/A
12. IN KEEPING WITH THE “TRAIN AS YOU FIGHT” METHODOLOGY, IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT MARINES KNOW HOW TO PROPERLY AND EFFECTIVELY ARRANGE AND MOUNT THE MODULAR ATTACHMENTS. IMPROPER MOUNTING CAN LEAD TO LOSS AND IMPROPER ARRANGEMENT CAN LEAD TO ONE DEVICE INTERFERING WITH ANOTHER. PROPER PCC/PCI DURING TRAINING WILL ENSURE THIS DOES NOT BECOME A COMBAT LIABILITY.
13. THE RECENTLY PROCURED GLOCK 19 LISTED IN PARAGRAPH 4 IS AUTHORIZED (MARSOC UNITS). THE NEW PISTOL HAS A “Q” TAM (Q0009) AS IT IS A SOCOM ASSET. STANDARDIZED HOLSTERS FOR THIS ITEM ARE PENDING SOURCE SELECTION. COMMAND APPROVED HOLSTERS ARE AUTHORIZED FOR THIS ITEM UNTIL SOURCE SELECTION IS COMPLETE.
14. GRIP POD, RIFLE NSN: 1005015411772 FOR THE SERVICE RIFLE/CARBINE AND BIPOD P/N: IWNS-911/3A703 FOR THE M27 IAR ARE AUTHORIZED TO BE ATTACHED TO THE WEAPON BUT THE LEGS OF THE GRIP POD AND BIPOD WILL NOT BE USED FOR SUPPORT DURING TABLE 1 IN ACCORDANCE WITH REF E.
15. WEAPONS TRAINING BATTALION QUANTICO, MPMS WILL RELEASE THIS MESSAGE ANNUALLY TO UPDATE THE AUTHORIZED WEAPONS, OPTICS AND MODULAR ATTACHMENTS REQUIRED FOR ANNUAL RIFLE AND PISTOL TRAINING.
16. CONTACT THE POC WITH ANY QUESTIONS OR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION.
17. RELEASE AUTHORIZED BY LIEUTENANT GENERAL KENNETH J. GLUECK JR., CG, MCCDC.//Smartphone service dead spots could be a thing of the past by year's end for thousands of daily CTA riders in Blue and Red Line tunnels, under a $32.5 million deal set to be announced Friday.
The 20-year agreement calls for four major wireless providers to pay for the installation, operation and maintenance of the latest-generation 4G communications technology, starting on the Blue Line to accommodate travelers going between O'Hare International Airport and downtown.
T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon are banking on strong revenue growth from wireless broadband, because data usage is increasingly overtaking voice as the primary source of traffic on mobile networks.
The move to 4G has been awaited by riders who don't want to stop streaming movies, uploading selfies or performing other data-intensive tasks for even a few train stops — even if the seatmates of those commuters might not be as thrilled by the availability of continuous telephone service underground. (For that etiquette problem, the CTA will launch an already-planned rider courtesy campaign in the spring.)
But there is no escaping that "people are using the transit system as a second office, communicating with work or family as they commute,'' CTA President Forrest Claypool said Thursday. "This will help make that easier for our customers."
Roughly 180,000 riders on an average weekday pass through the Red and Blue Line subways, according to the CTA.
The new, upgraded service will be phased in station by station, providing faster and more reliable voice and data transmission throughout the 22 miles of tunnels on the CTA's two most heavily used rail lines, said John Flynn, CTA vice president of technology.
In addition, safety officials said the enhanced technology will help improve communications during emergencies between first responders and CTA personnel.
City officials said Chicago will be the largest U.S. public transit system with 4G coverage in all subway stations and tunnels, and that 4G offers a competitive advantage that will help attract new businesses.
"Companies want people working while they are working, but also working while they get to work,'' Mayor Rahm Emanuel said of the project Thursday. "This is a transformative deal, at no cost to commuters yet a convenience for commuters.''
The existing 2G service in CTA subways, which dates to 2005 — before most smartphones and tablets were introduced — will be deactivated when the 4G service is fully functional, which is expected at the end of this year, Flynn said.
"Talking, streaming, downloading, emailing. However the consumer wants to use the phone, they will have that superfast experience,'' said Jennifer Silveira, vice president of engineering for T-Mobile's central region.
The $32.5 million agreement was brokered by the Chicago Infrastructure Trust, according to the Emanuel administration. The trust was created in 2012 to provide alternative financing and broader options for the city to take on major infrastructure projects.
T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint will pay for the entire upgrade related to the design and construction of a distributed antenna system capable of supporting 4G wireless networks and mobile devices, officials said. Installation started in early January on the southbound tracks of the State Street tunnel, which serves the Red Line, CTA spokesman Brian Steele said.
The CTA last year awarded a $19 million contract to Aldridge Electric Inc., based in Libertyville, to start installing the more robust 4G system. The new agreement with the four wireless carriers covers those earlier costs, officials said, and it will create about 50 jobs.
The wireless companies are expected to reap millions in additional profits from increased data charges to customers on CTA trains. The 4G service, while providing more reliable wireless service in general, is geared toward facilitating data transmission for Internet connectivity, email and large data files such as photos, videos and spreadsheets.
The companies will pay the CTA a flat amount each year — starting at $500,000 and rising 3 percent a year over the life of the contract — to lease space in the subway tunnels to run the 4G service, Claypool said. The CTA will also save roughly $400,000 a year by no longer having to pay maintenance costs for the wireless network, he said.
It's less revenue than what has been collected under the CTA's current wireless network contract, which generates about $1.8 million a year to the agency.
Claypool defended the new agreement, saying, "The big benefit to CTA is the capital cost avoidance'' of not having to pay for the design and installation of the new system.
jhilkevitch@tribpub.com
Twitter @jhilkevitchJoan Bryden, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA -- Conservative MPs have thwarted a bid to ensure that dying Liberal MP Mauril Belanger gets to realize his dream of a gender-neutral national anthem.
Fellow Liberals, with the help of New Democrats, tried two procedural manoeuvres Friday to expedite passage of Belanger's private member's bill, which would change the second line of O Canada from, "true patriot love, in all thy sons command" to "in all of us command."
But Tory MPs blocked both.
They put up enough speakers to fill the first hour of allotted debate on the bill, rather than let the debate run out and thereby force a second reading vote next week.
Liberal MP Greg Fergus sought unanimous consent to continue the debate for another hour -- which would have had the same effect of forcing a vote next week -- but Conservative MPs refused to give it.
As a result, the bill is unlikely to be debated again or put to a vote before the fall, although there are still some procedural manoeuvres that could be tried to speed things up.
"I'm angry beyond belief," Fergus said later of the Tory tactics.
With overwhelming support from Liberals and New Democrats, Fergus said the Conservatives are simply delaying the inevitable. Belanger's bill, or another just like it, will eventually pass and the only thing the Tories blocked Friday was an attempt to ensure that it happens "while Mauril is able to enjoy it."
Tory MP Andrew Scheer denied the Conservatives tried to hold up the bill, saying they treated it the same way as they would any other private member's bill.
"I think it's an unfair characterization to say blocked, there's a normal process that these private member's bills follow," Scheer said in a phone interview.
"There was nothing unusual about the way this bill was treated."
Scheer, a former House of Commons Speaker, accused the Liberals of using Belanger's illness to politicize a bill that proposes a change that would concern many Canadians.
"It really does seem unfortunate that some people are trying to play politics about this because we're dealing with someone with a very tragic situation," said Scheer, who opposes the bill.
"This is a bill that actually changes something very important to... most Canadians and if members want to speak to it, they have the right to do that."
Belanger has deteriorated quickly since he was first diagnosed last November with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis -- an incurable, fatal neurodegenerative disease, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease.
He showed up in the Commons on Friday in a wheelchair to launch second reading debate of his bill. He looked noticeably thinner. His collar was loosened to accommodate a tube that's been inserted in his trachea to help him breath and keep his lungs clear of fluid. He spoke briefly, using a tablet computer that converts text into computerized speech.
Belanger argued that his proposed change to two words in the English lyrics of O Canada would actually return the anthem closer to the original "thou dost in us command" -- wording that was changed to "all thy sons" in 1913, presumably to honour men in the armed forces at the approach to World War I.
Since then, he said, women have won the right to vote, to run for office and to die in combat as members of the military.
"Our anthem should not ignore the increasingly important contribution of 52 per cent of our population," he said.
Belanger, who received a standing ovation, was the only Liberal to speak during the debate. The NDP similarly put up only one speaker, Sheila Malcomson, who said every New Democrat she knows is proud to support Belanger's bill.
However, the Conservatives filled the remaining debate time with speaker after speaker opposed to the bill, although each prefaced their remarks with praise for Belanger's courage and determination.
"Rewriting the lyrics of our national anthem in the name of political correctness goes too far," said Manitoba Tory Larry Maguire.
He suggested passing Belanger's bill would set a precedent that could to lead to dropping the anthem's reference to God "so that Canadians who are agnostic and atheist feel included." Or it could spark changes to other national symbols, such as replacing the beaver with a "less destructive" national animal.
Other Conservatives argued that their constituents don't want to change O Canada, noting that their own government proposed a gender neutral anthem in 2010 but had to back down in the face of a public backlash.PSG want to lure Manchester United teenager Adnan Januzaj to Paris [GETTY]
United are bracing themselves for a big-money bid from PSG for Januzaj this summer, but are insistent he will not be sold.
The 19-year-old has become a key part of David Moyes' side, making 24 appearances this season.
And Moyes is desperate to keep Januzaj at United despite PSG's determination to lure him to France.
Januzaj has emerged at Old Trafford under David Moyes [GETTY]
PSG boss Laurent Blanc made a £15million offer for the winger in January, with the Ligue 1 outfit ready to up that bid to £40m.
Express Sport understands PSG are prepared to offer Januzaj a contract worth £100,000-a-week, £70,000-a-week more than his existing deal.
However, United have no intention of selling the Belgian-born starlet, who is happy in Manchester.
Januzaj's current contract at Old Trafford runs until 2018.The Trump administration is pointing to a large federal roundup of members of the violent gang MS-13 as vindication of increased enforcement efforts and reason to change the policy on unaccompanied minor illegal immigrants.
The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security announced a joint effort that led to the arrest of 214 gang members and those involved with gang-related crime.
MS-13 is an international criminal gang that spread throughout Central America into the United States—in largely urban centers such as Los Angeles, Boston, New York City, and into Toronto, Canada. The organization’s motto is “mata, viola, controla,” which means, “kill, rape, control.”
Of the 214, just 16 were U.S. citizens while 198 were foreign nationals. Of the foreign nationals, only five were in the country legally. Among those arrested, 64 entered the country as unaccompanied alien children, but most are now adults, according to the Trump administration.
During a press conference Thursday announcing the arrests, Tom Homan, deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, noted the 2008 law on unaccompanied minors does not allow them to be immediately returned to their country of origin.
“The agencies sent up a series of policy requests to the Hill to address a lot of issues to further control the border and illegal immigration,” Homan said. “Some of these policies are being exploited and used by criminal organizations. That’s why that’s one of the policy issues we asked Congress to look at and help us with.”
The multi-state, multi-federal agency program was called “Operation Raging Bull.”
The current law states that unaccompanied minors from countries other than Canada or Mexico aren’t subject to expedited removal, but the minors are promptly released into the United States upon arrival at the border. The Department of Homeland Security transfers custody to the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement within 72 hours. That office must promptly release the minor to relatives or other sponsors, according to the White House. In some cases, the sponsors were criminals who abused law.
Of the total immigration hearings for unaccompanied minors that came to the United States between 2014 and 2016, 12,977 cases out of 31,091 completed ended in removal, according to a Congressional Research Service report in January. Out of those removals, 11,528, or 89 percent, did not show up for their hearing to make their case against removal proceedings, and often remained in the country.
Also, more than half of the unaccompanied minors that came into the United States in 2014 and 2015 were 16 or 17 years old, according to the Government Accountability Office in a February 2016 report.
Out of the 214 arrested, 93 were charged with crimes including murder, aggravated robbery, racketeering, narcotics trafficking, narcotics possession, firearms offenses, domestic violence, assault, forgery, drunken driving, and illegal entry/re-entry. The remaining 121 were arrested on administrative immigration violations, according to the Justice Department.
“With more than 10,000 members across 40 states, MS-13 is one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in the United States today,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “President Trump has ordered the Department of Justice to reduce crime and take down transnational criminal organizations, and we will be relentless in our pursuit of these objectives. That’s why I have ordered our drug trafficking task forces to use every law available to arrest, prosecute, convict, and defund MS-13. And we are getting results.”TLC’s new show that started September 5 shows people with a compulsion toward a particular food, meaning they eat only one item - like cheeseburgers, french fries or pizzas - all the time.
On the upcoming shows, a 29-year-old mother eats only french fries and a 34 year-old diabetic is addicted to cheeseburgers. In “Freaky Eaters,” psychotherapist Dr. Mike Dow and nutrition specialist J.J. Virgin, intervene to figure out what compels the finicky eaters to obsess over the same food.
Dr. Ovidio Bermudez, the medical director for Child and Adolescent Services at the Eating Recovery Center, said he hasn’t heard much about this type of behavior in adults.
“Usually it’s a problem with children with extremely picky eating,” said Bermudez, a past president of the National Eating Disorders Association.
CNN's Eatocracy on Routine Repasts
Children who usually stick to just one type of food have suffered some sort of emotional disturbances or have fears of vomiting or choking that compels them to stick to one food. They usually outgrow this.
“It’s rare to see adults with that narrow of menu choices,” Bermudez said. “It’s almost unheard of.”
The average person cycles through his or her menu every 10 days, meaning an average lover of pizza might eat the item once every 10 days. Some people cycle through the menu less frequently by eating something every 20 days instead. The 10 to 20 days is the normal range, he said.
Eating the same thing every day is highly abnormal, he said.
“There’s two ways of looking at it- there’s an obsessive component – ‘I want the same thing all the time,’” he said. “That can be obsessive. The other is avoidance. ‘These are the only things I feel safe eating.’”The timetable for Geno Atkins' return continues to be a mystery (as if major injuries are supposed to be easy to return from).
We've heard that he'll participate during training camp "at some point" and we've heard that he won't be ready for the regular season. It's probably somewhere in the middle, yes?
Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinator Paul Guenther told reporters at the team's media luncheon that he "believes" that Atkins will be ready for the regular season opener.
#Bengals DC Paul Guenther says he believes Geno Atkins will be ready by Week 1. Exhale, Who Dey Nation. — Coley Harvey (@ColeyHarvey) July 22, 2014
More positive reviews for Geno. DC Guenther says he sees him playing Week 1. — Paul Dehner Jr. (@pauldehnerjr) July 22, 2014
Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis expressed similar optimism.
Marvin says going to hold Geno on PUP for few days into camp to get look at him. In a good spot though. Very encouraging news. — Paul Dehner Jr. (@pauldehnerjr) July 22, 2014
Atkins suffered an ACL tear against the Miami Dolphins last year and was placed on the team's Active/Physically Unable to Perform list on Tuesday. Once he's medically cleared, he can join his teammates on the practice field. However, if the medical staff is unable to clear him by the time Cincinnati starts the regular season, he would likely join the Reserve/Physically Unable to Perform list -- preventing him from playing for the first six weeks of the season.
Atkins, a two-time Pro Bowler, earned first-team All-Pro honors in 2012 after generating 12.5 quarterback sacks -- also third-most in a single-season in franchise history.Though the 935 is really just a ‘roided 911, it carries a totally different weight entirely. As one of the formative turbocharged racecars, it typifies all of those characteristics that made the word “turbo” both prevalent and synonymous with outrageous — and dangerous — performance in the 1970s and 1980s. Hell, even vacuum cleaners marketed to public consumers were often seen with Turbo scrawled on the side of their bags. They were dangerous times.
Leh Keen ought not be a stranger to any red-blooded motorsport fan. The man has owned a number of wild cars, including a Rauh-Welt 911, raced in numerous GT categories and made a success of himself in just about all of them. The quick hands and courageous late-braking is known to serve him well as he wrestles with this monster chucking out nearly 800 horsepower. Plenty of requisite sawing at the wheel, a laggy turbo setup and monumental acceleration give this old-school bruiser a real character of its own, and allow the tall talent from Georgia to excel through a field made up of talented drivers in eye-catching and very capable machinery.
Keen’s 935 K3 was a modified version that, built by Cologne-based tuner Kremer, tried to emulate some of the 935 Evolution’s bodywork. It also boasted an air-to-air intercooler, and with the talent of Klaus Ludwig behind the wheel, won Le Mans in 1979 in sodden conditions against some of the prototypes. That rear-engined design was far from optimal and it shows as Keen really struggles to get the front end to turn-in precisely, but once it has and a little mid-corner correction has been made, that incredible engine really comes on-song and few cars have the grunt and the rear traction to outrun it.
It’s wonderfully compromised and clearly flawed in some respects, but its seems that the driver who manages to work around these rough edges is rewarded. Even against modern, demonstrably nimbler cars like a 996 GT3 Cup, which has half the K3’s power but runs very neatly through the corners, is not much of a match for the 935 and its sci-fi acceleration.
At 3:35, Keen finds himself nipping at the heels of a modern Cup car despite the 935’s antiquated brakes. Every braking zone in the 935 is relatively long by today’s standards, and what’s aurally noticeable is the slow rate of downshifting. With only four gears to harness 800 horses and long straights, the gearing is noticeably taller than that of a contemporary 911 racer.
The modern GT3 exudes class in the slower corners, and pops away with rapid-fire, staccato gear changes and a normally-aspirated engine, but it is never so responsive as to disappear from the push-prone 935. Mid- and high-speed corners are something else entirely, but they require a specific technique. By turning in early, monstering the curbs occasionally and applying the throttle with little delicacy, a usable amount of oversteer helps point the 935 in the right direction without much wheelspin.
Keen’s bravery and certainty behind the wheel is impressive. Carrying immense speed into Road America’s notorious Turn 11, known affectionately as “The Kink,” Keen continues a rambunctious charge with both turbos whistling and a worrying amount of steering lock on well-past the apex. The car seems to relish in the abuse Keen hurls at it, and it shows as even after he turns the boost down, he manages to keep up with some of other competitor’s cars with Apollo-levels of acceleration. Those old Porsches weren’t the easiest to drive, but they were certainly workhorses.Spanish police are investigating an attack on a herd of recently reintroduced European bison that left one animal decapitated, three missing and several more apparently poisoned.
Officers were called to the Valdeserrillas reserve in Valencia on Friday after the discovery of the headless body of Sauron, the dominant male of a small herd of bison that had been brought to eastern Spain over the past year.
Return of the European bison Read more
Staff and police said they believed the herd was poisoned so that their heads could be cut off and sold as trophies.
Carlos Álamo, the manager of the reserve, said he noticed something was wrong when he went to check on the animals last Wednesday. Not only were the bison in a different area to the one they usually occupied, but they were skittish and ran away when he approached. Staff put the behavioural change down to the hot weather, but two days later Álamo found Sauron’s decapitated remains.
“He was called Sauron after the Lord of the Rings character because he was the biggest and the most powerful,” Rodolfo Navarro, a spokesman for the reserve, told the Guardian. “He was a beautiful animal that weighed nearly 800kg [1,764lb]. He was sort of the symbol of the reserve.”
Officers from the Guardia Civil’s nature protection service, Seprona, have taken blood and fur samples from the dead animal to see whether it was poisoned with either spiked meat or water. No cartridges or bullet casings were found in the area.
Navarro said that as the dominant male, Sauron may have succumbed quickly to the poison, having eaten first and taken more food than others in the herd. He also said that while the reserve was fenced to prevent the animals from escaping, it was not a “prison wall” that could keep poachers from getting in.
Navarro added: “We think that they took his head as a trophy … It must have been a gang because one person couldn’t commit this kind of brutality on their own. The police are investigating and it will be difficult, but we hope they get them.”
Staff were searching the 365-hectare (900-acre) site for the three missing animals but said the operation could take a while as many areas could only be reached on foot. Other animals in the herd had diarrhoea, apparently as a result of poisoning.
European bison, which were pushed to the verge of extinction by hunting and habitat loss almost a century ago, have been reintroduced across the continent over the past few decades. The 12 animals in the Valdeserrillas reserve were brought to Spain from the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK.
Navarro said the attack on the herd had put seven years of hard work and investment in jeopardy and could threaten the reserve’s future.
“It was like a murder,” he said. “It’s just senseless and it’s really damaged not only our image and Valencia’s, but also Spain’s.”"You've never swallowed?"
Three pairs of the most incredulous eyes I've ever seen bored into me. They bored into my soul. In almost 27 years on this planet, I had not once ingested the semen of a man. I'm an oversharer and the type of person who has sexual proclivities that most people would consider perverted. And yet, I'd never thrown one down the hatch.
"I dunno," I said looking into my beer. "It's like oysters or something. The texture just freaks me out, how thick and eggy it is. I'm just a spitter."
My dinner companions burst into raucous laughter. What was so funny?
"That's fine," Noah said, wiping tears from his eyes, "but what I'm about to show you will change your life."
He poured water into a glass.
"This," he said, lifting the glass to his lips, "is what you look like when you're looking for some place to spit."
He sipped the water, tilted his head back at a 45-degree angle, and jutted his bottom jaw out while simultaneously screwing up his forehead in feigned disgust. It did not look good.
He swallowed the water, looked at me sternly, and said, "Now picture that on a naked girl who's running for the bathroom."
Everyone was silent for a moment before Ainslie shrieked, "That, my friends, is why I've never spit!" and we all broke into paroxysms of wild laughter.
I've never loved the idea of swallowing semen. And I would be lying if I said part of me wasn't being a bit of a contrarian brat about it. If a guy simply expects to have his semen swallowed, then I'm simply not going to fulfill that expectation. Moreover, I don't think swallowing should be a precondition of sucking cock.
That's not to say I have anything against cum. I think it's just fine. On my belly, on my butt, in my vag, cum is nudity's best accessory. Nor do I have anything against swallowing. It's fine. If you want to swallow or enjoy swallowing then I wish you many glasses of jizz to sip upon until the end of your days.
But after Noah's humiliating imitation of Spitter Girl, I quietly resolved to swallow next time I gave a blowjob. I needed to up my fellatio game, right? And if I could overcome my fear of heights by parachuting off a mountain in Switzerland, what was a tiny little gulp of jizz by comparison?
Mere days later, I found myself wedged between my boyfriend's legs doing some fairly dexterous suck-and-rotate. All I could think about was the swallow. I knew it was coming. I could tell from the way he was clenching his butt cheeks that he was close, and my mind was racing. Would my gag reflex kick in when the thick paste hit the back of my throat? Should I kiss him afterwards? Was this good for my skin or something?
"Fuck!" he yelled. Warm liquid oozed into my mouth. It was the first time I'd let him cum while my lips were still wrapped around his dick. Go time.
I rose up to my knees and flicked my head back. In one fluid motion I gulped his outcome as though it was a tequila shot. And... it was fine. It tasted like... nothing. I felt... normal. Maybe... was my skin better?
I fell onto the bed next to him in fits of giggles, picturing Noah doing his spitting demonstration back at the restaurant.
"What?" He looked at me concerned, "Why is it funny? What did I do? Is something wrong?"
It probably wasn't the best time to laugh. I rolled towards him and kissed him, still half smiling.
"Oh no, it's not you." I kissed him again to make it clear, "funny story, actually."
***
I haven't swallowed again. I'm not sure it's quite fair for me to ingest the stuff until the guy it's coming out of has a taste too. Or if like, if I'm in love or something. When either happens, I will happily and forever ingest his dick juice.The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to “dismantle” Obama-era rules that regulated the businesses that connect Americans to the internet in a move that the left has breathlessly attacked since its announcement.
The so-called net neutrality regulations were supposedly put in place to prohibit broadband providers from blocking websites and or charging consumers for higher-quality services or to watch certain content such as Netflix.
“The action reversed the agency’s 2015 decision, during the Obama administration, to have stronger oversight over broadband providers as Americans have migrated to the internet for most communications. It reflected the view of the Trump administration and the new F.C.C. chairman that unregulated business will eventually yield innovation and help the economy,” reported The New York Times.
“It will take weeks for the repeal to go into effect, so consumers will not see any of the potential changes right away. But the political and legal fight started immediately. Numerous Democrats on Capitol Hill called for a bill that would reestablish the rules, and several Democratic state attorneys general, including Eric T. Schneiderman of New York, said they would file a suit to stop the change.”
While The New York Times noted that the “legal fight” has started immediately, they failed to even acknowledge the numerous calls for violence against the Republican chairman of the FCC that included direct threats of assassination.
“I hope a dark web assassin kills Ajit Pai,” one of the disgusting Tweets read. “Can someone please kill this subhuman scum? read another.
As Infowars.com reported, “Does net neutrality cripple innovation or encourage it? Ultimately the FCC would vote to release the internet back to its pre-Obama days in the wild, but more death threats against FCC Chairman Ajit Pai weigh in on Twitter. It’s the way the left operates now as they embrace domestic terrorism unchecked in the face of our Republic.”
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One can only imagine what the mainstream media would be doing if Trump supporters openly called for the death of a Democratic politician….
Courtesy of SHTFplan.comFor related articles and more information, please visit OCA's Millions Against Monsanto page
all
Big Food Would Rather Fight than Switch
Coca-Cola
Barron’s
Slate
General Mills
Sustainable Food News
Kellogg’s
in
Motley Fool
Hershey’s
Pepsi-Co
What about the organic and natural ‘Traitor’ brands?
“Our policy is to investigate the business practices of parent companies. If a brand line of organics happens to be owned by a multinational or national brand identified as a “traitor brand”, we do a practices and policy analysis of the subsidiary company in relation to the practices of the parent company. If we feel that the parent company exerts undue influence on the practices of the organic line, we then begin to phase out or search for ways to reduce brand representation on or shelves.”
*Top donors to Colorado’s No on 105 Campaign
*Top donors to Oregon’s NO on 92 Campaign
Ronnie Cummins is international director of the Organic Consumers Association and its sister organization in Mexico,
Katherine Paul is associate director of the Organic Consumers Association Ronnie Cummins is international director of the Organic Consumers Association and its sister organization in Mexico, Via Organica
It’s boycott time again.With less than two weeks to go before voters in Oregon and Colorado decide on ballot initiatives to require mandatory labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the Junk Food Giants are at it again.According to the latest numbers provided by the pro-labeling campaigns (as of October 22, 2014), the opposition in Oregon has raised $16.5 million to defeat Measure 92, while opponents of Colorado’s Proposition 105 have raised $14.3 million.Monsanto is the largest donor to both campaigns, with combined donations totaling approximately $8.8 million. While Dow has spent only $668,000 in both states, DuPont Pioneer has dumped a combined whopping $7.46 million into the opposition's war chests in Colorado and Oregon.But apart from Monsanto, and now DuPont Pioneer, the most prolific donors to the campaigns intent on defeating the Oregon and Colorado GMO labeling initiatives have been large, multinational food corporations. Many of these corporations own |
bits and pieces scattered about the re-creation of the historical settlement. Under the shadow of Zefram Cochrane’s statue, try to get the best parts possible, because the engines will make your model go faster, hull will allow it to survive longer, and stabilizers will keep it going at a better angle of launch.
Once captains have had a few minutes to collect their parts, they’ll return to their unfinished models and use leftover pieces to improve on the pieces they’ve assembled. After that, everyone will assemble at the missile silo to launch the models. Whoever’s model reaches the highest altitude will be declared the winner of that launch and the honorary student of Cochrane.
Captains of level 10 and above may participate in this event—even captains from the Klingon Defense Force and Romulan Republic are welcome to join these festivities, as a celebration of diversity and the meeting of different species.
We hope to see you there, reaching… toward the future!
Jesse Heinig
Staff Game Designer
Star Trek OnlineOver the past week I have put my kestrel duties on hold to help with Florida Scrub-Jay surveys in the Ocala National Forest. I haven’t spent very much time in the forest since handing jay training over to my co-worker in February, so I really enjoy any time I can get roaming through the scrub (chigger bites aside).
Lately, it has been hard to walk through the scrub without coming across some kind of recently fledged bird. The most common species in the scrub is by far the ‘White-eyed’ Eastern Towhee. This subspecies of the Eastern Towhee is found only in Florida and eye color can range from bright white to pale yellowish-brown, as opposed to its ‘Red-eyed’ northern counterpart. The fledglings of this species are extremely curious and it is hard to miss their clumsy flight and crash landings as they fly in to check out the jay calls coming from our mp3 players.
White-eyed Vireo fledglings are also abundant and equally as curious as their parents.
Blue Jay fledglings can often be found hiding in the forest edges, and today we found a Florida Scrub-Jay fledgling only a few trees away from a Blue Jay fledgling. Both were calling to their parents, who had likely left them behind for a morning foraging expedition through the scrub. Unfortunately the Blue Jay fledgling evaded my camera lens!
During jay surveys, fledgling scrub-jays are often the first to appear out of the scrub, likely mistaking the calls of the mp3 player for their parents. Their parents usually appear quickly in response to the calls of their chicks, and escort them back into hiding.
For more information about this important Florida endemic species, please visit the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Florida Scrub-Jay page.BY: Follow @P_Crookston
The Arizona Democratic Party has yet to give away the $40,000 it received from the owner of Backpage.com, a website linked to child prostitution.
Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.) donated the cash she received from Backpage.com's Michael G. Lacey earlier this year, and National Republican Senatorial Committee Communications Director Katie Martin said Sinema should speak up about the money her party still retains.
"Kyrsten Sinema should do the right thing and call on the Arizona Democratic Party to return the $40,000 they received from backpage.com," Martin said. "It’s an easy choice between right and wrong, so why won’t Sinema speak up?"
In the midst of the controversy, which involved the website running hundreds of prostitution advertisements that included ones for child sex trafficking, Lacey made multiple contributions to Democrats. He donated to Democrats at the state and federal levels, and his total contributions reached six figures.
He donated to Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Garcia in 2014, the year after Backpage.com caused the National Association of Attorneys General to call on Congress to amend laws to hold websites of the sort accountable for enabling child prostitution.
Garcia also donated the money he received from Lacey after the Washington Free Beacon reported the contribution in April.
Then California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who now serves as a Democrat in the Senate, described Backpage.com as "purposefully and unlawfully designed" as an online brothel. The website claimed not to control advertisements, but internal emails show they had edited them and were aware of possible infringements of the law.
The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) is a bill in Congress intended to crack down on sites like Backpage.com, and was put on hold by Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) in November.South Korea's dramatic protesters are ready for global spotlight
About 200 groups have registered to demonstrate during the G-20 summit. Activists here have often turned their rallies into absurd theater involving props and animals.
"Emotions are built up, so we were planning something pretty violent, maybe even throwing Molotov cocktails," said the vice chairwoman of the community, known as Nine Dragons, who declined to give her name because the issue is so sensitive.
But nervous officials struck a deal to avert the public dissent, agreeing to hear the protesters' grievances after the two-day summit ends.
Residents of a shantytown engaged in a development dispute with government officials planned to hurl hundreds of golf balls over the security fence as leaders of the world's top economic powers huddled at a mall complex in central Seoul.
Reporting from Seoul — The Group of 20 summit set to begin here Thursday may have already dodged one major crisis: the golf ball protest.
Protesters gather in Seoul before the G-20 summit. South Korean activists… (Matt Douma / For The Times )
For Seoul officials, it's one down and 199 protest groups to go.
About 200 organizations have registered to demonstrate during the summit, including labor unions, the physically challenged and former navy commandos who say they plan to set cars and oil tankers on fire nearby.
Few of the organizations have gripes with world leaders, but they aim to grab the international stage to air their grievances with the South Korean government. The former commandos, for instance, want bigger pensions.
Volatile South Korea is often called the Protest Republic. With a population of just under 50 million, it averages 12,000 protests a year, by far the most of any nation in Asia, according to National Police Agency statistics.
Many protests in South Korea feature theatrical tactics such as animal sacrifices, torch burnings, flag-eating, dummy decapitations and feces hurling. Last month, one anti-government protester set himself on fire. Then there was the man who covered himself with bees.
"Korea is Korea; we are who we are," summit spokeswoman Sohn Jie-ae said. "You cannot put a lid on demonstrations; you just have to live with them. While Americans write letters to their senator to get something done, we demonstrate. We voice our concerns on the street."
South Korean officials will deploy 60,000 security personnel, including 10,000 military riot troops. They have declared a 1.5-mile protest-free zone around the meeting venue, which will be surrounded by a 7-foot-high security fence.
Analysts warn that any violence would be a costly public relations blunder.
"South Koreans want to highlight themselves as a vibrant Asian democracy, as opposed to a law-and-order state," said David Midanik, a lawyer who represents activists who sued after their arrest at the June G-20 summit in Toronto. "They certainly don't want to look like North Korea."
According to Amnesty International, South Korean officials have a history of violent suppression of protests, often using untrained military conscripts to subdue activists.
"Over time, the crowd control tactics have mellowed," said Rajiv Narayan, a researcher who will monitor the summit protests. "Tear gas was once freely used, but you don't see that anymore."A new CNN poll released today offers further evidence that Rick Perry has stolen Michele Bachmann’s thunder.
Bachmann, a U.S. representative from Minnesota and an Iowa native, has been at or near the front of the pack in Iowa in recent months and she won the Iowa straw poll in August. But the Texas governor’s entrance into the race the day of the straw poll and visit to her childhood town of Waterloo the very next day has cast shadows on her campaign.
The CNN poll taken Sept 9 -11 and released today shows Perry with 32 percent of the support, followed by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney with 21 percent, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas at 13 percent followed by Bachmann and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 7 percent.
Bachmann had 10 percent of the support in CNN’s August poll.
When Sarah Palin’s name is thrown into the mix, Bachmann’s support this month sank to 4 percent, below Gingrich and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain. Palin, who has not announced if she will run for the Republican nomination, landed behind Perry and Romney for 15 percent of support. The poll of 1,038 adults was taken by phone and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Bachmann, Perry and others will face off in tonight’s “Tea Party Republican Debate” that begins at 7 p.m. and will be broadcast on CNN. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who dropped out of the race after the Iowa straw poll, today announced his support for Romney. Pawlenty will attend tonight’s debate as a guest of Romney’s.
Recommended PhotosThe San Francisco Bay Area, as America’s most liberal metropolitan area is about to be economically carpet bombed by the President Donald Trump’s tax reform.
American big cities with over 250,000 residents trend 83 percent liberal, according to research jointly published by MIT and UCLA. The Bay Area is the most liberal area in the U.S., with San Francisco and Oakland ranked first and fourth most liberal out of 67 cities.
Pew Research polling found that the reason big cities are liberal is that 46 percent of consistent liberals said they prefer to live in a city, compared to just 4 percent of consistent conservatives. That explains why liberals are about twice as likely as conservatives to live in urban areas, while conservatives tend to concentrate in rural areas. Consequently, liberal big cities vote Democrat and conservative rural communities vote Republican.
A recent Vanity Fair article claims: “Trump Crony Admits Republican Tax Plan Is An Elaborate Middle Finger To Liberals.” According to comments by Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore, liberal Democrats’ strategy of harping on Trump’s proposed tax reforms as raising the U.S. deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade has served as a justification to restrict state and local tax deductions (SALT), which will hit liberal blue states like California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
California is the most populous state, but only has the fourth-highest percentage of residents that claim SALT deduction at 34.5 percent. But the Golden State’s taxpayers claim SALT at the highest deduction per claimant of any state at $36,802. For many Bay Area liberals, Trump’s tax reform will be like getting a $12,000 increase in state taxes.
Eliminating Obamacare’s mandated requirement to buy health insurance will accelerate the implosion of nationalized healthcare, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates would save $388 billion over the next decade.
Moreover, California’s liberal Democrat-controlled Legislature gamed the Obamacare Medicaid expansion to sign up a stunning 13,465,532 enrollees, about 34 percent of the state’s population, according to the Medicaid.gov. Despite having just 12 percent of the nation’s population, California currently pockets 19.6 percent of all federal spending on Medicaid.
Elimination of Obamacare is estimated to cost California $58 billion in Medicaid funding over the next decade. That means California public employee unions, which are the key to funding the liberal agenda, could lose tens of billions in annual state and federal cash.
Another tax reform measure, requiring parents who claim the child tax credit to produce valid Social Security numbers, is meant to stop illegal aliens, who currently use bogus Individual Taxpayer Identification numbers to obtain the child tax benefit. Requiring real documentation could eliminate hundreds of billions in welfare and Medicaid entitlement fraud.
Peter MacKinnon, president of a big East Coast Service Employees’ International Union, recently admitted that SALT deductions have meant most Americans pay higher federal taxes as a way of “propping up profligate, big-government states.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein for decades have brought home the bacon to California, and especially to Bay Area liberals. But tax reform dumping SALT will make it much more difficult for California’s liberal politicians that want to impose high taxes, which fund their union allies’ jobs and pensions.Organisers say the club would play at New York's Red Bull Arena
Plans for a New York rugby league team to follow Toronto Wolfpack into the English game have been submitted to the Rugby Football League.
Toronto were promoted from League 1 to the Championship, the game's second tier, at the first attempt last season.
The consortium for the New York club hopes to get the go-ahead in time to enter the competition in 2019 at Championship level.
They are confident of building a fan base of 10,000 in the first year.
"We have a small consortium of high-networth individuals, one member of which has made New York his home, and all have a significant love for the game," said co-founder Tom Scott.
Like Toronto, who drew crowds of 7,000 last season, the New York club would not seek central funding and say they have already secured a $10m (£7.51m) investment.
The New York organisers say the team would also cover all travel and accommodation costs of visiting teams and play in blocks of home and away fixtures.
The plans have been tabled eight years before the United States is set to co-host the World Cup with Canada.
"We want to grow the sport in North America and increase the pool of players which would ultimately increase the chances of success for the USA national team," said the club's other co-founder Ricky Wilby.
The team would play at the 25,000-seater Red Bull Arena in New Jersey, with the consortium confident of attracting a television deal and having pledged to spread the game into schools and the local community.
Toronto founder Eric Perez says he will launch a second Canadian club in the next six months and predicts there could be up to six North American teams within five years.The members’ tea room in the House of Commons has been buzzing this week in a way that I have not seen for some time.
What, I hear you ask, has stirred up our nation’s legislators in this way? You might think it would be spending cuts or maybe the closure of RAF bases or maybe even changes to benefit rules. No. The thing that seems to have animated parliament this week is the decision of an election court at the end of last week that Labour MP Phil Woolas ran such a dishonest campaign in the May election that he was guilty of illegal practice under the Representation of The People Act 1983.
The election result was void and that there will have to be a by-election. Mr Woolas had distributed leaflets during the campaign stating that his Liberal Democrat opponent sought to woo the support of Islamic fundamentalists who supported the use of violence. It was brutal stuff.
We have had some vigorous debates in the isles over the years but by and large they have focused on the issues and not been personalised. It is a political tradition that we should be careful to preserve.
It is, I am told, the first time in 99 years that a court has returned a verdict of this sort. That in itself should give you some idea of how extravagant (and damaging) some of the claims made by Mr Woolas were.
The buzz in the tearoom, however, is that this judgment is an unjustifiable interference in the political process by the courts. A politician, the argument seems to go, should be allowed to make whatever outrageous and untruthful claim that he or she wants about an opponent.
It is a thoroughly depressing argument to listen to. Everyone knows that politics is a robust trade, especially in an election campaign. No-one would expect candidates to spend their time highlighting their opponents’ virtues but to suggest any smear is justifiable must be wrong.
Most worryingly it betrays an attitude that I had hoped would have been eradicated by the expenses scandals of the last parliament – namely that different rules should apply to MPs than apply to the rest of the population. If Tesco tried to smear the Co-op in the same way it would soon be in trouble. Why should politics be different?
Harriet Harman must be wondering when she will next be able to open her mouth without upsetting someone. A couple of weeks ago she had to apologise for referring to my colleague Danny Alexander as a “ginger rodent”. She might have thought she was on safer ground disowning Mr Woolas and his activities, but no. She has been faced by what is described by insiders as a “mutinous reaction” by Labour MPs. There is talk of them all chipping in to a fighting fund to help pay for their former colleague’s legal fees.
The right to freedom of speech is a fundamental one but it does bring a responsibility with it to tell the truth. The right to smear an opponent is not one we should be defending.
Alistair Carmichael MPWhen artists begin a new painting, they don’t immediately reach for the cadmium red and the phthalo blue. They first prime the canvas. Why? To ensure that the canvas is smooth and has a uniform white hue.
Many web designers prefer to use a CSS "reset" to "prime" the browser canvas and ensure that their design displays as uniformly as possible across the various browsers and systems their site visitors may use.
This is Part 1 of a three-part series of articles on the topic of CSS resets.
What Is CSS Reset?
When you use a CSS "reset," you’re actually overriding the basic stylesheet each individual browser uses to style a web page. If you present a website with no CSS whatsoever, the site will still be styled, to a very limited extent, by the browser’s default stylesheet.
The problem is that every browser’s stylesheet has subtle but fundamental differences. By using a CSS reset, you’re setting the styles of the fundamental CSS elements to a baseline value, thusly rendering the browsers’ varying style defaults moot.
Some of the most common elements that are styled differently among different browsers are hyperlinks ( <a> ), images ( <img> ), headings ( <h1> through <h6> ), and the margins and padding given to various elements.
So which browser is right, Firefox or IE? It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the spacing in between your paragraphs and other elements will look dissimilar if you don’t set a style for a paragraph’s margin and padding. — Jacob Gube, Founder of Six Revisions
It might be useful to peruse this chart showing the various browser defaults. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go back to IE6 (which causes so much havoc among stylesheets).
Who Uses Resets?
According to a 2008 poll by Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks, a solid majority of web designers use one variation or another of a reset. (Coyier’s parameters were fairly broad, possibly accounting for the heavy support of resets in his poll results.)
The poll, which did not purport to be particularly scientific or comprehensive, gave the following results:
27% use some version of Eric Meyer’s reset
26% indicated they didn’t know what a reset was
15% use a "hard reset," or some iteration of a reset using the universal selector
14% use a reset as part of a larger CSS framework
13% use their own custom reset
4% "purposefully do not use one"
Coyier was not surprised with Meyer’s reset coming in first in the polling, calling it "popular, thoughtful, and effective." Somewhat whimsically perhaps, Meyer replied in the comments: "Huh. I actually didn’t expect that at all; I figured the framework resets would win by a country mile. Now the pressure’s totally on! Arrrrgh!"
Early Days of CSS Reset
As far as I can tell, the first mentions of anything we would later consider to be a "reset" came in late 2004, with two very different approaches.
undohtml.css
The first was legendary developer Tantek Çelik’s UndoHTML.css stylesheet, which "strips the browser varnish" from a number of elements.
/* undohtml.css */ /* (CC) 2004 Tantek Celik. Some Rights Reserved. */ /* http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 */ /* This style sheet is licensed under a Creative Commons License. *//* Purpose: undo some of the default styling of common (X)HTML browsers */ /* link underlines tend to make hypertext less readable, because underlines obscure the shapes of the lower halves of words */ :link,:visited { text-decoration:none } /* no list-markers by default, since lists are used more often for semantics */ ul,ol { list-style:none } /* avoid browser default inconsistent heading font-sizes */ /* and pre/code too */ h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,pre,code { font-size:1em; } /* remove the inconsistent (among browsers) default ul,ol padding or margin */ /* the default spacing on headings does not match nor align with normal interline spacing at all, so let's get rid of it. */ /* zero out the spacing around pre, form, body, html, p, blockquote as well */ /* form elements are oddly inconsistent, and not quite CSS emulatable. */ /* nonetheless strip their margin and padding as well */ ul,ol,li,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,pre,form,body,html,p,blockquote,fieldset,input { margin:0; padding:0 } /* whoever thought blue linked image borders were a good idea? */ a img,:link img,:visited img { border:none } /* de-italicize address */ address { font-style:normal } /* more varnish stripping as necessary... */
In an October 2010 email to me, Çelik confirmed he was most likely first out of the gate. "I’m pretty sure I invented/proposed/shared the concept of resetting CSS (though not by that name) in my blog post of 2004," Çelik said.
Çelik’s reset removes link underlines, borders from linked images, and sets the font size to 1em for headings, <code>, and paragraphs. In 2009, author and designer Jason Cranford Teague described Çelik’s reset as "part sublime and part madness," for reasons that elude me.
"hard reset"
The second was web designer and developer Andrew Krespanis’s "hard reset" to overcome browser defaults for margins and padding (in a snippet he called "the tiny addition I threw in at the last minute").
* { padding:0; margin:0; }
When asked about the hard reset, Krespanis mused: "That single line of CSS kick-started my career in a big way, which in retrospect is amusing verging on absurd."
"Certainly no one suggested the reset idea to me, it was something I first suggested to CSS beginners on codingforums.com in early 2004 who defended their over-use of superfluous divs by the confusing rendering caused by default margins and padding on paragraphs, blockquotes, lists, fieldsets, etc." Krespanis said. "I also used it whenever providing examples to people, but wasn’t using it for sites until I started suggesting beginners do so. Eric Meyer was talking about a similar concept at the time, only his was more focused on quality sensible defaults to override those set by [browser] makers and he has continued to develop his over the years since."
Really Undoing html.css
Çelik’s reset quickly drew the attention of CSS guru Eric Meyer, who used Çelik’s work as a jumping-off point for his first attempt at a global reset, as well as a follow-up almost immediately thereafter. In the same conversation I had, Çelik said, "About a week and a half later, Eric Meyer went into a lot more detail on his blog and expanded on my work."
The Differences
Perhaps because Krespanis’s method was so simple and so basic (only addressing margins and padding, as opposed to Çelik’s and Meyer’s far more thorough reset), it seemed to attract more attention off the bat. However, this is a simplistic observation. Judging from the comments in both Meyer’s and Krespanis’s blogs, a number of people were considering something along these lines at around the same time; it’s also worth noting that several commenters in Meyer’s blog discussed the margin/padding reset weeks before Krespanis posted about it (Krespanis himself noted the technique on Meyer’s blog before posting on his own).
As the man said, it steamboats when it’s steamboat time. The idea of some sort of CSS reset had become, at least for many designers, a necessary one.
In 2004, Krespanis wrote:
"A big part of dealing with cross-browser differences is accounting for the default property values of elements in each browser; namely padding and margin. I use the following declaration in every new site I design; it has saved me many hours of nitpicking. * {padding:0; margin:0;} It doesn’t seem like much at first, but wait till you look at your mildly styled form in 11 browsers to find the positioning identical in all of them; or your button-style lists are perfect the first time, every time.
The difference between Çelik’s and Meyer’s early efforts, and Krespanis’s "afterthought," is, of course, Krespanis’s use of the * (which in CSS, is the universal selector that matches all elements in a web page).
Moving Away from the Universal Selector "hard reset"
Like a drop of antimatter, that single * had widespread effects. As Krespanis went on to note, the use of the universal selector canceled the padding and margin of every element in the page, sometimes to the detriment of the individual design, and it often fouled up forms and lists.
Today, it’s recognized that using the universal selector has repercussions on web page performance because of the resource tax involved in selecting and assigning styles to all elements. Co-creator of the Firefox browser, David Hyatt, advises developers to make sure "a rule doesn’t end up in the universal category," as a best practice for writing efficient CSS.
Russ Weakley, CSS book author and co-chair of the Web Standards Group, outlines a downfall of the "hard reset" method: "Once you have removed all margin and padding, this method relies on you specifically styling the margins and padding of each HTML element that you intend to use."
It didn’t take long for people to start modifying the original "hard reset" to something more specific. Steve Rider, for example, posted what he called a "no assumptions" reset on Meyer’s blog, tweaked to his own preferences:
body {margin: 0px; padding: 8px;} body, div, ul, li, td, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {font-size: 100%; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} div, span, img, form, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: transparent;}
Web developer Seth Thomas Rasmussen tossed his hat in the ring, where he gives some padding and margins back to selected elements:
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, ul, ol, dl, table, form, etc. {margin: 0 0 1em 0}
And it didn’t take long for Krespanis to come up with his own modification:
* {padding:0; margin:0;} h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, pre, blockquote, label, ul, ol, dl, fieldset, address { margin:1em 5%; } li, dd { margin-left:5%; } fieldset { padding:.5em; }
Between the wide-ranging resets from Çelik and Krespanis, the more "targeted" resets, and the objections to the sometimes-overwhelming changes the resets made, the games were on. Before long, people were trying all kinds of different resets and posting about it.
Lost and Found: Faruk Ate? and initial.css
In July 2005, Web developer Faruk Ate? posted his initial.css on the now-defunct Kurafire.net. In subsequent discussions on Meyer’s and other design blogs, a few commenters recalled Ate?’s efforts. Through the magic of the Wayback Machine, his initial.css reset can be examined. Like others, Ate? revised his reset after discussion and commentary was received.
Ate? said he had been using his reset for a year or so in his client designs, with little or no ill effect. I believe that his was the first truly "global reset" to become publicly available, though he said in a 2010 email to me that he wasn’t at all sure that was the case. In that same exchange, Ate? wrote: "It was also deliberately kept pretty small, because I didn’t like the idea of a huge ton of CSS to reset everything in the browser, when most every site I was building at the time didn’t actually use 50-60% of the less-common elements that were being reset. … [W]here Eric did the more usable-under-any-circumstances version, exhaustive and very complete (for its time), mine was more of the ‘hey, just these handful of styles have made my life as web developer easier’ and I shared them because, well, why wouldn’t I?"
/* =INITIAL v2.1, by Faruk Ates - www.kurafire.net Addendum by Robert Nyman - www.robertnyman.com *//* Neutralize styling: Elements we want to clean out entirely: */ html, body, form, fieldset { margin: 0; padding: 0; font: 100%/120% Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } /* Neutralize styling: Elements with a vertical margin: */ h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, pre, blockquote, ul, ol, dl, address { margin: 1em 0; padding: 0; } /* Apply left margin: Only to the few elements that need it: */ li, dd, blockquote { margin-left: 1em; } /* Miscellaneous conveniences: */ form label { cursor: pointer; } fieldset { border: none; } input, select, textarea { font-size: 100%; }
His reset included:
Setting the html, body, form, fieldset elements to have zero margins and padding, and their fonts to 100%/120% and a Verdana-based sans-serif font stack
,,, elements to have zero margins and padding, and their fonts to 100%/120% and a Verdana-based sans-serif font stack Setting the h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, pre, blockquote, ul, ol, dl, address elements to have a 1em vertical margin, no horizontal margin, and no padding
,,,,,,,,,,,, elements to have a 1em vertical margin, no horizontal margin, and no padding Giving a 1em left margin to the li, dd, blockquote elements
,, elements Setting the form label cursor to pointer
Setting the fieldset border to none
to Setting the input, select, textarea font sizes to 100%
As others noted before, and Meyer noted afterward, Ate? eschewed the universal selector because of its detrimental effect on forms (though it was in his first iteration).
For whatever reason, Ate?’s reset received a good bit less attention than some of the others, though it’s clear that many elements in the YUI and Meyer resets that followed appeared first in Ate?’s coding.
In October 2010, Ate? wrote that he never rewrote his reset after the single revision: "Any additions I would have made to it would’ve made it quickly grow in size, at which point people could’ve and should’ve just used Eric’s more comprehensive one. Eventually I stopped using my own initial.css and nowadays I usually copy from YUI or, more recently, the HTML5 Boilerplate, which contains parts from both YUI and Eric Meyer’s latest reset." In 2007, Web designer Christian Montoya provided an updated version of Ate?’s reset that he relies on for his own work.
The Yahoo! User Interface CSS Reset
The Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) reset first came on the scene in February 2006, written by Nate Koechley, the YUI senior frontend engineer, along with his colleague Matt Sweeney.
body,div,dl,dt,dd,ul,ol,li,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,pre,form,fieldset,input,textarea,p,blockquote,th,td { margin:0; padding:0; } table { border-collapse:collapse; border-spacing:0; } fieldset,img { border:0; } address,caption,cite,code,dfn,em,strong,th,var { font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; } ol,ul { list-style:none; } caption,th { text-align:left; } h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { font-size:100%; font-weight:normal; } q:before,q:after { content:''; } abbr,acronym { border:0; }
The effects of this reset on any stylesheet were dramatic. While the html element was left untouched, almost every often-used HTML element had its margins and padding zeroed out. Images lost their borders. Lists lost their bullets and numbering. And every single heading was reset to the same size.
The reset was, of course, one part of a much larger framework, called the Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI), which is a framework for developing web-based user interfaces.
The first YUI CSS Reset was, I believe, the first truly "global" CSS reset that received widespread public notice. Microsoft Developer Network blogger, Dave Ward said, "YUI’s reset is the first that could truly be considered a CSS reset by current standards."
The idea, as Koechley said in multiple presentations and blog posts, was to provide a "clean and sturdy foundation" for an identically formatted "clean slate" that individual stylesheets can build upon for a nearly-identical look no matter what browser or machine is being used to display the site. The YUI CSS Reset "removes everything" stated by the browser’s default CSS presentation.
In a September 2006 presentation given at Yahoo’s "Hack Day" event, Koechley told the audience: "Sound foundation ensures sane development." The reset "overcome[s] browser.css" and "level[s] the playing field."
In a bit of whimsy, Koechley wrote that the YUI CSS Reset "[h]elps ensure all style is declared intentionally. You choose how you want to <em>phasize something. Allows us to choose elements based on their semantic meaning instead of their ‘default’ presentation. You choose how you want to render <li>sts."
In an October 2007 slideshow, Koechley reminded users that the reset is "a good reminder that HTML should be chosen based on content alone." He restated that in a 2010 interview and went on to note that most people still don’t know that the browsers provide a strong layer of presentational functionality. If nothing else, he said, resets serve to bring all browsers down to a "neutralized, normalized … lowest common denominator" state that designers can then build from. Resets, he said, force people to rethink the semantics of HTML elements.
Koechley no longer works for the YUI team, and is instead a freelance web developer. He isn’t sure what, if any, changes will be made in the YUI reset to accommodate HTML5 and CSS3.
Eric Meyer used the YUI reset as a base for his own expansive reset, garnering even more attention than the YUI code.
Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset
Why do this at all? The basic reason is that all browsers have presentation defaults, but no browsers have the same defaults. … We think of our CSS as modifying the default look of a document — but with a ‘reset’ style sheet, we can make that default look more consistent across browsers, and thus spend less time fighting with browser defaults. — Eric Meyer, Author of leading CSS books
To paraphrase the 1983 commercial, when Eric Meyer talks, people in the design and development community listen. He started with a September 2004 post that, as noted above, itself built on work by Tantek Çelik.
Both Meyer and Çelik focused on "undoing" the html.css file that controlled the way Gecko-based browsers like Firefox and SeaMonkey displayed websites on the individual computer. Meyer’s follow-up on the first post focused on (fractionally) rebuilding the html.css file to make sites relatively usable again.
Both Çelik and Meyer envisioned their work as immediately practical and applicable to web design. Çelik told me that his reset "just made sense as a foundation to simplify coding CSS and make it more predictable" — and it didn’t take them, nor anyone else, apparently, very long to begin to comprehend how they could gain new control over the display across almost all browsers. The power, the power!
Meyer had other fish to fry in the ensuing years, including the birth of a daughter, the care and feeding of a radio show featuring big band and jazz music, and a truly intimidating schedule of design projects and conferences. However, he returned to the subject of CSS resets in April 2007. He brought up the topic at the 2007 An Event Apart conference in Boston, where he specifically avoided the idea of using a universal selector to reset the CSS. "Instead," he wrote, "I said the styles should list all the actual elements to be reset and exactly how they should be reset."
Meyer based his "blanket reset" on Yahoo’s YUI reset, making some significant tweaks along the way. Meyer’s reset.css code included the following:
Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset (2007)
html,body,div,span, applet,object,iframe, h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,p,blockquote,pre, a,abbr,acronym,address,big,cite,code, del,dfn,em,font,img,ins,kbd,q,s,samp, small,strike,strong,sub,s |
off the Blue Ridge during the mid-afternoon. Bowing segments created a swath of wind damage not far to the north of D.C., courtesy of numerous downbursts. The locus of heavy damage extended just south of, and along, the Mason-Dixon line.
Severe storms reports from Sunday (NWS SPC)
Close to D.C., that same line dropped southeast in the form of mostly just showers, sans thunder (albeit with peak gusts in the 40-45 mph range), and this line did not even impact northern Virginia.
Radar snapshot of storms late Sunday afternoon (RadarScope, adapted by CWG)
The lack of vigorous storms from the Beltway and south was surprising to some, but this is the nature of summertime convection. Rule No. 1: Severe local storms are localized, with lots of spatial variability expected. You cast a wide net for a severe thunderstorm watch, out of necessity. The reality is that not everyone experiences severe weather.
Yes, the lack of severe weather in D.C. and northern Virginia left us scratching our heads and wanting to do better. The setup was nearly perfect for severe storms, but nature did not deliver.
We don’t have a good answer for why not, at this point. One theory I have is related to the convective line’s gust front (leading edge of the cold, downdraft-driven outflow), which ran way out ahead of the storm cells. You can see this in the figure above.
Now, what does this mean, and why did this happen?
What it means: The gust front acts like a miniature cold front, scooping up moist, unstable air ahead of the convective line, supplying it with buoyant energy. You want that “scoop” to be located right along the leading edge of the convective cells. When it runs way out ahead, the unstable air is scooped up, but it does not feed directly into the cells. Bottom line: energy wasted, storm cells die, or at least “fail to thrive.”
Where the convective line was most severe — in northeastern Maryland — the gust front did not surge out ahead of the storm cells.
But why did this happen? We don’t completely know. Limited modeling studies suggest that squall lines crossing the Appalachians have complex interactions with the high terrain. At times, the cold, dense outflow surges down the mountains and outruns the parent convective line. After this initial surge, the line often regenerates, going through a second period of intense regrowth, close to D.C. This particular line did not. It could have something to do with the crossing angle or a host of other factors. At this time, much more research is needed.
The guidance we had late morning on Sunday, from the best high-resolution models, suggested that the squall line would survive the Appalachians, and indeed thrive, crossing the District. These models are our best tools for assessing future outcomes of inherently small-scale, short-fuse processes. But they also are not perfect.
Part of what we do, as meteorologists, is to learn their biases, their foibles, how best to incorporate them into our experience base. We do the absolute best we can, but we still have much learning to do.Andrew's goal was only his third of the season for Rochdale, and his first since September
Rochdale ended Bradford's 10-match unbeaten run as substitute Calvin Andrew poached an injury-time winner.
The visitors went in front early after Bradford goalkeeper Jordan Pickford was sent off for a challenge on Matty Done.
Ian Henderson dinked the resulting penalty against the bar, but Peter Vincenti slammed in the rebound.
Jon Stead levelled from close range and Bradford had the better chances before Andrew nodded in from Ashley Eastham's cross to snatch all three points.
The win, which followed back-to-back defeats in the league, lifted Keith Hill's side to eighth in the table, with Bradford remaining fifth.
Media playback is not supported on this device Hill on Bradford v Rochdale
Rochdale manager Keith Hill told BBC Radio Manchester:
"On a pitch like today it was down to a braveness, a physical braveness and a mental braveness.
"Let's be right, the pitch was horrendous and I think, without being disrespectful, that's shooting Bradford in their own foot.
"We knew it was going to be relentless, nothing changed when they went down to 10 men. The outfield remained the same - it was very difficult for us."You could just copy paste this:☑ ✓ ✔ √
or do this whole thingy
1. Find Alt code.
Numeric Alt codes for symbols are listed in Alt codes list. Check for Alt code of symbol you want to input.
2. Enable Num Lk.
You may need to simultaneously press ["FN" and "Scr Lk"] keys. That's the combination for "Num Lock" on some laptops. Look at the picture - the "Num Lk"/"Scr Lk" button is highlighted there.
3. Hold down "Alt" key.
Some laptops require you to hold both "Alt" and "FN" keys.
4. Input Alt code of symbol on Keypad.
Do this while holding "Alt" button pressed. Type Alt code on your laptop's numeric keypad. It's highlighted on the picture.
5. Release all the keys.
After you release all the keys alt symbol should be entered. If all this stuff didn't work - check if you have really enabled the "Num Lock" first. Remember that green indicator should shine near the lock symbol on your laptop's keyboard. If that wasn't the case - try simultaneously holding "FN" and "Alt" keys instead of just "Alt". That just might work.
and here's the list of characters for ALT codes: http://alt-codes.org/list/
? · 8 years ago 12 Thumbs up 1 Thumbs down Report AbuseSEATTLE, Wash. -- Some drivers in King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties are experiencing sticker shock with the latest round of car-tab renewal bills arriving in the mail.
The increase in car-tab fees is connected to the passage of Sound Transit 3, a major transportation package that was approved overall by voters in King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties last November.
Driver Robert Klem, who voted for Regional Transportation Authority Proposition No. 1, expected his car tabs to go up by $100-200, he said. But when he recently got his renewal bill in the mail from the Washington State Department of Licensing, he was stunned.
The Tesla owner paid about $500 for car-tabs last year, he said.
He's now being charged more than $1,500, he said.
"When I opened the bill and saw that it was about $1,000 more... Of course my wife was in the car with me. Her first reaction was ‘We’re selling the car.’" Klem said. "I think it was just stunning the amount."
The drastic jump largely stems from last fall's expansion of Sound Transit, which was approved by 54% of voters in the general election.
It raises the car-tab tax by 0.8% based on a vehicle's value. For a car worth $10,000, it equals out to about $80.
"I don’t think there’s anything that they did wrong on this," Klem said. "It just may have been something that I wasn’t as informed as I should have been about."
Klem now worries what the increased fees will mean for his son’s car in August and his wife’s SUV early next year, he said.
"If I knew that it would go up this much, would I not have voted for it? It’s surely possible," he said.
If you live in King, Pierce, or Snohomish Counties and your car-tabs expire on or after March 1, 2017, expect to see the increased fee on your car-tab renewal bill.
Sales taxes and property taxes are also impacted by the passage of ST3.The U.S. men's national team settled for a 1-1 draw with Venezuela in a pre-World Cup qualifying friendly Saturday night, battling back from a first-half deficit thanks to Christian Pulisic's 61st-minute goal.
Aside from the 18-year-old's equalizer, there were few positives for the U.S. to take away, and there is an injury worry, with John Brooks appearing to hurt his right thigh at the start of the second half. Should he be unavailable for either of the upcoming World Cup qualifiers against Trinidad & Tobago and Mexico, Saturday's draw would prove to be quite costly.
Playing at altitude in Sandy, Utah, to prepare for the qualifiers in Commerce City, Colorado, and Mexico City, the U.S. conceded first, when Jose Velazquez scored after a Venezuela corner. Tim Howard was called upon soon after to make a pair of fantastic saves to ensure La Vinotinto stayed off the scoreboard, and Pulisic came to the rescue to save face during an improved second-half performance.
Here are three thoughts on the game:
Pulisic continues to impress
Hardly a U.S. game goes by these days where we're not left marveling at Pulisic and something he does, and while he'll have better nights (and quiet ones too, you'd think) going forward, he provided the breakthrough the U.S. needed.
Operating in a central playmaking role as opposed to on the flanks, Pulisic continues to not just look comfortable, but thrive when called upon. It's not just the goals–there's the little things, too. A fifth-minute back-heel under pressure to keep possession and extend a sequence for the U.S. The move before the goal, shaking a defender and having the wherewithal to take the touch to create space before having the confidence to have a go.
The "sky's the limit" record continues to spin for the Borussia Dortmund rising star.
Set-piece snoozing, possession with no purpose
The USA's defending on set pieces and overall play over the opening half left plenty to be desired. Yes, the hosts bossed most of the ball, with Venezuela content to defend and counter, but the decision-making and urgency in the final third were lacking, and Venezuela really wasn't threatened despite conceding the ball. Don't believe it? Just ask Bruce Arena.
"Possession means nothing," Arena casually told FS1 at halftime. "We're not playing the ball quick enough, we're not playing it forward quick enough, they're getting 10 players behind the ball, doing a good job pressuring the ball and catching us on the break. we've got to do a better job with our spacing, play forward quicker and be more aggressive in getting at them."
On top of the possession-sans-purpose issue, there was the lack of focus on set pieces. Twice, in quick succession, the USA was burned by a novice Venezuela side on set plays, only conceding once thanks to Howard's heroics. Concede because of dynamic opposition? Fine. But simple set-piece marking shouldn't be on the to-do list of things to fix at this juncture.
Arena doesn't tinker with XI, but adds a wrinkle
Former U.S. manager Jurgen Klinsmann loved to experiment in friendlies, even ones that immediately preceded crucial matches. Whatever your feeling on his methods, there's an argument to be made for that approach, given that if you're going to try something to see how it works in a game situation, you might as well do it in a match with no direct consequence it if doesn't come off. That said, it also takes away from valuable minutes a core unit can have together, which is obviously a priority for Arena.
The U.S. boss has made no secret of who his top choices are, and he opted for a full-strength, first-choice unit to start against Venezuela. One could argue that Jozy Altidore, who has been in fine form, belongs in the top XI over Bobby Wood, and fair enough, but he was left out of the starters Saturday after showing up to camp late following his brother's wedding.
When the game devolved into a substitution-fest, as most friendlies do, Arena took a crack at operating with a 3-5-2. Omar Gonzalez, Matt Hedges and Tim Ream were the defenders (none started), and the U.S. does have the personnel to pull it off when called upon (DeAndre Yedlin, Fabian Johnson and Jorge Villafaña are capable wingbacks). As Arena showed in the 2002 World Cup, he's not afraid to make a bold lineup call and tactical shift, but given what we've seen and what we can deduce, don't expect a radical change from the start when the Americans return to qualifying action against Trinidad & Tobago.friedcat
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Re: [GLBSE] ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It August 09, 2012, 08:18:17 AM
Last edit: August 14, 2012, 04:28:25 AM by friedcat #2 Q: Why could I trust you?
A: In principle, like scientific theories, trustworthiness can only be
disproved. However some facts might contribute to more confidence: My ID, phone and email have all
been verified in GLBSE. I started running the fund called MU on GLBSE before it updated to version
2. I am also responsible for the GLBSE-listed bond MOORE.
Q: What about your partners?
A: They are my friends also located in China. I know them in person, trust
them myself in person. They are enthusiastic to this project and already commited a lot of hard
work at their best to make it succeed.
Q: Are you qualified of running Bitfountain and ASICMINER?
A: The short answer is yes.
The long answer is: Although I myself come from a software background, my other two partners
have been worked in the IC field for long. One of my partners worked in a national lab focusing on
microprocessor design, the other worked in an CPU-for-embedded-device startup. Mining ASICs are
easy to be made work compared to their former projects, and the only problem is how good we could
make it to be. In this aspect, we have done almost all baseline optimizations and some more
aggressive ones. The uncommonly high heat density of mining ASICs is another technical problem but
we are also confident in solving it nicely.
Q: Why don't you raise money from angels or venture capitals?
A: Because most of them come from a different background to Bitcoin. The risk
model of their minds is far away from that of the Bitcoin community. They would consider Bitcoin
itself as an extra major, if not the biggest, source of risk. Therefore they usually tend to pose
harsher clauses than the Bitcoin community on us.
Q: Why don't you borrow money to do it?
A: Same as most startups: the expense is beyond the number we could borrow
from a normal channel. Plus, we are frank that our project involves quite a few risks. We choose to
share both the risks and the profits to investors willing to take them.
Q: Why do you choose to do IPO so early when you haven't reached the stage
of sending your final designs to the foundry?
A: Because we have to save time. If the IPO takes too long, or doesn't work
out so that we have find inferior ways to raise funds, time elapses and we will be outpaced by our
competitors. A IPO in parallel with the later stage of physical design will make the arriving date
of our products earlier. Plus, if we finally have found that it is necessary to cancel the IPO,
100.5% of all raised funds will be turned back to investors.
Q: What if your first generation of chips are outdated? What if the other
companies deliver their products earlier than you do?
A: The so called "outdated" technology is exactly why we have so inexpensive
NRE. And we plan to do self-mining before product-selling, to avoid pre-maturely triggering a
fierce price war. There will almost definitely a relatively long window for both us and our
competitors to profit before the market price of hashrates falls down to their margin cost. In
this time range, the difficulty will not exceed a level that even with our technology of choice,
the electricity fee and management cost is still negligible compared to the Bitcoins mined.
Q: The privileges of board members are vague. What exactly could they do?
A: Some of the information and details of our company is only provided on
request of board members. Board members can monitor our business running face to face, or send
representations to do it. We also hope that board members could help us with a full-fledged
open financial management on both the RMB-nominated and BTC-nominated funds.
Q: How will your MU and MOORE interact with ASICMINER?
A: I will try to keep as objective as possible and evaluate ASICMINER as yet
another normal startup when considering the configuration of the MU portfolio. MOORE, on the other
hand, will be boosted up to in MH/s per share with ASICMINER in exchange of its raised funds when
our chips come out, and also will be used as one of the mechanisms for ASICMINER to sell hashrates
in the future.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: What is your fundraising target? How do you decide whether this IPO succeeds or not?
A: The minimum target is 100k$. If the raised funds surpass this number, we will consider that our IPO is successful. However, we would like to raise more (120-140k$) because keeping the budget at minimum is very prone to unexpected scenarios.
Q: So you will send the extra shares at at time?
A: Yes.
Q: How do you achieve so low costs?
A: There are several factors.
1. 130nm node size. As the mainstream switches to 28nm, the 130nm existed for so long that even many smaller foundries could do it very well. The intense competition of manufacturing in China brings the price of everything down, including ICs.
2. MLM(Multi-Level-Mask). Compared to full-mask, this technology reduces the cost of mask-set to half with the exchange of increasing the margin cost by about 40%. This is a good deal for us because the margin cost of chips themselves is one of the lowest cost in our budget.
3. Low EDA license fees and low labor cost in China.
4. We ourselves did most of the RTL design, optimization and simulation.
Q: Why don't you use Bitfountain for your GLBSE ticker?
A: Because the ASICMINER shareholders (GLBSE investors) have an extra set of privileges upon Bitfountain shareholder (us).The U.S. Air Force's new KC-46A aerial refueling tanker made by Boeing Co. is scheduled to make its first flight on Sept. 25, a general said.
The date was announced Tuesday by Brig. Gen. Duke Richardson during the Air & Space Conference near Washington, D.C. The milestone for the eventual successor to the KC-135 and KC-10 was initially planned for the spring.
"Once that first flight occurs we'll go into initial air worthiness," he said. That means the second flight will begin testing the boom, hose and drogue systems, he said.
Richardson, the program executive officer for tankers with the Air Force Material Command at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, said the subsequent flights will involve a variety of aircraft flying with the KC-46 and culminate with actual refueling flights in January.
Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the recent cost overrun on the aircraft, known as the Pegasus and based on the 767 twin-engine commercial airliner, is "deeply unfortunate" and that he's concerned about delays to the program.
McCain said he detailed the concerns in a recent letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. He and Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, sent a similar letter over issues with the Air Force's new bomber program.
"While the recently announced cost overrun on the Air Force's KC-46A tanker is deeply unfortunate, it is encouraging that the contractor, and not the taxpayer, will bear this expense," McCain said.
"That said, the resulting delays to the program's internal deadlines for completing key qualification and planned ground and flight testing activities are indicative of a program at risk of not meeting its planned delivery milestones," he said.
Boeing plans to deliver the first 18 KC-46As to the Air Force by August 2017. The service estimates it will spend $49 billion to develop and build 149 of the planes to replace its aging fleet of KC-135s, according to Pentagon budget documents. Boeing forecasts an $80 billion global market for the new tankers, according to Trading Alpha.Marquette guard Matt Carlino (13) sinks the game-winning three-point shot over the arms of Creighton center Will Artino (31) on Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at the BMO Harris Bradley Center. Credit: Mark Hoffman
By of the
It was nearly three years ago when Juan Anderson, Derrick Wilson and Matt Carlino first met for a college basketball game.
On March 15, 2012, Marquette sent Carlino and BYU home on the opening Thursday of the NCAA Tournament with an 88-68 win in Louisville.
On Saturday, the three will share the court for one of the final times of their college careers. This time they all will be wearing the Marquette uniform as the Golden Eagles (11-18, 3-14 Big East) host DePaul (12-18, 6-11) at 1 p.m. at the BMO Harris Bradley Center for the final home game of the season.
The past four years have been a roller-coaster for all three seniors.
Anderson and Wilson made trips to the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 in their first two years, but since then the Golden Eagles have struggled. Last season, Marquette missed the postseason altogether for the first time since 2001. This year, the Golden Eagles recorded their first sub-.500 record since 1998-'99 and hold the worst conference record in the program's history.
Looking back, Wilson says his wide range of experiences — the highs of the deep NCAA Tournament runs and the lows of the past two years — created a rare college journey. Despite the difficult turn at the end, he's glad to have traveled it.
"I'm still enjoying myself," Wilson said. "This is a great group to be around, we have a great coaching staff and I wouldn't rather be any other place."
Anderson, a starter in name only for much of his sophomore and junior seasons, strongly considered transferring at times. He ultimately decided to stay and has had his best year of his career, averaging nine points and a team-leading 6.1 rebounds while playing more than 30 minutes per game.
He has also been an outspoken leader, wearing his emotions on his sleeve as a captain along with Wilson.
"The leadership aspect has helped me," Anderson said. "I always think about how one day I'll have a family and when you hit adversity how are you going to respond?"
Unfortunately for Anderson he's dealing with adversity now. He rolled his right ankle in practice two weeks ago and hasn't been able to compete at 100% since, missing one game and being limited in the past three.
Anderson doesn't know what shape he'll be in for his final home game. But before every game he spends a lot of time soaking up the atmosphere.
"I embrace the opportunity that I've been given, I embrace the atmosphere," Anderson said. "I embrace it even if I'm on the bench. It's like no other — Marquette is one of a kind, the tradition, the support. So I love it.
"If I can't play I'm going to be sad and heartbroken of course, but nonetheless I embrace it and I appreciate it."
Looking at the two seniors who have been with the program four years, first-year coach Steve Wojciechowski sees two of his team's best role models.
"They've done a good job this year," Wojciechowski said. "I hate that Juan's been hurt the last two weeks because you never want a senior not finishing out at his best. Derrick's been rock solid. He's a guy that you can count on each day to come to work and do the very best that he can and really that's all you can ask of guys."
Carlino, a graduate transfer from BYU, is concluding his only season at Marquette. He's made a big impact, leading the team with 14.6 points per game.
"Matt, if it wasn't for his injury, I think he was on pace for an all-Big East type year," Wojciechowski said, referring to a concussion that forced Carlino to miss four games. "It's been a difficult year. Without Matt it had the opportunity to be much, much more difficult."
Marquette's struggles aren't what Carlino expected when he decided to transfer, leaving a BYU team that made the NCAA Tournament two of his three years and went to the semifinals of the NIT his sophomore year. But he says he has never thought about being there at all.
"I've really enjoyed my time here," Carlino said. "I've been, obviously, a few other places. I was at BYU for a while and UCLA I wasn't there very long, but here has really felt like home for me. Even though I've only been here a year it's really been a good place for me."
As much as Saturday closes a chapter for Marquette's seniors, none of them is willing to close the book just yet. It's been a challenging season and none of them knows what his next step is, so they're staying focused on Saturday's game and the Big East tournament — their last certain opportunities to share the court together, three years after their paths first crossed.
"It's been an interesting year because I've never been part of a losing team like we are now," Carlino said. "I think I'll evaluate it more when the season's over. Right now, to me, there's still a lot left."favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite
Hi, it's Amy... With all the talk in the news about legalizing weed, the focus is taken off the real issue - the negative effects of smoking marijuana.What I talk about here in this video is mainly spiritual...But I am aware and very concerned about the overlooked side-effect it has on the brain- it really deactivates the area involved in motivation and ambition. It's lulling people into such a "good mood" that the natural instinct to achieve, perform, overcome, and work is simply not there. Viewing our society as a whole, do you think that's a good thing?Addiction is our enemy. Here's a recording I made on alcoholism. I'm no professional, but I understand humans, and matters of the heart and soul. That's why I speak.Love,Amy(Dear Alcoholic - audio) p.s. Thank you marylena90 for the kind words and encouragement. God bless you and your family always, may you walk in peace and truth and happiness in His Name all of your days :)The Smithsonian Channel will air a new documentary called “Building Star Trek” on the restoration of the original Enterprise model on September 4th.
ICYMI: Get the tissues because we’ve got another wonderful fan made Star Trek 50th Anniversary Tribute Video from Ketwolski.
The story of how the Smithsonian renovated and restored the original Enterprise is the subject of a new two hour documentary form the Smithsonian Channel called “Building Star Trek.” The documentary will take you behind the scenes as part of the team working to get the Enterprise ready for display before Star Trek‘s 50th anniversary.
The documentary isn’t set to premier until September 4th, but we will get a sneak peek at some of it during Comic-Con.
Here’s the full press released on “Building Star Trek”.
SMITHSONIAN CHANNEL™ COMMEMORATES 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF LANDMARK SCI-FI TELEVISION SERIES
‘BUILDING STAR TREK’
SET TO PREMIERE SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 AT 8 P.M. ET/PT Two-Hour Special to Take In-Depth Look At Far Reaching Influence
That Original Star Trek Series Has Had on Science And Technology NEW YORK, JULY 6, 2016 – Smithsonian Channel will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Star Trek with a two-hour special that will take a look at the lasting influence the original Star Trek series has had on the world. BUILDING STAR TREK will premiere Sunday, September 4 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Smithsonian Channel. When the series debuted on September 8, 1966, the world was introduced to a number of alien concepts, such as hand-held communication devices, desktop computers, space shuttles, touch screens, and more. Star Trek’s visionary creator was remarkably able to conceive of a world so different from his own that the series would go on to have a profound legacy in television history. BUILDING STAR TREK will follow the conservation team from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum as they attempt to restore and conserve the original 11-foot, 250-pound model of the U.S.S. Enterprise from the original series. The special also will track the effort to rebuild a model of the original U.S.S. Enterprise bridge by using authentic set pieces and props, which recently went on display at Seattle’s EMP Museum. The two-hour special also profiles a new generation of engineers and scientists who are making Star Trek’s visionary technology real, pushing the boundaries of physics with inventions first conceived on the iconic series: warp drives, medical tricorders, cloaking devices and tractor beams. Proving that one TV show has truly gone where no man has gone before, BUILDING STAR TREK will showcase clips from the original series that highlight each scientific innovation and the new technologies that have inspired generations.
Are you excited about “Building Star Trek”? Let us know on Facebook or in the comments below.Annie Dookhan, a former chemist at the Hinton State Laboratory Institute, listens to the judge during her arraignment at Brockton Superior Court in Brockton, Massachusetts January 30, 2013. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi Want to know just how much our criminal justice system relies on plea-bargaining and how rarely prosecutions result in the kinds of jury trials we see on TV? Look no further than the story of Annie Dookhan, the disgraced Boston-area drug laboratory chemist whose egregious corner-cutting over a decade of work may have compromised more than 24,000 convictions in Massachusetts.
Dookhan had been working in a state lab operated by the Massachusetts State Police forensics unit and had personally tested thousands of drug samples used to convict defendants in criminal cases. Prosecutors were blindsided in 2012 when it turned out she had been routinely filing false test results and claiming to have detected the presence of drugs in samples she never actually examined. Dookhan was found to have been implausibly productive throughout her tenure at the drug lab, testing samples at a rate that was five times greater than that of her colleagues.
Dookhan pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, perjury, and tampering with evidence in November 2013 and was released from prison this past April. But the ripple effects from a decade of malfeasance created a profound headache for the Massachusetts criminal justice system, sending lawyers throughout the state scrambling to determine which cases needed to be re-examined.
Last year, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that anyone who had pleaded guilty to drug charges based on test results prepared by Dookhan could take back their pleas. On Wednesday, the court followed up with a second ruling in a case involving a man who had been convicted at trial based partly on Dookhan's discredited analysis. In an opinion, Chief Justice Ralph Gants wrote, "Regardless whether a defendant pleads guilty to a drug offense or is found guilty at trial, where Dookhan examined the substance in question as a primary or confirmatory chemist, the evidence is still potentially tainted by Dookhan's misconduct, the taint is still attributable to the government." The ruling extended to defendants who had gone to trial the opportunity for a do-over that had already been offered to defendants who had pleaded out.
The court's decision was applauded by the Massachusetts Bar Association, with chief legal counsel Martin Healy telling the Boston Globe, "We think that the level of misconduct and misrepresentation and fraud that occurred in the Annie Dookhan matter rises to the level of not being constitutionally sound. Anybody that's convicted by a jury of their peers deserves to be either tried anew or the decision should be dismissed or vacated altogether."
But it was the response from the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office that was more illuminating, if only inadvertently so. In an email, D.A. office spokesman Jake Wark told the Globe that Wednesday's ruling would only cause a "minimal disruption." That's because the vast majority of the roughly 7,500 Suffolk County convictions affected by Dookhan's misconduct had resulted from plea bargains, not jury trials. (The ACLU of Massachusetts disputes Wark's estimate of the number of Suffolk County convictions affected by Dookhan; a spokesman for the organization told me it is closer to 8,700.) In other words, the new ruling would not significantly expand the class of people affected by the bad tests because so few of those cases ever went to trial in the first place. Guilty pleas often lead to lesser sentences, making them enticing options. Flickr/Myfuture.com
It is a widely known but still underappreciated fact about the American legal system that criminal trials are extremely rare. When most of us imagine the gears of the justice system turning, we picture juries and judges listening to testimony and attorneys making dramatic courtroom statements in defense of their clients. But as Wark's serene reaction to Wednesday's ruling underscores, the reality is that almost all criminal cases are resolved through backroom deals between prosecutors and defense lawyers—a process that is poorly understood precisely because it happens outside of the public eye.
Why should we be concerned about the plea-bargaining system? Because, as U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff has written in the New York Review of Books, the power to dictate the terms of a deal "is, as a practical matter, lodged largely in the prosecutor, with the defense counsel having little say and the judge even less." Prosecutors run the show because, in most cases, the law gives them great flexibility to decide which charges to bring against a defendant and thus what kinds of sentences to threaten in order to pressure him into waiving his right to a trial. This is wrong not only because it is inherently coercive; it also leads to false confessions. Citing the National Registry of Exonerations, Rakoff noted in his NYRB piece that 10 percent of the 1,428 exonerations that were handed down between 1989 and 2014 involved cases in which a defendant had pleaded guilty.
Wark told me by phone that less than 5 percent of the 7,500 convictions the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office has identified as being possibly tainted by Dookhan went to trial. "That's simply the way things work in Boston, in Suffolk County, in Massachusetts, and in the United States," Wark said. "The vast majority of every type of case is resolved through a guilty plea, and the reason for that is that the evidence is generally pretty strong."
A defendant who wants a new trial based on Wednesday's decision will now be able to file a motion to that effect, Wark said, and a judge will make a determination as to whether their case relied heavily enough on Dookhan's work to warrant being retried. But Wark emphasized that prosecutors in Suffolk County don't rely exclusively on lab results when they bring cases against drug offenders, and they typically bring a range of evidence that includes actual drugs and drug paraphernalia that have been seized.
"The sliver of cases that will be affected by this decision is a sliver of the already small number of cases that went to trial," said Wark.here are all the celebrities you must Bye bye to, should Donald Trump get elected.
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been under the spotlight ever since he announced his intentions to run for president last year and whether you are an avid fan of his, someone who hates his guts or a “moderate” who doesn’t have any opinions on him or just doesn’t care, you have to admit, its been quite an interesting and entertaining ride. He has come so far in the polls, has won so many states and is leading in so many others that it is almost certain that he will be winning the GOP nomination. Well as is common in almost every presidential election, a lot of people have vowed and promised to leave the United States if he becomes president, some of them are Celebrities.
Vowing to leave the country if someone gets elected is nothing new, of course, back in 2008, The Ku Klux klan vowed that they would pack their bags and leave if a black man (Barack Obama) ever got elected as president of the country.
He did get elected.
They never left.
I’ve decided to make a collection of all the celebrities that have promised to leave the country if Trump gets elected, I’ll be updating the list as more say they will. Trust me, there will be more.
1. Rev Al Sharpton:
Rev. Al Sharpton revealed that he is willing to leave the United States if Trump is elected president. Right now, he is giving his support to virtually anyone but Trump, yet he has been very complimentary of Marco Rubio in hopes he wins the Republican nomination, according to The Washington Examiner.
“If Donald Trump is the nominee, I’m open to support anyone [else], while I’m also reserving my ticket to get out of here if he wins, only because he’d probably have me deported anyway.”
The Inquisitr reports him saying.
2. Raven Symone:
The “The view” TV show host is another person who has promised to leave the country if Trump is elected, and she plans on moving to Canada.
“I already have my ticket. I literally bought my ticket, I swear.”
She is reported saying. I am forced to believe she is serious.
3. John Stewart:
According to The Inquisitr, Jon Stewart, former host of the Daily Show, was one of the the first celebrities to throw his name out there. He had been asked if he’d considered returning to his old desk if Trump were to become president, but he shot that down in an instant and said that wasn’t happening.
Not only is Stewart prepared to leave the United States, but he’s intent on actually departing Earth if Trump gets into office. Stewart said that he would get in a rocket and think about going to another planet because this planet “has gone bonkers.” Yes, he said it in a joking fashion and took it to |
. Galax, for one, is a depressed city. There used to be a thriving furniture business there, but lower production costs overseas closed factory after factory. At the edge of town, you’ll find an Arby’s, Aunt Bea’s Barbecue, a decent Mexican place and a Wal-Mart, but there’s less work downtown. The streets were quiet the afternoons we wandered through. Folks were around, though, once we started to look. Some were wiping their hands on napkins at the Galax Smokehouse, which is known for pork, but also serves an excellent, juicy barbecue chicken. And then there’s the 1920s Rex Theater, which broadcasts live each Friday night on WBRF, a country and bluegrass radio station that provided the soundtrack to our trip.
But the liveliest business in town is Barr’s Fiddle Shop. Packed floor to ceiling with fiddles, guitars, amps and all manner of music — as well as a candy-shop section stocked with fudge — Barr’s hosts music sessions, curious tourists and lesson seekers. In the 1920s, the Hill Billies quartet got its start on the site — then a barbershop — and their sound, which came to be known as hillbilly music, swept the nation. “People are raised up going to the music,” said Stevie Barr, a 35-year-old banjo virtuoso with a shock of surfer blond hair, who owns the shop his father opened. “You are born with it, and you are born listening to it.”
I had heard that the best place to be on Friday night, to really see that generational mix, was the town of Floyd. So we bid farewell to Galax, popped a Wayne Henderson CD into the car stereo, and headed up the Crooked Road. “More dance!” Orli cried from the back seat. And then, looking out the window, “More cows! More horses!” Heaven for a city kid is driving in farm country.
BEFORE we’d gone too far, we came across Harmon’s. The sign, calling it the “Boot Capitol of Virginia,” was enticing and I couldn’t resist pulling into the parking lot. It is a sprawling store filled with stiff Wranglers, Stetson hats and endless rows of cowboy boots. Tucked in back was a museum dedicated to regional law-enforcement: a hodgepodge of Civil War paraphernalia; news reports of a shooting at the Carroll County jail in 1912 that people still talk about; the 1920 Matewan mining massacre; and random bits, like a stuffed two-headed calf. Even here there is a music exhibit, with a dulcimer and a banjo, and records cut by local musicians in the 1920s.
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I tried on a pair of boots, shot through with aqua up the shaft, rich mahogany leather at the bottom. The ladies at the cash register clucked with approval. “That’ll look real nice with skirts come summer,” one said. Impulsively, I bought them and jumped back in our rented Ford. And then I saw Ian with a Harmon’s bag. “I bought a Western-style shirt, $21,” he said, shrugging.
A few hours later we were picking up tickets for the Floyd Country Store Friday Night Jamboree — $5 each — in advance. Then we wandered down the street to Oddfella’s Cantina, a cozy restaurant with mismatched furniture, for salads (a relief after all the barbecue) washed down with local Shooting Creek beer. We skipped dessert to hit the jamboree.
The night began with the bluegrass gospel group Janet Turner & Friends. Tiny and snowy-haired, Ms. Turner plays a mean autoharp that pairs well with her sweet, high voice. “When I die, hallelujah, by and by, I’ll fly away,” she sang. Orli stood in the footlights, playing an air guitar; she and another toddler each began to dance.
But then, within seconds of the band’s closing note there was a rush for the dance floor. The audience had changed into double tap shoes, and left a sea of shoes in their wake. What had started out churchlike became a rumble and a roar. The Friday Night Old Time Band had begun. The music picked up, and the number of people in the store doubled, tripled, quadrupled. I swooped Orli up and back, away from the dancing feet. Every inch of wall space was undulating, whooping, stomping. More polished than the dancers at Fries, everyone knew how to flatfoot, and the tap shoes kept the time. A fellow in a T-shirt that read “Still Truckin’ ” spun me onto the dance floor. I did my best to keep up, clicking my boots on the floor.
Photo
Catching my breath, I wandered back into the store, past swirls of giant lollipops and displays of Carhartt pants and jackets. The room reeked of sweat; dancers were backed up to the ice cream counter. There I met Jackie Martin in pressed Liberty overalls. The music she said, nearly teary, has kept her going through hard times. “It’s who we are and what we are,” Ms. Martin said. “I’m 66 years old and I can still flatfoot!”
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The Floyd Country Store may be all about tradition, but the rest of town has a nouveau-hippie vibe, evident in places like the eco-minded Hotel Floyd, in events like Floyd Fest (a summer World Music festival) and in new galleries like Troika, which features decidedly unfolksy pottery, photography, wood pieces and drawings. Owned by the potter Silvie Granatelli, Gibby Waitzkin (a paper artist), and Susan Icove (a lighting designer), Troika emerged out of a biannual gallery crawl called 16 Hands, which takes visitors to the studios of artists who have moved to the region over the last 30 years or so, lured by affordable property and lovely vistas. In the process, they have pushed Floyd toward a creative economy that has buoyed it beyond the economic hardship experienced elsewhere on the Road. (Abingdon, about two hours from Floyd, has that energy too; a regional arts center called Heartwood is due to open in June.) We visited Ms. Granatelli’s studio, which is set in a swath of scenery that feels like an Andrew Wyeth painting: lazy cows on the hillside above her white clapboard house, a serene creek below.
In the morning, after stacks of hot cakes, we got on the Blue Ridge Parkway and headed an hour south to the Blue Ridge Music Center on the Virginia-North Carolina border. Run by the National Park Service and the National Council for the Traditional Arts and created by Congress, the Music Center has hiking trails, a marvelous Mid-Day Mountain Music series that runs from May through October and an amphitheater.
“History is under every rock in this area,” said Erynn Marshall, music program manager at the center, as she showed me around “The Roots of American Music,” a new interactive exhibition with instruments, photography and stories that trace the history and sound of the region. It was created by Joe Wilson, chairman of the National Council of Traditional Arts and author of “A Guide to the Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail,” and designed by Ralph Applebaum, known for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In recent years, Ms. Marshall said, there has been a big push toward preserving local history and culture, and she recommended that we head to another place to see even more of that effort: the Blue Ridge Institute & Museum, in Ferrum.
The drive to the museum, we learned belatedly, was on one of the most breathtakingly twisting roads in a region of shockingly complicated driving. But on arrival, we were pleased to find a child-friendly 19th-century working farm. A woman named Rebecca was dressed as the farmer’s wife; there were oxen and lambs to pet, horses, a blacksmith and a woman fiddling away on an ancient violin. At the museum, the current show, which is on display through July, is on the history of the dulcimer. Black-and-white photography in another room captures Appalachian women in the middle of the last century.
But there is another kind of history in these parts too. An hour and a half from Galax in Marion, just off Highway 81, the town’s main street is darkened by the shadows of empty storefronts. On the edge of town, a Wal-Mart looms. The Lincoln Theater and the Francis Marion hotel next door are lone standouts in a time of deep economic upheaval. Built in 1929 by the furniture factory owner Charles Wassum, the Lincoln is a masterpiece of Mayan revival; it stood empty from 1977 until a renovation in 2004. The hotel hails from the same era; it was rehabilitated from a boarding house to its former glory five years ago. After checking into our neat black-and-white room, we had a bite to eat and ran into the Lincoln for its monthly event, Song of the Mountains, a collaboration between the Lincoln Theater and PBS.
The theater is gorgeous — Art Deco murals on the walls, depicting scenes of Southern history. Sweet Potato Pie, a five-woman bluegrass band, was on stage. The sound was amazing, but immediately we realized we’d made a mistake. Orli couldn’t run here, couldn’t dance. She was the only child in the audience. After two songs, she and Ian left for the hotel.
They missed the Carter Family Sound, the group that took the stage next and played a string of songs in homage to one of the first families of bluegrass and country music. I met the group in the lobby after their set, and they laughed that I’d brought a 2-year-old. The place for little ones, they said, is the Carter Family Fold, in Hiltons, a few hours down the road. On Saturday nights, old-time bands pack the house and children run free.
You could spend a whole summer here, I realized, going to jams every night, seeking out sit-down venues like the Fold, and the Lincoln, standing-room-only music sessions in stores, and hiking the trails along New River.
As we drove back home to Washington, I kept thinking of the song playing when we’d left the Fries session that first night. “Y’all come,” Karen Carr on the upright bass had sung out, channeling Bill Monroe’s country song of that title. “Y’all come see to us now and then.”
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And we promised ourselves that we would.################### # Balance ################### - Minor clan revolt troops are no longer inherited, and the leader of the uprising now has more money, prestige, population and manpower as well as two sons to succeed him - If you grant a title and all titles below it to a child while following a religion that uses bishops, the temples will now have bishops generated rather than not get handed to the recipient - "Cultural Bonds" no longer causes an alliance, but instead allows other independent characters of the conqueror's culture to join them in defensive wars. The AI is likely to do this if their opinion of the defender is positive and they're not busy with wars of their own - Allowed vassals to press de jure claims against their fellow vassals again (though the AI won't) - You'll now lose some Threat if dying causes you to lose land - When the holder of a viceroyalty dies, they'll now be replaced in wars by their regular heir, not their liege - The "Ask to Leave Court" diplomatic interaction will now cause the character's spouses to leave as well, and has the same requirements of the spouses as the character being asked to leave - Increased the duration of the "War Taxes" modifier to five years (up from three), for completing the "Build a War Chest" Ambition - Overthrow Ruler will now give the ruler a claim on the title if they accept the demands - No longer possible to usurp titles from the vassals of a revolting vassal - Capitals can now be moved every 50 years rather than once per lifetime. Nomads still get to move it every 10 years - Merchant Republics with too few patricians will no longer draft people who are heir to a title to become patricians, since this risks disinheriting them - No longer possible to ask to join a war against someone you have a non-aggression pact with - The "make my court/vassals speak English" events can now trigger if one's a vassal of Britannia rather than England, and can trigger for the king/emperor as well, not just their vassals - The prestige you get from being a consort now scales with the tier of your spouse. Reduced the prestige to half. Now it ranges from 0.5/month from a baron to 2.5/month from an emperor - The capital duchy of a title, if held by the title holder, will under elective/tanistry law now always follow that title's succession, even if your heir is not playable for you. Counties, baronies, and other duchies will still revert to primogeniture in that case - Now possible to give temple holdings to children if that does not risk disinheriting them - No longer possible to appoint someone to your council when they're part of a faction that's sent you an ultimatum; this could be exploited to have them leave the faction, giving you an easy win in the faction war, or invalidating it entirely - When non-primary war participants die, their primary heir will now stay in the war if the inherited title ends up as their primary title, and it'd be possible for them to ask to join the war, or be called in by the war leader - When eating your prisoners, you can now attract a non-serious disease - No longer possible to join or start factions while you have a truce with your liege - Landed characters now pick a plot if they have none considerably more often; on average after 12 months
Spoiler: Interface
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# Interface
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- The levy tooltip now shows all modifiers to levy size rather than just the influence of martial and the location of the holding compared to one's capital
- The council job actions now say their name at the top of the tooltip even if the councilor is currently performing the action
- "Favorite map mode" buttons will now be highlighted if the associated map mode is selected via the regular button rather than the custom button
- The game will no longer occasionally change the selected tab for no apparent reason on the character screen if you have a non-ruler selected
- When part of a faction revolt, the faction leader's units will look allied rather than neutral
- Updated the "Grant Viceroyalty" interaction to include the "Include Vassal Titles" checkbox
- Added support for accented ASCII characters and similar (E.G., é, å, ü) in the Character Finder's search field
- The holding view will now show the influence of stewardship on the holding's tax income, and the income summary in the province view will acount for the stewardship bonus
- Updated the Focus window to avoid some cases were it wouldn't explain why you are unable to select a given focus
- Reaper's Due: The Hospital icon in the province view will now open the hospital buildings screen if the province has a hospital. If it does not, it will toggle the Extended Province View
- The main menu music will now start playing if you unmute it using the main menu settings, even if you started the game with music muted
- Fixed game rule titles sometimes going across two lines on the game rule screen for some languages
- Updated the dynasty view for the Indian religions, as they would use the Christian dynasty ornament
- Clicking the Nomad Agitation alert will now select the relevant province, not just pan to it
- Made the list of titles in the character view slightly wider
- The event where you ask your court physician to save your sickly child will now show the child's portrait
- Known/backed plots now show their plot power in the UI entry itself, not just the tooltip
- Clicking a council job action again will now cancel the job assignment
- Recalling someone from their council action while having a job selected for assignment will now cancel job assignment
- The border highlighting of selected CBs now takes precedence over selected provinces or titles
- Updated the condition tooltips for the decisions "Mend the Great Schism" and "Restore the Roman Empire" to shorten the tooltip and make them easier to read
- Now only possible to hit "Ready" in multiplayer when the save has finished loading
- Fixed the character UI not fully updating if the character died while you were looking at them. Before this would result in the plot button still being available, as well as a number of other issues
- The realm peace tooltip will now tell you how long it has been since you used realm peace if it is on cooldown
- Build Time and Build Cost modifiers now show as percentages (E.G., -10.0% instead of -0.1)
- Added a unique skin for the Republic view when playing as Indian
- Added a sound for gaining a new trait
- Event options will now list both trait icons and affected character portraits
- Fixed the "Call to Arms" text sometimes not fitting the letter window
- Changed the color of the mosaic at the top of the Muslim Clan/Nomad interface, to make it different from the Council interface
- The tooltip for religion in the province window now provides the same info as the religion tooltip in the character religion
- The title shields on the law page now no longer change order when you click any of them, instead making the selected one bigger
- Interface shortcuts that require the SHIFT key to be used now more clearly indicate that's the case. In the past a capital letter shortcut meant SHIFT was used, but now it'll say for example "SHIFT+A" rather than just "A"
- Removed "Show Commanders" choice in the Minor Titles View and changed the "Show Honorary Titles" to "Show Commanders Only" to only display commanders
- Added new option to the Minor Titles View "Auto-assign Commanders", which will replace a commander automatically with the best available candidate whenever a commander dies
- You no longer have to resign a commander first in order to replace them in the minor titles view
- Switched the placement of the title shield and the voter stance for the council in the My/Liege Council tab, to keep consistency with other portraits
- Fixed clicking on someone's primary title sometimes not taking you to their capital
- Clicking on a character's plot on the character screen will now take you to the target of the plot
- Fixed the decision to donate to the Knights of the Sun not having an icon
- The religion screen will no longer show the title of the religious head if there is no religious head
- The "Mod" and "Version" checkboxes in the multiplayer browser have been clarified to "Same Mods" and "Same Version"
- Moved the scrollbar slightly in the different law tabs, to make them somewhat easier to see
- Removed the "double" click sound you would get when clicking a province if the Extended Province View was opened already
- Added a sound effect when turning the pages in the Chronicle
- Added indicators for good and bad childhood traits in the Education Focus picker
- Removed the additional important minor title portraits at top of the Council View
- Made so the prisoner icon is now clickable and takes you to the imprisoner
- Improved the tooltip for the "Revoke Vassal Title" plot
- Updated character tooltip so it mentions whether you have educator/guardian (with name and location) and removed redundant tooltip that gave the same information
- Educate character interaction tooltip now use Conclave description if Conclave is enabledAn Oregon-based free speech group, Patriot Prayer, has been granted a permit by the National Park Service to hold a rally at Crissy Field in San Francisco on Saturday, sparking outrage and name-calling by liberals, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the city’s Mayor Ed Lee.
At an event in San Francisco on Tuesday, local television station KPIX 5 asked Pelosi about the labeling of the group as white supremacist.
“Pelosi said Crissy Field is a special place,” KPIX 5 reported.
“And now they’re going to give it as a venue to Nazis and white nationalists,” Pelosi said.
“I ask our public and our residents of the San Francisco Bay Area to honor our request to not dignify people who are coming in here under the guise of patriot and prayer words to really preach violence and hatred and to incite violence,” Lee, who is also Asian, said at a press conference on Tuesday after the National Park Service issued a permit for the protest, the San Francisco Examiner reported.
But Joey Gibson, who founded the Patriot Prayer group, told a local Fox affiliate that he has openly denounced white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
“I’m Japanese,” Gibson said. “We have three black speakers, a couple Hispanic, an atheist, a transsexual…We’re extremely diverse.”
“It’s really irresponsible for the leaders to call me a white supremacist,” Gibson added. “It’s completely unfounded.”
“The things I talk about, the things that I preach has nothing to do with skin color,” Gibson said. In the interview he outlined that he looks to God and Jesus for his values. “It has to do with what’s on the inside.”
Gibson said it is the counter-protestors who incite violence and try to “hi-jack” the message at these kind of rallies and called on Pelosi and Lee to denounce them.
“Why don’t you speak out about antifa?” Gibson said. “These guys are going to show up with a thousands of people all dressed in black and they promote violence, they promote hate.”
“I don’t,” Gibson said. “But I don’t see them speaking out about antifa.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which is being sued by a Christian group who said it has been defamed by being listed on the organization’s “hate map,” has not included Gibson or his group on the map and, in fact, wrote an article about him saying that he has allowed diverse speakers at his protests and had denounced white supremacy and Nazis.
“We have too many people right now who believe someone is an enemy because they have a different ideological perspective and we have to get beyond that,” Gibson told Fox. “We has so much hatred and so much division in this country and if we don’t handle that at a grassroots level I do believe this country will burn.”
In a letter to NPS before the permit was approved, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) also condemned Patriot Prayer, which she wrote “attracts white nationalists and other hate groups to its rallies with the intent to provoke unrest between those groups and counter-protesters.”
The NPS responded to complaints about the protest permit by issuing a statement.
“We cannot deny a permit to anyone planning to exercise their First Amendment rights based on their political stance or beliefs,” the statement said. “We can deny a permit application for public safety reasons if the event raises such significant public safety concerns that law enforcement cannot manage the event.”
A number of counter protests are planned around the free speech rally, including one on Friday with Lee and other city officials.Attack On Titan Shows More 3D Maneuver Gear Action At Taipei Game Show 2016
By Sato. January 29, 2016. 4:30am
Koei Tecmo has a demo for their upcoming Attack on Titan game by Omega Force at Taipei Game Show 2016, and an off-camera footage from the event gives us the latest look at its gameplay action.
The demo shows the player taking on basic missions as Eren, as they hunt down some of the smaller Titans at and early part of the game. We also get to see the characters group up to fight a bigger one that requires more hits to take down.
Attack on Titan will release in Japan on February 18, 2016 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita. The game is headed westward in 2016.Image caption The PHA has said suicide and self harm is "a major problem in Northern Ireland"
International experts in the field of suicide prevention are due to attend a conference in Belfast on Thursday.
Guest speakers from the USA, Canada, New Zealand and the UK will address up to 200 delegates at the event hosted by Northern Ireland charity, Contact.
The main speakers include the World Health Organisation's leader on international suicide prevention strategy, Professor Annette Beautrais.
Contact said it was an opportunity to learn from global and local research.
The charity will also use the conference to launch the results of two new studies on youth suicide.
Professor Beautrais will be joined on the podium at the Stormont Hotel by David Covington, the chair of the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which operates a network of more than 150 "crisis centres" across America.
Delegates will also hear from one of Northern Ireland's leading social scientists, Professor Mike Tomlinson, who has carried out extensive research on the link between suicide and the Troubles.
The Public Health Agency (PHA) has acknowleged that suicide and self harm is "a major problem in Northern Ireland".
Its head of health and social wellbeing improvement, Brendan Bonner, said the knowledge gained from the international speakers would be "invaluable in developing local solutions in partnership with those on the ground who are often best placed to see the needs".
"We know that trusted, accessible community-based facilities, supported by skilled and experienced mental health professionals, are a key factor in suicide prevention." Mr Bonner added.
Contact is an independent counselling and mental health advocacy charity that was established 35 years ago in Northern Ireland.
Its managing director, Fergus Cumiskey, said: "The conference offers a vital and urgent opportunity for all those working within the challenging area of suicide prevention and evaluation, to learn from the strengths and weaknesses of local and global research into suicide prevention.
"We are confident the conference take home message will influence the urgent task of building a cohesive, campaigning suicide prevention movement.
"We are also convinced our international speakers will also learn from unique NI research and practice efforts to reduce suicide."Travel
Hyperloop India is building a prototype to make Hyperloop travel in India a reality.
Sibesh Kar was just 19 years old when Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the Tony Stark of real world, announced in 2015 that he was throwing open a global competition with the SpaceX Design Weekend, seeking proposals for the best Hyperloop pod prototype designs. Kar was a fan of Musk already, so he didn’t need much convincing to take up the challenge, but that the Hyperloop could revolutionize cargo and passenger travel in the world was indeed inspiring.
With the Ministry of Railways and the Indian government making much noise about it, there is a lot of buzz on Hyperloop. But what exactly is it?
The concept of Hyperloop, which Musk calls the fifth mode of transportation, is to eliminate air resistance and contact friction to increase the speed of travel – it is to create a mode of transport in vacuum. Designing such a thing was no mean task, so Musk proposed an open design challenge under Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), also founded by him. The concept was to take ideas from across the world and develop them further.
With the idea of bringing Hyperloop to India in mind, Kar formed a team of three in his college, BITS Pilani, and entered the competition. After successfully making it to round two, Kar realized that there were more skillsets required to develop the various technologies and subsystems involved in the Hyperloop. He soon brought on board a number of other students from engineering and management backgrounds.
Sibesh Kar (third from left) with a part of the Hyperloop India team
Cut to 2017 - the team is now 70-member strong and has engineers from across BITS colleges and management students from the Indian School of Business (ISB) and IIM Ahmedabad. Having christened themselves Hyperloop India, they have submitted their final design report, which SpaceX has approved. The team is also one among the 35 semifinalists in Hyperloop One’s global challenge on the feasibility of Hyperloop. Hyperloop One is a US-based company - independent of SpaceX - that is trying commercialize Hyperloop.
As a part of this competition, Hyperloop India has suggested a corridor from Mumbai to Chennai via Bangalore. This 1,102-kilometre route can be covered in 50 minutes on the Hyperloop. As per their submission, this corridor will reduce cargo travel time between the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal from three days to less than 3 hours. “The same tracks can be used to link the vast populations, economies and diverse cultures of the large urban agglomerations of Mumbai, Bangalore, and Chennai,” their case study states.
Currently, Hyperloop India’s focus is entirely on building a pod to be represented at SpaceX’s design challenge in September. A pod is the vehicle which will travel through the Hyperloop. It needs to manufacture and fabricate India’s first pod prototype.
"Our team is currently focussed on creating a stakeholder network to develop the prototype and transport it to California. As per our estimates, the entire process will cost us Rs 60 Lakhs. This includes manufacturing, fabrication, engineering assistance, review and survey, and transportation,” says 20-year old Prithvi Sankar, who is a part of the business development team at Hyperloop India.
So, what is this pod that they’re building? Hyperloop India’s prototype will be called OrcaPod, which can reach speeds of up to 460 kmph. Sankar says that the OrcaPod is one of the most inexpensive pods as compared to its rivals.
There are various stakeholders involved in helping Hyperloop India realizing the dream of Hyperloop. As it builds its first prototype, the team is working with Invest India, which is helping it reach out to the right people and avail R&D funding from various organizations.
The Rail India Technical and Economic Service (RITES), a public service undertaking which does engineering consultancy in the field of transport infrastructure, is also helping Hyperloop India with its feasibility case study. It is also working with them to explore how Hyperloop could be what Mission 350 Plus is looking to achieve. Niti Aayog, too, is pitching in.
The Ministry of Railways announced the Mission 350 Plus to explore a levitation-based technology that can reach speeds of more than 350 kmph. The aim to introduce high-speed magnetic levitation spends in the country and implement at least the first stretch in less than three years.
So, will winning either or both of the competitions mean India will soon have its first Hyperloop corridor? The entire idea is only still at the conceptual stage. Sankar says that the technology exists, but it is all about bringing them together. Even in terms of the competition, there is a long way to go. But if Hyperloop India manages to win, that will definitely push further the advent of the Hyperloop in India.Xherdan Shaqiri has struggled to establish himself in Bayern Munich's first-team
Liverpool are interested in signing Bayern Munich forward Xherdan Shaqiri, according to Sky sources.
The Reds are believed to want a deal for the 23-year-old to move to Anfield in the summer and are happy for him to join Inter Milan, who are also interested, on loan until the end of the season.
Shaqiri, 23, has struggled to establish himself in Bayern’s first team since a transfer from Basel in 2012, making just 26 league starts in over two years.
Ray Parlour feels Bayern Munich winger Xherdan Shaqiri would be a good signing for Liverpool Ray Parlour feels Bayern Munich winger Xherdan Shaqiri would be a good signing for Liverpool
The Switzerland international, who has 41 caps, impressed at the World Cup last summer but has started in just three Bundesliga matches this season.
Shaqiri can play on either wing, similar to current Liverpool star Adam Lallana, and would offer Inter a strong short-term solution to their struggles in 11th place in Serie A.
Sky Sports football expert Ray Parlour, speaking on the Morning View, said: “It’s a move that he would be very interested in because he is not playing on a regular basis.
“He is only 5’6” and Liverpool have a lot small players already, but he has potential and at 23 he is already very experienced for his age. He would be a good signing.
“He has played with some top quality players. He always wants the ball, can go past players. Tracking back is probably not his game, but he can create chances.
“With his calibre at being at Bayern, Liverpool have to have a serious look at him.”The campaign group Pulse of Europe believes there has been an alarming increase in radicalisation in political life.
The organisation was formed by a group of German citizens in the wake of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in the US.
They say they have organised 58 demontrations since last November, which have been attended by an estimated 20 thousand people.
Today's #MarchForEurope may be over, but is continued from tomorrow with the PulseofEurope to set another signal for the #FutureofEuropepic.twitter.com/hMHqx0siuY — Fabian Weber (fabian_web) March 25, 2017
The group thinks the majority of people believe in the fundamental concept of Europe, its potential for reform and development and they do not want to lose it to nationalist tendencies. According to organisers, the protection of an alliance which secures peace and guarantees individual freedom, justice and legal security is at stake.
Friedrich Jeschke from Pulse of Europe in Aachen has spoken to Euronews.
Euronews: You started in November 2016 in Frankfurt and are a non-party movement encompassing people from all walks of life: young and old, workers and entrepreneurs. Your objective is to emphasise the positive aspects of the EU. You believe the EU is founded on positive values which are guidelines for the future. Does nationalism run against the European interest?
Friedrich Jeschke: One of the essential objectives of the nationalist parties is to exit a “United Europe”. They want to rebuild countries’ borders and revert to national currencies.
However, borderless countries and currencies are fundamental European concepts, so, yes, nationalism goes against Europe. We are present in ten countries and 14 cities in France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal, Ireland and even the UK. The movement is growing week-by-week and more cities are joining.
There are also other pro-European movements which have a similar ethos to “Pulse of Europe”.
Euronews:Your protests are only held on Sundays?
Friedrich Jeschke:Yes, and as far as possible, all at the same time.
A lot of participants come with their children. In Germany, everyone has the right to hold a demonstration. Security and safety is the responsibility of the police. We have donation boxes and those present are free to contribute as much as they want.
Euronews: What would you like to change or improve in Europe?
Friedrich Jeschke: We think the European idea should be more appreciated and made more understandable for the public. It is a grass-roots movement which starts at the bottom and moves up.
Europe should be fun again. Those who leave the Union cannot help to shape Europe in the future. Change and improvement are the result of greater participation and more debate.
70 years ago, our grandparents were standing face-to-face on the battlefields. Today, we are friends, neighbours and even family. Europe now stands for peace, freedom, dialogue and unprecedented opportunities for the individual development of its citizens.
“Pulse of Europe” also offers support for pro-European politicians. We offer them motivation and inspiration.
Euronews: How can people organise demonstrations for Pulse of Europe?
Friedrich Jeschke: Contact us at the organisation, and the police. You need public support to organise sound systems, leaflets and other materials. Our tool is social media as well as word-of-mouth recommendations and the press.
We had our first demonstration in Aachen on March 5th 2017.
Aymara Defêche for euronews.Vigo County, Ind (WIBQ) This morning (Friday) at 7:45 am, Vigo County Sheriff’s Deputies were called to a residence on East Moyer Drive when the homeowner found a man in her garage.
The homeowner and her husband, who were both armed, held the burglar at gun point until deputies arrived and took him into custody.
The suspect was identified as 31 year old Michael D. McBroom of Terre Haute.
During the arrest of McBroom, he was found to have a screwdriver concealed up the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
Police say that the screwdriver was concealed in such a manner that it could have been easily used it as a weapon.
McBroom is being held in the Vigo County Jail charged with Burglary and is slated to make his first court appearance on Tuesday (July 5th).Svetlana Zhurova, a gold medal-winning figure skater and Russian MP who voted for the bill banning "gay propaganda" is the "mayor" of Sochi's mountain Olympic village, and recently told the independent Russian TV channel Dozhd that she "voted to stop people promoting it to minors," Buzzfeed reports:
Zhurova claimed that many European politicians who oppose the law had told her in private that they actually supported it and that Russian celebrities who support the law had been told by their sponsors to stay quiet. She added, “I just think they shouldn’t show a cartoon on TV — excuse me, I have two boys — where a king loves another king.” She went on to tell a “joke” about the law: “If someone says he’s Napoleon, he’ll be taken straight to the appropriate institution. If he says he’s a woman, then basically nothing happens to him, he’s fighting for his rights.”
You may recall that Yelena Isinbayeva, the "mayor" of Sochi's sea-level Olympic village caused controversy back in August when she ripped Swedish high jumper Emma Green Tregaro for painting her nails in rainbow colors in solidarity with LGBT people in Russia.
Said Isinbayeva: "It's disrespectful to our country, disrespectful to our citizens because we are Russians…We consider ourselves, like normal, standard people, we just live boys with women, girls with boys … it comes from the history. I hope the problem won't ruin our Olympic Games in So |
the Grille has the following module mounted: Praga EPA 3, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module Praga EPA AC
If the Grille has the following module mounted: Praga EPA 2, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module Praga EPA AC
If the Hummel had the following module researched: Maybach HL 157P, then the Hummel will instead have that research converted to: Maybach HL 120 TRM R
If the Hummel had the following module researched: Maybach HL 120 TRM, then the Hummel will instead have that research converted to: Maybach HL 120 TRM 112 R
If the Hummel has the following module mounted: Maybach HL 157P, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module Maybach HL 120 TRM R
If the Hummel has the following module mounted: Maybach HL 120 TRM, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module Maybach HL 120 TRM 112 R
If the G Tiger had the following module researched: Maybach HL 230P45, then the G Tiger will instead have that research converted to: Maybach HL 230 TRM P45
If the G Tiger has the following module mounted: Maybach HL 230P45, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module Maybach HL 230 TRM P45
If the SU-26 had the following module researched: 122mm cannon mod 1930, then the SU-26 will instead have that research converted to: 76mm cannon mod 1905 40
If the SU-26 has the following module mounted: 122mm cannon mod 1930, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module 76mm cannon mod 1905 40
If the SU-14 had the following module researched: V-2IS, then the SU-14 will instead have that research converted to: M-17F R
If the SU-14 has the following module mounted: V-2IS, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module M-17F R
If the S-51 had the following module researched: V-2IS, then the S-51 бUDUт иSSLеDованы моDULи V-16 и V-2IS R
If the S-51 has the following module mounted: V-2IS, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module V-16
If the Object 212 had the following module researched: V-2IS, then the Object 212 will instead have that research converted to: V-2-212
If the Object 212 has the following module mounted: V-2IS, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module V-2-212
If the AMX 105AM had the following module researched: SOFAM 8Gxb, then the AMX 105AM will instead have that research converted to: 6F11SRY
If the AMX 105AM has the following module mounted: SOFAM 8Gxb, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module 6F11SRY
If the AMX 105AM had the following module researched: ER 55, then the AMX 105AM will instead have that research converted to: SCR 528
If the AMX 105AM has the following module mounted: ER 55, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module SCR 528
If the AMX 13F3AM had the following module researched: SOFAM 8Gxb, then the AMX 13F3AM will instead have that research converted to: 6F11SRY
If the AMX 13F3AM has the following module mounted: SOFAM 8Gxb, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module 6F11SRY
If the AMX 13F3AM had the following module researched: ER 55, then the AMX 13F3AM will instead have that research converted to: SCR 528
If the AMX 13F3AM has the following module mounted: ER 55, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module SCR 528
If the Lorraine155 50 had the following module researched: Maybach HL 234P45, then the Lorraine155 50 will instead have that research converted to: Maybach HL 230 TRM P30
If the Lorraine155 50 had the following module researched: Maybach HL 230P45, then the Lorraine155 50 will instead have that research converted to: Maybach HL 230 TRM P30
If the Lorraine155 50 has the following module mounted: Maybach HL 234P45, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module Maybach HL 230 TRM P30
If the Lorraine155 50 has the following module mounted: Maybach HL 230P45, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module Maybach HL 230 TRM P30
If the Lorraine155 50 had the following module researched: ER 55, then the Lorraine155 50 will instead have that research converted to: SCR 528
If the Lorraine155 50 has the following module mounted: ER 55, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module SCR 528
If the Lorraine155 51 had the following module researched: Maybach HL 234P45, then the Lorraine155 51 will instead have that research converted to: Maybach 850CV
If the Lorraine155 51 had the following module researched: Maybach HL 230P45, then the Lorraine155 51 will instead have that research converted to: Maybach HL 230 TRM P30
If the Lorraine155 51 has the following module mounted: Maybach HL 234P45, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module Maybach 850CV
If the Lorraine155 51 has the following module mounted: Maybach HL 230P45, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module Maybach HL 230 TRM P30
If the Lorraine155 51 had the following module researched: ER 55, then the Lorraine155 51 will instead have that research converted to: SCR 528
If the Lorraine155 51 has the following module mounted: ER 55, then it will be then it will be replaced with, module SCR 528
The following modules will be sold (at their purchased price) and have the funds credited to the account:
American engine Twin Cadillac 42A series
American engine Ford GAFM4
Soviet engine M-50TD
German engine Maybach HL 174 05
Chassis for Object 261, Bat Chatillon 155, Т92, GW Typ E.
Reallocation of research:
If the following vehicle was researched: Sturmpanzer II, then that research will be converted to: GW Mk IVe
If the following vehicle was researched: Grille, then that research will be converted to: Pz Sfl IVb
If the following vehicle was researched: G Tiger, then that research will be converted to: GW Elefant
If the following vehicle was researched: SU-8, then that research will be converted to: R100 SU122A
If the following vehicle was researched: SU-14, then that research will be converted to: SU14 1
If the following vehicle was researched: AMX 105AM, then that research will be converted to: AMX Ob Am105
If the following vehicle was researched: Bat Chatillon155 58, then that research will be converted to: Bat Chatillon155 55
If the following vehicle was researched: М12, then that research will be converted to: М44
If the following vehicle was researched: Т92, then that research will be converted to: M53 55
All existing camouflages, accumulated experience, crew members, vehicle battle statistics will remain on the specific vehicles, despite these vehicles changing tier.
All SPGs will have their researchable modules dismounted and returned to the depot. Additionally, all loaded ammo and equipment on SPGs will be dismounted and returned to the Depot.
The price in credits and the necessary experience required to complete research for SPGs and their modules have been recalculated.BRUSSELS, Nov 5 (Reuters) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned European firms he would block attempts to cut special deals with Britain ahead of formal Brexit negotiations.
In an interview published on Saturday, Juncker said he had heard industrialists' concerns in a meeting with French President Francois Holland and German Chancellor Angela Merkel but told them not to interfere in the negotiations.
"I take issue with the attempts in some countries, especially in industrial circles, to reach an agreement with the British for their sector before the other 27 (member states) have spoken," Juncker told Belgian newspaper Le Soir.
"I told them not to interfere in the debate because they will find me on their way: This is a negotiation between 27 and the United Kingdom."
Juncker's comments appeared to be a warning to European firms after Japan's Nissan agreed to build new models in Britain after reassurances from Prime Minister Theresa May that it would receive support to preserve its competitiveness in the EU market after Brexit.
The head of the EU executive also repeated what has become a mantra of "no negotiation without notification" for European leaders - that the EU will not so much as talk to the British until May formally triggers a two-year countdown to Brexit under Article 50 of the EU treaty.
May has pledge to do so by March next year.
(Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing by Alexander Smith)GA/PAL/1376
3 OCTOBER 2016
GENERAL ASSEMBLY
COMMITTEE ON THE INALIENABLE RIGHTS OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE 378TH MEETING (AM)
Presenting First Report on Occupation’s Costs Trade Official Describes Palestine’s Economy as ‘Captive Market’ for Israel
Among other critical activities during the General Assembly’s seventy-first session, the State of Palestine would pursue efforts to enhance its status at the United Nations and demand that the international community end illegal settlement-building activities, its Permanent Observer told the Palestinian Rights Committee today.
Pledging to ensure that the Security Council, in particular, shouldered its responsibility to his people, Riyad Mansour recalled that President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority had outlined plans in that regard during the Assembly’s high-level debate. “The situation on the ground is moving from bad to worse,” he told the Committee, known formally as the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. It had gathered against the backdrop of Israel’s intensified settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Recalling that the Security Council had been briefed on the matter last month, Mr. Mansour said the briefing had resulted in an unexpected open meeting, during which many speakers had emphasized the serious danger posed by continuing settlement construction. In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had publicly attacked members of the Council, referring to their demands for an end to the settlements as a form of ethnic cleansing.
Decrying that “abusive” language, he went on to describe the recent intensified demolition of homes in East Jerusalem, especially in Area C, as well as the extreme hardship endured by Palestinians living under siege in the Gaza Strip. Hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners, including those held under the inhumane practice of “administrative detention”, had also continued, he noted, adding that his delegation had documented such crimes in several letters to the Security Council and the Secretary-General, and had requested that they become official documents of the United Nations.
Since the beginning of the year, he continued, the State of Palestine had called on the Security Council to shoulder its responsibility vis-à-vis Israel’s illegal settlements. It was insufficient for the Middle East Quartet to describe those crimes without laying out plans to end them. In March, the State of Palestine had put forward a draft resolution on the settlements, which it had hoped would be forwarded to the Council. If adopted, the text would send a strong message that the international community was “fed up” with the settlements and wanted their immediate cessation.
He said his delegation would continue to push for that draft resolution despite suggestions that it wait until the conclusion of the United States presidential election. “We’ve been waiting for too long,” he added, emphasizing that “those who ask us to wait do not deliver” on their promises.
In that regard, he said, the Security Council would hold an Arria Formula meeting on Israeli settlement activities on 14 October, which, while insufficient, was a step in the right direction. On 28 October, it would hold an open debate, during which Member States would hopefully focus on the illegal settlements. “We are not going to allow the Security Council to run away from its responsibility to act,” he said, stressing that no meaningful doors could be opened to the political process without the immediate cessation of settlements.
Turning to other activities planned for the year, he said his delegation would continue to work with the International Criminal Court, which he hoped would soon move from its preliminary investigation of crimes committed against the Palestinian people to a formal investigation. Noting that 2017 would mark 50 years since the start of Israel’s occupation — “far too long” for a supposedly temporary phenomenon — he said that his delegation also intended to submit to the General Assembly a draft resolution declaring 2017 the international year for ending the occupation.
Going forward, the delegation would also pursue enhanced status for the State of Palestine at the United Nations, he continued. Recalling that his delegation had achieved observer State status in November 2012, he said it had since joined more than 40 international treaties and conventions. It would now push for a resolution allowing the State of Palestine to sponsor and co-sponsor all General Assembly resolutions, he said, adding that the Committee should allow it to sit in alphabetical order among other delegations.
He concluded by saying that the State of Palestine was considering seeking the Chair of the “Group of 77” developing countries and China in 2019, and would shadow Ecuador as it assumed that position in 2017. “Although we are moving slowly, we are moving surely,” he said, stressing his unwavering determination to attain independence for the State of Palestine and to save the two-State solution.
Also today, Rapporteur Carmelo Inguanez (Malta) presented the Committee’s draft report to the General Assembly, saying it covered developments on the ground as well as the Committee’s work since 7 October 2015. In its conclusions and recommendations, the Committee stated that it would welcome revitalization of the peace negotiations, he added.
In relation to Gaza, the Committee would demand the lifting of the blockade on the enclave, he said, adding that it would also call on the international community to secure long-term funding, including for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The Committee would welcome the report of the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict, and urge relevant authorities to work for an end to impunity.
The Committee would also welcome measures by the Human Rights Council to accelerate implementation of its resolution, which called for the creation of a database of all actors conducting business in areas under Israeli military occupation. It would encourage other organizations and States to adopt and implement policies guaranteeing adherence to international conventions, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention, in connection with illegal settlements in occupied areas.
Additionally, he said, the Committee would suggest that its 2017 programme of international meetings and conferences focus on achieving the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and examining ways in which to achieve the two-State solution. It would encourage civil society partners to work with their Governments and parliamentarians in order to gain their full support.
He said the Committee would recommend continuation of the annual capacity-building programme for Palestinian Government staff, and the special information programme of the Department of Public Information, which had made an important contribution to informing media.
Finally, the Committee would request that the General Assembly proclaim 2017 the “International Year to End the Israeli Occupation”, he said, adding that the draft report would be updated to reflect any new developments before its submission to the Assembly on 5 October.
The Committee then approved the draft report after perusing each section.
In relation to Chapter VI, Syria’s representative made a reservation regarding paragraph 92, saying some sentences were irrelevant to the current discussion.
The Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine and the representatives of Lebanon and Jordan took note of the reservation, while stressing nonetheless that the Committee would retain the agreed language from previous years.
Also briefing the Committee was Mahmoud Elkhafif, Coordinator of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) Assistance to the Palestinian People Unit and Senior Economic Affairs Officer within the Conference’s Division on Globalization and Development Strategies. Presenting a report titled “UNCTAD assistance to the Palestinian people: Developments in the economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, he said it sought to document, for the first time, the economic cost of the Israeli occupation. The full report would be presented to the General Assembly in the coming months.
Describing recent economic developments, he said that in 2015 the occupied Palestinian territories had seen no serious recovery from the 2014 recession. While the economy had grown by 3.5 percentage points, such humble growth did not accurately reflect the situation, and additional indicators painted a fuller picture. Unemployment stood at 28 per cent in the occupied territories and was even higher among youth. Two thirds of Palestinians there were affected by food insecurity and millions were in need of humanitarian assistance.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian economy remained a “captive market” for Israel, creating a forced dependency, he said. The leakage of Palestinian public funds into the Israeli treasury continued with $600 million to $700 million having leaked in 2015 alone. Infant mortality in Gaza was alarmingly high, with about 50 deaths for every 1,000 infants. The list of prohibited “dual use” materials — including construction materials and machinery — continued to grow, negatively impacting a number of Palestinian industries.
He went on to state that households in Gaza received just four to six hours of drinking water every few days. Sewage was being discharged into the sea, due to a lack of electricity, and the health-care system was suffering. Noting that Gaza’s full recovery would be impossible without a lifting of the blockade, he described additional costs of the occupation resulting from the systematic destruction of the Palestinians’ productive base, loss of water and other natural resources, economic fragmentation and loss of funds from international markets, as well as economic isolation.
“This just scratches the surface of the cost of the occupation,” he said, emphasizing the need — as outlined by the General Assembly in resolutions 69/20 and 70/12 — for the systematic documentation of such costs. While the report represented a historic milestone, costs should be calculated annually in an evidence-based manner, which would require additional budgetary resources.
The Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine underlined the need to maximize the benefits of the report. “We see the results of institutionalism,” he said, noting that the Committee would continue to consult with UNCTAD for regular reporting.
Nicaragua’s representative said the State of Palestine had every right to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. “We have the responsibility to ensure that Palestine becomes an independent State,” she emphasized.
Cuba’s representative said it was critical that UNCTAD continue to provide regular information on the economic costs of the occupation.
In response to comments, Mr. Elkhafif drew attention to the link between the costs of occupation and the 2030 Agenda, stressing that reversing the occupation was the first step towards the latter’s implementation.
Turning to other business, Committee Chair Fodé Seck (Senegal) informed Member States that the annual training programme for staff of the Palestinian Government, conducted by the Division for Palestinian Rights, would begin on 17 October, and that a special meeting in observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People would be held on 29 November. In addition, the Committee would inaugurate an exhibition to mark the International Day.
The Committee will reconvene on 15 November to consider resolutions relating to the question of Palestine.
For information media. Not an official record.Politics The enviros' new money man
On Monday, Congressman Steve Lynch, a Democrat seeking his party's support to run for the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated by our new Secretary of State, John Kerry, received a menacing letter. "Because climate change is such a serious issue," it read, "we are asking you, Congressman Lynch, today to do one of two things by high noon on Friday, March 22. Either act like a real Democrat and oppose (the Keystone XL pipeline's) dirty energy. Or, get a sworn, binding statement – with securities law enforcement – from TransCanada and the refiners that all of the Keystone-shipped oil will stay here." (Keystone XL opponents believe that most of the Canadian tar sands crude that the pipeline will transport to Gulf Coast refineries will be destined for overseas markets, doing little to wean the U.S. off Middle East oil, one of the main arguments in favor of the pipeline.)
If Lynch declined? "We will then immediately launch an aggressive public education campaign, including: investigative reports about your record, public events targeting interested Democratic voters, a college-based get-out-the-vote effort, community-to-community activity in cities and towns with the worst childhood asthma rates, and a robust social media effort to help voters understand that their climate interest is on the ballot."
Should Lynch stand his ground, which it appears he will, Steyer is promising to bankroll a Super PAC to ensure his defeat in the Democratic primary by Ed Markey, a Massachusetts congressman who is a Keystone XL opponent and generally the apple of environmentalists' eyes.
Steyer has long been a "rainmaker" in California politics. He was the main money-man behind a 2012 ballot measure to close a tax loophole for out-of-state corporations. (Cleverly, the self-described energy-obsessed Steyer designed the measure so the new revenue will go partly to energy-efficiency programs.) He also put up a lot of cash to defeat the effort to knock down California's pioneering global warming law, AB 32, and has given some $65 million to Stanford and Yale to fund clean energy programs.
This is Steyer's first major foray into national politics, but likely not his last. He stepped away from active duty at his hedge fund last fall to devote more time to philanthropy and activism -- and on that front, climate change is at the top of his priority list. Steyer's spokesman told the Globe and Mail that he sees Keystone XL as "the defining issue in the climate change fight of our times." And, on a tactical level, the spokesman told The Hill: "He plays to win. Obviously since the evil empire, i.e. Big Oil, is on the other side, he's willing to invest." Which is another way of saying Steyer will spend very freely to punish Lynch for his favorable view of the pipeline.
Steyer joins a growing list of politically minded Western high-rollers who have shelled out huge sums to Super PACs in hopes of influencing the outcomes of post-Citizens United elections. Last fall, such expenditures likely helped legalize gay marriage in Washington and pot in Colorado.
Steyer also appears to have grander plans to change the political conversation about environmental regulation in swing states, taking cues from the civil rights movement, the successful campaign to uphold AB 32, and even the strategy of opponents of federal climate legislation to go state-by-state stoking fears that new regulations would be inevitable job killers.
Which prompted the New York Times' Green Blog to ask: "Is Thomas F. Steyer the anti-Koch?"
Though environmentalists have certainly begun to play the dark money game, the climate movement has, to this point, not had a real answer to the Koch brothers where money and political strategy are concerned. Steyer, a very rich, ambitious individual who seems to possess equally strong convictions on the opposite end of the political spectrum, may be it.
Cally Carswell is the assistant editor at High Country News.
Photo: Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Flickr user Fortune Live Media.Tom! I wanted to thank you for your recent post “The Great Whiter-Than-Ever Way,” (http://www.apoorplayer.net/2012/01/the-great-whiter-than-ever-way) which is now being commonly referred to as the “Is it so bad to admit that theatre is for white people?” post. It’s a brilliant expose of the banal, but still incredibly insidious, dangerous, modern-day racism that lies beneath the innocent-looking façade of your average friendly, innocuous, white university professor chairing a third-rate theatre department in the middle of nowhere. I’m blown away by the courage it must have taken to reveal not only your native disdain for all cultures, races, and concepts besides your own, but also your incredible intellectual barren-ness – what some would even call thunderous stupidity! And to think – you’re a college professor! You work with impressionable young minds EVERY DAY! It’s just incredibly brave to reveal that you’re living your life half-asleep - something that could, in fact, SHOULD, cost you your job! Bravo, sir.
I only have one quibble with your post. When you use the word “admit” in what has become the de facto title of your post, I think you may have overstepped your bounds, even within the huge leeway you give yourself. You see, an “admission” is generally a revelation of a hidden fact – now, that fact can of course be your personal opinion, as in “I admit that I feel like black people are beneath me culturally” – but the fact you purport to reveal is that the theatre is for white people.
This, unfortunately, is not a fact.
Between my first reading of your post this morning and this evening as I write this, I have journeyed by train up to the North Bronx, one of our nation’s poorest Congressional Districts, and worked with a group of 18 student writers, all non-white, on a project called Shakespeare Remix. These writers, part of an overall group of 60 high school students in the afterschool project, analyzed a scene from ROMEO AND JULIET with me, and then applied their learnings to their own adaptation of the play that will later be re-integrated with the original text and performed in a professional venue for hundreds of members of their community, many of whom have never seen a professional theatre production, but who, nonetheless, if history is any guide, will be on their feet at the end of every show, weeping and cheering for the power of theatre to bring the voices of their youth into the civic forum. None of them are white.
My theatre, Epic Theatre Ensemble, co-founded their small school within a larger school that, ten years ago, before our partnership, had an average 4-year graduation rate of under 10%. Yes, you read that correctly. I do not use to jest. With our help, among many other factors, this school – not a charter school, which I just KNOW you’re thinking – now has a graduation rate over 85%. None of them are white. Why? Because theatre has a JOB in this world, sir. A job you do not seem to understand. It is not an entertainment. It is an incredibly powerful tool for social change. For awakening, particularly in young people, a thirst for rigor, and self-expression, and courage, the courage of speaking with truth and clarity in front of an audience who heretofore knew not your potential. And when this kind of drink is given to the thirsty, they become vigorous. And, I warn you, dangerous, to some of the things you seem to hold sacred about what you call “culture.”
Because these young people’s adaptation of ROMEO AND JULIET is not about Crips and Bloods, as you might assume. No. It’s about a wealthy Jewish family in southern Germany in 1938, after Kristallnacht, who use their influence to move into a comparatively low profile working-class neighborhood, where their daughter (“Juliet”) falls in love with their neighbor’s son (“Romeo”), whose family is slowly drifting into active National Socialism. The students are using rigorous research and text analysis, combined with their native earnestness, empathy, thoughtfulness, and insightfulness (who knew that non-white people had these qualities, right?) to sculpt a truly original vision of theatre that will be impactful on their community. They have not only embraced the “dominant culture,” as you call it, they are so bold, as young Americans, to think it is their own to use, re-vision, abuse, do what they will. You question if they are “interested in” the form of theatre? Trust me, given opportunity and access, they will wrest that form from the grips of lowly thinkers like you and me, and make it remember and fulfill it’s true purpose as a potent tool in our nation’s endless quest for equity and justice.
So your conclusion that theatre is for white people is just not borne out by the facts I have experienced. This afternoon. One person. At one school. Through one theatre. In one city. For one hour. In the vast diversity we call America. Who knows how many other theatre professionals today, with your ignorance ringing in their ears, have had similar experiences that reveal you to be singularly foolish?
Listen, Tom. Let me make something clear. I am white. And you don’t stand for me. In fact, I think our native relationship is as enemies. Don’t ever presume to speak for me. Don’t ever imply that my voice, as a white person, is aligned with your own. What you wrote does not make me “uneasy.” That’s the word people who are assured of their status because of the racism that pervades our every institution use when they write dangerous shit. What you wrote was a violent affront to everything I do, every day, and everything I stand for; not to mention the many other theatre-makers, and audience members, who actually are NOT white, who your post attacks. Or the millions of non-white students who use theatre every day to build better futures for themselves and their communities. What you wrote enrages me, and I here disavow you and your words. You, and they, are no part of me.CSPAN/screenshot
Speaking at the conservative "Freedom Summit" in New Hampshire on Saturday, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said he's beginning to believe that there's "more freedom in North Korea sometimes than there is in the United States."
The quote — which the audience did not laugh at and didn't appear to be a joke — was in reference to TSA patdowns and security procedures at the airport.
"When I go to the airport, I have to get in the surrender position," Huckabee said while holding up his hands. "People put hands all over me. And I have to provide photo ID in a couple of different forms and prove that I really am not going to terrorize the airplane."
"But if I want to go vote, I don't need a thing," he added, referencing Republican-led efforts to require government-issued identification in order to vote, an effort Democrats have said would only suppress voting rights.
To be fair to Huckabee, he was using the reference to North Korea to make his larger point about voter ID — agree with it or not — but plenty have taken him to task for such a crude comparison.
Besides being one of the most cruel and repressive regimes in the world, North Korea has plenty of citizens who probably wouldn't mind a patdown at the airport, as opposed to the real human rights violations of concentration camps, torture, and famine.
The video is here, via CSPAN (North Korea quote at 17:09).
More From Business InsiderNew Bitcoin.com Podcast Episode with Stephen King of RexMLS
During this week’s Bitcoin.com podcast our host, Richard Jacobs, sits down with Stephen King, Founder of RexMLS to discuss his blockchain-based company “RexMLS” and its implications for the broad, evolving real estate ecosystem.
Also read: Turkey to Initiate Major Crackdown on Illegal Gambling
Real Estate aas been an encumbered field where it is difficult to list properties or transact without barriers to entry, having to deal with a plethora of ads, or where property databases do not communicate with each other. King’s platform RexMLS is a protocol that leverages the power of decentralized applications to streamline real estate transactions.
Jacobs and his co-founder mainly wanted to build RexMLS to provide more opportunities to individuals in the real estate field. He said he wanted to,
Create a multi-layer protocol that would connect real estate vendors, buyers, and sellers worldwide will giving them the ability to later connect.
Furthermore, King acknowledges there are several “pain points” for various people in the industry, including buyers, sellers, and brokers. The paint point for the individual is cost. On current multiple real estate listing services, it costs upwards of 1,000 dollars per listing, according to King. In this episode, King covers various pain points like these and how RexMLS solves them by providing users with ownership over information and easier access without barriers to entry.
Check out Bitcoin.com’s podcast here, or stream the show below to hear more from RexMLS Founder, Stephen King, and why he thinks the company’s protocol will revolutionize traditional real estate transactions and management.
What do you think about RexMLS protocol? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Images courtesy of Bitcoin.com and RexMLS
At News.Bitcoin.com all comments containing links are automatically held up for moderation in the Disqus system. That means an editor has to take a look at the comment to approve it. This is due to the many, repetitive, spam and scam links people post under our articles. We do not censor any comment content based on politics or personal opinions. So, please be patient. Your comment will be published.On Thursday, a legal group filed three separate Freedom of Information Act requests to learn if President Donald Trump is a “moron” and must be removed under the 25th Amendment. Seriously, that’s how they titled their statement, obtained by Law Newz: “Legal Advocacy Group Files Urgent Freedom Of Information Act Request Of Government Information On Whether President Trump Is A ‘Moron.'”
Free Speech for People said:
Under Trump’s command, Cabinet members and even high-ranking Republicans have reportedly questioned whether Trump has the mental capacity to serve as President. Americans have a right to know whether the President is mentally fit for office, and the Cabinet and Congress have a responsibility to protect the country if he is not.
Free Speech for People, a nonprofit that describes itself as nonpartisan, was started in opposition to the controversial ruling in Citizens United, and has previously opposed Trump’s pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
On Thursday, the group asked for documents and the like regarding whether the president’s mental capacity was ever questioned by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke, and former Security of Homeland Security John E. Kelly. Accordingly, FOIA requests were filed separately with State, Defense, and DHS. Law Newz reached out to all three agencies for a response.
The “moron” reference is in regard to a NBC report, in which three anonymous officials claimed Tillerson called the president a “moron” after a July 20 meeting at the Pentagon. It’s unclear what specifically sparked the comment, though NBC later reported that according to three anonymous officials, Trump said in the meeting that he wanted to increase the United State nuclear arsenal by ten times.
Top officials have done their best to put on a friendly face, and dismiss reports. Mattis called the news about the nuclear arsenal “absolutely false.” Kelly himself, now Chief of Staff, has said he has no plans on leaving. Tillerson has denied reports that he wanted to resign, though he did not deny calling the president a moron.
Trump is idiosyncratic. That much is clear. It’s an oft-cited reason why his supporters voted for him. But a recurring criticism of his administration is whether his personal behavior could be a sign of some sort of mental deterioration, and whether cabinet members would need to remove him under the 25th Amendment. This has never happened to a president. Law Newz columnist Robert Barnes argued in February that incapacity under the law is a very narrow concept. For example, one must be in a coma, or otherwise incapable of providing for their own basic need.
“To be incompetent or incapacitated, as any lawyer knows, compels a very high standard of proof of completely inability to function,” he wrote.Washington (CNN) President Barack Obama is expected to announce his pick for the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff this week, perhaps as soon as Tuesday, a senior U.S. official told CNN.
Several officials say the front runner remains Gen. Joseph Dunford, currently the Commandant of the Marine Corps. The other major contender is General Mark Welsh, Air Force Chief of Staff.
Some officials told CNN it's believed Dunford may have initially declined the job, in favor of staying as head of the Marine Corps, a post he only started last October. Prior to that he served as the head of U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.
But Welsh's nomination could be problematic as well. One congressional official noted that the Air Force has had many run-ins with Congress over the rising costs of its major weapons programs. That could lead to a contentious confirmation process with the Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona.
Read MoreThe time is approaching for me to leave this site.
I’ve done Invisible Oranges for four and a half years, putting in 30- to 40-hour weeks on it, seven days a week. (I can count on two hands the number of days I’ve taken off from the site.) This is my 1400th post for Invisible Oranges. Given that each post typically takes over three hours of work (a typical album review requires weeks (if not months) of listening, an hour to write, and an hour to edit and lay out), and an interview typically takes over five hours to transcribe, edit, and lay out, I’ve put in well over 5000 unpaid hours on this site. (Our advertising this year might have us breaking even in terms of server and other costs.) I’ve sunk thousands of dollars into this site, and I wouldn’t take a single one back. But eventually it will be time for me to move on.
For four and a half years, I’ve come home from the various jobs that I’ve had and basically worked on the site until exhaustion. I’ve been exhausted for years. What you see on the site is the tip of the iceberg work-wise. I am perpetually hundreds of emails behind, dealing with writers, readers, bands, labels, and publicists. I currently have over 1,290 potential spam comments to moderate.My desktop currently has over 35 |
woman is my favorite. Don’t we all secretly hope we look this cool when we stand next to a light board?
These consoles were manual preset boards, but, in the event that you couldn’t find a snappily-dressed board op, some models did offer a way to “pre-program” cues. How, you might ask?
Scantron sheets!
Do you have stories to tell about the gear in this post, or your own stories of lighting history to share? Let us know at blog@etcconnect.com.There's a moment early in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West when it's easy to forget that Monkey and Trip are digital characters in a videogame.
It's after the crash of the slave ship, when Monkey wakes to discover that he's wearing a slave headband. As he stirs, Trip, the young technical genius, sits a short distance away, thin arms wrapped around skinny knees. She watches him with wide eyes. She's not sure if the headband she's hacked will work the way she expects, and she's equally unsure how the lithe and powerful Monkey will respond to being under her control.
Trip doesn't say any of this. There's no dialogue to tell us what's on her mind. We know what she's thinking because we can read it on her face and can see it in her body language. The same way we can sense Monkey's confusion by how his mouth twists, and his suspicion by the way his eyes narrow when he looks at Trip.
"So much of our communication is non-verbal," explains Tameem Antoniades, chief creative ninja at Ninja Theory and the designer of Enslaved. "We can tell whether you're lying or whether I'm telling the truth just by looking at each other's eyes and faces."
Good storytelling in a visual medium like film or videogames, Antoniades suggests, occurs when characters say one thing, but the audience knows they mean something else. It's the "show, don't tell" storytelling mantra that makes the intent behind the words most important. Meaning and emotion are conveyed not through dialogue, but through facial and body movements. A curved lip suggests passion, a furrowed brow indicates fear, a raised arm, anger.
We've come to expect the bodies of our videogame characters to move the way real people move, but as we're seeing in games like Enslaved, the faces of these characters - and therefore their emotions - are also now being rendered with incredible realism. And it's all thanks to a bunch of white dots and some glue, which are the key components used in motion capture.
Motion capture has been in use since the late 1970s, when it was largely relegated to kinesiology departments on university campuses. It's somewhat of an oversimplification, but motion capture essentially involves a camera recording an image of the body in motion, which is then translated into digital information by computer software, converting those little white dots into the angles, speed, and trajectory of a body's movement. That information can then be used to animate a digital skeleton on a computer. Put skin over that skeleton, and you've got a digital character.
Within a few years, the technology of being able to translate real movement into a digital environment was being used in the entertainment industry - movies and videogames - to create more realistic computer-generated (CG) characters. The amount of movement being tracked then was fairly basic. Improving technology meant that more dots could be placed on bodies, leading to even more realistic animations. The next step was putting dots on the faces of the actors, to record the fine movements of things like lips, eyebrows and cheek muscles.1943 Soviet postage stamp depicting Talalikhin's ramming
Viktor Vasilevich Talalikhin (Russian: Виктор Васильевич Талалихин; 18 September 1918 – 27 October 1941) was a Soviet lieutenant and aviator during the Winter War and World War II and a Hero of the Soviet Union, among the first to perform aerial ramming at night.
Talalikhin became a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Forces in the late 1930s, flying the Polikarpov I-153 during the Winter War. He served in the air defense of Moscow during World War II with an aviation regiment of the Soviet Air Defence Forces. He became one of the first Soviet aviation heroes of the war after ramming a German bomber at night with his Polikarpov I-16, but was shot down and killed in late October while flying a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3. Talalikhin claimed three victories during the Winter War and four in the air defense of Moscow.
Early life and military career [ edit ]
Talalikhin was born on 18 September 1918 in the village of Teplovka in Saratov Governorate to a peasant family. In 1924, he and his family moved to Volsk, where he studied at its Secondary School No. 1. In the summer of 1933, Talalikhin and his family again moved to Moscow, where he graduated from the factory school of the Moscow Meat Processing Plant in 1934. Talalikhin worked at the plant from 1934 to 1937; he joined a factory gliding group in September 1935 and with a Komsomol direction took flying lessons at the Proletarsky District flying club.[1] Talalikhin made his first solo flight in a Polikarpov U-2 in June 1937.[2]
After joining the Red Army in December of that year, Talalikhin graduated from the 2nd Borisoglebsk Military Aviation School of Pilots in December 1938 as a Junior Lieutenant. He became a junior pilot in the 3rd Squadron of the 27th Fighter Aviation Regiment (IAP), part of the Air Forces of the Moscow Military District, flying the Polikarpov I-153 biplane. With the 27th IAP he fought in the Winter War of November 1939-March 1940, flying 47 sorties and claiming three individual victories in addition to one shared. For his actions, Talalikhin received the Order of the Red Star.[1] In the spring of 1941, he graduated from courses for flight commanders, and joined the 177th Fighter Aviation Regiment PVO, then forming in the Moscow area, as a flight commander in its 1st Squadron.[2]
World War II [ edit ]
In 1941, during the first few weeks of fighting on the Eastern Front during World War II, he was first a flight commander, then the deputy commander of the 1st Squadron, flying with 177th Fighter Aviation Regiment PVO of the Soviet Air Defence Forces, providing air defense for Moscow.[1] Talalikhin flew his first combat mission on 22 July.[2]
He downed a Junkers Ju 88 on the night of 5–6 August. On the night of 6–7 August 1941, flying a Soviet Air Defense Forces Polikarpov I-16 fighter over Moscow, Talalikhin rammed a German Heinkel He 111 bomber after running out of ammunition, destroying both aircraft. Wounded by machine-gun fire from the German bomber, he parachuted to safety, landing in a small lake. He was reported as the first pilot in history to ram an enemy aircraft at night, and was feted in Moscow by Soviet media as the first major Soviet air hero of World War II. However, Pyotr Yeremeyev, another Moscow air defense pilot, had earlier performed the same feat on 29 July. On 8 August, Talalikhin was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin. He soon became a squadron commander in the 177th.[1]
Subsequently, Talalikhin began flying the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3. On 27 October, he led a mixed group of two MiG-3s and six I-16s in an action over Podolsk, covering ground troops. Near the village of Kamenka, he descended to attack German positions, but the Soviet aircraft were ambushed by six Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters attacking from a higher altitude. Talalikhin claimed two Messerschmitt Bf 109s before being shot down and killed by another.
His body was sent to Moscow and cremated, and on 23 February 1959 the urn with his ashes was moved to the Novodevichy Cemetery.[1][2]
Legacy [ edit ]
On 30 August 1948, Talalikhin was permanently added to the muster list of the 1st Squadron of the 177th Fighter Aviation Regiment. Monuments to him were built in Moscow and Podolsk, and an obelisk was placed at the 43rd kilometer of the Warsaw Highway, over which the ramming took place. Streets were named for Talalikhin in Moscow, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok, and Borisoglebsk.[1]
Parts of the He 111 that he downed by ramming are displayed in the Central Armed Forces Museum. In June 2014, the wreckage of the I-16 that Talalikhin rammed the bomber in was discovered in a forest 20 kilometers from Moscow.[6]
Notes [ edit ]And that's until I think it's one on Pyongyang's threatens more attacks in South Korea. The statement follows Tuesday's exchange of fire between the north and south including northern artillery barrages falling on the South Korean island. North Korean state run television said the country's armed forces would not hesitate to respond to what it termed provocations. I'm just okay. The candidate -- to cut it. The Korean People's Army will -- second or even third round of attacks without any hesitation. If warmonger and South Korea. Make reckless military provocations again. Credit card of course it up. The statement also said the south deserve the punishment referring to Tuesday's artillery exchange between the two nations. And said the -- was in response to South Korea using the island of young young as an outpost. Pyongyang's also blames the United States. The US cannot invade the blame for the recent shelling. If the US truly desires they talked on the Korean Peninsula it should not but let's seek shelter in the South Korean puppet forces -- -- -- -- The statements come two days after the north range artillery shells on young John island without apparent provocation. Killing four and injuring dozens. Okay. In the South Korean capital Seoul enraged demonstrators take to the streets. And they set fire to the Communist flag and burned photos of North Korean leader Kim Jong -- And at NG import -- of the victims arrive. Amid tears of mourning family members. As the caskets are carried away South Koreans are left bewildered by one of the most serious incidents on the peninsula since the end of the Korean War over fifty years ago. Travis Sprecher. Reuters.Aly Thomson, THE CANADIAN PRESS
HALIFAX -- Construction woes are commonplace in any city, but some small businesses in downtown Halifax have reached a breaking point with a megaproject being built on their doorstep.
Several businesses are threatening legal action to recoup losses they claim are the result of the "prolonged construction" of the Nova Centre, Wagners Law Firm said Monday.
A news release from the firm said businesses in the area around the new convention centre have suffered over the past three years as construction has closed streets, eliminated parking and reduced pedestrian traffic.
It said the project has experienced delays, and businesses have had to cope with the noise, dirt and dust associated with blasting and drilling.
"We want to see a vibrant downtown core. That was one of the driving factors behind the project itself," said lawyer Ray Wagner in the release.
"Ironically, due to poor planning and implementation, and a disregard for the realities of the impact the prolonged construction has had on small businesses, the Nova Centre is destroying the surrounding long-standing businesses as it rises up to dominate the area."
Construction on the one-million-square-foot centre, which is expected to open next year, started in January 2013.
Wagners said attempts to communicate the negative impacts with Nova Centre stakeholders have been "unfruitful," so some businesses have decided to take legal action.
The firm said compensation is being sought for personal and business damages resulting from the construction of the centre.
It said damages would be determined by the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board if the parties cannot agree on compensation through negotiation proceedings.
The news release said municipal, provincial and federal governments have received notice of the intended legal action, as well as Argyle Developments Inc., its parent company Rank Incorporated and Halifax Convention Centre Corporation.
Joe Ramia of Rank Incorporated, the Nova Scotia government and the federal government could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday.
Officials with the Halifax Regional Municipality confirmed they had been notified about the intended legal action, but would not comment further.
The Halifax Convention Centre Corporation also declined comment.Billy Mitchell, who supplied every villainous stereotype short of twirling his mustache in "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters," has opened an arcade at Orlando's airport under the film's branding - with good guy Steve Weibe gracing the entrance.
The King of Kong branding on Mitchell's arcade probably means everyone's aboard with it, which means the Mitchell-Wiebe rivalry has evolved into some kind of amicable relationship. As well it should, the two are more famous together, thanks to the 2007 documentary, which made Wiebe the face and Mitchell the heel, than they are apart.
Notably, Mitchell's arcade does not have a Donkey Kong machine - perhaps to keep someone (Hank Chien?) from beating the record in his own establishment. Others have complained about the arcade's lack of classic titles. Thematically, there should be all the 1980s arcade hits in there. But this is an airport business appealing to folks who may have never seen the movie. Newer machines bring in more money.
Mitchell's arcade, as you can see in this video, features a couple of Dead Heat cabinets, Terminator Salvation, two Super Bikes 1 setups, an Avatar pinball machine, plus an air hockey table and Aliens Extermination.
Next time you fly to Orlando International Airport - it's the home of Disney World, and a hub for AirTran - check it out.
Billy Mitchell Opens the King of Kong Arcade [Arcade Heroes]Intel on Monday detailed plans to push its Atom processors into devices beyond just netbooks and mobile Internet devices.
The company introduced four Atom chips that will go into devices such as entertainment systems for cars, videoconferencing devices, robots and interactive kiosks, said Doug Davis, vice president of Intel's digital enterprise group.
These ultra-low-power chips can offer the rich multimedia performance and high-bandwidth Internet connectivity demanded by those devices, Davis said.
The Z500-series Atom processors are integrated chips the size of a penny that draw little power and do not require fans to operate. The chips draw 2.5 watts of power or less and run at speeds of between 1.10GHz and 1.6GHz. The chips offer integrated 2D and 3D graphics and will be manufactured using Intel's existing 45-nanometer process.
Atom chips to date have gone into low-cost laptops, also known as netbooks, and devices such as mobile Internet devices (MIDs) and smartphones. Intel has said it wants to integrate more capabilities into Atom processors that could help the company enter new markets.
With the new chips, Intel is ramping up efforts to dive into an embedded space dominated by chips made with Arm designs, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64.
"Now that they have their Atom processor in good shape, they are looking for new places where they can ship it," Brookwood said.
Some new markets being targeted by Intel with the new chips include entertainment systems in cars and desktop videophones. For example, the new Atom Z520PT powers an in-car infotainment system that can run video without compromising on performance, Davis said.
Intel and OpenPeak also provided a reference design for a touch-screen videoconferencing phone embedded with a low-power Atom chip. Resembling a blown-up mobile Internet device, the OpenFrame home IP (Internet Protocol) phone design from OpenPeak also runs Internet-based video and social-networking applications, Davis said.
As part of the announcement, Intel also said Microsoft automotive applications would work with Intel's embedded Atom chips. Microsoft's auto division provides a software toolkit for developers to write in-car applications that include navigation and hands-free calling.
The new chips will be available in commercial quantities in the second quarter of this year. Pricing information was not immediately available.
Intel has taken a number of steps to develop integrated chips that could fit into devices such as set-top boxes and TVs. The chip maker in February said it was hurrying up the move to the new 32-nanometer process technology to produce faster and more integrated chips.
To that effect, the company said it would spend US$7 billion over two years to revamp manufacturing plants. The 32-nanometer process will also help Intel make more chips at lower costs and add efficiencies to the production process. Intel will begin producing chips with 32-nm circuitry starting in late 2009.
Intel may also be looking for outside help to develop custom Atom chips for embedded devices. Earlier on Monday, Intel entered a partnership to share the Atom chip designs with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. TSMC customers will have access to the Atom intellectual property to develop customized chips.
The partnership with TSMC could result in the development of customized chips for Intel to access new markets it can't reach alone, Brookwood said.
If you needed customized GPS (Global Positioning System) or graphics technology on the chip, for example, you couldn't do it, as Intel doesn't provide the building blocks to do so, Brookwood said. The deal with TSMC makes that level of Atom chip customization possible, he said.Napoli centerback Kalidou Koulibaly is currently away on international duty with Senegal and spoke to “So Foot” about his footballing experience. Here is some of what he had to say:
These past two years have passed by so quickly. When I arrived to Napoli I was only 22 years old. I demonstrated I was in good physical condition right away.
Sarri is obsessed with tactics. I’ve improved a lot with him especially through all the specific work he does with the defense. He sets apart time to work exclusively with us and this helps us improve and grow. It’s completely different from how Benitez ran things.
Higuain made his choice. Everyone is free to do what they like in their career. What is strange is that he left without saying anything to anybody. In his place I would have never done that.
It’s an honor to play in the Champions League. It’s a dream I’ve had since I was a child. We have a chance to proceed to the next round. There is no favorite in our group.
The supporters are very passionate. They reflect the city. The people live football. The emotions at the San Paolo are multiplied by 10 for Champions League matches.
Before arriving to the city I heard the usual clichés about the mafia and how dirty it was but when I arrived my idea of the city completely changed. The city is wonderful and I like it a lot. I love to walk the shoreline with my wife and son. Neapolitans love life and are always very friendly. It’s very different here.
If I have to mark a great forward I don’t think twice about it. I don’t fear anybody. In today’s football there is little room for defenders that aren’t skilled on the ball. That is why I’m always looking to improve my technical abilities. I’m always looking to be effective and efficient with the ball at my feet.
When I heard Deschamps wanted to call me up to the French national team after I had already been playing with Senegal, I was at home with friends. We have a great laugh! Before that moment I had never had contact with the French team.
Aliou Cissé had called me before that and told me he needed me to play for his team. I asked for a bit of time before making such an important decision. It took a few months but in the end I proudly chose to play with Senegal.He is credited with saving more lives than any other medical scientist of the 20th century. [3] [4] [5] Robert Gallo described him as "the most successful vaccinologist in history". [3]
Early life and education Edit
Hilleman was born on a farm near the high plains town of Miles City, Montana. His parents were Anna and Gustav Hillemann, and he was their eighth child. His twin sister died when he was born, and his mother died two days later. He was raised in the nearby household of his uncle, Robert Hilleman, and worked in his youth on the family farm. He credited much of his success to his work with chickens as a boy; since in the 1930s fertile chicken eggs had often been used to grow viruses for vaccines.[1]
His family belonged to the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. When he was in the eighth grade, he discovered Charles Darwin, and was caught reading On the Origin of Species in church. Later in life, he rejected religion.[6] Due to lack of money, he almost failed to attend college. His eldest brother interceded, and Hilleman graduated first in his class in 1941 from Montana State University with family help and scholarships. He won a fellowship to the University of Chicago and received his doctoral degree in microbiology in 1944.[7] His doctoral thesis was on chlamydia infections, which were then thought to be caused by a virus. Hilleman showed that these infections were, in fact, caused by a species of bacterium, Chlamydia trachomatis, that grows only inside of cells.[1]
Career Edit
After joining E.R. Squibb & Sons (now Bristol-Myers Squibb), Hilleman developed a vaccine against Japanese B encephalitis, a disease that threatened American troops in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War II. As chief of the Department of Respiratory Diseases at Army Medical Center (now the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research) from 1948 to 1957, Hilleman discovered the genetic changes that occur when the influenza virus mutates, known as shift and drift. That helped him to recognize that a 1957 outbreak of influenza in Hong Kong could become a huge pandemic. Working on a hunch, after nine 14-hour days he and a colleague found that it was a new strain of flu that could kill millions[citation needed]. Forty million doses of vaccines were prepared and distributed. Although 69,000 Americans died, the pandemic could have resulted in many more deaths in the United States. Hilleman was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal from the American military for his work.
In 1957, Hilleman joined Merck & Co. (Whitehouse Station, New Jersey), as head of its new virus and cell biology research department in West Point, Pennsylvania. It was while with Merck that Hilleman developed most of the forty experimental and licensed animal and human vaccines with which he is credited, working both at the laboratory bench as well as providing scientific leadership.
In 1963, his daughter Jeryl Lynn came down with the mumps. He cultivated material from her, and used it as the basis of a mumps vaccine. The Jeryl Lynn strain of the mumps vaccine is still used today. The strain is currently used in the trivalent (measles, mumps and rubella) MMR vaccine that he also developed, the first vaccine ever approved incorporating multiple live virus strains.
He and his group invented[1] a vaccine for hepatitis B by treating blood serum with pepsin, urea and formaldehyde. This was licensed in 1981, but withdrawn in 1986 in the United States when it was replaced by a vaccine that was produced in yeast. This vaccine is still in use today. By 2003, 150 countries were using it and the incidence of the disease in the United States in young people had decreased by 95%. Hilleman considered his work on this vaccine to be his single greatest achievement.
Hilleman was one of the early vaccine pioneers to warn about the possibility that simian viruses might contaminate vaccines.[8] The best-known of these viruses became SV40, a viral contaminant of the polio vaccine, whose discovery led to the recall of Salk's vaccine in 1961 and its replacement with Albert Sabin's oral vaccine. The contamination actually occurred in both vaccines at very low levels, but because the oral vaccine was ingested rather than injected, it did not result in infections or any harm.
Hilleman served on numerous national and international advisory boards and committees, academic, governmental and private, including the National Institutes of Health's Office of AIDS Research Program Evaluation and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the National Immunization Program. In his later life, Hilleman was an adviser to the World Health Organization. He retired as senior vice president of the Merck Research Labs in 1984 at the mandatory retirement age of 65. He then directed the newly created Merck Institute for Vaccinology where he worked for the next twenty years.
At the time of his death on April 11, 2005, at the age of 85, Hilleman was Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.In this Aug. 2, 2007 file photo, Michelle Duggar, left, is surrounded by her children and husband Jim Bob, tsecond from left, after the birth of her 17th child in Rogers, Ark. The Duggars announced on Friday, May 9, 2008 that they are expecting their 18th child. (AP Photo/ Beth Hall, File)
"19 Kids And Counting" stars Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar found themselves in the spotlight for dark reasons this week after reports surfaced that their oldest son, Joshua, molested several young girls, including some of his sisters, during his teenage years. With 19 children, the Duggars are frequently associated with the "Quiverfull" movement -- a contingent of conservative Christians who shun contraception -- though Michelle and Jim Bob have said they do not formally consider themselves "Quiverfull" Christians.
Even if the family doesn't openly embrace the ideology, their lifestyle mirrors many of its core principles. To remind you exactly what the movement is all about, here are a few key facts you should know:
The name comes from a passage in the Bible.
Psalm 127 states: “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court.” A quiver, in the old English sense of the word, is a case for holding arrows.
Many couples in the movement believe God won’t give them more children than they can handle.
Families that follow Quiverfull ideals refrain from using contraception, believing that it is only God who “opens and closes the womb,” as adherent Kelly Swanson told NPR. Another adherent told BBC in 2013 that her husband "saw it wasn't such a scary thing to do after all, and that God wouldn't overwhelm us with more than we could handle. One baby at a time arrived, and we were handling it, so we felt our marriage was being blessed by this choice and we continued."
A woman's ability to bear many children, like Michelle Duggar has, depends partly on overall health and partly on genes, Dr. Karen V. Wells from the Center for Women's Health at Evergreen Hospital in Washington told NBC News. The outlet noted that after five or six children, women are more prone to post-partum bleeding or hemorrhaging, though one doctor told NBC that having many kids can help protect women from breast and ovarian cancer.
Some Quiverfull adherents believe they are building an army for God -- or at least an army of conservative Christians.
Author Nancy Campbell, a well-known proponent of Quiverfull ideology who writes at the website Above Rubies, said in one post that the womb is a "weapon against Satan.”
“It is the womb that conceives and nourishes the ‘godly seed’ who will come forth to be the light in the darkness and who will destroy the works of Satan in this world. God is looking for an army.... The womb is a powerful weapon against Satan. Some women fear to bring babies into this evil world, but this is one of the greatest reasons for having children--to be the light in this dark world!” she wrote.
Kathryn Joyce, author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, noted the political aspects of the belief system in a 2006 article on its history. One primary example is the 1990 book A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ by Rick and Jan Hess, who bemoaned the lack of conservatives in Washington.
Joyce described the Hess' thinking: "But if just eight million American Christians began supplying more 'arrows for the war' by having six children or more, they propose that the Christian Right ranks could rise to 550 million within a century."
The Duggar family may hold many of the same beliefs, but they do not self-identify with the Quiverfull movement.
In their book, A Love That Multiplies, Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar wrote: “Even though Wikipedia and some Internet blogs report that we are part of a QuiverFull movement, we are not. We are simply Bible-believing Christians who desire to follow God’s Word and apply it to our lives. God says children are a gift and a blessing, and we believe it.”
Vyckie Garrison, a former adherent to the Quiverfull lifestyle who went on to start the blog "No Longer Quivering," points out that some may hesitate to label themselves as “Quiverfull” due to the politically charged nature of the term.
But the heart of the lifestyle, which the Duggars demonstrate, is what Garrison calls the practice of “biblical family values.”
The Quiverfull movement is anti-feminist and encourages a patriarchal system.
Doug Phillips, the former president of Vision Forum Ministries who is frequently described as a leader of the Quiverfull movement, has preached a message of “biblical patriarchy,” according to Religion News Service, stating that a man should “rule over his household” and “the God-ordained and proper sphere of dominion for a wife is the household.”
BBC notes that the Quiverfull movement originated in part as a backlash against the feminist movement and growing acceptance of birth control within American Christianity. Joyce adds that some Quiverfull adherents believe birth control to be the “hallmark of selfish feminists.”
Some of the most prominent advocates of the movement have been women.
Mary Pride's 1985 book, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality, helped set the stage for the Quiverfull movement. In the book, Pride called family planning "the mother of abortion."
"A generation had to be indoctrinated in the ideal of planning children around personal convenience before abortion could be popular," she wrote.
Campbell of Above Rubies says in one post on her site that “the womb is God’s beautiful gift to women. In fact, our whole reproductive cycle is designed especially for us by God.”
The movement has been linked to sexual assault before.
In the wake of the news that Joshua Duggar admitted to molesting underage girls, he released a statement on the family website, saying, “Twelve years ago, as a young teenager I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret. I hurt others, including my family and close friends.”
Quiverfull leader Phillips found himself mired in controversy in 2013 when he admitted to “a lengthy, inappropriate relationship with a woman” who was not his wife. “While we did not ‘know’ each other in a Biblical sense,” Phillips wrote on the Vision Forum Ministries website, “it was nevertheless inappropriately romantic and affectionate.”Pinterest, the social media website known for bookmarking recipes or fashion ideas, was used to spread Russia-linked political posts during the 2016 presidential election.
Pinterest became a repository for political posts created by Russians actors after other users on the web "pinned" the content to the scrapbook-like site, the company acknowledged to The Washington Post on Wednesday.
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It does not
appear that the Russian operatives posted directly on the site, but their presence on Pinterest grew as users unknowingly bookmarked the Russian propaganda to their online boards.
“We believe the fake Facebook content was so sophisticated that it tricked real Americans into saving it to Pinterest,” Pinterest head of public policy Charlie Hale told the newspaper. “We’ve removed the content brought to our attention and continue to investigate.”
Pinterest follows a string of other companies that were used in Moscow's disinformation campaign, including Facebook, Google and Twitter.
Facebook revealed last week that Moscow purchased online ads that specifically targeted swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin as well as particular demographic groups in an attempt to influence the presidential election.
Roughly 10 million Facebook users saw the ads purchased by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency, the social media company said.
Russian actors also reportedly used Google and Twitter in their efforts to meddle in the election. Twitter has already suspended more than 200 accounts tied to the Internet Research Agency.
The Washington Post reported Monday that Google's Russia-linked ads popped up on some of its other owned platforms including YouTube and Gmail.
Multiple congressional panels, as well as an independent Justice Department probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller, are looking into the extent and success Russia achieved in attempts to influence the country during the run up to last year's election.
The House panel also announced Wednesday their plans to release Facebook ads purchased during the election.The Viking missions showed the martian soil to be lifeless and depleted in organic material and indicated the presence of one or more reactive oxidants. Here we report the presence of Mars-like soils in the extreme arid region of the Atacama Desert. Samples from this region had organic species only at trace levels and extremely low levels of culturable bacteria. Two samples from the extreme arid region were tested for DNA and none was recovered. Incubation experiments, patterned after the Viking labeled-release experiment but with separate biological and nonbiological isomers, show active decomposition of organic species in these soils by nonbiological processes.
The results of the Viking lander analyses of soils on Mars are puzzling in three respects. First is the absence of organic materials at the level of parts-per-billion (ppb), as measured by pyrolysis–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (pyr-GC-MS) (1, 2). The second unexpected result is the rapid release of molecular oxygen, at levels of 70 to 770 nmol g–1, when soil samples were exposed to water vapor in the gas exchange experiment (3). The third puzzling result is that organic material in the labeled-release (LR) experiment was consumed as expected if life were present (4) (supporting online text). However, the presence of life is in apparent contradiction with the results from pyr-GC-MS. Currently, the most widely accepted explanation for the reactivity of the martian soil is the presence of one or more inorganic oxidants (such as superoxides, peroxides, or peroxynitrates) at the parts-per-million (ppm) level, whereas the lack of organics can be explained by their oxidation because of the presence of such oxidants and/or by direct ultraviolet radiation damage (5) (supporting online text).
We report here results of studies on the soils in the Atacama Desert, an environment that serves as a model for Mars. The Atacama is an extreme, arid, temperate desert that extends from 20°S to 30°S along the Pacific coast of South America (6–9) (supporting online text). Soil samples were collected along the precipitation gradient in a north-to-south transect centered on ∼70°W between 24°S and 28°S (Fig. 1). They were analyzed (10) for organic matter by pyr-GC-MS at 750°C under an inert atmosphere and for the presence of viable heterotrophic microorganisms by serial dilution plating on a number of artificial culture media that contained high and low nutrient levels. The diversity of the bacterial communities in a number of the samples was investigated by isolation of the total DNA, then polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and sequence determination of the 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes recovered.
Fig. 1. Digital elevation map of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, showing the historic nitrate mining sites (black counterlines) and the soil sampling sites. The Yungay area was sampled at the following sites: AT01-03, AT02-03A to AT02-03E, and AT03-33 to AT03-39 (10).
Analysis of samples by pyr-GC-MS revealed that the most arid zone of the Atacama, the Yungay area, is depleted of most organic molecules. Only two peaks in the chromatograms corresponding to organic molecules (formic acid and benzene) are detectable (figs. S1 and S2). In contrast, a less arid site, AT01-22, releases a complex mixture of organic compounds on pyrolysis (fig. S2). We carried out a comparative analysis by pyr-GC-MS with major classes of biomolecules (proteins, carbohydrates, fatty acids, porphyrins, and DNA) and bacterial mass (e.g., strain AT01-3 isolated from the Atacama Desert) (supporting online text). We concluded that site AT01-22 contains bacteria and/or all of the major classes of biomolecules at levels within the detection limits of the pyr-GC-MS protocol applied.
The two characteristic compounds released by all pyrolysates are formic acid, a highly oxidized organic compound, and benzene, a thermally stable aromatic compound. These two compounds are typically released by the thermal treatment of monocarboxylic acids, polycarboxylic acids, carbohydrates, polysaccharides, amino acids, and proteins. Formic acid is present at concentrations of ∼1 μmol g–1 in the Yungay area, then decreases by an order of magnitude at 26°S and increases again in the less arid zone (Fig. 2C). In contrast, benzene is present at trace levels (∼0.01 μmol g–1) at ∼24°S, with its concentration increasing to ∼1 μmol g–1 in the less arid zone (∼28°S). The ratio between formic acid and |
” and “Traders, Guns & Money.”World's first custom-built floating city to rise off French Polynesian waters
Updated
The world's first floating city could be constructed off the waters of French Polynesia after the Government signed an agreement with a United States company in San Francisco at the weekend.
Key points The Seasteading Institute has been searching for a location for five years
The French Polynesian pilot project will be built in sheltered waters
Floating cities could be a solution to rising sea levels around the Pacific
The Seasteading Institute has been researching the potential for what it describes as permanent, innovative communities floating at sea for the past five years.
After signing a memorandum of understanding with the French Polynesian Government, it is hopeful construction can start by 2019.
The institute's executive director, Randolph Hencken, told Pacific Beat finding a host nation was a significant milestone.
He said the next steps involved economic and environmental impact studies as well as legal investigations to figure out the special governing framework the institute believes is crucial to the ongoing success of its floating communities.
The Seasteading Institute was founded by Wayne Gramlich and Patri Friedman in 2008 to establish autonomous, mobile communities on seaborne platforms operating in international waters.
The French Polynesian prototype will not be in international waters but the institute still hopes its vision can be incorporated.
Mr Hencken said the detail of political autonomy needed to be negotiated and considered under the sovereignty of French Polynesia and France, of which French Polynesia is a territory.
"What we're interested in is societal choice and having a location where we can try things that haven't been tried before," Mr Hencken said.
"I don't think it will be that dramatically radical in the first renditions.
"But I imagine it has the opportunity to have different ways of voting for how things are run off the island instead of using the same systems that our great great-grandparents have given us that seem to have failed in so many first-world nations."
Mr Hencken said a former minister from the Government in Papeete approached his company last year and after a site inspection, the azure seas of the Pacific appealed for several reasons.
"We were looking for sheltered waters — we don't want to be out in the open ocean — it's technologically possible but economically outrageous to afford," he said.
"If we can be behind a reef break, then we can design floating platforms that are sufficient for those waters at an affordable cost."
Other attractions included fewer cyclones, a major airport in Tahiti and other aspects of modern life, like restaurants.
"We don't have to start from scratch as this is a pilot project," he said.
"They also have very stable institutions so we're able to work with a government that wants us there, that we have respect for and they have respect for us."
One of the challenges in the lead-up will be to prove the economic benefit to the Government.
"We are confident there will be both a direct and an indirect benefit for them economically," Mr Hencken said.
"They are a tourist-based economy and they're excited to bring us in because we are a technology-based idea.
"The first islands are going to be a pilot project and there will just be many dozens [of people] to get started with and then … we grow and are more successful, we will hopefully see hundreds and thousands of people living there.
"What excites me about the project is a location where people are going to create a community based on interests on floating islands rather than have a community because they happen to be born there and this is their ethnicity."
The agreement with the French Polynesian Government is for the studies to be completed this year and incorporated into draft legislation. If passed by the end of 2018, construction can start in the next year.
A solution to the Pacific's rising sea levels
The Seasteading Institute believes their vision for "sustainable, floating islands and innovative islands" will prove to be part of the solution to rising sea levels.
"So much of the world — places like Kiribati and many of the islands of French Polynesia — are threatened by rising sea levels," Mr Hencken said.
"We are planning to spin off a new industry of floating islands that will allow people to stay tethered to their sovereignty as opposed to having to flee to other countries.
"That's certainly why the Tahitians are interested in us. They want the environmental resiliency as well as the economic opportunities."
Topics: science-and-technology, community-and-society, climate-change, pacific, french-polynesia, united-states, france
First postedFor a lot of people, thoughts about the sexual politics of Playboy run along the lines of what Gloria Steinem reportedly once told Hugh Hefner: “A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.” Hefner’s magazine celebrates men as swinging bachelors and women as objects of desire; ergo, it’s sexist.
Not so fast, says Carrie Pitzulo. With Bachelors and Bunnies, she delves into the history of the magazine to reveal its surprisingly strong record of support for women’s rights and the modernization of sexual and gender roles. Taking readers behind the scenes of Playboy’s heyday, Pitzulo shows how Hefner’s own complicated but thoughtful perspective on modern manhood, sexual liberation, and feminism played into debates—both in the editorial offices and on the magazine’s pages—about how Playboy’s trademark “girl next door” appeal could accommodate, acknowledge, and even honor the changing roles and new aspirations of women in postwar America. Revealing interviews with Hugh Hefner and his daughter (and later Playboy CEO) Christie Hefner, as well as with a number of editors and even Playmates, show that even as the magazine continued to present a romanticized notion of gender difference, it again and again demonstrated a commitment to equality and expanded opportunities for women.
Offering a surprising new take on a twentieth-century icon, Bachelors and Bunnies goes beyond the smoking jacket and the centerfold to uncover an unlikely ally for the feminist cause.Speaking with CNN’s Carol Costello, Trump supporter and pastor Darrell Scott explained that principles of Christian forgiveness meant that Donald Trump should be forgiven for past transgressions. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, should not.
“Morality changes with times in America,” Scott argued. “What was once immoral now is viewed as moral, and even with character evaluations, character evaluations are subjective. There’s no objective definition of character. And so as times change, people’s opinions change.”
He continued: “What we once thought was intolerable has now become tolerable to the extent that its very hard to judge an individual because you don’t have a clear moral compass — I mean a clear compass as to what morality is these days.” Scott cited as an example of shifting morality, the fact that it is no longer acceptable to compliment a woman’s appearance.
The segment was a response to comments RNC Chair Reince Priebus made, accusing the Clinton camp of dredging up unsavory stories from Trump’s past.
Addressing the New York Times story about Trump’s history with women, Priebus said, “Look, I mean, these are things that he is going to have to answer for, but I also think there are things from many years ago and I think that, you know, as Christians, judging each other I think is — is problematic. I think it’s when people live in glass houses and throw stones is when people get in trouble. And so, you know, is Hillary Clinton — it’s a classic Clinton operation. Now suddenly these things are coming out. “
Costello pressed Scott later in the segment: “If Republicans can forgive Donald Trump’s transgressions, can they also forgive Bill Clinton’s past transgressions?”
He affirmed that Donald Trump was in the process of making a transition from a private person in the public eye to a public servant. “As a public servant, he doesn’t have the license and the liberties that he had as a celebrity figure. As a celebrity figure, he’s expected to make outsized, outlandish comments and have an over-the-top personality. As a public servant, he’s held to a different standard.”
Clinton, on the other hand, committed transgressions that were “inexcusable” while a public servant, namely using “his office as a bordello,” Scott said.
“Christianity is based upon forgiveness,” he added, invoking the apostle Paul. “Donald Trump was a different person then than he is now.” When asked about Clinton, Scott affirmed that the 42nd president got no such pass because then he was in public office.
[image via screengrab]
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comFormer White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon said that President Trump firing former FBI Director James Comey was the biggest mistake in “modern political history."
Asked during an interview on "60 Minutes" Sunday if it was true that he called the Comey firing the "biggest mistake in political history," Bannon said, "That probably would be too bombastic, even for me, but maybe modern political history."
Bannon told interviewer Charlie Rose that had Trump not fired Comey, the president would not be faced with an investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
"I don't think there's any doubt that if James Comey had not been fired, we would not have a special counsel," Bannon said, referring to Robert Mueller.
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“We would not have the Mueller investigation, we would not have a Mueller investigation in the breadth that clearly Mr. Mueller is going in.”
Bannon said that he didn’t believe firing Comey would have changed the “institutional logic of the FBI and particularly in regards to an investigation.”MANCHESTER, England, December 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --
Thousands of smokers will receive free electronic cigarettes in time for New Year.
The NHS plans to offer the devices on prescription during 2016, following Public Health England (PHE) reporting that electronic cigarettes are 95 per cent less harmful than tobacco.
Stealing a march on the NHS, e-cigarette brand VIP will provide 10,000 vaping starter kits as part of a new initiative - the first of its kind - which will launch on ITV1 tonight [Wednesday 9 December 2015].
Miguel Corral, co-founder of VIP, said: "It's widely agreed that vaping plays a major role in helping people to quit smoking. The NHS doesn't currently offer free vaping kits to those who need them, but no-one should have to wait for effective treatment. That's why we've stepped in just in time for New Year's resolutions - the most popular time to try to stop."
The brand is hoping that this campaign will lead smokers on the path to vaping for good.
Miguel continued: "Doctors recognise that smokers have a much higher chance of quitting if they receive adequate support. Vaping mimics the experience of smoking - making it an ideal solution for those who are sick of cigarettes but just can't quit with gum or patches.
"The vaping industry has had to endure years of scare-mongering and unfair claims, so to finally have validation from Public Health England among other bodies, such as the Royal College of Physicians[1], was a major milestone not only for e-cigarette brands, but for smokers, too."
Figures from public health charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) showed that, between 2012 and 2014, the number of e-cig users rose from 700,000 to 2.1 million, equating to a three-fold increase. Meanwhile, Smoking in England has reported that the prevalence of cigarette smoking continues to steadily decline, falling from almost a quarter of adults in 2007 to 18 per cent in 2015 - accounting for approximately 10 million people.
The Great VIP Giveaway will launch with a series of teaser trailers from Friday 4 December, with the official advert airing on ITV1 on Wednesday 9 December after the 9pm watershed. Viewers will be given a special code - the first 10,000 new customers to redeem the code on VIP's website will receive free vaping kits, worth £29.99 each.
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1. https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/news/rcp-statement-e-cigarettes
About VIP
VIP endeavours to be the premier provider of electronic cigarettes and related products in the UK and selected other markets by delivering the highest value to customers and employees. VIP strives to pursue new growth opportunities and continues to improve profitability while remaining a socially responsible and ethical company.
Launched under Must Have Ltd. in 2009, the VIP brand was one of the first e-cigarette divisions to be established in the UK. Extensive research and feedback obtained from cigarette smokers was used to assist in the development of VIP Electronic Cigarette products.
Headquartered in Manchester, VIP has now become one of the largest independent e-cigarette brands in Europe operating via multiple channels consisting of 200+ dedicated outlets throughout UK, Ireland and Spain, retail distribution network and e-commerce.
Website: http://www.vipelectroniccigarette.co.uk/
VIP was taken over in April 2014 by ECIG. Electronic Cigarettes International Group (ECIG), formerly Victory Electronic Cigarettes Corporation.
VIP was the first brand to screen a television advert for e-cigarettes last November, causing outrage among some health campaigners who felt it 'glamorised' smoking, despite the advert showing a woman exhaling e-cigarette vapour.
About ECIG
Electronic Cigarettes International Group (ECIG) is dedicated to providing a compelling alternative to traditional cigarettes for the more than 1 billion current smokers around the world. ECIG is a fast growing independent electronic cigarette company, and owns the trademarks VAPESTICK®, FIN®, Victory®, VIP®, and others. The Company owns multiple subsidiary companies and has operations in North America and Western Europe. ECIG offers consumers a full product portfolio that incorporates product quality and the latest technology.
Website: http://www.ecig.co
SOURCE VIPThe family of Bettie Jones, a 55-year-old grandmother who was killed by police in late December, filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago on Monday.
Jones was shot to death by a Chicago Police Department officer responding to a domestic dispute, according to The Chicago Tribune. Officers had been called after an argument involving Jones’ neighbor, 19-year-old college student Quintonio LeGrier, who was also killed by police that night. The suit reads:
Bettie Ruth Jones faced a hail of bullets being fired by an on-duty Chicago Police Department officer at and in the direction of her home and her, with bullets going through the doorway, and through the walls of her home where (one of her daughters and others) were located and at risk of injury and death.”
Since her death, the Chicago police department admitted that the shooting was “accidental.” Another lawsuit was filed by the family of LeGrier, who allege that the officer was 20 feet outside the building when he shot into it, killing both of them.
The Jones lawsuit also alleges that when Jones’ daughter asked a police officer for help, he replied by saying that “her mother was dead and she needed to ‘get over it.’”
The suit comes in the wake of a string of missteps and embarrassments for the Chicago Police Department, from the death of Laquan McDonald to an investigation over civil rights violations by the U.S. Justice Department.
[Image via Getty]Daemon and FreedomTM comprise a two-part novel by the author Daniel Suarez about a distributed, persistent computer application, The Daemon, that begins to change the real world after the original programmer's death.
Plot [ edit ]
Upon publication of the obituary for Matthew A. Sobol, a brilliant computer programmer and CTO of Cyberstorm Entertainment, a Daemon is activated. Sobol, dying of brain cancer, was fearful for humanity and began to envision a new world order. The Daemon becomes his tool to achieve that vision. The Daemon's first mission is to kill two programmers Joseph Pavlos & Chopra Singh who worked for CyberStorm Entertainment and unknowingly helped in the creation of the Daemon.
The program secretly takes over hundreds of companies and provides financial and computing resources for recruiting real world agents and creating AutoM8s (computer controlled driverless cars, used as transport and occasionally as weapons), Razorbacks (sword-wielding robotic riderless motorcycles, specifically designed as weapons) and other devices. The Daemon also creates a secondary online web service, hidden from the general public, dubbed the Darknet, which allows Daemon operatives to exchange information freely.
What follows is a series of interlocking stories following the main characters:
Detective Pete Sebeck is called in to investigate the death of Pavlos. However, when a connection is made between the two programmers and Cyberstorm, the FBI takes over led by Agent Decker. For being the first authority figure in the investigation, the Daemon selects Sebeck against his will to serve the Daemon, which frames Sebeck for its creation as a multi-million scheme and a hoax. The US government, though knowing the truth, fasttracks Sebeck's trial and executes him eight months later. Sebeck makes peace with his wife, who loves him despite Sebeck's having an affair, but his son Chris remains estranged, and he proclaims his innocence while dying from lethal injection. However, Sebeck later awakens to learn that the Daemon faked his death and assigned him the task to prove that humanity deserves its freedom from the Daemon. Joined by a fellow operative named Laney Price, Sebeck vanishes into America.
Jon Ross, a Russian hacker and identity thief, is questioned by the FBI and brought into the investigation by Sebeck. Unfortunately, traditional investigation methods are useless against Sobol's Daemon program. Ross eventually deduces that the Daemon can anticipate their every move, seemingly one step ahead of anyone who tries to interfere with its operation. Even after being named in the Daemon hoax (and put on the FBI's most wanted list), Ross willingly helps the US government to stop the program. Assigned to the NSA's anti-Daemon task force, with Agent Phillips, he is a firsthand witness to Loki's attack on the installation and barely survives the massacre that follows. With his immunity deal rescinded, he vanishes underground with the intent on destroying the Daemon on his own.
Agent Roy "Tripwire" Merritt a decorated FBI agent is brought in to secure Sobol's property, when several FBI agents and police officers are killed by an automated Hummer that attacks anyone who approaches. A longtime military officer and expert in hostage situations, he realizes that Sobol's estate is a death trap and red herring, but fear of the Daemon forces his hand and his team is ordered to secure the site regardless. His team is quickly killed, and he remains the lone survivor, infiltrating the house and accidentally triggering a bomb, which levels the property. Blamed for the failure, he is relieved of duty but is later brought onto the anti-Daemon task force by the Major. When Loki is revealed to have infiltrated the building, Roy pursues him, against orders. Fearful of the publicity that the chase will generate, the Major kills Roy himself. Despite being an enemy to the Daemon, he becomes a folk hero of the Darknet, known as "The Burning Man" by the Darknet users, who respect him for his tenacity.
NSA Agent Natalie Philips, a genius workaholic government cryptographer. Phillips joins the investigation shortly after the FBI is called in. Eventually, she is placed in charge of the anti-Daemon task force, but she finds plenty of interference from the Major. She is attracted to Jon Ross (the attraction is mutual), but she quickly states that national security will take precedence and their relationship will remain professional. Phillips objects to the murder of Sebeck to protect infected corporate systems from the Daemon's wrath. One of a handful survivors from Loki's attack, Phillips is blamed for the failure and relieved of duties.
Brian Gragg aka "Loki Stormbringer" is a sociopathic loner and avid gamer. He makes a living through identity theft and other cyber crimes. After running afoul of some hackers from the Philippines, he allows his partner in crime, Jason Heider, to be killed in his place. Needing to lie low, Loki is recruited by the Daemon by outthinking a hidden game level in one of Sobol's games. Loki is the first Daemon operative and quickly becomes one of the most powerful operatives. His behavior, though useful to the Daemon, is hated and feared even by other Darknet members. His first major act is to infiltrate the anti-Daemon task force. When found out, he quickly triggers an attack, which leaves most of the people and agents there dead. He is pursued by Roy Merritt, as he escapes and witnesses the Major executing Roy, vowing to kill the Major for betraying his own man.
The Major, unnamed throughout the series, is introduced as a secret DOD liaison assigned to the daemon task force. Soon, everyone who encounters him realizes that his history is checkered, and his loyalty remains with the military-industrial complex now under attack by the Daemon. When Loki massacres the task force, he quickly contains the situation by destroying all evidence (including leveling the building) and personally executing Roy Merritt, fearful that Merritt's pursuit of Loki will attract too much attention. Realizing that they have underestimated the Daemon and its network, the Major retreats and prepares to wage a secret war against the Daemon and its agents.
Anji Anderson is a recently fired reporter, whose good looks have hindered her career for years. Having been relegated to fluff pieces and put on the air to be pretty, she is quickly recruited as a Daemon operative, her job to investigate stories that benefit the Daemon and help push its propaganda. Her main effect in the story is to help frame Sebeck. She eventually becomes the spokesman for the Daemon.
Charles Mosely is a former drug dealer and convicted killer recruited by the Daemon, which helps him to escape prison by transferring him first to minimum security and then releasing him altogether. With a new identity, he travels to a Daemon-controlled office where he is interrogated by the Daemon's AI and is deemed acceptable to serve. He eventually becomes a security operative, assigned jobs such as executing criminals, participating a massive worldwide assassination of spammers who corrupt the internet. Mosley's only request is for the Daemon to locate his missing son and protect him. Ray is both found and sent to live with Daemon agents, who will raise and educate Ray in a safe family-like setting.
Dutton purchase [ edit ]
On June 25, 2008, the Dutton imprint of the Penguin Group purchased Daemon and the rights to the sequel Freedom™ from Verdugo Press.[1] Dutton has since achieved foreign rights sales worth over $1 million.
Film adaptation [ edit ]
Walter F. Parkes, who produced the 1983 film WarGames, had optioned the film rights to Daemon with Paramount Pictures,[2] but they likely reverted to Suarez on 8 December 2012.[3]Police made good late Monday on an ultimatum by new Chief Robert White, who told Occupy Denver protesters that their encampment at the edge of Civic Center would be dismantled forcibly.
Dozens of riot-gear-clad police pinched the edges of the park at about 11:30 p.m. and began clearing it out. It came amid a pair of fires intentionally set to burn parts of the encampment as protesters shouted and waved placards.
Within minutes, police pressed across a blockaded Broadway from the east side and encircled the ramshackle shelters. Seconds after police began taking the shelters apart, the fires broke out.
A firetruck moved in to douse the flames as a battery of police closed ranks shouting, “Move back!” to allow firefighters access.
Within 15 minutes after their arrival, police had moved protesters in a group toward the east side of the main branch of the public library. A few protesters ran east across Lincoln Avenue with police in pursuit.
Only one protester appeared to be pulled out for arrest shortly after the first fire broke out, but most of the incident appeared to be without injury or arrest.
A police spokesman was not immediately available early this morning to provide any information about possible arrests or reports on injuries sustained by protesters or police.
Shortly after midnight, as police pressed forward at 13th Avenue and Broadway, several protesters stopped in the street and “Tebowed,” kneeling in a pose reflecting Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow.
White had issued an ultimatum Monday afternoon to Occupy Denver protesters, saying that time was up and the city would forcibly dismantle their encampment near Civic Center at any moment.
The notice given at a meeting behind closed doors at police headquarters was the latest development in the battle between the Occupy Denver protesters and the city over the permanent demonstration on sidewalks that border Broadway between Colfax and 14th avenues.
Rumors of an impending clear-out swirled throughout the encampment late Monday as some protesters milled about warming fires set inside trash cans while others quietly made off with their belongings across snow-dusted streets.
As protesters carried protest placards and occasionally voicing opinions to no one in particular, little occurred among the group despite preparations for a police force they seemed to expect but didn’t see.
By 11:15 p.m., little more than dropping temperatures seemed to nip at the 30 or so people at the park’s eastern edge. A helicopter roared by at about 11:20 p.m. At 11:25, several police cars blocked off Broadway. The apparent removal appeared about to begin.
Protesters have built shelters, arranged tarps, set down sleeping bags and even tied a kayak to a tree, violating a city ordinance that forbids “encumbrances” on public rights of way. They’ve tried to state their case in federal court, to no avail. On Monday, White said the protesters have drawn a line in the sand and that the city was going to take action. He did not say when that was going to occur.
“As far as their encumbrances, they have to take them down,” White said. “There is not a lot of wiggle room. A decision was made that that needs to occur. They were asked to do it. And they decided they weren’t going to do it. Now it is on us to make that happen.”
The protesters left the meeting disgusted, calling it “incredibly unproductive.” and asking if they could take the crackers, fruits and veggie trays.
White said, “Of course.”
“I reiterated that I value their First Amendment rights, but they have to value everyone else’s rights and have to abide by the ordinances of our city,” White told reporters.
Patricia Hughes, who splits her time between Occupy Denver and being a nurse, said the structures are shelters for people with nowhere else to go.
“You take away the structures, you are sentencing people to death,” she said, adding that homeless shelters are not an option. “People are safer at Occupy Denver than they are at the shelters, where they could be raped or stabbed.”
But advocates for the homeless who operate the city’s nine shelters say that is not what occurs in the shelters that are segregated by gender.Police have arrested about 40 activists demonstrating in Azerbaijan's capital Baku against President Ilham Aliyev's government, and in support of residents of a northern town were protests were crushed earlier this week.
More than 100 protesters gathered in central Baku on Saturday, some chanting "Freedom!" and calling for the resignation of Aliyev.
Police swiftly stopped the protest, forcing demonstrators out of a park and then arresting some in the street.
The protest was triggered by unrest in Ismailli, about 200km northwest of Baku, where police used teargas and water cannon on Thursday to disperse hundreds of protesters demanding the resignation of a regional leader.
Cars were torched and a hotel set ablaze in a night of rioting.
Unrest in Ismailli reflected frustration at what some Azeris see as an overbearing government, corruption and a large divide between rich and poor in the mostly Muslim Caspian Sea nation of nine million where many lack jobs, money and prospects.
Aliyev succeeded his father in 2003 and has tolerated little dissent in the oil-producing former Soviet republic.
"Our patience came to an end. People are very unhappy with this regime. We demand a change of power in our country," demonstrator Malakhat Nasibova said at the protest in Baku.The California Association for Coordinated Transportation (CalACT) has recognized West Hollywood with its 2015 Leadership Award for implementing creative transportation programs.
CalACT is a statewide nonprofit organization whose membership include individuals and agencies from diverse facets of transportation, including operators of small and large systems transit systems, planning and government agencies, social service agencies, suppliers and consultants.
A successful transportation program identified by the award is West Hollywood’s TLC program, which provides door-to-door Dial-A-Ride services to the city’s residents who most need them.
An increasingly popular local option is Cityline, a free shuttle service that offers an alternative to larger modes of public transit. Cityline operates Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Since implementing major route and schedule changes in March 2013, Cityline has seen a significant increase in ridership.
Another model transportation initiative is The PickUp, West Hollywood’s free nighttime ride. The PickUp is a trolley service that offers a safe and convenient way to get to a destination in West Hollywood on Fridays and Saturdays from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. New seasonal Sunday service is expected to launch in June 2015. The PickUp travels along Santa Monica Boulevard in a four-mile loop with 10 stops in each direction between Robertson Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue and arrives at stops every 15 minutes.Share selection to:
Cleaning out ‘rust’ from the brain could be a way to slow and even prevent the degenerative disease Alzheimer’s, according to new research that pinpoints iron as its so-far elusive potential driver.
Previous research has long linked Alzheimer’s to a build-up in amyloid protein fragments in the brain that are normally broken down in healthy brains. But efforts to treat Alzheimer’s by using drugs that reduce amyloid levels have so far failed, leading to speculation that something else is driving the disease.
New research from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health and the University of Melbourne has found that iron might be the culprit. Iron has a special property that allows it to exchange electrons, which is crucial in allowing our bodies to generate energy from oxygen and fuels such as sugars. But it can also damage neurons in the same way that iron metal rusts in the presence of oxygen.
A stylised image of a brain MRI using Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) showing in red the increase in iron levels found in those with Alzheimer’s pathology compared to controls. Picture: Supplied
The researchers used cutting edge magnetic resonance imaging techniques to measure iron levels in the brain. They found that people with high levels of iron in combination with high levels of amyloid were suffering rapid cognitive decline, but that people with high levels of amyloid but low levels of iron in the brain, were stable.
They are now going to carry out a five year trial to test whether an anti-iron drug can slow the progress of Alzheimer’s, in what would be a major breakthrough in finding a treatment.
Brain can corrode like metal rusts
“Given the data from our study, it seems reasonable to hypothesise that lowering iron in the brain would slow the progression of the disease, but we can only know that by testing it, which is what we are now going to do,” says lead researcher on the study Dr Scott Ayton, who is based at the Florey Institute and the University of Melbourne.
Dr Ayton cautions that the amount of iron in a person’s brain appears unrelated to their iron intake or iron levels in the blood. People therefore shouldn’t be cutting down on iron in response to these results. It also means that levels of iron in the blood aren’t an indicator of Alzheimer’s risk.
“We don’t have any evidence that the amount of iron you eat, or the amount that is measured in your blood, has any impact on the amount of iron in your brain, so we are not recommending people change what they eat based on our research,” Dr Ayton says.
Indeed iron is important in generating energy, but Dr Ayton says it is also a double-edged sword as it can cause cell death, including the death of neuron cells in the brain. While iron and oxygen combine in the body to produce energy, the by-product is oxidative stress, which is similar to rust that deteriorates metal.
“The rusting you see on iron metal is the same rusting reaction that occurs in the brain,” Dr Ayton says.
“Iron and oxygen are very dangerous elements that biology has exploited to efficiently produce energy. But the characteristics that make iron such a useful element are the same that make it incredibly toxic.”
Hunt for another lesion
The hunt for an alternative driver of Alzheimer’s gained momentum when the same Florey Institute research group published a study in 2013 that found that among a group of participants aged over 70 with high levels of amyloid, about 30 per cent had no symptoms of dementia such as memory loss and falling cognitive function. Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of dementia.
“Amyloid build up is clearly important in Alzheimer’s. If you have high levels of amyloid in the brain then you are likely to get Alzheimer’s, but we just don’t know when. That’s why we hypothesise that another type of lesion in the brain is required for an individual to move from having the underlying pathology of the disease, i.e. amyloid build up, to the degenerative state of dementia,” explains Dr Ayton.
Advances and refinements in techniques of Magnetic Resonance Imaging have made possible to pin point iron levels in the brain. Picture: Leon Brocard/Flickr
The research team was further encouraged to target iron after they found that high levels in brain fluid were correlated with symptoms of dementia. But it is only thanks to recent advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques that they have been able to monitor actual levels of iron in the brain.
With the help of scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Dr Amir Fazlollahi and Dr Olivier Salvado, the research team was able to refine the Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) MRI technique to image iron deposits in the brain.
They recruited 117 participants of whom 56 had elevated levels of amyloid as measured by PET scans (positron emission tomography). MRI techniques were then used to measure iron levels. Over a period of six years they tracked these people’s cognitive function. They found that elevated iron in combination with elevated amyloid was strongly correlated with rapid cognitive decline.
The decline was further correlated with the location of the iron build up in the brain. A high level of iron in the hippocampus, which stores short-term memory, was correlated with memory decline. Similarly, high levels of iron in the temporal and frontal lobes, associated with language, were correlated with poor performance in language tasks.
The researchers now plan to test anti-iron drug Deferiprone on a cohort of Alzheimer’s patients. Deferiprone is known to reach the brain and there is early clinical evidence that it is effective in slowing Parkinson’s, a neurological disease that leads to movement disorders and is also associated with brain iron.
“These results for Deferiprone in Parkinson’s are what have really encouraged us to test the same drug on Alzheimer’s,” says Dr Ayton.
Senior researcher on the study and world-leading Alzheimer’s scientist Professor Ashley Bush says that if reducing brain iron is shown to be effective it could lead to a routine treatment for Alzheimer’s.
“If the trial results prove that low brain iron slows disease progression, we imagine a future where your GP sends you off for your 60-year health check, including a brain iron MRI scan, which is quick, cheap and painless,” says Professor Bush. “If you have high brain iron, then we would order an amyloid PET scan.
“Once we had those two measurements, we could predict the likely onset of Alzheimer’s and begin therapy to lower the iron, and delay disease onset.”
If you are over 65 and noticed that your memory is declining, or you are newly diagnosed with dementia, you can register your interest in being involved in the study at 3D@florey.edu.au. Eligible participants will be contacted when the study opens for enrolment later this year.
Banner image: Stylised version of a QSM image in which the red peaks represent the amount of iron in different regions of the average brain. Picture: SuppliedA former San Diego Chargers and Florida State wide receiver is suing the NFL Players Association, claiming the union failed to ensure his former agent was certified.
Richard Goodman, who played with the Chargers from 2010 to 2012, is seeking damages in excess of $15,000 in a civil suit that was filed Tuesday night in Broward (Fla.) County Court.
The 30-page lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by FOX Sports, accuses the NFLPA of "negligence, gross negligence and breach of fiduciary duty." The complaint stems from roughly $61,000 that Goodman was forced to pay when a $25,000 loan in 2010 was taken out in his name by agent James Burnoski.
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Goodman claims Burnoski forged his signature to receive the loan and then defaulted. The lender successfully sued Goodman for repayment of the $25,000 as well as an additional $22,500 in usury fees. The money was garnished from Goodman’s salary with the Chargers. In addition, Goodman was forced to pay $13,000 in personal legal fees.
Goodman alleges that he never would have continued to use Burnoski as his agent had it been known that his NFLPA certification and mandatory liability insurance had lapsed when he failed to pay for both. Despite his lack of standing with the NFLPA, the lawsuit asserts the union approved the player contract Goodman signed with Burnoski to represent him and admitted to the mistake during correspondence last December.
"Had Mr. Burnoski maintained the required insurance and the NFLPA not been grossly negligent in maintaining (its agent) database while informing all of the professional football players it represents of the status of certified contract advisors, Goodman would have had an opportunity to collect monies for the damages sustained due to Mr. Burnoski’s illegal acts," the lawsuit states. "Had Goodman known that Mr. Burnoski allowed his certification and liability insurance to lapse, he would have switched agents or would have never retained Mr. Burnoski’s services at all and would not have been subjected to (his) illegal conduct."
The NFLPA, which is responsible for the sanctioning of all player agents, didn’t immediately respond to a FOX Sports request seeking comment. Goodman’s attorney — Darren Heitner of South Florida-based Heitner Legal — declined comment to FOX Sports.
Goodman, 27, signed with the Chargers as an undrafted free agent in 2010. He appeared in 26 games with most of his action coming on kickoff returns during the 2011 and 2012 seasons. Goodman was released in the 2013 preseason.
News of Goodman’s complaint was first reported by ESPN and profootballtalk.com.France Warns Russia To Stay Out Of Its Presidential Election
The French government warned the Kremlin not to interfere in its presidential vote after signs of a disinformation |
system and the brain due to chronic exposure to a substance. Symptoms which may be experienced during withdrawal or reduction in dosage include increased heart rate and/or blood pressure, sweating, and tremors. More serious withdrawal symptoms such as confusion, seizures, and visual hallucinations indicate a serious emergency and the need for immediate medical care. Sedative hypnotic drugs such as alcohol, benzodiazepines, and barbiturates are the only commonly available substances that can be fatal in withdrawal due to their propensity to induce withdrawal convulsions. Abrupt withdrawal from other drugs, such as opioids can cause an extremely painful withdrawal that is very rarely fatal in patients of general good health and with medical treatment, but is more often fatal in patients with weakened cardiovascular systems; toxicity is generally caused by the often-extreme increases in heart rate and blood pressure (which can be treated with clonidine), or due to arrhythmia due to electrolyte imbalance caused by the inability to eat, and constant diarrhea and vomiting (which can be treated with loperamide and ondansetron respectively) associated with acute opioid withdrawal, especially in longer-acting substances where the diarrhea and emesis can continue unabated for weeks, although life-threatening complications are extremely rare, and nearly non-existent with proper medical management.
Treatment [ edit ]
Treatment for physical dependence depends upon the drug being withdrawn and often includes administration of another drug, especially for substances that can be dangerous when abruptly discontinued or when previous attempts have failed.[9] Physical dependence is usually managed by a slow dose reduction over a period of weeks, months or sometimes longer depending on the drug, dose and the individual.[7] A physical dependence on alcohol is often managed with a cross tolerant drug, such as long acting benzodiazepines to manage the alcohol withdrawal symptoms.
Drugs that cause physical dependence [ edit ]
Rebound syndrome [ edit ]
A wide range of drugs whilst not causing a true physical dependence can still cause withdrawal symptoms or rebound effects during dosage reduction or especially abrupt or rapid withdrawal.[28] These can include caffeine,[29] stimulants,[30][31][32][33] steroidal drugs and antiparkinsonian drugs.[34] It is debated whether the entire antipsychotic drug class causes true physical dependency, a subset, or if none do.[35] But, if discontinued too rapidly, it could cause an acute withdrawal syndrome.[36] When talking about illicit drugs rebound withdrawal, especially with stimulants, it is sometimes referred to as "coming down" or "crashing".
Some drugs, like anticonvulsants and antidepressants, describe the drug category and not the mechanism. The individual agents and drug classes in the anticonvulsant drug category act at many different receptors and it is not possible to generalize their potential for physical dependence or incidence or severity of rebound syndrome as a group so they must be looked at individually. Anticonvulsants as a group however are known to cause tolerance to the anti-seizure effect.[37] SSRI drugs, which have an important use as antidepressants, engender a discontinuation syndrome that manifests with physical side effects; e.g., there have been case reports of a discontinuation syndrome with venlafaxine (Effexor).[22]
See also [ edit ]September 18, 2014 – Today we discuss excessive force and the use of Tasers by law enforcement.
Family and friends are questioning the use of force by police in Independence, MO, after a 17-year-old sustained brain injuries that required him to be put into a medically induced coma.
According to police reports, an officer pulled over Bryce Masters for an outstanding traffic violation and refused to roll down the passenger-side window at the request of the officer. There was a struggle, and then the officer used his Taser on the teen. The struggle continued after Masters was pulled out of his car.
That’s according to law enforcement. Witnesses described a different scene, one of violence and excessive force by the officer.
Masters was outside of friend Curtis Martes’ home when the incident occurred. According to Martes, Masters could not have rolled the window down because the electricity to power it wasn’t connected.
Also, witness Michelle Baker said, “The cop was like, ‘you want to mess with me,’ and pulled out his Taser and tased him. I thought he shot him. Then he pulled him out of the car and handcuffed him and drug him around the car. It looked like he hit his head on the concrete. You could see blood coming out of his mouth. The cop put his foot on his back and moved it back and forth like he was putting out a cigarette and asked him, ‘are you ready to get up now?’ You could tell the kid was going into convulsions.”
Of course, the incident is still under investigation.
Do you think this could be another example of law enforcement inappropriately using lethal force on an unarmed suspect?
What can you do when you witness an officer using excessive force on someone? Call 9-1-1?
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
AdvertisementsAn adopted rescue puppy has melted its owners' hearts after being spotted sharing a blanket with a stray dog on a chilly morning.
Lana, who is eight months old, was taken in by Suelen Schaumloeffel and her fiancé after being found on the streets in Brazil last year.
But the lucky pooch, who is now a much-loved pet enjoying regular meals and a warm doghouse, hasn't forgotten her humble origins.
Lana - who had been tucked into her cozy bed the night before - was spotted by Suelen's fiancé doing something quite unusual on Tuesday morning as he went to work.
Pictured: Rescue puppy Lana drags her blanket over to a homeless hound (pictured) in Brazil
Pictured left and right: Lana enjoying her new life of love and luxury after being adopted by Suelen and her fiance
The kindhearted mutt had abandoned the luxury of her pink doghouse and dragged her lovely warm blanket to the gates of the couple's home to give the homeless hound a share of her good fortune.
Pictured: Suelen Schaumloeffel and Lana having a cuddle
Suelen told The Dodo: 'I thought, "How beautiful what she did for her friend".'
She added: 'My best four-legged friend reminded me of something so important: generosity!
'She is the nicest little dog I've ever met. We forget sometimes the difference we can make in someone's life. She reminded me of this.'
And now the couple, who are leaving out food for the stray dog, are hoping to help him find his way to a better place.
They say they have seen him around their house more than once, but he is too timid to come over to a human.A couple years ago, Scott Van Slyke was pretty much an afterthought. He was designated for assignment to clear a spot on the 40-man roster. No team took a flyer on him. Now, it seems the Dodgers were quite lucky for that.
Van Slyke hit the then-go-ahead home run in the second game of the Dodgers’ doubleheader against the Twins on Thursday night. It was his third of the season, and the power is real.
On opening day in Australia, Van Slyke drew the start and hit a double that would have been a home run in the Northern Hemisphere and a wind-blown home run in his next at-bat (so things evened out). He’s been “on” since that day, and the numbers back it up.
In 43 plate appearances, Van Slyke is hitting.309/.419/.722(!) with three home runs, four doubles, one triple and a.381 isolated power mark (league-average is.145). Eight of his 11 hits have gone for extra bases, and 15 of his 31 hits in 2013 were of the extra-base variety. When he gets a hit, he makes it count.
He has also improved his plate discipline this season. It’s a small sample size, but he’s walking in 16.3 percent of the time and is only striking out about 4 percent more than his career mark — more than worth it, considering the increased power.
Van Slyke has been worth 0.7 wins above replacement in 16 games. He was worth 0.8 WAR in 53 games (152 plate appearances) last season. There is value in this guy’s bat, which makes it even more infuriating when Don Mattingly refuses to use him late in games at times — especially in place of Carl Crawford and Andre Etheir against left-handers.
This season, he has a 1.399 OPS against lefties. That isn’t a typo. But he’s just 2-for-12 against righties this season, which also isn’t a typo. But, he owns a career.727 OPS against righties, so he could be more than just a lefty masher, if the Dodgers need him to be (i.e. Crawford and Ethier are injured/traded and Joc Pederson isn’t on the team). But he fits perfectly fine as a weapon against those pesky left-handers.
Van Slyke rededicated himself to baseball after, admittedly, he didn’t take the game seriously in his first couple seasons in the minors. Now, he’s one of the more valuable bench pieces in all of baseball. Seriously, if there were a “Sixth Man” award in baseball, he’d be the early leader in the clubhouse.
Much has been written about the Dodgers’ four-outfielder problem. Van Slyke and Pederson are making it a six-outfielder problem. Van Slyke, coupled with whomever is sitting on a day between Crawford and Ethier (and, on the rare occasion, Matt Kemp), head a pretty decent bench.
Oh, and he has a 70-grade mountain man beard working this season. That doesn’t hurt things.(CHICAGO) A lawsuit has been filed against two Chicago-area businesses that allegedly denied bathroom access to a woman with Crohn’s disease, a violation of Illinois’ Restroom Access Act.
In the suit filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court, the woman alleges that despite having a Medical Alert Restroom Access Card, employees at a South Loop Walgreens store and an Oak Brook Anthropologie would not let her use their restrooms.
Immediately after not being allowed to use the businesses’ restrooms, the woman defecated on the floor, causing her severe emotional distress, the suit stated.
Her visit to the Walgreens at 501 W. Roosevelt was in August 2013, and she was in the Anthropologie store in March 2014, according to the lawsuit.
In August 2005, Illinois enacted the Restroom Access Act, or Ally’s Law. The law allows people with Crohn’s disease or other inflammatory bowel diseases access to businesses’ employee restrooms if a public restroom is not nearby.
“Plaintiff experienced such extreme emotional distress as a result of not being able to use the restroom [that] she did not leave her house for days, and still experiences trepidation being in public places for fear she will not be able to use the restroom,” the suit stated.
Representatives from Walgreens and Anthropologie’s parent company could not be reached for comment Monday evening.
The two-count suit alleges intentional infliction of emotional distress. It seeks more than $100,000 in damages.Details Category: News Written by mouood Hits: 1315
The Turkish government has ordered the closure of 2 Shia television stations for what is said is “spreading propaganda against the government”.
The On4TV and Kanal12 were closed under a law related to restricting activities of terrorist groups, Rasthaber website reported.
The government has provided no evidence supporting its claims against the two TV stations.
According to some reports, all of the two TV channels’ belongings have also been confiscated.
The closures come at a time of growing concern for press freedom in Turkey.
Ankara introduced a state of emergency following an abortive coup in July 2016.
Turkey has put several prominent journalists under arrest following the abortive coup.
Activists have repeatedly warned that the state of emergency could be used for cracking down on groups or individuals beyond the coup suspects.No charges have been filed after the FBI searched nine locations connected to powerful union boss, John Dougherty. The FBI also searched the city hall office of Councilman Bobby Henon. (Published Sunday, Aug. 7, 2016)
Federal agents conducted raids Friday across Philadelphia and New Jersey, pulling truckloads of documents and computers from locations that included two rowhouses, a pub, a union hall and the political offices of a City Councilman.
A common link for all the search sites became clear immediately: the city's most influential labor union, IBEW Local 98, and its powerful leader known by the moniker Johnny Doc.
The FBI confirmed by mid-morning that the searches and subsequent seizures of enough boxes to fill an actual rental truck were part of an "ongoing investigation," apparently into the Philadelphia local for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
John Dougherty, who played a major role in getting Mayor Jim Kenney elected last year and at the same time helped his brother Kevin win a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, paced outside his home as agents searched inside.
Dougherty declined to discuss the purpose of the search, but told NBC10 he'd been under scrutiny his whole life, perhaps "because I keep winning."
It is the second time in 10 years that federal agents have raided the well-kept rowhouse on East Moyamensing Avenue in South Philadelphia.
His attorney, Hank Hockeimer of Ballard Spahr, was with Dougherty outside his house all morning and the two retreated inside once agents left.
"Nothing has changed inside the house since the last time 10 years ago," Hockeimer said.
Agents left there with several boxes of evidence and a computer after about four hours, then rolled a boxtruck up to the IBEW headquarters and union hall on Spring Garden Street and began loading dozens and dozens of boxes.
The FBI said federal agents searched those locations and Dougherty's pub in the 1800 block of South Second Street called Doc's Union Pub. In all, nine properties were searched throughout the morning and afternoon in connection with the investigation.
Those properties included Councilman Bobby Henon's offices at City Hall and in Northeast Philadelphia. Henon is a former IBEW Local 98 electrician who rose to become the union's political director before being elected to Council in 2011 with the support of Dougherty. This year, he took over as Council majority leader.
Across the river in New Jersey, federal agents raided MJK Electrical in Berlin and the Mt. Laurel home of Brian Burrows, president of Local 98. Pine Hill Police Chief Chris Winters said his officers assisted the FBI in serving the search warrant looking for tax records.
Several firearms and ammunition were seized during the search at MJK Electical unrelated to the FBI search. Winters said the person connected to the weapons was taken into custody. It's not clear why.
Frank Keel, who Dougherty edged out of his position this summer during a union reorganization, was back on the job as IBEW spokesman Friday. Keel said he didn't know anything about the investigation except for media reports of "financial improprieties" involving IBEW, and said the union is regularly audited.
John 'Johnny Doc' Dougherty's House, IBEW Raided by FBI
Dougherty last September became head of the Philadelphia Building Trades Council, a few months after his chosen candidate for mayor, Kenney, won the heated Democratic primary. Kenney easily won the general election in November. The two men grew up together in South Philadelphia and were close until a political estrangement last decade.
Still, when the mayor's race began shaping up last year into a battle between the longtime Councilman Kenney and state Sen. Anthony Williams, of West Philadelphia, Dougherty threw his union's considerable political clout -- and its vast resources -- behind the former South Philly friend.
Local 98's political action committee spent roughly $450,000 during the mayoral campaign last year.
Kenney: "I Don't Have Any Information"
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said Friday he wouldn't comment on early morning FBI raids at the home of union boss and campaign supporter Johnny "Johnny Doc" Dougherty and IBEW Local 98 headquarters. (Published Friday, Aug. 5, 2016)
"I know basically what you know," Kenney said when questioned about the raids at an unrelated midday news event. He quickly walked to a waiting vehicle and left without answering questions.
Kenney's spokeswoman Lauren Hitt confirmed no one in the Kenney administration has been approached by the FBI in relation to the investigation.
At the same news event, Councilmen Mark Squilla and Curtis Jones said they knew nothing about the investigation into their Council colleague, Henon.
Jones, the previous majority leader who lost the position to Henon after an internal power struggle on Council last year, brushed aside a question about Henon's reputation after the raids.
Asked if he has faith in Henon to be a leader on Council, Jones said, "I have full faith in me, and I have full faith in my institution, City Council. Totally. And I think the presumption of innocence always has to be there. I take no pleasure at all in anyone else's troubles."
Reporters Rosemary Connors, George Spencer, Mitch Blacher, Matt DeLucia and Drew Smith contributed to this story.Stephanie Flanders looks at the radical free-market economist Friedrich Hayek's solution to the problems of capitalism - set it virtually totally free from state control.
According to conventional wisdom, today's global financial crisis happened because markets were not regulated enough. But what if the opposite is true? That it was excessive government meddling in the markets that caused the crash?
In Masters of Money produced in partnership with The Open University, BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders examines the extraordinary influence of three intellectual titans - Keynes, Hayek and Marx and shows how they shaped the 20th century and continue to have a huge impact on our world today.
Stephanie turns her attention to the radical free-market economist Friedrich Hayek. Travelling from London to Vienna and America, she unravels the extraordinary life and influence of the only free-market thinker whose reputation has grown post-crisis.
With contributions from Central bankers, politicians and a Nobel laureate, she explores why despite his enormous influence, no government has ever dared to fully implement Hayek's solution to the problems of capitalism - set it virtually totally free from state control.National Football League players and other professional athletes are not dishonoring the flag or their country by kneeling in protest during the national anthem, but are instead trying to hold America up to its own standards with how matters of justice are handled, National Basketball Association legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar insisted on Monday — and he thinks it's "great."
"This is something they're concerned about, their families and the direction that our country is taking," Jabbar told CNN "New Day" anchor Chris Cuomo. "They have to make a statement about it. I think it's great. Sports has always been a vehicle for protest. We can start with Jackie Robinson. You know, the fact that he started playing may force people to think, we believe these people deserve to be on the field."
Players also are reminded about their own families when they see violent episodes taking place, said Jabbar.
"The reason that [Cleveland Cavaliers forward] LeBron James had so much to say about the death of young Tamir Rice is because LeBron is a parent," he said. "That could have been his son. The other members, the Cleveland Browns players that stepped forward, they were parents. They weren't doing this in some political fashion."
Cuomo noted that Jabbar has often spoken out, but he did it by writing "very thoughtful things," but Jabbar said younger athletes are seeing how their actions are bringing about change.By: Derek Yu
On: March 10th, 2011
Gemini Rue is a new sci-fi adventure game created by Joshua Nuernberger and published by Wadjet Eye Games, which developed The Shivah and also published Erin Robinson’s Puzzle Bots. The story revolves around two people: an ex-assassin searching for someone on a bleak, rainy planet, and another man who wakes up in a hospital after having his memories wiped.
Adventure Gamers has called this “the best Wadjet Eye title to date”, noting that the game has easy puzzles and a compelling storyline that you can play through in around 7 to 8 hours. I played through the demo myself, and it was intriguing enough that I’ll probably buy the full version for $15 to find out what happens next. The full version also comes with in-game director’s commentary, which I’m curious about.
TIGdb: Entry for Gemini RueKABUL: Afghan militants killed a North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) coalition force member during an attack on the United States (US) Bagram airbase outside Kabul, Nato said in a statement on Wednesday.
The attack on the main military airfield in Afghanistan took place on Tuesday evening and the nationality of the service member could not immediately be released, a Nato official said.
The Nato statement did not identify which militant group was responsible for the attack, though most of the groups active fall under the broad umbrella of the Afghan Taliban.
Bagram air base, which is guarded by US Marines and partnered forces, frequently comes under rocket attack from militants.
Fighting in Afghanistan has escalated since most foreign forces withdrew from last year and Afghan forces are bearing the brunt of the conflict.
A Taliban government was ousted by a US-led coalition in 2001 and its militants have been waging an increasingly violent insurgency for over a decade.
On Tuesday alone, at least 25 members of the Afghan army and police were killed in clashes, an interior ministry report showed. The Nato coalition has lost nine members of its force this year. Around 13,000 Nato troops are engaged in a new two-year training mission in the region.
In addition, several thousand US military personnel are still engaged in combat duties but details of their operations have not been disclosed.
Also read: No peace until foreign troops leave Afghanistan: Taliban chiefCBS will broadcast the fight on radio while its subsidiary, Showtime charges $100 for pay-per-view
Tonight’s matchup between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor has been called the “The Money Fight.” You may ask why? The $99.95 high-definition price tag on CBS Corp.’s Showtime is the highest ever charged for a pay-per-view event. CBS (CBS) expects about 4.9 million viewers will sign up for the broadcast.
It is the most distributed event in pay-per-view history. It will be shown in in over 200 countries on pay-per-view.
WINNERS
CBS has deals with other companies to show the fight live. Buffalo Wild Wings (BWLD) will show the fight at most of its 1,220 restaurants. Stocks of BWLD and CBS are probably worth watching more than the fight itself!
It is estimated that $700 million revenue will be generated from pay-per-view buys, ticket sales and other sources of income, according to sources. By comparison, Mayweather’s record-breaking match with Pacquiao in 2015 raked in an estimated $600 million. And let’s not forget tickets to the T-Mobile Arena, sponsorships, simulcast rights, merchandise and the many peripheral activities — gambling, hotel stays, meals — leading up to the big day on the Las Vegas Strip.
Japan’s boxing fans can view the fight with their smartphone and a $15 subscription to DAZN, a UK-owned sports streaming service that’s seeking to turn sports nuts into cord cutters. This is a new business model for pay-per-view.
“Mayweather vs. McGregor truly is a unique event and I doubt there will ever be one quite like it in the future,” said CEO of DAZN James Rushton. “We are analyzing how fans react to having this fight on DAZN and will evaluate if it’s something we want to continue doing in the future.”
Floyd Mayweather is expected to have a $300 million payday while McGregor is set to earn anywhere from $50 million to $100 million, according to various estimates.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oXy51JvkFY&w=640&h=360]
The last time Mayweather lost was in 1996, in a highly controversial decision at the semi-finals of the Atlanta Olympic Games, to Bulgarian Serafim Todorov. Even the Egyptian referee for the fight assumed Mayweather had won and held Mayweather’s hand aloft just as Todorov was announced as the winner. It would seem a mistake to bet against Mayweather now!
LOSERS
The biggest loser of the night will be HBO and its parent company Time Warner or soon to be AT&T (T).
With no real challengers remaining in boxing this year, Mayweather turned to the UFC and its biggest star, Conor McGregor. According to insiders, he timed the announcement and staged the fight in a manner designed to deal maximum damage to his former network partner, HBO, and two of their biggest pay-per-view fights of 2017.
Begin with the choice of an Aug. 26 fight date. “It’s perverse,” tells Bloomberg Jim Lampley, HBO boxing’s longtime commentator. “If there’s one indelible, accepted principle in operating pay-per-view, it’s ‘never before Labor Day.’
That’s why, for the upcoming HBO bout between middleweight titleholder Gennady Golovkin and former champ Canelo Alvarez—one of boxing’s best tilts, on paper, in years—the channel jumped on Sept. 16 to maximize the number of pay-per-view buys, assuming that Showtime would choose a later date in the fall for Mayweather-McGregor.
Instead, Mayweather-McGregor was set for Aug. 26, creating a tidal wave of publicity that is currently drowning the lead-up to the Canelo-Golovkin fight.
ODD MAKERS
The action is reflected in the odds, which bookmakers adjust either way as money comes in on the two fighters. Bookmakers have been lowering the odds steadily since the fight was announced, but even that hasn’t stopped the deluge of McGregor bets.
The big bettors are putting their money on Mayweather, who is 49-0 as a pro. But so many McGregor fans are betting small amounts that the betting slips were running 18-1 in the Irish fighter’s favor. McGregor fans have flooded sports books with $100 bills backing the mixed martial arts fighter, and even a late surge of money on Mayweather might not be enough to balance the books.
A fight that began with Mayweather an 11-1 favorite is now 5-1 or even less in some sports books.
Should McGregor somehow manage to knock out Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the early rounds Saturday night, Las Vegas’ bookmakers would lose millions of dollars in the biggest single event loss in the history of sports betting, according to Fox Business
Floyd Mayweather vs Conor McGregor
Date: Saturday, Aug. 26, 2017
Time: 9 p.m. ET
Location: T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas
STOCKWINNERS
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This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility.Monday: Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI) announces it will mothball the steelworks in Redcar, resulting in the direct loss of 1,700 jobs. As a result of the low price of steel, SSI will cease producing steel on Teesside, although Andy McDonald, the MP for Middlesbrough, estimates that job losses could be as high as 9,000 once the impact is felt along the steelworks' supply chain, with contractors and suppliers on course to be hit hard.
Wednesday: The government announces a loan of £45m – to Evraz, a steel-making and mining company owned by Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch. It has operations in the Ukraine, Canada, the United States, and Russia.
Why isn't the government stepping in to rescue jobs in Redcar? Government subsidy of the steel industry is tightly regulated by the European Union because overproduction of steel by heavily-subsidised national champions, resulting in crashes in the price – has been a persistent problem within the European economy. (That's also why closing down Trident manufacturing in Barrow and replacing it with alternative, well-paying work, is not as easy as it often sounds – the government has more leeway to subsidise jobs for defence than it does industries that compete on the global market, which is why the three unions who represent its workers remain opposed to scrapping the submarine.)
However, other European governments have persistently found ways round these regulations, with the Italian government heavily subsidising its steel industry under the guise of funding "environmental protection". And as David Cameron's choice to use the international aid budget to rehouse refugees here in Britain shows, the British government isn't opposed to fiddling the rules when it suits. It comes back to the central problem of the government's industrial policy: they have a plan to mortgage increasingly large chunks of Britain to China. They don't have a plan to retain the top academics or to maintain British industrial capacity.Late last week, an arson attack carried out by Israeli settlers against the West Bank village of Duna killed an 18-month-old baby and sparked furious protests across the occupied territories. The Israeli military was out in force almost immediately to crack down on the demonstrations, which they immediately dubbed “riots,” and has killed two more Palestinians, both of them 17-year-olds.
The first teenager was killed in Jifna, in the northern West Bank. He was shot in the chest by an Israeli military sniper, and evacuated to a hospital by the Red Crescent, though he died of his wounds later that night. The military claimed he tried to attack a military checkpoint near Ramallah.
The other Palestinian teen was in the Gaza Strip, and was killed when Israeli troops opened fire on protesters they believed were “too close” to the fence that Israel has surrounded the strip with. Israel could offer no details on this death, saying they’d shot at protesters several times in Gaza and weren’t clear which time this referred to.
Six other Palestinians were reported wounded across the occupied territories in protests. Two of them were shot by Israeli troops, while the other four were injured when Israeli troops fired tear gas into crowds of demonstrators in the southern West Bank.
Last 5 posts by Jason DitzClub executives are prohibited from publicly discussing the potential acquisition of players under contract with another team. Thus, Giants general manager Bobby Evans had little to say about a Boston Herald report citing a "baseball source" who claimed that San Francisco had contemplated bringing back Sandoval.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Contrary to reports issued on Saturday, the Giants have not internally discussed reacquiring third baseman Pablo Sandoval, who has struggled with the Boston Red Sox since leaving San Francisco.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Contrary to reports issued on Saturday, the Giants have not internally discussed reacquiring third baseman Pablo Sandoval, who has struggled with the Boston Red Sox since leaving San Francisco.
Club executives are prohibited from publicly discussing the potential acquisition of players under contract with another team. Thus, Giants general manager Bobby Evans had little to say about a Boston Herald report citing a "baseball source" who claimed that San Francisco had contemplated bringing back Sandoval.
• Hot Stove Tracker
"I am not aware of any consideration of a reunion," Evans said, "but we'll never forget all that he meant to the Giants organization."
The Giants, who project Eduardo Nunez as their primary third baseman for 2017, have been preoccupied with obtaining a closer to reinforce their bullpen.
Evans has remained cool to the suggestion of obtaining an offensively proven third baseman and moving the versatile Nunez to left field. People familiar with the Giants' baseball operations department emphasized that initiating talks with the Red Sox about Sandoval is absent from the club's priority list.
Left shoulder surgery limited Sandoval to three games with Boston in 2016. Continuing to battle weight problems, the "Kung Fu Panda" batted.245 with 10 homers and 47 RBIs in 126 games in 2015.
The Red Sox owe Sandoval a guaranteed $58 million through 2019, including a buyout for '20, under terms of the five-year, $95 million deal he received in free agency following the 2014 season.
Sandoval, 30, hit.294 with 106 home runs and 462 RBIs in 869 games with the Giants from 2008-14. His San Francisco tenure included All-Star Game selections in 2011 and '12, as well as hitting a record-tying three home runs in the 2012 World Series opener against Detroit.
Recording the final out of San Francisco's Game 7 triumph in the 2014 World Series at Kansas City, where he snared Salvador Perez's foul popup and slid to the ground in mingled relief and ecstasy, was Sandoval's last act as a Giant. Just days after he picked himself up off the grass, Sandoval rejected an offer from the Giants to sign with the Red Sox.As part of an ongoing response to the challenges enabled by in-app purchases, Apple has added a new section to the App Store explaining the ins and outs of app purchases.
The new section titled "Learn More About In-App Purchases" gives brief explanations on four topics: What Are In-App Purchases; Types of In-App Purchases; How In-App Purchases Work; and Parental Controls. The last section has links to Apple's Understanding Restrictions page and Parents' Guide.The move is a part of Apple's ongoing efforts to deflect criticism over what some call a faulty in-app purchase system. Apple has come under fire lately after a number of children were able to run up sizable bills on their parents' charge accounts thanks to in-app purchases in so-called "freemium" games.Apple has since kicked off a campaign to increase awareness of the potential pitfalls of in-app purchases. The company first rolled out warnings on in-app purchases in the OS X version of iTunes last month. An update to the iOS App Store followed shortly thereafter. Those updates place warnings beneath the app ratings that the app "Offers In-App Purchases."Sender Gear – Focused on serving the youth and adult climbing markets.
Sender Gear is a new climbing retailer with a strong focus on the youth climbing market. We caught up with owners Nick and Sharon Vukojevic and discussed competitions, shoes and climbing with kids.
Congratulations on the new store. When did you open?
Sharon: Thanks Gus, we are very excited about our new business venture. We launched Sender Gear on December 16, 2016. As with any business venture, the build up to the launch was much longer than expected. Reaching out to manufacturers and building the online store was more time-consuming than we originally planned.
The store is uniquely positioned in the marketplace. Care to elaborate as to who you see as your core customer?
Nick: The simple answer is kids and youth climbers. The not-so-simple answer is all climbers.
Sharon: Our initial vision was to provide quality performance gear to kids. We found that as our young girls progressed in their climbing abilities, it was getting harder to find suitable shoes. This was especially true for our youngest daughter who started climbing when she was four years old. With such an early start to climbing, her technical ability eventually outmatched the performance of conventional children's climbing shoes.
Nick: By the age of seven she was allowed to a lead climb at our home gym. It was almost unheard of for a seven-year-old to be granted that privilege a couple of years ago. She was using kids' size 12 shoes and was quickly wearing them out she because she was climbing three days a week – she wanted to climb all the time. We tried to find some small technical shoes for her, but no one seemed to carry performance-oriented climbing shoes in her size. That’s when we got the idea for Sender Gear. We want to provide parents with the resources to make informed purchasing decisions as well as access to quality shoes and gear for kids and competitive youth climbers. Our plan is to be the first stop in a parent’s quest to get the right gear for their budding sender.
Sharon: And by default, because of the great suppliers/vendors we have on board, we also cater to the entire climbing community. We want to make sure that expecting mothers, kids of all ages, experienced climbers and even the family dog are covered!
Some of the many brands available at Sender Gear.
What do you think makes you particularly well suited to serve this market?
Nick: As parents of two competitive youth climbers, we still live the challenge of getting the right gear for our kids. We not only have to find gear that they like, but the equipment also has to fit properly and be appropriate for their abilities and physical growth. Weighing quality, durability and price point can be difficult, especially when you don’t have the information or the experience to gauge what you need.
Let’s talk a little about you. How did you get into climbing?
Sharon: Climbing for us started years ago with our older daughter Mateja. She started gymnastics at the age of two. By the age of seven, the club wanted her to start competing. She really didn’t have much interest in that aspect of gymnastics. Fortunately, we persuaded her to stay in for one more season as her younger sister had just started gymnastics and loved it.
That was the year the gymnastics club built a small climbing wall. She spent most of that year watching the climbing instead of focusing on her lessons and the next year she switched to climbing while her sister was training in gymnastics. She spent two years there before the instructor told her that the facility was closing so he could spend more time with his growing family.
She was quite devastated, so we started searching online and found Climbers Rock in Burlington. When we walked in for the first time, it was like watching a kid during their first visit to Disney World. We signed her up for a program that day. And since we were there waiting for her, we booked a learn-to-climb lesson for ourselves. It was then we finally realized why she was so in love with this sport. We were hooked just as much as she was. After years of both of us playing and training in various higher impact sports, the effects were taking a negative toll on our bodies. We were ready to explore something that was a little less damaging and climbing seemed like a perfect fit.
Fast-forward six years and our entire family is now involved in climbing. It is a great way to spend time together while staying active and having fun.
Mateja and Dani are the two budding product testers for Sender Gear.
When we had talked over the phone, you shared an interesting perspective on who should take part in climbing. Care to recount your thoughts?
Nick: We believe climbing is for everyone. It’s really never too late or early to start and best of |
and instead of the expected brawl, the rally was peaceful and anticlimactic. All told, there were almost more media than alt-right defenders in attendance.”
Related: Reddit And Facebook Ban Neo-Nazi/Hate GroupsCHICAGO—With prospective players undergoing a final round of interviews and visits ahead of this week’s NFL Draft, sources revealed Wednesday that teams have been totally blown away by the ability of Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston to tell them exactly what they want to hear. “All of the GMs and coaches who talked to him were incredibly impressed after seeing Jameis so skillfully deliver the precise pandering answers they’d hoped for about maturing as a person and focusing solely on football,” said ESPN draft analyst Todd McShay, adding that the 21-year-old was “calm, composed, and totally in his element” while detailing his commitment to staying out of trouble and being a responsible team member. “He’s just such a natural at hitting every one of the generic, meaningless lines of rhetoric about personal growth, putting his past indiscretions behind him, and working hard to become the best quarterback in the league. It’s precisely what coaches were looking for.” McShay added that while Winston is still very young, there is widespread optimism around the league that he will easily transition to playing down his glaring character issues in the pros.
AdvertisementA long-awaited campaign to rebrand fossil fuels called Fueling US Forward made its public debut at the Red State Gathering 2016 on Saturday, where the organization’s President and CEO Charles Drevna gave attendees the inside scoop on the effort, and confirmed that the campaign is backed financially by Koch Industries.
Back in February, Peter Stone first reported in the Huffington Post that a $10 million-a-year effort was proposed by a Koch Industries board member, James Mahoney, and Mr. Drevna, aiming “to boost petroleum-based transportation fuels and attack government subsidies for electric vehicles.” In early August, the Fueling US Forward website launched, and on Saturday, the first public comments were made about the campaign by Mr. Drevna, and they revealed a lot about how the Koch-backed initiative is working to re-frame fossil fuels.
“We need a sustainable energy to ensure the future of the country,” Mr. Drevna told the audience.
The source of that energy? That which Mr. Drevna labeled “reliable, abundant, efficient and sustainable fuels.”
“Folks, that’s of course the fossil fuels,” he immediately added.
Never mind that fossil fuels don’t align with any dictionary definition of “sustainable,” as oil, gas and coal reserves are limited to what’s buried in the ground, unlike renewable sources of energy. Technically speaking, fossil fuels are the opposite of sustainable energy sources — but that fact did little to slow Mr. Drevna down as he made what he called the “pro-human” case for burning fossil fuels.
The top line takeaway from Mr. Drevna’s comments is that the Koch-funded Fueling US Forward is an effort to rebrand fossil fuels, focusing on the “positive” sides of oil, gas and coal.
The new initiative comes at a time when the impacts of climate change are becoming more difficult to ignore. 2016 is already on track to be the hottest year ever recorded, a mid-year climate analysis from NASA reported, and unusual storms, like the torrential rainfall that struck the Gulf Coast over the past few days causing historic flooding, have become more frequent.
For its part, Fueling US Forward wants to talk not about statistics, facts and figures, but to reach people’s emotions.
“We’ve got to take this to the emotional and personal level,” Mr. Drevna, a former DC lobbyist and Sunoco executive, told the crowd. “Oil and natural gas, they’re not the fuels of the past and maybe the present or a necessary evil. They are the future.”
In Peter Stone’s investigation for Huffington Post, many familiar with the early workings of the project that would grow into Fueling US Forward described it as an effort to bolster public opinion of fossil fuels and to combat electric vehicles.
Mr. Drevna’s new organization appears for now largely focused on the first half of that equation. Asked after his talk if Fueling US Forward planned to campaign against electric vehicles, Mr. Drevna said that his organization was focused on the positives of fossil fuels. He confirmed that he was working with Mr. Mahoney and that Fueling US Forward had indeed received funding from Koch Industries.
Koch vs. Clean
Koch vs. Clean, a DeSmog microsite launched today, takes a closer look at the Koch network’s efforts to promote the continued burning of fossil fuels and undermine clean energy innovations and electric vehicles, and the role that Mr. Drevna and a handful of others are playing in that offensive.
Throughout the day at Red State Gathering, panelists from Koch-linked organizations repeatedly cited Tesla Motors as an example of government subsidies gone awry, a talking point that seemed aimed to resonate with fiscal conservatives at the RSG 2016.
There’s good reason for the oil industry to fear the rise of American electric vehicles. “Volkswagen AG, in an attempt to recover from its emissions-cheating scandal, has said it will create 30 new electric models within a decade,” E&E News recently reported. “General Motors Co. has invested $500 million in Lyft, the ride-hailing service, and intends for Lyft’s drivers to pick up passengers in GM’s new electric compact, the Chevrolet Bolt.”
The Kochs’ newest effort doesn’t openly oppose electric vehicles or renewable energy technologies, but tries to frame them as uniquely dependent on government subsidies (despite the fact that the fossil fuel industry benefits from quadruple the amount of government subsidies as the renewable energy industry, according to the International Energy Agency).
And Fueling US Forward is an effort to paint fossil fuels as good for people because they’re cheap — a gamble that Americans have already forgotten how prices have fluctuated wildly for the past decade, when repeated price spikes saw average US gas prices rise as high as $4.10 a gallon, roughly double current prices.
That said, the argument that everyone benefits from cheap fossil fuels could be dangerously appealing at a time of historic economic stratification in the US — a staggeringly large gap between the ultra-rich like the Koch brothers and the rest of us.
But supporting fossil fuels to aid the poor is a message that the Kochs have also paired with campaigns that will keep people poor, including opposing minimum wage hikes (at a time when the Fight for 15 movement, which supports more than doubling the current federal minimum wage is gaining credible political traction) or calling for the minimum wage to be repealed altogether.
As of press time, Koch Industries had not responded to questions from DeSmog about the company’s motivation for funding Fueling US Forward.
It’s a tension that seemed to trip up Mr. Drevna as he talked this weekend, describing how fossil fuels had led to prosperity for the world’s people — or at least some of them.
“And we are basically richer than ever before,” Mr. Drevna told the crowd at the Red State Gathering, before catching himself and adding “as a world we are. As a nation we are basically richer than ever before.” In other words, some people have gotten rich because of fossil fuels — and for the rest of us, we better keep using coal and gasoline and hope it stays cheap.
Mr. Drevna also told the crowd that for a long time, the oil industry had “been engaged in asymmetric warfare” — hardly the language of someone who sees themselves as on the side of the masses.
The new tactics that Fueling US Forward plans to bring to the table then?
“We’re partnering with other organizations too, especially non-traditional allies like the minority community,” Mr. Drevna told the nearly all-white crowd. “Who in the heck gets hit hardest and fastest when there’s an energy crisis and prices go up? They do.”
While Mr. Drevna may want to research the definition of tokenizing as well as “sustainable energy,” it’s worth noting that communities of color also get hit hardest and fastest when climate catastrophes occur (think the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina), and by the day to day impacts of, say, refineries located in black and Latino neighborhoods, where asthma, cancer, and other health problems too often plague residents.
But then again, Fueling US Forward aims to keep attention on the positives. Stay tuned to KochvsClean.com for regular updates about this Koch-funded pro-fossil PR effort.
Video: Charles Drevna Introducing Fueling US Forward at the Red State GatheringPaycheck Fairness: The president who repeated the feminist "77 cents" myth and touted equal pay for equal work in the State of the Union hasn't practiced what he preaches with the women he employs.
The feminist heroine that prompted the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act might be surprised to learn of the Obama White House's war on women, paying its female staffers only 87 cents on the dollar compared with their male counterparts. So when Obama lectured that "women deserve equal pay for equal work," he hasn't exactly been true to his school.
Last September, economist Mark J. Perry noted that an analysis of salary data from the 2013 Annual Report to Congress on White House Staff showed the 228 female White House employees were being paid a median annual salary of $65,000 while 231 male staffers earned a median annual salary of nearly $75,000.
As Perry pointed out, that meant women working for Obama are paid less than 87 cents for every dollar paid to male staffers, and there is, therefore, a significant White House "gender pay gap" of more than 13%.
No less than feminist author Hanna Rosin has exposed the 77-cent myth, pointing out in Slate in August that while the official Labor Department statistics show the median earnings of full-time female workers is 77% of the median earnings of full-time males, that's an aggregate of all workers in various jobs and is different from claiming they do the same work.
Factoring in life choices such as getting married or taking time off to start a family, Rosin found the gap closes to where women earn 91 cents for the "same work."
"Women congregate in different professions than men do, and the largely male professions tend to be higher-paying," she said. Rosin also notes that "full time" means 35 hours a week, but men work more hours than women.
To get an accurate figure, you need to compare men and women with the same education, the same length of time on the job, who work roughly the same number of hours, and, yes, really do have the "same job."
During the 2008 campaign, columnist Deroy Murdock wrote that female staffers in Obama's U.S. Senate office were also shortchanged, the average man making $54,397, the average woman $45,152. This might be partly explained by Obama having only one woman among his top five staffers and seven among his top 20.
Whatever the case, the president has long been guilty of a transgression that he accuses others of. He needs to move on from this issue because he lacks the moral authority to get behind it.Before getting started here I strongly recommend that you read the five posts below, in fact it’s imperative that you do, or else this will be like opening a book in the middle and you won’t have a clue what’s going on!
In Secrets of the Owl: Part 1 – Links to the Ancients I showed you that:
Worship of the Owl and Moloch has been a significant part of history for thousands of years, up to and including the present day when freemasons are continuing in the traditions of ancient cultures. The hand gesture that pays homage/shows allegiance to Moloch (the deity associated with the owl/death) has been normalized into main stream society by rap culture and cartoons. The Temple of Baal (where Moloch was worshiped) has been brought into the mainstream, suggesting that the occult is starting to become has become more prevalent in today’s society.
In this post I’m going to really hammer home just how prevalent the owl is in our society.
You will start to get an idea of how the owl appears in your everyday life, as well as starting to grasp the fact that the owl is used as a key occult symbol by those who lead multinational corporations, countries, media, etc (i.e. members of the Bohemian Club, among others).
You’ll be happy to hear that the majority of this post will be light reading (i.e. many pictures), and the general theme is…
A quick point to make though before we start though:
Are owls evil?
No, not necessarily.
However, we need to be very concerned about the symbolism and occult (i.e. hidden) meanings behind the owl.
Now, as you will see below, the owl appears everywhere in our society: in architecture, education, media, television, music, business, etc, etc…
Let’s get started…
Owls in Architecture
Owls appear on the facade of many prominent buildings all around the world, such as banks; cathedrals; schools; universities; museums; parks; zoo’s, government buildings, etc…
These photos are courtesy of Richard Cassaro, who’s article on owls includes additional information that might be of interest.
Top Left: Owl on Merchants Building on Broadway at 4th Street in NYC.
Top Right: Detail on the Catford Broadway Theatre, London.
Bottom Left: Owl depicted on the façade of the Woolworth Building in Manhattan, NYC.
Bottom Right: Owl on a bridge of the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut.
Arzuid Sculpture in Amsterdam (left); and owl on a building in Helsinki, Finland (right):
Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, Czech Republic (left); and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce at 20 Exchange Place in Lower Manhattan, New York (right):
Owls either side of a statue of Athena on a building on Canon Street in the City of London (left); and a golden owl sitting on top of a three-faces clock on a building near the Monument (center and right).
Owls at Washington University, St. Louis, (left); and at Yale University, Connecticut (right):
Incidentally, Yale University is the home of the Skull and Bones, the secret society/freemasonic fraternity into which George Bush and John Kerry were initiated, and is located in New Haven, Connecticut – on the line of death I showed you in Leylines: Part 2.
I will cover the Skull and Bones – and especially the massive significance of 322, in a later post.
For now though, back to the owls…
Owls can also be found at Astor Court in Bronx Zoo, New York.
These photos are courtesy of Richard Cassaro, who’s article on owls includes additional information that might be of interest.
Owls are often designed in architecture more discreetly too, such as at the entrance to Bronx Zoo in New York:
Owls on the Exeter Cathedral emblem (left); and an owl guarding the gates of the Manchester Grammar School (right).
Carvings of owls in the chantry chapel of Bishop Oldham, Exeter Cathedral.
Owl in ivy misericord, St Davids Cathedral interior, Pembrokeshire National Park, Wales:
Owl on a rooftop in Barcelona, Spain (left); an ornate door design somewhere (right):
An owl in a stone carving, somewhere in Asia:
Landmark owl somewhere (left); Central Park’s Bethesda Terrace, NYC (right):
Owl in Southampton, England (left); unknown location (right):
Owl sculpture, Library of Congress John Adams Building, Washington, D.C.; FSU’s Monuments and Memorials: FSU History Through Seals, Florida State University:
Monument to the 5th Ohio at Gettysburg (both):
Monument to the Twentieth Regiment, New York State Volunteer Infantry (right):
Detail of Marble Statue of Wisdom’s Owl; Queen Victoria Memorial, Melbourne; unkown location (right):
Owl roof ornaments, Harold Washington Library (1991), Chicago:
Owls have even been the basis for the design of entire skyscrapers!……
Let me show you…
Frost Bank New Building, Austin, Texas:
Strata Tower, London, England:
Waxahachie Courthouse, Texas. Keep this building in mind for later, its going to play a key role in Leylines: Part 3… 😉
Legal System
Owls can be found in courthouses, and owls are in fact also often depicted as judges in cartoons.
Education
Military
Media
The National Press Club in Washington DC have an owl on their logo…
Herald Tribune, NYC:
The old Herald Tribune building was overflowing with owls perched on the rooftop, as is the Herald Square in NYC today. Herald Square now features several of the bronze rooftop owls perched on gate posts. And if you look closely as night falls, you will see that the owls with spread wings atop the monument flash their eerie green eyes (picture on the bottom row in the center just above the very bottom circular picture):
Bennett Clock in Herald Square has a statue of Athena with bell-ringers and features an owl (perched on the bell):
Owl logos in other Secret Societies
Minerval Seals of the Bavarian Illuminati: two of three known to still exist. P.M.C.V. stands for Per Me Caeci Vident (Through me the blind become sighted). An owl holding an opened book (signifying learning), surrounded by a Laurel wreath (a symbol of learning or graduation); Per Me Caeci Vident was a reminder to the Superiors of the class, whose responsibility it was to properly instruct the Minervals. These medallions were worn around the necks of Minerval initiates.
A Minerval Academy was also known as a Church; its meetings marked on the Illuminati’s calendar as sacred. To the right is the seal of the Freising Minerval Church. Instead of the letters P.M.C.V., they are replaced with S.E.M.T.: Sigil Ecclesiastic Minerva Thebes; or, “Seal of the Freising Minerval Church” (i.e. Freising’s alias within the Order was Thebes).
Founded in Prague, Bohemia, 1859, thirteen years before the Bohemian Club, the Schlaraffia were initially composed of actors, artists, literati and musicians (much like the Bohemian Club); and they too (like the Bohemian Club) have an owl as their totem:
Detail of an owl from a floral border, at the beginning of Matins of the Virgin. London, England (left); and an owl from an unknown location (right)
Owls in Music
Owls feature on hundreds of music album covers…
Drake
That’s a lot of owls for one artist…
Notice anything peculiar with this owl?
‘
… Maybe like how it is identical to the owls in Ancient Egypt…
I wonder who Drake is endorsing and showing allegiance to here…
Worth noting that Drake’s album “Rise of an Empire” was released 3/11 (3×11 = 33). It features songs called “Induction Speech“, “One Time“, “Fresher than Ever“, and “Moment“… Remember the time theme?…
Here are some other artists who also like owls…
“Owl Pharaoh”… what a strange name for an album!… Unless of course you know what you now know…. Notice that the cover at the bottom right also includes a pyramid too.
Music Festivals
Entire music festivals are dedicated to the owl…
EDC Las Vegas, Tomorrowland, etc…
Las Vegas, NV – June 21: Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas 2013 Day 1 on June 21, 2013 in Las Vegas, NV. © RD/ Kabik/ Retna Digital
Below is a short clip showing the enormous mechanically-moving owl on stage…. Imagine the effort and logistics required to build something like that… must have been important to have it there…
By the way, that music is rather monotonous… it’s almost like they were trying to hypnotize people or something…….. “Stay asleeeeep…….”
Books
Movies
Don’t worry Harry Potter fans, I didn’t forget Hedwig…
Whilst we’re on the subject of Harry Potter…
Here’s Gryffindor’s crest… Notice any familiar symbols?…
… like maybe the moon, sun, and pyramid at the top?
While we’re at it here’s another one… do you notice the triangular shape of doritos?…
Corporate logos
Athena/Minerva features prominently on corporate logos too…
Sports
Other appearances
Owl Rock near Monument Valley, Arizona… Could this be an ancient owl-worship site, similar to the 40ft owl at Bohemian Grove?…
The newly-launched London Night tube service has an owl as its logo:
Events
The Big Hoot in Birmingham, 20 July – 27 September 2015…
Literally hundreds of owls descend on city as Birmingham prepares for biggest ever art event…
Note that out of all the hundreds of owls to choose from, the photo below was the headline photo in newspapers…
What’s so special about this one you ask?…
Do you notice the sun/moon eyes… lots of occult symbolism…
Want to see why this is significant?
Occult symbols are used to send hidden messages through the media… and next I’ll show you exactly how that is done.
Before we start though, make sure you have your tin foil hats strapped on nice and tight, and get ready to dip your big toe in the twilight zone.
All set?…
Great.
Watch this short news clip, featuring Anderson Cooper (CNN’s top journalist).
He’s reporting on the Sandy Hook school shooting, and telling viewers about an owl that was drawn by a Sandy Hook student (Grace), who then met with Obama and presented it to Obama shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting incident…
The official story says that 20 kids were killed in school, and then another kid randomly happens to draw an owl and also happens to meet the busy President and give it to him….. which CNN then get a copy of and publicize for the whole world to see…
Of all the things a child could draw, what are the odds of them drawing an owl specifically, and then getting to meet the President to give it to him?
Furthermore, why would CNN be given a copy of it, and then have their top reporter make a big deal out of something so trivial when there were obviously bigger things to cover… like uhh… the fact that 20 kids were apparently killed, or something…
…. Do you smell that?
Here’s who really drew that picture colour-coded message to Obama:
You may recall that George Bush is part of the Skull and Bones secret society, as shown earlier…
Secret societies like the Skull and Bones communicate via symbols that have occult (i.e. hidden) meanings, usually through public channels like the news.
This owl was a message to Obama that Bush’s sacrificial task at Sandy Hook was complete, giving the go-ahead to Obama (as well as to other freemasons worldwide who inevitably watch CNN for their occult messages) to proceed with their own pre-arranged plans (i.e. plans that have been made when everyone is gathered together at the summer camp at Bohemian Grove and at the annual secret Bilderberg meetings.
For people who are new to secret societies the following video may seem confusing and probably a little kooky, but know that it is symbols – and not words – that are used by the ruling elite and freemasons to communicate with each other – most often through public channels like the news.
Oh, and lest we forget, as I showed you in Leylines: Part 2, Newtown, Connecticut (where the Sandy Hook shooting took place) is on the line of death connecting Teotihuacan, Hurricane Katrina, Atlanta Olympics bombing, Washington DC pentagon 9/11 bombing, New York 9/11 attacks, Boston Bombing, Stonehenge, the Bosnian Pyramids (including a Pyramid of the Sun), and Baalbek.
Watch this before proceeding:
Want to see another catastrophic event where the owl makes an appearance?
Hillsborough Stadium Disaster
During an FA Cup semi-final game between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough Stadium on April 15th, 1989, there was a massive crush that killed 96 people, which is to date England’s worst sporting disaster.
Hillsborough Stadium (where the game was played) is the home stadium of Sheffield Wednesday, a club who’s logo has…..
… an owl…
Here’s another funny coincidence…
Liverpool FC actually had a manager (Roy Hodgson) between July 2010 and January 2011 commonly referred to as “the owl”… as exemplified by a quick google search:
To be continued…Massive forest fires are raging beyond control in Quebec, sending huge plumes of smoke to the east. The Eastmain fire — top left in this image from NASA’s Earth Observatory — is spreading towards the east coast of James Bay, the southernmost extension of Hudson Bay, and is currently estimated to cover an area of 656,000 hectares (1.6 million acres). Smoke from the huge fires has already caused smog problems in Montreal and Maine, and is heading round the globe. On July 8 NASA’s Terra satellite spotted a great swathe of Canadian smoke crossing Norway and Sweden, and heading across the Baltic towards Finland.
The Eastmain fire is the largest wildfire in Canada since 1959, and is almost as big as all the wildfires that have burned in the US so far this year. Forecasts for the area show warm temperatures continuing for at least another 5 days, so the fire is likely to continue to spread.
Meanwhile, up on the Greenland ice sheet, Jason Box, Peter Sinclair and the Dark Snow team, who are investigating the effect of smoke particles deposited on the ice on melting, have successfully completed their first sampling mission. It’s well worth checking Sinclair’s blog for frequent updates — and lovely images — of the team’s progress.
[Update 14/7: Jeff Masters posts on the Canadian fires here, and a European team track the smoke in near real time.]
Like this: Like Loading...There’s been much talk lately of JavaScript loading libraries, and of how everybody and their dog is reinventing the same wheel. Around three years ago I began writing one such library, JS.Packages. This is the module loader from the JS.Class project but it can easily be used standalone outside JS.Class by including the package.js file in your project. I wrote it to solve a particular set of problems I had at the time and I still like using it, but since then there’s been an explosion of new loader libraries. Here are a few that spring to mind:
Some of these predate JS.Packages but a lot are newer. I wanted to understand how these tools differ from each other and whether any of them do a better job at solving my set of problems, and so I started putting a set of examples together showing how to load a JavaScript component with reasonably complex dependencies using each of the above libraries. Obviously this comparison will be biased, but I’ve tried to be as objective as I can be. My experience of these tools is based on reading their documentation and getting a working example going, and if I’ve misrepresented anybody’s work I will happily publish corrections.
The component I chose to write examples against is JS.Test. For the sake of comparison I duplicated the module definitions for all the components JS.Test depends on. JS.Class is a modular library and the testing framework uses quite a few bits of it, as we’ll see. The dependencies are configured like so:
JS. Packages ( function () { with ( this ) { file ( './lib/core.js' ). provides ( 'JS.Module', 'JS.Class', 'JS.Singleton' ); file ( './lib/test.js' ). provides ( 'JS.Test' ). requires ( 'JS.Module', 'JS.Class', 'JS.Console', 'JS.DOM', 'JS.Enumerable', 'JS.SortedSet', 'JS.Comparable', 'JS.StackTrace' ). styling ( './lib/assets/testui.css' ); file ( './lib/dom.js' ). provides ( 'JS.DOM' ). requires ( 'JS.Class' ); file ( './lib/console.js' ). provides ( 'JS.Console' ). requires ( 'JS.Module', 'JS.Enumerable' ); file ( './lib/comparable.js' ). provides ( 'JS.Comparable' ). requires ( 'JS.Module' ); file ( './lib/enumerable.js' ). provides ( 'JS.Enumerable' ). requires ( 'JS.Module', 'JS.Class' ); file ( './lib/hash.js' ). provides ( 'JS.Hash', 'JS.OrderedHash' ). requires ( 'JS.Class', 'JS.Enumerable', 'JS.Comparable' ); file ( './lib/set.js' ). provides ( 'JS.Set', 'JS.HashSet', 'JS.OrderedSet', 'JS.SortedSet' ). requires ( 'JS.Class', 'JS.Enumerable' ). uses ( 'JS.Hash' ); file ( './lib/observable.js' ). provides ( 'JS.Observable' ). requires ( 'JS.Module' ); file ( './lib/stack_trace.js' ). provides ( 'JS.StackTrace' ). requires ( 'JS.Module', 'JS.Singleton', 'JS.Observable', 'JS.Enumerable', 'JS.Console' ); }});
There are ten files here, and we have lists of the JavaScript objects that each file provides and depends on. Note that this does not specify a load order explicitly: when the user wants to use JS.Test, they simply call JS.require('JS.Test') and JS.Packages figures out the most efficient path to download and execute the missing components in the correct order. This is all the code that is needed at the point of use:
JS. require ( 'JS.Test', function () { // use the JS.Test library });
Before I go any further I should explain the design goals behind JS.Packages so we can see how other tools measure up. I need a loader library to have the following properties:
Should be able to load absolutely any JavaScript from any domain, in the browser and on a range of server-side platforms
Should be trivial to just state which objects you want to directly use, and the library should deal with dependencies
Should not waste resources on downloading packages that are already loaded
Should be lazy, and should not download any components until they are actually needed
The configuration given above looks verbose, but the information it gives the package loader makes all the above properties possible. It’s also no more information than you’d supply to another dependency manager like Dojo, the only difference is it lives outside the source files you want to manage.
The first requirement, that we be able to load absolutely any JavaScript object, rules out the Dojo package system, the YUI module system and anything that requires CommonJS. Not that these aren’t good tools – and a lot of good tooling has indeed sprung up around them – but they require the source you’re loading to explicitly use them. For example using the Dojo system requires source files to use the dojo.provide and dojo.require functions, and CommonJS requires use of the require and exports interfaces. When doing web development I frequently want to use third-party code from domains I do not control, so requiring certain source code conventions won’t work. For this reason, I keep dependency information separate from my source code. This lets me load any code I like and keeps my own code more portable, and JS.Packages gives me a great way to do this.
The second requirement, that it should be simple to just state which objects you want to use directly without worrying about dependencies, is important. I gives me freedom to refactor my codebase without needing to update lots of different call sites; I update a single config file and all my apps carry on working. This highlights a major difference between JS.Packages and the other libraries out there: basing requirements on object names rather than script URLs gives a level of abstraction that means the package loader can make better decisions about what needs to be loaded, and how it goes about loading things. It also means I can use the common strategy of including a build number in the path to a script to help with CDN caching, and I only need to update one reference to the file. I even have tools that generate my config files from version control.
The usage pattern with a lot of loader tools seems to be that you specify which scripts to inject before running a callback. HeadJS just runs everything you tell it to in order, and has the simplest API for doing so:
head. js ( './lib/core.js', './lib/enumerable.js', './lib/dom.js', './lib/comparable.js', './lib/observable.js', './lib/console.js', './lib/hash.js', './lib/set.js', './lib/stack_trace.js', './lib/test.js', callback );
Yepnope is also quite simple but its API is geared more toward feature detection and is a little lower-level: the callback given fires after every script file loads, so if you’re loading a set of files like this you need to check whether the last thing you want is loaded before continuing:
yepnope ({ load : [ './lib/core.js', './lib/enumerable.js', './lib/dom.js', './lib/comparable.js', './lib/observable.js', './lib/console.js', './lib/hash.js', './lib/set.js', './lib/stack_trace.js', './lib/test.js' ], callback : function () { if ( window. JS && JS. Test ) callback (); } });
HeadJS and Yepnope download everything in parallel where possible and execute scripts in the order you list them. LABjs and RequireJS allow you to specify where order of execution matters and lets everything else run in parallel:
$LAB. script ( './lib/core.js' ). wait (). script ( './lib/enumerable.js' ). script ( './lib/dom.js' ). script ( './lib/comparable.js' ). script ( './lib/observable.js' ). wait (). script ( './lib/console.js' ). script ( './lib/hash.js' ). wait (). script ( './lib/set.js' ). script ( './lib/stack_trace.js' ). wait (). script ( './lib/test.js' ). wait ( callback ); require ([ './lib/core.js' ], function () { require ([ './lib/enumerable.js', './lib/dom.js', './lib/comparable.js', './lib/observable.js' ], function () { require ([ './lib/console.js', './lib/hash.js' ], function () { require ([ './lib/set.js', './lib/stack_trace.js' ], function () { require ([ './lib/test.js' ], callback ); }); }); }); });
Using these APIs, LABjs will download everything in parallel just like HeadJS and Yepnope, but will block execution where you tell it to so that scripts execute in the right order. If order is unimportant the scripts execute in the order they arrive from the server. RequireJS’s API for managing dependencies means that downstream dependencies are not downloaded until the upstream files have executed. In theory this lengthens download times but I’ve not seen it make a huge difference in my limited set of tests. If performance is critical you should benchmark these libraries against your own codebase.
The third requirement is that scripts should not be downloaded multiple times. If several parts of an application require the same libraries, those dependencies should be downloaded and executed once and the components waiting for them should all be notified. I found that HeadJS, Yepnope, LABjs and RequireJS all fail at this, in that if I had multiple pieces of code requiring the same scripts then the scripts would show up multiple times in Firebug/Chrome’s network tab. Only LABjs and Yepnope seem to execute the loaded scripts multiple times though; HeadJS and RequireJS only executed the files once.
$script fares better than the others at this by giving each script a short name by which you can refer to it. This lets it track which modules have loaded and gives you an API for waiting for modules to be ready so you can manage dependencies:
$script ( './lib/core.js', 'core' ); $script. ready ( 'core', function () { $script ( './lib/enumerable.js', 'enumerable' ); $script ( './lib/dom.js', 'dom' ); $script ( './lib/comparable.js', 'comparable' ); $script ( './lib/observable.js', 'observable' ); }); $script. ready ([ 'core', 'enumerable' ], function () { $script ( './lib/console.js', 'console' ); $script ( './lib/hash.js', 'hash' ); }); $script. ready ([ 'core', 'observable', 'enumerable', 'console' ], function () { $script ( './lib/stack_trace.js','stack_trace' ); }); $script. ready ([ 'core', 'enumerable', 'hash' ], function () { $script ( './lib/set.js','set' ); }); $script. ready ([ 'core', 'console', 'dom', 'enumerable','set', 'comparable','stack_trace' ], function () { $script ( './lib/test.js', callback ); });
What I like about this is that it does a better job of managing complex sets of dependencies. Whereas something like LABjs lets you say ‘load X, Y, and Z, then block, then load A and B, then block’, $script lets you compose a tree of dependencies so each download is triggered as soon as its set of dependencies is ready. This is much closer to what JS.Packages does internally, though because you’re still triggering script downloads yourself it’s a little closer to the ‘metal’. It does suffer the same drawback as RequireJS in that you can’t download the whole list in parallel, but again you should benchmark this to find out if it really affects your use case.
My final requirement is that scripts not be downloaded if the APIs they provide already exist. This is different from saying that the same script should not be downloaded twice, and is closer in spirit to what Yepnope does. JS.Packages uses object detection to figure out if it actually needs to download anything to provide the objects you want. This is why working at the object level rather than the script level is such a big win – I can write a shim that provides an implementation of document.evaluate(), and configure it like this:
JS. Packages ( function () { with ( this ) { file ( './lib/my-doc-evaluate.js' ). provides ( 'document.evaluate' ); }});
Then, when I want to use this interface I just call JS.require('document.evaluate'), and if the browser or some library has already exposed this API JS.Packages will not download my shim, improving the load time. Though $script can stop you downloading the same thing twice through $script, it cannot stop you re-downloading something downloaded using another mechanism. Using object detection means JS |
Candy Crush lives in the murky middle ground between the rapid popularity of watching games streamed online and the eagerness of traditional media companies trying to capitalize on something they only barely understand. Traditional media is still trying to navigate the landscape of online video, unsure of where its territory ends and the realm of YouTubers, Twitch streamers, and seemingly arcane subcultures begin.
It’s easy to imagine the boardroom logic that led to Candy Crush the TV show: millions of people, especially millennials, like to watch other people play video games. At the same time, the concept is still puzzling — if not repulsive — to many network TV viewers, especially those who’ve never heard of Twitch, let alone owned a game console. And so, we have a show designed to appease both, and ultimately failing as a video game stream and traditional game show entertainment simultaneously.
Even if CBS had carefully targeted fans of video game streaming, it’s unclear what a better video game-inspired program might look like. For young viewers, the kind CBS wants to entice with a Sunday night game show, video games are as much a spectator sport as they are a hobby, lifestyle, and pastime. Game streaming, which is more accessible than e-sports, is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week on Twitch and elsewhere for every popular game on the market.
It’s entertainment in a context that makes absolutely no sense to standard TV viewers or execs. It can be digested intently on a big screen, or in the background of a browser window. The way game streaming integrates into a viewer’s life is ever-changing. It’s dictated not by suits at a network, TV schedules, or even by the platform owners, but by viewers and streamers (often one in the same) in an ongoing dance of expectations around how this content should be created, consumed, and marketed.
That is to say game streaming may be too abundant, available, and creatively fluid to live on network television, where it would be subject to slow development time tables, rigid broadcast slots, and minimal interactivity beyond the occasional hashtag campaign.
Game streaming may be too abundant, available, and creatively fluid to live on network television
What’s notable about the product that’s available is just how far it misses the target. Executives at CBS appear to understand the appeal of video games, to an extent. And yet the network still developed a show around Candy Crush, a game that came out five years ago, has long since peaked, isn’t known for its streaming community, and features gameplay that’s barely more interesting than Solitaire. Without compelling gameplay, the show’s creators have decided to complicate the experience with gimmicks and reality stars. Contestants scramble to match colored candies while floating in the air with a harness, riding a makeshift crane and using a giant pole, and while fastened to a teammate with a rigid candy cane in between.
Beyond these physical challenges, there is nothing interesting about watching the actual game being played. Candy Crush has no deeper strategy for contestants to employ or a narrative for viewers to digest. What makes Candy Crush work as a game is the varying levels of passivity and concentration you can sink into it. You can grind your way through levels with intense focus and addictive vigor, or by guilty spending real money on in-app purchases, or you can idly stare at your smartphone for 30 seconds on the subway. Flattening something that discretely dynamic into a chintzy game show completely misunderstands why people watch video games at all, which is mostly to marvel at the unbridled excellence of a pro or to sink into the antics and narration of an entertainer.
The value CBS is most suited to provide is completely absent on Candy Crush. If people want to watch someone play a video game, they’ll go to Twitch.tv. What they can’t get there, and what CBS is equipped to deliver, is professional commentary, carefully edited packages, and human-interest stories.
Perhaps CBS is chasing an audience that will never be theirs
Of course, nobody should expect CBS to greenlight a competitive Call of Duty game show, or host a League of Legends tournament. The network is smart enough to realize that most of its viewers are casual gamers at best, and largely unfamiliar with the broader gaming culture. That Candy Crush was the only sensible pick then is telling: it shows that the gap between a massively influential online audience and the broader mainstream TV one CBS knows it can reach is larger than it seems. Traditional media’s struggle to adapt to that online universe means that it might take something much bolder than giant touchscreens and Mario Lopez to bridge those audiences.
Perhaps it’s a fruitless exercise, and CBS is chasing an audience that will never be theirs, no matter how hard it tries. Candy Crush may have notched impressive premiere numbers, with 4.1 million viewers who stuck around after Big Brother 19. But it’ll be interesting to see how many stick around next week. The more pressing problem for CBS is that, pending something more audacious and creative than Candy Crush, watching people play video games is best enjoyed anywhere but network television.A week before Kate Koenig's first year in college started, her parents discovered her blog where she identified as pansexual and then found out the man she's dating is transgender. Then they nearly derailed her college career.
"As a result of that (discovery) they decided to cut me off," Koenig explained to HuffPost Live.
Without her parents' assistance, Koenig, and English major with a 4.1 GPA, didn't have the help she needed to pay for college at the University of Pittsburgh, which she considered her dream school.
"I was shaking, I was on public transportation and I started sobbing," Koenig said. "My first thought was, 'How am I going to pay for second semester?'"
She couldn't think of anything besides the fact that she needed to stay at Pitt. So she started a GoFundMe page to fundraise to cover her college tuition. To date, she's raised $7,327 toward a $15,000 goal from 291 people in 6 days.
Her family, meanwhile, is still holding out hope that Koenig will suddenly become heterosexual.
"They're praying literally praying that I turn off my sexuality and come back to the faith, come back to the church and... come back to them," Koenig said.
Despite Koenig's parents' objections, she maintains her faith and says she doesn't believe "being gay disqualifies from also believing in Jesus and having a religion."KYOTO -- A fire broke out at a restaurant in the popular dining district "Ponto-cho" here on the evening of July 5, sending two people to the hospital with minor injuries.
An employee at restaurant "Akaneya Junshinken" in Kyoto's Nakagyo Ward called a local fire department at around 7:10 p.m. on July 5, saying that a kitchen on the restaurant's first floor had caught fire. According to the Kyoto City Fire Department, the fire burned approximately 135 square meters including the two-story wooden restaurant building and structures on the south side of the restaurant. It was put out some four hours later.
A 23-year-old male restaurant employee, who sustained glass cuts on his right hand, and a 38-year-old woman who was dining in a different establishment were sent to the hospital.
The Ponto-cho alley located along the Kamogawa River that runs through central Kyoto is one of the most popular tourist spots in the city. Numerous teahouses and restaurants are packed in the narrow alley that stretches about 500 meters south-to-north.
Approximately 50 meters north of the restaurant that caught fire is the Pontocho Kaburenjo theater, which was built in the 1920s and is used for geisha and apprentice geisha performances. In summer, restaurants set up decks along the river, and many customers were dining in "yukata," a casual summer kimono, at the time the fire broke out.Companies sign global, multiyear contract to work on next-generation connected car technologies and driving experiences
PARIS, France/REDMOND, Wash. (September 26, 2016) – The Renault-Nissan Alliance and Microsoft Corp. have signed a global, multiyear agreement to partner on next-generation technologies to advance connected driving experiences worldwide.
The companies will work together to develop next-generation connected services for cars powered by Microsoft Azure, one of the company’s intelligent cloud offerings. These new services will improve customer experience via advanced navigation, predictive maintenance and vehicle centric services, remote monitoring of car features, external mobile experiences and over-the-air updates.
“A car is becoming increasingly connected, intelligent and personal,” said Ogi Redzic, Renault-Nissan Alliance senior vice-president, Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services. “Partnering with Microsoft allows us to accelerate the development of the associated key technologies needed to enable scenarios our customers want and build all-new ones they haven’t even imagined. We aim to become the provider of connected mobility for everyone with one single global platform.”
The Renault-Nissan Alliance is pioneering autonomous driving and connectivity features on mainstream, mass-market vehicles at affordable prices. The Alliance aims to develop connectivity technologies and features to support the launch of more than 10 vehicles with autonomous driving technology by 2020 with services to maximize better use of newly found in-car free time.
Renault-Nissan will continuously develop and launch new connected services and applications that make it easier for people to stay connected to work, entertainment and social networks, and offer vehicle centric services that will simplify and enhance engagement with the car through usage-based information, remote access, remote diagnostics and preventive maintenance.
Microsoft Azure provides a proven, secure global cloud platform with unlimited scale that allows Renault-Nissan to deliver services worldwide to its broad customer base.
Renault-Nissan selected Azure in part because of its enterprise-grade security and Microsoft’s rigorous commitment to compliance. In addition, Azure supports multiple operating systems, programming languages and tools, providing flexibility and choice to build a common platform for Renault-Nissan to deploy services to both Alliance brands.
“While the connected car experience is in its infancy, we believe there’s so much potential to dramatically change the industry. We are partnering to accelerate Renault-Nissan’s mobile and cloud strategies and unlock new experiences for their customers,” said Jean-Philippe Courtois, executive vice president and president, Microsoft Global Sales, Marketing and Operations, Microsoft. “Renault-Nissan is an exceptional partner thanks to its global presence and range of brands, which enable it to bring entirely new mobile and digital experiences to so many people. This collaboration will bring a new standard to connected cars.”
Focus on next-generation technologies
The partnership will accelerate development of best-in-class infotainment and location-based services that will:
Allow customers to personalize and protect their settings: Customers will be able to customize their settings knowing that data is safe and that they have the option to transfer the settings from one car to another, or lock them and disable transfer. By adding a driver-centric experience in the car, the drive becomes personal and allows for things like adaptive route suggestions and advanced navigation.
Productivity: With Microsoft, Renault-Nissan will expand the realm of productivity into the car – transforming the daily commute into a productive experience by seamlessly integrating the digital experiences present at work and life into the car.
Give access to over-the-air updates: Customers will be able to download over-the-air updates to, for example, have the latest autonomous drive software and collision-avoidance applications.
Help customers stay in touch: Customers will be able to easily check in and communicate their estimated time of arrival, or alert friends to a change of plans. They will also be able to use automatic payment from the car for highway tolls or parking, with a simple touch from the comfort of their seat.
Monitor the car from a distance: Car owners will be able to monitor their car from anywhere, through their mobile phone or laptop. They could transfer control to a friend or relative who needs their car – without transferring physical keys. They will use a mobile application that helps them find the car, can trigger remote charging and preconditioning and lock and unlock the car.
Protect the vehicle: Tracking software locates a stolen car and disables it at the next practical opportunity. “Geofencing” technology creates invisible fences around the car that will enable notifications when the car enters or exits a predefined area or route.
Improve the vehicle experience: By adding connectivity, customers will be able to have access to advance vehicle diagnostic services, allowing the car manufacturer to deliver unique features. Collecting real usage data will also support vehicle engineering to improve manufacturing quality.
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ABOUT THE RENAULT-NISSAN ALLIANCE
The Renault-Nissan Alliance is a strategic partnership between Paris-based Renault and Yokohama, Japan-based Nissan, which together sell one in 10 cars worldwide. The companies, which have been strategic partners since 1999, sold 8.5 million cars in nearly 200 countries in 2015. The Alliance also operates strategic collaborations with other automakers, including Germany’s Daimler, China’s Dongfeng, and Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors. The Alliance has a majority stake in the joint venture that owns Russia’s top automaker, AVTOVAZ.
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MEDIA CONTACTS
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Tel: +33 (6) 10 90 06 49
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rrt@we-worldwide.comMONTREAL – The CEO of Via Rail, Yves Desjardins-Siciliano, said Tuesday the Crown corporation is discussing private funding with potential investors for a $3 billion dedicated passenger track over the summer and will bring proposals to its sole shareholder — the federal government — by the end of the year, or early 2016.
Desjardins-Siciliano said Via will be meeting with the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which he describes as “the usual suspects who invest in passenger rail across the world,” in order to gauge interest in providing funds to build the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto line.
“In Canada it just so happens that in the past 30 years we have developed world-class expertise in public private partnerships that have made some of our largest pension funds invest in passenger rail services in England, in Europe and across Canada,” said Desjardins-Siciliano after delivering a speech to the Institut pour le partenariat public-privé in Montreal.
Desjardins-Siciliano said the potential investors could also come from outside Canada and that the final decision for partnerships in the project would be left to the government.
“Our task is to bring our shareholder options as to ways to do this. If our shareholder wishes to do it and who ultimately bids and wins the competition is left to the market and the government procurement rules,” he said.
“We’re not taking anything for granted and we’re not setting the table for anything other than what is the best solution at the cheapest cost to the Canadian taxpayer.”
Desjardins-Siciliano expects the return on investment for the project to be in the “mid-teens” and that construction would be completed within five years of establishing a partnership.
He said that Via sharing the tracks with several companies transporting merchandise is slowing down the potential frequency of the faster passenger trains because of increased traffic.
Between 2010 and 2014, the number of people using Via Rail’s services dropped from 4.1 million to 3.8 million. The company’s deficit reached $317 million.
“Via Rail is an increasing burden on Canada’s taxpayers due to deteriorating on-time performance and the lack of frequencies to be relevant,” said Desjardins-Siciliano.
He said that in a second phase, the tracks could be extended east from Montreal towards Quebec City, and west from Toronto to London.What about those nonvegans who do not care about animals, eliminating suffering, eliminating violence, or morality?
They are not our target audience. Our target audience are those who do care. Our job is to find those who do care and spend our precious time, energy, and resources educating them on why caring means going vegan, not trying to convince those who do not care to care. Not only is trying to convince those who do not care frustrating, it doesn’t work very well!
How do you find those nonvegans who do care? Well, they may not be the nonvegans in your immediate life (friends, family, and coworkers), but they are in your community. So you may have to offer yourself as a vegan educational resource in your community by leafleting, doing a street stall, teaching a vegan cooking class, etc. When you offer yourself, those nonvegans who care come to you!
Remember when you took the plunge and went vegan? It’s time to take the plunge and do TAVS Advocacy! Start with the TAVS Challenge!When you think of animals that can live a really long time, you probably think of tortoises and parrots.
The ocean quahog — a species of clam that lives in the North Atlantic — likely doesn't come to mind.
But this chart by Niall McCarthy, based off data collected by Discovery News, shows an interesting point: almost all of the longest-lived animals on Earth are in the ocean. And several of them can survive for two centuries or more.
many of these animals are virtually immune to predators
Why are these species capable of living for so incredibly long? One commonality is that in many cases, either their size (as with the bowhead whale) or some sort of external protection (the quahog or red sea urchin) makes them virtually immune to predators.
"When an animal can survive for longer, there's a selection for genes that provide longevity, because they can provide a real advantage," Jay Olshanksy, a public health researcher who studies aging, told me last year for an article about the naked mole rat, a rodent that can live for up to 30 years.
When predation isn't a threat, there's a big evolutionary advantage in developing physiological systems that allow an animal to live longer — since it can mean producing more offspring — and all that investment won't get wiped out if a random predator were to come by for a meal.
When predation is a constant threat, though (as is the case for the vast majority of animals), there's no selective pressure that leads to animals evolving to live for centuries. A good analogy is a car: if you bought a junker you knew would break down in 10,000 miles, it wouldn't make sense to invest in a high-end stereo.
Read and watch more: The end of aging: Do naked mole rats have the secret to long, healthy lives?PARIS (Reuters) - In a dingy Parisian back street, diners at a one-of-a-kind bistro tuck lustily into breaded horse brain, pan fried heart of horse and broiled cheek, along with prime rump steaks the chef cuts from the bone himself.
Metal horse heads outlined with neon lights are seen above a horsemeat butcher shop in Paris in this February 11, 2013 file picture. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/Files
Seasoned aficionados queuing at one of the few horse butchers left in Paris say they prefer theirs raw as minced “tartare”, pepped up with olive oil, lemon juice and pepper.
If the thought of having eaten Romanian cart horses in mislabelled frozen lasagne is making Britons choke, a loyal minority in France laments a dwindling appetite for a meat they say is a tastier and healthier alternative to beef.
“I understand people are upset if what they thought was beef turned out to be old Romanian ponies, but when horses are reared properly it’s a delicious meat,” said Gerard Marin, 67, at his weekly visit to one of a dozen surviving horse butchers in a city that 30 years ago counted hundreds.
“It’s much tastier than beef and has much less fat. Young people today eat nothing but processed meals, kebabs and other rubbish - they don’t know what they’re missing.”
France’s taste for horsemeat dates back to when 18th Century revolutionaries seized the fallen aristocracy’s horses to sate their hunger. It flourished for two centuries until falling out of fashion with a more squeamish younger generation.
The French now consume less than 300 grams (0.66 lbs) per person per year, a fifth of what they ate 30 years ago and less than 1 percent of the total meat they consume.
While fans say horsemeat is high in iron and more organic than mass-produced beef or battery hens, horse butchers are now a rarity. Le Taxi Jaune bistro in the labyrinthine Marais district is one of a tiny handful of Paris eateries serving it.
Another restaurant, Septime, occasionally serves it as raw tartare accompanied with wild strawberries and tarragon cream.
“I don’t serve easy dishes. But you come to a restaurant to eat something different,” said Otis Lebert, Le Taxi Jaune’s head chef, who also works with wild boar and whole ducks, and serves locally sourced vegetables that change with the month.
His horse brain starter has a subtly sweet flavour, while the steak has a hint of gaminess and a slightly metallic tang.
Finely-sliced cured horse sausage is also on offer.
“My clients know I take care to buy fresh meat and debone it myself. I never work with pre-packed meat. What shocks me is the way food wholesalers are taking people for a ride.”
BLOODY IS BEST
Overruling a 732 Papal ban, France legalised the eating of horsemeat in 1866 when poor families struggled to afford pork and beef. Many more were forced to eat it when the 1870-71 Prussian Siege of Paris caused severe meat shortages.
Today many French are sentimental about horses and regard eating horsemeat as something their grandparents did, much like the British think of eating pigs trotters, tripe or wild rabbit.
Yet as anger grows over the discovery that ready meals on sale across Europe contained horsemeat rather than the beef described on the label, some say that view is short-sighted.
They point out that horsemeat carries 110 calories per 100 grams compared to 160 calories for beef and contains far more cholesterol-lowering omega-3 fatty acids.
As long as it is not shipped pre-packed in plastic, where its high iron content means it oxidises faster than beef and can turn acidic, they say it tastes better and is more tender.
“I never buy beef. I prefer horse meat, it tastes better and it’s cheaper,” said Catherine Clerc, 42, who claims to have converted friends after cooking them horse roasts at home.
She buys horse meat weekly from a local market and likes it best as raw tartare, but otherwise serves it rare with potatoes, garlic and salad.
“I like it really bloody,” she whispered.
A 37-year-old karate expert queuing behind Marin at the horse butcher, which sports two neon horse heads above its door, said he finds horse meat lighter to digest.
“I’m very sporty. Beef sits heavy on my stomach. Horse meat is less fatty, it goes down better,” he said.
He is dreading the day this butcher’s shop closes, he said.
Butcher Jocelyne Lamire, 63, says her daughters have office jobs and she supposes her shop will end up as a takeaway food joint or clothing outlet like the nine other butchers that have closed in her street in the past few years.
“My clientele is getting older and it’s not being renewed,” she said, as an assistant hacked at chunks of horse flesh with a cleaver. “People nowadays don’t shop at traditional butchers. They spend their money on takeaway junk that is not nutritious.”NEW DELHI: Reliance Jio Infocomm’s free voice and data services have cost the government Rs 685 crore, prompting the Telecom Commission (TC) to consider pulling up the regulator for "jeopardising" the health of the sector by allowing the offers to continue beyond the stipulated time.This is the first time the highest decision-making body in the Department of Telecommunications has commented on the duration of Jio’s back-to-back promotional offers and their impact on government finances in the third quarter of this financial year.The commission will soon send a communiqué to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), according to a document reviewed by ET, reminding the regulator that its inability to implement its own orders could jeopardise the banking sector, deferred spectrum payments to the government and orderly growth of the telecom sector The commission earlier questioned Trai’s rationale in recommending penalties of Rs 3,050 crore each on operators for allegedly denying Jio adequate points of interconnection, which enable calls to be made from one network to another.Jio’s has offered free voice and data services ever since it started operating on September 5, forcing rivals Bharti Airtel Vodafone India and Idea Cellular to slash their rates in a bid to retain customers, leading to a drop in their revenue.The government collects licence fees and spectrum usage charges from operators, which are calculated on the basis of their revenue. "It is expected the revenues will further decline by 8-10 per cent, as per market expectations," the commission noted, according to a document reviewed by ET.Jio’s offers, the commission noted on Wednesday, have led to downward pressure on tariffs, further leading to "lower government revenues." "The commission has expressed its deep concerns for the health of the sector and asked the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to implement its decision of June 2002 and September 2008 regarding promotional tariffs," a senior official with knowledge of the commission’s decision told ET.Trai’s June 2002 decision restricts the validity of promotional offers by telecom operators to 90 days. The September 2008 order specifies that telcos must disclose details of promotional offers, which in any case shouldn’t exceed 90 days. Bharti Airtel had also challenged the legality of Jio’s free calls.It had filed a petition with the Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal contending that the interconnection usage charge of 14 paise per minute was a floor price below which operators couldn’t provide voice calls. The charge is paid to networks that receive calls.The commission highlighted that with free services till December 31, Jio had effectively violated the 90-day cap on promotional offers."Reliance Jio Infocomm commenced services from September 5, 2016, and offered a promotional tariff up to December 31, 2016, which was beyond 90 days," it said. According to the note, lower revenue will affect telecom operators, which owe over Rs 1 lakh crore to the government as deferred payment for spectrum and close to Rs 4 lakh crore to banks."If the falling trend continues, it will impact the payment and the investment capacity of the industry. In those circumstances, the possibility of defaulting on repayment of loan and instalment of deferred payment for acquisition of spectrum in earlier auctions cannot be ruled out," the note says.Liverpool Football Club are delighted to announce the signing of defender Dejan Lovren from Southampton.
The 25-year-old Croatian international today put pen to paper on a long-term deal with the Reds after completing his medical.
Lovren becomes Brendan Rodgers' fifth signing of the summer and the third arrival from St Mary's, following the capture of striker Rickie Lambert and midfielder Adam Lallana.
Upon finalising his Anfield move, the centre-back told Liverpoolfc.com: "It's a dream come true. I'm happy and glad to be here. I'm proud and can't wait to start. I know we have millions and millions of supporters - Liverpool is more than a club.
"After I played at Anfield last season, I said to myself: 'One day I hope I'll be able to play here for Liverpool'. The fans will know from the first minute that I'm a player that will give 100 per cent on the pitch."
Click here to head to LFCTV GO now to watch the first official Liverpool interview with Dejan Lovren.
Watch the video here »That relative silence could be a result of giving a revered public official the benefit of the doubt when there is only one identified accuser and a long-ago event. But political experts here say the explanation goes deeper.
The silence is part "cowardice" and part "lack of opportunity," asserts Neal Milner, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii. "Without a Republican Party to speak of and without newspapers interested in investigative reporting," Mr. Milner said, a stir that would be "taken for granted" elsewhere was unlikely to occur in the Aloha State. In a one-party government, he went on, "everything depends on behaving yourself," so people who want to keep their patronage jobs or their program financing learn to hold their tongues.
Most conspicuous in their silence here are the Democratic women among Hawaii's lawmakers, many of whom dashed to the nearest microphone last year to condemn the indignities Anita F. Hill said she suffered at the hands of Clarence Thomas.
Representative Patsy T. Mink, a seven-term Democrat, has spoken against the political dirty tricks that led to the charges against Senator Inouye. But the Congresswoman said in an interview that she had no comment about the substance of the accusations or whether an inquiry was appropriate. A day after the interview, and two months after the accusations surfaced, Mrs. Mink announced that any woman with complaints of sexual harassment was invited to call her office.
State Senator Ann Kobayashi, a leader of the Senate women's caucus, said "she didn't want to get into" the specifics of the accusations, which she had not had time to review because she had been busy "attending functions." Ms. Kobayashi said an inquiry was inappropriate because "there is no victim." Actually, she said later, she meant no complainant, because Ms. Kwock does not intend to press any charges.
Ms. Kwock said another member of the women's legislative caucus paid a private visit to her salon, which is patronized by the town's political elite. This Democratic Representative told her, the hairdresser said, that "as an individual" she believed her.
But the lawmaker said she was too fearful of political consequences to comment publicly, a path taken by only two members of the State Legislature: Representatives Annelle Amaral, a Democrat, who has been labeled disloyal by many fellow party members and has suddenly been defeated for leadership positions she was expected to win, and Cynthia Thielen, a Republican, who has little to lose.
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Mr. Inouye, married for more than four decades, has said relatively little about the accusations and was not available for an interview. But in earlier statements he said that Ms. Kwock's account "could be a matter of imagination" and that he would "welcome" an inquiry. On Dec. 1, the Senate Ethics Committee said it "had not yet determined that there is adequate evidence to warrant an investigation." Paradox at the Polls
Professor Milner said Democrats here "don't have to worry about defending themselves," and he added, "All Inouye had to say is 'No, I didn't,' and that's enough to protect him."
That was evident in voters' contradictory responses: pre-election polls found that 42 percent of likely voters believed Ms. Kwock, who passed a lie-detector test, and 20 percent Mr. Inouye, but on Election Day he won a sixth term by a wide margin.
Ms. Kwock was tricked into telling her story by a female campaign worker associated with Mr. Inouye's Republican opponent, State Senator Rick Reed. And it was this aspect, rather than the claims against the Senator, that captivated the local newspapers. The young woman claimed she was considering a position with Mr. Inouye and was concerned he might make sexual advances. She had heard, apparently from clients in whom the hairdresser had confided, that Ms. Kwock might be able to shed some light on the subject. The long conversation that ensued was taped and used briefly in a campaign advertisement in mid-October. The ad was withdrawn when Ms. Kwock threatened legal action.
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"It is quite remarkable," said Brian Nakamura, staff counsel to Lieut. Gov. Benjamin J. Cayetano, a Democrat, as is the Governor, Senator Daniel K. Akaka, the rest of the Congressional delegation and 69 of 76 state lawmakers. "Anybody would be hard-pressed to name another Federal officeholder who could stand up to the firestorm he stood up to. Senator Inouye is an institution."
Mr. Inouye is by far the state's most popular politician, the only one to hold major office every year since statehood in 1959. His larger-than-life stature is related to Hawaii's unique ethnic composition, a stew of various Asian groups, native Hawaiians and whites.
"Inouye represents the pinnacle of achievement of Japanese-Americans in a white Western world," said Jo Kamae Byrne, president of the Honolulu Information Service, who is half Japanese and half Hawaiian. "To bring him down is very disturbing for us, as it was for many blacks in the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas case."
That discomfort is shared by other nonwhites. Ms. Amaral, a native Hawaiian, wept as she described "choosing between the gender battle and the ethnic battle" because Mr. Inouye has long helped the native people.
Ms. Amaral and Ms. Kwock, who has lost the Senator's patronage since the accusations, said they had received threatening calls and letters for their outspokenness.
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"I know what I am dealing with because of politics," said Ms. Kwock, who says she "forgives" Mr. Inouye and has written a letter of "blessing" to him and his family. "It could cost me my business, and so I speak with tact and diplomacy."
Ms. Amaral's advisers say she has committed political suicide.
Outside of politics, as well, there are stirrings of fear here. One local social service agency, for instance, sent a memorandum to its employees warning that "statements regarding Inouye's guilt or innocence may severely hurt us at this time politically."
No one here suggests that Mr. Inouye has explicitly silenced discussion of the accusations, which include more than Ms. Kwock's. Representative Amaral, a former sexual abuse expert in the Honolulu Police Department, says at least nine other women have given her accounts similar to Ms. Kwock's, although they have not identified themselves publicly.
But when power is held in so few hands, political experts here say, it can be wielded by implication, not decree. "Part of the political culture here is the idea that there are sanctions that can be used against you," Mr. Milner said. A Perception of Intimidation
Ian Y. Lind, editor of The Hawaii Monitor, a political newsletter, traces the culture of implied intimidation to the plantation system, which was overturned by Mr. Inouye and other Japanese-American veterans who returned from World War II, entered law and politics and replaced the old oligarchy with a new oligarchy of one-party rule.
"There is some reality, and considerable perception, that the blacklist the plantations used is now used by the people who control state government," Mr. Lind said.
Mr. Inouye's spokesman, Nestor Garcia, agrees that the Senator has great stature and that he "delivers." But for people to stifle themselves for fear of punishment is "an overreaction on their part," Mr. Garcia said.
"Retribution to his perceived enemies -- the Senator is not that kind of person," Mr. Garcia added. "That's just a perception you and others have picked up. It's not reality as we see it."
But that perception hangs heavy over Ms. Amaral these days. "That this many people are fearful," she said, brushing tears from her broad cheeks. "That this few people have control. Is this the Hawaii I know? Is this the Hawaii I want to represent? The lesson for everybody is you don't want your town to turn into this." -------------------- Inouye Cancels Speech
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HONOLULU, Dec. 13People carry the coffin containing the body of 11-year-old Sahil Pervez who was killed in the Mar. 27 terrorist attack in Lahore, Pakistan. (AP)
(CNSNews.com) – State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday that he did not have “the fidelity of information to confirm overtly” that the massive suicide bombing in Lahore, Pakistan on Sunday was specifically targeting Christians celebrating Easter.
Ahsanullah Ahsan, a spokesman for Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, the breakaway Taliban faction claiming responsibility for the attacks, told the Associated Press on Sunday that the suicide bomber “deliberately targeted the Christian community celebrating Easter.” He also said the attack was meant to protest Pakistan's military operation in the tribal regions.
At the State Department today, referencing the condemnatory statement made by the Department but which contained no reference of the targeting of Christians, AP reporter Matt Lee asked, “There’s been some commentary about why you guys didn’t mention either the Easter connection or the Christian connection in your condemnatory statements over the weekend and again today. Do you believe the claim of responsibility that Christians were targeted and are targets?”
“We have no indications that their claims of responsibility are false, though I can’t sit here and confirm it a hundred percent,” Kirby said. “Therefore I have no indications that their, the motivation that they claim was the reason is also false, but this is all going to be investigated by Pakistanis.”
Kirby also said that his failure to mention that the attack was specifically targeted against Christians on Easter Sunday in the State Department’s condemnatory statement “was as much a fact, or as much an indication of the fact that it had just happened and we didn’t know that much about the attack at the outset.”
“Is that your understanding now, though?” said Lee. “Do you believe that it was?”
Kirby replied, “We have no reason to doubt the veracity of their claims that this was aimed at Christians on Easter Sunday. But again I’m not also in a position, I just, we don’t have the fidelity of information to |
you have no interest in? I keep in touch with exactly one person from my year at business school, but if I'd met him in any other situation, we'd have become friends. I see a couple of others on occasion. But that's it, one person. If you gave me £24,000 now and asked me to go and network, I’d join a club like Soho House or fly to Gstaad and spend a season working in a ski-rental shop. I’d meet everybody I needed to, or at least someone who knows someone.
Do it because you want to
I was trying to please Asian parents. I had failed them in my teens by not getting into medical school, and instead joining the army. You cannot impress Asian parents. Unhappiness is their default. And honestly, I believe they enjoy it. My mother has berated me for over twenty years for not getting an arranged marriage. She never tires of it. I call home to tell her how my job at The Economist is going and there it is—that painful pause, hear it?—and then “When are you going to get married?” If I did get married, my mother would be unimpressed by my choice. If she chose my wife, she would be unimpressed that I was not yet Lakshmi Mittal. My mother is unrelenting.
Which is to say: remember, you do not need an MBA. Only do it if you want to. Food and water are needs; an MBA is an expensive want. Like a Rolex. And that didn't impress my mother either.As the world’s sneakerhead population ardently awaits the release of Kanye West’s adidas Yeezi 3 with feverish hysteria, Nike’s ‘Red October’ still claims the spot as the most revered sneaker of this year, and perhaps even the last decade. Before Kanye was with adidas, he was turning out some of the most hyped sneakers the world has bared witness to with Nike, including the futuristic all-red footwear gem. These highly sought-after sneakers were being sold upwards of ten thousand dollars a pair on the aftermarket, with stories of them even being advertised for millions on Ebay. Now image that there was a brand new pair in box, autographed by Kanye West himself. Well there is. The Kanye West autographed Nike Air Yeezy 2 Red October kicks will be up for auction beginning November 21st, in a size 12. With a starting bid of $2,500 USD, the pair of sneakers alongside a certificate of authenticity are expected to sell for an insane amount. We are not sure what the proceeds will be going to, but will update ya’ll when we know more!
Have a look at the offical listing here.
STAY UP TO DATE WITH THE DROP BY FOLLOWING US ON TWITTER Follow @thedrop101 AND INSTAGRAM @THEDROP101Heroes:
* New Heroes!
Zone Scaling:
* Monsters per zone now increases by 0.1 every 500 zones (down from 1).
* Partial monsters per zone are counted as a chance of an additional monster.
Outsiders:
* Borb now grows at a rate of 12.5% per level (up from 10%).
Ancients:
* Kumawakamaru now approaches -8 monsters per zone (down from -100 monsters per zone).
Rubies:
* There is no longer a limit on the number of ruby tappables per ascension.
* Quick Ascension's hero soul reward will no longer grow past zone 1000000.
* Adds a 168 hour duration Timelapse purchasable for 50 rubies.
* Timelapse now has a minimum gold reward of an average monster farmed at highest zone this ascension.
Achievements:
* Adds achievements for acquiring 1000, 10000, and 100000 Ancient Souls.
* Adds achievements for beating zones 100000, 250000, and 1000000.
Mercenaries:
* Base rewards for gold quests now have a minimum reward of an average monster farmed at highest zone this ascension.
Skills:
* Tapstorm now provides a temporary +1 Auto Tapper (+2 when Energized) for its duration (changed from a flat +10 TPS).
* Activating a skill while idle will no longer break idle.
* Taps from Clickstorm will still break idle.
* Golden Taps will not benefit from idle gold since it requires taps which break idle.
* Energized skills now have a pink glow on the action bar.
* Activating a skill while it is still active will now extend the energized state in addition to resetting the duration.
* Skill durations longer than 60 seconds are now described in terms of minutes, hours, and days in the tooltip.
* Skill descriptions now list the time remaining on an active skill.
Miscellaneous:
* Adds a stat for Critical Tap Damage to the Stats Panel.
* Adds a stat for Auto Taps Per Second to the Stats Panel.
* Transcension Ancient Soul counts now also include the current ascension when showing AS to be gained from transcending.
* Adds an option to toggle the 'Entering Zone' text.
* Value leveling now supports a decimal place on the number's base (i.e. 1.1e10).
* Performance improvements have been made to Timelapse.
* General stability and performance improvements.
Bugfixes:
* Various bugfixes.With gas prices hitting an all-time low for 2014, many of us are left to wonder: Who’s responsible for gas prices at the pump? According to the UT Energy Poll, the largest national poll on energy issues, 7 in 10 Americans believe that oil and gas companies are one of the biggest deciders in the price of gas. Given that so many Americans seem convinced on this issue, I decided to delve into gas prices a little further to see if this widespread belief held up to scrutiny.
If you’re in the know about gas prices, you probably haven’t been surprised to see the reports that the price of crude oil has also been steadily declining for the past few months. What we see here is a correlation: As crude oil prices go down, gas prices quickly follow. The big question is: Does this correlation hold up over several years?
Conveniently, the EIA publishes weekly crude oil and gas price estimates right on their web site. The weekly oil price estimates come out on Friday, and the weekly gas prices come out the following Monday. The chart below shows us how well the oil prices on Friday predict gas prices on Monday. Each dot represents a Friday-Monday pairing, and the line shows the ideal pairing if oil prices predicted gas prices perfectly.
(Note: I didn’t adjust for inflation here because I’m not making comparisons between time points.)
What we see here is a near-perfect correlation over 21 years of oil and gas prices. In other words, oil and gas companies seem to have little to do with the price of gas; they simply follow the standard set by international crude oil prices. That’s not to say that oil and gas companies don’t add their own expenses to the cost of gas (as they should), but they aren’t the ones responsible for those sudden spikes in gas prices that we see every now and then.
If oil and gas companies aren’t responsible for gas prices, then who is?
According to the experts, commodity speculators play a huge role in determining the international price of crude oil. They keep an eye on the current worldwide supply and demand for crude oil, terrorist threats and disturbances, changing international markets, and several other indicators to best estimate the total supply and demand for crude oil in the future. In turn, these estimates directly affect the price of crude oil — and ultimately, how much you pay at the pump.
But that’s a theory left to investigate another day.Hello, hello
I don’t know why you say goodbye
I say hello.
–The Beatles
Goodbyes are hard. They suggest a certain finality, a signal that something good has come to an end. Unfortunately, life is full of goodbyes, and today I must say mine. After six years, five websites, and hundreds of thousands of lines of code, my tenure at Sports Reference will come to an end this week.
I started working on what would become Basketball-Reference.com back in 2003. I was in awe of what Baseball-Reference.com had done for baseball statistics and I had the pollyannaish idea that I could do the same thing for basketball statistics. After spending months building the database and designing the pages, the website debuted to great little fanfare on May 10, 2004. In fact, shortly after announcing the launch of the website on the now defunct APBR Yahoo! Group I received the following reply:
what’s the difference? what does yours have that [databasebasketball.com] doesn’t, besides that mustard-colored header*?
Well then.
* For those of you who are wondering what the site looked like back in May 2004, check out the Wayback Machine’s archive of the site.
Truth be told, the feedback I received was mostly positive, and I continued to work on the site as a hobby while keeping my day job. After some time, though, it become apparent that I could probably make more money — and definitely have more fun! — by turning my hobby into a full time job. So in June 2007 I made a big decision: I resigned from my job as a lecturer for the Department of Statistics at Ohio State and started working full time for Sports Reference.
That decision turned out to be a boon for the basketball site’s growth. Back in 2008, my first full year working for Sports Reference, Basketball-Reference.com was the company’s least-visited site, averaging about 2.8 million page views per month. But today Basketball-Reference.com is the company’s second most-visited site, averaging over 11 million page views per month.
Along the way I’ve done a lot more that just work on Basketball-Reference.com. For example, I designed and built the hockey, Olympics, college football, and college basketball sites, expanding Sports Reference’s web presence from three sites to seven.
Despite the fact that Sports Reference has very few employees — the company had just two full time programmers until May 2011 — its network of sites has received numerous honors. Most notably, TIME magazine recognized Sports Reference as one of the “50 Best Websites” of 2010, and the company won an Alpha Award for “Best Analytics Innovation/Technology” at the 2013 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
In short, I am very proud of the work that I have done for Sports Reference. So why, you may ask, am I leaving? This isn’t the time or the place for me to get into the reasons surrounding my departure, so I’ll just say that I chose to leave due to “creative differences” and leave it at that.*
* Full disclosure: I will continue to be one of the company’s co-owners.
And even though I’m saying goodbye to Sports Reference, I’m saying hello to new challenges: In September I will start a job as a web developer for Franklin University in Columbus.
As for a personal Internet presence, I plan to stay plugged into the sports scene through my Twitter account (@jkubatko) and this blog (Statitudes). I also hope that the numerous friendships that I have developed thanks to my work at Sports Reference will continue. You can always reach me at my Gmail address (justin DOT kubatko AT gmail DOT com).
And with that, I say goodbye … I mean, hello.
byThe Virginia government elections happened weeks ago, but it ain’t over yet. Here’s some frequently asked question to help explain what happened, and what to expect next.
What’s going on?
Virginia’s weird and arbitrary election schedule puts the election for Governor and some state offices in an “off-off-year.” Since the 2017 election was the first major political contest after Trump’s victory last fall, the entire country was watching to see how it might affect future elections.
Virginia did not disappoint.
Anti-Trump backlash drove voters to the polls, leading to historic gains for the Democrats. The Virginia state legislature will undergo a huge culture change, as a lot of old white dudes were replaced by the legislature’s first out Lesbian, first two Latina women, first Asian-American woman, first Democratic Socialist, and the first openly transgender legislator to be elected in America. (This last legislator, Danica Roem, will likely garner most of the attention from this group, and for good reason: not every state legislator attends the American Music Awards with Demi Lovato, and GOP legislators are being forced to deal with gendered titles and pronouns, probably for the first time in their lives.)
After a number of close races, the election ended with the GOP holding onto a slim majority at 51-49. However, some races are still undecided.
Which races are undecided?
There are three:
The state Board of Elections has just certified the results of the last of these elections, so we can move on to the recount/challenge phase.
What’s at stake here?
The outcomes of these three contested elections will determine which party controls one of the houses of Virginia’s bicameral (two-house) legislature. The House of Delegates has 100 members, and it’s been skewed heavily towards the GOP in past years – in 2017, it was 66 to 34 for the Republicans.
Again, the GOP lead is now down to 51 to 49. And, if a single one of the three contested election results are reversed at any point, the house would be evenly divided. That’s happened at least once before in the chamber’s history, and both parties worked out a power-sharing arrangement, with co-Committee Chairs and shared speaker duties.
Over in the Senate, legislators get four-year terms, so their next election isn’t until 2019. But that house also has just a narrow Republican majority, 21-19.
So what can happen to change the GOP majority?
A bunch of things can change the House of Delegates math, actually. There are at least four ways that the Democrats could block the Republicans from controlling the chamber:
1. Recounts
Virginia state law allows losing candidates to request a recount, as long as they lost by less than 1% of the total votes cast. You don’t need a lot of math to realize that all three of the contested races fall within that margin. Still, Hugo and Thomas probably have little to worry about here; it’s unlikely that a recount will turn up enough miscounted or discounted votes to overcome their lead.
Yancey, on the other hand, is SUPER vulnerable. We last saw a recount for the 2013 Attorney General election; there election officials found ~750 more Democratic votes statewide. Based on that math, finding more than 10 new votes for Democrats in a single district is certainly possible. In fact, insiders say Democratic votes are more likely to be found in recounts. (This is probably due to demographics; Democrats are more likely to claim poor, young, and inexperienced voters.)
The 2013 recount took place over two days in mid-December, so we’ll probably know the recount outcomes before the legislative session starts in January.
2. Contest in the house
Our endlessly inventive Virginia election laws also allow losing candidates to contest the election in the General Assembly. It’s not clear if this has ever happened before, so it’s hard to know exactly how this would proceed. But the state code allows for such a challenge to be overseen by the House’s Committee on Privileges and Elections. If the chamber remains Republican-controlled, it’s unlikely the contest will go anywhere. But under a power-sharing arrangement, things could get more interesting.
3. Court challenges
Democrats will most likely look to the courts for the 28th district, where voters were assigned the wrong ballots. Still, only about 80 votes seem to be at question here. Surely not all of them voted Democratic, so it’s unlikely the Democrats could generate enough votes from these folks even if they were allowed to submit new ballots.
The Democrats might instead try to get the original results thrown out and demand a special election. But they would have to find judges willing to interfere with election outcomes, which they are generally reluctant to do. The bottom line: these court challenges are less about the legal arguments made, and more about the politics of the situation. Will any Virginia judges be willing to wade into partisan politics and “overturn” an election? My guess is no, but we’ll see soon.
4. Political appointments
One final method that the Democrats could use: Governor-Elect Ralph Northam has a lot of jobs to fill in his administration. Some Republicans are worried he could try to change the legislature’s math by offering plum spots to Republican Delegates or Senators. At the same time, the Governor has to be careful not to pull a legislator out of a weak Democratic district.
Northam’s transition team may not end up affecting this year’s legislature much. (His predecessor, Terry McAuliffe, only created one special election through appointment, and that wasn’t until August.) But remember that being a state legislator is only a part-time job; administration appointments can be lucrative, as well as allowing significant contributions to public service. Everyone will be eyeing the work of his transition team very closely.
Why do we care?
This is fascinating for political junkies, for sure. But there are real policy consequences stemming from partisan control. For example, Republicans have blocked Medicaid expansion for years; so 400,000 Virginians who could have health insurance should care greatly about which party runs the legislature. Laws covering reproductive rights, gun regulations, and the environment all depend on whether or not they can get through committees.
So there’s a lot at stake. The next few weeks will determine what happens. Stay tuned.
Virginia Politics Sponsored by F.W. SullivansJapanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit Pearl Harbor with President Barack Obama on Tuesday to "express the value of reconciliation between Japan and the United States," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said earlier this month.
The White House has said Abe's visit would highlight the alliance between the former wartime enemies.
Abe will be the first Japanese incumbent prime minister at Pearl Harbor since a brief stopover by Japan’s former leader Shigeru Yoshida on September 12, 1951.
The visit Tuesday comes 75 years after the attack that thrust the United States into World War II, and less than four weeks before Donald Trump becomes the United States' 45th president.
Last month, Abe became the first world leader to meet Trump after the election. Following their hastily arranged meeting in New York, Abe called Trump a "trustworthy” leader.
Abe will not apologize for the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, that killed more than 2,000 military personnel, a Japanese government spokesman said.
In a similar move, Obama did not apologize for the U.S. atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in 1945.ABC News reports former House Speaker Dennis Hastert may have sexually abused the student equipment manager of his high school wrestling team as the team’s coach.
“In an emotional interview, Steve Reinbodlt’s sister Jolene said she first learned of her late brother’s purported years-long sexual abuse at the hands of the future Speaker of the House back in 1979 when her older brother revealed to her that he was gay and had been out of high school for eight years.”
“Sources knowledgeable of the case told ABC News Hastert was paying a man — still unidentified except as ‘Individual A’ — hundreds of thousands of dollars to hide that Hastert had engaged in sexual misconduct with him while Hastert was the high school wrestling coach. Jolene never asked for money from Hastert, but his sister believes that ‘Individual A’ is familiar with what happened with her brother. She does not know who Individual A is, but she said she’s thankful that Hastert’s alleged misconduct is coming to light.”Benicio Del Toro is Hollywood's hot new star - some say the next Brando, or at the very least the next Nicolas Cage. The 34-year-old actor has been receiving rave reviews and awards galore for his role as a Mexican narcotics policeman in Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning 'Traffic (2000)' and the quirky, brooding actor is about to make the leap from supporting actor to leading man in 'Basic (2001)', a military drama he is recently completed filming in Canada. In addition, Del Toro has also wrapped work on HUNTED, THE (2001), directed by William Friedkin, in which he plays a serial killer pursued by Tommy Lee Jones.
Winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor has established Del Toro as a rising star in Hollywood and as a Latino sex symbol whose heavy-lidded eyes and pensive expression has won him legions of female fans. Moreover, his edgy performances in films like Basquiat (1996), Usual Suspects, The (1995), and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) have made him a cult favorite amongst industry insiders. It was only a matter of time, therefore, before a film like Traffic (2000) succeeded in getting him into the acting big leagues and provided him with recognition amongst mainstream audiences.
"My goal as an actor has always been to reach a level where I can find a lot of interesting work, and I think I'm at that point now," says Del Toro. "The Oscar has given me a lot of recognition, but I think Traffic (2000) alone would have done a lot for me. It's the kind of role you die for because a lot of people are going to focus on your work. It gives you a very high profile. "
Interestingly, Del Toro was primed for the spotlight several years earlier after Usual Suspects, The (1995) earned him and Kevin Spacey a wave of critical support. We all know how Spacey went on to greater glory, but Del Toro's career lagged as subsequent roles in films like Basquiat (1996) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) went largely unheralded.
In the latter film, which co-starred Johnny Depp and was entered in the competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Del Toro gained nearly 50 pounds for the role.
"My career definitely went into a hole after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)," explains Del Toro. "The worst thing about that was that a lot of people assumed that that was the way I normally spoke, especially if they remembered me from Usual Suspects, The (1995). Hunter S. Thompson told me that my career would be over after I did the film and he was right - I was unemployable for about a year. "
"But all I tried to do with the character in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) is be faithful to the book, in playing this completely wacked out, crazed man. There was no other way I could play the guy. What went wrong is that I guess I was too convincing, and that everybody believed that I was on drugs myself. It was insane. Plus it took me three months to lose all that weight. That was the worst part, let me tell you - I'll never put myself through that again. "
Sitting down with Benicio Del Toro at L. A.'s Caffé Roma, it's surprising to note how tall the 6'3' actor is up close. He seems to be permanently slouching in many of his roles, and a lot of that is tied up with his natural shyness, a quality that was exacerbated when his father sent him away from Puerto Rico to study at an elite boarding school in Pennsylvania that played home to wealthy WASP children. Though he had cousins in the area, Benicio was "more or less on my own".
When Del Toro began his American school journey, his English was marginal at best, and so he used his athletic ability and a passion for music to gain acceptance.
"Acting was something I needed as a way of allowing me to express myself and not feel inhibited, closed off," explains Del Toro. "When I first start going to that school, it was hard for me to communicate because I was still working hard on my English. Sports, and mainly basketball, was my only outlet, my only means of expressing my passion. That and music."
"But I never saw going to that school as a bad thing. I grew up rapidly. Fending for myself was the only way to survive. I had no one else to hang on to for support. It was the first time that I looked at my inner self instead of looking outside. In boarding school I discovered things such as painting - something that I still a feel passionate about. I was lucky that I went to such a good school. You learn a lot more at places like that and that kind of education gives you a lot of advantages in life. "
Del Toro's atitude towards life is one that can be summed up as a quiet confidence in himself and his ability to cope with the world. "I used to play basketball and I was pretty competitive, but I was never a bad loser. I never got angry. For me it was always about doing my best and devoting myself to a challenge. Sometimes that will cut it, other times it won't. But I'm someone who remains faithful to my dreams. That's how I looked at acting, even though I knew it would be tough going at first. I didn't think about the money, I've always lived simply. I just need my books and I can get by. "
Del Toro got his professional start doing guest-starring roles on television, including 'Miami Vice' when he was 21, and the acclaimed miniseries 'Drug Wars: The Kiki Camarena Story'. Though he developed a reputation as a good character actor, Del Toro could only find occasional work in films, mainly independent features, although he did make a short appearance in the James Bond film License to Kill (1989). His career might still be functioning below the radar were it not for the surprise success of 1995's Usual Suspects, The (1995), in which he, together with Kevin Spacey, had the most memorable roles.
"That was a good experience for me because I found a role that I knew I could make stand out," recalls Del Toro. "I think we all knew that the film had something unusual to it, and that Kevin was going to become big. But I also thought it would work for me and it did. "
Though Del Toro began to land bigger roles in a number of highly touted but moribund studio projects (EXCESS BAGGAGE (1997), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) as well as independent films (Basquiat (1996), WAY OF THE GUN, THE (2000)), he was having a hard time jumping over the ethnic fencing that tends to limit Latino, as well as every other non-WASP, actor.
He was disappointed by the mauling Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) took at the hands of reviewers and at the box-office, but he tried to maintain a positive frame of mind and held out for work in good films rather than take small roles in bad movies.
"I told myself that things would work out and that I had to be patient," he explains. "I take a pretty reflective attitude towards my work. I waited a long time to get recognition and even though I have an Oscar now, I don't intend to start cashing in by going for big paychecks in big budget films. "
"I like to take things very slowly. When you start to become a movie star it's easy to believe that you are Superman. That can fool you. That's why I prefer not to pay much attention to fame. The truth is that I don't give it much thought. I don't suffer. I don't hang my photographs on the wall. Without realizing it, you can enter a vicious circle and think that you really are a superhero. That's the moment when you get yourself in real trouble. "
Del Toro lives in a small L. A. flat which is decorated by wall-to-wall bookshelves, stacks of books, magazines, and CDs covering the floors, and sheafs of papers which he uses to write down his thoughts. One of his current projects in development is a biopic about Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara. As far as his private life is concerned, he has been spending the better part of the last year with Claire Forlani, the seductively attractive British actress (MEET JOE BLACK (1998)) with whom he co-starred in 1996's Basquiat (1996).
Though he won't discuss, confirm, or deny their relationship, he is willing to venture some comments on his burgeoning sex symbol status. "It's beyond my control. I'm sure if you ask my family, they'll say, 'He was a sex symbol a while back.' But you know, it's what it is and I take it with half a smile, you know. If it helps me get to do what I want to do in films, then great. If it's going to get in the way, then I'll cut it down. "
Julian Schnabel, the pop artist turned director (BEFORE NIGHT FALLS (2000)) spent a lot of time hanging out with Del Toro when they were filming Basquiat (1996) together. The Bohemian painter reveals that Del Toro is notorious for allowing women to chase him without trying to show any definite signs of interest.
"Benicio has his own method," laughs Schnabel. "Women were all over him when we shot Basquiat (1996) but he tried to not to let on that he was interested. He loves to play hard to get. "
Del Toro doesn't buy into the Schnabel theory, however. "The attention is nice, but I like to take it slowly with girlfriends,"he reveals. "I've never been a guy who likes to play the field and even though you get more opportunities as your level of recognition goes up, I'm not interested in playing that game because it's a pretty shallow lifestyle... I've only been in love a couple of times in my life and it can be hard to go through a big break-up... Right now I'm so busy I honestly don't think I can have a long-term relationship. "
"I need a lot of time by myself where I can read and write and just think a lot. That's very tough on someone else because you can't really allow that person into that space that you need to be in. I need to to spend a lot of time in a private, sealed world of my own, and I don't know how good I would be in a relationship where you can't cut yourself off from your partner. It's something I'm eventually going to figure out, or be so much in love that it won't be an issue anymore. "
The turning point in Del Toro's life came when he graduated from his Pennsyulvania private school (his older brother Gustavo works as a doctor in New York), and was facing with the decision of whether or not to enter the family business - his parents, his grandfather, his godmother and his uncle had all been practicing lawyers - and he was expected to follow in their footsteps.
He enrolled at the University of California in San Diego intending to study painting but listed business as his major in order to please his father. But a drama class sparked his interest in acting causing the would-be lawyer to drop out of college and spend the next couple of years studying acting, both in New York and Los Angeles. Needless to say, his father was less than pleased with his decision.
"I had had a pretty up and down history with my father as a teenager and he didn't think acting was a very good career choice," laughs Del Toro. "He saw it as a big gamble where I would wind up doing a few
commercials, maybe a role in a TV show once in a while, and then wind up with nothing and with no future and no career to fall back on. My dad wanted me to go to law school part-time and work on my acting the rest of the time. You can see his point, but there was no way I could do that. I had made up my mind to become an actor. "
Though most of his family in Puerto Rico is enamored with his Oscar victory and the sudden fame that had come with his appearance in TRAFFIC (2000), Señor Del Toro Sr. is still less than a true believer in his son's career path.
"It's funny, but even now that I have an Oscar, I think that dad still hopes deep down that I'll go back to law school and do something serious with my life!"
Del Toro's initial interest in performing came, tragically, at his dying mother's bedside when he was just a child. For over a year, he would spend hours trying to entertain her and ease her pain.
"My mother died when I was nine. She died of hepatitis after being
chronically ill for a very long time. The performances I would do to
make her laugh were probably my first acting efforts. Incredibly, I took her death very well. My father and I spoke for many months afterwards and discussed a lot of memories and experiences we had as a family, and that was very beautiful. So her death wasn't as hard on me as it might have been... When things like that happen at such an early age, you accept them as a fact. It's like they are part of the tree of life. "
"That's my attitude towards acting. I'm blessed in life to have found
something I loved and had a talent for. Most people don't have that
chance, at least I don't think so, and so your world suddenly falls into place when you see what life offers you and you can go after it. I'm living the American Dream, I guess, in the sense that I'm able to pursue my happiness. "
In the aftermath of his Oscar victory, Del Toro claims that he has still not bought into the star status label that is being foisted on him. "No, no, no, I'm staying away from that kind of thinking," he says. "I don't expect to start making big action films or playing romantic leads just because of that. The Oscar has opened a lot of doors and it's exciting. But it's not going to change my life that much"....
"Fame is something you have to keep your distance from. I try not to
read stuff that's written about me and I haven't started hanging out
with a lot of famous actors and going to a lot of parties. "
"It's funny, but when I arrived in California to start college I was
much more interested in becoming a surfer and cruise along in life from one beach to the next. I didn't plan out any huge career for myself. Now that I see that I have this career and it's worked out for me, it still feels like I'm surfing, only that it's on a different level. I feel very free and that's all that I've ever wanted out of life. "
He adds: "Freedom, and maybe a little bit of art thrown in. "
Author : FeatsPressTown in South Carolina, United States
Due West is a town in Abbeville County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 1,247 at the 2010 census.[3] It is the home of Erskine College and Dixie High School.
History [ edit ]
Some say the name is a mispronunciation of "DeWitt's Corner", while others believe the town was due west on a pioneer trail.[4]
The Erskine College-Due West Historic District, Lindsay Cemetery, and Young Place are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[5]
Lawrence Cowan (1858–1933), Arizona territorial legislator, judge, lawyer, and businessman, was born in Due West.[6]
Geography [ edit ]
Due West is located at (34.332110, -82.387131).[7]
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 1.6 square miles (4.2 km2), of which 0.004 square miles (0.01 km2), or 0.32%, is water.[3]
Demographics [ edit ]
Historical population Census Pop. %± 1850 330 — 1870 400 — 1880 449 12.3% 1890 644 43.4% 1900 631 −2.0% 1910 672 6.5% 1920 702 4.5% 1930 620 −11.7% 1940 593 −4.4% 1950 1,033 74.2% 1960 1,166 12.9% 1970 1,380 18.4% 1980 1,366 −1.0% 1990 1,220 −10.7% 2000 1,209 −0.9% 2010 1,247 3.1% Est. 2016 1,292 [8] 3.6% U.S. Decennial Census[9]
As of the census[1] of 2000, there were 1,209 people, 307 households, and 194 families residing in the town. The population density was 738.4 people per square mile (284.6/km²). There were 342 housing units at an average density of 208.9 per square mile (80.5/km²). The racial makeup of the town was 79.24% White, 18.61% African American, 0.08% Native American, 0.99% Asian, 0.25% from other races, and 0.83% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.74% of the population.
There were 307 households out of which 20.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 45.9% were married couples living together, 13.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 36.8% were non-families. 32.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.21 and the average family size was 2.76.
In the town, the population was spread out with 11.3% under the age of 18, 40.7% from 18 to 24, 14.5% from 25 to 44, 14.7% from 45 to 64, and 18.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 24 years. For every 100 females, there were 75.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 72.6 males.
The median income for a household in the town was $39,375, and the median income for a family |
Western Rite missions have been founded within the AWRV, some growing into full parish status. Furthermore, when parishes of the Evangelical Orthodox Church joined the Antiochian Archdiocese in 1987, a few parishes joined as Western Rite congregations. However, many of these former EOC congregations subsequently switched to the Byzantine Rite.
Among Old Calendarist groups, the sole jurisdiction utilizing a Western Rite is the Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of North and South America and the British Isles, with approximately two dozen parishes. Due to their generally stricter stance, only older rites such as the Sarum are permitted.
Elsewhere [ edit ]
In 1995, the Church of Antioch also established a British Deanery to absorb converts from the Church of England,[clarify] though none of these congregations is now Western Rite.[20]
Western Rite Orthodoxy, in Australia and New Zealand, emerged mostly from Anglican and Continuing Anglican communities. Some communities were received[when?] into the ROCOR by Archbishop Hilarion (Kapral) of the Diocese of Sydney, Australia and New Zealand. Other were received[when?] into the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch by Bishop Gibran (Ramlawi) and Metropolitan Archbishop Paul (Saliba), of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia, New Zealand, and All Oceania. Saliba has recently[clarification needed] received around 30 Western Rite parishes in the Philippines.
Some Western Rite parishes are also a part of the Oriental Orthodox churches.[citation needed] The Syrian patriarchate of Antioch consecrated Antonio Francisco Xavier Alvares as Archbishop of Ceylon, Goa and India in 1889, authorizing a Roman rite diocese under his supervision. Additionally, in 1891 the Syrians consecrated Vilatte as archbishop for the American Old Catholics.
Current status in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia [ edit ]
On July 10, 2013, the recognition and status of Western Rite parishes within ROCOR seemed to significantly change. The Synod of Bishops of ROCOR, presided over by its First Hierarch, decreed that:[21]
ROCOR would no longer ordain clergy for Western Rite parishes.
would no longer ordain clergy for Western Rite parishes. Bishop Jerome Shaw of Manhattan would be censured for unapproved ecclesial services and forcibly retired without the right to perform ordinations.
Some ordinations performed by Shaw would not be recognized, and those candidates would be thoroughly examined before regularization.
A commission would examine how to integrate Western Rite clergy and communities into the Russian Orthodox Church.
Western Rite clergy and communities need to adopt the order of divine services of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but may preserve "certain particularities of the Western Rite".
Adherence to the rules and traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church in particular is required.
However, despite the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia never officially reversed this decision, new Western Rite parishes and monasteries continue to be founded by ROCOR and priests within the Western Rite continue to be ordained as of 2018, including in Sweden and the United States.[22][23]
Orthodox Church in America [ edit ]
Mention of the Western Rite was often made in the OCA, the most prominent being a mention during a speech by the primate of the OCA, Metropolitan Jonah Paffhausen, in April 2009.[24]
On September 8, 2018, the Orthodox Church of America established a Western Rite mission parish in Alberta, Canada.[25] [26] However, the OCA has not yet officially established an organizational structure for future Western Rite parishes.
Liturgy [ edit ]
An altar prepared according to the rubrics for the Tridentine Mass. Many Western Rite Orthodox congregations celebrate a revised version of the Tridentine Mass under the name Divine Liturgy of Saint Gregory.
Western Rite parishes do not all utilize the same liturgy, but often use a particular liturgy depending upon their individual affiliations prior to entering Orthodoxy. At present, there are nine different uses available to Western Rite parishes:
The Divine Liturgy of Saint Tikhon – This liturgy is currently used by approximately two-thirds of congregations in the AWRV. The Rite of St Tikhon was developed utilizing the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer and the Anglican Missal. The Book of Common Prayer was altered by removing the filioque from the text of the Nicene Creed, adding prayers for the dead, the invocation of the saints, and strengthening the epiclesis within the Eucharistic prayer, and by adding the pre-communion prayers from the Byzantine Rite. It is utilized primarily by former Anglican and Episcopalian background parishes.
– This liturgy is currently used by approximately two-thirds of congregations in the. The Rite of St Tikhon was developed utilizing the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer and the Anglican Missal. The Book of Common Prayer was altered by removing the from the text of the Nicene Creed, adding prayers for the dead, the invocation of the saints, and strengthening the epiclesis within the Eucharistic prayer, and by adding the pre-communion prayers from the Byzantine Rite. It is utilized primarily by former Anglican and Episcopalian background parishes. The Divine Liturgy of Saint Gregory – Utilized by the remainder of the AWRV as well as some communities in ROCOR, this rite is a version of the Roman Tridentine Mass which has been altered to remove the filioque and by inserting a Byzantine epiclesis. It is used primarily by former Lutheran, Roman Catholic, or Old Catholic background parishes, including those incorporated from the Society of Saint Basil in 1961. In the Russian Orthodox Church, there are three versions in common use: that of Overbeck (which was printed in full in the 1960 ROCOR yearbook), the Use of Mt. Royal (based upon the Carthusian use, itself adapted from the old rite of Grenoble), and the derivative use of Christminster (Usus Providentiae) which includes an epiclesis from the Gothic Missal.
– Utilized by the remainder of the as well as some communities in, this rite is a version of the Roman Tridentine Mass which has been altered to remove the and by inserting a Byzantine epiclesis. It is used primarily by former Lutheran, Roman Catholic, or Old Catholic background parishes, including those incorporated from the Society of Saint Basil in 1961. In the Russian Orthodox Church, there are three versions in common use: that of Overbeck (which was printed in full in the 1960 yearbook), the Use of Mt. Royal (based upon the Carthusian use, itself adapted from the old rite of Grenoble), and the derivative use of Christminster (Usus Providentiae) which includes an epiclesis from the Gothic Missal. The Sarum Liturgy – A British use of the Divine Liturgy of Saint Gregory, which retained many local Anglo-Saxon, Gallican, and Celtic elements. It is celebrated within ROCOR by the St Bride Hermitage and by the Hermitage of the Holy Cross. It is also occasionally celebrated at St Nicholas ROCOR Monastery in Ft. Myers, Florida. [27] The text is based upon a nineteenth-century Pearson English translation of the Sarum Missal, corrected of post-Schism insertions. An epiclesis from the Gothic Missal is included. St Hilarion Press and St Gregory's Press editions of Sarum services were blessed for canonical use, in September 2008 and December 2008, respectively.
– A British use of the Divine Liturgy of Saint Gregory, which retained many local Anglo-Saxon, Gallican, and Celtic elements. It is celebrated within by the St Bride Hermitage and by the Hermitage of the Holy Cross. It is also occasionally celebrated at St Nicholas Monastery in Ft. Myers, Florida. The text is based upon a nineteenth-century Pearson English translation of the Sarum Missal, corrected of post-Schism insertions. An epiclesis from the Gothic Missal is included. St Hilarion Press and St Gregory's Press editions of Sarum services were blessed for canonical use, in September 2008 and December 2008, respectively. The English Liturgy – The Russian adaptation of the 1549 English Book of Common Prayer according to the criteria set forth by the Holy Synod of Russia in 1907. This liturgy has been augmented with material from the Sarum Missal, Gothic Missal, York rite, and 1718 Scottish Non-Juror liturgy. An epiclesis from the Gothic Missal is included. This liturgy is not the same rite as the Liturgy of Saint Tikhon, and the two rites differ in many respects. [28]
– The Russian adaptation of the 1549 English Book of Common Prayer according to the criteria set forth by the Holy Synod of Russia in 1907. This liturgy has been augmented with material from the Sarum Missal, Gothic Missal, York rite, and 1718 Scottish Non-Juror liturgy. An epiclesis from the Gothic Missal is included. This liturgy is not the same rite as the Liturgy of Saint Tikhon, and the two rites differ in many respects. The Liturgy of Saint Germanus – Utilized by the French Orthodox Church, the Orthodox Church of the Gauls, and the Orthodox Church of France, as well as some parishes of ROCOR and the Serbian and Romanian Patriarchates. The liturgy of St Germanus is a reconstructed version of the Gallican mass, supplemented with elements from the Byzantine, Celtic and Mozarabic rites.
– Utilized by the French Orthodox Church, the Orthodox Church of the Gauls, and the Orthodox Church of France, as well as some parishes of and the Serbian and Romanian Patriarchates. The liturgy of St Germanus is a reconstructed version of the Gallican mass, supplemented with elements from the Byzantine, Celtic and Mozarabic rites. The Liturgy of Saint John the Divine – Utilized by a monastery of the Moscow Patriarchate, and in publication within ROCOR. It is a reconstructed version of the first millennium Celtic rite of the British Isles, from the Stowe Missal and other sources, and intended for modern use. The name is from the origin asserted by the Church in the British Isles before the Great Schism.
– Utilized by a monastery of the Moscow Patriarchate, and in publication within. It is a reconstructed version of the first millennium Celtic rite of the British Isles, from the Stowe Missal and other sources, and intended for modern use. The name is from the origin asserted by the Church in the British Isles before the Great Schism. The Mozarabic Rite – The Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of North and South America and the British Isles as well as the Holy Synod of Milan permit use of the Mozarabic Rite and the Sarum use.
– The Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of North and South America and the British Isles as well as the Holy Synod of Milan permit use of the Mozarabic Rite and the Sarum use. The Ambrosian Rite – The Ambrosian rite may be used in Western rite parishes of ROCOR.
– The Ambrosian rite may be used in Western rite parishes of. The Glastonbury Rite – The Glastonbury Rite was at one time used in the Celtic Orthodox Church.[29]
In France, Bishop Alexis van der Mensbrugghe, of the ROC, published a missal in 1962 which contained his restored Gallican rite and his restored pre-Celestinian Italic rite.[30](p276)[31][32] Neither of Mensbrugghe's restored rites are used by Orthodox groups.[30](p278)
Liturgical development [ edit ]
Most of the present Western Rite liturgies have been developed along the guidelines given to Saint Tikhon by the Holy Synod in 1904/07. As noted above, Tikhon's request to the Holy Synod concerned accepting Episcopal parishes into the Orthodox Church while permitting them to retain the liturgies of the Book of Common Prayer. While Saint Tikhon's request was specifically concerned with Anglicans converting, its recommendations came to be implemented for those parishes who did not have a specifically Anglican background. The two most important required changes included the removal of the filioque from the Nicene Creed and the addition of an epiclesis which specifically invokes the Holy Spirit and a petition for the Spirit to change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.
When the Antiochian Western Rite Edict was issued, it became necessary to determine what additions or corrections to western liturgies would need to be made to bring those rites into conformity with the 1904 Russian Synodal decree as well as the Ukase of 1936. To that end, the Antiochian Western Rite Commission was convened in 1958 composed of Fr Paul Schneirla, Stephen Upson, Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff for the purpose of determining "the mode of reception of groups desiring to employ the Western Rite, and the character of the rites to be used, as well as the authorization of official liturgical texts."[33] Meyendorff, Schmemann, and Schneirla were already familiar with the Western Rite both from having been in contact with members of the ECOF while teaching at Saint Sergius Theological Institute. Schmemann actively followed the Liturgical Movement in the Roman Catholic and Anglican Church and was an advocate for renewal of the Orthodox liturgy.[34]
In January 1962, the official Western Rite Directory was issued, "establishing liturgical usages and customs and discipline", drawing on principles of the 1904 Moscow Synodal response to Saint Tikhon, the authorization of Western Rite offices by Metropolitan Gerassimos (Messarah) of Beirut, and the 1932 Russian Ukase of Metropolitan Sergius.[35]
Liturgical books [ edit ]
Officially, the AWRV provides one liturgical book, The Orthodox Missal,[36] which contains both the Liturgy of Saint Tikhon and the Liturgy of Saint Gregory, with appropriate propers for seasons, feasts, saints, and prayers before and after Mass. The Antiochian Archdiocese publishes the Saint Andrew Service Book (SASB),[37] also known as The Western Rite Service Book,[38] which was developed by Saint Michael's Church in California under the leadership of the late Father Michael Trigg; the 1996 second and 2005 third editions of the SASB received official sanction from Metropolitan Philip Saliba, with the latter containing explicit reference to the authorized nature of all previous editions of the SASB.[37] In addition to duplicating the contents of The Orthodox Missal, the SASB also includes forms for Matins and Vespers, the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and the threefold Amen common to the Byzantine epiclesis but absent in The Orthodox Missal. The SASB was produced by the Antiochian Archdiocese without the participation of the AWRV.[38] The Orthodox Missal is an official publication of the AWRV and is the Vicariate's standard and approved text with the SASB authorized by the Archdiocese as an approved text.
Parishes within the AWRV are permitted to use either the Liturgy of Saint Tikhon or that of Saint Gregory. While most parishes use the Tikhonite liturgy, several use the Gregorian liturgy on weekdays or on specific Sundays of the year. Presently, there is no breviary specifically designed for the Orthodox Western Rite, though priests of the AWRV who celebrate the Liturgy of Saint Gregory are expected to pray as much of the Breviarium Monasticum as possible,[39] in the Anglican Breviary.[39][40] The same hours, in English or Latin, are approved for Christ the Savior Monastery under the ROCOR. However, priests who celebrate the Liturgy of Saint Tikhon pray a form of Morning Prayer and Evensong approved by the AWRV.
Also in common use within the AWRV, though not officially approved, are St. Dunstans's Plainsong Psalter,[41] The English Office Noted,[42] and the St. Ambrose Hymnal.[43] The St. Dunstans's Plainsong Psalter sets the Psalter and selected canticles to Gregorian and British Chant and includes orders for Morning Prayer, Evensong, and Compline. The English Office Noted includes Morning, Noonday and Evening Prayers, Compline and the Psalter set in modern notation. The St. Ambrose Hymnal provides musical settings of classic Western hymns as well as post-schism and modern hymns which are judged "not to contradict the Orthodox faith."
Within ROCOR, the Saint Colman Prayer Book has been authorized by Metropolitan Hilarion Kapral for use within the Diocese of Sydney, Australia and New Zealand. It has since received permission in other dioceses. The Book includes the Sarum rite, English rite, and Gregorian rite liturgies, together with a simplified version of the monastic hours. Most of the occasional services required by a Parish Priest through the course of the year are there, as well as the Rites of Holy Week and a Lectionary. In September 2008, Kapral blessed the Sarum Rite series published by St. Hilarion Press,[citation needed] originally under the auspices of the Holy Synod of Milan and edited by Hieromonk Aidan Keller,[44] for liturgical use.[discuss] The Holy Synod of Milan also published approximately 30 volumes of texts of pre-schism services.[citation needed] They contain complete forms for celebration of the Liturgy or Mass, the Divine Office, the Mysteries or Sacraments, and many other services, with full chant notation. In December 2008, the St. Gregory's Press edition was also blessed for actual usage; these contains full forms, with complete chant notation, for the celebration of the Liturgy or Mass and of the Divine Office, i.e., the Canonical Hours.
Church calendar [ edit ]
Among those Western Rite parishes that are within the Eastern Orthodox Church, some use the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar with the Byzantine Paschal cycle, while others use other calendars.
The Communion of the Western Orthodox Churches uses the Gregorian Calendar to determine the dates of the holy days and Pascha, while each member church has its own liturgical calendar. The Luxeuil Lectionary, Missale Gothicum, Missale Gallicum, and the Gallican adaptations of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum are the chief authorities for the Liturgical year of the Gallican Rite.
The Western Rite parishes of the Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of North and South America and the British Isles follow the Julian calendar.
Vestments [ edit ]
Priests of the Western Rite utilize standard Western vestments as a part of their liturgy, whether celebrating one of the Western liturgies or (as far as Antiochians are concerned) when concelebrating a Byzantine liturgy, with some exceptions (See Criticisms below). Antiochian Byzantine Rite Orthodox priests who concelebrate Antiochian Western Rite liturgies wear Byzantine style vestments and hierarchs wear Byzantine vestments when participating in Western liturgies.
Clergy using the Sarum or English liturgies use the vestments commonly known as Sarum but which were actually used throughout north-western Europe and the British Isles. These are typified by apparels' of the seasonal colour, added to the alb and amice for priest, deacon, subdeacon, clerk and servers in certain groups, although there is no evidence this was done before the thirteenth century.
Organizations [ edit ]
Unlike the 23 sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches, which are autonomous ritual churches with separate hierarchies and canon laws, Western Rite Orthodox congregations of the Antiochian jurisdiction fall under the jurisdiction of their local Orthodox bishop. In North America, the Antiochian Church has established the AWRV and the Western Rite Commission to coordinate the activities of Western Rite congregations and to provide a single point of contact for persons and groups concerning Western Rite Orthodoxy. However, all the Western Rite congregations remain under the direct supervision of their normal diocesan bishop, with Bishop Basil (Essey) of Wichita being the "hierarch of reference" and advocate for Western Rite issues within the synod of Bishops. In the ROCOR, as of November 2009, all Western Rite Orthodox congregations and monastic houses fall under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan.
The Old Calendarists have two hierarchies which consider themselves Western jurisdictions and therefore have no liaison, citing the canonical responsibility of bishops to their local territories, opting to simply treat all parishes of Western and Eastern Rite equally. Of these, the larger Western Rite organization is the Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of North and South America and the British Isles, with the presiding hierarch, Metropolitan John LoBue of New York and New Jersey, the only Orthodox bishop in North America who regularly employs Western usage in his monastery.
Publishing houses [ edit ]
The official publishing arm of the AWRV is St. Luke's Priory Press in Stanton, New Jersey. Among their publications are The Orthodox Missal, the official service book of the AWRV ; The Orthodox Ritual, the official source for the administration of all the sacraments in the vicariate; and the annual Ordo Kalendar. They also publish several apologetic works concerning the Western Rite.
Lancelot Andrewes Press is the publishing arm of the Fellowship of Saint Dunstan and publishes material which is utilized by congregations and individuals in Western rites. The primary mission of Lancelot Andrewes Press is to publish material for the "advancement of historic Christian orthodoxy, as expressed by the liturgical and devotional usages of traditional English Christianity."[45] Among their publications are the Monastic Diurnal and St. Dunstan's Plainsong Psalter.
While not official publishing houses, St Petroc Monastery, Christminster, and St. John Cassian Press have published copies of liturgies for use by ROCOR Western Rite congregations. St. John Cassian Press distributes former St. Hilarion Press publications (see "Organizations" above) blessed for ROCOR use, including Orthodox Prayers of Old England (omnibus service book), The Holy Psalter (core of the divine office), Old Sarum Rite Missal, The Companion (epistle and gospel book), Chant Ordinarium (a kyriale), and Westminster Benedictional (a book of blessings), in all some 2,500 pages of approved texts, with chant. This body of work includes several apologetic works concerning Western rites and Orthodoxy in general.
The most voluminous texts of the Western Rite in English, however, have been produced by Old Calendarists: recently 10,000 pages of text of the Western monastic psalter in traditional English were placed online for free download and use.[46]
Devotional societies [ edit ]
There are also devotional societies within the AWRV :
The Orthodox Christian Society of Our Lady of Walsingham – dedicated to encouragement of devotion to the Theotokos, particularly under the title of Our Lady of Walsingham (and the preservation of the replica of the shrine of Walsingham). [47]
The Fellowship of Saint Dunstan – dedicated to historic Christian Orthodoxy particularly traditional English Christianity.
Parishes and missions [ edit ]
Parishes and missions belonging to the Western Rite can be found in a number of Orthodox jurisdictions. The single largest group of such communities is to be found within the Orthodox Church of France,[48] followed by jurisdictions of the Eastern Orthodox Church,[49][50] and the Communion of Western Orthodox Churches.[51][52][53] There are also parishes and missions belonging to the Old Calendarist tradition.[54] While certain member churches of the Oriental Orthodox Church have embraced Western Rite parishes in the past, there are currently no such communities within the Oriental Orthodox family of churches.
Africa [ edit ]
St George Orthodox Church, Douala, Cameroon – Orthodox Church of the Gauls
Saint Michael the Archangel Orthodox Church, Mbongo, Cameroon – Orthodox Church of the Gauls
Australasia [ edit ]
Saint Dyfan Monastery Mission, Hobart, Tasmania – ROCOR
Saint George's Mission – Waiwhetu, Lower Hutt – Antiochian
Saint Simon and Saint Jude Church – Rangoria, Canterbury – Antiochian
British Isles [ edit ]
Abbey Church of Saint Alban, Buittle Castle, Scotland – Old Calendarist
Saint Aldhelm Mission, Bournemouth, England – ROCOR
Saint Edmund the Martyr Mission, Nottingham, England – ROCOR
Saint Gwenn's Orthodox Church, Wessex, England – Celtic Orthodox Church
Saint Nectan Mission, Weston-super-Mare, England – ROCOR
Saint Tikhon Mission, Woolwich, England – Old Calendarist
Caribbean [ edit ]
Our Lady of Grace Orthodox Church, Martinique – French Orthodox Church
St Benedict Orthodox Mission, Haiti – Orthodox Church of France
North America [ edit ]
Christ the King Orthodox Church – Tullytown, Pennsylvania – ROCOR
Christ the King Orthodox Mission – Omaha, Illinois – AWRV
Christ the Saviour Orthodox Mission Church – Jacksonville, Texas – AWRV
Emmanuel Orthodox Church – Warren, Massachusetts – AWRV
Holy Apostles Orthodox Church – Tyler, Texas
Holy Dormition Chapel, New Jersey, USA – Orthodox Church of France
Holy Incarnation Mission – Detroit, Michigan – AWRV
Holy Paraclete Orthodox Church – Oregon – Orthodox Church of France
Holy Trinity Orthodox Church – Lynchburg, Virginia – AWRV
Michael and All Angels Orthodox Church – San Antonio, Texas – ROCOR
Our Lady of Glastonbury Orthodox Church – Hamilton, Ontario, – ROCOR
Our Lady of Grace Orthodox Mission Church – Melville, New York – AWRV
Our Lady of Regla – Miami, Florida – AWRV
Our Lady of Walsingham Church – Mesquite, Texas – AWRV
Our Lady of Walsingham Orthodox Church – Allison Park, Pennsylvania – ROCOR
Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne Orthodox Church – Nashville, Tennessee – ROCOR
Saint Andrew the Apostle Church – Eustis, Florida – AWRV
Saint Benedict Orthodox Church – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma – ROCOR
Saint Benedict of Nursia Antiochian Orthodox Church Wichita Falls, Texas – AWRV
Saint Columba Church – Lafayette, Colorado – AWRV
Saint Cuthbert's Orthodox Mission – Pawtucket, Rhode Island – ROCOR
Saint George Church – Lawrence, Massachusetts – AWRV
Saint Gregory the Great Church – Washington, D.C. – AWRV
Saint Gregory the Great of Rome Orthodox Church, Seattle, Washington – ROCOR
Saint James of Jerusalem Orthodox Church – Hanceville, Alabama – ROCOR
Saint John the Wonderworker Orthodox Church – Carlsbad, California – ROCOR
Saint John the Wonderworker Orthodox Church – Des Moines, Iowa – ROCOR
Saint John the Wonderworker Orthodox Church – Simcoe, Ontario – ROCOR
Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco Orthodox Church – Peoria, Illinois – ROCOR
Saint Joseph of Arimathea Orthodox Church and House of Prayer – La Porte, Indiana – ROCOR
Saint Joseph Orthodox Church – Sarasota, Florida – ROCOR
Saint Katherine of Alexandria Orthodox Church – Pelion, South Carolina – ROCOR
Saint Mark's Church – Denver, Colorado – AWRV
Saint Mary the Virgin Orthodox Church – Barrie, Ontario – ROCOR
Saint Mary the Virgin Orthodox Church – Madison, Georgia – ROCOR
Saint Michael's Church – Whittier, California – AWRV
Saint Michael Archangel Mission – Wichita, Kansas – AWRV
Saint Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church – Spokane, WA – AWRV
Saint Nicholas of Myra Orthodox Church – Bush, Louisiana – ROCOR
Saint Nicholas of Myra Russian Orthodox Church – Acworth, Georgia – ROCOR
Saint Patrick's Chapel – Northville, Michigan – ROCOR
Saint Patrick Church – Warrenton, Virginia – AWRV
Saint Patrick Orthodox Church – Bealeton, Virginia – AWRV
Saint Patrick of Ireland Orthodox Church – Stanwood, Washington – ROCOR
Saint Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church – Houston, Texas – AWRV
Saint Paul the Apostle Orthodox Church – Kenosha, Wisconsin – ROCOR
Saint Peter's Antiochian Orthodox Church – Fort Worth, Texas – AWRV
Saint Peter's Church – North Miami, Florida – AWRV
Saint Stephen Orthodox Church – Springfield, Massachusetts [55] – AWRV
– AWRV Saint Thomas Orthodox Church – Mountain Home, Arkansas – ROCOR
Saint Vincent of Lerins Church – Omaha, Nebraska – AWRV
South America [ edit ]
Hesychastic Centre of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – French Orthodox Church
Hesychastic Centre of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil – French Orthodox Church
Vicariate of St John of Saint-Denis & St John of San Francisco, Argentina – Orthodox Church of France
Western Europe [ edit ]
Annunciation Orthodox Mission, Montpellier, France – Orthodox Church of the Gauls
Communion of the Saints Orthodox Chapel, Aubonne, Switzerland – Orthodox Church of France
Our Lady & Saint Thiebault Orthodox Church, Gorze, France – Orthodox Church of the Gauls
Our Lady of the Angels & St Anskar Orthodox Church, Kiel, Germany – Orthodox Church of France
Our Lady of the Fiat & St John the Evangelist Orthodox Church, Craponne, France – Orthodox Church of the Gauls
Our Lady of the Sign Orthodox Church, Saint-Dolay, France – Celtic Orthodox Church
Parish of the Visitation and the Holy Encounter, Nancy, France – Orthodox Church of the Gauls
Saint Anastasia, Croatian Orthodox Church
Saint Anne Chapel, St Vigor-le-Grand, France – Orthodox Church of France
Saint Anne Orthodox Mission, Paris, France – French Orthodox Church
Saint Athanasius & Saint Amand Orthodox Church, Brussels, Belgium – Orthodox Church of the Gauls
Saint Aure Orthodox Church, Paris, France – Celtic Orthodox Church
Saint Benedict, Croatian Orthodox Church
Saint Donatus, Croatian Orthodox Church
Saint Germanus of Parish Chapel, Le Mesnil Germain, France – Orthodox Church of France
Saint Gregory Palamas Orthodox Chapel, Lausanne, Switzerland – Orthodox Church of France
Saint Irenaeus Cathedral, Paris, France – Orthodox Church of France
Saint Joseph of Arimathaea Orthodox Church, Nîmes, France – Celtic Orthodox Church
Saint Marien en Bourbonnais, Audes, France – Orthodox Church of France
Saint Mary Magdalene Orthodox Church, Toulon, France – French Orthodox Church
Saint Nicholas & Saint Eubert Orthodox Church, Lille, France – Orthodox Church of the Gauls
Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church, Vérines, Switzerland – Celtic Orthodox Church
Saint Remy & Saint Clotilde Orthodox Church, Puiseux-en-Retz, France – Orthodox Church of France
Saint Seraphim of Sarov Orthodox Church, Coupiac, France – French Orthodox Church
Saint Theoroda Orthodox Church, Flensburg, Germany – Orthodox Church of France
Saint Titus – Croatian Orthodox Church
Saint Tugdual Orthodox Church, Saint-Hilaire-de-Chaléons, France – Celtic Orthodox Church
Saint Winwaloe Orthodox Church, Beuzec-cap-Sizun, France – Celtic Orthodox Church
Monasteries and hermitages [ edit ]
There are a few monasteries and hermitages which use the Western Rite:
Abbey of Saint Alban & Saint Æthelwold, Buittle Castle, Scotland [56] – Old Calendarist
– Old Calendarist Assumption of Mary Benedictine Monastery, Eisbergen / Porta Westfalica, Germany – ROCOR
Bethany Community – Gorze, France – Orthodox Church of the Gauls
Christminster/Christ the Saviour Monastery, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada – ROCOR
Holy Angels Hermitage, Woolwich, London – Old Calendarist
Holy Presence Monastery, Saint-Dolay, France – Celtic Orthodox Church
Monastery of Saint Benedict, Zadar – Croatian Orthodox Church
Our Lady of the Holy Presence Monastery, Toms Brook, Virginia, US – Celtic Orthodox Church
Saint Bride Hermitage, Edinburgh, Scotland – ROCOR
Saint Clotilde Monastery, Saint Dolay, France – Celtic Orthodox Church
St Michael & St Martin Monastery, Bois-Aubry, Luzé, France – Orthodox Church of the Gauls
St Michael du Var Monastery, France – French Orthodox Church
Monastery, France – French Orthodox Church Saint Seiriol Hermitage, Bodorgan, Wales – Celtic Orthodox Church
In addition to the established monasteries, some parishes also have among their members Benedictine oblates. Some are associated with Christminster Monastery, while others are not associated with any particular monastery and thus are not oblates in the traditional Roman Catholic sense. These latter oblates are individuals who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict to foster their spiritual development.
Canonical missionary societies [ edit ]
These groups are Canonical missionary societies with a core of canonical Orthodox laity served by canonical Orthodox clergy within the Orthodox Church with the goal of future reception of converts into the Western Rite of Orthodoxy. The societies themselves were formed inside the Orthodox Church for reception of converts, and not for the reception of the societies themselves. The Orthodox Church they are currently under the guidance of is also listed.
Saint Brendan OSS – Panama City Florida – ROCOR[57]
Criticisms [ edit ]
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware says that the Western Rite is inherently divisive; following different liturgical traditions than their neighboring Byzantine Rite Orthodox Christians, those using the Western Rite do not share liturgical unity with them and present an unfamiliar face to the majority of Orthodox Christians. Ware is particularly concerned about the further fragmentation of Orthodoxy in non-Orthodox countries, in this case in Britain.[58]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
This article incorporates text from Western Rite at OrthodoxWiki which is licensed under the CC-BY-SA and GFDL.
Liturgies [ edit ]
Apologetic sites [ edit ]Please enable Javascript to watch this video
KANSAS CITY -- Kansas City Missouri Police have a bizarre case on their hands. A man who was reportedly high on PCP fell out of a moving car. He then got run over but was able to get up. The accident led to a child abduction attempt and landed the man in the hospital.
The accident happened around 2 p.m. on Saturday near I-70 & Blue Ridge Cutoff. Witnesses tell FOX 4 that a lot of people stopped to help the man who appeared to be seriously hurt.
The man then got up and tried to open the doors of one of the cars that tried to help him. When he opened the back door, he tried to take a one-month-old baby who was inside a car seat. The parents say they kept yelling at him and pulling the car seat so he couldn't take the baby. That's when other people who had stopped stepped in to help.
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According to friends, the man involved in this abduction attempt is actually a victim himself. He lost his daughter about a month ago. They believe he saw the little girl and it reminded him of his daughter. They also say they don't think he was trying to hurt the baby.
As of now, the suspect is in an area hospital pending charges including attempted child abduction.BERLIN/GENEVA (Reuters) - European business is increasingly concerned about the potential collapse of the region’s 26-nation border-free zone under the pressure of a huge influx of migrants, with companies from automakers to logistics firms warning of serious losses.
Migrants argue with police near the Greek-Macedonian border, near the village of Idomeni, Greece March 2, 2016. REUTERS/Marko Djurica
Some use words such as “horrific” and “devastating” to describe the prospect of an end to the 30-year-old Schengen accord, seen one of the essential linchpins of post-World War Two peace and prosperity in Europe.
Schengen has already been temporarily suspended by seven countries to keep migrants from crossing their borders, and fears are rising of an European-wide reversal towards costly and delaying frontier checks.
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“The impact would be quite devastating,” Olivier Jankovec, the association’s director general, said, though adding that he did not believe this would |
got no more scripts from me. My production went to cash customers. Belatedly, Howard, on his own initiative, adopted the same approach. (BOTD 72)
Other writers also noted that backlog of payments got so bad that some payments were made more than a year after publication. (CLIMH 178)
At the time, the staff at Weird Tales consisted of William Sprenger, the business manager; B. Cornelius, the printer, majority shareholder, and treasurer; and Farnsworth Wright, the editor who did everything else, from art layout to writing ad copy. Of the three, Howard had direct dealings with both Wright and Sprenger (though none of the latter’s letters survive), and it is likely that Sprenger made the ultimate decision as to whom would be paid and how much; certainly he signed some of the checks. (CLIMH 79) After Robert E. Howard’s death, Wright responded to Dr. Howard’s criticism of their business:
I must correct the impression that I or anyone else connected with Weird Tales “put in our pockets” the money that was due your son during the period when Weird Tales was in the throes of the depression. Fact is, I often did not know from one month to the other whether I would receive any money at all from the magazine; and I often received nothing (a serious condition, with my wife and son Robert to take care of); and it has been years since I received more than a fraction of the salary I used to get. […] Your son understood this state of affairs with the magazine, for both Mr. Sprenger and I explained it to him in our letters. (CLIMH 103-104)
The rumors that Wright went without a salary added something to the myth of Weird Tales in later decades, though E. Hoffmann Price, who visited Wright and the WT office in Chicago, poo-pooed the idea, and later even claimed:
A good many years after this dialog, I learned from an employee of the bank which had handled W.T. funds from the beginning and on until another outfit bought the magazine, that the publisher had money by the ream. The outfit had always pleaded poverty, and had found the “Great Depression” a handy device to exploit writers who could not, or fancied that they could not write salable yarns for any other than W. T. (BOTD 72)
This was probably a mistaken impression on the part of Price, as Wright was at pains to explain to Dr. Howard:
But there has always been sufficient balance at the news company (which holds back payment always for three full issues, a sum that we cannot tap) to pay off the authors in full in case the magazine went under; though the fund would not be available for that purpose until all the copies outstanding with the magazine-dealers had been called in. (CLIMH 104)
Still, the overdue and partial payments by Weird Tales, the long silence in response to Howard’s plea for funds, and the growing amount of monies owed—as Howard’s stories continued to see print in WT during 1935—all contributed to the agitation with Weird Tales in the Howard household. When E. Hoffmann Price and his wife visited Robert E. Howard for the second time in October 1935, the elder Howard braced him: “They are robbing my son—What do you think of those sons of bitches?” “Doctor, they rob us all, so I am getting into other lines, and so is Robert—” (CLIMH 331)
Two-Gun Bob was getting into other lines. In November 1935 he splashed three new markets: Western Aces, Thrilling Mystery, and Spicy Adventure, but he still wasn’t making sales as regularly as he wished (CL3.373, 392). While his work would slow and stutter to a stop during the worst of his mother’s illnesses, as Dr. Howard observed: “as his mother would react and show promise of even partial recovery, he would become normal again and spring into his work with renewed energy.” (CLIMH 59) Such bursts of creativity gave birth to Breckinridge Elkins, Pike Bearfield, and the revival of El Borak. Yet Mrs. Howard’s health continued to decline, and the medical bills kept piling up.
About the middle of November my mother’s health became so poor we took her to the Torbett Sanatorium in Marlin, Texas, where more than a gallon of fluid was drawn off her pleura. She stayed at Marlin two weeks. (CL3.388)
Robert E. Howard stayed in Marlin as well, and wrote several stories as his mother healed, experimenting with unfamiliar styles – just as the first part of The Hour of the Dragon debuted in the December 1935 issue, earning a cover painting by Margaret Brundage. Though they never met, Brundage recalled:
Howard was my favorite author […] I always liked his stories the best. […] Quinn’s work was alright but I liked Howard’s much better. Quinn was smart though. He realized immediately that Wright was having me do a nude for every cover. So, he made sure that each de Grandin story had at least one sequence where the heroine shed all her clothes. Wright invariably picked the Quinn stories to be the cover story. […] I had just about no contact with any of the authors of the stories that I illustrated. […] I never heard from any other authors other than an occasional letter from one that Wright showed me. (WTS 68)
Howard seemed almost to have given up on Weird Tales, describing “Red Nails” as “well may be the last fantasy I’ll ever write.” (CL3.389, 392-3) Then, at around the turn of the year:
A belated acknowledgment of the check for $99.00 from Weird Tales. A pleasant surprize, as I had not expected a check for “The Grisly Horror” at this time. (CL3.400)
The January 1936 issue of Weird Tales featured the second installment of The Hour of the Dragon. The first installment in the previous number was voted the most popular story in the issue, prolific fan-letter writer Gertrude Hemken of Chicago came out in praise of Conan in the Eyrie, and though behind in payments nearly a year (“The Grisly Horror” had been published in February 1935), WT was again cutting checks for Robert E. Howard. During the first weeks of January as his mother recovered, Two-Gun Bob reportedly managed 35,000 words of material (including a rewrite of “Sailor Dorgan and the Jade Monkey,” which had been accepted by Farnsworth Wright for The Magic Carpet Magazine but returned when the magazine folded), and between sales and the check from WT was managing his finances. (CL3.421, cf. BOTD 82, CLIMH 32-33) However, his mother’s condition soon took a turn for the worse:
I’ve had little opportunity to do any writing of any kind for the past month. In fact this letter is the longest bit of writing I’ve done since about the 20th of January. After our return from Marlin we stayed at home for about two weeks, and then my mother’s pleura filled again, and we took her to a hospital in San Angelo, 105 miles southwest of Cross Plains. After a few days then we put her in a sanatorium about seventeen miles northwest of San Angelo, where she stayed for six weeks, when her condition got so bad we put her back in the hospital at San Angelo. She remained there twelve days, and then we brought her home, since it seemed they had done all they could for her. (CL3.415)
Perhaps following the advice of E. Hoffmann Price and encouraged by Kline (who was, after all, earning a commission on sales to magazines other than Weird Tales), Howard focused on other markets, and there is no record that he submitted another story to Weird Tales after “Red Nails” for the rest of 1935. (CL3.367, 392-3)
For myself, I haven’t submitted anything to Weird Tales for many months, though I would, if payments could be made a little more promptly. I reckon the boys have their troubles, same as me, but my needs are urgent and immediate. (CL3.421)
Novalyne Price, Howard’s on-again love interest, approved of the transition:
I want to see you make something of that talent. I don’t want your work to be interfered with. I’m glad you’ve stopped writing for Weird Tales. They didn’t pay you anyway, and you’re better than that. Much better than that. (OWWA 267)
Despite these protests, Howard doesn’t seem to have been entirely done with fantasy. The first part of his essay “The Hyborian Age” appeared in The Phantagraph in February 1936, and the same month saw the publication of the third installment of The Hour of the Dragon, with praise for Howard and the serial was effusive in the Eyrie, with letters from Alvin V. Pershing, Henry Kuttner, B. M. Reynolds, Gertrude Hemken again, and Julius Watkins, who criticized Brundage’s cover painting for the December 1935 issue:
From Howard’s stories I have always pictured Conan as a rough, muscular scarred figure of giant stature with thick, wiry black hair covering his massive chest, powerful arms, and muscular legs, and a face that’s as rugged as the weather-beaten face of an old sea captain…. The first part of Howard’s The Hour of the Dragon is very exciting and I anxiously await the remaining installments. (WGP 81)
Watkins wasn’t the only critic of the art that accompanied the serial; James Vincent Napoli handled the interior artwork, and prompted Howard to remark: “Yes, Napoli’s done very well with Conan, though at times he seems to give him a sort of Latin cast of the countenance which isn’t according to type, as I conceive it. However, that isn’t enough to kick about.” (CL3.430)
Two-Gun Bob, meanwhile, had taken his mother back to the hospital in Marlin, and did not return to Cross Plains until March. (CL3.425, 426) Weird Tales published the penultimate installment of The Hour of the Dragon, with fan-letters in the Eyrie from Michael Liene and Charles H. Deems, but the most effusive expression of praise and support for Howard’s Weird Tales character came from P. Schuyler Miller and Dr. John D. Clark, a pair of fans that had put together “A Probable Outline of Conan’s Career,” and had written to Howard for further details on the Cimmerian, which the Texan readily supplied them with.
Sales piled up, with Weird Tales “paying regularly” (CL3.431), but Howard’s mother still needed a great deal of care:
Seeing we could expect nothing from specialists or hospitals we brought her home, in the early part of March, and we’ve been here ever since. We got goats and for weeks she lived mainly on their milk. She seemed to be improving a little when she had an attack of acute pleurisy on her right side, which until then hadn’t been affected. My father handled that, and she was definitely on the mend, although the sweats never ceased, when in the early part of April we had the worst dust storm I ever saw in my life, and she developed pneumonia. […] I don’t know whether she’ll live or not. […] She started sweating in January and it’s just the last few days that there has been any appreciable lessening of it. Many a night she had to be changed six or seven times, and that many times a day—sometimes more. Woman after woman we hired, and they quit, either worn out by their work, or unwilling to do it, though my father and I did most of it. Sometimes when we could get a couple of good women we’d get a short breathing spell. Again there were times when we couldn’t get anybody, and I not only took care of my mother, while my father handled his wide practice, but did all the housework, washing, and cooking. I’ve gone for nearly a week at a time without even taking off my shoes, just snatching a nap as I could between times. Things are better now, but anything can happen, and I’m not optimistic. (CL3.458-460)
At the same time as Howard struggled to write and support his parents, Novalyne Price was less than understanding and supportive of both demands on his time and attention. Of Weird Tales in particular, Price later recalled:
From the way he talks, he’s making a good many sales to Argosy, sales to Action Stories, but the thing that seems to upset him is that Weird Tales still owes him about a thousand dollars and doesn’t pay. He appreciates Wright for giving him a start in selling stories, but sometimes he calls Wright a two-bit editor; a man who can’t recognize anything good; a dyspeptic; a small man who gags at a gnat and swallows a camel. Although he uses such barbed epithets, he really doesn’t mean to be malicious. The trouble with Wright (I take it) is that he seems very concerned with what the readers say or write. He doesn’t take into consideration that readers are a fickle lot. “I lose readers sometimes,” Bob said. “I admit that. But, damn it, I always gain them back or get new ones. Wright forgets that. It’s a damn losing battle.” (OWWA 278)
He did gain them back. The April 1936 issue of Weird Tales featured the final installment of The Hour of the Dragon, and in praise Mrs. John A. Heller wrote:
Robert E. Howard’s stories are always fascinating from start to finish and I know this new serial will never be a disappointment. I notice in the Eyrie someone asks to have Howard’s stories about King Kull revived. Come to think of it, I think the King was a more fascinating character than Conan. I remember I was bitterly disappointed when he dropped the King for Conan. However, Conan has won his spurs with me, and I do not want him to be dropped entirely in favor of further stories about King Kull. I would like him to give us stories of each in sort of a rotating schedule. Still the King will have to go places to win back the place he used to have and lost to Conan; he only lost it because Howard dropped him entirely. (WGP 82)
The readers of Weird Tales voted The Hour of the Dragon as the best part of the April issue, and though the May 1936 number contained no new fiction from Howard, the Eyrie was loaded with praise for the conclusion of the serial, from J. MacKay Tait of Nova Scotia and G. A. Robinson of Kingston, Jamaica, Weird Tales author Ronal Kayser and regular letter-writer Gertrude Hemken, as well as from Ivan Funderburgh, Elanor Layton, and Donald Allgeier. Robert E. Howard had a letter published:
Enthusiasm impels me to pause from burning spines off cactus for my drouth-bedeviled goats long enough to give three slightly dust-choked cheers for the April cover illustration. The color combination is vivid and attractive, the lady is luscious, and altogether I think it’s the best thing Mrs. Brundage has done since she illustrated my “Black Colossus.” And that’s no depreciation of the covers done between these master-pictures. I must also express my appreciation to Mr. Napoli, who has done a splendid job of illustrating my serial. I hope the readers have liked the yarn as well as I liked writing it. (CL3.462)
More privately, Howard would write that: “I believe of all the various clans of readers, the weird and scientific-fiction fans are the most loyal and active. […] I find it more and more difficult to write anything but western yarns.” (CL3.461) Howard noted that he had not “written a weird story for nearly a year,” but perhaps the sale encouraged him, as he began a new weird, though he never completed it. (CL3.438)
Howard’s story in the June 1936 issue of Weird Tales was “Black Canaan,” this time illustrated by Harold S. De Lay. “Black Canaan” was a story Lovecraft had urged his friend to write (cf. CL2.130-134, 158), but which had failed to place and had to be rewritten to Wright’s requirements to sell:
Ignore my forthcoming “Black Canaan”. It started out as a good yarn, laid in the real Canaan, which lies between Tulip Creek and the Ouachita River in southwestern Arkansas, the homeland of the Howards, but I cut so much of the guts out of it, in response to editorial requirements, that in its published form it won’t much resemble the original theme […] (CL3.438-439)
Wright was sensitive to the reader’s comments, which he knew well from the fan-letters he read and quoted in each Eyrie, and sensitive to sales his criticisms probably echoed what he perceived as their tastes, as E. Hoffmann Price once recalled:
Wright once said, “Often I buy a story because I like it. But always, I am obliged first to consider whether my readers would like that yarn. Many a time, I’ve accepted things which I did not care for, but which I felt would please many of the readers.” (BOTD 13)
The readers thought more of the story than Two-Gun Bob did, and it was voted the most popular in the issue. Praise and criticism for Howard once more showered the Eyrie, from E. A. Taylor, J. F. MacDuffee, Robert Hoyer, Charles H. Bert, W.A. Betikofer, and once again the irrepressible Gertrude Hemken:
And then I laid down my WT after having read the conclusion of The Hour of the Dragon—with a sigh of satisfaction—as of accomplishing a thing well done. The whole story was brimful of excitement, fun, eye-widening horror—it’s just about the best I’ve ever read in WT. Mr. Howard certainly created a dynamic character when he introduced Conan. One thing I noticed a bit out of order—Conan asked for Zenobia to rule as his queen. I wonder how long that will last? (WGP 85)
July 1936 saw the first installment of Howard’s Conan serial “Red Nails,” the first of three, with interior art by Harold S. De Lay (who would illustrate the rest of the serial) and a cover by Margaret Brundage. Praise for The Hour of the Dragon was still occupying the Eyrie, in the form of another letter from Alvin V. Pershing. Fans of Howard at the magazine must have been looking forward to more tales from Two-Gun Bob, and The Phantagraph was set to publish the second part of “The Hyborian Age” in an August supplement, and the third in October-November. At this point with the publication of “Red Nails,” Weird Tales still owed Howard something around $1,350, but were paying it off, and relations seemed almost normal once again. (CLIMH 132) Margaret Brundage remembers:
I came into the offices one day and Wright informed me of Howard’s suicide. We both just sat around and cried for most of the day. He was always my personal favorite. (WTS 68)
In the Howard household, Hester Jane Howard had been on her deathbed for some time. Two weeks before his death, Robert E. Howard had informed Kline that “In the event of my death, please send all checks for me to my father, Dr. I.M. Howard,” and likewise marked two manuscripts marked “In the event of my death, send these two stories to Farnsworth Wright, Editor of Weird Tales, 840 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago.” (CLIMH 84) The last of Howard’s letters—to E. Hoffmann Price, his friend and peer at Weird Tales, and a note to Otto Binder, Kline’s representative in New York, were postmarked 3 June and 5 June, respectively. The next week would be spent at his mother’s side as she slipped into a coma from which she would never awaken. Robert E. Howard committed suicide on 11 June 1936; his mother passed away 31 hours later, on the 12 June. Howard never saw the July issue of Weird Tales.
New issues of a magazine typically come out at the beginning of the month, and not infrequently at the end of the previous month. News of Howard’s death was delayed by the necessity of funeral services, then went out in letters from Dr. Howard to his son’s correspondents, and from there quickly made the rounds. Farnsworth Wright was on vacation, and did not receive the news until the beginning of July, by which point it was too late to mention in that month’s issue of Weird Tales. To Howard’s friend Thurston Torbett, Wright wrote:
I feel a great sense of personal loss in Howard’s death, for he was one of my literary discoveries, and although I had never met him, we have corresponded for twelve years, during which time I had come to know him and admire him both as a friend and as a writer of genius. (CLIMH 67)
In early July Otis Adelbert Kline wrote to Carl Jacobi:
He finished his last story for Weird Tales, which had bought his first story, and took it to his mother, saying: “Mother, it is finished.” (CLIMH 69)
No letters from Howard survive that attest to this event, nor is the title of the story given, but was likely one of the manuscripts that Dr. Howard sent to Weird Tales after his son’s death, and in accordance with his instructions. These stories were “Dig Me No Grave” and “The Fire of Asshurbanipal”—Dr. Howard’s letter indicates one of the manuscripts also contained “The Black Hound of Death,” but the ledger suggests that this story, which had been rejected by Thrilling Mystery, was accepted on 13 May 1936. (cf. CLIMH 86-87, 367) Robert E. Howard’s dealings with Weird Tales had now entered a posthumous phase, with Dr. Howard working to settle his son’s estate, including the considerable monies due from Weird Tales, and the rights to his son’s published prose and poetry.
Notice of Howard’s death went out in the August number, which contained the second installment of “Red Nails,” later voted the best of the issue. An unknowing Gertrude Hemken and Charles H. Bert showered praise on “Black Canaan” and The Hour of the Dragon in the Eyrie. The mourning proper began with the October issue—there being no issue for September—with elegies from H. P. Lovecraft, E. Hoffmann Price, Robert Bloch, and Seabury Quinn, appreciation from Irvin T. Gould, Gertrude Hemken, and Robert A. Madle. The poem R.E.H. from R. H. Barlow accompanied the final installment of Howard’s last Conan story, which tied for first place in the most popular stories of that issue.
November’s Weird Tales had Howard’s posthumous tale “The Black Hound of Death,” with another illustration by Harold S. De Lay, and Howard continued to be the main subject of the Eyrie. December, which featured “The Fire of Asshurbanipal,” with both cover and interior art by J. Allen St. John, was much the same. Letters from fans would continue to cross the editor’s desk for years, and in January 1937 Wright wrote quite sincerely: “By his death WEIRD TALES has suffered an irreparable loss.” (WGP 98)
References
BOTD The Book of the Dead (E. Hoffmann Price, 2001, Arkham House)
CL The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (3 vols. + Index and Addenda)
CLIMH The Collected Letters of Doctor Isaac M. Howard (2011)
OWWA One Who Walked Alone (Novalyne Price Ellis, 1998)
WGP Robert E. Howard: World’s Greatest Pulpster (Dennis McHaney, 2005)
WTS The Weird Tales Story (Robert Weinberg, 1999)post response: +759
1. [+1861, -122]
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2. [+1383, -54]
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3. [+1000, -99]
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4. [+787, -85]
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5. [+641, -49]
“It’s not Sunhee, it’s Sunny”
[naver] “AURA SNIPER”… SOHEE, DREAMY CHIC INNOCENCE
post response: +62
original post: here
1. [+84, -7]
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2. [+76, -8]
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3. [+54, -8]
She’s so pretty nowadays. She suits well with the clothes!
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ㅠㅠ I like Sohee
5. [+42, -7]
ㅋ looks like this brand will do well because of Sohee Whatever Sohee wears becomes prettylooks like this brand will do well because of Sohee
[naver] “LA TRIP”… CHOI YOOJUNG X KIM DOYEON, NOTICEABLE CELEBRITY FORCE
post response: +445
1. [+3454, -136]
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2. [+1248, -129]
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3. [+1248, -129]
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4. [+991, -121]
Pretty pretty!!!
5. [+723, -110]
They both suit the photoshoot… they really have that force… wow
[naver] BLACK PINK JENNIE "THE #1 THING I WANT TO ACHIEVE IN MY 20'S IS OF COURSE BLACK PINK"
post response: +492
1. [+1615, -92]
She's unconventionally pretty
2. [+1488, -76]
Somehow, her face is exactly the charming type
3. [+1038, -71]
She's sexy but cute at the same time <3
4. [+790, -72]
Seriously pretty
5. [+597, -70]
I really like you~~~
[naver] 'LA'S MALE GOD'.. LEE JEHOON, FIRST TIME SEEING THIS KIND OF CHARISMA
post response: +114
original post here
1. [+73, -1]
Seriously crazy....... freaking handsome <3 <3 <3
2. [+51, -2]
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3. [+33, 0]
Please shoot something with this concept~^^
4. [+32, -1]
He's handsome but he even has the aura down, I like Lee Jehoon ㅠㅠ
5. [+34, -3]
Matchless sharp nose~~~~~Going into 2015 there’s a lot riding on ArenaNet releasing an expansion pack. With only theories behind its development, one corner of Guild Wars 2 that desperately needs some intervention is its Structured PvP. While the recent changes to the game mode are welcome and have seen some increased participation, there are still significant flaws. The New Year and potential expansion pack is AreanNet’s best opportunity to fix these. Here’s my analysis of the current Meta and what I would change.
Celestial Amulet
To start with the most obvious, the Celestial Amulet is crippling Guild Wars 2’s PvP. For any class capable of Might stacking (Engineer, Warrior or Elementalist) Celestial Amulet’s are statistically far superior to any other Amulet. Amulet’s provide a variety of total Attributes but Celestial is significantly higher. Combined with Might stacks of 10 or more, these three classes are capable of not only dealing enormous Power based damage, but Conditions as well. Worse, their survivability is enormous because of their combined skills and utilities. I regularly play Celestial Engineer and what I’m afforded thanks to the Amulet leaves me questioning why I ever play any other class. To play any other class means you’re facing an uphill struggle the moment you start and while these Celestial builds can be beaten, it’s far harder work than it ever should be.
Before Celestial builds became the "norm", you’d actually see a good spread of classes within PvP and as part of that, there would be an element of tactical play in the fights you chose to engage in, depending on your classes strengths and weaknesses. Now and if you’re either an Engineer, Warrior or Elementalist there’s no need to do this: you excel at absolutely everything. As a result, there’s no thought process other than “I’m good everywhere.”
Might Stacking
Part of the reason why the Celestial Amulet is so strong is because the three classes who use it are capable of Might Stacking above 10 stacks. When an Elementalist, with almost no effort, can obtain 25 Might Stacks, not only is he going to hit like a truck but when paired with the Celestial Amulet means his Attributes are untouchable. The exact same can be said for a Hambow or Shout Warrior and a Rifle Engineer. The problem ArenaNet have is that limiting Might stacking in PvP would go down with the community like a pricked balloon while nerfing Celestial to compensate would make the Amulet entirely useless. Perhaps not a popular opinion but at this point I’d simply remove the Celestial Amulet and replace Blasting Fire Fields with another Boon.
Evasion and Dodging Is Too Prevalent
There was a time when utilising a Dodge would require both skill and timing. They were precious to you because you knew that Endurance acquisition wasn’t easy to come by. Where we now find ourselves in PvP is that Endurance acquisition comes too easily. Combined with a variety of skills that provide Evasion and it’s a recipe for disaster. Little thought now goes into dodging and instead players simply use the skill in abundance in the knowledge they’ll be able to dodge again only seconds later. There’s simply too much access to Vigor and Endurance regeneration while skills that offer Evasion have too little cooldown. Reducing the prevalence of these 3 things will once again place emphasis on the importance of dodging. I'm sure we've all come up against a Thief or Ranger wildly flailing around doing very little but avoiding almost every single piece of incoming damage. It's just silly.
SKILL AND TRAIT CHANGES
There have been too few Skill and Trait changes since Guild Wars 2 launched. Too many skills are still terrible in both a PvP and PvE environment while too many Traits serve no purpose or are downright terrible. This leads players into the same tried and tested Meta setups with too few variations and the feeling that the PvP has grown stale. For the Trait system to truly work every single Trait, irrespective of whether it’s a minor or grand-master, needs to be awesome. Traits such as Acidic Elixir’s or Empowering Adrenaline have no place when they are fundamentally poor. Traits should always offer a very difficult choice as to how to build your class because the pro’s and con’s over one Trait or another should be significant. As far as skills as concerned, they too should cause a player difficult choices in what to take. At the moment it’s simply a case of classes still using most of the skills that they always have. Elites and at least half of all skills are poor and unviable while some are far too strong.
Double Sigils and On Crit Triggers
I sometimes take my Longbow Ranger into Ranked Arena for a break from playing Celestial or if I’ve grown frustrated at my Mesmer. Like most spike classes (including Shatter Mesmer and Thieves) everyone double stacks Superior Sigil of Fire and Superior Sigil of Air. These two Sigils are not only capable of dealing enormous damage in an instant but the ability to mitigate or avoid that spike is impossible. To be able to spike thousands of damage in an instant every 5 seconds is frightening, even more so when it’s unavoidable. Whether it’s Mug or Rapid Fire, the ability to combine these sigils is too strong and simply results in luck playing too bigger part in success. If two Mesmers or Thieves are facing off it literally becomes a case of who triggers Fire or Air first as to the winner. That’s wholly wrong and undermines player skill when fighting an opponent.
Reading Skills and Passive Traits
AreanNet did well to add an option to standardize the models you see in the game but what they failed to do is add visible queues for all skills and Traits. Whether it’s the Fear from a Necromancer and his Rune of the Nightmare or an Engineer using Net Shot, they lack “tells”. As a result it’s incredibly difficult to know exactly when to dodge or interrupt. Runes such as Rune of the Nightmare should have a passive glow on the character, just like a Guardian has when Aegis is active. Players need to be able to see and understand what they’re up against so that the playing field is fair. To be feared for 2 seconds without knowing if the Necromancer has it on cooldown is frustrating and it feels cheap. ArenaNet have already acknowledged this recently by adding a tell to a Ranger’s Point Blank Shot but such animations should be on all skills so that they can be learnt.You can listen to today's Environment Report or read an expanded version of the story below.
The Bruce Nuclear Power Plant sits on the Ontario side of Lake Huron. It’s across the lake from Michigan’s Thumb region. Ontario Power Generation owns the plant.
The company wants to store the lower level nuclear waste from all of their plants underground, near the Bruce plant.
They’re proposing to dig almost a half mile underground to build the facility. It would be a little more than half a mile away from the shore of Lake Huron.
It’s called a deep geologic repository. It would store low and intermediate level waste from the company's 20 nuclear reactors.
Just to be clear: spent nuclear fuel would not be stored in this proposed site.
Marie Wilson is a project spokesperson for OPG. She says the low level waste includes things like clothing, mop heads and paper towels with very low levels of radioactivity. She says intermediate level waste includes things such as filters from the reactors’ water systems.
"About 80 to 90 percent of what is going to go in OPG’s DGR is low level waste, so it will be the majority. After about 300 years, all of that waste for the most part will have decayed. With respect to the very small volume of intermediate level waste, which would be about 10 to 20 percent, most of that waste will be gone after about 100,000 years," says Wilson.
So - the facility would need to be built to safely store radioactive waste underground for at least 100,000 years.
Wilson says they’ve conducted more than four years’ worth of studies, taking a close look at the conditions of the rock at the site.
"The conclusion is that there will not be any significant adverse effects to the environment or human health," says Wilson.
A very long timeline
But other people who’ve looked at the proposal say it’s hard to know what the effects will be.
Brenda Murphy studies nuclear waste management at Wilfrid Laurier University in Brantford, Ontario.
"We’re talking about timelines that go incredibly far into the future, farther into the future than we have pyramids going back into the past," says Murphy.
She says there has been a lot of research on deep geologic repositories, but she says it depends what parameters you put into the models and how you tweak those models.
"We're talking about timelines that go incredibly far into the future, farther into the future than we have pyramids going back into the past."
"One of the things for Canada is that most of our models that have been done over the last 40 years have been for igneous rock, which is the rock on the Canadian Shield. It’s not been for the sedimentary rock. And so, Kincardine, where they’re looking at the low and intermediate level facility, is going to be in that sedimentary rock. The difference being: the sedimentary rock is much softer, it’s more porous, it’s more prone to fracture – all of those things, compared to the harder rock of the Canadian Shield," she says.
In an email, OPG spokesperson Neal Kelly gave the following response:
Over the course of the last two decades, international research has indicated that sedimentary bedrock settings can provide favorable conditions for the safe long-term management of radioactive wastes. In the correct setting, sedimentary rock sites offer geologically stable and very low permeability environs that contain ancient groundwater systems in which contaminant migration is governed by diffusive processes. In clay rich sedimentary rock settings, the self sealing properties of the rock minimize the influence of fractures on Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) performance. Extensive research conducted at Underground Research Laboratories, such as the Mt. Terri facility in Switzerland, is contributing to a strong sense of confidence that sedimentary environments provide a suitable setting for DGR implementation. Sedimentary geologic settings are either being pursued for long-term radioactive waste management purposes or have operating DGRs in the United States, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada and Germany.
Pitting neighbors against each other
This proposal to bury low and intermediate level waste is dividing some communities in Canada.
Cheryl Grace is the spokesperson for Save Our Saugeen Shores. It’s a citizen’s group that’s against the repository.
"I mean, there’s definitely a lot of tension because a lot of people earn their livelihood from Bruce Power and Ontario Power Generation. They’re very loyal, and you know, I can totally understand that," says Grace.
But she says there are many beautiful tourist towns in the area, and people are concerned that burying nuclear waste deep underground could end up contaminating the water.
Grace says money is complicating the issue. The municipality of Kincardine has agreed to be the host community for the low and intermediate level waste DGR. In exchange, Grace says, Kincardine and nearby towns receive payments every year, including her community of Saugeen Shores.
"We now get about $280,000 a year. Kincardine gets over $650,000 a |
you feel comfortable?
Here are some ideas to help locate an LQBTQ-inclusive provider:
Use the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association’s Provider Directory to look through a list of inclusive medical providers.
Check out the Healthcare Equality Index to find the LGBTQ inclusive policies of organization leaders in healthcare.
Review resources on the rights and experiences of LGBTQ people in mental health care, including the Center for American Progress and the National Transgender Discrimination Survey.
Ask friends and local LGBTQ centers for referrals or suggestions of LGBTQ-friendly healthcare providers.
Call ahead and ask if a provider you are considering has any LGBTQ patients.
If you are uncomfortable about coming out and being open with your provider, bring a trusted friend or family member with you to your appointment.
Tips for Talking to Your Provider
If you feel comfortable, come out when you meet with your provider.
Ask questions about the provider’s experience working with LGBTQ people.
Be confident about disclosing relevant information about your sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
Be open about your thoughts and feelings of depression, suicide, anxiety, fear and self-harm.
Ask for more information about any health-care-related referrals, including to other therapists and psychiatrists.
Support & Resources
If you are experiencing a mental health condition, it’s possible to take control of your health care and improve your chance of recovery. There are a number of resources available:The Binghamton Zoo at Ross Park recently announced the arrival of Magnus the Coyote pup!
Magnus was rescued, at approximately three-weeks-old, by Paws Animal Wildlife Sanctuary (PAWS) in Waterloo, South Carolina. With no sign of his mother or other pups around, PAWS took him in and began efforts to find a facility that would care for him.
An alternate home had to be found for Magnus because South Carolina law dictates he could not be released back into the wild. The Binghamton Zoo had the space and facilities for this species, so staff eagerly started making arrangements to bring Magnus to his new home.
Binghamton Zoo staff has been caring for the eight-week-old pup and socializing with him since his arrival at the facility on June 8th. Magnus will be an important part of the Zoo’s educational team. He will help tell the story of Coyotes in the wild and their relationship with their neighbors in the wild, the Red Wolves.
Magnus is currently going through a quarantine period and will not be on exhibit. Ultimately, he will become a resident of Binghamton Zoo’s ‘Wolf Woods’ exhibit.
Photo Credits: Binghamton Zoo at Ross Park
Coyotes (Canis latrans) are a canid that can be found throughout Mexico, the United States, and Canada in habitats ranging from forests to deserts. Coyotes’ coats are colored grayish brown, reddish brown, and gray. They live about 10 years in the wild and 18 years in captivity.
Litter size ranges from 4-6 pups and it takes about 9 to 12 months for a Coyote to reach its adult size.
The Coyote is similar in size to a small German Shepherd and weighs an average of 25 to 40 pounds but can grow to a maximum of 50 pounds. They can run up to 40 mph, and can jump distances of up to 13 feet.
Coyotes are extremely intelligent with keen senses. They are mostly nocturnal, doing the majority of their hunting and traveling at night. They usually travel and hunt alone. The Coyote requires minimal shelter to survive, but it will use a den for the birth and care of its young. Coyotes prefer to take use of an abandoned badger den or natural cavities rather than dig their own den; however, they will make the necessary renovations by excavating multiple escape tunnels linked to the surface.Live Nation Entertainment Inc. (LYV) is unfazed by you, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN).
"It's Amazon; it's obviously an incredible business. I give Jeff Bezos all the credit in the world... But, I'm not going to give my front door away," Michael Rapino, Live Nation CEO, president and director, said at a Goldman Sachs conference on Thursday, Sept. 14.
A Goldman Sachs analyst asked Rapino if he is concerned about reports that Amazon is planning to enter the ticket business. The move would place Amazon, the e-commerce conglomerate upending tech and retail alike, in the space dominated by Live Nation's Ticketmaster.
"We control 80 million tickets, we have a great software program," Rapino said Thursday. "If Amazon wants to sell some of our tickets, if that makes the pot bigger for us, great."
In brief, Rapino's message was, "we are willing to work with you, but good luck trying to beat us."
BTIG analyst Brandon Ross had predicted that it won't be easy for Amazon to enter the ticketing business in the U.S., as it did in the U.K. In the U.S., tickets are primarily distributed through deals between the venues only and ticketing companies. Amazon will need to find venues not already partnered with Ticketmaster.
In August, Reuters reported that Amazon began the move by approaching venue owners. Plus, Ross said that Amazon is likely going a step further by contacting sports teams and promoters directly to get access to tickets Ticketmaster was unable to sell.
Rapino said at the conference, tech is the "future of the ticketing business." And we all know Amazon dominates the tech space. For its part, Live Nation has been testing mobile versus print tickets, for certain events, so it can track customers and target them for upcoming events.
In its most-recent second quarter, Live Nation said it promoted more than 7,000 shows for 24 million people, a 5.5 million increase from the year-ago period. As of July, the live entertainment company has sold 68 million tickets to concerts alone this year.
Live Nation Entertainment was formed from the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster in 2010. Year to date, the company's stock is up 56.39%.
Read More of What's Trending on TheStreet:
Editors' pick: Originally published Sept. 14.Scenes from the Rent-Seeking Society: Norwegian Airlines Can't Fly to the US By Art Carden
I love traveling, and I might be one of the few people on earth who actually enjoys flying. Trouble is, flying is pretty expensive, and it’s especially expensive if you want to go overseas. There’s an obvious solution: let more airlines compete. Alas, foreign airlines are not allowed to fly US domestic routes, and some airlines are prevented from offering international service to and from the United States.
Norwegian Air’s plans to fly between the US and Europe are recent casualties of the rent-seeking society. According to USA Today:
The House approved legislation Tuesday to prevent a Norwegian airline from flying to the USA because of concerns the low-cost carrier will dodge international labor rules.
The article is short and worth reading. Notice the rhetoric: the president of the pilots union refers to “foreign airlines that try to cheat the system.” This is a pretty obvious attempt to retain privileges for special interests, but it is couched in the language of fear (safety, “foreign airlines” [emphasis added]) and fairness (“that try to cheat the system”).
The winners: domestic special interests like the major US carriers and their employees’ unions.
The losers: travelers–many of whom are Americans–and the people with whom they might choose to do business.
Note that the House is controlled by Republicans. Consider this evidence that they are not free-market zealots, or that being “pro-business” isn’t the same thing as believing in free markets (I explained for Forbes here in 2010).
HT: The Skeptical Libertarian.news The Australian Privacy Foundation (APF) has warned that the Federal Government’s MyHealth Record system is a “privacy disaster waiting to happen”.
The scheme’s “biggest weakness”, according to the privacy group, is the Medicare Call Centre with its many operators – “all with potential access to MyHealth Record data”.
The APF cited the government’s 2011 promise of a “clear and robust framework” for the scheme’s call centres. “Five years later,” it said, “there are no rules or procedures in place, the necessary infrastructure or a robust framework of privacy protection.”
According to Dr Bernard Robertson-Dunn, chair of the health committee at the APF: “This total failure to deliver on its promise and put in place much needed protections exposes patients to curious call centre operators whose prying and spying are unlikely to be detected.”
“This will get even worse if everyone is forced to have a My Health Record, which the Government is trying to do with its opt-out initiative,” he added.
Accusing the government of “breathtaking negligence”, the APF said that call centre operators have “unlimited access” to patient health records in order to do their jobs.
“There has been nothing done to properly and adequately protect patient data from misuse by these operators, whether intentional or accidental,” it said.
Robertson-Dunn commented: “Health information is highly attractive to criminals and hackers. This is a serious threat not only to patients but to call centre operators
themselves who could potentially be pressured by outsiders to reveal health data on targeted individuals.”
Suggesting “prevention is better than cure”, he went on: “Relying on criminal and civil penalties will not protect privacy. It will only punish breaches, where they are detected.
“The priority for government now should be the acknowledgment and fixing of the privacy and security “flaws”, Robertson-Dunn said, adding that the MyHealth Record scheme is “not safe to use in its current form, “especially with the dangerous ‘opt out’ model creating records without prior consent”.
The Australian Privacy Foundation called on the Australian Government to “immediately stop the opt-out registration trials” and to “seriously reconsider” the “enormous privacy risks” of its call centre.
“Australians need to be aware that that the system has other privacy-threatening features such as that it is impossible to cancel or remove your record. You can only inactivate it,” Robertson-Dunn added.
“Unfortunately the MyHealth Records system is like Hotel California: ‘You can check out any time, but you can never leave’,” he concluded.
Image credit: United States Geological Survey, public domainAll 30 NHL teams announced their home openers on Monday afternoon, and with it we learned of three games on the 2016-17 Philadelphia Flyers schedule.
The season looks like it will begin Friday, October 14 in Los Angeles against the Kings. That’s the home opener at Staples Center for L.A.
Then they’ll be in Glendale, Ariz. to take on the Arizona Coyotes on October 15. That’s the home opener for the Coyotes, and it means the Flyers will start the season with a back-to-back. A little #FlyersAfterDark to start the year isn’t the worst thing in the world, eh?
There might be at least another game on this West Coast trip to start the year before the Flyers return to Philadelphia on October 20. That night, they’ll host the Anaheim Ducks in their home opener at Wells Fargo Center.
The season is starting slightly later this year due to the World Cup of Hockey, which could end as late as October 1 in Toronto. Training camps will be pushed back slightly as a result. The Flyers final preseason game will be played October 8 in Boston.
The full 2016-17 NHL regular season schedule will be announced on Tuesday.Think fast! Tell me something Mike Trout isn’t very good at. If you said “winning Most Valuable Player awards”, you’re not wrong. If you said “ice hockey” you’re also not wrong, probably. But in terms of on-field baseball skills, Trout is across-the-board outstanding. There are, of course, some things he’s better at than others, and one notes that he just had twice as many strikeouts as walks, but Trout hits, he waits, he fields, and he runs. Trout doesn’t have a weakness — he has only relative weaknesses — and as for strengths, while it’s not as sexy as hitting dingers, Trout’s a hell of a base-runner. Our metric gives him 12 extra runs for his base-running in 2012, which is incredible. And of Trout’s 54 attempted steals, he was thrown out only five times.
One time, in the season finale, Trout was thrown out stealing by Jesus Montero, and we already wrote about that. It was notable, because Trout’s a good base-runner and for a catcher, Montero’s a heck of a DH.* (*Not really, because his hitting wasn’t good either.) But I wanted now to write a follow-up, about the other times Trout was thrown out stealing. I’ve been supplemented with information from BIS, covering the four times Trout was gunned down trying to take second. He was, for the record, 43-for-47 going for second, and 6-for-7 going for third. The latter situation is different, so we won’t get into it here. Let’s focus on those four. How, exactly, did teams manage to throw Trout out, where so many other batteries failed? Are there any patterns we can observe? We will proceed individually.
MAY 26
The key here is that Olivo made a perfect throw down to second base. Olivo made a perfect throw, and still, according to instant replays, Trout might well have actually been safe. BIS provided pop times, measuring how long it took the pitcher to deliver the baseball to home, and how long it took the catcher to deliver the baseball to second. A league-average combined pop time is 3.37 seconds. In this case, Hernandez and Olivo combined for a delivery time of 3.29 seconds, very slightly better.
Of note is that, shortly before Trout took off, Hernandez made a pick-off attempt to first. So Trout had Felix’s attention. Here’s where Felix was in his delivery when Trout turned to go:
Here’s where Trout’s hands made contact with the ground during his slide:
The jump was fine, and the slide was fine. The delivery was quick, and the throw was perfect. Trout might have hesitated on account of Felix’s earlier pickoff.
JUNE 4
Pitcher: Jason Vargas
Jason Vargas Catcher: Miguel Olivo (again!)
The combined delivery time here was 3.57 seconds, or two-tenths of a second slower than average. You wouldn’t expect that to be good enough to get Trout out, but there are variables here. Vargas, as you can see, is left-handed. So Vargas could look right at Trout at first base as he took his lead. Before Trout took off, Vargas made a pick-off attempt. Look at where Vargas was in his delivery when Trout turned to go:
Against Felix, Trout was going before Felix even had the ball out of his glove. Vargas’ hands are completely separated, and the ball’s about to be moving forward. In other words, Trout got a late jump, costing him time. As Trout turns to go, the ball is just about on its way to home plate. There’s also the matter of Trout’s slide into second:
Trout hit the ground earlier than usual on this slide, slowing him down further. We’re talking about a matter of milliseconds, but stolen bases are decided by matters of milliseconds, and this did Trout in. The delivery time was slow, and the throw from Olivo wasn’t great, but thanks to Trout’s late start and his early slide, he was still the second half of an Angels double play.
AUGUST 21
The previous two caught-steals were preceded by pick-off attempts. Here, there was no preceding pick-off attempt, but there was a straight pitch-out where the Red Sox accurately sniffed out Trout’s intentions. The combined delivery time was 3.13 seconds, a good quarter of a second faster than average. So Trout was thrown out, despite the throw ending up on the wrong side of second base. The time cost from Dustin Pedroia having to move his glove was more than offset by the time gained from the pitch-out. Trout was still very nearly safe, so this wasn’t a sure thing, giving you some idea of how quick Trout really is. He nearly beat a pitch-out against the Red Sox in the top of the ninth.
Here’s Trout touching the ground during his slide:
A pitch-out’s a pitch-out. Not much you can do about a pitch-out if you’re already running.
OCTOBER 3
Pitcher: Blake Beavan
Blake Beavan Catcher: Jesus Montero
And it’s this play again. The combined delivery time was 3.37 seconds, right on the league average. According to BIS, an expected delivery time for Beavan and Montero would be about 3.39 seconds. Montero’s throw was right on the money, improving matters. In the previous post about this play, we noted that Trout appeared to stumble when he turned. Any stumble, of course, costs valuable time. Here’s where Beavan was in his delivery when Trout turned to go:
It’s Trout’s right foot that kicks up a little dirt, indicating slippage. Here’s Trout touching the ground during his slide:
Trout might’ve slid a little early, too. And, importantly, we’ll note that, prior to Trout running, Beavan attempted a pair of pick-offs. For all three non-pitch-out Trout caught-steals at second, there were preceding pick-off attempts. Here’s Trout during one of the pick-offs:
There’s a slight, visible lean toward second base. Trout was going to go, although he made it back to first in time. Here’s Trout right before his steal attempt:
The lean is gone, and Trout is hesitating. He doesn’t turn to go until Beavan’s hands are just about separated, and then there’s the slight stumble. Thanks in part to Beavan and thanks in part to Trout’s iffy footing, Trout got a below-average jump, allowing Jesus Montero to gun him down with a perfect throw. The play was still incredibly close, because there’s no such thing as throwing out Mike Trout by a mile.
We’ve looked at four caught-steals, one of which came on a pitch-out and the other three of which followed pick-off attempts. In Beavan’s case, we can clearly see the effect of the earlier pick-offs. In Vargas’ case, we have to consider the difference between stealing off a righty and stealing off a lefty. In Felix’s case, we don’t know what effect the pick-off might’ve had, and Olivo’s throw was genuinely perfect. Trout was gunned down by two perfect throws and a pitch-out, and in the other case he got a late start off a southpaw and slid too early. A lot of things had to come together for a battery to erase Mike Trout from the basepaths.
It’s probably worth investigating in greater depth the true effects of pick-off attempts. It would be incredibly complicated, which is why I’m not volunteering, but there are people out there who are smarter than me. It’s also definitely worth considering that nothing on a baseball field is automatic, and everything is conducted by humans, leaving everything vulnerable to human error bars. Sometimes a baserunner will start a slide too early. Sometimes a catcher will make an unusually strong and accurate throw. When the right error bars overlap, Mike Trout gets thrown out stealing. They don’t do that very much.HTC in order to be able to compete with Samsung will soon release a plastic and much cheaper version of the recently announced HTC One M8 smartphone, G4Games reports. The cheaper version is seen by HTC one as “the same phone, but of different quality” as the change to plastic makes no difference as far as design. The device will become available next month if the rumors are accurate.
See Also: HTC One m8 available in 3 different editions
The price of the device will be 3.000 YUAN (which is approximately $483) and the current HTC One M8 is available for 5299 YUAN ( approximately $853) which is a huge price difference. As of now it is also unknown if the device will have a different name or what name this will be.
HTC’s flagship smartphone launched just a few days ago and was originally revealed on March 25th 2014 and features some impressive specs:
Snapdragon 801 quadcore CPU at 2.3GHz
2GB of RAM
Dual 4MP cameras
5″ 1080p display
2600 mAh battery
Running on Android Kit Kat 4.4.2
Is a cheaper HTC One M8 something you will buy? Let us know in a comment bellow!All this anticipation for the new Ghostbusters movie got you hankering for a dose of the original? Well have no fear, Sony Pictures has got you covered. On June 8, the anniversary of the original 1984 release, Fathom Events (the event company shared by AMC, Regal, and Cinemark Theaters) will re-release the orignal film in more than 750 theaters across the country. (An encore date of June 12 has also been scheduled.)
Peter Vankman, Egon, and even Slimer will be hitting theaters for these brief two days before the classic film returns to the vault.
In addition, BBQ Films will be hosting three nights of immersive screenings of Ghostbusters in a giant warehouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (natch) beginning June 8. The event company plans to transform the venue into a Ghostbusters HQ where fans can strap on a proton pack, hang with some ghosts, and of course screen the original film.
Tickets for both events can be found here: FathomEvents.com and BBQ Films.Trump won all three states, with his margin of victory in Michigan being just 10,704 votes
She has also raised the $.5million needed for the Pennsylvania filing fee and the $.6million needed in Michigan
Stein said the recount in Wisconsin is on after securing the $1.1million needed for the filing fee
She raised $4.1million in less than a day online and the money will be used to pay for the recounts
Jill Stein has raised enough money for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania after experts said it was possible that hackers had artificially lowered Hillary Clinton's counts there.
If all three states were overturned - however unlikely that outcome may be - it could theoretically hand the White House to Clinton.
Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway criticized those who were calling for a recount on Thursday, writing on Twitter: 'Look who "can't accept the election results."'
She then linked to an article about Clinton supporters calling for a recount.
Stein started the fund-raiser on her website on Wednesday, saying that she needed to raise $2million by Friday - but broke that within hours.
She has now raised the necessary funds for the filing fees in all three states, and announced on Thursday that the recount would be moving forward in Wisconsin.
'Congratulations on meeting the recount costs for Wisconsin,' wrote Stein on her website.
'Raising money to pay for the first round so quickly is a miraculous feat and a tribute to the power of grassroots organizing.'
Scroll down for video
Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has raised $3.1million in less than a day online and the money will be used to pay for the recounts
Stein said the recount in Wisconsin is on after securing the $1.1million needed for the filing fee
Stein promised to use the money - which was initially set at $2million - to pay for recounts in the three states.
On Thursday morning, the target was increased again to $4.5millon.
The campaign anticipates eventually needing $6 million to $7 million to cover attorney fees and statewide recount observation costs.
She cited the Green Party's successful 2004 demand for an Ohio recount - which ended in two election officials being convicted of rigging the count - as proof of concept.
On her website, Stein positioned the fundraiser as 'an effort to ensure the integrity of our elections' after experts 'independently identified Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as states where "statistical anomalies" raised concerns.'
'Our effort to recount votes in those states is not intended to help Hillary Clinton,' she said.
The recount may indeed help Clinton, however - if, as experts suggest could be the case, she has been the victim of a cyber-attack on electronic polling stations.
According to New York, the group - which includes computer security and voting law experts - says Clinton performed 7 per cent worse in those Wisconsin counties in which voters input their choice directly into electronic voting machines.
In the other counties, where Clinton did better, voters have a paper ballot that is counted using an optical scanner or (in small numbers, to ensure accuracy) by hand.
That, they say, suggests the electronic voting machines could have been hacked to filter out Clinton votes - something that can't be done when scanning paper ballots.
Their calculations say that proposed hack could have robbed Clinton of 30,000 votes in the state. She lost Wisconsin to Trump by 27,000.
The move theoretically puts Clinton back in play for the Presidency - but the odds are still against her, and the White House reportedly wants to get on with transitioning to Trump
The experts reached out to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta in a conference call on November 17 to try to get Clinton to call for a recount. But Stein could do it herself
They believe that Pennsylvania and Michigan are two other key states that could theoretically have been affected. If Clinton claimed all three in a recount, she would win the Electoral College.
The scientists don't have direct evidence of a hack, they say - if it exists, it would only come if Clinton demands an investigation and recount - but DNC emails were plundered by hackers in the run-up to the election.
Clinton campaign chair John Podesta also had his email account hacked and its contents leaked.
And in August, both Illinois and Arizona election records were breached in a cyber-attack, according to the FBI and state agencies.
No suspects have been named in this potential voting hack, but Russia was fingered as a culprit in all of the attacks by US officials.
The computer experts used a statistical analysis to conclude Clinton did worse in states with electronic voting machines - which they argue could have left the door open to hacking
The experts include J Alex Halderman, director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society.
In an article for Medium, Halderman admits that Clinton's shock defeats in the states - which went against polling predictions - were 'probably' the fault of the polls being'systematically wrong' rather than hacked.
But, he said, neither explanation was 'overwhelmingly more likely than the other,' and so it was imperative for 'physical evidence' to be examined.
On November 17, his group contacted Clinton campaign chair John Podesta and general counsel Marc Elias to present them with their findings and push for a recount and investigation, according to New York magazine.
But the White House is reportedly leaning on Clinton not to demand the recount, as it wants to focus on smoothing the transition from the Obama administration to Trump's new Cabinet.
However, if Stein gets her way, neither Clinton nor the White House will have a choice.
Podesta's emails were hacked during the election campaign, as were DNC emails and voter data in Arizona and Illinois. US officials pointed to Russia as a culprit in all three cases
Clinton already conceded to Trump and gave a farewell speech. She faces a recount deadline of just days in the three states, even if a challenge is mounted
The same day, Clinton's lead in the popular vote increased to more than 2million. Millions more are left to be counted, and many are expected to go to Clinton
And Clinton's success in the popular vote may prove more of an impetus to push out the boat anyway.
On Wednesday, as Stein's takings rocketed, it was announced that her lead over Trump had increased to more than 2million, and was expected to keep rising.
David Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Report tweeted the result Wednesday, as her lead increased to 1.5 per cent of the vote.
According to the Cook Report, Clinton's ballot count is now at 64,225,863 -compared with Trump's 62,210,612.
There are still millions more votes to be counted, and it's believed that most of those will be for Clinton.
If Stein or Clinton want to push for the recounts, they'll need to move fast, however.
If they want to file a recount in Wisconsin, the deadline is Friday. In Pennsylvania they have until Monday. And in Michigan the cut-off is November 30.This is the Mozilla annual report for 2014. It highlights activities for that calendar year and is accompanied by detailed financials and our non-profit tax filing.
The Web is an invaluable public resource, a global platform capable of generating tremendous positive change. It unlocks economic opportunity, connects far-flung people and ideas, celebrates diverse opinions, and empowers educators. In a word, the Web is extraordinary.
The Mozilla project is devoted to keeping the Web extraordinary. We believe the Web should be open, inclusive and accessible, a platform that uplifts people around the globe and is not controlled by a small handful of corporations and governments. To keep the Web open, Mozilla builds products, organizes communities, helps people learn about the Web, and runs advocacy campaigns to mobilize people to stand up for the Web.
In 2014, we built and improved products like the Firefox browser and Firefox OS at a time when the need for openness grew even stronger, especially as the mobile Web started to resemble the desktop before Firefox. We’re carrying this momentum forward into 2015 and beyond, focusing on providing choice and enhancing users’ control online. In 2015, Mozilla launched Firefox for iOS, and unveiled Private Browsing with Tracking Protection.
In 2014, Mozilla also grew our educational programs and tools like Hive Learning Networks and Webmaker, empowering the next generation to develop and use digital literacy skills that will keep the Web open. We brought together talented and diverse leaders through the Mozilla Festival, Mozilla Developer Network, Mozilla Science Lab, and the OpenNews journalism initiative. We launched the Cyber Security Delphi, a comprehensive research project to better understand security threats on the Internet. And we partnered with the Ford Foundation to launch the Open Web Fellows program, a global initiative to develop technical leaders capable of defending the Web.ALBANY — Journalist, author, advocate and longtime Capital Region resident Scott Christianson, whose diverse subjects ranged from the history of incarceration to runaway slaves, died suddenly on Sunday at his home in Great Barrington, Mass.
Christianson, 69, died from massive head trauma after falling down the back stairs of his home. His wife, Tamar Gordon, said the banister had given way.
Gordon described her husband as a man who combined a voracious curiosity with a deep sense of social justice — and a keen nose for a great story.
Christianson had recently begun working for the investigative unit of the McClatchy news service. Just two weeks ago, he and his McClatchy colleague Greg Gordon published a comprehensive investigation on the ties between President Donald Trump and the hedge-fund mogul Robert Mercer.
Gordon laughed as she recalled hearing him lustily discuss his next story over the speakerphone only last week.
"He loved to write, and he loved investigations," Gordon said.
A 1965 graduate of Bethlehem Central High School who last year was inducted into its hall of fame, Christianson began his career at the Bethlehem Star and the Knickerbocker News, which merged with the Times Union in 1988. Despite his relative youth, Christianson's work at the Knick News from 1969 to 1972 saw him nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and profiled as "one of the nation's top 20 investigative reporters," according to his BCHS bio.
He would go on to contribute articles to dozens of publications, from The New Yorker and The New York Times to the Washington Post and The Nation. He also worked on documentary films and curated exhibits on crime and punishment.
Christianson made the leap into public service in the 1980s, serving as an adviser on criminal justice and correctional issues to Gov. Mario Cuomo. He later held leadership roles at the state Coalition for Criminal Justice, the Safer Society Foundation and the Center on Minorities and Criminal Justice.
Gordon met Christianson in 1989, when they were set up on a date in Troy by a mutual friend. She had just completed a teaching post at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Washington County. Hearing this, Christianson noted that the prison had once contained a soap factory where convicts, stripped to the waist, would sing work songs.
"This man is a storyteller," she recalled thinking.
Writer Scott Christianson poses Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2000, in the Time and Space Limited gallery in Hudson, N.Y., with two photos from his documentary photo exhibit that accompanies his book 'Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House'. At the left is Maurice O'Dell in a Buffalo Police headshot from Feb. 8, 1953. O'Dell was executed in Sing Sing on Jan. 7, 1954. The right photo is the Sing Sing electric chair circa 1940s. (Associated Press0 less Writer Scott Christianson poses Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2000, in the Time and Space Limited gallery in Hudson, N.Y., with two photos from his documentary photo exhibit that accompanies his book 'Condemned: Inside... more Photo: JIM MCKNIGHT, AP Photo: JIM MCKNIGHT, AP Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Scott Christianson, 69, acclaimed journalist, author and advocate 1 / 5 Back to Gallery
"Scott and I knew immediately that we were going to be together," Gordon said.
Christianson wrote more than 10 works of nonfiction, including "With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America,'' which in 1999 received Distinguished Honors in the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award competition.
In 1999, Christianson told the Times Union the study was his attempt ''to explore, from the very beginning, the origins and development of prisons in America to show how much of a part of our heritage it is, and how much of a role it's played in our history, to help explain why to this day we imprison more people than any other country on the face of the Earth.
Read Full ArticleOTTAWA — The Harper government is under fire for cutting Elections Canada’s budget even as the agency struggles to address rampant procedural errors and widespread allegations of cheating during the last federal vote.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says the eight per cent cut to the election watchdog’s 2013 budget is symptomatic of a government that has no respect for democratic institutions.
He accuses the Conservatives of showing a consistent willingness to cheat during elections — citing the so-called in-and-out affair and the robocall scandal.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says the budget cut is worrying and part of a pattern by Conservatives to discourage people from taking part in the democratic process.
However, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says his government will shortly introduce legislation aimed at helping Elections Canada crack down on abuse, such as the thousands of misleading, automated phone calls that directed voters to the wrong polling stations in 2011.
He says it will also incorporate changes in response to a report, released Tuesday, which found an average of 500 serious procedural errors were made by polling officials in each riding in the 2011 election.NDRF members prepare to be flown to Nepal to provide assistance to victims of the earthquake at Hindon Air Force Station near New Delhi on Saturday. (AFP)
New Delhi, April 25: India has launched what is beginning to look like its biggest peacetime relief-and-rescue operation in Nepal with an agility that is in sharp contrast to comparable efforts in the recent past.
Indian Air Force aircraft, Indian Army personnel and National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) workers clicked with such synergy today after the Himalayan quake that the speed of official response was difficult to keep up with.
The timing of the temblor, the proximity to the Himalayas, the friendliness with Nepal and the reaction of people who were shaken combined with a political directive from the Prime Minister's Office to produce the immediate response.
"Nepal toh pariwar hai," said a senior bureaucrat in the nerve-centre of the operations. "Nepal is family."
Indian Air Force aircraft - a C130 Hercules with 40 personnel of the NDRF - left for Kathmandu the moment clearance was given to land in the Nepal capital. The airport was closed for about four hours after the pre-noon tremors.
"Spoke to PM Sushil Koirala, who is in transit in Bangkok on his way to Kathmandu. Assured all support & assistance during this tough time," Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted before a meeting of the crisis management group at 3pm. By then, the ministries of external affairs and defence had set up a control room and a helpline.
Modi also spoke to the chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal.
The scale of the tragedy, in which at least 1400 people were estimated to have died in Nepal by late tonight, is likely to warrant an unprecedented deployment.
Among the victims were two Indians, including the daughter of an Indian embassy employee who lost her life when a house in the mission complex in Kathmandu collapsed. The wife of the employee, identified as Madan, was seriously injured. The death of the other Indian was reported at Bir Hospital but details were not known.
"A house in our embassy complex collapsed. Unfortunately, the daughter of our employee Madan has died. His wife's condition is serious," PTI quoted external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj as saying.
Foreign secretary S. Jaishankar said he expected four aircraft from the IAF with NDRF personnel to fly to Kathmandu by last light today. The NDRF has planned to send 10 teams of about 45 personnel each to Nepal. Additional teams have been deployed in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and the Bengal hills.
The Indian Army has two field hospitals and two engineering regiments ready to be airlifted to Kathmandu and Pokhara.
Jaishankar said he expected eight helicopters from the IAF to be stationed in Kathmandu and Pokhara by tomorrow.
"I think in a situation after an earthquake you do not need senior officials but specialised people on the ground," replied Jaishankar when asked if the Indian government was deploying a senior official to coordinate relief and rescue in Nepal.
There could be flights to Kathmandu from Delhi, the airbase at Hindon east of Delhi, and from bases in north India through the night. Late this evening, there was a sortie almost every minute seeking to land in Kathmandu, or taking off to land in an airstrip or helipad somewhere in Nepal.
Major General J.S. Sandhu was set to catch an air force flight to go to Kathmandu tonight. He is like an unofficial task force commander, his rank of divisional commander indicating the potential resources that India may be deploying to Nepal.
In March and earlier this month, during the evacuation |
CONNECT THE DOTS SO THAT THE NATION IS NEVER ATTACKED AGAIN LIKE IT WAS ON 9/11
At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 2, Senator Feinstein showed her hand when she said: “I will do everything I can to prevent this [NSA’s bulk] program from being canceled.” Declaring that 9/11 “can never be allowed to happen in the United States of America again,” Feinstein claimed that intelligence officials did not have enough information to prevent the terrorist attacks.
Mr. President, we trust you are aware that the lack-of-enough-intelligence argument is dead wrong. Feinstein’s next dubious premise – that bulk collection is needed to prevent another 9/11 – is unproven and highly unlikely (not to mention its implications for the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment).
Given the closed circle surrounding you, we are allowing for the possibility that the smell from these rotting red herrings has not yet reached you – even though your own Review Group has found, for example, that NSA’s bulk collection has thwarted exactly zero terrorist plots.
The sadder reality, Mr. President, is that NSA itself had enough information to prevent 9/11, but chose to sit on it rather than share it with the FBI or CIA. We know; we were there. We were witness to the many bureaucratic indignities that made NSA at least as culpable for pre-9/11 failures as are other U.S. intelligence agencies.
We prepared this Memorandum in an effort to ensure that you have a fuller picture as you grapple with what to do about NSA. What follows is just the tip of an iceberg of essential background information – much of it hidden until now – that goes to the core of serious issues now front and center.
The drafting process sparked lively discussion of the relative merits of your Review Group’s recommendations. We have developed very specific comments on those recommendations. We look forward to an opportunity to bring them to your attention.
Introduction
We write you with a sense of urgency looking toward your upcoming decisions regarding the activities of the National Security Agency. We the undersigned (William Binney, Thomas Drake, Edward Loomis, and Kirk Wiebe) worked with NSA for a total of 144 years, most of them at senior levels. Our mission required the highest technical skills to keep the country safe from foreign enemies, while protecting the privacy rights of U.S. citizens under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
For us, the 21st Century arrived with serious management and technical shortcomings at NSA in meeting the huge challenges posed by the digital and Internet age and the huge problems accompanying the transition from a Cold War footing over 40 years to an increasingly complex world with many asymmetric threats.
NSA management’s reaction in this environment not only opened the door to the attacks of 9/11 but led to violation of what had been the “First Commandment” at NSA; namely, “Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant.” Under the circumstances, three of us (Binney, Loomis, and Wiebe) left; Drake had just come on board in hopes of playing a constructive role in addressing the challenges at NSA.
We all share an acute sense of regret for NSA’s demonstrable culpability for what happened on 9/11, and – for those of us working there before the terrorist attacks – a remorse for not having been able to stop them. We tried; but it is hard to escape a nagging regret that, somehow, we should have tried harder.
We were there; we know what happened. And we know how what happened has been successfully covered up – until now. Calamities like this tend to happen again if there is no accountability for what happened before. You need the unvarnished truth. The flood of revelations now in the public domain frees us to address facts and events formerly hidden behind a convenient, cover-up classification regime. We feel bound by the solemn oath we took to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, to make truths known to you that you may find as unconscionable as we do.
Why do we still care? Because we have consciences; because the oath we took has no expiration date; because we know – as few others do – how critically important it is for our country to have a well functioning, Constitution-abiding National Security Agency; and because we know how that ship can be steered back on course at that important place of work by improving its ability to find terrorists and other criminals in massive amounts of data, while protecting the right to privacy and citizen sovereignty.
Getting in the Door
It comes to us as no surprise that there is strong resistance on the part of the Establishment when it comes to giving us a hearing – a shunning of the very people who know what happened and how to take steps to prevent it from happening again.
Our predicament calls to mind that of our colleague veteran intelligence professionals, who were ignored by Official Washington and an obsequious media, when we knew that fraudulent (not mistaken) intelligence was being used to “justify” the launching of an aggressive war on Iraq 11 years ago. Establishment Washington barred the doors in 2002-2003. Just five years later our own clearances were taken away.
Now, once again the voices of seasoned intelligence professionals are being muted, in favor of a closed group of officials with huge incentive to cover up their failure to keep America safe and their playing fast and loose with the Fourth Amendment.
Mr. President, we have given up hope that your palace guard will let us in. Our chances of reaching you seem far better via this Memorandum, the 28th of its kind issued since early 2003, prepared at the behest of the Steering Group of our Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). If this gets past your in-box protectors, we encourage you to pay more heed to it than your predecessor did to VIPS’ warnings in the months before the attack on Iraq.
In one limited sense, we are better off than our colleagues 11 years ago. This time, mainstream media have been unable to ignore the documentary evidence of rank dishonesty on the part of senior NSA and other intelligence officials. This time the media has come to us, seeking our views. This time we can comment rather freely on matters that until now were hidden under TOP SECRET stamps.
On December 26, for example, The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy front-page article, quoting NSA’s former Senior Technical Director William Binney (undersigned) and former chief of NSA’s SIGINT Automation Research Center Edward Loomis (undersigned) warning that NSA is drowning in useless data lacking adequate privacy provisions, to the point where it cannot conduct effective terrorist-related surveillance and analysis.
A recently disclosed internal NSA briefing document corroborates the drowning, with the embarrassing admission, in bureaucratize, that NSA collection has been “outpacing” NSA’s ability to ingest, process, and store data – let alone analyze the take.
54 Now Down to Zero ‘Thwarts’
It is not difficult to connect NSA’s collect-everything approach with one principal finding of the Review Group you appointed to look into NSA programs; namely, that exactly zero terrorist plots have been prevented by NSA’s bulk trawling for telephone call records. One Review Group member, your former Chicago law professor colleague, Geoffrey Stone, has confessed to being “absolutely” surprised at the group’s finding of zero. Clearly, the statements of top NSA officials left Stone wholly unprepared for the truth.
Reacting to the Review Group’s report, a member of Congress involved in intelligence issues told a reporter, “That was the ballgame … It flies in the face of everything they have tossed at us.”
While this finding of the Review Group is a further blow to Keith “54-terrorist-plots-thwarted” Alexander’s credibility, it is no surprise to us. More important, it goes to the heart of whether NSA’s bulk collection is more hindrance than help in preventing terrorist attacks. We suggest, with all due respect, that you give us an opportunity to brief you, before you find yourself repeating undocumented claims like “lives have been saved,” and demonstrably false claims that no abuses have occurred.
What passes for a process for collection and analysis at NSA appears to be highly inefficient and ineffective. How else does one explain missing the bombers of Boston, Times Square, and the underwear bomber over Detroit?
In short, we would like to talk to you about things you might otherwise have no way of knowing, given that our information reflects so poorly on top NSA management past and present. You and the country are ill served by the reluctance of your national security advisers to give a hearing to former intelligence insiders like us. Your advisers may be too inexperienced to realize that circling the wagons is not going to work this time. This time the truth will out.
Clapper & Alexander
Surely you have asked National Intelligence Director James Clapper flat-out why, in formal testimony to the Senate on March 12, 2013 he answered “No, Sir” to Senator Ron Wyden’s question, “Does the NSA collect any type of data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”
Surely you know that Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein persists in covering for Clapper, telling ABC three months after Clapper’s falsehood that “there is no more direct or honest person than Jim Clapper.” And now Director Clapper’s lawyer, Mr. Litt, is trying to convince readers of the New York Times that Clapper did not lie.
Surely you intuit that something is askew when NSA Director Keith Alexander testifies to Congress that NSA’s bulk collection has “thwarted” 54 terrorist plots and later, under questioning, is forced to reduce that number to one, which cannot itself withstand close scrutiny. And surely you understand why former NSA Director and CIA Director Michael Hayden protests too much and too often on Fox News and CNN, and why he and House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers publicly suggest that whistleblower Edward Snowden be put on your Kill List.
Does a blind loyalty prevail in your White House to the point where, 40 years after Watergate, there is not a single John Dean to warn you of a “cancer on the presidency?” Have none of your lawyers reminded you that “electronic surveillance of private citizens … subversive of constitutional government” was one of the three Articles of Impeachment against President Richard Nixon approved by a bipartisan 28 to 10 vote of the House Judiciary Committee on July 27, 1974?
Let us be clear. Candor dictates that we state up front that the more skeptical among us suspect that you are not as isolated from the truth about NSA activities as it might seem. That notwithstanding, for purposes of this Memorandum we choose to adopt a broader view and assume you would welcome help from former insiders who chose to leave rather than become complicit in NSA abuses.
What we tell you in this Memorandum is merely the tip of the iceberg. We are ready – if you are – for an honest conversation. That NSA’s bulk collection is more hindrance than help in preventing terrorist attacks should be clear by now despite the false claims and dissembling.
What we shall now attempt to explain to you is how corruption – born of lust for billions of dollars, and the power that comes with that – scotched implementation of an inexpensive and demonstrably superior in-house technical program the prototype of which was up and running before 2001. Not only did it hold considerable promise, it also honored the privacy protections guaranteed American citizens under the Fourth Amendment.
Fourth Amendment-Compliant Technology That Worked
No one currently working for NSA Director Alexander is likely to tell you this, so please hear it from us. In the years before 9/11, a group of NSA mathematicians and computer technology experts led by Binney, Loomis, and Wiebe devised a process called THINTHREAD for collection and rapid analysis of billions of electronic records relating to targets of intelligence interest, with automatic encryption of information about U.S. persons, per the standard of FISA and the Fourth Amendment.
Data on U.S. citizens could be decrypted only if a judge approved it after a finding that there was probable cause to believe that the target was connected with terrorism or other crimes. It was also considerably cheaper, easier, and more secure to store such data in encrypted format rather than allow that raw information to remain vulnerable to unauthorized parties in unencrypted form, as NSA chose to do. A fuller understanding of THINTHREAD’s capabilities is necessary to appreciate the implications of what came next.
THINTHREAD, you see, was a fundamental beginning to breaking the endemic problem of stovepipes – that is, standalone collection systems with standalone databases. There was such a maze of databases, with special security compartmentation, that it was impossible for an analyst to “see” more than a few pages, so to speak, about a target, much less a whole chapter, let alone the whole available book. Information was fragmented by design, in order to placate functionaries blindly placing tight security above virtually all other considerations – even, in this case, the analyst’s need to know.
Thus, THINTHREAD was developed precisely to unite data associated with terrorists/criminals from all databases. An analyst was able to do one simple query on participants on a targeted activity and get access to all related content – be it from computer, phone, or pager.
Now, Mr. President, perhaps you have been in Washington long enough not to be surprised by what happened next to THINTHREAD. Most of us have been around a lot longer than you, but even we found it shocking – and, as we will show below, ultimately devastating in its implications.
In short, since THINTHREAD was developed in-house at NSA, it cost about $3 million to build and to make operational at three sites. Members of Congress, however, had political incentive (the imperative to appear to be doing something against terrorism) and financial interest (no need to spell that out) in throwing billions at NSA.
In the end, NSA Director Michael Hayden rejected THINTHREAD in favor of a contractor program called TRAILBLAZER, upon which billions of dollars were ultimately squandered and which never became operational. NSA SIGINT (signals intelligence) Director Maureen Baginski announced the Requiem for THINTHRAD to William Binney and Edward Loomis in a private meeting on August 20, 2001, three weeks before 9/11.
Some Programs Don’t Cost Enough
This is how it went down: In 2000, as THINTHREAD was beginning to show promise, the head of the NSA Transformation Office (NTO) asked the creators of THINTHREAD (Loomis, Binney, and Wiebe) what they could do with $1.2 billion. We told him that, with that amount of funding, we could upgrade every one of our field installations that had access to foreign Internet sources, as well as upgrade collection equipment to access greater bandwidths available on fiber. But for the equipment, maintenance, and other costs for THINTHREAD, we only needed about $300 million.
Director Hayden reacted swiftly on learning of this. He removed the NTO chief, replacing him with a senior vice president of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), which became one of the leading contractors for a replacement project called TRAILBLAZER. TRAILBLAZER was originally budgeted for $3.8 billion, but after burning away most of that money, it had to be jettisoned in 2006.
No functioning components had been produced, much less delivered; Gen. Hayden had been forced to confess to the Senate Intelligence Committee that TRAILBLAZER was vastly over budget as well as well behind schedule. And our (Binney/Loomis/Wiebe) complaint to the Department of Defense Inspector General had generated a highly critical report on TRAILBLAZER, which was also a factor in its termination. SAIC, though, continued to serve as one of NSA’s major prime development contractors and remains so to this day.
Hayden had announced TRAILBLAZER to great fanfare in the spring of 2000, as he began to show more preference for opening the door wider to the private sector. A year before, NSA’s New Enterprise Team, which included some of the undersigned, had begun to learn of contractor complaints over getting only maintenance contracts, while the most interesting work was being conducted in-house.
That fall, an NSA Red Team predicted that TRAILBLAZER would fail unless major changes were made to the program. Hayden, however, ignored the Red Team report, and none of the Red Team recommendations saw the light of day.
This particularly unconscionable (Hayden-SAIC-Congress) corruption is a case study in how the drive for big money and the power can squander big taxpayer bucks, chip away at our constitutional protections – and, more important, as we shall explain below – play a crucial role in the worst intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor – 9/11.
You will hear the usual denials. With all due respect, we think caution is indicated in thinking about taking them at face value. We would encourage you to get ahead of the curve this time.
The financial fiasco could not be kept from Congress or the Pentagon. Recognizing NSA’s inability to manage multi-billion dollar programs, NSA’s “Milestone Decision Authority” – that is, the responsibility for planning, acquiring, and implementing major intelligence capabilities was revoked and responsibility was transferred to the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics at the Department of Defense.
After 9/11, Most of Us Out
The financial and managerial corruption was bad enough. To our horror, after 9/11 we came to realize that the abuses occurring during the years before 2001 had gravely damaged NSA’s capability to thwart attacks like 9/11. Wiebe, Binney, and Loomis retired. Thomas Drake (also undersigned), who joined NSA on August 26, 2001, as a senior executive after many years as an NSA contractor, stayed on in an attempt to right the ship.
All of us very soon learned that we didn’t know the half of it – that is, of the misfeasance and malfeasance leading directly to NSA’s substantial contribution to the intelligence failure that day.
Again, we are prepared to brief you on the whole nine yards, so to speak. For now, we have decided to supplement the above with observations from our former colleague, Thomas Drake, who, as a contractor, had been thoroughly briefed on NSA programs, including THINTHREAD, before he joined the ranks of NSA as a senior executive. Thomas Drake writes:
“My first day on the job at NSA was 9/11. I was immediately charged as the lead NSA executive to find and deploy the best technology at NSA for the fight against terrorism. One of the programs I recommended to be resurrected for immediate operational implementation was THINTHREAD. I ran into a stone wall.
“As I pursued what I was tasked to do, I was surprised and deeply troubled to discover that, with a secret go-ahead from the White House, NSA had unchained itself from the protections of the Fourth Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The vast power of NSA had been unleashed secretly on US citizens through a massive bulk surveillance program called STELLARWIND, a program completely unknown to most if not all of those working at the SIGINT Automatic Research Center. In the weeks after 9/11, 40 to 50 servers began arriving followed quickly by a whole new set of technical people who on September 26, 2001, turned STELLARWIND loose on all of us.
“Even after the developers of THINTHREAD left NSA in October 2001, I kept trying to get it authorized to go operational – in vain. However, I was able to acquire enough funding to complete a THINTHREAD Content Evaluation of NSA databases that contained huge amounts of collected data.
Pre-9/11 Intelligence
“That’s where I found the pre- and post-9/11 intelligence from NSA monitoring of some of the hijackers as they planned the attacks of 9/11 had not been shared outside NSA. This includes critical pre-9/11 intelligence on al-Qaeda, even though it had been worked on by NSA analysts. I learned, for example, that in early 2001 NSA had produced a critical long-term analytic report unraveling the entire heart of al-Qaeda and associated movements. That report also was not disseminated outside of NSA.
“Make no mistake. That data and the analytic report could have, should have prevented 9/11.
“Top NSA management knew that. They knew that I knew that. I was immediately shut down. In spring 2002, the remnants of THINTHREAD were unceremoniously put on the shelf in NSA’s ‘Indiana Jones’ data warehouse, never to be seen again.
Cover-up
“Hiding the worst: In December 2001, Senator Saxby Chambliss, chair of a House Subcommittee on Homeland Security announced a preliminary investigation into 9/11. At a SIGINT Leadership Team meeting in February 2002, SIGINT chief Maureen Baginski directed me to lead a NSA Statement-for-the-Record effort for a closed-door hearing scheduled by Sen. Chambliss for early March to discuss what NSA knew about the 9/11 hijackers and their plotting before 9/11.
“As indicated above, the highly embarrassing answer was that NSA knew a great deal, but had not shared what it knew outside of NSA.
“After a couple of weeks Baginski rejected my draft team Statement for the Record report and removed me from the task. When I asked her why, she said there was a ‘data integrity problem’ (not further explained) with my draft Statement for the Record. I had come upon additional damaging revelations. For example, NSA had the content of telephone calls between AA-77 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar in San Diego, CA, and the known al-Qaeda safe house switchboard in Yemen well before 9/11, and had not disseminated that information beyond NSA.
“In short, when confronted with the prospect of fessing up, NSA chose instead to obstruct the 9/11 congressional investigation, play dumb, and keep the truth buried, including the fact that it knew about all inbound and outbound calls to the safe house switchboard in Yemen. NSA’s senior leaders took me off the task because they realized – belatedly, for some reason – that I would not take part in covering up the truth about how much NSA knew but did not share.
“When the 9/11 Commission hearings began, Director Hayden chortled at executive staff meetings over the fact that the FBI and CIA were feeling the heat for not having prevented 9/11. This was particularly difficult for me to sit through, for I was aware that NSA had been able to cover up its own culpability by keeping investigators, committees, and commissions away from the truth.
“I subsequently blew the whistle on the TRAILBLAZER fiasco, STELLARWIND, NSA’s hoarding of critical pre- and post-9/11 intelligence, and its cover-up. I shared this information via proper channels with the Joint Congressional Inquiry on 9/11 and the Defense Department Inspector General – to no avail.
Preventing 9/11
“Against this background, it is difficult to listen to the manufactured claim so frequently heard these days to the effect that, had bulk collection been operational before 9/11, it would have prevented the 9/11 attacks. The mantra is convenient for those defending NSA overreach; it is also bogus.
“It masks the reality that, as indicated above, NSA had already collected highly significant intelligence on the hijackers themselves but did not disseminate it outside of NSA before the attacks. At best, the claim about bulk collection is one part wishful thinking and nine parts red herring.
“Not only does it exaggerate the efficacy of a collection method with zero demonstrated successes to date, but it also blows smoke in the eyes of those genuinely interested in knowing what role NSA played, or failed to play, in the months and weeks before 9/11. Worse still, this specious claim amounts to a cruel hoax on the thousands who died on 9/11, and the hundreds of thousands who died when Bush/Cheney used the attacks as a pretext to invade Iraq.”
Former Vice President Dick Cheney is widely reported to have been principally responsible for suborning then-NSA Director Michael Hayden into violating what had formerly been the “First Commandment” at NSA – “Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant.” So it is no surprise to see Cheney come out of the woodwork and renew his contribution toward giving dishonesty a bad name.
On December 29, Cheney picked up where Senator Feinstein and former FBI Director Robert Mueller left off in promoting the disingenuous claim that had NSA’s bulk collection been in place before 9/11, the attacks that day would probably have been prevented. Adding to his unenviable record for credibility on Sunday talk shows, Cheney told Fox News Sunday:
“As everybody who’s been associated with the program has said, if we had this before 9/11, when there were two terrorists in San Diego – two hijackers – had been able to use that program, that capability, against that target, we might well have been able to prevent 9/11.”
Cheney was basking in the glow of Judge William Pauley’s ruling two days earlier that NSA’s bulk collection is legal, in contrast to Judge Richard Leon’s ruling on December 16 that it was “almost certainly” unconstitutional. Pauley simply bought into the NSA/Feinstein/Mueller mantra, hook, line and sinker. The mantra cannot bear close scrutiny, however, no matter how many leading lights of Establishment Washington sing it.
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller had prepared the ground for Cheney, when Mueller gave factually incorrect testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 13, 2013. Mueller said that we “could not know who was calling into that particular safe house [in Yemen]. We came to find out afterwards that the person who had called into that safe house was al-Mihdhar, who was in the United States in San Diego.”
Mueller was stretching the truth well beyond the breaking point in saying “we could not know.” His intent became abundantly clear as he proceeded to put his mouth around the Big Whopper: “If we had had this program [bulk collection of telephone records] in place at that time, we would have been able to identify that particular telephone number in San Diego.” Here was the FBI director kicking dust into the eyes of gullible Senators, in order to defend an NSA program of dubious effectiveness and even more dubious constitutionality.
More recently, the “outside” insider reportedly leading your Review Group, former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell, recited the mantra in a December 19 op-ed in the Washington Post. Morell claimed that “had the program been in place more than a decade ago, it would likely have prevented 9/11.”
Khalid al-Mihdhar
The poster boy for this PR ploy is Khalid al-Mihdhar one of the hijackers of AA-77, who had been communicating from San Diego with people in a known al-Qaeda terrorist safe house in Yemen. Al-Mihdhar had been on the radar of U.S. intelligence at least since 1999, when NSA picked up communications from a “terrorist facility” implicating him. In early 2000 he lived in San Diego, California, with fellow hijacker Nawaf al-Hazmi.
NSA knew the telephone number of the safe house in Yemen at least by1996 and was, of course, keeping track of calls to it from the U.S. Would Mueller, Morell and Cheney have us believe NSA doesn’t know about caller ID? As William Binney has explained, automated systems take over when such calls are made and as long as you have one valid number you can obtain the other. Was it a case of gross ineptitude on NSA’s part; or was NSA deliberately withholding information linking al-Mihdhar to the known al-Qaeda base in Yemen?
Richard Clarke, who was White House counterterrorism czar from 1998 through 2001, has told ProPublica that NSA had both the ability and the legal authority to trace calls from Mihdhar to Yemen. Clarke is correct. The targeting had been done; the numbers were known. The necessary authorities already existed.
No warrant would have been required, had Director Hayden simply made use of the authorities available to him via Executive Order 12333, Part II, Section 2.C, by which he could have obtained approval from the Attorney General to target all communications with the safe house in Yemen regardless of origination or destination. It remains unclear as to why this was not done, especially in light of the recent revelation that Hayden did exercise that authority AFTER 9/11 in approving STELLARWIND.
Michael Leiter, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center from 2007 to 2011, later acknowledged publicly that while monitoring the al-Qaeda switchboard safe house in Yemen (run by al-Mihdhar’s in-laws), NSA intercepted and transcribed seven calls from al-Mihdhar to the al-Qaeda switchboard. Leiter claimed that NSA didn’t figure out that the calls were coming from the U.S. Was Leiter never told that NSA knew about the switchboard and the calls from the U.S., but failed to share the intelligence with others?
We have been focusing on NSA but would be remiss were we not to add that there were plenty of opportunities to alert the intelligence community to al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi and their whereabouts before 9/11.
For its part, the CIA had plenty of intelligence about al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi but withheld critical pieces of it from dissemination outside CIA. This was firmly established in a Justice Department Inspector General report. The DOJ IG report added that, despite an attempt by a FBI detailee working at the CIA to share critical intelligence on the two hijackers, “that information was not released by the CIA to the FBI. We were unable to determine why this did not occur.”
Richard Clarke was also deprived of the information. During an interview on August 11, 2011, he publicly accused former CIA Director George Tenet of personally barring the dissemination of intelligence on al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi to him (Clarke) as well as to the FBI. Clarke suggested that CIA operations officers were planning to recruit the two terrorists to work for the CIA, and once the FBI learned they were on U.S. soil the CIA would lose jurisdiction and control.
Bottom Line
It should now be clear, for those who can handle the truth, that the problems at NSA run deep – in terms of effectiveness, integrity and respect for the Constitution. By withholding information and exploiting secrecy, NSA’s leaders past and present have pulled off an unparalleled coup in concealing the sad reality that NSA could have prevented 9/11 and didn’t. And Schadenfreude chortling by leaders at the top regarding the demonstrated bureaucratic advantages and success of such dishonesty has a tendency to be heard down through the ranks, corrupting even dedicated workers.
As you ponder more recent abuses, we hope you will address the deficiencies of NSA management past and present – those who have been in charge of tens of thousands of patriotic workers doing their best in an agency whose mission is critical to our national security. And we suggest that you might wish to avoid repeating the dodgy rhetoric aimed at “proving” to us all that tragedies like 9/11 cannot be prevented unless we collect every bit and byte of signals intelligence we can.
We are in a position to know that collecting everything makes very little sense from a technical point of view. And, as citizens, we are offended by the callous disregard of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution we all swore a solemn oath to support and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Signed:
William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of the SIGINT Automation Research Center.
Thomas Drake, former Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service, NSA
Edward Loomis, former Chief, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA
J. Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA
PREPARED UNDER AUSPICES OF AD HOC STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY
Ray McGovern, CIA analyst/Presidential Briefer, (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Near East (ret.)
Coleen Rowley, Minneapolis Legal Counsel & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)
Daniel Ellsberg, Former State Dept. & Defense Dept. Official (VIPS Associate)
Reprinted from Consortium News with permission.The Green Bay Packers pass rush under Dom Capers has been a hot-button issue seemingly since the fall of the Roman Empire (which happened right around 2011 if my public school education serves me right).
Each season seems to see the Packers fail to generate any kind of pass rush opposite Clay Matthews. One of the things that stood out during the 2010 Super Bowl run was how much the pass rush from Cullen Jenkins coupled with Clay Matthews helped the defense succeed. After three poor years, Dom Capers seems to have figured things out. The numbers show that the Packers have generated the best pass rush that they have had since Capers became the defensive coordinator in 2009.
The Packers knew going into the off-season in 2014 that they needed help with the pass rush and so Ted Thompson patiently waited and was able to get Julius Peppers late in free agency, a signing that has worked out well for the Packers. The table below shows that despite having the best outside linebacker to work alongside of Clay Matthews that the Packers have had, the sack numbers don’t look all that different than in years past.
[table id=16 /]
The Packers have had a fairly uneventful season by their sack standards under Capers. At 41 sacks the Packers ranked 10th in the NFL. That puts them with the fourth highest amount of sacks and fourth highest NFL ranking that they have had in Capers’ six seasons with the Packers. Something that does stand out however is that the Packers have been pretty good at generating sacks over the last six season. Five of the six seasons the Packers ranked in the top 11 in the NFL in sacks and twice in the top five.
Sacks alone do not tell the entire story however. There are multiple things that come into play when looking at sacks and at the pass rush in general. Sacks as a whole can be inflated by the number of times a team passes against you. Sacks aren’t everything either, if you are getting sacks but not getting consistent pressure, you’re going to have a tough time as a defense.
Getting to the quarterback and hitting him, as well as forcing him to move around in and out of the pocket play a big part in making a quarterback uncomfortable, which helps force the quarterback to make poor reads and inaccurate throws. Consistent quarterback hits as well as quarterback pressures are every bit as important as sacking the quarterback.
One of the reasons why sack totals are not a great measuring stick is because as you can see from the table below, teams attempt to throw a lot on the Packers, a lot more than those teams usually do.
[table id=17 /]
More so than anything else, the Packers offense forces teams to throw a lot on the Packers defense to try and catch-up. In 2010 through 2012 teams threw an average of 10 pass attempts per game against the Packers more than they typically would. Peaking at a staggering 48.4 dropbacks per game in 2010, 11.2 more dropbacks than the NFL average. 2009, 2013, and 2014 saw a much more reasonable average of two to three dropbacks more per game against the Packers than the average team.
It is not hard to see how the Packers got a lot of sacks over the last six seasons, teams drop back to throw on them a lot. What is more impressive is just how bad the 2011 pass rush was. The 2011 pass rush had the 5th least amount of sacks in the NFL, despite seeing 763 drop backs.
Looking at pass rush stats as a percentage of opportunities gives a much more accurate depiction of how the pass rush is doing from year to year. Instead of just looking at sacks, the tables below also include quarterback hits, and quarterback hurries to see how often the Packers defense is disrupting the quarterback.
[table id=18 /]
This season has been the Packers best season in terms of pass rush under Dom Capers. They set new highs for sack percentage (6.8%), QB hurry percentage(27.3%), and tied their previous high for QB hit percentage (9.2%) under Capers. While the sack totals and sack percentage is not extraordinarily high this year, they have been getting to the opponent’s quarterback a ton compared to the previous five seasons. Their QB hit percentage is almost twice as high as it was last season and the frequency in which they hurry the opponent’s quarterback is almost 10 percent higher than it was in 2012. The Packers have also dominated their 2010 pass rush percentages across the board this season.
When looking at a possible reason for the extra success that this team has had at rushing the passer this year, the easy explanation is to point to Julius Peppers, and that would not be a bad choice. Peppers is 2nd on the team in sacks, tied for first on the team in QB hits, and first on the team in QB hurries. Peppers was a great addition to the team and for the first time in six seasons there is a solid counterpart working outside linebacker opposite of Clay Matthews for the entire season.
However while Peppers has been a good addition to the team, he may not be the main catalyst for success in the pass rush. Looking at the percentages in the above table, 2009, 2010 and 2013, 2014 were better years than 2011 and 2012. What did the Packers defense have in 2009, 2010, 2013, and 2014 that they did not have in 2011 or 2012? A good pass rushing defensive end. Cullen Jenkins in 2009 and 2010 and Mike Daniels in 2013 and 2014.
Mike Daniels has been a stud this year and last. Daniels is tied with Julius Peppers for the team lead in QB hits and is first in QB hit percentage. Daniels is also third on the team behind Peppers and Matthews in sacks and hurries this year.
Last season no Packers player hit the quarterback more frequently than Mike Daniels. He was second on the team in sacks and hurries as well as leading the team in QB hits. The impact from Daniels being able to generate a consistent pass rush from the line cannot be denied. This season has been head and shoulders above Jenkins’ pass rush percentages from 2009 and just shy of the season Jenkins had in 2010 in terms of sack percentage and hurry percentage, while having a higher QB hit percentage.
Using the Pass Rush Productivity metric from Pro Football Focus that combines sacks, QB hits, and QB hurries, only J.J. Watt has been a |
:map-reader wrap/int-string-map-reader :reduce my-reduce :input-format :text )
and after definition, we can run this job using command line option -job job-name (as full with namespace), instead of specifying separate options -map and -reduce.
Usage of defjob macro is shown in wordcount4 and wordcount5 examples. The only different between them is that in wordcount5 in job's definition the reader and writer functions are specified. Full example with defjob you can see below.
Full example
As example, I want to show small program, that generates sets of N-Grams from given files — I use generated databases for document classification tasks. The source code is available on github, in hadoop1 directory. This example uses defjob macro to describe job and user-defined mapper & reducer functions.
All example consists from one file with source code, that implements functions my-map and my-reduce, that are used in job's specification together with input and output formats specifications, etc. As usual in MapReduce, the my-map function accepts two parameters — key (integer number) and value (string) and produces list of pairs of string/integer, where string is n-gram. The my-reduce function is very simple — it just sum all entries for given key.
( ns hadoop1 ( :require [clojure-hadoop.wrap :as wrap] [clojure-hadoop.defjob :as defjob] [clojure-hadoop.imports :as imp]) ( :use clojure.contrib.seq-utils) ( :require [clojure.contrib.str-utils2 :as str2]) ( :import (java.util StringTokenizer ))) (imp/import-io) (imp/import-mapred) ( def delimiters "0123456789[ \t
\r!\"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\\^`{|}~-]+" ) ( defn gen-n-grams [ #^String s #^Integer n] ( when ( > (.length s) 0) ( let [str ( str " " s ( String. ) (str2/repeat " " ( - n 1)))] ( reduce ( fn [val elem] ( conj val (.substring str elem ( + elem n)))) [] ( range 0 ( + 1 (.length s))))))) ( defn my-map [key #^String value] ( map ( fn [token] [token 1]) ( flatten ( map #(gen-n-grams %1 3) ( enumeration-seq ( StringTokenizer. value delimiters)))))) ( defn my-reduce [key values-fn] [ [key ( reduce + (values-fn))] ]) ( defn string-long-writer [ #^OutputCollector output #^String key value] (.collect output ( Text. key) ( LongWritable. value))) ( defn string-long-reduce-reader [ #^Text key wvalues] [(.toString key) ( fn [] ( map ( fn [ #^LongWritable v] (.get v)) ( iterator-seq wvalues)))]) ( defjob/defjob job :map my-map :map-reader wrap/int-string-map-reader :map-writer string-long-writer :reduce my-reduce :reduce-reader string-long-reduce-reader :reduce-writer string-long-writer :output-key Text :output-value LongWritable :input-format :text :output-format :text :compress-output false)
This code is based on wordcount5 example from clojure-hadoop distribution. To build it we're using following project for Leiningen:
( defproject hadoop1 "1.0" :description "hadoop1" :dependencies [[org.clojure/clojure "1.1.0" ] [org.clojure/clojure-contrib "1.1.0" ] [com.stuartsierra/clojure-hadoop "1.2.0-SNAPSHOT" ]] )
To run this job, we need to combine all code into one archive, so we need to use lein uberjar to combine our Clojure code with all necessary libraries. After this, you can run this job either in autonomous mode, without running Hadoop and working with local files, or in cluster mode. To run job in autonomous mode you can use following command:
java -cp hadoop1-standalone.jar clojure_hadoop.job -job hadoop1/job -input FILE -output out
specify any text file instead of FILE argument, and after execution, you'll get generated file with n-grams in the out directory. This file can be used as database for language detection & text classification tasks.
To run your code in Hadoop cluster, you need to put files onto HDFS (into input directory, in our example), and run task with following command:
hadoop jar hadoop1-standalone.jar clojure_hadoop.job -job hadoop1/job -input input -output output
And after finishing of task, data will put into the output directory on HDFS, and you can get access to them with standard HDFS commands.
Additional information
This information is just an introduction into use of Clojure for Hadoop programming. Additional examples of clojure-hadoop usage you can find in following materials:
Additional information about programming for Hadoop and MapReduce you can find in following materials:
It also worth to mention the Cascalog project, that implements DSL, that allows to query data in Hadoop using Clojure.A man was brutally beaten by two large men on the streets of New York City, but no one attempted to intervene because they said there was no stopping the assailants.
An unidentified 24-year-old man was mercilessly attacked by two men who chased him through the streets of downtown Manhattan around 3am on Friday, according to police.
As the larger males repeatedly kicked and punched the victim, passerby did nothing to stop the blows, in the disturbing event captured on surveillance video.
One witness said although what happened was horrific, he was scared to step in because the men 'were big guys' and there wasn't going to be 'any stopping them'.
An unidentified 24-year-old man was mercilessly attacked by two men who chased him through the streets of downtown Manhattan around 3am on Friday. They kicked, stomped and punched their victim before fleeing in a livery vehicle
Captured by a shop's surveillance's video on Orchard Street, in the Lower East Side, the two attackers savagely kick the victim in the head, face and body, reported PIX 11.
Several people walked by but none stepped in to rescue the helpless man on the ground from the crushing blows.
Only once did the men flee the scene in a livery vehicle, did witnesses intervene and waited with the injured man until medical assistance arrived, according to New York police.
A witness said to CBS2: 'It was really gruesome and hard to watch.
Several passerby witnessed the brutal assault but no one intervened to help the man. A witness said he was scared to step in because the men 'were big guys' and there wasn't going to be 'any stopping them'
'And they wouldn’t stop — just going on and on and on, like, and that’s when I was yelling: "Stop! Stop! He’s down! Just leave it! Go!"
'I mean, they were big guys. Like, I myself couldn’t stop them. I don’t think there was any stopping them.'
Another witness said to ABC7: 'It looked bad. It looked real bad. Because once the ambulance came, there was just blood all over the street. It was bad.'
The victim was transported to Bellevue Hospital with serious injuries.
Police are looking for the suspects and anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).Share. Press X To Dismember. Press X To Dismember.
Ryse: Son of Rome is about going to beautiful places and repeatedly stabbing everyone you meet there. Developer Crytek’s Roman tale looks magnificent, and its typical revenge story setup is handled with great care, but the combat doesn’t always keep up with the high bar Ryse sets for itself in all other departments.
Ryse’s story is delivered out of chronological order. Rome is crumbling under a barbarian assault, and Marius, a proud and decorated Centurion, is escorting Emperor Nero through his palace. One moment later, Marius is a fresh-faced greenhorn of the Roman army. As I progressed, I enjoyed learning more about how the circumstances became so dire. And despite the abnormal structure, the story was never difficult to follow even when it took a few unanticipated turns.
Exit Theatre Mode
If you want to show off the capabilities of your shiny new Xbox One to your friends, Ryse is more than capable of lending a hand. Environments don’t just look terrific technically; they have great variety. There’s plenty of Roman architecture, but Ryse also takes you to beaches dotted with shipwrecks, trap-filled swamps, and Crytek’s signature lush forests. Characters’ animations look fluid and natural, even during hectic fights with dozens of fighters going at it. It sounds great as well, with special mention going to the excellent voice acting. Strangely enough, Emperor Nero’s sons sound a lot like Bane and the Joker from Nolan’s Batman films. If it’s supposed to be an homage, those voice actors nailed their roles.
Ryse, Rynse, and Rypeat
Ryse’s biggest issue is that not even halfway through its modest six-hour campaign, you’ll have seen and experienced a vast majority of your offensive options. Combat consists of basic hits, bashes, blocks, and heavy attacks. In most battles, you can chain these actions together in nearly any order and still be successful, which remains fun until the flashy animations start to lose their luster. There is a system in place to land perfect attacks, but those too are easy to execute once you understand them.
Exit Theatre Mode
What’s there isn’t at all bad, it just feels like a foundation for something far greater and more nuanced that never comes. Enemy variety does a bit of work to liven things up. Some foes are unblockable, some charge you, and some assault you with a flurry of dual-sword attacks. Dealing with them requires you to care about your blocks, attacks, and movements, which is fun until you figure out their repetitive patterns.
Stuck in the Past
Many games of this style rely on upgrades in the form of unlockable combos and items to add mechanical depth. But most of Ryse’s are boring passive bonuses that don’t change the way you fight. Your health bar can be extended, as can your slow motion power-up. Executions, which are gory displays of dismemberment that Ryse revels in, are the other thing you’ll spend experience points on, but they’re focused more on the showy outcome than the work it took to make them happen.
Exit Theatre Mode
When an enemy is weakened, you can initiate a brutal execution with one button tap. From there, you simply match your button presses to they color the enemy glows – either blue or yellow. You’re given ample time to hit the buttons, and even if you miss the execution still goes through. Hitting the prompt in time just earns you a higher rating for the kill and rewards you with more health, experience, or whatever else you have selected as an execution reward. Upgraded executions give you larger bonuses for completing them, but the input hardly changes. So what’s the point? This one mechanical decision managed to extract most of the danger from a game about burly, cruel men who savagely kill each other.
The standard hack-and-slash combat is occasionally broken up by special gameplay sections that, at the very least, give you a break from the norm. Sometimes it’s as simple as manning a crossbow turret with unlimited ammo and mowing down barbarians. Other times you arrange your warriors into a phalanx and march them forward into fortified territory, blocking arrows and chucking spears. Like your normal actions, none of the activities ask much of you. They’re about the spectacle, which, to be fair, is pretty impressive.
New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
Boss battles aren’t common, but when they do rear their heads, they can be frustrating. On one hand, bosses often attack faster or have heavy attacks that can’t be blocked, which is a nice change from the rhythm of combat you’ll have grown accustomed to by then. On the other, Ryse likes to lean on the old regenerating-boss-health trick to extend the fights, but doesn’t bother to change up their behavior when their bar refills. You don’t fight the same boss in a markedly different way now that he’s really mad – you just fight him again.
Exit Theatre Mode
The co-op multiplayer modes let you dismember enemies with one friend in the famed Roman Colosseum. Before each fight, you pick a god to serve, each with different bonuses. One player might allow both to recover health with executions, while the other might allow both to earn focus. Having to defend another guy, and thus preserve your own bonuses, is an extra layer of strategy that isn’t present in the single-player mode, and it’s badly needed. However, aside from ensuring the right player lands an execution at the proper time, the combat remains held back by the same passiveness of the campaign. The environment does shift constantly, with new blades, towers, and pits springing up every few minutes as the objectives change. It’s a cool way to keep the combat dynamic within one round.
PC Version -- October 9, 2014
Ryse: Son of Rome for PC makes this already great-looking game look even better, with support for high-resolution monitors and settings for shadows, shaders, and even the quality of animations. Our GeForce GTX 780-equipped PC ran Ryse without a hiccup, but mid-tier GPUs might have to settle for medium settings - which still look excellent.
The visual spectacle is the best thing about Ryse, which means the PC is the best place to play it. But as you’d expect for a port, this new version does nothing to correct any of the issues I had with Ryse’s repetitive combat when I played it on Xbox One. In fact, its new multiplayer mode, Survival, actually amplifies them a bit.
The premise is that you’re bleeding out, and you must constantly kill to keep refilling your health bar. (Because you’re a vampire, I guess?) I’d hoped for exciting pacing, but in practice you’re forced to do the repetitive tasks of combat over and over again even more quickly than normal. At least the multiplayer DLC maps are included in the PC package, which gives it some improved variety in scenery.
More Must-See Xbox One Launch Content:Wilmington and Tewksbury are among the communities that fared well as a result of the vetoes.
STATE HOUSE – Massachusetts lawmakers last week poured millions of dollars back into the state budget over Gov. Charlie Baker's objections and approved a two-day tax holiday designed to trade expected revenues to the state for an anticipated burst of consumer spending in mid-August.
Wilmington and Tewksbury are among the communities that fared well as a result of the vetoes.
Sen. Barbara L'Italien, who represents Tewksbury, Dracut, Lawrence and Andover was grateful to colleagues for overriding Baker’s veto of $90,000 to reimburse Tewksbury for costs associated with its Fire Department responding to calls to Tewksbury State Hospital.
“This critical health care facility in Tewksbury serves and benefits the surrounding communities so it's fair and reasonable for the state to help offset the additional financial burden the hospital puts on the town's fire department,” said L’Italien in a statement.
The House and Senate on Wednesday and Thursday also nixed Gov. Charlie Baker's veto of L'Italien’s proposal to insert language into the new state budget protecting Tewksbury State Hospital from downsizing and potential spending cuts next fiscal year.
State Rep. James Miceli, representing Wilmington and Tewksbury, said he was pleased with the budget – as well as the overrides.
“We worked very hard to override the Governor’s vetoes to ensure that the budget was balanced without cutting local programs, such as the special needs program in Tewksbury known as Camp Pohelo or the Wilmington High School Wildcat Service Program, which allows students to volunteer in their local community,” said Miceli in a statement. “These programs are critical to the well-being of our respective towns, and I am pleased to have been able to obtain financial support in this budget to ensure their continued success.”
With both branches meeting simultaneously, the Democratic House and Senate majorities held firm in support of overriding budget vetoes that Baker said were necessary to ensure a balanced budget in light of what the administration has cautioned is a developing shortfall in the state's non-tax revenues.
The House and Senate voted overwhelmingly, for example, to restore funding for kindergarten expansion grants, cultural council grants and the University of Massachusetts. Republican lawmakers joined Democrats in overriding many of Baker's vetoes.
UMass President Martin Meehan called the $5.25 million override for the five-campus system a "victory for the students, faculty and staff" at UMass and said he hoped the Legislature would also approve spending to cover the university's $10.9 million in "state-funded" union contracts for the 2014-2015 academic year.
The tax holiday, scheduled for Aug. 15-16, drew strong support from Republicans but divided Democrats, with critics of the idea calling it a "boondoggle" and minimizing the 6.25 percent savings that consumers would receive by buying items exempt from the sales tax.
The sales tax holiday bill cleared the House 136-20 and the Senate 27-11. Some lawmakers who voted for it said they did so reluctantly and hoped the measure would get a closer examination next year.
Noting retailers were already advertising with the expectation that the sales tax holiday would be approved, Sen. Marc Pacheco of Taunton said, "I will be voting for it reluctantly so that the Senate is not blamed for stopping it."
All told, the House and Senate overturned 87 total vetoes worth a collective $97 million in spending to the fiscal 2016 budget cut by Gov. Charlie Baker out of concern that the budget could fall out of balance later in the year.
Both houses left about $65 million of his spending cuts in place.
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg told reporters Senate Ways and Means Chairwoman Karen Spilka recommended that any override the House sends to the Senate be placed before the chamber for a vote.
The House and Senate unanimously overrode Baker's veto of $17.6 million in kindergarten expansion grants, which would have left $1 million in the account.
While he joined in the override vote, House Assistant Minority Leader Brad Hill said there would need to be a "dialogue" about the grants, which he said could be part of a larger debate about education funding. The Baker administration contends the grants continue to flow to districts even after they have established kindergarten programs.
But supporters of the kindergarten grants said the money was a critical component of education funding and Spilka said there are 33 communities in Massachusetts that still don't have full-day kindergarten.
On other overrides, Republicans split from the majority Democrats, but with the Republican caucus numbering only 35 in the 160-seat House and six in the 40-seat Senate, they were unable to sustain a single one of Baker's vetoes that House and Senate leadership brought up for a vote.Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued a broad condemnation of racism on Aug. 18 and promised to make his department more racially diverse. (Reuters)
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued a broad condemnation of racism on Aug. 18 and promised to make his department more racially diverse. (Reuters)
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared on Friday that hate is not an American value in his most extended remarks on racism and bigotry since last weekend’s violence in Charlottesville.
In a speech announcing a new effort to expand diversity at the State Department, Tillerson did not explicitly mention either Charlottesville or President Trump’s reactions to the presence of white supremacists and neo-Nazis there, but he said the events of the past week were on everyone’s mind.
“We do honor, protect and defend freedom of speech, First Amendment rights,” he said. “It’s what sets us apart from every other government regime in the world, in allowing people a right to expression. These are good things.
“But we do not honor, nor do we promote or accept hate speech in any form. And those who embrace it poison our public discourse and they damage the very country that they claim to love. So we condemn racism, bigotry in all its forms. Racism is evil; it is antithetical to America’s values. It’s antithetical to the American idea.”
[Mother of woman killed in Charlottesville says she won’t speak to Trump after his comments]
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson listens to a question during a news conference at the State Department on Aug. 17. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Tillerson also reached into history, quoting both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln for their words condemning bigotry and the need to heal divisions.
“George Washington said in an address to the synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, that his vision for our country was, I quote, ‘a government which to bigotry gives no sanction; to persecution, no assistance.’ In his second inaugural address in the middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln called on Americans to ‘bind up the nation’s wounds.’
“What Lincoln knew, and that we are sadly reminded today, that painful racial tensions are part of our experience as a nation. We too today should seek to bind up the wounds. We must pursue reconciliation, understanding and respect regardless of skin color, ethnicity or religious, or political views.”
Tillerson’s remarks on racial intolerance were part of a speech he made to students with fellowships and internships at the State Department. He announced a new initiative to increase diversity at the State Department, including the recruitment of minorities in colleges that are not Ivy League schools and an effort to get more minority ambassadors.
Tillerson noted that only 12 percent of senior Foreign Service officers are nonwhite, and a third are women
“We have a great diversity gap in the State Department,” he said. “We need a State Department that reflects the American people, reflects who we are.”
Since Tillerson arrived at the State Department six months ago, he has been looking at ways to reorganize and reform a huge bureaucracy that employs 75,000 people around the world. The diversity outreach he announced Friday is the first concrete step to come out of months of employee surveys and draft memos.
Tillerson said he has ordered that at least one minority candidate be included for every ambassador post that comes open. That will help target future leaders, he said, so their careers can be nurtured.
“We need a more deliberate process to cultivate the abundance of minority talent we already have in the State Department,” he said.
Tillerson said the State Department will step up recruitment of African Americans at historically black colleges and universities. Colleges in Miami and Chicago with large Hispanic populations will also be seeing State Department recruiters, he said. And he said the recruitment and promotion drive should include women and members of the LGBT community.
“This enriches the quality of our work,” he said. “We know we are a stronger organization when we embrace, incorporate diverse points of view into our work product.”
Tillerson also noted that many current diplomats and civil servants come to the State Department after completing military service, “So we know this is a rich talent pool from which to fish.”Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
A JUDGE yesterday slammed Mike Ashley’s bizarre bid to put Dave King in jail – and his £3 “F*** King” woolly hats.
Mr Justice Peter Smith rejected the billionaire’s demand to have the Rangers chairman locked up for allegedly breaking a gagging order about talks between the club and Sports Direct.
And he asked Ashley’s QC: “Is your client interested in having a relationship with Mr King or does he just want to grind him into the dust?
“I’ve seen the bobble hats – how does that advance things? They say ‘F*** King’ and he is selling them cheap.
“Do you expect Mr King to sit down and have a sensible relationship with him?”
The hats appeared on Sports Direct’s website in November. Bosses did not explain what the slogan meant.
King said after the hearing that the judge had torn Ashley apart.
King could still be found in contempt of court and penalised. That decision will be made later.
(Image: Stefan Rousseau/PA)
But at the High Court in London, Mr Justice Smith made it clear what he thought of Ashley’s attempt to have him locked up.
He said he was “staggered” by it, and then threw it out without even hearing from King’s legal team.
The judge told Ashley’s QC that threatening someone with contempt of court and prison was “not to be used as an extra power in your locker for commercial negotiations”.
Ashley made his demand after King told Jim White of Sky Sports in July that he had met Sports Direct bosses and had a “good discussion” about commercial deals between Rangers and the company.
The court heard that Ashley loaned the club money when it was in difficulty. King’s legal team said a loan had been repaid in full yesterday.
It’s claimed that by giving the interview, King broke a court injunction obtained by Sports Direct which banned him from talking about the negotiations.
But Mr Justice Smith told Ashley’s counsel David Quest QC: “I’m staggered that your client thinks it’s so serious that it applies to put Mr King in prison.
“This is one very large stick you wish to put over Mr King.”
Mr Quest replied: “We say that is the only way of ensuring he is compliant.”
The judge asked the QC what was so damaging about the interview “that Mr King has to go potentially to Pentonville [prison] for a period of time?”
(Image: REUTERS)
Mr Quest replied that Sports Direct did not want reports about the talks to appear in the media.
He said: “The press are fully entitled to report it, and one can understand, with football being more important than life and death.
“That’s why Sports Direct is entitled to say, ‘If you want us to continue discussions, we want that to be on the basis that nobody talks to the press about it.’”
Mr Quest said of King: “He asked if he could make comment on the meeting and we said he couldn’t, and he goes and gives an interview and he does it anyway.
“The more comment there is by Mr King and by Rangers, the more this issue remains in the public eye and gets reported on.
“That’s what we are trying to avoid.”
Mr Quest said King was fully aware of the terms of the injunction when he gave the interview to White.
But the judge repeatedly asked what King had said that made Ashley so upset. He told Mr Quest: “I’m trying desperately to find out what is so damaging about King referring to the meeting.
“Three out of four of your complaints are just Mr King discussing existence of meetings.”
In a statement to the court, King said he could not remember giving White the quotes, and added that he “didn’t think he had his Rangers hat on” at the time.
Mr Quest said the court was entitled to “draw inferences” from King saying he couldn’t remember – and that those inferences could be drawn “to a criminal standard”.
But the judge, who strongly criticised Ashley’s team for not putting King in the witness box, retorted: “I’m not going to send a person to prison on inferences when you choose not to have him cross-examined.”
Mr Justice Smith said Ashley’s decision not to have King give evidence meant he couldn’t ask him if the account of his interview with White was accurate.
During exchanges with the judge, Mr Quest confirmed that the gagging order was a “one-way agreement”. It bans King from discussing the talks, but leaves Ashley free to say whatever he likes.
(Image: Stefan Rousseau/PA)
Mr Quest said: “That’s what Rangers signed up to.”
Mr Justice Smith spent more than two hours debating with Mr Quest about the merits of Ashley’s application to have King jailed.
Then he turned to King’s barrister, William McCormick QC, and told him he didn’t need to argue his case.
He said: “I’m going to dismiss the application for reasons I will give later.”
Mr Justice Smith noted that the legal row had cost the two sides more than £400,000 so far.
And he said: “I do wonder what is the point of all this. £400,000 would get you a full-back in the Scottish second division.”
The judge said he was minded to continue the gagging order on King, but added that it “needs tidying up”.
He said of King: “He can discuss things that are already established and in the public domain.”
Ashley was not in court. King sat at the back, listening to the exchanges.
Mr Justice Smith warned him he still faced a trial for contempt of court, and added: “Mr King should not assume he has been completely vindicated. It’s going to be a close-run thing.”
He advised King not to talk to the press, saying: “I think Mr King should say absolutely nothing, except how happy he is not to go to prison and that Mr Justice Peter Smith is a fair-minded judge.”
King said outside court that he wasn’t surprised by the judge’s decision – and described it as “a humiliating defeat for Mike Ashley”.
He added: “I’ve never witnessed a strong judge really, virtually tearing someone apart the way he did today.
“I came a long way for this, and I’m glad it was an experienced senior judge who knew what the matters were.
“It’s something I expected and I’m absolutely delighted.”
King declined to comment on the Sports Direct loan repayment, believed to be for £5million.
Asked about his relationship with Ashley, he said: “It’s the same as it was, the stresses and strains that everyone is aware of.”A Spanish court has ordered that the remains of Salvador Dalí be exhumed after a woman who claims to be the daughter of the world-famous artist filed a paternity claim.
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The Madrid court said Monday the exhumation aimed "to get samples of his remains to determine whether he is the biological father of a woman from Girona (in northeastern Spain) who filed a claim to be recognised as the daughter of the artist."
"The DNA study of the painter's corpse is necessary due to the lack of other biological or personal remains with which to perform the comparative study," it added.
The court said the decision could be appealed.
Tomb of Salvador Dali - basement of Teatro Museo Dali - Figueres Spain. pic.twitter.com/oS6NckIudU — Alan Farley (@msttrader) October 10, 2015
A spokesman for the court said the woman who claims to be Dali's daughter is called Pilar Abel, but refused to give any further details.
Dali is buried in Figueras, a city in the northeastern region of Catalonia where he was born in 1904 and died in January 1989 of heart failure after a life marked by the genius of his work and his own eccentricities and extravagances.
(AFP)Fixing FreeBSD Networking on Digital Ocean
Posted on May 19, 2017
I decided it was time to update my FreeBSD Digital Ocean droplet from the end-of-life version 10.1 (shame on me) to the modern version 10.3 (good until April 2018), and maybe even version 11 (good until 2021). There were no sensitive files on the VM, so I had put it off. Additionally, cloud providers tend to have shoddy support for BSDs, so breakages after messing with the kernel or init system are rampant, and I had been skirting that risk.
The last straw for me was a broken pkg :
$ pkg update /usr/local/lib/libpkg.so.3: Undefined symbol "openat"
Uh oh. Some Googling led to an answer. Essentially, around pkg version 1.9, there were some library version requirements that my outdated installation didn’t have. Let’s start with upgrading to FreeBSD 10.3.
# freebsd-update fetch install # freebsd-update -r 10.3-RELEASE upgrade # freebsd-update install
I rebooted, and of course, it happened: no ssh access after 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes…I logged into my Digital Ocean account and saw green status lights for the instance, but something was definitely wrong.
Investigation
Fortunately, Digital Ocean provides console access (albeit slow, buggy, and crashes my browser every time I run ping ). ifconfig revealed that the interfaces vtnet0 (public) and vtnet1 (private) haven’t been configured with IP addresses. Combing through files in /etc/rc.*, I found a file called /etc/rc.digitalocean.d/${DROPLET_ID}.conf containing static network settings for this droplet ( ${DROPLET_ID} was something like 1234567 ).
It seemed that FreeBSD wasn’t picking up the Digital Ocean network settings config file. The quick and dirty way would have been to messily append the contents of this file to /etc/rc.conf, but I wanted a nicer way. Reading the script in /etc/rc.d/digitalocean told me that /etc/rc.digitalocean.d/${DROPLET_ID}.conf was supposed to have a symlink at /etc/rc.digitalocean.d/droplet.conf. It was broken and pointed to /etc/rc.digitalocean.d/.conf, which could happen when the curl command in /etc/rc.d/digitalocean fails:
# /etc/rc.d/digitalocean DROPLET_ID=$( /usr/local/bin/curl --retry 5 --retry-delay 2 \ --connect-timeout 2 -s http://169.254.169.254/metadata/v1/id ) #... /bin/ln -s -f /etc/rc.digitalocean.d/ $DROPLET_ID.conf \ /etc/rc.digitalocean.d/droplet.conf
Using grep to fish for files containing droplet.conf, I discovered that it was hacked into the init system via load_rc_config() in /etc/rc.subr :
# /etc/rc.subr if [ -L /etc/rc.digitalocean.d/droplet.conf -a -f /etc/rc.digitalocean.d/droplet.conf ] then. /etc/rc.digitalocean.d/droplet.conf fi
The Fix
I could fix that symlink and restart the services:
# set DROPLET_ID=$(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/metadata/v1/id) # ln -s -f /etc/rc.digitalocean.d/${DROPLET_ID}.conf /etc/rc.digitalocean.d/droplet.conf # /etc/rc.d/netif restart # /etc/rc.d/routing restart
Networking was working again, and I could then ssh into my server and run the following to finish the upgrade:
# freebsd-update install
At this point, I decided that I didn’t want to deal with this mess again until at least 2021, so I decided to go for 11.0-RELEASE:
# freebsd-update -r 11.0-RELEASE update # freebsd-update install # reboot
No network outages!
# freebsd-update install # pkg-static install -f pkg # pkg update # pkg upgrade # portsnap fetch update # portmaster -Da # uname -a FreeBSD hostname 11.0-RELEASE-p9 FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE-p9 # pkg -v 1.10.1
The problem was solved correctly, and my /etc/rc.conf remains free of generated cruft.
The Digital Ocean team can make our lives easier by having their init scripts do more thorough system checking, e.g., catching broken symlinks and bad network addresses. I’m hopeful that collaboration of the FreeBSD team and cloud providers will one day result in automatic fixing of these situations, or at least a correct status indicator.Wondering where all those Windows Phone headlines a mobile-centric website like ours is supposed to feature hiding? In all honesty, the platform has been going through a transition and settling-in period. Microsoft is really busy turning Windows 10 from a wild convergence vision to a practical computing reality. Meanwhile, it's been re-branding the Nokia Lumia devices as part as of its official product line-up. What Microsoft, clearly, hasn't been busy enough with is selling Lumia phones to the masses. The latest data by Kantar Research paints a glum picture full of declining yearly sales in important markets between Sep 2013 and Sep 2014.According to the analysts, Windows Phone has seen a 0.3% decline in the USA between S year, falling from 4.6 to 4.3 points. Over in China, Windows Phone lost a disheartening 2.8% market share and is left occupying a measly 0.4%. If you thought Samsung and Sony have been having a hard time battling those Xiaomi and Huawei phones on their home turf, just ask Microsoft. The situation in Australia is also pretty scary - Windows Phone lost 3.1% market share, falling to 6.2%. Moving over to Europe, Spain, France, and Great Britain are reporting small losses too, while Italy and Japan actually have some growth going on - it's 1.5% for the former, and 0.2% for the latter.Hopefully, Microsoft has worked out a solid game plan to address the situation.It’s hard to overstate the influence of 2005’s surprise smash Sin City, a collaboration between director Robert Rodriguez and comic-book iconoclast turned filmmaker/public scourge Frank Miller. It dramatically altered the visual vocabulary of movies, proving conclusively that in the right hands, green screens could be an entire aesthetic, not just a tool for world-building and special effects. At the time, Sin City represented a bold, original fusion of comic-book stylization and live-action hard-boiled pulp—part blood-splattered graphic novel, part heavy-breathing neo-noir.
It’s similarly difficult to overstate the utter worthlessness and repulsiveness of the film’s late-in-the-works sequel, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, and how hateful, stupid, and misogynistic it is in every facet of its storytelling. It’s so egregiously awful, so utterly without merit, that it makes its predecessor seem much worse by association. The film’s brainless, chest-beating brand of hyper-pulp calls into question whether Sin City was any good at all, or whether the novelty of its visuals and storytelling merely masked a howling nothingness at its core.
In the nine years since Sin City came out, its extensive use of green-screen has gone from being a thrilling innovation to a groaning cliché. So in a typical bit of counterproductive excess, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For attempts to make up for its lack of novelty by embracing another innovation that has |
Autonomy is a vexing concept that moves one quickly from the safe terrain of science and engineering into the quagmire of philosophy. Broadly speaking, we ascribe some autonomy to almost all animals. The ant pushing a seed and the chameleon snagging an insect are considered to be acting as individuals. However, we also assume that animals such as these are basically obeying the call of their instinct or responding to immediate stimuli. Moving further up the phylogenetic tree, we gradually begin to assign greater agency to animals – the bird that cares for its young, the dog that understands verbal commands, the bull elephant that leads its herd – but this agency is still rather limited, and does not rise to the point of holding the animal truly responsible for its actions. That changes when we reach the human animal. Suddenly (evolutionarily speaking), we have an animal that thinks, understands, evaluates, and makes moral choices. This animal has a mind! With mind comes intelligence and the ability to make deliberate, thoughtful decisions – free will. But is this a reasonable description of reality?
Nothing that we know of in terms of its physical nature suggests that human animal is in any way qualitatively different than other animals with central nervous systems. Thus, the attributes identified with the mind – including intelligence – must either arise from some uniquely human non-material essence – soul, spirit, mind – or be present in all animals, though perhaps in varying degree. The former position – termed mind-body dualism (or just dualism) – is firmly rejected by modern science, which postulates that mind must emerge from the physical body. Indeed, this is the whole basis of the artificial intelligence project, which seeks to build other physical entities with minds. How to do this is an issue that has engaged computer scientists, philosophers and biologists for decades and is far from settled. I have expressed my own opinions on this elsewhere, and will return to them briefly at the end of this piece. The pertinent point is that intelligence – real or artificial – is not an objectively measurable, all-or-none attribute that currently exists only in humans and will emerge suddenly in machines one day. Rather, it is convenient label to describe a whole suite of capabilities that can be, and already are, present in animals and machines to varying degrees as a consequence of their physical structures and processes. Basically, from a modern scientific, materialistic viewpoint, animals and machines are not fundamentally different – though it is simplistic, in my opinion, to simply reduce them both to entirely conventional notions of information processing. From a mind-as-matter scientific viewpoint, the “smart” autonomous missile is not qualitatively different from the “dumb” heat-seeking missile, since both are equally at the mercy of their physical being – or embodiment – and their environments. The smart missile just has far more complex processes.
Scientifically valid as this view may be, it is not shared by most people. The problem is that there exists an unspoken mismatch between the scientific and societal conceptions of responsibility, but this issue has mainly been an academic one so far. AI algorithms are now forcing us to confront it in the real world. Since time immemorial, the human social contract has been based on the idea that people have freedom to choose their actions autonomously – with constraints, perhaps, but without compulsion. And yet, the current scientific consensus indicates that this cannot be the case; that true “free will”, in the sense of being potentially able to choose action B even at the instant that one chooses action A, is an illusion – a story we tell ourselves after the fact. This follows from the materialistic view of humans, which may have room for the unpredictability and even indeterminacy of actions, but no room for explicit choice. The activity of neurons and muscles always follows only one path, so only one choice is ever made. There is no way for an individual to make “the other decision” because by that point, the individual's physical being is the decision that is already occurring. In a sense, freedom of choice lies wholly in the post facto apprehension of the counterfactual.
Of course, this is problematic from a philosophical perspective that seeks to assign responsibility, but that is a modern – even post-modern – problem. Until now, the convention has been to assign responsibility based on motivation, with the implicit assumption that human evaluators (judges, juries, prosecutors, etc.) can ascertain the motivations of other humans because of their fellowship in the same species and a common system of values grounded in universally human drives and emotions. Even here, cultural differences can lead to very serious problems, but imagine having to ascertain the motives of a totally alien species whose thought processes – whatever they might be – are totally opaque to us. Do we assign responsibility based on human criteria? Is that “fair”? Are the processes occurring in the machine even “thought”? If we follow the logic of the Turing Test and decide to accept the appearance of complex, autonomous intelligence as “true” intelligence, we have a much more complex world. Currently, we only have human-on-human violence, but once we have three more kinds – machine-on-human, human-on-machine, and machine-on-machine – how do we assign priority? Does privilege go automatically to humans, and why is that ethical? We already face some of these issues with animals, but there it has tacitly been agreed that the human is the only species with true responsibility, and privilege is to be determined by human laws – even if it occasionally ends up punishing the human (as in the case of poaching or cruelty to animals). The co-existence of two autonomous, intelligent – and therefore responsible – species changes this calculus completely, requiring us to draw a moral boundary that has never been drawn before. Having to ascertain responsibility in machines will force us to define the physical basis of human volition with sufficient clarity that it can be applied to machines. In the process, humans will need either to acknowledge their own material nature and consequent lack of true free will, or give in to dualism and deny that purely material machines can ever be truly intelligent and moral agents in a human sense. In the former case – which modern science would recommend – we would have to accept that not only logical processes, but also those most cherished human attributes of emotion, empathy, desire, etc. can emerge from purely material systems. The caricature of the machine that cannot “feel” – all the angst of Mr. Data – would have to go, to be replaced by the much more disorienting possibility that, far from being coldly calculating, truly intelligent machines would turn out to be like us, and, even more disconcertingly, that we have been like our machines all along!
For most people outside the areas of science and technology, this perspective on machine intelligence is deeply problematic – much as the idea of human evolution has been. A unified view of humans and machines strikes at the core ideas of soul, mind, consciousness, intentionality and free will, reducing them to “figments of matter”, so to speak. Our moral philosophies, social conventions or legal systems may not be ready for this transition, but intelligent algorithms are going to force it upon us anyway. Some of the complexities involved are already being discussed by philosophers of law, though mainly in the context of relatively simple artificial agents such as bots and shopping websites.
The Existential Threat of AI:
The more sensational part of the alarms raised about AI are dire threats of human destruction or enslavement by machines. Steve Wozniak says that robots will keep humans as pets. Lord Rees warns that we are “hurtling towards a post-human future“. Given that science considers both animals and machines as purely material entities, why are such brilliant people so concerned about smarter machines?
Perhaps part of the answer can be found by posing the question: Would we be more afraid of a real tiger or an equally dangerous robot tiger? Most people would probably choose the latter. Scientific consensus or not, we remain dualists at heart, recognizing in animals a kinship of the mind and spirit – an assumption that, in the end, they are creatures with motivations and feelings similar to ours. About the machine, we are not certain, though it would be hard to explain this on a purely rational basis. For many, the very idea that the machine could have motivations and feelings is absurd – which is pure dualism – but even those who accept the possibility in principle hesitate to acknowledge the equivalence. Most of the concerned scientists who are unwilling to trust an autonomous machine to make a lethal choice are not pacifists, and are willing to allow human pilots or gunners to make the same decision. Rees, Hawking and co. may be concerned about intelligent robots that could enslave or destroy humanity, but are far less concerned that humans may do the same. Why is that? I think that the answer lies in a natural and prudent fear of alien intelligence.
Yes, alien! Though they are our constructions, most people see machines as fundamentally different, cold, non-empathetic, mechanical – and believe that any intelligence that may emerge from them will inherit these attributes. We may prize Reason as a crowning achievement of the human intellect, but both experience and recent scientific studies indicate that, in fact, humans are far from rational in matters of choice: Much of human (and animal) behavior emerges from emotions, biases, drives, passions, etc. We recognize intuitively that these – not Reason – form the bedrock of the values in which human actions are ultimately grounded. The duel between Reason and Passion, the Head and the Heart, Calculation and Compassion has pervaded the literature, philosophy, culture and language of all human societies, and has found expression in all spiritual, moral and legal systems. Those who lack empathy and emotion are regarded as sociopathic, psychopathic, heartless and inhuman. In this framework, machines appear to lie at the hyper-rational extreme –driven by algorithms, making choices through pure calculation with no room for empathy or compassion. Where, then, would a machine's values come from? Would it even have a notion of right and wrong, good and evil, kindness, love, devotion? Or would it only understand correct and incorrect, accurate and inaccurate, useful and useless? Would it have a purely rational value system with no room for humanity? It turns out that we humans fear the hyper-rational as much as we fear the irrational cruelty of a Caligula or Hitler. But in the case of intelligent machines, it is compounded further by at least three attributes that would make intelligent machines more powerful than any human tyrant:
· Open-Ended Adaptation: As engineers, we humans build very complex machines, but their behavior is determined wholly by our design. Everything else is a malfunction, and all our engineering processes are geared to squeezing out the possibility of such malfunctions from the machines we build. Our best machines are reliable, stable, optimized, predictable and controllable. But this is a formula to exclude intelligence. A viable intelligent machine would be adaptive – capable of changing its behavioral patterns based on its experience in ways that we cannot possibly anticipate when it rolls off the factory floor. That is what makes it intelligent, and also – from a classical engineering viewpoint – unreliable, unpredictable and uncontrollable. Even more dangerously, we would have no way of knowing the limits of its adaptation, since it is inherently an open-ended process.
· Accelerated Non-Biological Evolution: It has taken biological evolution more than three billion years to get from the first life-forms on Earth to the humans and other animals we see today. It is a very slow process. And though we now understand the processes of life – including evolution – quite well, we are still not at the point where we are willing – or able – to risk engineering wholly new species of animals. But once machines are capable of inventing and building better machines, they could super-charge evolution by turning it into an adaptive engineering process rather than a biological one. Even machines may lose control of what greater machines may emerge rapidly through such hyper-evolution.
· Invincibility and Immortality: Whatever their dangers, humans and animals eventually die or can be killed. We know how long they generally live, and we know how to kill them if necessary. There's a lot of solace in that! Machines made from ever stronger metal alloys, polymers and composites could be infinitely more durable – perhaps self-healing and self-reconfiguring. They may draw energy from the Earth or the sun as all organisms do, but in many more ways and much more efficiently. Their electronics would work faster than ours; their size would not be as limited by metabolic constraints as that of animals. Suddenly, in the presence of gleaming transformers, humans and their animal cousins would seem puny and perishable. Who then would be more likely to inherit the Earth?
Ironically, as argued earlier, the idea of the intelligent machine as hyper-rational is probably just a caricature. If what we believe about animal and human minds is correct, machines complex enough to be intelligent will also bring with them their own suite of biases, emotions and drives. But that is cold comfort. We have no way of knowing what values these “emotional” machines might have, or if they would be anything like ours. Nor can we engineer them to share our values. As complex adaptive systems, they will change with experience – as humans do. Even the child does not entirely inherit the parents' value system.
The fears expressed by the critics of AI are more philosophical than real today, but they embody an important principle called the Precautionary Principle, which states that, if a policy poses a potentially catastrophic risk, its proponents have the burden of proof to show that the risk is not real before the policy can be adopted. In complex systems – and intelligent entities would definitely be complex systems – macro-level phenomena emerge from the nonlinear interactions of a vast number of simpler, locally acting elements, e.g., the emergence of market crashes from the actions of investors, or of hurricanes from the interaction of particles in the atmosphere. The “common sense” analysis on which we humans base even our most important decisions often fails completely in the face of such emergence. As a result, when it comes to building artificial complex systems or human intervention into real complex systems – such as wars, social reforms, market interventions, etc. – almost all consequences are unintended. In addition to the many “known unknowns” inherent in a complex system due to its complexity, there is an infinitely greater set of “unknown unknowns” for which neither prediction nor vigilance is possible. The warnings by Hawking et al. are basically the application of the Precautionary Principle to the unleashing of the most complex system humans have ever tried to devise. Even thinkers as brilliant as Hawking or Musk cannot know what would actually happen if true AI were to emerge in machines; they are just not willing to take the risk because the worst-case consequences are too dire. And since the complexity of true AI would forever preclude a positive consensus on its benignness, the burden of proof imposed by the Precautionary Principle can never be met.
But can such machines ever be built in the first place? How will true AI emerge? How, if ever, will the issues of intelligence, autonomy, free will and responsibility be resolved? Thinkers much more accomplished than me have engaged with this problem, and continue to do so without achieving any consensus. However, let me suggest a principle inspired by Dobzhanski's famous statement, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution“. As we grapple with the deepest, most complex aspect of the human animal, I suggest that we adopt the following maxim: Nothing about the mind can make sense except in the light of biology. The mind is a biological phenomenon, not an abstract informational one. Focusing on the mind-as-algorithm – something to which I also plead guilty – may be formally justifiable, but it unwittingly ends up promoting a kind of abstract-concrete mind-body dualism, detaches mental functions from their physical substrate, and, by implying that these functions have some sort of abstract Platonic existence, blinds us to their most essential aspects. The mind – human or otherwise – emerges from a multicellular biological material organism with a particular structure and specific processes, all shaped by development over an extended period in the context of a complex environment, and ultimately configured by three billion years of evolution. We will only understand the nature of the mind through this framework, and only achieve artificial intelligence by applying insights obtained in this way. And when we do, those intelligent machines will not only be intelligent, they will be alive – like us!
Finally, a word on when all this might happen. Simple extrapolation over progress in AI would suggest that we are far from that time. However, progress in technology is often highly nonlinear. There are several developments underway that could supercharge the progress towards AI. These include: The development of very large-scale neural networks capable of generalized learning without explicit guidance; the paradigm of embodied robotics with an emphasis on emergent behavior, development and even evolution; much better understanding of the structure and function of the nervous system; and rapid growth in technologies for neural implants and brain-controlled prosthetics. This topic is too vast to be covered here, but one point is worth considering. It is quite possible that the transition to intelligent machines will occur through transitional stages involving the replacement or enhancement of living animals and humans with implants and prosthetics integrated into the nervous system. Once it is possible to integrate artificial sensors into the nervous system and control artificial limbs with thought, how long will it be before the militaries of all advanced countries are building cyborg soldiers? And how long will these soldiers retain their human parts as better ones become available from the factory? The Singularity may or may not be near, but the Six Million Dollar Man may be just around the corner.April 3rd was election day in Wisconsin for non-partisan local offices. Five Wisconsin Greens were running for re-election, two were running as challengers, and all seven won their County Board races.
In Dane County, home of Madison, Wisconsin, Kyle Richmond & John Hendrick ran unopposed for re-election to the County Board of Supervisors. Hendrick has been on the County Board since 2000, Richmond was first elected in 2002.
Leland Pan, a student at the University of Wisconsin, ran for the County Board district that represents most of the campus. Pan won his race with 54% of the vote, 207-171. Leland Pan is a young social justice activist, from supporting the gay-straight alliance in high school to fighting for labor rights in college. He is an organizer for the Student Labor Action Coalition (SLAC), a member of the Campus Solidarity Committee, and Student Council of Associated Students of Madison (ASM) and active on the ASM Legislative Committee. Leland Pan became involved in the Wisconsin Green Party through Ben Manski’s State Assembly race in 2010.
In the upper northwestern part of the state, Kathy Kienholz faced a challenger to her re-election bid for the Polk County Board of Supervisors. Kathy was first elected in 2008, and was re-elected in 2010. Kathy won her re-election by just 11 votes, 150-139. Kienholz had been an active member of the St. Croix Valley Green Party since 2003. Kienholz has served on the County’s Finance Committee and the Land & Water Committee, both of which suit her strengths as a CPA and as an advocate for sustainability.
In northern Douglas County Wisconsin, David Conley ran unopposed for re-election to the County Board. Conley was first elected in 1986 and at 26 years is the longest continuously serving Green in office nationwide. His tenure in office pre-dates the Wisconsin Green Party, which was organized two years later in 1988.
In Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Ron Hardy ran unopposed for a seat on the Winnebago County Board of Supervisors, representing District 17 in the heart of the city. Hardy became involved with the Lake Winnebago Green Party in 2004, was co-chair of the Wisconsin Green Party from 2006-2008, and served as Chair of the City of Oshkosh Sustainability Board in 2009-10. Hardy had previously ran for Oshkosh City Council in 2010 and 2011, winning 1,666 votes the first year and 4,562 votes the second year. In 2012, after County Board districts were redrawn following the census, Hardy found himself in a District without a candidate and stepped up to run for the seat. Hardy won 377 votes versus 6 write-in votes.
Greg David won re-election to the Jefferson County Board in East Central Wisconsin. David has been actively promoting the Natural Step for Communities, a movement that has been growing across Wisconsin. He spoke at the Wisconsin Green Party’s Summer Gathering in August 2007 at which the Party officially endorsed the Natural Step and the Eco-Municipality movement throughout Wisconsin.
There are now currently 10 Wisconsin Greens serving in elected office. Over 50 Greens have been elected to office in Wisconsin over the last 20 years.Delta opioid (DOP) receptors participate to the control of chronic pain and emotional responses. Recent data also identified their implication in spatial memory and drug-context associations pointing to a critical role of hippocampal delta receptors. To better appreciate the impact of repeated drug exposure on their modulatory activity, we used fluorescent knock-in mice that express a functional delta receptor fused at its carboxy-terminus with the green fluorescent protein in place of the native receptor. We then tested the impact of chronic morphine treatment on the density and distribution of delta receptor-expressing cells in the hippocampus. A decrease in delta receptor-positive cell density was observed in the CA1, CA3 and dentate gyrus without alteration of the distribution across the different GABAergic populations that mainly express delta receptors. This effect partly persisted after four weeks of morphine abstinence. In addition, we observed increased DOP receptor expression at the cell surface compared to saline-treated animals. In the hippocampus, chronic morphine administration thus induces DOP receptor cellular redistribution and durably decreases delta receptor-expressing cell density. Such modifications are likely to alter hippocampal physiology, and to contribute to long-term cognitive deficits.They sing doo-wop, croon about antimatter, and they were the first band on the Web. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the Cernettes.
The group, with its unusual blend of high tech and ’60s rock ‘n’ roll, hails from CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics — the birthplace of the Web — near Geneva, Switzerland.
Britons Michele de Gennaro, a 3-D graphic artist at CERN; Colette Reilly, a secretary at the International Air Transport Association; and Louise Richmond, a secretary at the United Nations, don their satin gloves and sequined dresses to play for Nobel Prize celebrations. They’ve taken their act to physics and computer conferences in France, Seville, Spain, Brussels, Belgium, and San Francisco. And they’re regulars at the Hardronic Festival, the particle physicists’ version of Lollapalooza.
Their numbers include “Surfing on the Web” (Surf me on the Web/ My page is all for you/ Call me on the Web/ I’ll open my windows to you), “Strong Interaction” (You quark me up/ You quark me down/ You quark me top/ You quark me bottom), and “Computer Games” (Since you’ve gone away/ I’ve got a million games to play/ I’ve got your 80 megabytes full of computer games).
The group — which bills itself as “the one and only High Energy Rock Band” — formed in 1990 when a secretary at CERN complained that her physicist boyfriend spent his nights and weekends smashing protons in an underground collider. She confessed her woes to friend and computer scientist at the laboratory, Silvano de Gennaro, who wrote a song about her plight.
From that episode, “Collider” was born:
I gave you a golden ring to show you my love
You went to stick it in a printed circuit
To fix a voltage leak in your collector
You plug my feelings into your detector
You never spend your nights with me
You don't go out with other girls either
You prefer your collider
You only love your collider
Your collider.
Three other CERN secretaries joined the group, and they gave their first gig under the moniker Les Horribles Cernettes. The name is a takeoff of the acronym for CERN’s future accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider.
The band is hardly burning up the pop charts. But Silvano de Gennaro, who still writes songs and plays keyboard for the group, says the Cernettes make physicists swoon. From their first performance, “they were a terrific success. They got all physicists really wild, so they decided to go on.” Like the action inside a particle collider, a Cernettes concert is hard to imagine.
“They always enter the stage like real ’60s stars: on a forklift, on a bridge crane, in a convertible car, or play on top of buildings,” Silvano de Gennaro said.
“The look and feel is very important,” he explains. They have the hair, clothes, and dance style down, and the stage is littered with heart-shaped balloons, confetti, snow spray, electronic boards, junk cables — all to act out their songs.
Michele de Gennaro, a founding member of the group who sings in a couple of other Geneva bands, says the Cernettes really connect with their brainy audience.
“We give them a chance to let their hair down. Music breaks through all barriers. There have been many memorable occasions when we’ve witnessed this. For example, jumping offstage and dancing with a Nobel Prize winner and singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the director general. They are a great, fun-loving audience.”
The Cernettes even occupy their own space in Web lore.
When Tim Berners-Lee was writing the software to serve GIF files, he asked co-worker Silvano de Gennaro for a few pictures of the singers. One of the band photos was among the first five pictures published on the Web.
Silvano de Gennaro thinks the band is here to stay, if only to cultivate that narrow niche that includes high-power computer scientists, Nobel Prize-winning physicists, and the people who can appreciate the Cernettes’ arcane lyrics.
“They make a high-energy explosive cocktail. And for once, we found a way to be sexy and charming without falling in the usual overexploited cheap cliché,” Silvano de Gennaro said. “The Cernettes are not the Spice Girls. Thank God.
“They were there before and will stay after. They are excellent singers and they give all that an audience wants: a true, lively, funny, and not overproduced show.”
This article has been reproduced in a new format and may be missing content or contain faulty links. Contact wiredlabs@wired.com to report an issue.Khodorkovsky, who was in Switzerland with his family, "is on a short private visit" in Israel, his spokesman David Krikler told AFP, confirming news reports.
He would not comment on the exact nature of Khodorkovsky's trip, but according to local media reports, the man who was once the wealthiest person in Russia was visiting a former business partner.
Krikler also would not say when Khodorkovsky planned to return to Switzerland.
Freed on December 20th following a pardon by arch-rival President Vladimir Putin, the 50-year-old had stayed in Germany but was last week granted a three-month Swiss visa.
On Sunday, in a Swiss television interview, Khodorkovsky said had travelled to Switzerland with his wife to take their twin sons back to school there.
Local media have reported that Khodorkovsky's wife and their sons live in western Switzerland's Chernex village which overlooks Lake Geneva.
His spokespeople stressed in a statement Sunday that the former oil tycoon "has not yet made any plans about permanent residency in Switzerland or anywhere else".
Khodorkovsky's supporters say his decade-long imprisonment was Putin's revenge against him for financing the opposition and openly criticizing the Russian leader.In a visit that will be both symbolic and historic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will meet with Mayor Gregor Robertson at Vancouver city hall Thursday.
The symbolism is in the fact Trudeau promised during his election campaign to be accessible to municipal governments and work with civic politicians on issues such as transit and housing.
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History will be made because no sitting prime minister has visited Vancouver city hall since Trudeau’s father, Pierre Elliott, did in 1973.
“This is a very welcome visit and shows how Prime Minister Trudeau and his government value Vancouver and local government as partners in improving the lives of Canadians and their families,” said Vision Vancouver Coun. Raymond Louie in an email to the Courier.
Louie, who is president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, said he didn’t know if Trudeau would make any announcements regarding funding for Vancouver. A press release from the prime minister’s office issued Wednesday gave no details.
Robertson has spoken to Trudeau by telephone since he’s been elected and met with him during the recent climate change conference in Paris. The two have a strong relationship, with Trudeau rumoured to have approached Robertson to run as a candidate in the last election. He also sent the mayor a video message for his 50th birthday last year.
The camaraderie between the mayor and prime minister is unlike the frosty relationship Robertson and his ruling Vision Vancouver council had with former prime minister Stephen Harper and his ministers.
Since Vision Vancouver won a majority in 2008 – and kept it in subsequent elections – Robertson’s administration has been highly critical of the federal government’s inaction on homelessness, housing, transit and drug issues.
The City of Vancouver further angered the Harper government this year by being the first municipality in Canada to regulate illegal marijuana dispensaries. The City and advocates of drug users also fought the federal government in the courts to prevent the Insite supervised drug injection site from closing.
During his campaign to become prime minister, Trudeau promised to legalize marijuana and support the opening of more drug injection sites. He also committed to work with Robertson and the provincial government to get a rapid transit line built along the Broadway corridor.
“The lack of federal funding will no longer be a roadblock to action,” said Trudeau during a campaign stop in September from a rooftop patio at Cambie and Broadway, where he announced $20 billion for transit infrastructure across the country. The patio was part of a city-leased building used by engineering staff.
On housing, Trudeau promised to provide tax incentives to boost development and renovation of rental housing, renew existing co-operative housing agreements set to expire and review temporary and non-resident home purchases.
Trudeau and Robertson, however, have opposing views on Kinder Morgan’s pipeline proposal, with the mayor campaigning against another pipeline from Alberta to Burrard Inlet while Trudeau has said he supports the project provided it meets certain environmental standards.
Four of Vancouver's six MPs are Liberals, including rookies Jody Wilson-Raybould (Vancouver-Granville) and Harjit Sajjan (Vancouver-South). Trudeau appointed Wilson-Raybould as justice minister and Sajjan as defence minister. Joyce Murray (Vancouver-Quadra) and Hedy Fry (Vancouver-Centre) are Vancouver's two other Liberal MPs.
mhowell@vancourier.com
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Off licences in an area plagued by St Patrick’s Day trouble have agreed to close on the big day in a bid to stop trouble erupting.
The voluntary booze ban, in Belfast’s Holylands area, comes as a senior police officer has warned that alcohol will be confiscated from street drinkers across the city.
Chief Executive of pubs and offies campaign group Hospitality Ulster, Colin Neill, welcomed the move. But he also called on the supermarkets to do the same.
He said: “I can understand both sides of this debate. I have sympathy with residents of the Holylands, who have been subjected to unacceptable behaviour on St Patrick’s Day, year after year. However, I also have sympathy for the local Off-sales and commend them for voluntarily agreeing to close.
“We know that this is only one element to the so called ‘street-party’ problem and the majority of alcohol is most likely purchased in supermarkets at rock bottom prices in the days leading up to the event. I call on the supermarkets to match the actions of the local Off-sales and stop deliveries of alcohol into the Holylands area on St Patrick’s Day and the day before.
(Image: Justin Kernoghan)
“Hospitality Ulster will be doing all that it can in co-operation with the PSNI and others to ensure any trouble is minimised on the day, though in our view this problem goes far beyond the sale of alcohol and can only be addressed by a proper strategy to rebalance the mix of residents locally which has become unbalanced in favour of student accommodation.”
Also today, police in Belfast said they are are “asking everyone attending the St Patrick’s Day celebrations on Friday to enjoy them safely and respectfully”.
Superintendent Melanie Jones added: “We are expecting a large number of visitors to the City on Friday to enjoy the carnival and family friendly atmosphere. We will have an operation in place in conjunction with our partners to help everyone enjoy the day safely and legally.
“In the past, overindulgence in alcohol has led some people to act in a way they would never do when sober. This has previously resulted in assaults, damage to property and annoyance to others and we are making it clear that this behaviour is not acceptable.
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“As in previous years, we will be working alongside Belfast City Council and in South Belfast, with Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Ulster, the Belfast Met and local schools, who will again proactively encourage young people and students to stay off the streets of the Holyland on St Patrick’s Day.
“We are planning joint enforcement patrols with Belfast City Council’s Antisocial Behaviour Officers to seize alcohol from anyone drinking in the street and to minimise antisocial behaviour in general. Students who become involved in rowdy or disorderly behaviour risk disciplinary action by their universities, colleges and schools.”
The senior officer warned that ending up in a criminal record “can affect travel, education and employment opportunities in the future”.Please Hammer, don’t hurt ’em. Those competing search engines know that your new search engine, WireDoo, is too legit to quit. Stop. Hammer time moves much faster than standard technology product development time.
Don’t stop, actually. After all, they put you in the mix. Now everyone keeps saying, “Here comes the Hammer!” This is the way you roll, though. It’s all good. You had no other choice but to pump it up. Here’s the news: WireDoo does “deep search,” says Mashable.
Have you seen her? Nobody has. She’s not available to the public yet, but when she is, we’ll all say, “Yo!! Sweetness.” We’ll just pray you officially turn this mutha out. Until then, we’re all in the same gang—we can’t touch this.
[via Mashable]
MORE: The 10 Most Dangerous Celebrities on the InternetCARACAS (Reuters) - Fistfights broke out in Venezuela’s parliament on Tuesday, injuring a number of legislators during an angry session linked to the South American nation’s bitter election dispute.
Venezuelan opposition lawmaker Julio Borges of the Primero Justicia party arrives at a news conference with a bruised and bloodied face after a fight broke out at a session of the National Assembly in Caracas April 30, 2013. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
The opposition said seven of its parliamentarians were attacked and hurt when protesting a measure to block them from speaking in the National Assembly over their refusal to recognize President Nicolas Maduro’s April 14 vote victory.
Government legislators blamed their “fascist” rivals for starting the violence, which illustrated the volatile state of politics in the OPEC nation after the death of late socialist leader Hugo Chavez last month.
“We knew the opposition came to provoke violence,” Maduro said of the incident. “This must not be repeated.”
The 50-year-old Maduro, who was Chavez’s chosen successor, defeated opposition candidate Henrique Capriles by 1.5 percentage points. Capriles, 40, has refused to recognize his victory, alleging that thousands of irregularities occurred and the vote “stolen.”
The vote exposed a nation evenly divided after 14 years of Chavez’s hardline socialist rule.
“They can beat us, jail us, kill us, but we will not sell out our principles,” one of the opposition parliamentarians, Julio Borges, told a local TV station, showing a bruised and bloodied face. “These blows give us more strength.”
One assembly worker, who asked not to be named, told Reuters the trouble began when opposition legislators shouted “fascist” at the National Assembly leader and unfolded a protest banner reading “parliamentary coup.”
Government parliamentarians attacked them. Laptops and tables were hurled in the ensuing melee, with one legislator hit over the head with a chair, the witness said.
Workers later had to show their phones to see if they had photos or videos of the incident, the assembly employee added.
‘DEFENDING CHAVEZ’S LEGACY’
Government parliamentarian Odalis Monzon said she and some colleagues were attacked and beaten. “Today again I had to defend the commander’s (Chavez’s) legacy,” she said.
The fracas came after the government-controlled assembly passed a measure denying opposition members the right to speak in the chamber until they recognized Maduro as president.
“Until they recognize the authorities, the institutions of the republic, the sovereign will of our people, the opposition deputies will have to go and speak (to the private media) but not here in this National Assembly,” said Diosdado Cabello, the head of parliament.
Both sides accused each other of starting the incident, which took place behind closed doors without media present.
In a video that pro-opposition private TV station Globovision broadcaster said it obtained from a parliamentarian, various assembly members could be seen hitting each other and scuffling to cries of “stop” from others.
In another potential flashpoint for Venezuela, the government and opposition are planning rival marches in Caracas on Wednesday to commemorate May Day.
Venezuela has been on edge since the April 14 presidential election. At least eight people died in violent protests the day after the vote. There have been scores of arrests in what the opposition is calling a wave of repression.
Maduro has accused the opposition of planning a coup.
Former colonial ruler Spain this week offered to mediate in Venezuela’s political tensions. But Maduro rejected that.
“Stop sticking your noses in Venezuela. Spanish foreign minister, get out, you impertinent man. Venezuela is to be respected,” he said in a speech, referring to Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo. (Additional reporting by Marianna Parraga; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Paul Simao and Stacey Joyce)Posted by ProtoPlant Makers of Proto-pasta on November 23, 2015
3D Printing Holiday Gift Guide – What 3D Printers, Filament & Accessories to buy this Christmas!
Best 3D Printers (least |
new tree farm in town.
"Eya Bailey!" Agent Ewell walked in, stepping aside from the mistletoe cautiously. "Merry X-Mas!"
"Same to you, Ewell." Tristan awkwardly stood the tree up and frowned; despite the fact that it was fifteen feet tall, it neatly fit into the commons he had set it up in, which had only a ten-foot ceiling. "…remind me to get Sinclair or someone in botany to look at this."
"Noted," Ewell said, sipping on some eggnog. "What all's happening in Multi-U?"
"Not much. We found a universe where… you know the Christmas Truce?"
"Yeah, that thing in World War 1 that made people stop fighting for an entire day because of the power of Christmas. Why?"
"We found a universe where it's a global holiday," Tristan explained. As he did so, a light flickered on the Christmas Tree, despite the fact that none had been put on. "Every year, across the world, wars stop being fought in honor of Christmas, or at least, a solstice celebration."
"And let me guess: the U.S. of A uses it to gank enemies from behind?"
"Actually, no. Here's what makes it amazing." Tristan grinned as he explained, ignorant as to what was happening on the tree behind him. "The League of Nations- U.N. never formed in this universe- has very strict rules about it. Nazi Germany tried violating it in 1943. Hitler was dead by New Years."
"Merry friggin' Christmas, eh?" Ewell chuckled and sipped at his drink, nearly dropping it as he saw what had happened to the tree.
"Yeah! And this year is the centennial of it, just like in this universe. They're throwing a big shebang; Director Weiss has given a few people permission to- Ewell you're getting Eggnog on the carpet!"
"Look at the tree, Bailey."
Tristan spun around and stared at the tree. It had changed from a plain pine to a marvelous spruce, hung with garlands and candles and various colors of berries, and popcorn strings, and at the very top, an angel. Not one of the wimpy ones you saw on the top of normal Christmas trees, either; this was a many-winged angel with inhuman form, and if it were real and not simply a wood and metal reconstruction, it would have burned out the eyes of everyone in Site 87.
"Get someone from botany. Now."
On the second day of Christmas, 87 gave to me…
Two magic tomes were what Dr. Sinclair pored over come December 15th. Everyone else was distracted with something about a tree in a common room. She had work to do, dammit.
So, she looked over the two books before her, scratching her head. "No, that's not right… the translation should be direct… why mistletoe…" She sighed, and looked around the dark, empty lab, lit only by a single candle by her side. She preferred to work in the dark; it helped her concentrate.
She rubbed her face and sighed. Monty- Montgomery- was gone for the holidays; he was visiting family back home. So, she was in her lab, alone, with Christmas only 9 days away. The second day of Christmas, as her mother called it; she counted Christmas as the 12th.
Either way, she was alone, in her lab. She didn't much care for Christmas, anyway, at least, not the American version; now, the Germanic version with the Krampus, That was an amazing celebration.
She reached into her wallet, and looked at a picture she had taken with her mother in Austria, during a Krampusnacht celebration she had been a part of when she was… what, 10? She was in on the act, of course, but that didn't make it any less exciting.
Katherine Sinclair, at this point, looked back at her tomes. One of them was a book written by St. Nicholas. Because of course it was; things in Sloth's Pit always seemed to line up with the times. In Thanksgiving 2013, for instance, coincided with Hanukkah, so the turkeys in the cafeteria had become golems animated by a disgruntled employee.
Katherine looked into this book and frowned. There was a ritual here for summoning the Krampus, or at the very least, a Krampus. Were there multiples? It seemed like a simple ritual, easy to contain… and could provide valuable insight into Krampusnacht and magic used by Saints.
What the heck? She clapped her hands, turning on the lights in the lab, and started looking for test approval forms.
On the third day of Christmas, 87 gave to me…
Three baffled botanists looked over the Christmas tree in Common Room 3, who, in turn, were being watched by various Foundation staff who were taking time off from guard duty or experimenting to look at the researchers doing it. They had been taking samples of the tree for days on end, but so far, it seemed like a completely normal tree. Of note, however, was that all the mistletoe in the site, real and fake, seemed to be vanishing, and started disappearing the previous night, forty-four in all.
One researcher in particular, Chris Hastings, was looking over one of the candles that had appeared on the tree, squeezing it in his hand, smelling it, and licking it. "Beeswax."
"Of course it is, Hastings. What else would a candle be made out of?" Dr. Partridge, head of Botany at Site 87, rolled his eyes at the annoyance of an assistant.
"No, I mean… this just formed on the tree. And look." He broke it open, revealing a honeycombed pattern inside. "Looks like it came right from the hive, but it's smooth on the outside. Maybe it's something in the tree?"
"We'll have entomology look into it," Dr. Partridge assured him."Dr. Grant's been rather bored lately; Christmas Bees would be exciting to him."
"Why bees? Pine trees don't flower…" Chris took out a notepad filled with several possibilities, including "Christmas curse", "fair folk", "enchanted tree" "Krampus (?)" and "Just plain fucking weird". "I've been meaning to talk to Sinclair in occult studies about it-"
"If Dr. Sinclair were a medical doctor, I'd be inclined to call her a quack. But, she's not, so I can only call her insane." Dr. Partridge sneered at Hastings. "Now, let's get this back to the lab-"
"Uh, we can't, sir. If you were here yesterday, you would have known that." Chris nodded to a couple of grunts, who attempted to lift the tree; it stayed in place like it weighed as much as a dump truck, and one of the agents yelped as he strained his shoulder. "It appears to be locked in place."
"Oh, very well. We'll set up the commons as a containment area, for the time being. Clear out, everyone."
All of the watching Foundation researchers protested; some booed like the disgruntled ghosts of Christmas. A few actually glared at Chris, despite it not being his fault.
This was going to be a long week.
On the fourth day of Christmas, 87 gave to me…
Four and forty sprigs of mistletoe, both real and fake, lay in the center of a circle set up by Dr. Sinclair in the testing chamber. A very nervous-looking man from the cryptozoology department was assisting her, monitoring her through the chambers.
"Um, Researcher…" Dr. Hendricks swallowed. "I'm not equipped to do this. I honestly don't know what to do with half of this—"
"From left to right, EMF reader, Kant counter- though that's unreliable, at best- emergency Scranton activation switch, thermal camera, infra-red camera, regular camera, alarm button, and redundant recording devices."
Jason Hendricks stared trough the glass. "You know, you could be monitoring this… have a D-Class do the actual… test…"
"Yes, let's have a barely sentient clone with organs that will fail in 30 days do a complex ritual that requires speaking in at least two languages." Sinclair rolled her eyes. "Anyway. This requires someone else to read the spell, so when I start burning the sprigs, read the highlighted section on the paper."
"Right…" Dr. Hendricks looked at the paper and frowned. "Didn't think Saint Nicholas would be involved in this…"
"Ol' Nick's the patron saint of thieves— repentant thieves, granted, but he was involved in some shit." She muttered a prayer and began burning the mistletoe. "Any time now, Jason."
Dr. Hendricks sighed, and read, feeling like a fool. "O'o'o yon mistl'to, hung on yonder tree… the ol' witch-god awaits you, kiss his lips for me…"
Dr. Sinclair expected the smell of burning plastic to meet her lips as she lit the fake mistletoe, but instead, all she smelled was crisp pine needles and Yule Logs. She gave a satisfied sigh, and produced a pumpkin, carved into a Jack-O-Lantern. "Herbst abgeschlossen ist, die Flüsse fließen nicht, Krampus, Krampus, Krampus, Kommen Sie…" She threw the pumpkin into the fire; it conflagrated instantly, and from it, emerged a being with the face of a man, the horns of some bizarre deer, and white, stark hair all over. It growled at Katherine.
"Wer ruft mich? Es ist meine Zeit vorbei." The Krampus had a cold voice, like freezing to death on Christmas Eve.
Katherine swallowed at the sound of his voice. "Ich heiße K. Sinclair," She was careful not to give it her full name. "Ich bin ein Forscher für eine Organisation, die ein Interesse an Ihnen. Sprechen Sie Englisch?"
"I speak English, yes," The Krampus grinned. "Your German is poor, Fraulein."
"I have called upon you to ask you questions," Katherine swallowed. "What do you know of Saint Nicholas of Myra?"
"That is not why you had your pet call me, K. Sinclair. You and I both know it."
She repeated her question, in more detail. "What do you know of Saint Nicholas, Defender of Orthodoxy, Wonderworker, Holy Hierarch, Bishop of Myra-"
"He really calls himself Wonder-Worker now?" The Krampus snorted. "Very well. I shall tell you some information of him. I am bound by your wo-"
"Dr. Sinclair?" An unfamiliar voice entered the laboratory from behind Dr. Hendricks.
Hendricks looked behind him, and groaned as he saw who it was. Christopher Hastings, Botany, the great conspiracy theorist. The worst part is that he was right nine times out of ten, but nobody wanted to admit it. "Yes, Researcher Hastings?"
"What are you doing here, Dr. Hendricks? Wha- ohmygod!" He dropped a stack of papers he was carrying as he saw what was in the testing chamber. "Y-you've summoned a Christmas Demon! You're intending to spread Christmas joy by force because we aren't celebrating hard enough! You're conspiring with the tree-people!"
"Tree- Hastings, what are you on about now?" He rubbed his face and sighed. "It's an experiment. We're seeing what information we can get out of him about Saint Nicholas, or something— it's Sinclair's doing. What did you need?"
Without another word, Christopher fled the room.
On the fifth day of Christmas, 87 gave to me…
Five mugs of eggnog later, Christopher Hastings woke up in a daze in the common room where E-2512 ("The Christmas Tree") was, with Dr. Partridge having just come in. Not noticing the scattered mugs lying about, he nodded at Hastings and looked up at the angel on top. "Have we heard back from Theology about that?"
"Not yet, sir," Chris said, rubbing his face. "I tried to talk to Dr. Sinclair last night, but-" They were trying to summon a demon to take over the site "-she was in the middle of an experiment, so I said I'd be back later." No, you idiot!
"Very well," Dr. Partridge sighed. "Have we tried destruction testing yet?"
"Sir," Agent Ewell stepped into the room, looking distinctly yellow and frustrated, "I'd prefer if you didn't try to burn down an anomaly in the middle of a public common room."
"Who said anything about fire? We need acid-"
"I agree with Agent Ewell, sir."
Dr. Partridge looked at Hastings. "Christopher, you do realize the scientific value of this, correct?"
"Scientific value? It's a Christmas tree with lights that appeared when people got into the Christmas spirit. Unless we're planning to research whether or not trees can be living mood rings, I fail to see the value." He crossed his arms. "Besides, Bailey's the one who brought it in. Maybe we should ask him about it?"
"He's "out of town"," Ewell said, Christopher instantly picking up on the innuendo there. Dr. Partridge did not.
"…right." Dr. Partridge frowned. "I'll go talk to Father Plum in theology. Hastings, you try to talk to Sinclair again."
"A-all right." Chris swallowed and started to head down to the occult studies laboratory. On the way down, he avoided Dr. Hendricks, and knocked on the laboratory door. Maybe they had banished it?
Dr. Sinclair opened the door and frowned. "Ah. Hastings. What do you want?"
"I-I want to consult you about E-2512. I believe some magical activity might be taking place in it."
"I suppose I could be of some help," She shrugged. "Well, come in. We've made cookies."
"…we? Don't tell me…"
Sinclair held up her hands. "I haven't let him out of the testing chamber! I'm not an idiot! But he just conjured an oven out of nowhere and started making gingerbread men!"
"…so you actually did summon a Krampus…"
"Yes! And he's provided a fair bit of information about Jolly Old Saint Nick. Absolutely fascinating— did you know he could speak five different languages? And he might be affiliated with Doctor Won-"
A crackle came on from the testing chamber's communication as the Krampus pressed the button. "Fraulein, either let him in or don't. You're, as you say, waffling."
Christopher frowned and entered the room, Dr. Sinclair letting him in. She looked him over. "So, you… wanted to talk about the tree?"
Christopher nodded. "You found my notes on the floor, I take it?"
"Yes, they were out of order and nonsensical. Something about a "Christmas curse"? Just because weird shit happens around here on holidays doesn't mean this place is cursed; it just means that it's a Nexus."
"B-but the candles…"
"Ah, yes, the beeswax candles. What about them?"
"Right here-" Chris dug into his pocket to take out the sample bag containing single candle he had broken in two- only to find two full-size ones in there. "…oh dear."
"Right…" Dr. Sinclair took the bag, and took out a candle, and broke it. Over the course of about a minute, two new candles formed. "Hydration magic, then."
Hastings raised an eyebrow. "What does this have to do with water?"
"Hydration in the sense that if you cut one, two more grow in its place." She made a mock salute. "Hail Hydrate!" She then let out a laugh, leaning against a table so she didn't fall over; as she did, she made the scars on her forearms noticeable.
Christopher groaned and failed to suppress a laugh. "…one: that was a horrible pun. Two: that was completely unprofessional. Three: I am ashamed that I found that funny and got the reference, and four… what does this mean?"
"I don't know. Several forms of fae, mainly leprechauns, use it to trick humans. And no, it's not really called 'hydration', but it's a much better name than 'duplication', don't you think?"
Christopher sighed. "It sucks being right, you know that? But fairies? Why?"
"I dunno. We could ask Bailey when he comes back from out of town. Until then…" She offered a plate of cookies. "Ginger snap?"
On the sixth day of Christmas, 87 gave to me…
Six hours was all the sleep Tristan Bailey got that night, and with good reason. For one, he wasn't in his quarters at Site 87; instead, he was in a middling-quality inn in Sloth's Pit, known as The Elk's Horn. For another, someone was next to him in bed. The head of the Department of Multi-Universal Affairs, Dr. Claire Hennessy. The somewhat pudgy, red-headed woman smiled at him as he woke up, dazzling green eyes meeting his plain brown ones.
"Hello there, gorgeous." She gave him a kiss on the cheek. "How are ya?"
"Don't call me that, Claire…" Tristan smiled at his girlfriend as he sat up in bed. "And I couldn't be better."
Claire sat up with him. "So," she said. "Apparently, that tree you brought in is causing a real stir back at the site."
"Which is exactly why I wanted to get away from there. Among other reasons."
"Oh, so I'm 'other reasons' now, am I?" Claire stuck out her tongue and got out of bed, going over to get her bathrobe on. "Seriously though, botany's got their head up their ass about it. Partridge is convinced there's scientific value in it."
"Which is why I'm avoiding the site. Partridge is gonna grill me about it endlessly."
"Partridge would grill someone about a pea pod if he was convinced it had "scientific value"," Claire agreed, putting on her robe. "Anyway. Shall we head up to the site? We need to sign the paperwork for the Truce universe."
"Yeah, I guess." Tristan got out of bed and began looking for his clothing "…why do my trousers have blood on them?"
"That's ketchup."
A few hours later, the two of them drove back up to the site in separate cars, half an hour apart from one another. Tristan paid for the room with a civilian credit card, as opposed to the Foundation one he was issued; he had lost it anyway. When he got to the site, he used an entrance different from the one Claire had used, and met her down in Multi-Universal affairs.
"Dr. Bailey," she said. "You're late."
"Overslept, madam," Tristan said, adjusting his tie. "What's going on?"
"Well, for one thing…" Claire smirked at him. "You have visitors."
"Boo!" said a voice from behind. Tristan turned around and there were two copies of him standing by, one well-tanned and wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat, the other having a rather well-groomed goatee.
Tristan grinned and laughed. "Tom! Trev! What the heck are you doing here?!" He held out his arms, and the three brothers hugged.
"I gave myself time off for family," Tom said, "And Bright gave Trevor some vacation time over Christmas to visit here."
"Wait, wait, wait." Tristan said to Trevor. "Bright the Bastardized actually gave someone time off?"
"You'd be surprised what being related to our dad can do," Trevor said. "Anyway. Less than a week to Christmas. We got stuff to prepare for."
"Yeah," Tom said. "Like… we heard you found something out regarding the Christmas Truce?"
"Oh, we've got a lot to discuss," Tristan said, grinning and heading off with his brothers in tow. "I've got so much new data to show you!"
On the seventh day of Christmas, 87 gave to me…
Seven days after the tree had manifested its anomaly, Dr. Partridge was grasping at straws. He was trying to think of reasons to keep it contained.
"It's a good alternative to cheap Christmas decorations… no… Oh, I know! It's… no…" He paced back and forth in the greenhouse, while Chris took notes on how E-2512 was developing.
"Sir, with all due respect," Chris said, chewing on his pen, "It's not even a safe-class anomaly. At best, it's an anomalous item with connections to the fair folk."
"Don't call them that, Hastings. They're Unclassed Anomalous Entity-Jakob-892."
"Well, UAE-Jakob-892 has a tangential connection with it, at best, according to Sinclair. If I were you, I'd give it up for the time being. Wait until after the Holiday is done to study it."
"Very well," Dr. Partridge sighed. "I'll announce that Common Area 3 is to be re-opened to the rest of the site."
"Right," Chris stood up. "I'm going to talk with Dr. Sinclair and Hendricks again. See if they've made any progress."
Dr. Partridge replied with a noncommittal "mmm", and Chris headed out of the greenhouse, into the abnormally warm December day. He made his way to basement level five, where he knocked on the door to Occult Studies.
Dr. Hendricks peeked out of the door, timidly. "Oh, Hastings. Come in…" He opened the door, and revealed that the entire lab was decorated with candles just like the ones Chris had brought in the other day.
Hastings stared. "What the hell…"
"I don't know!" Sinclair said, taking down a candle. "Every time I try to remove them, new ones just pop up! I was kidding about the Hydra thing!" She took one down and doused it in water; two more popped up in its place.
"Is the Krampus being of any help with this?" asked Chris. "Hell, he worked with the big guy in red. He must know something."
"Actually, Mein Herr," said the Krampus from a seat near the entrance to the lab, "The Wonder-Worker wore brown more than red."
"Oh," said Chris, before doing a double-take. "He's out of his cell?!"
"He can't leave the lab," Hendricks assured him. "Sinclair made sure of that. Put some kind of a… bondage spell on him?"
"Binding enchantment," said Sinclair, twitching slightly. "I've bound him to something in this room that he doesn't know about, and he can't be more than ten feet away from it at any time."
"…right," Chris edged away from the Krampus. "So, endlessly-replicating candles, a tree that can fit inside a room smaller than it… but what does it all mean?"
"We've been trying to find the source of the tree," Sinclair said. "But Bailey's been of no help; he's been spending all day with his brothers."
"Perhaps I can talk to him," Hendricks said. "Comedy night is tonight. You're welcome to come if you want, Sinclair."
"And leave this magnificent specimen-" she indicated the Krampus- "Unobserved? I'd rather go Fahrenheit 451 on the Library of Alexandria!"
"…right," Hendricks sighed. "Well, at least it'll be good to see the Baileys together again."
On the eighth day of Christmas, 87 gave to me…
Eight wrong addresses later, they came upon the proper tree farm. Tristan Bailey, Christopher Hastings and Katherine Sinclair all stood before the Terra Incognita Tree Farm- or at least, that's what the sign out front claimed it was.
The only problem is that there appeared to be no trees, nor a farm, and there seemed to be a distinct lack of anything incognita as well. Tristan frowned. "I don't get it. I know I bought it from here."
"Looks like you got duped," Katherine sighed. "God damn it. Why can't we have any normal holidays in this town?"
"We live in Sloth's Pit, Dr. Sinclair," Christopher said, breathing into his gloved hands. "Normal is relative, and in this town, it's a distant cousin five times removed that lives on Pluto."
"…that metaphor really got away from you, Hastings." Tristan frowned, and stepped over the threshold to the farm, past the sign-and vanished.
Sinclair started. "Shit!"
Christopher's jaw hit the ground. "…did we just lose one of the sons of Tyler Bailey? Weiss is going to have our asses on a platter!"
Tristan's head poked out of thin air; his body didn't follow. "Uh… you guys okay?"
Sinclair regained her composure. "Right, just as I suspected… illusory magics. Well, lets… proceed!"
Christopher coughed, which, by sheer coincidence, sounded like the word "bullshit".
Tristan nodded, and vanished again. Chris and Katherine followed, and found themselves in a very different place from Sloth's Pit, Wisconsin.
It was colder, for one, and there was actually snow. There were trees everywhere, ranging from five-foot-tall Douglas firs to over 100 foot tall spruces, all of which had price tags on them. The largest pine tree was the size of a skyscraper, so big that the entire place was in the shade of it. Sinclair gaped at it.
"…Bailey…"
"Yes, Sinclair?"
"You bought a Christmas tree from a magic tree farm, and you didn't notice?"
"…I may have been slightly drunk at the time."
"Ah, welcome!" a voice from nearby greeted them; turning, Chris saw that it was a tall, white-haired being with pointed ears. He looked at Tristan. The being spoke in a soft, sweet-sounding voice. "Ah, hello. You left your credit card here, you know."
Sinclair and Chris stared at Tristan, who looked ashamed. "All right, I was plastered. Went out drinking with some people from Multi-U and had too much booze in the eggnog.
Chris rubbed his face. "That's beside the point." He looked over towards the elf, resisting the urge to ask if his name was Legolas. "Sorry, but… who are you?"
"I am one of Alfheimr. Your friend here purchased a tree from us for the solstice celebration." He nodded to Tristan. "He seemed quite happy with the purchase, but, as he said, he was intoxicated." He held out a credit card to Tristan, who took it sheepishly.
"Er, thanks. Listen, there have been some… complications with the tree."
"Oh?" asked the one of Alfheimr. "Are you unhappy with the root? Is its enchantment not working?"
"If by "enchantment", you mean "making its own decorations", then it's working perfectly fine," said Sinclair.
"Excellent!" The elf clapped its hands together. "Then I presume you only returned for the credit card? Or do you wish to purchase more?"
"We're just wondering if it's safe, honestly," Chris said. "We've been… studying it, and…"
"Studying?" The elf frowned. "Ah. You're one of the Foundation, then. And before you ask, yes, we know about you. You aren't terribly well-liked, you know."
Dr. Sinclair's hand balled up, and she rubbed at the scars on her arm. "Look. We just want to know if something's gonna happen to the tree that might hurt us."
"Nothing at all!" the elf smiled. "Unless, of course, it was within the vicinity of a Krampus,. We don't terribly like those things."
Tristan and Chris stared at Katherine, who stared rubbing the back of her neck."Er. About that…"
The elf stared back. "Oh by the all-father… are you serious? Well, at least you didn't damage it."
"…define "damage"," Chris said, looking nervous.
"Well, so long as you didn't break an ornament… it should be- you broke an ornament, didn't you?"
Chris nodded. "I wanted to see what the inside of one of those candles looked like."
"For Wotan's sake!" The elf threw up his arms. "This is why my kind don't deal with your organization! You always mess up everything!"
"…how bad is it going to be?"
The elf thought for a moment, and simply said, "Do you have the means to escape a universe at your disposal?"
Tristan spoke up. "…as a matter of fact, yes."
"Then I suggest you all run into there and escape this one." With that, the elf walked off.
Tristan stared. "Did I just instigate an XK scenario?"
"He was probably exaggerating. I'll ask the Krampus about it tomorrow," Katherine said, smiling nervously.
On the ninth day of Christmas, 87 gave to me…
Nine minutes of swearing and cursing in German later, the Krampus stared at Katherine. "The tree is from Alfheim?!"
"Yes…"
"And you broke its ornamentation?! Around me! Oh for the love of…" He rubbed his face. "You need to banish me. Now. It might help."
"What's going to happen?" Katherine said. "Tell me. What is going to happen if we don't?"
"Oh, nothing much. Just a Christmas tree coming to life and trying to kill me."
Katherine's expression went flat. "I believe you."
"Really? No flat "what" reaction?"
"This is Sloth's Pit, Wisconsin. Last Thanksgiving, we had animate turkey corpses attack the site. At this point, nothing surprises me."
"Right…" The Krampus rubbed his face. "All-father isn't exactly pleased with the Wonder-Maker intruding upon his territory."
"How is Santa Claus intruding on Odin's territory?"
"Think about it. Leader of an important organization in the north, all sorts of servants of lower class than him, great flowing beard…"
Katherine sighed and dug some aspirin out of her pocket, rubbing her scars as she swallowed it. "Right, so. Either we watch you duel to the death with a Christmas tree from Valhalla, or we banish you and let said Christmas tree tear us apart."
"That's the long and short of it," said the Krampus, biting the head off of a gingerbread man.
"In all honesty, I'd rather have you here. We stand a better chance if we have something to fight against it."
"I was afraid you'd say that." The Krampus sighed. "I'm willing to bet that spirits of other holidays don't have to put up with this."
Katherine shrugged, and was about to respond, when there was a knock on the door of the lab. She peeked through the door, and saw all three of the Bailey brothers outside. "…what do you want?"
"We hear our brother screwed up," Trevor said, poking Tristan in the side.
Tom nodded, giving Tristan a noogie. "We wanted to see if there was any way we can help un-screw it up."
"…right, okay… this is going to need some planning…"
On the tenth day of Christmas, 87 gave to me…
"That's at least ten sprigs of holly I've seen you hang today, all of which are from my greenhouse.." Dr. Partridge frowned at Tom Bailey. 'What exactly are you playing at? Do you want the entire site to start gluing their faces together?"
"Quite frankly, we're trying to prevent the site from being destroyed by a psychotic Christmas tree." Tom started to hang the mistletoe from the door to the entomology wing.
"Again?"
"Hush," Tom frowned as he hung the mistletoe from a strand of red string."The Christmas of 2008 never happened. We all agreed on it."
"There was Christmas in 2008?" Snarked Tristan as he passed by, putting up sacrificial gingerbread men along the hallway. Tom pointed at Tristan, Tristan pointed at Tom, and they both went "aaaaay!"
"I will never understand how Tyler Bailey could produce sons like you…" Dr. Partridge shook his head, and started walking off.
As he went, Tom shouted after, "Y'know, our mom might have had something to do with that!"
Tristan laughed, and continued pinning the cookies to the walls. Tom looked over at him. "So, Weiss is still… relatively lenient, I see."
"Anything for the good of the site, Tom." Tristan smiled.
"Not exactly what I meant." Tom shook his head. "By the way, point of interest: Trevor hung some mistletoe over Dr. Hennessy's office."
Tristan frowned. "And this is relevant to me how, Thomas?"
"And I know you're bullshitting me! You only call me Thomas when you're bullshitting me."
Tristan sighed. "Is it that obvious?"
"Tristan, the stain on your collar is the same color as her lipstick. On a related note, wash your fucking shirt once in a while."
"Look, if anyone at the Site finds out, Claire will be ruined. Think about it, the head of Multi-U sleeping with the kid of the person who invented the MUTA…"
"Could be worse," Tom said. "You could be a chick." Tristan threw a gingerbread cookie at the back of Tom's head; he winced as it collided. "What was that for?!"
"For reminding me there's a universe where we're the Bailey sisters." Tristan shivered.
Trevor walked by at this point. "I dunno. I thought that I was kind of hot in that universe."
"Of course you would think that," Tom said, going on to the next doorway to put up some mistletoe. "Right, so, we have less than a day until that tree wakes up. Is the site going to be evacuated?"
"Probably," Trevor said. "It's the safest thing to do."
"And we're going to miss an all-out brawl between two holiday spirits?" Tom frowned. "Dang it."
"I'll see if we can at least get the security footage of it after the fact," Tristan said. "Has Hastings figured out how to move the tree yet, by the way?"
"He's working on it." Tom paused meaningfully as he heard a chainsaw rev up from the direction of Common Area 3, followed by the scream of a D-Class as the kickback of said saw made him lose an arm.
"Well, at least this Christmas won't be green." Tristan pinned another Gingerbread man to the wall.
On the eleventh day of Christmas, 87 gave to me…
At 11:00 in the morning, all hell broke loose at Site 87.
The majority of the site had evacuated the night before, but a few had stayed behind, all by choice, in order to study the events. From botany, Dr. Partridge and Christopher Hastings were there to observe the tree's behavior; from Occult Studies, Dr. Sinclair and (reluctantly) Dr. Hendricks, to keep the Krampus in check; and from Multi-Universal Affairs, the Bailey Brothers, ready to shove both the Krampus and the Tree in the Multi-Universal Transit Array if the need arose.
"Right," Dr. Partridge said. "Explain to me how this all works again."
"The gingerbread cookies will act as sacrifices for the Krampus in place of blood sacrifices," Sinclair explained, "and will empower it to fight E-2512. The mistletoe acts as a mechanism to contain E-2512, (in theory, at least), the bottles of Coca-Cola will act as the spiced wine for the banishing ritual for the tree-"
"Magic, got it."
Katherine frowned. He wasn't incorrect, but why bother asking in the first place?
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe that actually had facilities to contain a psychotic Christmas tree and had done so before, Tristan Bailey was meeting with his counterpart. Or at least, he thought it was his counterpart.
"God, that goatee looks ugly," Tristan said to his other self.
"Yeah, I know," said Tristan-2. "I'm thinking of shaving it off."
"Oy!" Trevor yelled, having an identical goatee to Tristan-2.
"But it looks good on you!" Both Tristan and Tristan-2 said, blatantly lying.
«Are you jackasses ready to contain this thing,» Asked Dr. Hendricks over their earpieces, «Or is this going to be 2008 all over again?»
"What happened in 2008?" asked Tom-2, pushing up his glasses.
"Do you have a paleontology department at 87 in this universe?" Tom asked, adjusting his hat.
"Yeah?"
"We don't have one in our universe anymore."
"Yikes," Trevor-2 said, fiddling with his own straw hat.
Meanwhile, in our universe, the Krampus stepped into Common Area 3, nostrils flaring as it bit the head off of a gingerbread man. The tree simply stood there, taunting him.
"Well?"
No response from the tree.
"Come on, I know that you want to do this. I'm a spirit of a Holiday, you're a Christmas Tree. Just get it over with already."
More silence. Dr. Partridge coughed from behind. "See if you can get a sample of its needles."
The Krampus turned its head to say something along the lines of "piss off", and got blindsided by a sucker punch from the Christmas Tree. The conifer had sprouted evergreen limbs, and had leapt forward to strike at the horned beast.
It was at this point that Christopher Hastings finally began to question the choices in his life that had led him up to this point. He would have questioned it more, had a blast of energy not come from the tree topper and hit Dr. Partridge in the chest, sending him sprawling.
At that point, Chris started running away. The Krampus stayed behind to fight, peppermint-scented blood dripping from the wounds as he was pushed back to the first mistletoe barrier. The tree let out a screech and attempted to muscle through the wall created by the sprigs of berries, and fired a ball of green energy through it, obliterating the barrier.
The Krampus dove out of the way in time, and the ball hit the ceiling, causing it to sprout pine needles, which |
sensors to detect any potential hazards and automatically brake, if necessary. They can reach speeds of almost 200 mph (320 km/h) and their greater efficiency means that 25% more trains can be run on the same lines. While a number of slower trains had already been automated before, the SNCF becomes the first operator in the world to run automated high-speed trains.* Initially, conductors remain on board in case of an emergency.* The service runs between Paris and destinations to the southeast of France, but is gradually expanded to other parts of the country.
By Taxiarchos228 (Own work) [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Completion of the Stad Ship Tunnel
The Stad Ship Tunnel is a 1.8 km (1.1 mile) canal and tunnel on Norway's west coast, designed to allow ships to bypass the Stad peninsula – notorious for its hazardous weather and complex wave conditions. It is the world's first tunnel for ships. The structure was first proposed in 1874, but not revived until more than 130 years later. Around eight million tons of rock is blasted out to build the tunnel, which is 50m high and 36m wide. This allows a water depth of 12 metres, sufficient to handle ships of up to 18,000 tons and large enough for the Hurtigruten coastal express ships to pass through. The overall project cost is 2.7 billion kroner ($314 million), with construction starting in 2019 and the official opening in 2023.*
Launch of the SPHEREx mission
Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) is a NASA observatory that performs an all-sky survey of more than 300 million galaxies, along with 100 million individual stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. It is designed to improve the understanding of both how our universe evolved and how common are the ingredients for life in our galaxy's planetary systems.
Among the specific objectives are:
• Constraining the physics of inflation, by measuring its imprints on the three-dimensional large-scale distribution of matter;
• Tracing the history of galactic light production through a deep multi-band measurement of large-scale clustering;
• Investigating the abundance and composition of water and biogenic ices in the early phases of star and planetary disk formation.
SPHEREx uses a spectrophotometer to observe in the near-infrared, mapping the entire sky four times during its nominal 25-month mission. It classifies galaxies according to redshift accuracy, fitting measured spectra to a library of galaxy templates. Specifically, it probes the signals from "intra-halo light" (rogue stars torn from their host galaxies) and signals from the epoch of reionisation (arguably the least understood period in the lifetime of the Universe, marking the point when the first stars ignited and ended the "Dark Ages"). It studies what drove the early universe inflation, explores the origin and history of galaxies, and determines the origin of water in planetary systems.
SPHEREx complements the Euclid and WFIRST observatories, but its lower redshift survey allows its measurement of inflationary parameters to be mostly independent to provide a new line of evidence. The mission creates a map of the entire sky in 96 different colour bands, far exceeding the colour resolution of previous all-sky maps. It also identifies targets for more detailed study by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
SPHEREx is launched on 31st December 2023.*
Credit: CaltechRugby sevens will make its Olympic Games debut on 6 August, 2016 after the Rio 2016 Organising Committee on released the daily competition schedule on Wednesday to mark 500 days to go.
The rugby sevens competitions at the Deodoro Sports Complex will be played over six days between 6-11 August with two sessions per day. The session times will be announced in due course.
The world’s top women will be the first rugby players to compete for an Olympic Games medal for 92 years with 12 teams competing over three days with the 12-team men’s competition following over the next three days.
The four top teams on the World Rugby Sevens Series log at the end of the season will qualify automatically for Rio. With just four more rounds remaining, South Africa (93 points) have a slender lead at the top of the Series standings over rivals New Zealand (88). They are closely followed by Fiji (86) and Australia (71).
South Africa will be looking to consolidate their top spot this coming weekend when they play at the Hong Kong Sevens in China and in next week in Tokyo, Japan.
The South African Women, however, face a daunting task to qualify for Rio with three tournaments left in the Women’s qualification process. The team is currently in 12th position on the log standings after three rounds.
VIEW THE RIO 2016 DAILY COMPETITION SCHEDULE HERE >>
World Rugby President Bernard Lapasset said: “The announcement is a very exciting and important milestone for rugby fans around the world – it marks the moment when they can begin to plan their Rio 2016 experience in earnest.
“We have worked in close partnership with the IOC, the Rio 2016 Organising Committee and other stakeholders to ensure that we have the best-possible schedule for our players which allows them to perform to the best of their abilities as they compete to be the first rugby medallists at the Olympic Games in 92 years.
“Rugby sevens, with its winning blend of high-octane action, close competition and entertainment, is proving a hit with young audiences, broadcasters and commercial partners around the world.
“This is why we believe that Rio will love sevens and we look forward to hosting fans in a vibrant arena at the very heart of the Deodoro complex where fans will experience the dynamic athleticism of our rugby sevens Olympians in a unique festival atmosphere.”
With anticipation building across the rugby community, the global qualification process well underway and rugby sevens continuing to excite, engage and inspire new participants and audiences around the world, demand for tickets over the six days is expected to be high.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR TICKET INFORMATION>>
Issued by SARU Corporate Affairs
“Main Photo:”A tale of two employees
Firstly, let’s set the scene by considering one employee called Alice. She joined a company a couple of years ago and she’s really enjoying her job. She works with a team that gives her enough autonomy to work in the way that she wants, using the tooling that she prefers. She feels that she can pick and choose the work she is most comfortable with in her team’s sprints, and she’s given some technical talks to the department recently; she is working on her public speaking. She attends a conference of her choice each year, and she has started mentoring a graduate developer who has recently joined the company. In the recent company survey about employee happiness, she was extremely positive in all of her responses.
Next, let’s consider Bob. He joined his company a couple of years ago, and he’s stuck in a rut. He never feels like it’s clear as to what he should be working on during each sprint, and he feels stuck with the tools and language that were provided for him. He’s never been asked to speak about any of his work to a wider forum, and has never been asked whether he would like to attend any technical conferences. He’s quite unsure about whether he wants to stay at the company as he’s never been shown what his career progression should be. In his recent company survey, he gave some very negative answers.
Sounds like two very different situations, doesn’t it? Well, Alice and Bob are actually in the same team, and they’re both Java developers. What’s going on?
It’s your call
The difference between Alice and Bob is that Alice is proactively seeking ways to make her job more fulfilling, and Bob is expecting to be told what to do. Even though it is a manager’s responsibility to ensure that their direct reports are motivated and are having a positive impact on the company whilst being fulfilled in their career, there can sometimes be a misunderstanding about who is actually responsible for planning that career. In my experience, there is only one answer: the employee themselves. The manager facilitates it happening.
Given a choice between being passive and active in the way your career is going, you should always be active. Now, it’s impossible to write an article that will help you define exactly where your career will want to go. We’ve written before about the two tracks of growth and also whether you like stability or change, and if you’ve not read those before, then they might serve as some inspiration. However, regardless of what you feel like you want to do, or how you want to grow, I would heavily encourage being entrepreneurial with your career. Find out what you want, and then think about ways that you can get it.
There are broadly two ways in which you can affect growth in your career:
Growing outwards : where you focus on improving your existing skills to become more of an expert at your current role. This aligns with an individual contributor career track.
: where you focus on improving your existing skills to become more of an expert at your current role. This aligns with an individual contributor career track. Growing upwards: where you focus on beginning to experience what it’s like to operate at the next level up in the org chart; aligning with the management career track.
Let’s have a look at some ways in which you could actively grow, motivated by yourself and on your own terms. If you feel uncomfortable just doing these things in case you feel like you may be overstepping your mark, then perhaps bring them up in your next 1 to 1 with your manager first.
Growing outwards
There are many ways that you can, of your own volition, hone your existing skills whilst doing your existing job. These will require self-motivation and an entrepreneurial attitude towards your own development, but they are rewarding. If you have been previously feeling stuck, you may actually find that you have more autonomy in your role than you first thought.
Mentoring others: One of the best ways to become more knowledgable and to more deeply understand what you currently do is to teach others. It gives you the opportunity to train a more junior member of staff, hence improving the overall output of the department, but, at the same time, it allows you to reflect on the way that you solve problems yourself. Mentoring can be done in a number of different ways. You could seek out a more junior engineer and introduce yourself, or you could regularly encourage pair programming sessions with those on your team. Another strategy is to advertise “office hours” in your schedule where anyone can drop in with a problem that you can help solve together.
One of the best ways to become more knowledgable and to more deeply understand what you currently do is to teach others. It gives you the opportunity to train a more junior member of staff, hence improving the overall output of the department, but, at the same time, it allows you to reflect on the way that you solve problems yourself. Mentoring can be done in a number of different ways. You could seek out a more junior engineer and introduce yourself, or you could regularly encourage pair programming sessions with those on your team. Another strategy is to advertise “office hours” in your schedule where anyone can drop in with a problem that you can help solve together. Giving talks: Whether you are a fan of it or not, getting better at public speaking is a life skill rather than just a career skill. What better opportunity to practice than to speak on subjects that you know a great deal about in front of friendly people from a similar skill set? You can start small by encouraging an informal talk slot at regular intervals within your team, or you could give a department-wide talk if you’re feeling brave. Even better still, submitting abstracts to conferences and then getting accepted is a great way of forcing yourself to dedicate time to doing a great talk. Once written and done once, you can take that talk and do it again and again at different meet ups and gatherings. Similar to running a marathon, you don’t become an expert by default. Public speaking requires practice, practice, practice.
Whether you are a fan of it or not, getting better at public speaking is a life skill rather than just a career skill. What better opportunity to practice than to speak on subjects that you know a great deal about in front of friendly people from a similar skill set? You can start small by encouraging an informal talk slot at regular intervals within your team, or you could give a department-wide talk if you’re feeling brave. Even better still, submitting abstracts to conferences and then getting accepted is a great way of forcing yourself to dedicate time to doing a great talk. Once written and done once, you can take that talk and do it again and again at different meet ups and gatherings. Similar to running a marathon, you don’t become an expert by default. Public speaking requires practice, practice, practice. Actively seeking training: Don’t wait to ask whether you would like to go to a conference, just ask! If you find out there is no budget, see if there are some cheaper alternatives. Perhaps you could volunteer at the event in exchange for a free ticket. Additionally, ask whether the company could arrange other types of training that you might find useful, such as public speaking classes or finding you an external coach. You’ll never know if you don’t ask.
Don’t wait to ask whether you would like to go to a conference, just ask! If you find out there is no budget, see if there are some cheaper alternatives. Perhaps you could volunteer at the event in exchange for a free ticket. Additionally, ask whether the company could arrange other types of training that you might find useful, such as public speaking classes or finding you an external coach. You’ll never know if you don’t ask. Seeking out the latest technologies: Spend time during the week reading the latest developments on open source projects, via news aggregator websites such as Hacker News or project sites themselves such as the Apache Incubator. Perhaps have a browse while you eat your lunch. If you find something cool, share it with your team. Could one of these open source projects be considered for your next piece of work? Could you do a prototype with it?
Spend time during the week reading the latest developments on open source projects, via news aggregator websites such as Hacker News or project sites themselves such as the Apache Incubator. Perhaps have a browse while you eat your lunch. If you find something cool, share it with your team. Could one of these open source projects be considered for your next piece of work? Could you do a prototype with it? Building your network: Think about how you can make influential connections both inside and outside the business. For the former, a previous article addressed how you can begin to make additional connections. For the latter, see whether your work will let you leave a bit early once a month to go to that interesting meet-up where you can connect with other likeminded people who work for different companies. You’ll probably learn a bunch of new things and have a lot to offer others as well.
Growing upwards
The previous section looked at some different ways of honing your current craft through teaching, speaking, learning and socializing. However, for engineers that want to get into management but feel stuck as to how to do so, how could you be entrepreneurial with your time so that you get experience of what lies above you in the org chart?
Speak out! This almost goes without saying, but if you’re interested in growing further in the management track, then you need to make that known. This allows your conversations with your manager to start aligning around the skills and experience that you’re going to need to work towards. Bring it up as soon as possible; don’t wait for end of year reviews.
This almost goes without saying, but if you’re interested in growing further in the management track, then you need to make that known. This allows your conversations with your manager to start aligning around the skills and experience that you’re going to need to work towards. Bring it up as soon as possible; don’t wait for end of year reviews. Shadowing: Your manager will be doing all sorts of activities that you currently aren’t privy to. These can include meetings with their peers in the department, steering meetings about roadmap, budget and priorities, or reporting up into the executive. Why not ask to see whether you could attend some of these sessions to hear the discussion and get involved. You will naturally gain access to other notable people in the company by doing so, and this can help grow your network.
Your manager will be doing all sorts of activities that you currently aren’t privy to. These can include meetings with their peers in the department, steering meetings about roadmap, budget and priorities, or reporting up into the executive. Why not ask to see whether you could attend some of these sessions to hear the discussion and get involved. You will naturally gain access to other notable people in the company by doing so, and this can help grow your network. Ask to be delegated to: As well as attending particular meetings, there are activities that your manager does regularly that you could ask to gain exposure to. You could work on some of these things together so that you can gain some experience, or perhaps they could be delegated to you completely. Examples include getting involved in budgeting decisions, having input in the overall technology or product roadmap, doing interviews, or simply acting as a sounding board to help with their own decisions. You’ll gain some interesting insight into how their world works.
As well as attending particular meetings, there are activities that your manager does regularly that you could ask to gain exposure to. You could work on some of these things together so that you can gain some experience, or perhaps they could be delegated to you completely. Examples include getting involved in budgeting decisions, having input in the overall technology or product roadmap, doing interviews, or simply acting as a sounding board to help with their own decisions. You’ll gain some interesting insight into how their world works. Network with others in your company: Make sure that you don’t cut yourself off; take time to network with your peers, and depending how accessible they are, those that are more senior than you. Why not invite people out for a coffee at lunchtime to get to know more about them and what they do? Conversations can help you learn more about different paths you want to choose in your career. The more that you get to know everyone, the more that people will be willing to offer you that next opportunity.
In summary
It’s important to take control of your career and be proactive and entrepreneurial in how you spend your time and energy. Over time, the difference between someone who is proactively seeking knowledge, experience and opportunity and someone who isn’t continually widens: those who do not seek may find themselves in the same role feeling unhappy, and those who seek may find themselves with many opportunities and a deep satisfaction for their work and those they work with.
Own it and challenge yourself. You’ll never know where you’ll end up.English people are just trying to enjoy a quiet night in but those Muslims and their Diwali celebrations keep ruining everything, Britain First have complained today.
After several evenings of firework displays ruining his peace and quiet thanks to his foreign-looking next door neighbours, Britain First member Simon Williams took to their Facebook page to rant his easily angered little heart out.
“Bloody Mooslims!1!” he posted, evidently furious at just how bad things are getting in his beloved Britain.
“Four nights on the trot they’ve had fireworks for this ‘Diwali’ festival of theirs. I never knew fireworks were a big thing for the Muslamics, but every day they’ve been setting them off just when I’m settling down to watch my daily dose of ‘whites only’ pornography. It is really annoying.”
He warned, “And you know what they say – ‘Diwali fireworks today; Sharia law and mandatory Burkha wearing tomorrow’!
“And they even had the nerve to put a card through my door wishing me a ‘Happy Diwali from the Hindus next door’ and that isn’t even their surname so I don’t know what all that was about.”
He added, “Anyway, rant over. See you all for the usual Guy Fawkes celebrations in a few weeks.”Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX)
is a national non-profit organization committed to helping ex-gays and parents and friends of gays who want help, hope and community. PFOX exists to educate, support, and advocate for individuals and parents on the issue of same-sex attraction, and increase others’ understanding and acceptance of the ex-gay community.
We encourage you to view PFOX resources for those impacted by homosexuality whether struggling and looking for help, a parent seeking support, a student in school, or a leader in a church. We hope you’ll learn more about the ex-gay community through our ex-gay page and by watching personal stories on our video page, and that you’ll better understand same-sex attraction, transgender/gender identity, and what’s important for our leaders in government to realize when making policy decisions on these issues.Gerard Smulevich/Courtesy MAK Center for Art and Architecture
Seeing Things is a biweekly design column by Brooke Hodge, a design writer and curator based in Los Angeles.
Related Read more Seeing Things columns
Billboards, like palm trees and freeways, are ubiquitous elements of Los Angeles’s vast cityscape. Over the next seven weeks, “How Many Billboards? Art In Stead,” an ambitious urban exhibition organized by the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, will be displayed on 21 billboards across the city. When the Museum of Contemporary Art unveiled its controversial 2001 marketing campaign, in the form of billboards plastered with clever plays on museum labels, Kimberli Meyer, the MAK Center’s director, imagined billboards as a site for art rather than for advertising.
Gerard Smulevich/Courtesy MAK Center for Art and Architecture
Artists could use the billboards like large blank canvases to create work in the context of the city — work that would be seen by an almost unlimited audience. Three years ago, Meyer revived the project and — with the curators Lisa Henry, Nizan Shaked and Gloria Sutton, each of whom has her own approach to contemporary art — commissioned 21 contemporary artists, including Kerry Tribe, Kenneth Anger, Michael Asher, Kori Newkirk, Jennifer Bornstein, Yvonne Rainer and James Welling, to submit proposals. The first billboards went up last week, and more will pop up across the city. “The streets of Los Angeles become the walls of the exhibition, and the city itself becomes a large museum,” says Meyer, who hopes it will become an annual event. A series of public programs, bus tours and an overview exhibition and orientation station at the MAK Center, which opens on Feb. 23, will complement the billboards. Go to the project’s web site for an interactive Google map with up-to-date information on billboard locations, and don’t forget to look up!Baby boom for one of the world's rarest parrots
The world's rarest (and arguably most interesting!) parrot is on the rebound thanks to a very productive breeding season.
The population of New Zealand's oddball "owl parrot", the kakapo, has been given a major boost with the addition of 33 newly hatched chicks. The species is incredibly rare – it's estimated that just 125 adults exist in the wild.
Back in the 1970s, the situation looked even worse: kakapo numbers were so low that experts feared the species would not survive. Just 18 birds were known to exist – and they were all male. In a move to save the parrot from extinction, conservationists searched desperately for any signs of another population – one containing females. And against all odds, they found one hiding out on remote Stewart Island, where new breeding stock was discovered.
Hunted by feral cats, the Stewart Island birds were also in trouble, so the population was relocated to safety on three predator-free islands: nearby Whenua Hou (or Codfish) Island, Anchor Island in southwest Fiordland and Hauturu (Little Barrier) Island in the Hauraki Gulf.
Since the 1990s, the New Zealand Department of Conservation's Kākāpō Recovery programme has been working to ensure the parrots continue to bounce back.
A number of this year's hand-reared arrivals ready to be released into the wild. Image: Andrew Digby/Kākāpō Recovery
"In 1990, only one bird survived from mainland New Zealand to join the recovery programme, whilst the other 50 kakapo originated from Stewart Island. This mainland bird, named Richard Henry, was genetically distinct, and bore three offspring in 1998," Kakapo Recovery's Deidre Vercoe tells the BBC.
Keeping the family name alive and well, Richard Henry's daughter, Kuia, produced six eggs of her own this year, four of which resulted in chicks. "We’re thrilled that Richard Henry's incredibly important genes have been passed on to the next generation," Vercoe adds.
Besides being the world's only flightless parrot, the kakapo has a lot of other quirks on its resume – including a very unusual mating ritual. It's also the heaviest of the world's parrot species and an achiever in the longevity stakes – some kakapos have lived for an impressive 120 years. But as is the case with many long-living solitary animals, the birds also have a long reproductive cycle, making it tough for their numbers to recover.
"Kakapo are notoriously picky about breeding – they only reproduce every 2-4 years depending on the amount of fruit available from rimu and beech trees, their primary food source," explains the country's conservation minister, Maggie Barry.
Image: Andrew Digby/Kākāpō Recovery Image: Conservation minister Maggie Barry released one of the chicks onto Whenua Hou Island back in June.
This year's bumper rimu crop brought a bumper kakapo breeding season – with a major increase in the number of hatched chicks, up from just six in 2014. "This successful breeding season is just reward for the hard work the recovery team has done to bring kakapo back from the brink of extinction," adds Berry.
The arrival of so many chicks, now a few months old, is great news for the species, but there have been some setbacks, with a small number of birds lost to illness and injury. Each chick is vitally important, so the team has been making every effort to ensure their survival. Each kakapo wears a special transmitter, fitted when the bird is close to fledging, which allows their breeding and health to be monitored. The team has also been hand-rearing some of the birds before releasing them into the wild.
"Now is the time to keep up the momentum with recovery efforts to ensure the kakapo continues to strengthen," adds Barry.
And with that, we'll leave you with a huddle of berry-loving kakapo chicks:
__
Top header image: Jake Osborne, FlickrFrederick Douglass Exhibit Opening at the Museum of African American History
You know Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist. But do you know Frederick Douglass, the man obsessed with photography?
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One man, countless images. Starting July 15, the Museum of African American History welcomes many Frederick Douglasses to its walls for a new exhibit, “Picturing Frederick Douglass.” Most know of Douglass as a fervid abolitionist, but—fun fact alert—he was also the most photographed man of the 19th century, with his 160 preserved images trumping Abraham Lincoln’s 126.
L’Merchie Frazier, Director of Interpretation and Education at the Museum of African American History, shares her excitement that the museum will be able to exhibit these images to show Frederick Douglass in a new light. “One of the anchor icons in the museum collection is abolitionist Frederick Douglass. He rose from an enslaved black man to an ambassador statesman and he reflects the African American experience of triumph,” Frazier says.
Douglass’s interest in photography has been largely overshadowed by his political stature. In fact, prior to the publication of Picturing Frederick Douglass, the book written by Zoe Trodd and John Stauffer that inspired this exhibit, most Douglass photographs were hidden. “We got to find Douglass in unexpected places, in archives that didn’t know they had him, photographs of Douglass thrown in boxes and labeled ‘unidentified negro,’” Zoe Trodd, co-author of the book and co-curator of exhibit, explained.
The search began with challenges. “When we went to meet them, they thought we were a little bit mad,” Trodd says of the archivists whose collections they searched. But the work has certainly paid off. Picturing Frederick Douglass, both the book and exhibit, shows the inextricable ties between Douglass’s politics and photography. The first documented photograph of him was taken in 1841, just years after he became free. In it, he confronts the camera with a direct, unsmiling stare—a much different image than happy slaves in black-face minstrelsy shows. “Throughout his life, he intentionally used the studio and his portraits as the foundational visual image to propel to the issue of ending slavery and promoting democracy and freedom,” Frazier says.
Trodd explains that most photographic manuals from the time actually recommended that the subject look above and beyond the camera. But Douglass stared directly into the lens, confronting the viewer with sad anger that resisted moral complacency. He used photography as a tool for social change built upon the power of his solemnly angry expression.
“Douglass was working really closely with photographers to achieve just the perfect shot. Because, for him, to be better-dressed, more photographed, more elegant, more dignified, more seen than the average white American, was to make an argument for African American’s humanity and their citizenship and their equality,” Trodd says. “For the first time in history, he’s trying to create a black public persona… He’s trying to give us an image of black leadership that is a precedent all the way through to King and onward to Obama.”
Paintings and other artistic adaptations of Douglass often forced a smile, softened his features, and lightened his skin to present, in Douglass’s words, “a much more kindly and amiable expression than is generally thought to characterize the face of a fugitive slave.” He heralded photography for its truth, honestly depicting what is in front of the camera, without need for smiles to make a black face palatable to a morally culpable and largely white audience.
“He rails against what he thinks white artists are doing when they represent African Americans. He thinks they exaggerate stereotypical black features, or he often finds that they try to whitewash black people,” Trodd says. “He’s pushing against not just the minstrelsy but also some of the abolitionist print culture, the whipped back and the bleeding hands, the imagery of exposure that was supposed to be helping with anti-slavery, but actually put African Americans in this position of being quite passive, victims.”
In essence, Douglass engaged in what Trodd calls “the first great battle in American visual culture…him on the one hand with his images of dignity and self-possession, and on the other hand racist and pro-slavery imagery and also paternalistic white abolitionist imagery.” And Douglass’s battle is by no means the last. “Today you see it every time someone is killed by the police and there’s a tension between the images that get circulated of them looking like ‘thugs’ and the images that their family sees as more accurate, where you realize how young a lot of these victims of police brutality are.” Trodd hopes that viewers will keep these connections in mind. “Abolitionism is a usable past for social justice movements,” she says.
Frazier echoes Trodd’s sentiments. She hopes viewers of the exhibit will think, “First of all, wow, Frederick Douglass. Second of all, the brilliance of using the tools of media that are generated by the time to advance a movement and develop policy that effects humanity, reflected in the advancement of the civil rights movement and the use of television as a strategy, and analogous also to campaigns like Black Lives Matter and cell phone photographs on social media.”
Douglass’s influence is not limited to national police brutality. The Frederick Douglass Family Initiative works closely with a global movement that fights the enslavement of 46 million people. Trodd shares that Douglass is also the figure depicted most frequently in murals, with locations in the US and internationally.
However, more intimate moments hide among Douglass’s image of black leadership and power. For example, the exhibit will feature a never-before-seen photograph of Douglass with his youngest daughter, Annie—the only photograph of Douglass with one of his children. Annie is five in the image; she died four years later. “To see his arm around her in the photograph, we get to see Douglass the father,” Trodd says. “To realize she died just a few years later—it was really moving actually.”
Still, much remains hidden. Frazier brings up his sometimes complicated relationship with John Brown. “Our question becomes, how much do you really know about Frederick Douglass?”
$5, July 15, 2016-July 31, 2017, Museum of African American History, 46 Joy St., Boston, afroammuseum.org.Yesterday, news broke that Chinese documents allegedly showed that OPPO owned almost the entirety of OnePlus. Media outlets, along with fans and observers speculated what exactly that meant for the two supposed competitors.
Today, OnePlus emailed us a statement on the situation.
“We understand the confusion as many people are just finding out about OnePlus. But as we’ve said from the beginning, OnePlus is a separately run company that does share common investors with OPPO. One of those investors is OPPO Electronic. OPPO Electronic is an investment company and is not the same as OPPO Mobile. OnePlus is also in talks with other investors.”
That may be technically correct, but it is safe to assume that OPPO Electronic is also an investor in OPPO Mobile, who is a competitor to OnePlus. It is not unusual for an investment firm to diversify within the same market, but the Chinese media outlet stated that OPPO Electronic made up the entirety of OnePlus’ ownership (the article stated “100%”) that would make it unusual, especially when that investment firm shares its namesake with a competitor.
But unusual doesn’t necessarily mean dishonest. OnePlus stated that they are “in talks with other investors.” It is entirely possible that former OPPO Executive and OnePlus founder Pete Lau, simply convinced OPPO Electronic that investing in a company that does things differently, the way he wanted to do them, would be a good investment.
I’m not suggesting that is what happened, I honestly don’t know. I’m just laying out an alternative possibility to the “they lied to us” narrative that has developed around this story. OnePlus may still turn out to be more than OPPO’s version of Toyota’s Scion.
When multiple outlets reported on the Chinese news story, they all parroted the same line about Pete Lau consistently denying an OPPO connection in the past. I did not report on that because I know Google Translations can be tricky and I couldn’t independently verify it. In fact, looking at the media reports during the creation of OnePlus, some speculated that OPPO would help manufacture OnePlus’ first device, indicating that the two companies were always close.
It is possible that Lau denied the connection in the Chinese media, but I have not been able to find any statements where he emphatically stated that OPPO and OnePlus have no connection.
The bigger question is, should we care? A flagship quality phone for $299 is still a flagship quality phone for $299, regardless of who bankrolled it.History, Browse > Home The Church / I’m a Muslim But Here’s Why I Admire the Catholic Church
I’m a Muslim But Here’s Why I Admire the Catholic Church
First, allow me to start this short article with what might be deemed a startling confession: I am not a Catholic, nor am I even a Christian. In fact, I am a secular Muslim and an avid reader of philosophy and history with an unswerving commitment to the unmitigated truth no matter where it is even, nay especially, if it runs counter to commonly held beliefs.
I have spent the last few years researching the history of Christianity, especially the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, and was shocked to discover that almost everything we had been taught about Catholicism was erroneous and apparently affected by anti-Catholic bias. In contradistinction to what most people both in the West and Middle East think, the Catholic Church and Church Fathers did not suppress science, reason, and knowledge. Quite the opposite, in many cases they even encouraged the acquisition of secular learning and the pursuit of science, and placed a high premium on man’s rational faculties. I was also astonished to discover that the “dark" Middle Ages were not intellectually barren after all. This period was not one of utter stagnation, superstition, or the persistent persecution of natural philosophers. In fact, the universities—where unhindered scholarly and intellectual debates were held—were founded in Europe during the High Middle Ages. In addition, 12th- and 13th-century Catholic scientists, who were committed both to their Christian faith and the scientific method, laid the groundwork for the Scientific Revolution. It is becoming more and more evident that this revolution, which began with the publication of Nicholas Copernicus' On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres and Andreas Vesalius' On the Fabric of the Human Body, was not an abrupt outburst of creativity but a continuation of intellectual headway reached in previous centuries, namely the High Middle Ages. What is equally stunning is the importance medieval Catholic theologians and philosophers attached to human intellectual capacities, and their relentless pursuit to create a synthesis of reason and faith. In a nutshell, years of intensive research have made me respect and even admire the Catholic Church even though, as I have said earlier, I hail from a secular Arab family that has taught to investigate all issues without any pre-conceived dogma and to accept the truth even if it turns out to be incongruent with generally accepted views.
I feel utmost respect for the work of Catholic monks and monasteries in the Middle Ages. Their intellectual activities are one of the brightest chapters in the history of the Catholic Church. The monasteries played a positive role as centers of teaching, learning, and scholarship, and they can be aptly described as "proto-universities" (Trombley 58). These monasteries taught grammar, logic, rhetoric, and later mathematics, music, and astronomy, and they were "among the most important libraries in the history of Western thought” because they copied, transcribed, and stored valuable texts (58). While the Catholic Church is persistently accused of destroying classical or Greco-Roman culture, the fact is that the monasteries should be credited for "the careful preservation of the works of the classical world and of the Church Fathers, both of which are central to Western civilization" (Woods 42).
Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular could not have stifled |
Agip Oil Company plans to build plants to generate electricity from this gas and thus claim 1.5 million offset credits a year. United States company Pan Ocean Oil Corporation has also applied for credits in exchange for processing its own waste gas in Nigeria. Oilwatch.org's Michael Karikpo calls this "outrageous", as flaring is illegal in Nigeria, adding that "It's like a criminal demanding money to stop committing crimes".[81]
Other negative impacts from offset projects [ edit ]
Although many carbon offset projects tout their environmental co-benefits, some are accused of having negative secondary effects. Point Carbon has reported on an inconsistent approach with regard to some hydro-electric projects as carbon offsets; some countries in the EU are not allowing large projects into the EU ETS, because of their environmental impacts, even though they have been individually approved by the UNFCCC and World Commission on Dams.[82] It is difficult to assess the exact results of carbon offsets given the fact that they are a relatively new form of carbon reduction, and it is possible that some carbon offset purchases are made in an attempt to increase positive business public relations rather than to help solve the issue of greenhouse gas emissions.[83]
Offset projects may also have negative social impacts, for example when local residents are evicted to enable a National Park to be marketed as a carbon offset.[84]
See also [ edit ]Merkel's administration has faced harsh criticism over allegations it gave the German Foreign Intelligence Service (BND) permission to help the NSA spy on European firms and officials, triggering a scandal that has potential to dent the chancellor's credibility in Germany and abroad.
In a letter to the parliamentary committee investigating the affair, Merkel's office said the mandate of the neutral investigator would be to provide "answers without disclosing concrete content from the list [of targets]."
Merkel has come under increasing pressure to divulge the so-called "selectors" used to identify targets of surveillance, including the IP addresses of individual computers, in an affair that has strained relations between her conservatives and the Social Democrat, the junior coalition partner in the current federal government.
'Crucial' to investigation
The chancellery has proposed the investigator be allowed to inspect the list of targets and report back to the committee. The results would also be shared with a parliamentary body responsible for supervising the BND. The contents of the list are considered crucial to establishing whether the BND infringed on German law by assisting the NSA.
In its letter, the chancellery said it did not expect the US government to formally agree in the immediate future to the circulation of the list. It therefore suggested appointing the "trusted individual" who alone would see its contents.
Revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about US espionage in Germany caused outrage when they surfaced, and this has now been compounded by allegations that German intelligence was not only aware, but also complicit.
glb / sms (Reuters, dpa)Lee Chapel
I went to Washington & Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia. Robert E. Lee was the former president and he and his family are buried on campus. It's also the town Stonewall Jackson is from, and he's buried in a Confederate cemetery next to where my apartment was located.
At the beginning of your time in law school, everyone had to go to Lee Chapel to sign the honor code. We sat in a building that hung Confederate flags over the crypt of a man who didn't believe black students should have any legal rights, much less going to school to learn about protecting other people's rights. We sat in that building while black students were lectured about morality and the importance of honorable ethics.
On Lee-Jackson Day, the same weekend as MLK Day, those students had to walk to campus past the parade of locals wearing a knockoff of their long-dead ancestor’s uniform, waving their flag on Main Street, and went to school at a place that treated the men as heroes in an on-campus museum. I can't know what it felt like. But I've been told by several students that they felt like the 1860s weren't so far in the past. I've been told that they were afraid. And after seeing someone murdered in Charlottesville this weekend, about an hour from Lexington, they had every right to be fearful.
Those that say they are celebrating heritage with their Confederate flags and monuments are correct. It is heritage they're celebrating. But what is that heritage? By the 1890s, as a reaction to Reconstruction, Southern states started passing the Jim Crow laws that separated people based on race. In 1915, the movie Birth of a Nation was released, presenting a perverted version of Reconstruction in which black people could never be integrated as equals and the KKK had honorable and justified goals. The KKK was revived, and that’s when the 20th century saw a resurgence of white robes and burning crosses. That’s also when the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville was erected, in 1924. And the Confederate flag? It wasn’t actually the flag of the Confederate States of America, but the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. It didn’t become associated with Southern “heritage” until Birth of a Nation featured it prominently, and became popular when the Dixiecrats used it heavily in 1948 to protest desegregation. That’s the heritage they’re fighting to celebrate.
Help me make politics something we can be proud of. If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your monthly donation will go through immediately: Express Donate: $5 a month Express Donate: $10 a month Express Donate: $25 a month Or, donate another amount Now imagine being told that the monuments should stay up so a group of people can celebrate their "heritage.” Then you learn that their “heritage” is fabricated from whole cloth and has nothing to do with Southern history, but was created decades later for the explicit purpose of white supremacy. Then you’re told that this “heritage,” which says that you aren’t even human, trumps your right to live without fear.
We need to come together as a country. That will never happen as long as we fail to understand our own history and allow these monuments to continue to stand. It’s time to move forward and create a heritage of which we can all be proud.
Please visit our website for more information about the campaign and ways to get involved. Make sure you check us out on facebook, twitter, and instagram.Calvin Borel rode Super Saver to win the Kentucky Derby today, the third time in four years that he's won horse racing’s most prestigious race. Borel, who also won last year’s Preakness Stakes, cemented his place as the most celebrated and sought-after jockey in America.It hasn’t always been like that for the 43-year-old Borel, who has spent most of his 26-year racing career out of the spotlight. He won his first Grade I stakes race in 2006, and the following year he won the Kentucky Derby, a victory that earned him the admiration of President George W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth II.With a thick Cajun accent, upbeat attitude and inspiring life story, Borel has become one of racing’s most popular figures. Though he is now something of a celebrity—he appeared last year on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno—and has made millions of dollars, Borel has maintained the humility and work ethic he’s shown his entire career.He still helps his brother Cecil, a Kentucky-based trainer, clean stalls, something he’s done for 30 years. He has also taken little time off to celebrate major victories; the day after last year's Preakness win, he returned to Churchill Downs and won a $7,500 claiming race. “These are the horses that got me here,” he said to The Associated Press.Borel is so likeable that he's even able to switch from mount to mount without offending his clients. After winning last year's Kentucky Derby on 50-1 longshot Mine That Bird, Borel chose to ride super filly Rachel Alexandra in the Preakness Stakes, and the filly won, with Mine That Bird finishing second. Nonetheless, the connections of Mine That Bird gave the mount back to Borel when he was again available to ride.Time to resolve Kashmir as per UN resolutions: Gen Raheel Says Pakistan ready for ‘hot or cold start’, ‘traditional or non-traditional war’; Kashmir unfinished agenda of partition; writ of the state well established; most of the terrorists involved in APS incident brought to justice; won’t relent until all terrorists, their financiers, abettors, facilitators and sympathisers brought to justice; great deal of success achieved in establishing peace in Karachi, Balochistan; CPEC important for region; proud to command one of most battle-hardened armies of the world; forces trying to undermine our efforts for Afghan peace won’t succeed; commends media for unmasking terrorists RAWALPINDI: Army Chief General Raheel Sharif on Sunday said the time has come to resolve the Kashmir issue according to the UN resolutions. Answering the provocative statements of Indian leaders, he said Pakistan is ready for any ‘traditional’ or ‘non-traditional’ war, and any ‘cold’ or ‘hot start’. He was speaking to a magnificent ceremony at the General Headquarters (GHQ) to mark Defence Day. According to ISPR, he said, “Today’s Defence Day is of immense significance. September 6 is a day of great importance in our national history. This is the day when the enemy dared to attack our country. In response, our valiant armed forces and the nation stood together to successfully defend and inflict a humiliating defeat on the aggressor. I am extremely proud that today we have amongst us the veterans of that war. “It has been 50 years since September 6, 1965. Over this period, Pakistan has seen many ups and downs. I can say with a lot of conviction that today our country is much stronger and the Pakistani nation more resolute than ever before. This successful journey was only made possible due to the supreme sacrifices of the martyrs and war veterans of this great nation. Let me reiterate that our armed forces stand fully capable to defeat all sorts of external aggression. If the enemy ever resorts to any misadventure, regardless of its size and scale, it will have to pay an unbearable cost. “Ladies and gentlemen; over the past many years, Pakistan has been confronted with terrorism and sub-conventional war. Operation Zarb-e-Azb was launched at a time when the forces of disorder were challenging the state of Pakistan. The law and order situation in the country was abysmal and deteriorating. The APS Peshawar incident was an inhuman and barbaric act of horrendous proportions. “However, the sacrifice of the martyred children and immense fortitude of their parents reinvigorated the national resolve against terrorism. I can assure you that most of the terrorists involved in that incident have already been brought to justice. With the blessings of Allah Almighty and prayers of the nation, the armed forces and other law enforcement agencies of Pakistan, through untiring efforts and sacrifice, have brought the situation under control, and the writ of the state has been well established. “Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to commend the Pakistani media, which has unmasked the real face of terrorists, thus playing a critical role in creating national consensus. This was a difficult and complex undertaking. To make this success comprehensive and enduring, all organs of the state will have to earnestly play their part to achieve the objectives of National Action Plan in the earliest possible time. Today, I reiterate the resolve that we shall not relent until all terrorists, their financiers, abettors, facilitators and sympathizers are brought to justice. “Through concerted civil-military effort, a great deal of success has been achieved in establishing peace in Karachi and Balochistan. Allah willing, we will continue our efforts to bring these operations to their logical conclusion. “The China Pakistan Economic Corridor is of importance not just for Pakistan but for as the entire region. Its completion is a national obligation; and the armed forces of Pakistan will fully play their part in bringing this project to fruition. “I salute my patriotic brothers from Fata for their extreme sacrifices. The process of the return of Temporarily Displaced Persons has already begun; it is our sincere endeavour that these people are able to get back to their homes as early as possible in order to start a better life. “Our young generation is the prime focus of all our efforts, they are the real embodiment of the nation’s future. The armed forces of Pakistan whole heartedly share the passion and fervor of our youth. “I must highlight that the aggravating security situation in Afghanistan is a point of serious concern. We have strong historical and blood ties with Afghanistan and no power on earth can disrupt this relationship. We have made concerted and sincere efforts for bringing peace in Afghanistan but certain inimical forces are bent upon undermining our efforts. Allah willing their nefarious design will never succeed. “Our national struggle against terrorism has played a vital role for regional and international peace. We hope that the international community acknowledges our extreme sacrifice and assists us in this endeavour without any prejudice. “It is pertinent to mention that Kashmir is the unfinished agenda of the partition of the subcontinent. The innocent people of Indian occupied Kashmir are being subjected to injustice and atrocities for over the last seven decades. It should be clearly the understood that enduring peace in the region will not be possible without a just resolution of Kashmir. The issue can no longer be put on the backburner. The time has come that the Kashmir issue be resolved in line with the aspirations of its people in accordance with UN resolutions. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to command one of the most battle-hardened armies of the world, which has no parallels. The armed forces of Pakistan are fully capable to deal all types of internal and external threats, be they conventional or sub-conventional; whether it is cold start or hot start. We are ready! “In the end, I take this opportunity to once again salute the martyrs and veterans for their unforgettable sacrifice and contribution in the defence of our beloved motherland. While standing amongst the dear families of martyrs, I reiterate our resolve that we will not let their blood go in vain.”
Says Pakistan ready for ‘hot or cold start’, ‘traditional or non-traditional war’; Kashmir unfinished agenda of partition; writ of the state well established; most of the terrorists involved in APS incident brought to justice; won’t relent until all terrorists, their financiers, abettors, facilitators and sympathisers brought to justice; great deal of success achieved in establishing peace in Karachi, Balochistan; CPEC important for region; proud to command one of most battle-hardened armies of the world; forces trying to undermine our efforts for Afghan peace won’t succeed; commends media for unmasking terrorists
RAWALPINDI: Army Chief General Raheel Sharif on Sunday said the time has come to resolve the Kashmir issue according to the UN resolutions. Answering the provocative statements of Indian leaders, he said Pakistan is ready for any ‘traditional’ or ‘non-traditional’ war, and any ‘cold’ or ‘hot start’.
He was speaking to a magnificent ceremony at the General Headquarters (GHQ) to mark Defence Day. According to ISPR, he said, “Today’s Defence Day is of immense significance. September 6 is a day of great importance in our national history. This is the day when the enemy dared to attack our country. In response, our valiant armed forces and the nation stood together to successfully defend and inflict a humiliating defeat on the aggressor. I am extremely proud that today we have amongst us the veterans of that war.
“It has been 50 years since September 6, 1965. Over this period, Pakistan has seen many ups and downs. I can say with a lot of conviction that today our country is much stronger and the Pakistani nation more resolute than ever before. This successful journey was only made possible due to the supreme sacrifices of the martyrs and war veterans of this great nation. Let me reiterate that our armed forces stand fully capable to defeat all sorts of external aggression. If the enemy ever resorts to any
misadventure, regardless of its size and scale, it will have to pay an unbearable cost.
“Ladies and gentlemen; over the past many years, Pakistan has been confronted with terrorism and sub-conventional war. Operation Zarb-e-Azb was launched at a time when the forces of disorder were challenging the state of Pakistan. The law and order situation in the country was abysmal and deteriorating. The APS Peshawar incident was an inhuman and barbaric act of horrendous proportions.
“However, the sacrifice of the martyred children and immense fortitude of their parents reinvigorated the national resolve against terrorism. I can assure you that most of the terrorists involved in that incident have already been brought to justice. With the blessings of Allah Almighty and prayers of the nation, the armed forces and other law enforcement agencies of Pakistan, through untiring efforts and sacrifice, have brought the situation under control, and the writ of the state has been well established.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to commend the Pakistani media, which has unmasked the real face of terrorists, thus playing a critical role in creating national consensus. This was a difficult and complex undertaking. To make this success comprehensive and enduring, all organs of the state will have to earnestly play their part to achieve the objectives of National Action Plan in the earliest possible time. Today, I reiterate the resolve that we shall not relent until all terrorists, their financiers, abettors, facilitators and sympathizers are brought to justice.
“Through concerted civil-military effort, a great deal of success has been achieved in establishing peace in Karachi and Balochistan. Allah willing, we will continue our efforts to bring these operations to their logical conclusion.
“The China Pakistan Economic Corridor is of importance not just for Pakistan but for as the entire region. Its completion is a national obligation; and the armed forces of Pakistan will fully play their part in bringing this project to fruition.
“I salute my patriotic brothers from Fata for their extreme sacrifices. The process of the return of Temporarily Displaced Persons has already begun; it is our sincere endeavour that these people are able to get back to their homes as early as possible in order to start a better life.
“Our young generation is the prime focus of all our efforts, they are the real embodiment of the nation’s future. The armed forces of Pakistan whole heartedly share the passion and fervor of our youth.
“I must highlight that the aggravating security situation in Afghanistan is a point of serious concern. We have strong historical and blood ties with Afghanistan and no power on earth can disrupt this relationship. We have made concerted and sincere efforts for bringing peace in Afghanistan but certain inimical forces are bent upon undermining our efforts. Allah willing their nefarious design will never succeed.
“Our national struggle against terrorism has played a vital role for regional and international peace. We hope that the international community acknowledges our extreme sacrifice and assists us in this endeavour without any prejudice.
“It is pertinent to mention that Kashmir is the unfinished agenda of the partition of the subcontinent. The innocent people of Indian occupied Kashmir are being subjected to injustice and atrocities for over the last seven decades. It should be clearly the understood that enduring peace in the region will not be possible without a just resolution of Kashmir. The issue can no longer be put on the backburner. The time has come that the Kashmir issue be resolved in line with the aspirations of its people in accordance with UN resolutions.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to command one of the most battle-hardened armies of the world, which has no parallels. The armed forces of Pakistan are fully capable to deal all types of internal and external threats, be they conventional or sub-conventional; whether it is cold start or hot start. We are ready!
“In the end, I take this opportunity to once again salute the martyrs and veterans for their unforgettable sacrifice and contribution in the defence of our beloved motherland. While standing amongst the dear families of martyrs, I reiterate our resolve that we will not let their blood go in vain.”When examining polytheistic ideas about divinity and the nature of worship (and vice versa), we must first take down some barriers to clear thinking of which many people are unaware. Discussing spiritual matters with modern Westerners, even the religiously inclined, is often like discussing rainbows or sunsets with someone who has worn dark sunglasses for his or her entire life. First you must persuade them to remove the sunglasses, at least temporarily, in order to show them what you are talking about. This is especially difficult if the person is unaware that the sunglasses exist, or that they can be removed. Unless you have carefully prepared them for the experience, the odds are high that their reaction to an unfiltered rainbow or sunset will be to scream in horror, replace their sunglasses as quickly as possible, and attack you violently. Christian fundamentalists confronting the evidence for evolution, Roman Catholic leaders refusing to ordain peni-less priests, or Islamic fundamentalists burning the works of Salman Rushdie, all demonstrate this common Western reaction to ideas coming from outside of their established worldviews. What may not be so obvious is that third-rate stage magicians and mediocre scientists debunking evidence for psychic phenomena, intellectual members of liberal religions ignoring the magical aspects of liturgy, or ordinary people rejecting ideas about multiple deities and other spirits, are behaving in exactly the same fashion prisoners of the conceptual sunglasses they dont even realize they are wearing. A couple of centuries of modern science have devastated so many old interpretations of the monotheistic traditions that many intelligent, educated Westerners have, consciously or not, decided that all monotheistic beliefs are equally unscientific. Yet a person who has rejected every other monotheistic dogma will often continue to accept the one that says Judaism/Christianity/Islam (choose one, and then a denomination within it) is the only real religion, and all others are foolish, weak, or demonic. This, of course, is based on the conservative monotheistic belief that theres only One God, only One Reality, and therefore only One True Religion. Once you have decided that the only real religion (usually your childhood one) is unscientific, and therefore unworthy of belief by a modern intellectual (who has been taught that science is the only way to judge proposed reality constructs), its a short step to declaring all those other inferior religions, magical systems, and psychic technologies to be even more unscientific and absurd. The philosophical term for this type of logic is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The usual result is a conversion to atheism, agnosticism, Marxism, or some other non-theistic (but still dualistic) faith. One of the most popular choices is Scientism (also known as Scientolatry and Secular Humanism), which is the worship of the previous generations scientific worldview, and the acceptance of any statement made by an elderly man wearing a white labcoat. People who are devout followers of Scientism share a number of quaint dogmas, the most important of which is the one that they dont have any. These people will always declare themselves to be open-minded and willing to be convinced of the error of their ways and then set up the logical rules of their game to exclude all non-Scientistic reasoning or evidence as fallacious. Thats because theres only one reality, and only one way to understand it does this sound familiar? Scientism is dualistic, just like the conservative monotheistic philosophies from which it is descended (see my Evolution of Dualism Chart for a graphic explanation). All statements are Absolutely True or Absolutely False (except in the area of subatomic physics, where Scientistic types will usually (if reluctantly) admit the necessity of the Uncertainty Principle). Because of their basic fear of ambiguity (which many feminist philosophers believe is rooted in fear of the feminine) and their frustration with a universe that does not actually fit into nice neat little pigeonholes, Scientistic people are terrified of parapsychology and the occult. They react to claims of paranormal activity, not with the lofty intellectual neutrality they brag about, but with the same anger, hatred, and fear that fundamentalists of other religions express when confronted with counterfeit miracles (those done by members of competing faiths), and for the same psychological and theological reasons. To the followers of Scientism, all miracles are counterfeit, and always will be, world without end, amen. Scientism should not be confused with genuine science. Science is a collection of intellectual tools, organized into various systems known as scientific methods (there are many), each of which is designed to discover and organize certain types of knowledge (physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, anthropology, and so on). The methods of the so-called hard or physical sciences are not very useful for understanding music, poetry, love, religion, ecstacy, or other important aspects of human experience (thats what the soft or social sciences are supposedly for). Of course, superior scientists seldom claim that the methods of any one system of science are universally applicable. Its primarily the mediocre scientists, who are more frightened than inspired by the unknown, who try to insist that (their particular) Science is the Answer to every single question that a human can ask. Unfortunately, most people in our dualistic culture are unable to tell the difference between science and Scientism, or between healthy skepticism and unhealthy cynicism for that matter, and this includes many with strong interests in spiritual matters both inside and outside of the Neopagan community. The irony is that, although its true that the hard sciences dont really support conservative monotheistic doctrines anymore, ever since Einstein all the sciences have tended more and more towards multi-model, pluralistic theories that fit very well indeed with polytheism and traditional concepts of non-monotheistic occultism. This makes it sad that even people who have consciously rejected conservative monotheism are reluctant to let go of certain Scientistic prejudices, especially those concerning materialism and the nature of reality. Ive often thought that the overwhelming reason why most modern magic(k) falls so short of its potential is that most modern magicians, whether monotheists or Neopagans, really dont believe in magic. So they have to keep inventing new definitions for it. After all, magic as psychotherapy can be made to sound scientific, magic as art or poetry is immune from scientific criticism, and magic as a method of spiritual growth is above science. But magic as magic, as a way of causing measurable and observable changes in the physical universe, collides head-on with Scientistic dogmas about the nature of reality. Most people simply dont have the intellectual courage to deal with multiple levels of reality, with nested paradox, or with complex ambiguity. They like things kept as simple as possible, so they wind up closing their eyes to the complex, yet potentially liberating, aspects of their environment. This may be the single most important reason why successful magicians are rare in any culture, and almost unheard of in the West.This web site is updated daily. If it looks the same as yesterday, CLICK HERE. Every report on this web site is public domain and can be re-posted in full. Just mention this web site by linking back to the original here Donations: All donations are logged here for at least 3 days to allow the sender to confirm their donation did not get intercepted. Thanks! 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Sep 16 2015 American servers down I cannot do what I want today because the American based servers are down. So this will be brief Egyptian military shot up Mexican tourists I did not see this anywhere in the American MSM, (perhaps I missed it) but 14 Mexican tourists were taking an extreme 4x4 vacation in the Egyptian desert, with a well known tourism company, and the Egyptian military "mistook them for ISIS" and shot them up. It was a brutal scene which included 4 totally burned out range rovers and bodies everywhere. Mexico is pissed, and now there is a huge playoff going between Mexico's government, Egypt's government, Egypt's military, and the tour company, all trading off paperwork saying NO WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE. And all can produce proof. Which has sparked rumors in Mexico that it was a payoff to the Egyptian military by powers unmentioned that caused the attack for the purpose of killing important Mexican people for the purpose of this, that, whatever. The Egyptian government has made claims that the tour company went into a military restricted zone. But the tour company can prove it had permission to be where it was. My take? I actually do not know what to think, but will say this at least - when you see how Mexico's government reacted and how the press reacted, Mexico clearly cares more about it's citizens than America does. I have never seen the American government react so harshly to anything done to Americans abroad, and am shocked by how Mexico could put so much pressure on Egypt, Mexico has them spinning and doing back flips and despite extensive political training and discipline, the Egyptian representatives actually show fear and extreme tension on camera. Amazing! Mexican President Pena Nieto is lookin good with this one. Do not miss the comedy show The Republican National Convention will be on CNN tonight, starting at 6PM EST and it will be quite the comedy seeing how CNN reacts to Trump. No doubt Trump will be the shredder and make everyone else look stupid. My only question with Trump is will he actually be good for the country? Who knows, but he certainly would be a LOT BETTER THAN HILLARY, who should already be in prison. American elections are sort of like choosing between a tree and a telephone pole after going off the road..... Ought to be quite the show. Opinion: Too many baby parts There are too many baby parts being sold by Planned Parenthood to possibly be for any sort of "lab" work. Labs will typically only need a few samples, from which they keep a live culture going indefinitely. And I think, instead, that due to the extreme volume delivered Planned Parenthood is actually selling the baby parts to be eaten or used in satanic rituals. I do not think this is far fetched at all. There are several photos from China that show entire dead babies on plates being eaten by the Chinese "elite" and I would not be surprised at all if certain circles inside the U.S. provide such a "product demand" as well. In the latest planned parenthood video, they have Planned Parenthood being busted marketing "fresh eyes, hearts, and gonads" and if that be the case, it appears it is all being run as a meat market rather than a lab supply outlet. Either is downright nasty, but as it goes with the world's elite, when one begins to dig there never seems to be a bottom..... Though this report does not mention the baby parts actually being eaten, Take a look at this and think about it. I would not be surprised at all. Sep 15 2015 A few quick things Deafening silence is a silver bullet There is a deafening silence with regard to the Jew busted for setting up a 2015 911 attack in America. Joshua Goldberg, an orthodox Jew living in Florida, constituted 100 percent of America's ISIS, and was busted by the FBI on September 9. And it is NOWHERE in the alternative media, scant few people have uttered a peep about this (most notably Alex) and I strongly suggest people make a list (and check it twice) of who mentioned this and who did not, because those who did not are BONA FIDE FAKE OPPOSITION. This event is the litmus test. And it is already too late for alt media people to do catch-up (save face) reports on this topic because the main story broke on 9/11/2015. Joshua was arrested by the FBI, was definitely the one who cooperated with Pamela Geller to fake the Garland Texas shooting, Definitely set up synagogue shootings in Australia and the U.S., and was busted by the FBI two days before he had a pressure cooker bomb set off in Kansas City. ALL ISIS NEWS IN AMERICA AND AUSTRALIA, ALL ACTIVITY and I mean ALL was done by this guy, it is an epic bust and the entire FBI affidavit was published and is available: READ THIS AFFIDAVIT! Original from the Government HERE There is no fog with this one, and failure of Alt media to report on this is 100 percent proof of whether or not they are fake. This is the bombshell that can blow the entire ISIS conspiracy into the sewer FAIL TO REPORT THIS AND YOUR ALT MEDIA VENUE IS AUTOMATICALLY PEGGED AS A SHAM. Blue pig There was a wild pig with blue fat shot somewhere in the American southwest (I forgot the details) but the story was viral and I am sure you saw that, if not just google blue pig, you will find it with ease. There are many theories flying around as to how this happened. I would not worry about a GMO pig running around, there is an easy explanation. All reports out there say there are many mines around, but for this and that reason, (whatever) they are not the cause. I think that the mines are the cause, and that somewhere in one of them a silver deposit was hit and the pig went into that mine repeatedly and drank from it. Best possible explanation. Other explanation? The pig somehow came across a box of dye and ate it. This then went to the fat. If the muscles were blue, that would be an entirely different thing, but the fact it is in the fat says to me that the pig found plenty to eat overall, and then ate some sort of coloring agent that went into the fat. I am going to do pirate radio By going back through the stats on this web site, and the stats for other legitimate alt media web sites, it is obvious that in May the web was put under strict controls that already destroyed many legitimate alt media venues and had a serious impact on this web site as well. These controls are precisely why you can't find many sites that know anything about Joshua's pressure cooker bomb, because the fake opposition will not report anything that is not blasted in the MSM. If a story that huge can be stopped, it is game over, hardcore action MUST take place or we are ALL DEAD. Aidos drudge, alex..... I am confident I can arrange an antenna system that will get ALL of a signal up to America from Mexico and not be heard in Mexico. So they won't care in Mexico. If they kill the web, other methods will be needed. There is a full report on this farther down the page. This can't happen quick, I need to first do a lot of low power testing to make sure I can't be heard in Mexico, and to also make sure the signal goes where I want it to go. But I think I can do it on time..... the FCC will get it's "information control" backlash, they should have never jacked with the web. North Korea goes full on with nuclear program North Korea cranked up their coffee pot to max steam and obviously hope it won't blow. Kim Jong claims he can make many many bombs. Doubt it, but would not cry much if he did. Some are saying that it is all an MSM show, a zio lie, because now that Russia is in Syria, Syria is out as an option for starting world war 3, and North Korea is the back up plan. If so, Kim Jong will get his day in the media sun. IF he has nukes (enough) already, trust me, no one will do ANYTHING. I'd trade a nuke for an aircraft carrier ANY DAY. Sep 14 2015 HUGE STUFF ON THIS PAGE TODAY There is so much important stuff on this page that I am going to let it get reads as it is now so people do not miss it. Key points: 1. JEWS BUSTED BY THE FBI BEFORE THEY COULD PRESSURE COOKER BOMB ON 911: Finally the FBI did something right, and clearly busted a Jew for truly (and successfully) setting up 911 terror attacks in Kansas City, which the FBI stopped on September 9, two days before 911. There is a lot to this bust, including attacks on synagogues, and the so-called attack on Pamela Geller's mohammed festival in Garland Texas. This bust proved that ALL of ISIS in America and Australia was Jewish run, there is nothing left here folks, ISIS in America and Australia has been wiped out, the entire thing went down in one shot. 2. They finally released the pictures from inside the bat man shooting theater, and they prove nothing happened. I have super clear pictures of all of this posted. Key points to this one: No blood on seats ANYWHERE, not a single bullet hole visible that was not taped over, and the bullets that "went through the seats" were obviously drilled with a power drill for the sole purpose of giving the trajectory markers a place to seat into, all the while there was no mushrooming and divoting of the seat back metal around the bullet holes which should happen if a real bullet went through them, and many many other completely obvious flaws in the set up of the horror scene including obviously staged popcorn spills, and absolutely no blood where it should be according to the official lie (and a very mysterious lack of blood, PERIOD). 3. A really important piece which clearly indicates Google is likely to be part of a massive A.I. program which is aiding and abetting banks and obviously other tribe institutions in well calculated, and sometimes significant thefts of money from people's bank accounts which is all done in a way the AI program calculates will not get discovered and/or stopped by victims, even when the victims know the theft is taking place. This AI appears to cooperate in part with the GOOGLE search engine, which, with it's massive database of personal activity on everyone who uses it, appears to inform the theft A.I. when people do searches that indicate they know a theft is happening, and know enough to stop the theft and protect their rights. Only then will the A.I. back off and return things to normal, complete with return of all funds stolen, and removal of all online records that can show a theft took place and was reversed. This indeed happened to one man, and he can prove it with paper records of the thefts to put in contrast with the online records that show "nothing happened" to prove it. There are several massive victories for the |
, Stone and Clark. A recent debate in London between the latter two turned into a swirl of cause and counter-cause, accident and counter-accident, until they came close to concluding the cause was indeed Princip's Sarajevo bullet of 1914.
No less fierce has been argument over whether Britain needed to fight at all. Niall Ferguson yesterday called it "the biggest error in history". Britain had previously held aloof from the feuds of Europe's nation states. Germany was no existential threat to Britain. Even if Britain had wanted to intervene, it and America should have waited for Germany to win or lose to Russia and France. As it was, the war was staggeringly expensive. It lost Britain an empire and left Germany fit only for Hitler and catastrophe. It was hardly a triumph.
Ferguson's trouble is that any war a nation wins is thereby rendered "worth it". Historians can argue whether the Great War was noble, well-fought and sensibly resolved. But the more appalling the sacrifice, the more inexcusable it is to challenge its worth. Hence Germany must be depicted as so evil that the very idea of not declaring war on it is taboo. All wars start as popular; all wars end as just.
In his state of the union speech this week, Barack Obama bravely pleaded with America to "move on from a state of war". Any visitor to his country knows what he means: a place seemingly embattled and paranoid. Britain may be less militaristic, but it is no less obsessed with war as such, the second world war as much as the first.
The publishing industry swims in a sea of Hitleriana. Of some 800 books a year written on Hitler, 80% emanate from Britain. The school curriculum is stuffed with war. Television schedules are crammed with it. So, too, are opera sets, costume dramas, video games, comics. Nazis charge from every orifice. GCSE websites get three times more hits for Hitler than for the Tudors. Video game designers claim they always use Nazis (rather than Arabs) as baddies because they incur no moral relativism.
A nation trapped in nostalgia for past military triumphs is not healthy but weak and Ruritanian. Germany may understandably prefer not to commemorate its 20th-century conflicts, despite the losses its people suffered. Yet it must put up with its conquerors rehearsing their victories, year after year. Britain and Germany have always seemed to me to be the two European countries that have most in common, including a shared Anglo-Saxon ancestry. It is tragic that one feels constantly impelled to an orgy of recalled hatred for the other.
History is the orphan of politics, abused and forgotten. A year that promises a festival of history is thus a good thing. But why does it have to be a festival of war? Over the centenary horizon lies Magna Carta (1215). This year we should be commemorating the Hanoverian succession, the demise of the Stuart monarchy and the advent of modern politics. Then comes Peterloo (1819) and the pathway to the Great Reform. Will the government stage festivals, parades and lottery grants for these? Come the anniversary of the 1918 armistice, will it also remember votes for women? Can we really not do history without war?Greece scrambled fighter jets to intercept six Turkish military aircraft that violated Greek airspace over 20 times on Wednesday, reported the local Kathimerini paper Thursday. The violations of the European Union member’s airspace, which included two aircraft that were armed, comes just days after Athens agreed to a $96 billion bailout from its EU creditors in exchange for deep public sector cuts, which include trimming Greece's bloated military budget.
The jets entered Greece's northeastern, central and southeastern regions over the Aegean Sea, the area of water that divides the two countries’ mainlands. While it's not yet known if the incursion into Greek airspace was accidental, few will see it as a military navigational error given the centuries of hostility between the two nations. What is more likely is that Turkish military wanted to test the reaction time of Greece's air force, usually an indicator of military preparedness -- a tactic deployed often by the Russian air force.
Should the incident spill over into a diplomatic spat, it will be of huge concern to NATO, which values both Turkish and Greek membership in the alliance because of their strategic locations on the fringes of Europe. Similarly, leaders of the alliance, now more than ever, are trying to avoid internal disputes as it seeks to show Russia a united front amid ongoing conflict in Crimea and the east Ukraine war.
During its economic fall, Athens has built stronger ties with Moscow as it looked to take advantage of Russian natural gas supplies via a pipeline that would be built between the two countries.
While relations between Turkey and Greece have been quiet in recent years, there is little love lost between Athens and Ankara. After going to war against each other in 1919, the Cypriot crisis that spanned the 1950s to the mid-1970s has left both with a mutual distrust of each other. Now both countries are in a disagreement over potential energy reserves off the coast of Cyprus, a country split between Turkish and Greek-speaking residents.Some cannabis growers may soon find themselves with a lot less irrigation water if the U.S. government decides to block the use of federal water for state-legal marijuana cultivation.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees management of federal water resources, "is evaluating how the Controlled Substances Act applies in the context of Reclamation project water being used to facilitate marijuana-related activities,” said Peter Soeth, a spokesman for the bureau. He said the evaluation was begun "at the request of various water districts in the West."
Local water districts in Washington state and Colorado, where recreational marijuana is now legal, contract with federal water projects for supplies. Officials from some of those water districts said they assume the feds are going to turn off the spigots for marijuana growers.
“Certainly every indication we are hearing is that their policy will be that federal water supplies cannot be used to grow marijuana,” said Brian Werner at Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, which handles approximately one-third of all water for northeastern Colorado and is the Bureau of Reclamation's second-largest user in the number of irrigated acres.
Washington state’s Roza Irrigation District, which supplies federal water to approximately 72,000 acres in Yakima and Benton counties, has already issued a “precautionary message” to water customers that may be involved in state-legal cannabis growing.
“Local irrigation districts operating federal irrigation projects have recently been advised that under Federal Reclamation Law, it is likely project water cannot be delivered and utilized for purposes that are illegal under federal law,” wrote Roza district manager Scott Revell in letters to the Yakima and Benton county commissioners. “Presumably growing marijuana would fall into this category.”
Both Washington and Colorado legalized marijuana for medical use more than a decade ago. Pot remains illegal under federal law. Reclamation’s Soeth said that the issue of cutting off water supplies for marijuana has never come up before.
A Department of Justice official told HuffPost it has no comment on the water issue. The Bureau of Reclamation is likely to announce a decision this month. “We’re going to work with our water districts once that decision is made,” Soeth said.
Marijuana advocates condemned the possibility of a federal water ban for state-legal crops. Mason Tvert, communications director for Marijuana Policy Project and key backer of Amendment 64, which legalized marijuana for recreational use in Colorado, criticized the hypocrisy of a federal government that would prevent water access to some legal businesses and not others.
“If water is so precious and scarce that it can’t be used for state-legal marijuana cultivation, it shouldn’t be used for brewing and distilling more harmful intoxicating substances like beer and liquor,” Tvert said.
The impact on Washington may be more severe, since the state’s marijuana laws allow for outdoor growing and, according to McClatchy, the Bureau of Reclamation controls the water supply of about two-thirds of the state’s irrigated land. In Colorado, marijuana businesses can grow either indoors or outdoors, but some local jurisdictions like Denver require the outdoor grow to be in a fully enclosed and locked space, like a greenhouse.
Growing in Denver, home to the majority of Colorado marijuana dispensaries, likely wouldn't notice a shortage if the Bureau of Reclamation cuts off federal water.
“Because we are not a federal contractor, we would not be affected,” said Travis Thompson, spokesman for Denver Water, the main water authority for the state’s capital and surrounding suburbs.
But many other regions of the state rely on federal water. In Pueblo, about two hours south of Denver, about 20 percent of regional water is Reclamation-controlled. Although the remaining 80 percent of the region's water is locally controlled, it passes through the Pueblo Dam, operated under Bureau of Reclamation authority.
"Yes, they come through a federal facility, but the federal facility is required to let those water right to pass," Pueblo Board of Water Works executive director Terry Book said to southern Colorado’s NBC-affiliate KOAA.
The St. Charles Mesa Water District, another Pueblo-area water facility, has already imposed a moratorium on supplying water to marijuana businesses until the Bureau of Reclamation settles the issue.
The Bureau of Reclamation said its facilities deliver water to 1.25 million acres of land in Colorado and 1.2 million acres in Washington state. About 1.6 million acre-feet of water is delivered to Colorado’s agricultural sector from Reclamation and about 5 million acre-feet is delivered to agriculture in Washington.
As McClatchy reported last month that there are several viable alternatives to using federal water. Small-scale marijuana-growing operations may be able to use city-controlled water sources, or drill a well. Greenhouse growers are allowed to use up to 5,000 gallons of well water per day under state law. Any use beyond that requires a permit from the state. While some marijuana plants can require an average of six gallons of water per day, growing operations in the state are likely to fall well within that limit.
However, in areas of the state where much of the water is controlled by Bureau of Reclamation contracts, these alternatives aren't as accessible.
The potential water ban has already set off local opposition. The Seattle Times' editorial board urged the Bureau of Reclamation to allow federal water contracts to be used by marijuana farmers.
"The bureau has never had -- nor should it have -- a stake in what crop is planted. That’s a basic tenet of the 1902 National Reclamation Act, which created the bureau and transformed the arid American west," read the May 4 editorial. "Yet the federal government is now threatening to forget that history, because some regulators are queasy about Washington and Colorado’s experimentation with marijuana legalization."
As the Times' board points out, there is some precedent for the Justice Department to stand down on the water issue. Last August, Attorney General Eric Holder told the governors of Washington and Colorado that the DOJ wouldn't intervene in the states' legal pot programs. And earlier this year, federal officials issued guidelines expanding access to financial services for legal marijuana businesses, so long as the business doesn't violate certain legal priorities outlinedby the Justice Department.Untitled a guest Sep 12th, 2015 1,441 Never a guest1,441Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint C++ 3.72 KB #include <iostream> //this command creates a preprocessor #include <string> #include <cmath> #include <string> using namespace std ; // this command uses the C++ standard Library int main ( ) { string string000 ; string string001 ; string string002 ; string string003 ; string string004 ; string string005 ; string000 = "The first equation is 15 - 92 + 15600 divided by 156" ; string001 = "Is the answer to the equation, " ; string002 = "And the following numbers and letters represent the" ; string003 = "Hex addresses of the variables assigned:" ; string004 = "Is the answer to the 2nd equation." ; string005 = "The Second equation is 55 divided by 6" ; string string1 ; string string2 ; string string3 ; string1 = "This is a Short Story, i think c++ is interesting and fun i like carrying out procedures of writing c++ it is very fun and i like it" ; string2 = "I wanted to learn how to program so i can program codes into my games that i make i am learning c++ everyday and leaning more and more" ; string3 = "Type the number you want to Square: " ; // Creating integer variables: int a = 15, b = 92, c = 156, d = 4039, e = 15600, f = 7000 ; // Initialization integer variables: int result ; // Process of assignments of the integer variables: a = 15 ; b = 92 ; c = 156 ; d = 4039 ; e = 15600 ; f = 7000 ; // The integer "result" is assigning the integers "a, b, e, c" to "to "a = 15, b = 92, e = 15600, c = 156" which the integer "result" equals to "15 - 92 + 15600 / 156": result = a - b + e / c ; // Process of assigning integers with (value) constructor initializers "declares the variable then assigns it to a value inside the constructor initializer()" int aa ( 55 ) ; int bb ( 6 ) ; int result2 = aa / bb ; // this variable represents a float which can houses a modulus number string string006 ; string string007 ; string006 = " This is the third equation" ; string007 = "The SquareRoot of 125 equals:" ; float mynumber ; mynumber = 10.2 ; // Prints the integer "result": cout << string000 << endl ; cout << result << ": " ; cout << string001 << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << string005 << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << result2 << ": " << string004 << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << string002 << " " << endl ; cout << string003 << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << endl ; // prints the 'Hex Decimal' addresses of the data in the integers "a,b,c,d,e,f" cout << & a << " :Integer Variable (a) " << endl ; cout << & b << " :Integer Variable (b) " << endl ; cout << & c << " :Integer Variable (c) " << endl ; cout << & d << " :Integer Variable (d) " << endl ; cout << & e << " :Integer Variable (e) " << endl ; cout << & f << " :Integer Variable (f) " << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << string1 << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << string2 << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << endl ; cout << string3 ; // This is the process of squaring a number, basically multiplying a number by its self. int x ; x = x * x ; cin >> x ; cout << "Squaring = " << x * x << endl ; // Variable doubles can house whole numbers and real numbers(floating point numbers) // this is the number of the Avogadro constant 6.023 * 10 ^ 23. double decimal = 6.022 ; double number = 10.0 ; double exponent = 23.0 ; double avogadro = 6.022 * pow ( number, exponent ) ; cout << avogadro << endl ; //Terminates the program: return 0 ; }
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#include <iostream> //this command creates a preprocessor #include <string> #include <cmath> #include <string> using namespace std; // this command uses the C++ standard Library int main() { string string000; string string001; string string002; string string003; string string004; string string005; string000 = "The first equation is 15 - 92 + 15600 divided by 156"; string001 = "Is the answer to the equation, "; string002 = "And the following numbers and letters represent the"; string003 = "Hex addresses of the variables assigned:"; string004 = "Is the answer to the 2nd equation."; string005 = "The Second equation is 55 divided by 6"; string string1; string string2; string string3; string1 = "This is a Short Story, i think c++ is interesting and fun i like carrying out procedures of writing c++ it is very fun and i like it"; string2 = "I wanted to learn how to program so i can program codes into my games that i make i am learning c++ everyday and leaning more and more"; string3 = "Type the number you want to Square: "; // Creating integer variables: int a = 15, b = 92, c = 156, d = 4039, e = 15600, f = 7000; // Initialization integer variables: int result; // Process of assignments of the integer variables: a = 15; b = 92; c = 156; d = 4039; e = 15600; f = 7000; // The integer "result" is assigning the integers "a, b, e, c" to "to "a = 15, b = 92, e = 15600, c = 156" which the integer "result" equals to "15 - 92 + 15600 / 156": result = a - b + e / c; // Process of assigning integers with (value) constructor initializers "declares the variable then assigns it to a value inside the constructor initializer()" int aa(55); int bb(6); int result2 = aa / bb; // this variable represents a float which can houses a modulus number string string006; string string007; string006 = " This is the third equation"; string007 = "The SquareRoot of 125 equals:"; float mynumber; mynumber = 10.2; // Prints the integer "result": cout << string000 << endl; cout << result << ": "; cout << string001 << endl; cout << endl; cout << string005 << endl; cout << endl; cout << result2 << ": " << string004 << endl; cout << endl; cout << endl; cout << string002 << " " << endl; cout <<string003 << endl; cout << endl; cout << endl; // prints the 'Hex Decimal' addresses of the data in the integers "a,b,c,d,e,f" cout << &a << " :Integer Variable (a) " << endl; cout << &b << " :Integer Variable (b) " << endl; cout << &c << " :Integer Variable (c) " << endl; cout << &d << " :Integer Variable (d) " << endl; cout << &e << " :Integer Variable (e) " << endl; cout << &f << " :Integer Variable (f) " << endl; cout << endl; cout << endl; cout << endl; cout << endl; cout << string1 << endl; cout << endl; cout << endl; cout << string2 << endl; cout << endl; cout << endl; cout << endl; cout << endl; cout << string3; // This is the process of squaring a number, basically multiplying a number by its self. int x; x = x*x; cin >> x; cout << "Squaring = " << x*x << endl; // Variable doubles can house whole numbers and real numbers(floating point numbers) // this is the number of the Avogadro constant 6.023 * 10 ^ 23. double decimal = 6.022; double number = 10.0; double exponent = 23.0; double avogadro = 6.022 * pow(number, exponent); cout << avogadro << endl; //Terminates the program: return 0; }Anna Margaret Ross (née McKittrick; 8 December 1860 – 2 February 1939), known by her pen-name Amanda McKittrick Ros, was an Irish writer.[1] She published her first novel Irene Iddesleigh at her own expense in 1897. She wrote poetry and a number of novels. Her works were not read widely, and her eccentric, over-written, "purple" circumlocutory writing is alleged by some critics to be some of the worst prose and poetry ever written.
Life [ edit ]
McKittrick was born in Drumaness, County Down, on 8 December 1860, the fourth child of Eliza Black and Edward Amlave McKittrick, Principal of Drumaness High School.[2] She was christened Anna Margaret at Third Ballynahinch Presbyterian Church on 27 January 1861. In the 1880s she attended Marlborough Teacher Training College in Dublin, was appointed Monitor at Millbrook National School, Larne, County Antrim, finished her training at Marlborough and then became a qualified teacher at the same school.[1]
During her first visit to Larne she met Andrew Ross, a widower of 35, who was station master there. She married him at Joymount Presbyterian Church, Carrickfergus, County Antrim, on 30 August 1887.
Her husband financed the publication of Irene Iddesleigh as a gift to Ros on their tenth wedding anniversary, thus launching her literary career.[3] She went on to write three novels and dozens of poems. In 1917 Andrew Ross died, and in 1922 Ros married Thomas Rodgers (1857/58–1933), a County Down farmer.[1]
Ros died at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast on 2 February 1939,[1] under the name "Hannah Margaret Rodgers".[2]
Writing [ edit ]
She wrote under the pen-name Amanda McKittrick Ros, possibly in an attempt to suggest a connection to the noble de Ros family of County Down.[4] Ros was strongly influenced by the novelist Marie Corelli. She wrote: "My chief object of writing is and always has been, to write if possible in a strain all my own. This I find is why my writings are so much sought after."[5] She imagined "the million and one who thirst for aught that drops from my pen", and predicted that she would "be talked about at the end of a thousand years."[6]
Her "admirers" included Aldous Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon, C.S. Lewis, and Mark Twain.[7] Her novel Irene Iddesleigh was published in 1897.[8] Twain considered Irene "one of the greatest unintentionally humorous novels of all time." A reader sent a copy of Irene to humorist Barry Pain, who in an 1898 review called it "a thing that happens once in a million years", and sarcastically termed it "the book of the century." He reported that he was initially entertained, but soon "shrank before it in tears and terror." Ros retorted in her preface to Delina Delaney by branding Pain a "clay crab of corruption," and suggesting that he was so hostile only because he was secretly in love with her. But Ros claimed to have made enough money from her second novel, Delina Delaney, to build a house, which she named Iddesleigh.
In Ros' last novel, Helen Huddleson, all the characters are named after various fruits: Lord Raspberry, Cherry Raspberry, Sir Peter Plum, Christopher Currant, the Earl of Grape, Madame Pear. Of Pear, Ros wrote: "she had a swell staff of sweet-faced helpers swathed in stratagem, whose members and garments glowed with the lust of the loose, sparkled with the tears of the tortured, shone with the sunlight of bribery, dangled with the diamonds of distrust, slashed with sapphires of scandals.. "[6]
Ros believed that her critics lacked sufficient intellect to appreciate her talent, and was convinced that they conspired against her for revealing the corruption of society's ruling classes, thereby disturbing "the bowels of millions".[6]
Legacy [ edit ]
Belfast Public Libraries have a large collection of manuscripts, typescripts and first editions of her work. Manuscript copies include Irene Iddesleigh, Sir Benjamin Bunn and Six Months in Hell. Typescript versions of all the above are held together with Rector Rose, St. Scandal Bags and The Murdered Heiress among others. The collection of first editions covers all her major works including volumes of her poetry Fumes of Formation and Poems of Puncture, together with lesser known pieces such as Kaiser Bill and Donald Dudley: The Bastard Critic. The collection includes hundreds of letters addressed to Ros, many with her own comments in the margins. Also included are typed copies of her letters to newspapers, correspondence with her admiring publisher T.S. Mercer, an album of newspaper cuttings and photographs, and a script for a BBC broadcast from July 1943.
A few enthusiasts have kept her legend alive. A biography O Rare Amanda! was published in 1954; a collection of her most memorable passages was published in 1988 under the title Thine In Storm and Calm. In 2007 her life and works were feted at a Belfast literary festival.[6]
Denis Johnston, the Irish playwright, wrote a radio play entitled Amanda McKittrick Ros which was broadcast on BBC Home Service radio on 27 July 1943 and subsequently. The play is published in The Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston vol. 3. Johnston acquired a collection of papers from Ros including the unfinished typescript of Helen Huddleson. These can now be seen as part of the Denis Johnston collection in the library of the University of Ulster Coleraine, Northern Ireland.[9]
Reputation [ edit ]
Nick Page, author of In Search of the World's Worst Writers, rated Ros the worst of the worst. He says that "For Amanda, eyes are 'piercing orbs', legs are 'bony supports', people do not blush, they are 'touched by the hot hand of bewilderment.'" Jack Loudan said that "Amanda is the most perfect instrument for measuring the sense of humour. Alert and quick witted people accept her at once: those she leaves entirely unmoved are invariably dull and unimaginative."
The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature describes her: "Uniquely dreadful".[6]
Novels [ edit ]
Aldous Huxley compared her work to the Euphuist movement in Elizabethan literature:
In Mrs Ros we see, as we see in the Elizabethan novelists, the result of the discovery of art by an unsophisticated mind and of its first conscious attempt to produce the artistic. It is remarkable how late in the history of every literature simplicity is invented. The first attempts of any people to be consciously literary are always productive of the most elaborate artificiality. Poetry is always written before prose and always in a language as remote as possible from the language of ordinary life....The Euphuists were not barbarians making their first discovery of literature;...But in one thing they were unsophisticated: they were discovering prose. They were realizing that prose could be written with art, and they wrote it as artificially as they possibly could... They became intoxicated with their discovery of artifice. It was some time before the intoxication wore off and men saw that art was possible without artifice. Mrs. Ros, an Elizabethan born out of her time, is still under the spell of that magical and delicious intoxication. Mrs. Ros's artifices are often more remarkable and elaborate even than [those of John Lyly, founder of Euphuism]. This is how she tells us that Delina earned money by doing needlework: "She tried hard to keep herself a stranger to her poor old father's slight income by the use of the finest production of steel, whose blunt edge eyed the reely covering with marked greed, and offered its sharp dart to faultless fabrics of flaxen fineness."[10]
Her novel Delina Delaney begins:
Have you ever visited that portion of Erin's plot that offers its sympathetic soil for the minute survey and scrutinous examination of those in political power, whose decision has wisely been the means before now of converting the stern and prejudiced, and reaching the hand of slight aid to share its strength in augmenting its agricultural richness?
The Oxford literary group the Inklings, which included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, held competitions to see who could read Ros' work aloud for the longest length of time without laughing.[7]
Northrop Frye said of Ros' novels that they use "rhetorical material without being able to absorb or assimilate it: the result is pathological, a kind of literary diabetes".[11]
Poetry [ edit ]
A poet as well as a novelist, Ros wrote Poems of Puncture and Fumes of Formation. The latter contains "Visiting Westminster Abbey," which opens:[12]
Holy Moses! Take a look! Flesh decayed in every nook! Some rare bits of brain lie here, Mortal loads of beef and beer.
Availability [ edit ]
As of 2013, only Irene Iddesleigh is available in a modern edition.[13] This contains appendices with Barry Pain's influential "Review" of the first edition and Thomas Beer's "introduction" to the 1926 edition along with Amanda's own venomous reactions. Her other books are rare and first editions command prices of 300-800 USD on the used-book market. Belfast Central Library has an archive of her papers, and the Queen's University of Belfast has some volumes by Ros in the stacks.
The Frank Ferguson-edited collection Ulster-Scots Writing: An Anthology (Four Courts, 2008) includes her poem 'The Town of Tare'.
On 11 November 2006 as part of a 50-year celebration, the librarian Elspeth Legg hosted a major retrospective of her works, culminating in a public reading by 65 delegates of the entire contents of Fumes of Formation. The theme of the workshop that followed was 'Suppose you chance to write a book', Line 17 of 'Myself' from page 2 of Fumes of Formation.
Bibliography [ edit ]
Irene Iddesleigh (novel, 1897, current edition 2013) ISBN 9781909721005
(novel, 1897, current edition 2013) ISBN 9781909721005 Delina Delaney (novel, 1898)
(novel, 1898) Poems of Puncture (poetry, 1912)
(poetry, 1912) Fumes of Formation (poetry, 1933)
(poetry, 1933) Helen Huddleson (posthumous novel, 1969)
(posthumous novel, 1969) Jack Loudan (1954) O Rare Amanda!: The Life of Amanda McKittrick Ros (London: Chatto & Windus 1954)
(London: Chatto & Windus 1954) Thine in Storm and Calm — An Amanda McKittrick Ros Reader, edited by Frank Ormsby (The Blackstaff Press, 1988.)
The Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston vol. 3 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1992.)
See also [ edit ]Scientists in Hong Kong believe they have found traces of organic compounds deep in interstellar space that have similar structures to coal and oil. The findings - which are based on infrared spectroscopic data - suggest that these organic compounds exist throughout the universe, and may have seeded life on Earth.
For decades astronomers have been aware of a band of mid-infrared emissions coming from interstellar space, but haven’t been certain of its origin. Many believe the emissions arise from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) that are excited by ultraviolet photons. Others claim that there are flaws with this hypothesis. These scientists argue that the infrared emissions exist even around cool stars where there is no stimulating ultraviolet radiation, and - perhaps more significantly - that in interstellar environments no individual PAHs have ever been identified.
Now, Sun Kwok and Yong Zhang of the University of Hong Kong have come up with a different answer to what these emissions mean. Taking data from the European Space Agency’s Infrared Space Observatory and Nasa’s Spitzer Space Telescope, Kwok and Zhang analysed the spectra of dust formed in exploding stars, known as novae. Rather than finding sharp, well-defined features that would be consistent with pure PAHs, the researchers discovered features hinting at non-aromatic, or aliphatic, compounds. Indeed, the researchers believe their data are most consistent with emissions from organic matter with a mixed aromatic-aliphatic structure, similar to coal and oil.
If interstellar space does harbour such complex organic matter, it would be a significant discovery. Coal- and oil-like compounds have already been spotted on meteorites - the remnants of a distant past when Earth was bombarded by comets and asteroids. Linking such compounds to deep space suggests that Earth’s complex organic matter - and by extension life - might have been seeded from outside of the Solar System.
However, Aigen Li of the University of Missouri in Columbia, US, raises a concern on one aspect of Kwok and Zhang’s model - that the organic matter’s aromatic component causes a 3.3um infrared emission feature and its aliphatic component causes a weaker, 3.4um feature. If this were true, Li says, absorption spectra from particularly dusty regions of space should also have a strong 3.3um feature and a weak 3.4um feature - but past observations have actually shown these strengths to be reversed. ’Therefore, the [two features] are probably not from the same material,’ and PAHs are still a likely cause of the infrared emissions, he concludes.
Still, Kwok and Zhang are persevering. ’We hope to continue to pursue astronomical infrared spectroscopic observations to better identify the exact chemical composition of these compounds,’ says Kwok.
Jon CartwrightThe University of Mississippi's School of Medicine was forced to delay construction of a parking garage after tests revealed the presence of as many as 1,000 bodies buried at the Jackson, Miss., site.
They were not identified, according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, and are thought to have been former patients at the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum, which closed about 80 years ago.
The discovery wasn't entirely unexpected, university spokesman Jack Mazurak told Yahoo News. "The property that the University of Mississippi Medical Center is located on used to be the location of the state insane asylum, which operated from 1855 to 1935," Mazurak said.
"Historically we knew that there were a lot of graves, many of which were not marked. In the '90s, we took the handful of marked graves and reinterred them in a designated cemetery area," he said.
"Throughout the years, as construction projects have gone on, on campus, we've occasionally run across a coffin. In fall of 2012, we were extending a road for a new intersection. That extension ran across an area that had rows of graves." Mazurak said they found about 66 graves in that instance.
Mazurak said the university quickly determined it couldn't build on the site, both out of respect and due to the cost to move and rebury the bodies, which would have added $3 million to the cost of the parking garage project at about $3,000 per grave.
The recent discovery was made before any bodies were physically dug up. Having learned their lesson from previous instances, researchers used ground-penetrating radar to test before breaking ground.
Officials from the medical center are currently discussing where to build the parking garage as well as other structures and parking lots they have planned for the campus.
The main campus for the University of Mississippi is located in Oxford. The Medical Center is located around three hours south in Jackson.
Follow Mike Krumboltz on Twitter (@mikekrumboltz).Frank Bruno has been training with Ricky Hatton in recent weeks
British former world heavyweight champion Frank Bruno wants to return to the ring at the age of 54.
Bruno, who has not fought since being knocked out by Mike Tyson in 1996, has been suffering with bipolar disorder in recent years.
However, he told ITV's This Morning: "I've been in the gym all the time, that's why I want to come back into boxing."
Asked if it was a good idea, Bruno replied: "I haven't got a choice."
Bruno, who made his professional debut in 1982, says he returned to the gym to burn off energy and does not like to be "mugged off" when challenged by younger boxers.
"I can't sit down and let these so-called promoters say Anthony Joshua can knock me out in two rounds when I'm not even dead," Bruno added.
However, Bruno later said that his agent had been told by the British Boxing Board of Control that it would not accept his application for a licence.Some states ban smiling in driver’s license photos, but wearing a colander on one’s head is apparently allowed.
A Massachusetts woman this week won the right to wear a colander on her head in her driver’s license photo after citing religious reasons. Lindsay Miller identifies as a “Pastafarian” and member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which some critics call a parody religion.
She tried to wear the kitchen utensil in her driver’s license photo this year but the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles denied her request. However, after intervention by the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center the RMV recently reversed its stance.
Ms. Miller said she was delighted that the agency allowed her to don a colander for her driver’s license, which was issued Thursday.
“While I don’t think the government can involve itself in matters of religion, I do hope this decision encourages my fellow Pastafarian Atheists to come out and express themselves as I have,” Ms. Miller said.
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster spawned out of a letter that Oregon State University graduate Bobby Henderson penned to the Kansas State Board of Education in 2005. He wrote to protest the board’s decision to permit the teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in public school science classes, suggesting that students should “hear multiple viewpoints” of how the universe came to be, including the idea that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created it.
PHOTOS: 10 best Christmas movies on Netflix
And though many describe the religion as a farce, believers defend it as legitimate, stating on their website that the religion is “backed by hard science. Anything that comes across as humor |
inadequate.
To talk to former uranium miners and their families is to talk about the dead and the dying. Brothers and sisters, coworkers and friends: a litany of names and diseases. Many were, as one worker put it, “ate up with cancer,” while others died from various lung and kidney diseases. When the former workers mention their own diseases, it’s clear, though unspoken, that they’re also dying. Some don’t wait for the disease to take them: “Poor guy says he don’t wanna be in a diaper,” says one worker of his brother-in-law, a former miner with lung disease who was facing hospice. “He got a gun and shot himself.”
Women who worked in the mines and mills also bore the risk of reproductive disorders and babies with birth defects. “[Supervisors] told me … as long as I could do the job, there was no reason to worry about my baby,” says Linda Evers, 57. Both of her children had birth defects. Her daughter was born without hips.
Linda Evers, who worked in a uranium mill in the 1970s, says, “Every day, they told us we were doing our part for the Cold War effort.” (Photograph by Joseph Sorrentino)
I spent a week interviewing former uranium workers (those who worked in the mines and the mills and, sometimes, both) and their families in the towns of Grants and Church Rock, N.M.: ground zero for uranium mining from the mid-1950s until the early 1980s. Years, sometimes decades, after laboring in the mines and mills, workers exhibit diseases associated with uranium exposure. The federal government, under a program called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), has paid more than $750 million in restitution to uranium workers on nearly 8,000 claims. But in order to receive compensation, workers have to have been employed before 1972—the year the federal government stopped purchasing uranium for its nuclear arms build-up. The workers I spoke with are part of a group of thousands who worked in uranium mines or mills after December 31, 1971, and have diseases linked to uranium exposure, but, so far, cannot get compensation from RECA.
Spouses of former workers also suffer health effects, even though they may have never set foot in a mine or mill. The Post ’71 Uranium Workers Committee, an advocacy organization cofounded by Linda Evers, surveyed 421 wives of uranium workers and found that 40 percent reported miscarriages, stillbirths or children with birth defects. One vector of contamination may have been laundry brought home from the mines. Cipriano Lucero, 61, worked in the Anaconda mill, where uranium was processed into yellowcake, a toxic substance. “[His clothes] were stinky and yellow and no matter how much bleach, they would never come out, they were still yellow,” says his wife, Liz, adding, “I would wash his clothes with our clothes.”
Liz was diagnosed with tumors in her ovaries when she was 28 and had to have a hysterectomy. She says the doctor told her it was uranium-related. Liz and Cipriano cofounded the Post ’71 Uranium Workers Committee with Evers.
So who’s to blame?
Uranium mining has long been known to be dangerous work. As early as 1546, in Schneeberg, Germany, it was noted that large numbers of uranium miners were dying from lung disease. The first scientific report linking uranium mining and lung disease was published in Germany in 1879, and that disease was shown in 1913 to be lung cancer. More scientific articles in the 1930s and 1940s seemed to indicate that radon and “radon daughters,” byproducts of uranium decay, were the primary cause.
But, driven by the Cold War push for nuclear arms, uranium mining continued unchecked with “little attention… paid to the health of uranium miners,” according to a Department of Labor historian.
In 1950, an Irish-Navajo sheep herder named Paddy Martinez found a bright yellow rock of uranium ore near Haystack, N.M. That set off a mining boom in the Four Corners (where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado meet), providing sorely needed jobs.
“[The men] wanted to provide for their families, and the [mining] companies came in and said, ‘Hey, you guys are gonna make good money, have good benefits,’ ” says Liz Lucero. When she and Cipriano first got married, in 1976, he was working in a gas station for $3.85/hour. He took a job at the Anaconda mill the next year in order to get benefits and more money; about, he figures, $6 an hour. “Had to,” he says. “Had to support our family.”
Companies also lured workers with patriotism. “Every day, they told us we were doing our part for the Cold War effort,” says Linda Evers. “They’d tell us, ‘We won the Cold War because of you guys.’”
As the boom took off, Grants declared itself “The Uranium Capital of the World.”
Workers like Evers say they didn’t understand the dangers of uranium exposure, in part because the diseases take years to manifest. “When I was working, no one had been getting sick,” says Evers.
During the 1960s, Navajos working in uranium mines, few of whom smoked cigarettes, started experiencing high rates of lung cancer. Advocates and workers pressured the federal government—the sole purchaser of uranium from 1948 until 1971—for remedies. In 1979, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) introduced the first bill to compensate uranium workers and others for diseases attributable to radiation exposure, but it wasn’t until 1990 that RECA became law. With RECA, the government recognized its responsibility for the harm done to uranium miners and apologized “on behalf of the nation.” A 2000 bill expanded RECA to cover uranium mill workers, ore transporters and above-ground miners. Workers with diseases such as lung cancer, pulmonary fibrosis and silicosis are eligible for $100,000 in restitution. But the act only covers workers who were employed before 1972.
The Four Corners mining boom continued, however, thanks to nuclear power. It didn’t slow until 1979, when a glut of uranium on the world market led to a steep price drop, and layoffs began. By 1989, the last conventional uranium mine in New Mexico had closed.
All of the dozen former workers interviewed for this article worked after 1971 and are therefore denied RECA benefits. Tommy Reed, who worked in the mines until 1983 and has a constant cough, as well as skin and lung problems, finds this untenable. “We did the same work, have the same diseases, but we’re not covered,” he says. “What’s the rationale behind that?”
According to Chris Shuey, who directs the Uranium Impact Assessment Study at the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, the government reasoned its responsibility ended in 1971 when it stopped purchasing uranium. Many Congress members, he adds, believe the new standards on radiation exposure passed in 1969 protected uranium workers. Yet, post-1971 workers are still dying. Something didn’t work.
A failure to regulate
Health and safety protections for uranium workers were, for many years, spotty at best and negligent at worst. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Mines (BOM), established in 1910 to reduce accidents, had little regulatory authority and was also tasked with “mineral resource development.” State laws were piecemeal: In 1958, for example, New Mexico instituted a policy to “clear all areas” of mines that exceeded safe levels of radon, but “there was limited enforcement,” according to a 2002 National Institutes of Health paper by Doug Brugge and Rob Goble.
Federal responsibility for mine safety was reshuffled twice in the 1970s. The Mining Enforcement and Safety Administration (MESA) took over for the BOM in 1973 due to concerns about conflicts of interest. In 1978, the Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) replaced MESA as part of the sweeping reforms of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act. MSHA also assumed responsibility for uranium mills.
MSHA’s motto is “Protecting Miners’ Safety and Health Since 1978.” Former uranium workers interviewed—all of whom worked at mines and mills from the mid-1970s through 1982 or 1983— don’t believe it did a very good job.
Radon is “one of the most potent carcinogens known,” according to Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. But during the 1970s, government regulations didn’t mandate regular federal inspections to measure radon levels at uranium mines. Neither MSHA nor the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (which inherited some of the BOM's responsibilities) could provide In These Times with confirmation that the government conducted inspections for radon levels at that time. Companies were supposed to self-monitor, and if they detected high levels of radon, implement safety measures.
By 1981, MSHA was supposed to be checking radon levels at the mines annually. Several workers remember inspections, but told In These Times that when inspectors were coming, supervisors had workers barricade the unsafe areas. When the inspectors left, the barricades came down and the workers went back in. At mills, “[inspectors] never got out of the trucks,” says Evers. “Maybe they did, but I never saw them.”
One effective way to reduce exposure to radon is through ventilation. All underground mines are supposed to be well-ventilated, and according to 1973 guidelines, uranium mines specifically had to have “an adequate quantity of good-quality air” in working areas so as to keep radon levels below the threshold. But in a survey of 1,302 post-1971 workers conducted by the Post ’71 Uranium Workers Committee in 2009, only 14 percent said their work areas had adequate ventilation; 36 percent said no and almost half answered “sometimes.”
The ventilation guidelines didn’t extend to uranium mills, despite exposure hazards there as well. At mills, uranium ore is refined into yellowcake, which is 80 percent to 90 percent uranium oxide. When inhaled, it can become embedded in the lungs, increasing the risk of pulmonary fibrosis, which can be fatal. When ingested, it can damage the kidneys.
Cipriano Lucero worked in uranium mills from 1977 to 1982. He has pulmonary fibrosis, and one of his kidneys failed when he was 48, necessitating a transplant. He uses a continuous positive pressure airway machine at night and uses an oxygen tank during the day. Asked whether there was proper ventilation in the mills where he worked, Lucero simply replies, “Not really.” Linda Evers says the dust was so bad in mills that she sometimes couldn’t see. “They had exhaust fans,” she says, “but it wasn’t anything different than an oversized box fan. They just moved [the dust] around.
“We were allowed one dust mask a month, a paper dust mask,” she continues. “After one shift, they were clogged, so we just wore bandanas, or nothing.”
Lucero agrees: “We had masks but they were useless … paper masks only. Sometimes you wouldn’t even have a mask, breathing in all that dust.” Workers often coughed up black soot.
Given the dangers of working with uranium, it would seem that companies should have provided extensive training on radiation hazards—but they did so at their own discretion. “We had a class, lasted about an hour or two,” said Lucero. “Mostly about first aid, if you hurt yourself, how to wrap it.” They didn’t talk about radiation. Larry King, who worked in the mines, mainly as a surveyor, for eight years, said he had only one safety meeting and that was when he started work.
“No one told us of the hazards of radiation, uranium or radon,” he says. Seventy-nine percent of the workers questioned in the Post ’71 survey believed that safety measures—including information and equipment—were inadequate.
Surrounded
Church Rock is located in the Navajo Nation, 55 miles west of Grants. Nestled in red rock hills, the town gets its name from a formation that looks like a steeple. Local Navajo were drawn to the mines, like the residents of Grants, because of the well-paying jobs. Because Navajo miners often worked within walking distance of their homes, their risk of exposure was heightened.
Larry King, who is Navajo, lives about five miles from the entrance to Church Rock Mine, off a gravel road just past a hand-painted “Old Church Rock Mine Road” sign. In addition to the overwhelming likelihood of uranium exposure at work in the mine, there’s a strong chance he was, and may still be, exposed at home. His house is a short distance from where, on July 16, 1979, a tailings pond dam broke, releasing 93 million gallons of radioactive water. It was, by volume, the largest single release of radioactivity in the United States.
King is a sturdy-looking 58-year-old, but he suffers from respiratory problems that leave him fatigued and short of breath when he works on his property, which includes 13 cattle. “I used to do quite a bit of work several years ago, and now I’m limited,” he says.
Five miles north of where King lives is the home of Edith Hood, also a Navajo former mine worker. She worked as a probe technician in the Kerr McGee mine for a total of six years. A quiet 64-year-old, she’s still energetic despite having been diagnosed with lymphoma in 2006. Her front yard is less than half a mile from the abandoned mine where she once worked. Just a short distance away is a buried tailings pile—mine waste that contains uranium and may still be giving off radon. “Since we live and work here,” she says, “it’s a double whammy.”
Waiting
In 2015, bills to amend RECA to include post-1971 workers were introduced in the House and Senate, spearheaded by three Democratic New Mexico legislators: Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich and Rep. Ben Ray Luján.
It’s the fourth attempt since 2000. Keith Killian, a private attorney in Grand Junction, Colo., who is fighting to get compensation for post-1971 workers, sees reason for “guarded” optimism. “There are bipartisan sponsors,” he says. “That’s really good. In the past we didn’t have a lot of Republicans interested.”
Still, no bill has received a hearing and nothing is scheduled. Neither Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) nor House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte responded to requests for comment.
Cipriano Lucero, a soft-spoken man of few words, did what he was told when he worked in the mills. He, like many other uranium workers, said if he complained about working conditions, he risked losing his job. One of his tasks, washing uranium off air filters, required him to stand in foot-deep water containing uranium runoff. Doctors, he says, told him radiation exposure had made his left leg brittle; it broke three times and eventually had to be amputated. Now he has a prosthesis, with a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe on it. Lucero has trouble walking and usually uses a cane or, when he gets too tired, a motorized wheelchair.
“Some days are terrible,” he says. “I can barely get out of bed. I just wonder how I’m gonna die…suffocate or whatever.” He’s only 61.
“It’s haunting us,” says Jerry Sanchez, who worked as both a miner and miller. “If you worked there, you got it coming. If you don’t have it, it’s coming.”
Grants is the quintessential boom town, post-boom. Now, the best jobs are in the prisons. Along its main street, a stretch of Route 66, there are almost as many weed-infested lots as there are occupied buildings. A half-mile stretch contains six payday loan companies—four in one block. A few large neon signs beckon people to buildings that no longer exist. An abandoned gas station has a large sign advertising Marlboro for $1.69 a pack. Lucero says that in its prime, Grants had “lots and lots of people. … The restaurants were full all the time, people [were] buying cars and houses.” But the streets are mostly deserted now. Asked if his friends and family have moved away, he answers, “No. Most of them died because of cancer.”
Eli Massey contributed research to this article.John 14:6 “Jesus saith unto him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.’”
I was contemplating this scripture today and thinking about the mystery of Jesus’ proclamation here. In the typical fashion of St. John’s writing in this gospel, he provides us with a glimpse into the ancient mystery that has entered the world. It’s a glimpse of the triune nature of God, but also it is a proclamation of Christ’s person within the Trinity.
The Way
I think it’s actually a narrow definition to only say Jesus Christ is proclaiming He’s the “way to God”. While I’m not disputing that, I think it’s more multi-faceted in it’s meaning. Jesus is proclaiming he’s the way in all things. He’s the way to eternal life, the way to peace, the way to perfection and so on.
If we find there is a path we are being lead to, the beginning, the middle, the pavement beneath our feet, and the end of that path is Christ, although that may not be revealed until after we have passed and our reaction to the destination may vary.
The Truth
Every truth is God’s truth in the sense that the underlying reality of everything is tied to Him. Every person who seeks truth is basically looking for Christ. The truth is also not just a known variable. It’s not math. It’s in alignment of heart, mind and soul to God. All the truth of God is revealed in Christ, so as we seek to become like Christ, we then become a part of the truth. Notice, I said we “become”, not “know”. This truth is transcendent from knowledge.
The Life
We are dead. We may not know it, but we are. We had been stuck under the thumb of death and corruption. Not just in our flesh, but in our very being. Sin is the start of corruption and death is the continuation of corruption beyond this life. In Christ, we find life….true life. And that life becomes the antidote curing us from within our inner being outward. Christ redeemed us from the condemnation that death offered to us based on our sinfulness and we will be resurrected to life everlasting.
Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
I guess what I’m trying to say in all of this is that all three of these are inseparable revelations of the Christ, just as the Trinity is three persons inseparable. It’s a great mystery and I’m sure I’ll continue to see it differently throughout my lifetime. But our faith is built on great mystery and paradox.
“In the Christian context, we do not mean by a “mystery” merely that which is baffling and mysterious, an enigma or insoluble problem. A mystery is, on the contrary, something that is revealed for our understanding, but which we never understand exhaustively because it leads into the depth or the darkness of God. The eyes are closed—but they are also opened.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox WayDear rider,
Over the past 18 months, Port Authority has heard from nearly 8,000 riders seeking a transit system that is more accessible and affordable.
We heard countless stories from individuals visiting Pittsburgh for the first time – even some frequent riders – confused by when to pay, where to pay or how to pay on a particular route. At the same time, other riders suggested offering a variety of new fare options to make riding more convenient.
Based on those recommendations, we’ve developed a plan we believe will make riding faster, simpler and easier. This proposal has the potential to open doors to new riders who otherwise may not consider or be able to afford transit.
Highlighted in the following pages are many of the new ideas being proposed. In short, we plan to simplify our current system by streamlining the boarding and exiting process, eliminating the complex zone system and introducing a number of new, more flexible, fare products.
If approved by the Port Authority Board, we’ll be able to lower the average transit fare in Allegheny County for the first time in at least 35 years. We’ll also be able to provide faster and more efficient service for all Port Authority riders beginning early next year.
Sincerely,
Ellen McLean
Chief Executive OfficerNASA/GSFC
The planet is warming and the Arctic is warming the most, as long foreseen by scientists in a climate system pushed out of balance through the rapid buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. One result is greater loss of Arctic sea ice in the annual summer warmup.
Today, the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that the annual summer retreat of Arctic Ocean sea ice had reached a new low for the 33-year satellite era of careful monitoring (1.58 million square miles, or 4.1 million square kilometers), and there is still another week or two of melting before the typical summer ice minimum occurs.
This quote in the release from Walt Meier of the ice center efficiently encapsulates the context:
By itself it’s just a number, and occasionally records are going to get set. But in the context of what’s happened in the last several years and throughout the satellite record, it’s an indication that the Arctic sea ice cover is fundamentally changing.
The animated sea-ice imagery above — from one of two autonomous cameras set on ice near the North Pole each spring — gives a close-focus view of the slushy conditions that develop on the shifting ice when the summer sun is at its peak. (This is part of the annual North Pole Environmental Observatory project that I reported on in 2003; the cameras drift with the ice through the summer and are currently over the shoulder of Greenland. You can track their position here.)
Justin Gillis has more on this development over on the news side of The Times. This excerpt echoes the thinking of quite a few ice researchers I’ve interviewed over recent years:
“It’s hard even for people like me to believe, to see that climate change is actually doing what our worst fears dictated,” said Jennifer A. Francis, a Rutgers University scientist who studies the effect of sea ice on weather patterns. “It’s starting to give me chills, to tell you the truth.”
Still, there are many other veteran sea-ice scientists (this is not false balance) who note that the complexity of this system has consistently defied predictions in either direction (see this year’s Sea Ice Outlook forecasts to get the range of forecasts).
There’s plenty of year-to-year, and even decade-to-decade variability to complicate things, as both modeling and observations have shown. And variations in the thickness and extent of sea ice cloaking the Arctic Ocean are driven by yet another set of complicating factors, ranging from long-term shifts in atmospheric pressure patterns to events as close-focus as the potent Arctic superstorm I reported on earlier this month.
That’s one reason that, even with today’s announcement that the sea ice reached a new low extent for the satellite era, I wouldn’t bet that “the Arctic is all but certain to be virtually ice free within two decades,” as some have proposed. I’d say fifty/fifty odds, at best. [See the update below including a sea-ice scientist’s take on such wagers.]
But I will bet that profound changes are well under way that virtually guarantee the Arctic described in history books — an ice-locked and forbidding frontier for everyone except the Inuit — will not resemble the Arctic of the second half of this century. There will be problems and opportunities, as I and other Times reporters chronicled in detail in our 2005 series “The Big Melt” and as I wrote in my book, “The North Pole Was Here.”
But is this a situation that is appropriately described as a “death spiral”? Not by my standards.
Cecilia Bitz of the University of Washington, one of the authors of “Future abrupt reductions in the summer Arctic sea ice,” an important 2006 paper projecting ice trends in this century, sent this reaction (edited very slightly for e-mail shorthand):
It surprises me to say that the observed trend is still not as fast as the threshold we placed on an rapid ice loss events in our 2006 paper…. Thus, even though models are thought to not lose ice fast enough, every one of the old CCSM3 runs had a “RILE” (rapid ice loss event) at some point in the 21st century that beat the current streak. None did so before 2012 though, and we know that the model trends speed up as the ice thins. As far as bets go, I agree with you — a 50-50 chance it will take a few decades is about right. The current rate of loss each year is about 0.2 million square km. Starting from 4 million square km, at this rate it would take 20 years. Models say it should accelerate, so decrease by a few years maybe. The RILES we found were due in part to ocean heat flux pulses on the Atlantic side. I don’t think we can say if one has happened lately. This year we can’t claim a large unusal high pressure occurred like 2007. My best guess is that the ice just started out very thin in the spring. The IceBridge indicates this was true especially north of Banks Is, where the ice melted out first.
Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University sent this additional thought after I sent a batch of ice researchers an e-mail last night seeking broader context for this year’s ice retreat:
The fact that the ice is so dramatically thinner now than it was only 20 years ago means that it is vulnerable to any abnormal weather event or fluctuation in ocean currents. If the “perfect storm” of atmospheric and oceanic conditions that led to the 2007 record, or the patterns that reduced ice this summer, happened back in the thick-ice era, sea-ice loss would not be making headlines. Following this summer’s new record ice loss, the Arctic will enter a winter with even less ice than ever before, leading to even thinner ice, which barring any monumental external events like a major volcanic eruption, will likely perpetuate the trend in sea ice decline. We are all trying to understand a system that has entered territory never seen before, and I think scientists are naturally cautious in their interpretations and predictions of what’s to come. Models were formulated with understanding of the familiar system, which may explain why some model simulations lag observations in losing ice.
Hajo Eicken, an ice researcher at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, sent this note on the importance of tracking regional conditions as well as the overall picture:
Following up on Jennifer’s comments, and with my regional blinkers on, it’s important to point to the expected increases in interannual variability in total ice extent, but also keep in mind that at the regional level, the thickness distribution of sea ice plays an important role in determining how a particular summer or even specific weather events like storms or stretches of calm sunny weather play out. This has been obvious this year in the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas where you had a stretch of thicker sea ice linger well into summer (in fact, some of the ice remnants — though rotten — still show up in the satellite data from the region). Earlier this year, a number of research groups was able to coordinate thickness measurements (airborne, surface based and associated deployment of buoys) to help us better understand the ice thickness evolution in this sector of the Arctic. More detail is available on this here. While the goal of this campaign was to improve seasonal ice prediction, the work also showed two important processes at work: (i) Older, thicker multiyear ice continues to flush out of the high Canadian Arctic and depending on winter surface circulation, some of this ice may reach very close to the coast. In fact, this winter not just old sea ice but also some glacial ice fragments were spotted in northern Alaska inshore waters. This thicker multiyear ice takes longer to melt back (both because of greater thickness and higher albedo than first-year ice) and so in conjunction with the weather it is responsible for more extensive ice in the late summer in this region. At the same time, it represents a potential hazard to operations in the region, of which – as you are aware – there is quite a bit this year. (ii) Even subtle year-to-year changes in the thickness of first-year ice and its snow cover can play an important important role in determining interannual and seasonal variations in ice extent with an overall thinner ice cover. This is what may have contributed in part to lingering ice in this region as a result of thicker first-year ice (due to a more severe winter and higher winter ice growth) as well. This is not to detract from the large-scale picture discussed by Jennifer and Cecilia, but under conditions of an overall diminished ice cover, such remnants become very important from a marine ecosystems perspective (e.g., walrus hauling out on such ice) while at the same time continuing to play a role as a hazard to marine operations.
J. Michael Wallace of the University of Washington, someone whose views I’ve tracked closely for decades, had this sobering assessment (I’ve asked him to clarify what he means by “irreversible” given various papers (e.g., 1, 2, 3) cutting against that idea and will add an update when it comes):
I view the question of whether the minimum sea ice extent sets a new record this year as secondary. The important news is that in five summers the sea ice concentration over the Arctic has not recovered from its precipitous decline in 2007. This is one of the clearest examples of a regime shift in the recent historical record. I think we still need to be open to the possibility that natural variability has played a role in the recent warming of the Arctic, but with each year that goes by without a return to the pre-2007 summertime Arctic climatology it seems more likely that the remarkable change that we have witnessed will prove to be irreversible. [After reading my query about “irreversible” he sent a slightly adjusted version of this comment which you can read in the comment stream by clicking here.]
Ignatius Rigor, a climate and ice researcher at the University of Washington (who’s been heard from here quite a lot in recent years), added this note (in the group exchange with Francis, Eicken and others):
What really strikes me is how vulnerable the thinner ice pack is. In 2007 we had a persistent high sitting over the Canadian Arctic, which contributed significantly to the export of sea ice out of the Arctic. This year, that deep low in August may have may have been the trigger. In the past (pre-1990s) this low would have just spread the ice pack out and increased sea ice extent, but with how thin the ice is, this just allows heat to melt the scattered ice from all sides and have a bigger impact on sea ice extent.
This afternoon, I asked Marika Holland, a climate and ice modeler at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, to consider recent ice trends in light of her work with Jennifer E. Kay and Alexandra Jahn on a paper finding likely periods of ice recovery on the way to an ice-free Arctic in summer. This relates to differing views (see comment discussions) on the merits of the phrase “Arctic death spiral.” As I’ve said, and told Holland, that phrase would be fine with me if it were stressed that there will be “loop the loops” on the way down. Here’s her note:
The work pointing to periods of recovery on the way to a largely ice-free summer later in the century is still valid…. Basically the message is that natural variability is large for sea ice. When this reinforces the anthropogenic change, it can cause RILEs [rapid ice loss events] — but it can also counter that change and cause brief periods of near-stability (or even small increases on a decadal scale). So, given the research, I think that loop-the-loops are to be expected. This in no way means that the ice loss is not large, important, and likely to result in near ice-free Septembers later this century though!
I found a nice recent YouTube presentation by Holland on climate model projections of Arctic ice loss that makes a nice closer here for now:The anecdote goes that Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, inquired as to why the crowds were in the street demonstrating in 1789. She was informed that they had no bread to eat. She is said to have replied, “Why, then, let them eat cake!” However apocryphal the anecdote, it is pregnant with wisdom. In 1793 those same crowds executed her. Nowadays we have kinder ways of punishing failed politicians. We unelect them and give them a perch on basic cable.
There should be no confusion about who shut down the US government and why. It was shut down by billionaire backers of the so-called Tea Party faction in the Republican Party. They ordered their sockpuppets, like Ted Cruz, to defund the government so as to take a hostage for ransom. They don’t want to help pay for affordable health care for most Americans, because having $4.8 billion instead of $5 billion is just too humiliating. We don’t even know the names of Cruz’s biggest campaign contributors any more because of the corruption in US campaign finance. But Goldman Sachs and Berkshire Hathaway want him there, and we can bet that the Koch Brothers do, too. They should all be boycotted.
We don’t have a functioning government this morning because our super-rich are on the whole too stingy to help guarantee all Americans the basic human right of health care. They won’t share, even though their tax rates are low in world terms and they couldn’t have gotten rich without the infrastructure and legal latticework provided by the US government, and without the skills and labor of American workers.
Did millions of these working Americans not have affordable health care? Let them, Ted Cruz says, go to the emergency room. Except that it is impossible for ERs to handle all those millions, and it is mmuch more expensive to have them treated that way, and pregnant mothers can’t get prenatal care at ERs. The number of babies lost and infants who die goes way up when the mothers don’t see a physician regularly during pregnancy, and poor women couldn’t afford to do that before Obamacare.
In other words, Ted Cruz and his billionaire backers are telling us, “let them eat cake.”
The Scrooge Oligarchs want to go back to the age of Robber Barons in the nineteenth century.
Those same billionaires, whether the Koch Brothers or the wealthiest investors in firms like Exxon-Mobil, have led the charge to prevent the US government from doing anything about the dire threat of global warming. They have funded liars to parade on television and deny the facts of human-caused climate change. In fact, eighth-grade chemistry should be enough of a background to understand that if you dump 35 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, it will cause global warming; C02 is a greenhouse gas that causes the atmosphere to retain the sun’s heat instead of radiating it back out into space.
And we don’t have the urgent (and I mean emergency ) legislation we need to move immediately to solar and wind energy over the next two decades and to abandon coal, oil, and gas. In fact, since 30% of US CO2 emissions come from 1% of power plants, especially coal plants, the latter should be closed yesterday!
Just as the alarming UN climate report has appeared, promising us the loss of Miami and New Orleans to rising seas in the lifetime of our current newborns, the Republican Party has furloughed the workers of the Environmental Protection Agency. Ordinary Americans’ health and well-being are threatened as never before by carbon pollution issued by cosmic old farts like the Kochs.
It is dangerous for the super-rich to act so arrogantly. This is an America where unemployment is stubbornly high for the Millennials, where the top 1% are taking home 20% of the national income (twice the proporition of just a few decades ago), and where people are struggling. In this America, rich spoiled Ivy League types like Ted Cruz and his shadowy backers are closing down our government, trying to steal our health insurance, and conniving at inflicting drought and flood on us They are shouting “Let them eat cake!” in our faces. Americans will put up with a lot, but their patience isn’t infinite.
Karl Rove’s permanent Republican majority evaporated in 2008. The next stage of American political development may be a shift of the Democratic Party toward a genuine democratic socialism. If private insurance companies can’t provide us proper health insurance, we may have to go to single-payer. If power plants are endangering us, we may have to nationalize them and close them down in favor of solar coops. The prevailing order is not the only possible one, and by taking thought and by peaceful social action, the 99% can change the rules of the game.3.
sudo service sendmail stop sudo apt-get remove sendmail
sudo ln -s /usr/sbin/ssmtp /usr/sbin/sendmail
4.
echo "email content" | mail -s "email subject" email_address_to_send_email_to@somedomain.com
ssmtp email_address_to_send_email_to@somedomain.com
To: email_address_to_send_email_to@somedomain.com From: your_email@gmail.com Subject: this is your email subject And here you can write the content of the email
CTRL + D
ssmtp email_address_to_send_email_to@somedomain.com < message.txt
Important security note:
I use Ubuntu Karmic Koala and this step wasn't necessary, but it might be for you. So, make sure you don't have sendmail installed. Again, for Ubuntu, paste this:And create a symbolic link for ssmtp to replace sendmail:That's about it. There are multiple ways you can now send an email. Open a terminal and:a)The above line is pretty much self explainatory so replace the text between the quotes with your email body and subject and do the same for email_address_to_send_email_to@somedomain.com - replace it with the email address you want to send the email to.b)Then enter the following lines in the terminal (pressing ENTER after each line):And to send the email, press:This time |
aroo’s rescue in the freezing waters off Port Elliot. Picture: Stephen Muller
The fully-clothed chefs, Jeff Della-Mina, 28, and apprentice colleague Dan Marshall, 19, who had just finished the lunchtime rush at the Flying Fish Café, came to the distressed animal’s aid.
With little regard for their personal safety, they sprinted to the rocks, dived into the water and spent the next 20 minutes corralling it to the shore.
media_camera The stricken kangaroo at Horseshoe Bay off Port Elliot. Picture: Stephen Muller
Initially becoming spooked by the human help, the exhausted kangaroo eventually calmed as the pair lassoed a rope around its neck and led to the beach where it “coughed up” a large amount of water.
They were met by local Country Fire Service and State Emergency Service crews, who wrapped him in a warm blanket on a stretcher.
After an animal rescue expert observed it for another 10 minutes, the kangaroo made a full recovery and bounced off into the scrub.
Mr Della-Mina, a chef for 10 years from Port Elliott, told the Sunday Mail last night how he raced to the kangaroo in trouble near dangerous rocks.
media_camera Jeff Della-Mina and Dan Marshall bring the stricken animal ashore from the freezing waters. Picture: Stephen Muller
“When we got to him he was pretty knackered and he was struggling,” he said. “We tried to corral it back to shore as it had tried to swim back out into the bay. I think he was happy to have the human help.
“It was pretty cold. I would have liked to have a wetsuit. I think the run knackered us more than the swim.
“We are not brave, not at all. It just needed help. We like animals and we just wanted to give him a hand.”
Mr Marshall, of Goolwa, added: “I am just happy he is all right. I would do it again.”
media_camera Jeff Della-Mina and Dan Marshall signal all is well after their herculean rescue of the kanagaroo. Picture: Stephen Muller
The cafe’s “absolutely ecstatic” manager, Jo Smith, 38, hailed their heroism. She said: “They are pretty amazing boys I tell you. I think they are damned bloody good heroes.”
Peter Malinauskas, the government minister who oversees the CFS and SES, was enjoying a family birthday lunch at the cafe.
“All of sudden these two fellas still in their chef gear ran off and jumped into the water and shepherded the kangaroo,” he said.
media_camera SES officers getting the kangaroo ready to be taken away for medical attention. Picture: Chris Jones
“It was incredible, just bloody fantastic. Those fellas are absolute champions.
“Then these CFS and SES rock up. They had been going about an ordinary Saturday when their pagers went off and quicker than anything, they respond to a kangaroo rescue. Whether it is humans or animals, they are amazing people.”Who are the top 10 players in Major League Baseball for 2012? The ESPN 500 is counting down from No. 10 to the No. 1 player from 12-2:30 p.m. ET Tuesday.
Chat with ESPN 500 voters as the players are unveiled. Here's who will be chatting: ESPN Insiders Jim Bowden and Dan Szymborski and ESPN The Magazine writer Molly Knight from 12-1:15 p.m. ET followed by ESPN.com senior writers Jerry Crasnick and David Schoenfield and ESPN Insider Kevin Goldstein from 1:15-2:30 p.m. ET.
The results will be announced simultaneously on Twitter (@ESPN_MLB). Fans can use the hashtag #ESPN500 to join the discussion or follow along.
To compile a top-500 ranking, 34 ESPN experts, polled over the final two weeks of February, started with a list of the top 600 players projected to play in the majors in 2012. Using a 0-to-10 scale, they evaluated only the quality of each player for the 2012 season.
Players expected to miss the 2012 season with an injury, such as Victor Martinez, were not included, except for those who were injured after the voting took place. Dan Szymborski's ZiPS system, which projects 2012 performance, was used to break ties to the fourth decimal point. Ages are listed as of July 1, 2012.
ESPN 500 LiveA federal judge delivered a symbolic victory on Monday to Republican National Committee delegates who have chafed against their obligation to support presumptive nominee Donald Trump on the first ballot in Cleveland next week.
In the end, however, the toothless ruling won't likely change much.
Carroll 'Beau' Correll argued that the First Amendment guarantees him the freedom to pick his own horse at the convention, rather than voting in a way that reflects the results of his home state Virginia's March 1 primary election.
Those results awarded Trump 17 of the state's 49 delegates, along with 16 for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, 8 for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, 5 for Ohio Gov. John Kasich and 3 for retired surgeon Ben Carson.
Scroll down for video
TOOTHLESS? Republican National Convention delegate Carroll 'Beau' Correll won a symbolic victory in federal court that will protect him from prosecution if he bucks voters and refuses to cast a convention ballot for Donald Trump – but the end result won't likely change
NOT IMPRESSED: Donald Trump's campaign said Monday that the judge's ruling protects the national Republican Party's right to run its convention rules as it sees fit
A Virginia law would have forced the state Republican Party to send those totals to the national party.
But federal judge Robert E. Payne ruled that the state law can't be enforced because governments can't be allowed to have control over how parties choose their nominees.
It's a token win that may only apply to Correll himself since his didn't qualify as a class-action lawsuit. And the national nomination process is managed by the Republican National Committee – not the state parties.
The RNC's rules currently call for the official reading of delegate votes in the way each state's voters, and each state party's rules, assigned them.
The convention's secretary, in other words, will record the votes as the RNC's rules say they should be cast – even if Correll and others were to go rogue.
So unless the rules are changed when the convention's Rules Committee meets this week in Cleveland, Virginia's vote tally next week won't change – even if Correll and 1,000 other delegates were to cast their votes for Mickey Mouse.
Practically speaking, Payne didn't direct the RNC to change course.
RNC spokeswoman Lindsay Walters told The Washington Post on Monday that Payne's ruling 'upholds the right of political parties to set their own rules for national convention delegate selection and allocation.'
'It affirms our First Amendment right to require that delegates be bound to primary results, and it makes clear that delegates are bound under national party rules.'
That much is true: Payne ruled that the GOP can apply its own rules, under which Trump controls more than enough 'bound' delegates – those committed to support him by their state parties' rules – to win the Republican presidential nomination.
SHOWDOWN: The Cleveland, Ohio convention's Rules Committee is meeting this week to hammer out the final rules for convention voting
The rules in force are leftovers from the 2012 convention in Tampa, Florida, giving anti-Trump forces a last hope of tossing out their standard-bearer.
A long-shot effort could force a change in the 2012 rules, 'unbinding' delegates and throwing the Quicken Loans Arena into chaos.
If one-quarter of the 112-member Rules Committee's members were to sign on to a'minority report' asking for all the convention's delegates to be unbound, the full convention would be required to put the question to a vote.
At that point, anything is possible.
Correll offered NBC News a victory lap on Monday, saying the GOP and the Trump campaign were'morbidly humiliated' by his federal court victory.
'They put all their chips on the table and they lost all of them — if I were them I'd go hide in a closet in Trump Tower,' he said.
In a statement hours later, he begged fellow anti-Trump delegates to 'take a step forward from the darkness and into the light. Show us that you have the courage to stand for leader of the Free World, appeal to the better angels of our nature, and to deliver this Republic from the abomination of a Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton presidency.'
Trump Campaign attorney Don McGahn, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, issued a statement insisting that Payne's ruling will ultimately be seen as a 'fatal blow to the anti-Trump agitators.'The European Union's foreign ministers voted Monday on a new round of sanctions that the eurobloc will impose on Iran over its nuclear defiance.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said ahead of Monday's meeting of EU foreign ministers that new sanctions would be "a sign of our resolve in the European Union that we will step up the pressure."
Related stories:
Hague said such pressure would continue to mount "over the coming months unless negotiations succeed. We remain open of course to success of negotiations."
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said that EU would be banning the import of Iranian natural gas into the bloc's member-nations, trying to increase pressure on Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Westerwelle also indicated that other sanctions on Iran are being considered by EU foreign ministers as they meet Monday in Luxembourg.
The foreign ministers of France and Germany made similar calls. They did not elaborate on the kind of measures under consideration.
Meanwhile, EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton said that there is still time for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear program, and negotiations could move forward soon.
Ashton represents six major powers in their on-and-off talks with Iran.
"There is room for negotiation… I do hope we will able to move forward soon with our discussions with Iran," she said.
Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and TwitterThis article explicitly discusses Christianity. I’m not religious nor do I strongly believe in any sort singular higher power- It is important that you note my obvious bias because of this. I won’t go into the specifics of my beliefs here, so as to stay on topic, but am happy to elaborate in separate discussions.
When is a person really, truly healthy? I am a physically fit, twenty-something with an abnormal fondness of dark green vegetables and exercising, but in spite of all this, I still don’t feel healthy. My blood pressure is far higher than it should be and I experience anxiety so strong that sometimes it makes me physically sick. As I delve deeper into the world that is my blackness, I’m finding truths connected to my stress I can never unlearn.
The tragic death of Brown Girls creator, Karyn Washington has raised the long suppressed and painful discussion of black stress and how we have learned to cope, or in many ways avoid, the roots of our stress and anxiety. It’s time we discuss new and better ways of coping with stress, because right now, black people, stress is killing us- literally.
The Root writer, Lottie L. Joiner, revealed a 2010 study with the devastating fact that black people, mainly black women, suffer from higher blood pressure, more strokes, and heart disease, all due to the higher levels of stress experienced; a lot of which stem from simply being black.
“US blacks are more likely to experience stressful situations, such as material hardship, interpersonal discrimination, structural discrimination in housing and employment, and multiple care giving roles than whites,” wrote Dr. Michelle Gourdine, author of Reclaiming Our Health: A Guide to African American Wellness.
Historically, the church has been the place to relieve stress and find community for black people. We have found power through religion, from the liberating civil rights moment of the 1960s, led by peace leader and Christian pastor, Martin Luther King Jr. to Christianity as a catalyst of strength for black slaves during a time where no other hope could be found.
Christianity has become so closely intertwined with blackness, that even the fast-growing community of non religious black people cannot help but be influenced by it. For many black people, our church is our therapy, God is our mantra and pray is our meditation, but with the building proof that stress impacts the health of black people more than other ethnic groups, perhaps religion alone is no longer enough.
It is important to note my upbringing is far from typical of not just black culture, but American culture as a whole. In the middle of the day in our homeschooling courses, my mother would have my siblings and me sit in a circle and focus on our breaths in what I later learned was a form of meditation. We attended a ‘new thought’ church that was so progressive, it was actually called ‘a spiritual center.’ For the first eight years of my life, I understood meditation and spiritualism through humanity as normal.
Then, as a preteen my family left our spiritual center to attend a more traditional church. I remember asking my father why we left a place in which I’d grown to love and find such comfort;
“You need to get the black experience,” he expressed; a response I will never forget.
At our new church we were given sermons by a self-appointed Apostle who preached the gospel of prosperity and fear of our powerful Lord and Savior. The apostle told us to ‘do good’ for our God, to be strong in the presence of evil and to not let the devil bring us down.
In some ways, it was comforting to know that no matter what, I was protected by God. But on the other hand, in spite of the strength in community that was apparent at my new church, there was an overbearing sense of loneliness in accepting God as my only protector from the countless obstacles I would undoubtedly face. Not that all black people interpret Christian teachings as I did, but as an impressionable ten year old, this was my honest evaluation.
My background is unique in that I was given two separate philosophies in the most influential times of my upbringing. I have the unique perspective of a non affiliated mentality and later- a deeply religious, Christian mind; and I’m privileged to be able to analyze the implications of such a shift.
I learned from my time as a devout Christian that in particular, black Christians are taught to hold our own. We are taught to fight like hell so that we don’t go to hell, and God will reward us with prosperity; a goal for many black people because of the fact that we are an over represented group in the working class or under the poverty line.
Due to the major influence Christianity has had on the black American community, I believe that this is true even for non-religious black people- that we either turn to God, or go within to solve our mental issues. Encroaching our issues on anyone else is a sign of weakness and instability. Often times, the furthest we move towards seeking help from our community is asking for pray, usually a request so vague as asking to be blessed in your ‘time of struggle.’
Rarely do we actually speak about our issue.
I understand that discussing religion is frequently a lost cause. People have their beliefs that are usually static, and so it goes. I am not here to challenge Christianity. In fact, I believe that no path, spiritual or religious is better or worse a path than the other- so long as that path does not harm yourself or others ( as, unfortunately, many religions do).
I am writing to propose a discussion that involves finding new ways of building mental peace and healthy mentalities for black people, that may go beyond our modern understanding of black culture so intertwined with conservative forms of Christianity: in forms of counseling, discussing our lives with trusted peers, meditation, mantras, yoga, ect..
The real issue now is that we, black people, have a detrimental communal understanding of what it means to be in control of your mind. To be really in control of ones mind is to understand that, just like the rest of our bodies, our brain needs constant maintenance. A mind in control is always present, not absent (absent in this case, meaning on default). Striving for mental health takes the sort of deliberate thinking that very few people recognize is even necessary. That is why we, as black Americans, understand the community that meditates to be a very small, elite group. I mean really, how often do you stop to think to breath?
Russell Simmons released a book recently advocating meditation for people from all walks of life. While a pioneer effort for a black man to advocate for meditation, I fear his millionaire status and lavish lifestyle may overshadow his efforts in persuading the black community that such a practice makes sense for the average person.
I used to believe that a strong mind meant I could handle anything on my own. I thought that never needing to talk to anyone about my problems meant I was resilient, a warrior of my circumstances. Holding in my emotions gave me a sense of pride. Black culture suggests a hard shell equals a sound mind, when really, a strong disposition may just be a coping mechanism for pain or stress.
So many in my community shared this belief to the point that it felt normal, expected even, to stay silent, even when I felt I might fall a part. I recognize that there is great privilege in being able to talk out your problems with a professional, but for those of us that cannot afford counseling, we must acknowledge that expressing our feelings to our peers is not a sign of weakness. Taking time out of our day to collect our thoughts does not mean we are retreating. It merely means we have made our mental health a priority- and I do hope that day comes soon for us all.
For black people, walls can kill, and so we have no choice but to break them down. An no, more silence is not the answer.
Fortunately, this difficult discussion of black stress is showing up more in our media than ever before. This piece was written simply as an additional perspective to a fresh forum that already exists, and I really hope it continues.
AdvertisementsTurkey threatened Friday to drop out of a United Nations panel investigating Israel's deadly raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May last year, saying the wording of the draft report was in favor of Israel, Turkish daily Hürriyet reported.
The report said that Ankara believed the panel was favoring the Israeli view, as its wording fell short of saying Israel violated international law when its naval commanders boarded the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish-sponsored Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
Israel Navy forces approaching the Mavi Marmara bound for Gaza, May 31, 2010. Reuters
The Mavi Marmara was one of several aid ships aiming to deliver supplies to Gaza in violation of an Israeli naval blockade. In efforts to prevent the ship from arriving at Gaza's shores, Israeli navy commandos boarded the ship on May 31, 2010 and were met with violence. Nine Turkish activists were killed in the clash that ensued.
There is a crack on the panel. The talks are not going well," the Hürriyet Daily News reported a diplomatic source as saying, but added that the rough draft "is being worked on.
Israel and Turkey were both handed a draft of the UN report ahead of its intended public release this month, but Turkey's threat to disassociate itself from the report unless radical changes were made has delayed the announcement of the panels findings.
The findings were due to be released ahead of another Gaza-bound flotilla, which is expected to set sail in mid-June. The organizers of the second flotilla initially intended to embark this month, but deferred the departure date until after the upcoming Turkish parliamentary elections.
Turkey has demanded that Israel apologize for the raid, and pay compensation. Israel has maintained its stance that it had a right to protect the Ocean siege on the Gaza strip, and has expressed regret for the deaths in the attack.
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UN Secretary-General Ban ki-moon set up the four-member review panel in August 2010. The panel is led by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, who is also an expert in international maritime law, and includes one representative each from Israel and Turkey.
The Israeli member of the panel is Joseph Ciechanover, former Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Turkish member is Ozdem Sanberk, a former diplomat who held senior positions in the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the United Nations.
The panel listened to the representatives for the last time late-April and was expected to make its findings public this month.LAS VEGAS – B.J. Penn and Lyoto Machida headline different shows for the UFC this weekend. Those fights will take place four weight classes apart, which makes it all the more difficult to comprehend that the two fighters once faced off in a heavyweight bout.
Penn (16-9-2 MMA, 12-8-2 UFC) meets Frankie Edgar (16-4-1 MMA, 10-4-1 UFC) in the featherweight main event of the TUF 19 Finale on Sunday, while Machida (21-4 MMA, 13-4 UFC) challenges Chris Weidman (11-0 MMA, 7-0 UFC) for the middleweight world championship just 24 hours earlier tonight at UFC 175.
Both events take place at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Events Center with the TUF 19 Finale airing on FOX Sports 1 and UFC 175 available on pay-per-view.
When Penn and Machida went to battle more than nine years ago under the K-1 banner, it marked the only time “The Prodigy” has ever been defeated outside of the UFC.
With the matchup just the sixth professional fight of Machida’s career, few knew what “The Dragon” was capable of and what he would go on to accomplish in his career. Penn admitted he also didn’t know much about Machida at the time of the fight, but when the challenge was put forth, he couldn’t help but accept.
“From my understanding, the fight got put together because K-1 called us and said Machida and them have a guy that wants to fight you,” Penn told MMAjunkie. “(They said), ‘He’s a really good street fighter, but no one knows him. I said, ‘No one knows him? Tell Machida I’ll fight him.’ Then it got put together.”
Penn, who has fought the majority of his career at lightweight and welterweight, ballooned up to more than 200 pounds for the March 2005 bout. Even with the added size, he was still at a massive disadvantage. He was the significantly smaller fighter and lost the speed and power advantages he enjoyed when competing at a natural weight.
Because of that, he was forced to make compromises with his fighting style, the most meaningful of which was conserving his energy for a one-shot knockout blow.
“I remember I had a game plan where I was going to go swing and try to knock him out when he grabs me and pushed me on the ropes,” Penn said. “I wasn’t going to use as much energy so I could get my chance to knock him out again.”
Penn failed to execute that game plan and went on to lose a unanimous decision to his Brazilian opponent. However, he delivered a respectable effort in the process.
Even though he’s had numerous fights since then, Penn fondly remembers his bout with Machida, particularly because he was forced to absorb one of the most powerful body shot strikes of his career.
“I remember him kicking me so hard in my ribs one time – it was crazy.” Penn said. “That’s how the fight went and he ended up walking away the victor.”
Despite the fact he didn’t defeat Machida, the Hawaiian has had an extremely successful career that’s included two UFC championship reigns in separate weight classes. Machida hasn’t achieved quite that level of overall success, but he’ll have the chance to put his name right there with Penn in the record books when the former light heavyweight champion attempts to take middleweight gold from Weidman tonight.
For more on UFC 175 and The Ultimate Fighter 19 Finale, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.The system UI in Android has, for the most part, been sacrosanct. Apps can't just add new elements to the OS, but Android N looks to be loosening up that restriction a bit. We already posted about the ability to add Quick Settings tiles natively, and now it looks like Google is allowing developers to insert an app settings link in app info.
The app info screen is where you go to see permissions, notification status, data storage, and so on. It's a few levels deep in the settings, but you can get there from the recent app list too. It's one of my most common stop-offs in the Android settings. It's neat, then, that Google will let developers include a settings link. It will show up as a small gear icon that, when pressed, will open the app's settings.
Developers can enable this feature by adding a string to their manifest with the value android.intent.action. APPLICATION _PREFERENCES. You can see this in the Android N preview documentation provided by Google.A lesson on data structures, networking protocols, data sanitization and disclosure
Around 2 years ago, I was enthusiastically working on Spigot and Bukkit along with a couple of fairly popular plugins. During my poking around within the networking internals of Minecraft, I came across a fairly substantial problem that allowed anyone to send certain malformed packets and crash a server by running it out of memory.
Following the defacto standard procedure, I responsibly and privately disclosed the problem to Mojang on 10th July, 2013. That’s nearly 2 years ago. I asked for updates in one month intervals over the course of 3 months and was ignored or given highly unsatisfactory responses. I kept my hopes up that the problem would be patched and checked the source code on new releases whenever I could.
The version of the game when the vulnerability was reported was 1.6.2, the game is now on version 1.8.3. That’s right, 2 major versions and dozens of minor versions and a critical vulnerability that allows you to crash any server, and starve the actual machines of CPU and memory was allowed to exist.
The technical details
The minecraft protocol enables the exchange of information about what an inventory slot contains. This allows you to, for example, get the items in your hotbar when you log in. Items in minecraft also contain a feature that allows them to store arbitary metadata (used for enhancements, books etc). This metadata is stored in a format known as NBT. The NBT format is essentially like JSON but in binary form. This allows it to store complex data structures with nesting and the like.
For example, the NBT metadata (known as a tag) for a book might look something like this
tag : { author : "ammar2", title : "Kitteh", pages : [ "Kitties are cute", "I like kitties" ] }
The vulnerability stems from the fact that the client is allowed to send the server information about certain slots. This, coupled with the NBT format’s nesting allows us to craft a packet that is incredibly complex for the server to deserialize but trivial for us to generate.
In my case, I chose to create lists within lists, down to five levels. This is a json representation of what it looks like.
rekt : { list : [ list : [ list : [ list : [ list : [ list : [ ] list : [ ] list : [ ] list : [ ]... ]... ]... ]... ]... ]... }
The root of the object, rekt, contains 300 lists. Each list has a list with 10 sublists, and each of those sublists has 10 of their own, up until 5 levels of recursion. That’s a total of 10^5 * 300 = 30,000,000 lists. And this isn’t even the theoretical maximum for this attack. Just the nbt data for this payload is 26.6 megabytes. But luckily minecraft implements a way to compress large packets, lucky us! zlib shrinks down our evil data to a mere 39 kilobytes.
Note: in previous versions of minecraft, there was no protocol wide compression for big packets. Previously, NBT was sent compressed with gzip and prefixed with a signed short of its length, which reduced our maximum payload size to 2^15 - 1. Now that the length is a varint capable of storing integers up to 2^28, our potential for attack has increased significantly. (for the more technically minded people, we fill the list up with TAG_ENDs, which aren’t accounted for by the accumulator Mojang attempted to implement to fix this)
When the server will decompress our data, it’ll have 27 megs in a buffer somewhere in memory, but that isn’t the bit that’ll kill it. When it attempts to parse it into NBT, it’ll create java representations of the objects meaning suddenly, the sever is having to create several million java objects including ArrayLists. This runs the server out of memory and causes tremendous cpu load.
This vulnerability exists on almost all previous and current minecraft versions as of 1.8.3, the packets used as attack vectors are the 0x08: Block Placement Packet and 0x10: Creative Inventory Action.
The fix for this vulnerability isn’t exactly that hard, the client should never really send a data structure as complex as NBT of arbitrary size and if it must, some form of recursion and size limits should be implemented. These were the fixes that I recommended to Mojang 2 years ago.
Proof of concept
A proof of concept of this exploit can be seen here on my Github repo. The code to generate the posioned nbt can be seen in start.py. The code has been tested under python 2.7, once you have connected to a server simply enter exploit in the command line and the packet will be sent to the server.
Disclosure
I thought a lot before writing this post, on the one hand I don’t want to expose thousands of servers to a major vulnerability, yet on the other hand Mojang has failed to act upon it. Mojang is no longer a small indie company making a little indie game, their software is used by thousands of servers, hundreds of thousands of people play on servers running their software at any given time. They have a responsibility to fix and properly work out problems like this. In addition, it should be noted that giving condescending responses to white hats who are responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities and trying to improve a product they enjoy is a sure fire way to get developers dis-interested the next time they come across a bug like this.
Timeline
28th July, 2013: First contact with mojang employee about the issue, vulnerability disclosed and proof of concept provided. 19th August, 2013: Second time asking about fix, response given that its being worked on. 24th September, 2013: Third contact with employee, told that the problem has been delegated. 25th October, 2013: Fourth time I attempted to contact employee, ignored. 27th October, 2013: Another attempt to contact, ignored again. (at this point, I patiently waited for a fix)
In retrospect, yes, I should have given them a final warning sometime recently before this but I just expected to be shot down again
Update: With the release of this full disclosure I have actually made contact with mojang and they are working to fix the issue. Apparently the initial fix they tried failed which indicates a lack of proper testing.
Update 2: The exact problem that caused this bug to go unpatched has been identified. Mojang attempted to implement a fix for this problem, however they did not test their fix against the proof of concept I provided, which still crashed the server perfectly fine. This, in combination with ignoring me when I asked for status updates twice led me to believe that Mojang had attempted no fix. In retrospect, a final warning before this full disclosure more recently was propbably in order. A combination of mis-communication and lack of testing led to this situation today, hopefully it can be a good learning experience.
Update 3: This problem has been patched as of minecraft version 1.8.4
https://mojang.com/2015/04/minecraft-1-8-4-security-release/
I’m happy to see that multiple other security issues have also been fixed. Once again, I feel better communication would have easily alleviated this problem. Keeping me in the loop and not ignoring me, in addition to proper testing would have easily led to this exploit being fixed long ago.
Edit: In regards to the statements that I never filed a report on their bug tracker, I’d just like to point out that nobody pointed me towards the tracker when I reported the issue, I wasn’t asked to make a ticket or told that I could follow the progress of the report on x-ticket.It is with a huge fond-farewell that I am moving on from the After Effects team here at Adobe. After Effects has been near and dear to my heart for over 12 years when I first started designing software (plugins) for it. I still love it, and most importantly love what you create with it.
That being said, while I have had a blast these last almost 4 years as the principal product manager for After Effects, it’s time to pass the baton. Effective immediately Todd Kopriva (@ToddKopriva_AE) will be responsible for where After Effects goes from here as its product manager.
Many of you know Todd, but for those of you who don’t – he is one of a few people I can count on my hand that have almost the entirety of After Effects in his head. After Effects is in very good hands.
I’m also not going anywhere. I remain passionate at Adobe and have been given an awesome opportunity to do some really interesting things that I hope to come back and talk with you about very very soon. You can take the guy out of a startup, but you can’t take the startup out of the guy ;).
Until then…
S.As offers go, the chance to play professional football in Afghanistan is not the kind of proposition that can be taken lightly. For one young American, mulling it over leaves him wrestling between the attractions and complexities. He knows the environment well, having played for Ferozi in the Kabul Premier League last season, a small club that played its matches in front a few hundred spectators. The option of taking a considerable step up to the national championship is at once tempting, fascinating and precarious. It would mean drawing more attention to himself. That is not always the wisest move for a westerner in an unpredictable land.
If Nick Pugliese, a 23-year-old son of Rochester, New York, decides to return to this footballing outpost, come the spring he will join a multitude of Afghan hopefuls with their hearts set on a remarkable chance. The Afghan Premier League, which was formed two years ago, is connected to a reality TV show called Maidan-e-Sabz, which translates as Green Field. There are eight clubs, one from each region of Afghanistan, and filming begins with open trials to make it into one of the squads. The league is owned by Moby, the largest media company in the country, and the programme is backed by round the clock promotion on television and radio. There is a series of 16 programmes following the trials, watched by the kind of numbers seldom seen before for original content. The winners get to play for real once the squads are whittled down and ready to compete, in a league with all the games broadcast.
"The league put them up in this mansion in the centre of Kabul with 100 or so players living there together, sleeping in dorm style set-ups," Pugliese says. "The salary is nine dollars a day. A lot of them were losing money as they had to give up their jobs in the regions to travel to Kabul to take part. It is a dream for a lot of these kids, they think the league can identify them for the national team, which it did for a handful in the first season. People are willing to sacrifice to play professional football."
The game is followed passionately in Afghanistan. Pugliese describes interest in the Premier League and La Liga as "massive". One of his friends made a striking observation about daily divisions: "We used to sit in our college classroom based on ethnicity. The Pashtun over here, the Tajik over there. Now we sit split by who is Real Madrid and who is Barcelona." Recently, a women's league has even been formed in Kabul.
It was his love of the game that opened up a new world to Pugliese. What began as a deliberate search for work in an emerging country to see what that experience would teach him turned into something more profound. Working for Roshan, the country's main telecoms company, he had to sneak away from security to find a kickabout with amateur teams. When he was offered the chance to play for Ferozi FC in the Kabul League, he handed in his notice at Roshan and his life took an extraordinary diversion. He became the team's defensive midfielder and they won the cup.
Through sport he was able to connect with Afghans in a way he did not anticipate. It began through the international language of football while he was still trying to get to grips with the local dialect – a lot could be expressed with two feet, a ball, gestures, expressions and humour. "That is how it started. I met people through football I never would have otherwise. Soccer opened the door."
Preconceptions were challenged and he felt he was able to show that Americans can be "slightly more real and normal" than some of his compatriots in Kabul. "Structurally they are aloof in the city. They are always behind walls or in armoured cars," Pugliese says.
His new workplace was the Ghazi Stadium, the focal point for football in Kabul and the place where Ferozi trained three times a week and played their matches as they had a connection which meant they could use the facilities for free. The group were close-knit. "Our coach would have us come over to his house on game day four hours before kick-off. His wife would cook us this soup – a meat broth with vegetables – we would hang out and watch music videos and just chit chat. Our coach is friends with all of us on Facebook. That's pretty much how relationships work in Afghanistan, pretty informal."
The Ferozi salary came in at $300 (£184) a month. Some players subsidised their income with other work. "For a number, their family owned shops and they would help out in the shop. Another owned a very rudimentary advertising business. If you asked them |
17][18][19] Multiple teams acted behind the scenes using social media to organize hundreds of citizens. Volunteers acted as citizen dispatchers, relaying requests for rescue from the Cajun Navy Facebook page to those boaters who could perform the rescue via Zello.[20][21]
Hurricane Irma (2017) [ edit ]
In cooperation with U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, the Cajun Navy agreed to participate in relief efforts for storm surge victims of Hurricane Irma within central and southern Florida, in September 2017.[22]
Hidalgo County flood (2018) [ edit ]
The Cajun Navy assisted victims of flooding in Hidalgo County, Texas.[23]
Hurricane Florence (2018) [ edit ]
In September 2018 the Cajun Navy was activated and sent to New Bern, North Carolina to assist with rescues in the wake of major flooding from Hurricane Florence.[24] They rescued 160 people, many from the tops of their cars and some using air mattresses because the winds were severe enough to topple boats,[25] until local emergency management told them their help was no longer needed because all rescues could be handled by local first responders.[26]
Tropical Storm Gordon (2018) [ edit ]
Also in September 2018, Cajun Navy members were mobilized in anticipation of possible flooding in New Orleans generated by Tropical Storm Gordon.[27]
Future endeavors [ edit ]
Although initially informal groups of rescuers, there have been recent efforts to create a much more organized structure for the Cajun Navy. There are several formal regional groups now, including one of which that was acknowledged by President Donald Trump.[28] These regional groups now include the Scott-based America's Cajun Navy[29] (and its chapters, the Hammond-based Louisiana Cajun Navy[30] and Texas Cajun Navy[31]), the Watson-based Cajun Navy 2016,[28] the Lafayette-based Cajun Navy Acadiana,[32] the New Orleans-based Cajun Navy Relief & Rescue,[33] and the Baton Rouge-based United Cajun Navy.[30]
In addition there are also groups known as the "Cajun Special Forces",[34] the "Cajun Army", and the “Cajun Commissary”, that assist with post-flood projects like supplying survivors with food, water and supplies, gutting houses, and other various rebuilding efforts.[35]HYDERABAD: Anna,' meaning elder brother in Tamil and Telugu, has finally found recognition in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). In all, 70 new Indian words from Telugu, Urdu, Tamil, Hindi and Gujarati have been added to the dictionary in the latest update that happened a month ago.So far, Anna exists in the dictionary as a noun, which means a former monetary unit of India and Pakistan, equal to one sixteenth of a rupee. Now, anna2 (also annan), noun, has been added. 'Anna' in Telugu and Tamil means an elder brother, often used as a respectful title or form of address.`Abba', Urdu word for father has also been added. Other words added in the latest edition of OED are Achcha, Bapu, Bada Din, Bachcha, Surya Namaskar (thanks to Yoga). Most of the Indian words added pertain to relationships, culture and food. In addition to Achha for okay that already exists, Achcha, an exclamation used to express an emotion of surprise, doubt and joy, is now in Oxford English Dictionary.According to `Release notes: Indian English' written by Danica Salazar, OED World English Editor, “Seventy words originating from Indian English have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary in this latest update, alongside the 900 or so words already existing in the OED.“She writes, “Indian speech etiquette features a complex system of kinship terms and terms of address, in which age, gender, status, and family relationships are marked by a highly specific vocabulary with no direct equivalents in English.This lexical gap is filled by borrowing such words from Indian languages (abba, anna, bapu, chacha, didi, mata), or adapting existing English words (cousin brother, cousin sister).“The OED publishes four updates a year in March, June, September, and December respectively. The Oxford University Press New Words Release notes that more than 1,000 new words, senses and subentries have been added to OED in the 2017 September update, including words like worstest and fungivorous.K Venkat Reddy, professor at English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad, told TOI, “Well known dictionary publishers in the world such as Oxford, Cambridge Collins constantly keep tab on the real English being used in real situations both in written and spoken forms.The Oxford University Press has made public how they go about collecting the data, called `corpus' to compile the dictionary. They keep tabs on all walks of life from sports to marketing to politics to education to gossip to social media to collect the words. The corpora available with the OUP include 10 billion words. It studies whether words are becoming more or less popular, and how they are used regionally. OUP appoints readers to read a wide variety of texts and report the changes taking place in the use of language."WASHINGTON -- Members of New Jersey's congressional delegation urged President Donald Trump Tuesday to support the Gateway Tunnel project despite his budget proposal to cut off a key source of funding.
A letter from a bipartisan group of lawmakers to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao asked her to support using the Federal Transit Administration's Capital Investment Program, or "New Starts" for Gateway.
Reps. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11th Dist.) and Tom MacArthur (R-3rd Dist.) were the only two New Jersey federal lawmakers who did not sign the letter. Both lawmakers support Gateway funding, according to their press secretaries.
Trump's spending plan for the 12 months beginning Oct. 1 would limit funding to those projects with contracts in place. That would exclude Gateway, which is not at that stage.
Trump cuts could derail Gateway
"Gateway is absolutely necessary for the region's core, its absolutely necessary for the Northeast Corridor, it's absolutely necessary for the nation," said U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking subcommittee that oversees mass transit. "I am seriously worried at least as the president's budget is devised now."
The $20 billion Gateway project would rebuild the Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River and construct two new tubes under the Hudson River for Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains so that the existing tunnels could be closed to repair damage from Hurricane Sandy.
"It is essential that we advance projects like the Hudson River tunnels and the Portal Bridge north through the pipeline in an expeditious manner, and avoid unnecessary delays and red tape for some of the most important infrastructure projects in the nation," read the Menendez-led letter signed by12 of the state's 14 federal lawmakers, nine Democrats and three Republicans.
One of those who didn't sign, Frelinghuysen, is in a key position to ensure that the money is available as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which writes the spending bills funding the federal government, including transportation projects.
Spokesman Steve Wilson said Frelinghuysen helped secure funding for Gateway in the $1.2 trlllion spending bill for this fiscal year that was enacted last month and "certainly will have ample opportunity, and soon, to convey personally his support for the Gateway rail tunnel project directly to Secretary Chao."
MacArthur spokeswoman Camille Gallo said the lawmaker "fully supports the Gateway Project and will be communicating this to Appropriations Chairman Frelinghuysen, along with a host of other budget priorities."
Before Trump was elected, the federal government had agreed to pay half the cost of the project. Despite the budget request, Chao told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee earlier this month that Gateway was "an absolute priority."
Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.Steven Avery did not sexually assault Brendan Dassey, according to a 2006 psychological evaluation that raises new questions about a reporter’s theory of the “Making a Murderer” case.
Dan O’Donnell, who covered Steven Avery’s trial and now hosts the popular “Rebutting a Murderer” podcast, told TheWrap last week that everyone involved in the case — including the “Making a Murderer” filmmakers — ignored the possibility that Avery molested his nephew, Dassey. Both Avery and Dassey are serving life sentences, convicted of killing Teresa Halbach.
O’Donnell pointed to a May 2006 phone call in which Dassey told his mother that he had told police Avery “would grab me somewhere where I was uncomfortable.” In his interview with police, Dassey said Avery sometimes tried to grab his penis “through the pants.”
Also Read: 'Making a Murderer' Reporter: Evidence Ignored That Steven Avery Sexually Abused Brendan Dassey
But when Avery was interviewed for the psychological evaluation in November 2006, psychologist Robert H. Gordon concluded that he had not been molested.
“Brendan reported having no history of being physically or sexually abused,” Gordon wrote.
Avery’s lawyer, Kathleen Zellner, strongly denied her client molested his nephew.
“Mr. Avery categorically denies this unsubstantiated allegation,” she said in a statement to TheWrap.
Just as O’Donnell has contended that Dassey may have been manipulated by Avery, Zellner has argued that Dassey was manipulated by police into a false confession. The psychological evaluation said that he was in the “low average” range of intelligence and that he was “nervous and scared” when interviewed by police.
“Making a Murderer” filmmakers Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi have declined to comment on O’Donnell’s argument that their docu-series ignored the possibility that Avery molested Dassey.This post comes to us from startup guru Steve Blank.
One of the great things about being a retired entrepreneur is that I get to give back to the community that helped me. I assembled this collection of free and almost free tools, class syllabi, presentations, books, lectures, videos in the hope that it can make your path as an entrepreneur or educator easier.
Free:
Startup Tools
If you’re building a startup, the Startup Tools tab on my blog has curated links to hundreds of startup resources. Specific links are:
A list of startup tools is here
Market research tools to help you figure out the size of the opportunity your startup is pursuing, are here
Some of the best advice on founding and running a startup from other smart voices are here
Updates and suggestions for tools I’ve missed are welcomed on the Startup Tools comments page.
The Lean LaunchPad course online
I teach potential founders a hands-on, experiential class called the Lean LaunchPad at Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia and Caltech. The class teaches the three basic skills all entrepreneurs need to know:
Business model design
Customer development
Agile engineering
For my Innovation Corps class for the National Science Foundation it made sense to record the lectures and put them online. In my regular classes I now “flip” the classroom and have my students watch these online lectures as homework and we use the class time for discussion.
The free on-line class, hosted at Udacity is here.
Class Syllabi, My Lecture Slides and Student Presentations
The Slides/Video tab on my blog has all the open source course material for my classes. Specific links are:
Syllabi for all my classes are here
Educators Training Guide is here (it’s part of the Educators Course where we teach how to design a Lean Entrepreneurship Curriculum and how to teach the Lean LaunchPad class – described in the Educators section below.)
Latest presentations posted click here
Stanford presentations, lectures and syllabus here
Berkeley presentations, lectures and syllabus here
Columbia 5-day presentations, lectures and syllabus here
Caltech 5-day presentations, lectures and syllabus here
For some general customer development slides, click here
The Entrepreneur’s Checklist
The good folks at Udemy have taken a few of my lectures at Stanford and put them together in a series online.
The free on-line lectures, hosted at Udemy are here.
Online Guide to How to Build a Startup: The Lean LaunchPad
Startupplays.com, publisher of online entrepreneurs processes guides, drew from my Udacity course and The Startup Owner’s Manual to create a free step-by-step guide to understanding your customers and creating your value proposition. Called “How to Build a Startup: The Lean LaunchPad,” it walks you through the Business Model Canvas and an overview of the customer development process.
Find it here.
Videos
The Slides/Video tab on my blog has a number of my talks on entrepreneurship, customer development, and startup, some short, some long, and a few interesting. Find them here.
Recommended Reading
The “books for startups” tab on the top of this page is my recommended reading list. These books have influenced my thinking. There’s a short synopsis of why I like each book.
Updates and suggestions for books that I’ve missed are welcomed on the books comment page.
Visitors Guide to Silicon Valley
I got tired watching dignitaries fly into Silicon Valley, visit Google, Facebook, Apple, and Stanford and then say they understand startups and entrepreneurship. So for the rest of us I put together this Visitors Guide to Silicon Valley.
Updates and suggestions for places to see that I’ve missed are welcomed on the Guide comments page.
Secret History of Silicon Valley
What began as a hobby of mine – research in the intersection of my military, intelligence and Silicon Valley careers combined with my interest in the history of Silicon Valley and technology entrepreneurship – ended up in this video and PowerPoint presentation. I first gave the Secret History of Silicon Valley presentation as an invited talk at Google, then at the Computer History Museum.
When I gave the talk to audience of CIA staffers, they asked how I came up with the talk, so I wrote a series of posts as the back-story that can be found here.
I still love giving this talk to people who lived it and people curious about it.
Almost Free:
Startup Weekend Next
Startup Weekend Next is a three-week version of the Lean LaunchPad class with hands-on instructors and mentors – offered in hundreds of cities around the world.
The class is organized, led and delivered by Startup Weekend, the global non-profit that teaches entrepreneurs how to launch a startup in 54 hours.
TechStars and Startup America are partnering to provide mentors in the U.S.
They don’t ask for equity and charge just enough to cover the costs of pizza and the room rental. Sign up here.
The Lean LaunchPad Educators Course
Hosted by NCIIA, Stanford University and U.C. Berkeley, Jerry Engel and I teach a course for educators interested in learning how to update and revise their entrepreneurship curriculum for the 21st century as well as learning how to teach the Lean LaunchPad class.
The Lean LaunchPad Educators Training Guide here is part of this course.
Next class is Jan 30th. Click here for more information.
The Startup Owner’s Manual
The Startup Owners Manual written with Bob Dorf, has become the step-by-step reference manual for anyone even thinking about a startup. Each section offers detailed guidance and how-to’s, helping you make your way through the Customer Development process using MVP’s and pivots as you search for a business model.
Last month we added a Kindle version, reorganized to make it easier to follow on a tablet and incorporating hundreds of links to websites, blog posts, and presentations.
The Founder’s Workbook
Zoomstra, the publisher of online workbooks offers The Founders Workbook to help you track and monitor your progress through every step of the Customer Development process. It takes the static 57 checklists from The Startup Owner’s Manual and makes them dynamic and accessible by putting them online as an interactive checklist. Use it to keep your team on track and ensure you have completed each critical task as you search for a scalable business model.
Click here for more information.
The Four Steps to The Epiphany
The Four Steps to the Epiphany has been described as the book that launched the Lean Startup movement. The book is still relevant today as when it was written. The last two chapters deal with scale and management of growing startups.
Now get out of the building and make something happen!
This post initially appeared on Steve Blank’s blog. Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur now teaching entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Columbia.A government that fears technology. A regulatory board that suppresses invention. A ruling elite that fears people who break out on their own to learn things they shouldn’t. A society that is growing ever poorer because the jackboot steps on every expression of individual entrepreneurial talent.
The people are demoralized, dejected, depressed, hopeless.
This book puts the central focus on the key failing of socialism: its opposition to progress.It all sounds uncomfortably familiar. The book in question is Ayn Rand’s 1938 masterpiece Anthem.
It’s my personal favorite of her books, even though it is far less known than her other works. She understood something about socialism that eluded many of her contemporaries and continues to confuse people today.
Socialism and interventionism are never about progress. They force regression. This is because they stamp out creativity and individualism. A truly totalitarian world would not and could not be prosperous. It would be a world of grueling poverty.
Rand understood because she had seen this with her own eyes as a little girl in Russia. This spectacular novel presents the stark reality in fictional form.
Publishers Reject the Book
“The author does not understand socialism,” read the letter from MacMillan in reply to the submission of the novella. They turned it down. Actually, the publisher didn’t understand socialism. Hardly anyone did in 1937, when this book was written.
Rand, however, did understand socialism. She understood it so well that she knew it would result in the opposite of what it promised and that its proponents would eventually come to embrace its grim reality, rather than repudiate the system of thought.
In many ways, this book is one of the best dystopian novels ever written because it puts the central focus on the key failing of socialism: its opposition to progress.
We’ve adopted features of the system she fled.How is that possible given that progress is a central slogan in socialist thinking? The problem is that by collectivizing private property, socialism removes the machinery of progress itself. It abolishes prices and profits and calculation and the incentive to create. It puts a premium on political control, and politics resent the revolutionary implications of entrepreneurship. Therefore, a consistently socialist society would not only be poor and backward; it would revel in those features and call them the goal.
Think about it. This book was written the late 1930s, long before the environmental movement and long before the primitivist streak in socialist thinking was to emerge as an outright agenda to be imposed by force. But as a child in the old Soviet Union, Rand had seen it in action. She had seen how entrepreneurship and creativity had to be sacrificed for the collective, and how this drove civilization straight into the ground. A totalitarian society would not be a world with amazing technology and flying cars, but would exist only at a subsistence level. And it would try to stay that way.
Rand's World Is Our World
This is an excellent time to reread this book or encounter it for the first time. Every day, regulatory agencies are pouring out mandates that degrade our technology. They are degrading our washing machines, dishwashers, soaps, paint, light bulbs, toilets, water systems, lawn mowers, medicines, microwaves, showers, hot water heaters, gasoline and gas cans, and probably thousands of other things. These regulations are passed in the name of the environment, security.
Their one result is to drive us back in time, making the future worse than the present and probably even worse than the past.
We cannot give up our ideals. We must have development, innovation, and progress because they are the sources of life, and we cannot give up life.That’s only the beginning. Through intellectual property laws, the state literally assigned ownership to ideas that are the source of innovation, thereby restricting them and entangling entrepreneurs in endless litigation and confusion. Products are kept off the market. Firms that would come into existence do not. Profits that would be earned never appear. Intellectual property has institutionalized slow growth and landed the economy in a thicket of absurdity.
So we’ve finally come full circle in the land to which Rand emigrated because it was a free country. We’ve adopted features of the system she fled. In that sense, this small book is an amazing critique of precisely the unfreeness of the system under which we increasingly live. In that sense, the dystopian world she presents is a distilled version of where we are headed too. Even the author’s theory that the word “I” is the thing that is most feared by the regime has resonance.
What is the way out? We cannot give up our ideals. We must have development, innovation, and progress because they are the sources of life, and we cannot give up life.
Despite what all her detractors say, it is a fact that Rand was a genius and a visionary. This small book underscores that she saw things that no one else saw, and saw them long before anyone else did.Press Release
"An all-new era begins this May as Marvel’s Mightiest Mavens assemble for an explosive new series launching during Secret Wars! Today, Marvel is pleased to present your new look inside the blockbuster A-FORCE #1 – from the creative team of G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel), Marguerite Bennett (Angela: Asgard’s Assassin, James Patterson’s Max Ride: First Flight) and Jorge Molina (X-Men)!
"As the Secret Wars begin, the Avengers as you know them are no more – and a new team will lead the way! In a secluded corner of Battleworld lies Arcadia, an island nation fiercely protected by a team of Avengers the likes of which has never been seen before!
"So who are the Marvel powerhouses taking center stage? 'She-Hulk, Dazzler, Medusa, Nico Minoru and other fan favorites, will take charge,' says series co-writer G. Willow Wilson. 'We've purposefully assembled a team composed of different characters from disparate parts of the Marvel U, with very different power sets, identities and ideologies.'
"And there came a day unlike any other, when Earth’s Mightiest Heroines found themselves united against a common threat. Fighting to protect the small sliver of their world that’s left, they stand tall, shoulder-to-shoulder, ready to take on the horde. Ushering in a new day with a rallying cry heard across Battleworld – A-FORCE ASSEMBLE!
"Heed the call, and don’t miss the start of a comic series that will have the world talking when A-FORCE #1 hits comic shops and digital devices this May!""So what do you wanna know about that's not Half-Life 3?" Valve president Gabe Newell, laughing, asks a crowd of 4chan members who recently visited the Washington-based studio. The group's first question, however, was just as worthwhile. What's up with that supposed new game engine? "We've been working on new engine stuff for awhile," Newell says. It's tough to hear what he says next, but it sounds like, "We'll probably just roll it out in one of our games" (subtitles of the video read: "We've just been waiting for a game to roll it out with"). Thankfully, a followup question directly addresses Newell's ambiguity. "Is it going to be more than just an update to Source [Valve's first game engine]? Is it an entirely new engine?" the 4chan member asks, which Newell directly (and concisely) responds to with a simple, "Yeah." See the full back-and-forth beyond the break.
Newell doesn't directly refer to the in-development engine as "Source Engine 2," so it's possible (albeit unlikely) that he's referring to a separate engine altogether, or (even more unlikely) Valve has more than one game engine being created. We've yet to hear back from Valve for clarification.
Oh, and if you want an update on Half-Life 3, Newell re-confirms that "Ricochet 2" is being worked on, so take that as you will.At TGS, like at most high schools, there is no shortage of students with the capacity to understand mathematical concepts when the conditions are ideal — trust me here. But what about when the conditions for learning aren’t particularly conducive? As a traveling school, we find ourselves in unique locations on a regular basis, and classrooms in Peru pose a completely different learning environment than a classroom in Sweden. Not all teachers travel, but all teachers find themselves in situations where a strategy can be implemented to help alleviate student confusion.
During my career, the main reasons why a student may not understand an aspect of mathematics can be categorized into one of the five following reasons.
#1 Bad Prof!
The teacher explained the idea poorly: context not provided, insufficient examples, illustrations, or an excess of speed.
Symptoms: more than one student will be confused, often a significant number.
more than one student will be confused, often a significant number. Strategy / Approach: a student should let the teacher know that a repeat, rewording, or further illustration may be helpful as the idea is still unclear.
#2 Google Translate Anyone?
Perhaps some of the vocabulary was not introduced properly before it was used, or students are unfamiliar due to a different international/cultural background.
Symptoms: most students show confusion if the teacher failed to introduce vocabulary appropriately, or a small number of students show confusion if a word has been assumed to be understood but different past experiences in students reveal a gap somewhere.
most students show confusion if the teacher failed to introduce vocabulary appropriately, or a small number of students show confusion if a word has been assumed to be understood but different past experiences in students reveal a gap somewhere. Strategy / Approach: students must immediately ask so that the consequences of the vague terminology don’t spread any further. Time is of the essence in this case -keyword- immediate!
#3 Squirrel!
The student was not listening properly due to being distracted by an internal or external factor. Sometimes, even when a student is trying to be attentive, the right attitude is not present and the chain of connections attempted by the teacher was lost somewhere. This can very easily happen, and has happened to me more times than I can count — and I can count pretty well!
Symptom: a single student or small number will be confused / a little lost – often asking a friend nearby for help. T his is one of the most delicate and important situations, and needs to be solved artfully. First of all, the student feels an increased guilt at feeling like other students “got it” but they didn’t. This makes them less likely to ask the teacher for help. Secondly, if the explanation is still going, they may distract their friend, causing secondary confusion.
his is one of the most delicate and important situations, and needs to be solved artfully. First of all, the student feels an increased guilt at feeling like other students “got it” but they didn’t. This makes them less likely to ask the teacher for help. Secondly, if the explanation is still going, they may distract their friend, causing secondary confusion. Strategy / Approach: The correct strategy here (and for this, each student in the class must make a commitment to the rest of the class that they will try to be mindful of this) is for the student to put their hand up and say something along the lines of – I’m sorry I missed a step somewhere between x and y – can you go over it for me?
If the teacher is “on a roll” and other students are engaged, the student should wait until the end of that segment and then stop the teacher — this is key. Another few segments down the line, the teacher may get frustrated that they were not stopped sooner. So what? The teacher will get over it – but if you can avoid it, all the better, na?
#4 Shaky Foundations
The ideas discussed here are based on a previous mathematical concept being shaky for one or more students.
Symptom: a deeper worry in the student – this is highly concerning as it gives the student the feeling that they are in a lot of trouble, since there is a piling up of rusty or confusing material.
a deeper worry in the student – this is highly concerning as it gives the student the feeling that they are in a lot of trouble, since there is a piling up of rusty or confusing material. Strategy / Approach: this requires a separate conversation with the teacher. This is perhaps the most important responsibility of the student. They need to take control of their learning and start a dialogue which they will have to chase until they feel the previous concept has been covered to their satisfaction.
For a student to simply state “I’m not very good at quadratics” and then hope for the teacher to provide all the required material and time for them to cover the knowledge gap is insufficient and wishful thinking. There needs to be a deliberate, ongoing conversation. This is where many students become complacent and damage their enjoyment and progress in the subject significantly.
Granted, in an ideal world the sole mention of a shaky foundation will trigger the teacher into a sequence of actions that will help the student overcome their gap in full. But with all the things going on in the head of the teacher, this is a little unrealistic, and with him being human and all, the effort needs to be two sided. Much of this may happen, especially at TGS, outside of class time. This means time needs to be scheduled — often one single session will suffice for a gap, other times a little more is needed.
#5 Sleepy Panda
The student was exhausted for reasons x,y,z. Tired at school? How come, surely not! This one is key, guys.
Symptom: the student may become frustrated or have grumpy reactions to the efforts by their teacher to animate them; may become negative and/or stubborn. Otherwise, student may seem totally disconnected, withdrawn or absent.
Strategy / Approach: encourage the student to get sleep. Help them understand their limits, and the fact that life is way more joyful and plentiful when they are rested. Let them know their tiredness can affect others around them.
Secondly, the student should let the teacher know at the beginning of the class that they are tired, so the teacher can be mindful, a little more tactful, and patient. This will really help and potentially make the student less grumpy, as they no longer need to hide or get defensive about their tiredness. We all get exhausted from time to time. A second session can be arranged outside of class when the student’s feeling better, or another student may be able to lend a hand after class. Perhaps the student ought to do some quick warm up exercise to oxygenate the body, or take a nap so they are fit and better for the next class – yes, I mean it 🙂
At present, I cannot think of other reasons why a student may be confused about the beautiful subject of mathematics. There is certainly no lack of insight or capacity in a single student I currently teach.
But what about the teacher?
We can be tired, too! That being said, I aim to be well rested each day so that I avoid feeling cloudy and in possession of a grumpy mind.
Commitments for fostering a positive community of maths learners
As an instructor, I hope a couple of positive things come out of your having read this. First, I hope you realize that in order to maintain a healthy community learning environment, you and your students must collaborate to make sure they feel comfortable asking questions and asking each other for help. At the same time, you must be mindful of timing. You cannot explain a key concept without introducing its context, and it shouldn’t be explained at the end of the class, either. Timing, timing, timing.
Students need to be aware of timing, too. Help them choose the right moment for their questions: too late and it will take more work to fix, too early and it may cut into the middle of an argument. It’s important for students to learn this skill. You can direct them and give them feedback — even when they ask impetuously and without regard for timing. If you give them feedback kindly, they will get better at asking, and this will contribute to the flow of the lesson. Often it’s enough to wait for less than a minute for a chain of ideas to reach a “checkpoint” where it’s safe to interrupt.
In all of the above, there is a great deal of emphasis on what the student ought to do, and this is partly because as a teacher it is difficult to perceive every students’ state of understanding.
Closing Notes
As ample research has demonstrated, stress, feelings of shame and inner conflict are the worst possible mental states for a student to be in while learning. I encourage you to foster an open communicative environment, applying creative solutions to the roadblocks you may encounter. If a student knows you are looking for factors that can help them in their learning and not placing the blame for not understanding on their learning capacity, ultimately, they will feel safe to make mistakes and to be adventurous in their thinking, and in their asking.
As teachers, it’s our job to stop these five issues from arising as little as possible by planning activities that are approachable and realistic. I hope this list of frequent reasons for misunderstanding serve you well in your classroom and aids your students in reaching their fullest potential. I chose to share them with my students, and I noticed an improvement in communication and a reduction of feelings of inadequacy circling the classroom.
From time to time, I like to remind my students and myself of the following idea, on which this current post is based: in a relaxed environment, when the teacher uses vocabulary that the students understand, when context is provided, and concepts are layered with no assumptions, the student is likely to succeed in understanding every single time.
-Guillermo Machado, mathematics teacher at THINK Global SchoolAs President Donald Trump prepares to boost fossil fuel production, a Pew Research Center poll finds that 65 percent of Americans would rather the U.S. focus on developing clean energy.
The new poll, released Monday, shows that 27 percent said fossil fuels should be a priority, compared with 65 percent who favored renewable energy. Public support for renewable fuels has risen 5 percentage points since 2014, Pew said, with 81 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of Republicans now backing it as a priority. Among those aged 18 to 49, 73 percent favored renewables, compared with half of those over 50.
Renewable energy gets scant attention on the new president’s agenda. Many climate scientists say investing in clean energy, such as solar, water and wind power, can help combat climate change. Instead, Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and has pledged to revive the coal industry by stripping environmental regulations ― ignoring pleas from more than 800 science and energy experts.
Trump’s “America First Energy Plan” is outlined on the White House website, which featured former President Barack Obama’s robust climate action plan before it was taken down hours after last week’s inauguration.
The new president’s energy plan boasts that the Trump administration:
... will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own.
The plan echoes a November video message posted to YouTube in which Trump pledged to undo fossil fuel restrictions his first 100 days in office and create “many millions of high-paying jobs” in coal and shale.
Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, issued an executive memorandum hours after the inauguration, freezing all new government rules and regulations, including four Obama administration rules to boost energy efficiency.
Trump’s fondness for petroleum shows in his proposed Cabinet, which includes former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, and Oklahoma attorney general and climate-denier Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Police remove a protester at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing for Rex Tillerson, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. January 11, 2017.
Trump has been antagonistic to renewable energy. He said in August that solar, the fastest-growing source of energy, “has a lot of problems” and is “not working so good.” Wind farms, he tweeted in 2012, are “disgusting looking” and were “killing the finances and environment of many countries and communities.”
Last year proved the hottest year on record, resulting in severe weather that included extreme flooding and deadly wildfires. Still, the Pew Research Center poll found just 12 percent of conservative Republicans and Republican leaners believe climate change is a major threat to the well-being of the United States.
Leaders in dozens of cities are standing up to Trump, pledging commitment to renewable energy.
“We ask that you lead us in expanding the renewable energy sources we need to achieve energy security [and] address climate change” a group of mayors wrote in a November open letter to Trump. “While we are prepared to forge ahead even in the absence of federal support, we know that if we stand united on this issue, we can make change that will resonate for generations.”
The Pew Research Center poll was conducted Jan. 4 to Jan. 9, with a nationally representative sample of 1,502 U.S. adults.These cookies are asking for your attention. Not so much begging or pleading, but asking nicely for you to pay attention.
They’re here to tell you that they’re a little to big, a little too sweet, have a little too much bacon, and yea… too much chocolate, too. They’re crisp and they don’t care about your affection for chewy. They’re gluten-free, but really… they never needed gluten in the first place. They’re the boss. They know it. Don’t play.
Peanut Butter.
Bacon.
Dark Chocolate.
Get on the bandwagon before these cookies raise their voice. Nobody wants that.
See also: Peanut Butter Bacon Pancakes. Sorry. Also, not sorry.
These cookies are so easy you’re going to feel like you’re cheating… like you’re getting way with something… like you’re part human and part bacon-cooking genius. (Because bacon-cooking geniuses aren’t human. We all know that.)
Peanut butter plus two sugars: granulated and brown. A one to one ratio. Once cup peanut butter and one cup sugar.
We’re off to a good start.
An egg too.
Maybe a dash of vanilla extract if you’re feeling extra fancy.
And we can’t forget the baking soda.
But that’s it!
There’s no flour in these cookies. They’re the ultimate in gluten-free because there never was any gluten to begin with!
The cookies stick together with the magic of peanut butter and egg. It’s a |
This look at the heroes and zeroes of 3-on-3 hockey, by yours truly, featured some really revelatory stuff about those who star in overtime (Jeff Carter and Johnny Gaudreau) and those who don't (Filip Forsberg and Zach Parise).Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma is a new anime that has just started airing this spring. In the show, as the title states, there are multiple occasions when food takes the spotlight. The show’s main character, Soma, is one hell of a chef according to the reactions of the people that eat his food. There have been instances where his food was related to having clothes exploded off, and other times where it was as if the tasters were experiencing the birth of a new spring. Our goal here at The Ani-TAY Kitchen is to recreate, to the best of our abilities, the dishes made in Food Wars and see if we have similar reactions.
The First dish that we will be tackling is the main dish seen in episode one, the Fake Pork Roast. This is a dish supposedly simulates the gratification of eating a pork roast without using pork loin. The dish is comprised of lightly mashed potatoes, mixed with onions and mushrooms, all wrapped in thick-cut bacon, then all covered in a red wine/soy sauce/sake sauce. What apparently makes the dish so good, according to Soma, is the fact that the bacon juices are soaked up by the potatoes during baking. This gives the illusion that you’re eating pork when you’re only eating mere potatoes.
To start out, I’d like to say that only the dish’s ingredients were stated in the anime. This means that we are essentially guessing the portions and measurements, hoping for the best. In any case, we’ll list the portions and measurements that we used in our dish and provide suggestions so you can make your own.
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Note: One of the chefs at The Ani-TAY Kitchen is allergic to mushrooms, so we’ll be substituting it for cauliflower. There should be no difference since the mushrooms are there to soak up and take on the flavour of the bacon, a trait that cauliflower can also accomplish.
Here we go. I hope you have fun!
Check out my review of Food Wars below. Ani-TAY is a great place for anime lovers. There’s no ads, just anime.
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What You Will Need:
-1.5 to 2 hours of time.
-Large serving plate/pan.
-Large bowl.
-Cutting board & knives.
-Large knife.
-Large pot with a steaming tray.
-Potato peeler.
-Frying pan.
-Wooden spoon.
-Baking tray.
-Measuring instruments.
-Unbleached/uncoloured twine. We used hemp twine, but anything suitable for baking should be good.
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-6 white potatoes.
-3 Eringi mushrooms. or substitute with 1/4 of a head of cauliflower.
-1 large white onion, or 2 medium white onions.
-1 sprig of rosemary.
-Butter. I suggest 2 tablespoons (30ml), but you could always used a bit more.
-2 packs of thick-cut bacon.
-1 Cup, or 250ml of red wine. We used a Pinot Noir since its preferable for cooking.
-1/4 cup, or 60ml of sake. Any sake that is labeled as “sweet” should do.
-2 tbs, or 30ml of soy sauce.
-1 spring of parsley or any garnish.
Optional Step 1: Prepare Your headband
-This is a critical step. If you do not have a headband, then you will never truly harness the abilities needed to succeed.
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Optional Step 2: Put On the Headband
-Only those who believe they are capable may do so.
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Step 1: Peel the Potatoes
-Amount: 6 white potatoes.
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Step 2: Slice the Potatoes
-Wash the potatoes then cut them into quarters or halves, depending on size.
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Step 3: Chop the Mushrooms/Cauliflower
-Amount: 1/4 of a head of cauliflower, or 3 Eringi mushrooms.
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Step 4: Chop the Onions
-Amount: 1 large white onion, or 2 medium white onions.
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Step 5: Steam the Potatoes and Cauliflower
-Steam potatoes until soft (about 15-20 minutes).
-Steam or microwave the chopped cauliflower until soft (10 minutes for steam, 5 minutes for microwave).
-If you’re using mushrooms, DO NOT steam or microwave.
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Step 6: Pan Fry the Onions and Mushrooms/Cauliflower
-Prep the pan with a tablespoon of butter.
-Pan fry onions and mushrooms/cauliflower until caramelized or fully golden.
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Optional Step 3: Get in the Zone
-The highest level of performance can only happen when in the zone.
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Step 7: Mash the Potatoes
-Mash into small chunks in a large bowl. Do not mash too much, you want to avoid it being frothy in order to form it to shape.
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Step 8: Mix in the Onions and Cauliflower
-Mix until the ingredients are even in the bowl.
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Step 9: Pick the Rosemary
-Pick the rosemary off its stem.
-Set aside.
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Step 10: Add the Salt
-Add a few sprinkles of salt to the top of the bowl.
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Step 11: Form the Fake Roast
-Let the mix cool until touchable (more than 5 minutes). CAUTION HOT
-Take all of the mix and form it into a log shape.
Step 12: Wrap the Roast in Bacon
-Amount: 2 packs of thick cut bacon.
-Wrap the roast fully, try not to leave any gaps, otherwise the potatoes will seep out when the bacon tightens.
-There is no surefire way of doing this, just coat it to the best of your ability.
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Step 13: Tie the Roast
-Tie the roast with the twine. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy, just wrap it around a few times.
-Intertwine the rosemary afterwards.
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Step 14: Bake in the Oven
-Bake at 375ºF or 190ºC for 30-45 minutes or until bacon is golden (cook longer for crispy bacon), turing halfway.
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Step 15: Boil the Wine In the Frying Pan
-Amount: 1 Cup, or 250ml.
-Bring the wine to a boil (~10 minutes) on medium-high heat in a frying pan. The aim is to reduce it.
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Step 16: Add the Butter, Sake, and Soy Sauce to the Wine
-Amount: 1 tbs of butter, 1/4 cup of sake, 2 tbs of soy sauce.
-Melt the butter into the boiling wine.
-Pour the soy sauce and sake into the sauce.
-Continue to cook for 2-3 minutes.
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Step 17: Remove the Twine and the Rosemary
-When the baking is done, remove the twine and rosemary, they are not to be eaten.
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Step 18: Pour the Sauce on the Roast
-Pour the finished sauce onto the roast (make sure the roast is on a plate so as to hold the extra sauce). Pour slowly.
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Step 19: Add the Garnish
-Add a garnish to the top of the dish, we used parsley, the anime used watercress.
Step 20: Serve
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There we have it, the finished dish. The only thing left to do is compare the taste to the depicted taste in the anime. As seen below, once the characters take a bite of the dish, they imagine their clothes exploding off. As this is just in their minds, this feat may actually be accomplishable in real life. Let’s see what everyone though.
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Characters’ Apparent Satisfaction: Exploding Clothes/Exploding Clothes
Our satisfaction (from 1 to exploding clothes):
Stanlick: 5/Exploding Clothes
It was true that the mashed potatoes did in fact take on a pork flavour. You would imagine it tasting like mashed potatoes and bacon, but this was not the case. The dish, however, didn’t live up to the demeanour of a standalone main; surely having side would improve it, preferably green. I feel like the sauce was a very nice complement to the dish and instead of pouring overtop, try slitting the top of the fully cooked roast and pouring it into the roast directly.
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Guy With Headband: 7/Exploding Clothes, if improved 9
It was good. The flavours did go into the mashed potatoes, but making the log thinner would probably make it better. Maybe add a bit more onion would make it better too. Try rotating the roast as it’s cooking to make sure all the bacon is well cooked everywhere. Add less soy sauce too.
Assistant 1: 8/Exploding Clothes
The meal was rich with flavour, because the bacon really spread its flavours to the other ingredients. It was pretty good for a bunch of university students without any guide to follow. A side would be a good addition, something green like Brussel sprouts or asparagus. My only complaint is that the mashed potatoes seemed a little dry, but were certainly tasty thanks to the bacon juices.
Assistant 2: 8/Exploding Clothes
It was right, but I think the bacon could have been crispier. It tasted like a waterslide with bowling balls going down it. The sauce was a good blend, it felt very proportionate, however it could have been thicker. Maybe add some syrup to the sauce to thicken it up. The rosemary was a good addition, it spread well into the bacon as the bacon spread well into the roast.
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Overall Rating: 7/Exploding Clothes
We all seem to agree that the dish did what it was made to do, but there were definitely ways to improve it. Unfortunately(?) no clothes exploded due to the eating of this meal. Try it out for yourself and see if your clothes fall off.
Until next time, this was The Ani-TAY Kitchen. I hope we pleased your palate.
In our next instalment, we tackle the Transforming Rice from episode two. You can find the article here:
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Condensed Recipe:
Step 1: Peel the Potatoes
-Amount: 6 white potatoes.
Step 2: Slice the Potatoes
-Wash the potatoes then cut them into quarters or halves, depending on size.
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Step 3: Chop the Mushrooms/Cauliflower
-Amount: 1/4 of a head of cauliflower, or 3 Eringi mushrooms.
Step 4: Chop the Onions
-Amount: 1 large white onion, or 2 medium white onions.
Step 5: Steam the Potatoes and Cauliflower
-Steam potatoes until soft (about 15-20 minutes).
-Steam or microwave the chopped cauliflower until soft (10 minutes for steam, 5 minutes for microwave).
-If you’re using mushrooms, DO NOT steam or microwave.
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Step 6: Pan Fry the Onions and Mushrooms/Cauliflower
-Prep the pan with a tablespoon of butter.
-Pan fry onions and mushrooms/cauliflower until caramelized or fully golden.
Step 7: Mash the Potatoes
-Mash into small chunks in a large bowl. Do not mash too much, you want to avoid it being frothy in order to form it to shape.
Step 8: Mix in the Onions and Cauliflower
-Mix until the ingredients are even in the bowl.
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Step 9: Pick the Rosemary
-Pick the rosemary off its stem.
-Set aside.
Step 10: Add the Salt
-Add a few sprinkles of salt to the top of the bowl.
Step 11: Form the Fake Roast
-Let the mix cool until touchable (more than 5 minutes). CAUTION HOT
-Take all of the mix and form it into a log shape.
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Step 12: Wrap the Roast in Bacon
-Amount: 2 packs of thick cut bacon.
-Wrap the roast fully, try not to leave any gaps, otherwise the potatoes will seep out when the bacon tightens.
-There is no surefire way of doing this, just coat it to the best of your ability.
Step 13: Tie the Roast
-Tie the roast with the twine. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy, just wrap it around a few times.
-Intertwine the rosemary afterwards.
Step 14: Bake in the Oven
-Bake at 375ºF or 190ºC for 30-45 minutes or until bacon is golden (cook longer for crispy bacon), turing halfway.
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Step 15: Boil the Wine In the Frying Pan
-Amount: 1 Cup, or 250ml.
-Bring the wine to a boil (~10 minutes) on medium-high heat in a frying pan. The aim is to reduce it.
Step 16: Add the Butter, Sake, and Soy Sauce to the Wine
-Amount: 1 tbs of butter, 1/4 cup of sake, 2 tbs of soy sauce.
-Melt the butter into the boiling wine.
-Pour the soy sauce and sake into the sauce.
-Continue to cook for 2-3 minutes.
Step 17: Remove the Twine and the Rosemary
-When the baking is done, remove the twine and rosemary, they are not to be eaten.
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Step 18: Pour the Sauce on the Roast
-Pour the finished sauce onto the roast (make sure the roast is on a plate so as to hold the extra sauce). Pour slowly.
Step 19: Add the Garnish
-Add a garnish to the top of the dish, we used parsley, the anime used watercress.
Step 20: Serve
Thanks for reading the first instalment brought to you by The Ani-TAY Kitchen. Stay tuned for more in the future!
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Thanks to the assistance of my assistants.
You’re reading Ani-TAY, the anime-focused portion of Kotaku’s community-run blog, Talk Amongst Yourselves. Ani-TAY is a non-professional blog whose writers love everything anime related. Click here to check us out.
You can contact me (Stanlick) by emailing me at stanlick_anitay@outlook.com.
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It’s in your best interest to amuse Button-chan; go follow Ani-TAY on Facebook and Twitter.A BRAIN drain has stripped Australia of one in four of its scientific leaders and 671 research positions as our best and brightest head overseas.
As Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull talks up a vision for innovation and an ideas boom many of the people who could deliver it have left the country to get their research funded.
The Australian Society for Medical Research (ASMR) is warning “Australia is in danger of squandering its opportunity to capitalise on years of investment” in distinguished researchers.
And if researchers continue to leave there will not be enough with the experience to capitalise on new funds from the government’s Medical Research Future Fund when it starts paying out money for research, it warns.
In its budget submission ASMR is calling on the government to provide $300 million for the Medical Research Endowment Account to stem the loss of senior researchers so they remain ready to take up positions when the Medical Research Future Fund is ready.
In the last five years the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has slashed by 25 per cent the number of scientific leadership positions it funds under its Fellowship Scheme ASMR says.
In 2011 92 of these positions were awarded and in 2016 this fell to just 69 ASMR says.
There has also been a 16 per cent loss of human capital or 671 full time equivalent research positions from the major NHMRC Project Grants within the last three years.
The NHMRC currently funds less than one in seven project grant compared to a funding rate of over one in four a decade ago in 2007.
Australia’s current investment into the NHMRC is 0.6% of the total health spend, while the US spends 4.5 per cent of its health budget on the equivalent National Institutes of Health.
“Should the current vibrant and highly qualified research community continue to suffer attrition due to lack of opportunity, its renewal and restoration would take decades and be enormously costly on many levels,” ASMR says in its budget submission.
Nearly a quarter of the health and medical research workforce told an ASMR survey they were uncertain as to whether or not they have employment in 2016.
Replacing 25 per cent of the PhD-qualified health and medical research sector would cost Australia $570 million in 2009 dollars, the ASMR says.
South Australian independent MP Senator Nick Xenophon says medical research funding should be made an election issue because it will take years to rectify the damage done by the brain drain to be undone.
“We are supposed to be the clever country but we make some dumb decisions on medical research,” he said.
Cancer researcher Dr Geoffrey Matthews says he was forced to leave Australia to get funding for his research into a new anti-cancer drug that targets multiple myeloma an incurable blood cancer.
He now works at Harvard University.
“In Australia, I worked under the mentorship of Professor Ricky Johnstone at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, in Melbourne,” he says.
The paucity of grants and fellowships meant he was unable to secure NHMRC grant funding to continue his cancer research in Australia.
“I had always believed that contemporary Australian scientists did not need to head overseas to pursue a career due to the high calibre research being carried in our institutions. However, without the availability of sufficient funding to fund our research we are being driven overseas,” he says.
“In my case, and my wife’s, an early career researcher in paediatric neuroscience, we chose the United States,” he says.
The ASMR represents more than 120,000 Australians involved in professional societies, medical colleges and corporate/disease related foundation members.By Janet Goetze
For the Hollywood Star News
St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, 5309 N.E. Alameda, has a newly placed altar and tabernacle blessed by Archbishop Alexander Sample.
A series of events led to the special service, starting with the discovery of a once stolen and damaged tabernacle, a receptacle for the Eucharist or materials used for Communion. The tabernacle was discovered in a cupboard during spring cleaning in May 2014.
The Rev. Matthew Libra, after talking to the staff and leadership of the St. Rose Parish and Archbishop Howard School at St. Rose, received permission from Archbishop Sample to use a chapel at the church as a place for a second tabernacle to hold communion elements. Canon law requires that a bishop give permission for the elements to be in a second place at a church.
The newly found tabernacle was restored and placed in the main sanctuary on the altar moved from the chapel. Altar stands were created from part of the altar originally built for the 1926 church.
The stands went into the chapel, called “Blessed Sacrament Chapel,” and the tabernacle that had been in the main sanctuary is now in the chapel.
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commentsNew York Times' Nate Silver, image via Wikimedia, Creative Commons licensed
Conservative darling Dean Chambers, founder of the website unskewedpolls.com that purports to recalibrate political surveys to rid them of liberal bias, argued that New York Times polling guru Nate Silver cannot be trusted because he is a weak, little girly-man.
In a post for Examiner.com, Chambers sought to discredit Silver’s recent statistical analysis that showed Romney flatlining in the presidential race. Chambers, who rose to prominence by asserting that pollsters were nefariously skewing their results in favor of Democrats, insisted that Silver’s latest finding was more indication of that perceived liberal bias.
How could Chambers tell that Silver is an untrustworthy liberal? His lack of overt masculinity, of course.
“Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the ‘Mr. New Castrati’ voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program,” Chambers wrote. “In fact, Silver could easily be the poster child for the New Castrati in both image and sound.”
While that may sound like a coded, presumptive attack on Silver’s sexuality, it actually isn’t—if you go by Limbaugh’s own definition.
As defined by Limbaugh, the “New Castrati” are men who have been, “bullied by women” and who have been beaten into, “total acquiescence to the liberal agenda.” Though Limbaugh insists it is not a term denoting sexual orientation, he concedes that it does refer to a, “lack of manhood.”
So according to Chambers, it’s not that people should distrust Nate Silver’s political analysis because he might be gay, but rather because he’s subservient to women and liberals and he also has no testicles.-Chapter 12-
The police cruiser pulled over, backing into the alleyway, effectively concealing itself in the shadows of the buildings. Judy shifted the car into park, letting out a sigh.
"So...do we just wait now?" Etson asked her.
"Yes," she answered, "so you should probably get comfortable."
Etson, accepting the invitation, reclined his seat and wriggled himself into a more comfortable position, putting his paws behind his head as he leaned back. Judy reached for the car radio, pressing the knob to turn it on. One by one, she went through her presets. Advertisement, advertisement, crappy song...she paused.
"'Cause I can make your paws clap," the chorus came through the radio, saxophone blaring over the catchy beat. Judy winced. That was one of Nick's favorite songs. Quickly, she pushed the thought out of him out of her mind, pressing the next knob on the dashboard.
"Fasco appears to be up in the polls today after the two Alimandish attacks yesterday, his strict policy on -" Judy shook her head at the radio, moving onto the next latest single from Selena Goatmez started playing, satisfying Judy. She followed Etson's lead and leaned back in her chair, gazing across the street.
"That's the house we're looking after, right?" she inquired, pointing.
Etson nodded. "Zhat's it."
"Perfect," she exclaimed. If anyone started to try anything they were in the perfect position to stop it. She just hoped that they wouldn't look too closely for police cruiser. She had done her best to hide it in the darkness of the alley, but on such a busy street it was nearly impossible to completely conceal. Of course, this was assuming that the P.P.P. were going to strike at the location Etson had provided, which could very well turn out to not be the case. Still, Judy liked to remain optimistic that at the very least something would happen.
"So you're a Goatmez fan, eh?" Etson asked in reference to the radio, still comfortably reclined in the shotgun seat.
"I mean she's not my favorite, but she's not bad either," Judy replied, turning to look at the raccoon. "What do you think of her?"
"Meh. I'm not really into zhe music here," he admitted. "Not my zhing, really."
Judy raised an eyebrow at him. "What about the music 'here' don't you like?"
"I don't know, it's just different I guess," he replied, shrugging. "Music in Alimand... is a lot more electronic. Not many...how do you say it..." the raccoon paused, grasping for the word he needed.
"Vocals?" Judy suggested.
"Yes! Vocals. Zhere aren't very many vocals," Etson finished, somewhat embarrassed that he had forgotten the vocab.
"Hmm. I'll have to listen to it sometime, then," she chatted.
There was a brief moment of silence, the two animals staring out over the busy avenue together.
Judy turned her head to look at the raccoon. "Do you miss Alimand?"
He glanced back at her. "Yes and no," he replied. Seeing the perplexed look on the rabbit's face, he decided to elaborate. "We had to leave a lot of friends zhere. And zhe food. I really, really miss zhe food," he admitted, smiling.
Judy started to laugh, but the humor was quickly neutralized by her memories. Nick also loved Alimandish food. She remembered him stuffing his face at the food court on one of their patrol days, hardly taking time to breath. She shook the mental baggage off, reminding herself that she didn't need to be concerned with him any more.
"Aside from zhose zhings, zhough...Zhere's not much I miss," Etson concluded, letting out a sigh.
Judy bit her lip nervously. She didn't want to pry, but she was curious. "Why...don't you miss it?"
Etson inhaled heavily. That was a question that couldn't be answered easily. "Zhings are...different zhere. And not the good type of different, eizher," he told her.
"Thanks for that vivid picture," Judy teased, causing the raccoon to chuckle. "Care to explain some more?"
"Sure," he said as he cleared his throat, preparing his best narrator voice. "You see, it all started zhousands of years ago...on zhe ozher side of zhe world zhere was an island in zhe middle of zhe ocean, untouched by mammalkind. Legend has it zhat a terrible storm blew a ship of traders to zhe island, which zhey called Alimand. Zhey made a small village zhere, living off of the many fish on zhe coast and in zhe rivers," Etson explained, waving his paws around for dramatic effect. "Zhere were only twenty or so mammals on zhe ship. But zhere was somezhing zhey all had in common."
"What?" Judy eagerly asked.
"Zhey were all...predators," Etson revealed. "Zhese animals...zhey were zhe ancestors of everyone who would live on Alimand, according to zhe story. Zhe animals started to multiply, slowly spreading out over zhe rest of zhe island. New fishing mezhods led to more food and more population. Being isolated on an island in the ocean allowed for zhe Alimandish language to develop along wizh unique Alimandish culture. Zhey built magnificent structures working togezher. Everyone seemed content, living in harmony wizh one anozher for centuries."
Judy felt a lump in her throat. This was going to be the part when things got ugly, she could tell.
"What happened?" she tentatively questioned.
Etson fidgeted awkwardly. "Ozher animals found zhe island," he answered as a grim look came upon his face. "At first it was just explorers. Zhey mapped out zhe island and left, bringing tales of a myzhical civilization home wizh zhem. And zhen, over time more animals came. And zhen...zhen zhings started to get worse."
"What do you mean? How did they make it worse?"
"Well...zhe animals zhat came..." Etson paused, reluctant to continue, "were prey." Judy's ears started to droop. Etson sighed. "Zhese animals...zhey didn't want to live zhe way zhe Alimandish natives did. Most of zhe time...zhere was no way for zhem to communicate wizh each ozher. Zhings gradually got more violent as more and more of zhese animals came...Until zhe whole island snapped," Etson lamented. His tone got significantly darker, his face now shifting into a frown. "A wolf named Jurwezy went out to his fishing nets zhat morning, only to catch some prey animals stealing from him. Zhis was not an uncommon sight. Prey often took from zhe predators...and Jurwezy decided that he'd had enough."
"What...what did he do?"
"He... attacked zhem," Etson started, his voice softer all of a sudden. "And killed zhem both."
Judy's face mimicked Etson's, a heavy frown overcoming her usually positive expression.
"Zhe prey were outraged. Zhey began calling for zhe muzzling of all of zhe native Alimandish citizens, claiming zhat zhey were all too dangerous to trust," Etson swallowed heavily. "Zhey attacked zhat night. One by one, zhey set fire to zhe homes. Everyone panicked. Zhey had no idea what was happening," he described to her. "By zhe end of zhe night...everyone in zhe village had been captured and muzzled, from the smallest child to zhe wisest elder. Zhe whole zhing is known to zhis day as Jurwezylao, or Jurwezy Night, after zhe wolf who attacked."
Judy looked over at the raccoon. "Did...things ever get better?"
The raccoon was silent for a moment. Letting out a sigh, he shook his head. "Zhe prey took over zhe island, village by village, night after night. Zhe mammals of Alimand tried to fight back, but zhey had no real weapons because...well...zhey had never needed to fight a war before," he told Judy somberly. "Eventually they reached the grand temple in zhe center of zhe island. Zhe Alimandish could do nothing but watch as zheir greatest work was pounded to rubble by zhe prey. It was zhe end of an era. From zhat day on...prey would rule Alimand. And zhe predators..." Etson paused, "were ruled over. For the next hundred years predators would have to wear muzzles in public. Zhe island was split into two, predator and prey, wizh zhe predator half being heavily policed and oppressed. To zhis day everyzhing is still separated. Everyzhing - zhe tap water, zhe schools, zhe homes, zhe jobs - it's all better if you live in zhe prey sector. And zhat... Zhat is why I don't miss Alimand."
Judy rested her head against the back of the driver's seat, taking the whole story in. It was history like this that made her reconsider her positive outlook on the world. How could she continue to see the best in animals when stories like Alimand's so clearly showed the worst of mammal nature? In a way, even though she knew it made no rational sense, she felt guilty that fellow prey could commit such atrocities. She knew that the world wasn't perfect...but it wasn't entirely imperfect either. At least that's what she chose to believe. Yet, as she became increasingly acquainted with the subject of history, she kept having that belief challenged. Her eyes sunk down, fixed on her seat, Judy feeling equal parts ashamed and unsettled.
"Look, I know it's not a very happy story," he admitted, hoping to make Judy feel better, "but we haven't seen how it ends yet."
She turned to look at him. What was he saying?
"Zhe predators are finally fighting back," he explained. "Zhe protests...zhe sit-ins...it's all a step in zhe right direction. If enough animals will listen, and realize zhe right zhing to do," Etson said, a glimmer of hope in his eyes, "zhen maybe Alimand will finally become a place worzh living."
Judy's frown slowly changed back into her usual determined expression.
It's all about trying to make the world a better place, she thought. In the end, that's all you can do.
She stared out the windshield as the radio switched songs, feeling a profound sense of confidence instilled in her. She glanced around, taking a moment to admire the city she was now much more proud to live in. There was something she had always loved about Zootopia, and juxtaposing the current situation there with the one in Alimand certainly made her more grateful. Her eyes hopped from animal to animal and building to building, her mind wondering about the stories of each animal looked at. The mother with a stroller...the frantic businessman...the hooded figure toying with the lock across the street...they all could have novels written about their lives.
Wait, she realized, someone's breaking into that house!
Judy suddenly leaned forward in her seat. She squinted and then quickly rubbed her eyes, not trusting what her senses were telling her. Her mouth gradually began to hang open.
"Etson..." she started, "You...you see that too, right?" she pointed across the street to the target building.
He looked in the area she had pointed out for him. "I don't see anything..."
"Look harder," Judy told him.
Etson's eyes widened. "Is zhat...?"
"It has to be," Judy quickly responded, the driver's side door flying open as she leapt into action. "Quick! We have to move!"
Etson quickly fumbled to unbuckle his seatbelt before jumping out the passenger side door. Judy sprinted across the street, narrowly avoiding oncoming traffic. Etson followed behind her, running through the crosswalk to catch up. The hooded figure turned around and, after noticing the two animals who were barreling towards them, jumped off the steps that led to the door and began running down the street.
"Stop that mammal!" Judy yelled, pursuing as fast as she could, Etson not far behind. "You're under arrest!"
The hooded figure kept running, disregarding the rabbit's orders. They ducked into a nearby alleyway, trying to lose their new friends. Judy and Etson followed after them. The alleyway was dark and small, but the hooded figure could still be easily seen. They sprinted after the criminal side by side, their surroundings fading into a blur, when Etson thought he noticed something on the ground.
He looked over his shoulder to examine the object. Those could work, he thought. He came to an abrupt halt, scurrying over to the side of the alley.
"Etson! What are you doing?" Judy screamed, still running.
"I'll catch up!" he yelled back. "Just keep going!"
Judy looked back over her shoulder, wondering what crazy plan he had concocted. She looked forwards again and kept chasing the figure, who was still ahead of her by a few strides. The alleyway ended, sending the chase back into another main avenue. The hooded figure's footsteps matched Judy's, the rabbit matching them stride for stride a few meters behind. They ran against a crowd of pedestrians, Judy carefully maneuvering to avoid being stepped on by the larger animals around her. She watched as the culprit climbed up a series of fruit crates which were stacked atop of each other outside of a fruit market. Hastily, they pulled themselves up onto the top crate. The stack of crates teetered and plummeted as they pushed off, landing in the back of a pickup truck that happened to by driving by. Judy dived out of the way as the boxes hit the ground around her, spilling fruit all over the sidewalk. Somersaulting back into a run, her eyes darted through the traffic, singling out the truck that was carrying the suspect. The hood they had been wearing had fallen off their head, revealing their true identity.
The vandalizer...is a deer foal? Judy thought. Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud voice behind her.
"Coming zhrough!" Etson yelled. Judy glanced quickly over her shoulder to see the raccoon on roller |
’s love at first sight, and Steven employs his preternatural gift for deception to get the two of them assigned as cellmates and, eventually, to spring his boyfriend from jail.
Jim Carrey has struggled in midlife to find a place for his outsized, dominating performance style, sometimes tamping it down for straight dramatic roles like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, sometimes hiding behind animated avatars as a voice actor in A Christmas Carol and Horton Hears a Who. Carrey’s performance here is broad, clownlike, and, in the sex scenes especially, almost deliberately grotesque. Yet he’s also vulnerable and tender. Ewan McGregor brings a screwball sweetness to his role as the blond, Southern nancy boy who’s both bedazzled and shocked by his boyfriend’s criminal audacity.
Though the movie is light on story, with an episodic structure that sometimes drags, I Love You, Phillip Morris is something close to brilliant in its mastery of tone. Like Bad Santa, it’s a black comedy with a caramel center. The movie goes to some really bleak places—I can’t tell you how bleak without spoiling a major twist—and shows its characters in some very unflattering lights, without ever abandoning its basic faith in the redemptive power of love. What saves that faith from being cloying is how the Steven/Phillip romance comes mixed with a heaping helping of sex—when he looks for shapes in the clouds, Steven can’t help but spot a proudly erect phallus every time.
In the end, I Love You, Phillip Morris is neither a light romantic comedy nor a pious drama of oppression. It’s a passionate, amoral caper, a story of outlaw love on the run in the tradition of Breathless or True Romance. Without making any big proclamations, I Love You, Phillip Morris neatly subverts our every expectation of what a “gay movie” should be.
Like Slate on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.Aroluxe, the Nashville-based production company that was funding episodes of Impact in exchange for ownership shares of TNA under Dixie Carter, is getting back into the wrestling business.
They’re doing so with a lucha libre show called Aro Lucha. Reports indicate they’ll film a pilot for the show next month, and the social media accounts for the brand are already hyping a house show - although there aren’t details about where or when.
Today (Nov. 15), they issued a press release announcing their head writer, current promoter of The Crash in Mexico and on-screen character for Impact, Konnan:
Arolucha, Inc. announced today that Carlos “Konnan” Ashenoff will lead the writing team for its upcoming Lucha Libre project. Effective November 1st, 2017, Konnan will lead the writing team to produce character-driven, authentic, and original storylines for the Aro Lucha world of Lucha Libre. Konnan is regarded as one of the brightest and most creative minds in the wrestling and sports entertainment industry. Spanning over 3 decades, Konnan’s career has ranged from professional wrestler and on-screen talent, to color commentator, booker and creative consultant. He has worked for nearly all major professional wrestling organizations including AAA, CMLL, WCW, Impact, and WWE. “When you’re creating an authentic Lucha Libre product in the United States, I’m not sure if there is any other person you want at the core of your company than Carlos, (Konnan)” said Jason Brown, CEO or AroLucha, Inc, “He brings an authenticity and a knowledgebase to the project that is unmatched.” Konnan is best known to his legion of fans as one of the biggest box office draws in the history of Mexico. Breaking attendance records as the main event in virtually every major city, including Mexico City and Los Angeles. Although his success as a professional wrestler launched Konnan’s career, his lasting impact on the industry continues through his own Mexico-based promotion, The Crash Lucha Libre, where he is co-owner, lead writer, and executive producer. Konnan has a keen eye for talent, bringing to light the likes of Rey Mysterio and Psychosis, and more recently Penta Zero M and Rey Fenix. He continues to influence and foster young talent through his perpetual support of Hispanic performers within the professional wrestling industry. “Carlos loves this industry. He has given his life to professional wrestling and there is no one else that we could see as a better partner within the US,” said Ron Harris of Aro Lucha.
No qualms with the hire, but you have to wonder where this product fits in the wrestling world. There’s a ton of competition for the fan’s time and money these days, and a similar sounding product in Lucha Underground still has its fans but isn’t lighting it up at the box office or in the ratings these days. From the description on their official Twitter and Instagram accounts, it sounds like they’ll be making a “family friendly” product, which could help differentiate them.
There’s also a question of getting talent for a television show, which could prove challenging with CMLL stars aligned with Ring of Honor and New Japan, and AAA linked with Impact and Lucha Underground. Konnan is a well-connected veteran, though, and probably has some ideas there.
It’s an interesting project, but it’s got a steep hill to climb.Smartphone cameras have come a long way recently, with sensor and lens setups in some of this year’s flagships offering up some seriously good looking results, just look at the Galaxy S6 or the LG G4 for example. However, even the best smartphone cameras still suffer from limited versatility, often have poor low light performance, and heavy noise and crosstalk when compared with higher end sensors found in DSLR cameras.
Furthermore, the resolution race has seen increasingly high-resolution cameras in smartphones, but our testing and experience has shown us that the cameras with the most pixels aren’t necessarily producing the best results. That being said, HTC’s attempt to buck this trend with its Ultrapixel technology failed to produce superior results either. The fact of the matter is that sensors, and therefore pixel sizes, in smartphones are limited by their compact size.
InVisage, a fabless semiconductor company, is planning to bring its unique QuantumFilm technology to market, which might provide a big leap forward in image quality for small form factor mobile devices.
The problem
The crux of the issue is down to the compromises made with module size and light capture. For a little background, modern CMOS image sensors are built up of lots of sensor/pixel cells, each configured with a filter to detect how much red, green, or blue light is in the scene and in which locations. But these sensors aren’t perfect, there is a certain amount of reflection and loss as light enters a sensor and there can also be cross talk between adjacent cells and electronic interference, which manifests as noise and color artifacts.
These problems are more pronounced in compact smartphone sensors, as the cells are smaller and packed in closer together. Further increasing the resolution of a sensor compounds these problems, leading to more noise and worse performance in low light conditions.
The image sensor industry has come up with a number of innovations to help combat these problems. Moving over from frontside to backside illumination sensors helped reduce loss as the light reached the base of the cell, while Samsung’s Isocell aimed to better insulate nearby cells from each other, resulting in less crosstalk. These are fine solutions, but don’t completely eliminate the aforementioned probems.
QuantumFilm’s solution
InVisage’s QuantumFilm technology aims to address these problems by tweaking traditional sensor designs to make use of its own light sensing layer, which promises to capture more light and avoid crosstalk. Much of the design remains the same as today’s CMOS sensors, instead it is the QuantumFilm layer that is of particular interest.
Rather than using silicon photodiodes, InVisage’s sensors use their own metal-chalcogenide quantum-dot film to capture much more light near the surface of the sensor. This film is built from quantum dots, a small nanocrystal with quantum mechanical properties, arranged in a colloid, a solution made up of evenly distributed small particles.
This layer is connected in between the usual filter layer and the electrode circuitry. When a certain color of light reacts with the QuantumFilm layer, the circuit can detect the region in which this reaction occurred to determine the pixel’s color. This way, the camera’s resolution does not affect the amount of light captured in the way that traditional CMOS sensors do and there’s apparently less crosstalk than solutions which require larger photosensitive cells. In other words, the resolution of the filter layer and density of the detecting circuitry determines the resolution, while the film layer remains unchanged.
The video below offers a pretty comprehensive explanation of what the company wants to achieve, without the techno-babble.
This whole idea seems rather well suited to smartphones, where compact hardware is essential. QuantumFilm has a few benefits in this regard, as it can be produced at very thin sizes, cutting up to 0.8mm off the very smallest CMOS sensors, which is a small, but valuable space saving inside a smartphone.
Furthermore, QuantumFilm boasts a light absorption capacity up to eight times greater than some silicon CMOS sensors, allowing for greater dynamic range and better low light shots, less noise, and it can also be used for infrared light detection, opening the door for new and interesting compact product ideas.
How soon?
Like many other up and coming pieces of technology, the big problem with QuantumFilm is that it remains untested in real world consumer products. There has been a lot of talk for a number of years, but nothing for us to really sink our teeth into.
As a small company, InVisage is currently only producing a small number of wafers, but is looking to ramp up production in the second half of this year. TSMC will be helping InVisage further increase production with additional capacity next year.
We are still probably in for quite a wait until the first smartphones appear sporting the technology, but QuantumFilm is certainly something to keep an eye on.Netflix hasn't been coy about its ambitions with original programming this year: from House of Cards to Arrested Development, the company wants to become the next HBO. Those plans will keep moving forward on July 11th when Netflix will release its latest original program, Orange Is the New Black. Based on a memoir by Piper Kerman, the show is created by Jenji Kohan — the woman behind Showtime's Weeds. It's described as a comedic drama that follows a woman (Taylor Schilling) who's ripped from her New York lifestyle after being sentenced to a year in a federal penitentiary due to her involvement in a drug-running operation. Like House of Cards before it, Orange's first season will consist of thirteen episodes, with Kohan writing the first and last entries. The cast is filled out by Taryn Manning, Natasha Lyonne, and American Pie's Jason Biggs as the lead character's fiancé.
Netflix appears to be settling into a groove with its original programming, introducing them to viewers at a steady pace this summer. While Cards arrived in February, Hemlock Grove debuted in April. Arrested Development is scheduled for a May 26th release, while Orange will be coming two months after that. Hemlock Grove didn't receive the raves amongst non-genre fans that House of Cards did, but Arrested Development seems a virtual lock for critical approval; we'll have to wait until July to see if the same holds true for Orange Is the New Black.Vanderbilt coach Bryce Drew is rolling on the recruiting trail. On Wednesday, five-star Class of 2018 power forward Simi Shittu committed to be a Commodore, giving Drew his second five-star pledge of the cycle. Shittu’s pledge gives the Commodores their highest-rated recruit since point guard Darius Garland committed… last week. Shittu is the third member of Vanderbilt’s stunning 2018 recruiting class, which is now ranked eighth nationally and third in the SEC behind Kentucky and Florida. The 6-foot-9 standout ranks as the No. 8 overall player, the No. 1 power forward, and the No. 1 player from the state of Vermont. Shittu chose Vandy over more than 20 scholarship offers, including North Carolina, Alabama, Baylor, UCLA, and Texas, among others.
The new wave of Vanderbilt basketball started with a Nov. 8 commitment from four-star prospect Aaron Nesmith, followed shortly by Garland, and now Shittu. Shittu says the decision for him was easy and he feels he could be the missing piece to take the program to the next level. I fully agree with his statement and they may have a chance now.
Drew took over Vanderbilt in 2016 after five years at Valpo, and has already led this rising program to an NCAA Tournament berth. With the influx of talent expected soon and with a top 10 recruiting class, it seems postseason berths could be more of the same in the future. Keep a lookout for Vandy in the future.There are approximatley 6 million Palestinians who live outside the pre-1967 borders [EPA]
Mark LeVine asked three leading scholars of the "refugee problem" - Karma Nabulsi (lecturer in international relations, Oxford University), Susan Akram (Boston University Law School and founder of the Asylum and Human Rights Clinic at Greater Boston Legal Services) and Ingrid Jaradat Gassner (Director of BADIL, Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights) - to address some of the key arguments surrounding the right of return. Some of the answers are quite detailed and technical, but given the importance of this debate, we have not edited them, so as to offer the most complete information possible on this issue.
ML: Can you explain at its base what "right of return" means? Is is merely a political concept or is it an accepted legal concept as well? Is there one definition accepted by all Palestinians or is the term contested within Palestinian society?
"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." - Article 13(b) UDHR
KN: The right of return is a universal right that is binding under international law, enjoyed by every people regardless of where they come from. The idea of universal rights is an ancient one, but one of its first international expressions is found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was proclaimed by the United Nations in 1948 "as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations". One of the core rights set out in the UDHR is the right of return. Article 13(b) of the UDHR states: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." Palestinian refugees are entitled to this binding universal right, in the same way that all other refugees are, whether they come from Bosnia, Rwanda, South Africa or anywhere else.
In spite of ill-founded - and quite frankly racist - arguments concerned with denying this universal right to them, the United Nations has frequently insisted on its particular applicability to Palestinian refugees, who constitute the world's largest refugee population. For instance, General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 2535, passed in 1969, recognises "that the problem of Palestine Arab refugees has arisen from the denial of their inalienable rights under the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights". In the same vein, UNGA resolution 3236 reaffirms "the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return."
UNGA Resolution 194
What is particular to the Palestinian case is the exceptional frequency with which the right of return was insisted upon, time and again, by the United Nations and the international community. UNGA Resolution 194 clearly resolves that "the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible". Israel's admission as a member of the UN was made conditional on its acceptance and implementation of resolutions including UN Resolution 194; this demonstrates that without question, the UN and the international community saw Israel as fully responsible for the complete implementation of this right. This right was further reaffirmed by the UNGA on more than 135 occasions, clearly reflecting the consistent will of the international community on this matter.
"The majority of the Palestinian people were forcibly displaced and uprooted from their homes and lands in 1948." - Karma Nabulsi
Of course, as well as being a universal right that is clearly applicable to Palestinian refugees on an individual basis, the right of return is conceptualised and understood by most contemporary international jurists as a collective right. The most recent expression of this can be found in Professor Guy Goodwin Gill's recent opinion piece and further note of August and September 2011, on the issue of refugees' representation at the UN. As one of the world's leading international lawyer for refugee rights, he emphasised the commonly understood legal position that the Palestinians' inalienable right of self determination and their right of return are both collective rights.
Broad consensus
Of course, the right of return is also a political and moral concept holding enormous importance for the Palestinian people. There is broad consensus that the right of return, along with the right of self-determination, is the foundation of the 63-year-old struggle of the Palestinian people. The majority of the Palestinian people were forcibly displaced and uprooted from their homes and lands in 1948 and modern Palestinian politics begins with the establishment of popular movements, parties, and associations concerned with claiming and struggling for the right of return. Dozens of these groupings, voluntarily founded and supported by thousands of refugees, had the term Al-Awda ["return"] in their name. The foundation document of every major Palestinian party, regardless of its ideology - ranging from Fatah's Bayan Harakatuna (1958) and the Declaration of the Foundation of the PFLP (1967) to the Hamas Charter (1988) - enshrines return as its first and foremost principle. Above all, the PLO's Palestine National Covenant, the basis of all Palestinian law, defines the Palestinian people's struggle as striving for the following objectives: "to retrieve its homeland, liberate and return to it and exercise the right to self-determination in it..." (Article 26).
The principle of return goes well beyond politics and extends to the realm of culture. The Palestinian artistic canon - comprising countless works, from the novels of Ghassan Kanafani to the paintings of Ismail Shamout - created and shaped what is commonly known as Thaqafat al-Awda [the "culture of return"]. In this cultural realm, as with the political one, the right of return is understood as return to the original homes, lands, cities and villages found in the entirety of historic, mandate Palestine.
"The national Palestinian consensus on this matter cannot be doubted." - Karma Nabulsi
Finally, Palestinians throughout the world have responded to the perceived threat to the right of return posed by the Oslo process by founding hundreds of civic associations concerned with defending this right wherever Palestinian refugees now live across the world, as well as active legal committees and resource centres, such as Badil. The unwavering commitment of refugees to this simple right has been illustrated time and again, most comprehensively in the Civitas Register of 2006- which engaged the mobilisation of thousands of Palestinian refugees in 26 countries, all reaffirming their unwavering commitment to this right. In short, the national Palestinian consensus on this matter cannot be doubted.
Contextualising
ML: Can you put the right of return into the context of the expected UN vote to recognise Palestine as a state?
KN: Palestinian legal advisors, associations, and movements have highlighted various concerns pertaining to the right of return that arise out of the September initiative at the UN as it is currently formulated. In particular, they have asserted the need for maintaining the PLO's status as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people at the UN, and have warned of the dangers of replacing it with the state of Palestine as its representative in the seat. As I noted above, the legal aspects of these concerns have been discussed in detail in a significant opinion by Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill in his recent briefs on the subject.
The right of return per se is not threatened by the current initiative. It is, as highlighted earlier, an inalienable universal right enshrined in international law and held fast to by the Palestinian people. The concern is that changing the representative at the UN from the PLO to the State of Palestine would adversely affect the ability of Palestinian representatives at the UN to claim and advocate that right, and that all Palestinians [should] have their representation at the UN. The PLO is the national representative of the Palestinian people as a whole, representing those inside and outside the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories. Being confined to the 1967 boundaries, the State of Palestine (which is yet to attain actual sovereignty on the ground), cannot claim to represent the refugees, unlike the PLO.
"Since the Oslo process began, the PLO has been consistently undermined." - Karma Nabulsi
This is not a question of names nor of titles. Indeed, the designation "Palestine" is currently used by our representatives at the UN. In its resolution 43/177, the UNGA acknowledged "the proclamation of the State of Palestine by the Palestine National Council on 15 November 1988" and it decided that, "effective as of 15 December 1988, the designation 'Palestine' should be used in place of the designation 'Palestine Liberation Organisation' in the United Nations system, without prejudice to the observer status and functions of the Palestine Liberation Organisation within the United Nations system..." Significantly, this wording ensured that the status of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people was preserved and reaffirmed by the UN. This formulation can be preserved by the leadership, whether or not it chooses to seek an upgrade to our representative status at the UN.
In any case, recent events, including the September initiative, have raised the vital question of representation and democracy. Since the Oslo process began, the PLO has been consistently undermined, and political fragmentation has been imposed upon the Palestinian people through the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA). In theory and on paper, the Palestinian Authority is a subsidiary body of the PLO - and the West Bank and Gaza's Legislative Council is incorporated into the Palestinian National Council (PNC) so there is one legislative body for all Palestinians, and all are equal politically under the law. In practice however, the PA is emerging as a parallel structure which excludes the refugees who constitute the majority of the Palestinian people. It is essential that this parallel structure not take the PLO seat at the UN, as the Palestinian refugees would be politically disenfranchised and legally and institutionally disempowered from making their claims to their rights at the only place that matters, the United Nations.
The PLO and the PNC
Furthermore, it is essential that the PLO and the PNC recover their legitimate role in Palestinian politics. Article 7(a) of the Fundamental Law of the PLO states: "The Palestine National Council is the highest authority of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, and it is the body that draws the policy of the PLO and its plans and programs." Moreover, Article 5 of the Fundamental Law states that the PNC is to be directly elected by the Palestinian people. The electoral system, issued on 17 July 1965, states: "Every Palestinian has the right to vote in PNC elections if he/she is 18 years old, if his/her name has been recorded in the final electoral registers, if he/she is of sound mind, and has not been convicted of a crime against national honour."
In line with these fundamental laws of the Palestinian people, there has been broad Palestinian mobilisation in recent months, and especially in the wake of the Arab Spring and in response to the September initiative, to reclaim and democratise the PLO and the PNC. In particular, there is a growing movement for holding direct elections to the Palestine National Council, which is the highest Palestinian legislative body, and which represents all Palestinians, whether they are refugees or not. The PNC is the body that creates the national strategies, platforms and policies of the Palestinian people, which the PLO executive committee should implement. Only a rejuvenated, democratically elected PNC can lay the foundation for effective representation of Palestinian rights, including the right of return.
A young demonstrator bears the Arabic numerals '194' on his forehead, referring both to Palestine becoming the 194th UN member and UNGA resolution 194 [EPA]
ML: When Palestinians demand that Israelis recognise the right of return it is not always clear whether what is being demanded of Israel is that it merely "recognise" that Palestinians have this right, without committing to actually letting hundreds of thousands - or millions - of Palestinians move into Israel, or whether Palestinians are demanding the actual implementation of this right? Is there agreement among Palestinians on this issue and if not, what are the main areas of debate?
KN: Palestinians do not simply demand the recognition of their right to return, but also its implementation, its exercise, and its translation into reality. This is not merely a moral theoretical stance, but a lived and concrete one, agreed upon by both the Palestinian people and the many host countries in the Arab world which they currently live, including Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon and the Gulf. In accordance with international law, all refugees must be allowed to return. Whether they choose to exercise that right or not is a matter for each individual refugee to decide for themselves.
ML: If the broad consensus is to demand an implementation of the right, is there a general understanding of which and how many Palestinians would be expected to move within Israel's 1967 border? Which groups would be prioritised?
IJG: The right to return is a right held by all Palestinians who were forced to leave their homes and properties, as well as their descendants. Two groups of Palestinians would exercise their right of return in what is today Israel: the so-called 1948 refugees who live outside Israel's pre-June 1967 borders (approximately 6 million persons today), and Palestinians who have become internally displaced persons (IDP) since 1948 (approximately 300,000 persons today).
There is no understanding of how many Palestinian refugees and IDPs would actually decide to return to their homes and properties in Israel, because such understanding would require that these refugees and IDPs are offered an opportunity to make a free choice about whether or not they want to return, based on detailed information about the conditions of return, including the procedure for reclaiming their property and available support, and other options available for them. No such opportunity has ever been offered to Palestinian refugees or IDPs since 1948.
The question of whether certain groups would be prioritised during return is part of the numerous technical matters that could be agreed upon by the PLO and Israel in conjunction with the international agencies responsible, with the aim of ensuring a smooth and sustainable process of return and absorption.
ML: Would Palestinian returnees who became Israeli citizens also have Palestinian citizenship?
IJG: In a scenario where the right of return is implemented, all 1948 Palestinian refugees who decide exercise their right to return are entitled to Israeli citizenship. The question whether they should also be offered Palestinian citizenship is outside of the scope of the right to return. It is a sovereign matter of the state of Palestine, and its practical legal implications for Palestinians who opt for such dual citizenship would be subject to bilateral diplomatic agreements with Israel.
SA: Although it is true that citizenship is an internal matter for the Palestinian state, it does have ramifications for Palestinian refugees, Palestinians in the diaspora, and those who are Israeli citizens. There are many options for defining who is entitled to citizenship, each with its own set of ramifications. The main criteria for determining nationality are set out in the Nottebohm (Guatemala v Lichtenstein) case, which focuses on a "genuine link" between the individual and the territory. Palestine would have great latitude under international law in defining the scope of the link for its nationals, and what the criteria would be for obtaining or claiming citizenship.
Defining nationals
Consider some of the ramifications, however, of the state defining its "nationals" in one of the two main ways that states grant citizenship: by jus sanguinis, blood relationship, or by jus soli, birth on the territory. As to the first, Palestine might define as its nationals anyone whose parent, grandparent or great-grandparent was born on the territory of historic Palestine, or whose ethnic origin was Palestinian during any (defined) period. If these were the criteria, without more, the risk is that states in which Palestinians fitting that criteria reside could determine that they are Palestinian citizens, remove whatever temporary status they have in that state, and deport them to the Palestinian territory. In the worst-case scenario, if Palestinians who are citizens of other states are subject to laws disallowing dual citizenship, or disallowing dual citizenship with states that have a conscription law, they could also be deprived of their second-state citizenship and removed to Palestine. As a matter of international law, this would be legal, as no individual has a "right" to more than one citizenship.
"The citizenship/nationality question also has a significant bearing on the refugee issue." - Susan Akram
Consider some of the ramifications of the state defining its "nationals" as including those born in the territory of Palestine. Under international law, a successor state (or a new state) must grant citizenship to all habitual residents of the territory, and it cannot arbitrarily withhold citizenship or denationalise any segment of the population habitually residing on the territory ("arbitrary" is defined on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity or religion). If Palestine were to be consistent with international law, it may be required to confer citizenship on Israeli settlers, if they are considered "habitual residents of the territory" - this, however, is highly ambiguous when settlers already have Israeli citizenship, and the uncertainty of whether prolonged occupation and settler implantation can "ripen" into habitual residence.
The citizenship/nationality question also has a significant bearing on the refugee issue, as I will discuss further.
ML: Let's look at some of the key Israeli objections to the right of return. First, Israelis argue that there is in fact no "right" of return because: 1) UN General Assembly Resolution 194 is non-binding since it's only a GA and not a Security Council Resolution, and 2), the language of the resolution itself merely states that Palestinians "should be" allowed to return, rather than what they argue is the more forcible and legally binding "shall be" allowed to return. Indeed, the phrase "right of return" was, according to the documentary record, removed from an earlier draft of 194 - precisely because the GA would not pass a resolution with that language. In trying to counteract this claim, an article by Salman Abu Sitta argues that UNGAR 194 "has been affirmed by the international community 135 times in the period 1948-2000. There is nothing like it in UN history. This universal consensus elevates the weight of this resolution from a'recommendation' to an expression of the determined will of the international community". But this language doesn't actually challenge the argument that it's non-binding. "Determined will" is not the same thing as international law, is it?
IJG: Israeli arguments of the above kind are flawed mainly because the right of return is not some "special right" claimed by Palestinians, but rather a universally recognised human right of all persons, irrespective of the reason why they have left their country. The right of return is not created by this or that UN resolution, but enshrined in numerous bodies of international law, including customary and treaty law. For refugees, who are persons who left their country involuntarily, this right is so widely respected and recognised as key to resolving refugee situations, that it is hardly ever questioned. Israeli efforts to argue that Palestinians are different have, therefore, no basis in international law. The language of UN General Assembly Resolution 194 and the more than 100 UN resolutions which affirm the right to return of Palestinian refugees, including UN Security Council Resolution 237 of 1967 which affirms this right for the 1967 Palestinian refugees, must be understood in this context. The real problem is the lack of political will of powerful UN member states to enforce Israel's respect of the right of return of Palestinians. Israel has used this kind of flawed argument in order to deflect debate about its own legal responsibility towards the Palestinian refugees.
SA: Argument one misconstrues the significance of General Assembly versus Security Council resolutions. The binding nature of any resolution from the UN depends, not on whether it is issued by the GA or the SC, but whether it rests on existing international law. The difference between GA and SC resolutions is a matter of the way powers are allocated within the UN organs. Only the SC can "enforce" a resolution through the use of armed intervention - the GA has no such power. That has nothing to do with the binding nature of international law, however, and if a GA resolution rests on binding principles of law, then whether those are enforced or not through the UN is a political, not a legal, issue.
Customary law
"Palestinian refugees have an absolute right to return to their original places of origin and obtain full restitution." - Susan Akram
Resolution 194 incorporated what was already customary international law in 1948, and has become an even stronger set of principles through widespread state practice to the present. Paragraph 11 of UNGA resolution 194 means that Palestinian refugees must be permitted to return to their precise homes and lands if they so choose. This is obligatory because only the return to one's place of origin is required of a state, since no state is obliged to absorb or resettle a refugee in a place not of his origin. That was law in 1948, and remains the state of the law today. Paragraph 11's requirements that Palestinian refugees have an absolute right to return to their original places of origin and obtain full restitution and compensation for properties taken or destroyed, were all binding legal principles at the time the resolution was drafted, and were meant to preclude political solutions that did not meet these legally required criteria for Palestinian refugees.
It is curious that states such as the United States now challenge the 'legality' of resolution 194. When the original draft of paragraph 11 was submitted to the General Assembly, the United States delegate confirmed that no new rights were being created. He commented that 194, paragraph 11, "endorsed a generally recognised principle and provided a means for implementing that principle".
Quite aside from 194 being a specific source of the right of return for Palestinian refugees, the right of return in general represents a complex interrelated set of rights grounded in distinct bodies of treaty and customary international law. The right of return is found in the major treaties and rules protecting individuals and groups in times of armed conflict under humanitarian law and the laws of war; it is found in treaties and principles governing issues of nationality and state succession; and it is found in the core human rights conventions governing state obligations in both war and peacetime, particularly in refugee provisions.
State practice
Since 1948, the evidence is overwhelming that the right of return for refugees - as an aspect of nationality, humanitarian, human rights and, specifically, refugee law - has become one of the strongest of existing state obligations. The widespread incorporation of the principle in international treaties and regional instruments has been reinforced by incorporation in peace agreements and state practice in virtually every part of the globe. State practice reflects this in the millions of refugees that have returned to their countries and homes of origin on the basis of bilateral and tripartite agreements involving both states and specialised agencies such the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, without states questioning their right to do so.
As for Argument two, this is inaccurate. Resolution 194 requires that refugees be allowed to return immediately as a matter of right, and without preconditioning such return on a general peace agreement or other criteria. Earlier proposed language intended to weaken, rather than strengthen, the notion of absolute right to return, was rejected by the drafters. This is apparent in the drafting history, in which amendments to make return contingent, for example, on the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement, were rejected.
The UN Secretariat, answering the question: "What is the meaning of the term 'at the earliest practicable date?' reviewed the record of UN proceedings. The proceedings reflect that the UK draft resolution included the word "possible" rather than "practicable". The Guatemalan delegation proposed the phrase "after the proclamation of peace between the contending parties in Palestine, including the Arab States..." In opposing this amendment, the UK delegate and the US delegates stated that proclamation of peace should not be prerequisites to the refugees' right to return, as their return must be immediate and obligatory. As the US delegate stated: "these unfortunate people should not be made pawns in the negotiations for a final settlement". The word, "practicable" was substituted for "possible", and the Guatemalan amendment watering down the absolute and immediate right to return was rejected by 37 votes to 7. The UN Secretariat concluded that there could be no doubt that once the Armistice agreements were signed, the conditions of stability required the return of the refugees.
Population transfer has happened before, but almost all such forced migrations have been regarded as illegal [EPA]
ML: Another objection is that the international humanitarian law, such as the fourth Geneva Convention or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognise the right of people fleeing war to return to their homes after cessation of hostilities, were enacted after 1948 and referred to "international conflict" rather than intercommunal/civil war, and therefore do not cover Palestinian refugees from that war. Can a Palestinian be considered "denationalised" or possessing the right to return to "his own country" when he or she was not living in a recognised state in 1948?
IJG: Palestinian refugees can be considered to be "denationalised" and possessing the right to return to their "own country" because they held the citizenship of Palestine under the British Mandate. They were citizens of their country, and their country was to be led to independence by the British, in line with the mandate of the League of Nations. Israel is the "successor state" in part of British Mandate Palestine, and under international law governing state succession, Israel is obliged to permit return and grant citizenship to all Palestinians who had lived there previously and to respect their right to their property.
'Israel's ethnic cleansing'
Moreover, although drafting and enacting the fouth Geneva Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights coincided with Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine, a strong legal argument can be made for the applicability of their provisions, due to Israel's continuing policy of forcible displacement of Palestinians, and because all wars in Palestine since 1948, including Israel's occupation since 1967, are recognised as international armed conflicts by the United Nations. |
Yes, I’m still around and there hasn’t been a better and more important time to subscribe to The Reinhardt Report. A major market correction is imminent.
The subscription cost is only $200.00 for a year. Here is the link to purchase a subscription:
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After your account is removed you may renew over at enronnext101.wordpress.com and I’ll get you back on the site.
Very Important!
The markets can only continue on this current path for so much longer.
And it is time to start paying some very serious attention to the/my leading indicators.
But first.. time to do some long overdue business.
Very Important!
With the exception of lifetime subscribers – pretty much every subscribers’ subscription has expired and the next couple of weeks everyone will need to renew.
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Next week (if you haven’t renewed by then) all subscriber accounts that have yet to renew will be removed and we will start from scratch.
It would be a good idea to copy my email address:
reinhardtagain@gmail.com
After your account is removed you may renew right now.
Very Important!
The markets will NOT continue on this current path for so much longer.
And it is time to start paying some very serious attention to the/my leading indicators.
But first.. time to do some long overdue business.
Very Important!
With the exception of lifetime subscribers – pretty much every subscribers’ subscription has expired and the next couple of weeks everyone will need to renew.
Very Important!
The rate is still $200.00 for a year and here is the PayPal link to renew:
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This Is My Public [i.e. free] Website. I Am “Reinhardt” (google it – if you’re not familiar: “reinhardt wall street”; then maybe add “legatus” to the search).
My [“Reinhardt’s”] September 15, 2008 stock market prediction discussed at 18:25 into the video link below.
Jessie Ventura Wall Street Conspiracy Documentary: http://vimeo.com/51494143 Wall Street Conspiracy Documentary:
Note the publication date of this paragraph from the published article below. (click on all images on this page to enlarge the image)
The above was published on Monday September 15, 2008. THE exact day of THAT market crash.
That article was not written on that day. That article was written in advance just in case the prediction actually happened. And it did.
A lot of people were watching quite closely prior to September 15 2008.
Even more people became aware the day of the crash:
If you really want to research further (much further) just google “reinhardt legatus”.
The prediction angered a lot of [self-appointed “alpha-males”] people as well, but it also woke a lot of wise people up.
The site you reading/are on right now (enronnext101.wordpress.com) is my public website.
My private website site (which will be 8-years old on February 09, 2016 ) where I follow news and events (geopolitical and geoeconomic) that allow me to predict market crashes and explain to subscribers in detail “how I called the date” of September 15, 2008 and how I will be calling the date of the next crash is not free. Because I’ll be within no greater than two weeks of market crash accuracy. Stock markets are not speculative. Stock markets are predictable. Totally predictable.
The cost for a one-year subscription to my private/pay-site is currently $200.00 and will be increasing to $300.00 and probably higher very soon.
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AdvertisementsFor years, Const. Jon Hall thought having flashbacks involving dead bodies was normal.
The Ottawa police officer often woke at night, screaming from violent nightmares. By day, he suffered panic episodes so severe he thought he was having a heart attack.
It's therapeutic for me.... It forces me to self assess, it forces me to think about what I'm going to write down and really get in touch with my feelings and those symptoms. - Ottawa police Const. Jon Hall
Hall always thought it was just part of his job. Then one day a colleague confided that he was suffering from PTSD.
"Honestly, it was one of the most awkward conversations I've had with him. Those first five minutes, I didn't know how to react," said Hall.
"It scared me a lot, because I was fearful for [him] — he was seeking treatment — but when he was talking, describing his symptoms, it was like he was describing me. He's never been to my house. He doesn't know me on a personal level, just on a work level. Yet there he was describing everything I was going through, everything I was feeling at home."
At home, Hall often found himself raising his voice at his wife and two small children. He felt both impatient and lethargic, and wore noise-cancelling earmuffs in the house so he wouldn't hear loud noises that may trigger him.
Diagnosed with PTSD, depression
Hall decided to seek help, and was diagnosed with PTSD and depression last year. That conversation he had with his police colleague prompted him to assess his own mental health, and he believes more first responders need to do the same.
He created an alter ego called The Bearded Cop, which he uses to blog and tweet about mental health and how it factors into his day-to-day routine doing traffic enforcement.
Us motor-officers always have each other's back <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/tacticaltuesday?src=hash">#tacticaltuesday</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/traffic?src=hash">#traffic</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/policing?src=hash">#policing</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ottpolice?src=hash">#ottpolice</a> with <a href="https://twitter.com/carbinekane">@carbinekane</a> <a href="https://t.co/QbqrqHDEO8">pic.twitter.com/QbqrqHDEO8</a> —@TheBeardedCop
"It's therapeutic for me.... It forces me to self assess, it forces me to think about what I'm going to write down and really get in touch with my feelings and those symptoms," said Hall.
"This is my way of breaking down that stigma. I'm just one person and I don't represent all police officers, but if it can get a conversation going here and there, hey."
Challenging police culture
Hall's Twitter posts are a colourful mix of traffic safety tips, light-hearted photos of him and his colleagues on the job, and funny and popular memes that he often ties to traffic enforcement.
How it feels when my partner and I pull over 2 drivers at the same time <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/sychronizedswimmers?src=hash">#sychronizedswimmers</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/policing?src=hash">#policing</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/schoolzone?src=hash">#schoolzone</a> <a href="https://t.co/1IDfcWsb1D">pic.twitter.com/1IDfcWsb1D</a> —@TheBeardedCop
His traffic posts are interspersed with links to Hall's more serious blog posts about how he copes with PTSD and depression as an 11-year veteran of the Ottawa Police Service.
His goal is to challenge the stigma surrounding mental illness that still exists within the ranks.
"That culture — I was part of it. Using that negative language such as'snap leave' is stuff I've said in the past as well," said Hall, referring to the pejorative term used by some officers for mental health leave.
Const. Jon Hall's tweets about traffic safety are interspersed with links to his blog about his struggles with depression and PTSD. (Twitter/@TheBeardedCop) "And that's one of the biggest challenges with culture. It's not something that comes necessarily from management or the executive. It's something that we all participate [in], we all perpetuate in our everyday language, from constables to civilians to anybody in the workplace."
Hall estimates he'll be in treatment for the rest of his life for his mental illness. He also does yoga regularly to keep his body and mind fit.
He acknowledges his ongoing struggle in his blog, and that's reflected by this Bearded Cop proverb found on the front page:
"By sharing myself to the world, I hope to rediscover parts of myself that have been lost or forgotten over time."This item has been removed from the community because it violates Steam Community & Content Guidelines. It is only visible to you. If you believe your item has been removed by mistake, please contact Steam Support
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Young Girl Poloma
Title Description Before she was wrecking fools in the arena, Poloma was once also a young girl. I think. Maybe. I don't know. Anyway, here's my attempt at, uh, youthifying her. You can find full vods of coloring at: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/205034877 (P1) https://www.twitch.tv/videos/205256709 (P2) I'll prolly upload sped-up version sometime soon. Probably. Save Cancel
Created by MAND4
Last Online 9 hrs, 54 mins ago File Size Posted Size 3.434 MB Nov 29, 2017 @ 7:53am 1920 x 1080 96 Unique Visitors 0 Current Favoritesby Alex Greenberger via artnews.com
The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. has commissioned Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald to paint Barack and Michelle Obama’s portraits, respectively, the Wall Street Journal reports. Both portraits will be unveiled next year when they are added to the museum’s collection.
Wiley is known for Old Masters–style portraits of contemporary black sitters. He has occasionally discussed the positive impact Barack Obama’s presidency had on artists creating images of non-white sitters. “The reality of Barack Obama being the president of the United States—quite possibly the most powerful nation in the world—means that the image of power is completely new for an entire generation of not only black American kids, but every population group in this nation,” he told BBC News in 2012.
The Baltimore-based Amy Sherald, who paints minimalist pictures of black Americans is less well-known than Wiley. She has had two shows with Monique Meloche Gallery, and next year will have a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.
Source: Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald to Paint Portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama | ARTnewsI am an evangelical Christian woman living here in Salt Lake City, and I am following the lead of my LDS neighbors. I am refusing to vote for Donald Trump, his campaign and his inexcusable rhetoric.
As people of faith in Utah, it’s time for us to come together, lead and emphatically state to the rest of the nation that Mr. Trump’s actions are not tolerated — that we refuse to denigrate and marginalize immigrants and refugees, that we stand against sexual assault against women, that we believe in the promise and potential of every child, regardless of race, gender or orientation.
In Utah, we hold strong to the value of hospitality — that everyone is welcome, that everyone deserves kindness and charity, especially the least of these and the most vulnerable. We hold strong to the value of family, building loving and faithful homes, and the belief that our children should have leaders to which they can look up and aspire. We hold strong to the value of providing equal protection for all people under the law, and we don’t believe we need to sacrifice religious freedoms to do it.
Ultimately, as people of faith, we believe in hope and promise, not hate and divisiveness. We believe that we can achieve more together than we can on our own. We believe that every faith — Mormon, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and more — adds to the dynamic, vibrant fabric of our state. Diversity doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us stronger, and Utah has always been a safe haven for those who have felt persecuted. Certainly, I don’t need to lecture the good folks of the Beehive State on the history of religious persecution.
Mr. Trump and his divisive, hateful campaign stand in stark contrast to all of these values, which we hold so dear. I’m a mother of two beautiful school-aged children, and I would never want our children to hear the atrocious comments he has made about women. I would never want my children to look at their immigrant and refugee classmates as “murderers and rapists.” I would never want my children to think that their Muslim neighbors weren’t worthy of the same rights as them.
In these final weeks of the election cycle, it’s time for us to show the world that the good, faithful people of Utah hold to our values and principles and we will not be swayed. We believe in a powerful, all-knowing God. We believe he is sovereign. But God’s sovereignty does not abdicate us of our responsibility to stand against the threat and reality of injustice, particularly when it’s inflicted on vulnerable people. And make no mistake, a Donald Trump presidency would mean gross injustice for immigrants and refugees — especially children in those communities.
I am an evangelical, and the majority of my neighbors here in Utah are Mormon. There is much that we could debate and there are probably many areas in which we disagree. But I absolutely agree with the majority of faithful Latter-day Saints who have shown great moral courage in standing up to the moral vacancy of Donald Trump. He cannot become president of this beautiful, diverse country. Let’s stand as people of faith and lead well, together.In 2002 I was happily trudging along as a psychiatric nurse working with street homeless people when I suddenly developed a bad case of Multiple Sclerosis. Shortly after (and with indecent haste in my opinion) the NHS retired me and I was left out on a limb. Being suddenly impoverished my family and I were uprooted from insanely expensive Oxford to merely expensive Shropshire. After a couple of years composting and grieving for my career I pulled myself together and went about retraining as an illustrator (which is what I wanted to do in the first place, long story…), finally graduating in 2008 and working as a freelance illustrator, teacher and general creative for hire ever since. Apart from a couple of glitches and a tory government I now seem to have more silver lining than cloud.
One of the glitches of MS which directly affect my work is that very often my hands will feel as if they are encased in gloves which are WAY too tight, making me stiff and fumble fingered. Not good when one is trying to draw! I developed a simple style of doodling as an exercise which helps me to limber up my hands before I start my “serious” work. It lets me start slowly and deliberately to begin mark making and, placebo or not, it doesn’t take long for me to feel less like I am drawing with my elbows.
Over the years I have often been asked when I am going to colour them in (I would rather stick pins in my eyes!!) and I have often been told that they would make a good colouring exercise. Interesting, the colouring advocates have always been women of a certain age. I am making no conclusions from this, merely an observation. However, in a recent article in the Telegraph it seems that French women are using colouring in as a short-cut to the zen like calm which most people find who draw or paint.
It has taken me three long years (even longer story…) but I have finally produced a self published book of my Extreme Doodles to cater for this apparent interest. If you are a volunteer in the VAN gallery in the Market Hall, Shrewsbury there are copies on sale and also a copy for volunteers to colour in in quiet moments.
Whilst looking immediately rather complex and detailed, even a few moments examination will show that the technique is very simple. I recognise everyone doodles differently, we all have a range of shapes and squiggles which turn up over and over again in the margins by the crossword or as evidence of a dull meeting, what I do is to pull my own together to develop a visual texture. Here then, in short, is the secret of Extreme Doodling (which is in no way extreme…)
Firstly I draw an outline using a thick marker pen. This is purely to be a container for the doodle and to make it a finite, encapsulated thing. I have taught seven year olds to do these doodles and we used thin paper to trace pictures of dinosaurs etc but it works equally well with a simple shaped blob or a ruled box. Here I am deconstruction one of my favourites, the Chameleon. Because chameleons are ace.
The next stage is to break up the main shape into smaller areas using a medium thickness pen. This allows you to approach the doodle in compartments, one bit at a time, rather than as one huge task. Originally this was simply because I would often keep one doodle going over several sessions but later, when I began to think of them as drawings in their own right, I found that I could use this stage to shape the drawing and add volume and definition.
The last stage is the most fun to a compulsive mark maker like me! All of us doodle and, as previously noted, we all have simple shapes or symbols that we unthinkingly draw. I simply take those shapes and meaningless, unformed marks and repeat them. Endlessly. As you can see in this detail of the finished Chameleon I have further broken the sections into strips and used them to make lines of swirls, triangles, hearts, flowers, whatever. Over time, as the marks fill the sections and spread across the whole of the outer shape, the doodle develops a visual texture. This texture relies, as many drawings do, on the multiplicity of marks made to draw the eye from one place to another. Because there is such a depth of visual texture, the eye never sees the inevitable (and when I do then, anyway, myriad) mistakes or wobbles or sudden changes of mind.
And that is it. Extreme Doodling relies on a series of simple tricks to develop a texturally complex image. Extreme Colouring, on the other hand, is an application of patience and observation and psychomotor skill of which I am completely incapable and I wish all such colourists the best of luck, they have my absolute regard!Show full PR text HTC EVO 4G LTE, Exclusively from Sprint, First HD Voice-capable Smartphone Available in the U.S.; Offers Best-in-Class Features, including Beats Audio,
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NEW YORK – April 4, 2012 – Sprint (NYSE: S), the only national wireless carrier offering truly unlimited data for all phones while on the Sprint network1, and HTC, a global designer of smartphones, announce the next evolution of the award-winning HTC EVO™ family: HTC EVO™ 4G LTE. HTC EVO 4G LTE focuses on exceptional improvements in camera technology, audio and voice quality on both the network and device.
HTC EVO 4G LTE will be available in the second quarter for $199.99 (excludes taxes and surcharges). The availability date will be announced later. Customers can sign up for updates today at www.sprint.com/evo4glte, and pre-order will begin Monday, May 7, at www.sprint.com.
HTC EVO 4G LTE is built on Android™ 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, integrated with HTC Sense™ 4. HTC EVO 4G LTE boasts brilliant features, including a vibrant 4.7-inch HD display, HD voice capabilities, 1.5GHz dual-core processor, large 2000mAh embedded battery and dual-cameras (8-megapixel rear-facing and 1.3-megapixel front-facing) with instant capture capability. HTC EVO 4G LTE brings back the fan-favorite kickstand built into the smartphone's refined, slim design.
With the launch of HTC EVO 4G LTE, Sprint becomes the first U.S. carrier to announce plans for a nationwide HD Voice network beginning in late 2012 as part of Sprint's Network Vision program.
HD Voice is the next-generation evolution of voice quality and the future of voice communications for mobile phones. The service will provide fuller, more natural-sounding and less fatiguing voice quality and should reduce troublesome background noises often found in a cafe or on the street.2 Users should expect to identify voices and hear every word better than ever. Sprint's commitment to HD Voice starts with HTC EVO 4G LTE, Sprint's first HD Voice capable device.
"Sprint has a long history of leading the wireless industry in innovation, and the debut of HTC EVO 4G LTE marks another chapter in that innovation story," said Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. "Once again, we are partnering with HTC to deliver the benchmark Android device for the year with the next generation of our award-winning EVO brand. We know our customers will appreciate the focus on audio and voice quality with EVO 4G LTE, including the addition of Beats Audio and HD Voice capability."
HTC EVO 4G LTE is Sprint's first device with HTC's Authentic Sound experience integrating Beats Audio™. The technology enables customers to hear music the way the artist intended with unique audio tuning that delivers thundering bass, soaring midrange and crisp highs.
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"The partnership between HTC and Sprint has resulted in one of the most popular and successful smartphone brands of all time with over 7 million EVO devices sold to date," said Jason Mackenzie, president, HTC Corporation. "With HTC EVO 4G LTE, we've created a desirable successor that is sure to excite the millions of current EVO customers and beyond with HTC's distinct design, amazing camera and authentic sound."
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Crafted from aluminum spaceframe in an anodized black finish, HTC EVO 4G LTE delivers cutting-edge function and style in a thin and distinctive design. The smartphone's 4.7-inch display and 80-degree viewing angle makes it easier to share pictures and video with others. The multiposition kickstand allows users to watch videos hands-free.
HTC EVO 4G LTE customers can enjoy an unlimited data experience with Sprint Everything Data plans. Sprint's Everything Data plan with Any Mobile, AnytimeSM includes unlimited Web, texting and calling to and from any mobile in America while on the Sprint Network, starting at just $79.99 per month for smartphones3 – a savings of $40 per month vs. Verizon's comparable plan with unlimited talk, text and 2GB Web, or $10 per month savings vs. Verizon's 450-minute plan with unlimited text and 2GB Web.
Sprint recently announced Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and San Antonio are expected to have 4G LTE and enhanced 3G service in mid-year 2012. Sprint 4G LTE will enable faster speeds for data applications, and the enhanced 3G service promises better signal strength, faster data speeds, expanded coverage and better in-building performance. The launch of these large metropolitan areas demonstrates the continued commitment by Sprint to invest in its network through Network Vision. Sprint customers in these areas will soon enjoy ultra-fast data speeds and improved 3G voice quality. Whether a Sprint customer is using a smartphone to share a video, checking the Web via a mobile hotspot, Sprint 4G LTE will make it easier. And, when someone makes an important voice call, they can expect to find a clearer connection and a stronger signal in more areas. For the most up-to-date details on Sprint's 4G LTE rollout, please visit www.sprint.com/4GLTE.
So, how does the EVO 4G LTE differ from the One X? As HTC tells it, the company was focused on three major factors: design, camera and sound. The first is really what distinguishes it, and much to HTC's credit, the EVO does its best to stand apart from the tightly packed crowd of large-screened slabs. The vast majority of the front is monopolized by that big, bright 4.7-inch 720p HD display, flanked by three touch buttons on the bottom and a thin speaker grill (not machine-drilled as seen on the One X and S, unfortunately), along with a 1.3MP front-facing camera on the top. Flip it over, though, and you'll see some fairly interesting design choices on the rear.The bottom two-thirds of the back is fashioned out of black aluminum. The top portion, which includes the rear 8-megapixel camera, is protected by a removable polycarbonate plastic back. Slip that off and you can have a look at a number of antennae, including NFC (compatible with the pre-loaded Google Wallet, among others). There, you'll also find the microSD slot, which lets you expand the phone's built-in 16GB of storage to 32GB -- a welcome feature for the multimedia fanatics who will likely be drawn to the phone but were concerned about the lack of external storage on the One X or S. According to HTC, the dual-material rear was put in place to make it easier for users to position their hands while taking photos -- in other words, you can feel the difference on the back without looking. Fair enough, though we wish striking aesthetics mattered just a bit here too.The materials are split by a long, thin, spring-loaded kickstand, whose red metallic color hearkens back to the original EVO 4G. HTC corrected a pretty glaring design flaw this time out, allowing users to use the kickstand with the phone positioned on either side, so you can actually charge the thing while you're consuming all your media hands-free. Speaking of correcting glaring flaws, the company assured us that, unlike past models (ahem, Thunderbolt ), this guy should have ample runtime, courtesy of a 2,000mAh battery -- a sizable improvement over the One X's 1,800mAh juicepack. No word on how much usage time that translates to with LTE enabled, but for now we're cautiously optimistic.Of course, you can't discuss bold design decisions without mentioning the aluminum band circling the perimeter of the device, not unlike the metal ringing the iPhone 4. An HTC rep repeatedly used the word "oozing" to describe this particular flourish. In spite of that odd phrasing, it doesn't look bad, per se, but it certainly contributes to the cluttered, somewhat schizophrenic design, and it also lends the handset a slightly jagged feel in-hand. Up top, you'll find a door for the micro-USB slot, mic and headphone jack, so you can take that proprietary Beats Audio for a spin. Unlike the Rezound, though, the phone doesn't ship with Beats earbuds -- an sacrifice to the cost-cutting gods. On the right side is the volume rocker and dedicated camera button. Lastly, the phone comes in at 0.35 inches (8.9mm) thick, just like the global One X, and weighs in a mere tenth of an ounce heavier at 4.7 ounces (133 grams).A lot of thought clearly went into the device's picture-taking capabilities, thanks in part to the ImageSense functionality that comes part and parcel with HTC's Sense 4 skin for Ice Cream Sandwich skin. To recap, it brings the experience in line with what you'll get on the One X and S. For starters, that dedicated button lets you access the camera functionality with the phone switched off. You can snap four shots a second with blast image capture, with the phone emitting a machine gun-like shutter sound effect (this can be turned down for all of those animated GIFs you want to capture in your local libary). Also nice is the ability to capture still images while shooting video. According to HTC, the phone's f/2.0 lens lets in "up to 44 percent more light than other leading smartphones," making it a solid choice for low-light shooting. Additionally, the flash on the rear automatically adjusts based on distance and light level, so you don't go blowing out shots.As we noted in our review, Sense 4 feels quite light on top of Ice Cream Sandwich. So far as we could tell in our brief hands-on period, the handset is quick and responsive, thanks in part to the 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 chipset (Sprint has confirmed that it uses MSM8960, the same chip inside the AT&T One X). HTC also promises that sound quality has been improved -- in fact, the EVO 4G LTE is set to become Sprint's first HD Voice -capable phone (: our impressions are here!), boasting hardware improvements on the handset itself, which should help reduce background noise and forthcoming boosts to the network, which are set to begin rolling out later this year. Apparently people still use these things to make phone calls. Who knew?All in all, the EVO 4G LTE is a promising team-up from HTC and Sprint. We prefer the simplistic look and feel of the One X, though the companies get some points for at least trying something different -- even if the cluttered design does feel a bit like a "too many chefs" situation. We also appreciate the focus on actual usable features, as opposed to, say, the gimmickry of the EVO 3D. Again, the EVO 4G LTE will be available for $199 at an unspecified time in Q2. If you need something to mark in your calendar, however, the May 7th pre-sale date seems a pretty good place to start.Zach Honig contributed to this report.A parent challenging the use of a nonfiction book about poverty in Highland Park ISD says it is a “socialist, Marxist book” taught with a political agenda.
Meg Bakich, a University Park mother of five, told an online talk show recently that she objects to the use of the book, The Working Poor: Invisible in America, in an Advanced Placement English class for college-level high school juniors. Students are asked to analyze texts and write about contemporary issues such as poverty, education and the economy.
“This English class is really a year-long undermining of American values,” she said.
A committee of parents, staff and students will soon review The Working Poor, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David K. Shipler, to decide if it should stay in use. The book is about men and women in the U.S. who live just above the poverty line.
It is the second title challenged in Highland Park ISD by a parent objecting to content. Another parent is appealing to the superintendent her request to remove a contemporary novel — The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein — from high school English classes.
Bakich has declined requests from The Dallas Morning News to discuss her challenge of The Working Poor. She discussed her concerns on the online radio program hosted by Women on the Wall, which describes itself as a conservative advocacy group. The discussion was recorded and has been posted on the group’s website at voicesempower.com/women-on-the-wall-radio.
The challenged books are among seven that Superintendent Dawson Orr suspended in September. He reinstated the books after national attention and backlash from other parents and alumni and students.
On the radio program, Bakich said the media has portrayed her opposition to the book as a “class warfare argument” and called that “the furthest thing from the truth.” She said her mother-in-law was part of the working poor.
“My husband was the product of a mother who worked three jobs, and he’s the first person in his family to graduate from college, and he’s an example of equal opportunity and the ability and the freedom to succeed — as well as the freedom to fail,” she said.
Bakich was joined in the discussion by Peg Luksik, a conservative politician from Pennsylvania, and Alice Linahan, a Texas tea party activist and founder of Women on the Wall and Voices Empower, a consulting firm for grass-roots politics.
Bakich said social issues have no place in an English class and “have nothing to do with great literature and rich literature and becoming a well-read, articulate person.”
If students do read books about social issues, she said they should also read books that portray other viewpoints and compare “poverty in a Marxist or socialist environment” to “poverty in a free market.” She suggested We the Living, by Ayn Rand, and America the Beautiful, by Ben Carson, a potential Republican candidate for the 2016 presidential election. Carson apologized earlier this month after accusations of plagiarism in the book and said he’s working with editors to make changes.
Bakich is a state advisory board member of Constituting America, a Colleyville-based organization founded by actress and political activist Janine Turner to teach adults and students the importance of the U.S. Constitution.
In an email, Turner and co-chair Cathy Gillespie called Bakich “a personal friend,” but said Constituting America “is not involved in Ms. Bakich’s current involvement with the school districts.”
Another book challenge is pending against The Art of Racing in the Rain. Lisa Mead, a University Park parent, filed a second appeal after a committee of staff, parents and students and the high school principal upheld the novel’s use. Mead filed a challenge to the book in late September about objections to sexual content and language. She wrote that the book is “not necessary for any age” and recommended a classic in its place.
In her latest appeal, Mead said the review committee was biased in favor of the book and did not consider “curriculum objectives” or compare it to an alternative book, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. She said the book “is below grade level reading and contains excessive profanity and sexually explicit content.”
Mead has declined to comment.
If Mead appeals a third time, the challenge would go to the school board, according to district policy.
Trustees are reviewing how the district selects book and handles book challenges. They may vote on policy changes in February.
Follow Melissa Repko on Twitter at @melissa_repko.It’s time the we stopped pretending that the Tea Party is some real organization that deserves our respect, with the media going so far as giving the Tea Party a rebuttal to the President’s State of the Union Address.
The Tea Party didn’t just invoke Hitler in a recent pro-gun fundraiser attacking President Obama. The Tea Party said that President Obama is Hitler. They even have a nice photo of President Obama sporting a Hitler moustache, titled “STOP AMERICA’S HITLER.”
Here’s a screen capture of the Tea Party Web page accompanying the email (there are two Web pages, one has the Hitler image, the other does not, though both compare President Obama to Hitler.)
Interestingly, Chris got this email from a German friend who is on the Tea Party list, and who’s old enough to have been a little boy during Hitler’s reign, and he was horrified by it.
When your political opponent gets this crazy, they not only lose all respectability, they also start earning a visit from the Secret Service, the FBI, and possibly an unmanned drone. This is the kind of thing you could imagine people saying right before they blow up federal buildings, or at the very least before they inspire others to violence.
The bizarre anti-Obama missive, titled “Stop America’s Hitler,” came out a few weeks ago from TeaParty.org, a conservative faction of the Tea Party that’s been quite vocal about putting its opposition to the President in the starkest of terms. It’s an email and Web ranting about gun control – what else? – and promotes the gun-nut lie that Hitler banned all guns. He didn’t.
Here’s a little from the TeaParty.org:
I am compelled to ask again: if you were to make a movie today about a nation where only the |
abbreviated as CFA, some thought employing a high-priced Toronto lawyer might backfire on the defense. Mr. Gold easily outclassed Mr. Veniot in closing arguments, but in the end, the jury was not convinced.
Dennis's uncle, Moosehead brewery magnate Derek Oland, released a statement supporting his nephew.
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"We are disappointed and dismayed by the outcome of the trial. We continue to believe our nephew and cousin Dennis is innocent and we will support him and his family members through the course of whatever legal actions will unfold. We want to reiterate that all Oland family members are certain Dennis had nothing to do with the death of his father. We are proud of Dennis and we continue to place our trust in the expertise of his legal team."
In a separate statement, Dennis's mother Connie said the family remained "proud" of him.
"We are shocked and saddened by the outcome of the trial. Our faith in Dennis' innocence has never wavered and the jury's decision has not changed that belief," she wrote.
The jury deliberated for two-and-a-half days before reaching their guilty verdict. They also recommended that Mr. Oland spend ten years in custody before becoming eligible for parole. In second-degree murder trials, the judge can take a jury's recommendations into consideration.
Sentencing was set for February 11.SALT LAKE CITY — A grand jury has indicted a 21- year-old "hacktivist," who is believed to have accessed two Utah law enforcement websites earlier this year.
John Anthony Borell III, of Toledo, Ohio, is charged with two counts of computer instrusion for allegedly hacking into protected computers without authorization on two occasions in January, and intentionally causing damage to servers hosting websites for two Utah law enforcement agencies.
Borell is believed to have accessed a server hosting a website for the Utah Chiefs of Police Association on Jan. 19, and one hosting the Salt Lake City Police Department website on Jan. 31. Prosecutors say he then tweeted about his actions, providing usernames and passwords to the site.
"I just need it back up for 30 seconds so I can log in and rick roll them all," Borell posted on one of his many Twitter accounts on Jan. 19, according to court documents.
A Salt Lake City-based Associated Press reporter contacted a man claiming to be responsible via Twitter, asking for more information. Borell responded with, "It was at the time an unrelated hack, just one I was working on, but I decided it was a good spot to spread the message about megavideo."
Megavideo and Megaupload are file-sharing websites that allowed users to share and watch files, many of them illegal. Federal agencies shut down the sites on Jan. 19, prompting hackers from Anonymous to retaliate by launching an attack on federal and public websites.
Related:
Personal information accessed in hack of SLCPD website A hacking collective known as Anonymous broke into the Salt lake City Police Department website Tuesday evening, and was apparently able to access the personal information of those who had registered with the site.
Damages to the chiefs' website was estimated to be $150,000, according to court documents. Website administrators for Salt Lake police calculated damages of nearly $33,000 for the incident.
Another tweet stated: "SLCPD. Shut Down The Website, But Its Too Late For Damage Control. I Have Your Crime Tip Police Reports. Will Keep Them Safe For You."
Salt Lake City took down the police website after noticing what had been done, specifically additional pages had been added to the site the agency uses to communicate with media and the public.
Borell allegedly claimed his primary motivation to hack the police website was SB107, a legislative bill that would have made it a crime to possess graffiti paraphernalia. The bill did not pass through the Utah Legislature.
The self-proclaimed hacker activist continued taunting the agency with various tweets, according to a complaint unsealed on Monday. "Looking at the files I snagged from you SLCPD, it seems these files can out your confidential informants, You should up your security," one stated.
KSL reporter Shara Park and other local news media had online conversations with the tweeter "ItsKahuna." The poster said he could provide a "sample of the released file" and shared a submission from the traffic complaints section of the police database. He also confirmed that he was part of "Anonymous" — an Internet group with no defined leadership or membership that targets various agencies, specifically law enforcement — and that he was responsible for hacking into the Salt Lake police website.
In another conversation, ItsKahuna wrote, "haha they wont ever find me, im too awesome :) Trust me, I wouldnt have gotten away with as much as I have if I wasnt careful enough to make sure I dont get caught Im like the gingerbread man, no one can catch me :P"
FBI agents arrested Borell in Ohio on March 20. He was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City Monday and pleaded not guilty to both counts.
The potential maximum sentence for each count of computer intrusion is 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Borell spoke only briefly in court Monday, noting that he had seen the charges against him and that he understood them. U.S. District Magistrate Judge Samuel Alba then set the case for a five-day trial beginning June 25.
Any potential plea agreements must be completed by June 11, the judge said.
Borell will continue to be held at a halfway house in Ohio.
FBI Special Agent in Charge David Johnson credited Borell's arrest to the "outstanding job" done by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office. He would not comment on whether Borell might be responsible for other hacking cases.
"His capabilities speak for themselves," Johnson said.
Borell declined to comment as he left the courthouse.
Contributing: Emiley Morgan
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Related Stories[That] by also giving a disproportionate amount of time to Mukesh Singh, the documentary feels like it should be titled not India's Daughter, but rather The Man Who Raped India's Daughter....India's Daughter quietly listens to what a rapist, murderer has to say. It doesn't rage, it doesn't even blink while doing so. And that just feels wrong. ( source
The documentary is unbalanced as the victim’s viewpoint is missing. The facts are hidden and the content is fake. Only Jyoti and I know what happened on that night and the documentary is far from truth.
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The onus of rooting out the threat of rape, or sexual violence of this kind, does notlie on India, nor is the crime of rape endemic to one specific region or culture. Rape is a hideous crime and violence against women has been a persistentfor quite some time. Today sexual violence is ubiquitous; you can find the victims wherever you look. Needless to say, the victims or the potential victims of this crime need to be protected.However, in the virtuous quest for a solution to this grave problem, ascribing its cause to one specific culture or associating it with extraneous and sometimes unrelated problems is not going to help. What the BBC documentary basically attempts to do is lump together two of the most complicated issues of Indian society, i.e. gender discrimination and nonsensical preference for male-child – which is sometimes extended to the level of– together and portray this horrendous combination as an explanation for, or even as the primary cause behind the crime of rape.Much as though I hate gender discrimination or misogyny, rape is caused by an urge that is much morethan that.Alas! Neither the BBC film-makers nor the preponderance of the Indian audience got it right in the first attempt. Indian government’s response was the, when they should have discussed the issue with the film-makers and asked them to edit the objectionable parts out.People love to stereotype other groups and, sadly, the director of the documentary, Leslie Udwin is no exception. But here, I dare say, "the other group" is not just the Indian male; it's the male population in general. In response to the ban from the Indian government, Ms. Udwin impetuously ended up labelling the whole of Indian society as “”. In her own words, “It is very sad but it is hardly surprising, in any way. And it does not really worry me because this is a sick society.”But that is not even remotely asas what she says next. She claims that "the men" (as a gender group) are "looking to keep the status quo." She, in essence, is summarily apportioning aon the entire male population for the crime of one depraved individual. Also she claims she has been raped. I cannot but fear that this much emotional attachment to the subject is bound, or is at least likely, to cloud one's judgement and objectivity.It would be a terrible mistake to think that the desire to commit such crimes stems merely and invariably from a patriarchal mentality. To understand the psychology of the rapists we need to dig deeper, much deeper than superficial self-exculpatory drivel of the mentally unstable perpetrator. The same reason we go to the doctors or researchers, as opposed to a mentally unstable patient, to enquire about the nature or treatment of various psychological diseases, is why interviewing the rapist with the hope of knowing more about rape, despite best intentions, is an utterly futile exercise.Many Indian writers/bloggers have voiced similar concerns as Piyasree Dasgupta who writes:Also the Avanindra Pandey, the man who was with Nirbhaya when she was attacked, said:All in all, Udwin lets the murderer say what she knew he would say and wanted to highlight. Not only that, she directly or indirectly, cajoles andother gullible people, who aresocial scientists or experts on Indian culture inway, intosomedemeaning generalizations aboutin this documentary as well. That is I think what has hurt many Indian viewers. Because that doesn't tell us anything new or lead us to a solution. Hence, I have to assume that Indians were never the intended audience of this documentary. It wascreated keeping the Indian Audience in mind.The logic that we needed an over-simplistic film that deals in misleading generalizations and is saturated withabout a, to create awareness on rape is sorely and dangerously flawed.It is like publicizing anrantwhile claiming that it's onlyto show people that the problem of terrorism exists. No, it's so that Osama Bin Laden can reveal his idiotic views about Islam and an ideal Islamic society. But the point that is frequently neglected is that an animal like Bin Laden is not an authority on the religion of Islam.Think about why we banned Awlaki's teachings on the internet. Because giving criminals media mileage isThe film was presumably made with an aim to create a vile perception about Indian societythat is the only thing it does thoroughly. And Udwin's generic views on Indian society make it amply clear as to her motives behind this film.What this documentary basically wants to show is the problem of rape exists in India, which is nothing new. The second point it wants to demonstrate is that Indian cultural mindset is favourable towards, or condones patriarchy or preference for male-children. This is somewhat still a problem indeed, especially in rural parts.And the third point, this culture is in and out of itselfand that this cultural mindset is what unilaterally motivates people toa crime like rape. I think this is a perilouslyand even offensive to a certain extent.Like I said, rape is not endemic to Indian subcontinent, then why associate it inherently with Indian culture? India actually has a higher conviction rate for the crime of rape than U.K. According to the Guardian, justwhereas India, being a developing country with a huge law and order problem, managed aconviction rate for rape in 2012. In one report researchers from the University of Surrey stated that. (seeas well)Also if you don't think in the per capita terms, you will find India leading on many fronts because of India’s large population. For example, in 2010, per 100,000 people, 1.8 incidents of rape were reported in India compared to a staggering 27.3 in the U.S. but the contrast won’t seem so drastic if it were in absolute terms. I know there is a reporting difference in these countries. However, there doesn't seem to be any reliable comparative study on the US and India when it comes to unreported rape-cases.So yes, this comparison is far from exhaustive and it doesn’t reflectthe aspects in correct perspective either. Also, most importantly, saying US has a rape problem has absolutely no bearing on the fight against rape in India.Whether it’s USA, UK, Australia or India, nobody, in his right mind, would expect to derive pleasure from, or live peacefully after, committing a crime like rape, or even murder, and the recent incidents are all a testimony to this truth. But rapes and murders do happen. So, the next important question is: why do rapes occur so frequently at so many places?Because not all rational-people are indeed rational and sane, something of a primal, animalistic impulse lurks deep within almost all of us. That is the burden of the evolutionary process that we all have to live with.The makers of the Documentary, instead of trying to get to the heart of this worldwide problem,tried to attribute the cause to a stupid preference for male-child and even ended up elevating that abominable inhuman perpetrator to the position of an expert on ‘Indian culture’, as though his assessments or thoughts are somehowof the predominant mindset of the majority of Indian men. There is somethingandin cherry-picking one of the mostpsychopathic minds that one could find in a country of over a billion people, and projectingas the classic example or theof that society.So, in light of all this, I believe we ought to refrain from pointing fingers and splittingabout which place is worse than the rest and must focus on the problem as a Global issue. Instead of trying to get one up on others, we should look to co-operate with each other in any way we can to eliminate this evil of rape.Had the documentary focused on Bollywood movies and item songs or how it's indirectly complicit in promoting female-objectification, violence or gender discrimination, I would have liked itand it would have led us into a positive direction.3 Shares 0
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Independent journalist Eva Bartlett (fresh from a videotaped exchange in which she skewered a befuddled Norwegian Aftenposten journalist) was invited onto RT Live for a debate with Dilly Hussain, deputy editor of 5PillarsUK, about the situation in Syria, with a focus on Aleppo.
The debate was extraordinary for the professionalism of Bartlett and Hussain's lack of dignity and professionalism, as well as poor moderation by the unnamed RT personality. (I inquired of RT regarding the moderator's name on 17 December but did not hear back before publication.)
Why is Hussain unprofessional? Because he engaged in ad hominem attacks on Bartlett and also against the media outlet he was appearing on. He serially interrupted Bartlett while she presented her facts (and Bartlett, after pleading for the courtesy to make her points uninterrupted, finally — out of apparent exasperation — interrupted Hussain, albeit on far fewer occasions).
First, ad hominem should have no place in any discussion. It is irrelevant to the facts of the matter, and it should serve as a loud warning that the name caller has a poor grasp of the facts or, even worse, wishes to present a case he knows is contrary to the facts. Second, interrupting an opponent is not only extremely rude, but it is underhanded in that it serves as a device to throw off the opponent: causing a pause in the flow of an opponent's argument, the loss of a train of thought, unnecessary repetition, or causing an unwary debater to become flummoxed and unfocused. These tactics of Hussain are rude, unethical, and speak poorly to his ability to persuade viewers with the command of his facts.
Early on Hussain cast aspersions at Bartlett and his host, RT:
It's a shame that you brought Ms Bartlett here who presents herself as a journalist. She's neither independent and nor can she quantify or qualify as a journalist. She's a grade A conspiracy theorist for the Assad and for the Russian regime.
Hussain does not state how Bartlett lacks in quantity and quality to be a journalist. Hussain seems assured of his journalistic integrity since his bio tells of his NCTJ Certificate in Print Journalism in 2010. But what kind of journalist reveals an animus by berating a colleague, even if he refuses to recognize her as such? Moreover, if he lacks essential journalistic debating qualities, would his certificate have any substantive value?
The website, 5PillarsUK, where Hussain edits, claims to be independent:
We are financially independent and that means that we are editorially independent. Everything so far has been financed from our own personal savings, reader donations and advertising.... We do, however, aim to raise money for this site through advertising and through individual grants and donations which won't impinge on our editorial freedom. [Italics added]
One wonders: how does accepting advertising money equate to financial independence? Academics Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their Propaganda Model posited advertising revenues as creating a conflict of interest. It is conceivable, however, that 5PillarsUK only accepts advertising that would not impinge on their journalism.
Early on, Hussain tried to bulldoze the debate over Bartlett; the RT moderator had also interrupted Bartlett once and stood back and allowed one guest for too long to try imposing himself over the entire debate. When the moderator finally spoke up, Hussain objected. This was shameful. Does fair play and any semblance of etiquette go out the window because it is a TV debate? Do viewers not deserve to hear, undisturbed, the arguments put forth by all guests equally?
Hussain's frequent interruptions made me think of über-Zionist Alan Dershowitz and how he tried to monopolize all the speaking time in a debate with Norman Finkelstein who exposed Dershowitz as a fraud and plagiarizer. It appeared to this viewer that Dershowitz was running scared. Bartlett ostensibly recognized the same as she accused Hussain of "Zionist tactics."
Hussain, who relies on Tweets from British aid workers and videos purportedly from Syria which he analyzes from his base in Britain, had the audacity to question Bartlett's sources. Hussain would be wise to be more skeptical to NGOs. Médecins Sans Frontières has even been accused of being involved in people-smuggling.
Barlett who had been on the ground on four occasions in Syria, including Aleppo and had interviewed Syrians while there, named her sources. Bartlett, appearing very conversant on the situation, answered every query from Hussain.
The moderator, however, equated the British social media sources of Hussain with the on-the-ground Syrian sources of Bartletts saying, "... there are two very opposing perspectives and they are quoting different sources which are very hard to verify in all cases..." Really? Bartlett's sources have names, so one assumes that one can go and find the person and check. It is a little harder to verify a Tweet, but Hussain did provide names later in the debate.
The moderator asked Hussain about media coverage.
Hussain's reply:
I know when I see news about Russia, I mean about Syria from Russia Today or from Press TV, I know that they are merely pushing propaganda to protect the Assad regime...
When challenged by the somewhat indignant moderator, Hussain offered:
You're misunderstanding my point; the point is that all media outlets claim to be impartial but they've got their agendas; they've got their loyalties where their interests lie...
This is a baffling statement from someone who identifies himself as a journalist. One wonders how that speaks to the points he made in the debate?
Bartlett, according to Hussain, has no trustworthiness. "She is an Assad regime apologist," he charges.
There is a certain pathos in a person who derides another person's credentials as a journalist while relying on Tweets and British aid workers. Douglas Valentine, an expert on the CIA, wrote, "... the modern AID worker is a highly indoctrinated fanatic." Furthermore, "... AID programs provide cover for the CIA and are symbolic of the evil intentions that lurk behind the righteous US façade." (Douglas Valentine, The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, Clarity Press, 2016: p 370.) Tweets have a place, sure, and some NGOs might be untarnished. Yet Hussain claims a certainty in his sources. He uses words such as "unequivocally" and "absolutely," as if such words verify his claims. But how do Tweets and videos stack up against speaking to people on the ground, people who live in the region, and witnessing for oneself what is transpiring?
Although the beleaguered moderator tried to steer Bartlett in another direction, Bartlett demanded to address claims made by Hussain. She then hoisted Hussain on hos own petard by pointing out that although he said UN statements ought to be taken with a pinch of salt, his own allegations of Russian massacres of Syrian civilians stemmed from UN officials.
Hussain tosses away any pretense to be a gentleman when he chides Bartlett: "Eva has no humanity, has no conscience." Through all these attacks on her person, Bartlett kept her composure.
She also had to deal with a moderator who seemed to be saying that there could be two truths: one for either side. Again the moderator opined, "... basically you got two sides throwing around accusations, very pointed ones, and then also backing it up with very questionable sources..."
Hussain's partiality comes through clearly to this viewer in his willingness to lambaste Saudi Arabia for war crimes in Yemen, but he does not lambaste Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, the US, Canada, Israel, Britain, France for their war crimes in Syria. His criticism focuses on Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, although he allowed that and everyone, including the US and Britain, has used Syria "as a chess game." This is patently biased and consequently propagandistic. He claims that he sees no difference between Russia in Syria and the US and UK in Iraq and Afghanistan? What Hussain does not consider is that had the US, Qatar, Saudi Arabia not been instigating "regime change" in Syria in the first place, there would have been no reason for Syria to request help in defeating the mercenaries and terrorists. Colleague BJ Sabri and I put forth the argument:
It is also important to note that if the US regime and its anti-Assad instruments had not participated in the aggression against Syria, then there likeliest would have been no Russian involvement, and Syrians might have been able to settle the matter for themselves. Logically, any blame for casualties resulting from Russian military involvement must be directly attributed to the anti-Syrian regime coalition—it is the law of action and reaction. In the end, we see that the ultimate culpability for all those who died in Syria rests exclusively with those who initiated the violence in the first place.
As Bartlett pointed out: Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah were invited by the government of a Syria to assist in combatting terrorism. A legitimate response for any sovereign nation. That was not the case in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The US and UK engaged in "regime change" in those countries. Russia and Iran are not seeking any change of government in Syria.
RT presents viewers with the four times on-the-Syrian-ground Eva Bartlett and sitting-in-Bedford-UK Dilly Hussain. And we are asked to choose between the sources of these two people. It seems a no-brainer. For this viewer, Bartlett put another journalist in his place, although in this case, Hussain did much of the damage to himself.
To conclude, Hussain appears duplicitous on critical issues. His suspicious ambivalence on Saudi Arabia, his adversarial stance toward Russia and Syria without valid reasons, his boorish attitude toward Bartlett, as well as poor arguments suggest that he is driven by an agenda whose origin is not clear. I do not want to be harsh, but from watching the way he tried to impose his views on the debate, he appears to be a classical opportunist seeking undeserved fame. Effectively though, whatever he thinks of himself, Hussain appears to lack the essential command of facts. Consequently, spotting the fraudulent arguments that he was defending should be a priority for all those who follow the American-Saudi-Turkish-Qatari war on Syria.
I would be surprised to see Hussain back on RT again.Having raised the Question, Ditko then set out to provide the A. -- the Answer -- in the form of brand-new comic books, chock-full of heroes.
Mr. A. is the quintessential Ditko hero. He is meant to embody the highest qualities of humankind – which, per Ditko's emphasis on individual reason and self-sufficiency, results in an unwavering dedication to making hard distinctions between good and evil, white and black, with any grey area between inevitably conductive to the continued survival of evil, and thus fundamentally irrelevant toward the correction of such. With Mr. A., you're either with him or against him, and he doesn't abuse his emotions in mourning the villains whose usage of Force and Fraud -- the twin towers of evil in Ditko's work, representing the perfect affront to personal liberty, and the ultimate frustration of reason -- demand a most permanent outlay of Responsive Force. Here he is 30 years ago:
As you might expect, Mr. A. is also on hand for two of the new comics:...Ditko Continued... [#3] and Oh, No! Not Again, Ditko! [#4], which serialize a new short story. But something is different:
Well, several things are different. First of all, Mr. A. is no longer so violent a presence. Mostly, he just spooks this guy into defeat with his color-changing cards, representing the pollution of “the white” with “the grey,” and thus the inevitable transition to “black.”
Is this an official superpower? I don't know. It used to be that Mr. A.'s placid white face was a metal mask he'd wear to protect himself from the blows of Force, but somewhere along the line Ditko began drawing it as his actual face. As the Joker might say, why bother taking it off, if that's who he really is?
More importantly, though, the consistency of superpowers isn't all that important to Steve Ditko comics, because superheroes tend to behave less as rounded, literal figures inhabiting a virtual comic book reality than broad metaphors. In other words, when I say this stuff is supposed to be “inspiring,” as far as I know, Ditko doesn't actually want people dressing up in fancy outfits and punching crime until it stops – rather, he's using superhero stories as a means of communicating the manner in which rational individuals comport themselves. It's not kids' stuff. Always, Ditko considered the superhero genre to be a legitimate art form capable of communicating relevant themes to adult readers.
To put things into perspective: Mr. A., if we're breaking out the fandom timeline, is technically a Silver Age superhero. Perhaps he represents the end of the Silver Age. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason he doesn't is because, for too long, superhero fans gauged the entirety of history in terms set down by Marvel and DC. But you can't abide by such limitations forever, if you're meant to think for yourself.
Speaking of limitations, are all of these stories about perfect, grinning superheroes terrifying stooges into submission?
Hey, I'm not gonna sugarcoat anything – Ditko has a very specific set of interests, and every one of these comics serve those interests. Sometimes, reading them is like encountering a series of particularly odd and specific religious tracts (which I'd enjoy anyway); many pages of the Phase 2 comics are taken up by full-page drawings illustrating these favored themes in a manner akin to newspaper editorial cartoons, but charged with Ditko's particular iconography. Here, for example, is a problem:
And here is the solution:
This hero, you'll be pleased to learn, is named the Hero, and he represents many of the visual qualities Ditko presently favors: strong, clearly defined separations between black and white values (get it?) representing Reason vs. the wavy, congealing, intermingling, random lines of all that is negative in the world. The same traits were present in the Mr. A. story above, both in Mr. A.'s card and the ghostly, outline-like figure of Mr. A. himself.
I am fascinated and thrilled and delighted by this stuff. Simple as the plots may be, seeing Ditko work his way through this perfect, intuitive visual system -- panels and pages utterly without fat, where individual lines carry distinct, thematically appropriate meanings, as delicate and personal and immediate as a man signing his name, over and over -- is to witness a master advanced so far in age and skill that crowd-pleasing additions of gloss and finish have been brushed away in favor of the fastest, realist communication of his message that he can possibly manage. Even the words his characters speak rarely cohere into full sentences anymore – instead, they are self-evidently visual elements, aimed not at mimesis of realistic speech patterns (which is the one and only criterion for how "good" dialogue is composed in much of the contemporary criticism) but premised for signals for thought, motivation and action.
There is an entire cosmos in these pages. Ditko once said that he never talks about himself, because his work is him. THIS IS HIM.Terry Pratchett’s Snuff (Doubleday) has become one of the fastest-selling novels since records began, shifting 54,687 copies at UK book retail outlets in its three days on sale last week.
Helped by extensive pre-orders and a £5 deal at Tesco, Pratchett's 39th Discworld novel has the biggest opening week sale from a hardback adult-audience novel since Transworld stablemate Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol (Bantam Press) in 2009. Along with Brown, only one other novel has sold more copies in its first week on shelves since records began: Thomas Harris’ Hannibal (Heinemann) sold 58,300 copies in four days after its release in June 1999.
Transworld managing director Larry Finlay said: "[Pratchett] is now firmly established as one of the nation’s most important and widely read authors, with so much to say about the world in which we live. I couldn’t be more delighted that with Snuff, Terry now joins a very select band of record-breakers."
James Patterson and Howard Roughan's Don't Blink (Arrow) was the second bestselling book of the week, scoring sales of 25,139 copies helped by a half-price "book of the week" spot in W H Smith. The latest edition of Guinness World Records enjoyed a small sales boost week-on-week, and climbs one position into third place in the Official UK Top 50.
Snuff was one of more than 200 hardbacks to hit the shelves on Thursday last week (13th October), in what was another huge day in the 2011 publishing calendar. Books released on Thursday that earn bestseller status this week include Ian Rankin’s The Impossible Dead (Orion); Cecelia Ahern’s The Time of My Life (HarperCollins); Danielle Steel’s Hotel Vendome (Bantam Press); the Hairy Bikers’ Perfect Pies (Weidenfeld); and the latest edition of Ripley’s Believe it or Not (Random House). A few others, including Jeremy Clarkson’s Round the Bend; Rob Brydon’s Small Man in a Book (both Michael Joseph); Michael Bublé’s Onstage, Offstage (Bantam Press); and Kirstie Allsopp’s Craft (Hodder), narrowly miss out on places in The Bookseller's bestseller lists.
However, the 13th October proved unlucky for some, with a few new titles getting off to comparatively slow starts in a competitive market. New books by “Top Gear” star James May, TV presenter Tess Daly, Olympian Sir Steve Redgrave and broadcaster Terry Wogan all failed to sell more than 500 copies in their first week on shelves last week.
As book fans look to the announcement of the Man Booker prize tonight (18th October), A D Miller's Snowdrops (Atlantic) has entered the Top 20 Mass-market Fiction chart for the first time. It sold 6,685 copies last week, which is more than double the next most popular shortlistee, Carol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie. The Canongate title sold 2,864 physical copies last week.
Overall, hardback book sales through Nielsen BookScan’s Top 5,000 bestseller list for the seven days to 15th October were up 15% week-on-week. However, due to a big decline in sales of paperback novels (down 10% week-on-week), overall book sales fell 1.9% week-on-week, to £33.8m overall.
Sales of printed books also continue to struggle in comparison to last year, with last week’s sales down 8.4% on the comparative week in 2010. Although sales of children’s books are relatively flat year-on-year, spending on non-fiction is down 10% and spending on fiction is down almost 20%, according to top 5,000 data.AAP suffers massive blow over cross-border drug smuggling case, leader Sukhpal Singh Khaira gets this notice
A fresh summons was issued against Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA and Leader of Opposition in Punjab Assembly, Sukhpal Singh Khaira by a court in Fazilka district on Thursday after the leader failed to appear for the court proceedings
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA and Leader of Opposition in Punjab Assembly, Sukhpal Singh Khaira. (PhotoL IE)
A fresh summons was issued against Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA and Leader of Opposition in Punjab Assembly, Sukhpal Singh Khaira by a court in Fazilka district on Thursday after the leader failed to appear for the court proceedings. Khaira is facing trial in a trans-border drugs smuggling case. According to reports, Khaira’s plea that challenged the summons by the trial court issued to him for an appearance on November 30 were turned down by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on November 17. However, the court had cancelled the non-bailable warrants issued against him by the court in Fazilka district and further directed it to decide the matter on merit.
The summons issued to Khaira came as a setback for the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP, that had fought the Assembly elections earlier this year on the anti-drugs plank, and it also resulted in sharp attacks from the SAD, Congress and BJP. While the AAP’s Delhi leadership has maintained silence over the summons to Khaira, Punjab leaders have sided with him. State president Bhagwant Mann and co-president Aman Arora even issued statements in favour of Khaira.
Khaira along with 4 others were issued summons by Sandeep Singh Jossan, the Additional District and Session judge, Fazilka and he further asked them to appear on December 21 to record their statements in the case under the NDPS Act. Others who were issued summons were Khaira’s personal security officer (PSO) Joga Singh, personal assistant Manish, Charanjit Kaur, a resident of Bath village (Jalandhar); and Major Singh Bajwa of Bajwa Kalan village (Jalandhar). After Khaira failed to be present in the court on November 30, the summon was issued against him under section 319 of the CrPC (power to proceed against other persons appearing to be guilty of an offence) following an application from the prosecution, PTI reported.
Earlier on October 31, the Fazilka court had sentenced nine people to imprisonment in the trans-border heroin smuggling racket which surfaced in 2015. AAP leader Sukhpal Singh Khaira had then moved the High Court on November 3 against the Fazilka court’s order. Khaira along with the Aam Aadmi Party had alleged that the case was an instance of political vendetta. The convicts were arrested by the police on March 9, 2015, along with 2-kg heroin, 24 gold biscuits, one country-made pistol, two Pakistani SIM cards and an SUV.The Smithsonian American Art Museum has finalized its lineup for the Art of Videogames exhibit, it said Thursday.
The official list contains 80 games (PDF), including Portal, BioShock and Shadow of the Colossus. Also on display will be Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, games that are generally ranked among the best of all time.
Selections were narrowed down from a list of 240 by a public vote. Some of the more interesting choices include Wii adventure Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure and the strategy game Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II.
Those 80 games will be displayed at the exhibit, which the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. will run from March 16 through September 30 of 2012, through images and video footage. In addition, five games will be playable at the museum: Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst and World of Warcraft.
Now we can officially end any and all discussion about whether or not games are art.
(Disclosure: Wired.com editor Chris Kohler serves on the board of advisors for this exhibit.)Yes, Young Adult books are quickly taking the second best source for movie source material after comics. Divergent, starring Shailene Woodley and Theo James, received some negative press because some people perceived it to be a Hunger Games wannabe. After seeing Divergent at the theater, I’d say it definitely falls into the Hunger Games post-apocalytic, divided society category. Beyond those commonalities, Divergent has enough originality to stand alone.
Divergent will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on August 15, 2014. This buyer’s guide will include Blu-ray, DVD and digital options.
Divergent On Blu-ray
This includes a Blu-ray disc, DVD and digital copy. The digital copy can be redeemed with UltraViolet. The Blu-ray disc displays the film in 1080p video with Dolby Digital 7.1 surround sound. The price of Divergent is $24.96 from Amazon.com.
Divergent Blu-ray Special Features
Bringing Divergent to Life Documentary
Faction |
to them as prey! Ha-ha!" Professor Port's boisterous voice echoed in the lecture hall, followed by an awkward silence.
"Uhh... And you shall too, upon graduating from this prestigious academy! Now, as I was saying: Vale, as well as the other three kingdoms, are safe havens in an otherwise treacherous world! Our planet is absolutely overflowing with creatures that would love nothing more than to tear you to shreds! And that's where we come in. Huntsmen! Huntresses..." the Professor paused to wink at Flora, who smiled and winked back.
Guess he liked the Huntsman then…
"Individuals who have sworn to protect those who cannot protect themselves! From what, you ask? Why, the very world!" Professor Port paced back and forth by his desk as he got sidetracked by a long-winded story. Yasmin was desperately trying to focus on what the professor was saying to make sure she didn't miss anything that could be of use in further studies, but as she looked at her partner, Slate was making himself busy chatting up some older girls sitting in the row behind them.
"Slate!" She hissed.
"Stop flirting and pay attention in class!" No response. The girls giggled at the younger boys words.
Oum give me strength… Enough of this.
Yasmin swiftly grabbed Slate's thigh and gave it a jolt of her semblance.
"YEOWTCH! What the-" Slate jumped in his seat. Port glanced in their direction and cleared his throat loudly.
"As I was saying; finally, I subdued the two Ursai and returned to the village a hero. The moral of this story? A true huntsman must be dependable! A true huntsman must be honorable! A true huntsman must be strategic, well-educated and wise! So, who among you believes themselves to be the embodiment of these traits?" Several hands shot in the air.
"Ahaha! Good, good! How about… you, young man! Step up and face your foe!" Professor Port bellowed jovially as he pulled the drapes off a large cage situated next to his desk.
The student walked down from his seat and took his place in front of the cage. Then he stepped down hard on the floor, making two daggers pop out of his boot soles.
"Ready."
"That annoying, womanizing… SCUMBAG!"
Twenty minutes later after the class had ended, Yasmin had made her way to the gym, and was presently hammering away with all her might on a punching bag. Just as she threw an electrically charged punch that severed the bag horizontally with a large crackle, Doctor Oobleck passed by the open door. He took one step forward, then did a double-take and backpedalled.
"Ah, Miss Meški! What seems to be the problem?" Yasmin frowned at the interruption as she looked down at the demolished punching bag at her feet.
"Nothing professor, just that I'm partnered with the most incompatible person in my year. He flirts with any girl he meets, he's casually throwing around racist commentary…"
"That sounds like quite an experience. Sit with me for a moment, will you?" the Doctor motioned towards a bench by the wall. As they sat down, Doctor Oobleck looked Yasmin in the eyes.
"While racism is indeed a very, very serious infringement, consider the fact that he is only a young man. It is highly likely he's just saying these things without actually regarding what he is, in fact, saying. You should try to talk to him more, impart on him that you are not comfortable with his choice of words." Doctor Oobleck leaned in towards Yasmin, with a smile displayed on his lips.
"As for the womanizing… allow me to tell you a story about a young, insufferable man I once made the 'pleasure' of making acquaintance with by the name of Peter Port…"
"… And ever since that day, so many, many years ago… There is none other in this whole wide world I'd rather have by my side in combat than Peter Port. The point, Miss Meški, is that you've only known this boy for less than a week. Give him time. Get to know him as a person. And only then may you judge if you were right or wrong about him. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go prepare for my guest lecturer's arrival for my next class." The gangly man rose to his feet and started towards the door. He had almost made it past the demolished punching bag as he paused, then kneeled down to retrieve something from within the ruined bag. He walked back to Yasmin with a piece of lightning-shaped glass.
"You could probably sell these. They are very beautiful." He then turned on his heel and zipped out of the room, leaving Yasmin alone with his words echoing in her head.
AN: Again, sorry for the rushed chapter. This has got to be one of the crappiest things I've ever written.
Reason why Port's lines are almost taken word-by-word from the show is that I felt it to be perfectly in-character for him to reuse his old material, even if it happens to be three years old by now.
I'll leave it up to you how the unnamed dude with the knifeboots took down his opponent (canonically a young beowolf). I'd like to imagine Flora and Xander did some stealthy use of their respective semblances to secretly aid him in delivering a swift kick to the beowolf's nads (because why not?).
I do not own RWBY, that's RoosterTeeth and Monty Oum.Exclusive: Sources linked to the intelligence community say it is believed that a Russian hacker of the election, Pyotr Levashov, was paid directly by Boris Epshteyn on behalf of both Trump and the FSB.
Patribotics hopes to expand reporting and commission other writers. If you would like to donate, there are buttons around the site, or you could make a contribution here.
Sources say the indictment on April 20th of Levashov in the US district court in Connecticut (where an FBI counterintelligence division is based) represents the first concrete move in court that openly leads towards the impeachment of Donald Trump and the prosecution of dozens of members of his team – because this hacker, the sources suggest, was compensated by Team Trump and the FSB jointly, and Team Trump, sources say, know it.
Mr. Epshteyn’s lawyers have denied to me in writing that he was ever an agent of Russia, and have said that neither he nor his parents were ever agents of the Russian state. However, I stand by my prior and current reporting on this public figure, who, until recently, was a member of the US Government as staff at the White House, as well as maintaining a constant public presence as a surrogate of Mr. Trump’s during the campaign, and on television for the White House after it.
Multiple sources with links to the intelligence community report that:
Trump Tower was a “command and control” center for the Kehlios botnet, dismantled by the FBI;
That the “Trump server” with a Trump Tower IP address, that was communicating with servers owned by Alfa Bank in Russia, and with Spectrum Health, had the data packets it sent opened on the hour by human members of Trump’s data team, located near to Trump Tower;
As I have previously reported here at patribotics, the server was ‘washing’ the DNC’s stolen, hacked ‘Vertica” database with voter registration databases – but new sources report further information that images were also sent from or to Russia, and opened by members of Trump’s own team on an hourly basis
That “Pyotr Levashov'” or “Peter Severa”, indicted by the FBI for running the Kehlios botnet, was recruited for the hacking effort by Mr. Epshteyn, who, sources say, was working for both the FSB and team Trump;
That in 2015, Trump Hotels was fined a pittance of $50,000 for malware and credit card fraud after it failed to correct an earlier “breach”, but that this was deliberate, as the credit card malware would later be repurposed to be used in the election;
That human accounts pushing out fake memes authorized by Russia were paid, via the Kelhios botnet being operated from Trump HQ, using bitcoin and a spam payments system previously used for pornography;
And that Pyotr Levashov, aka Peter Severa, is also connected to one Dante Jimenez, another top spammer who himself connects back to Hostkey – the Russian company controlled by Vladimir Putin, with servers in the Russian academy of sciences, that hosts Wikileaks
Sources further attest that the FBI intercepted the traffic between the Alfa Bank server and Mr. Trump’s server, and know exactly what was transmitted
Sources further report that there were at least two other “mother servers”, other than the one with the Trump Tower IP address, and the Spectrum Health server that simultaneously pinged Alfa Bank. Sources indicate that one of these two servers was at Spectrum Health, and transferred messages to Russia via a method called “iodine xfer transfer”, but that the US intelligence community intercepted all such messages
Sources close to the intelligence community indicate that the indictment of Pyotr Levashov in Connecticut this week represents the FBI ‘making its move’ to begin proceedings against Trump and his team, as, these sources say, Trump and many of those working for his campaign are well aware that they are tied by data to the criminal activities of Mr. Levashov
Multiple, other sources with links to the intelligence communities of more than one country, who were not the original sources on my exclusive story that Carter Page took a recording of Donald Trump to Moscow, confirm that this story is true.
There will be extensive further reporting on this exclusive story; please check back for updates.Some people like to keep the money they make. There's a word for those people, according to leftist economics columnist Eduardo Porter: (wait for it...) racists.
(Eureka!)
New York Times writer Porter says in Wednesday's “Considering the True Cost Of Keeping Taxes Lower” that Americans would have no problem shelling out mega-money for the government's pet projects if only we weren't so doggone filled with hatred for minorities. Eschewing notions of "rugged individualism" as a reason to hold onto one's earnings, Porter lands the front page of the Business Day section with the blunt accusation of racial hostility. It is, he says, the cause of our country's resistance to the extreme financial governmental confiscation found in other parts of the world. Porter paints America as strange as he mandates that we get with the program:
American tax policy must stand as one of the great mysteries of the global political economy...Wagner’s Law, named for the 19th-century German economist Adolph Wagner, states that government spending as a share of the economy will increase as nations get richer and their citizens demand more and better public services. This may approximate public policy in other industrialized nations. In the United States, it fails.
Porter's assertion that it is the rich who want to benefit from government services seems patently absurd...but he continues, ridiculing the country's wimpy federal government that just isn't giving (subsequent to taking) nearly enough for our own good:
Americans are paying dearly as a result, as their comparatively small government has proved incapable of providing an adequate safety net to protect those most vulnerable to globalization and technological change.
Furthermore, Porter tells us he just can't fathom why we'd want to keep our earnings, but then he hits pay dirt -- racism:
It is hard to understand the deep reasons behind the American aversion to taxes and government. Is it the vestigial expression of a rugged individualism born on the American frontier? Is it racial hostility -- an unwillingness by whites to fund social programs that some believe unduly benefit minorities?
Vilifying those racists for wanting to keep their money, he asserts:
I have written about this country’s uniquely stingy tax policy before. Small government, I believe, has proved to be no match for its social ills, too puny to offer much resistance to rampant inequality, stubborn infant mortality or off-the-charts opioid addiction. American voters’ uniquely intense hostility toward trade can, in the same way, be traced back to the government’s ineffectiveness in mitigating trade’s disruptions.
Citing a study by the left-wing Brookings Institute indicating that Republicans' plan to raise the estate tax exemption to $11 million will only help the super rich, Porter castigates the wealthy and ridiculously contrasts higher taxes with babies dying:
It is hard to conclude that the Republican proposal is about anything but that narrow sliver. If it succeeds, it will transform the United States from a low-tax country to a lower-tax one. And the mystery will persist: In cutting taxes as babies die and adults waste away in addiction, what do Americans mean by nation?
Porter isn't NYT's only supporter of the government's totalitarian confiscation of the citizenry's financial resources: on Thursday, the Times doubled down on allegations of American racism as cause for communist resistance. Alan Rappeport's “Tax Rewrite Could Mean Cuts in Safety Nets" argues that, since Republicans are talking about tax cuts, it's time to bring up something the paper had no discernible concern for during the Obama years — the deficit:
Republican lawmakers have largely dismissed concerns about how their $1.5 trillion tax cut would add to the federal deficit. Now, some Democrats are warning that the tax rewrite would ultimately be financed by gutting entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. The possibility of cuts to safety net programs appeared more likely on Tuesday, as the Congressional Budget Office warned that the tax bill could set off an arcane budget rule that would make deep cuts to Medicare over the next decade. Republican lawmakers have turned a blind eye to the effect of the tax bill on the deficit, saying the tax cuts would essentially pay for themselves through increased economic growth. But the party of deficit hawks is beginning to once again complain about the ballooning federal deficit, suggesting that spending cuts must be enforced to reduce the national debt, which has surpassed $20 trillion.
At a town hall-style event in Virginia on Tuesday night, Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker, said the most important steps that could be taken to reduce the national debt were spurring economic growth and making changes to entitlement programs.
For good measure, Rappeport quotes a big-name Democrat degrading and dismissing Republicans as maniacal congressional deviants:
Democrats said the tax bill was opening the door to the kind of entitlement cuts that Republicans had long wanted to pursue. “This is a nasty, two-step strategy that has long been the holy grail for hard-right Republicans,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader. “If this bill passes, you can bet the Republicans will immediately sharpen the knives for middle-class benefits."
To many at The New York Times, American politics is a clear-cut case of Democrats being virtuous providers for the masses while Republicans are sinister forces killing children. So is the state of the leftist mainstream media. But when those attitudes creep into discussions of economics by those who are supposed to have a knowledge of the subject, and when capitalist America is compared to countries with lower standards of living and still lamented as worse, we've wandered off the reservation in a bad way. Hard working Americans want to keep the money they earn. And it's that work ethic -- and the liberty which provides the possibility of its reward -- that has made the United States not a racist place, but a place that the Left trumpets so often: the longed-for destination of immigrants around the world.Heading into tonight's Republican presidential debate airing on Fox Business News, Florida's Marco Rubio is handily ahead of rest of the Senate Tea Party candidate pack in the polls (hovering between 11 and 14 percent recently, behind the peculiar frontrunner pair of Donald Trump and Ben Carson, and ahead of fellow Floridian Jeb Bush, who has noticed).
This week the farthest-behind Tea Party Senator, Rand Paul of Kentucky, has apparently eyed Rubio as a rival who needs to be taken down. Paul has bashed the Floridian over foreign policy and immigration. (Rubio is being hit from all sides for largely abandoning his job as Senator as he runs, but I'm not sure that's a very resonant point with a GOP primary electorate.)
For those rooting for the most libertarian Rand Paul they can get, the foreign policy part is a good sign, the immigration not so good. While I give Paul credit for speaking his actual policy mind on both issues, not going purely for political gain, I doubt either tactic is going to prove political gold.
Maintaining Paul's foreign policy realism cred likely misreads the typical Republican voter's feelings on foreign policy. And people in a tizzy about people living or working here without their papers in order don't need Rand Paul.
On foreign policy, as Paul said on CNN on Sunday:
"I see [Hillary Clinton] and Rubio as being the same person," he said. "They both wanted a no-fly zone. They both have supported activity in Libya -- the war in Libya that toppled Gadhafi, an intervention that made us less safe. "They both have supported pouring arms into the Syrian civil war, a mistake that I think allowed ISIS to grow stronger. And they both have supported the Iraq War. So I mean, what's the difference?" He was particularly critical of both Clinton and Rubio over Libya, saying the two had advocated an intervention that led to instability and turned the country into fertile territory for ISIS. "I fault Hillary Clinton. I fault President Obama. But I also fault the neoconservatives within my party like Rubio who have been eager for war in Libya, in Syria, in Iraq, and they want a no-fly zone in an airspace where Russia is already flying," Paul said. "It's a foolhardy notion, and people really -- this is the kind of stepping it up to a debate over who would best be commander in chief that we really need in our country," he added.
As Matt Welch has documented here, Rubio is indeed a worst of every world foreign policy nut who has learned nothing from the mistakes and bad outcomes of past interventions and thinks everything will be better with more, while also pretending this is compatible with fiscal conservatism. Remember when Rand Paul made the damaging-to-his-reputation call for a military budget rise of 16 percent over the next two years, with accompanying cuts elsewhere? That was supposedly intended as a procedural jab at Rubio for making the same proposal with no sense of how to pay for it.
Will reminding Republicans Hillary shares those awful qualities be helpful with Paul's immediate political task of knocking Rubio down a peg or three?
Sure, Republicans hate Hillary reflexively, which is doubtless why Paul thinks it might be a gotcha to point out that she shares Rubio's foreign policy views. But Rubio's closeness to Clinton on those issues is shared by the rest of the GOP field, even supposed fresh-air outsiders Trump and Carson. (Trump at best is wary of foreign interventions that don't directly fill imperial coffers.)
Paul, unfortunately, remains resolutely outside the mainstream of what either major party wants to offer in his relative foreign policy realism and sense. He's so far seemed to fail at selling the value of his point of view to his potential national constituents. Doing so should be one of his prime goals for tonight.
But the more likely end game of stressing that is that, in the event of a Clinton vs. Paul race next November, lots of formerly somewhat loyal GOP foreign policy minds will just abandon the Republican Party to go where the interventionist action is. Many Republican voters who see American military swagger as essential even if embodied by a woman they hate would likely follow.
On immigration, Paul wants to call Rubio to task for being a prime mover in 2013's failed comprehensive immigration reform bill, which passed the Senate (with both Paul and Cruz voting against) but didn't get passed the House. Paul kept hitting in a Breitbart interview:
“Rubio teamed up with the Hillary Clinton wing [of the Democratic Party] on immigration, teamed up with Chuck Schumer on immigration,” Paul told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview here on Friday night over pizza and beer at Millstone Pizza and Taphouse. “I think it’s been a little bit forgotten in some of the debate, but yeah—he was a part of the ‘Gang of Eight.’ At some point in time, he probably needs to be made to own it. He does own it. It is his baby, but he seems to have disowned his baby right now.” Rubio has not been asked in any of the presidential debates about the only legislative accomplishment he’s had as a U.S. Senator — passing the ‘Gang of Eight’ amnesty bill through the U.S. Senate. Paul thinks Rubio should be asked about that accomplishment during the upcoming debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Rubio himself has backed away from that plan, saying that alas any attempt to normalize the already-here illegal must take a backseat to border security. That was pretty much Paul's position during that 2013 debate: encircle the nation in impregnable wall first, think about common sense ways to normalize the currently illegal later.
As Shikha Dalmia has outlined here comprehensively, Paul's actual policy proposals on immigration have been crummily restrictionist, refusing to see the obvious analogies someone of even libertarian sympathies should be able to see with the drug war (which Paul mostly opposes though not to the extent of calling for full federal legalization) and the war on immigration: "they both involve criminalization of minor offenses, militarization of the border, violation of elementary civil liberties, hyper-intrusive surveillance, and over-zealous local enforcement. "
At the same time, Paul's rhetorical framing on immigration has sometimes not been that bad, including nods to the absurdity of actual capture and/or deportation of all current illegals. In essence this means he understands that something that immigration opponents will call "amnesty" is pretty much inevitable.
Rubio at least has the sense to admit that crackdowns on illegal immigrants require the incredibly privacy-violating and life-ruining (when the system doesn't work as planned, which it won't) expedient of an e-verify system through whose bureaucratic maw all of us will have to pass to legally get a job in this country.
Paul likes to pretend that we can keep illegal immigrants from working effectively without interfering with legal Americans rights via federal e-verify mandate. It's nice he recognized a bridge too far for someone with even mild libertarian or civil liberty bonafides with e-verify, but it is the logical conclusion of treating illegal workers as a vital public policy crisis demanding government action.
The weeds of Rubio's current complicated set of immigration proposals can be dug through here.
Rand's father Ron hit the silliness of border-wall security obsession onstage at a GOP debate in 2012, in colorful Ron Paul fashion. "Every time you think of a fence keeping all those bad people out, think about those fences maybe being used against us, keeping us in."
Given Rand Paul's poking at Rubio over the 2013 reform bill, and Rand's pretty consistent calls for increased and effective "border security" as the preface to any immigration reform, it seems impossible we'll see any repeat of that tonight.
Politically, though, Paul can't really distinguish himself from the rest of the restrictionist pack, and if it ever comes down to Paul and an opponent on toughness on immigration, Paul has said plenty of things softer than the average GOP voter probably wants to hear. As Dalmia reported:
Paul delivered a speech before the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce so sympatico to the plight of immigrants that the Statute of Liberty would have wept. He chastised Republicans for treating immigrants as "liabilities rather than assets," supported a pathway to legalization for undocumented workers ("If you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you"), and defended bilingualism ("Republicans who criticize the use of two languages make a great mistake").
While one could be excused for detecting some ambiguity at least in Paul's attitude toward immigration, if not the specifics of his generally restrictive or punitive suggested legislation, Paul insists lately that he's been staying the course, remaining himself, on all issues, saying the same things he's been saying for four years:
“I give the same speech I gave four years ago, with a little bit of variety. But I’m not a believer that really we’re doing anything wrong or made a misstep. “All the stories that say: ‘Oh, his campaign sucks, that’s why he’s doing poorly’ … not really. It has nothing to do with my campaign. It has nothing to do with me, really. It may mean people are liking the more bombastic message, but that’s just not me. “I’m giving the same message as when I was higher in the polls.”
It may be, then, that Rand Paul 2016 still has a lot of the basic education of the voting public in libertarian, or at least libertarian-ish, ideas to do. (Or maybe he believes if the distractions of Trump and Carson were to disappear, he'd regain ground in comparison to the experienced candidates.)
Tonight's debate would be a good time to really make people understand why Rand Paul's role in the race, and in his Party, is both distinctive and vital. Just mocking Rubio for being part of a failed legislative solution that acknowledged complications involved in the existence of millions of people already here illegally that demand more than just shouts of "no amnesty" isn't apt to help much.
Rubio's press office did not respond to a request for comment on Paul's jabs by time of posting. If they reply later, will update this post accordingly.University students mobilize in Montreal after Trump wins the U.S. elections
Since the results of the U.S. presidential election were announced, university groups, such as the Quebec Public Interest Research Group at Concordia (QPIRG Concordia) and Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), have hosted events in opposition of the win of president-elect Donald Trump.
“When I say fuck, you say Trump!,” shouted SSMU president Ben Ger to the crowd gathered outside of Redpath Museum on the McGill campus on Thursday, Nov. 18. “Fuck,” shouted Ger. “Trump!,” shouted the crowd of about 20 students in response. “Not my president!,” Ger yelled back.
“After the election, I noticed that some of my friends supported Donald Trump,” said Charles Keita, a participant at the event, a McGill student and Florida resident. He said while this is not an issue, as a person of colour, it is concerning to see some of the statements his friends have shared in support of Trump. However, he mentioned there is a need for dialogue between both political spectrums.
“As a society, we should keep in contact with those with differing opinions because it’s the only way we can make the conversation continue,” said Keita. “By communication, we can still make a difference and that’s why we shouldn’t be silent—not today, not tomorrow—because our voices are needed.”
On the morning of the U.S. election, QPIRG Concordia announced a public community meeting to be held the following day, said Jaggi Singh, the programming and working groups coordinator for QPIRG Concordia. “There were more than 100 people who showed up—all of whom were in some way critical of or opposed to the policies of Trump and what Trump represents.”
There are plenty of reasons why Trump’s win would anger people and create fear, said Singh. “Trump is someone who ran a campaign on demonizing and marginalizing migrants,” Singh said, adding that he openly proposed to ban an entire minority group and bragged about sexually assaulting women.
Singh said there were many ideas put forth by community members to QPIRG Concordia, including monitoring hate crimes and using popular education to inform people about the policies being implemented, said Singh. Popular education is described as education aimed at empowering those who feel marginalized and encourage them through their learning to generate social change.
“Some people emphasized being able to [converse with] some people who might be empathetic to Trump’s ideas,” said Singh. “We, as Canadians in general, can’t live in this bubble. People just can’t be like, ‘Well I’m not that type of person so I’m just going to ignore them’—we need to engage people.”
Concordia journalism student Julian Krajewski, who is eligible for an American citizenship, said he feels QPIRG is not providing that opportunity to develop dialogue between the left and right, as he was banned from commenting on QPIRG Concordia’s first post-election “Resist Trump!” event on Facebook.
“I got banned from one of the events for just asking a question about my safety if I showed up in a MAGA hat,” said Krajewski, referring to his Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat.
“It sounds troll-y to them—I wasn’t trying to be troll-y. I was just asking what would happen if I showed up because, in their description of the event, it just says they are organizing to come together in resistance against the Trump movement.”
Singh responded to The Concordian about the instance, stating the “Resist Trump!” community meeting was for people who oppose Trump and his far-right, anti-immigrant, racist and misogynist policies. “Julian Krajewski clearly supports Trump and openly expresses far-right, anti-immigrant views, so it makes no sense for him to join the group except to troll it,” said Singh. “He is, of course, free to set up a “Support Trump” Facebook group for people who share his views, or to try to organize a public debate about Trump.” Singh said he does not recall Krajewski trying to join the group.
“I have serious concerns about the safety of my ideas and my ability to openly express them in the very institution of our society that is supposed to house and encourage such discussions,” said Krajewski. He said the QPIRG members he has interacted with have treated him with hostility and unjustified skepticism and belittling. “The attitude that anyone who doesn’t [agree] with left-wing politics on campus needs to be resisted or ignored or excluded is the very same attitude that they are accusing Trump supporters of,” he said.
“There are definitely very quiet Trump supporters on campus. I’m definitely the most vocal that I’ve ever seen,” said Krajewski.
Krajewski said the Trump movement has been labeled as racist due to the media. Trump himself has been identified as a racist, a white supremacist and a misogynist, which Krajewski said is because the media attempted to find anything to portray him negatively, and denied manipulating video and audio footage of him. “In all his rallies, he has said ‘I want to help Americans, if you pay your taxes—doesn’t matter what skin colour, what gender you are,’” said Krajewski.
“Trump is the pro-American guy and he’s the first pro-American politician to actually have a chance to be elected [in my lifetime],” said Krajewski. “It was the great American resurgence, the way I see it. We’re going to have to see how it plays out.”
Graham Dodds, an associate professor from Concordia’s political science department, offered his opinion on the U.S. election results, particularly on how Trump’s win will affect Canada-U.S. relations. He said, while it will not be like the “bromance” portrayed between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Barack Obama, the US-Canadian relationship is more institutional than based on leaders and their political leanings. “Presidents and prime ministers come and go, but the strong Canada-U.S. relationship largely persists,” said Dodds. “Even though Trump might greatly strain the relationship, the relationship is strong enough that it will endure, hopefully.”
“Trump is going to be inaugurated on Jan. 20. He is not perceived as the actual president of a huge segment of the population, so there’ll be protests,” said Singh. “I think it’s fair to say Montreal [will] join into those protests.”
Singh said Prime Minister Trudeau extended an invitation for Trump to come to Canada. “It’s fair to expect Trump to be in Ottawa or the Ottawa area in the early months of 2017,” said Singh.
Singh announced yesterday QPIRG will be visiting Ottawa if Trump accepts Trudeau’s invitation. Though the details have not been finalized, as Trump has not yet responded to Trudeau, QPIRG plans to mobilize if a visit from the future president is scheduled.
QPIRG Concordia will be hosting the next “Resist Trump!” community meeting on Nov. 23 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at QPIRG Concordia, at 1500 de Maisonneuve. If there are too many attendees, they will meet in the CSU lounge on the seventh floor of the Hall building.Most Americans were taught a cartoonish version of the first Thanksgiving, but the history of the Pilgrims and Indians was far more complex—and harrowing.
Whether we realize it or not, we all have an image of the first Thanksgiving that’s more or less a cartoon we were taught in grade school. In the autumn of 1621, a plucky group of black-clad, buckle-shoed Pilgrims and stoic yet friendly Indians feasted together after a successful autumn harvest, heralding a promising new friendship between their two peoples.
The actual history of the first Thanksgiving is of course nothing like the grade-school story—it’s far more interesting and complex. While it undermines the bowdlerized, multicultural narrative of peaceful Indians and well-meaning Puritans living together in harmony, it also informs a radically more nuanced understanding of the world the Pilgrims found when they landed at Plymouth in December 1620.
Among the most compelling historical accounts of that world comes from Charles Mann’s intriguing 2005 book, “1491,” a revisionist history of the pre-Columbian Americas that renders our storybook conception of the first Thanksgiving obsolete and, by comparison, rather boring. The truth is, the Pilgrims were able to survive and establish their colony because they were drawn into the political machinations of Massasoit, a shrewd and calculating Indian leader who was trying to figure out how to save his people from apocalypse.
The Indians Drew The Pilgrims Into a Political Alliance
Massasoit was the sachem, or political and military leader, of the Wampanoag confederation, a loose combination of villages in southeastern Massachusetts. About five years before the Pilgrims arrived, Massasoit’s people had been decimated by diseases brought by earlier European traders. Entire villages had been depopulated—including a Patuxet village that the newly arrived Pilgrims settled into and named New Plymouth.
As Mann explains, Massasoit was in a bind. The epidemic that had hit the Wampanoag hadn’t touched their longtime enemies to the west, the Narragansett. Massasoit feared his weakened people would be overrun, so he decided to gamble and let the Pilgrims stay. European traders had been visiting New England for at least a century, but Indian leaders always forbid them from establishing permanent settlements. The relationship was strictly transactional. Far from seeing the Europeans as superior, writes Mann, the Indians had good reason to take advantage of these strange newcomers:
Shorter than the natives, oddly dressed, and often unbearably dirty, the pallid foreigners had peculiar blue eyes that peeped out of the masks of bristly, animal-like hair that encased their faces. They were irritatingly garrulous, prone to fits of chicanery, and often surprisingly incompetent at what seemed to Indians like basic tasks. But they also made useful and beautiful goods—copper kettles, glittering colored glass, and steel knives and hatchets—unlike anything else in New England. Moreover they would exchange these valuable items for cheap furs of a sort used by Indians as blankets. It was like happening upon a dingy kiosk that would swap fancy electronic goods for customers’ used socks—almost anyone would be willing to overlook the shopkeeper’s peculiarities.
Massasoit’s plan was to allow the Pilgrims to stay—as long as they allied with the Wampanoag against the Narragansett. His first meeting with them, however, almost ended in a pitched battle. Massasoit sent two interpreters into the Pilgrim settlement on November 22, 1621. The first, a man named Samoset, was a trusted ally of Massasoit. The second, Tisquantum—better known to us as “Squanto”—was not.
Squanto is of course the friendly Indian from our grade-school textbooks who teaches the Pilgrims how to plant corn and fertilize their crops with fish. The truth about Tisquantum, a member of the Patuxet tribe of the Wampanoag confederation, is that he encountered the Pilgrims after a long and harrowing journey of his own. Seven years before that first Thanksgiving, Tisquantum was captured by British sailors and sold into slavery in Spain, where he was eventually freed by local Roman Catholic priests. He made his way to London, where he learned English and, writes Mann, “served as a kind of living conversation piece at a rich man’s house.”
Tisquantum eventually arranged for passage back to North America, but when he finally arrived back in Massachusetts, about a year and a half before Massasoit’s meeting with the Pilgrims, he found his entire tribe had been wiped out by disease. Mann describes Tisquantum’s former home along the New England coast as a “cemetery two hundred miles long and forty miles deep. Patuxet had been hit with special force. Not a single person remained. Tisquantum’s entire social world had vanished.”
With nowhere left to go, Tisquantum presented himself to Massasoit, but the Indian leader didn’t trust him. He had kept Tisquantum “in a kind of captivity since his arrival, monitoring his actions closely,” and wouldn’t let him negotiate with the Europeans on his own, writes Mann.
The First Meeting at Plymouth Almost Ended In Bloodshed
On this November day at Plymouth, Massasoit sent Samoset and Tisquantum ahead while he and the rest of his Indian party kept out of sight. What followed was a tense encounter that could have abruptly ended the Pilgrims’ foray in the New World:
Samoset and Tisquantum spoke with the colonists for about an hour. Perhaps they then gave a signal. Or perhaps Massasoit was simply following a prearranged schedule. In any case, he and the rest of the Indian party appeared without warning at the crest of a hill on the south bank of the creek that ran through the foreigners’ camp. Alarmed by Massasoit’s sudden entrance, the Europeans withdrew to the hill on the opposite bank, where they had emplaced their few cannons behind a half-finished stockade. A standoff ensued.
It ended when Edward Winslow, who would later serve as governor of Plymouth Colony and co-author an account of the first Thanksgiving, waded into the creek wearing a full suit of armor and carrying a sword. Through Tisquantum, he offered himself as a hostage. Mass |
from their words. One understands thus that the Spectacle, where politics and economics remain abstractions separated from metaphysics, represents for them a prior form of Publicity. But it is in fact all the old petrified dualisms that, in the substantive continuity of meaning, abolish themselves. In the midst of these rich totalities of meaning, full and overt, eternity finds itself lodged in each instant and the entire universe in each of its details. Their world, the city, shelters them as an interiority, while their interiority has taken on the dimensions of a world. They are already, in a partial, provisional, and sadly reversible manner, in the “restoration of the broken unity of the real and the transcendent” (Lukacs). But for the caprices of domination, their life leads itself to the realization of all human potentialities that it contains. This next figure of Publicity corresponds to the maximum deployment of this, that is to say that it espouses language without the least restraint, that it is the language, just as it knows silence. With it, essence is no longer distinguishable from appearance, but humanity has ceased to confound these with itself. With it, Spirit has its Rest, and attends in peace its own metamorphoses. Language is there the unique law, new and eternal, that goes beyond all past laws of which it was certainly the material, but in a crystallized state. If the ancient forms of Publicity bring themselves up in more or less equilibrated constructions, more or less harmonious, this one is on the contrary horizontal, labyrinthine, and topological. No representation can surpass it on any point; all its space advertises being explored. As to the operational articulation of the Imaginary Party, in regard to the innervation of the world, this is not assured by any system of vertical delegation, but in a mode of transmission itself inscribed in the limitless horizontality of language: that of the Example. The geographical plane of the world of Tiqqun in no way signifies the abolition of values and the end of all human pursuit of exploration. Only, it is by “the authority of the prototype and not the normativity of order” (Virno) that it is permitted to humans, as it already is to fractions of the Imaginary Party, to impose their excellence. The map of the world that we draw is nothing other than the map of Spirit. And it is at present this Publicity of Spirit that, on all sides, overflows the party of nothingness, of which the idiocy and baseness become each day more ferocious and more intolerable. We will put an end to it, inevitably.
26) Without doubt, the war of attrition that the Spectacle leads against the Imaginary Party and freedom henceforth devastates entire regions of the social space. There it decrees measures of protection of which have been common only in world conflicts: curfews, military escorts, methodical information gathering, control of weapons and communications, putting into trusteeship whole sectors of the economy, etc. The humans of our time march straight to an immeasurable fear. Their nightmares are peopled with tortures that no longer belong only to the domain of dreams. Now, one speaks of pirates, of monsters, and of giants. Tied to the progress of a universal sentiment of insecurity, facial expressions bear the evidence of a fatal and continued accumulation of small nervous fatigues. And as each epoch dreams the following, little sultans emerge suddenly and dispute amongst themselves the control of a public space already reduced to the space of circulation. The weakest spirits give themselves over to insane rumors that no one is in a position to confirm or deny. Tenebrous infinities have filled the distance that humans have left amongst one another. Each day make a little more clear, in spite of the growing obscurity, the lugubrious profile of civil war where no one knows who does and does not fight, where confusion is limited by death alone; where nothing is assured, in the end, but worse to come. We thus hold ourselves, on this side of all growth, in the evidence of the disaster, but nothing can restrain our glances going to the beyond. Thus it seems that these are the “birth pangs” which no new epoch has the right to preserve itself from. Those who sharpen their glance to distinguish in the night the nearby combat of giants discover that all this desolation, all these dull echoes of cannon, all these faceless screams are not, in fact, but of the lone, hideous Titan of commodity domination which in its bloody delirium struggles, howls, burns, and tramples; to insure that we want its hide, it hurries off nonsensical orders, rolls on the ground and finishes by hitting with all its weight the walls of its living-room. In the profundity of its folly, it judges that the Imaginary Party is only the obscurity that surrounds it, and that this must be abolished. To hear it, it seems to have had it with this territory of wrongdoing that persists in never coinciding with the map, and already it menaces it with the worst reprisals. But in proportion as the day exhausts it, no one listens anymore, its closest subjects themselves lend no more than an absent-minded ear to this capering old lunatic. They act as if to listen, and then they wink at one another.
27) The Imaginary Party awaits nothing from the present society and its evolution, because it is already practically, that is to say the existence in fact, of its dissolution and transcendence. Consequently, it is not a question for it of taking power, but solely of making domination fail everywhere, by durably making it impossible for its apparatus to function—the temporary character, and even the fugitive places, of the contestation that operates under the banner of the Imaginary Party explain themselves by this: it is guaranteed to never become a power itself. This is why the violence it has recourse to is of a totally different nature than that of the Spectacle, and this is also why it fights alone in obscurity. While commodity domination unleashes its “empty liberty”, its “negative will which has no feeling of existence save in destruction”(Hegel), so long as its pointless violence aspires to nothing but the infinite extension of nothingness, the exercise of violence by the Imaginary Party, although unlimited, only attaches itself to the preservation of forms of life that power prepares to alter, or already menaces. From thence comes its force and its incomparable aura, from thence also comes its richness and its absolute legitimacy. Even in the midst of the offensive, it is a violence of conservation. We rediscover here the dissymmetry of which we have spoken. The Imaginary Party does not pursue the same end as domination, and if they are concurrent, it is that each one among them wants to destroy that which the other attempts to realize; with this difference however, that the Spectacle does not want more than that. That the Imaginary Party should come to the end of commodity society and that this victory should be irreversible will depend on its faculty of giving intensity, greatness and substance to a life free of all domination, no less than the aptitude of its conscious fractions to make this explicit in their practice as much as in their theory. It is to be feared that domination would yet prefer to the eventuality of its defeat a generalized suicide where it will be at least assured of bringing with it its adversary. From one end to the other, it is a bet that we make. It belongs to history to judge if what we undertake is but a beginning or already an end. The Absolute is in history.Militants, including suicide bombers, killed at least 13 Yemeni troops outside the southeastern port city of Mukalla today, the army said, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.
An army official spoke of three suicide bombings and held rival jihadists of Al-Qaeda responsible, but an IS statement posted online said one of its militants was behind the attack.
It was a rare intervention by IS in the city which was held by rival jihadists of Al-Qaeda for a year until they were driven out by government troops last month.
"A knight of the knights of martyrdom, brother Hamza al-Muhajir... Was able to detonate his explosives-laden car at a post of the apostates of the militia of (President Abedrabbo Masour) Hadi," the IS statement said.
Several soldiers were also wounded in the attack on the eastern outskirts of the Hadramawt provincial capital, the military official said.
The deadly assault came shortly before Prime Minister Ahmed bin Dagher arrived in Mukalla with several ministers on a one-day visit aimed at reviving government institutions in the city, a local official said.
One suicide bomber rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into the gate of a base in the Khalf district, followed immediately by a second who blew up a car in the centre of the camp, the military official said.
Jihadists clashed with soldiers outside the base immediately after the bombings.
A third suicide bomber targeted the nearby residence of the commander of Hadramawt's second military region, General Faraj Salmeen, but he escaped unharmed, the official said.
The commander of the province's first military region, General Abdulrahman al-Haleeli, survived a suicide bombing against his convoy yesterday that killed four of his guards.
Al-Qaeda was driven out of Mukalla and nearby coastal towns last month with support from Emirati and Saudi special forces.
The Pentagon revealed last week that "very small number" of US military personnel has also been deployed around Mukalla in support of the operation to retake the city.
The US Navy also has several ships nearby, including an amphibious assault ship called the USS Boxer and two destroyers.
"It does not serve our interests to have a terrorist organisation in charge of a port city, and so we are assisting in that," Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said.
The offensive against Al-Qaeda comes amid a truce and peace talks between the government and Iran-backed rebels it has been fighting with support from a Saudi-led coalition since March last year.
Jihadists of both Al-Qaeda and IS took advantage of that conflict to expand their presence in Hadramawt and other areas of the south, including second city Aden where the government has its base.Usually, the first couple weeks of spring seem to drag on and on, but for some reason, that is not the case this year. We have been here for over 2 weeks now, and the intensity of the players has not wavered a bit. The coaches and staff have been upbeat and excited to get better everyday, and the players have been relentless in their work level. The days start early (around 5:00 a.m.) and players are still working hard in the cages and weight room, far past quitting time. I sense a youthful excitement that is obviously initiated by the fact that we have more twenty-something players than anybody in the league, but our well seasoned veterans are still leading the pack with being the first to arrive and the last to leave. Our ongoing culture of hard work, and work done well, seems to be impacting the next generation of players, and my only fear is that our coaching staff is going to pass out from all the extra work requests. What does all this mean? Nothing really, except that the guys are taking care of what they can control at this point of the season, and that is the hard work of preparation, and learning the discipline of pushing their bodies and minds beyond where most will go. I believe that it will pay off in the end.
Today is the first game of the spring and I believe that the players are ready to begin competing. A great deal has been made about the competition inside our camp for multiple positions, but that is really just a distraction to us, and distractions are the first opponent that we will face this season. Unfortunately, they will keep coming, unless we decide to take their legs out from under them.
At this level, our guys are naturally competing every single second they are awake. They can't help it, as it is in their DNA. They are competing against themselves and anyone who tries to tell them that they cannot do something as well as they believe that they can. Today we will attempt to deflect the distractions that come from the baseball world, and the real world of LIFE, and put our attention on competing on the field to show our talents. I can't wait to watch these guys grow together as a group, and begin to showcase their talents against some of the best in the game. I pray each day for health for each of these guys and that we will all maximize the gifts we have been given, and the opportunity to compete to be the best that we can possibly be. If we each compete in a way that meets our own expectations, then the results will be there. Let the competition begin.[Rating T13][Romance][Drama][One-shot]
Primal instincts is written as a “what if Nick went savage” story with a twist, especially when dealing with Nick’s “condition.” I really enjoyed the different take on Nick’s “savagery,” which brings a new idea to the table and really aids in this story’s uniqueness. Overall, the writing is superb and a great read all around, -ZNN Namicle
Author: Starfang’s Secrets
Description :
Bellewether was in custody and Nick and Judy were friends once again. In fact, the Chief himself offered the fox a job on the force. What more can a fox ask for? Good balance would be one of them. Another being that the Nighthowler pellets be more resistant to being stepped on. Can Nick resist the influence of the serum? Or will he lose himself to its sway?
Primal Instincts
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Additional Tags: SAVAGE!!Tiffany & Co. History
The 1830s in New York City were a time of dynamic growth and golden opportunity for anyone with a little capital and an abundance of imagination. In 1837 New York became the proving ground for 25-year-old Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young, who opened a “stationery and fancy goods” store with a $1,000 advance from Tiffany’s father.
On their way to the new emporium at 259 Broadway, fashionable ladies in silks, satins and beribboned bonnets faced a gauntlet of narrow streets teeming with horses and carriages. At Tiffany & Co. they discovered a newly emerging “American style” that departed from the European design aesthetic, which was rooted in ceremonial patterns and the Victorian era’s mannered opulence. The young entrepreneurs were inspired by the natural world, which they interpreted in patterns of simplicity, harmony and clarity.
Tiffany first achieved international recognition at the 1867 Paris World’s fair. The company was awarded the grand prize for silver craftsmanship, the first time that an American design house had been so honored by a foreign jury. Tiffany was the first American company to employ the British silver standard (92% pure). Largely through the efforts of Charles Lewis Tiffany, this standard was adopted by the U.S. Government.
The Tiffany & Co. silver studio was the first American school of design. Apprentices were encouraged to observe and sketch nature, and to explore the vast collections of sketches and artwork assembled by Edward C. Moore, the celebrated silversmith and head of the studio. By 1870 Tiffany & Co. had become the America's premier silversmith and purveyor of jewels and timepieces. At the turn of the 20th century the company had more than one thousand employees and branches in London, Paris, and Geneva.
In 1878 Tiffany acquired one of the world's largest and finest fancy yellow diamonds from the Kimberley diamond mines in South Africa. Under the guidance of Tiffany's eminent gemologist, Dr. George Frederick Kunz, the diamond was cut from 287.42 carats to 128.54 carats with 82 facets, which gave the stone its legendary fire and brilliance. Named the Tiffany Diamond, the stone became an exemplar of Tiffany craftsmanship.
The legacy of Tiffany design is richly told in the annual Blue Book Collection, featuring Tiffany’s and the world’s most spectacular jewels. Initially published in 1845, the Tiffany Blue Book was the first such catalogue to be distributed in the U.S. Since 1878, the signature Tiffany Blue® color has distinguished the catalogue’s cover, as well as the famous Tiffany Blue Box®, an icon of style and sophistication.
In 1886 Tiffany introduced the engagement ring as we know it today. Previously, diamond rings were set in bezels. But Mr. Tiffany’s ring was designed to highlight brilliant-cut diamonds by lifting the stone off the band into the light. This famous ring was named the Tiffany® Setting. To this day, it is the most sought-after symbol of true love.
Having introduced major gemstones to the United Stated through purchases of the crown jewels of France and Spain, Mr. Tiffany’s enterprise was now the world’s diamond authority. At the same time, the world had embarked on the Age of Expositions that took place in Europe and America. At every venue, Tiffany won the highest honors. The company’s exhibit at the 1889 Paris fair was heralded as “the most extraordinary collection of jewels ever produced by an American jewelry house.” Tiffany produced an equally praiseworthy collection for the 1900 Paris fair, along with magnificent silver pieces based on Native American designs. This unprecedented number of awards led to Tiffany’s appointment as Royal Jeweler to the crowned heads of Europe, as well as the Ottoman Emperor and the Czar of Russia.
With the death of Charles Lewis Tiffany in 1902, Louis Comfort Tiffany, the founder’s son, became Tiffany’s first art director. His position as America’s leading designer was well established by 1882, when President Chester Arthur invited him to redecorate the White House. By 1900 the younger Tiffany was a world leader in the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movements. The famed artist created a remarkable range of designs, from technically brilliant leaded glass to colorful enameled and painterly jewels based on American plants and flowers.
Throughout the jeweler’s history, the most prominent members of American society were Tiffany customers. Vanderbilts, Astors, Whitneys and Havemeyers adorned their evening dress in Tiffany diamonds and commissioned the company to produce gold and silver services. President Lincoln purchased a seed pearl suite for his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, in 1861; and a young Franklin Roosevelt purchased a Tiffany engagement ring in 1904.
As the 20th century progressed, Tiffany designs captured the spirit of the times, from the extravagance of the 1920s to the modernism of the 1930s and the aerodynamic age of the 1940s and 1950s. Tiffany china set the stage for White House dinners and Tiffany jewels accented the elegant clothes of the world’s most glamorous women, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor and Diana Vreeland. Very often Jean Schlumberger created their jewels. This great 20th century jewelry designer arrived at Tiffany in 1956. His bejeweled flowers, birds and ocean life remain the pride of Tiffany & Co.
Throughout Tiffany’s history, the U.S. Government has called upon the company to create commemorative designs. Among them are ceremonial swords for Civil War generals; the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award; and the 1885 redesign of the Great Seal of the United States, which appears on the one-dollar bill.
Business and professional organizations have also commissioned Tiffany to create custom designs. The most well known is the Vince Lombardi Trophy for the National Football League Super Bowl® Championship. Tiffany has created the trophy since the first Super Bowl in 1967.
In addition to Jean Schlumberger, Tiffany welcomed other visionary designers, including Elsa Peretti, who transformed 1970s jewelry design with an elegant simplicity based on natural forms; and Paloma Picasso, who followed in 1980 with jewelry of bold originality.
Throughout the company’s history, Tiffany designers have drawn on the natural world for inspiration. Nature is also the source of the precious metals and gemstones necessary for creating their designs. Tiffany was an early proponent of obtaining these materials in ways that are socially and environmentally responsible. As Tiffany & Co. Chairman and CEO Michael J. Kowalski, has said, “Our position as a leader in the luxury jewelry market gives us the opportunity and the responsibility to conduct our business in a manner that is consistent with our core beliefs—protection of the environment, respect for human rights and support for the communities in which we do business.”
In 2012 Tiffany marked its 175th anniversary. In honor of this milestone, the Tiffany Diamond was reset in a magnificent necklace of dazzling white diamonds. After traveling to gala celebrations in Europe, Asia and the United States, the diamond in its new setting returned to its permanent place of honor on the Main Floor of Tiffany’s Fifth Avenue store.
This priceless gem is symbolic of a heritage based on the highest standards of quality and design excellence. These standards have made Tiffany & Co. one of America’s great institutions, a world-renowned jeweler with over 200 stores worldwide, and something more: the trusted maker of gifts that will be treasured for a lifetime.
TIFFANY & CO., TIFFANY and the TIFFANY BLUE BOX are trademarks of Tiffany and Company.Following its comprehensive fall patch yesterday, Battlefield 1 will launch its first Battlefest in-game event later today.
First introduced to Battlefield 4 in 2014, Battlefest events promise new game modes, community missions and double XP weekends, among other time-restricted specials. EA and DICE are yet to reveal what this year's event will hold, however a dedicated livestream is set to run later today.
What's the deal with Battlefest? Tune in this Wednesday from 4PM - 6PM ET for all the details on https://t.co/KZHqGdDAtc pic.twitter.com/v5v5WYOqhpNovember 16, 2016
You can tune into the two hour show via the official Battlefield Twitch channel which, as noted above, kicks off at 1pm PT/9pm GMT and everything in between.
According to a different tweet issued from the Battlefield 1 official account last night, Hardcore servers are set to launch today at 4am PT/12 noon GMT. Good luck with those when the time comes.In a nutshell our Gender Advertising Remixer app lets you re-combine video from ads directed at boys with audio from ads directed at girls (and vice versa) to create hilarious and insightful fair use mash-ups. It allows you to drag and drop clips from a library of 20 absurdly gendered toy commercials into 400 possible remix combinations. There are currently three different versions of the app up and running! We have an HTML5 video version and most recently a HTML5 LEGO edition that lets you mash-up the gender stereotypes in LEGO’s new Friends commercials.
• Try the Gendered Advertising Remixer (in HTML5)
• Try remixing LEGO’s gendered TV ads (in HTML5)
Why remix toy commercials?
Young people in the United States are subjected to an average of 25,000 TV commercials every year. Embedded in those advertisements are a very regressive and stereotypical set of social values about gender roles for boys and girls. So how can kids push back against a multibillion dollar corporate marketing machine? The goal of this project is to help empower youth of all genders to better understand, deconstruct and creatively take control of the highly gendered messages emanating from their television sets.
Who is behind the project?
The Gendered Advertising Remixer was designed by pop culture hacker and video remix artist Jonathan McIntosh. The app was built by Jonathan in collaboration with developers Boaz Sender, Zohar Babin and Brian Chirls during the Open Video Conference in 2010 and 2011.
More about the project:
Over the past 5 years I’ve been recording TV commercials and using them in educational remixing workshops. I’ve found that fair-use remix video can be a fantastic way to combine critical media literacy, technical skills and creative play to help youth understand, deconstruct and remix mass media messages about gender roles. So at the 2010 Open Video Conference Hack Labs I began a collaboration with Zohar Babin and on building a simple online Flash application to facilitate quick remixing of toy commercials without the need for expensive editing software. The next year’s Open Video Conference (2011) I teamed up with Boaz Sender and Brian Chirls to create a new open source version of the remixing tool using HTML5 and JavaScript.
Future plans:
I’m in the process of developing a series of educational resources and materials to be use in combination with this remixing tool. In case anyone wants to see the original ads I’ve set up playlists with all the boys ads and girls ads on YouTube.Local brewpubs and taproom owners are raising a glass to celebrate the Minneapolis City Council's overwhelming approval of a measure that allows for the sale of growlers on Sundays.
"We've been waiting a long time for this," said Jamie Robinson, owner and head brewer of Northbound Smokehouse & Brewpub. "We are expecting pretty high sales."
Minneapolis is one of the first cities in the state to approve Sunday growler sales, which city leaders say will support the burgeoning craft brewing industry.
Starting June 14, brewpubs and taprooms can begin selling the 64-ounce refillable jugs of beer on Sundays. The measure, which passed 13-0, also allows restaurants to serve bloody marys and other drinks starting at 8 a.m., rather than 10 a.m., on Sundays.
For Town Hall Brewery general manager Scott Krebsbach, the vote means he will no longer have to turn away Sunday tourists at the South Washington Avenue brewpub who are looking to take home some beer.
"It's kind of difficult to keep explaining the different laws we have in this state," he said.
The council's vote came after a new state law enabled cities to decide whether to allow Sunday growler sales. Despite the change, state law still prohibits liquor stores from selling alcohol on Sundays.
"We're really excited that breweries will be the only place to get a beer on Sundays to go," said Matt Hauck, director of operations of the Fair State Brewing Cooperative, located on Central Avenue.
Minnesota cities currently selling growlers on Sunday include Montgomery, Rochester and Shakopee. St. Paul sales are expected to start in July.
Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery general manager Lou Hernandez said he sells 10 to 15 growlers a day at the brewery in downtown Minneapolis. He expects Sunday sales to double that amount.
"It's fantastic," he said. "Just the benefit of Sunday sales are going to entice people."RAIN ROOM by RANDOM INTERNATIONAL
ASIA PREMIERE AT THE SHANGHAI YUZ MUSEUM
China’s preeminent musuem of contemporary art, the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, will present the first showing in Asia of a major installation from the Yuz Collection entitled Rain Room (2012) by the artists Random International. Rain Room was first presented at the Barbican in London (2012) and then at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013). It will be premiered in Asia at the Yuz Museum Shanghai from September 1st to December 31st 2015. The presentation in Shanghai has been made possible with the support of Volkswagen Group China.
This presentation of Rain Room at YUZ Museum in Shanghai is inspired by an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York organized by Klaus Biesenbach, Director MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large, MoMA with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of the Serpentine Gallery and supported by Volkswagen Of America.
Rain Room is a large-scale environment of perpetually falling water that ceases to pour wherever a person walks.
Conceived by the artists Random International, Rain Room is on view courtesy of Yuz Collection who commissioned a site- specific installation of 150 sq. meters in response to the vast space of the Yuz Museum. In presenting the most ambitious scale of the work to date, the Shanghai exhibition will have over 50% more capacity than the previous exhibitions.
Extended viewing hours and a “view only” queue where visitors can engage with the installation at very close range but without walking directly below the rain, ensures everyone inspired to visit can experience Rain Room in person.
Rain Room responds to the presence and behaviour of its participants, offering visitors a surreal environment and unique relationship with water. Exploring ecological challenges through art, this presentation of Rain Room also offers another perspective to the multi-layered Yuz Collection and the forthcoming programming of spectacular temporary exhibitions at the Yuz Museum.
After the presentation in Shanghai Yuz Museum, Rain Room will tour China and Asia, starting with Beijing during spring 2016.
Rain Room is on view at Yuz Museum, courtesy of Yuz Collection and made possible by a partnership with Volkswagen Group China.
About Random International
Founded in 2005, Random International is a collaborative studio for experimental practice within contemporary art. Taking science as a means to develop a new material vocabulary, their work invites consideration through explorations of behaviour and natural phenomena — with the viewer an active participant. In the decade following the studio’s inception, the focus of Random’s artistic practice has continuously evolved and today encompasses sculpture, performance and spatial installation on an architectural scale.
Random International is currently featured in the group exhibition ‘FOMO’ at Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille, on view until August 2nd. Lundskonsthall, Lund last year exhibited a solo presentation of Random International’s work entitled ‘Studies In Motion’. In 2013, Random International’s Tower: Instant Structure for Schacht XII was shown at World Heritage Zollverein as part of the Ruhrtriennale festival. The studio’s kinetic and responsive sculpture Fly was premiered at the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2011, while their work Swarm Study / III is on permanent display at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. In addition, the studio has won a number of awards including Prix Arts Electronica – Award of Distinction 2013, Ruhrtriennale Children’s Choice Award 2013, Designer of the Future 2010, CR – Creative Futures Award, Wallpaper* Award and were listed in the Observer’s Top Ten Creative Talent in the UK.The reason why today’s Spain sucks is straightforward: it is a country of Suckers. Historically this attitude towards southern Europe has been typical of countries like France in the 1980s and 1990s and now Germany. It is time to acknowledge that we have what we deserve. The French used to say in post-World War II Europe that Africa would begin at the Pyrenees. They were somewhat right.
Spain is a country of Suckers because our political leaders have become Suckers. They are no longer necessary and have become an extractive, fat and inefficient ruling elite. It is time to cut the fat and become lean.
Spain is a country of Suckers because Spaniards have become Suckers. A country that could be the Florida or California of Europe, which could be managed and governed like Scandinavia is today the shame of a continent, closer to Greece and Portugal than to Italy and France. We have what we deserve.
In a recent lunch a Professor of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid confessed that Spain had to accept the status of a Louisiana or Arkansas in the United States. Not that is anything wrong with being the Louisiana or Arkansas of Europe, but the aspiration should be to become California or Texas.
Europe is way different from the United States of America, there is no common identity, there are no common goals, no patriotism is possible in the absence of a continental leadership democratically elected gifted by the rigor and the charisma of Margaret Thatcher and François Miterrand.
I am ashamed of being Spaniard, I am not proud at all. Why would I or should I be? Some claim to be proud because Spain has won the Football World Cup in 2010, because Rafa Nadal is one of the World’s top tennis players, because Real Madrid and FC Barcelona are among the World’s best football clubs. What a shame. Where are our Universities? Who was the last Spaniard to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, Physics or Chemistry? What are our top-notch industrial and technological companies? Where are our entrepreneurs?
“Spain is different” is a motto that was created during the 1960s and used by the late Manuel Fraga Iribarne to promote tourism in northern Europe. Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset pointed out that “Spain is the problem and Europe is the solution”. Former University of Salamanca President Miguel de Unamuno would argue “Me duele España”. These three statements summarize the reality of a country whose character has not changed in two hundred years.
I was born in Valencia, Spain. I am a World Citizen independent from my place of birth or residence. But I know Spain and Spaniards deeply and I love them with all of my heart. And I know that Spain and Spaniards deserve better. We cannot trust our future to Angela Merkel and a defunct European Union commanded by José Manuel Durao Barroso, Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton, Catherine what? Whereas everyone in Europe knows who Silvio Berlusconi is, rather few know who are the commanders in chief in the technocratic European Union. If only Europe had a leadership with the rigor of Angela Merkel and the charisma of Beppe Grillo!
The Financial Times and The Economist never get it right when they analyze the pain in Spain crunching numbers and analyzing ratios and indicators. Spain no longer works because it is a country of Suckers. Unless we get rid of the Suckers we will continue to be on the wrong path to nowhere, or let me rather say, to hell.
If you have not heard two of Spain’s most critical voices please stay tuned. Writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Rafa Nadal’s uncle Toni Nadal may surprise you with some of their recent statements.
How can we get rid of the Suckers? A Sucker-free Spain exists in a nearby future. I have called this fiction-state Reypública. Some may call me an “afrancesado”. Sure thing we need more afrancesados in our streets demanding change, taking control of the situation, moving forward with vision and enthusiasm.Even outsiders are noticing.
“When I landed here, I was taken aback, in a good way,” said Denise Brown, a United Nations World Food Program official who visited Adado in March. “I didn’t see what I usually see in Somalia: destitution, chaos, needy people.”
Mr. Aden does not get much help from the United Nations or the internationally supported transitional government of Somalia, which is led by moderate Islamists and preoccupied with beating back an intense insurgency in the capital, Mogadishu.
Most of what Mr. Aden has accomplished he has accomplished on his own, in distinctly Somali fashion. His police officers carry rocket-propelled grenades. Parked in front of the police station are two enormous tanks.
“My Cadillacs,” Mr. Aden calls them.
But however playful or flamboyant he may come across, Mr. Aden seems to have hit upon a deeper truth. People want government, he says, even in Somalia. “They’re begging for it,” he said.
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His experiment of building a small local government from the bottom up, relying on that one feature of Somali society that has bedeviled just about all national governance efforts to date — the clan — may have wider implications for the rest of the country, which seems to export trouble continuously, most recently in the form of pirates. Many pirates are actually from Mr. Aden’s area, and one pirate whose nom de guerre is Son of a Liar is building a huge house in Adado — right behind the police station.
“I’d take these guys on, but I can’t right now because I don’t have the resources,” Mr. Aden said. “Besides, you can’t just wipe out a whole line of work for thousands of young men. If you take something away, you must replace it with something else. Otherwise, more problems.”
WHAT drove him to give up a comfy life with his wife, Shamso, and their five boys in Burnsville, Minn., a Minneapolis suburb? How was he able to make the transition from running a small health care business to being “president,” which is what his constituents in Adado call him?
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“When I first arrived, I was afraid,” he recalled. “I didn’t know how the people would react to me, if they would trust me. That first year I was focusing on muscle. Without muscle, you can’t do anything.”
Of course, there’s much about America he misses.
“SportsCenter, Subway, AC, even winter,” he says.
But in a way he didn’t have a choice. He came to Adado last year for what he thought would be a few weeks, to help out with a killer drought. He organized water trucking and emergency food deliveries and channeled tens of thousands of dollars from middle class Somalis in the United States to nomads dying of hunger and thirst.
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Afterward, Adado’s elders, impressed by how fast he could work, turned to Mr. Aden and asked: want to be our leader?
“We needed a man of peace and he is from a peaceful place, Minnesota,” said one elder, Mohamed Ali Farah.
It did not hurt that Mr. Aden had a pipeline to overseas cash and a college degree from Minnesota State in management information systems. With the elders firmly behind him, he was able to form a well-armed police force of several hundred fellow clansmen who are fiercely protective of him — essentially his own private army, which has made it difficult for the extremist Islamists wreaking havoc in other parts of Somalia to establish a beachhead here.
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People who have challenged his authority have paid the price. Last summer, his police officers shot to death four men who violently refused to vacate a piece of property that Mr. Aden’s administration ruled belonged to someone else.
“I knew there were outliers, people with their own rules,” he said. “I knew I had to challenge them, sooner or later.”
Nowadays, from Adado’s dusty town square, he hands down new laws, like a recent one saying that anyone who cuts down a live tree has to pay a fine of 100 camels.
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The orderly refuge he has carved out has become a magnet for displaced families fleeing the relentless bloodletting in Mogadishu, and at noon each day, the metal roofs of thousands of new homes sparkle like mirrors scattered across the desert.
Mr |
“technical interns” as per their visas.
“To think the law aims to crackdown on those interns who were fortunate enough to be able to escape their workplaces... this is unbelievable,” Ippei Torii, secretary-general of the Solidarity Network with Migrants Japan, said.
“The government completely lacks the understanding that these people are in fact victims who need to be protected.”“This may give the administration even more authority than people thought,” said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush and Clinton administrations and a co-author of “National Security Investigation and Prosecutions,” a new book on surveillance law.
Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.
These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and so-called “trap and trace” operations, analyzing specific calling patterns.
For instance, the legislation would allow the government, under certain circumstances, to demand the business records of an American in Chicago without a warrant if it asserts that the search concerns its surveillance of a person who is in Paris, experts said.
It is possible that some of the changes were the unintended consequences of the rushed legislative process just before this month’s Congressional recess, rather than a purposeful effort by the administration to enhance its ability to spy on Americans.
“We did not cover ourselves in glory,” said one Democratic aide, referring to how the bill was compiled.
But a senior intelligence official who has been involved in the discussions on behalf of the administration said that the legislation was seen solely as a way to speed access to the communications of foreign targets, not to sweep up the communications of Americans by claiming to focus on foreigners.
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“I don’t think it’s a fair reading,” the official said. “The intent here was pure: if you’re targeting someone outside the country, the fact that you’re doing the collection inside the country, that shouldn’t matter.” Democratic leaders have said they plan to push for a revision of the legislation as soon as September. “It was a legislative over-reach, limited in time,” said one Congressional Democratic aide. “But Democrats feel like they can regroup.”
Some civil rights advocates said they suspected that the administration made the language of the bill intentionally vague to allow it even broader discretion over wiretapping decisions. Whether intentional or not, the end result — according to top Democratic aides and other experts on national security law — is that the legislation may grant the government the right to collect a range of information on American citizens inside the United States without warrants, as long as the administration asserts that the spying concerns the monitoring of a person believed to be overseas.
In effect, they say, the legislation significantly relaxes the restrictions on how the government can conduct spying operations aimed at foreigners at the same time that it allows authorities to sweep up information about Americans.
These new powers are considered overly broad and troubling by some Congressional Democrats who raised their concerns with administration officials in private meetings this week.
“This shows why it is so risky to change the law by changing the definition” of something as basic as the meaning of electronic surveillance, said Suzanne Spaulding, a former Congressional staff member who is now a national security legal expert. “You end up with a broad range of consequences that you might not realize.”
The senior intelligence official acknowledged that Congressional staff members had raised concerns about the law in the meetings this week, and that ambiguities in the bill’s wording may have led to some confusion. “I’m sure there will be discussions about how and whether it should be fixed,” the official said.
Vanee Vines, a spokeswoman for the office of the director of national intelligence, said the concerns raised by Congressional officials about the wide scope of the new legislation were “speculative.” But she declined to discuss specific aspects of how the legislation would be enacted. The legislation gives the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales broad discretion in enacting the new procedures and approving the way surveillance is conducted.
Bush administration officials said the new legislation, which amends FISA, was critical to fill an “intelligence gap” that had left the United States vulnerable to attack.
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The legislation “restores FISA to its original and appropriate focus — protecting the privacy of Americans,” said Brian Roehrkasse, Justice Department spokesman. “The act makes clear that we do not need a court order to target for foreign intelligence collection persons located outside the United States, but it also retains FISA’s fundamental requirement of court orders when the target is in the United States.”
The measure, which President Bush signed into law on Aug. 5, was written and pushed through both the House and Senate so quickly that few in Congress had time to absorb its full impact, some Congressional aides say.
Though many Democratic leaders opposed the final version of the legislation, they did not work forcefully to block its passage, largely out of fear that they would be criticized by President Bush and Republican leaders during the August recess as being soft on terrorism.
Yet Bush administration officials have already signaled that, in their view, the president retains his constitutional authority to do whatever it takes to protect the country, regardless of any action Congress takes. At a tense meeting last week with lawyers from a range of private groups active in the wiretapping issue, senior Justice Department officials refused to commit the administration to adhering to the limits laid out in the new legislation and left open the possibility that the president could once again use what they have said in other instances is his constitutional authority to act outside the regulations set by Congress.
At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so, according to three participants in the meeting. That stance angered Mr. Fein and others. It sent the message, Mr. Fein said in an interview, that the new legislation, though it is already broadly worded, “is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president’s Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence.”
Brian Walsh, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who attended the same private meeting with Justice Department officials, acknowledged that the meeting — intended by the administration to solicit recommendations on the wiretapping legislation — became quite heated at times. But he said he thought the administration’s stance on the president’s commander-in-chief powers was “a wise course.”
“They were careful not to concede any authority that they believe they have under Article II,” Mr. Walsh said. “If they think they have the constitutional authority, it wouldn’t make sense to commit to not using it.”
Asked whether the administration considered the new legislation legally binding, Ms. Vines, the national intelligence office spokeswoman, said: “We’re going to follow the law and carry it out as it’s been passed.”
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Mr. Bush issued a so-called signing statement about the legislation when he signed it into law, but the statement did not assert his presidential authority to override the legislative limits.
At the Justice Department session, critics of the legislation also complained to administration officials about the diminished role of the FISA court, which is limited to determining whether the procedures set up by the executive administration for intercepting foreign intelligence are “clearly erroneous” or not.
That limitation sets a high bar to set off any court intervention, argued Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who also attended the Justice Department meeting.
“You’ve turned the court into a spectator,” Mr. Rotenberg said.Certain files on a UNIX-like system, such as /etc/passwd and /etc/sudoers, are integral for managing login and authentication, and it’s thus necessary to be very careful while editing them using sudo not to accidentally leave them in a corrupted state, or to allow others to edit them at the same time as you. In the worst case scenario it’s possible to lock yourself out of a system or out of root privileges in doing this, and things can only be fixed via physical access to the server or someone who knows the actual root password, which you may not necessarily know as a sudo user.
You should therefore never edit /etc/passwd, /etc/group, or /etc/sudoers by simply invoking them in your editor of choice. A set of simple utilities exist to help you make these edits safely.
vipw and vigr
If you want to safely edit the /etc/passwd file, for which you’ll need to have root privileges, you should use the vipw tool. It doesn’t require an argument.
# vipw
This will load a temporary copy of the file into your $EDITOR, and allow you to make changes. If all is well after you save and quit, you’ll see a message like:
You have modified /etc/passwd. You may need to modify /etc/shadow for consistency. Please use the command 'vipw -s' to do so.
If you’ve made changes which might require changing something in the /etc/shadow file, you should follow these instructions too.
The command to edit groups, vigr, works in much the same way:
# vigr
visudo
The analogous tool for editing the /etc/sudoers file is visudo. This file not only does the necessary lock and file corruption checking as vipw does, it also does some basic checking of the syntax of the file after you save it.
# visudo
If the changes you make to this file work correctly, you’ll simply be returned to your prompt. However, if you’ve made some sort of edit that means sudo won’t be able to correctly parse the file, you’ll get warned and prompted for an appropriate action:
visudo: >>> /etc/sudoers: syntax error near line 28 <<< visudo: >>> /etc/sudoers: syntax error near line 29 <<< visudo: >>> /etc/sudoers: syntax error near line 29 <<< What now?
If you press? here and then Enter, you’ll get a list of the actions you can take:
Options are: (e)dit sudoers file again e(x)it without saving changes to sudoers file (Q)uit and save changes to sudoers file (DANGER!)
You’ll probably want the first one, to edit your changes again and make them work properly, but you may want to hose them and start again via the second option. You should only choose the third if you absolutely know what you’re doing.
sudoedit
In general, you can edit root-owned files using sudoedit, or sudo -e, which will operate on temporary copies of the file and overwrite the original if changes are detected:
$ sudo -e /etc/network/interfacesThe Muslim Brotherhood has been active in Sweden for decades. The openly Islamist organization has enjoyed secular support and is actively seeking to Islamize Sweden, a government report found, stirring a major controversy. Politically correct researchers and politicians hurried to dismiss the uncomfortable findings as "racist" and "prejudiced".
© REUTERS / Anders Wiklund/TT News Agency Jihadi 'Veterans' Return to Sweden, Establish Islamist Extremist Networks
In a fresh report by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) was found to be secretly leading Islamists in building a parallel society in Sweden by infiltrating organizations and political parties across the country. The Islamist network has been gradually established as a consequence of immigration, the report noted.
The report specifically stated that the Muslim Brotherhood was trying to Islamize Sweden, with its ultimate goal set as becoming a state based on sharia law. Additionally, numerous Muslim organizations across Sweden were found to be mobilizing their forces in a nationwide Islamic campaign, seeing the spread of Islam as their moral duty.
Perhaps most notably, though, the MB was found to enjoy secular support from government institutions, as well as the Left and the Green Party, which were identified as "uncritically viewing Muslims as victims of Islamophobia."
"Over the years, the MB managed to establish a dominant position in the Muslim part of the state-sponsored civil society though aid from a plethora of organizations. Many millions of kronor were channeled from Swedish tax-payers into the world's largest Islamic organization's Swedish branch," the report stated, identifying the Swedish Commission for Government Support to Faith Communities (SST) and the Swedish Agency for Youth and Civil Society (MUCF) as major grant givers.
The report sparked outrage among Swedish academia and security officials, as well as members of the burgeoning Muslim community. A blog post signed by 22 Swedish researchers specializing in religious studies dismissed the report as "almost conspiracy-theory-like," lacking sources and resting conclusions on personal views rather than evidence.
According to Swedish journalist and left-wing foundation Expo activist Bilan Osman, theories of Muslim infiltration risk may fuel anti-Muslim conspiracy theories.
"It is regrettable that the authorities issued such a report based on racist conspiracy theories. That we should be part of a secret global network trying to infiltrate Swedish politics while building parallel societies is both absurd and constitutes very serious allegations," Rashid Musa, President of the Swedish Young Muslims told Swedish national broadcaster SVT.
However, the Swedish Young Muslims have been criticized for having links to the Muslim Brotherhood before and had support from MUCF terminated due to "actions incompatible with the ideals of democracy."
Magnus Norell, the man behind the report, responded brusquely to the politically correct criticism.
"Had they smoked something before reading the report? You just need to read it. If someone doesn't accept this, there's not much I can do about it. It's proven!" a fuming Norell told SVT. MSB made it clear that it was not going to disown the report despite criticism.
© AFP 2018 / JONATHAN NACKSTRAND Multicultural Sweden Siphons Millions to Stifle Xenophobia
Magnus Norell completed his PhD degree at the Stockholm University and worked at the Swedish Defense Agency (FOI), the Sweden National Defense College (FHS), the Swedish Security Service (SÄPO) and the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST). In 2015, Norell published the book "Caliphate's Return: Causes and Consequences," which by his own admission Swedish publishers refused to print.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization formed in Egypt in 1928. The group is currently active in about 70 countries and presents itself as a democratic force, yet is banned in several countries including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Russia, as terrorist organization.
A 2014 report by the US State Department estimated the number of Muslims in Sweden at 600,000 (or 6 percent of the Swedish population of 10 million). However, the percentage of Muslims is expected to have risen further following the influx of migrants from predominantly Muslim countries.
Never miss a story again — sign up to our Telegram channel and we'll keep you up to speed!The powerhouse brewers behind San Diego’s newest brewery are churning out gold.
A crack team of brewers has assembled in San Diego, and they call themselves Modern Times. The brewery’s the brainchild of Jacob McKean (left), a longtime homebrewer and Stone Brewing’s former social media guru, who’s joined by a top-notch crew including Matt Walsh, former head brewer at Lost Coast; Derek Freese, the recent head brewer at Monkey Paw; and ex-Ballast Point brewer Alex Tweet. Consultant Michael Tonsmeire, a well-known homebrewer and author of The Mad Fermentationist blog, took a sabbatical to launch the brewery’s wild yeast beers. Modern Times’ “fermentorium” now churns out four core brews, four seasonals and a never-ending line of here-and-gone batches focusing on wild Brettanomyces yeast. The brewery (like all of its beers) is named after a 19th- century utopian community in Long Island. In classic utopian fashion, the recipes are available online, so everyone can enjoy the Modern Times movement.
Blazing World: “I call it an amber-IPA hybrid. It was inspired by Tröegs Nugget Nectar, although it’s really different. I wanted to make something that was an homage to their great work, but with our own spin: We use Nelson Sauvin, Mosaic and Simcoe, which are very dank, fruity hops.”
Fortunate Islands: “Our 4.8%-ABV hoppy wheat beer was kind of inspired by Three Floyds Gumballhead, which I fell in love with in Chicago. I wanted this to focus on Citra hops to get that tropical mango and pineapple aroma, and there’s also a fairly nutty, wheaty malt body.”
Black House: “We’re one of the only breweries in the world that roasts our own coffee beans in-house, which allows us to roast them exactly how we want. We wanted to make an oatmeal coffee stout that kind of tastes like a chocolate- covered espresso bean and bursts with a coffee aroma.”
Lomaland: “This is a 5.5%-ABV saison with malt, wheat, flaked corn and a blend of Saison Dupont and Westmalle yeast. It’s traditional in style, but I really wanted to make a more sessionable saison that was also complex and yeast-driven. It’s very earthy, haylike and delicious.”DESCRIPTION:
(from The CW's press release, January 2019) The CW Network has given early renewals to ten of its primetime series for the 2019-2020 season, it was announced today by Mark Pedowitz, President, The CW, during the network's session at the Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena. "This season, we expanded our primetime schedule to six nights with the addition of Sunday -- which has been an unqualified success for the network, our affiliates and our advertisers. In addition to growing our schedule across the week, we also continue to add more year-round programming. The early renewal of these signature CW series gives us a head start on laying out the 2019-2020 season, and this is just the beginning," said Pedowitz. "These shows provide a strong foundation for our multiplatform programming strategy, and we look forward to building on this with even more returning and new shows as we approach the May upfront." The series being ordered for the 2019-2020 broadcast year include second seasons of The CW's freshman hits CHARMED and LEGACIES, as well as new seasons of ARROW (Season 8), BLACK LIGHTNING (Season 3), DC'S LEGENDS OF TOMORROW (Season 5), DYNASTY (Season 3), THE FLASH (Season 6), RIVERDALE (Season 4), SUPERGIRL (Season 5), and SUPERNATURAL (Season 15). Specific premiere dates for each series will be announced at a later time.The Datapoint 2200 was a mass-produced programmable terminal, designed by Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) founders Phil Ray and Gus Roche[2] and announced by CTC in June 1970 (with units shipping in 1971). It was presented by CTC simply as a versatile and cost-efficient terminal for connecting to a wide variety of mainframes by loading various terminal emulations from tape rather than being hardwired as most contemporary terminals, including their earlier Datapoint 3300. However, enterprising users in the business sector (including Pillsbury Foods) realized that this so-called "programmable terminal" was equipped to perform any task a simple computer could and exploited this fact by using their 2200s as standalone computer systems. Its industrial designer John "Jack" Frassanito has later claimed that Ray and Roche always intended the Datapoint 2200 to be a full-blown personal computer, but that they chose to keep quiet about this so as not to concern investors and others.[2][3] Also significant is the fact that the terminal's multi-chip CPU (processor) became the basis of the x86 architecture used in the original IBM PC and its descendants.
Technical description [ edit ]
The Datapoint 2200 had a built-in full-travel keyboard, a built-in 12-line, 80-column green screen monitor, and two 47 character-per-inch cassette tape drives each with 130 kB capacity. Its size, 9 5⁄ 8 in × 18 1⁄ 2 in × 19 5⁄ 8 in (24 cm × 47 cm × 50 cm), and shape—a box with protruding keyboard—approximated that of an IBM Selectric typewriter.[4] Initially, a Diablo 2.5 MB 2315-type removable cartridge hard disk drive was available, along with modems, several types of serial interface, parallel interface, printers and a punched card reader. Later, an 8-inch floppy disk drive was also made available, along with other, larger hard disk drives. An industry-compatible 7/9-track (user selectable) magnetic tape drive was available by 1975. In late 1977, Datapoint introduced ARCnet local area networking. The original Type 1 2200 shipped with 2 kilobytes of serial shift register main memory, expandable to 8K. The Type 2 2200 used denser 1 kbit RAM chips, giving it a default 4K of memory, expandable to 16K. Its starting price was around US $5,000 (equivalent to $31,000 in 2018), and a full 16K Type 2 2200 had a list price of just over $14,000.
The 2200 models were succeeded by the 5500, 1100, 6600, 3800/1800, 8800, etc.
The seed of the x86 architecture [ edit ]
The original design called for a single-chip 8-bit microprocessor for the CPU, rather than a processor built from discrete TTL modules as was conventional at the time. In 1969, CTC contracted two companies, Intel and Texas Instruments, to make the chip. TI was unable to make a reliable part and dropped out. Intel was unable to make CTC's deadline. Intel and CTC renegotiated their contract, ending up with CTC keeping its money and Intel keeping the eventually completed processor.[2]
CTC released the Datapoint 2200 using about 100 TTL components (SSI/MSI chips) instead of a microprocessor, while Intel's single-chip design, eventually designated the Intel 8008, was finally released in April 1972.[5]
Even though the Datapoint 2200 operated one bit at a time as a serial computer, the DataPoint 2200 performed faster than the 8008 chip.[6]
Possibly because of their speed advantages compared to MOS circuits, Datapoint continued to build processors out of TTL chips until the early 1980s.[6]
Nonetheless the 8008 was to have a seminal importance. It was the basis of Intel's line of 8-bit CPUs, which was followed by their assembly language compatible 16-bit CPUs — the first members of the x86 family, as the instruction set was later to be known. Already successful and widely used, the x86 architecture's further rise after the success in 1981 of the original IBM Personal Computer with an Intel 8088 CPU means that most desktop, laptop and server computers in use today have a CPU instruction set directly based on the work of CTC's engineers. The instruction set of the highly successful Zilog Z80 microprocessor can also be traced back to the Datapoint 2200 as the Z80 was backwards-compatible with the Intel 8080. More immediately, the Intel 8008 was adopted by very early microcomputers including the SCELBI, MCM/70 and Micral N.
Credits [ edit ]
The original instruction set architecture was developed by Victor Poor and Harry Pyle.[7] The TTL design they ended up using was made by Gary Asbell. Industrial design (how the box's exterior looked, including the company's logo) was done by Jack Frassanito.[8]
Specifications [ edit ]
Main unit
CPU: 8-bit, made from standard TTL components. The Intel 8008 was a nearly 100% compatible LSI implementation.
RAM: 2K, expandable to 16K
Display: Text only, 80×12 characters
Storage: 2 tape drives, optional 8-inch Shugart floppy drive
Peripherals
Users of the 2200 and succeeding terminals eventually had several optional units to choose from. Among these were× Expand The old City Hall ca. 1905, designed by Detroit architect Elijah Myers and completed in 1894. Today it is used for state offices. (Photo courtesy of the Cook Collection at the Valentine)
Back in the bad old days of the mid-1990s, I attended a conference organized by the Richmond Regional Planning District Commission and was among the other earnests there to discuss “regional cooperation.”
These were times when Richmond’s murder rate stood at about 150 corpses per annum, when City Council was embroiled either in scandal or attempting to avoid arrest from said scandal, and the center city had cratered from both the loss of retail and the ham-fisted efforts to shock the place back to life. During the ensuing discussion, an older man (seemed older to me, as I was at the time quite younger than now), rose from the bleachers burning from a three-alarm ire. He announced that Richmond, incapable of governing itself, should turn in the ancient city charter and submit to the better administrations of Chesterfield and/or Henrico counties.
I wondered about the practicalities.
Would our City of Monumental Juxtapositions get divvied up like Vienna, Austria, after World War II and patrolled by police forces of the three municipalities? Would it require state-approved letters of transit by those seeking to get in and out? I imagined desperate characters gathered at a shabby café on Belt Boulevard to await their turn on the bus to Skinquarter and Varina, and wrenching scenes of families crossing the Falling Creek Reservoir in overloaded skiffs. I’d written about how the counties wanted no truck with Richmond’s lame and infirm, nor its poor and huddled masses — most of whom were not white, though nobody actually said so — yearning to breathe free air conditioning. When talking about, for example, extending bus service into the counties, I heard about not wanting “an urban element” disturbing the comity of the cul-de-sac archipelago.
If some things haven’t changed since that meeting, others have. Poverty has taken root in the inner-ring suburbs, while the city is growing again, energized by younger professionals with disposable incomes.
These new residents, often from larger cities, have reasonable expectations of proper schooling for their progeny, good roads, trash collection, and wise stewardship of public spaces and access ways.
Lately, we’ve experienced some engine trouble.
In public forums today, there is caviling and wailing about the disastrous past seven years since the citizenry started directly electing its mayor. We indulge ourselves in pangs of past glories both real and imagined because they provide odd comfort. As we enter the next mayoral campaign season, it’s useful to examine just how we got here.
Let’s begin with Adon Allen Yoder. He would tell you governance of Richmond has never been pretty.
Yoder, a “radical revolutionist tho’ conservative” socialist (strong on women’s rights, weak on black civil liberties) lambasted Richmond’s city government a little more than a century ago as a “botched and bunglesome machine.”
A Lynchburg native, Yoder was the fourth of seven children of Mennonite educator Jacob E. Yoder, who founded that city’s African-American schools. His father’s causes made Adon a target for insults and worse, but he, too, grew up seeking to rectify social injustices.
After a brief and disappointing stint in the Baptist ministry, Adon Yoder became a proto-blogger from 1909 to 1911, printing his weekly pamphlet “The Idea.” He gained modest support in Richmond by “saying in public what others say in private.”
He named names of municipal malefactors, printed city commissioners’ gambling winnings, showed cracks in the foundations of new schools, described the houses of prostitution in Shockoe Valley — and implied that some members of the police commission earned rent from the bordellos. He expressed exasperation about the city engineer’s incompetence and showed that in Richmond, public business was rife with corruption. For his trouble, Yoder was beaten, incarcerated and sued.
Richmond’s government structure at the time imitated the state and federal levels: a two-house city legislature formed of a Common Council and Board of Aldermen and brokered by a popularly elected mayor. Some 56 chummy white men ran Richmond. They oversaw a byzantine arrangement of commissions and committees. Even the city’s own leaders realized the futility of the mess.
Yoder left town in March 1911 to seek treatment for his tubercular wife. As if to spite him, the Common Council Special Joint Committee released a report eight months later calling for a “radical” restructuring of city government. The next year, the city underwent reduction from eight council wards to four. An administrative board of five members elected at-large for four-year terms assumed the major responsibilities of prior committees. The board oversaw the city works, utilities and the engineer’s office. Council retained control of the purse strings and the lawmaking.
That was the first of three charter changes Richmond would undergo before reaching its present mayor-at-large over a nine-member council.
Put another way, every other generation, we revise or completely overhaul our system of governance. And each time, we stand on the precipice, frustrated by the administration and a decided lack of leadership, transparency and accountability. How does this happen? What is the underpinning reason for these repeated failures? What’s wrong with Richmond?
We’ll enter this skin-pricking thicket next month in Part the Second.The case against Independent deputies Mick Wallace and Clare Daly, alleging they entered a restricted area at Shannon Airport and climbed the perimeter fence, has opened at Ennis District court.
Mr Wallace and Ms Daly are contesting the charges, and say they were making a political statement about the use of Shannon by the US military.
The court heard that Mr Wallace will be conducting his own defence and will be leading witnesses in their evidence.
The court was shown CCTV footage of deputies Wallace and Daly inside the perimeter at Shannon Airport at an area known as Taxi Way 11 on 22 July 2014.
They were noticed by airport police and walking in an area where there was live aircraft activity, the court was told.
There were two US military aircraft in the area at the time being guarded by members of the Irish Army and gardaí.
When questioned by airport police both deputies said they wanted to inspect the aircraft.
They had no identification and no permission to be there, the court heard.
Arresting Garda Sgt Noel O'Rourke informed deputies Wallace and Daly that being in the area without a permit may have been a criminal offence.
Deputy Wallace replied they had entered the airport in order to make a political statement regarding the use of Shannon for military purposes.
He said they wanted to bring this to the attention of the minister.
Sgt O'Rourke also noticed that Deputy Daly had a cut on her eye and injuries to her fingers and she informed him it had happened when she got over the fence.
A rope ladder found beside the perimeter of the fence was also shown to the court, and Deputy Wallace asked if he could have it back.
A security analyst, Dr Tom Clonan, who has written articles for the Irish Times on international security matters, gave evidence on behalf of the defence.
He said he got permission to board a US civilian aircraft at Shannon in 2006, in which he observed US troops putting pistols in the overhead bins.
He said and they also had automatic weapons at their feet.
Defence witness Roberto Zamora from Costa Rica, an international legal expert told the court the use of Shannon by US military aircraft is a violation of Irish neutrality and International law.
The case had been adjourned until 10 March for further evidence and Judge Patrick Durkin has indicated he will be reserving his judgement.I've had my fill of some things around here. The one I've reached my wits end on in the QB conversation. I can't take anymore of this Peyton Manning and Matt Cassel talk. I'm going to go through and dismantle the arguments in favor of these guys.
Then I'll show why The Chiefs cannot afford to not afford RG3 this April. Enjoy the ride.
First, put Peyton Manning out of your heads. Bringing him in is terribly short-sighted and foolhardy for a number of reasons. Among them are his age, health, expense, and opportunity cost. At 36, Manning is in the twilight of his career. At best we would hope to wring 3 years out of him. At the end of that period we're sitting in 1995 again, wondering what to do with our QB vacancy and likely no jewelry to show for it. Also consider than Peyton's neck may never be truly right again. It'd feel pretty shitty to have the most expensive man in football riding our bench because his neck has been aggravated by hits from DL escorted to him by Barry Richardson. Even if he stays healthy, the cost is not worth it twofold. Pioli has played the salary cap pretty well thus far, keeping us in position to be able to retain players we develop (Hali, DJ, Bowe, Carr). Maybe we get an uncertainty discount on Manning but he's still going to be expensive enough to obliterate our cap space. "But we have to spend it all anyway!" Right, so spend it on players who can contribute long term. Thus is the opportunity cost. We could spend in on, I don't know, a QBoTF prospect instead.
As for Cassel and the rest of our QBs, they're a platoon of mediocrity. I feel generous calling Cassel average and likewise I think the term discounts Orton a little. Either way neither stray appreciably far from the mean. The point I want to slam home here is that average, or even above average, just isn't good enough. If the best one can say of your (non rookie) QB is that "he's above average" then you should be moving mountains to find a replacement. Average QBs can and do make the playoffs with regularity. My definition of a successful season for the Chiefs is winning a playoff game. I've seen us get there enough, but I'm not old enough to have seen a win. As far as the franchise goes, lets talk about who has won playoff games here.
The last time the Cheifs won a playoff game, Joe Montana was at the helm. Of the playoff games the Cheifs/Texans have won, either Montana or Len Dawson was the QB for 7 of the 8. These two men, Dawson and Montana, are the only two QBs in Chiefs history anyone would even consider using the word elite to describe. Outside of them there are only two other QBs the Chiefs have fielded that I would consider better than average by a significant margin. They are Trent Green and Steve DeBerg(debatable, I know). As for that outlier in the 7 of 8 number, it was won by Mr. DeBerg in 1991.
Maybe the Chiefs have just had a spurt of bad luck for the last half century or so. To judge this, let's look at what kind of QBs typically make it to the superbow. I went through every SuperBowl since 2000 and rated all 26 QBs on a 1-5 scale. 5= great 4=well above average 3= roughly average 2= well below average 1= awful. Of those who appeared, here they are by rating:
5: P. Manning, Brees, Brady, Roethlisberger, Warner, Rogers
4: E. Manning, McNabb, Delhomme, Gannon, Collins, McNair
3: B. Johnson, T. Dilfer, Hasselbeck,
2: Grossman
I know some of you could quibble with some of those but keep in mind it's rough, and I gave primacy to the year of play. Some notes about what my crude rating scale shows: The average SB QB comes in at 4.4, or very good. On only three occasions do I have the inferior QB prevailing: E. Manning def. Brady, T. Dilfer def. Collins, and B. Johnson def. Gannon. Recall that in 2002 the Buc's coach was John Gruden, who knew the opposing Raiders inside and out, having been their coach the year before. No 5 rated QB lost a SB without also having won one. The only non-5 to appear in more than one SB is E. Manning. Of the 26 SB appearances, 65% were by 5s. 85% were by a 5 or 4. The point here is that unless you have a top end QB, your chances of getting to a SB are tiny. Said another way: if you want a SB ring, you need at least a very good QB.
via static6.businessinsider.com
This April, the biggest thing in Quarterbacking since Peyton Manning is going to be on the board. He'll go to IND, ironically, to succeed Manning. There is, however, a nice consolation prize for a team willing be be aggressive in the QB market. Robert Griffin would be the high prize in any other draft. He's a brilliant guy, has exceptional accuracy, and luminal speed to boot. A good decision maker with an accurate arm is rarely any worse than "good." He's got "franchise QB" written all over him. The Chiefs MUST be aggressive in trying to acquire him through the draft. St. Louis bought all their stock in Sam Bradford, so they'll be looking to deal 2 overall to a QB hungry team. A team that has won fewer playoff games in the last half century than chance should permit should certianly be that team. It doesn't matter what it would take to move up to 2 to get him; give St Louis whatever bounty they ask. If we get a franchise QB out of the deal no one will look back and think "man, just wasn't worth it." The skeptic could argue that he's just a prospect, and we have no way of knowing how good he'll be in the NFL. That's only true because it's true of every player ever drafted. Fact is that the draft is where NFL players come from, so that's where you're going to make (or break) your team. This team has very |
| [Layer1 * 1.5] | [Layer1 * 1.5]
(base) (boots) (road) (buff) (werewolf)
Notice that the order of these operations doesn’t actually matter. For example, if the base speed gets moved to the end for whatever reason, like this:
[Layer1 * 1.5] | [Layer1 * 1.5] | [Layer1 * 1.5] | [Layer1 * 1.5] | [Layer1 + 10]
(boots) (road) (buff) (werewolf) (base)
It doesn’t actually matter; it will evaluate to the same thing.
Oh wait, we wanted the road bonus to apply after the other buffs? Just put that in the second layer, done:
[Layer1 + 10] | [Layer1 * 1.5] | [Layer2 * 1.5] | [Layer1 * 1.5] | [Layer1 * 1.5]
(base) (boots) (road) (buff) (werewolf)
No need to think about where to put it in, or what parentheses to use, like earlier--it just works.
And now for our Wingfoot title. We can control if it goes before any of the buffs by putting it on the first layer, before the road buff by putting it in the second layer, or after all the buffs by putting it on the third layer. For example, let’s put on layer 1:
[Layer1+10]|[Layer1*1.5]|[Layer2*1.5]|[Layer1*1.5]|[Layer1*1.5]|[Layer1+5]
(base) (boots) (road) (buff) (werewolf) (wingfoot)
Again, none of the mess we had above, just add it and be done.
Another great thing about the LAEs is that they can be combined painlessly, so we can do things like store all of the attacker’s damage math into one, and the defenders resist math into another, and then just smash them together and get the correct expression for how much this sword attack does against the guy wearing chainmail.
Overall, the LAEs are a flexible, straightforward system that seeks to minimize the amount of math minutiae that we have manage, allow for easy introspection, and all around reduce math bugs, which should allow us to avoid unintended explosions of numbers, and generally keep a better handle on balance. State Of The Build -by Cory Demerau Wow, this has been a busy month! A lot of big back-end projects came together in the last few weeks, allowing us to knock out several big features all at once. The biggest of these was a major upgrade to our netcode, which enabled a large number of things to be done much more easily/quickly. Skills are also making some major progress now that most of the core systems are complete, and we’re making a lot of progress in getting all of the abilities ready for each of the nine classes we’re planning on for beta. Whether it’s skills, warbands, lighting, or server performance, there’s something in this month’s changes for everyone. Let’s dive in!
Skills: Added many more nodes for use in creating Skill components.
Skills can now be dependent on consumables. Archers can use arrows, Physicians use elixirs, etc.
The Stonehealer’s stones now have health, and thus can be destroyed by attacks.
Deflection effects no longer invert damage or healing. This means that if deflection brings the damage of an attack into the negatives, it won’t heal you.
Fixed some issues with Disruption (having your abilities cancelled by moving/taking damage).
Skills can now have Armor Penetration, making it more likely to defeat your target’s heavy armor and deal your full damage.
First pass of stances. For now, players automatically enter Travel Stance when they start the game. More stances will be added soon!
Fixed an issue with armor resistances.
Skill tracks have been implemented, allowing players to execute multiple skills at the same time.
Players can now use skills other than the ones they have crafted, such as from siege engines. Warbands: Fixed various bugs in Warbands, and improved their performance.
Warband leaders now have more options, and are properly displayed in the UI. If the leader leaves the Warband, another player becomes the leader. The leader can also give leadership to another player with the /makeleader command. Warband leaders can now /kick other players out of the warband, or /promote members to allow them to invite other players.
There is now a maximum size for a Warband (8 players). Characters: Fixed some issues that were causing regeneration values to not work/display correctly.
Characters can now receive traumas when they take too many wounds to a particular body part. Server: Fixed some issues that caused our script compilers to use way too much memory. This is a major gain in server performance.
The client now dynamically connects and disconnects to servers depending on which zones are relevant to their player. If a server comes online while you're playing and its zone is nearby, the client will connect and you'll see the zone pop in. Also, if you run far enough away from a zone that's in the distance, the client will disconnect from that server
Massive overhaul to our UDP network code that contains several benefits, including the following: Codegen that automatically creates code for communication between the Game Server and Proxy Server. This generated code will eventually allow other types of servers, such as the Group Server, to automatically get data from the Game Server. Several improvements to bandwidth usage in all areas used for skills, with enough generalization that non-skill systems can take advantage of it in the future.The network layer now supports the new entity-component model that we created for re-abilitation.
Client: Fixed an issue with our code signing, so that Windows doesn’t complain that we’re unsafe for a few weeks after we renew each year.
Fixed a crash on startup. Items: Weapons now have stat requirements. If you fail to meet those requirements, you can still equip the weapon, but will not be able to use it for abilities.
Items now support equipping to one of several options of slots. This is currently used for any-handed weapons (that can go in either the left or right hand).
Weapon Crafting has been updated so that weapons are no longer defaulted to only being equipped in the right hand. Two-handed weapons now actually use both slots, and any-handed weapons can go in either slot.
Weapon appearance is now dependent on which realm you belong to, and each realm has a different set of weapons. Check out each realm’s unique swords and staves!
Added a server command that allows us to easily wipe items and regenerate the default items for every character, so we don’t need to wipe characters when items need to be reset.
Arrows are now properly treated as munitions rather than weapons themselves. Crafting: Resource Nodes can now exist in the world, and using /harvest while near one will cause a player to gain the appropriate substance (Note: None have actually been placed in Hatchery’s zones...yet)
Plots:
Fixed a bug that would cause plot information for the player to update only when another aspect of the player updated. Graphics: Enabled High Dynamic Range Lighting (HDR). This will make atmospheric lighting more realistic (the sky will be brighter while you’re in dark areas, and dark areas darker when you’re outside of them).
Fixed a driver crash on older nVidia cards.
Various improvements to the way we build particles will allow us to produce more interesting effects much more quickly. UI: Chat messages are throttled, making it less likely to freeze from too many incoming messages. Lore Corner -by Max Porter
We hope you enjoy this piece, the ninth part of The Great Depths Raid story. This lore of The Depths™ was penned by Max Porter under the vision and guidance of Mark Jacobs for Camelot Unchained. You can find the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth parts of the tale in the Lore section of our website, here. The Great Depths Raid
Part 9: The Whispering Dark
Where does evil begin? In the heart, yearning for something it should not? In the hands, eager to do wrong? Or does the source lie in something else, somewhere else, a supernatural force that reaches out to clutch at the innocent, miring them and remaking them as Innocents -- No Longer? In the Depths, the questions are one and the same, for to exist in its dark, twisted reality is to lose all innocence in the face of its malevolent evil.
The Delvers, pausing before the inscrutable gate with its mysterious, ancient writing, had begun to understand this truth. Transfixed beneath the Collector’s piercing, earsplitting screech from high above, they felt like wriggling, helpless insects skewered on a table.
Or so the Collector assumed. As it turned out, spending so much time in this dark, dangerous place had raised all the Delvers’ nerves to the highest pitch. Even as he launched forth his wriggling metal coils of limbs and the Depths erupted with answering tentacles below, the Delvers moved to counterattack.
With one furious glance at the plummeting enemy, Jorvald swept up his axe, scarred from the battles already fought here, holding it in readiness to connect with the Collector’s strange metallic parts once more. He was bolstered at the same moment by a swelling power, a glow that shimmered about him and his weapon, increasing his destructive potential.
The Human Xedric had already learned how far down he could fall and still be himself; there was nothing that could surprise him now. He sent curling flames hissing through the air, lighting the broad stone dais and the ancient, crumbling steps in a flare of orange fire.
The Collector saw all of this in but a moment as he fell. The foul air rushed with him, teeth exposed in points of light, a cloudlike tangle of arms reaching, crushing, grabbing, all the rage and twisted hate of his existence coiled into twin springs.
A twisting, metallic finger whistled by his head as Donnie leaned back to avoid the blow, eyes round and wide. He had attained what he had come for; now for the fun of escaping! The Luchorpán sent another hissing pulse of magic through the air toward Jorvald, as if to say, quicker than words, attack now! The magic rippled and expanded along Jorvald’s axe, making it shimmer. The Dvergr glanced down and grinned.
Using some power unknown to the others, he caused the stone to shift beneath his feet, throwing him upward even as the attacks came crashing down. His axe, swinging with terrific force, smashed into an uncoiling cluster of the Collector’s limbs, exploding in such a shower of vivid sparks that for a moment he was hidden from view.
Fogja, for her part, felt on the brink of understanding the secret she had sought in the Depths; that the mistakes of past battles meant nothing. Everything you know, everything you thought you understood, you have to let go; and in its place, you must write your soul anew, darker and harder, a shimmering gem through which the eye can view the truth.
The frost giant twisted, her hammer slamming through the air and crackling with lightning. A thunderous rumble sounded as she hit home on a writhing coil of metal limbs that had burst from the ground at the Collector’s call. Her attack sent shockwaves of lightning and sound that splintered the metal and nearly destroyed the cluster of deadly cables.
His way now clear, the Bean Sidhe Sacriphisto howled his own Dire Scream, and called forth the energies that kept his companions safe. He was finally certain; certain not of answers, but of his question. It was not the strength of their arms or their convictions that must be decided, but who they and the mysterious denizens of this place would become. Their identities and characters would be altered forever--but as servants of darkness, or its enemy?
Forcing the healing influence to reverse its flow, Sacriphisto sent a ripple of power through the nearest limb that stuck down like a bolt of steel lightning from above. Empowered by the gleeful chaos of the living Depths, it shot up and through the Collector’s torso, reacting with whatever blood was left in his mangled body. A discolored liquid burst from the screaming figure, splashing against the great stone archway as he continued to come crashing downward.
Hidduk slipped away, as if blown by the wind of the attacks into the shadows. He was far more used to being the ambusher than the ambushed, and he knew this quality of his alone had not changed; for it seemed that everything else about him had. That, he knew in his soul, is the darkest secret of the Depths. That through the horror, the touch of true, pure evil, a new and stronger soul can be made. Like hammers beating steel in a furnace, the thrumming heartbeat of our worst fears and desires forces a new shape, a new existence.
When the creature hit the dais, his fury split the stone, making a great crack appear, and threatening to tip the Delvers from their feet.
One of them, however, was steady enough on that surface to attack again. With a wordless roar in place of a battlecry, Jorvald lowered his head, and the stone along his shoulders and back lined up to form a battering ram shape, while he held the point of his axe forward to form a piercing nose. Then the Dvergr charged. Stone rippled and cracked where each foot fell, and as he rushed forward, stone seemed to rush forward with him like an oncoming wave, sweeping into a concentrated blow.
Ramming into the enemy, already damaged and off balance, Jorvald managed to send the awful creature skidding over the stone, striking sparks and clicking. Gears and ichor alike flew from his wounds, and the screaming attack was cut short as the Collector managed to stop himself at the brink of the dark abyss. He turned, just enough of his mangled visage left to express desperation.
The Collector’s torso teetered on the edge, shaking in twisted rage, shrieking and hissing without forming recognizable words. So loud was the cacophony that as his stone protections crumbled, Jorvald was forced to hold his hands over his ears, eyes almost crossing as the waves of vibrating noise washed over him.
Once again, Hidduk told himself, it was up to him to strike the finishing blow. The Cait Sith sprang from hiding and spread his arms wide. Still recovering from the onslaught of attacks, the Delvers looked up in surprise as a hiss escaped their companion’s lips, his eyes glittering as he flew through the air. The shadows seemed to cling to him and peel away in dark waves, while his tattered cloak billowed behind him like the wings of a misbegotten angel.
The Depths themselves seemed to propel him forward, and the howl of rage that burst from his throat, startling the enemy, covered the whistle of his daggers as they descended, flashing in the firelight. There was a shriek of metal on metal, and the click of gears rattling together.
Shivering, the Collector glanced at the his ruined arms. They fell from his slashed and crushed shoulders, twitching. Unbalanced at the edge of the utter dark and the fall to the river, he leaned back on his central wheel. He had not failed. He smiled, and would have winked at his destroyer but for the bright edge of the cliff that rushed up and whisked the scene from view as he let it all go. The Depths would swallow him up, take him into its dark heart once again, only to be reborn for more exquisite pains and horrific delights.
“There,” Hidduk grunted, panting with exertion as the Collector fell. “That’s the end of that. And now for new beginnings…” As he turned back to the others, there was a crash, far out in the shadows of the vast chamber, that echoed around and was met by further noises, whose source he could not yet see.
The other Delvers picked themselves up and began to examine their newest wounds. Both of the heavy fighters, Jorvald and Fogja, had taken serious damage, and looked weary. Xedric was pale, still not fully recovered, if he ever would. Sacriphisto seemed nearly spent, his ghostly appearance faded and frayed at the edges. Even Donnie had not escaped entirely unscathed: He wiped away blood where it trickled from beneath his piled crowns, still miraculously perched upon his head. If they still meant to leave this place, they would have to do so soon.
The tall, blue-skinned Frost Giant gasped and pointed upward. “Look!”
Across the top of the archway, a smear of brown-black blood across the stone glistened, the vile fluid of the Collector. It appeared to be bubbling, while the deeply carved letters that had presented such an inscrutable meaning shifted across the tremendous bulk of curved stone.
Another loud explosion of sound made them all look away, up at the columns of glowing jars, which stretched on forever, mockery of the infinite stars that lay outside this nightmare realm.
The stars began to fall. Not one by one but in streams, a flood of miniscule lights twinkling and tumbling down, growing larger. Some of the glowing jars collided in midair, dashing themselves and their contents to pieces, spreading and glittering in the dark. The flood of falling objects became a deluge, crashing and collapsing with a torrential noise as they fell down, down toward the watery abyss.
“Time to go through the door!” Sacriphisto shouted, and floated up a set of the cracked and crumbling stone stairs that still stood.
As if to punctuate his point, a jar crash-landed on the other side of the dais, exploding into glass, embalming fluid, and what seemed to be a torrent of small coins. Faces, grimacing or grinning, appeared from where each bit of old metal bounced and skidded on the stone. The faces were ghostly, flickering like flames. They howled and twitched in a macabre dance, mocking the poor lost souls. Then they stretched up, long long mouths wrenching in a silent scream, as, fading like smoke, the bits of memory contained in each collected item melted into nothing.
Fogja refocused her attention on the writing above the tremendous stone doors. The carved sigils were finally slowing their bubble and shift beneath the discolored splash of the Collector’s blood. Then the Frost Giant’s jaw dropped. “Of course!” She shouted over the cacophony of the collapsing room as her companions ran up be behind her. “I’ve never seen it before--it’s blood script! I will remember...”
“Is it the way out? Can you read it?” Hidduk shouted back, wondering if the doors would give way to a concerted push.
He had an answer before she could respond. The writhing, scrambling characters froze, forming a new, short phrase beneath the stain of the Collector’s passing.
It now read, plain for all to see: The price is One.
There was nothing else. The stone doors swung inward of their own volition, revealing a shadow that Xedric’s flickering torchlight seemed unable to penetrate.
The Delvers stared in wonder, heedless of the falling stars breaking apart the platform behind them. Like the petals of a dark orchid blooming, layers of shadow within the gate unfolded into a slowly spinning portal into the unknown.
A long, glittering stream of stars threatened to crash upon the dais. Before the deadly projectiles could hit, the Delvers exchanged a quick glance. Then, they went in together through the broad doorway.
Beyond, there was a passage made of darkness. The steps they found themselves climbing, the struts holding up the roof of the tunnel, everything--it was all made of some utterly black material that lacked proper substance. It was barely visible but for the crimson sheen that reflected their flickering torchlight like volcanic glass.
“Well, this isn’t so bad… now, if that Merchant were to suddenly show up, I might get the creeps,” muttered Xedric, mostly to himself as he focused on lighting their way as best he could.
Then the whispers began.
They came up from the cracks in the floor like the voices of the damned and all their demons, smoky twists of sound and tempting words. There was something absolutely hypnotic about the whispers, something that invited the ear to bemusement and confusion, a desire for more desire, a yearning for cupidity. Each Delver saw their companions shift and bend beneath their eyes, along with the floor beneath their feet, a sea of choppy waves in the solidity that was supposed to be stone.
The whispers felt like an atmospheric force, a physical presence pressing in around them like tiny pinpricks insistently trying to seep through. The voices were speaking secrets, laughing to themselves, speaking in sibilant sounds of the many treasures left to find, the mighty riches and power still to be had within the Depths: songs of mistrust and misunderstanding.
Still the Delvers pushed on, following the winding tunnel of black on black. They came at length to a crossroads.
In the shifting, uncertain nature of the passage, it was hard to tell exactly how many tunnels branched from here; Hidduk counted five.
Jorvald stepped forward, peering down one branch and another with his silver eyes. His gruff voice could barely be heard over the rasping whispers. “It seems to me that all of these go to the same place. Also, this farthest path on the right leads upward, which is promising.”
Sacriphisto joined the Viking, blinking in the futile attempt to shake the shadowy haze from his eyes. “Come, friends. We have traveled this far together. Let us proceed the same way.” The Bean Sidhe motioned toward the right-hand path with one ghostly finger.
As most of the Delvers nodded and began to follow, Hidduk paused. “You are right as usual, good healer. However, my tactics rely on stealth; it would do no good for me to enter through the same path. I shall take this one.” As he indicated the central tunnel with his curved dagger, the swirling darkness all around appeared to coagulate into quivering, unreal shapes, weaving and melting as they inexplicably clustered around the Cait Sith. The whispers grew louder, rising to a deafening moan that sounded like pain and delight in one.
Fogja shook her head at the lithe, furry creature. “Come on, shorty. You don’t--you don’t want to end up going the wrong way.” She glanced away from Jorvald’s smirk, which in those conditions was hard to see in any case.
Donnie beckoned as well, the stack of bangles on his wrist rattling sharply above the whispers. “You don’t want to get lost, now.”
Hidduk snorted at the shorter man, rolling his yellow eyes. “Please. Have you forgotten who among us has braved the Depths before, and survived where others could not? If a little Luchorpán can find his way through a side path and steal some treasure to boot, then so can I. It is decided: I take the left-hand path.”
Hidduk glanced once more over his shoulder, eyes peering from within his hood, which in the strange light appeared to be leaking tendrils of shadow like tentacles. He nodded, and seemed to smile. Then he went through, vanishing in a moment. The rest of the Delvers were left to follow the upper path, together, and to arrive wherever it would take them.
It was an evil place, a wrong place. Even for the Depths, it was a place of dark hallucination and nightmare. Not the center, but a centerpoint; not real, but all too deadly; not truly alive, yet utterly malevolent and evil. The place itself was a presence, weighing heavily on all souls. The pressure of the whispers mounted higher and higher, pushing on through the mind and into the core of one’s being to ask: What is your pleasure? What is your pain? What is your corruption? Bonus Image! We can’t let you escape without looking at a cool C.U.B.E. image! This mighty castle was created by KnightValor:Donald Trump at the second presidential debate Sunday. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
ST. LOUIS—The most important part of Sunday night’s presidential debate happened within the first 20 minutes. The rest wasn’t uninteresting—at one point, Donald Trump confessed to not paying income taxes, at another broke with his running mate on what to do in Syria—but it wasn’t vital. It wasn’t, and shouldn’t be, the chief takeaway.
The honor goes to the first major moment of the debate. That’s where, after a lengthy exchange, a menacing and almost unhinged Trump threatened to put Clinton in prison should he win the White House in November. Even in a campaign in which Republican crowds chant “lock her up” and Trump surrogates play-act anti-Clinton tribunals, it was extraordinary and disturbing. The behavior of a despot, not of a president.
The ramp-up to this was revelatory. Trump was cornered, and he responded with a burst of banana-republic machismo, vowing to investigate and prosecute a political opponent using the powers of his office. It was a remarkable moment: a presidential nominee promising to rip up the foundations of liberal democracy for the sake of getting off a good attack line.
It began with the first question. One of the two moderators, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, asked Trump to account for the now-infamous tape in which the Republican nominee claims to “grab” women “by the pussy,” bragging about sexual assault. Trump called it “locker room talk” and tried to pivot to ISIS. Cooper stopped him and pressed him on the question, which he tried to avoid. Trump returned to his campaign slogan—“We’re going to make America great again”—and Cooper turned the question over to Clinton, who hit one of her themes.
“Donald Trump is different. I said starting back in June that he was not fit to be president and commander in chief,” said Clinton, before rattling off the laundry list of groups that Trump has attacked and insulted over the course of the campaign. He responded—“It’s just words, folks. Just words.”—and the moderators brought the debate back to audience questions, including one submitted online. This one also focused on the tape. “When you walked off that bus at age 59, were you a different man, or did that behavior continue until just recently?” Again, Trump called this “locker room talk.” But then he went in a different direction, one presaged by both his Friday night apology video and an unusual pre-debate “press conference” involving three women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault.
“There’s never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that’s been so abusive to women,” said Trump of the former president. “You can say any way you want to say it, but Bill Clinton was abusive to women.” He continued, tying Hillary to her husband’s history with women. “Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously.”
Clinton had a chance to respond, and she did, again reciting Trump’s attacks on a variety of groups and individuals, from the Khan family—whose son died fighting in Iraq—and Judge Gonzalo Curiel, to President Obama, whom Trump repeatedly attacked as illegitimate on the basis of his birth.
It’s at this juncture that the Republican nominee—already teetering on the edge of decorum—went off the rails. He accused Clinton of starting the “birther” conspiracy; he questioned her friendship with Michelle Obama; he accused Clinton of rigging the Democratic primary to rob Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders of the election; and he slammed her for her emails, all leading to an explosion of contempt and menace.
“If I win,” said Trump, “I’m going to instruct the attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation because there’s never been so many lies, so much deception.” He continued: “[W]e’re going to get a special prosecutor because people have been, their lives have been destroyed for doing one fifth of what you’ve done.” And when Clinton gave her response—“It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law of our country”—Trump jumped in with a quip.
“Because you’d be in jail.”
There’s no charitable read here, or at least not one that respects the rules and structure of the English language. Trump’s meaning is plain. Should he win the Oval Office, he will use his authority vis-à-vis the Justice Department to launch an investigation of his rival in the presidential election. And because he believes Clinton uniquely perfidious, this investigation would lead to her prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment. As he said, she would be in jail.
Historians, commentators, and “Never Trump” Republicans quickly grasped the weight of his statement. “Only time I’ve ever heard a candidate threatening to jail his opponent was in the Congo. He lost & was later convicted of war crimes,” tweeted former Mitt Romney campaign manager Stuart Stevens. On television, CBS’s Bob Schieffer said Trump’s threat reminded him of a “banana republic.” And University of Virginia historian Nicole Hemmer stressed that this was a “breathtaking violation of our democratic tradition.”
She’s right. The United States is not a perfect democracy. But one thing we can say is that, in America, political opponents are just that: political opponents. They aren’t hounded and they aren’t imprisoned. It isn’t a crime to be on the other side of an election. To go down that road is to take a shortcut to despotism and repression.
On Sunday, to an audience of tens of millions of Americans, Trump voiced his contempt for the norms that define and safeguard our democracy with a promise to jail his chief political opponent. This, again, was the most important moment of the debate. Nothing else—not Clinton’s poor answers for her private speeches, nor Trump’s abject ignorance—comes close. And it’s all the more important given Trump’s larger platform. If elected, the Republican would use the force of the state against nonwhites and religious minorities, from forced deportations of unauthorized Hispanic immigrants to surveillance of Muslim Americans and a return to stop-and-frisk. Trump already promises an authoritarian state for millions of Americans. This statement—planned and strategically deployed—just shows the scope of his vision.
In all of this, it’s worth noting the complicity of the GOP leadership. An hour after Trump promised to jail his opponent if elected president, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus praised his nominee’s performance. “Hillary Clinton spent the night struggling to defender her failed record,” he said on Twitter.
American democracy needs two healthy parties, at least, to survive and to thrive. Sunday showed we have just one.
Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.China has unblocked the popular entertainment website IMDB (Internet Movie Database), which has been blocked since 2010.“I know very few cases where a site that’s been blocked for a long time is unblocked,” said Doug Young, a journalism professor at Fudan University in Shanghai and author of the new book The Party Line: How the Media Dictates Public Opinion in Modern China. “No reason is ever given. People are always left to guess.”No reason for blocking IMDB was ever given, but Young speculates that there might be movies or TV shows or comments that were critical of China. Blocking of IMDB began about a year after popular sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter also were blocked. Those sites remain blocked.“The timing is very unusual because typically in the run up to the big Communist Party meeting, they tend to crack down more,” said Young. “They censor more, and things tend to get more heavy handed.”Access to IMDB in China was first reported in earlier this month by the South China Morning Post, but Young said it’s possible the site may have been unblocked for months.Young speculated that China’s rulers might be beginning to realize how powerful new media can be.“The media has become an incredibly powerful tool, with online sleuths that dig up dirt and post pictures,” he said. “The leaders think media, especially new media, is a useful tool for the Communist Party to achieve its objectives like rooting out corruption.”Atlanta’s most talked-about temporary landmark just made its way back into the spotlight — on the sanctuary stage of the dReam Center Church of Atlanta, that is.
» RELATED: Atlanta’s newest landmark takes social media by storm thanks to 2 Chainz
In an effort to “Make the Church Relevant Again,” church leaders took a marketing tip from Atlanta-based hip-hop star 2 Chainz himself and decorated their sanctuary with a miniature Pink Trap House, a pink stove and a pink toy car.
The church shared its one-of-a-kind service led by Bishop William Murphy on Facebook Live and as of Monday morning, the post has garnered nearly 30,000 views.
» RELATED: 2 Chainz’s Atlanta Pink Trap House lease up, to be repainted, owner says
Viewers and attendees alike lauded Bishop’s and the dReam Center Church’s unique way of attracting the youth for its Sunday service.
» RELATED: 2 Chainz kicks off tour in pink wheelchair
And 2 Chainz himself took to Instagram to praise the service, writing, “I think it’s dope to be used by God in different ways.”
Seems like somebody was praying for me this morning!! " pink traphouse " made it to yet another sermon, I think it's dope to be used by God in different ways 🌸🏚 A post shared by 2 Chainz Aka Tity Boi (@hairweavekiller) on Aug 13, 2017 at 2:31pm PDT
2 Chainz’ Pink Trap House, a flipped home at 1530 Howell Mill painted pink to mimic his album’s cover art, was a hot Instagram spot last month.
The artist, currently performing in a pink wheelchair after breaking his leg on tour, initially used the venue to host a listening party to promote his project with actress and writer Issa Rae, “Pretty Girls Like Trap Music.”
But the house was also used as a site for free HIV testing and for a “Trap Church” event hosted by Street Groomers, a neighborhood watch group and local faith leaders such as Michael Wortham, minister of young adults at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.
While the Pink Trap House lease was up July 7, it seems marketing genius 2 Chainz is still making an impact around town.It wasn't just coincidence to Bobby Burton. The 47-year-old Houston native had been covering college football recruiting for more than 20 years. With increased frequency, the best players he saw were more Americanized than American.
Burton lives in a Houston recruiting hotbed, but what he increasingly saw created a recruiting quandary. Who were these kids with the strange names? They were polite, dedicated and often studs.
They absolutely were Nigerian, or the second-generation offspring of Nigerians, playing the hell out of American football.
"You're always looking for the next thing in recruiting," said Burton, a writer for 247Sports.
This one hit him between the eyes.
All of it made sense when Burton did the math. Nigeria is the seventh most populous nation in the world (190 million). There are more Nigerian immigrants in the United States (376,000) than anywhere in the world. The Houston metro area is home to most Nigerians in the country (about 150,000).
Somehow their culture, their drive, their family structure and, oh yes, their bodies seemed to fit football.
With some meticulous research, Burton determined that in the 2016 NFL Draft there were as many players taken from Lagos, Nigeria, as from the city of Chicago (three).
"Unbelievable, unbelievable," said Hakeem Olajuwon, the acknowledged pied piper for Nigerian athletes after coming out the University of Houston in 1984 and becoming a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
"You can see the talents coming out."
It turns out, this phenomenon was bound to happen.
"I think it was kind of that moment in time," Burton said. "It's gone past the point of coincidence … It's no longer just [an] anomaly. It's part of the fabric of football and football recruiting in this country."
Their story goes beyond college football -- or even college athletics. Forget any athletic stereotype, Nigerians have a fierce family pride and dogged belief in education -- particularly higher education -- that allows them to succeed in this country.
These noble West African natives and their descendants are the American Dream.
"There is an honor about them," USC coach Clay Helton said.
Helton counts at least five first- or second-generation Nigerians on his roster.
"They're such a regal people," said Chris Plonsky, the women's athletic director at Texas.
Oh, and they can play. In the space of four picks at the end of the first round and beginning of the second of that 2016 NFL Draft, three were of Nigerian descent (Ole Miss' Robert Nkemdiche, Texas A&M's Germain Ifedi and Oklahoma State's Emmanuel Ogbah).
While the NCAA doesn't keep statistics on nationality (only race), Nigerian influence on college sports is obvious. Among the Power Five, only the SEC didn't have at least one player of Nigerian heritage on its all-conference first or second teams in 2016.
The past three seasons, at least one player of Nigerian heritage has finished in the top 25 nationally in tackles.
At least 80 players of Nigerian ancestry have populated professional football, soccer, basketball and even car racing in recent years. In 1987, Christian Okoye ("The Nigerian Nightmare") became the first Nigerian-born NFL player.
Before Okoye, Olajuwon was the inspiration.
"You're totally right," said Emmanuel Acho, a Nigerian-American who played linebacker at Texas and in the NFL. "If you want to start with Hakeem Olajuwon or you want to start with Christian Okoye, [it doesn't matter]."
Hakeem Olajuwon and Christian Okoye led a wave of Nigerian athletes in the U.S. Graphic by Michael Meredith
Hakeem's background in soccer and handball helped his footwork in basketball. Those Phi Slama Jama teams in the mid-1980s changed the game.
But what about the scores of second-generation Nigerians -- those born into a family with at least one Nigerian-born parent? In the 2016 NFL Draft alone, there were three times as many Nigerian players with hereditary ties to the country's dominant tribe -- the Igbo -- (six) than draftees from Florida State (two).
Oluwole Bet |
Desmet, Ignacio Ortuño-Ortin, Romain Wacziarg
The current refugee crisis has highlighted the importance of understanding how ethnic and cultural differences affect social cohesion. This column investigates the links between ethnicity and culture, and the relationship between diversity and civil conflict. It finds that globally, there appears to be little overlap between ethnic identity and cultural identity. Also, ethnic diversity per se has no effect on civil conflict. It is when differences in culture coincide with differences in ethnicity that conflict becomes more likely.
Are ethnic cleavages associated with deep differences in preferences, norms, values, and attitudes? Many people think so. In developing countries, ethnic divisions are often blamed for lack of agreement on the broad goals of society – leading to dysfunctional governance and conflict. Countries with fractionalised ethnic compositions, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, are prone to social tensions and civil conflicts. In developed countries, the recent rise of populist movements has brought to the fore issues of cultural identity, and there is a growing perception that immigration and multiculturalism may lead to the breakdown of social consensus. The debate over Syrian refugees in Europe is at least as much about cultural values as it is about economic interests.
Many of these concerns over ethnic divisions are based on the underlying assumption that people agree about values and norms within ethnic groups and disagree across ethnic groups, but this assumption has not been subjected to empirical scrutiny. The relationship between ethnic diversity and political economy outcomes has been extensively analysed in widely cited contributions by Easterly and Levine (1997), Alesina et al. (1999), Fearon and Laitin (2003) and Alesina et al. (2003) (these are but a few examples in a vast and growing literature).
Yet much less is known about the underlying mechanism. Does ethnic diversity per se impact growth, public goods, redistribution, and conflict? Does cultural diversity act as the mediating channel? Or is it only when ethnic groups are culturally distinct that political economy outcomes are negatively impacted? In recent research, we conducted a systematic investigation of the links between ethnicity and culture (Desmet et al. 2016).
A definition of culture
We think of an individual’s culture as his set of norms, values, attitudes, and preferences. To measure culture empirically, we use the World Values Survey. This survey asks individuals across a wide variety of countries a set of questions about their values, norms, and attitudes. The survey also provides information about an individual’s ethnicity and language. This allows us to analyse the extent to which culture and ‘ethnolinguistic’ identity coincide.
Social antagonism, culture and ethnicity
Ethnic differences may exacerbate social antagonism, but what is not well-understood is why this might be the case. We argue that there could be three different channels at work, depending on the factors underlying social tensions. When discussing these three channels, consider a hypothetical society with two ethnic groups – the Amhara and the Oromo – and one cultural trait – how obedient children should be.
Cultural antagonism
Consider a society where antagonism arises from cultural differences, and where ethnicity plays no role. No one cares about the other’s language, colour, or ethnicity. People only feel tension when they are with others who have different preferences. In our simple example, no one cares about whether you are Amhara or Oromo, but people do care about how you educate your children. In this case, we can measure tensions by the probability that two randomly chosen individuals disagree about how obedient a child should be. We refer to this measure of social antagonism as cultural fractionalisation.
Ethnic antagonism
Now consider a society where antagonism only stems from ethnic differences. No one cares about how the others think or what their attitudes are, they only care about whether they have the same skin colour or speak the same language. This could be due to pure racial animosity, or it could come from a lack of trust or communication barriers between groups. In our simple example, no one cares about whether you think children should be obedient, but people do care about whether you are Amhara or Oromo. In this case, we can measure tension by the probability that two randomly drawn individuals are of a different ethnic group. We refer to this measure of social antagonism as ethnic fractionalisation.
The overlap between ethnicity and culture
A third possible society is one where individuals feel antagonism towards other ethnic groups, but only to the extent that those other groups are culturally different from their own. That is, people do not feel tension towards culturally different individuals from their own ethnic group or towards other ethnic groups that are culturally similar. They only experience antagonism towards other ethnicities if they are culturally different. In our simple example, you only dislike people of a different ethnic group if they have different views on how to educate children.
A very intuitive way of measuring this overlap between culture and ethnicity is by using the fixation index, F ST, a measure first developed by population geneticists. In our context it is the ratio of between-group cultural heterogeneity to total cultural heterogeneity. It measures the share of the overall variation in culture that is due to differences between ethnic groups. We refer to this measure of social antagonism as F ST, or the overlap measure.
If F ST or overlap is high, then knowing someone’s ethnicity provides a lot of information about his culture. If, on the other hand, F ST is low, then knowing someone’s ethnicity tells me little about his culture. To illustrate this idea, go back to our child obedience example. If two-thirds of the Amhara think children should be obedient and one-third don’t, and the same is true for the Oromo, then knowing someone’s ethnicity does not reveal anything about his culture. The variation in culture in the society at large is identical to the variation in culture within the Amhara and within the Oromo. In that case, the F ST value would be zero – in population genetics this would be the result of perfect interbreeding, or ‘panmixia’. If, instead, all the Amhara think children should be obedient and none of the Oromo do, then knowing someone’s ethnicity gives us perfect information about her culture. In that case, the F ST value would be one – we have perfect fixation of the cultural trait to ethnic groups.
When economists and political scientists use ethnic diversity as a proxy for cultural diversity, they typically have this latter situation in mind. More to the point, if there is perfect fixation, then ethnic diversity and cultural diversity would be indistinguishable. If we were to find that ethnic diversity causes conflict, we would not be able to know whether this is because of ethnic antagonism or because of cultural antagonism. But as argued before, so far this has been an unproven assumption.
What do the data show?
Figure 1 shows a map of cultural fractionalisation, measured by the probability that two randomly drawn individuals of a country answer a randomly drawn question of the WVS differently. The most culturally diverse country is Zambia and the least culturally diverse country is Jordan. Examples of countries that are culturally highly diverse include France and India, and examples of countries that are culturally much more homogeneous include Egypt, Indonesia, and China.
Figure 1 Cultural fractionalisation
Similarly, Figure 2 displays ethnic fractionalisation. A common assumption in the literature is that cultural diversity is highly correlated with ethnolinguistic heterogeneity. Comparing Figure 2 and Figure 1, it becomes immediately obvious that no such correlation is present in the data. Countries such as Pakistan and Egypt have high levels of ethnolinguistic heterogeneity but low levels of cultural heterogeneity. At the other extreme are countries such as Germany and South Korea, which are ethnolinguistically fairly homogeneous but culturally diverse. The lack of a relationship between both types of heterogeneity is not limited to these few examples – the correlation between both measures is zero.
Figure 2 Ethnolinguistic fractionalisation
The absence of a correlation between cultural and ethnic fractionalisation suggests that there is little overlap between ethnic identity and cultural identity. Figure 3 shows F ST, the share of the variation in cultural fractionalisation that occurs between groups. Perhaps surprisingly, the average FST is around 0.012. That is, only 1.2% of the variation in culture is between groups, so 98.8% occurs within groups. Yet there is interesting variation in FST across countries: Western Europe and Latin America display particularly low values of F ST whereas South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa have high values.
Figure 3 Variation in cultural fractionalisation
Culture, ethnicity and civil conflict
We now return to one of our initial questions. What drives the relationship between diversity and civil conflict? Is it cultural diversity and the differences in opinions about life? Is it ethnic diversity per se that worsens outcomes? Or is it when ethnic groups have divergent views that outcomes are affected? We find it is the latter.
In contrast to a commonly accepted view, we find that ethnic diversity per se has no effect on civil conflict. Instead, it is when differences in culture coincide with differences in ethnicity that conflict becomes more likely. Cultural diversity, on the other hand, has, if anything, a pacifying effect. The magnitude of the effect of overlap on conflict is large – a one standard deviation increase in our overlap measure leads to a 17% increase in the probability of conflict. We have applied this same methodology to analyse the provision of public goods and the level of development. As with civil conflict, we find that ethnic diversity per se does not matter. Instead, it is when the overlap between culture and ethnicity is high that public goods provision suffers and economic development lags behind.
Conclusion
Our analysis leads to four important conclusions. First, ethnic diversity cannot be viewed as a proxy for cultural diversity. The correlation between both is essentially zero. Second, differences between ethnic groups only explain 1.2% of the overall cultural heterogeneity we observe in societies, making it hard to predict someone’s culture based on knowing her ethnic group. Third, there is interesting variation in the degree to which ethnicity predicts culture. In rich, developed democracies, as well as in Latin America, the association between the two has essentially been erased, whereas in poor societies of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, there is a stronger link between cultural values and ethnic identity. Fourth, although the overlap between culture and ethnicity is small, variation in the degree of overlap is relevant as a predictor of civil conflict, public goods and development.
Our research suggests that if modernity allows cultural values to become further unmoored from ethnic identity, there is hope that the deleterious effects of ethnic antagonism will fade away as countries become richer and more democratic.
References
Alesina, A, A Devleeschauwer, W Easterly, S Kurlat, and R Wacziarg (2003), "Fractionalization", Journal of Economic Growth, 8 (2), 155-194
Alesina, A, R Baqir, and W Easterly (1999), "Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114 (4), 1243-1284
Desmet, K, I Ortuño-Ortín, and R Wacziarg (2016), "Culture, Ethnicity and Diversity", CEPR Discussion Paper 10451
Easterly, W, and R Levine (1997), "Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112 (4) 1203-1250
Fearon, J, and D Laitin (2003), "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War", American Political Science Review, 97 (1), 75-90MANILA - (UPDATED) NLEX guard Mark Cardona was rushed to the hospital on Sunday after he overdosed on pills in an apparent attempt to commit suicide.
According to Cardona's sister Rowena, the basketball player is at the intensive care unit (ICU) of the University of Perpetual Help Hospital in Las Piñas after his vital signs started to stabilize.
Rowena asked his brother's supporters to continue praying for Cardona's recovery.
"Ang huling nasabi lang po niya sa akin, 'Ate hindi ko na kaya.' Nagpapaalam siya... Nararamdaman ko na may balak siyang gawin sa sarili niya," Rowena said in an interview on DZMM, recalling her last conversation with her brother.
Cardona was arrested after his partner Bianca Jackes complained of domestic violence.
Rowena denied Cardona aimed a gun at Jackes, saying the cager does not own a gun.
"Isa iyon sa ikina-depress sa kapatid ko na nag-trigger sa kanya na gawin 'to sa sarili niya. Sarili naman niya ang sinaktan niya," Rowena said.
NLEX Road Warriors team manager Ronal Dulatre appealed to the public for privacy for Cardona and his family at this time.
"We urge the public to allow Macmac (Cardona) and his family to have privacy at this difficult time," Dulatre said in a statement sent to ABS-CBN News.
The NLEX Road Warriors management also pledged to assist the embattled basketball player.
"Macmac is part of the NLEX Road Warriors team. We are providing whatever assistance he needs from us during this time," he added.
Meanwhile, a group in the Philippines is dedicated to addressing those who have suicidal tendencies.
The crisis hotlines of the Natasha Goulbourn Foundation aim to make those individuals feel that someone is ready to listen to them.
These are their hotline numbers:
Information and Crisis Intervention Center
(02) 804-HOPE (4673)
0917-558-HOPE (4673) or (632) 211-4550
0917-852-HOPE (4673) or (632) 964-6876
0917-842-HOPE (4673) or (632) 964-4084
In Touch Crisis Lines:
0917-572-HOPE or (632) 211-1305
(02) 893-7606 (24/7)
(02) 893-7603 (Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm)
Globe (63917) 800.1123 or (632) 506.7314
Sun (63922) 893.8944 or (632) 346.8776
(For more sports coverage, visit the ABS-CBN Sports website.)“Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow’” – Mary Anne Radmacher
On Sunday, most of us are going to be spoiled in some fashion by our children who will shower us with hand-made cards and breakfast in bed as we celebrate Mother’s Day. There are mothers among us who will find this holiday incredibly difficult, mothers we know and love who bear a pain so profound that it will be carried through their lifetimes, and for them I am writing this post. On Mother’s Day, let’s celebrate the inspiring courage of the bereaved mother.
This week, I’ve been thinking of my friends Natalie and Mike. They are a young couple, recently engaged. They’re smart, athletic, funny, warm, talented, good-looking, and healthy. There are so many more attributes to describe these wonderful people, but the one quality I most want to share with you is their bravery. In early September, at seven months pregnant, our friends lost their little baby, a son they named Aemon. Our circle felt the incredible ripple of this devastating loss, and I have been humbled and inspired at how Mike and Nat have wrapped themselves in a cloak of love and moved forward, one step at a time, through their grief.
I can’t imagine how losing a child could feel. In fact, the idea of such sorrow afflicting anyone I know or love has been so terrifying, that sometimes when I talk to Nat or Mike, I don’t really know what to say. In those moments, I say; “I love you.” Those words are the most important ones, I think.
Yesterday Mike, who is the more seasoned writer of the two, (Nat is a dancer and aerialist and tells her stories with her body) posted an incredible letter on his Facebook timeline. I asked him if I could share it with you, and he graciously permitted me to post. Below Mike’s letter are some resources for parents who are grieving. Nat and Mike both wanted me to make these available to you and anyone you know who might benefit. Please don’t be afraid to share, and please do take the time to explore these resources if you have a friend or relative who has experienced infant death. You will learn so much about how you can help.
Dear friends,
I want to share an important story that I feel I’ve been keeping off of Facebook for much too long. For the last several months I haven’t felt the strength to share this very personal story online with essentially everyone I know, but I feel that by not sharing the story I’m hiding a major part of myself, and I don’t want to do that anymore.
Last August I shared an image hinting that my darling love Natalie and I were expecting our first child, due in late October. Just a few weeks after sharing that photo, we found out that our baby had passed away. At dusk on Friday, September 6th Natalie gave birth to our beautiful son, Aemon. We won’t ever know why he wasn’t able to stay with us. He was perfect in every way, except that his heart had stopped beating.
Of course the loss was the most shocking and devastating thing we’ve ever experienced. For the last several months it’s been the love and support of the people closest to us that has sustained us, yet I’ve been reluctant to talk about our experience with people outside that close circle. I’m over that reluctance.
A meet-up with an old friend this week reminded me how hard we find it to talk about death, or rather how much easier it seems to be not to talk about it. This is much more the case when the person who left us is a baby that barely anyone ever got to physically interact with. I imagine that someone hearing about our kind of loss understands that it must be very severe and weighty, but also finds it kind of intangible. I imagine that that must be very disorienting, which might help explain why discussion of infant death is one of the gigantic taboos we live with – and a very alienating one. People carefully seek to protect our feelings and prevent us further pain, but for the record I want to point out that that effort is misdirected.
Most bereaved parents will tell you that no amount of discussion about their loss and their baby will make them feel worse. On the contrary, Natalie and I love talking about Aemon. Our love and our memories of him are all that we have left, and it brings us great joy to share them. My boy had big feet and a head of thick dark hair like me. Before he left us he liked to bug his mother, like me. If you’d like to know more, I would be happy to tell you.
This weekend as we all celebrate mothers and the magic of their love, please take a minute to think of the countless women who do not have a child to hold in their arms but who still hold that same bottomless love in their hearts. And while I have your attention: do be good to one another. Everyone really is fighting a hard battle, and all life really is a miracle.
Thanks for reading.
Some resources that Natalie and Mike wanted to share:
The Pregnancy and Infant Loss Network (P.A.I.L)
“There is no Footprint too small to leave an imprint on this world”
PAIL Network is a registered Canadian charity committed to making a positive difference to those affected by pregnancy and infant loss. This incredible service has a wide-ranging network, mostly powered by women who have lost children of their own. This is an incredible resource linking to medical care, support groups, and a wealth of other valuable information for parents who are grieving the loss of a baby.
http://www.pailnetwork.ca/
Bereaved Families of Ontario
Their website is a bit dated and clinical, but this is a comprehensive resource for families who are grieving the loss of any family member. There are additional tools for families who have had to deal with completed suicide, sudden violent loss, and for children who are dealing with grief.
http://www.bereavedfamilies.net/
Carly Marie, Project Heal
“A mother is not defined by the number of children you can see, but by the love that she holds in her heart.” – Franchesca Cox
This incredible blog, and virtual art experience was created by a mother who experienced the stillbirth of her son and went on to create this beautiful place of hope and healing. My words can’t do this justice, I encourage all of you to visit and experience this site.
http://carlymarieprojectheal.com/
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep
My friends learned of this incredible initiative only after they left the hospital, so I want to spread the word because I was deeply moved by what this organization is doing. NILMDTS is a volunteer collective of professional photographers with a wide network who will visit the hospital and take portraits of your baby so you have a keepsake of your beautiful child. They even have resources on their site for medical professionals, with instructions on posing and lighting, in case they aren’t able to send a photographer to your location. Friends and loved ones, I hope you never have to remember that this service exists, but if anyone you love is experiencing still birth, please make them aware of this incredible resource. Many parents can’t bear the idea of a photo in the moment, but nearly all of them are grateful to have captured the memory in hindsight. These beautiful portraits often go on to occupy the space they deserve beside photos of other family members and loved ones. Photographer friends, there is no greater work that you can do.
https://www.nowilaymedowntosleep.org/
GAPPS – The Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth, an initiative from Seattle Children’s Hospital produced this beautiful video:
Return To Zero
This feature length film starring Minnie Driver is due to be released on the Lifetime Network in Canada on May 17th. The star-studded cast features the likes of Alfred Molina and Kathy Baker and centers on the story of a successful couple who lose their first baby to stillbirth, on of the first times this subject is explored in popular media.
Mothers, and fathers, who have loved so deeply and felt such profound loss, know that our hearts and our hopes are with you on Mother’s Day and every day. I for one, am happy and honoured to listen whenever you want to share stories of your beautiful children.A report published last night on World Net Daily outlines the shocking details of a warrantless raid on a Missouri homeschooling family by a SWAT Team that forced its way into the family’s home, Tasered the father, pepper-sprayed the mother and put their children in the custody of social service workers.
Jason and Laura Hagan, of New Hampton. have filed a lawsuit against Capt. David Glidden of Nodaway County, Missouri as a result of the raid. The lawsuit seeks compensatory damages, punitive damages, as well as attorneys costs and fees, and was brought on behalf of the couple by the Home School Legal Defense Association. A court has already ruled the raid was a violation of the family’s constitutional rights.
According to the report, attorney James Mason, senior counsel for HSLDA, told World Net Daily the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure were added to the Constitution for a reason.
“We need to be vigilant,” Mason said. “We need to be willing to stand up for our rights.”
He said authorities sometimes need to be reminded that “rules apply to them, too.”
The lawsuit alleges that the officers came to the Hagan residence because a social worker was investigating a report of a messy home. The case worker wanted to inspect the home a second time, but the Hagans refused, so she called Glidden and White. Glidden first demanded to be allowed into the home and was denied permission. So, according to the complaint, he pepper-sprayed Jason and then Laura.
“Glidden then turned to Jason, who was still standing, and shot him in the back with his Taser,” according to the complaint.
When Laura closed the front door, Glidden continued triggering the Taser through the closed door. Then White joined in the attack. “Together they forced open the door and found Laura and Jason lying on the floor,” HSLDA said. They “slapped Laura, knocking her glasses off of her face, they threatened to shoot the family dog, they threw a telephone across the room, called Laura a ‘liar,’ handcuffed the parents and threatened to let Jason fall down.”
The entire assault occurred in the presence of the three children, aged 13, 10 and 8. The children were taken into state custody, where they remained for months. After allegations made by social workers and the officers against the couple reached court, a judge summarily tossed the case.
“The court will not allow [an] exception to sanction warrantless entry into a private residence by pepper spray and Taser. If the officer had a warrant in hand and such force was necessary, that is a different story, but those are not the facts of this case,” the judge said
The judge also ruled that all evidence and information the officers obtained was disallowed due to the fact that the officers entered the home without a warrant.
“The state has not offered sufficient, if indeed any, evidence of an exception that would justify a warrantless entry,” the judge said.
“The Fourth Amendment strikes a carefully crafted balance between a family’s right to privacy and the government’s need to enforce the law,” the HSLDA wrote in its report. “In most situations, government agents cannot simply force their way into a home. Instead, they must explain to a neutral magistrate why they need to enter the home, and they must provide real evidence to support that need.”
“This rule applies to all government agents,” the report states. “Court after court has agreed that there is no social services exception to the Fourth Amendment.”
The report went on to say: “All too often, law enforcement officers and child-welfare workers act as if the Fourth Amendment does not apply to CPS investigations. They are wrong. The Fourth Amendment is a legal shield that protects people from exactly the kind of mistreatment the Hagans endured.”
SourceLorde has formally canceled her upcoming June concert in Tel Aviv following criticism from fans and activists.
“We regret to announce the cancelation of the Lorde concert in Israel planned for June,” the show’s organizers told Israeli media outlet YNET (via New Zealand Media and Entertainment). “The tickets already bought will be reimbursed within 14 business days. As to the circumstances that led to the cancellation of the show, Lorde is expected to publish a statement via Twitter soon.”
As reported by The Jerusalem Post reporter Amy Spiro, Lorde released the following statement:
hey guys, so about this israel show — i’ve received an overwhelming number of messages & letters and have had a lot of discussions with people holding many views, and i think the right decision at this time is to cancel the show. i pride myself on being an informed young citizen, and i had done a lot of reading and sought a lot of opinions before deciding to book a show in tel aviv, but I’m not too proud to admit i didn’t make the right call on this one. tel aviv, it’s been a dream of mine to visit this beautiful part of the world for many years, and i’m truly sorry to reverse my commitment to come play for you. i hope one day we can all dance. L x
Here is @Lorde's statement on the cancellation of her Tel Aviv show, via Israeli PR for the concert. pic.twitter.com/Ph0uGHRjCV — Amy Spiro (@AmySpiro) December 24, 2017
Spiro also noted Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev hoped Lorde would reverse her decision. “Lorde, I’m hoping you can be a ‘pure heroine,’ like the title of your first album, be a heroine of pure culture, free from any foreign — and ridiculous — political considerations,” she said.
The Grammy-winning songstress announced her 2018 Melodrama world tour back in June with a list of shows posted online. One such stop was scheduled for the Tel Aviv Convention Centre on June 5, 2018 at 7 p.m. Activists Nadia Abu-Shanab (Palestinian) and Justine Sachs (Jewish) wrote a joint letter to Lorde that called for her to cancel her Israel concert stop in protest of the country’s treatment of Palestinians.
“Today, millions of people stand opposed to the Israeli government’s policies of oppression, ethnic cleansing, human rights violations, occupation, and apartheid,” the letter read. “As part of this struggle, we believe that an economic, intellectual and artistic boycott is an effective way of speaking out against these crimes.”
Abu-Shanab and Sachs also argued that “playing in Tel Aviv will be seen as giving support to the policies of the Israeli government, even if you make no comment on the political situation. Such an effect cannot be undone by even the best intention and the best music.”
Lorde responded to the letter over social media on Wednesday. “Noted! Been speaking [with] many people about this and considering all options,” the “Royals” singer tweeted. “Thank u for educating me i am learning all the time too.”
Noted! Been speaking w many people about this and considering all options. Thank u for educating me i am learning all the time too 🌸 — Lorde (@lorde) December 21, 2017
The North American Melodrama tour stops kick off on March 1, 2018 in Milwaukee, WI.This space is normally reserved for terrible coaching decisions. Let’s have a real good time this week and focus on some of the week’s braver and more appealing decisions. Obviously, we’ll start with Falcons head coach Michael Smith, who made the curious decision to attempt a fourth-and-several-inches conversion from his own 29-yard line with almost 11 minutes left in overtime.
When Michael Turner was stuffed and the Saints promptly kicked a game-winning field goal, it created the perfect culture for reactionary criticism. It hit almost every checkbox. It was an uncommon decision! The Falcons didn’t need to go for it! It put them in a spot where they would probably lose if they failed! It’s not what coaches are supposed to do!
Was it the right decision? It’s up for debate. Certainly, going for it on fourth-and-very-short from your own 29-yard line in overtime isn’t something that should happen very frequently, if ever. But if there were ever going to be a situation that called for such a move, this would be it. The Saints, as we’ve mentioned during the past couple of weeks, have the worst run defense in football, allowing in excess of five yards per carry. They have allowed teams to succeed 80 percent of the time in power situations, the third-worst rate in football. And while the Falcons have been just 26th in the league when running in those situations, they’d attempted to run for a first down on four different occasions during the game, including a fourth-and-1 situation in the third quarter. They had successfully converted each of them for first downs, even picking up another conversion on a fourth-and-3 during their final drive in regulation with a throw to Roddy White. When they had needed a yard during the game, the Falcons had been able to get it without much difficulty. Four plays isn’t a large sample size by any means, but combine that with the Saints’ struggles in these situations and it’s possible to see why the Falcons would be confident enough to go for it in that spot.
Keeping the ball away from Brees was also a pretty fair motivator. Although the Saints punted during their first drive in overtime, Brees had led four drives of 50 yards or more among his 10 regulation possessions, and the only reason that figure wasn’t higher came to a case of the dropsies from Jimmy Graham during the first half. The Falcons held the Saints to a three-and-out just twice during regulation. There was no guarantee whatsoever that the Falcons were getting the ball back, and if you’re the kind that says, “Well, they stopped them on the first drive in overtime,” you can’t then throw away the fact that the Falcons hadn’t been stopped with a yard to go.
Should the Falcons have run a quarterback sneak? Probably. The first four runs had been from their halfback, but they only needed a fraction of a yard; once you get the slightest push forward and move into the great mass of humanity, you’re probably going to get marked ahead with forward progress and pick up the first down. Refs are far more likely to give a first down in that situation than they are to decide a game with a bad spot, which is why quarterback sneaks succeeded 83 percent of the time last year. Carries by running backs in those same spots only converted 66 percent of the time. It would have even been a good time to run the not-yet-seen double-fake-snap play, where you go up to the line and shout out the hard count to make the opposing team think that you’re just trying to draw them offsides, only to then actually run the play with a couple of seconds left on the clock. That is a money play waiting to happen.
In fact, when you run the numbers with a Win Probability analysis that doesn’t adjust for the specific teams involved, as Brian Burke did on advancednflstats.com, the move rates out as a slight positive. The Falcons have a 47 percent chance of winning the game by going for it and a 42 percent chance of winning by punting. Part of that calculus is that the Falcons would still have an 18 percent chance of winning even after a failed conversion, mainly because teams often run the ball into the line for no gain and attempt a long field goal when they get just inside the 30-yard line during overtime. When you simultaneously consider just how bad the New Orleans run defense has been this year, it’s really not a bizarre decision from Smith. Just an unconventional one.
Thank You for … Coaching?
Smith wasn’t the only one with the gusto to make some bold decisions. We again pay praise this week to the world’s greatest coach, 49ers head honcho Jim Harbaugh. If there were some sort of Tiger Beat knockoff that had pinup posters of coaches looking at their play charts or sipping diet soda in the boxes upstairs, Harbaugh would be plastered all over our wall. Nobody in the league even comes close to managing his assets and making intelligent decisions the way Harbaugh does.
Of course, it starts with the unexpected onside kick that Harbaugh called at the end of the second quarter. The unexpected onside kick is the perfect meld of statistics and scouting. In situations where teams would not have a reason to expect an onside kick from the opposition from the scoreline, an onside kick attempt will succeed about 60 percent of the time. You can’t run an onside kick every play, though, because teams will pick up on it and start planning accordingly. Even one every two or three weeks would be too frequent; you want to find a situation where the opposing team has players up front who “leave early” and turn around to run back toward their returner and block before the ball has actually been kicked.
The 49ers saw exactly that on tape, and Harbaugh was actually going to call the onside kick on the previous kickoff. They changed their mind, but when they saw Giants blockers Spencer Paysinger, Ramses Barden, and Jacquian Williams leaving early on that kickoff, there was no escaping the call on the next one. Kicker David Akers executed the onside attempt perfectly, the Niners recovered without a fight, and then promptly drove down the field for a field goal that gave them a halftime lead. It seems like Harbaugh pulls off one of these types of plays each week to get his team an extra possession or some smaller advantage at the margins.
One decision by Harbaugh later in the game was far more subtle, but it showed just how aggressive he can be with the tools available to him as a coach. As you already know, teams have a minimum of two coach’s challenges to work with per game. Once the two-minute warning hits in the second half, though, it doesn’t matter how many of your challenges are left. They’re gone for good, so use them or lose them.
Most coaches are content to leave their challenges in their sock, but Harbaugh decided to use his. When the Giants picked up a fourth-and-6 with 3:33 left by throwing a 19-yard out to Mario Manningham, he fell out of bounds near the sidelines with a couple of 49ers in his wake. It looked to everyone involved that Manningham had just completed a difficult catch to keep the Giants’ hopes alive, but Harbaugh decided to throw the challenge flag and make 100 percent sure.
This made sense as a challenge, even though it looked like Manningham made the play, because it was a low-risk, high-reward challenge. Harbaugh’s team had a seven-point lead with two timeouts, and the Giants were at midfield with three minutes left. Even if the Giants eventually scored a touchdown to tie the game, there probably would not be enough time for Alex Smith to lead a two-minute drill and set up a game-winning field goal. A failed challenge would cost the 49ers one of their timeouts, but the challenge itself was inconsequential. Even if the Niners wanted to challenge a play in the ensuing minute before the two-minute warning, they still had another challenge and timeout to work with.
Now, let’s consider the rewards. If Manningham did happen to struggle controlling the ball or somehow fail to step inbounds (or if the refs just blew the call on review), the 49ers would have the ball with three minutes left, a seven-point lead, and two timeouts for the Giants. That’s essentially ballgame. If the replay fails, you still get to “reward” your pass rush and secondary by letting them rest for 90 seconds. A timeout isn’t a terrible idea there, and if you’re going to take a timeout, a challenge isn’t much worse.
Most other head coaches in the NFL will flip this challenge on its head and employ the antithesis: The high-risk, low-reward challenge. Sadly for Harbaugh, the perfect example of this challenge is no longer available to confused head coaches. For some reason, coaches love challenging that a player didn’t make it into the end zone when he fell down a fraction of a yard shy of the goal line. In the middle of a game, it is one of the dumbest decisions they could make.
We’re not numb to the possible reward. Taking points off the board can be sweet, especially if the offense turns the ball over. The problem is that the points almost always go back on the board. A team that has the ball on first-and-goal from the one-yard line who runs the ball three straight times |
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Forts Blown Up,
In order to gain time for an orderly
tetreat, a heavy fire *<?* maintained
against the Germans up to the last
minute, and the forls?ere then blown
up by the defenders as the Germans
?.ame in at the gate of Malines Many
buildings were b'armg, and while the
correspondent's little host sped down
the Scheldt one could imagine a pro
on <>f the Kaiser's troop? already
I goaee-atepping their wa? through the
wellnigh deserted streets. Those forty
I ho'irs of shattering noise almost with?
', out a lull seem now a fantastic night
i mare, but the harrowing sight- wit?
nessed in many part? of the city can?
not be forgotten
It was Wednesday night *hat the
shells began to fs?? into the city. From
? then onwsrd they must hsve aversged
(.bout ten a minute, and moot of them
cerne from the larges* guns which *he
Germons posse,?
Plsrk Maris?.?? Tommy Atkins
e'nrstened them before the bombard
? ment, had been long In operation. The
?tell population, er s large proportior
of It, fell into a panic. 11 la'mpossl
ble to blame thess peaceful, quist-liv
i Ing burgher, of Antwerp for the 'ears
'?ha? po,,e?,eH 'hern whe't the merci?
lea, ralti of German?hells began to
! fall Into the streets and on the roof?
??' their Vouae? and publie hutldtn?*,.
Tl?-. hurgfimaater In h', proclaim?) Inn
K?t??>?-???,ei n '???-, In remain
fa.-??, fa* Inafanae, r?M hi eer'?''
then aa admlrabl? eaampto, hot it >*??
Impassible le eaunaal pcr'en in-i la dir
, BelgiaH?,?i????i...?* *hs bad I sppei ed
i...........i --. i?.?? s, seeesd??.?ta?
ANTWERP MUST PAY
FOR RESISTANCE
I Fallen City lo Be?Mulcted Heavily by Germans
?I lostages Seized?Invaders Take.Away 2.000
Carload? of Their Wounded
I By Cable to The Vribune.*
\"??-??In Oct 11 Antwerp? undei German government
I??>?i.c Baron voi dci rhuef* has been appointed Militar*, Governor, h
? reported that?.?? ta* ol nul lev than'20.000,00(1 lerling? to b<
rvifd on ihi it
" \?? Hiding??? t? ll.-iii.lflhi.nl' foui Gern - iddenl; ap
pearrd n no before the Hotel?le Ville al Vntwerp at-.d?le
manrli I????I the lowti Mter i short copsultation thia w?
lo, an?l the iirrmani ent?ter? Vntwerp tlirongli ihe gatea in the
road. from riirnhont and Welrycl The? entered in almo?) rmpl t;
??? hfii I'.ni'l pla\ing \t.?h? m 1 o'clorl? Friday afternoon th? I
il. gun ive t Piare de Neir, where
the loyal pa tu.? ted The troops at once occupied all publii build
1 barn I? I.ren who remained in town were instructed t?
warn all refugee to?? t n i within two days; othei vise th? i!??use would
ting iro i?- and then- furniture removed.
Itnmedi tel afte ih? rntr} into tbi city, an official proclamati?
issurd, inviting th? nti rns to return without delay, \ promi <???< given
th.it thei '? i?iil?| be respected and that no harm would I" do*ie
them n' the) ili played a propei attitude toward the German troops, Loco?
motive are wailing undn team at '' rhen.? Rejgtan frontier village that
?a now a vast refuge??? rea lo earn the reinares into Holland at
? Germans appro?
I'wo Gei...?..???'? Putton yesterda) afternoon?i a
<-. : died upon the commandant of the Dutch
.i - and luid him
twerp -\a> in German posaesaion The)
asked him to?.?? the refugee????? return t.. 'heir homes,?Thousands \i?
Hal?? -?-..
With i?..? - the German are tightening their grip
??n the??? b taking hostages in earh village?ml
? unliniiert on pase 2 rolumn "I
ALLIES IN NEW FIGHT
TO TRAP VON KLUCK
Present Operation.*-. Newa of Which Is Carefully (?warded.
Are Made Doubly Important by German Reinforce?
ments Released by fail of Antwerp.
n
Loi don, Oct. 12. " l*he Dailj Sewi
puhh following, which?ri
telegraphed yesterday h?, a rorrespon?
i ni Ihen : ri Northern Prance :
"The chiel
again in this neighboihood. It?was
before the fa II? '??? rp, and no1
then no doubl thai within a radiu
??? twenty miles from Lille event? c
vast consequence ore developing. Th
r? rat?ng of pcrhap - I '?, > i e (lermn
eorp to intei pose in the count r
between the coasl and Valencienne
mus) make a difference to the Allie
? m?- little time
"I suppos?that?? - non takin
i lac? bel and the Gei
n i, n line?if eon n inicatiom fill i e
main a* obscure at official t*??mmu
i iqu? can??? 1 bul all * he evl
dence I have been able to gather give
?.i othei reading than 'ha; here event
a importai' al least as any that h:ivi
? ippened hitherto are now unfolding
?i day or two ago I mad? a lomewha
lentrtby journey to the ea*>t and?a**
gh to coi * ce me that 1 ha?
leached i distinctly unhealthy neigh
borhood. I'a' region is now shut of?
from the srorld. So far as Aarras |i
concerned, its- immediate nenyhborhoor
two?lay* ago was cleai of the enemj
They had been driver c? isiderably tr
ind north.
"Seeing that the Al ies did not? it
the door on von K!u?-k while a??>:i
'lit- narr of his army was busy ai
Antwerp, there is evidently so much
now interposed between the edge of the
and the post that one does not
ee it closing without a very great
??ggle.
"We hen- arc imping in?ieed tr;.-?
not b< forced open to any extent.
That the Allie* were ready for the new
problem I ha * everj assurance."
l.ontioi. Oct. 11 With 'he conclu
sion of 'nst phase of the irai- o' the
nations which came???. if h the fall of
Antwerp the censorship has again
drawn a veil over the fighting In?he
creaier part of the Farnnesn continent.
The French communication ;ssueri
?his afternoon deais only with the
battle, or serien of harlei. which has
been -n pr-igre?? for four weeks from
>??? to wear in Frsr.ee. with?t? mm?,
extending line, w-hirh now reach?
, norti ward from the elbow at N'oyo
to and acroas the Belgian border?
Armen? mi m
Tiie statetntnt?a?.? ths? the AI1?S
hp.ve held their positions e?.ei\whei
and ihat llerman cavalry, which?va
attempting to envelop 'he Allies'?el
I ng and hail,-e,:?'d certain points c
fi;?-,*;age on the Ri*. er Lye, to the ca?
<?! Aire,?ta defeated yesterday an
ratil -I to?he northeast into the At
mentiires district.
AI the -ame time the Germans deliv
fie?!.?? gorons s'tacK on the righ
bunk of 'he Ancre River, between Ar
tas and?he Oise, without rrnk, ng an
progr?s-,
1 h is indicates that the battle il
Pieardy, comprising the department o
, Somme and part of dise, t'a? de-Calai
and Aisne, in which the cavalry is tak
ing Mich a prominent nart and on i
<ca!?> n?>??ten in previous modern wan
I t??tends over a very considerable area
Uerr there are mai;-, m ill-s of opei
country,?vhere horsemen can man?TU
I?. re with advantage.
Retween the River Oise and Rbeims
and particularly In the region north
west of Soissons, where the Britist
forces are intrenched, further progresi
ha? been made. It thus seems prob
abK that the Germans have abandone?:
some of their strongly intrenched po
sitions in this neighborhood. It is re?
ported that sanitary reasons have com
pelled this, as the trenches in wli.ch
the troops have been living for week*
i have become the bree?hng place.? for
, disease.
The Cirrman? have resumed their
night attacks between (raonne and
r.heims. which. accor?iing to French
accounts, have been repulsed
From Rheims to the Meuse notn rg
n*??nipoi'ance has occurred of la'.e.
but in th?* Apremanl district of the
Woevre, to the east of St. Mihiel, ttlQ
Germans marie riaient attacks?hirtn?
the night of October 9 snd the follow?
ing day
Apremoni aras taken by 'he Ger?
mana, but?-.??? retaken by the French
?and remains??? their hands. The Ger?
mans apparently are determined to
maintain as far s? po'sble their pos?
sessions here, where they have pier.-?d
fhe line of forti?eat'ons between Tat
dun and Tou! along the Ri?? : Meuse
Should they be success*!;! agsinst the
Allies elsewhere this doubtless would
be the route by which they would en?
deavor to enter the heart of France.
CORNWALLIS WEST
REPORTED SHOT
Mrs. Patrick Campbell's
Husband Said To Have
Been Killed.
??. :v -??-?>? la Th. Tribu -
Ponton, Oc.. It, The R,v. Dr. Will?
tarn Harmon Van Allen, rector o' the
I hmrh of the A'lvor", a fashioneSU
Hue? Hay parlih, It day, on his return
'mtr l.nrvlpr., nhorr h? has heon?Ines
.tune, tolil of an Insistent report, se
i-epted In many of (?if he?l London
and drawing r*i?'fti,, that Oaaraj?
Cornwall!? Weet, Maband ef Mr?, l'i?
riaa Oampball?ml? erllllaat?nldier,
has baen aaaeuted hy a fteio^ i.^?m?1???
Of this om.i war rana liana ',r
Van alian saysi
?Mai.?'?'? Is -i.?d '|i?' t*r,ee?
I :??, of Baiteatorf, n?i'-rmsn prmcv,
??nose wife is s?is'dr of the C'srms.
ras beer. :mprt?oned in the Tower of
Lor.don for safe keeping, his comp>'?*
disappearance apparently supporting
the story, an?! tha: Sir Ernes'. <~a?sel.
ir.timat? friend of Ktr.g Edward, Il
c?oselv watched, but it is definite'.** s?
? er'.ed by raer., usually well informed,
that, George Cernwallil West, a
brilliant fonng soldier, hss been
tillad, weet was tha "?eond hus
bur.d o? M?s. Patrick fsmphell. the
autre??.
"Thn story I? -?lark nr.t, and th?
tttX that hla present wife, coming over
r?n th? I.usitat!?,?i? dressed In d?ep
mourning, did "n'. lall ta make an Im?
pression on those who had heatd o'
?ii? rrpoettd nest h of h?r husband.
NO RUSSIAN LAND
FOR FOES OF CZAR
t'-jf'?., Oel!t "An '??per', -tee?-?o,
supplementing th? law, already |a
ore?, prohihit, th? iMtiialt.ea of r?1?'
???? -?. -?>'-????f e&i'on,.,? war
???'^ Rueala," *?y? Ala?patat| from
t\'rogfscl to '.ho ll?y?s Agency.
Ofiicial Report
of French Army
???????????????
Par?a, Or? |f, The offi-ial commun?
r^tt.-in muf,! i,y the French War Offl
'??eight?a;.?;
"There i, no new d?'ail to mention,
except?he?;.ptuie of a flag near I.a?
sign-.-. The impression of the daj is
satisfactory."
The fol'owini? announcement by the
French War Office aras msd?* this af
tert oo' :
"First <?n mir left t? mg. Gorman
cavalry, which had seized certain p?
of passage n-cr?he I.,? River?o the
Are.. a-.! r t? a> n "ff?. e -?? rd.lv
and retired In*-' evening into the Kx
mentierea district Retween Arrns a**ri
the f'liae. the enetn-, 1-iaHe n?. e |??? 'gnr
ou? attack on?he nght haut of the
Ancre, but?? ithoul making an. prog
re-.
"Second On?he centre, between the
Oise and Rhein?. our troops have mad?*
ilighl advance to th? n?." the
?I i i? particular!) in the region to't
northwest of Soissons Bel ieen <
?inn?- and Rhe.. German attacks made
si right have been repulsed, r rom
|!?ieim? to the Meuse (here is nothing
to report In 'he Woevre district 'he
'iermar.s h;?\e?lettered -onto ver
'lolenl attack?. In 'he region of Apre
mont, to?i % tool of Sainl Mihiel, there
aas fighting during the.. jhl of
f?th and the folio* ing daw. during
which time Apremont was taken and
retaken,?ne town finally remaining in
oui hands.
"Third On our rght?wing m lor
raine, the Vosges and Al-oce?here is
noth??: '<i report To sum up. we have
everywhere maintained r,|j' position."
Official German
Army Report
London,??et. 11. The fol!o*ring dis
patch was receive?! here th's evening
from Berlin by wireless:
"An ofncisl report from Antwerp?M/S
all the forts?here are in our possei
s i on.
"Main headquarters iepor*s?la? the
Be,7 an?? accepted the Gorman offer to
arrange?o thai all historical monu
ments should be spared?s much as
possible, and that 'he?lay before the
bombardeen' a pli.n showing the p-'si
tions of 'h? principal architectural
fea?ure? of the eitj?as handed to the
?ierrnan civil administration through
the American Minister,?'optes of th?>
plan were given to eery artillery com?
mander, a,id 'he greatest possible?on
sideral on ers ihown. When?le sur?
render of th.* i-::-, was negotiated no
military could be found '"
The dispatch adds that the Braxilian
Minuter in Rrrlln has requested his
countrymen German capital to
inform tl.eir relatives in Brasil that
they are in full enjoyment of seeurit;
ai'd liberty, and that conditions in
Germany ere absolutely normal, despiti
th? war
Berlin via I he lUg;**. Oct. 11.
The German official report 'in the eapt
lire of Antwerp say?:
"The flrat shot va*, f'ted on Soptem
her n agai'??' the outer lino of for*?
On Oetoboi I 'he drat forts were taken
by assault. The River N'ethe was
crossi-d bj the German infantry and
artillery on October 6 and T. On th
7th Antwerp was notified tha' a bom
bardmant was imminent, and this wa?
begun at 12:30 o'clock in the morning
of October P. Simultaneoual a??
tack was made on the inner forts
"On October ') two of the inner forts
were taken. At '1-Atl o'clock on the
afternoon of Oc'ober 0 the city of Ant?
werp wa? occupied by German infantr;
without re i is'a nee upon the part of the
B gians, whose eon duet was valiant
How?\er. the effect of the German
ar' -ry. infantry and marine division
m tr. first attack was such tha' ri
sistanca was futile.
"\ iRrge quantity Of supplie- "..is
taken by the Germans. The effie enej
of the German troops was recognised
the Emperor in conferring upon
Ger.eial von Reseler the Cider of
Merit."
Antwerp, Oet. 11. General eon Rese
1er, commande? " th? German troops
,-ias issue?! the following proclamation;
"To the Inhabitants of Antwerp: The
German army has entered >nur c
conquerors. Sot *uen -hall be harmed
and your property?hall be spared, if
you refrain from hostile acts. All re?
fractoriness will be punished accord
il g to the laws of war. and may lead
?o *he?iemolition of your beautiful
eitj
ALLIES SINK TWO
AUSTRIAN WARSHIPS
Lor.dor.. Oet. 12.?A dispatch to "The
Dsil> Ms:'" from Rome says:
"I* is reported here that the Anglo
Frereh fleet off Raguss. Dalmatia. Fri?
day sar'?c two Austrian torpedo boa's.
-?<? af which was escorting a stenr*-.
? - p [adan?? th monitions af wsr.
Their erowt were saved.
"A torpedo boa* destroyer Is?enorted
to have been injured by Striking a
mine "
TURKiTF?RTnTYING
HOLY LAND POINTS
Pstl?, Oet. 11. A Havas dlspa-ch
from Atrisn? sayal
"Tha pi?wapaj?er? hure annehme?
from an eti?t"?rltat'ro noure??hat 'he
Tuet? ara eoneen? ra?''??.' (eooii-i gt g
e.uinb?r?>' pointa i Syria, ''?lesili*?
sn?l Snrih irahis, m?H fortifying???
pertreu' pise.-, re '?n fiaa'. and?in
rou'o? to the 'n'.er'.or.
'
3 KILLED, 14 INJURED,
AS LOW-FLYING PAIR
DROP MANY MISSILES
Historic Church, Great Railway Stations
and Bourse Aimed at by 2 Airmen
in Bold Daylight Attack.
BOMB EXPLODES ON CATHEDRAL ROOF
Invaders Circle (her Heart of the French Capital
in liarly Afternoon? Property Damage Is
Considerable French Airmen Pursue.
By Cable to This Tribune.l
Paria, Oct. 11.?Two German aviators rained bomba upon
Paris early this afternoon. It ia officially atated that twenty pro?
jectiles were thrown and that three peraons were killed and four?
teen injured, while the Cathedral of Notre Dame wai struck and
rlightly damaged.
A bomb struck the roof of the north transept at the point
where it meets the roof of the nave. The guardians of the church
would permit no on?? to see the spot, but it would seem from later
inquiry that the bomb did explode, despite the earlier rumor, for
a large hole had been made in the parapet and roofing, aa a pin?
nacle is broken away, while many bullets and fragments of shell
are embedded in surrounding material.
One bomb fell just behind the cathedral, clo.e to the resi?
dence of the Archbishop of Paris. All told, four bomba wee
thrown in the vicinity of Notre Dame from one aeroplane. On?
struck the parapet of the Quai de Bourbon, near the cathedral,
and rolled into the Seine, while another fell in the river close to
the Notre Dame Bridge.
ATTACK HEART OF CITY.
The two aviators seemed to have agreed upon northern and
southern areas of attack, the principal southern objective being
Notre Dame, while in the north the Gare du Nord and the Gare
Saint-Lazare were menaced.
All places struck were within a circle in which is the heart of
(he city. The most central place of all was the vicinity of the
Bourse. Here a bomb set fire to a house, which was not greatly
damaged, and landed within a hundred yards of an office occu?
pied by American newspaper men. Most of the American and
English newspaper correspondents have offices in this district.
One projectile fell in the Place de la Republique, near the
barracks of the Republican Guard ; another in the Rue du Rocher,
near the Gare Saint-Lazare, and a third struck the coal depot in
the Rue Lafayette, near the Gare du Nord.
The grand boulevards were also visited. A bomb fell closa
I o the large department store called La M?nag?re, in the Boulevard
des Bonnes-Nouvelles. Another landed in the Rue Bourdaloue,
bordering the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette. The populoua
Faubourg Saint-Antoine alao received a bomb.
It was the projectile that fell in the Rue Lafayette, just north
of the grand boulevards, that killed three persona and injured four?
teen others.
FLY LOW IN GRAY CARS.
The airmen flew low and seemed to act with great deliber?
ation.
The Germans, pursued by French airmen, flew away after
their stock of projectiles had apparently been exhausted. Their
machines seemed to be painted a cloudy gray, which made them
almost indistinguishable. Other German aeroplanes from which
attacks have been made on Paris have been of a light brown color.
In the Rue Lafayette the property damage done included the
?mashing of thick plate glass windows and the riddling of walla
with bullets. An apothecary shop had its windows completely
blown out. On the other side of the street was a curiosity shop,
which, with its contents, was completely wrecked. Moat of the
windows in surrounding housea were more or less damaged and
the pavements were littered with broken glass.
Some remarkable and extraordniary escapea?from injury are
reported. Indeed, the wonder ia that in crowded thoroughfares in
the middle of the day the loss of life was not greater. Several nuns
with some children were in the garden behind the Cathedral of
Notre Dame, between it and the morgue, when the attack waa
made. Hearing and then seeing the aeYopIane, they rapidly fled
into a neighboring street, thus eacaping the bomb that fell in the
garden.
One missile fell very near the Saint-Antoine Hospital, in the
neighborhood of the Lyons railway atation. It cut the trolley wire
and, falling on the tram linea, exploded with great violence. There
ia a cab and taxi station at this point, in the Rue du Faubourg
Saint-Antoine, and many hawkers atood near with barrow? of
vegetables and fruit. There were also many foot passengers.
An elderly woman who witnessed the explosion said that she
heard the aeroplane first, but did not aee it. Then ahe heard a
loud whistle, followed by a heavy eoneuaaion. She aaw a young
man standing on the pavement near by fall mortally wounded. A
doaen other persons, men and women, fell similarly and two horse*
i were killed. People ruahed paricatricken in to their houses, ntukWhy isn’t there a global movement to combat noncommunicable diseases?
In Moscow on Thursday, health ministers from around the world gathered to discuss a serious global health crisis: the rise of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like heart disease, stroke, depression, and cancer. Their goal is to replicate the successes of a similar meeting held nearly a decade ago, when the United Nations General Assembly convened a special session to combat HIV/AIDS. Since that session, development assistance for the disease has skyrocketed (from $960 million in 2001 to over $6 billion in 2008), and over 5.2 million people in developing countries now receive antiretroviral therapy. The global movement against HIV/AIDS imagined then has in many ways come to fruition, but don’t expect the campaign against NCDs to garner nearly the same level of support.
NCDs cause over 60 percent of the world’s deaths, yet, up to this point, the development community has largely neglected them. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals, for instance, have driven an ambitious global health agenda to improve child health, reduce maternal mortality, and combat infectious diseases like tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDs. The goals, however, leave out any mention of NCDs. Investments in their prevention and treatment has paled in comparison to other areas of global health. Funding is so paltry that the international reporting system of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which collects data on foreign aid for health from donor countries, does not even have a code to track investments in NCDs.
Why this neglect? Part of the problem is the outdated worldview that NCDs are “diseases of affluence,” primarily affecting rich countries that have conquered infectious disease with improved sanitation, mass vaccinations, and better medical care. In reality, many developing countries today suffer from the double burden of infectious diseases and NCDs. Across countries in Africa in 2004, for instance, 2.8 million people died of NCDs—roughly the same number who died of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that obesity now kills nearly as many people in developing countries as being underweight does. High blood pressure, in that same analysis, topped a list of the health risks that accounted for the most deaths in developing countries, outranking unsafe sex, micronutrient deficiency, and poor water, hygiene, and sanitation.
Other practical constraints will also work against a coherent push to tackle NCDs after Thursday’s Moscow meeting. In 2001, advocates for a movement against HIV/AIDS had the luxury of focusing on just one disease. Today, health ministers must build a plan for combating a constellation of diseases and ailments ranging from heart disease to stroke to cancer to mental disorders. A wide range of interventions must be considered, including, among many others, cognitive behavior therapy for depression, increased screening for cervical cancer, and glycemic control programs for diabetics. Then, there’s the question of prevention. HIV/AIDS has one pathway for transmission—the exchange of bodily fluids—and usually requires only one event (one unsafe sex act or injection) to lead to infection. NCDs, by contrast, build up over years, even decades of exposure to poor diet, a sedentary lifestyle, a polluted environment, or other dangerous factors. As hard as it is to convince people to have safe sex, it may be harder to get people to commit to big lifestyle changes like eating and drinking less.Clearly, the reason for conservative anger against the transgender issue nationwide is perhaps because it’s something they’ve never had to reckon with before, lashing back feelings that have been forced on them, triggering religious leaders to stage a united attack on the community from pulpits across America.
Social media can be blamed for bringing the topic of discrimination against transgender people front and center. It is one of the items the Associate Pastor of Wilshire Church in Dallas put on his list of what he’s learning about the transgender community, which is that they don’t especially appreciate the kind of attention they’re getting right now in relation to the controversial bathroom laws.
That pastor is a man named Mark Wingfield who published a piece for the Baptist News Global which has gone viral, as it’s a rarity that a religious leader would make any effort to embrace the transgender community rather than oppose it.
The article is an opinion piece simply titled “Seven Things I’m Learning About Transgender Persons” where he tries to gain some insight into the world of a transgender person. It is especially interesting as it also provides more secular people or even transgender people similar insight into the mysterious mind of a religious leader.
null
Wingfield’s piece is refreshing, not only because it provides a different view of how society could see transgender people, but because he makes more than the standard effort to think outside-the-box in a far more accepting way. Rather than talk down to the reader about their impending doom, he leaves it open and expresses genuine humility of his ignorance.
For a while, religious leaders have made headlines by saying the most divisive things, demonizing the LGBT community by tying it to political right-wing platforms and practically tossing it on the pile of lawsuits in front of the White House on the lawn, aiming the blame at the Obama administration, for creating the fringe group.
This sticker is in bathrooms in Seattle in nearly half of the districts 15 high schools already have gender neutral bathrooms and one high school has had a transgender bathroom for 20 years. [Image by Elaine Thompson/AP Photo] For details on this, the Inquisitr wrote specifically about the response from some popular religious Christian-Conservative leaders who have referred to the HB2 bill and the fight with the federal government with what they claim is a sign of God |
Food Introduction
Following milk introduction, the next major change in the infant’s diet is the introduction of solid foods. Solid food introduction in infants aged 4 to 6 months was associated with a change in infant gut microbiome composition (eFigure 6 in the Supplement), but not phylogenetic diversity (nonparametric t test, P >.99). We interrogated our data to determine whether early solid food introduction changed the pattern of the microbiota trajectory, using a random forest regression model.4 Early solid food introduction (<4 months) in our infant cohort led to a rapid maturation of the infant stool microbiota (Kruskal-Wallis, P =.02) (Figure 4). The amount of daily breastfeeding as a proportion of total milk intake continued to influence the infant stool microbiome diversity and membership even after solid foods were introduced (eFigure 7 in the Supplement).
Predicted Metagenome Function of Breast Milk and Infant Gut Bacterial Community
Given the effect of breast milk microbiota on the infant gut community, we sought to gain insight into the genes present in breast milk bacterial communities using PICRUSt.24 Breast milk contains bacteria with predicted high abundance in gene families associated with membrane transport and carbohydrate, amino acid, and energy metabolism (eFigure 8 in the Supplement). We compared metagenome predictions of infant stool microbiota based on the amount of breast milk intake. Infants who were primarily breastfed had a lower representation of genes involved in energy metabolism, sphingolipid metabolism, and glycan biosynthesis and metabolism (eFigure 9 in the Supplement). Infants with earlier introduction of solid food had microbiota with increased function related to xenobiotics biodegradation and metabolism.
Discussion
We characterized bacterial communities in mother-infant pairs and provide data suggesting that bacteria from mothers’ breast milk and areolar skin are transferred to their infants’ guts. Key support for this idea comes from comparisons of bacterial lineages in the infants’ guts with their mothers vs random mothers, which showed more shared lineages in the correct pairs. Our data do not exclude the possibility that bacteria from infants’ stool seed the mother’s microbiome. It is likely that bacteria cycle between the mother and infant in a constant exchange. However, we favor the idea that transfer of bacteria primarily occurs from mother to infant. Breast milk is an early source of bacteria and nutrition introduced to the infant gut within a few hours of birth. Bacteria from mother’s milk and skin are most prominent in their infants’ guts in the first month of life, accounting for nearly 40% of the gut bacteria in primarily breastfed infants. Mother to infant microbe transmission was compromised in infants who were not primarily breastfed. Other sources of the infant microbiome include the mother’s gut and vaginal bacteria as well as the environment. In mice, cross-fostering experiments initiated within 48 hours of birth have shown that the nursing mother, rather than the birth mother, dictates the infant microbiome composition, which persists after weaning and for life.26 In the Human Microbiome Project, Ding and Schloss16 found breastfeeding during infancy to be a major life-history characteristic that affects bacterial composition in adults. Early life may represent a critical window for bacterial imprinting of breast milk bacteria leading to nonrandom community assembly.3,27 Our model showed that the complex ecologic network that forms during the first 6 months of life is built on interdependent bacterial relationships in the infant gut. Breast milk bacteria that seed the gut first influence and select for bacteria that follow, leaving a footprint that can be detected even in adulthood.16 Our oligotype analysis indicated that breast milk provides Veillonella and Rothia, bacteria genera that have been associated with a lower incidence of asthma.6 These early bacterial seeding events may be a mechanism by which breastfeeding protects children.
The breast milk microbiota become more divergent between mothers during the first 6 months of her infant’s life. The divergence lessens after 6 months when breast milk is typically no longer an infant’s sole food source. The infant gut microbiota display increasing α diversity and reduced β diversity as the infant ages—a trajectory also observed by others.5,15 Mother-infant sharing decreases as the infants age. Milk bacteria are detectable in infant stool at least through 6 months of life, but differences in the gut microbiota and their function are evident throughout the entire first year. Some studies have suggested that even small amounts of formula supplementation would shift the microbiota from a breastfed pattern to a formula pattern.28 Our multivariate and diversity analyses indicate that the shift occurs in a dose-dependent manner. The proportion of breast milk intake also decreases with introduction of solid foods. A recent study suggests that cessation of breastfeeding, rather than introduction of solid foods, is the major driver in the development of an adult microbiota.15 In our cohort, introduction of solid foods prior to 6 months led to early maturation of the microbiota. Furthermore, continued breastfeeding after solid food introduction suppressed the diversification and enrichment of bacteria typically associated with solid foods. These findings further support the current World Health Organization and American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation for exclusive breastfeeding during the first 6 months with continued breastfeeding until at least 12 months.17
Our predicted metagenome functional analysis shows that breast milk harbors bacteria with prominent carbohydrate, amino acid, and energy metabolism functions. Breastfeeding has been shown to strongly protect against obesity.29 Microbiota harvest energy from the diet, and energy storage in the host is divergent between obese and lean humans and mice.7,30 Infants in our cohort who were not primarily breastfed had a higher abundance of the Bacteroidaceae, which has been associated with subsequent obesity in most pediatric studies of early gut colonization,31-33 although not all studies agreed.34 Erysipelotrichaceae and Ruminococcaceae were also increased in infants not exclusively breastfed. Both families are enriched in older children and adults with higher body mass indexes.35,36 Furthermore, continued breastfeeding as the primary source of milk intake after introduction of solids appeared to suppress increases in multiple families within the phylum Firmicutes that are butyrate producers. Butyrate can serve as an energy substrate or signaling molecule to contribute to the de novo production of lipids. Firmicutes and butyrate have also been associated with an obese phenotype in mice and humans.37-39 These pathways need to be explored further.
Limitations
This study has limitations. We did not sequence communities from maternal mouth, skin other than areolar, vagina, or stool, which may have contributed additional bacteria to infants. The origin of breast milk bacteria is unclear. One hypothesis is that milk bacteria come from the infant’s oral cavity. We did not collect infant oral specimens. However, we did not see differences in the microbiota of breast milk by delivery type in our cohort, as has been similarly reported by other investigators.40 Our recruitment focused on breastfeeding participants, and we did not enroll large numbers of strictly formula-fed infants. Some participants were unable to adhere to our longitudinal collection schedule. Sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene is limited in analysis at the strain level. SourceTracker is an estimation/prediction tool; the results may differ if the model included all potential sources of microbiota or additional longitudinal samples. We used PICRUSt to estimate bacterial gene content; because the input is 16S rRNA gene data, we did not capture any eukaryotic or viral contributions to the metagenome.24 PICRUSt also cannot distinguish variation at the strain level and different strains of 1 bacteria can vary in gene counts. Metagenomic shotgun sequencing would permit strain and more accurate functional analysis, but is costly. Finally, we focused on bacterial communities, yet milk is a complex substance with many bioactive components, including human milk oligosaccharides, which may promote the persistence of specific bacterial lineages.
Conclusions
Our study confirms a bacterial community in breast milk and tracks that community from mothers into the infant gut. Breast milk bacteria influence the establishment and development of the infant microbiome with continued impact after solid food introduction. Furthermore, breast milk contributes bacteria associated with a decreased risk for developing allergic diseases. Our results emphasize the importance of breastfeeding in the assembly of the infant gut microbiome.
Back to top Article Information
Accepted for Publication: January 30, 2017.
Corresponding Author: Grace M. Aldrovandi, MD, Department of Pediatrics, University of California, Los Angeles, MacDonald Research Laboratory, 675 Charles E Young Dr S, Room 4780 (MRL 4-780), Los Angeles, CA 90095 (galdrovandi@mednet.ucla.edu).
Published Online: May 8, 2017. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2017.0378
Author Contributions: Drs Pannaraj and Aldrovandi had full access to all of the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.
Study concept and design: Pannaraj, Yang, Bushman, Sleasman, Aldrovandi.
Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data: Pannaraj, Li, Cerini, Bender, Yang, Rollie, Adisetiyo, Zabih, Lincez, Bittinger, Bailey, Sleasman, Aldrovandi.
Drafting of the manuscript: Pannaraj, Li, Cerini, Zabih, Sleasman.
Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: Pannaraj, Li, Cerini, Bender, Yang, Rollie, Adisetiyo, Lincez, Bittinger, Bailey, Bushman, Sleasman, Aldrovandi.
Statistical analysis: Pannaraj, Li, Bender, Yang, Bittinger, Bailey.
Obtained funding: Pannaraj, Sleasman, Aldrovandi.
Administrative, technical, or material support: Cerini, Yang, Adisetiyo, Zabih, Bailey, Sleasman, Aldrovandi.
Supervision: Cerini, Bushman, Sleasman, Aldrovandi.
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Pannaraj receives funding from AstraZeneca for clinical research and Pfizer for vaccine education. No other disclosures were reported.
Funding/Support: This work was supported by National Institutes of Health grants K23 HD072774-02 (Dr Pannaraj), K12 HD 052954-09 (Dr Bender), R01 AI052845 (Dr Bushman), R01 AI1001471 (Dr Sleasman), and UM1AI106716 (Dr Aldrovandi), and University of Pennsylvania Center for AIDS Research grant P30 AI045008.
Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The funding organizations had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.Giulia QV SportWagon Model Rendering
This stunningis the second rendering of said model this year and it was created by Alessandro Masera. Unfortunately, this model only exists in the digital world but carscoops.com thinks we may see Alfa launch this Giulia variant as it has done so in the past for its predecessor the 2011 MY 159 Saloon Though not as dramatic as the 159 Sportwagon, the Giulia QV's 5 door rendering looks like a more modern and sporty take on the estateWe're not quite sure what a non QV version of the Giulia Sportwagon will look like since its production model is still under wraps but we could be seeing renders of that in the future.but if this does become a reality in the future,thats found in the Sedan. The 159 SWs engine and trim options were the same as the 159 saloon so cross model engine sharing is a possibility.Every deal starts with a conversation. In B2B Marketing, conversations are rather hard to come by. Sure, you can always call a company and ask for information, but when it comes to reaching a decision-maker and inviting him to a face-to-face meeting or phone call, it can be a little trickier that most people think.
Without an proficient appointment setting strategy, you leave the fate of your lead generation campaigns to chance. You can’t just sit there and wait for prospects to come to you. You need to make the most out of every call opportunity.
Here are the things you need to do to increase your odds at appointment setting:
1. Know who you’re talking to
In persuading people to allot their precious time in talking to a salesman, you need to discover their pain points and really understand what they’re going through. Not making an effort to know your prospects can lead to a breakdown of communication which kills your rate of success.
2. Know your capabilities and limitations
As much as you need to know who you will be talking to, you also need to know yourself. Are you good at cracking jokes and building rapport? If not, don’t force it. Are you good at handling objections aggressively? If not, make your rebuttals appealing to logic rather than emotions. To be fully aware of your level as a telemarketer can set the tone for an entire call.
3. Cut to the chase and avoid the salesy talk
Cunning verbal skills can surely go a long way, but this is not B2C. Words won’t be enough to convince B2B buyers to commit to a sale or a service. Pitches must be intellectually and logically satisfying. Do them a favor and spare them the unnecessary theatrics.
4. Give them your full ears
The fact to the matter is they like being listened to. Give them that from the very beginning and you’ll be on to a good start.
5. Draw a line between ‘persistent’ and ‘pushy’
It’s admirable to be relentless in setting that appointment but there are limitations. You don’t want them to remember you as the guy who was too desperate to schedule a meeting that you almost didn’t take no for an answer. That bad impression may not give you another chance in the future.Ahh, Riverdale. It’s so good to have this show, and its complete devotion to going for it, back. We’ve heard that this season will have “Dark Archie.” Well, if the premiere is any indication, that basically just means Archie’s a dick.
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This year’s mystery is apparently going to be “Who shot Fred Andrews and why?” It’s gonna take a while to figure out because everyone has a motive because everyone in Riverdale has a motive for murder.
Fred Andrews getting shot interrupts Veronica drinking the Cristal her mom bought for her dad getting out of prison (that it was for a special occasion bothers her more than her high schooler drinking), Veronica’s mom interrogating her about her sex life, and Jughead’s contemplations about his jailbird father.
Once at the hospital, we are treated to some of Riverdale’s finest bits of dialogue as Archie calls his mom. “How are you? Good, yeah, good. Actually Mom, we’re not, we’re in trouble here. Dad’s in the hospital. It was a robbery and he was shot.” LEAD WITH THE GUNSHOT, ARCHIE. If it bleeds, it leads. The Coopers could have told you that.
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Betty is also the only person not wondering if maybe her family is to blame. Because Jughead thinks that one of the Southside Serpents that Fred fired might have shot him. Jughead asks the Serpents, who see him as one of them, to look in every “hidey hole” and see if they can find out who did it. Veronica, however, thinks her mother ordered the hit. Basically, last season, there was a whole thing where Hermione Lodge wanted Fred to sell his shares in a company they owned together, because her husband was going to be out of jail soon and he and Fred “wouldn’t get along.” Veronica knows this, and she confronts her mother, who responds, “Get back in line with this family. Because you are a Lodge before anything else. I should slap you for what you just insinuated, but I’m not a violent person.” Every parent in Riverdale is great.
Veronica gets nowhere with her family, but the result of Jughead asking the Serpents to help is a bloodied man is delivered to his trailer. He was bragging about Fred getting what he deserved, and so the Serpents think he might be who Jughead is looking for.Jughead, by the way, is justifying all of this to Betty by saying that his dad’s gang, trailer, and Southside Serpents jacket makes him feel closer to his incarcerated father.
In character development news, Veronica says she’s bad at comfort. And given that she gets naked and joins Archie in the shower as he washes off all his dad’s blood, she might be right. But then Archie’s anger flares up and he tries to push Veronica away through the time-tested manner of “being a dick.” It almost works, but Veronica refuses to go, saying Archie needs her. It’s character growth, and growth she’ll need since her dad is introduced at the end of this episode literally sitting in shadow and asking for a kiss from his loving daughter.
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Archie also has a breakdown this episode about how he didn’t do anything after his dad was shot, just sat there frozen in terror. And he closed his eyes when the guy put the gun to his head and didn’t open them til he heard the guy leave. For some reason, “being afraid of the guy with a gun who just shot his dad” fills Archie with deep shame. I mean, I guess it is? But only in the context of everyone else in Riverdale’s much higher levels of trauma and dealing with it shockingly well. In real life, it’s a perfectly human response that is very understandable and not shameful.
This has shaken Archie so much that, while his dad convalesces, he’s taken to standing guard over his home by sitting on a box by the front door with a baseball bat. Because...sure, why the hell not? You go, Dark Archie. You...sit there with a bat while people one town over get murdered.
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Yeah, that happened at the end of the episode. Lest you think it was a one-time deal, spurred by true love, the episode ends with the return of Ms. Grundy. She’s sexing up a piano student of hers over in Greendale, pretty much the same way she did with Archie. Only not so much anymore, because a masked figure kills comes out of nowhere to kill her. I’m sure that won’t cause Archie to further spiral at all.
Assorted Musings:
I wanted to focus on Archie, but oh my god Cheryl is in amazing form in this episode. After setting her house on fire last season, she’s telling everyone that her mom got burned from saving her from an accident. “I might have perished if not for mommy’s heroics,” is her alibi.
Also, she tells her mother to go along or, you know, everything will get worse.
Also, also, she shows up in Fred Andrews’ hotel room, just to creepily say to Archie, “You gave me the kiss of life Archie Andrews, now I’ve given it to your dad.” Cheryl’s gone completely round the twist.
As he struggles for life, Fred Andrews is in a dreamworld where Archie works with him at “Andrews and Son Construction” and proposed to Veronica. There are bagpipes at the fantasy wedding.
The actual best scene in the episode may be Pops asking Betty and Jughead if they’re hungry, and their simultaneous answers. Betty: No. Jughead: Always.
This means Jughead ate a burger in the premiere. Progress!No. 2 Florida Gators women’s tennis will play for the national championship for the third-straight year after defeating the No. 4 Duke Blue Devils in the Final Four of the 2012 NCAA Tournament at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex in Athens, GA.
Florida (26-1) extended their winning streak to 21 matches in their 4-3 defeat of Duke (29-3), advancing to the finals of the tournament for the third year in a row and receiving an opportunity to defend their 2011 national title. The Blue Devils were on an 18-match winning streak of their own that the Gators ended on Monday.
UF has never won back-to-back national championships but will look to make team history while appearing in the program’s 13th national title game.
The nation’s No. 1 pairing, junior Allie Will/sophomore Sofie Oyen, opened doubles action with an 8-3 win and was forced watch as their teammates fought to clinch the point. Sophomore Alex Cercone/junior Caroline Hitimana trailed most of their match but held off Duke and relieved the pressure on Florida’s second-best pairing.
That duo, No. 22-ranked junior Lauren Embree/senior Joanna Mather, coughed up a substantial lead and allowed the Blue Devils to pull even with them at 7-7. Embree and Mather were soon down 8-7 and fighting for their lives but evened the match 8-8 and dominated the tiebreak round to clinch the doubles point for the Gators. Cercone and Hitimana dropped their match 8-4 in time with Embree/Mather pulling out the victory.
Florida lost five of their six first sets in singles action but was still able to increase their lead over Duke to 2-0 after No. 9 Embree built off her opening set victory and won her singles match 6-4, 6-1. The Gators then jumped ahead 3-0 when No. 21 Mather came from behind to take her match 2-6, 6-2, 6-0.
No. 61 Oyen and No. 79 Cercone both took their second sets after falling behind early, giving the Gators four opportunities to notch the match-winning points. The first of those chances was lost shortly after when sophomore Olivia Janowicz fell 1-6, 6-4, 3-6 and allowed the Blue Devils to reduce their deficit to 3-1.
No. 1 Will struggled all match long with No. 2 Beatrice Capra. The 2012 ACC Player and Freshman of the Year eventually upset her 4-6, 4-6 in straight sets and brought Duke within two points with two matches left to play.
Oyen did her best to hold off her opponent but was unable to do so for long, losing 3-6, 7-5, 2-6 and putting both teams’ title hopes in the hands of Cercone and No. 66 Mary Clayton, two extremely well-matched players.
The competitors went back-and-forth all afternoon with Clayton claiming the first set and forcing Cercone to come from behind if she wanted to pull out a victory. In the end Cercone did just that, starting with an 0-2 deficit in the third set before outscoring Clayton 6-1 over the final seven games to pick up a 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 win and send Florida to the championship game.
UF will face No. 1 UCLA for the 2012 NCAA Championship on Tuesday at 1 p.m. The Gators will be participating in their 13th NCAA Tournament final in the last 25 years and will be looking to win the team’s sixth national title.ABC-TV
While on the show, Gina said she participated to overcome stereotypes about conservatives, but on her website and radio show last week, Gina explained that her family moved to California and appeared on the show to be a part of a "culture war."
"I think there comes a time when you look at the culture we're in and you ask yourself the question 'What am I really doing?' We all enjoy calling ourselves culture warriors but how do you really fight that culture war?" she asked.
Conversatives can't fight a culture war by addressing people with similar views and beliefs, said Gina, who has appeared on Fox News and written a book.
"Anytime I have a platform I'm going to take the opportunity to fight for what I believe in. You can't very well call yourself a culture warrior and then be afraid to engage in the battle."
1. "One-Penis Policy," highly snarkable in the poly world.
I was dreading it, but I broke down and watched it anyway. So that you don't have to. I'm talking about ABC's prime-time episode of "Wife Swap" just now, in which a mom from a polyfamily swaps homes for two weeks with a mom who's a Religious Right talk show host married to a former state senator from Missouri; they're on God's mission to save America.I steeled myself with a pass-the-popcorn attitude. We're first introduced to the two families. The polys have four kids, the Tea Partyers have five. The polyfamily consists of Chris Envy (his real name), a pro wrestler who works at a warehouse for his day job; his bi wife Angela, and their younger live-in girlfriend Ashley. The three sleep together. All care for the kids together. Chris explains at one point how they came to be: There was this party at the house, and Ashley got too drunk to drive home, so she stayed over, and one thing led to another. She's been with them for a year now. They and the kids eat mostly junk food and watch lots of TV together for family time. The women cook and clean. Chris would be fine with another woman getting involved but not a man — an OPP kind of guy.Cringe, go I.On the other side of the country, Gina Loudon runs a radio talk show where she rattles on about how "You take Hitler. You take Mussolini. You take Pol Pot. They were all liberals. Let's not forget that." And, "the reason for Planned Parenthood was to eliminate the black race." Her youngish-looking husband John Loudon, even more of a Christian evangelical, used to be a Missouri state senator when he was even younger.When Gina first arrives at the Envys' house it's empty, and she cannot make sense of the pictures on the wall. "I'm utterly confused about the family situation here. What I'm seeing is, two couples who live here?"Each mom has left a family handbook for the other with explanations and house rules. Gina reads the word "polyamorous" with confusion and growing disbelief.Meanwhile, Angela is telling Mr. Loudon and his children about her poly home, and already she is looking defensive, embarrassed, and outgunned. Literally; he and the kids take her to a shooting range for some gun education, and after a few flinching shots she says she never wants to shoot a gun again.It goes downhill. "Wife Swap" is designed to be a drama fest, and its producers are skilled. Gina rags on Chris for being a lazy pig and makes him cook a real sit-down dinner. She views Ashley as an exploited afterthought and orders her out of the house; her new rule. Ashley breaks down crying and refuses. So do the kids; they cling to her, and Chris wades in to defend them all. Ashley stays. Still, in her smiley way, Gina sets other rules: no TV, and dump all the junk food and white sugar. And she tells Chris that he's going to be turned into someone "worthy of living in America." Starting with studying the Constitution under her tutelage.They get into arguments over religion. Chris blurts that the Bible is "a mythical comic book where a man walks on water." Gina says she is being persecuted for her religion.Angela, meanwhile, is trying to set a new rule on her end. In the interest of peace, there will be no discussions of politics or religion. The Loudon family will get out of their "bubble" and do new things together, like art and skateboard lessons for the kids (who have been homeschooled). It doesn't stick. John cracks belittling little jests about deviants in front of her and the kids, and reads her Leviticus where it says homosexuals (and, we presume, bi women) shall be put to death "and their blood shall be upon them." She breaks down.And so on.But as the two-week swap nears its end, developments take a twist. Gina leaves the Envys' home — whether she was kicked out or stormed out isn't clear to me — and she breaks the show's rules by phoning John on the other side of the country. We hear him (through a closed door) telling her to pack and return immediately: "we're definitely dealing with dark forces here."And that's it. Usually "Wife Swap" ends with the two families sitting at a roundtable to discuss the experience. But ABC made a big thing in its publicity that this was the first time in the show's history (it's now in Season 6) when one family refused to met and discuss.Which side chickened out? On that cliffhanger, we get a bunch of commercials. Then we're back. It was the Loudons. A narrator says that John and Gina's attorney informed the show that they would no longer participate in any way. So, we are left with the triad and their kids at the roundtable alone, discussing how awfully things went, how disrespectful and judgmental the politico-religious couple were, and how utterly overjoyed they all are to be back together safe again in their own happy home.We see a followup six weeks later. The Envys, says the narrator, continue as a happy, loving family. Angela tells the camera that one good thing to come from the experience is that they feed the kids healthier snacks now, and Chris helps cook. Angela laments for their naive early hope that they would make new friends on the show. We close with a heartwarming scene of the three adults and four kids joyfully gathered on the couch in each other's arms.And then a black screen with the narrator saying that despite repeated attempts, the show was unable to make any further contact with the Loudons.The show displayed Religious Right evangelicals being their worst. No viewer can have missed this. The poly family came off as trashy at first, but became much more sympathetic during the ordeal as they pulled together and stuck up for each other at every turn. The happy ending was lopsidedly pro-poly.One useful lesson learned: To get overweening fundies out of your hair, make them think they're "definitely dealing with dark forces here." They'll vanish.(Disclaimer: I scribbled notes while watching the show just once, so I don't guarantee that all details above are error-free.)You can now watch the full episode. Also, here is Wife Swap's webpage Wife Swap typically has about 5 million viewers. And there will be reruns.A local online newspaper where the Loudons live, thehas a story on the episode the morning after, including this:Some warrior. Once outside her bubble she broke and ran, the first in the show's six years to do so, leaving the "enemy" in uncontested control of the battlefield. Yet here she is back on the air telling her bubble of believers what a great warrior she is. Rush Limbaugh weighs in, fuming that the Tea Party family was portrayed as “intolerant, Bible-thumping prudes” while the polyamorous family was portrayed as “the normal, loving, sympathetic characters whose worst trait is eating a lot of junk food.” But apparently he couldn't find much so bad to say about them either.-------------------------
Labels: Chris Envy Angela Ashley polyamory polyamorous, TV, wife swap. Gina John LoudonWhen watching organized team activities and mandatory minicamp practices last month, Miami Dolphins linebacker Raekwon McMillan was one of the players that stood out on the defense. With Koa Misi still out from an offseason neck surgery, McMillan was cross-training at every linebacker position, including at middle linebacker.
Despite being a second-round pick, it appears McMillan is the rookie from this year’s class with the best chance to start in the Dolphins’ season opener against Tampa Bay Buccaneers on September 10. Editor of Draft Wire Luke Easterling talked to McMillan several times during the draft process, and Easterling is high on the former Ohio State Buckeye.
“Raekwon [McMillan] was one of my favorite players in this class,” Easterling said in an interview with Dolphins Wire. “I spoke with him at length during the season and came away impressed with his intelligence and intangibles. He’s a leader who can make plays all over the field, against both the run and pass. Adjusting to NFL speed is something every rookie has to deal with, but I think his football IQ will make things slower for him than most. Another great value pick for Miami.”
McMillan was the Buckeyes’ leading tackler the last two seasons (2015-2016). In his final year at Ohio State, McMillan finished with 102 tackles, two sacks, seven tackles for loss and two fumble recovers. For his efforts, McMillan was a Second-Team All-American selection by the Associated Press and a Butkus Award semifinalist.
With Lawrence Timmons expected to play in the middle, McMillan could start the season as one of the outside linebackers opposite Kiko Alonso. Miami has been looking for an athletic linebacker for years, and it might have finally found its man in McMillan.Jimmy's Bakery in Yilan County, Taiwan is in the humble business of making toast. Watermelon toast, that is.
But this isn't your standard slice of toast, nor is it a nutritional slice of fruit. In fact, the watermelon toast sold at Jimmy's Bakery isn't actually toast at all. Quite simply, it's bread that's shaped and dyed to look like watermelon, and it's become an Instagram sensation.
# #WatermelonToast A photo posted by Holing (@chiuling813) on May 4, 2015 at 6:11am PDT
Metro UK reports that head baker Lee Wen-fa created the gram-worthy bread to encourage young children to eat more during the hot summer months when he says they're prone to losing their appetites.
The bread's fruity hues come from matcha green tea powder, red dye and strawberries. Jimmy's Bakery also sells a yellow watermelon toast loaf that's made using tea powder and yellow dyes only. Inside the loaf, tiny pieces of edible bamboo charcoal mimic the appearance of black watermelon seeds.
Day2— Ps:1 2. #yilan #WatermelonToast # A photo posted by Ellie Chen (@elliecxy) on Jul 6, 2015 at 10:20pm PDT
#breakfast #toast #watermelontoast #tomato #view #morning # A photo posted by @claire_kuku on Apr 28, 2015 at 8:45pm PDT
Jimmy's Bakery churns out about 100 loaves of watermelon toast per day, though customers can choose to purchase bread by the slice. But as the trend heats up on Instagram, the bakery is having trouble keeping up with high demand.
Food and Wine reports that customers form lines outside the bake shop each morning before it opens, though they also have the option of to order a coveted loaf online.
The hottest things in Taiwan, watermelon toast. #WatermelonToast## A photo posted by Yilin Hsu (@yilin10hsu) on Jun 27, 2015 at 7:24am PDT
For those who prefer their breads shaped like decidedly un-carb-like foods, watermelon toast is the stuff of dreams. And for those who can't make the trek out to Jimmy's Bakery, fear not. There are alternative recipes online:Photo by Hank Oscarsson
Swedish doom trio Monolord will release its colossal sophomore album, Vænir, in the coming weeks. The band has already teased LP cuts “Cursing the One” and “We Will Burn”, and now it’s dropped a third massive track, “Died A Million Times”.
“This track’s theme is a bit different from the others,” guitarist Thomas V. Jäger says. “It’s about getting lost in your mind. A psychedelic mind-trip evoking the feeling that you’re dying. Over and over again.”
It’s an expertly paced 10-minute opus built on a thematic bass line that ducks and curls through tempo changes, instrumental drop outs, and crushing buildups of feedback — the most complex piece on the album. Typical of Monolord, the vocals are dreamy and ethereal, only here they’re placed up front, with the chorus even touting a catchy melodic hook. It’s a truly modern sound: recognizably doom, but with the glistening production values of Sigur Ros and adventurous songcraft of Rush. Check it out below.
Vænir comes out on April 28th via RidingEasy Records (pre-orders are ongoing). In support, Monolord will play Roadburn Fest on April 9th in Tilburg, located in the southern reaches of the Netherlands.
Vænir tracklist:
1. Cursing the One
2. We Will Burn
3. Nuclear Death
4. Died a Million Times
5. The Cosmic Silence
6. VænirMuslims around the world, like these people in Senegal, will celebrate Eid al-Adha this November, a tradition that includes sacrificing lambs. ((Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press))
Some Muslims in Canada's capital region are worried that they may be fined for sacrificing lambs during November's Eid al-Adha celebrations.
Since 2005 it has been illegal in Ontario for anyone but the owner of a licensed abattoir to buy livestock and slaughter it independently. Last fall, a Muslim man was fined $2,000 for slaughtering and distributing lamb, and another man is scheduled to appear in court next week for killing a pig.
Abed Abufarha used to celebrate Eid by going to farms to slaughter lambs himself. But this year he will head to an abattoir in Pakenham, Ont., to get his lamb meat. He said the regulations have changed a tradition he used to bring his family to.
"It's getting really serious. They're just so sharp about it. They want to stop it right away," said Abufarha. "There's big fines for slaughtering meat outside of a slaughterhouse."
Many Muslims in the Ottawa area have begun booking lambs to sacrifice for their Eid feast on Nov. 16, and say they'll risk killing the animals themselves. Akram Elmuradi has already paid for 10 live lambs he plans to sacrifice with friends.
"I myself take joy in the kill itself," Elmuradi said. "It's a tradition. … Nobody's going to stop you from doing something you believe in."
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture says it only investigates if a complaint is filed. Still, the penalties can be severe. The maximum fine |
-Straße and keeping right takes you into the road "Alte Deichstraße" with its ensemble of traditional half timbered merchant houses and the canal Nicolai Fleet at the rear. This is the site where Hamburg's harbour was some centuries ago.
HafenCity [ edit ]
Hamburg Speicherstadt
At the southern end of the Alte Deichstraße, you see where the harbour moved afterwards. There is a canal called Zollkanal. Looking to the left, you see the Speicherstadt, a large district of warehouses from around 1900. Some are still in use, but others have been converted to apartments. It's a 'typical' location and worth a visit. It houses museums (International Maritime Museum, Speicherstadtmuseum, Spice Museum, Automuseum Prototyp) and also attractions, such as the "Hamburg Dungeon" and the "Miniatur Wunderland".
The Hamburg Dungeon [42] is a live-action presentation of the "darker times" of Hamburg. It is probably mostly suited for a younger, easily impressed audience. But it might not be suitable for young children. Tickets: 23 €.
The Miniatur Wunderland [43] is the world's largest model railway layout. The panoramas include parts of Hamburg, the Alps, the American west, and a Scandinavian exhibit which features automated ships on a body of water. It also has an airport exhibit with automated planes which taxi and fly. Tickets Adults: 12 €, kids <16: 6 €.
Behind the warehouse district Speicherstadt a totally new quarter, the HafenCity [44], is being shaped and erected on unused industrial ground, nerved by channel, docks and basins. It is Europe's largest project of city development, creating a whole new quarter from scratch in a former harbour region. Outstanding architecture of, among others, shipyard museum, concert hall - the Elbphilharmonie, new 'architectural lighthouse' of Hamburg by 2012. On the top of a huge old warehouse a 110 metres tall modern philharmonic hall with glass facade and wave-shaped roof is being built. [45] You can find information about the new buildings and whole district in the HafenCity Kesselhaus InfoCenter[46] (Sandtorkai 30, open Tu-Su 10AM-6PM they provide free guided tours), Elbphilharmonie Information Pavilion[47] (guided tours around 5 EUR, 3 EUR discounted) and look at the erecting process from an orange observation tower called HafenCity View Point, which allows nice views on the HafenCity, the harbour, and the river (free admission).
Also The Hamburg Cruise Centre[48][49], where cruise lines land in Hamburg, is in the HafenCity. Its terminal building is constructed out of 40 sea containers.
Looking from Alte Deichstraße over the Zollkanal to the right, you can see the modern buildings belonging to the Hanseatic Trade Centre ending to the right at the Kehrwiederspitze. Looking further right, you already see the modern harbour.
Harbour Area [ edit ]
Dock "Elbe 17" in Hamburg harbour
Walking in this direction takes you to the river, Elbe. At the opposite of the metro station "Baumwall", there's Hamburg's city and yacht harbour ("City und Sportboothafen"). The big red lighthouse ship ("Feuerschiff") hosts a restaurant today. Some yards further down the Elbe, you get to the Überseebrücke where formerly big cruise liners docked when coming to Hamburg. Permanently docked is the museum ship Cap San Diego, which is said to be last classic cargo ship.
Leaving the water, passing by the hyper-modern building of the Gruner + Jahr publishers, you get to the church St. Michaelis (called "Michel", from the tower you'll have a great view over the city), Hamburg's well-known landmark. Close to the Michel off the road Krayenkamp the shopkeeper-office-flats ("Krameramtswohnungen") are the last example of a typical 17th century housing estate.
Continuing down the river Elbe, you get to Landungsbrücken ("landing bridges"), the most touristy part of Hamburg's harbour, close to the metro station with the same name. Piers connected with several bridges swim on the water adapting to the tide. There tourism boats land and you will find tourist shops, restaurants, and snack bars. The sailing ship Rickmer Rickmers can be visited.
Hafenrundfahrt just started
From Landungsbrücken, you can make boat tours into the harbour. These Hafenrundfahrten are available from various companies and take around an hour. Big ships provide more comfort, but smaller ships also go through the Speicherstadt. Both are well worth the money. Inquire about English language tours.
As a low-budget alternative for a boat tour on the river Elbe take a HADAG Ferry that is part of Hamburg's public transport system (HVV, see "Get around"). If you have already bought a HVV day ticket, the ride is free. Most tourists take the number 62 to Finkenwerder, via the museum harbour Oevelgönne. The whole ride to Finkenwerder and return takes about an hour. In Finkenwerder, you can continue with another ferry to Teufelsbrück (Line 64 which is also part of the HVV).
You can also walk through the tunnel Alter Elbtunnel from 1911 to the other side of the river Elbe and have great views from there. A lift or stairs bring you the 24 metres down into the tunnel. You then walk through one of its two 427 metre long pipes having 12 metres of water over your head. The tunnel is decorated with ceramic arts of maritime motifs (e.g. fish, mussels, seals, old boots). At the other side, you again walk up the stairs or take a lift. Go out and back to the river to "Aussichtspunkt Steinwerder" for great views on Landungsbrücken and the sights behind. Even cars can pass though the tunnel (only M-F, 5:30AM-8PM for €2) being brought down with four lifts. You find the tunnel at Landungsbrücken in the building having the biggest green dome. Signs to "Aussichtspunkt Steinwerder" also point to it. For pedestrians and bicycles it is free and open all day and night, every day.
Walking from Landungsbrücken down the river Elbe takes you to St. Pauli Fischmarkt, walking further you'll reach Övelgönne and Blankenese.
Landmark of Hamburg: The Michel
Other Neighbourhoods [ edit ]
Sankt Pauli [ edit ]
Another Hamburg landmark is the Reeperbahn in Sankt Pauli. It's probably one of the most famous red-light districts in the world. From vaudeville to prostitutes, from bars to sex-shops, you can find an assortment of attractions. Plus, it is frequently visited by a lot of travelers to go shopping for a huge variety of sex-related articles and toys. This is probably one of very few places worldwide where all shopkeepers give you serious and open advice on all kinds of sex-related articles. Commonsense and caution are advised here, as in any such area. It's relatively safe and a definite touristy place to see. A lot of people go there for dinner, live music, theatre, musicals or other non-sex related activities. It is worth pointing out however, that one is likely to be accosted by prostitutes offering "certain services".
Three times a year (Mar, Aug, and Nov), there is an enormous fair in this part of town called Dom [50]. It features rides, enormous numbers of food vendors, and a broad range of tacky animatronics. Take the U-Bahn to Feldstraße or Sankt Pauli. In a park across the street is an enormous statue of Bismarck.
The "Hafenstraße" (Harbour street) is between Landungsbrücken, the most tourist crowded place in the city, and the fish market, which is open only on Sunday morning from 4:30AM-9:30AM. The street between was a place for squatters in the 1980s and was well known by the media when there were "battles" between the Autonomous movement and the police. Some houses still exist there, though the "80s-Myth" is dead. You can go to the Punksbar "onkel otto" or eat at the "vokü".
During the time of squatting, the well known football club "F.C. St.Pauli" obtained an antifascist-fan-crowd, in opposition to right wing hooligans. The team plays in the 2nd Bundesliga, and is one of the most popular teams in Germany. The outstanding character of the area, its inhabitants and also the football club can best be pointed out by the person of the ex-club-president who is also the director of two non sex-related theatres on the Reeperbahn and a well-known figure in Hamburg's and even Germany's gay community. If you get the chance for a ticket of a match, don't miss it.
Sankt Pauli is one of the most populous district in Europe and a melting pot of all different people, thousands of stories and interesting histories.
As of 18 July 2009, glass bottles are banned in the neighborhood from Friday night until Monday morning. Violating the ban can apparently result in a fine up to 5000 eur. Alcohol is still permitted on the street and vendors can still sell drinks in cans or plastic bottles.
Also in the Reeperbahn area are clubs where the Beatles played at various times from 1960-1962, including the Indra club and Star Club. At the corner of Reeperbahn and Grosse Freiheit, also called Beatles-platz, there is a sculpture honoring the Beatles.
Schanzenviertel [ edit ]
Schulterblatt Street in Schanzenviertel
This neighbourhood is situated right in between Sankt Pauli, Eimsbüttel, and Altona. Get out Sternschanze station and walk down Schanzenstraße southward to reach the vivid centre of Schanzenviertel. Students and immigrants from all around the world and young creatives give this quarter a unique and urban flair. During the last few years, Schanzenviertel became very popular among even wealthy people. This led to rising living costs on the one hand and a variety of exquisite boutiques on the other. The Schulterblatt street with the Rote Flora building and its galore of bars and restaurants represents the centre of Schanzenviertel. The Rote Flora used to be the last squatted house in Hamburg, it's now left to the squatters for free by the owner. During the week, it is turned into a café, concerts of various styles or other events may also take place. On some days there is cheap (mostly vegan) food available. You can sometimes find fantastic parties for small prices on Friday and Saturday.
Sankt Georg [ edit ]
Hamburg St. Georg Kirche
Situated northeast of Central Station and city centre, Sankt Georg is the lively, trendy centre of Hamburg's gay scene. Rainbow flags flutter from the balconies in summer. The streets are crowded with people shopping, having a chat, drinking coffee, or going to one of the many art exhibitions around the Lange Reihe street.
Ottensen [ edit ]
Zeißstraße in Ottensen
The former Danish village Ottensen, bordered by the River Elbe in the south and the Altona Central Station in the east, is not unlike Schanzenviertel, a very hip place to live. In the 1970s and 1980s, Ottensen was mainly populated by Turks, working class people, and political activists. Nowadays, it is one of the most expensive neighborhoods. Its situation and the architecture let many inhabitants even today speak of Ottensen as a village. The Fabrik, an alternative concert hall, is situated at Barnerstrasse. Only a few blocks away lies Zeisehallen, a formerly occupied fabric hall, nowadays home to a movie theatre, a gallery, a restaurant, and a bookshop. Ottenser Hauptstrasse and Bahrenfelder Strasse, crossing at the Spritzenplatz, offers a huge variety of small shops and bistros.
Karolinenviertel [ edit ]
The Karolienenviertel (also known as Karoviertel) can be compared to the Schanzenviertel. Locals claim that the Schanzenviertel became too popular (and thus crowded). The Karoviertel is far from quiet, but populated by locals. The main attractions are unique clothing stores some of which are second hand. To get there take the HVV to either Feldstrasse (Heiligengeistfeld) or Messehallen subway station.
Blankenese [ edit ]
Blankenese was a fishing village on the Elbe to the southwest of Hamburg. It lies in a valley between two of the only ridges in the area that runs straight down to the river. This upbeat suburb of Hamburg has more millionaires than any other German city. On pretty weekends, the place will be full of Hamburgers there to enjoy the tiny beaches, the winding streets, and the charming houses. Blankenese is among the most picturesque parts of Hamburg.
To get there, take the S1 to Wedel or the S11 to Blankenese. The train station lies at the top of the valley, on Bahnhofstraße. Go straight across Bahnhofstraße and your will find the banks, an Italian gelateria and café, the market square (markets open early and close at 1PM on W, F, and Sa), the bakeries, grocery store, and post office.
Bergedorf [ edit ]
Bergedorf once was an independent town, but now is a quarter of Hamburg. It is situated in the south-eastern side of Hamburg. Bergedorf borders with the quarters of Lohbrügge, Billwerder, Allermöhe, Curslack and Altengamme. Sometimes it is called the "garden of Hamburg". This is because the Vier- und Marschlande are part of the quarter of Bergedorf, which consists mostly of farmland.
Touristic Attractions are the Bergedorf Castle, which is the only castle still intact within the borders of Hamburg, the shopping arcade, starting at Lohbrügges Alte Holstenstraße, continuing on Bergedorfs Sachsentor (lots of frame houses can be seen here) and ending on Mohnhof, where the "city center" of Bergedorf is located. Another attraction is the observatory, which was build in 1912 and is still in use today. It is owned by the University of Hamburg.
In the past few years Bergedorf underwent a heavy reconstruction, with a new main bus terminal and a new commercial center.
To get there, take the S2 or S21 to Bergedorf/Aumühle. Another possibility is to take the Regional Train R20, which also stops in Bergedorf and can be used with a regular HVV ticket. The train station lies on the border of Lohbrügge and Bergedorf. Exit the station to the left hand side (facing the direction the train travelled coming from Hauptbahnhof) and you will end up in Lohbrügge. Right hand side is Bergedorf with the newly build commercial center.
Other Sites [ edit ]
Chilehaus
U 434 — One of the biggest non-nuclear Soviet submarines.
Church St. Katharinen — One of the five main churches of Hamburg.
The Chilehaus, depicting the form of a ship, is probably the best example of the 1920s style of "Kontorhaus" architecture. Large office buildings are displayed in the typical, northern red brick style.
Parks [ edit ]
Elephant feeding in the Hagenbeck Zoo
Planten un Blomen is a park in the city with an emphasis on flower displays. Subway station Dammtor.
is a park in the city with an emphasis on flower displays. Subway station Dammtor. Alter Botanischer Garten with Tropenhaus (Schaugewächshäuser) in the Area of Planten un Blomen. Admission free.
with in the Area of Planten un Blomen. Admission free. Neuer Botanischer Garten in Klein Flottbek. Admission free.
in Klein Flottbek. Admission free. Alstervorland, at the Außenalster.
, at the Außenalster. The Stadtpark (city park) — Has a pretty good Planetarium situated in an old water tower in the middle of the park (closed for refurbishing until end of 2016).
— Has a pretty good Planetarium situated in an old water tower in the middle of the park (closed for refurbishing until end of 2016). Ohlsdorfer Friedhof — One of the world's biggest graveyards.
— One of the world's biggest graveyards. Jenischpark, Baurs Park, and Garten der Alma l'Aigles, down the river Elbe close to Teufelsbrück.
,, and, down the river Elbe close to Teufelsbrück. Hagenbecks Tierpark — Hamburg's Zoo.
Beaches [ edit ]
There are a number of small beaches on the North side of the Elbe river between Övelgönne and Blankenese. Even though not common, it is safe to swim in the Elbe there (if you don't swim out too far). You may have a barbecue there in the evenings, as long as you bring a grill and clean up after yourself. Watch out for surprisingly large waves created by large ships passing by and stay clear at least 50m of any structure in or reaching into the water! See Stay Safe below!
In addition, there are a usually number of commercial beach clubs during the summer, usually between Fischmarkt and Övelgönne. Other than the name might indicate, these are bars open to the public.
The best way to come to the most popular beach is to take the harbour-ferry bus from the Landungsbrücken station to Neumühlen/Övelgönne.
Museums [ edit ]
Hamburg publishes a thick, detailed booklet of local museums called "Museumswelt Hamburg". You can find the Museumswelt Hamburg at the information desk at any of the museums.
Night of Museums[51] in April is big in Hamburg. Over fifty places take part and are open till 2AM. Entrance to museums is not free, but the cost is symbolic, ticket everywhere (plus public transportation) costs 12 € (discounted 8 €).
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum of Arts and Crafts), Steintorplatz, just to the southeast of Hauptbahnhof, Tel: 489 133-200, Fax: 426 136-29 32, Open Tu-Su 11AM-6PM, Th 11AM-9PM, Admission: € 10, reduced: € 7, children unter 18 years free, family: 17 €.
The museum is a leading centre for art, applied art, and design. Its collections of work from Europe and the Middle and the Far East are of the finest-quality and span all epochs from the Ancient World to the present day. They also have many activities and concerts (see the Classical Music section). The museum is housed in an 18th century palace, which has the original roofs and ceilings.
Kunsthalle, baroque building
Hamburg Kunsthalle
Kunsthalle (art museum), Glockengießerwall, north of Hauptbahnhof, Tel: 428 131-200, Fax: 428 54-3409 [52]. Open Tu-Su 10AM-6PM, Th 10AM-9PM. Adults 12 €, Concessions 6 €, Family Day Ticket 18 €, under 18 free admission.
The museum houses an important collection of paintings from the 19th century with works from Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth, Philipp Otto Runge, Caspar David Friedrich, Adolf Menzel, and modern arts. It rises on both sides of a paved court. The Baroque building on one side has the older works. The areas under the courtyard and the other, modern looking building house an extensive collection of very modern art. There are some extremely fine pieces, but the quality is uneven and the curacy curious at times. For instance, in a far back corner with minimal climate control and no observation are four or five gorgeous French Impressionist paintings which are among the finest in the museum.
Deichtorhallen[53] — The Deichtorhallen is one of the best known exhibition galleries worldwide. The historical buildings are divided into an exhibition hall for contemporary art and the "House of Photography". Together the two buildings organize a highly diverse program of changing exhibitions.
Hamburg Museum[54] (former: Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte), Holstenwall, close to Underground station "St. Pauli". This is the museum of city history, bringing the past to life with a lot of models showing the development of the harbour and the city. The club "MEHEV" is showing a 40-year old and one of the largest scale model railroads here.
International Maritime Museum – Privately owned museum in HafenCity district houses a collection of thousands model ships, construction plans, uniforms and photographs on ten floors in the oldest preserved warehouse in Hamburg (from 1879). Opening Hours: Tue - Sun 10.00 - 18.00 h, Normal ticket € 12.50, family € 24.50, Audio-Guide € 3,50, Koreastraße 1, Tel. +49 (0)40 300 92 30–0.
Hamburg Dockland
Speicherstadtmuseum (Dockland Museum), branch of Museum of Labour located in docklands warehouse. History of the district and tea and coffee trade. Entrance: 3.60 €, discounts apply. Am Sandtorkai 36, Tel. 040 / 32 11 91
Automuseum Prototyp[55] HafenCity, Shanghaiallee 7. Museum of car prototypes, nice shop inside. Open 10AM - 6PM, Mondays closed. Tickets 9 EUR, kids <14 4,50 EUR.
Museumshafen Oevelgönne[56] — historical boats (admission free).
MS Cap San Diego[57] museum cargo ship moored at the port of Hamburg. Hosts temporary exhibitions. Accommodation in cabins is possible.
museum sailing ship Rickmer-Rickmers
Rickmer Rickmers[58] museum sailing ship (three masted bark) from 1896 moored at the port of Hamburg.
Altonaer Museum[59] — Dedicated to Altona's, Hamburg's and northern Germany's cultural history.
Museum für Völkerkunde, Museum of Ethnology[60] Rothenbaumchaussee 64.
Deutsches Zollmuseum — (admission €2).
Bucerius Kunst Forum[61], Rathausmarkt 2.
Spicey's Gewürzmuseum[62], (Spice Museum) located in the Speicherstadt. They claim to be the world's only spice museum.
Houses of worship [ edit ]
Hamburg Hauptkirche St. Michaelis
Hamburg is traditionally a Lutheran evangelic town. But due to the large number of different ethnic groups who settled in the harbour town, one is most certainly going to find a suitable temple of any religion. Almost all synagogues have been destroyed during the time of Nazi-government.
St. Michaeliskirche Protestant baroque church, the building as it is known today was built in 1786.
Protestant baroque church, the building as it is known today was built in 1786. Synagoge Hamburg, situated in the traditionally Jewish Grindel neighbourhood.
, situated in the traditionally Jewish Grindel neighbourhood. Christianskirche, Baroque church in Ottensen.
, Baroque church in Ottensen. Dreieinigkeitskirche St. Georg, Post-war church with Baroque steeple in Sankt Georg.
, Post-war church with Baroque steeple in Sankt Georg. St.-Marien-Dom St. Georg — Since 1995, this neo-romanesque church is the cathedral of the youngest Roman Catholic archbishop of Germany. Though the church has not the splendor one might expect, next to it you may find the first statue world wide of the late pope, John-Paul II.
— Since 1995, this neo-romanesque church is the cathedral of the youngest Roman Catholic archbishop of Germany. Though the church has not the splendor one might expect, next to it you may find the first statue world wide of the late pope, John-Paul II. Flussschifferkirche, Germany's only floating church next to the Speicherstadt [63].
, Germany's only floating church next to the Speicherstadt [63]. Imam-Ali-Mosque — Biggest of all mosques in Hamburg. Centre of the religious and cultural life of the huge Iranian community. The Imams of Hamburg happen to have played important roles in Iran's religious and political everyday life since their installation in the 1950s.
— Biggest of all mosques in Hamburg. Centre of the religious and cultural life of the huge Iranian community. The Imams of Hamburg happen to have played important roles in Iran's religious and political everyday life since their installation in the 1950s. International Baptist Church (IBC-Hamburg) — Biggest English-speaking church in Hamburg. Meets 12:30-2pm on Sundays. Large Young Adult Group that meets Tuesdays as well.
— Biggest English-speaking church in Hamburg. Meets 12:30-2pm on Sundays. Large Young Adult Group that meets Tuesdays as well. St. Thomas Becket Anglican Church — First non-Lutheran parish permitted in Hamburg after reformation. The classical building from 1831 is close to St. Michaeliskirche.
Boat trips [ edit ]
The best way to explore Hamburg's extensive waterways (Hamburg boasts more bridges than Amsterdam, Venice and London combined, but that includes any kind of bridge) is on a ferry or pleasure boat.
Boat trips are largely divide into those on the inner city Alster Lake (both, inner and outer lakes) and harbour trips on the Elbe. river.
All trips are also available in English, but you will have to check for times.
Alster boat trips [ edit ]
A variety of boat tours lasting from 50 minutes to 3 hours depart regularly from the Jungfernstieg on the southern ennd of the Inner Alster lake. The exact offer varies depending on the season, so do check in advance or at the landing stage to see what's available. The simplest and shortest tour is the Alsterrundfahrt or Alster tour that lasts 50 minutes and takes in the Inner and Outer Alster lakes (adults: €15).
Although not a regular public transport, some trips let you get on or off at other stops around the outer Alster lake.
The small cruise boats are often hired for weddings. Contact Alster Touristik on 35 74 24-0 or check out the website at www.alstertouristik.de. There is also the independently operated Alster Steamboat, which might offer a more authentic feeling.
You might also chose to rent a rowing boat or a paddle boat to explore the Alster and the canals linked to it at your own pace.
Bear in mind that
you may only stop at a very few designated spots and private properties reaching down right to the waters edge are, of course, out of bounds
tour boats run along the sometimes very narrow canals, so a bit of caution is advisable and you might have to squeeze next to the bank
regular powered boats and sailing boats have right of way
For those who can do it, sailing boats are available for hire (taking 4 persons max., proof of skill will be necessary, be sure to remember the special right-of-way rules on the Alster)
You will usually need to leave a passport/id card as a deposit for any boat hire.
There are no powered boats for personal use.
Harbour boat trips [ edit ]
At the Landungsbrücken (floating landings for embarkation) area you will find a number of companies offering tours around the harbour. They last from about one hour up to three hours if it includes a downriver stretch.
Note that tours around the 'Speicherstadt' (historic warehouse district, now a World Heritage site) depend on tides and captains may decide on short notice if they can navigate the shallow canals. Check for high tides to plan your trip.
Regular ferry services [ edit ]
Popular among locals and tourists alike are the local ferry services along the Elbe river, especially the lines running between the Elbphilharmonie and Finkenwerder (the Airbus factory site). They offer a lot of the views you will get from the tours (minus the commentary and the Speicherstadt) with the fare usually being included in flat rate public transport tickets (tourist tickets, day or multi-day passes, etc.). Be prepared to queue at busy times.
Theatre, Opera and Musicals [ edit ]
Hamburg is home to the Hamburg State Opera House (Staatsoper Hamburg [64]), one of the leading opera houses in Germany. It holds great historical significance, as in 1678 the first public opera house in Germany was built in Hamburg at Gänsemarkt Square, which is where the opera house is still located today. The In 2011 the Staatsoper celebrated 333 years of opera at Gänsemarkt. Hamburg also has many theaters, and is known to host a number of different musicals, as well as other music events.
Classical Music [ edit ]
The Laeiszhalle [65] is the main classical music hall in Hamburg, with two halls: the klein Saal and großer Saal. You can see the schedule on their website. For online ticket purchases, use Ticket Online [66].
The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg has many smaller concerts — something almost every day — and is much cheaper than the Laeiszhalle. The programs range from the curator of their early keyboard instrument collection playing them and giving a spiel on the music and the instruments (in German only!) to formal concerts of renditions of Schubert's Die Winterreise. Pick up a schedule at the desk of the museum (down the street from Hamburg Hauptbanhof).
Theatres [ edit ]
Deutsches Schauspielhaus — The biggest German speech theatre looks back on a famous tradition. Gustav Gründgens, Ivan Nagel, and Peter Zadek staged highlights in German theatre history here.
Ernst-Deutsch-Theater — The Ernst-Deutsch-Theater has been an established part of the Hamburg theatre scene since 1951. Today, it is the largest privately operated playhouse in Germany.
Thalia-Theater — New directors and the continuing cooperation with young important writers based on the confidence in a strong and vital company lead to international acknowledgment.
The English Theatre of Hamburg [67] — The English Theatre of Hamburg performs from September through June, giving eight performances per week.
Schmidt-Theater — Theatre, variety, cabaret, concerts, and satirical revues.
Schmidts Tivoli — Avant garde shows and high-class musicals. The world famous musical "Cabaret" and the successful musical compendium "Fifty Fifty" were staged here.
The Rover Rep Theatre, at the Irish Rover, Großneumarkt 8, Tel. (040) 317 31 41,[68]. English language pub theatre under the Irish Rover at the Großneumarkt. High class professional productions in a special atmosphere.
The Hamburg Players, (040) 713 13 99, [69]. Hamburgs oldest English language theatre group giving three shows a year at the Theater in der Marschnerstraße.
Musicals [ edit ]
Tarzan produced by Disney with music from Phil Collins.
produced by Disney with music from Phil Collins. Rocky by Stage Entertainment, Sylvester Stallone and the Klitschko brothers (from November 2012).
by Stage Entertainment, Sylvester Stallone and the Klitschko brothers (from November 2012). Lion King produced by Disney.
Note that all musicals are in German language, regardless of their origin. If you're still interested, make sure to buy tickets early, many shows are sold-out. But, midweek there is a good chance that you will be able to buy last minute tickets at a highly discounted price of €40 regardless of price category, age, or occupation.
Sports [ edit ]
The Volksparkstadion (from 2001 to 2015 officially known as Imtech-Arena, HSH-Nordbank-Arena and AOL-Arena respectively, before 2001 and since 2015 officially called Volksparkstadion, but always called that way by fans anyways) is the stadium of the local Bundesliga football/soccer club HSV. Newly constructed and reopened in 2000, it is arguably the prettiest stadium in Germany with a great atmosphere. In addition to guided tours, it also features a museum presenting the history of the club. See also the HSV website [70].
The Millerntor-Stadion is the home of the famous Bundesliga football/soccer club FC St. Pauli [71]. It lacks the modernity and prettiness of the Volksparkstadion, yet its atmosphere during games is unique and well worth a visit. The Millerntor-Stadion is located at the east end of the Reeperbahn. Nearest station is St. Pauli on the underground line U3.
Hamburg Blue Devils — Fourfold German American Football Champion (German Football League).
Hamburg Stealers HSV-aligned baseball club, with field located near Hamburg Airport.
HSV-aligned baseball club, with field located near Hamburg Airport. HSV Handball is the local handball team, playing their matches at the modern o2 World Hamburg (formerly Colorline-Arena), right next to the Volksparkstadion.
Hamburg Freezers share the Colorline-Arena with HSV Handball. The premier-league ice hockey team features many international top class players.
share the Colorline-Arena with HSV Handball. The premier-league ice hockey team features many international top class players. The German Open in Men's Tennis are held at the Rothenbaum in Hamburg. The tournament is one of nine ATP Masters Series tournaments.
in Men's Tennis are held at the Rothenbaum in Hamburg. The tournament is one of nine ATP Masters Series tournaments. Deutsche Bank Players’ Championship, at the Gut Kaden Golf and Land Club. Golf tournament of world class, prize money €600,000.
, at the Gut Kaden Golf and Land Club. Golf tournament of world class, prize money €600,000. Vattenfall Cyclassics — World Cup and public bike race.
— World Cup and public bike race. Holsten City Man — The only German Triathlon World Cup.
— The only German Triathlon World Cup. Conergy Marathon Hamburg — Usually in spring, open to the public.
Events [ edit ]
Fish Market.
Fischmarkt (Fish Market) — Every Sunday morning vendors praise wares of virtually every type at Hamburg's oldest open-air market, dating back to 1703. The market takes place at the foot of the century-old Fish Auction Hall offering live-bands perform at jazz, skiffle, country, or western music. Open every Sunday from 5AM-9:30AM, in winter from 7AM-9:30AM.
Parking space usually is dear, try to come on foot or best by public ferry no. 62 to Fischmarkt station.
It is popular with locals, early rising tourists and late partygoing people coming straight from the nearby Reeperbahn.
Do check carefully what lies at the bottom of those nice fruit baskets...
— Every Sunday morning vendors praise wares of virtually every type at Hamburg's oldest open-air market, dating back to 1703. The market takes place at the foot of the century-old Fish Auction Hall offering live-bands perform at jazz, skiffle, country, or western music. Open every Sunday from 5AM-9:30AM, in winter from 7AM-9:30AM. Parking space usually is dear, try to come on foot or best by public ferry no. 62 to Fischmarkt station. It is popular with locals, early rising tourists and late partygoing people coming straight from the nearby Reeperbahn. Do check carefully what lies at the bottom of those nice fruit baskets... Hafengeburtstag (Harbour Anniversary) — Each May the harbour anniversary attracts millions of people. Dozens of stands and stages with music of all kinds, a parade of historic ships, cruise liners and al kinds of other craft, a ballet of harbour tugs (see those 400-plus-ton-brutes dance!) and other events are organized to celebrate the city's original source of wealth. Starting at the 800th anniversary in 1989, the event has grown into the greatest harbour celebrations in the world. It generally takes place in early May and lasts over 3-4 days, depending on whether it coincides with public holidays.
— Each May the harbour anniversary attracts millions of people. Dozens of stands and stages with music of all kinds, a parade of historic ships, cruise liners and al kinds of other craft, a ballet of harbour tugs (see those 400-plus-ton-brutes dance!) and other events are organized to celebrate the city's original source of wealth. Starting at the 800th anniversary in 1989, the event has grown into the greatest harbour celebrations in the world. It generally takes place in early May and lasts over 3-4 days, depending on whether it coincides with public holidays. Kirschblütenfest (Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival) — On May 19th, the Japanese community of Hamburg celebrates the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival on the Outer Alster lake. The enormous fireworks and a peaceful atmosphere make this an ideal outdoors event (make sure to book boats well in advance, if you care to enjoy the view from the water).
— On May 19th, the Japanese community of Hamburg celebrates the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival on the Outer Alster lake. The enormous fireworks and a peaceful atmosphere make this an ideal outdoors event (make sure to book boats well in advance, if you care to enjoy the view from the water). Hamburger Dom (Fair) — The 'Dom' |
fell under the influence of Pabloism had subjected the politics of petty-bourgeois nationalism to a relentless criticism?
Certainly the result could have proven to be one of temporary isolation, at least from the movements dominated by the petty-bourgeoisie. But in the process they would have educated the most advanced sections of workers and youth. Through this struggle, a leadership could have been prepared capable of mobilizing the working class in revolutionary struggle. Instead of falling under the domination of military dictatorships which helped achieve a temporary restabilization of world capitalism, Latin America could have given a powerful impetus to the world socialist revolution.
The central lessons we must draw from this strategic experience concern the critical responsibilities of Marxists. Their task is not that of discovering and adapting themselves to some other forces who will spontaneously carry out the socialist revolution. Rather, it is to build independent revolutionary parties of the working class, sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, that base themselves on implacable theoretical firmness and tell the working class the truth.
The objective conditions in Latin America and internationally are maturing to the point where the struggle undertaken by the Trotskyist movement will intersect with the revolutionary movement of millions. The lessons this movement has assimilated from the struggle for socialism in the 20th century, will become decisive for its realization in the 21st.
Notes
[1] Leon Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1939-40,
(New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973), p. 202
[2] Documents of the Fourth International:
The Formative Years 1933-40 (New York: Pathfinder, 1973), p. 394
[3] Ernesto Che Guevara, La Guerra de Guerrrillas,
(La Habana:Talleres de INRA, 1961)
[4] Joseph Hansen, Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution:
The Trotskyist View (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1978), p.75
[5] Cliff Slaughter, ed., Trotskyism Versus Revisionism: A Documentary History (London: New Park Publications, 1974), vol. 3, The Socialist Workers Party's Road Back to Pabloism, p. 65
[6] Ibid, vol. 4, The International Committee Against Liquidationism,
p. 199
[7] Ibid
[8] United Secretariat 9th Congress documents
[9] Ibid
[10] Joseph Hansen, Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution:
The Trotskyist View (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1978) p. 265
[11] Granma, 16 November, 1994Every year when the NFL Draft rolls around, I experience four distinct levels of interest in the event.
As a FOOTBALL FAN. Football has been absorbed into my tiny little bones since childhood. I like to watch the NFL Draft as basic entertainment. It satisfies my curiosity. “Oh, I didn’t expect the Browns to NOT fuck up this year! Interesting!” It is the layer that offers me the least amount of engagement, but satisfies my basic need for football in the offseason.
As a SEAHAWKS FAN. My engagement is now starting to pick up. If I’m going to root for my team during the draft, I have to know which prospects I am hoping they come away with. I obsess over draft articles, scouting reports, team visits, and private workouts so that I can reliably narrow the field of potential Seahawks picks to a dozen or so. This way I always have players I am rooting for- prospects who I am personally high on, and who I pray will fall to the Seahawks (or at least not end up with the Patriots… I’m still pissed about Wilfork going two picks before we took Marcus Tubbs…)
As a FANTASY FOOTBALL PLAYER. This is what I would like to talk about right now. The fourth layer is all about competing in mock draft competitions or other NFL Draft games, but I’ll get more into that later. Why jump ahead? It’s fantasy football season right now.
I believe a huge number of people tuning into the draft are doing so with fantasy football on the brain. Viewing it through that lens is a way to invest yourself more fully into each pick. The offensive picks, anyway. Instead of just rooting for a guy to play for your favorite team… your brain is put to work, identifying the best combination of player talent, team fit, and opportunity. It’s when you start to think of potential. Which of these prospects can be the cornerstone of your fantasy team?
Fantasy drafts are filling up everyone’s nights, and fantasy football research is being done surreptitiously during work hours while the boss is at lunch. It’s time, right now, to talk about the fantasy impact of the 2016 NFL Draft.
No QBs or TEs in Top-10 Fantasy Football Rookies from the 2016 NFL Draft
I’m going to come at this ranking from a keeper/dynasty perspective, because I think we should view these prospects the same way the teams that drafted them do- as combination immediate-and-long-term assets. Here are my top fantasy prospects taken in the 2016 NFL Draft:
10) Sterling Shepard – WR, New York Giants, Round 2 Pick 9 (40 overall)
I’m sure many of you will stop reading right now. You’ll say “There’s no way nine rookies are going to score more than Sterling Shepard, you wretched contrarian!” To that I would say… you’re right. Nine rookies will probably not outscore Shepard. This year. But I have one hard rule when it comes to drafting wide receivers. One that I fear writing here, just in case members of my fantasy football leagues are reading. But here’s my rule:
Do not draft a wide receiver who isn’t his own team’s WR1.
Looking at the top scoring fantasy WRs from last season, each of the top-11 (and 19 of the top 25) is their team’s WR1.
When you draft Shepard, you are guaranteeing yourself that, for as long as Odell Beckham is in town, he will not be a top-10 WR. That cap on upside is really troubling to me. Yes, I expect him to put up WR2 numbers this year, and you will have to pay WR2 cost for him. But without a clear path to being his team’s #1 WR, I’m not touching him.
9) Tyler Boyd – WR, Cincinnati Bengals, Round 2 Pick 24 (55 overall)
Tyler Boyd has the same problem as Sterling Shepard, except his QB (Andy Dalton) is younger, his competition to be WR1 (A.J. Green) is older, and I actually like his skill set more. Boyd has crazy good hands and concentration. He moves smooth as cream, which should help him absorb hits and avoid injuries. He’ll be on the field as much as Shepard his rookie year, but he holds more long-term potential.
8) Derrick Henry – RB, Tennessee Titans, Round 2 Pick 14 (45 overall)
Derrick Henry is a prospect I didn’t like very much heading into the draft. He is, essentially, a Brandon Jacobs clone. And Jacobs had a couple good seasons (also sharing the ball in a crowded backfield, like Henry will with DeMarco Murray) but nothing to really get excited about. It’s true, I hate Brandon Jacobs because he cost me TWO fantasy football championships in three years. That might be contributing to my distaste for Derrick Henry. But if you are going to read my analysis, you also have to stomach my gut reactions, and my gut says Henry is big and fast and strong, but he runs upright and needs to gain a head of steam before he is effective. A head of steam is easier to get when you’re running behind the Alabama offensive line, maybe the best run blocking offensive line in college football. Not so easy in the NFL.
7) Keith Marshall – RB, Washington Redskins, Round 7 Pick 21 (242 overall)
Torchlight glows in the distance as the cackle of pitchforks shakes my bones. Please, I beg! Just hear me out. Everyone loves Derrick Henry because he is very fast for his massive size. An athletic freak. Well, at the NFL Combine, Keith Marshall ran a 4.31 40 and put up 25 reps of the bench press at 220 pounds. That is a big, strong, fast man! He landed in a better situation than Henry. He’s only behind Matt Jones, the league’s worst (including Latavius Murray) starting RB, and Matt Jones is even injured now! (update! Keither Marshall just got hurt last night… I am keeping my rankings as-is for now…) Will Keith Marshall step in right away and own that job? Maybe not. He’s a rookie. He has his own complex injury history. But his upside is something to behold. He is fast and fluid in the open field and has good hands. He slashes inside and glides in the open field, like a modern day Marcus Allen. He is a natural football player, and I believe he could end up as the top RB from this draft class.
6) Kenneth Dixon – RB, Baltimore Ravens, Round 4 Pick 36 (134 overall)
I’m a little torn on Dixon, so putting him at 6 was my only choice. I love his talent. He was my third favorite running back from the 2016 draft class. He is such a natural receiver, he can be utilized in that role at the minimum, which gives him a nice safe floor. There weren’t many teams he could have gone to that would frustrate me (the Lions would have been one) but when he was taken by the Ravens, I let out a sad sigh. They already have Buck Allen, who is a less-talented player with the exact same skill set. But he’s got a year of experience in the system. Justin Forsett is still probably locked in as the starter. And now reports out of camp are that Terrance West, a guy I really liked last season, is looking great. (update! Dixon was ALSO injured last night! This is why all fantasy drafts must always be scheduled after week 3 of the preseason!) It’s a crowded mess back there, and while I like Kenneth Dixon’s skills, I’m not sure they are enough to get him immediate touches, even in this weird/horrible/injured offense. The Ravens feel so unknown at every offensive position, I can’t with any confidence project him as a contributor, and I cannot project that offense as any kind of reliable engine for scoring points.
5) Josh Doctson – WR, Washington Redskins<, Round 1 Pick 22 (22 overall)
I know that Doctson is injured. Again… long-term. Keeper. The thing is, he is the lowest rated WR on my list who I can reasonably expect to be his team’s number 1 WR. First round pedigree is a nice thing to have… but when you have Kirk Cousins throwing the ball, the most important thing to have is a huge catch radius and the ability to win contested catches. Because let’s be honest… most of your catches will be contested. A big fast jump-ball expert is just what that offense needed, and it’s what they got in Josh Doctson. Right now there is a lot of competition for catches with Desean Jackson, Jordan Reed, Pierre Garcon, and Jamison Crowder all really good options. But by this time next year, I imagine Doctson could be that team’s WR1. Both Desean and Pierre are unrestricted free agents. I’m not totally confident in Docston the player. I don’t love his game. But I can easily envision imagine a scenario in which he steps up as the Redskins’ best WR.
4) DeAndre Washington – RB, Oakland Raiders, Round 5 Pick 4 (143 overall)
I could change this spot from “DeAndre Washington” to “Whoever Is The Backup RB For The Raiders.” For now it is him, so he holds this spot. I actually don’t love him as a prospect, but every report out of Oakland describes him as “explosive.” I think his talent is limited and he goes down too easily because he is undersized. The thing is, Latavius Murray is a REALLY bad professional football player. He just has no vision or bust or wiggle, and he runs so upright I would be shocked if he didn’t have a major leg injury this season. And he is running behind an amazing offensive line, with a coach that loves to run the ball. So if it were any other RB backing up Murray, he would probably be a top-2 player for me. Given Washington’s limitations… he sits here at 4.
3) Laquan Treadwell – WR, Minnesota Vikings, Round 1 Pick 23 (23 overall)
Now HERE is a textbook example of an easy path to team WR1 status. He is exactly the long, physically imposing WR that can dominate the mid-range passes and help out a conservative QB such as Teddy Bridgewater (though I prefer the term methodical, because I like him…) Laquan Treadwell played hurt his last year in college, contributing to his underwhelming statistics. Those tidbits make me salivate. The problem right now is the Minnesota Vikings offense. This is the AP show, and will probably remain so for the next couple years. As Doug Baldwin showed last year, there are numbers to be had as the WR1 in a run-based offense… but Baldwin is a savvy vet. Treadwell is a rookie. He won’t put up big numbers right away. With Bridgewater, he might never put up elite numbers. But I like his chances much more than any other WR not named…
2) Corey Coleman – WR, Cleveland Browns, Round 1 Pick 15 (15 overall)
Corey Coleman is 95% of everything you could ever want in a rookie WR. He flat out dominated in college football. He personally owned the NFL combine, with amazing burst and speed scores. He has great hands, great agility, great tackle breaking ability, and a total love for the game that just radiates off of him. It feels like a privilege to watch this guy play. And he was drafted by a team without an established WR1. He steps right into that role. And much like Odell Beckham did three years ago, I expect him to absolutely refuse to relinquish that title when Josh Gordon returns from his suspension. Whether RG3 works out this season or the Browns are in the market for a QB (again) in the 2017 NFL Draft, Corey Coleman is a fantastic centerpiece for an offense that will probably be forced to throw often. DeAndre Hopkins showed us last season that a talented WR1 can overcome his QB play. It might take half a season, but Coleman will be the latest to reinforce this truism.
1) Ezekiel Elliott – RB, Dallas Cowboys, Round 1 Pick 4 (4 overall)
Duh. Everyone knew Ezekiel Elliott would be there at number one, and even I am not contrarian enough to pretend he isn’t the top rookie fantasy prospect. But if this column were about the best rookie fantasy VALUES of the 2016 season, Elliott would certainly lose out to Corey Coleman, who is being drafted at the end of the 9th round. It’s going to take a first rounder to draft Elliott. Elliott’s top ranking on this list is based more on opportunity than talent, though I do think he is a good player. I actually had him rated as the second best RB in this draft class (Keith Marshall, I love you!) But it is common knowledge that Elliott is running behind the best offensive line in the league with no competition for touches, and with an all-star WR and QB forcing defenses out of the box. Darren McFadden put up a top-15 season running behind this line! They kept Darren McFadden healthy! That’s, like… impossible!
So yes, Elliott has a great opportunity, and has the skills to make the most of that opportunity. The problem is, everyone knows it, and so you will not get a deal on him. For my money, target Coleman, Treadwell, and Marshall as the best value prospects from the 2016 NFL Draft.Exclusive: When Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate turned to world affairs, the NBC correspondents and both Sen. Sanders and ex-Secretary Clinton fell in line behind “group thinks” about Syria, Iran and Russia that lack evidentiary support, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
A curious reality about Official Washington is that to have “credibility” you must accept the dominant “group thinks” whether they have any truth to them or not, a rule that applies to both the mainstream news media and the political world, even to people who deviate from the pack on other topics.
For instance, Sen. Bernie Sanders may proudly declare himself a “democratic socialist” far outside the acceptable Washington norm but he will still echo the typical propaganda about Syria, Russia, Iran and other “designated villains.” Like other progressives who spend years in Washington, he gets what you might called “Senate-ized,” adopting that institution’s conventional wisdom about “enemies” even if he may differ on whether to bomb them or not.
That pattern goes in spades for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other consciously “centrist” politicians as well as media stars, like NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Lester Holt, who were the moderators of Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate. They know what they know based on what “everybody who’s important” says, regardless of the evidence or lack thereof.
So, you had Mitchell and Holt framing questions based on Official Washington’s “group thinks” and Sanders and Clinton responding accordingly.
Regarding Iran, Sanders may have gone as far as would be considered safe in this political environment, welcoming the implementation of the agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program but accepting the “group think” about Iran’s “terrorism” and hesitant to call for resumption of diplomatic relations.
“Understanding that Iran’s behavior in so many ways is something that we disagree with; their support of terrorism, the anti-American rhetoric that we’re hearing from their leadership is something that is not acceptable,” Sanders said. “Can I tell you that we should open an embassy in Tehran tomorrow? No, I don’t think we should.”
Blaming Iran
In her response, Clinton settled safely behind the Israeli-preferred position to lambaste Iran for supposedly fomenting the trouble in the Middle East, though more objective observers might say that the U.S. government and its “allies” including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have wreaked much more regional havoc than Iran has.
“We have to go after them [the Iranians] on a lot of their other bad behavior in the region which is causing enormous problems in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere,” Clinton said.
Yet, how exactly Iran is responsible for “enormous problems” across the region doesn’t get explained. Everybody just “knows” it to be true, since the claim is asserted by Israel’s right-wing government and repeated by U.S. pols and pundits endlessly.
Yet, in Iraq, the chaos was not caused by Iran, but by the U.S. government’s invasion in 2003, which then-Sen. Clinton supported (while Sen. Sanders opposed it). In Yemen, it is the Saudis and their Sunni coalition that created a humanitarian disaster by bombing the impoverished country after wildly exaggerating Iran’s support for Houthi rebels.
In Syria, the core reason for the bloodshed is not Iran, but decisions of the Bush-43 administration last decade and the Obama administration this decade to seek another “regime change,” ousting President Bashar al-Assad.
Supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers, this U.S.-backed “covert” intervention instigated both political unrest and terrorist violence inside Syria, including arming jihadist forces such as Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and its close ally, Ahrar al-Sham and to a lesser degree Al Qaeda’s spinoff, the Islamic State. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.“]
The desire of these Sunni powers — along with Israel and America’s neoconservatives — was to shatter the so-called “Shiite crescent” that they saw reaching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. Since Assad is an Alawite, a branch of Shiite Islam, he had to be removed even though he was regarded as the principal protector of Syria’s Christian, Shiite and Alawite minorities. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Did Money Seal Saudi-Israeli Alliance?’]
However, while Israel and the Sunni powers get a pass for their role in the carnage, Iran is blamed for its assistance to the Syrian military in battling these jihadist groups. Official Washington’s version of this tragedy is that the culprits are Assad, the Iranians and now the Russians, who also intervened to help the Syrian government resist the jihadists, both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s various friends and associates. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Climbing into Bed with Al Qaeda.”]
Blaming Assad
Official Washington also accepts as undeniably true that Assad is responsible for all 250,000 deaths in the Syrian civil war even those inflicted by the Sunni jihadists against the Syrian military and Syrian civilians a logic that would have accused President Abraham Lincoln of slaughtering all 750,000 or so people North and South who died in the U.S. Civil War.
The “group think” also holds that Assad was behind the sarin gas attack near Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, despite growing evidence that it was a jihadist group, possibly with the help of Turkish intelligence, that staged the outrage as a provocation to draw the U.S. military into the conflict against Syria’s military by creating the appearance that Assad had crossed Obama’s “red line” on using chemical weapons.
Mitchell cited Assad’s presumed guilt in the sarin attack in asking Clinton: “Should the President have stuck to his red line once he drew it?”
Trying to defend President Obama in South Carolina where he is popular especially with the black community, Clinton dodged the implicit criticism of Obama but accepted Mitchell’s premise.
“I know from my own experience as Secretary of State that we were deeply worried about Assad’s forces using chemical weapons because it would have had not only a horrific effect on people in Syria, but it could very well have affected the surrounding states, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey.
“If there is any blame to be spread around, it starts with the prime minister of Iraq, who sectarianized his military, setting Shia against Sunni. It is amplified by Assad, who has waged one of the bloodiest, most terrible attacks on his own people: 250,000-plus dead, millions fleeing. Causing this vacuum that has been filled unfortunately, by terrorist groups, including ISIS.”
Clinton’s account which ignores the central role that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and outside support for the jihadists in Syria played in creating ISIS represents a thoroughly twisted account of how the Mideast crisis evolved. But Sanders seconded Clinton’s recitation of the “group think” on Syria, saying:
“I agree with most of what she said. And we all know, no argument, the Secretary is absolutely right, Assad is a butcher of his own people, man using chemical weapons against his own people. This is beyond disgusting. But I think in terms of our priorities in the region, our first priority must be the destruction of ISIS. Our second priority must be getting rid of Assad, through some political settlement, working with Iran, working with Russia.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Blind Eye Toward Turkey’s Crimes.”]
Sanders also repeated his talking point that Saudi Arabia and Qatar must “start putting some skin in the game” ignoring the fact that the Saudis and Qataris have been principal supporters of the Sunni jihadists inflicting much of the carnage in Syria. Those two rich countries have put plenty of “skin in the game” except it comes in the slaughter of Syrian Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other religious minorities.
Blaming Russia
NBC anchor Lester Holt then recited the “group think” about “Russian aggression” in Ukraine ignoring the U.S. role in instigating the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych. Holt also asserted Moscow’s guilt in the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 despite the lack of any solid evidence to support that claim.
Holt asked: “Secretary Clinton, you famously handed Russia’s foreign minister a reset button in 2009. Since then, Russia has annexed Crimea, fomented a war in Ukraine, provided weapons that downed an airliner and launched operations, as we just did discuss, to support Assad in Syria. As president, would you hand Vladimir Putin a reset button?”
While noting some positive achievements from the Russian “reset” such as a new nuclear weapons treaty, help resupplying U.S. troops in Afghanistan and assistance in the nuclear deal with Iran, Clinton quickly returned to Official Washington’s bash-Putin imperative:
“When Putin came back in the fall of 2011, it was very clear he came back with a mission. And I began speaking out as soon as that happened because there were some fraudulent elections held, and Russians poured out into the streets to demand their freedom, and he cracked down. And in fact, accused me of fomenting it. So we now know that he has a mixed record to say the least and we have to figure out how to deal with him.
“And I know that he’s someone that you have to continuingly stand up to because, like many bullies, he is somebody who will take as much as he possibly can unless you do. And we need to get the Europeans to be more willing to stand up, I was pleased they put sanctions on after Crimea and eastern Ukraine and the downing of the airliner, but we’ve got to be more united in preventing Putin from taking a more aggressive stance in Europe and the Middle East.”
In such situations, with millions of Americans watching, no one in Official Washington would think to challenge the premises behind these “group thinks,” not even Bernie Sanders. No one would note that the U.S. government hasn’t provided a single verifiable fact to support its claims blaming Assad for the sarin attack or Putin for the plane shoot-down. No one would dare question the absurdity of blaming Assad for every death in Syria’s civil war or Putin for all the tensions in Ukraine. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “MH-17’s Unnecessary Mystery.”]
Those dubious “group thinks” are simply accepted as true regardless of the absence of evidence or the presence of significant counter-evidence.
The two possibilities for such behavior are both scary: either these people, including prospective presidents, believe the propaganda or that they are so cynical and cowardly that they won’t demand proof of serious charges that could lead the United States and the world into more war and devastation.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday that President Trump must apologize for "disgraceful and incendiary" claims that former President Obama wiretapped him last year.
Pelosi said in a statement that FBI Director James Comey's testimony earlier in the day "put the last nail into President Trump’s mendacious wiretapping claims.”
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"President Trump owes President Obama and the American people an apology for his disgraceful and incendiary fabrications,” Pelosi added.
Comey told a House panel the Department of Justice has “no information" supporting Trump’s unverified claim from earlier this month. The FBI director also confirmed the bureau is probing Russian attempts to meddle in the 2016 race, including any ties between Moscow and Trump campaign officials.
Pelosi added that Trump "has been desperate to distract attention from the FBI investigation into the Kremlin’s grip on his administration.”
“The possibility of Trump officials conspiring with a foreign adversary to influence a U.S. election represents a grave threat to our national security and our democracy, and the American people deserve answers,” Pelosi added.
“The Deflector-in-Chief’s desperation demands answers to our original question: what is Russia’s political, personal and financial grip on the Trump Administration?”
Comey on Monday refused to “characterize” Trump’s tweets from earlier this month accusing Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower in New York City last year.
“As you know our practice is not to confirm the existence of an ongoing investigation,” he said during a House Intelligence Committee hearing.
“But in unusual circumstances where it is in the public interest, it may be appropriate to do so,” Comey added, noting the Justice Department had authorized him to break bureau policy and publicly disclose the probe.
“This is one of those circumstances. I can promise you we will follow the facts wherever they lead.”
The chairman and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee have previously said no evidence exists for Trump’s wiretapping claims.
Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and ranking member Adam Schiff Adam Bennett SchiffHouse Democrats file legislation to ensure Mueller report released Hannity echoes Bill Maher, invites Schiff to appear on show Curtain rises on 3 days of Cohen drama MORE (D-Calif.) received Justice Department documents last Friday they say did not support Trump’s allegations.This post is part of a series examining the role of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) in aiding and abetting child abuse. I have previously looked at HSLDA’s efforts to prevent the reporting of child abuse and their efforts to stonewall child abuse investigations. In this post I will turn to HSLDA’s defense of child abuse.
HSLDA has made a name for itself defending parents’ right to spank their children and spends a good bit of its time and energy monitoring and opposing new child abuse legislation—an odd activity for an organization nominally devoted to protecting the legality of homeschooling. While HSLDA literature continually talks about the importance of defending parents’ use of “reasonable” corporal punishment, the organization has never taken the time to define just what constitutes “reasonable” corporal punishment. Similarly, while HSLDA occasionally makes statements condemning child abuse, I’ve noticed a bit of a pattern—these statements are always followed with the word “however.”
Hiding and Ignoring Child Abuse
In its literature, HSLDA (to my knowledge) never defines “reasonable” corporal punishment, never warns its member families not to abuse their children, and never tells its member families how to handle child abuse they might see in other families in their homeschooling communities. HSLDA’s attorneys are not pioneers in stopping child abuse in homeschooling families; they are pioneers in disabling child abuse protections. Never once does HSLDA touch on how to solve the child abuse problem, perhaps because they don’t see it as a significant problem or perhaps simply because they see it as something “other” people do, not problem some of their own member families might have. While you could argue that HSLDA sees child abuse detection and prevent as important but not as a homeschooling issue, this makes no sense when you consider the amount of time HSLDA spends working to disarm protections for abused children.
Let me give an example of the sort of advice HSLDA gives regarding child abuse and child protective services—In a document titled “The Social Worker at Your Door: 10 Helpful Hints,” HSLDA attorney Christopher Klicka advised parents as follows:
Avoid potential situations that could lead to a child welfare investigation. b. Do not spank children in public. c. Do not spank someone else’s child unless they are close Christian friends.
In other words, Klicka is aware that HSLDA member families physically discipline their children in ways many people would consider abusive, and even find concerning enough to actually call Child Protective Services. But instead of addressing where the line between “reasonable” corporal punishment and child abuse is located, he merely advises HSLDA member families to avoid the use of corporal punishment in public. This displays a remarkable lack of care about the very real problem of child abuse, as well as an inability to consider that any of its member families might actually discipline their children in ways that are abusive and should be stopped.
Further, Klicka advises HSLDA member families to restrict their use of corporal punishment on children outside their families to the children of “close Christian friends.” This statement seems to imply that without this suggestion, HSLDA member parents might spank children outside of their families without their parents’ permission and be reported to Child Protective Services for doing so—and also that close Christian friends will de facto be okay with them spanking their children without asking first. After all, why not say “Do not spank someone else’s child unless you have their permission“? Or even, why not say “Do not spank someone else’s child” and leave it there?
There is also the problem of omission—for all of the advice HSLDA gives on how its member families can recognize, avoid, or stonewall child abuse investigation, the organization never takes two seconds to inform its member families how to recognize and avoid child abuse or even how to handle or deal with child abuse in their homeschooling families or communities. One wonders if there are any circumstances at all in which HSLDA would ever recommend that its member families involve CPS.
What Is Child Abuse?
HSLDA’s member manual states that “HSLDA believes that child abuse is a terrible crime and that true abusers should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” Note the use of the word “true.” The more I read, the more convinced I become that HSLDA does not define child abuse in the same way as most Americans. For example, HSLDA is on record defending foster parents’ rights to use corporal punishment on their foster children, something most Americans would find disturbing. Further, it’s worth noting that the sentence above is one of the many times HSLDA briefly condemns child abuse and then starts the next sentence with the word “However” (see page 3, column 2 of the link).
The only time anyone at HSLDA comes close to discussing what actually counts as child abuse is in discussing a 2008 California law that would have added to the penal code a list of actions for jurors to consider when determining if a form of discipline is “unjustifiable.” In a Washington Times op ed, HSLDA president J. Michael Smith explained that HSLDA had no problem with most of the items on the list—stating that these things were indeed child abuse—and that the organization only opposed the law because it took exemption to the listing of hitting children with objects. Here are his words:
This bill amends Penal Code section 273(a), which makes it a crime to cause unjustifiable pain, harm or injury to any minor child. If the bill passes, spanking with an object such as a stick, rod or switch would be lumped in with throwing, kicking, burning, or cutting a child. Striking a child with a fist. Striking a child under 3 years of age on the face or head. Vigorously shaking of a child under 3 years of age. Interfering with a child’s breathing. Brandishing a deadly weapon upon a child. These are all factors that a jury could use to conclude that a defendant in a criminal case has inflicted unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering. What the bill would do is to equate discipline administered via an implement with the above conduct, which obviously is abusive behavior toward a child.
Now of course, this is no actual laying out of a comprehensive definition of child abuse—Smith merely goes down the items listed in the bill. Further, I’m less than willing to trust what HSLDA spokespeople say in public forums given that Farris claimed in an article for popular readership that requiring social workers to have either parental consent or a warrant to enter a home was be no biggie because the vast, vast majority of people voluntarily let social workers in, even as the organization advises its members to never never never let a social worker into their homes without a warrant, ever. Still, it does appear that HSLDA does view some actions—such as violently shaking a small child or striking a child with a fist—to be child abuse. Whether it warns its member families against these actions or ever takes the time to define “reasonable” corporal punishment, however, is another story.
For the record, I am personally against any form of physical punishment of children, and am raising my two young children without laying a hand to them. In contrast, many conservative Christians, including those who founded and run HSLDA, believe strongly that the Bible demands that parents use corporal punishment on their children (they take “spare the rod, spoil the child” stuff literally). Most Americans fall somewhere in between these two positions: they believe that some form of corporal punishment can be employed without crossing the line into child abuse, but also that spanking should consist merely of swatting a child’s buttocks with an open hand and that this form of punishment is usually unnecessary. The question I want to ask here is not whether or not corporal punishment is acceptable but rather where HSLDA draws the line between “reasonable corporal punishment” on the one hand and child abuse on the other. The reason I titled this post as I have is that HSLDA appears to define child abuse differently from the average American.
Given that HSLDA never defines “reasonable corporal punishment” or gives any sort of comprehensive definition of child abuse, I want to take a look at the organization’s positions regarding three different proposed state child abuse statute changes over the past five years. Their positions and advocacy on these bills represent a small fraction of HSLDA’s monitoring of child abuse statute changes across the nation—something the organization watches very closely and doesn’t hesitate to use its e-alert system to mobilize its members in lobbying—but should give us a sample of how HSLDA talks about and defines “reasonable” corporal punishment and what it does or does not include as child abuse.
HSLDA in California: Don’t Restrict Disciplining with Objects!
We’ll start with the HSLDA’s opposition to the proposed 2008 revision of California’s child abuse statute referenced above. At the time, the state’s statute banned causing children “unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering.” The new bill kept this same language but added the following:
In a prosecution under this Section in determining whether or not a defendant willfully caused any child to suffer, or inflicted unjustifiable physical pain, or mental suffering, a jury may consider any of the following: a) The use of an implement, including, but not limited to, a stick, a rod, a switch, an electrical cord, an extension cord, a belt, a broom, or a shoe. b) Throwing, kicking, burning, or cutting a child. c) Striking a child with a closed fist. d) Striking a child under the age of three on the face or head. e) Vigorous shaking of a child under the age of three. f) Interference with a child’s breathing. g) Brandishing a deadly weapon upon a child. However, the above conduct is not sufficient by itself to prove guilt, and its weight and |
to 2016
In 1999, Newell Company acquired the Rubbermaid and Graco brand names in a megamerger deal worth $5.8 billion, and later renamed the combined firm Newell Rubbermaid. This was an acquisition ten times as big as the last biggest acquisition Newell had made before. This nearly doubled the company's size, and significantly increased Newell's portfolio of brands. According to the November 10, 2004 Frontline documentary series' "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?" episode, Newell's chance to buy the Rubbermaid brand resulted from the original Rubbermaid corporation's bankruptcy and fire sale-style liquidation of its remaining assets. The original Rubbermaid had risen to enormous market share and profits by making Wal-Mart the near-sole distributor of its products, shifting away from a previous, years-long policy of diversifying its product distribution by using multiple retailers. After it had become dependent upon Wal-Mart for almost all of its sales, Rubbermaid claimed that it needed to raise the retail price of its products by a small, single-digit percentage. Rubbermaid said that this price increase was needed to keep pace with operational costs and inflation, without sacrificing its legendary product quality. Despite Rubbermaid's insistence that it couldn't afford to stay in business without it, Wal-Mart, citing its strict commitment to its "everyday low price" (EDLP) policy, and language in their contract with Rubbermaid allowing it to control pricing refused Rubbermaid's request. Rubbermaid's business collapsed shortly thereafter. Most of its physical assets had to be sold off at discount prices to satisfy its creditors; its biggest remaining asset was the Rubbermaid brand name.[citation needed]
However, the merger in 1999 was dubbed as the "merger from hell" by Businessweek magazine.[7] Newell shareholders lost 50 percent of their value in the two years following the closing and Rubbermaid shareholders lost 35 percent. In 2002, Newell wrote off $500 million in goodwill.
Other mergers [ edit ]
In 2000, Newell Rubbermaid acquired Gillette's stationery products business, including the Paper Mate, Parker, Waterman and Liquid Paper brands.
In 2002, they acquired American Tool Companies, adding the Irwin, Vise-Grip, and Marathon brands to their portfolio.
In 2003, Newell Rubbermaid acquired American Saw and Manufacturing Company, a manufacturer of linear-edge power tool accessories, hand tools and band saw blades marketed under the Lenox brand.
In 2005, the company acquired DYMO, designing, manufacturing and marketing on-demand labeling solutions. The company expanded its presence in this market with the 2006 purchases of CardScan business card scanners and Mimio interactive whiteboard products along with the 2007 acquisition of postage company Endicia and its Picture-it-Postage brand. In 2005, Mark Ketchum was named president and CEO. The company added the slogan of "Brands That Matter" to their logo to emphasize the change.[citation needed]
In February 2008, Newell Rubbermaid acquired Aprica Kassai, a Japanese maker of strollers, car seats and other children’s products and Technical Concepts, in the away-from-home restroom[clarification needed] market. The company created a global headquarters in the Atlanta metropolitan area to consolidate numerous brands and functions under one roof. In July 2011, Michael B. Polk joined the company as president and CEO.[8]
On July 21, 2014, Newell Rubbermaid announced a $308 million acquisition of Ignite Holdings, a Chicago-based maker of reusable water bottles and thermal mugs.[9]
On October 5, 2015, Newell Rubbermaid announced that it would acquire Elmer's Products, the makers of Elmer's glue, Krazy Glue, and X-Acto, amongst other brands, for $600 million. The company also announced plans to divest its window covering brands Levolor and Kirsch.[10]
On December 14, 2015, Newell Rubbermaid announced that it would acquire Jarden for over $15 billion of cash and stock. The combined company will be known as Newell Brands, and 55% will be owned by Newell's shareholders. The combined company will have an estimated annual sales of $16 billion.[11][12]
Divestitures [ edit ]
In 2017, Newell sold K2 Sports, Völkl, Diamond Match Company, Levolor and Kirsch.
In January 2018, Newell announced that it would sell off several businesses, mostly former Jarden units, as part of a refocusing effort.[13] In May 2018, Newell sold Waddington to Novolex.[14] In June 2018, Newell sold Rawlings to Seidler Equity Partners.[15] In August 2018, Newell sold Goody to ACON Investments.[16] In November 2018, Newell sold its Pure Fishing line of business to Sycamore Partners for $1.3 billion and Jostens to Platinum Equity for $1.3 billion.[17]
Brands [ edit ]
Newell's brands include the following.[18]
Appliances & Cookware [ edit ]
Baby [ edit ]
Aprica Kassai - Japanese baby stroller brand
Baby Jogger - American baby stroller brand
Fiona
Graco
Lillo - Brazil baby accessories
Nuk - baby bottles
Tigex - European baby accessories
Consumer & Commercial Solutions [ edit ]
Calypso
Crawford
Lehigh
MAPA
Mucambo Professional
Quickie
Rubbermaid Commercial Products
Spontex
Virulana
Vitomit
YOU
Food [ edit ]
Ball & Kerr brand Mason jars and canning supplies - Kerr was acquired in 1996 [19].
. Bernardin - Canadian brand Mason jars and canning supplies acquired in 1994 [20].
. Food Saver - Food sealing system.
Rubbermaid - plastic containers and accessories
Sistema Plastics - storage containers
Tableluxe - tableware
Home Fragrance [ edit ]
Home & Family [ edit ]
Bicycle
Aviator
Bee
Bernardin
Billy Boy
Fournier
Hoyle
KEM
Tally-Ho
Outdoor Recreation [ edit ]
Aerobed
Bubba
Campingaz
Coleman
Contigo
Esky
Exofficio
Invicta
Mad Dog
Marmot
Sevylor
Stearns
Process Solutions [ edit ]
Safety & Security [ edit ]
Writing [ edit ]
Former brands [ edit ]
References [ edit ]There are thousands of productivity tips promising to help you increase your performance and get more done in less time. Just google the term “productivity tips” and you’ll get over 40,000,000 results in less than a second.
Unfortunately, many of these tips aren’t worth very much. They are either too complicated, too
impractical, or simply not based on any real-word evidence or experience.
But that doesn’t need to be the case. Today, I want to show you five productivity tips that are practical, easy to implement, and based on actual science.
1. Take 2-3 Mini Breaks Per Hour
Your brain isn’t built to focus on one thing for long periods of time without any interruptions. A study recently showed that people can maintain their productivity and focus much longer when they give their brains brief diversions every 15-20 minutes.
Apparently, the brain circuits you’re using on any particular task need those mini breaks to refresh and recover themselves. Mark Waldman, a famous neuroscientist and productivity expert, confirms these insights:
“Our research has found that taking 2-3 breaks during each hour to consciously relax, stretch, meditate, or do something pleasurable –even for 10 seconds –will reduce stress, enhance your awareness, and significantly boost your concentration and productivity.”
Now, don’t get the wrong idea here. This isn’t a free pass to check Facebook, email, your smartphone or whatever. We are talking about one tiny little distraction every 20 minutes and we are talking about a healthy distraction.
What would be a healthy distraction, you ask? Here are a few ideas:
Take a few deep breaths
Yawn a couple of times and stretch your body
Look at an object far away (to combat eye strain)
Look at a nature scenery (whether it’s a short video, picture, plant in your office, or the sky through a window)
What these activities have in common is that they are all highly relaxing and refreshing for the brain.
Oh, and if you’re sitting most of your day, it’s also a good idea to stand up and move around a bit. Joan Vernikos, the author of ‘Sitting Kills, Moving Heals’, explains in her book that interrupting the sitting a few times per hour is a great way to counteract some of the negative health effects of prolonged sitting.
2. Stop Multitasking
Multitasking is a myth. We can do two things at the same time (e.g. walk and talk), but we can’t concentrate on two things at the same time. Rather, we are forcing our brain to switch back and forth between tasks.
This constant back and forth switching, it turns out, comes with a heavy price. For starters, we lose a little bit of time whenever our brain has to switch. Specifically, we lose up to 40 percent of time according to researchers estimates.
And it gets worse. Not only do we lose about 40% of productivity, but we also temporarily lower our IQ, shrink our brain, and stress ourselves out for no good reason.
Instead of multitasking, start focusing on completing one task at a time. You’ll be healthier, smarter, and more productive.
3. Spend Some Time In Nature
Spending some time in natural environments is one of the best things we can do for ourselves. Period. According to research, spending time in nature boosts our immune function, reduces stress, improves our mental health, lowers blood pressure and blood sugar, improves sleep, restores our attention, and lifts our mood.
As far as productivity is concerned, it’s especially the benefits on sleep, attention, mood, and stress that will make a substantial difference.
Let’s just look at one study together. Researchers asked children with ADHD to go on walks in three different settings – one especially “green” and two less “green”. Everything else about the walks was kept as similar as possible. The children took one walk after another (some started with the green first, some with the others) and completed a test on attention after every walk. The test was created in a way so that practice didn’t improve the score.
The researchers summed up the results as follows:
“We compared each child’s performance to their own performance on different walks. And when we compared the scores for the walks in different environments, we found that after the walk in the park children generally concentrated better than they did after a walk in the downtown area or the neighborhood area. The greenest space was best at improving attention after exposure.”
Again, this is just one of hundreds of studies proving the beneficial effects of nature on concentration, focus, attention, and so much more.
If you want to be more productive, simply take some time out of your day and spend it in nature. Get outside for long phone calls. Go on a walk in a nearby park. Spend your breaks outside. Surround yourself with imagery of natural settings by using posters, screensavers, and background images (this study says it works!). Or simply green up your office a little bit…
4. Get Some Greenery For Your Office
Considering the vast benefits of spending time in nature we’ve just discussed, it’s no surprise that having some greenery in your office helps to improve productivity as well. One study from 2014 found that offices decorated with plant life help increase employee productivity by up to 15 percent.
According to the authors of the study, greenery in the office turns the workplace into a more comfortable and enjoyable place, which creates a perfect atmosphere for high performance. We also know that plants filter the air of unhealthy pollutants and make people feel more relaxed, two other reasons that might explain the productivity boost.
Whatever the reasons, make sure you get some greenery for your office if you haven’t already. A simple pot plant will do the trick.
5. Track Your Productivity
Famous productivity guru Peter Drucker once said: “What gets measured gets improved.”
And modern science agrees. When researchers study the effects of a certain intervention, simply telling participants to track an outcome makes them likely to improve. For example, ask people to wear a pedometer and they will walk at least one extra mile per day on average, while improving their overall activity levels by 27 percent according to this study.
You can take advantage of this what-gets-measured-gets-improved effect by tracking your productivity. Exactly how you’re going to do that is up to you. You could measure the amount of words you write on a given day, or the number of sales calls you’ve made, or the amount of time you’ve spent on meaningful tasks.
Whatever you decide to measure, you will quickly realize that the simple act of measuring automatically improves your performance. Sounds too simple to work, but I find it highly effective in multiple areas of my own life. Give it a try, you won’t be disappointed!
Sum Up
And there you have it. Five practical, easy to implement, and science-based productivity tips you can start using today.
These tips may not look groundbreaking, but they all add up to make your day just a little bit more productive. Best of all, they shouldn’t take much effort on your part, so that you have enough willpower left in the tank for whatever else you’re currently working on.
I hope these tips will serve you well. Thanks for reading. And now, get back to work.
— Nils Salzgeber
This is a guest post from Nils Salzgeber. Nils is a lifestyle coach and co-founder of njlifehacks.com, a blog dedicated to helping people live a better life through relentless self-improvement. He’s on his journey to actualizing his full potential and loves sharing what he learns along the way.Threatened with being thrown out of the Schengen borderless Europe zone, Greece has accepted an offer from the European Union to bolster its borders with foreign guards as well as other aid, including tents and first aid kits.
© AP Photo / Visar Kryeziu EU Sends Help as Migrant Chaos on Greek-Macedonian Border Escalates
Greece was threatened with being thrown out of the Schengen zone unless it could secure its borders amid the current refugee crisis. Greece — together with Italy — bore the brunt of the huge influx of refugees this year as asylum seekers fled war zones in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
The European Council this week called for a massive strengthening of Europe's external borders, including deploying staff from Frontex — the EU border agency — to Greece to assist the country in controlling the flow of refugees into Europe.
There were reports Thursday that Greece was unwilling to accept foreign border guards on its territory, but these were denied by the government.
Greece Friday activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism to benefit from material support to help cope with the influx of refugees and asylum seekers in the country. Greece has requested items such as tents, generators, beds, sanitary equipment and emergency first aid kits.
Authorities must ensure protection of those in need at Greek border with fYR Macedonia https://t.co/2ug4zDuvZG pic.twitter.com/RLEfdHkhKi — UN Refugee Agency (@Refugees) December 4, 2015
© AFP 2018 / ARIS MESSINIS UK Asylum Seeker Accused of Masterminding EU-Wide People Smuggling Ring
The aid delivery is being coordinated by the European Commission's Emergency Response Coordination Center (ERCC) which is working closely with the Greek authorities and the other participating states for a swift response to the request.
Up Frontex
Greece has also agreed an operational plan with Frontex for a new operation at the Greek border with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, where the agency will assist with the registration of migrants.
The deployment of additional officers will begin next week.
"It is crucial that all migrants entering the European Union are properly registered. Migrants at Greece's northern border will be checked and those found not properly identified will be registered," said Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri.
Greece has also put in a formal request for the deployment a Rapid Border Intervention Team (RABIT) operation to provide immediate border guard support at its external border in the Aegean islands. This is not the first time Greece has called for such intervention.
Greece asked #Frontex yesterday to provide rapid intervention teams to the Aegean islands. https://t.co/gLF2D4deEu — Frontex (@Frontex) December 4, 2015
In 2010, Greece requested the deployment of RABIT on the Greek-Turkish border. The operation lasted from November 2010 to March 2011. This followed a large increase in arrivals and successfully brought down the numbers, with detected entries falling month-on-month from the October peak of 7607 to 1632 by February 2011.JREF Swift Blog
Taking the Lift Out of Street Levitation, with Physics!
A few weeks ago, Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic Magazine and the Skeptics Society, posted this photo on his Twitter account:
It’s an amazing trick, to be sure, but how is it done? Here is another angle:
Unceremoniously cutting to the chase, we already know how the trick is done—with conveniently placed steel rods and plates—but why is it so easy to do? Why doesn’t it involve elaborate rigging or scaffolding? Prepare yourself for some physics.
Modeling Magic
Let’s go ahead and assume that the connections between the steel (or whatever material they use) can withstand the loading of the “levitating” person. Here’s what I see in the first picture:
To fit underneath the carpet, the plate must be rather small. And from the looks of the picture above, the sitting man isn’t that elevated therefore the plate is not too thick. A thin plate can be heavy, so you may be thinking that the weight alone is balancing the whole apparatus, but a ~180 pound man on a steel rod can produce quite a bit of force. There is more physics to it than this, though the additional weight certainly helps. It could also be the case that the sitting man is helping to balance the levitating one, but considering that this trick can also be done with one person, we’ll assume that the sitter isn’t contributing to the stabilization.
I’ll do some engineering calculations in a process called statics to sort this out. I’ll assume a 180 lb man whose center of gravity is directly above the bar connecting to the plate:
Now, the most efficient way to do this trick would be to sit directly above where the steel rod connects to the plate. This way, there is no torque in the plate-rod connection created by the levitator. This looks to be how the two-person levitation trick is set up.
The calculations are easy. To be in equilibrium, all the forces and moments (rotational forces) must cancel out. And what we are really concerned about, if we were the tricksters, is whether or not the apparatus will tip over. We can find this out by calculating how much rotational force is acting at the edge of the plate assuming nothing is moving. In the set-up above, the moment at point A is calculated by multiplying the downward force by the perpendicular distance (I guessed again here) to the point. This results in 180 ft-lbs that push the plate edge down into the ground (a clockwise force).
Here is where the trick comes in. The further the edge of the plate is away from the center of gravity of the levitator, the more stable the whole apparatus becomes. But a plate with long edges isn’t very subtle (and rugs only get so big). Therefore there must be a clever balance between rotational forces and deception. The closer the weight of the levitator comes to any edge of the plate, the smaller the moment becomes, until it becomes zero when the levitator is directly over an edge. This is the near-tipping condition.
If the weight of the man moves over any plate edge, the moment reverses, now acting to overturn rather than stabilize the pair.
In the trick involving just one person (photo below) the man cannot sit directly above the joint, and you can see the lean creating the downward rotational force:
Image Credit: TwentyTwoWords
But even here you see that the center of gravity of the man appears to be still inside the plate area.
The best of these tricksters will use a step-up with the closest balance between stability and tipping. Theoretically, the best trick would have the center of gravity of the levitator balanced directly above the center of a small, square plate. But the world is a messy place. I’m sure set-ups differ to account for wind, wriggling, and instability, making plates larger than they need to be.
Far from “unweaving the rainbow,” I think that using science to discover a clever bit of engineering is far more interesting than walking past this demonstration on the street, only casually attracted to the cloaked men.
Kyle Hill is the JREF research fellow specializing in communication research and human information processing. He writes daily at the Science-Based Life blog and you can follow him on Twitter here.MIAMI -- Guard Richie Incognito's suspension, imposed three months ago by the Miami Dolphins, ended on Tuesday.
Incognito took to Twitter Tuesday to thank his friends and family, as well as express his support for Jonathan Martin.
The NFL transaction was an administrative move agreed on by all parties to lift Incognito's suspension after the Super Bowl. Incognito's suspension was unpaid for two games.
This doesn't mean much in terms of Incognito's future with the Dolphins. Incognito was suspended on Nov. 4, 2013, following bullying and harassment allegations from Martin.
Both players and the Dolphins are awaiting the Ted Wells investigation to determine if further action is necessary.
Incognito will become an unrestricted free agent in March.
Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said last week that he doesn't think Incognito or Martin will return to the team in 2014. Martin is under contract and could be traded or released.Kodak may be going under, but apparently they could have started their own nuclear war if they wanted, just six years ago. Down in a basement in Rochester, NY, they had a nuclear reactor loaded with 3.5 pounds of enriched uranium—the same kind they use in atomic warheads.
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But why did Kodak have a hidden nuclear reactor loaded with weapons-grade uranium? And how did they get permission to own it, let alone install it in a basement in the middle of a densely populated city?
Nobody really knows. Kodak officials now admit that they never made any public announcement about it. In fact, nobody in the city—officials, police or firemen—or in the state of New York or anywhere else knew about it until it was recently leaked by an ex-employee. Its existence and whereabouts were purposely kept vague and only a few engineers and Federal employees really knew about the project.
It's extremely strange that Kodak managed to get something like this. According to Miles Pomper, from the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington. it's "such an odd situation because private companies just don't have this material." While 3.5 pounds of weapons-grade uranium is not enough to create a nuclear bomb, illegal arm merchants are seeking small amounts like this to put them for sale in the black market—which is why the United States has such a tight control on this material. The government doesn't want Iran or al-Qaeda getting their hands all over the atomic candy for obvious reasons.
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Kodak's purpose for the reactor wasn't sinister: they used it to check materials for impurities as well as neutron radiography testing. The reactor, a Californium Neutron Flux multiplier (CFX) was acquired in 1974 and loaded with three and a half pounds of enriched uranium plates placed around a californium-252 core.
The reactor was installed in a closely guarded, two-foot-thick concrete walled underground bunker in the company's headquarters, where it was fed tests using a pneumatic system. According to the company, no employees were ever in contact with the reactor. Apparently, it was operated by atomic fairies and unicorns.
It wasn't until 2006, well after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, that it was decided to dismantle it. [Democrat and Chronicle]Danny DeVito to return to small screen
NEW YORK (AP) Danny DeVito — who hasn't starred in a TV series since Taxi ended its run in 1983 — will return to the small screen next year in the FX comedy It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
"Getting the news from FX that our show got a second season pickup was fantastic," said series creator Rob McElhenney in a statement Wednesday. "Getting the news that Danny has signed on to co-star feels like we just hit the lottery."
DeVito will play a retiree who has moved back to Philadelphia to spend time with his children.
The series' second season is set to debut in June. DeVito, 61, will co-star in all 10 episodes. He will be able to shoot his scenes within a period of 10 to 15 days, the network said.
Taxi began its run in 1978. DeVito played Louie De Palma, a New York City dispatcher who bullied and insulted his drivers.
After the series ended, he turned his attention to producing (Get Shorty,Man on the Moon ) and directing (Throw Momma From the Train,The War of the Roses,Hoffa ).
His screen credits include roles in Romancing the Stone,Twins and Batman Returns.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Muslim women have a key role in the fight against extremism, a national conference has heard.
Members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Women’s Association South West (AMWA) gathering in Cardiff, to promote the peaceful teaching of their branch of Islam, said misunderstanding among non-Muslims and Muslims themselves spark intolerance and fear which can lead to extremism.
They called on all Muslims to speak out against violence and help spread the peaceful message of the Koran, warning that IS and other terrorist groups have highjacked its words to promote terror and lure young people to join them.
Saiha Maaz, mother of two teenage boys from Cardiff and regional vice president of AMWA South West said Muslim women were working behind the scenes to counter extremist views among young people, but must do more.
“Muslim women can play a huge role in fighting extremism,” she said.
RELATED: We must help Muslim mums and dads protect children from radicalisation
“There’s absolutely no way a man can have any hope of achieving what we can because we have more of an impact on our boys – that connection that men perhaps don’t have with teenage boys.
“The whole thing begins at a younger age. As Ahmadiyyas we believe in the foundation from the bottom up, you can’t just jump in and engage when you see the signs of trouble, whether it’s racialisation or drugs.
“We have them in our laps. That’s where it begins.
“You must give children the right understanding and direction and faith and respect towards mankind.”
'They see stuff about IS all the time'
She admitted raising teenagers wasn’t easy and it was an age when people were most attracted to extreme causes.
“It is very challenging on a day-to-day level. They see stuff about IS all the time,” she said.
“We must teach them the true theology.
“There was a suicide bomb and my son came to me and asked about it. The Koran very clearly says you should not kill yourself.
“IS have highjacked our words and are making things that are not right seem right.
“It worries me because it will have an impact on them and their environment. What people think matters.”
Her sons, pupils at Radyr Comprehensive, have occasionally had to explain the true teaching of Islam after friends have read misinformation or misunderstood media reports.
'That's why women matter'
“They do sometimes have people coming up to them at school and saying, ‘I read this’ and they have to answer them.
RELATED: Leading Welsh Muslim tells how villagers called the police when they heard he was coming to give talk at public meeting
“I sit down with them and talk to them about the true theology of Islam.
“That’s why women matter.”
Anum Khan, 23, a former St Iltyd’s and St David’s College student, whose brother was in the same class as the older of the two Muthana brothers from Cardiff who went to fight for IS in Syria, believes some young Muslim men find the violence of IS attractive.
Nasser Muthana, 20, a former medical student from Heath, his younger brother Aseel and Reyaad Khan, 21, who was born in Penarth and grew up in Riverside, went to fight for IS last year.
Related: Islamic State jihadists Nasser Muthana and Reyaad Khan have assets frozen by Treasury
They were not Ahmadiyya Muslims, a branch of the religion started in India in the late 19th century.
“I was shocked when I saw people from Cardiff had gone to fight with IS in Syria. Maybe some people are not integrated,” Anum said.
“We need to do more to get young people to integrate. Perhaps we could run joint programmes or have a youth forum in Cardiff.
'If you went to school here you should feel part of society here'
Sabeeha Mughal, 27, Cardiff University student and former Willows High School pupil, who moved to Cardiff from Pakistan aged 13, believes some young Muslims feel isolated in Western society.
“I think people go to Syria to fight because they don’t feel they belong and have issues with their identity and IS may make them feel they have an identity.
“The best response is to promote the peaceful teachings of Islam.
“I feel I have an identity. If you went to school here you should feel part of society here.
“Partly the blame goes to preachers who don’t give them information. They have been misguided, perhaps at home, or in their mosques.”
Nusrat Ahmad, 36, said the Ahmadiyya community in Wales, where there are hundreds of members, and elsewhere, has a policy of working with the communities they live among.
Related: Wales hosts unity vigil to remember Charlie Hebdo and supermarket siege victims
In Wales they work with the British Legion and Oxfam and community work includes litter collections and tree planting.
'Most Muslim women feel liberated... The veil is no obstacle'
To date the Ahmadiyya branch of Islam has had no young members leaving to fight for extremists in Syria, the conference on Saturday, heard.
Women who travelled from as far as London and Cornwall to attend the Muslim Women in British Society conference, also wanted to counter negative views of Muslim women.
“It is very annoying because most Muslim women feel liberated,” said financial worker Nusrat Ahmad, 36, from Bristol.
“Muslim women are very strong and independent and are encouraged to get educated and find employment.”
Shehla Noman, regional president of the AMWA South West, also from Bristol, said: “The biggest fear is being misunderstood for something I am not as a woman and a Muslim
“IS is everything but Islamic and the veil is no obstacle.UNITED STATES - OCTOBER 4: Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, leaves the House Republican Conference meeting in the basement of the Capitol to speak to the media on Friday, Oct. 4, 2013. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
Debt ceiling strategy! Everyone knows we need one, in order to prevent a huge, global economy-crippling default crisis. But no one seems to know, right now, what the hell is going on, or how catastrophe is to be averted. That includes me. So, here is a column about how no one knows what the hell is going on, or how catastrophe is going to be averted, including me. I'm telling you this right up front, so that you can just bail out now, and get on with your life.
Okay, if you've stuck around, bear with me. Here we go.
First, some obligatory background that will provide many of you the opportunity to skip several paragraphs.
As I've written before, this whole "debt ceiling" thing is a sort of grand, metaphorical legislative ceremony. Congresses, past and present, have passed all sorts of bills that are now law, those laws dictate that a certain amount of money needs to get spent, and from time to time, in order to make good on what are already ironclad obligations, the "debt ceiling" has to be "raised," in order to maintain the full faith and credit of the United States, and the U.S. Treasury bonds, which the world has essentially agreed to observe as the magical linchpin of what is colloquially known as "the global economy."
This whole process of raising the debt ceiling is really nothing more than an incantation -- a loud chant in which our lawmakers profess the desire to honor our sovereign credit. It's sort of weird, but it sure beats sacrificing virgins under a full moon to appease volcano monsters.
In the past, the occasional need to raise the debt ceiling has been a time when we allow some lawmakers from the opposing party to make barbaric yawps about the policy priorities of the president and the party that controls the purse strings. A few lawmakers are chosen to cast ceremonial votes against the raising of the debt ceiling, so that their remarks make it into newspapers. But care is taken to make sure that the votes to raise the debt ceiling are there, when they are needed, which is "whenever we have to perform this dumb ceremony."
Everything changed during President Barack Obama's first term. For some reason, Obama thought that the raising of the debt ceiling would be a great occasion to stage a series of high-stakes budget negotiations. At the time, Obama was still under the impression that he was always just one reasonable accommodation away from achieving comity with the wildest and lycanthropic members of the Republican Party. He had promised, after all, to "bring everyone together." This was a pretty stupid promise to have made! But in his defense, when he made the promise, he did not yet know that he would be trying to "bring together" people who included a bunch of koo-koo-loo acid-head freakazoids.
And so it came to pass that he discovered that he was totally wrong about being perpetually on the verge of striking the right compromise and getting all of Washington to sing "Peace, Love, And Understanding" in Lafayette Park. Instead, Obama's opponents learned a different lesson: the debt ceiling could be taken hostage for the purpose of extracting a lot of concessions without having to offer any in return.
Okay, flash-forward to now. The two men in the center of this current, bordering-on-the-apocalypse mess are Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Somehow, some way, these two guys are going to have to figure a way out of this.
Right now, there is tremendous clarity with the president's position. He's not negotiating anything on the debt ceiling. He learned one of the dumbest lessons in one of the hardest ways possible, and he is obligated now, to do his part in stuffing the monster he loosed back into its cage.
His motivation for this is obvious. Standing firm here preserves the relevance of the presidency, for future Democratic and Republican presidents alike. If Obama fails to stand firm, what will happen is that all future Congresses will be predisposed to blackmailing all future presidents in this manner. All of which increases the likelihood that the default bomb explodes. Preventing these things from happening is of the highest importance.
Now, based upon my read of the situation, I strongly suspect that Boehner is of a similar mind. He, too, has an office, the relevancy of which he is similarly obligated to preserve. He seems fully aware of what's at stake. But Boehner is bound in ways that Obama isn't. He's beholden to a group of House Republicans who have essentially lost their minds, if they've ever had them to begin with, and he typically has to do a lot of careful management of this perpetual disorder. It's like he's in charge of a huge boiler, and he constantly has to release a little steam here, tighten a valve there, all with euphonious precision, lest the whole thing explode.
Here's something we can say, definitively. Boehner, right now, has the harder job. He's got to forge a path to an outcome that doesn't blow up the world. He's got to get there through a thicket of colleagues who are perfectly happy to blow up the world anyway, if they don't get something in return. Somehow, he's got to get this from Point A to Point B.
And he's basically got to engineer all of this in a way that looks like he has not engineered anything at all. If he succeeds, he's not going to win a medal for playing a huge role in preserving life as we know it. Realistically, he could end up losing his speakership. He could go down in history as a disgraced, hapless boob. So, you know, do like I do and spare a thought for the guy.
Because Boehner has to essentially pull off a weird bit of secret parliamentary parkour, no one reporting the "WTF is going to happen with the debt ceiling" story is able to properly assess what Boehner is ultimately going to do. We are left somewhere between horse whispering and "Oracle at Delphi"-style augury. Or a combination. Maybe we're whispering at the horse, "Hey, come here," and then when the horse walks over, we dagger open its gut and look for hope in the entrails that fall out on the dirt. Seriously, at this point, you could do a lot worse then kill a bunch of horses and ponder their intestines.
The Washington Post attempted to track down something solid -- something on which one might find purchase -- amid all of the ether earlier this week. It was impossible! Here is what happens in consecutive paragraphs:
1. Boehner has met with "small groups of rank-and-file lawmakers" and told them that he "will not permit the country to default for the first time on its debt," so he "has told fellow Republicans that they must craft an agreement that can attract significant Democratic support," because he's not going to get a "majority of the majority" to go along with it.
2. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a "close Boehner ally" agreed, saying, “This needs to be a big |
fuming anger in Beverly Hills after the racing incident, the source said, the sheikh’s fleet of cars remained stashed in a hangar at LAX. “They took their time to leave,” the source said.
Officially, the investigation in Beverly Hills remains open and cops are hoping more witnesses and evidence comes forward so they can cite the sheikh or whoever was driving for flouting the law. They admit they are limited with video footage and can’t discern much beyond the tinted windows. “We suspect [al-Thani] has some sort of involvement in this but we can’t put him behind the wheel of the Ferrari,” said Beverly Hills Police Lt. Lincoln Hoshino.
All the cops have to go on for now is that Shiekh al-Thani told them “‘I own the cars and I have diplomatic immunity,’” said Lt. Hoshino. (A State Department spokeswoman confirmed that there wasn’t anybody involved in this incident “entitled to diplomatic or consular immunity”—which is perhaps why al-Thani and his entourage fled shortly after the incident.)
Lt. Hoshino stressed that the police department isn’t going soft on the sheikh. “This is not the first guy with an exotic car we’ve run into,” Hoshino said. “We don’t care who you are, or where or how much money you have.”
The sheikh apparently failed to register the cars in question with the State Department and local authorities. Lt. Hoshino confirmed that the LaFerrari at least was “not registered” to be driving on the roads in California or anywhere else in the U.S.
How Sheikh Khalid Hamad al-Thani managed to steal away, without even so much as a speeding ticket, at all is partly due to the fact that Qatar is a member country of the Visa Waiver Program.
A Department of Homeland Security official explained that unless the sheikh was facing charges or had an outstanding warrant for his arrest he would be able to quickly leave the country. “We would only stop someone if there is an open warrant for his or her arrest,” the source said, not speaking specifically about the sheikh’s status. “If there is no formal charge there’s no record in the system and that individual is not going to be stopped.”
But after the run-in with the law, another government official confirmed that the heir is all but “guaranteed to be in the system and would have trouble getting into the U.S.” in the future.
Phone calls and detailed emails addressing the specifics of this story were received by a spokeswoman at the Qatari Embassy but no responses were given.
Al-Thani has been a racing fanatic since he was 12 years old and has been trying to steer a legitimate path. He injected beaucoup bucks ($10 million annually) kickstarting engines back in 2008 to underwrite Alan Johnson Al-Anabi Racing and, according to one of his drivers, become “a major player in worldwide drag racing.” Sheikh al-Thani explained his high-rolling philosophy in a Wall Street Journal profile: “We like to present ourselves nicely, but I have to spend a little more because we got established so fast,” he said.
That team churned out champions like Khalid alBalooshi of Dubai and Southern California’s Shawn Langdon. But the sheikh severed ties with the team earlier this year for unknown reasons.
This past summer, al-Thani and his entourage were a common sight around Beverly Hills. At the Walden Drive property, neighbors say, the royals brought with them several lux shuttle busses and a security detail that gridlocked the street with its SUVs. Other sources say that the yellow Ferrari and Porsche involved in the drag race could often be seen parked outside Cartier as the sheikh shopped for baubles, or spotted outside exclusive hotspots like The Grove and the chic SLS Hotel.
Al-Thani is just one of many drivers from the Middle East who fly their cars in private jets to their vacation hotspots. The hot wheels of the so-called “Arab Playboys” are a regular sight on the streets of London and Paris. That they have now landed in the States is a new thing.
“Generally they just like cars and most of them are fantastic,” said one source, who has forged close ties to several foreign drivers from the Middle East. “They’re hated in Europe,” the source said, adding that the States offers the sultan-style set (often armed with A-1 visas) a kind of clean slate. “This is the first year they have shipped their cars here and they’re very nice guys; nicer than Americans even,” the source added.
To show how kind the playboys are, the source pointed to one Saudi man who had shipped his Koenigsegg Agera R (a hypercar manufactured in Sweden) and, while gassing up in Brentwood this past summer, managed to witness another car make contact with his precious vehicle’s bumper.
Love-tapping the $3 million car’s bumper could have set Saudi off, but instead he let it slide, the source said. “He was just like, ‘It’s OK. There’s no damage.’”
The trend to bring “The Season” (as it’s called) to L.A. may become a summer tradition here, the source said.
That might mean a windfall for businesses wherever the cars and their security detail choose to pit-stop. “They will all go down to Orange County, or out to Malibu or Beverly Hills and they spend a lot of money everywhere they go,” the source said.
That is, unless al-Thani’s alleged drag race ruins it for his exclusive circle. “This guy fucked it up for everyone,” the source said.
But despite the embarrassing drag-racing episode and increased police vigilance, the source said that the big shots and their cars will be coming back to Cali soon.
“There will be a winter break for these guys and they think this will blow over,” the source said. “When summer comes they will be back—some of my friends are already planning their return trips.”Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Sep. 12, 2016, 3:05 PM GMT / Updated Sep. 12, 2016, 3:05 PM GMT By Herb Weisbaum
A new study finds that credit card agreements are literally too hard for most Americans to read.
The analysis of more than 2,000 current credit card agreements by the CreditCards.com found that they are typically written at the 11th-grade reading level. But half of Americans read at the 9th-grade level or below.
By comparison, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” is written at the 8th-grade level and the Book of Exodus in the King James version of the Bible is written at a 10th-grade level.
“To a degree, contracts are by their very nature difficult and need to be complex,” said Matt Schulz, senior industry analyst at CreditCards.com. “But that said, there’s no question that there’s a whole lot of improvement needed to make these contracts easier for people to read.”
Nearly half (46 percent) of the 1,000 credit card holders surveyed by CreditCards.com last month said they “never” or “hardly ever” read their credit card agreements.
When asked to describe their card agreement in just one word, most chose a negative one, such as “long,” “wordy,” “verbose,” “confusing” or “complex.” The words “tedious,” “painful” and “unclear” were also mentioned.
The website found that the average card agreement is 4,900 words, which would take about 20 minutes to read.
“Unreadable contracts really hurt consumers," Schulz told NBC News. "If you don’t understand what you’re signing up for, it can cost you a lot of money. For example, if you don’t know all of the fees that come with the card, how can you work to avoid them?”
Other key findings:
HSBC’s Platinum Rewards Card agreement is the easiest to read, written at the 8th-grade level
Synovus Bank’s Visa and MasterCard agreements, written at a 17th-grade reading level (grad school), are the most difficult
Fifth Third Bank has the longest contracts, with an average word count of 11,383
State Employees’ Credit Union has the shortest, with only 3,487 words
Credit card agreements are often written at a higher grade level than most Americans read at, a new study show. CreditCards.com
The study found that many of the country’s largest financial institutions have agreements that require the cardholder to read at a high school level or higher. These include: TD Bank, Bank of America, BB&T, US Bank, PNC Bank, Citizens Bank, and Fifth Third Bank. The average agreement at Barclays Bank Delaware requires a reading level of 14.8 years, a junior in college.
"Consumers are wise to fear the fine print, because as many credit card consumers find out the hard way, words matter,” Wendy Patrick, who lectures on business ethics at San Diego State University, told NBC news.
“The companies often have comprehensive policies that need to be expressed, they cannot omit any of the necessary terms and conditions,” Patrick said. “However, some companies are succeeding more than others in striking a balance between completeness and coherence—resulting in shorter, more readable agreements."
Does it need to be this way?
Mike Calhoun is a lawyer and president of the non-profit Center for Responsible Lending. He believes most lawyers wouldn’t understand some of the more complex credit card agreements.
“You shouldn’t have to be a consumer law expert to engage in an ordinary consumer transaction like this,” he said.
The nation’s bankers insist they want customers to understand the terms and conditions of their credit card accounts. But they say they often find it a challenge to meet that goal of having simple disclosures.
“Any business can only go so far with regard to contractual language and still ensure the contract is enforceable and complies with disclosures rules,” wrote Nessa Feddis, senior vice president at the American Bankers Association, in a email.
“Credit card issuers endeavor… to make contracts as readable as possible, but government regulations, contract law, courts, and plaintiff’s lawyers demand that certain words be used in order to be effective from a legal perspective,” she wrote.
Federal rules now require card issuers to provide an easy-to-understand summary of the important terms and conditions of the contract with their credit card user agreements. Feddis points out that the industry supports that requirement.
“Assertions that contracts are deliberately complex are baseless and inaccurate,” she wrote.
Things are slowly getting a little better
CreditCards.com compared current credit card agreements on file with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) with those filed in 2011. That’s when the CFPB asked credit card companies to simplify their agreements. At that time, the agency also published a model card agreement that was just two pages.
The analysis shows a slight improvement during the last five years:
The average agreement now requires an 11th-grade reading level, down from 12th-grade
The average credit card agreement is now 4,900 words, down about 500 words
“While there have been improvements in credit card agreements, they’re still way too difficult for consumers to understand,” said Christina Tetreault, a staff attorney with Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports.
"People can get hurt by what they don’t know and it’s time for banks to step up and make their products understandable to consumers."
Herb Weisbaum is The ConsumerMan. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter or visit The ConsumerMan website.If you’re planning to visit Disney World’s Hall of Presidents, you might encounter a few technical hiccups. According to park officials, the Donald Trump robot in the Hall of Presidents seems to have convinced the other presidential robots to join a Ponzi scheme to sell a product called Trump Luxury Vinegar.
Yikes, it’s sad to see this beloved Disney attraction malfunctioning badly enough to recommend a multi-level marketing scam.
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Disney World technicians say that ever since they installed the animatronic figure of Donald Trump, they have observed increasing evidence that the robot replica of the president has been recruiting all of the other robot presidents into an intricate Ponzi scheme that involves selling crates of Trump Brand Luxury Vinegar in the mail in a convoluted marketing model that ultimately results in the robot Trump pocketing the majority of the revenue.
While Disney World technicians still aren’t entirely clear on what happened, they first noticed the glitch late last week when the animatronic Abraham Lincoln segued mid-Gettysburg Address into an enthusiastic sales pitch urging all Americans to enroll as a Trump Vinegar Ambassador so they can “get rich like Donald Trump working on their own schedule, selling the world’s best white vinegar from the comfort of their own homes.” For the past few days, the animatronic Lincoln has continued to eagerly explain to anyone who visits the Hall of Presidents that the patented ”Trump Pyramid of Retail Achievement” business plan allows Trump Vinegar Ambassadors to recruit their friends and family as Trump Vinegar Ambassadors, and then profit immensely by receiving a percentage of all of their vinegar sales.
The animatronic Lincoln concludes his speech by tipping his hat and saying, “Harness the power of sour, and make your bank account great again thanks to Trump Luxury Vinegar,” before robotically saluting the animatronic Trump and starting his sales pitch for Trump Luxury Vinegar over from the beginning.
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Later in the show, the George Washington robot recommends that everyone purchase at least $2,000 of vinegar each month, but ideally $10,000 or more, because the more Trump Luxury Vinegar you buy, the more money you earn when you eventually sell the vinegar. The founding father then interviews “former president and vinegar expert Dwight D. Eisenhower,” who attests that Trump Luxury Vinegar is a new standard in deluxe vinegar for the true distilled vinegar connoisseur. Several other mechanical presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, then provide testimonials claiming that Trump Luxury Vinegar revolutionized the way they flavor salads and clean countertops, which convinced them to start selling Trump Luxury Vinegar themselves and achieve the financial independence they always dreamed of.
Unfortunately, even the new robotic President Trump’s performance is marred by technical difficulties. When the animatronic replica reenacts his swearing-in ceremony and begins to take the oath of office, he’s rendered completely inaudible due to the loud sound of all the former presidents enthusiastically applauding Trump and repeatedly chanting, “Thank you for showing us the power of vinegar,” in mechanical unison.
The former presidents’ zealous clapping and shouting does not stop until several minutes after the curtain closes and the show ends.
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Until Disney World technicians can get the Hall of Presidents back in proper working order, this is bound to be a real disappointment for tourists who wanted to learn about American history instead of having an android version of Barack Obama tell them to “earn $6,000 a week just sitting at home by sailing down a river of Trump Luxury Vinegar to the Island of Self-Made Wealth.” Let’s hope that Disney fixes these bugs soon!Shipping:
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5) Your shipping address.On Saturday morning, the Delhi Police carried out raids in the Capital and Noida On Saturday morning, the Delhi Police carried out raids in the Capital and Noida
The Delhi Police is set to question senior bureaucrats and top executives of private companies whose employees were arrested after the corporate espionage syndicate was busted with the arrest of 12 people.
The Crime Branch sleuths, after the initial interrogation of the employees of the private companies, are now zeroing in on the real beneficiaries of the leaked documents. Sources said it's the top honchos who were interested in these secret documents. "We will question the senior executives soon to unravel the entire network," said a police officer. Four bureaucrats of the petroleum ministry are also in the crosshairs of the crime branch.
The mindboggling rates at which the documents were being sold is also the focus of the probe. Sources say a lot of money has been pumped in since the past several years. Initial investigation reveals that that documents had been sold between Rs 5-10 lakh and up to Rs 2 crore depending on the importance of the files. Budget notes and pricing-related documents fetched the most. However, during the investigation it was found that most of the documents went out of the petroleum ministry. Documents on government strategy in the court cases, policy formulation, crude oil purchase details and payment of fuel subsidy files were the also sought-after.
Higher-ups involved
Sources said during investigation, officials of five companies told the police that their seniors used to request them to get documents related to developments of the petroleum ministry. Senior officials of the ministry were also in direct touch with higher-ups in energy companies.
Police have started analysing call details of these accused. "Our main job is to narrow down beneficiaries and senior management of these firms and a few bureaucrats are also under scanner. Initial investigation has revealed that five executives representing different companies were close friends and shared details coming out from the ministry regularly, a source said.
On Saturday morning, the Delhi Police carried out raids in the Capital and Noida. A crime branch team carried out searches at Prayas Jain's Patel Nagar officer. Jain is one of the consultants arrested. Later in the afternoon, police went to Jubilant Energy's office situated in Noida. One of the employees of the company has been arrested by the Delhi Police.
Reacting on the development in the case of corporate espionage, Delhi Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi said, "We have searched places which were necessary for the course of investigation. We may further raid places as our aim is to reach the bottom of the whole thing. Investigation is on in the case and it will end only when a chargesheet is filed."
The Delhi Police has also prepared a list of 55 persons who were constantly in touch with Santanu Saikia and Prayas Jain. "We have prepared a list of persons on the basis of details given by Santanu and Prayas. We will also analyse their call, message details to get further leads," said a police officer.
Sources said the five executives arrested on Friday were just courier guys who used to take information from documents from various sources.
Essar reacts
"We have noted with concern that one of our employees has been arrested by the authorities. Essar is a law-abiding corporate following a zero tolerance policy towards acts which are against the law of the land. The company reiterates that neither it has directly, nor has it authorised anybody to conduct any acts not in compliance with the law.
We will also launch an internal probe to investigate the matter and in the meanwhile, are extending full cooperation to the authorities."Henry Hobson Richardson (September 29, 1838 – April 27, 1886) was a prominent American architect who designed buildings in Albany, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Hartford, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and other cities. The style he popularized is named for him: Richardsonian Romanesque. Along with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, Richardson is one of "the recognized trinity of American architecture".[1]
Biography [ edit ]
Early life [ edit ]
Richardson was born at the Priestley Plantation in St. James Parish, Louisiana,[2] and spent part of his childhood in New Orleans, where his family lived on Julia Row in a red brick house designed by the architect Alexander T. Wood.[3] He was the great-grandson of inventor and philosopher Joseph Priestley, who is usually credited with the discovery of oxygen.[4]
Richardson went on to study at Harvard College and Tulane University. Initially, he was interested in civil engineering, but shifted to architecture, which led him to go to Paris in 1860 to attend the famed École des Beaux Arts in the atelier of Louis-Jules André. He was only the second U.S. citizen to attend the École's architectural division—Richard Morris Hunt was the first[5]—and the school was to play an increasingly important role in training Americans in the following decades.
He didn't finish his training there, as family backing failed due to the U.S. Civil War.[6]
Career [ edit ]
Richardson returned to the U.S. in 1865. He settled in New York in October 1865. He found work with a builder, Charles, whom he had met in Paris. The two worked well together but Richardson was not being challenged. He had little to do and yearned for more. With no work Richardson fell into a state of poverty looking for more work. One of his first commissions was the William Dorsheimer House on Delaware Ave in Buffalo, NY, which is in the style of the Second Empire with a Mansard roof. This important commission led to many other commissions. The style that Richardson developed over time, however, was not the more classical style of the École, but a more medieval-inspired style, influenced by William Morris, John Ruskin and others. Richardson developed a unique and highly personal idiom, adapting in particular the Romanesque of southern France. His early works, however, were not very remarkable. "There are few hints in the mediocre work of Richardson's early years of what was to come in his maturity, when, beginning with his competition-winning design... for the Brattle Square Church in Boston, he adopted the Romanesque."[7]
In 1869, he designed the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane (now known as the Richardson Olmsted Complex) in Buffalo, the largest commission of his career and the first appearance of his eponymous Richardsonian Romanesque style. A massive Medina sandstone complex, it is a National Historic Landmark and, as of 2009, was being restored.[8]
The 1872 Trinity Church in Boston solidified Richardson's national reputation and led to major commissions for the rest of his life. Although incorporating historical elements from a variety of sources, including early Syrian Christian, Byzantine, and both French and Spanish Romanesque, it was more "Richardsonian" than Romanesque.[9][10] Trinity was also a collaboration with the construction and engineering firm of the Norcross Brothers, with whom the architect would work on some 30 projects.
He was well-recognized by his peers; of ten buildings named by American architects as the best in 1885, fully half were his: besides Trinity Church, there were Albany City Hall, Sever Hall at Harvard University, the New York State Capitol in Albany (as a collaboration), and Oakes Ames Memorial Hall in North Easton, Massachusetts.
Despite the success of Trinity, Richardson built only two more churches, focusing instead on the monumental buildings he preferred, plus libraries, railroad stations, commercial buildings, and houses.[11] Of his buildings, the two he liked best, the Allegheny County Courthouse (Pittsburgh, 1884–1888) and the Marshall Field Wholesale Store (Chicago, 1885–1887, demolished 1930), were completed posthumously by his assistants.[12]
Death and burial [ edit ]
Richardson died in 1886 at age 47 of Bright's disease, a historical term for the kidney disorder chronic nephritis.[13] On his last day, he signed an informal will directing the three assistants still remaining to carry on the business, which was soon formalized as Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge.[14] One example includes Richardson's design for the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce Building. Richardson had won the selection process in 1885 and nearly finalized the work, but after his death, his aforementioned successors completed the project.[15]
He was buried in Walnut Hills Cemetery, Brookline, Massachusetts. Despite an enormous income for an architect of his day, his "reckless disregard for financial order" meant that he died deeply in debt, leaving little to his widow and six children.[16]
Legacy [ edit ]
Richardson's great granddaughter[17] is Mill Valley architect Heidi Richardson.[18]
Home [ edit ]
Richardson spent much of his later years in his house in Brookline, Massachusetts, which had a studio attached to ease the strain on his health. The house fell into disrepair and was listed in 2007 as an endangered historic site.[19] However, the house was purchased in March 2008 for roughly $2 million with an amended deed requiring that the building be historically restored.[20] The house is on a hill, where Richardson could supposedly watch construction of the Trinity Church in Copley Square, from his second story window.[citation needed]
Major work [ edit ]
Trinity Church [ edit ]
Richardson's most acclaimed early work is Trinity Church.[7] The interior of the church is one of the leading examples of the arts and crafts aesthetic in the United States. It was at Trinity that Richardson first worked with Augustus Saint Gaudens, with whom he would work many times in the ensuing years. Across the square is the Boston Public Library, built later (1895) by Richardson's former draftsman, Charles Follen McKim. Together these and the surrounding buildings comprise one of the outstanding American urban complexes, built as the centerpiece of the newly developed Back Bay.
Richardson Olmsted Campus [ edit ]
The largest building complex of HH Richardson's career, Richardson Olmsted Campus in Buffalo, New York, United States was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986. The first building to display his characteristic style the complex of buildings was designed in concert with the famed landscape team of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the late 1800s, incorporating a system of enlightened treatment for people with mental illness developed by Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride. Over the years, as mental health treatment changed and resources were diverted, the buildings and grounds began a slow deterioration. In 2006, the Richardson Center Corporation was formed with a mandate to save the buildings and bring the Campus back to life through a state appropriation.
Today, the Richardson Olmsted Campus is being transformed into a cultural amenity for the city, beginning with the now open Hotel Henry Urban Resort Conference Center and 100 Acres: The Kitchens at Hotel Henry, both nestled within the iconic Towers Building and two flanking buildings (about one-third of the Campus). Arriving in 2018, the Richardson Olmsted Campus will also welcome the Lipsey Architecture Center of Buffalo. The remaining buildings have been stabilized pending future opportunities.
Building types [ edit ]
The Thomas Crane Public Library (Quincy, Massachusetts), with Japanese inspired eyelid dormers in the roof on each side of the entrance
Richardson pointedly claimed ability to create any type of structure a client wanted, insisting he could design anything "from a cathedral to a chicken coop."[citation needed] "The things I want most to design are a grain elevator and the interior of a great river-steamboat."[11] However, architectural historian James F. O'Gorman sees Richardson's achievement particularly in four building types: public libraries, commuter train station buildings, commercial buildings, and single-family houses.
Public libraries [ edit ]
A series of small public libraries donated by patrons for the improvement of New England towns makes a small coherent corpus that defines Richardson's style: Winn Memorial Library (Woburn,) Ames Free Library (Easton,) the Converse Memorial Library (Malden,) and the Thomas Crane Public Library (Quincy), (1880–1882) "generally regarded by architectural historians as the masterpiece of Richardson's libraries",[21] the Hubbard Memorial Library (Ludlow, Massachusetts), and Billings Memorial Library on the campus of the University of Vermont.[22] These buildings seem resolutely anti-modern, with the atmosphere of an Episcopalian vicarage, dimly lit for solemnity rather than reading on site. They are preserves of culture that did not especially embrace the contemporary flood of newcomers to New England. Yet they offer clearly defined spaces, easy and natural circulation, and they are visually memorable. Richardson's libraries found many imitators in the "Richardsonian Romanesque" movement.
The Thomas Crane Public Library is regarded as the best of Richardson's libraries.[23][24][25] In his earlier libraries, Richardson's approach was to conceive the parts and then assemble them, while in the later ones such as Crane he thought in terms of the whole.[26] Richardson also engaged in a process of simplification and elimination with each successive library, until in Crane "Richardson's concentration on the relation of solid to void, of wall to window, becomes the basis for a harmonious abstraction with scarcely a reference to any past style."[24][27]
Commuter railroad station buildings [ edit ]
Richardson also designed nine railroad station buildings for the Boston & Albany Railroad as well as three stations for other lines.[28] More subtle than his churches, municipal buildings and libraries, they were an original response to this relatively new building type. Beginning with his first at Auburndale (1881, demolished 1960s), Richardson drew inspiration for these station buildings from Japanese architecture that he learned about from Edward S. Morse, a Harvard zoologist who began traveling to Japan in 1877, originally for biological specimens. Falling in love with Japan, upon his return that same year Morse began giving illustrated "magic lantern" public lectures on Japanese ceramics, temples, vernacular architecture, and culture.[29] Richardson incorporated Japanese concepts "in both sihouette and spatial concept", including the karahafu ("excellent gable", but generally poorly translated as "Chinese gable" despite its Japanese origin), the eyelid dormer, and the wide hip roof with extended eaves, all shown by Morse.[30]
Detail from Old Colony Railroad Station showing a dragon carved in the beam of a glazed Syrian arch.
Among the few stations still extant, these influences are perhaps best illustrated in his Old Colony station (Easton, Massachusetts, 1881–1884).[31] Here he uses the Syrian arch that became a hallmark of Richardson designs for both the porte-cochère and the windows of the main structure. Reminiscent of a courtyard and temple that Morse illustrated from Nikkō in Tochigi prefecture, Japan, the hip roof on wide, bracketed eaves nearly hides the rough stonework below in shadow. Richardson even included a carved dragon at each end of the beam spanning the arches of windows.[32] The walls "become horizontal planes hovering above one another with bands of windows in between."[33]
Richardson was an early although not the first U.S. architect to look to Japan, but his train stations "form the earliest sustained application of Japanese inspiration in American architecture, an undeniable precursor to Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie house designs".[33] As with his libraries, Richardson evolved and simplified as the series continued, and his famous Chestnut Hill station (Newton, Massachusetts, 1883–1884, demolished circa 1960) featured clean lines with less Japanese influence.[33]
After his death, more than 20 other stations were designed in Richardson's style for the Boston and Albany line by the firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, all draftsmen of Richardson at the time of his death.[28] Many Boston and Albany stations were landscaped by Richardson's frequent collaborator, Frederick Law Olmsted. Additionally, a railroad station in Orchard Park, New York (near Buffalo) was built in 1911 as a replica of Richardson's Auburndale station in Auburndale, Massachusetts. The original Auburndale station was torn down in the 1960s during construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike. The original Richardson stations on the Boston and Albany Highland Branch have either been demolished or converted to new uses (such as restaurants). Two of the stations designed by Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge (both in Newton, Massachusetts) are still used by Boston's MBTA (green line) public transit service.
Commercial buildings [ edit ]
Although built in traditional fashion of stone without steel frame, Richardson's well-integrated Marshall Field Wholesale Store was very influential in the development of modern approaches to building facades.
The noted Marshall Field Wholesale Store (Chicago, 1885–1887, demolished 1930) is Richardson's "culminating statement of urban commercial form", and its remarkable design influenced Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and many other architects.[34] According to Jeffrey Karl Ochsner, who has compiled all of Richardson's architectural works, despite its demolition in 1930, the Marshall Field Wholesale Store "is probably the most famous of Richardson's buildings, one that Richardson himself saw as among his most significant."[35] Architectural critic Henry-Russell Hitchcock states that in the Field Store, Richardson "was, perhaps, never more creative architecturally."[36] Drawing from his own earlier work and both Romanesque and Renaissance precedents, Richardson designed this "massive but integrated" seven-story stone warehouse.[37] Minimizing ornamentation in an era that employed lots of it, he stressed what he termed "the beauty of material and symmetry rather than mere superficial ornamentation" with "the effects depending on the relations of 'voids and solids'... on the proportion of the parts."[38] Not requiring the new steel frame technology because of its comparatively low height, Richardson used multi-storied windows topped by arches to tie the stories together, and the regular patterns of the windows to tie the entire building into "a simple and unified solid occupying an entire block."[39]
Single-family houses [ edit ]
Richardson designed many important single-family residences, but his famous John J. Glessner House (Chicago, 1885–87) is his best and most influential urban house. The Mary Fisk Stoughton House (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1882–1883), the Henry Potter House (St. Louis, 1886–1887, demolished 1958), and the Robert Treat Paine Estate (aka Stonehurst) (Waltham, Massachusetts, 1886) play that role for suburban and country settings.[40] The Glessner House in particular influenced Frank Lloyd Wright as he began developing what would become his Prairie School houses.[41] With his house for Reverend Percy Browne (Marion, Massachusetts, 1881–82) Richardson revived "the old colonial form (of the gambrel roof) to shape the facade of an artistically ambitious house. Perhaps he used the gambrel to signify the humility appropriate to the profession of his client, but in doing so he sanctioned its use for wealthier patrons and by other architects. Within three years the crumpled gambrel profile was showing up everywhere" and became one of the notable features of Shingle Style architecture.[42]
Other work [ edit ]
Cheney Building (1875–76), Hartford, Connecticut
Sever Hall, Harvard University (1880), brickwork, with molded brick string courses with turrets embedded in the walls, strips of windows, under a huge hipped roof as well as Austin Hall (Harvard University) (1882–1884) which followed a more traditional Richardson motif.
Emmanuel Episcopal Church (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), noted for its fine brickwork, nicknamed "the Bake Oven Church".
New York State Capitol (oversight and partial contribution)
Warder Mansion, Washington, DC
The Allegheny County Courthouse, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, (1883–1888), shown on the bottom right, connected by a "Bridge of Sighs" to its jail across a street: cyclopean masonry and a tall tower
New London Union Station (1887), New London, Connecticut
Richardsonian Romanesque [ edit ]
Richardson is one of few architects to be immortalized by having a style named after him. "Richardsonian Romanesque", unlike Victorian revival styles like Neo-Gothic, was a highly personal synthesis of the Beaux-Arts predilection for clear and legible plans, with the heavy massing that was favored by the pro-medievalists. It featured picturesque roofline profiles, rustication and polychromy, semi-circular arches supported on clusters of squat columns, and round arches over clusters of windows on massive walls.
Following his death, the Richardsonian style was perpetuated by a variety of proteges and other architects, many for civic buildings like city halls, county buildings, court houses, train stations and libraries, as well as churches and residences. These include:
the successor firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, who completed some two dozen unfinished projects and then continued to produce work in the same style, and continued to employ his collaborators the Norcross Brothers for construction and engineering expertise, Frederick Law Olmsted for landscape architecture, and the English sculptor John Evans for stonecarving
Stanford White and Charles Follen McKim, who worked in Richardson's office as young men, went on to form McKim, Mead and White and moved into the radically different Beaux-Arts architecture style
Richardson's great admirer Louis Sullivan adapted Richardson's characteristic lessons of texture, massing, and the expressive language of stone walling (see Richardson's noted Chicago building Marshall Field's Wholesale Store), particularly at Chicago's Auditorium Building, and these influences are detectable in the work of Sullivan's own student Frank Lloyd Wright.
Richardson found sympathetic reception among young Scandinavian architects of the following generation, notably Eliel Saarinen
Howard aka Taylor Library building, New Orleans, constructed 1886-1889
The Patrick F. Taylor Library, formerly known as the Howard Memorial Library, was built soon after Richardson's death. It is sometimes called "the only Richardson building located in the South". [43] Residents of New Orleans had wanted an example of Richardson's work, a native son of New Orleans. The office of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge used a Richardson design which had been submitted and rejected some years earlier for a library in Saginaw, Michigan. This leads some, particularly those in New Orleans, to argue that the building can be said to be by Richardson; the counter argument is that the design was not originally intended for this location and the building was constructed after Richardson's death with no input from the architect beyond the initial design. The library building is currently |
. Breastfeeding, still being lukewarmly recommended by doctors as "natural", may have been so in a state of nature, she conceded "but we don't live in that time now, and we must adapt [a consciously evolutionary term] our doings to the age in which we were born... Let no mother condemn herself to be a common or ordinary 'cow' unless she has a real desire to nurse... "
Meanwhile, Dr Eric Pritchard advised women to make themselves as much like cows as possible, if they wanted to breastfeed successfully. They were to drop all social commitments, rest a lot and follow a bland and nourishing diet.
Dr Allbutt, despite being the author of the racy but banned The Wife's Handbook, told women in Every Mother's Handbook that "sexual emotion of frequent occurrence deteriorates the quality of the milk".
By 1914, Mary Gardner likened mothers to the Egyptian hens who had forgotten how to sit on their own eggs because they were kept warm for them by their keepers. "In the same way, as a race we are becoming decadent with regard to breast-feeding, and the mothers who can't and the mothers who won't are causing successive generations to be less and less fit physically to nourish their infants naturally."
Despite Darwin's conclusion that evolution was a process that had taken thousands and millions of years to happen, it is clear that in the popular mind, the action of every generation risked influencing the whole race.
1920-1946
Truby King sits astride the early 20th century. He advocated regimental discipline in feeding and sleeping routines and in coping with crying and other nursery problems.
Struck by the high death rate among bucket-fed calves, King invented a "scientific system" of feeding, which ended all deaths from this cause. He argued that a human life a day could be saved if human mothers fed their babies in a similarly scientific and rational way.
In 1907, the Truby King movement started in earnest in New Zealand and within five years, the infant death rate there had dropped by 1,000 a year. For the next 30 years his was the dominant voice and he coined the phrase "Breastfed is Bestfed". Undeniably, the movement successfully revived breastfeeding at a time when the scientific finesse of artificial feeding was seen as altogether more satisfactory - no mean achievement.
However, King became obsessed by hard and fast rules on quantities and times of eating. He failed to allow for difficult feeding cases, and later critics felt that his emphasis on the evils of overfeeding led to a generation or two of hungry, thwarted babies, convinced of their essential unimportance during the long, hungry night-time sessions of "crying it out".
A note of rebellion made itself heard in the 1930s. The attribution of all babyhood ills to overfeeding was questioned once Arnold Gesell showed how varied infant intake could be.
The ebullient Marie Stopes queried the opinion of Eric Pritchard that a gain of more than seven ounces a week was excessive. "If you are lucky enough to be the mother of a prince among men... you are to check this growth, interfere with the rhythmic response between your flow of breast milk and his happy and lusty development, and instead you are to rear a child, wantonly and wickedly cut down to pattern so that he, who might have been a big-boned, strong, glowing, six-foot Apollo with perfect teeth, is to be starved into matching the ill-begotten and ill-nourished 'average' with whom 'trained' nurses and 'doctors' in their disease-infested lives are accustomed to meet."
1946-1981
When feeding babies came under the scrutiny of the Freudians, there were three new concerns: dealing with biting the nipple, the timing of weaning, and how to avoid the traumas involved in thus separating the baby from its mother. Discouraging baby from biting the nipple now had to be handled very carefully.
Dr Spock also warned mothers to handle "chewing on the nipple" with care. Once the idea of nipple-biting was raised, it became a real fear in the minds of many new mothers havering between breast and bottle.
When the Freudians added that weaning should be postponed to the middle of the second year, as the satisfaction of oral impulses was vital to the development of a healthy little psyche, enthusiasm flagged even more. The new fashion for demand-feeding and schedule-free eating, at a time when embarrassment was still caused by the sight of a breast bared for action, also discouraged breastfeeding.
Although breastfeeding continued to be classed as preferable, bottle-feeding became increasingly acceptable. Writers bent over backwards to reassure mothers who couldn't nurse but in effect demoralised those who could. "When in doubt, leave it out," was Flanders Dunbar's catchy aphorism.
In the 1970s, fashion changed. New research emphasised the nutritional as well as the emotional value of breastfeeding. The few organisations that had remained true to the idea of breastfeeding - the La Leche League in the US and the National Childbirth Trust in Britain - suddenly found themselves besieged by mothers eager to feed naturally.
1981-2007
Advice on feeding has become varied and idiosyncratic over the past 20 years. Breastfeeding is given pride of place in most books. A new angle was to declare it environmentally friendly: "A bottle-fed baby relies on cows for milk," explained Penny Stanway in Green Babies. "Cows need pasture. As the population of the world increases and more women bottle-feed, more cows are needed to produce milk to make infant formula, so wooded lands are cleared to provide grazing."
Never has there been more detailed advice on how to latch baby on target, some of it gruesomely explicit. Graphic cross-sectioned diagrams of the inside workings of breasts accompany hugely enlarged photographs of babies' mouths homing in on mountainous, pimply nipples.
The new breed of anything-goes, toss-guilt-out-of-the-window experts were quick to say that breast being best did not make formula bad. Mothers were urged to "consult their own feelings" as to the methods they used. "Don't be depressed by the 'breastfeeding' brigade!" wrote Mary Beard.
In his early editions, Christopher Green enthused wittily about breastfeeding ("It would seem sensible to use the product recommended by the manufacturer"), but listed some rather far-fetched disadvantages: the cost ("Each mother will have to consume between 750 and 1,000 extra calories a day to keep up the flow") and the uncertainty that the baby is getting enough ("Your baby may have latched on like a bomber refuelling over Libya, but you don't know how much is passing through the tube"). By 2001, a paragraph on the offence that breastfeeding in public might cause has disappeared, while other signs of changing times are that refuelling takes place "over the Gulf", and a jokey aside about not exercising "with the fanatical zeal of the Ayatollah Khomeini" has been dropped.
There is no doubt that 21st-century manuals try hard to promote breastfeeding, and they certainly spell out in detail what you can expect.
But there is such a thing as overkill. They mean well, but it may be a mistake to include lengthy lists of what can go wrong or to rhapsodise over the super-suction power of an electric breast-pump. A depressingly large number of mothers get into difficulties within days of returning home from hospital, throw the book across the room and send Daddy out for some formula. As Gina Ford generously admits in her revised Contented Little Baby: "No book is as useful as informed advice from an experienced friend, relative, health visitor or breast counsellor. Until the UK acknowledges that its present post-partum care policy is severely flawed, it will continue to have a disappointingly small number of mothers who breastfeed their babies for more than a fortnight."
· This is an edited extract from Dream Babies: Childcare Advice from John Locke to Gina Ford by Christina Hardyment, published on November 29 at £12.99.Retro JRPG Maker Moves From 16 Bit RPGs To PS1 Style Games
By Spencer. June 21, 2013. 1:29am
Kemco is known for developing JRPGs for Android and iOS that capture the spirit of the Super Nintendo era. Alphadia Genesis is a technical leap forward since the game feels more like a PsOne title. The world map uses sprites, but the battle system has 3D character models and dragons.
I played an early build of Alphadia Genesis and the game uses a standard command battle system. Players can choose to do melee attacks, skills, or spells like using fire magic. The story takes place after the Energi War where mankind has been fighting to control life energy. Instead of sending souls out, countries created clones to fight battles. With the war over, clones were reprogrammed to live alongside humans and without a will to fight. But, one day a clone kills its master and the protagonist Frey has to figure out why clones are suddenly attacking people.
Kemco found a nice little niche as the developer of retro RPGs with simple stories. Alphadia Genesis is being made by Exe-Create, the developer of Infinite Dunamis. Masaomi Kurokawa, Manager of the Mobile Business Department, estimates the development cost for Alphadia Genesis is double the budget of other RPGs, which makes it a risk. The reason why Alphadia Genesis costs more is mostly because of 3D graphics.
Alphadia Genesis is in development for iOS and Android devices. Kemco plans to localize the game in English too and this version will include all of the Japanese voiceovers.
I asked Kurokawa if he thought about bringing it to consoles too since the game is developed with Unity, a popular video game engine designed for multiplatform development. "I hope so," said Kurokawa. "Since Unity supports other consoles we will try to test it first. If that works well maybe we will bring it to Vita, Wii U, and if PlayStation 4 supports it." Another one of Kemco’s RPGs, Mystic Chronicles, will be available on PSP later this year care of Natsume.ObamaCare boosters in Colorado are treating young women "cheap sluts who don’t care about their health or well being other than getting cheap birth control pills to have sex with strange men," complains Washington Times opinion writer Emily Miller in a November 12 post at the newspaper's website.
"The latest marketing campaign implies that young women would only be interested in Colorado's government-run health care exchange if they get coverage for birth control pills to have sex with strange men," Miller noted, going on to describe what she considers the "most offensive ad" [see below page break for illustration] which...:
...shows a 20-something woman named “Susie” holding a packet of birth control pills with an open-mouth, wide smile. She is wearing a flesh-colored, low-cut, sleeveless top, tight skinny jeans and open-toed black heels. Susie is leaning against “Nate,” who is wearing an untucked shirt with the top four buttons undone to show his hairy chest. He has a smirk on his face and one hand in the pocket of his jeans. “OMG, he’s hot!,” Susie is shown saying. “Let’s hope he’s as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which means all I have to worry about is getting him between the covers.”
Yes, "[l]iberal groups paying for marketing campaigns to targeting young people to get health insurance is to be expected," Miller noted, but this was beyond the pale.
Miller is absolutely correct, and, when you think about it, there's tremendous hypocrisy from the Left when it comes to fighting against an imaginary "war on women."
You may recall that the media lambasted conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh in early 2012, saying that he degraded left-wing activist Sandra Fluke by calling her a slut for testifying at a Democratic Party show-hearing about the need for "free" contraception on health insurance plans.
Liberals complained that Limbaugh was oversexualizing Fluke, reducing her to nothing more than her ovaries and dehumanizing her in the process.
Yet here we are nearly two years later and ObamaCare boosters are resorting to caricaturing women as concerned ONLY about their reproductive organs, with nary a word from liberals about how patently offensive the Colorado ad campaign is.
It really is an astounding display of liberal sexism.China is joining the search for extraterrestrial life with construction of the world’s biggest and most sensitive radio telescope.
The final piece of the 500-m Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, or FAST, has been fitted, the BBC reports, and operations are slated to begin in September. The radio telescope is designed to “search for intelligent life from outer space,” according to China’s state broadcaster CCTV.
The $185 million device, which is constructed into a natural karst depression in southwest China’s Guizhou province to protect it from electromagnetic disruption, has a 1.6-km circumference and comprises nearly 4,500 panels. After debugging, it will be used to detect for pulsars over 1,000 light-years deep into the universe.
“Understanding the fundamental physics of pulsars will help us understand the Big Bang,” Yue Youling, associate researcher of National Astronomical Observatories, told CCTV. “Now we only know what happened after the Big Bang, everything before that relies on our calculation. Therefore, there are a lot of uncertainties.”
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China is investing heavily to become a global player in science and technology, and the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is well aware of the propaganda mileage to be made. In late May, President Xi Jinping called for China become a “world leader” in science by the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 2049.
“Great scientific and technological capacity is a must for China to be strong,” Xi told a conference in Beijing.
On Wednesday, the People’s Daily newspaper — the CCP’s mouthpiece — listed the FAST telescope among eight Chinese achievements that were supposedly “shocking the world.” Others include satellites, bridges and a supercomputer.
— With reporting by Yang Siqi / Beijing
Write to Charlie Campbell at charlie.campbell@time.com.This week on the podcast, returning guest and owner of Zachtronics: Zach Barth joined me for an exclusive chat about Infinifactory — his spiritual successor to the amazing game Spacechem.
We started off talking about the basics for Infinifactory and how it’s being pitched as a 3D Spacechem. This includes the return of histograms, open ended puzzle design and more. We also discussed some of the trouble spots of Spacechem such as boss stages, the game’s difficulty curve and the challenges of creating a tough game that won’t drive people away.
This also led to a talk on intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards, Zach’s thoughts on achievements and a brief tangent about 1001 Spikes. For our final topic we focused more on the fact that Infinifactory will be Zach’s first early access game and what led to it and his thoughts on the model. By the time you are hearing this, Infinifactory will be coming out on Monday, January 19th.Think about those nights you bolt upright in bed, heart racing, salty with cold sweat, awakened from a nightmare just before you meet your final doom. Now think about the rush of relief you feel as you take in the solitude of your cozy bedroom, the cushy support of your TempurPedic mattress, and the comfy envelopment of your goose down pillows. Lame, right? You don't want to feel peace, you want to feel fear. You want a perpetual battle for your life. You want a constant challenge to your sanity. You want an average resting heart rate of 120. You want to wake up from one nightmare and step right into the next! Zombie bedsheets will make it happen. With the desperate clutches of dozens of living dead hands creeping towards you amidst explosions of blood and brain matter, you'll never have to worry about sleeping in peace like some punk little baby who spits up and shits himself and has to suck on a boob 'cause he can't chew steak ever again.
Textile designer Melissa Christie's fantastically creepy zombie bedding set for real men and women includes a duvet cover and 2 pillowcases, with screen printed zombie arms, and masterfully hand painted blood splats and cranial extractions. Available in standard bedding sizes twin, double, queen, and king.Firefighters stand across from the main entrance of Tan Than Industries as the Taiwanese bicycle factory burns, in Di An Town, Binh Duong province, Vietnam, Wednesday, May 14, 2014. Mobs burned and looted scores of foreign-owned factories in Vietnam following a large protest by workers against China's recent placement of an oil rig in disputed Southeast Asian waters, officials said Wednesday. (AP Photo/Jeff Nesmith)
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- A 1,000-strong mob stormed a Taiwanese steel mill in Vietnam overnight, killing a Chinese worker and injuring 90 others, Taiwan's ambassador said Thursday, the first deadly incident in a wave of unruly anti-China protests prompted by Beijing's deployment of an oil rig in disputed seas.
The unrest is emerging as a major challenge for Vietnam's authoritarian and secretive leadership, and is hurting the country's reputation as a safe investment destination. It risks inflaming an already tense and dangerous standoff between patrol ships from both countries in the South China Sea close to the rig, which Hanoi is demanding Beijing withdraw.
Companies from Taiwan, many of which employ significant numbers of Chinese nationals, are bearing the brunt of the protests and violence, the most serious in years to hit the tightly controlled nation of 90 million people.
Taiwan's China Airlines has added two charter flights to its usual service to Ho Chi Minh city, making for a total of just over 1,000 seats for Taiwanese looking to leave Vietnam amid the unrest, according to Taiwan's Central News Agency.
The riot took place at a mill in Ha Tinh province in central Vietnam, about 350 kilometers (220 miles) south of Hanoi. It followed an anti-China protest by workers at the complex, operated by the conglomerate Formosa Plastics Group, one of the biggest foreign investors in Vietnam, according to Ambassador Huang Chih-peng and police.
Huang, who spoke to a member of the management team at the mill Thursday morning, said rioters lit fires at several buildings and hunted down the Chinese workers, but did not target the Taiwanese management. He said the head of the provincial government and its security chief were at the mill during the riot but did not "order tough enough action."
He said he was told one Chinese citizen was killed in the riots, while another died of natural causes during the unrest. He said around 90 others were injured. State-controlled online newspaper VnExpress quoted a top police official as saying that one Chinese person was killed, and that police and military troops had restored order.
A doctor at the Ha Tinh General Hospital said about 50 people, most of them Chinese nationals, were admitted to the hospital Wednesday night and early Thursday morning. He didn't give his name because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Anti-Chinese sentiment is never far from the surface in Vietnam, but it has surged since Beijing deployed an oil rig into disputed waters about 240 kilometers (150 miles) off the Vietnamese coast on May 1. The government protested the move as a violation of the country's sovereignty and sent a flotilla of boats to the area, which continue to bump and collide with Chinese ones guarding the rig, raising the risk of conflict.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, mobs burned and looted scores of foreign-owned factories in southern Vietnam near Ho Chi Minh City, believing they were Chinese-run, but many were actually Taiwanese or South Korean. Authorities said they had detained more than 400 people.
Ambassador Huang said that the mill in Ha Tinh is Vietnam's largest foreign-invested project and that when completed it will be the largest integrated steel mill in Southeast Asia. It employs 1,000 Chinese nationals, he said. Vietnamese Prime Minster Nguyen Tan Dung attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the complex in 2012.
Low wages, especially compared to next-door China, and a reputation for safety, have been driving investment in Vietnam over the last years. But that was now at risk, said Minister of Planning and Investment Bui Quang Vinh.
He said 400 factories had been damaged since the unrest began this week, and that worker protests had broken out in 22 of the country's 63 provinces. "The investment image that we have been building over the past 20 years is turning very ugly," he told the parliament, according to an account in the state-run Labor newspaper.
Willy Lin, who heads a Hong Kong trade group representing knitwear manufacturers and exporters, said investors were hoping it was "one-off incident."
"If this madness continues and spreads out in the next couple of days to other parts of Vietnam, definitely it will have a very damaging effect on exporters, because they might not be able to commit to their delivery day," he said.
Hong Kong-based contract clothing maker Lever Style, which started outsourcing production to Vietnamese factories three years ago, has sent some Chinese quality assurance and technical support staff working at those factories back to China as a safety precaution, said CEO Stanley Szeto.
"You always have these little hiccups, no matter where you go," Szeto said. "Other than our staff, we're not really affected."
___
Associated Press writer Kelvin Chan in Hong Kong contributed to this report.SINGAPORE/MUMBAI (Reuters) - Singapore widened the trading band for its currency in response to increasing market volatility and India intervened to temper a rising rupee as foreign exchange tensions persisted ahead of a key G20 meeting.
A general view of Singapore's financial district from Merlion Park April 14, 2010. REUTERS/Tim Chong
The U.S. dollar, under pressure for weeks on expectations the Federal Reserve will soon print money again to buoy a faltering economy, fell sharply against a range of currencies on Thursday after the surprise move by Singapore.
Emerging nations are in a policy bind because of an influx of footloose global capital seeking higher returns than the near-zero interest rates on offer in the developed world, which is driving their currencies up and threatening their exports.
In response, several governments have stepped into foreign exchange markets or tried to curb capital inflows, raising fears of a currency “race to the bottom” that may trigger protectionism and hobble global growth.
India’s central bank bought dollars around 44.10 rupees on Thursday, dealers said, in what is thought to have been its first such intervention this year.
The Reserve Bank of India has been reluctant to intervene in currency markets but may be forced to again as foreign investors are expected to pour in billions of dollars to buy shares in the country’s largest ever IPO, for Coal India.
Verbal jousting from policymakers has intensified in the run-up to a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers in South Korea next week and a leaders summit in Seoul on November 11-12.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) warned that a recovery in global investment was now threatened by the specter of a currency war.
“We have seen recently fluctuations of major currencies in a significant manner. There is a danger of a currency war,” said James Zhan, director of UNCTAD’s investment and enterprise division.
As a result foreign direct investment — a key source of finance for developing countries — is likely to stagnate this year at about $1.1 trillion, one quarter below its level in the years running up to the financial crisis, said Zhan.
European Union Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn cautioned on a visit to Moscow that disorderly exchange rate movements could have “very adverse implications” for economic and financial stability and pressed countries with undervalued currencies to allow them to appreciate.
Like Rehn, European Central Bank policymaker Christian Noyer played down talk of a currency war but took a swipe at countries like China who are keeping their currencies from rising.
“That penalizes Europe, that penalizes the United States, that penalizes the entire world,” Noyer told France’s RTL radio.
DOLLAR HITS NEW LOWS
Singapore widened the trading band for the Singapore dollar for the first time since just after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States — a move analysts said gave it more flexibility to react to a tide of hot money flowing in.
That propelled the local currency to a record high and helped push the U.S. dollar to a new 15-year low under 81 yen, a 28-year low against the Australian dollar and its weakest level in over eight months against the euro.
The dollar extended losses versus the euro after data showed U.S. initial jobless claims rose more than expected.
Underscoring the currency strains, state media in South Korea reported Seoul had complained to Japan after Tokyo questioned its leadership of the G20 forum of major economies because of repeated intervention to curb the won.
Seoul was angered by unusually direct remarks on Wednesday by Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who said emerging market countries with current account surpluses, like China and South Korea, should allow their currencies to be more flexible.
“It is inappropriate to talk about a certain country’s foreign exchange policy unilaterally,” Bank of Korea Governor Kim Choong-soo told reporters.
Japan itself intervened in the currency market last month for the first time in more than six years to try to stem a rise in the yen that threatens its fragile economic recovery.
The next flashpoint will come on Friday, when the U.S. Treasury is expected to make a ruling on whether China is deliberately manipulating its exchange rate — a move that would enrage Beijing and make the prospect of any accord on currencies even more remote.
The United States has not formally branded China a currency manipulator since 1994 and a ruling against it would be a shock despite growing anger from U.S. politicians who accuse Beijing of “stealing jobs” by keeping the yuan artificially cheap.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will deliver a keynote speech on monetary policy which will be pored over for signs he is about to restart the money printing presses, a move China and others say will flood the world with more liquidity, weaken the dollar and push emerging currencies yet higher.
The Chinese central bank, which keeps the yuan’s exchange rate on a short leash, let the currency creep up on Thursday to 6.6562 per dollar, the highest level since it abandoned a decade-old peg to the U.S. currency in July 2005.
Visiting Beijing, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said the upper chamber was poised to follow the House of Representatives and pass legislation to correct the undervaluation unless Beijing acted.Tweeted a great joke lately? Was it A) a brilliantly original observation all of your own? Or B) a funny tweet you saw on Twitter and pilfered, sans credit?
If the answer is B) your joke theft might result in your tweet being blocked on copyright grounds — if the original composer of the joke reports your theft as copyright infringement to Twitter.
The Verge covered a recent incidence of this happening, after Twitter user @Plagiarismisbad noticed instances of tweet takedowns relating to a joke originally tweeted by freelance writer Olga Lexell (@runolgarun):
BREAKING NEWS: Twitter is hiding tweets reported stolen. And it's referring to the author as a "copyright holder" pic.twitter.com/DkteWMZ7zg — Plagiarism Is Bad (@PlagiarismBad) July 25, 2015
Although, as other Twitter users have pointed out, tweets being blocked on copyright grounds is not in itself a new thing — e.g. this one from two year’s ago:
This Tweet from @mikko has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder. Learn more: https://t.co/LAk1oFhH — Mikko Hypponen (@mikko) November 3, 2012
So it’s not clear whether Twitter has recently expanded its copyright policy to specifically cover 140-character jokes, such as the one written by Lexell. Or whether this is more a case of a writer who tweets her jokes thinking to report their plagiarism on Twitter, and the resulting takedowns coming to other users’ attention.
U.S. copyright law does not always cover short phrases (that’s more getting into trademark territory), so 140-characters might be a stretch for traditional copyright law purposes. But of course Twitter makes the rules on its platform and gets to apply them how it sees fit.
A spokesperson for Twitter declined to comment on the individual tweet in question but pointed us to its general copyright and DMCA policy. That policy doesn’t mention jokes specifically — rather focusing on multimedia content such as photos, videos or links to copyrighted material — but there’s a process for anyone who believes their copyright has been infringed to report the content to Twitter for review.
@runolgarun’s tweets are now protected but, according to the Verge, she tweeted earlier to confirm she had reported theft of her joke to Twitter, asserting her intellectual copyright of the content in the tweet and saying she makes her living writing jokes and uses tweets to test them out. She also told the publication she had filed other takedown requests to Twitter before now, noting that spambots were frequently the culprits for this sort of credit-less reposting.
In recent times Twitter has taken greater steps to control the types of content that can be broadcast on its platform, doing more to counteract the visibility and spread of abusive sentiments, for example. Whereas, in earlier years and pre-IPO, Twitter’s Biz Stone pushed a more ‘hardline pro-free speech’ stance, arguing the tweets must flow — and saying the company would “strive not to remove Tweets on the basis of their content”.
Blocking a tweet on IP grounds may be less controversial than removing someone’s (hateful) opinion, but both show how Twitter’s platform has shifted its stance on the flow of tweets as it seeks to scale up and attract a more mainstream user-base.(JTA) — A bipartisan letter by House members is calling for increased funding for a program that funds security for Jewish sites.
The letter, spearheaded by Reps. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., and Dan Donovan, R-N.Y., and signed by 112 lawmakers, calls for more than doubling funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program, to $50 million a year from $20 million. It cites intelligence assessments finding the threat of “homegrown violent extremists, who draw inspiration from ISIL or other Sunni extremist organizations,” as well as bomb threats and anti-Semitic acts committed against Jewish community centers, schools, museums and synagogues.
A budget plan by President Donald Trump proposed rolling the funds for the program into broader federal emergency preparedness funds. The vast majority of funds have helped upgrade security at Jewish institutions.
The Orthodox Union lauded the letter.
Nearly 150 JCCs and other Jewish institutions received bomb threats and three Jewish cemeteries were vandalized this year. Nearly two weeks ago, an Israeli-American teen was arrested on suspicion of calling in more than 100 bomb threats.
Last month, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., slammed Trump’s budget proposal.
This story "Lawmakers Urge Increased Security Funding For Jewish Institutions" was written by Josefin Dolsten.A cannon blast at a parade in Utah sparked an explosion, sending three children to the hospital.
Police say the accident occurred when a Civil War reenactment group fired a cannon Saturday at the start of the Summerfest Parade in Orem, about 45 miles south of Salt Lake City.
Investigators say sparks from the cannon landed in a large pouch containing additional charges for the cannon and the pouch then exploded.
Witnesses told KUTV-TV that two of the three children appeared to be engulfed in flames.
Police say all three children were treated at the scene and taken by ambulance to a local hospital in stable condition.
The children were part of the Civil War reenactment group and were participating in the parade.
The explosion is under investigation.A Filipino clan leader who occupied a Malaysian village in the territory of Sabah with nearly 200 followers, has said the Malaysian police opened fired at them, reportedly killing at least 10 of its members.
Raja Muda Abimuddin Kiram, leader of the armed group, told Al Jazeera's Jamela Alindogan on Saturday that authorities fired at them in an apparent bid to end the three-week stand-off that threatens to complicate the relations between the two countries.
Our correspondent said she "could hear gunshots [in] the background" when she talked to Kiram on the phone.
Raul Hernandez, spokesman for the Philippines foreign ministry, confirmed the incident but did not elaborate on the reported Filipino fatalities.
Hernandez, however, said two Malaysian police officers were killed and another one wounded, after their vehicle were reportedly fired upon by the Kiram group.
"The ambassador said that the stand-off is now over," Hernandez said refering to Datu Mohd Zamri, Malaysian ambassador to the Philippines, who met Philippine Foreign Minister Albert del Rosario.
Malaysian warning
In Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak said the armed Filipino clan should leave the area as soon as possible, according to the Bernama state news agency.
"We will not let this issue to prolong," he said. "We will do what it takes to defend the sovereignty of our country."
Members of a Muslim royal clan who call themselves the Royal Sulu Army from southern Philippines landed in a coastal village in Sabah on February 9 to claim the territory as their own, citing ownership documents from the late 1800s.
They ignored appeals from Philippine President Benigno Aquino III to leave immediately or face prosecution at home on charges of triggering armed conflict.
The group claimed that they made the decision to occupy the Sabah village in protest at the Philippine government's continued indifference to their claim.
Mar Roxas, the Philippine interior secretary, said that according to the Philippine police attaché in Malaysia, the police in Sabah fired warning shots. Roxas had no reports of any casualties.
Aquino urged on Tuesday Kiram's brother in the Philippine province of Sulu, Sultan Jamalul Kiram III, to order his followers to return home and called their action a "foolhardy act'' that was bound to fail.
Peace negotiations
The stand-off elevated the Sabah territorial issue, which has been a thorn in the Philippine-Malaysian relations for decades, to a Philippine national security concern.
The crisis erupted at a crucial stage of peace negotiations, arranged by Malaysia between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest Muslim rebel group in the southern Philippines.
Aquino has said that the standoff may have been an attempt to undermine his government on the part of those opposing the peace deal, including politicians and warlords who fear being left out in any power sharing arrangements.
The Malaysian government continues to pay the Kiram clan of Sulu a supposed annual rent of $1,500 for the use of more than 73,000sq km of land Sabah.
The Philippines this week sent a navy ship with social and medical workers off Lahad Datu while trying to persuade the Filipinos to return home.23473
Pflicht zur Neutralität von Prozessparteien : Scheidung nur ohne Kopftuch von Prof. Dr. Klaus F. Gärditz und Wiss. Mit. Maria Geismann, LL.M. 17.07.2017 © BillionPhotos.com - stock.adobe.com
Ein Familienrichter verbietet einer Muslimin, bei Gericht ein Kopftuch zu tragen – wohlgemerkt in ihrem eigenen Scheidungsverfahren. Eine Gerichtsposse aus der Provinz Brandenburgs.
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Das Kopftuch vor Gericht bewegt derzeit die Öffentlichkeit. Für die Ausübung unmittelbarer Hoheitsfunktionen als Staatsanwältin oder Richterin gelten qualifizierte Neutralitätsverpflichtungen. Unterschiedlich bewertet wird, wie dies z.B. für den Sitzungsdienst kopftuchtragender Referendarinnen zu handhaben ist. Positiv entschieden hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG), dass eine Teilnehmerin nicht allein wegen ihres Kopftuches aus dem Zuschauerraum eines Gerichtssaales verwiesen werden darf (Beschl. v. 27.06.2006, Az. 2 BvR 677/05).
Andere Fragen stehen im Raum, sind jedoch (noch) nicht (verfassungs-)gerichtlich geklärt. Rechtsanwältinnen sind zwar Organe der Rechtspflege (§ 1 Bundesrechtsanwaltsordnung), aber unabhängig und nicht dem Staat zurechenbar. An Parteivertreterinnen lassen sich funktionsimmanent keine Neutralitätserwartungen stellen. Konsequenterweise kann auch von einer Anwältin nicht erwartet werden, ein aus religiösen Gründen getragenes Kopftuch vor Gericht abzulegen. Ebenso vereinbar ist das Kopftuch mit der Rolle als Zeugin.
Dass es einer (anwaltlich vertretenen) Partei als Privatperson untersagt sein sollte, in einem Verfahren in eigener Sache vor Gericht Kopftuch zu tragen, war bislang nicht ernsthaft diskussionswürdig.
Kopftuchverbot in Luckenwalde
Offenbar abweichend bewertet wird dies jedoch vom Amtsgericht Luckenwalde, wie ein aktueller und irritierender Fall – vertreten von Rechtsanwältin Najat Abokal aus Berlin – zeigt: In einer Scheidungssache eines muslimischen Ehepaares hat der dortige Familienrichter das persönliche Erscheinen der Ehepartner nach § 128 des Gesetzes über das Verfahren in Familiensachen und in den Angelegenheiten der freiwilligen Gerichtsbarkeit (FamFG) angeordnet. Verbunden mit der gerichtlichen Ladungsverfügung ist eine Anordnung, dass die Ehefrau (notabene: in ihrer eigenen Scheidungssache!) vor Gericht ein Kopftuch nicht tragen dürfe:
"Es wird darauf hingewiesen und zugleich um Beachtung gebeten aus gegebenem Anlass, dass religiös motivierte Bekundungen wie Kopftuch usw. im Gerichtssaal/während der Verhandlung nicht erlaubt werden. Es muss daher mit entsprechenden Anordnungen gerechnet werden und bei Nichtbeachtung mit entsprechenden Ordnungsmaßnahmen. |
ain this is slightly different from how Fascinating Captain has it. Notice also that to run the dd command you open the terminal window.Then cd to your download folder where you should find the GalliumOS ISO image you downloaded. Then run the dd command.Now you have the ISO boot stick ready, you need to enable dual booting. For dual booting on a Chromebook you should use the RW_LEGACY BIOS mod from the MrChromebox web site The way dual booting works is, the boot screen displays, and you then use Ctrl-L to boot LINUX, or Ctrl-D for ChromeOS. If you do nothing, it will time out, beep and boot to ChromeOS by default.After pressing Ctrl-L, wait until the text appears directing you to press Esc, then pick option 2 to boot from the USB. Now the installer should boot. Insert your USB 128GB stick into the second USB slot. Fascinating Captain has good instructions for installing and setting up the LINUX partitions. Once done shutdown. Then you can remove the boot stick, place the 128GB USB in the first slot and now boot with Ctrl-L, Esc, 2 again and your brand new shiny GalliumOS should start.I have added the USB 3.0 port extender and Ethernet connector and the external HDMI cable in the picture here. That allows me to use my HD monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse. The HDMI works well with a VGA adapter if you need that to use your monitor or a projector.I also have an external Samson "Go Mic" USB microphone for Skype and recording with using tools like Audacity. The Bluetooth works also with my Sony DR-BT50 headphones and Pandora and Google Play and A2DP fidelity.So now you have things working, its time to move in and set up the "furniture and fittings" as you like it.I have configured the Ubuntu Unity theme look and feel following these instructions for Xfce4. And set Nautilus as the default file browser.The keyboard mapping you can get to by pressing the? search key and entering search term - keyboard. More on Chromebook keyboard here You can also setup Weather services from My-Weather-Indicator here. The default Weather Update in the Xfce4 panel does a nice job too.I also added the Caffeine service from the Software library to prevent screen sleep during video play. In addition I ran the Startup app from the Settings and disabled a range of services that I do not need generally, including the timeout manager.There's a big laundry list of software to install; naturally those are to you own preferences. Open the launcher and enter search term - software to see the software center.Then here is my top dozen list:1) Firefox browser. It is noticeably faster than Chromium (and do not install extensions in Chromium; it will crawl then).2) LibreOffice Suite 53) Wine for running Windows software4) Screenshot tool5) Skype6) VLC video player7) Pithos for Pandora8) Google Play desktop9) Freeplane mindmap10) GIMP editor11) Kdiff3 compare12) Audacity audio and OpenShot videoFor many more tips, see this what to do guide. For online help see the GalliumOS community links. And don't forget to install latest updates using launcher and run the GalliumOS Update app. Then last but not least, purchase a spare USB 128GB stick and do a complete backup so you have an image.Welcome to GalliumOS on your Acer Chromebook.Here is a desktop screen shot of the Xfce4 launcher, Ubuntu theme and nautilus file manager open.Here is a of screen shot of several desktop items open and the system performance monitor.In the Philippines, Good Friday is spent performing a very literal reenactment of the Bible, specifically, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The annual ritual, which draws crowds of spectators to the streets of San Fernando — a city 50 miles north of Manila — feels like the movies, except it's all real, from the Roman costumes, down to the real nails being hammered into real human hands.
The celebrations have been going on for years, much to the disappointment of the Catholic Church, who says the ritual is a corruption of Christ's message.
VICE News attends the Good Friday celebrations in San Fernando to speak with people partaking in this controversial ritual.
Read "Filipinos Celebrated Easter by Crucifying a Bunch of People Again"
Watch "Crystal Meth and Cartels in the Philippines: The Shabu Trap"It’s hard to believe that almost one year ago we decided to go the route of Early Access for The Culling. After working on the project for a little over six months we realized we had something that could be very special on our hands. Our 16-developer studio had a 16-player game that we playtested several times a day, quickly making it our favorite competitive title.
We realized that our 16 individual opinions about aggressive, player-versus-player combat were simply not going to be enough. Despite our collective years of experience, it was clear that we needed to include more viewpoints if we were going to make any changes with confidence. Hence the decision to release in Early Access - a choice that would afford us not only the freedom to experiment, but the opportunity to refine.
Since that initial release of The Culling, we have always worked hard to make it a more fun, engaging and meaningful experience. Sometimes we got things right, sometimes we got them wrong. There is no doubt this game is in a much better state than it was nearly one year ago, thanks in large part to the feedback from the community, confirming that Early Access was definitely the smart decision.
This January we will reach a milestone in our development. It’s a giant step toward what we would call our “1.0 Release” of The Culling, a goal that we’ve been striving towards for quite some time.
As we approach that exciting group of features and additions, we wanted to take one more hard look at our melee combat experience - something which has been hotly debated topic since people started playing the game. In looking back, we see one glaring truth that stands-out:
Players spend too much time “disabled.” It’s as simple as that.
The fact that a basic attack can easily lead to a hard stun is so utterly disruptive that it is simply not fun. Not for new players, not for skilled players, not for anyone. According to our data, the average melee fight in The Culling lasts about 30 seconds. We estimate that players spend about one-third of that time completely stunned. We need to reduce the number of those disruptive moments to improve the overall experience.
So this leads us to two significant changes for our last update of 2016. Although the changes themselves are small, we think they will have a big impact on combat in a positive way.
First, we are removing the hard stagger associated with attacking a Block. Blocking a melee attack will still stop all damage, but it will no longer stun or disable the opposing player.
The second change is that players can no longer interrupt the charged Power Attacks of other players. When an opponent charges a melee attack, your only recourse is to block, leading to more exciting moment-to-moment confrontations.
All other aspects of combat remain the same. In our early tests in the studio we found these two changes to be incredibly positive to the overall experience, even at this preliminary stage.
Now, we want to put it in your hands to see what you think.
We just ask one thing: If these changes concern you, play before you judge. Bring your constructive criticism to us with some time spent playing with the new changes. It will make that feedback much more effective.
With this patch we wish you all Happy Holidays. Expect to hear more about it soon.
We look forward to seeing you during the break as players and after the break as we work to finish-up our exciting new features we will bring you in January.
Signed,
Xaviant CEO
Michael McMainMy four-year-old daughter is illiterate. She can only sight read her own name, has not memorized short board books, and can barely write five letters of the alphabet. I am more than fine with all of this. In fact, I am proud.
Don't get me wrong, my husband and I read to our children, daily. They love books, and on any given day would be more than happy to spend hours lounging on the couch with a stack of Pinkalicious and Frog and Toad stories.
However, I am not spending time teaching the girls letters, phonics, and sight words. The older daughter does not practice tracing her name, and the younger one believes that all letters spell her sister's name. We send our daughters to a play-based Jewish preschool, where the alphabet is not introduced until they enter the pre-k program. Their days are spent experimenting with paint, sand, clay, dressing up in costumes, romping outside with friends, planting seeds in the garden, and singing songs about fall leaves, the colors of the rainbow, and Moses.
Unfortunately, living in this supermommy environment, where all children are untapped tiny geniuses, I cannot visit the playground without overhearing a mother brag about how her three-year-old spends hours reading to herself and her younger brother. And, as an overly self-critical mother, whose mommy guilt only swells with each BabyCenter milestone email, I am constantly second-guessing these choices.
For only $200 the Your Baby Can Read series (as seen on TV!) promises to give your child "increased communication styles, enhanced learning ability, greater confidence, and future success!!!" The program states that parents can begin putting their baby on the path to literacy at a mere three months of age. Using their "scientifically proven" (and patented) instructional materials, parents need only to force their infants to lie in front of a TV screen for an hour or so a day, and let the magic ensue. In a matter of months, your young, bald, slobbering baby, will be able to identify simple words like: dog, drum, boy, and car (even though she may not be able to pronounce these words yet).
As enticing as it may seem to brag to all the other mothers at your playgroup that little Max has memorized over fifteen written words, most experts do not endorse this program. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood filed a complaint against the company with the Federal Trade Commission, claiming that the company uses misleading marketing techniques and that its program teaches babies to memorize, not read. The CCFC alleges that this program is not only deceptive, but harmful, since it encourages abundant television time for infants when the American Academy of Pediatrics explicitly states that children under the age of two should be allowed no screen time.
Infants and toddlers have much more valuable things to be doing with their time: finger painting, running in circles, jumping on couches, pot-and-pan beating, and annoying their siblings (to name just a few). Children, especially at this young age, learn through everything they do. Playing with dirt and water inspires scientific discovery and dipping their fingers in yogurt to smear across the freshly washed table motivates undeveloped artists. There will be plenty of time for them to learn i before e, except after c when they are sitting in school desks for the next seventeen plus years of their lives.Franklin Graham has joined the chorus of conservatives beating on CBS' Bob Schieffer for asking Family Research President (FRC) Tony Perkins whether his group had taken their opposition to marriage equality “too far.”
During a recent Sunday appearance on Face the Nation, Schieffer welcomed Perkins to the show by reminding him that his group has been branded an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“Mr. Perkins, I'm going to say this to you upfront. You and your group have been so strong in coming out against this and against gay marriage that the Southern Poverty Law Center has branded the Family Research Council an anti-gay hate group,” Schieffer said. “We have been inundated by people who say we should not even let you appear, because in their view 'you don't speak for Christians.' Do you think you have taken this too far?”
Perkins answered “no” and went on to defend himself, saying that allowing gay couples to marry nationwide would lead to an “open season on people of faith.”
In a Facebook post, Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham and head of the Billy Graham Evangelist Association, called Schieffer's introduction an “attack.”
“Did you see where Face the Nation's Bob Schieffer attacked Tony Perkins and Family Research Council in what is being called an 'ambush' interview last week?” Graham rhetorically asked. “He accused Tony and FRC of being anti-gay. I know Tony. He's a great American and a strong Christian.”
“Just because Christians take a stand aligned with what the Word of God says is true, that doesn't mean we are anti-gay. It means that we love people enough to warn them. God tells us in His Word that lying is sin, stealing is sin, murder is sin, adultery is sin, homosexuality is sin … and 'the wages of sin is death.' The Bible says 'all have sinned,' and we want people to know that God will forgive them and give them eternal life if they turn from their sins and accept His Son, Jesus Christ, as Lord and Savior. In our world today, being bold enough to speak out on important biblical and moral issues means that we are targets of the liberal media's anti-Christian bias. But it doesn't mean that we stop.”
Writing at Media Matters for America, Carlos Maza praised Schieffer, saying Perkins will “likely think twice before agreeing to appear on CBS again.”
“Hate groups should be afraid of the sunlight and accountability that results from appearances in major media, which has a responsibility to reveal the agenda behind the facade,” he said.Jittery staffers at Hillary Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters have gone into full panic mode, in the wake of five straight landslide losses to Bernie Sanders and the candidate’s plummeting numbers in three national polls.
“This was the worst week so far in the campaign,” said a Democratic party insider, “and everybody is blaming everybody else for the setbacks. Bill Clinton called (campaign chairman) John Podesta (once his White House Chief of Staff) and screamed, ‘Those snotty-nosed kids over there are blowing this thing because nobody is listening to me.’”
By “snotty-nosed kids”, the former president, 69, is referring to campaign manager Robby Mook, 36; press secretary Brian Fallon, 35; and campaign vice chairwoman Huma Abedin, 39, who in actuality wields the most power of anyone in the organization by virtue of her status as Mrs. Clinton’s soulmate and alter ego since 1996.
Former president Clinton believes his wife made a mistake in wrapping herself so tightly in the mantle of Barack Obama just before the Southern primaries. He warned her not to do it and blames her recent crushing defeats on that miscalculation. Mrs. Clinton felt it was a strategy she had to employ, in that it energized her base in the Southern states. Nonetheless, astute observers remember that her longtime lackey Sid Blumenthal regularly sent emails to her when she was Secretary of State that ridiculed and insulted President Obama, and instead of remonstrating, Hillary forwarded them to Huma.
Last week, as the primaries and caucuses moved west and voters paid more attention to what they call “her lack of authenticity”, she got creamed. Mrs. Clinton received only 18% of the Democratic vote in Alaska; 20% in Utah; 21% in Idaho; 27% in Washington state; and 30% in Hawaii. Sanders got all the rest, a staggering series of victories, which was underplayed by the mainstream media, who want the Clintons to have a third term.
Also last week, when Mr. Clinton made a campaign speech characterizing the Obama administration as “the awful legacy of the last eight years”, the blowback against him from the Brooklyn politburo was white hot. The insider source tells us, “After Podesta and Mook told him to stop trashing Obama, President Clinton was furious and cancelled two campaign appearances the following day.”
At last report, Bill is still pouting. But he is right about history: since FDR’s time, no party has won three consecutive presidential terms, with the exception of George H.W. Bush. By positioning herself as a continuation of Obama, Hillary has alienated the army of 2016 voters who have had enough of corrupt and incompetent federal bureaucrats, and want a fresh face to take charge and kick them out.
Back in Brooklyn, the campaign organization is de facto divided into two factions, informally known as “Bill’s crew” and “Huma’s crew” and the tension between them is palpable. Although the candidate does not want to alienate her husband/business partner because she needs him, her primary confidence and trust rests, we are told, in Ms. Abedin, with whom she has a deeper and more fulfilling relationship.
It is not unusual for ambitious sycophants to vie for the ear of presidential candidates (in fact, they usually encourage rivalries among staffers), but the current schism among Hillary’s troopers is significant. Mr. Podesta, the adult in the room, is trying to stay neutral between the opposing Bill and Huma factions, but he is losing patience. Every day, Mr. Clinton keeps calling calling calling with new demands and strategies, and his former employee can hardly refuse to take his calls.
Another frustration for the former president is that he can’t get through on the telephone to his wife, the candidate, without going through Ms. Abedin, who carries the cell phone and screens all calls. When Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Abedin are traveling, they always share a suite, which they lock from the inside to bar the Secret Service. If Hillary is not in the mood to listen to her husband kvetching about problems in the campaign, she instructs Huma to tell Bill she is sleeping and cannot be disturbed. Naturally, this sends the ex-president into paroxysms of rage.
There are two other factors in play here. The Clintons are not seriously worried that she will go to the convention with fewer pledged delegates than the 74-year-old left-wing curmudgeon and the nomination will be awarded to Sanders. What they are concerned about is that the latest national polls show her popularity declining so rapidly that the powers-that-be, i.e. the “superdelegates”, will decide to substitute a Biden or a Warren or someone else who is not so polarizing and abrasive.
And the new numbers are indeed concerning. The NY Times/CBS poll says that enthusiasm for her candidacy among Democrat voters versus that of Sanders has gone down a net 17 points in the past month. Her favorability rating among all voters is now the lowest for any Democrat front-runner in the history of the poll—31% favorable and 52% unfavorable. Forty percent of Democrat primary voters told exit pollsters they think Hillary is dishonest and a liar. Among independent primary voters, 65 percent think she is dishonest and a liar.
The new Bloomberg poll says Sanders has passed her nationally as the candidate that Democrats would most like to see as the next president. And the recent NY Times, CNN, and Bloomberg polls all show Bernie running stronger than Hillary versus the three remaining Republican candidates (e.g., he beats Kasich by six points, she loses by six points). Lest we forget, twelve months ago nobody outside of Vermont had ever heard of Bernie Sanders, and Hillary has been in our faces for a quarter of a century.
The other factor which no one is addressing is what role Bill Clinton will arrogate for himself in a Hillary administration. He has told associates he plans to have his office in the West Wing, the center of gravity. (“The East Wing is for arranging flowers and planning menus”, he harumphed.) Even more problematical is that Bill will almost certainly insist on attending meetings of the National Security Council and of the Cabinet. (As he put it, “Rosalynn Carter sat in on Cabinet meetings—and they think they could keep me out?”) Since as a former two-term president he is barred by the Constitution from being a de jure president and exercising its powers, will his insistence on helping formulate policy violate the provisions of the 22d Amendment? (That will be a nice case for the Supreme Court to decide, will it not?) In any event, Bill has made clear that he has no objections to Huma’s undertaking the ceremonial duties of an unofficial First Spouse. (“Let Huma pick the curtains; I’ll worry about Syria.”)
ORB SAYS: This is going to be such fun, breaking new ground. When the Clintons promised us “two for the price of one”, for once they were telling the truth.
Bill Clinton can’t get Hillary on the phone
by Richard Johnson
Bill Clinton is upset his wife’s campaign team doesn’t follow his advice — and because he often can’t even get Hillary on the phone.
“Those snotty-nosed kids over there are blowing this thing because nobody is listening to me,” Bill told campaign chairman John Podesta, according to OrbMagazine.
The former president has not only clashed over policy with Hillary’s closest adviser, Huma Abedin, he’s also said to be furious he can’t phone his wife without going through Abedin, who carries Hillary’s cellphone and screens all her calls.
“When Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Abedin are traveling, they always share a suite, which they lock from the inside to bar the Secret Service,” Orb reports.
“If Hillary is not in the mood to listen to her husband kvetching about problems in the campaign, she instructs Huma to tell Bill she is sleeping and cannot be disturbed. Naturally, this sends the ex-president into paroxysms of rage.”In a recommendation to the Australian Government, Google warns that draconian anti-piracy measures could prove counterproductive. Instead, the Government should promote new business models. "There is significant, credible evidence emerging that online piracy is primarily an availability and pricing problem," Google states.
As in many other countries, online piracy is causing headaches for the Australian Government. A variety of anti-piracy strategies to deal with the problem have been suggested in recent years, but thus far without result.
Late last year Australia’s Minister for Communication invited several companies to share their thoughts on the reduction of regulation in the communication sector. The minister asked for input on a variety of issues including future legislation regarding copyright.
One of the companies that responded is Google, and TorrentFreak has obtained a previously unpublished copy of the company’s response.
In its letter Google warns the Government not to implement draconian ant-piracy legislation. The search giant notes that they believe piracy is mostly an availability and pricing problem, which is best tackled with innovation instead of legislation.
“We believe there is significant, credible evidence emerging that online piracy is primarily an availability and pricing problem. We would encourage the Government to promote new business models and a free marketplace for legal purchasing of content,” Google writes.
“We would be disappointed if the Government decided to go down the route of overly harsh regulation to combat piracy without considering the evidence from around the world that this would likely be costly for businesses to implement and with little effect,” they add.
Besides the warning above, Google stresses that some of the current legislation is also problematic. For example, Section 313 of the Telecommunications Act is used to censor websites, which threatens the free availability of information.
“It appears that this law has been interpreted broadly by various Australian government agencies to include the take down of websites that are deemed illegal,” Google writes.
“Google believes that section 313 does not contain sufficient safeguards, and could potentially impact significantly on the availability of information and content on the internet through the overbroad blocking of websites.”
Google recommends that the Government should create more oversight by implementing measures to make these website takedowns more transparent.
In addition, Google is also worried about the lack of a safe harbor for Internet services, which can now be held liable for pirating users.
According to the company it is of “critical importance” that this gap is addressed, as the current uncertainty has a chilling effect on innovation among Internet services.
Google’s suggestions appear to stand in sharp contrast to the plans Australia’s Attorney-General George Brandis unveiled a few weeks ago. In a speech to the Australian Digital Alliance forum, Brandis opted for a “three strikes” graduated response system for persistent pirates as well as wide scale blockades of infringing websites.JFS said admission to the school was a religious, not a racial matter
The JFS, a state comprehensive in London, has been told to change under-subscription criteria which could result in indirect discrimination.
But the adjudicator rejected a claim against the school's main criterion, that a pupil must have a Jewish mother.
Complaints had been made by Brent Council and two parents.
The school, in north London, is ranked outstanding by Ofsted and says it is oversubscribed - with more applicants than it has places.
The chief adjudicator, Philip Hunter, said the case involved a "very difficult" issue that could only be decided finally by a court.
The central objection was that the school broke the Race Relations Act 1976 by giving priority for places to children recognised as being Jewish by the Office of the Chief Rabbi.
The chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the Commonwealth (OCR) - the school's religious authority - says that to be Jewish, one's mother has to have been born Jewish or been through a recognised conversion, or one must be converted oneself.
Race
Dr Hunter said the school's first criteria in its admissions policy was based on religious grounds, not those of race.
"It appears to me that the policy reflects an essentially religious view, i.e. the view that those who satisfy the requirements of Orthodox Judaic law for being Jewish should be the ones given priority for admission to the school," he said.
So the policy did not contravene the prohibition on direct discrimination on racial grounds.
But Dr Hunter objected to criteria relating to who the school would admit if it did not have enough applicants who were Jewish under Orthodox Jewish law.
The school's policy gives preference to children who have one Jewish parent or grandparent, ahead of those of other faiths or none.
It is greatly reassuring that the authority of the office of the chief rabbi to determine the Jewish status of our applicants has been confirmed
Jews' Free School
He said: "I accept that there is no direct discrimination as the criteria are still based on religious grounds not racial grounds (albeit the religion of the father or the grandparents).
"However, those criteria may conflict with the prohibition on indirect racial discrimination.
"The point to bear in mind here is that the criteria deal with the way in which two children - neither of whom are Jewish in the religious sense - would be dealt with in terms of admission.
"One child (the child with a Jewish father or grandparent in the religious sense) is given preference over the child who has no such parent or grandparent.
"That does appear to me to put persons who are not ethnically Jewish at a disadvantage as compared with those who are."
The school said it was pleased that the central aspect of its admissions policy and its underlying principle had been upheld.
"It is greatly reassuring that the determination of the criteria for admission of Jewish children to JFS has been confirmed as being a religious, not a racial matter, and the authority of the office of the Chief Rabbi to determine the Jewish status of our applicants has been confirmed," a spokesman said.Having written a long piece on the election of Syriza yesterday I saw this morning that they have gone into coalition with what has been described as an anti-migrant right (or even far right) party called the Independent Greeks ( or ANEL). ANEL have a strong anti-ECB stance but on the level of seeing Greeks as a victim of an 'International Conspiracy'. Tie that into their leader claiming falsely that Jews pay no Taxes and it should sound warning bells. They do have 15 elected members so it gives the coalition a strong majority and Syriza have worked with them in the past. Presumably this and their strong anti ECB stance is why Syriza has decided that their anti-migration policies are not important. [Translation into Greece]
Below are some quick notes and sources, I'm resisting commenting yet beyond the rather obvious point that this choice of coaition partners makes nonsence of Syrizas talk of solidarity with those outside Greece. Defenders of this decision say that this was Syriza's best option (but note not only) as the others are too sectarian (KKE) or not anti Europe enough ( Potami ). For me this is just a particularly brutal example of the inevitable costs of electoralism but there is an irony in some Syriza supporters proclaiming that 'There Is No Alternative' the day after proclaiming the election results had banished Thatchers TINA for good.
The one thing I have to say is that the migration question is not some matter of local politics to be swept aside. Because of its location Greece is one of the main arrival points for migrants into Europe. They are already subject to brutal racism, both from the state but also from far right organisations, in particular Golden Dawn. Many have died at the hands of cops or of fascists while many, many more have died trying to enter the country. There interests should not be swept aside in the name of Greek or even European solidarity - in fact stating it in those terms I think highlights the scale of the problem here.
Of course migrants have no votes and are extremely marginalised already so the cost of sacrificing them for Greek interests will not be electorally significant at all. To the electoralist pragmatist its probably hard to understand why anyone would see a problem here at all.
First off on the news it turns out I shouldn't be surprized as this coalition was telegraphed before the election, example below
"The Independent Greeks differ from Syriza on many traditionally conservative issues, pledging to crack down on illegal immigration and defend the close links between the Orthodox Church and the state. But in other ways the party could be as comfortable a fit as To Potami, the untested new centrist party often seen as Syriza’s most likely ally.
Its anti-bailout line is much tougher than the pro-Europe rhetoric of To Potami. It wants to wipe out a large part of the debt, which is equivalent to 175 percent of economic output, and cut high levels of taxation, with tax incentives to attract investment, create jobs and provide funding to small companies. Kammenos’ ambitions are wider than merely getting into parliament. “
The dilemma is what do the people want, a government with the arrogance of an absolute majority or a national unity government with Independent Greeks being the guarantors of tomorrow?” he said in his speech.
A campaign advertisement showing Kammenos helping a small boy called Alexis to avoid derailing his model train illustrates the role he wants to play in a Syriza-led government." ( Source )
Some details on what their anti migrant policies actually are
"A new political party, Independent Greeks, was created in early 2012 - again as a splinter group from the conservatives resulting from its leader's disagreement with ND's support for the EU-IMF rescue package for Greece. It entered the electoral contest with a strong anti-immigration agenda.
The party programme introduced the notion of a 2.5% quota for non-Greek population residing in the country. It advocated for maximum-security detention facilities in distant and isolated places, the mass expulsion of illegal immigrants, and a hierarchy of 'preferred' immigration by country of origin, heavily biased towards western and Latin American countries."
...
"While Independent Greeks capitalized on its highly emotional discourse on national sovereignty and its hard line on immigration, SYRIZA advocated for the legalisation (in various forms ranging from) of the majority of immigrants who entered Greece before the end of 2010 – and proposed various measures to do so, ranging from granting temporary to long-term residency permits, to full-fledged naturalisation" ( source )
ANEL voted against the 'Law for opposing certain types and manifestations of racism and xenophobia' this year but so did the KKE. Quote is from long article on racism that gives an idea of where their support comes from and suggestz that in electoral terms the racism may be secondary see https://www.contributoria.com/.../543690d2580ab68323000037
"As the fourth most popular party in the 2009 elections, LAOS participated in the coalition government of Lucas Papademos with PASOK and New Democracy in late 2011. But the move came at the expense of the party’s anti-austerity credentials, and in the two elections of 2012, LAOS failed to get reelected, having lost much of its top brass to New Democracy.
The void it left was partly filled by the Independent Greeks (ANEL), which, for all their textbook anti-immigrant sentiment and nationalism, were aware that their stronger card was a very populist, anti-austerity agenda. Also vying for LAOS’ electoral capital was the more monolithic, cult-like and activist Golden Dawn."
The comments on this piece belwo are useful as its a couple of far right supporters including Golden Dawn types outlining what they like and dislike about ANEL http://greece.greekreporter.com/.../independent-greeks.../
A report on a ANEL rally from 2012
"Now, let's meet the leader of Independent Greeks Panos Kamenos," he shouted into the microphone and his voice was immediately covered by the cheers of several hundred supporters of the party. "Christ is risen," said the leader and the people underneath responded in one voice with the familiar "Truly He is risen." Then, he delivered the slogan, "We are many. We are independent. We are Greeks." and repeated it many times thereafter. It was amazing how many times he used the word "Greeks" in his speech. ( Source )
Panos Kammenos, the ANEl leader leader is often said to have claimed that "Jews don't pay taxes" during an interview on the Antenna television channel. ( http://forward.com/…/greek-jews-slam-right-wing-politician…/ )
The full quote is a bit less dodgy as he was talking about religious bodies rather than individuals (but was also wrong). "We see that Orthodoxy, which Mr Samaras cites in his article, his government took most of the decisions that are against the Church of Greece; cremation, civil partnerships for homosexuals, taxation just for the Orthodox religion. Buddhists, Jews, Muslims are not taxed, the Orthodox Church is taxed and in fact is at risk of losing its monastery assets” ( http://www.hellasforce.com/…/uproar-greek-party-leader-say…/
Have you more information or can you explain what is happening here? We are getting hit hard by spammers at the moment but I'll try and leave commenting open as long as possible.
WORDS: Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )
[Translation into Greece]SHARE THIS STORY:
These Muslim people are not protesting anything, they are not mad, and they are not angry. They are celebrating what their religion, Islam, and its various traditions commands them to do.
“For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.” Revelation 16:5 (KJV)
The Bible says in Genesis that Ishmael, the father of the Muslims and by extension Islam, was a “wild man” whose hand would be “against every man”. And as he grew and his race multiplied to what we see today in 2016, that prophecy has come true in stunning fashion.
“And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the LORD hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.” Genesis 16:11,12 (KJV)
The Muslim festival of Ashura, which mourns the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, celebrates by bloodletting the faithful
Ashura is marked by 10 days of mourning, in which many devotees whip and cut themselves with chains and knives and some drive knives into their scalps and is seen as a way of washing away their sins. Can YOU wrap you head around that? Take just a moment to look at the sweet angelic face of the young Muslim girl in the photo at top of this article. Her own parents and relatives, people she loves and trusts, are mere seconds away from opening her scalp up with a hunting knife. And they are doing it to appease the moon god Allah. We will not show you what happened next, but just know her entire head and face were covered by her own shed blood.
Shiite Muslims Prepare for Day of Ashura:
This is the official sanitized version of what Ashura is all about.
Now, I want you to let this all sink in your brain. These Muslim people are not protesting anything, they are not mad, and they are not angry. They are celebrating what their religion, Islam, and its various traditions commands them to do. They have no problem with slicing themselves and their children open with knives, spears, chains, whips and razor blades to please their prophet Mohammed.
Shi’ite Muslims observe Ashura holy day, Iraq:
This is VERY GRAPHIC, do NOT watch this with young children.
So if that’s what they are willing to do to themselves to worship Allah, and follow Mohammad, do you honestly think they have any problems, issues, regrets or a guilty conscience when they kill you because you have “disrespected the prophet”? Answer: no, they do not. None of any kind. In fact, just as it pleased themselves to shed thier own blood for Allah, they will also be quite happy to shed yours. Muslims celebrate when one of their terrorists kill after shouting “Allahu Akbar”.
President Obama Says You Combat Islamic Terrorism With Jobs:
If you think, even for a moment, that you can stop Muslim violence through politics, social programs, social justice, job creation, welfare benefits or anything else, you are a highly deluded person. Islam is not a religion per se, it is a violent religious ideology whose whole purpose is to bring people who are not Muslims to submission to Allah. Not all Muslims are terrorists, that’s true, but all Muslims follow Islam which in and of itself is violent not only to outsiders but to its own followers as well.
Take another look at the little girl at the top in the photo. That’s Islam, that’s what their Qu’ran really teaches, that’s what their traditions and culture instruct them to do. Westerners look at honor killings with proper disgust and outrage, but the Muslim parents who carry that out against their own children experience peace and happiness for removing someone who “offended Islam”.
When you can wrap your head around all that, then and only then will you be able to fully comprehend and understand Islam.It's early September, and Jim Breuer, the former Saturday Night Live and current Kevin Can Wait star, is killing time inside his suite at the South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. It’s a big room for one guest, with a retro vibe and a massive conference room table overlooking a view of Nevada’s desert |
ascribe that day any meaning other than Friday.
The revelation came to me on Sunday, when I read the New York Times article named “Stop Googling. Let’s Talk” the article discusses a variety of topics centered around how phones are diminishing our humanistic qualities. Everyone is too focused on getting that quick burst of arousal from checking their phones to have real and meaningful conversations in person. The article practically begs the reader to try to uni-task (appropriately, a word I’d never heard until “Stop Googling”), instead of multitasking in conversations. According to the article, there is a 40 percent decline in empathy amongst college students mostly being after 2000 – when cell phones became very prevalent. The article reported that a study has shown people preferring a mild shock to being in solitude with nothing to do, which sounds insane; people would rather experience pain then being alone with their thoughts? But I would choose the shock as well, quite literally being an arousal addiction. I would go crazy sitting in that room without anything to stimulate my brain.
Being called an addiction is powerful in its own right, even if it’s not entirely true for me. I attend classes in school and never pull out my phone; It’s only a compulsion, but a powerful and destructive one nonetheless. The constant use of the internet is the most pervasive clutter in my life and the evidence keeps piling up showing its negative effects, anecdotal and scientific. In an interview on The Needle Drop, musical artist Clarence Clarity described his maximal, dense, and loud album No Now as a reflection of the internet as a whole. They both throw so much noise at you that it’s almost impossible to make sense of. I’ve realized that I don’t need that extra noise in my life and am actively trying to uni-task. I am now listening to albums like Clarence Clarity with my full attention to truly appreciate it. I’m not playing a video game and watching a YouTube video at the same time, not fully paying attention to either of them. I do one or the other, trying to embrace the less exciting moments in both, because the world as “Stop Googling” puts it, “doesn’t respond like an app, quickly and efficiently.” I want to stop seeing the quiet moments as boring, where I try to fill the void with whatever I can, and start appreciating each experience more. “If we don’t know how to be alone, we’ll only know how to be lonely.” Uni-tasking is my first step to separate loneliness and solitude in my life. I will no longer overload my brain with as many forms of entertainment as possible, and finally give some room for myself to think. As the great Ron Swanson once said, “Don’t half ass two things, whole ass one thing.”
Article By Taylor Kalsey
AdvertisementsAs the spring rains ease, the Forest Service is looking for drier weather to set controlled fires that can help reduce the risk of runaway blazes. The tactic has gotten strong support in the Legislature.
Federal officials plan controlled burns on more than 9,000 acres in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest as the rains ease and the landscape dries.
The burns this spring are part of a broader effort in Washington to step up the pace of intentionally set fires that can reduce fuel loads and hopefully lower — in those treated areas — the risk of runaway summer blazes.
The work, which increasingly includes partnerships among landowners, benefits from strong support from lawmakers.
“There is a lot of leadership in our Legislature,” said Reese Lolley, the Nature Conservancy’s director of forest restoration and fire in Yakima. “I think they are recognizing how big the issue is, and that it’s not going to go away.”
Last year, the Legislature approved $800,000 in pilot projects for prescribed burns (15 were approved), air-quality monitoring and public education about why the burns were happening.
The Legislature this session has passed two bills focused on restoring these forests:
• Senate Bill 5546 calls for reducing fuel loads in 1 million acres of Washington forests by 2027 through prescribed fire, chain-saw thinning and other treatments.
• House Bill 1711 instructs the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to set up a system for evaluating the state lands most in need of treatment to reduce the potential for runaway wildfires.
Prescribed burns, in which fires are lit to reduce fuel for wildfires, are widely backed by scientists as an important tool for keeping forests healthier and less susceptible to devastating wildfires.
They have been developed in an era when decades of fire suppression have — in some forests — created dense stands of timber with lots of understory that can set the stage for huge fires like those that raged across large areas of Washington in the dry summer of 2015.
Prescribed burns are typically carried out during the cooler spring and fall months when conditions are dry enough for flames to help clear the forest without torching all the trees.
But the burns can be controversial, in part, because the smoke they emit may impair air quality. And on a few occasions, elsewhere in the West, some prescribed fires have burned out of control, causing property damage and generating intense criticism.
In Washington, the U.S. Forest Service has conducted controlled fires on 111,724 acres over the past decade.
The Seattle Times reported in 2015 that Forest Service officials had pushed to step up the scale of these burns in Washington. But their effort was hindered by the DNR, which must approve such burns on public and private lands.
During the past two years, relations between federal and state officials have improved as the DNR and the Legislature offered more support for reducing fuel loads through controlled burns.
Loren Torgerson, the department’s wildfire adviser, said a draft of the smoke-policy plan should be ready by October. He said the department also is planning prescribed burns on lands it manages, a change from years past when the department opted not to use fire to help restore the forests.
“We certainly want to be part of the conversation on how prescribed fire is used on the landscape,” Torgerson said.
Last year’s pilot projects helped spur discussion in many communities. Forest Service officials say they have worked harder to explain why they carry out these burns.
“It really brought the right partners and the right voices into the room together to take a hard look not only at how we conduct our operations but also … how we effectively communicate about fire in the ecosystem,” said Holly Krake, a Forest Service public-affairs officer.
This spring, the Forest Service wants to conduct 22 controlled burns at sites ranging from a 300-acre tract 30 miles west of Yakima to a 1,600-acre tract 25 miles east of Tonasket, Okanogan County.
So far, the winter snowpack has delayed the start of these operations in many areas.
Once the snow melts, the window for work may be short because heat can quickly dry out a forest and make it too volatile to attempt a controlled burn.
Forecasters, overall, predict this summer’s fire season will be fairly average. The wet spring could nurture grass growth that, when it dries out, could add to the fires.
But unlike the drought year of 2015, when fires started in the spring, major wildfires are not expected to start until July, according to Mike Powell, a fire analyst with the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center.CHICAGO, May 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- With statistics showing that more than one million bachelor's degrees are conferred each year,* eager grads of the class of 2012 emerging from colleges across the country this spring are being faced by some real-life changing decisions—where to work and where to live. While more than half of employers (54 percent) surveyed by CareerBuilder reported they plan to hire recent college grads in 2012, up from 46 percent last year, the competition for jobs is still stiff in this recovering economy. The current job situation combined with the lowest apartment vacancy rates in recent history and increasing rents nationwide make it more important for recent grads to evaluate their prospective career and living opportunities on a holistic level. For the fifth year, Apartments.com and CareerBuilder have compiled the "Top 15 Best Cities for Recent College Graduates" list to identify those cities that offer the best overall opportunity.
Recent grads, and in fact many people today, are willing to relocate for work as evidenced in a recent Apartments.com survey where respondents said relocating for employment opportunities was the number one reason they were planning to move in 2012. However, in today's tight rental market the cost of living needs to be an integral part of the decision equation.
"When starting out, it can be tempting to focus on only one aspect of a city," said Tammy Kotula, public relations and promotions manager for Apartments.com. "However, it's important to carefully evaluate a variety of options before choosing where to settle down. The first step should be identifying cities that offer the most professional opportunities while affording you a lifestyle you can enjoy. If you relocate to an area of the country with high apartment occupancy, you may find yourself paying more in rent in response to a competitive market. However, if this same city offers a wealth of opportunities for your career, you may find it's something that evens out. It is tough decisions like this that have motivated the teams at Apartments.com and CareerBuilder to collaborate and generate this list that measures job opportunity, average salary and rent."
Even after graduation, savvy grads find they still have some homework to do to identify the cities that afford them the best opportunity for employment, the best place to live and the best quality of life as a young professional.
"While the competition remains tough, job prospects for recent college graduates have improved this year," said Michael Erwin, director of Corporate Communications for CareerBuilder. "Job listings on CareerBuilder are up across industries and company sizes. The key is pinpointing those markets that not only have the greatest demand for your skill sets, but match areas of interest."
The Apartments.com and CareerBuilder "Top 15 Best Cities for Recent College Graduates" list is a resource that helps identify the best places in the country for newly minted grads to begin their new lives, taking into account employment opportunities, salary and rent for a one bedroom apartment. Apartments.com and CareerBuilder, backed by their expertise as two leading national online resources for apartments and jobs, present the 2012 "Top 15 Best Cities for Recent College Graduates" list along with average rent for a one bedroom apartment:
Top 15 Best Cities for Recent College
Graduates Average Rent for 1 Bedroom
Apartment 1. Washington DC $ 1,696 2. New York $ 1,789 3. Boston $ 1,814 4. Minneapolis $ 974 5. Dallas $ 912 6. Atlanta $ 855 7. Chicago $ 1,224 8. Houston $ 910 9. Philadelphia $ 1,070 10. Baltimore $ 1,235 11. Denver $ 1,089 12. Salt Lake City $ 772 13. San Francisco $ 1,653 14. Seattle $ 1,199 15. Oklahoma City, OK $ 676
The Apartments.com and CareerBuilder "Top 15 Best Cities for Recent College Graduates" list was culled from US cities in the top 100 Designated Market Areas based on the inventory of entry level jobs from CareerBuilder and CareerRookie (January-April 2012), average entry level salary (CareerBuilder April 2012) and the average rent for a one bedroom apartment (rents from Apartments.com April 2012). Inventory of entry level jobs was weighted heaviest as that is of most importance to recent graduates, alongside unemployment as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (March 2012), eliminating markets where the average rate of unemployment was above 10 percent.
About CareerBuilder
CareerBuilder is the global leader in human capital solutions, helping companies target and attract their most important asset - their people. Its online career site, CareerBuilder.com®, is the largest in the United States with more than 24 million unique visitors, 1 million jobs and 40 million resumes. CareerBuilder works with the world's top employers, providing resources for everything from employment branding and data analysis to recruitment support. More than 9,000 websites, including 140 newspapers and broadband portals such as MSN and AOL, feature CareerBuilder's proprietary job search technology on their career sites. Owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), Tribune Company and The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI), CareerBuilder and its subsidiaries operate in the United States, Europe, South America, Canada and Asia. For more information, visit www.careerbuilder.com.
About Apartments.com
Apartments.com (http://www.apartments.com) is a leading national apartment Internet listing subscription service with more than 50,000 unique addresses representing millions of rental units from managed properties, newspaper classifieds and for-rent-by-owner properties. By incorporating the most relevant products to reach renters including personalized searches and highly visual ads featuring live chat, real-time rent, online video walk-through demonstrations, professional photography, a mobile website and iPhone and Android app, Apartments.com creates easy access to its listings. Providing unmatched exposure to its advertisers through an intuitive name, strategic search engine placements, featured partnerships including Yahoo! Real Estate, Univision and more than 120 newspaper websites and innovative emerging media, Apartments.com reaches millions of renters nationwide, driving both qualified traffic and highly-engaged renters to leasing offices nationwide. Apartments.com is a division of Chicago-based Classified Ventures, LLC. The Apartments.com network of apartment rental websites includes Apartment Home Living (http://www.apartmenthomeliving.com), a leading social media apartment website distinguished by a "live for fun" community experience, proprietary lifestyle matching and local living guides to help renters find their perfect place to live.
*SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2011) Digest of Education Statistics, 2010 (NCES 2010-015),Chapter 3.
SOURCE Apartments.comMapping the Evolution of the Lower East Side Through a Jewish Lens, 1880-2014
Image courtesy of MNCY
Long considered the capital of Jewish America, this overpoweringly cramped neighborhood was considered by many to be the greatest concentration of Jewish life in nearly 2,000 years.
Between 1880 and 1924, 2.5 million mostly-impoverished Ashkenazi Jews came to the US and nearly 75 percent took up residence on the Lower East Side. According to the Library of Congress, by 1900, more than 700 people per acre were settling in a neighborhood lined with tenements and factories. And as quickly as they descended on the streets, all sharing a common language (mostly Yiddish) and most certainly, similar backgrounds, they quickly established synagogues as early as 1865 (the landmarked Bialystoker Synagogue, whose congregants were mostly Polish immigrants from Bailystok), small shops, pushcarts teeming with goods, social clubs and even financial-aid societies.
By 1910, the Lower East Side’s population was well over the five million mark, but sadly, such congestion habitually caused havoc.
Nearly half of the city’s deaths by fire took place on the Lower East Side. For many years, tenants lived without indoor plumbing, central heat or central light – but whatever the dangers, diseases or lack of “amenities” they lacked (which was likely the same in the villages they emigrated from), it was still was a world away from the virulent anti-Semitism they faced on a daily basis back home.
According to a 1927 Department of Public Markets report, the first pushcarts were set up on Hester Street in 1866 and by 1900, 2,500 open-air vendors were actively hawking their wares. A suitable way for an immigrant to earn a living and perhaps a stepping stone to a more stable future, these peddlers rose at dawn and headed to nearby stables and paid a quarter to rent one for entire day by elbowing one another for a piece of sidewalk space. But as more and more brick-and-mortar shop owners complained, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia proposed that an indoor market house the street merchants under one roof. Thus, on January 10, 1940, the Essex Street Market opened with 475 stalls. Ironically, within a year’s time, Orchard Street shopkeepers reported a 60 percent decrease in business and blamed it on the relocation of pushcart vendors to the market. Still successfully operation to this day, the Essex Street Market is now a fusion of Lower East Side noshes and egg creams–and stalls selling pricey artisanal cheeses breads, produce, and prime meats.
Well into the 1960s and 1970s, Orchard Street remained notable for discount shopping. Buyers came from far and wide to shop along the neighborhood streets, particularly on Sundays because back then, all uptown stores, including Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor, were not open for business. Retailers like the now demolished Fine & Klein at 119 Orchard Street thrived well into the 21st century by selling top-of-the-line leather goods at discounted prices. Harris Levy at 98 Forsyth Street has been selling some of the finest linens in town since 1894 and Economy Candy at 118 Rivington Street has been in business since 1937.
Schapiro’s © Ted Barron; Other images via Wiki Commons
But some of the Lower East Side’s most popular establishments are sadly gone forever. For instance, for more than a century, the kosher Schapiro Wine Company reigned supreme at 126 Rivington Street where grapes were crushed in a series of cellars that ran through the entire block until the building was sold in 2000. Ratner’s kosher restaurant kept the doors open from 1910 to 2002, serving carloads of blintzes and latkas while patient patrons lined up behind a velvet rope until a table attended by one of the restaurant’s famously rude waiters became available. Though originally located around the block on Pitt Street, it moved to Delancey Street in 1918. But as luck would have it, a number of original food establishments remain and among the most famous is Russ & Daughters, the Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery and Katz’s Delicatessen.
When Russ & Daughters opened a century ago, Joel Russ could never have imagined his appetizing store being hailed by the Smithsonian Institute as an important part of New York’s cultural heritage, let alone being listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Originally on Orchard Street just below Houston Street, this beloved market got its start selling salt-cured herring and salmon. By 1920, they moved to its current location on Houston Street between Ludlow and Allen Streets, renaming it the J. Russ National Appetizing Store. With his daughters Hattie, Anna and Ida at his side throughout the years, Joel renamed the shop to Russ & Daughters in 1933. As the years passed with his daughters married and his grandchildren old enough to help out, this Manhattan institution is still a family-run business, selling everything from caviar and chopped liver to borscht, babka and bagels. For foodies seeking instant gratification, they can grab a chair a few blocks away at the rather new Russ & Daughters Café at 127 Orchard Street. Better yet, it was recently announced that a second café will open inside the Jewish Museum on 92nd Street off Fifth Avenue in early 2015.
Yonah Schimmel, a Romanian immigrant, first peddled his knishes via a pushcart around 1890, but as his business flourished, Yonah and his cousin Benny Berger rented a small store on Houston Street and named it the Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery Street. Though Yonah left the business a few years later, his cousin moved the bakery across the street in 1910, where it remains today. Family-owned since its inception and still using the original recipes, the bakery is operated by Yonah’s great nephew, Alex Wolfman.
Katz’s Delicatessen, Image © Julienne Schaer
In 1888, the Iceland Brothers’ delicatessen opened its doors, but when Willy Katz arrived from Europe in 1903, the name was changed to Iceland & Katz. When Willy’s cousin Benny came on board in 1910, they bought out the Iceland brothers and formed Katz’s Delicatessen. By 1917, the deli moved to its present location at the corner of Ludlow and Houston Streets, with a new partner Harry Tarowsky in tow. An emporium of smoked fish, meat, pickles and herrings, the façade we see today was added in the late 1940s. During World War II, the three sons of the owners were all serving their country, and the family tradition of sending food to their sons became the company slogan “Send A Salami To Your Boy In The Army.”
By the late 1970s, all the original owners had moved on to their final resting places, so Katz’s continued operating by way of younger family members. However, by the middle of the 1980s, with no new generation to pass ownership to, long-time friend and restaurateur Martin Dell, along with son Alan and son-in-law Fred Austin purchased Katz’s in 1988. Alan’s son Jake officially joined the store in late 2009 and is currently in charge of all major operations. World-famous for its sky-high, hand-carved pastrami and corned beef sandwiches, this amazing and always crowded deli is said to sell up to 20,000 pounds of meat a week. And for those of you who didn’t know where that classic scene in the film with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan was filmed, just look for the small sign above a table inside Katz’s that reads “Where Harry Met Sally… hope you have what she had!”
The interior of Katz’s, Image © Julienne Schaer
Just a few weeks ago, well-founded rumors began surfacing that Katz’s had sold its air rights. Chatter points to real estate developer Ben Shaoul of the Magnum Real Estate Group as the buyer. No other details have surfaced, so we all have to sit tight and wait for the information to become part of public records. Obviously, this information is no surprise given that the neighborhood fell from its iconic pedestal by way of drugs, gangs and shuttered shops in the late 1980s – and by the early 2000s, gentrification produced upscale restaurants, art galleries, jazzy boutiques, a handful of small hotels (i.e., the Blue Moon, and Thompson LES) along with expensive condominiums and gut-renovated tenement buildings garnering market rate prices. The sale of Katz’s air rights is simply another step toward the completion of the gentrification of the Lower East Side.
Still and all, Jake says the pastrami sandwiches will keep on coming, no matter what happens. “The most important thing is that the future of Katz’s is secure… at the end of the day, no developer can ever come in and knock us down to put in a high rise,” Jake recently posted on The Lo-Down website.
Tenement Museum, Image © Julienne Schaer
To learn for yourself what daily life was like a century ago, take a walking tour with the Lower East Side History Project, and then visit the Tenement Museum on Orchard Street. Inside the 1863 tenement apartment house that was home to nearly 7,000 immigrants through the years, the museum has recreated apartments, as they would have looked like from the late 19th century and well beyond America’s Great Depression. Learn about the living synagogues and historic structures in the neighborhood from one of the knowledgeable tour guides at the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy. Another museum worth a stop is the Museum at Eldridge Street that’s inside a synagogue that opened on September 4, 1887, just in time for the Jewish High Holidays.
Tags : 118 Rivington Street, 126 Rivington Street, 127 Orchard Street, 98 Forsyth Street, Economy Candy, essex street market, judaism, Russ & Daughters, Russ & Daughters Café, Schapiro Wine Company, Tenement Museum, Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery
Neighborhoods : Lower East SideEx-PM warns failure to take tougher stand has made it inevitable that rogue bankers will again gamble with public money
Gordon Brown: Bankers should have been jailed for role in financial crisis
Gordon Brown has claimed bankers should have been jailed for their fraudulent and dishonest behaviour during the financial crisis that led to Britain’s deepest post-war recession and his defeat in the 2010 general election.
The Labour former prime minister used the second extract from his memoirs to warn that the failure to take a tougher line with wrongdoing – as pursued by other countries – has made it inevitable that rogue bankers will again gamble with public money.
“If bankers who act fraudulently are not put in jail with their bonuses returned, assets confiscated and banned from future practice, we will only give a green light to similar risk-laden behaviour in new forms,” Brown says.
Gordon Brown memoirs: Barclays' RBS bid in 2008 is a staggering revelation Read more
The ex-PM adds in his book My Life, Our Times that he had braced himself for resignation had the government’s £50bn rescue plan for UK banks in October 2008 met with a hostile response from the financial markets.
He also reveals for the first time that Barclays made an offer to buy its stricken rival Royal Band of Scotland, which was eventually largely nationalised under Labour’s bailout package.
Brown had been prime minister for less than two months when the financial crisis began in the summer of 2007, but had been chancellor during the previous decade when the problems in the global banking system had gone unnoticed and unchecked.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Former RBS CEO Fred Goodwin. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian
The extract says Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of RBS, should have been stripped not just of his knighthood but of his bonuses and the right to be a company director for leading the bank to the brink of collapse.
Accusing the Conservatives of being too soft on bankers since taking office in 2010, Brown says: “Little has changed since the promise in 2009 that we bring finance to heel. The banks that were deemed ‘too big to fail’ are now even bigger than they were.
“Dividends and bankers’ pay today represent almost exactly the same share of banks’ revenues as before the crisis hit.”
Brown says one of the arguments used to justify high salaries in the financial sector – that the money is reward for risk taking – has not survived the crash.
“With many banks backstopped by the taxpayers, they make their profits at least in part because of the government guarantee. The risks they are taking is often not with their money but with ours,” he says.
“And often bankers are not being compensated for risk but rewarded for failure. It cannot be right that Fred Goodwin walked away with all of his past bonuses untouched, a tax-free lump sum … and even after he agreed to halve his pension it still was said to amount to £300,000 a year.”
Brown adds that if the conduct of bankers was dishonest by the ordinary benchmark of what would be considered reasonable and honest, then there was a case for Britain following the example of Ireland, Iceland, Spain and Portugal and in launching prosecutions.
A new criminal offence of reckless misconduct in the management of financial institutions had been intended to deter irresponsible management decisions, but Brown says defendants would find it easy to get round the law by claiming that their institutions’ problems were the result of factors beyond their control – such as changes in interest rates or government regulation – rather than their own conduct.
“The Fraud Act 2006, which criminalises fraud by false representation, failing to disclose information and abuse of position, may be more relevant,” he says.
Britain led the way in the recapitalisation of the banks when the financial crisis deepened after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.
Brown says he was unsure whether he would survive the key day, 8 October, when the bailout plan was announced.
“When I got up the next morning I told [Brown’s wife] Sarah that she would have to be ready to pack our things for a sudden move out of Downing Street. If what I was about to do failed, with markets collapsing further and confidence ebbing from Britain, I would have no choice but to resign.
“As I walked into the office, I didn’t know if I’d still be there at the end of the day.”A couple of noted liberal political activists, first Howard Dean and now Noam Chomsky, have found common ground with the most unlikeliest of individuals — former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — and admit she’s right on at least one key view: President Obama doesn’t have a whole lot of substance.
At least he didn’t during his presidential campaign, Mr. Chomsky said in a recent interview with the left-wing outlet Democracy Now.
“I don’t usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this ‘hopey, changey stuff,’ she was right. There was nothing there,” he said, the Inquisitr blog reported. “And it was understood by the people who run the political system, and so it’s no great secret that the U.S. electoral system is mainly a public relations extravaganza … it’s sort of a marketing affair.”
Mr. Chomsky is a well-known professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an internationally recognized author and political activist for liberal causes. And his support of the Mrs. Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, comes on the heels of more of the same from another noted liberal, Mr. Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman.
Last month, the Inquisitr reported that Mr. Dean wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “One major problem [with Obamacare] is the so-called independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB is essentially a health-care rationing body. By setting doctor reimbursement rates for Medicare and determining which procedures and drugs will be covered and at what price, the IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them.”
He didn’t mention Mrs. Palin, but she was speaking of the same problem during the same time frame — and taking big media hits from a mocking press for her view.
Mr. Dean finished in his WSJ article: “Getting rid of the IPAB is something Democrats and Republicans ought to agree on.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Speaking to the news website n-tv.de, de Maiziere said that in the future, Syrian refugees should only be provided with "subsidiary" protection. Under the interior minster's proposal, the refugees' time in Germany would be limited and family reunifications prohibited.
De Maiziere added that every case should be examined individually to find which protection status is most appropriate, rather than applying the same method across the board.
At the moment, Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) grants Syrian refugees a status in accordance with the Geneva Convention. The agreement states that the marital partner and children can be reunited with the refugee at a later date.
Chancellery not informed
De Maiziere told Deutschlandfunk earlier this week that Syrians would be granted a "subsidiary" protection. Shortly after, however, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said the protection status of all Syrians would remain the same at present.
According to a report in the German newspaper "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung" (FAS), de Maiziere had not informed the chancellery about the instruction of the Interior Ministry.
"Only the Interior Ministry itself and BAMF knew that the processing procedures had been reformed," Chancellery Chief and Refugee Coordinator Peter Altmaier told Deutschlandfunk.
FAS reported that Altmaier was in fact informed by Vice Chancellor and leader of Germany's Social Democrats Sigmar Gabriel, who later intervened.
The chancellery chief said De Maiziere responded quickly to the protests by the SPD, however, making it clear that there would be no unilateral changes.
ksb/rc (kna, epd, dpa)The first thing you should do after seeing Thor: Ragnarok isn’t to watch any of the other entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but instead go read a poem called “Ragnarok” written by award-winning sci-fi and fantasy author Paul Park. In 2011, Park published the poem which uses the Norse myths as a way to talk about potential real-world calamities. But what did the “Ragnarok” in Thor: Ragnarok have in common with the “real” Ragnarok of Norse myth. As Park explains, not quite enough.
“The movie’s writers had a difficult task,” Park tells Inverse. “Ragnarok, the Norse apocalypse, takes place in the future. It is a story of cataclysm and rebirth, the utter destruction of the old world, including most of the pantheon of gods and heroes, amid the promise of a new reality in a beautiful fresh landscape, under a new sun.” But, as the author and poet explains, the Marvel version of Ragnarok was limited to one specific place and time, otherwise, there can’t be other Marvel movies.
Paul Park and the illustration for his poem "Ragnarok.' (Art by Richard Anderson)
“So, the solution is to put Ragnarok into the distant past, and suggest that the rebirth was a more local one, in which the (conveniently blond) survivors of Asgard, post apocalypse, escape to resettle prehistoric Norway. Thor and Loki and Heimdall remain alive, because they have to be alive for the other movies to make sense.”
What Park means is that Odin hanging out in Norway at the beginning of Thor: Ragnarok was a way for the MCU to vaguely match up with Earth mythology. And, if all of the survivors of Asgard come to Earth by the next Avengers movie, they might not all end up in the present. In fact, some of them have to end up in our past. Because the first Thor established that Thor is the same Thor from Norse legends, it stands to reason that the spaceship in Ragnarok gets redirected to Earth’s past, rather than 2018. Obviously, if this actually happens, Thor will have time travel to get with the rest of the Avengers… or something.
This wolf should have been a bigger deal.
Still, in Park’s mind, the concept of Ragnarok was robbed of some of its destructive mojo. “For reasons of script continuity, this Ragnarok can’t really involve any destruction at all—just the city of Asgard itself, a place we don’t care much about, although I did like how the gods’ palace resembles Hallgrimskirkja, the main cathedral in Reykjavik, which is also the site of the massacre in my poem.”
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Park contends that “Ragnarok isn’t really Ragnarok,” but that he himself appropriated the term for his poem. “It’s not really Ragnarok in my poem either—the title is sort of ironic. The story takes place in a [fictional] post-apocalyptic Iceland, where the modern world has come to an end, and things are in chaos, and we can imagine a new version of the medieval age,” he explains. “As for someone coming across my poem, fresh from immersion in the Marvel universe—that would be fine. I imagine he or she might be disappointed, because it’s not a magical story, or one that involves gods or heroes; that’s where the irony resides, because I do think it might be possible for us to destroy the world, and not as a result of cataclysmic struggles between noble forces and wicked ones.”
Still, what would have happened had Thor: Ragnarok stayed closer to the real myth, and really included a shitload of legit destruction and murder? “The events of the legend are so stupendous and cinematic—well, it would be great to see them actually dramatized,” he says and then describes how the actual myth plays out.
What if blood was dripping from Loki's mouth?
“Loki is loosed from his prison, where he’s been laid out with poison dripping on his face after the murder of Baldur, and now gathering together his demonic children, Fenrir the wolf and the midgard serpent, and the frost giants and fire giants breaking out of their worlds, and on earth a stupefying convulsion of lust and violence that leaves only two survivors, and the valiant gods and valkyries dying one by one, each one vanquishing a monster, and the sun blotted out, and dark water swallowing the globe.
“If the Marvel people really had wanted to do justice to the theme, they could have brought in Iron Man and the Hulk and Black Widow and Jeremy Renner and all the rest, and put each one of them into a self-sacrificing struggle to the death with the entire cast of Marvel villains, while in the meantime all the cities of earth explode and burn and drown. The death ship sails on the blood-red sea. I’d love to watch that. Who wouldn’t?”
Thor: Ragnarok is out in wide release now. Paul Park is the author of several award-winning science fiction and fantasy novels including All Those Vanished Engines and Soldiers of Paradise. You can read his award-winning poem — “Ragnarok” — here.YTMND, an initialism for "You're the Man Now, Dog", is an online community centered on the creation of hosted memetic web pages (known within the community as fads, YTMNDs or sites) featuring a juxtaposition of an image (still or short animation) centered or tiled along with optional large zooming text and a looping sound file. Images and sound files used in YTMNDs are usually either created or edited by users. YTMND is generally a humor website, owing its tone and culture to the original YTMND and its early imitators. Other YTMNDs, however, are artistic or political.
History [ edit ]
YTMND originated in 2001 from Max Goldberg's original website, "yourethemannowdog.com", which he registered along with "dustindiamond.com" after seeing a trailer for the movie Finding Forrester in which Sean Connery says the line "You're the man now, dog!". Originally, the website featured the text "YOURE THE MAN NOW DOG.COM" drawn out in 3D ASCII text with a sound loop from the Finding Forrester trailer of Sean Connery reciting the phrase "You're the man now, dog!".[2] The advent of zoomed text currently on the website was seen in the following months, where the website also featured a photograph of Sean Connery. Goldberg's new creation inspired others to make similar sites with other movie and television quotations (or any other sound clip they wished to use).[3][4 |
Los Angeles Times.
Nunes, for his part, has defended his on-again/off-again involvement in the committee's probe by saying – you guessed it – he never really recused himself.
"Simply put, I'm still the chairman of the committee," the California congressman told Fox News this month.
"The way to look into this is that I'm still read into everything, but... I was going to set at least the Russia side of the investigation aside because I didn't want to be the face of this investigation. But everything else, I'm still in charge of," he added.
Whether this means he has honored the spirit of his April 6th announcement can be debated (it'd probably be easier and more forthright for him to go all-in or not at all). What is clear, however, is that what he said Monday isn't new. This is his line now, whether it makes sense or not.On Tuesday, Feb 3, Kevin Iole revealed that Anderson Silva had failed a blood test for two PEDs. Shortly afterwards it was learned that the test had been administered on on Jan. 9. Further, again on Tuesday, Feb 3, Nick Diaz failed a test for marijuana that had been administered on Jan 31.
The hardcore fanbase immediately began to speculate that something was wrong, that perhaps the Nevada State Athletic Commission held back on the results, or otherwise ensured that they came out after the fight was over. A bout of that magnitude brings many, many millions into Nevada, and no small amount to the commission itself, providing an incentive to hold back on a result that would have resulted in the cancellation of the fight.
Imagine if Woodley vs. Gastelum was the main event …
However, Iole investigated, and the tinfoil hats can go back on the shelf for now. The sample was sent to the WADA-accredited Sports Medicine Research & Testing Laboratory (SMRTL) in Salt Lake City, Utah. Iole spoke with the Executive director of SMRTL and the former science director of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, Dr. Daniel Eichner, who explained the process.
He said he was unable to speak specifically about Silva's case, but said there is a lack of understanding of how testing procedures work. The key thing, he said, is that everything is done anonymously. The sample is sent to the lab by a WADA-certified collector, who does not put the athlete's name on the sample but rather a number. The lab doesn't know who requested the test or who is being tested, Eichner said. “We're independent and we have no knowledge of who is getting tested when,” Eichner told Yahoo Sports. “We get a unique sample, a biological sample that is either urine or blood, sometimes both, and it comes in the mail to us. We log it into the system. The analyst will go through that sample and depending upon what kind of testing is requested, whether it's a full WADA screen or whatever, and they'll look for the illegal substances. “It's important to remember that the analyst only sees a sample number and has no idea whether it corresponds to any particular athlete or any particular event. If there is an event coming up and we get a sample from an athlete in that event, that analyst would have zero idea that that's what this is.” Eichner said the lab looks for every known prohibited substance and metabolite, which he called “quite a vast and extensive screening process.” If anything is detected during the initial screen, that triggers more work. “If we see anything that could look remotely like a prohibited substance, we then go back to that urine sample in the A bottle and then we do a confirmation process,” Eichner said. “We look specifically for that compound of the parent drug or the metabolite.” He said the tests can be lengthy, particularly if there are multiple prohibited substances found, as was the case in Silva's Jan. 9 sample. Eichner said that though his lab makes every attempt to turn around the samples as expeditiously as possible, he isn't going to do so at the expense of accuracy. “Obviously, we would like to get reports out as soon as possible,” Eichner said. “But it's important to remember that the kind of work that WADA laboratories do is different than what a drugs-of-abuse lab does. We're not comparing us to the same things. If you're trying to compare us to a workplace drug-testing program, it's not at all the same thing. “Would we like to get the reports out before an event? Of course. Of course we would. But think of the Olympic movement: You strip people of gold medals. You don't stop them from racing. Sometimes these things take longer and then you have to go back and sanction after the fact.”
Read entire article…
The urine test the Diaz failed is exactly the kind of recreational drug screen that Dr. Eichner described as being relatively simple and quick. Both Silva and Diaz will likely be temporarily suspended at the next NSAC meeting onFeb. 17; at that point disciplinary hearings will be scheduled for March or April.I learn from Francesco Saraceno that some people are attacking me for, as they see it, defending an economic orthodoxy that has failed. It’s kind of an odd place to find myself, given how critical I’ve been of the way the economics profession has dealt with the crisis. But it’s not entirely unfair: I am quite skeptical of people whose response to the sorry state of affairs is to declare that what we need is a whole new field.
Why my skepticism? I’m all for new ideas that add to our understanding. But ideas like that aren’t easy to come by! Mark Thoma’s classic crack — “I’ve learned that new economic thinking means reading old books” — has a serious point to it. We’ve had a couple of centuries of economic thought at this point, and quite a few smart people doing the thinking. It’s possible to come up with truly new concepts and approaches, but it takes a lot more than good intentions and casual observation to get there.
So, for example, what do I say when I read something like this from someone who apparently considers himself a bold rebel against orthodoxy?
“Rational thinking is an important aspect of human nature, but we have imagination, we have ambition, we have irrational fear, we are swayed by other people, we get indoctrinated and we get influenced by advertising,” he says. “Even if we are actually rational, leaving it to the market may produce collectively irrational outcomes. So when a bubble develops it is rational for individuals to keep inflating the bubble, thinking that they can pull out at the last minute and make a lot of money. But collectively speaking... ”
My answer, to put it in technical terms, is “Well, duh.” Maybe grad students at some departments, who are several generations into the law of diminishing disciples, really don’t know that rational behavior is at best a useful fiction, that markets aren’t perfect, etc, etc. But does this come as news to Robert Shiller? To Ben Bernanke? To Janet Yellen? To Larry Summers? Would it have come as news to Irving Fisher or Walter Bagehot?
The question is what you do with this insight.
There is definitely a faction within economics that considers it taboo to introduce anything into its analysis that isn’t grounded in rational behavior and market equilibrium. But what I do, and what everyone I’ve just named plus many others does, is a more modest, more eclectic form of analysis. You use maximization and equilibrium where it seems reasonably consistent with reality, because of its clarifying power, but you introduce ad hoc deviations where experience seems to demand them — downward rigidity of wages, balance-sheet constraints, bubbles (which are hard to predict, but you can say a lot about their consequences).
You may say that what we need is reconstruction from the ground up — an economics with no vestige of equilibrium analysis. Well, show me some results. As it happens, the hybrid, eclectic approach I’ve just described has done pretty well in this crisis, so you had better show me some really superior results before it gets thrown out the window.
Oh, and if you think you’ve found a fundamental logical flaw in one of our workhorse economic models, the odds are very strong that you’ve just made a mistake.
Does this mean that nothing should change in the way we teach economics? By no means — it’s quite clear that the teaching of macroeconomics has gone seriously astray. As Saraceno says, the simple models that have proved so useful since 2008 are by and large taught only at the undergrad level — they’re treated as too simple, too ad hoc, whatever, to make it into the grad courses even at places that aren’t very ideological.
Furthermore, to temper your modeling with a sense of realism you need to know something about reality — and not just the statistical properties of U.S. time series since 1947. Economic history — global economic history — should be a core part of the curriculum. Nobody should be making pronouncements on macro without knowing a fair bit about the collapse of the gold standard in the 1930s, what actually happened in the stagflation of the 1970s, the Asian financial crisis of the 90s, and, looking forward, the euro crisis.
I’d put my oar in for history of thought, too. Watching highly trained economists reinvent old economic fallacies suggests to me that there would be real payoff to requiring that students have some idea how the current leading doctrines got to where they are.
But must we reconstruct all of economics? No. Most of what we need, at least for now, is in those old books.For other people with similar names, see Ronald Howard (disambiguation)
Ronald William Howard (born March 1, 1954) is an American filmmaker and actor. Howard is best known for playing two high-profile roles in television sitcoms in his youth and directing a number of successful feature films later in his career.
Howard first came to prominence playing young Opie Taylor, the son of Sheriff Andy Taylor (played by Andy Griffith), in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show from 1960 through 1968. During this time, he also appeared in the musical film The Music Man (1962) and the comedy film The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963). In 1973, he played Steve Bolander in the classic coming of age film American Graffiti (1973). In 1974, Howard became a household name playing teenager Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days, continuing in the role for seven years.[1] Howard continued making films during this time, appearing in the western film The Shootist (1976) and the comedy film Grand Theft Auto (1977), which he also directed.
In 1980, Howard left Happy Days to focus on directing. His films include the science-fiction/fantasy film Cocoon (1985), the historical docudrama Apollo 13 (1995) (earning him the Directors Guild of America award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures), the biographical drama A Beautiful Mind (2001) (earning him the Academy Award for Best Director and Academy Award for Best Picture), the thriller The Da Vinci Code (2006), the historical drama Frost/Nixon (2008) (nominated for Best Director and Best Picture Academy Awards) and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).
Since 2003, Howard has narrated the Fox (later Netflix) comedy series Arrested Development, on which he also served as an executive producer and played a semi-fictionalized version of himself.
In 2003, Howard was awarded the National Medal of Arts.[2] Asteroid 12561 Howard is named after him. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2013.[3] Howard has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions in the television and motion pictures industries.[4]
Early life [ edit ]
Howard was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, in 1954, the elder son of Jean Speegle Howard (1927–2000), an actress, and Rance Howard (1928–2017), a director, writer, and actor.[5] He has German, English, Scottish, Irish, and Dutch ancestry.[7][8][9][10] His father was born with the surname "Beckenholdt" and had taken the stage name "Howard" by 1948, for his acting career.[11][12] Rance Howard was serving three years in the United States Air Force at the time of Ron's birth.[14] The family moved to Hollywood in 1958, the year before the birth of his younger brother, Clint Howard. They rented a house on the block south of the Desilu Studios, where The Andy Griffith Show was later filmed. They lived in Hollywood for at least three years, before moving to Burbank.
Howard was tutored at Desilu Studios in his younger years but continued his schooling at Robert Loius Stevenson Elementary and David Star Jordan Junior High when not working in television, eventually graduating from John Burroughs High School. He later attended the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts but did not graduate.[15][16]
Howard has said he knew from a young age he might want to go into directing, thanks to his early experience as an actor.[17]
Career [ edit ]
Early acting roles and The Andy Griffith Show [ edit ]
In 1959, Howard had his first credited film role, in The Journey. He appeared in June Allyson's CBS anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson in the episode "Child Lost"; in The Twilight Zone episode "Walking Distance"; a few episodes of the first season of the sitcom Dennis the Menace, as Stewart, one of Dennis's friends; and several first- and second-season episodes of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Howard played "Timmy" (uncredited) in "Counterfeit Gun", Season 4, Episode 2 (1960) of the TV series, "The Cheyenne Show."
In 1960, Howard was cast as Opie Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show. Credited as "Ronny Howard", he portrayed the son of the title character (played by Andy Griffith) for all eight seasons of the show. Recalling his experiences as a child actor on set, he commented
I was five years old. And I was preoccupied with the prop that was in my hand, because it was a toy turtle. But I had to pretend it was a real turtle that the audience just wasn't seeing, and it was dead, so I was supposed to be crying and very emotional, and I remember him looking at that little turtle and talking to me about how it was kind of funny to have to pretend that was dead. So I recall just a very relaxed first impression.[18]
In the 1962 film version of The Music Man, Howard played Winthrop Paroo, the child with the lisp; the film starred Robert Preston and Shirley Jones. He also starred in the 1963 film The Courtship of Eddie's Father, with Glenn Ford.
He appeared as Barry Stewart on The Eleventh Hour, in the episode "Is Mr. Martian Coming Back?" in 1965; on I Spy, in the episode "Little Boy Lost", in 1966; as Henry Fonda's son in an ABC series, The Smith Family, in 1968; as Jodah, in "Land of the Giants", in 1969; as a boy whose father was shot on the TV show "Daniel Boone", in 1971–72; and as an underage Marine on M*A*S*H in the episode "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet", in 1973. In the 1970s, he appeared in at least one episode of The Bold Ones, as a teenage tennis player with an illness.
Howard appeared on the 1969 Disneyland Records album The Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion. It featured the story of two teenagers, Mike (Howard) and Karen (Robie Lester), who get trapped inside the Haunted Mansion. Thurl Ravenscroft plays the Narrator, Pete Reneday plays the Ghost Host, and Eleanor Audley plays Madame Leota. Some of the effects and ideas that were planned but never permanently made it to the attraction are mentioned here: the Raven speaks in the Stretching Room, and the Hatbox Ghost is mentioned during the Attic scene. It was reissued in 1998 as a cassette tape titled A Spooky Night in Disney's Haunted Mansion and on CD in 2009.
In 1974, Howard guest starred as Seth Turner, the best friend of Jason Walton (Jon Walmsley), in The Waltons, "The Gift". In the episode, Seth wants to learn to play an instrument in his father's band, but it looks as if he will not have the time; he has been diagnosed with leukemia. The concept of death — and the unfairness of it all — is an extremely difficult one for Jason to accept, and it is up to Grandpa to help the boy through this crisis. Featured in the cast as Dr. McIvers is Ron Howard's father Rance Howard.[19]
Film roles and Happy Days [ edit ]
Happy Days Richie (Ron Howard) takes a turn on Fonzie's motorcycle in a scene from
Howard played Steve Bolander in George Lucas's coming-of-age film American Graffiti in 1973.[1] A role in an installment of series Love, American Style, titled "Love and the Television Set",[20] led to his being cast as Richie Cunningham in the TV series Happy Days (for syndication, the segment was re-titled "Love and the Happy Days"). Beginning in 1974, he played the likeable "buttoned-down" boy, in contrast to Henry Winkler's "greaser" Arthur "Fonzie"/"The Fonz" Fonzarelli. On the Happy Days set, he developed an on- and off-screen chemistry with series leads Winkler and Tom Bosley. The three remained friends until Bosley's death in October 2010.
In 1976, Howard played Gillom Rogers in the movie The Shootist, with John Wayne. Howard's last significant on-screen role was a reprise of his famous role as Opie Taylor in the 1986 TV movie Return to Mayberry, an Andy Griffith Show reunion reuniting him with Griffith, Don Knotts, and most of the cast. He also appeared in two Happy Days TV reunions: 1992's The Happy Days Reunion Special, a retrospective hosted by Winkler that aired on ABC; and 2005's The Happy Days 30th Anniversary Reunion, where he was reunited with most of the surviving cast.
Directing [ edit ]
Before leaving Happy Days in 1980, Howard made his directing debut with the 1977 low-budget comedy/action film Grand Theft Auto.[1] This came after cutting a deal with Roger Corman, wherein Corman let Howard direct a film in exchange for Howard starring in Eat My Dust!, with Christopher Norris.[1] Howard went on to direct several TV movies.[1] His big theatrical break came in 1982, with Night Shift, featuring Michael Keaton, Shelley Long, and Henry Winkler.[1]
He has since directed a number of high-visibility films, including Splash, Cocoon, Willow, Parenthood, Backdraft, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Beautiful Mind (for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director), Cinderella Man, The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, Rush, In the Heart of the Sea and Inferno.
Howard showcased the world premiere of his film Frost/Nixon at the 2008 London Film Festival in October 2008.[21]
Howard was the recipient of the Austin Film Festival's 2009 Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award. Michael Keaton presented him with the Award.
Howard took over directing duties on Solo: A Star Wars Story, a film featuring Star Wars character Han Solo in his younger years. The film was released on May 23, 2018. Howard officially replaced directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller on June 22, 2017; they were let go from their position two days earlier, reportedly due to their refusal to compromise with Lucasfilm over the direction of the film; reportedly the directors encouraged significant improvisations by the actors, which was believed by some at Lucasfilm to be "shifting the story off-course".[22] At the time, the film was nearly completed, with three and a half weeks left to film and another five weeks of reshoots scheduled.[22] Howard posted on Twitter, "I'm beyond grateful to add my voice to the Star Wars Universe after being a fan since 5/25/77. I hope to honor the great work already done & help deliver on the promise of a Han Solo film."[23]
In November 2017, Howard announced that he would be teaching his first directing class.[24]
Imagine Entertainment [ edit ]
Howard is the co-chairman, with Brian Grazer, of Imagine Entertainment, a film and television production company. Imagine has produced several films including Friday Night Lights, 8 Mile, and Inside Deep Throat, as well as the television series 24, Felicity, and Arrested Development which Howard also narrated.
In July 2012, it was announced that Imagine had put into development Conquest for Showtime, a period drama based on the 16th century conquest of the Aztecs by Spanish Conquistadors. To be directed by Howard, the series was originally planned as a feature film before it was decided that the project was more suited to television.[25]
As part of Imagine Entertainment, he appeared in a 1997 print ad for Milk – Where's your mustache?, in which he wore a cap for Imagine Entertainment and sported a milk mustache. Earlier versions show a younger Ronny Howard on the other side.
In 2009, he appeared in the Jamie Foxx music video "Blame It".
Personal life [ edit ]
Howard married writer Cheryl Alley (b. 1953) on June 7, 1975.[26][27] They have four children: daughters Bryce Dallas Howard (b. 1981) (who has earned her own acting status in films), twins Jocelyn Carlyle and Paige Howard (b. 1985) (like her father and older sister, Bryce, Paige is also an actor), and son Reed Cross (b. 1987).
Filmography [ edit ]
Film [ edit ]
As Producer only [ edit ]
As Actor [ edit ]
Documentary films [ edit ]
Short films [ edit ]
Year Title Credited as Role Notes Director Producer Actor 1969 Old Paint No Yes No Credited as Ronny Howard Deed of Derring-Do No Yes No Cards, Cads, Guns, Gore and Death No Yes No 2011 The Death and Return of Superman No No Yes Max's Son When You Find Me Yes No No
Television [ edit ]
Year Title Credited as Notes Director Producer Writer 1978 Cotton Candy Yes No Yes TV Movie 1980 Skyward Yes executive No 1981 Through the Magic Pyramid Yes executive No 1983 Littleshots Yes executive No 2017 Genius Yes executive No Pilot episode
As Producer only [ edit ]
As Actor [ edit ]
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]Alex Wong/Getty Images
Amid reports that Robert Mueller’s office is getting ready to make the first indictments public in the investigation into Russian collusion with Donald Trump’s campaign, the commander in chief wants everyone to focus on Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in general. The president went on a long, confusing tweetstorm Sunday morning that seemed to have one clear purpose: discredit any part of the Russian collusion investigation.
Nevermind the Russia collusion investigation, Trump says in his tweets, the real scandal that should be investigated involves Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. Trump launched his tweetstorm by saying there is lots of “Republican ANGER & UNITY” over “the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier.” There is “the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more” but “instead they look at phony Trump/Russia.”
Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?),.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017
...the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more. Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia,.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017
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The Russia collusion investigation is nothing but a “Witch Hunt” that Democrats are using “for evil politics.” But now Republicans are “fighting back like never before” but apparently not enough for Trump’s taste, who yelled out into the Twitter sphere: “DO SOMETHING!”
..."collusion," which doesn't exist. The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R's... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017
...are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017
The president ended his Sunday Twitter rant by suggesting that the Russia collusion investigation is somehow related to Republicans “making their big push for historic Tax Cuts & Reform.”
All of this "Russia" talk right when the Republicans are making their big push for historic Tax Cuts & Reform. Is this coincidental? NOT! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017Many facets of the burgeoning business are dominated by females, who have also risen to the top of marijuana reform as activists
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(Hilary Black, Jamie Shaw, Andrea Dobbs, Mary Jean Dunsdon, and Shega Youngson (A'mula) will be panelists at the Georgia Straight's upcoming event, Grassroots: An Expo for the Cannabis Curious on April 7 and 8, 2018. Get your tickets now.)
One of the first lessons a marijuana enthusiast learns is to purge a grow operation of males. Only the females of the cannabis plant—identifiable by pistillate flowers, in contrast to a male’s staminate flowers—produce the cannabinoid chemicals sought for their psychoactive effects. So gardeners pull the male plants out by their roots and discard them as useless.
On the human side, nobody is actively purging Vancouver’s burgeoning marijuana industry of men, but many facets of the business are similarly dominated by women.
“Here in Vancouver, women have been at the forefront of this industry from the very beginning,” said Jamie Shaw, president of the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries (CAMCD).
She recalled that one of North America’s first marijuana storefronts, the nonprofit B.C. Compassion Club Society, was founded in 1997 with feminist ideals at its core.
“In our early days, 70 percent of the Canadian workforce was male, so we made it policy that 70 percent of our staff had to be female,” Shaw told the Georgia Straight. “And we still have that policy.”
Hilary Black, who cofounded the Compassion Club alongside Shaw, recalls that things happened a little more organically.
“I was 20 years old,” Black recounted. “We were all in our mid- to young 20s. It was just a group of women who were willing to engage in civil disobedience and provide services for marginalized and chronically ill people.”
Regardless of how conscious the group was of its feminist bent back then, Black said the tradition is something worth keeping alive today.
“Women were the roots and the pioneers of medical cannabis in this country,” she emphasized. “And I think it is really important that we continue to see them having a leading voice and influence as the movement moves into an industry.”
Hilary Black recalls launching the B.C. Compassion Club Society along with a group of women who were all in their early 20s at the time.
Almost 20 years after the Compassion Club opened its doors on Commercial Drive, there are plenty of Vancouver women following in its footsteps. Shaw pointed to Dori Dempster of the Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary, the Village Dispensary’s Andrea Dobbs, and Jessika Villano of Buddha Barn Medicinal Cannabis. Women are also behind some of the city’s most popular oils and edibles, Shaw continued—Brina Levitt of Green Penguin Delights, for example, and Apothecary Labs’ Gabriele Jerousek. Another is Mary Jean Dunsdon, better known as Watermelon, whose online cooking show has earned her an international following. (Dunsdon also appeared on the cover of the Straight back in 2008.)
It’s not just in the dispensary industry that women are running the show.
UBC’s Rielle Capler has focused on marijuana and patient care as a research area for more than a decade. Before that, she was another woman involved early with the Compassion Club. More recently, Capler has become a big contributor to evolving legal frameworks, having helped draft the standards and certification program for dispensaries that the City of Vancouver adopted last June.
On the research front, Capler called attention to a cannabis study that was published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review on September 14. Bucking the academic trend of papers often being dominated by men’s names at the top, that study was coauthored by eight B.C. researchers, including Capler, plus Kim Crosby, Lynne Belle-Isle, and Susan Holtzman.
“To do the dispensaries, that was civil disobedience,” she said. “And research was an area that needed pioneering as well because it is still a taboo topic.”
Jodie Emery rose to the front of North America's marijuana-reform movement after her husband, Marc, was sentenced to five years in prison. Since his release, she's maintained a lead role in activist circles. Travis Lupick
Of course, the Canadian cannabis movement’s most visible face is also a woman’s.
Jodie Emery has carried the crown since her husband, Marc, began a five-year prison sentence in 2010. He was released in August 2014 but has appeared content to see Jodie remain the lead spokesperson for the push to reform marijuana laws.
In a telephone interview, Jodie Emery speculated that one of the reasons women have risen to the top of marijuana reform is that pot—or at least its more legitimate areas—is a relatively new industry that’s going mainstream after efforts began to force old-boys’ networks and institutional sexism out of the workplace.
“Because the legal or semilegal marijuana industry is new, there are positions available for women that men may have otherwise filled before,” she said. “Women have had an equal opportunity to be involved.”
That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement, she added. For example, Emery agreed that her husband’s name often still comes first in media reports on the reform movement, despite Marc taking a back seat for some time.
“Something that women have always dealt with is being somebody based on their husband being somebody,” she said. “I struggle with it.…But I’ve never encountered anyone belittling a female [marijuana] activist.”
At the Village Dispensary in False Creek, Dobbs similarly told the Straight that the marijuana industry is better to women than most but is still far from perfect.
“You get a lot of people calling you ‘darling’; you get a lot of references to ‘the kind of girl that smokes weed’,” she said. “Or, ‘She’s pretty for a girl that smokes weed.’ So there is a lot of that kind of stuff.”
Dobbs also noted that as Canada inches closer to legalizing recreational marijuana, she has started to see the industry adopt chauvinistic advertising strategies, like those on display in beer commercials.
“You see a lot of young, hypersexualized girls handing out leaflets and flyers feeling kind of excited to be part of it but not recognizing that they are not being taken seriously,” she explained.
Working to counter that sort of sexism is Women Grow, a professional association with groups in more than 40 cities across North America.
The Vancouver chapter was founded by Shaw and Shega A’Mula, CAMCD chief operating officer and a relatively new face in B.C.’s marijuana movement.
In a telephone interview, A’Mula gave credit to the women who blazed a trail for her and said she hopes Women Grow can help do the same for the next generation. She invited anybody interested to the group’s next meeting, a networking event scheduled for this Thursday (October 1).
“It’s a really empowering environment,” A’Mula said. “It’s not all big business, like other cannabis events.…It’s a way to have fun, connect, and have conversations you probably can’t have elsewhere.”VANCOUVER — Vancouver police say a 72-year-old man has killed a pit bull with a folding knife after it attacked his pug near a popular beach.
The incident took place in the early afternoon around the Kitsilano Beach Park.
They say a woman who was walking the pit bull approached the man and the pug, and after a brief introduction the larger dog bit down on the smaller dog’s neck.
Police say the man and woman couldn’t separate the animals, and the man “put down” the pit bull with a folding knife.
According to the Vancouver Sun,
a woman claiming to be the sister of the owner of the pit bull posted on Facebook that her family was in shock after the death.
Amy Leigh wrote that “would [I] let my very small child around this dog while I’m in another room? My answer is yes, absolutely. I did. Many times.”
The posting continued: “And given the chance again, I would let that beautiful, intelligent, beloved dog care for my daughter in a heartbeat. Sadly, I will never have that opportunity. My daughter has lost her best friend. That pit bull that was murdered today? She helped me raise, and care for my almost four-year old daughter.”
Leigh claimed on Facebook that her sister’s dog was on a leash in an on-leash area, but the pug wasn’t, and asked why the owner hadn’t restrained the smaller dog.
The pug was taken to a veterinary hospital for stitches, and police say they are not considering charges.
Marcie Moriarty of the B.C. SPCA says officials will perform a necropsy on the dead dog and will interview the individuals involved.
Moriarty told the Vancouver Sun that “our role now is to interview the parties involved and determine exactly what happened. At this stage our file is still open.”
B.C. SPCA general manager Lorie Chortyk told the Sun that “we hear stories of perhaps farmers shooting dogs that come onto their property, but certainly this is the first I’ve heard of this.”
With files from Post staffCaroline Grueskin reports on the Dakota Access Pipeline protests near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on October 27
Nearly 40 years ago, a young journalist just out of Stanford traveled to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North and South Dakota and started a newspaper. That reporter, Bill Grueskin, would run the Dakota Sun for two years, the first step in a news career that would lead him to The Miami Herald, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News.
That was in 1977. Last year, his daughter, Caroline, landed her own first newspaper job, at The Bismarck Tribune, where she quickly found herself in the middle of covering the protests over a proposed pipeline at Standing Rock, literally retracing many of her father’s early journalistic steps.
Bill Grueskin, 60, now a professor of professional practice at the Columbia Journalism School, and Caroline, 24, (whose mother, Rosalind Resnick, is also a former Miami Herald journalist) sat down recently with CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope to talk about the synchronicity of their careers, how a father responds to his daughter’s Internet trolls, and the pride they both have in each other’s work.
***
CJR Bill, what brought you to North Dakota?
BG I graduated from Stanford with a degree in classics. And I had done a few journalism jobs or internships, one in Palo Alto, one in Italy at an English-language paper, and I’d always found each newsroom had these old guys who would sit around and say, “One day I’m gonna leave this place and go work on a little paper of my own.” And I thought, OK, I’m gonna get that out of my system early.
So I called VISTA–the domestic version of the Peace Corps–and said, “Do you ever need someone to start a newspaper or run one?” And they said, “That never happens.” Then, a couple weeks later I got a call from the head of VISTA in Denver, who said that there’s an Indian reservation that wants somebody to start a newspaper. He said “Standing Rock.” I’d never heard of it and it took me about 15 minutes to find a map that had it. A couple of months later I got in my Jeep and drove to Standing Rock.
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CJR And you started the newspaper there from scratch?
BG There was nothing there. My sponsoring organization was a community college, and the president of the college, a guy named Jim Shanley, had this vision for how it would be good for the college and good for the community if there was a paper that covered Indian affairs.
Standing Rock in those days had 10,000 people. It was half Anglo and half Native American. And there was a white-run newspaper in a nearby town but they never did stories about the tribe or tribal issues.
CJR And the paper was called the Sun?
BG Yeah, the Dakota Sun. It was eight to 12 tabloid pages and came out every Thursday afternoon. At the beginning, we raised money by selling hot dogs at a pow wow at the end of August. I drove up to Bismarck and bought 1,200 hot dogs, thinking we’d sell them for a dollar each. It was a three-day pow wow and by the second day, we had sold about 80 hot dogs. So, I was looking at about 1,100 hot dogs in my freezer. What I didn’t realize is by the third day, most people are starting to run out of money, and we sold the other 1,100 hot dogs at cut rate. We ended up making $800 or $900 and that was enough to get us started.
Bill Grueskin trying out the Dakota Sun‘s new typesetter in 1978, made possible after the Sun won the official-newspaper election in Sioux County, North Dakota.
CJR What did you cover?
BG Pretty much everything a small weekly newspaper would cover. We would occasionally take an issue broadly framed around Indian affairs and localize it. So, at the time, there was a lot of negotiation over a settlement over the Fort L |
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Given that links found in sitemaps are merely recommendations, whereas links found on your own website proper are considered canonical... it seems the only logical thing to do is avoid having a sitemap and make damn sure that Google and any other search engine can properly spider your site using the plain old standard web pages everyone else sees.
By the time you have done that, and are getting spidered nice and thoroughly so Google can see that your own site links to these pages, and would be willing to crawl the links -- uh, why do we need a sitemap, again? The sitemap can be actively harmful, because it distracts you from ensuring that search engine spiders are able to successfully crawl your whole site. "Oh, it doesn't matter if the crawler can see it, we'll just slap those links in the sitemap!" Reality is quite the opposite in our experience.
That seems more than a little ironic considering sitemaps were intended for sites that have a very deep collection of links or complex UI that may be hard to spider. In our experience, the sitemap does not help, because if Google can't find the link on your site proper, it won't index it from the sitemap anyway. We've seen this proven time and time again with Stack Overflow questions.
Am I wrong? Do sitemaps make sense, and we're somehow just using them incorrectly?Damon Scheleur, Huffington Post Tony Clark is the first former player, and first African American, to serve as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association.
Tony Clark was a 20-year-old minor leaguer when he walked into the Negro Leagues exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. He made the drive from nearby Niagara Falls, where he had an off day from practice in the Single-A New York-Penn League. For hours, he soaked up the history of his sport -- and of men who, like him, were black and, unlike him, would never have the opportunity to play Major League Baseball.
Three years later, the Detroit Tigers summoned Clark to the big leagues for the first time. He made his debut on Sept. 3, 1995 -- a tumultuous time for baseball. Just 13 months prior, baseball players had launched a high-stakes strike that resulted in the cancellation of the World Series. The league Clark entered was still grappling with the reputational damage done by the 232-day dispute, which at the time was the longest in American professional sports history.
While the strike rocked the game, it ended with a victory for the players, who staved off owners’ demand of a cap on salaries. So while Clark and his teammates heard boos from resentful fans each time they took the field, they were also united in their resolve to protect hard-won labor victories.
The lessons of that fight rubbed off on the young rookie, and two decades later, Clark, now 43, has been handed the task of protecting those gains. Seven years after his playing career ended, Clark is the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. He is the first former player to hold that role in the union’s modern history, and the first African-American to ever lead baseball's labor arm. Ask him how he got to the corner office that overlooks Madison Avenue in midtown Manhattan, and he points to that afternoon in the museum and those first days in a post-strike MLB clubhouse.
“Our game has been around for a long time,” Clark says. “I learned very early why I had the opportunity I did, and wrapped in there was the responsibility I had to leave the game better than it was left to me.”
Clark took over the union at a crucial, albeit far less turbulent, time in baseball’s history. The sport has not had a work stoppage since the strike ended in 1995, and there are now players on Major League rosters that were still newborns when spring training resumed that year. This period of labor peace will be tested again this season, as Clark, his union and Major League Baseball return to the negotiating table ahead of the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement on Dec. 1.
Clark will be one of the central figures in that drama -- or lack thereof, if everything goes to plan.
The 6-foot-7 former first baseman who is now, undoubtedly, one of baseball’s most powerful figures, is charged with forging the deal that will govern players and the game for at least the next half-decade. It is an opportunity for Clark to reshape the future of the sport in his own image.
Rick Stewart via Getty Images Clark played seven seasons for the Detroit Tigers, and became the team's representative to the players association in 1999.
Clark retired in 2009 as a.262 career hitter who finished with 251 home runs in 15 seasons. He played for six teams and was named an All Star in 2001. His cleats hung up, he envisioned a life in which fatherhood and the golf course were now his biggest sources of stress. Then, Michael Weiner called.
Weiner, who had become the MLBPA’s executive director earlier in 2009, was preparing the union for its next round of negotiations in 2011 and wanted Clark, who had served as a union representative for most of his playing career, by his side.
At the time, Clark was working as an analyst on MLB TV and various radio programs. He had a few coaching offers. He worried that the union would require the type of long hours and frequent travel he’d just left behind. He told Weiner he’d consider it, and mulled the offer for months.
Clark became a union representative early in his career because he “wanted a voice in the rules that were going to govern my career,” he says. Over time, he realized that the job came with a responsibility to the history of the union and the game, and an opportunity to shape its future for players that would come after him. Clark, who repeatedly returns to words like “responsibility,” “opportunity,” and “fraternity” when describing his approach to union matters, couldn’t resist the chance to have a key role in its future.
“The truth was that, for me, in order to make a difference with the active guys, the inactive guys and the guys who were coming next, this was the opportunity to do that,” Clark says. “To make a difference was the endgame for me.”
After four months, he called Weiner and accepted the position.
As the director of player services, Clark served as the union’s chief liaison to its members and regularly interacted with players to keep up with their concerns. That made him an integral part of Weiner’s negotiating team, and by 2013, he was promoted to deputy executive director.
Weiner's death in November 2013 -- he'd been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor a year earlier -- left the union in need of an elected leader to carry them through the end of the bargaining agreement, and begin negotiations on a new one. A month later, the players turned to Clark, overwhelmingly electing him as Weiner’s successor.
ASSOCIATED PRESS Clark worked alongside Michael Weiner (second from left) to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement in 2011.
There is no stronger union in American sports than the MLBPA, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary during the 2016 season. There have been union efforts in baseball almost since the sport's beginning, but the MLBPA as it exists now was born in 1966. That year, players made Marvin Miller, a Brooklyn-born economist and a former negotiator for the United Steelworkers, their first executive director, a move that immediately began to reshape the sport.
Miller, who preached from the beginning that the union’s job was to provide an “adversary” to owners, negotiated the league’s first collective bargaining agreement in 1968, winning higher minimum salaries and the establishment of health and pension programs that even today are stronger than those in other sports. He led the first players’ strike in baseball history in 1972, then helped players win free agency three years later.
After the short-lived tenure of former federal labor mediator Ken Moffett, fiery labor lawyer Donald Fehr took over in 1983 and helped players successfully defeat owners in federal court in three separate collusion cases before the 1994 strike. Weiner was a labor lawyer who served as the union’s general counsel under Fehr before assuming the executive director’s role. Though Weiner's tenure never featured a work stoppage, he went to battle with MLB over drug-related suspensions and constantly reminded players that “owners’ desires have not changed. They want to pay players as little as possible and control their services as long as possible.”
Clark's pedigree differs from his predecessors', but he doesn't believe that affects his approach to the union or to its upcoming negotiations.
“My perspective is different, my background is different, my experiences are different,” Clark says. “The commitment is the same.”
As a player representative, a position he first held with the Tigers in 1999, Clark was on the front lines of negotiations in 2002, when players and owners came within hours of another work stoppage before striking a deal. Clark was an association representative, the highest union position active players can occupy, during the 2006 negotiations, and he helped Weiner negotiate the 2011 bargaining agreement.
That has given Clark a wealth of experience at the bargaining table, and his time as both a player and a union employee also helped him forge relationships with those who will sit on the other side of that table this year. Clark and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, for instance, have known each other for more than 13 years.
"We have a long and positive relationship dating to when he was a player rep," says Manfred, who lauded Clark's "commitment" to both the game and the issues that affect his players.
"I've always regarded him as a positive force at the table," he says. "The MLBPA has always been a player-driven organization no matter who the chief spokesperson was. It's a real tribute to Tony that players had this level of confidence in him."
Those who have worked next to Clark describe him similarly.
“Tony was always that guy [to say], ‘We want what's fair.' He didn't believe in, ‘We're gonna give you this if we get this,’” says Ray King, a retired Major League relief pitcher who served as an association representative alongside Clark in 2006.
Clark, King says, would remind players of former St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood’s fight for free agency, the battles the union waged to secure better salaries and benefits for players, and their duty to the players that would follow them. His mentality was, “‘we don’t want to take any regressions back... We want to push forward,’” King says. “He wanted the best thing for players coming up tomorrow, and also for the players that played yesterday.”
While his most immediate job may be to negotiate a new labor deal, Clark also wants to help reshape baseball’s racial landscape.
As the head of the union, Clark is now one of the most powerful African-Americans in baseball at a time when concern about black participation in the sport has never been higher.
African-American players held more than 15 percent of Major League roster spots when Clark made his debut in 1995. Baseball today is more diverse than it ever has been, thanks in part to the continued rise of Latino players. But fewer and fewer African-Americans are reaching its top levels -- they made up just 8.3 percent of roster spots on opening day 2015. There are only two African-American managers in MLB. Arizona’s Dave Stewart is the league’s only black general manager.
While his most immediate job may be to negotiate a new labor deal, Clark also wants to help reshape baseball’s racial landscape.
“I'm not naive to the fact that as a minority, as an African-American, as a black man, there are responsibilities that I have,” he says. “I understand the responsibility I have in representing our fraternity. And I also understand and appreciate the responsibility I have to a much larger cause because of all those who have laid the groundwork both as a player and in our communities for me to have the opportunity that I have.”
Clark has already pursued that priority since assuming his current office, and has worked alongside the very people with whom he'll negotiate a new labor deal to do so. Last July, MLB and the MLBPA announced the creation of a $30 million joint initiative focused on bolstering youth baseball programs across the U.S. and Canada. One of its marquee components was a two-week development program for hundreds of minority players.
“There are a number of things that, if both sides commit to them, have an opportunity to effect positive change that will help toward moving the industry as a whole forward," Clark says. "Not just professionally. Top to bottom.”
Clark says he wants to fuse together “moving pieces” of baseball’s diversity efforts -- existing marketing, development and education programs -- and he's excited about the joint youth initiative's potential to do that. He's heartened by programs he's visited, like a league in Baltimore that is home to hundreds of young black players, but he wants to find a way to link them to each other.
“You lay that foundation, you build on top of that foundation, you create a network of programming... and before you know it you've got a coordinated effort and commitment... to build something special,” Clark says.
“That's something that hasn't happened yet,” he continues. “But I like to think we're pointing in that direction.”
Matt King via Getty Images Clark and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred (left) have a "long and positive relationship," Manfred says, which could help labor negotiations over the 2016 season.
The first order of business, though, remains negotiating a new bargaining agreement.
Baseball is two decades removed from its days of constant labor strife, and an era of economic prosperity that can trace its roots to the earliest days of Clark’s Major League career has inspired widespread confidence that this round of negotiations will go smoothly. Baseball’s revenues neared $9.5 billion last season. Salaries have grown, and the league’s 30 teams handed out more than $2 billion in free agent contracts this winter.
There is no apparent issue threatening negotiations from the start the way a salary cap, drug testing or contraction have in the past, and Clark dismissed one issue that has caused concern in the baseball media: that player salaries aren’t growing fast enough. Those projections, some of which have shown players’ share of baseball revenues dropping below 40 percent, are based on incomplete data, Clark says.
“The rights that currently exist in the collective bargaining agreement afford all those involved the opportunity to maximize your earning potential, on both sides of the equation," he says. "That system has worked well.”
But Clark knows from his own experience that small, intricate issues can pose their own problems. Recently, he has raised concerns that numerous notable players still hadn’t signed new contracts before spring training opened last week. Potential changes to the amateur draft, how teams acquire international players, revenue sharing and even the length of the schedule could all crop up at the bargaining table too.
Clark will spend most of March visiting spring training sites in Florida and Arizona, where he’ll have a final chance to meet with players from all 30 teams before the regular season begins in April. The hope, of course, is to build the foundation for another clean round of negotiations. A quarter-century of labor peace would be quite a milestone, Clark concedes. And yet, the union leader who made his Major League debut just a year after baseball players walked off the field remains guided by one of Weiner’s favorite sayings.This photo from May 2015 shows a Chinese airstrip under construction at Fiery Cross Reef, part of the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The artificial island now includes a military-capable airstrip, possible gun emplacements, radar towers, helipads and communications equipment, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.
The destroyer USS William P. Lawrence sailed near a militarized reef claimed by China on Tuesday, the latest move by Washington to counter what it views as Beijing’s growing aggressiveness in the South China Sea.
China’s Defense Ministry said two fighter jets were scrambled and three warships shadowed the U.S. destroyer, according to the Reuters news agency, as it sailed inside 12 nautical miles of Fiery Cross Reef. The Spratly Islands reef is claimed by several nations.
The ship’s actions “challenge excessive maritime claims of some claimants in the South China Sea,” Defense Department spokesman Cmdr. Bill Urban said.
“These excessive maritime claims are inconsistent with international law as reflected in the Law of the Sea convention in that they purport to restrict the navigation rights that the United States and all states are entitled to exercise,” Urban said in an emailed statement.
The ship, which belongs to the John C. Stennis carrier strike group, made one pass near the island as “innocent passage,” Urban added.
Innocent passage is a concept that allows ships to pass through any waters, including territorial waters, in accordance to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which China has ratified and the Navy follows in practice.
It precludes “any exercise or practice with weapons of any kind,” as well as intelligence gathering, according to international law.
Some nations argue that innocent passage may not apply to military vessels without prior notice of their movement, which the U.S. rejects.
China often warns away foreign ships and aircraft when they approach parts of the South China Sea it considers sovereign — including vast swathes that the U.S. considers to be international waters and airspace.
Tuesday’s transit follows an overflight by U.S. A-10 aircraft in April near Scarborough Shoal, a disputed territory that China wrested from the Philippines in 2012. Other ships have undertaken operations, similar to the Lawrence’s, near the Spratly Islands in recent months.
China claims about 90 percent of the South China Sea based on what it deems historical rights.
The Philippines has challenged the “nine-dash line,” a border drawn around much of the sea on official Chinese maps, in the international Permanent Court of Arbitration.
A decision on the line’s legality, along with other issues, is expected in the next month or so, though China has stated it will not comply with the ruling.
Fiery Cross Reef’s status under international law remains under dispute. If the natural reef is entirely submerged, it would be considered an artificial island and wouldn’t be included within territorial waters under international law, unless it is close enough to a natural land feature.
China has topped Fiery Cross with 677 acres of landfill since 2014, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, a project of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The artificial island now includes a military-capable airstrip, possible gun emplacements, radar towers, helipads and communications equipment, according to AMTI.
China has been involved in varying degrees of dispute in the South China Sea during recent years with Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia.
In multiple cases, Chinese ships have fired water cannons and rammed fishing boats from other nations while asserting their claims.
The U.S. does not take a position on the sovereignty of the claims but has expressed concerns over China’s militarization of the islands, as well as what it views as Chinese attempts to limit Navy transit through international waters. About $1.2 trillion in U.S. trade passes through the sea annually, according to U.S. government figures.
slavin.erik@stripes.com
Twitter: @eslavin_stripesThird Flatiron Anthologies
February 1, 2019
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
--Arthur C. Clarke
Our Fall/Winter anthology, Terra! Tara! Terror! is out! (!!!)
See Current Issues tab.
Podcast Tab:
Our latest: Liam Hogan's "The Dance of a Thousand Cuts" ( or read it free!)
Also check out:
Wulf Moon's historical fantasy, "War Dog." Read it free here.
We are currently closed for submissions. See below for upcoming submission periods.
Third Flatiron Publishing is based in Boulder, Colorado, and Ayr, Scotland. We are looking for submissions to our (approximately) quarterly themed anthologies. Our focus is on science fiction and fantasy and anthropological fiction. We want tightly plotted tales in out-of-the-ordinary scenarios. Light horror is acceptable, provided it fits the theme.
Please send us short stories that revolve around age-old questions and have something illuminating to tell us as human beings. Fantastical situations and creatures, exciting dialog, irony, mild horror, and wry humor are all welcome. Stories should be between 1,500 and 3,000 words. Inquire if longer.
Role models for the type of fiction we want include Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur C. Clarke, Dan Simmons, Connie Willis, Vernor Vinge, and Ken Kesey. We want to showcase some of the best new shorts available today.
For each anthology, we will also accept a few very short humor pieces on the order of the "Shouts and Murmurs" feature in The New Yorker Magazine (600 words or so). These can be written from a first-person perspective or can be mini-essays that tell people what they ought to do, how to do something better, or explain why something is like it is, humorously. An SF/Fantasy bent is preferred.
See the "Submissions" tab for preferred formats, etc.
Care to try a sampler of our most popular stories? Third Flatiron Best of 2017 is available in ebook from Amazon.
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Our publishing schedule for 2018-19 is below. Books will be available in ebook form as well as trade paperback. See the "Current Issues" tab for our latest offerings.
Themes and Schedules
Continuing with Third Flatiron's quarterly themed anthologies, we will be soliciting SF/Fantasy/Horror short stories with the following themes. Themes are designed to be open-ended, allowing authors considerable leeway. We appreciate short, imaginative tales, preferring those that work with the theme in some way. Short stories should be 3,000 words or less. Flash humor pieces (<=1,000 words) can be on any theme. We aim to be inclusive and encourage submissions from all creators. Please submit during the reading periods.
Spring-Summer 2019 - This theme now closed for submissions
Hidden Histories - A secret history (or shadow history) is a revisionist interpretation of either fictional or real history which is claimed to have been deliberately suppressed, forgotten, or ignored by established scholars. Your tale can be based in the real world, past, present, or future, as long as it has a speculative fiction element. We're not exactly looking for alternate history, but there can be a fork in the road timewise. We'd especially welcome stories about events or people who have been erased from history (Image: Still from Another Earth, uploaded by user FilmPresence, commons.wikimedia.org)
Reading period: January 1-31, 2019
Writer deadline: January 31, 2019
Publication date: April 15, 2019
Fall-Winter 2019
Longevity - Legends tell of people who lived a long time, like Methuselah. Some are just lucky (Lazarus Long), some have it thrust upon them (Lestat), some just naturally come by it (cats and bristlecone pines), and some rightfully earn their immortality (Shakespeare). Is life extension possible via diets or genetic manipulation, and will there be side effects? Give us your speculative take (SF/F/H) on longevity and how it is achieved.
Reading period: July 10 - August 10, 2019
Writer deadline: August 10, 2019
Publication date: October 15, 2019
Now Available
Spring 2018
"Monstrosities" - Humor (SF/Fantasy/Horror). Things that are just too big or that don't scale. Whether it's the new shopping mall down the street, kaiju attacking Tokyo, flawed utopian ideas, the supposed ultimate weapon, or somebody who's way too big for his britches, we all have had to deal with humongous blunders. Get it off your chest--as 19 authors share with us their favorite monstrosities. Plus a special reprint by Edward Bryant. (Photo by Juanbobadilla - Own work, commons.wikimedia.org). Now available on Amazon.
Summer 2018
"Galileo's Theme Park" - Space opera, SF, physics. The great Italian scientist is famous for standing up for science in the face of the Inquisition, doing his best work while under house arrest. He also brought us our first views of Jupiter's moons by combining a convex lens with a concave one to invent a high quality telescope. We invite you to join us on a journey to the lands beyond Earth revealed to us by Galileo and 20 speculative fiction authors. Suggested reading: "The Old Astronomer" by Sarah Williams (Art: Galileo during IUS burn. NASA. http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/images/artwork.html). Now available on Amazon.
Fall 2018 - Double issue!
"Terra! Tara! Terror!" - SF, Fantasy, Horror. Whether the setting is a cabin in the woods (Terra), Fae (Tara), or spaceship Nostromo (Terror), we'll take you there with 26 fresh new SFF/H stories. For a bit of mood whiplash, we've included a mixture of dark and bright stories. Examples: Obsession with odd artifacts, alternate histories, paranormal romance. Plus a special reprint by Robert Silverberg. (Image: The initial letter of the fairy tale "Guleesh" created by John D. Batten for Joseph Jacob's collection, Celtic Fairy Tales. 1892. commons.wikimedia.org). Now available on Amazon.
~~~~~
If you’re interested in having your work read and getting paid a little something for it, then submit your story today.
Third Flatiron Publishing are a specialist digital publisher and can help you distribute your work to a truly global audience. Subscriptions are available via Patreon.It wasn't the picture perfect ending either fighter imagined, but it's real: Fedor Emelianko loses to Antonio Silva by doctor stoppage. What happened in June against Fabricio Werdum - the unthinkable - now happened twice in a row, both defeats coming at the hands of Brazilians. Call it the revenge of Nogueira.
In the first round, both fighters stood on the feet and generally evenly traded, perhaps with Fedor getting the better of the exchanges on the judges score cards. One can still make a case for Antonio Silva to have won that round, especially given the late takedown he secured just before the bell sounded.
The second round, however, belonged entirely to the American Top Team prospect. He took Fedor down immediately, controlled Fedor's position on the bottom, passed to superior position on top and unloaded a barrage of hard strikes that nearly stopped the action. He was able to keep Fedor controlled either in back mount or mount and came close to securing a head and arm triangle. Fedor was able to escape late and even attempted a submission of his own towards the end of the second, but the damage had been done. Before the third round started, Fedor could not see out of his left eye and the doctor stopped the fight.
The doctor stops this contest at the end of round two. Antonio Silva is the winner by way of TKO. He will face the winner of Fabricio Werdum vs. Alistair Overeem.
There will be debate about the stoppage, but the notion that Fedor can still compete at the highest level in professional heavyweight MMA has never been more dubious.MANILA, Philippines — An Indian company has offered the lowest bid for the purchase of two frigates for the Philippine Navy, one of the biggest projects in the military's modernization program.
Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd., a state-run firm, has been declared the lowest bidder for the multi-billion peso frigate acquisition project, Defense Undersecretary Fernando Manalo told The STAR in a recent interview.
Garden Reach offered to supply the ships for P15.047 billion, about P950 million lower than the P16 billion approved budget for the project.
A total of four firms joined the bidding for the project last month. Other companies that submitted offers were Hyundai Heavy Industries, Inc. and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. Ltd., both from South Korea; and Spanish firm Navantia S.A.
Only Garden Reach and Hyundai were declared as qualified bidders as the two other bidders had failed to meet some documentary requirements.
Hyundai submitted a bid worth P15.744 billion, higher by close to P700 million than the offer of Garden Reach.
Garden Reach will have to meet the post-qualification requirements before it can be declared the winning bidder. The post-qualification phase allows the government to check if the offer of the lowest bidder is compliant with the technical specifications of the project. The phase involves visits and inspections to the suppliers' office and facilities.
"The technical working group is preparing the post-qualification plan," Manalo said.
In its website, Garden Reach described itself as "the premier warship building company in India" that is under the administrative control of the Ministry of Defense.
The company said it has built 95 warships like state-of-the-art frigates and corvettes and fast patrol boats since 1960. It also claimed to have built and supplied close to 700 vessels to carry men and materials for surveillance of coast line by police forces.
The frigate acquisition project is one of the military upgrades aimed at boosting the Philippines's territorial defense and disaster response capabilities.
The ships can enhance the Philippines's security presence in the disputed West Philippine Sea, part of the South China Sea, and can participate in relief efforts in calamity-struck areas.
The two frigates are also expected to complement the BRP Gregorio del Pilar and BRP Ramon Alcaraz, vessels acquired by the Philippine Navy from the United States Coast Guard.
The Defense department is also planning to spend about P2 billion for the ammunition of the two ships.New York comedian Randy Credico has become the unlikely focus of the US government’s Russia investigation. He believes the US is trying to use him as a pawn to undermine WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been dubbed a “demon” by the CIA director.
Credico is a leftist comedian, radio host, and civil rights activist who calls New York City home. The letter he received this month didn’t have anything to do with comedy, radio, or civil rights, however.
Signed by Congressman Michael Conaway (R-Texas), who leads the Russia investigation in the House Intelligence Committee, and the ranking member, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-California), the letter requested that Credico “participate in a voluntary, transcribed interview at the Committee’s offices” during the first half of December, Alternet reports.
Credico declined the voluntary interview, telling the House Committee through his lawyer that he would not be participating. That’s when he realized the interview apparently wasn’t so voluntary after all. His attorney told him that the Committee planned to issue a subpoena.
The letter did not indicate why Credico was being summoned. It stated only that his interview could cover topics including “Russian cyber activities against the 2016 US election, potential links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns, the US government’s response to these Russian active measures, and related leaks of classified information.”
Witch hunt of Assange’s associates?
Credico believes the interview has to do with his dealings with Julian Assange, who is no friend of the US government. “This is about chilling WikiLeaks and that starts with intimidating anyone who has met with Julian [Assange],” he said.
The WikiLeaks founder and his associates were dubbed“demons” by CIA Director Mike Pompeo in April. Pompeo also accused WikiLeaks of siding with world dictators and endangering the “free world” with the help of states including Russia.
The Trump administration has expanded the federal jury seeking Assange’s arrest over his role in the leak of a huge trove of US diplomatic cables in 2010. He faces charges of espionage, conspiracy, theft of government property, and computer fraud in the US.
Read more
Credico said he and Assange previously held “three meetings that were two to three hours each” at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been holed up since June 2012 in an effort to avoid being extradited to the US. The meetings took place on September 6, November 13, and November 16 of this year, and fueled a series of online rumors accusing Credico of serving as a courier between Assange and former Trump adviser Roger Stone.
However, Credico said the purpose of his November trip to London was to attend the hearing of an Italian correspondent by the name of Stefania Maurizi, who had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request demanding the right of the press to access documents regarding Assange’s case.
“I was just there to support [Assange] as a wing man,” Credico told Alternet’s Max Blumenthal. “I don’t agree with him on everything — it’s the fact that he’s a journalist and a publisher and has not put anything out that’s false. I don’t know anything about technology and he didn’t give me any secrets.”
Credico’s advocacy for national security whistleblowers who exposed secret government torture, assassination, and mass surveillance programs in the years following 9/11 led to him hosting Assange on his former radio show ‘Live on the Fly,’ which aired on the Pacifica affiliate WBAI in August 2015. Several subsequent interviews also took place, along with a series titled ‘Assange: Countdown to Freedom’ which featured high-profile whistleblowers advocating for Assange’s release.
Read more
“I had to build an audience at a moribund station and I got 65 percent of the traffic,” Credico said. “I had a popular international show because it was tweeted out by WikiLeaks and Anonymous Scandinavia and I got a huge international following.”
The rumors that Credico had acted as some kind of messenger between Stone and Assange are potentially a major part of why the comedian is being sought by the committee. In September, Stone testified before the committee about his contacts with WikiLeaks and a tweet that seemed to suggest he had prior knowledge of the Podesta email leak, which was ultimately published by WikiLeaks. He denied colluding with the Russian government and said that all of his contacts with Assange had been conducted through an “intermediary.”
Stone, like Assange, was also a guest on Credico’s radio show. The two had also cooperated on sporadic political initiatives through the years.
Still, Credico insists that “quieting” Assange is the committee’s main focus. “Roger Stone is just a whipping post for the committee but the one they’re after is Assange because they want to quiet him,” he said.
“They’re looking for a way to do in Assange,” the comedian added. “And I’m the only American in the press that has visited him outside of a reporter from the New Yorker, and he’s not going to talk to anyone else.”
Read more
Meanwhile, Credico said that although he publicly made his disdain for Hillary Clinton clear, he wouldn’t have helped Trump come to power. “I hate Trump,” he said, slamming the US president’s attempted "ethnic cleansing" of Haitians and Latin Americans and calling Attorney General Jeff Sessions “the worst nightmare I’ve ever seen.”
Asked whether he will comply with the committee’s request, Credico told New York 1’s ‘Road to City Hall’ program that he is “willing to go to jail” to protect journalists’ rights.
“I’m a journalist with a radio show and there’s nothing [the committee] can elicit out of me because I’m covered by the First Amendment. And everything I’ve talked to Assange about has been on the show, and everything else is in my fu**ing notes. Would any journalist give them their notes?” he said to Alternet.
As Credico awaits his interview, which is just days away, he feels confident that the committee won’t be able to break him. “Congress is no problem. I’ve worked much tougher rooms than that,” he said.
The US government is continuing its investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, despite no evidence emerging that Moscow interfered in any way. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any interference or collusion with the Trump campaign, with Russian President Vladimir Putin stating in May that the anti-Russia spin was concocted by those who simply can’t come to terms with the fact that Clinton lost the election fair and square. US President Trump has also referred to the investigation as a “witch hunt” while also denying any collusion between his camp and Moscow.Clear your end-of-summer calendar for two nights of music, beer, and water conservancy, because Great Lakes Brewing Co. is proud to announce the 17th annual Great Lakes Burning River Fest August 17 and 18 at the historic Coast Guard Station on Whiskey Island.
Illuminated by the downtown skyline, the Great Lakes Burning River Fest returns to Cleveland’s waterfront with three stages of music, scenic views, and refreshing brews. Piano-thumping rockers Low Cut Connie tops the bill Saturday with their explosive live act, while The Speedbumps, an award-winning American band with a warm, authentic indie-rock sound, headline Friday night. 14 genre-spanning acts ready to light up the Lake Erie shoreline will join them on two stages, while DJ Red-I and Candi Fresca curate the Burning River Fest Silent Disco inside the PNC Boathouse.
A diverse mix of food vendors will dish out the goods, and since beer and music go hand in hand, Great Lakes Brewing Co. will pour fresh, award-winning brews Burning River Pale Ale, Oktoberfest, Commodore Perry IPA, Turntable Pils, and Rally Drum Red Ale all weekend long.Autism is something that happens because of vaccinations.
Autistic people are like Rain Man.
Autism is overdiagnosed.
Autism only happens to other people's kids.
Your son can't be autistic. He's so friendly.
* * *
I remember when I first saw those multicolored puzzle piece car magnets. I knew they stood for autism spectrum disorder awareness. Which bugged me. Everything was autism. Have a weird kid? Diagnose him with autism. Don't have a name for what is going on with your child? Throw her under the umbrella of autism. Doesn't everyone know someone who is a little weird? Won't look you in the eye? Has odd social skills? Why is it all autism all of a sudden, is what I used to think.
But the more I saw those puzzle piece magnets, the more I thought about my own child and what a puzzle he was. Such a unique child. |
or career EV SV% early in his career.”
100 games isn’t enough, also, to determine whether Schneider will continue to grow at this rate. You need about 200 starts to really make the call, but the Canucks aren’t working with that kind of time, so there’s a bit of a gamble in going with Schneider.
Switching gears now, there’s only one goaltender who is on a similar career trajectory as Schneider as far as games played and shots faced. That would be Toronto’s James Reimer, a goaltender who is better than his surface numbers indicate because he’s played behind a god-awful penalty kill for his first two league seasons. His EV SV% has been near the top of the league since he showed up in the winter of 2011.
Look at Schneider’s 10-Game line in comparison to Reimer’s:
There isn’t too much different. Adjust that for Schneider’s great PK SV% and Reimer’s poor PK SV% and the lines act more in concert, except for a brief spell between Games 55-70 when Schneider was putting up league-high PK SV% numbers and Reimer was playing with a concussion.
There’s also the reality that Reimer isn’t on a hot streak like Schneider that’s bringing up his overall number. I do find it quite funny that there’s so much talk of Luongo’s natural destination being Toronto when we really know, from the data, about as much as Schneider as we do Reimer.
Anyway, here’s a look at some other goaltenders who finished a season before Age 26, with a similar number games played and shots against as Schneider, and how they performed in the future. Save % 1 is the early segment of their careers, and Save % 2 is everything since:
Save % 1 Shots Faced Save % 2 Shots Faced Josh Harding 0.915 2050 0.916 1042 Patrick Lalime 0.911 2474 0.901 7730 Mike Smith 0.910 2641 0.915 4568 Antero Niittymaki 0.896 2910 0.907 3689 Sebastien Caron 0.892 2684 0.877 57
Hockey Reference unfortunately can’t break things out by mid-season. Sebastien Caron hardly counts since he was below replacement-level coming in and has faced 57 shots since. Josh Harding is the same. Antero Niittymaki and Mike Smith regressed upwards while Patrick Lalime trended downwards.
Lalime’s even strength numbers are actually similar to both Reimer’s and Schneider’s when you adjust for league average after his first two seasons as a starter, and he was the only one in this group who was a starter, so…
Point is, goaltending is voodoo and tough to predict. Schneider appears to continually improve. Bold prediction: Probably, he’ll eventually fall back to earth and it will be during that sequence that Alain Vigneault loses his job.These cooperation spirals are presented with sweeping scope. Spirals are offered not only for hot-buttons like the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula, and Cross-Straits relations, but also climate change and environmental concerns; Sino-American economic relations; economic cooperation, competition, and investment in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East; and the two countries’ trilateral relationship with both India and Japan. Each of these spirals is preceded by a survey of the public debate Americans and Chinese have had about these issues in prominent research articles, policy proposals, and op-eds. Goldstein’s surveys of the Chinese language debates are probably the most important (and certainly the most interesting) sections of the entire book, providing American readers with a rare glimpse of discussions to which they would not otherwise be privy.[15] His policy proposals follow naturally from the literature reviews. Goldstein is aware that there is a temptation to nitpick at the various proposals (one hundred in total) listed in the book. He welcomes this, encouraging issue and area experts to “propose superior cooperation spirals, with greater specificity, realism, and thus promise to improve the relationship.”[16] This is a wise approach. In international affairs, conditions change quickly enough that rigid adherence to any set of proposals would leave the lot of them out of date. The true meat in Goldstein’s book is in the broad conceptual approach he outlines; its myriad applications simply illustrate how that approach might be turned from concept into policy.
It is thus in terms of broad concepts Meeting China Halfway must be judged—and it is here Meeting China Halfway is most deserving censure. Goldstein’s approach is simply unworkable. Any attempt to apply it in the real world would be met with immediate cries of outrage that the entirety of America’s foreign relations and domestic policies were being sacrificed to the God of Close Sino-American Ties. Just a sampling of these recommendations illustrates the problem. For the sake of various cooperation spirals, Goldstein recommends that the U.S. government formally acknowledge Israel as a nuclear weapons state, stop all drone attacks in Pakistan, invest in high speed rail infrastructure projects across the continental United States, and disband Africa Command. These policies may be of themselves worthy ones, but the hope that they will be widely adopted for the sake of stronger Sino-American relations is fantastic.
The reason for this is fairly simple: subordination of global policy to Sino-American cooperation (or, for that matter, Sino-American rivalry) is the subordination of the entire American bureaucracy to its few China hands. As a China hand, I welcome the status and authority this new conception of world affairs might grant me—but I would not want to be the man tasked with telling the fellows over at AFRICOM they must close up shop for the sake of improved U.S.-China relations! The resistance of the non-Asianists in the U.S. bureaucracy and foreign policy community to a Goldstein-style foreign policy will be too ferocious to bear.
The reaction of U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific would also be terrible to face. Goldstein is curiously dismissive of these allies’ concerns. One can sympathize with the time constraints that shaped his treatment of them—a titanic amount of research was required simply to survey the existing debates inside Washington D.C. and Beijing, and it would be too much to expect Goldstein to provide a thorough survey of the debates being had in Seoul, Manila, Taipei, Tokyo, Singapore, and New Delhi as well; but this unwillingness to consider events as seen by anyone outside of Beijing or Washington leads Goldstein to bizarre places. He outright dismisses Taiwan’s 23 million citizens with the curt (and unsubstantiated) claim that those who seek to put Taiwanese opinion first in discussions of their future “lack an objective view of history, culture, and identity.”[17] Goldstein dismisses other allies’ fears that Beijing’s growing strength might harm their interests by comparing them to children’s “talk of monsters hiding under the bed or in the closet.”[18] Patronizing comments of this sort undermine the spirit of mutual understanding Goldstein claims is central to successful strategy for peace. Meeting China Halfway begins with an earnest appeal to not treat the Chinese with arrogance, paternalism, or undue hypocrisy. This appeal would be far stronger if he avoided these same vices when discussing the lesser powers in the region.[19]
Weighing Fire and Cooperation on Fundamentals
This partly answers the puzzle of how these two analysts could start off so similarly but end up so far apart. Haddick thinks that serious consideration of the perceptions and interests of regional powers are critical to a successful China policy. Goldstein believes they can be dismissed as easily as the monsters hiding in toddler’s closets. Goldstein never discusses what will happen if lesser powers decide they do not wish to play along with the division of Asia into two great spheres of interest. This is Haddick’s nightmare scenario.
But this is not their biggest difference. The essence of Goldstein’s argument is that:
China must make a comprehensive effort to increase the transparency of its national security apparatus, reform some of its long-held claims, and influence certain partners to conform to international norms. In a series of de-escalatory steps, the United States should reciprocate by limiting the scope of its military deployments and military engagement activities.[20]
This is almost exactly the opposite of Haddick’s recommendations for the region.
The fundamental difference between the two analysts is their theory of what makes the Communist Party of China tick. Reading these two books next to each other is a reminder of just how important an analyst’s inner model of Chinese decision making is.[21] Under Goldstein's schema, fear of American power, not contempt for American weakness, is what has led the Chinese down the path they now tread. Haddick's case is built on the opposite view. Not all they have to say, but a great deal of it, follows from these opposing opening assumptions.
It is these assumptions—these unstated models of Chinese decision making—that keep me from endorsing either argument. I have presented a different version of what makes Beijing tick. As I (along with folks like Lee Hisen Loong and Bilahauri Kaukisan) have argued, Xi Jinping’s regime believes that the Western-led liberal order and the demands it makes on those who join it are corrosive to authoritarian control, and will eventually lead to the collapse of the Party.[22] For them the Party comes first. When translated into concrete policy, “putting the Party first” means eliminating Western influence from within and actively reshaping regional rules from without. What China is doing is not an inevitable consequence of great power competition, but the fruits of very specific fears of a specific ruling regime.
If this explanation for China’s behavior is correct, then neither Haddick’s nor Goldstein’s proposals are tenable. Haddick's entire strategy is predicated on the idea that you can build a military machine whose might will raise the costs of conflict so high that the Chinese must eventually back down. But if Zhongnanhai serves the Party before it serves the country then none of that matters. The Communist Party of China’s continued domination of China is justified to the Chinese public on the grounds that hostile Western forces have always sought to contain and cripple China, but under the guardianship of the Party, the Chinese people will never be forced to bow down to foreign powers again. Backing down and accepting Western order threatens their legitimacy. It is an existential threat to their continued rule. The costs of war cannot compete with this. In the worst case war scenario, Party leaders suffer the same fate they would most likely suffer in any existential crisis (violent death); at best, they get lucky and win the war. This is not a recipe for stability.
This model of Chinese decision making also makes Goldstein's cooperation spirals exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to implement. Beijing does not just fear specific American policies—it fears the entire American-led system. The Chinese can bide and endure this order, but they cannot permanently compromise with it. It is hard to compromise with a system whose existence threatens your survival.
There are probably less than a hundred people on this planet who actually know why Beijing does what it does. They are unlikely to share this information with American analysts.
One’s inner model of Chinese decision making thus matters quite a lot. The most disturbing thing about reading these books together, however, is that neither of these analysts, exceedingly intelligent and well respected in their field, pauses to explain where their assumed model of Chinese decision making comes from. These operating assumptions are left unstated and unproven, despite how readily everything else these authors write follow from them.About The Author Jeremy Olson (@jerols) is founder and lead designer at Tapity, a tiny Apple Design Award winning app company. His latest app, Languages, launched to much … More about Jeremy…
Tale Of A Top-10 App, Part 2: Marketing And Launch
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Our anticipation was building. Between defining our language translation app, sketching it out, obsessively designing and iterating, and juggling other projects — all covered in the first part of our case study — we had been working on Languages for close to a year. It was finally go time.
Our anticipation was building. Between defining our language translation app, sketching it out, obsessively designing and iterating, and juggling other projects — all covered in the first part of our case study — we had been working on Languages for close to a year. It was finally go time.
Even the coolest app in the world is doomed to swiftly descend into the abyss of obscurity if no one knows about it. So, part two of our journey is all about marketing. It turns out that you don’t need a huge marketing budget to get into the top 10 in the App Store.
Further Reading on SmashingMag:
Seriously, Marketing?
I never thought of myself as a marketer. To me, “marketing” sounded like a dirty word. But when I was building my first app, Grades, I actively watched the indie developers who were consistently building hit apps, and sure enough, along with factors such as delightful design and amazing execution, a key factor to consistent success was great marketing.
Meet Smashing Book 6 — our brand new book focused on real challenges and real front-end solutions in the real world: from design systems and accessible single-page apps to CSS Custom Properties, CSS Grid, Service Workers, performance, AR/VR and responsive art direction. With Marcy Sutton, Yoav Weiss, Lyza D. Gardner, Laura Elizabeth and many others. Table of Contents →
The cool part is that, as I found out, marketing doesn’t have to be about spam, meaningless buzzwords or sleazy Twitter follower generators, and it certainly doesn’t have to be expensive. If your product is great, marketing can be genuine, fun and free. Ultimately, it becomes a part of everything you do, without your even realizing it.
Marketing Starts From Day 1
We often have the misconception that marketing is what you do once you’ve launched a product. Too many people have come up to me after a talk or after reading one of my articles and said, “We just launched our app and got a few small blogs to write reviews, but those have generated only a few sales. What’s the magic trick that gets an app on The Verge or featured by Apple?”
Sorry, no magic tricks here. Just a lot of hard work, and that takes a long time. The good news is that it’s completely achievable, but you can’t wait until your app is ready to launch to get started.
Do It Yourself
You would think that the ideal situation is to have a boatload of cash and hire a public relations (PR) firm.
Wrong.
You — the designer, the developer, the founder — are the very best person to market the app.
Why?
The press love to hear directly from the folks in the trenches. A lot of PR agencies don’t get the nuances of app marketing. Relationships with journalists is the currency of PR. Even if a PR firm landed you some great articles, they would take those relationships with them, leaving you with no long-term benefits. If you do it yourself, you will be cultivating those relationships, making future launches a lot easier.
There are definitely some exceptions. I know some marketers who really understand the space and who deliver results. But in general, doing it yourself is better, especially if you are in this game for the long haul.
Make Friends
Later in this post, we’ll talk about marketing tactics — crafting our pitch, drawing lists of blogs and so forth — but those tactics don’t mean a whole lot unless you understand something very fundamental about grassroots marketing: It’s all about the people.
The problem is that we view big websites like The Verge as monolithic black boxes into which we insert a pitch and hope for the best. But who runs The Verge? Real people with flesh and bones. Who runs the App Store? People. How do you get featured? By winning the hearts of those people.
These days, getting my apps featured isn’t that difficult. Why? Because over the past four years, I have made friends with people at almost every major venue that features apps, including Apple. Now, whenever I release a product, I can direct message a few people on Twitter and send a few emails and, assuming my product is at the caliber that my friends have come to expect from me, be fairly confident that launch day will go pretty well. That’s the power of people-focused marketing.
Remember that just a few years ago, I was an obscure college freshman, starting at ground zero. No apps. No friends. Not even any connections. So, if I can do it, anyone can.
How did I do it?
List influential people.. It started by making a list of influential folks in the iOS industry: app designers and developers (David Barnard, Phill Ryu, etc.), technology journalists who cover apps, folks at Apple. Limiting this list to tech journalists would have been a huge mistake. In the app world, the top players know each other, so a connection with one influential app developer could very well lead to a connection with Apple or the press — and the iOS community is chockfull of great people who love to share their experiences. I’ve compiled Twitter lists for top app makers, app journalists, and Apple employees.
. It started by making a list of influential folks in the iOS industry: app designers and developers (David Barnard, Phill Ryu, etc.), technology journalists who cover apps, folks at Apple. Limiting this list to tech journalists would have been a huge mistake. In the app world, the top players know each other, so a connection with one influential app developer could very well lead to a connection with Apple or the press — and the iOS community is chockfull of great people who love to share their experiences. I’ve compiled Twitter lists for top, app journalists, and Apple employees. Actively monitor.. I actively watched what these people were doing, looking for opportunities to connect in tasteful ways. Suppose Phill Ryu had a question on Twitter that I could answer, or Ellis Hamburger wrote an article on The Verge that I really enjoyed — I took those opportunities to engage with folks on their turf. I never spammed them with my apps or my blog — once someone likes you, they’ll naturally check out your stuff.
. I actively watched what these people were doing, looking for opportunities to. Suppose Phill Ryu had a question on Twitter that I could answer, or Ellis Hamburger wrote an article on The Verge that I really enjoyed — I took those opportunities to engage with folks on their turf. I never spammed them with my apps or my blog — once someone likes you, they’ll naturally check out your stuff. Go where they are.. Everyone is on Twitter, so I made sure that my profile there looked interesting and I got active. I went to conferences such as the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and South by Southwest and actively got out of my shell to meet the people around me and the people on my lists. Because I was a designer, I also hung out in communities like Dribbble and Forrst to connect with other designers. Finally, I occasionally emailed influential people — I didn’t spam them, but I would say something nice about an article they wrote or ask a close-ended question about something they were interested in (close-ended because you are not likely to hear back on questions that require long answers).
. Everyone is on Twitter, so I made sure that my profile there looked interesting and I got active. I went to conferences such as the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and South by Southwest and actively got out of my shell to meet the people around me and the people on my lists. Because I was a designer, I also hung out in communities like Dribbble and Forrst to connect with other designers. Finally, I occasionally emailed influential people — I didn’t spam them, but I would say something nice about an article they wrote or ask a close-ended question about something they were interested in (close-ended because you are not likely to hear back on questions that require long answers). Do cool stuff.. If you aren’t building cool apps that are innovative and well designed, then gaining respect in the app community will be tough, and respect is a pillar of friendship. You don’t necessarily need to have apps in the App Store, though. I made a lot of my connections before my first app ever launched. A big reason for that is that I blogged and tweeted about what I was learning from app developers about making successful apps, and I posted very introspective thoughts about developing my first app. That caught people’s attention, and doing that well is a great way to gain respect before you’ve actually “made it” in the industry. This is important, because if you’ve gotten someone’s attention by talking to them at a conference or by engaging them on Twitter, then you need to gain their respect in order for them to take the leap of following you on Twitter (which, as weird as it sounds, can be a big deal in establishing a lasting friendship).
. If you aren’t building cool apps that are innovative and well designed, then gaining respect in the app community will be tough, and respect is a pillar of friendship. You don’t necessarily need to have apps in the App Store, though. I made a lot of my connections before my first app ever launched. A big reason for that is that I blogged and tweeted about what I was learning from app developers about making successful apps, and I posted very introspective thoughts about developing my first app. That caught people’s attention, and doing that well is a great way to gain respect before you’ve actually “made it” in the industry. This is important, because if you’ve gotten someone’s attention by talking to them at a conference or by engaging them on Twitter, then you need to gain their respect in order for them to take the leap of following you on Twitter (which, as weird as it sounds, can be a big deal in establishing a lasting friendship). Cultivate long-term friendships.. Once I established a connection with someone, I cultivated it by discussing issues on Twitter, in email and at conferences, giving them beta access to my apps, requesting feedback on projects (especially high-profile ones), and saying something nice about them once in a while — I don’t know one human being who doesn’t have at least a smidgen of ego.
This might sound a bit manipulative when broken down like that, but it’s really just about being a friendly, interesting person and going out of your shell a bit to meet the great folks at the top of our industry.
I like how David Barnard put it:
“There are some really cool people in this industry. If all you do is beg for coverage, you’re missing out on getting to know some great folks.”
If you follow this advice, then the advice below will produce great results. If not, I can’t guarantee a whole lot of fruit from the more tactical stuff.
Launch Plan: Concentrated Blast
The App Store is not the Web. On the Web, you can launch softly, get some articles here and there, and build your user base over time.
If you are trying to sell a mass-market app for $0.99, then scattered marketing doesn’t work. To get hundreds of thousands of downloads, you need to make an effort and get the app to “chart,” to blast up the App Store’s sales charts. Once your ranking is high enough, you will experience a snowball effect because the charts are where most people look for apps.
With that in mind, we prepared as much as we could before the launch in order to make the blast as concentrated as possible.
Building Buzz
A couple months before the launch, we started building anticipation. The goal was to collect email addresses, Twitter and Facebook accounts that we could reach come launch day.
Blogging
We started by writing blog posts about the making of Languages. We posted our UX mapping process, progress reports, rants on gestures, among other things. Blogging played a large role in building our brand and credibility with previous apps, but a lesser role for this launch. It was probably still worth it, though, because continuing to build your blog’s readership is always good.
Twitter
I like to use my personal Twitter account (@jerols) most of the time, but we decided to create a @languagesapp Twitter account to make it easy for us and others to refer to the app without having to link to it (“Putting the final touches on @languagesapp”). My followers could then click the Twitter user name to find out more information about it. While it was hard to remember to post consistently to the @languagesapp account, I posted a teaser screenshot once in a while and retweeted it from my personal and company accounts, giving the @languagesapp account more exposure.
With fairly minimal effort, we were able to garner about 500 followers for the account.
Facebook
I’m honestly not a Facebook marketing expert and didn’t spend a lot of time experimenting with it, but I did set up a page and post screenshots and status updates once in a while. It got about 50 likes, half of which were friends. I could have experimented more and gotten a lot more likes, but it didn’t seem like the most effective use of my time.
Dribbble
As a designer, it was only natural to post my UI mockups to Dribbble, a design community in which you can get great feedback and sometimes get viral sharing of your designs. I’m not a Dribbble pro, and my designs have never made it to Dribbble’s famous front page, but I did get some valuable feedback and a few thousands views to boot.
Teaser Website
We always build a teaser website a month or two before launch to collect email addresses of people who would like to know when the app launches. About 200 folks subscribed. Not something to write home about, but every little bit helps. Some of the subscribers were influencers in the industry, which is always good.
Pitching The Press
Two weeks to go. Pitch time. I was fortunate enough to have been able to show an early build to some of my journalist friends at the WWDC, so I already had some really hot doors to knock on.
Warm Calls
Most of the journalists I knew personally already followed me on Twitter, so, in most cases, the best way to initiate the pitch was to send them a direct message on Twitter, teasing them with a screenshot and asking whether they wanted to play with a prerelease build. These guys are super-busy, so I didn’t hear back from all of them, but many of them were on board.
We used TestFlight to send out prerelease builds to the press. Most of them had TestFlight accounts already, so getting a build to them was pretty easy. Later on, once the app was finalized and approved by Apple, we replaced TestFlight with promo codes in our pitches, which are more convenient. (Promo codes are valid after the app is approved by Apple but before it is available to the public.)
After sending out the builds, I sent the journalists personalized thank-you notes, which also communicated the basic pitch and hinted at some advanced features to check out.
Our programming partner, Sonico, also had some great connections. So, they contacted the journalists with whom they had the strongest relationships, and we contacted ours.
Cold Calls
While warm calls are ideal, I’ve had some success with cold calls — i.e. pitching journalists and individuals with whom I don’t already have a strong connection. I created a spreadsheet with all of the websites I wanted to pitch and prioritized them by how influential I perceived them to be. For the really big websites, I identified the best individual journalists to contact and sent them a personalized pitch. For the smaller websites, I generally just wrote to their tips@ email address and only personalized the “Hey, [website’s name] team” greeting.
As expected, we got only a few responses from the cold calls, but it was still worth it.
When Personalization Goes Wrong
I generally personalize the greeting and first sentence of my emails, especially for journalists whom I know. Unfortunately, this time, I had a “brilliant” idea: to refer to the journalist’s website in the middle of the email, to make it even more personal!
Bad idea. I forgot about that reference in one of my pitches and left in the name of a competing website. Talk about embarrassing and unprofessional. From then on, I decided to keep it simple. Don’t include personalized references anywhere but at the beginning of the email, and always double-check before sending! Thankfully, the journalist was a friend and took it well.
The Pitch
Rather than talk about what I think makes for a good pitch, I’ll just show you mine.
Hey [journalist’s name], [Personalized message to the journalist and introduction to the pitch.] Launching in a week, Languages is the fastest, most reliable and most affordable offline translation app to hit the App Store. Most translation apps break down when you need them most: traveling without an Internet connection. Languages gives you the peace of mind that you’ll never be stuck without reliable translation. While other offline translators charge $5 to $20 for a single language, Languages packs 12 common language pairs into one app for $0.99. Price: $0.99
Launch Date: Next Thursday, October 25
Video Demo: http://vimeo.com/51481324
Website: http://www.languagesapp.com
Press Kit: http://www.languagesapp.com/LanguagesPressKit.zip
Promo Code: WJ9HXJNAPL73 Please let me know if you would be interested in doing a review, and I would be happy to provide more information or answer any questions. Thanks, Jeremy Olson Tapity - Founder 704.421.8242 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/@jerols Website: http://www.tapity.com
It certainly wasn’t perfect (if you want to learn how to make a perfect pitch, you should probably read Pitch Perfect by Erica Sadun and Steve Sande), but it was pretty short, gave the basic value proposition pretty quickly, and provided the key information that journalists like. It also included the press kit, a folder full of screenshots, the app icon at various sizes, and a press release.
Video or No?
A lot of great apps launch with an amazing launch video. It’s a great idea if you can afford to hire a video producer or can shoot it yourself well… like, really well. But whether you make a video for the public or not, definitely make a short one for the press. Journalists would rather spend 30 seconds watching your app in action than spend a few minutes trying to “get it” for themselves on their phones.
In our case, we didn’t have time to shoot a professional video, so we just made a short video for the press, showing off all of the features. It was pretty rough, but it did the job.
Go Time
“Sorry, can’t talk right now. I’m super-busy launching Languages.” That was typical launch-day conversation. You would think that launching an app is a pretty good excuse to do nothing. It’s not. While I might have responded to some urgent questions from journalists or taken an emergency call with Apple here and there, this was really a day to kick back and watch all of our hard work pay off.
The majority of the day consisted of one activity: refreshing. Refreshing Twitter search for “Languages app” to see who was talking about it. Refreshing my “mentions” feed to see who was saying “Congrats!” Refreshing Google’s “past hour” search results for “languages” to uncover any new reviews.
Most of all, launch day can be characterized quite accurately as one of desperate and incessant refreshing of the App Store to see where Languages stood in the infamous top charts. It is the ultimate stroke of the ego after a year of blood, sweat and tears. This, folks, is what dreams are made of.
Results
Aside from a few blunders on my part from miscommunications about when journalists could start posting reviews, the launch went even better than I expected.
We got some amazing reviews from some of my favorite journalists.
We blasted the announcement to Sonico’s substantial mailing list, the Languages mailing list, our blog and social media channels, resulting in a lot of buzz on Twitter and a swift climb up the App Store’s charts. Before long, we reached the number one spot in the “Reference” category.
Apple
Our relationship with Apple is one of my company’s greatest assets and one that took time to cultivate. Getting featured prominently by Apple is one of the best things that can happen to your app. It will usually get you far more downloads than any coverage from the press.
When people ask me how I’ve gotten all of my apps to be featured by Apple, I usually recommend a big marketing push during launch in order to get Apple’s attention. This time, though, we were fortunate enough to have piqued Apple’s interest a few months before Languages launched. We were fairly certain that Apple would feature us, but were pleasantly surprised to be featured as the “Editor’s Choice” in many countries and very prominently in the “New & Noteworthy” section in others.
Blast Off!
Concentrating all of our marketing on launch day really paid off. With over a dozen press reviews, thousands of tweets and retweets, a blast to our mailing lists, and an important feature from Apple, Languages blasted into the top-25 overall paid apps on launch day. The snowball effect kicked in, and by day two, Languages peaked at number 5 in the US.
Results from the other countries were staggering, with the app hitting the number one spot in France and a few other European countries. Over 70% of our sales came from outside the US. Suffice it to say, app localization, the App Store description, and the screenshots that showed most of the major European languages paid off.
Whew, what a ride! I could finally check off one of my life goals: beating all incarnations of Angry Birds in the charts, if only for a short period of time.
Aftermath
Languages managed to stay in the top 100 for a couple weeks, and then slowly but surely made its inevitable descent down, down, down into the App Store abyss. Fortunately, Languages found a pretty comfortable resting spot around number 30 (and then later number 50) in the “Reference” category’s top-100 list.
We were pretty happy with the few hundred downloads it was getting per day. It wasn’t going to make us millionaires, but most of the money you make from these kinds of hit-based apps will be from major launches — i.e. major updates, the iPad version, etc. — so, the decent consistent sales are a bonus.
Support
Support doesn’t just mean updating the app with new features. One of the most time-consuming parts of making a popular app is addressing all of the bugs, feature requests and comments you receive via email and Twitter every day. During launch week, we were getting hundreds of emails a day. No joke.
Thankfully, the comments were mainly positive, asking for new languages and features.
I tried to respond to a lot of the emails, but pretty soon we realized that support was a full-time job, so we shifted responsibility to one of Sonico’s support guys. That being said, we did look through the emails to find recurring bugs reports and feature requests so that we could address them in the next version.
I expected users to ask for things like voice support and conjugation, but it turns out the most popular feature request was to be able to customize the bookshelf and to hide dictionaries not being used. That blew my mind, but we made sure to include that in the next version.
The most negative feedback was from users who said that, while the interface was great, they couldn’t find certain words in the dictionary. We learned from the Apple Maps fiasco that the robustness of an app’s content can easily overshadow the beauty of the interface. While our content wasn’t perfect, it was pretty decent, so fortunately we didn’t reenact the Apple Maps disaster, but we did need to work on it going forward.
Raising the Price
We decided to go for the mass market at launch and set the app at $0.99. If you are trying to hit the top charts, the app needs to be an impulse buy.
Having gone with a launch-sale approach, we raised the price to $2.99 once the app fell out of the top 100. Raising the price when the app is falling out of the charts might seem counterintuitive, but you actually make more money that way. The only reason we ever set it at $0.99 was to get the app to the top charts and to keep it there as long as possible. Once it falls out of the charts, the people who will find it are not impulse shoppers; they will have to actively look for it and will be willing to pay a higher price for it. This has worked out well for us.
Conclusion
Wow, that was quite a journey. If you’ve scrolled to the end for a reader’s digest, you’re in luck. The big lessons to take away are these:
Yes, marketing matters! Start way before your app launches. Do it yourself by making friends in the industry. Build buzz through social media. Concentrate the marketing in blasts. Spend time getting your pitch right.
The App Store is certainly not easy street. Building a hit app takes a ton of hard work, and there are never any guarantees. That being said, it sure is a fun ride, and there is still plenty of opportunity for those who are willing to work at it. So, get out there and build something great!
(al) (il)Tomgram: Engelhardt, Locking the Gates
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Today, something new. In addition to the usual dispatch below, for those of you who like your information portable and audible, Ralph Pochoda has recorded my piece as a TomCast audio feature. You can catch it by clicking here or download it to your iPod here. And while I’m at it, a little reminder: if you have the urge to buy anything at Amazon, including my latest book The American Way of War, and you go to that site by clicking on a TomDispatch book link (or the book cover image in any post), we get a small but meaningful cut of your purchase at no cost to you. It’s a great way to offer ongoing support to this site! Tom]
(N)ever Again
Old Secretaries of Defense Never Die, They Just Write Bestselling Memoirs
By Tom Engelhardt
Talking about secretaries of defense...
Oh, we weren’t?
Well, let’s. After all, they’re in the news.
Take former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who, on leaving government service -- and I hope you don’t mind if I mangle a quote from General Douglas MacArthur here -- refused to die, or even fade away. Instead, he penned Known and Unknown, a memoir almost as big as his ego and almost as long -- 832 pages -- as the occupation of Iraq, which promptly hit the bestseller lists (making the American reader a Known Unknown).
Now, Mr. Known Knowns, etc., is duking it out on Facebook, Sarah-Palin-style, with “the chief gossip-monger of the governing class,” the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward. Amusingly enough, Woodward has just |
with him, and this definitely resolves that concern. To me, Xavier Rhodes is a better, slightly more versatile version of Chris Cook, so this perfectly fits that pattern.
Rhodes needs to do a better job hitting his landmarks and reacting to the ball before its thrown before he can be considered and elite zone cover corner. Nevertheless, his physical play, strong tackling capability, speed and general instinct make him valuable in any scheme.
With enough film study and pattern recognition, the defense can shift from a bland Cover-3 zone to a matchup zone in a Cover-3 while incorporating cloud concepts. This just means playing man-to-man within zones (matchup zone) while rolling the zone landmarks to match either the flow of the play (bootleg QB) or to cover for a more complex assignment, like when a defensive back is expected to shift from zone coverage to man coverage based on a few keys (cloud).
This will take some time as new players start incorporating the basic defensive concepts, but could be rolled out as early as midseason, were the Vikings willing to choose this defense.
Here's a decent example of how the Cover-3 works out when the secondary has given itself the ability to ad-lib while still staying within the assignment, courtesy of Field Gulls:
Obviously the coverage example above works, but the defense as a whole might have some questions. How has the Wide 9 fared over the years?
Statistics
I looked at sack statistics, pressures and run success rate to look at how the Wide 9 defenses do. I don't like yardage stats because they are blind to context. Giving up a ton of runs when you're ahead by 20 points in the fourth quarter is irrelevant, especially when you've sold out for the pass. Instead determining whether or not a run was "successful" based on historical expected win rates. First downs are successes in almost every situation, and for the most part, runs that get you 40% of required yardage to convert on first down, 60% on second down and 100% on third or fourth down are considered successes.
When Washburn ran a partial Wide 9 in his early years at Tennessee (only one end split out wide), it was enormously successful. While I only have pressure stats from 2008, the sack stats that Tennessee produced were impressive. The "half 9" averaged 9th in the league in sacks produced, and ranked 3rd one year and 2nd another year. Against the run, his success rate averaged 5th in the league.
The full Wide 9 didn't do as well, although everything relates to personnel in the end. In pressures produced (a much more consistent statistic from year-to-year than sacks and a better predictor), they were impressive. They ranked 8th on average in pressures produced, and 5th when you remove outliers (basically, before the Lions had personnel up front). In three years of the five years I have data for, a Wide 9 defense ranked first in quarterback pressures three times and once ranked second.
To me, there's no question that they can make hell for quarterbacks with a fairly vanilla pass rush. The question largely has to do with run defense for the Wide 9. Generally, it seems that the Wide 9 gets a lot of flak for producing bad defenses, when statistically, it looks like it does what it's asked to do.
Against the run, the Wide 9 has been relatively variable. They've ranked between 7th and 30th, and average 18th overall. For the most part, it looks like personnel matters more for the run game, although the "half 9" has simply been more successful, having ranked 2nd, 3rd 4th and 10th in the only years I have data for.
For context, the Tampa-2 defenses averaged 14th in pressures produced and have ranked between 3rd and 27th, generally ranking in the middle. The Vikings averaged 8th in pressures produced under a Tampa-2 system for the years I have data for.
Against the run, the Tampa-2 defenses averaged 14th as well, although removing the Colts from the equations ranked the Tampa-2 defenses about 8th overall. The Vikings averaged 9th overall and have no years of note under the Tampa-2 defense, either at the top or bottom in run success rate.
So the Wide 9 can still be relatively successful against the run, but because gap control becomes difficult in the full Wide 9, the statistics suggest a "half 9" could be the best of both worlds, which is the system defined above. They are enormously successful in creating pressures. I don't include pass statistics simply because I think the secondary scheme and personnel are a lot more at fault or credit for those.
That's how the defense changes by emphasizing two under tackles instead of the classic nose/under combination. Because of the change in the gap assignments, the middle linebacker needs to mug the line and walk up, making the Tampa-2 coverage scheme untenable. Everything else simply follows from there.
How would you feel if the Vikings implemented this new defense instead of continuing to install the Tampa-2?NatWest has admitted that it could not say exactly how much money should be in individual accounts as the crisis caused by a failed software update last week spiralled out of control for days.
The bank was quick to deny claims by the Unite union that the "offshoring" of IT jobs to locations in India had led to the the problems which appeared on Tuesday night and which paralysed its systems through to Friday, and which have not yet been fixed.
However a number of programmers and experts who have worked on or with NatWest systems told the Guardian that they could not imagine the problem happening in the period before the redundancies of experienced staff since 2010.
"[NatWest owner] Royal Bank of Scotland has 40 years' experience running these systems and banks as a rule don't drop the ball like this," one said. "Somebody somewhere made a decision that has led to this."
The Guardian's investigations suggest that NatWest's problems began on Tuesday night when it updated a key piece of software – CA-7, which controls the batch processing systems that deal with retail banking transactions – ahead of the regular nightly run.
RBS/NatWest has not said what went wrong, though one programmer who has worked on RBS/NatWest's systems told the Guardian: "CA-7 is a very common and reliable product used to automate large sequences of batch mainframe work [which are usually referred to as 'jobs']. It will start jobs, wait for them to run, then start other jobs dependent on the first ones completing, and so on. RBS processes accounts overnight via thousands of jobs."
The jobs take transactions from various places, such as ATM withdrawals, bank-to-bank salary payments, and so on, and finish by updating the master copy of the account – in a system known as Caustic – with the definitive balance.
"It seems whoever made the update to CA-7 managed to delete or corrupt the files which hold the schedule for the overnight jobs, so they did not run, or ran incorrectly," the programmer told the Guardian. "They have backed out from this change, but now are trying to play catch-up, and have been doing so for a few days."
The batch processing system, which reconciles the movement of money in and out of more than 10m NatWest and Ulster Bank accounts, did not run correctly for three nights – meaning that millions of transactions were not processed until it did begin running correctly on Friday. Even when it had been fixed, the batches of transactions have had to be re-run in order, beginning with Tuesday, so that nobody's account goes wrongly into overdraft.
A NatWest spokesperson, asked whether it knew how much money people had at any time, said: "All the money is safe in the bank. It's being applied to people's accounts. We can show people statements on screens if they come into branches." The bank is offering special opening hours, extending to 6pm, this week. NatWest also ran extra batches to catch up with the transaction backlog over the weekend.
NatWest, like many other banks, uses the CA-7 software and attendant files to fit its own custom needs. The problem only surfaced once the batch run was underway in the early hours of Wednesday. RBS appears to have advertised for specialists in CA-7 in February in India – to which a number of its IT jobs were moved after 2010. "Looking for candidates having 4-7 years of experience in Batch Administration using CA7 tool," the advert read. "Urgent Requirement by RBS."
The Unite union has criticised RBS management for cutting jobs in the UK and shifting a number of them offshore. Since 2010, hundreds of IT jobs have been cut from RBS's Edinburgh headquarters and shifted abroad. RBS/NatWest has denied that it made any difference.
But some observers strongly disagree. "This was not inevitable – you can always avoid problems like this if you test sufficiently," said David Silverstone, delivery and solutions manager for NMQA, which provides automated testing software to a number of banks, though not RBS/NatWest. "But unless you keep an army of people who know exactly how the system works, there may be problems maintaining it."
One programmer who worked on the RBS/NatWest systems during the takeover in 2001-02 said that the latest problems suggested a paucity of staff on the spot with experience of what to do. "The people in India will have done their darndest to do a good job, but without the knowledge of the overall system that you get from years of experience on the ground, it's easier to see how you get a big operational failure."
Banks have for decades used huge mainframe systems to process payments such as cheques and to update customers' accounts; the transactions for each day are collected and are then run in a single gigantic batch overnight, so that accounts have been credited and debited with the correct amounts by the morning. That is why internet banking transactions are not processed if you carry them out after certain times: the banks' systems simply don't add them into the queue for that night's batch.
Sources familiar with NatWest's systems, and who have also spoken to staff there, explained that the problems with the update surfaced during the batch run. NatWest confirmed on Monday that the problem first surfaced on Tuesday, and that "we confirmed the fix on Friday".
The problems with the upgrade were spotted during the overnight run ahead of Wednesday morning. "We have guardian systems which spot when things go wrong," a NatWest spokesperson said.
But by Friday, when the fix was implemented, three sets of batch runs had failed. If a batch fails badly – as here – then all of the transactions, including the payments in and out of accounts, are "rolled back" to the starting point, as if it had never run. The set of transactions from Wednesday was then added to the pending list on Wednesday, and attempted to run in the early hours of Thursday; that too failed. By the time the fix had been done, there were three days' worth of unimplemented transactions queued up.
Richard Price, a Norwich-based systems developer who has worked on banking systems that linked into NatWest's, explains: "Banking systems are like a huge game of Jenga [the tower game played with interlaced blocks of wood]. Two unrelated transactions might not look related now, but 500,000 transactions from now they might have a huge relation. So everything needs to be processed in order." Thus Tuesday's batch must run before Wednesday's or Thursday's to avoid, for example, penalising someone who has a large sum of money leave their account on Thursday that might put them in debt but which would be covered by money arriving on Wednesday.
Price said that any software update would first have been subjected to quality assurance and user acceptance testing before being implemented.
CA-7 is familiar to many in the banking industry: it was originally released in 1980 by Uccel – which was then taken over by Computer Associates, which provides key software for scores of banks. Computer Associates told the Guardian: "RBS is a valued CA Technologies customer, we are offering all assistance possible to help them resolve their technical issues which are highly unique to their environment. We do not comment on customer confidential issues." However it declined to say whether CA-7 lay at the heart of the problems.Who are the most underrated national champs of all-time?
Everyone remembers the champs. From the first NCAA champions in Oregon in 1939 to last year’s UConn team, hoopheads can tell you who won.
Problem is, some are more remembered than others in history. The 1951 Kentucky squad coined the Fabulous Five. The UCLA teams of the early 1970s were arguably the most dominant of their era. Right after, the 1976 Indiana team still remains the last undefeated champion in Division I college basketball.
In between the ones that are always brought up, there are the champs that don’t come to mind. At least not at first, anyway.
So who are they? TBBC looks into who are the most underrated champions all-time and why.
1989-90 UNLV
Record – 35-5
Coach – Jerry Tarkanian
What everyone remembers – That four of their starting five would eventually be drafted into the NBA. The team that was hounded by the NCAA arguably more than any program in college basketball history — with reason — had horses with the centerpiece of forward Larry Johnson (in his first season of Division I ball out of Odessa College), veteran point guard Greg Anthony, reliable forward Stacey Augmon, do-it-all utility man George Ackles and sharpshooter Anderson Hunt, who was the Big West Player of the Year as a sophomore, prior to Johnson’s arrival on campus.
The Runnin’ Rebels (you can’t leave off the ‘runnin”) demolished Duke in the largest margin of victory in NCAA Championship Game history, 103-73. Prompting the memorable “chair lean” from Tark.
What everyone doesn’t remember – This team played rough, but they also scored in bunches. The Runnin’ Rebels eclipsed 100 points in 15 games and scored 90-plus in another eight. And after dropping a 107-105 decision to LSU on Jan. 27, UNLV finished the season winning 22 of their final 23 games, with a 78-70 loss to UC-Santa Barbara on Feb. 25 the only blemish. They dominated opponents, winning by an average of 15 points per game.
Why are they underrated? – They’re a victim of their own doing. Despite the run UNLV had, everyone remembers the 1990-91 UNLV team that ran over everyone on their way to an undefeated regular season and a loss to the same Duke team in the national semifinals a year later. That dominant run — followed by an epic collapse — made that squad more memorable than the team that won it all.
1994-95 UCLA
Record – 31-1
Coach – Jim Herrick
What everyone remembers – The return to prominence for one of the more storied college basketball programs in history and brought the program its first NCAA title since the legendary coach John Wooden got his last in 1975.
Oh, and those two words that weren’t in Mizzou’s vocabulary: STOP BALL.
What everyone doesn’t remember – Despite the record, the Bruins had a rough start to conference play….they lost their Pac-10 opener to Oregon 82-72. They were arguably one of the dullest (I mean that with love) champions of the 90s, but one of the best single-game performances came at the hands of Ed O’Bannon with 30 points and 17 rebounds in the national title game, an 89-78 win over Arkansas.
And their schedule wasn’t easy, with seven regular season games against Top 25 teams and five of their six games in the NCAA Tournament as well — which is impressive in the 64-team field.
Why are they underrated? – Most teams that won it all in the 90s had some sort of future-pro star power. This one simply didn’t. Herrick took a cast of talented players, none of which would have much of a career in the NBA, to the title. Tyus Edney’s staggered four seasons in the league were the most of any Bruin from this team.
1973-74 North Carolina State
Record – 30-1
Coach – Norm Sloan
What everyone remembers – The Wolfpack will always be known as the team that interrupted The Dynasty of the John Wooden-coached UCLA teams of the late ’60s and early ’70s. They upset the Bruins 80-77 in their national semifinal contest and took out Marquette in the national title game. David Thompson was the NCAA Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player along with earning his first of two national player of the year awards.
What everyone doesn’t remember– Before their Final Four win over UCLA, for the most part, N.C. State stayed at no. 2 in the nation behind UCLA. The Bruins made sure that they stayed there with an 84-66 beat down of the Wolfpack early in the season.
In fact, N.C. State was thisclose to not even making the NCAA Tournament, needing overtime to beat no.3 Maryland 103-100 in the finals of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. The NCAA tournament only took 25 teams that season, and only began to include at-large teams in 1975.
Why are they underrated? – They get lost, like most teams of the 1960s and early 1970s, in the shuffle of the UCLA juggernaut. Thompson was far-and-away the star, but N.C. State also had 7-4 center Tom Burleson’s 18 points and 11.7 boards per game and 5-7 point guard Monte Towe was one of the best floor generals in the game at a time when assists weren’t seen in the same light as they are now.
1997-98 Kentucky
Record – 35-4
Coach – Tubby Smith
What everyone remembers – Ask anybody who knows that team, they first thing you’ll normally hear out of their mouths is “it was Rick Pitino’s team.” Pitino left after reaching his second straight NCAA Final in 1997, taking the Boston Celtics head job, and as a result, Smith inherited a gold mine. Aside from that, the team was the third straight Wildcat squad to make it to the Final Four, cementing itself as the team of the 1990s (Getting thrashed by UNLV gives UK the edge here, Duke fans….)
….And so does this:
What everyone doesn’t remember – Despite the “Tubby just had to roll the balls out in practice” schtick, this was a team full of players that just knew their role. The Wildcats took an early-season loss to the team that beat them in the 1997 NCAA Final, Arizona. The roster also featured four first round picks in Jamaal Magloire, Nazr Muhammed, Scott Padgett and Michael Bradley (though Bradley would transfer to Villanova after the 1998-99 season.
The team was as balanced as any in its era, with Jeff Sheppard the team’s leading scorer at 13.7 points per game. In fact, only 4.9 points separated Sheppard and the team’s sixth-leading scorer, Heshimu Evans (8.8 ppg). Four players also averaged at least four rebound per game — the most was Mohammed’s 7.2.
Why are they underrated? – They were at the tail end of a dynasty that the original architect didn’t finish. Everyone remembers the 1996 team as one of the most dominant teams of the era, and that hurts when remembering the best teams of the 90s. But when looking at the numbers, the ’97-’98 team holds their own. The Wildcats won all three of their Southeastern Conference tournament games by double-digits, including a 99-74 drubbing of no. 16 Arkansas in the semifinals and an 86-56 pasting of no. 15 South Carolina in the finals. Impressive considering their strength of schedule was 9th in the nation.
1976-77 Marquette
Record – 25-7
What everyone remembers – Al McGuire in his awesome suits were retiring at the end of the Warriors’ (as they were known until 1994) season. Butch Lee hitting spinning lay-up after spinning lay-up. Lee, the Most Outstanding Player of that tournament, headlined that team, which played in one of the more amazing endings to a Final Four game in history against UNC-Charlotte (more on that below).
What everyone doesn’t remember – ….And it’s incredible really. Jerome Whitehead pulls in the three quarter-court pass from Lee with three seconds to go just inside the free throw line, turns, one dribble, and stuffs it home for a 51-49 win over the 49ers and a trip to the title game against North Carolina.
It also wasn’t an easy road for the Warriors, who were in their second Final Four in four years. They played no. 11 Cincinnati in the first round, Kansas State in the second, then no. 9 Wake Forest in the Elite Eight, UNC-Charlotte — no. 17 at the time — in the semifinals, then finished with no. 5 North Carolina in the title game.
Also, a soon-to-be prominent coach named Rick Majerus (R.I.P.) was an assistant on that team.
Why are they underrated? – It’s a team that, like N.C. State, gets lost in the shuffle of the 1970s. They weren’t necessarily spectacular, but they averaged 70 points per game without a three-point line and had two Top 20 NBA Draft picks in Lee and Bo Ellis on the roster. They also didn’t finish all that high in the polls, ranking between no. 6 and no. 15 for most of the year.
It was one of the more impressive stories in college basketball history, with the small, Jesuit school in Milwaukee sending their retiring coach out as the ultimate winner. It’s stuff that sports movies are made out of.
Got a better idea? Did we forget anyone? Hit us on Twitter at @David_Harten or @TBBChronicles or with an email at TBBChronicles@gmail.com.
AdvertisementsBernie Sanders is a stubborn man, a fact I kept coming across as I reported and wrote "Why Bernie Sanders Matters," the unauthorized biography of the Democratic presidential candidate. That trait might explain why he continues to describe himself as a “Democratic Socialist,” even though any mention of the “S-word” turns off many American voters. A recent Gallup poll found that less than half of Americans would vote for a candidate who is a socialist. “Socialist” in an epithet, hurled by conservatives at President Barack Obama to discredit his health care reform efforts.
To be sure, Sanders has been gradually moving away from socialism. As a radical student activist in the 1960s, he identified with the Socialist Workers Party. When he first ran for statewide office in Vermont during the 1970s, he described himself as a socialist. In office, he all but glorified the term. Walk into his Senate office and you will see a plaque on the wall honoring Eugene V. Debs, who ran for president five times as leader of the Socialist Party of America.
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But Bernie Sanders is not a socialist. No way, no how. He’s not even a democratic socialist, as it is practiced in the Scandinavian nations. Fact is the socialists don’t want Sanders. Here’s why:
No Means: Socialism distinguishes itself from capitalism, fascism and other political/economic systems by this fundamental requirement: the state or the community shall own the means of production. That means public ownership and control of corporations, especially major ones like power companies and auto makers. In November Bernie Sanders delivered a speech at Georgetown University to define his brand of socialism. “I don’t believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production,” he said. So Sanders, by definition, is not a socialist.
Money Talks: Sanders believes in the capitalist system. He might advocate reform of capitalism’s current excesses, but he is a capitalist. As a congressman, Sanders successfully stopped the government from bestowing multi-million-dollar bonuses on executives at Lockheed. But he never attacked the company’s basic capitalist premise. Likewise, when peace protestors tried to block the entrance to a GE plant in Burlington when he was mayor, he had them arrested. Socialist Party of USA co-chair Mimi Soltysik sees the world differently: “We don’t see capitalism as a reformable institution.” Sanders does.
Bernie the Bomber: Socialists embrace pacifism. War is a last resort. Sanders’s model, Eugene Debs, was jailed for his opposition to World War I. But Sanders has cast vote after vote for sending troops to war and bombing one side or another. When he supported NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, Vermonters occupied his office and a staffer quit. He’s voted for sending troops to Afghanistan. He enthusiastically supported Obama’s most recent budget, with a five percent increase in military spending.
Tepid Dane: When pressed about his brand of socialism, Sanders often will refer to the Scandinavian nations that practice “democratic socialism.” Northern European countries like Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden have governments that tax heavily and provide excellent free public education and health care, for example. Asked by the Wall Street Journal for his definition, he said: “For me, what democratic socialism is about is to maintain the strong entrepreneurial spirit that we have in this country to continue to produce wealth, but to make certain that the wealth is much more equitably distributed than is currently the case.” So, kinder and gentler capitalism.
Democrat Down Deep: Sanders is a Democrat in every way but the name. Running in Vermont, Sanders had to distinguish himself from Democrats to establish his own brand. But once he got to Congress in 1990, he voted with the Dems, nearly 100 percent of the time. The Democratic establishment funded his 2006 senate campaign, including $10,000 from HillPAC, Hillary Clinton’s funding arm. He caucused with the Democrats in the Senate. And by the way, he’s running as a Democrat.
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Nader Not: For many left-leaning Americans, Ralph Nader remains the most progressive leader in America. He and his “Nader’s Raiders” have advocated for the public against corporate America for decades. But Sanders and Nader don’t mix. He refuses to take Nader’s calls. Nader has branded Sanders “The Lone Ranger.” Sanders refused to support Nader’s 2004 presidential campaign. “Not only am I going to vote for John Kerry,” Sanders said, “I am going to run around this country and do everything I can to dissuade people from voting for Ralph Nader.”
GOP Mayor: In his first term as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders morphed into a fiscal conservative, after running as a social progressive. He balanced the city’s books, cut taxes and built up reserves. “We‘re going to out Republican the Republicans,” he was quoted as saying. When he ran for office, Sanders undercut the incumbent Democrat by accusing him of playing up to developers who wanted to build condominiums on the Lake Champlain shoreline, rather than public parks. As mayor, Sanders supported the same developer; progressives mounted a referendum to defeat Sanders’s deal with the developer. “We must ask how the Sanders administration’s economic development policies differ from a traditional capitalist approach,” Steven Soifer wrote in The Socialist Mayor.
Zionist Leanings: When it comes to Israel, virtually all leftists, progressives and socialists of any stripe side with the Palestinians. In Europe and U.S. college campuses, Israel represents a warmongering oppressor. Note the current BDS movement to boycott Israel and divest investments in the country – driven by leftists. But Senator Sanders has often defended the Israelis and voted on their side. He has voted for billions in foreign and military aid to Israel. Sanders enraged progressives when he supported the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2014. At a town meeting in Cabot, Vermont, he was forced to shout down protesters.
Red Scare: Socialism and communism became scary prospects immediately after World War II when the U.S. confronted the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Sanders drew his own line: “When I talk about democratic socialism,” he said in 1990, “what I am not talking about is authoritarian communism – a system which, thank God, is now falling apart; a system which has been responsible for the deaths of millions of people; a system which has been a vicious dictatorship; a system which has run an extraordinary dictatorship in the Soviet Union.”
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Populism Rules: Add up Bernie Sanders’s sayings and stands over the years, especially after 1980, and they will lead you to a clear conclusion: Sanders is much more like Huey Long, the populist governor of Louisiana, rather than his socialist icon Eugene Debs.
All of which begs the question: why does Bernie Sanders cling to the Socialist brand -- democratic or otherwise?
In part, Sanders cannot bear to be associated completely with the Democratic Party. He’s been running against Democrats his whole life. His brand requires him to be the insurgent, the lonely crusader, the radical alternative. Perhaps he truly believes in a more socialist system where the government steps in more stridently to redistribute wealth, ensure quality education for all and provide free health insurance. And maybe Bernie Sanders cannot change his basic philosophy just because it will improve his chances of prevailing. Perhaps it’s true that he’s the one political candidate who will not do the expedient thing, like dropping socialism from his brand.
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And maybe that’s why voters will look beyond socialism and buy Bernie Sanders, regardless of how he’s defined, by himself or others.While it's dramatic to use what is most commonly known as the official label for Apollo 13, applying the "successful failure" tagline to Miami Marlins outfielder Christian Yelich helps to illustrate just how divided views are on him. Yelich might have developed into a steady presence in the Miami outfield for some, but there are others who refer back to his initial scouting and projections as a source of disappointment, rather than any sort of guidance.
With now two full Major League seasons under his belt, Yelich has a solid 4.4-WAR season to his credit in one of those seasons (2014). Injuries and some summer struggles, however, saw him fall to just a 2.3 figure in 2015, resulting in some already closing the book on what Christian Yelich could possibly be.
And to a certain extent, that's understandable, especially when you take into account what some have projected Yelich to be from the outset. An excerpt from Baseball Prospectus' scouting report (which includes some first-hand reporting from a Marlins front office source) reads:
Christian Yelich has one of the purest swings in the minors, a short and powerful stroke despite the arm length. Yelich creates well above average bat speed, and as he continues to mature and learns the nuances of power, his doubles will start to turn into home runs and he could be a true middle-of-the-lineup threat. He shows good pitch-recognition skills, and his bat-to-ball ability is on par with the best in the minors, so he should be able to hit for a high average.
And then that quote from the front office source, in the same BP scouting report, follows:
I think the hit tool is a 70 and I think the power shows up down the line in the 25-plus range with a ton of doubles. He’s a tough out and he’s just going to get better when he’s forced to face better.
That's obviously high praise for Yelich from a more than reputable source, in Baseball Prospectus. But the perhaps-too-ambitious scouting on Yelich doesn't necessarily end there. SB Nation's own Minor League Ball had their own bit on Yelich back in May of 2012, noting the following:
Although he isn't likely to develop into an overwhelming home run masher, Yelich should hit for average, get on base at a good clip, and produce above-average power. His strikeout rate has been creeping upward as he ascends the ladder, but his power output is increasing as well, and he's still drawing walks at a substantial clip.
While that's only a pair of scouting reports, and a lot of things can change significantly in the nearly five years that have passed since Yelich was drafted, they both note one significant aspect of Yelich's game to which naysayers refer when criticizing Yelich: the power aspect. He's hit just 16 combined home runs in his two seasons in Miami, so calling him a disappointment in that respect wouldn't be a stretch at all. He hasn't come close to living up to those expectations. It may also be important to note that his strikeout rate is likely higher than anticipated as well, with a 19.2 percent mark that ranked 16th among National League outfielders.
Therein lies the primary motive for those who refer to Christian Yelich as anything resembling a failure. His power has been nonexistent, and he strikes out more than expected. But should we think any less of Yelich because of this, or simply think of him in a different way? He's obviously not the player that he was expected to be, in some respects, but as we examine what he has become, is there a way to get him closer to what he was originally thought to be?
To call Yelich a disappointment, a failure, or any word with a similarly negative connotation would simply be unreasonable. In 2015, a year in which he dealt with injury and a May where he hit only.231 (his worth average in any month of the year), he still managed to post that 2.3 WAR, which ranked 17th among NL outfielders. His.366 on-base percentage placed sixth among that group, and his 117 wRC+ was a top-10 figure.
Going back to 2014, his first full season at the big league level, Yelich finished with a 4.4 WAR that made its way into the top 10, ranking ninth among NL OF, an identical-to-2015 117 wRC+, and a.362 OBP that ranked seventh. From a rough statistical standpoint, Yelich is certainly no slouch, let alone any sort of failure. But what exactly does he do specifically that makes him as successful in the respects that he is?
For one, he hits the ball hard. His 32.8 Hard% ranked 12th among NL OF last year, while his 22.5% line drive rate was seventh among the same group. He also hit opposite field with the best of 'em, with a 27.7% oppo rate that was seventh. He maintains a quality eye at the plate, with a 26.6% swing rate on pitches outside of the zone, and only a 43.3% swing rate overall. One area of concern, and one that is likely contributing to the lower power numbers, is that groundball rate that's up over 62%. Elevating his contact more could be a worthwhile change in order to help him change his fortunes in the ISO department.
One wonders, though, if he could continue to improve those numbers if he were to swing more at hard pitches than offspeed, which was not the case last year. Brooks Baseball has Yelich swinging at just over 46% of offspeed last year, against 44% of hard stuff. Better pitch recognition, something that Yelich has been praised for in the past, could lead to higher quality contact, more play in the gaps, and maybe even, somewhere in there, an uptick in his overall power numbers.
The goal for Christian Yelich, in order to stave off of some of that "failure" talk, misguided as it may be, should be to focus on improving that.116 ISO. Maybe it's a matter of being completely healthy, building up strength, and letting that power continue to develop. Or maybe it's a change within his swing that needs to be made in order to allow him to elevate more. Or maybe it's a matter of recognizing and targeting fastballs during at-bats.
Regardless of the adjustments that might need to be made, it's absurd and unreasonable to declare Christian Yelich a failure. While he hasn't developed in one or two respects, he continues to be a steady performer in many others. He's an excellent baserunner, as a near-lock for 20 swipes a season, and a better defender than expected (18 Defensive Runs Saved in two seasons). Mostly, he's a very solid contact hitter who maintains a strong approach and gets on base at a very pleasant rate. He may never develop into the middle-of-the-order guy that the Marlins thought they had initially, but as a table setter alongside Dee Gordon, he's doing just fine.
That's not a bad thing to have to settle for if the power never comes.
**Statistics via FanGraphs
Randy Holt is a staff writer for Beyond the Box Score. You can follow him on Twitter @RandallPnkFloyd.Speaking to PoliticsHome ahead of her Westminster Hall debate, Labour MP Luciana Berger accused the Government of not doing enough to prevent prison suicide.
In 2016, 119 people took their lives in prison. This figure is the highest since records began over 25 years ago, doubling since 2012, while self harming in prisons has reached a record high of 37,784 incidents - up 18% from the previous year.
But instead launching an investigation into the crisis, former shadow mental health minister Luciana Berger believes the Government is “not really doing anything”.
The Labour MP has accused the Conservatives of U-turning after pledging to undertake an investigation and consequently she has scheduled a Westminster Hall debate in order to hold the Government to account.
“Last year the Minister said in one of his answers they would be looking at everything that had happened and respond towards the end of the year," she told PoliticsHome. "I then asked parliamentary questions to try and drill down what that meant in practice and there's been no report back. They're not really doing anything.”
Ms Berger said she cannot answer for the Government and does not know why it is not acting to stop further deaths.
“I can't tell you why [the Government isn't doing anything] but that is what is happening. They've got a responsibility in a civilised society to ensure that people pay for their time with their crimes, but not with their lives. We rightly banned the death penalty decades ago but you're eight times more likely to take your life in prison than you are outside of prison and that's just not acceptable.
“This is essentially the death penalty by the back door for some prisoners who go on to take their own lives and that's just not acceptable in 2017.”
Ms Berger believes the numbers are increasing for a combination of reasons, most notably due to the fact that there are 7,000 fewer prison officers in the UK than in 201 |
. But to hold me over, there would be a third Iron Man movie, a second Thor, and a second Captain America. The truth is, I didn’t even look forward to these movies that much, because I thought it was so much better to see these characters all together. I almost felt that stand-alone movies would be a step backwards after seeing ‘The Avengers’.
Then I actually saw ‘Iron Man 3’ and was surprised by how much fun I had with it. Say what you want on the movie, but in my opinion, it gave a far better character study to Tony Stark than any team up movie would have, and was a much more enjoyable experience than ‘Iron Man 2’.
‘Thor: The Dark World’ was okay. This was definitely an example of a Marvel movie that was made to hold the fans over while waiting for something better. But at the time, I still thought that the “something better” meant ‘Age of Ultron’.
I was proven wrong of course in 2014 with the release of ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’. This movie actually had an even BETTER story than ‘The Avengers’, and ended up changing so many things that we had been used to. Turns out, when watching the movies that followed- this movie in particular could not be missed. It basically restructured SHIELD, and changed Steve Rogers’ viewpoints on the world.
One of the great things about the movies leading up to ‘The Avengers’ was that you didn’t necessarily have to see all the movies that came before it. Sure, it made for a great experience if you did, but it wasn’t a prerequisite. You didn’t have to see ‘Iron Man 2’ to understand what was going on in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’, or ‘Thor’. They were separate franchises, until the time came where they’d crossover.
However as time goes on, it’s beginning to look like this is all about to change, and I think people need to be well aware of this. I just recently wrote my review on ‘Civil War’, and I stated that this was the first time I truly felt with a Marvel movie that the viewer actually needed to see a select few movies beforehand in order to understand and feel what was going on.
‘Civil War’ not only tells a Captain America story, where you need to see the first two to really get it, but it also offers so much more. It’s Iron 3.5, it’s Avengers 2.5, it’s an introduction mini-movie for Black Panther and Spider-Man! It’s actually INSANE how many of these things are tackled in the movie, and at the end of it all, it was still just a Captain America movie at its center core.
So you might be thinking, “Wow, this is just way too much for people to keep track of now”. And sure, I can understand that. But is that what you say when you’re watching a television show? If you miss an episode of any show that follows an on-going story-arch, you will feel confused. If you miss multiple episodes, you’ll just be completely lost. The MCU is no longer a traditional film series. It’s a big-budget television show, where you just have to wait a few months between episodes.
It’s not James Bond, where you can pick up anywhere and get the gist of things. And if you’re looking for a TV comparison, it’s not NCIS. I honestly predict that ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ will be required viewing for ‘Avengers: Infinity War’.
I’ve even heard many complaints that they are starting to feel fatigued from all of these movies. If that’s you, it simply means you’re probably just not invested in it that much. But the money is speaking, and the MCU just made its 10 billionth dollar. There were numerous people who saw trailers for ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and ‘Ant-Man’, who truly believed Marvel was scraping the bottom of the barrel and decided to not see those movies because they thought the train was starting to slow down. Us real Marvel fans laugh in the faces of those people now because those two movies I just mentioned were massive successes both financially and critically. ‘Ant-Man’ was among my Top Five movies of 2015 and I liked it even more than ‘Age of Ultron’- a movie I was anticipating for three years! I was one of these people who wanted to push the standalone movies aside and just get the big team ups, and then look what happened. Most of those standalones ended up being more enjoyable. ‘Age of Ultron’ ended up being a weaker episode to an otherwise excellent season of Marvel movies.
Even outside of all of this, we have the Netflix Marvel shows that differ greatly from the movies! Yeah, they’re connected to a degree… but they don’t focus much on trying to make references to them, and that’s why these shows (on their own) work insanely well. Daredevil and Jessica Jones are both very adult and dark, which added even more freshness to the MCU as a whole. Daredevil feels a bit familiar as it draws a lot from Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. However, there is enough there to differentiate it, and really makes for its own thing. Jessica Jones on the other hand was not only one of the best things I’ve seen come out of the MCU, but one of the most original/intriguing things I’ve seen in general. Sure, it’s still a comic book adaptation, but it was unlike anything I’ve seen before. And it was easily one of the best things I saw this year, accounting for both television and film.
Marvel structures and groups their films in “Phases” and these phases play out just like seasons of a television show. Or- you could even say like a traditional three-act structure that a movie, book, or play abides by. Phase 1 is where we are introduced to all of the characters. You get an understanding of who they are, where they come from, and what drives them. Phase 2 is there to further the story. This is where we see things shifting gear, or things hitting rock bottom before they’re able to get back up. ‘Winter Soldier’ saw the fall of SHIELD and the resurgence of HYDRA. The second Thor film and Guardians introduced us to an important plot device that sets up the final phase. Phase 3 will be the culmination of everything we’ve seen before. But already, I have burning questions. What will get Tony to fight alongside Steve Rogers again? Where are Thor and Hulk? What will happen in the Black Panther movie, and will Captain America and/or Bucky be a part of it like it was teased? How will Star-Lord, Rocket, Groot, Gamora, and Drax end up fighting alongside Ant-Man, Spider-Man, and literally everyone else?
It’s already been confirmed that Robert Downy Jr. will be a part of ‘Spider-Man Homecoming’. Since this is the case, it’s very obvious that the relationship we saw between Tony and Peter in ‘Civil War’ was essential, and that even the events of that movie will play a key role to the events of this Spider-Man flick.
I truly believe that this sense of “fatigue” is only being mentioned by those that just simply don’t have enough interest to keep going with something. And I also really believe it is their lack of understanding that Hollywood is trying to approach their films with more of a television model now.
Let’s compare the MCU, DC Extended Universe, and Star Wars to the most popular show that is currently on television, ‘Game of Thrones’. We’re currently on our 6th season of GoT, and there are 10 episodes in a season, and each episode is nearly a full hour long- give or take a couple of minutes.
This means that so far, since 2011- we are approaching 60 hours of GoT. That’s 10 hours a year on 1 story vs. 2-4 hours a year in either the Star Wars, DC or Marvel universes.
And there are people saying that Star Wars/Marvel/DC might feel over-saturated???!!!
One particular issue that many might bring up, at least in regards to Star Wars is: Each movie tends to repeat a formula, while each episode of GoT might actually feel quite fresh story-wise. This is just using GoT as an example though. Let’s not forget about network shows that actually do have the same formula each episode (NCIS, Law & Order,etc…). People love GoT, Breaking Bad, and House of Cards since they stray away from these formulas, and because they know people will get bored of that when they binge-watch. But television has the ability to expand their stories. So much so, that there is far more set-up, than actual pay-off. I didn’t feel pay-off for the television show LOST, until pretty much the final moments of that show.
But a formula is just the structure of a movie. Period. It’s actually needed so that there’s just the need to watch the movie, and go home, and not think “Oh, I gotta binge watch 5 more movies to see what happens next!” People want a sense of finality or closure when their movie ends, and in order to get to that, you have to use a three-act structure/formula. Some movies might end on a cliffhanger, but the viewer should still feel satisfied with a certain pay-off the story gives first, before teasing where the story will go next. ‘The Force Awakens’ did this perfectly. It felt like a complete journey, with a beginning, middle, and end. But then the ending also left you wanting to see where the journey would go next.
A studio should never feel the need to make a movie that is all set-up and no pay-off. There are exceptions, such as when a studio decides to adapt a book and split it into parts. (i.e. Harry Potter, Hunger Games, The Hobbit, etc…) Funny enough, people have taken issue on those movies. Specifically for the reason that one movie was all set-up, while the other was all pay-off. And how are they supposed to feel that pay-off emotionally if they watched the set-up a full year beforehand? They’ve forgotten why they should be emotionally invested in these characters and the events that transpire. So with all of that said, when studios have an idea for any movie, the goal should be to make that one movie good, and then they can see how the story can continue later, after they have seen how receptive the audience was.
This is a huge reason the latest Terminator movie failed. They went into it with the plan of it being a trilogy, and their movie ended up being a confusing mess that spat on the face of the first two films. Most importantly, there was simply no interest from the audience to have it continue. Had the movie been good, and then also set up the possibilities for more movies, fans would have been far more open to that. Whereas, with ‘The Force Awakens’: They brought a franchise that was more or less “done” back from the dead, gave us a good movie first and foremost, and then gave us the bits that would lend to the story continuing.
Maybe Marvel plays certain movies safe. And by that I mean, not all of them are AMAZING, but none of them are piss poor either. I think most of us can agree that ‘Thor: The Dark World’ is not the greatest installment of the MCU. But it was at least good enough for the audience to say “hey, I still like Thor and can’t wait to see what’s next for him”! ‘Terminator: Genisys’ on the other hand had people walking out saying the same thing they’ve been saying since 2003. “They should have left it at T2”. Fun fact– both of these movies I just mentioned were directed by the same person. A director who has also been behind the camera for a few episodes of Game of Thrones too. So if that isn’t proof that the studios are more in control of a final product when we’re dealing with a big-budget movie, I don’t know what is.
And that leads me to my next point. This is all a part of a studios’ plan! Much like how it’s HBO’s plan to tell their Game of Thrones story, it is Disney’s plan to keep Marvel Studios and LucasFilm active, to generate successful story-telling. If you watch GoT, or literally any show at all that produces 10+ episodes a year, you should not be complaining that LucasFilm is putting out 1 Star Wars movie a year, or that Marvel and DC put out 2 movies a year. This is intentional for the story they’re trying to tell. They want it to feel like a big-budget television show. If you don’t like it, that does not mean that everyone else will share that opinion. It means that you simply aren’t invested enough in the stories that they are telling. It’s no different than the reason I STOPPED watching ‘The Walking Dead’. I just didn’t like the show. Others do, and that’s fine. That’s why it keeps going. And that’s why anything keeps going. It has interest, and ratings/money reflect that.
Now sure, there is the issue of the movie ticket. It’s not cheap. And this is something I think is a really huge issue. This is a big reason many people only go to the movies so often. That could be a whole different discussion. However I do believe we’re starting to see the evolution of the cinema just by the content that is being put out and what we choose to see.
Take a movie like ‘The Nice Guys’, that just bombed at the box office, even though it had extremely high praise. What does this say about the movie-going public? From my eyes, it looks as though people are starting to be content with their smaller, low budget stuff being available to them at home, and seeing the bigger/louder stuff at the theater.
I’m totally one of these people! I really wanted to see ‘The Nice Guys’, but I also wasn’t dying to check it out right away at the theater to be painfully honest. I had an X-Men movie I wanted to get to first, because I knew that watching a movie like X-Men at home would not be the same experience. So I pushed the Shane Black movie to the side for a later weekend… and what happened? It was no longer playing at the theaters near me because it wasn’t making money. The theater chains started to pull it in favor of adding more showings for ‘Civil War’ and ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’…ya know, movies that would draw in more business. Yeah that’s kind of my own fault, but I’m also not that sad about it, because I know that in a short few months, I will have the opportunity to see it by renting it.
To those with the complaint that movies aren’t original anymore- you’re wrong. This is an example of what happens to the original movies that are released. They are there. You’re just not seeing them. Why? Because you’d rather spend your buck on the bigger mass-marketed movies that are an adaptation/sequel/reboot of something else that already exists. That also shouldn’t be looked at as a bad thing either. I think it’s all a part of the evolution for film and television.
If you don’t believe me, then here- take this link. This is the “coming soon” list from IMDB that has every movie that is being released in the not too distant future. Now I just went through it and counted for June, July, and August of 2016 for my sample. These 3 months are huge for sequels/reboots/remakes, and this is where their numbers would be highest. I counted 16 movies between June 3rd and the end of August that would fall under the category of sequels/reboots/remakes. How many original movies? 50.
We’re also now living in a world where some of the best original content is sitting right in your streaming services. So you have all of that stuff to account for too! If Adam Sandler can translate his box office failures to some kind of success on Netflix, you can expect a lot more original movies and shows to debut on these streaming services in the future, while the cinema will be reserved for the “event” films.
I realize a lot of what I’ve said in this post might be completely obvious to many of you reading this. But believe me, there are so many people out there that don’t understand this. There are people that feel that an annual Star Wars movie will end up being a bad thing. There are people that think that having ‘Captain America: Civil War’ and ‘Doctor Strange’ (two completely different films tonally) being released in the same year will create mass exhaustion.
If you do start to feel that way, that’s fine. But just because it happens to you doesn’t mean it will happen to a billion other people in the world. Just like any TV show, if you don’t like it anymore, just stop watching it. Maybe superheroes or Star Wars just isn’t your thing, the same reason zombies aren’t my thing. But someday, I’m sure there will be a cinematic universe that will appeal to you, if there isn’t one already. We’ve got Universal working on a Monsters Universe, which could be a fun return to old-school horror adventure, and we’ve got Legendary Entertainment working on crossovers with Godzilla, King Kong, and all of those other giants. That sounds super entertaining! We even have a Transformers universe in the works… though I’m not sure who that’s really for honestly.
My point in all of this?
The shared universe model is just another piece of cinema evolution.
So next time you come across someone that brings up “franchise fatigue”, or “nothing is original anymore”- show them this post. It might actually shut them up.
AdvertisementsThis is Photojournalist Fred G. Haseney with his eye on scientology. For today’s blog, I’m not reporting from the Pacific Area Command Base (“PAC Base” or “Big Blue”), the so-called “church” of scientology’s West Coast headquarters, in Los Angeles. I’m writing to you, instead, from my residence. I thank my lucky stars that I still have a roof over my head because scientology would rather shut me up or see me without a place to live.
Why? What happened? What are the specifics? Who did what? Who is the “who” behind it all?
On Monday, May 2, 2016, a day after someone from scientology called the police on me during a silent protest on L. Ron Hubbard Way (“LRH Way”) at PAC Base, someone showed up where I live, and spoke to the person in charge. This is how her business card reads:
Church of Scientology in Los Angeles
Janet Weiland
Vice-President
1308 L. Ron Hubbard Way
Los Angeles, CA 90027
I have her phone, cell and email address, too.
Ms. Weiland tried to exercise scientology’s muscles to get the manager at my residence to do something about me. They told her, however, that they have no control over me; if she or scientology has a problem with me, then they’ll have to deal with me directly. It’s my understanding that in the discussion, Ms. Weiland revealed the fact that the police had been called about my taking pictures on LRH Way while there were children in the vicinity. I actually didn’t take any pictures of children along LRH Way knowing full well that I can’t publish them. It’s well known where I live that scientology is a cult. Thanks be to God that I still have a place to call home.
Keep in mind that I found out about Ms. Weiland’s visit today, Wednesday, May 4, 2016. Nobody pulled me in for a meeting nor did anyone take me aside to find out about Ms. Weiland’s allegations. I’m afraid to report that Ms. Weiland, the Office of Special Affairs and scientology were ineffective in their attempts to discredit me and dishonor my name.
The bigger picture here is that someone has been following me. Someone who I’m “friends” with on Facebook may not be who I think he or she is, and has searched my FB page for information about where I live. Ms. Weiland’s actions prove that a silent protest in which a little magnetic sign adhered to the side of a car slowly and quietly circling PAC Base can make scientology rear its ugly head. All we want, Ms. Weiland, is for loved ones in scientology to call those they’ve left behind: their parents, their children, their extended family, their significant other, their work associates, their bosses, all the people they’ve left behind, all in the name of “clearing the planet.”
Whatever it is that scientology is afraid of doesn’t matter. All that matters is something we’re doing is getting under their skin. We are the good guys here. We are not hiding anything. We stand for justice and, of course, things like “the American Way” (since were talking about Los Angeles). But scientology is an international fraternity that moves their Sea Org slaves around like pieces on a chessboard. We don’t stand for just Americans; we stand for the rights of the disconnected, the declared and the excommunicated worldwide.
Notice that Ms. Weiland’s address doesn’t read “Church of Scientology OF Los Angeles,” because if it did, it would be the Los Angeles Organization (“LA Org”), located at 4810 W. Sunset Blvd. The Advanced Organization of Los Angeles (“AOLA”), is located at 1306 LRH Way, at the southeast corner of LRH Way and Fountain. All even-numbered addresses in Los Angeles are on the south or east side of the streets; all odd-numbered addresses are on the north or west side of the streets. If you were to walk behind AOLA, through their parking, you’d reach what most likely is the street address where Ms. Weiland can be found, at 1308 LRH Way.
Who is Janet Weiland?
Photo Caption: From the Xenu Directory, in a web site address that contains the phrase “osababes,” I found a photo of a “Janet Weiland.” “OSABabes” must refer to “babes,” or the pretty women of “OSA,” meaning scientology’s Office of Special Affairs. The same person who supplied this photo also supplied a photo of Gerry Armstrong’s wedding, complete with a full-length, much younger “Janet Weiland,” but that photo is no longer available at that website.
Who is Janet Weiland?
Photo Caption: Google images provided a photo of a “Janet Weiland” in an issue of Freedom Magazine. This issue appears to be from 2001. The photo (left to right) is the President of the Church of Scientology International (at the time), Heber C. Jentzsch; the Vice-President of the Church of Scientology International, Janet Weiland; the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (from 1997 to 2002), Bernard Parks.
Who is Janet Weiland?
Photo Caption: At Linked In, a “Janet Weiland” describes her job as “Public Affairs at Church of Scientology International,” from 1987 to the present (29 years).
Who is Janet Weiland?
Photo Caption: From the Scientology Newsroom, we find a photo of a “Janet Weiland,” scientology’s Public Affairs representative sharing information with others on drug education provided by the so-called “church.” That same “Janet Weiland” stood proudly at the scientology tent set up at the Parliament of the World Religions, held October 2015, at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. (I got into scientology, by the way, through their Mission of Salt Lake City, in 1977.) “People would line up or call ahead,” Ms. Weiland declared, “to reserve a place at the Volunteer Ministers tent to receive a scientology assist.”
Who is Janet Weiland?
Photo Caption: At the Encyclopedia Dramatica, we learn that a “Janet Weiland” used to be legend Tory “Magoo” Christman’s boss at OSA.
In closing, Janet Weiland’s interest in me has only fueled my interest in her. Suddenly, I feel so alive. I’m a Very Important Person (“VIP”) to scientology now. When do I meet Tom Cruise and John Travolta? Take me to your fearless leader, David “Let Him Die” Miscavige (so he can autograph the picture of himself on his daddy’s soon-to-be bestselling book cover).
Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.” —The New Testament of The Holy Bible, 1 Peter 3:13-14.
All images (unless noted otherwise) © 2015—2016 Fred G. Haseney. All rights reserved.
I’d like to gratefully acknowledge a friend for providing editorial and proofreading chores.
AdvertisementsNew research could help improve bird conservation methods
Scientists at the University of Sheffield have developed a new method of testing the fertility of critically endangered birds which could make captive breeding programmes more effective and help secure the future of several species.
Using newly developed methods which allow experts to tell the difference between infertility and very early embryo death – something that has never been done before in endangered species – new light has been shed on methods for breeding critically endangered bird species in captivity.
Researchers from the University’s Department of Animal and Plant Sciences believe their new method of assessing egg fertility, ensuring pairs are sexually compatible and the males are producing enough sperm, could save bird species on the brink of extinction.
Academics analysed the reproduction of five critically endangered species of birds in the wild and in breeding programmes and found the wilds birds suffered exceptionally high rates of embryo death because of inbreeding, while in the captive birds little, if any, sperm even managed to fertilise the eggs.
Dr Nicola Hemmings, who led the research, said: “Our findings suggest that breeding birds in captivity may impact on fertility. The captive birds we studied had high levels of infertility and far fewer sperm managed to reach the eggs than would be expected for birds of their size.
“This may be for a number of reasons; for example, the birds may not mate properly in captivity or males may not produce sufficient sperm due to the stress of a captive environment.”
The researchers believe their findings, published in the journal Biology Letters, will have important implications for the conservation of endangered birds across the world, particularly those species where most of the remaining birds are kept in zoos and sanctuaries.
Dr Hemmings added: “Although breeding in captivity may not necessarily be the best option, it is sometimes the only option for critically endangered species like the ones we worked with. I'd advocate using techniques like we did to assess fertility of birds, so you know which birds are likely to be successful.
“Once fertile birds are identified, it may be best to allow these birds to engage in natural courtship, mate choice and breeding behaviour with minimal human intervention - this would probably minimise stress and may also reduce the chance of incompatibility between partners.
“Normal social and sexual behaviour may be a really important ingredient for successful reproduction. However, some human intervention may be necessary, for example if female birds are not incubating their eggs properly then it may be necessary to incubate those eggs artificially to avoid losing the developing embryos.”
The team found that more than 100 eggs examined from birds bred in captivity – including the Spix's macaw, which is now extinct in the wild, and the orange-bellied parrot – had not been fertilised because few, if any, sperm had managed to get to the egg. In the wild, most endangered bird eggs failed due to embryo death, which is probably caused by inbreeding in their small, isolated populations.
Scientists from the University analysed five species of birds: the helmeted honeyeater; hihi; the orange-bellied parrot; Spix’s macaw; and the yellow shouldered Amazon parrot.
Additional information To view the paper on line please visit: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/08/29/rsbl.2012.0655.full The University of Sheffield With nearly 25,000 students from 125 countries, the University of Sheffield is one of the UK’s leading and largest universities. A member of the Russell Group, it has a reputation for world-class teaching and research excellence across a wide range of disciplines. The University of Sheffield has been named University of the Year in the Times Higher Education Awards for its exceptional performance in research, teaching, access and business performance. In addition, the University has won four Queen’s Anniversary Prizes (1998, 2000, 2002, and 2007). These prestigious awards recognise outstanding contributions by universities and colleges to the United Kingdom’s intellectual, economic, cultural and social life. Sheffield also boasts five Nobel Prize winners among former staff and students and many of its alumni have gone on to hold positions of great responsibility and influence around the world. The University’s research partners and clients include Boeing, Rolls Royce, Unilever, Boots, AstraZeneca, GSK, ICI, Slazenger, and many more household names, as well as UK and overseas government agencies and charitable foundations. The University has well-established partnerships with a number of universities and major corporations, both in the UK and abroad. Its partnership with Leeds and York Universities in the White Rose Consortium has a combined research power greater than that of either Oxford or Cambridge.In this article I will explain how to set up a wifi setup that can connect to an internet source far away. This works great on a boat (which I did in my case), in an RV, or even in a downtown apartment. If you have the password to a nearby wifi it will essentially transport that wifi and make it wherever you have this set up. You can get a wifi login (with permission) to a local restaurant or cafe and then have that in your own home environment. In my case I set this up on my boat and was able to get access to wifi in an office 2 miles away.
The actual hardware setup is relatively easy, the confusing part was figuring out how to set up the device interfaces, thus me offering my knowledge to help you. The following is a guide for the exact Wireless Router (TP-Link N150 Wireless 3G/4G Portable Router) and Wireless Radio Receiver (Ubiquiti Bullet M2 Titanium)I bought.
First we need to set up the Wireless Radio Receiver (Ubiquiti Bullet M2 Titanium). Plug the ethernet from the Bullet directly into your computer. Follow these Beginner’s Guide Steps proved by Uniquiti. Download here
Here are my Bullet setup settings:
After you are able to connect to a wifi network unplug the Bullet and connect the Wireless Router (TP-Link N150 Wireless 3G/4G Portable Router) with the Ethernet cable to your computer. On the router there is a switch on the side, set this to AP. Then follow the steps under “AP Mode” (page 19) for setting it up in TP-Link’s guide. Download Here
When finished setting up the router plug the ethernet cable going from the Bullet into the router’s WAN/LAN port. This will then bring the wifi on the radio into the router and push that out through it. Now connect a device to the wifi and you should have internet.
Here is the setup I did for my boat which is 12v so it required more custom wiring to get power rather than plugging it into an outlet:With an aim of imparting technical and medical education in Hindi, the Madhya Pradesh's Hindi Vishwavidyalaya has started courses in Hindi medium for electrical, mechanical and civil streams.
"The process is on for admitting students in electrical, mechanical and civil engineering degree and diploma courses. After completion of the procedure, we will start the classes soon in total Hindi medium," university's Vice Chancellor Dr Mohan Lal Chhipa told PTI today.
"We are determined to start these courses in Hindi language from this session even if a single student takes admission in it," Chhipa said when asked about the intake in these courses.
"The issue is not intake. We have to break this mindset of English that dominated the country for over 250 years. It can't be ended in just 70 years of country's Independence," he said.
Except few nations, many countries like Israel, Japan, China, Russia, Korea, Germany, and various others have teaching these courses in their own language and are progressing, he pointed out.
"We have to break this mindset that progress is assured through English only," the VC said.
He said it is a matter of pride that the university, which was founded in the name of noted Hindi scholar and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, is working towards imparting education in technical subjects in Hindi medium.
The university at present is functioning from the Minto Hall (Old Vidhan Sabha building) and its own campus is being constructed in a 50 acre area.
The university will start engineering courses at present from Bhoj Open University's campus and will shift to the new campus once its construction is over, he said.
Chhipa said the university will focus on creating job-seekers, but will train them in a manner that they become job-creator for others.
The university has already drafted the syllabus in Hindi and appointed faculty for imparting engineering courses in Hindi. Besides degree courses, the university will also run diploma courses in these disciplines, he said.
To begin with, the varsity is offering 30 seats each in civil, mechanical, electrical streams and also in diploma courses.
It will take some more time to start the medical courses in Hindi and the university has already written to the Medical Council of India to permit it.
"The process is long and will not change overnight, especially the mindset," he added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Chief NRA lobbyist and Boyle-from-Brooklyn 99 lookalike Chris Cox was the opening act for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at Friday’s National Rifle Association Annual Meeting, and didn’t waste any time making some vicious attacks on likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and telling a string of lies about her to boot. Cox began by asking the crowd if they had a right to defend themselves with firearms, not in public or in their cars, but in their homes. He then asked if they knew where Hillary stood on the issue, pointed to a video monitor, and said “Let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth!”
He then “accidentally” played a doctored clip of Hillary barking, followed by audio that seemed to confirm his claim about Hillary’s position. Later in the speech, Cox joked that Hillary could be in prison soon, then made a joke about her sex life that compelled him to apologize to his mother. Here are those “highlights”:
The crowd ate up the crude insults, as well as the fear-mongering about Hillary Clinton, as well they should have. That leaked audio he played was pretty damning, especially since he specified that he was only talking about the right to have a gun in your home, not somewhere else, because that’s clearly not what Hillary Clinton was saying in that audio clip:
The idea that you can have an open carry permit with an AK-47 over your shoulder walking up and down the aisles of a supermarket is just despicable.
Oops! As a matter of fact, much to the chagrin of many liberals, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama profess a belief in the right to individual gun ownership, and even Krazy Kommie Bernie Sanders won’t make Heller a litmus test for the Supreme Court. If the NRA were so convinced of the rightness of their position, there would be no reason for them to lie right to the faces of their members.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.The Department of Defense on Thursday issued a stern warning to its personnel to steer clear of tomorrow’s demonstration outside the White House protesting the recent spate of fatal police shootings across the country.
A group claiming to be Anonymous is billing the DC demonstration as being part of a “collective day of rage” and “day of solidarity,” with 36 other protests taking place in major cities across the country on Friday night, including one in Manhattan’s Times Square.
“Please be advised the [US Northern Command] has issued a threat advisory informing DOD personnel that a series of protests has been scheduled to be conducted across the United States on July 15, 2016,” reads an advisory issued by the US Army in response to a threatening video posted Wednesday by Anonymous.
The notice mentions that one of the demonstration sites is outside the White House.
“For your personal safety, we highly encourage you to avoid this specific location entirely,” the Army noted.
The advisory to all Army personnel also lists the start times and locations of the protests in cities that include Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami.
The five-minute-plus video produced by Anonymous shows footage of the fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota, and the slayings of five officers in Dallas, Texas. A man’s voice is dubbed over the disturbing images.
“Yet, while we do honor these fallen officers, we will not be discouraged. We will not stop until the officers responsible for the deaths of both Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” the man says.
“We will not submit to another failure of judgment by those who failed to indict Darren Wilson and prosecute the officers who were involved in the death of Freddie Gray,” the man says.
Officer Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown during an altercation in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, but was later exonerated of criminal wrongdoing.
Gray died in Baltimore, Maryland, while in police custody in 2015. Charges against several officers involved in his death have already been dismissed. Other cops in the case are still facing trial.
“The entire global collective of Anonymous are outraged at these vicious murders,” the man’s voiceover continues. “The time has come to draw a line in the sand and say, ‘Enough is enough.’”
“We are infuriated as we watch day after day another human murdered because an irresponsible corrupt system allows free reign to cops that continuously abuse their power,” the man says. “We are calling for a collective day of rage. We must stress the importance of staying non-violent.”
The video makes it clear that the hacker group has “launched attacks” on the “virtual infrastructure” of the police departments involved in the Sterling and Castile shootings.
“To the St. Anthony and Baton Rouge police departments, we have already launched attacks on your virtual infrastructure,” the voiceover warns. “We are prepared to release every single piece of evidence that will expose your corruption and blatant disregard for human life.”On a Sunday morning, I find myself in Long Beach, California with a cold beer resting in my hand as a race is about to |
number and a personal code; electronic magic takes care of the rest. Money is deducted from the user’s PayPal account and a receipt with details of the transaction is sent to their e-mail address. Purses or wallets do not come into it.
In several countries customers at Starbucks do not need to reach for cards or cash either. Coffee in hand, they can open the firm’s app on their mobile phones, hold up a barcode for the cashier to scan and the job is done. Rewards for frequent custom are automatically tallied up in their online account.
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An even more hands-off payment option in many shops in America involves a firm called Square. Among other things, it offers a “virtual” wallet that stores details of a user’s credit cards and loyalty-scheme memberships and can be accessed via a mobile phone. To buy things with it, a customer does not even need to touch the phone—just have it with him. Square’s app can be instructed to turn itself on and “check in” when the user enters a store in the firm’s network; when he wants to pay, all he has to do is to tell the cashier his name and that he is using Square. Signatures, PIN numbers, cards and barcodes are all done away with. Instead, the cashier’s system brings up a picture of the account-holder, to make sure he is who he claims to be, and Square sends him a text message confirming his purchase to make sure the charges are correct.
The world of payments is changing: people are buying ever more things online and increasingly with their phones. Whizz-bang technology can make transactions effortless or embed them seamlessly into other activities, such as booking a cab or searching for a nearby coffee shop. The numbers are becoming significant: PayPal has 143m active accounts and handled $180 billion in payments last year. And new services to make spending money easier are springing up all the time.
They are not confined to the rich world: in Kenya roughly 60% of adults—about the same number as have a bank account—use a mobile-phone payment service called M-PESA (see chart 4) And increasingly they cater to business customers too: services that integrate electronic invoicing and payments into a firm’s procurement and accounting system, or that help manage and raise working capital, are becoming commonplace.
Not surprisingly, the titans of the internet have started to eye up the payments business. Google offers a virtual wallet; Amazon recently set up a service to allow its customers to transfer money; Facebook and Apple have expressed interest in the field. There is much speculation that the latest iPhone’s ability to read fingerprints may be heralding a world-changing payment service. Telecoms companies (such as Safaricom, the firm behind M-PESA) and bricks-and-mortar merchants (Starbucks) are also dabbling in the field.
Yet banks are largely absent from this technological and commercial battleground. Payments are a huge business for them, bringing in $1.3 trillion in 2012, or 34% of their global profits, according to McKinsey, a consultancy. And these revenues have been growing steadily: by 3% a year in 2008-12, compared with just 1% a year for other income. As in their lending businesses, however, banks are finding that new regulations eat into their revenue from payments. The main target has been interchange fees, as banks’ charges for processing credit- and debit-card payments are known. The European Parliament recently adopted a law that would cap these at 0.2% of the value of a transaction for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. In America the Dodd-Frank act of 2010 curbed interchange fees for debit cards.
The American authorities have also extracted big settlements from several card issuers for inveigling customers into buying expensive and unnecessary ancillary services, such as insurance against missed card payments. A similar scandal has cost banks dear in Britain. In many jurisdictions the credit-card networks have been investigated by competition authorities.
All this is a worry for banks because credit cards account for a big share of their revenue from payments—41% in North America, according to McKinsey, although less elsewhere. And their use is growing fast, especially in booming emerging markets. In China McKinsey expects it to increase by 42% a year between 2012 and 2017. Brazil is already the world’s second-biggest market for card transactions after the United States, according to Capgemini, another consultancy.
At the same time the wealth of new services is threatening to disrupt the payments business. A few upstarts—most notably Bitcoin, a troubled virtual currency—are seeking to bypass the existing payments infrastructure altogether. Bitcoin has proved a volatile store of value (see chart 5), but as a cheap, reliable and transparent way to make a transfer it is a notable success.
For the most part, however, the challenge is not head-on. In fact, by making it easier to buy things, most new payments services are pushing extra business to the existing channels, dominated by banks. When a consumer buys something using PayPal, he must still find a way to settle his PayPal account. That typically involves either a card payment or a direct transfer from a bank account. Equally, customers at Starbucks top up their loyalty-card balances or online accounts by conventional methods. Square is perhaps the best example of this symbiosis: its clever mobile wallet is merely an offshoot of its main business, which makes it easier and cheaper for small merchants to accept credit cards. It has been so successful that it has spawned a host of imitators, including a European service called iZettle and an offering from PayPal called PayPal Here, all of which are now pushing millions of payments though the credit-card networks.
Square makes it easier and cheaper for small merchants to accept credit cards
Nonetheless, such services can nibble away at banks’ revenues. In some countries PayPal steers users towards bank transfers rather than card transactions by charging lower fees for them. Such transfers are much cheaper for PayPal (and thus not nearly so lucrative for banks); they cost only a small fixed amount rather than a percentage of the payment. Moreover, when users add funds to their PayPal account in one go to cover more than one purchase, they cut down on the number of bank-mediated transactions.
Perhaps more important, banks are losing out on the information that comes with handling customers’ purchases directly and can then be used to steer advertising or provide other services. An American mobile-payments start-up called LevelUp, for instance, considers that opportunity so valuable that it offers merchants a discount on the interchange fees that it pays to banks on their behalf. In exchange, the merchants give LevelUp a share of the money customers spend using promotions delivered through LevelUp’s platform.
Consultants like to speak of “purchasing journeys” in which settling the bill is only the final step. Other waystations include advertising, internet search, participation in loyalty schemes and so on. Innovators, the thinking goes, could afford to undercut market prices for payments in anticipation of greater rewards at some other stage in the journey. “I could see Google running the payments business,” says Lee Kyriacou of Novantas, a consultancy. “Advertising could pay for the whole network.”
Tech firms are not the only potential usurpers. Retailers, too, are understandably eager to increase their leverage in the world of payments. In America an alliance of household names, including Walmart, CVS and ExxonMobil, is in the process of setting up a mobile-payments scheme called Merchant Customer Exchange. Such firms may well use their clout to get the banks to reduce their charges on card transactions.
Many telecoms firms, too, see the growth of mobile payments as their chance to break into a lucrative new business. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, three of America’s four biggest mobile providers, have formed a consortium called Isis to develop their own mobile-payments system and virtual wallet. Similar outfits have sprung up in many other countries.
In the long run, banks risk becoming the providers of a cheap, commoditised service, with most of the money in the payments business going to firms that make customers’ lives easier or provide new services. As Capgemini put it in a recent report: “The payments-acquisition value chain is splitting—with transactional components becoming commoditised and customer-engagement components becoming differentiators.”
A good example of this sort of thing is a firm called Simple. It blends online and mobile banking with tools to help customers organise their finances through an elegant website and app. Customers can easily check not only their balance but also the amount that it is safe to spend, taking into account pending bills and recurring payments. They can set goals for savings and budgets for different categories of expenditure each month. Simple tracks their progress and can answer questions like “How much did I spend on clothes last year?”
Cherchez la banque
The most striking thing about Simple is that it is not a bank. As its website notes, “the funds in your Simple account are held by our partner bank, The Bancorp Bank, Member FDIC.” These accounts generate revenue in the normal way: from the spread between the interest they earn when lent out and the interest Simple pays on them, and from interchange fees from cards tied to the account. Simple provides the interface and in return splits the revenue with Bancorp. But customers learn the name of the bank where their money is held only if they read the fine print.
Even worse for banks would be a future in which people begin to store more of their money outside the banking sector and make payments that are not tied to a formal bank account. In a small way that is already happening in the rich world. Customers of firms such as Starbucks and Shell keep billions in the firms’ prepaid cards. “Open-loop” prepaid cards, which can be used at any retailer that accepts card payments, are also becoming more popular. Transaction volumes have been growing by 20% a year, according to Capgemini. Mercator Advisory Group, yet another consultancy, expects funds loaded onto such cards in America alone to reach $80 billion this year.
The issuers of the vast majority of prepaid cards are not banks; indeed the cards are often explicitly promoted as alternatives to a bank account. They usually allow holders to deposit cheques, make and receive electronic payments and use cash machines. Big American retailers, including Walmart and Walgreens, are getting involved in the business, promoting prepaid cards through their shops and allowing customers to deposit money at their tills and withdraw it from cash machines on the premises. In addition to this marketing clout, prepaid cards hold a regulatory advantage in America: they are not subject to the interchange-fee restrictions that apply to debit cards.
The threat to banks from novel payments systems is even clearer in poorer countries, since a smaller share of the population is using a bank in the first place. MasterCard, for instance, is co-operating with the Nigerian government to issue national identity cards that can double as prepaid cards, in a deliberate effort to provide financial services to those without bank accounts. Visa is helping to develop a mobile-payments system in Rwanda.
When such schemes take off, they can quickly supplant banks as the main local conduit for money. Some 43% of Kenya’s GDP is channelled through M-PESA each year, according to Safaricom. M-PESA itself cannot offer interest-bearing accounts, loans or insurance but provides them through tie-ups with several local banks. The products concerned are available only to M-PESA customers and can be accessed only via a mobile phone. As with Simple, the banks seem to play a secondary role.
One of M-PESA’s advertisements shows a herdsman in traditional dress, surrounded by milling cows and goats, smiling as he reads a text message with an update on the credit in his account. Then a Sikh overseer on a building site realises he can make his life much simpler by paying his workers via M-PESA instead of in cash. Next, a businessman on a plane reaches for his phone to pay his son’s school fees. The idea being rammed home is that M-PESA caters to all Kenyans, irrespective of their income.
Tomorrow the world
Vodafone, Safaricom’s parent, has rolled out M-PESA in several other African countries as well as in Afghanistan and India. In March it announced it would offer the service in Romania, where more than one-third of the population does not have a bank account. It says other countries in Europe will follow.
Banks are not ignoring these developments. They are sprucing up their websites and mobile apps and trying to develop catchy products of their own. Barclays, a big British bank, signed up 2.5m users for its mobile money-transfer service, PingIt, in its first 18 months. Erste Group of Austria has developed a system called Erste Confirming that allows businesses to haggle over invoices, securing discounts for buyers and cheap loans against unpaid bills for suppliers.
If necessary, banks can always buy the technology they need or the companies that create it. BBVA, a Spanish bank, recently bought Simple for $117m—a heady amount for a service with just 100,000 customers, but a trifle for a buyer with a market capitalisation of €50 billion. And an American subsidiary of RBS has teamed up with Bottomline Technologies, a firm that helps businesses pay each other electronically, to beef up its corporate offering. But acquiring such businesses from the people who invented them will not turn the banks into bold innovators.Back in 1972, Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan kingdom, proposed Gross National Happiness as a better indicator of well-being than Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Ever since, Bhutan has been a poster child for happiness. Its philosophy has influenced many international committees including one headed by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, which has just submitted its report on The Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress.
The Stiglitz report says that GDP is a poor measure of well-being, so countries should also measure quality-of-life indicators that make people happy, such as leisure, education, social relationships, political voice and governance. Happiness is, of course, much more than GDP. Yet Bhutan's dirty secret is that it is a world champion in GDP growth.
While many countries faced declining GDP in 2008, Bhutan had the fastest GDP growth rate in the world at 21.4%, says the CIA World Factbook. Bhutan used to be among the poorest countries in the world in the 1980s. But galloping economic growth for two decades took its per capita GDP in 2008 to a respectable $ 1900, almost double neighboring India's $ 1070.
This fabulous GDP growth was not spurred by the pursuit of happiness, but by giant hydropower projects India has been building in Bhutan's steep mountains for two decades. Bhutan's current hydropower capacity is 1,480 MW, and it plans additional projects to generate 10,000 MW of power by 2020, almost entirely for export to India, which provides all the financing.
Large dams are not usually regarded as sources of happiness. Environmentalists usually condemn them for displacing people and submerging forests. Bhutan's neat ploy has been to adopt a green name (Druk Green Power Corporation) for its hydropower producer. It gets away with this since environmentalists shy away from attacking a much ballyhooed Shangri-La of happiness.
Its first big hydropower project of 336 MW capacity at Chuka was commissioned in 1988. This was followed by Kurichhu (60MW) in 2001, Basochho (40MW) in 2005 and the giant Tala project (1,020 MW) in 2007, which largely explains the subsequent huge jump in GDP in 2008. Electricity revenue will provide no less than 60% of the government's entire revenue in 2009.Yet only 66% of Bhutanese households and 39% of its villages are electrified.
Developing countries with rich natural resources, like oil, often fare very badly. Economists talk of a "resource curse" that enables a kleptocratic ruling elite to become very rich without any productive effort or decent governance. Revenues from natural resources flow directly to governments, bypassing citizens.
Hydropower potential is Bhutan's big natural resource, generating vast revenues for its government. To Bhutan's credit, kleptocracy and misgovernance have been kept at bay so far. Yet as hydropower revenue keeps soaring, the risks will keep rising.
Bhutan has done many things to deserve its Shangri-La reputation. Its forest cover is a very high 72%, and it has pledged to keep this above 60 % for eternity. It admits only a small number of high-end tourists, helping preserve the traditional character of its delightful towns. Tourists say the people are very friendly, tranquil and hospitable.
Yet appearances can be deceptive. Bhutan has expelled 100,000 people of Nepali origin, who now languish in refugee camps in Nepal. The Bhutia tribe accounts for roughly 50% of Bhutan's population, and ethnic Nepalese for another 35%. Nepalese migrants have swamped original ethnic groups in neighboring parts of India like Sikkim and Darjeeling. The Bhutias of Bhutan are determined not to be swamped too. Those expelled claim they are regular citizens who have been ethnically cleansed, while the government claims they are illegal immigrants. Such ethnic strife does not look like a recipe for happiness.
In most countries women outnumber men. But Bhutan has only 89.2 females per 100 males, worse even than India (93.3 females per 100 males) where female feticide and infanticide are facts of life. Bhutan's gender ratio suggests discrimination against female children in access to health and food.
The CIA World Factbook estimates literacy in Bhutan at 47%, while a recent Bhutanese publication puts it at 59.5%. Nepal banned TV for decades to protect its people from pernicious modern influences, but finally allowed TV in 1999. Low literacy and media bans are not usually associated with happiness, but some will say that ignorance is bliss.
So, Bhutan's greatest achievement is not its index of Gross National Happiness, but its apparent demonstration that happiness can flow from rapid GDP growth and large dams, overcoming problems like gender discrimination and low literacy.He tells me that his wifes late father, who was a marine in the battle of Iwo Jima, had brought back his pistol from the war. I'm thinking, ok must be a nice old 1911 model, one that has probably seen more than a few soldiers hands. then comes the rest of the story.
Turns out that the guy's father in law, had a camera with him in his sack, and had taken some pictures of when they raised the flag on Mt. Suribachi. He submitted his photo, but it was not chosen as the one that is now famous. The family still has this picture hanging in their living room.
A few days after the flag raising, the Japanese attacked the marines, and another fight broke out. As they are in the middle of everything, a Japanese sniper takes a shot at him. The bullet hits him in the right wrist, and hits his gun hanging from his belt. The round, after completely disabling his right hand, penetrates his leather pistol holster, and embeds itself into the slide of his 1911. fragments from the round penetrate through the other side of the holster, and into his leg, injuring him further.
The marine was able to get to the medic, where he was then evacuated to care for his injuries.
So the technician asks me if I would like to see it. After telling him the obvious, he calls his wifes brother and asks if he could bring it up to the shop.
Here are the pictures I took after listening to the same story again from the Marine's son. (it was a good story, I had no problem listening twice. )
I asked him if he would mind me posting them on here, as long as I blocked out the serial number. He said go right ahead.
Although I had to blur out the serial #, it fell into the early/mid 600,000 range. Found this.
Colt: S/N 450,000 to 629,500 = Oct. 24, 1918 to April 10, 1919
If anyone can tell me a little more about this gun, I can relay it to the owner, who would be very grateful!
ETA...the Marine's name was Horace Arthur Smith "Arty". he passed away 3 years ago.
One of the older technicians at work was telling me a story today about a pistol that was in his in laws family.He tells me that his wifes late father, who was a marine in the battle of Iwo Jima, had brought back his pistol from the war. I'm thinking, ok must be a nice old 1911 model, one that has probably seen more than a few soldiers hands. then comes the rest of the story.Turns out that the guy's father in law, had a camera with him in his sack, and had taken some pictures of when they raised the flag on Mt. Suribachi. He submitted his photo, but it was not chosen as the one that is now famous. The family still has this picture hanging in their living room.A few days after the flag raising, the Japanese attacked the marines, and another fight broke out. As they are in the middle of everything, a Japanese sniper takes a shot at him. The bullet hits him in the right wrist, and hits his gun hanging from his belt. The round, after completely disabling his right hand, penetrates his leather pistol holster, and embeds itself into the slide of his 1911. fragments from the round penetrate through the other side of the holster, and into his leg, injuring him further.The marine was able to get to the medic, where he was then evacuated to care for his injuries.So the technician asks me if I would like to see it. After telling him the obvious, he calls his wifes brother and asks if he could bring it up to the shop.Here are the pictures I took after listening to the same story again from the Marine's son. (it was a good story, I had no problem listening twice.I asked him if he would mind me posting them on here, as long as I blocked out the serial number. He said go right ahead.Although I had to blur out the serial #, it fell into the early/mid 600,000 range. Found this.Colt: S/N 450,000 to 629,500 = Oct. 24, 1918 to April 10, 1919If anyone can tell me a little more about this gun, I can relay it to the owner, who would be very grateful!ETA...the Marine's name was Horace Arthur Smith "Arty". he passed away 3 years ago.Well, it’s Friday, so I’ve survived yet another of Uncle Buck’s cooking classes, which are held on occasional Thursdays at Magnolia Wellness. This time, it didn’t involve cooking so much as waiting…waiting for the homemade ice cream to freeze!
Sure, you can just drop some cannabis tincture on a cup or cone of ice cream, but that will taste kind of nasty. Uncle Buck is all about good quality food as well as medicine, and he knew that the only way to make it taste good was to infuse the milk and cream and make the ice cream from scratch. And he made it with an ounce of cannabis, mint extract, and threw on some chopped-up Kiva chocolate bars, so he called this particular batch One-Zip Mint Chip!
So for most of the class, we waited with antici…pation for the stuff to freeze, since Uncle Buck was making it right in front of us with an electric stirrer in a tub full of rock salt and ice. This was very educational, because we had lots of intellectual discussions, and got to see Uncle Buck in a slightly over-medicated state himself (by the time we left, he had arranged for someone else to drive him home).
I generally can’t stand anything with mint in it, but this stuff tasted pretty amazing (I’d still like to try it without the mint, hint hint). You could taste the cannabis, but it didn’t taste weedy, just good and green. I can’t explain it better than that.
Do The Math
I was due to run some errands after class, so I dutifully went off to the shopping center. This was a mistake, since I had failed to do some simple math. There were about 14 people in class, so each of us had about 2 grams’ worth of dosage…yikes!
First thing I found out is that infused ice cream does not take an hour to take effect like with most edibles. More like half an hour. So there I was, gliding around Lowes about 4 inches off the ground. Then I barely avoided buying everything that looked tasty in Trader Joes, which was even harder than it sounds.
So I called my wife and told her I’d be late coming back from my adventure, and decided to stay completely away from my car and walked over to Chipotle, where I ate half of an amazing burrito bowl. Came back and it was still pretty hot outside (around 100 degrees), so I carefully moved my car into the middle of a huge parking lot and opened all the windows to cool it off in whatever breezes were around. Then I started listening to Jefferson Airplane on my iPod, because I was still getting higher in spite of eating.
It was still hot, so I walked around my car a few times. By now, the sun had started to go down, so it was like being in a music video filmed at dusk by someone who likes those rotating Steadicam shots. I kept alternating between sitting down because I was feeling dizzy and walking around (OK, standing and leaning against the car so I wouldn’t fall down). I had to keep reminding myself that it actually was hot outside and I wasn’t overheating due to some medical problem or other. Even so, at one point I was about 10 seconds away from calling 911, just because it had all happened so fast.
At this point, I finally decided to call my wife and ask her to pick me up. This took a huge load off my mind, and now I could concentrate on getting through what had rapidly become an unexpected voyage to Level [14.5], although only briefly at that altitude.
By the time my wife and son finally showed up, I was having severe time dilation. So on the drive home, I was treated to what seemed like a 100+ mph 3D Star Wars amusement ride through miles and miles of roller-coaster-like hills and screaming curves. The last part was just like the little tram inside Gringott’s that we saw in the final Harry Potter movie earlier this week. If you’ve seen that, you ought to have a good idea of how freaking high I was.
So I eventually went to sleep and today I feel a lot better as usual. But I’m concerned about just one thing…
What must have happened to those people who went back for seconds?!?!?!?!?TECH moguls look upon the European Commission with as much enthusiasm as does the average Tory MP from the English shires. Europe has no successful technology companies of its own, they whisper, which is why Eurocrats spend their time hassling American tech giants instead.
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Not for the first time Google finds itself in the commission’s crosshairs. This week, the head of the EU’s trustbusting division, Margrethe Vestager, issued charges against the internet-search firm (see article). Its “preliminary view” is that Google is guilty of unfairly using its control of Android, the operating system that powers over 80% of the world’s smartphones, as a means to get its apps and services preferred over those offered by rivals. Europe trying to protect its own? Perhaps. Nevertheless, Google has a case to answer.
The commission’s claim has echoes of antitrust battles against Microsoft, which was found guilty on both sides of the Atlantic of trying to extend a monopoly in one area, the operating system for desktop computers, into others. The commission reckons that Google has a European market share of over 90% in three related areas: internet search, licensed smartphone operating systems and the distribution of apps for use on the Android platform via its online store, Google Play. Google is charged with using these near-monopolies to reinforce each other and also to extend its market power to other apps in its line-up. So if a manufacturer wants to pre-install Play on its handsets, it must also install Google Search as the default search engine. If it wants to license Google Search, it must pre-install Google’s Chrome browser. By “tying” its products in this way, Google can consolidate its market power.
This makes it harder for apps from Google’s current rivals (or by potential future innovators) to get a look in. Google claims there is no arm-twisting of manufacturers. Android is open-source software, it says. Anyone can use it without Google’s say-so. Handset-makers, such as Samsung, can and do pre-install apps of rivals, such as Facebook and Amazon, alongside those from the Google stable. Apple’s iOS, by contrast, is a closed operating system. But Apple’s slice of the smartphone market, though wildly profitable, is much smaller. In contrast, Google’s sway over Android gives it the power to crush rivals and, crucially, to entrench its position in search, where it currently has no strong competitors.
That power adds weight to a second charge by the commission, that Google is offering financial incentives to manufacturers to pre-install its search service on smartphones and tablets exclusively. A third charge is that Google does not allow manufacturers to use modified versions of Android on any of their devices if they want to pre-install the firm’s apps on one of them. If such restrictions were truly necessary to preserve the integrity of the Google-licensed version of Android, that might be good for consumers. But such conditions also seem to show that Android is a rather less open system than Google likes to claim.
Besmirched engine
Awkwardly for Ms Vestager, Canada dropped charges against Google the day before she unveiled hers. The European interpretation of competition does not hold much sway in America, where the prevailing view of its courts is that the power and profits that come with a dominant market position are simply the prize for success. Yet the need to reward Google has to be balanced against the need to inspire innovations that might complement Android or Google Search—or even displace them. It is now up to Google to demonstrate that its mobile strategy does not harm competition, and thus consumers.NEW DELHI: Shortly after a controversy erupted over government's proposal to investigate on every message that an individual will send via WhatsApp, SMS, or Google Hangouts, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology clarified in a draft that social media websites and applications will be exempted from the purview of the Encryption Policy.The mass-use encryption products, which are currently being used in web applications, social media sites, and social media applications such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter etc are being exempted from the purview of the draft National Encryption Policy, said a proposed addendum to the policy posted on the department's website.Encryption products used in Internet banking and payment gateways, and those used for e-commerce and password-based transactions will also be exempted.Deity had earlier proposed that all messages sent through encrypted messaging services such as WhatsApp ( Android version supports encryption), Google Hangouts or Apple's iMessage, must be stored for 90 days.The move triggered widespread privacy concerns and generated heated debate.The draft of New Encryption Policy proposes that users of encrypted messaging service on demand should reproduce same text, transacted during a communication, in plain format before law enforcement agencies and failing to do so may lead to imprisonment of the user as per the provisions.The proposed policy, issued by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, would apply on everyone including government departments, academic institutions, citizens and for all kind of communications -- be it official or personal.Generally, all the modern messaging services like WhatsApp, Viber, Line, Google Chat, yahoo messenger etc, come with high level of encryption and many a time security agencies find it hard to intercept these messages."All information shall be stored by the concerned B/C entity for 90 days from the date of transaction and made available to Law Enforcement Agencies as and when demanded in line with the provisions of the laws of the country," the draft said.The draft has defined 'B category' as all statutory organizations, executive bodies, business and commercial establishments, including all Public Sector Undertakings, Academic institutions.The 'C category' as per the draft are all citizens including personnel of government and business performing non-official or personal functions.In case of the user has communicated with foreigner or entity abroad then the primary responsibility of providing readable plain text along with the corresponding encrypted information would be that of the user in the country.Besides this all service providers located within and outside India that use encryption technology for providing any type of services in India must register themselves with the government, as per the draft..The draft proposes to introduce the New Encryption Policy under section 84 A of Information Technology Act 2000. This section was introduced through amendment in 2008.The sub-section 84 C that was also introduced through the amendment has provision of imprisonment for violation of the act."Encryption products may be exported but with prior intimation to the designated agency of Government of India. Users in India are allowed to use only the products registered in India. Government reserves the right to take appropriate action as per Law of the country for any violation of this Policy," the draft said.The last date for public to comment on the draft is October 16, 2015."Having a draft on issue is a welcome step. It looks at everything with prism of law enforcemnnt. It will create a license raj. There is very much concern around privacy of citizen. The policy wants messages to be given on demand. If my private information is sought by government, it should be done through courts," Arun Sukumar,Head, Cyber Initiative, said.Valhalla Valkyrie Forum Member
Join Date: Jan 2014 Location: Britannia Posts: 777
Eminem presented as the 'Angry White man' Hearing the wiggers music it becomes obvious that it is done to portray him as the 'Angry White Man'. His music is upset rambilings. An anti-white trick they use is in his songs they put him alongside a'strong' black female singer. The audio effect is the 'Angry White Man' contrasting with the'strong' female black artist so making white males feel less masculine.
This differs from black rap music which pushes'masculine' virtues of gangs, guns, drugs and free sex and the general theme that the black man has it all under control while the 'Angry White Man' Eminem is angry with the world around him.
There is also a lot of white male hetrosexual songs where the singers have a whispering feminine voice and a slow acoustic guitar where they sing of love, loss and sensitivity like it is all too unbearable. As there are few white masculine artists in popular music to be a'man' young white males listen to the senseless mumblings of black music.
It is the same with white female artists as their songs are similar to the male hetrosexual songs in themes. They also have songs about going out to nightclubs with the purposeful addition of the black rapper in the song to link the excitement and rebellion of nightclubs with black men. In contrast to white female artists black female artists are'strong' and 'powerful' like they are warriors.
I only noticed this recently and posted it in case anybody else has not noticed thisWednesday 30 Jul 14
The world champions in data transmission are to be found in Lynbgy, where the High-Speed Optical Communications (HSOC) team at DTU Fotonik has just secured yet another world record. This time, the team has eclipsed the record that was set by researchers at the Karlsruhe Institut für Technologie, by proving that it is possible to transfer fully 43 terabits per second with just a single laser in the transmitter. This is an appreciable improvement on the German team’s previous record of 26 terabits per second.
The worldwide competition in data speed is contributing to developing the technology intended to accommodate the immense growth of data traffic on the internet, which is estimated to be growing by 40–50 per cent annually. What is more, emissions linked to the total energy consumption of the internet as a whole currently correspond to more than two per cent of the global man-made carbon emissions—which puts the internet on a par with the transport industry (aircraft, shipping etc.). However, these other industries are not growing by 40 per cent a year. It is therefore essential to identify solutions for the internet that make significant reductions in energy consumption while simultaneously expanding the bandwidth. This is precisely what the DTU team has demonstrated with its latest world record. DTU researchers have previously helped achieve the highest combined data transmission speed in the world—an incredible 1 petabit per second—although this involved using hundreds of lasers.
The researchers achieved their latest record by using a new type of optical fibre borrowed from the Japanese telecoms giant NTT. This type of fibre contains seven cores (glass threads) instead of the single core used in standard fibres, which makes it possible to transfer even more data. Despite the fact that it comprises seven cores, the new fibre does not take up any more space than the standard version.
The researchers’ record result has been verified and presented in what is known as a ‘post deadline paper’ at the CLEO 2014 international conference.
The High-Speed Optical Communications team at DTU Fotonik has held the world record in data transmission on numerous occasions. Back in 2009, these researchers were the first in the world to break the ‘terabit barrier’, which was considered an almost insurmountable challenge at that time, when they succeeded in transmitting more than 1 terabit per second—again using just a single laser. The benchmark has now been raised to 43 Tbit/s.Chris Haueter (see here and here) is a member of the infamous "Dirty Dozen," a master technician and teacher, an artist, and a philosopher (by temperament if not by training). Indeed, in my humble opinion, he is the most interesting (and important) American-born black belt. Whenever I read (or watch) an interview of his (or just a video of him waxing philosophical about jiu jitsu--see below), I am always impressed with how many nuggets of wisdom he has accumulated during his own jiu jitsu journey. He exemplifies and embodies what it means to live the "jiu jitsu lifestyle"--running a long-standing gym aptly called "The Garage," travelling the world competing and spreading the gospel of grappling. Consequently, I was delighted when a nearly 30 minute video was posted of a recent seminar he gave at Veterans Jiu Jitsu (see below). Some of the concepts he shares in this video are |
gun restrictions. He would limit federal power to what’s stated explicitly in the Constitution and Bill of Rights; any new federal law affecting the states would require a constitutional amendment. “If your state goes retarded,” he says, “you can move to another state and vote with your feet.” The president would be stripped of emergency powers that allow him to seize property, restrict travel, institute martial law, and otherwise (as the Congressional Research Service has put it) “control the lives of United States citizens.” The Constitution, Rhodes explains, “was created to check us in times of emergency when we are freaking out.”
Much of this is familiar rhetoric, part of a continuous strain in American politics that reemerged most recently during the 1990s. Back then, a similar combination of recession and Democratic rule led to the rise of citizen militias, the Posse Comitatus movement, and Oath Keepers-type groups like Police & Military Against the New World Order. But those groups had little reach. Nowadays, through the power of YouTube and social networking, and with a boost from the cable punditry, Oath Keepers can reach millions and make its message part of the national conversation—furthering the notion that citizens can simply disregard a government they loathe. “The underlying sentiment is an attack on government dating back to the New Deal and before,” says author Neiwert. “Ron Paul has been a significant conduit in recent years, but nothing like Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin—all of whom share that innate animus.”
Oath Keepers’ strength derives from what Rhodes calls “a very powerful common bond” (the vow of service) as well as the uniform—”a powerful source of credibility and respect” that allows members to “throw their weight into any movement…and tip any election.” Rhodes is wary of “old-party asshole RINOs” (Republicans in name only)—he mentions Dick Armey, the former House majority leader turned Tea Party sponsor—who in his view are merely out to hijack the grassroots.
Most Oath Keepers may intend to disobey their commanders only in the instances the group highlights. But the group’s ideas also appeal to extremists like Daniel Knight Hayden, whose inflammatory tweets last April (“START THE KILLING NOW!”) signaled his intent to wreak havoc at a Tax Day protest. On the morning of April 15 he sent out a tweet touting Oath Keepers, followed by “Locked AND loaded for the Oklahoma State Capitol. Let’s see what happens.” (The FBI arrested him at home a few hours later; he was eventually convicted for transmitting interstate threats.) Rhodes vigorously denounced Hayden, but the episode hinted at the power of the group’s language. Rhetoric like Rhodes’ (“Do you want them to kick down your door in body armor?”) can have “an unhinging effect” on people inclined toward violent action, Neiwert explains. “It puts them in a state of mind of fearfulness and paranoia, creating so much anger and hatred that eventually that stuff boils over.”
In the months I’ve spent getting to know the Oath Keepers, I’ve toggled between viewing them either as potentially dangerous conspiracy theorists or as crafty intellectuals with the savvy to rally politicians to their side. The answer, I came to realize, is that they cover the whole spectrum.
ON A CLEAR September evening, I found myself in suite 610 at the Texas Station casino in North Las Vegas mingling with two dozen Oath Keepers state leaders, directors, and hardcore devotees. It was past midnight, but the place—down to the American flag wallpaper in the bathroom—was awake with the sense of a movement primed to burst into the national consciousness. Mississippi director Chris Evans, who sports a long beard and cowboy hat, declared in his pronounced drawl that this gathering was so important to him that for the first time since 9/11 he’d succumbed to the “invasive breach of privacy” required to fly here. Rand Cardwell, who organized multiple chapters in Tennessee, only woke up, he told me, when the government began bailing out big companies and left ordinary people in the cold: “Pain causes action,” he said. For others here, the aha moment came with the Patriot Act or when federal troops and contractors confiscated weapons in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
As techies swarmed around laptops discussing website tweaks, two shy Midwesterners who hoped to become state directors told me they were eager to learn recruiting tips. An energetic young veteran griped that hate-crime bills aim to police people’s thoughts, and that the “Don’t Tread on Me” bumper stickers popular with constitutionalists raise enough suspicion these days to get a person pulled over by the authorities. Over bottled water and microbrews, they swapped tips on how to involve members in state militias, spread viral YouTube videos of soldiers reaffirming their oaths, and reach out to other patriots. They boasted of recruiting at gun shows, approaching politicians and cops, and stuffing leaflets into magazines in veterans hospital waiting rooms.
The three-day conference was called posthaste after Rhodes realized that his group was growing beyond his control. On the first night, over a casino buffet of barbecue, goopy Chinese food, and key lime pie, core members scrutinized printouts of potential organizational structures before heading upstairs to sign legal documents, pick a board of directors, and start nominating state representatives.
Rhodes caught wind of my presence during the introductory meet and greet. Taking me aside, he told me he’d decided reporters weren’t welcome. After I protested that the Oath Keepers website had described the conference as open to the public, he offered to refund my $300 entrance fee. Then I told him I’d read his Yale paper and shared many of his concerns about executive power; I really wanted to hear what Oath Keepers had to say. In the end, he agreed to let me stay and eventually invited me to hang out with the inner circle.
The next morning, in a casino ballroom, a hundred or so Oath Keepers exchanged business cards and schmoozed in between speeches about constitutional law, American Revolutionary history, and a soldier’s obligation to disobey illegal orders—Nuremberg references on full display. Clad in suits, or slacks with button-downs, most of them could have been attending an insurance convention. One Oath Keeper handed out Gadsden-flag bumper stickers, while others sold T-shirts, baseball caps, and polo shirts featuring the group’s minuteman logo and motto: “Not on our watch.” There was a raffle, and James Sugra, one of the masterminds behind Ron Paul’s fundraising “money bombs,” scored a huge framed replica of the Constitution. To enthusiastic applause, a driver in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series (a hot new cross between NASCAR and monster truck rallies) announced that the Oath Keepers would get free ad space on his car. Their logo would be seen on television sets across America. During the talks, I sat between a libertarian who had biked across America, stopping at police stations to hand out recruiting materials, and a first-generation Chinese American stay-at-home dad from San Francisco who invited me to my local chapter’s winter survivalist training and rifle practice—extracurriculars, he assured me.
Oath Keepers is officially nonpartisan, in part to make it easier for active-duty soldiers to participate, but its rightward bent is undeniable, and liberals are viewed with suspicion. At lunch, when I questioned my tablemates about the Obama-Hitler comparisons I’d heard at the conference, I got a step-by-step tutorial on how the president’s socialized medicine agenda would beget a Nazi-style regime.
I learned that bringing guns to Tea Party protests was a reminder of our constitutional rights, was introduced to the notion that the founding fathers modeled their governing documents on the Bible, and debated whether being Muslim meant an inability to believe in and abide by—and thus be protected by—the Constitution. I was schooled on the treachery of the Federal Reserve and why America needs a gold standard, and at dinner one night, Nighta Davis, national organizer for the National 912 Project, explained how abortion-rights advocates are part of a eugenics program targeting Christians. I also met Lt. Commander Guy Cunningham, a retired Navy officer and Oath Keeper who in 1994 took it upon himself to survey personnel at the 29 Palms Marine Corps base about their willingness to accept domestic missions and serve with foreign troops. A quarter of the Marines he polled said that they would be willing to fire on Americans who refused to disarm in the face of a federal order—a finding routinely cited by militia and patriot groups worried about excessive government powers.
From the podium, ex-sheriff Mack told the crowd that he wished he’d been the officer ordered to escort Rosa Parks off the bus, because not only would he have refused, he would have helped her home and stood guard there. These days, he said, it’s not African Americans who are under attack, but Christians, constitutionalists, and people who uphold family values: This time “it’s going to be Rosa Parks the gun owner, Rosa Parks the tax evader, or Rosa Parks the home-schooler.”
Mack runs the “No Sheriff Left Behind” campaign encouraging state and local authorities to disregard federal laws that they believe violate states’ rights. During the 1990s, he successfully eviscerated a Brady Law provision requiring sheriffs to run background checks on handgun purchasers. Another sheriff who spoke, Mark Gower of Iron County, Utah, uses Mack’s precedent to refuse to act against property owners who violate the Endangered Species Act. The conference’s lifetime achievement award went to Army Specialist Michael New, discharged in 1996 for refusing to wear a United Nations helmet and patch while serving in Germany.
Oath Keepers steers clear of certain issues. Personally, Rhodes would prefer the list of objectionable orders to include detaining foreigners indefinitely at facilities like Guantanamo. And while he argues that torture should never be legal, the group takes no official stance on America’s war on terror or overseas engagements. After an Oath Keeper who is also a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War touted IVAW repeatedly on Oath Keepers’ Web forum, Rhodes deleted the guy’s online testimonial. “The IVAW have their own totalitarian mindset,” he told me. “I don’t like communists any more than I like Nazis.”
On the conference’s final day, National 912 Project chairman Patrick Jenkins stepped up to talk about the National Liberty Unity Summits his group was organizing in cooperation with Oath Keepers. They would provide a chance, he said, for patriots to forge a common agenda and a plan to carry it out. At the first summit, in December, attendees included representatives of groups from FairTax Nation to the Constitution Party to Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum. On hand were Ralph Reed Jr. (former director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition and recent founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition), Larry Pratt (head of Gun Owners of America), and Tim Cox (founder of Get Out of Our House, an organization praised on Fox News for its goal of replacing business-as-usual incumbents with “ordinary folks”). Most notable were representatives Broun and Gingrey, who according to summit organizer Nighta Davis have expressed willingness to introduce legislation crafted by summit attendees. (So, Davis says, have Steve King [R-Iowa] and Michele Bachmann [R-Minn.]. None of the representatives agreed to comment for this story.)
The December gathering was merely a windup. In mid-April, another summit is planned to coincide with a huge gun-rights march and a Tax Day Tea Party rally in Washington organized by Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks PAC and the American Liberty Alliance—whose home page touts Oath Keepers as a key part of “the Movement.” Organizers expect hundreds of thousands to turn out. The Oath Keepers will be there en masse.
IN VEGAS, Rhodes took me aside repeatedly to explain that many of those in attendance—including featured speakers like “Patriot Pastor” Garrett Lear (“When a government doesn’t obey God, we must reform it”)—might not represent Oath Keepers’ official message. He and his Web staff have been overwhelmed, he told me, by the amount of policing required to keep people from posting “off message” commentary encouraging violence or racism. Last December, they shut down one forum because too many posters were using it to recruit for militias. The Constitution, of course, allows citizens to form militias so long as their intent is to defend and not overthrow the government, but active-duty soldiers can lose security clearances or get demoted for associating with them. Rhodes advises members to go ahead and join—just not in Oath Keepers’ name. “As a matter of strategy, it is best to keep the two separate,” he wrote in a post.
There may also be serious downsides for a soldier who follows through on his Oath Keepers pledge. Disobeying orders can mean discharge or imprisonment. “You have every right to disobey an order if you think it is illegal,” says Army spokesman Nathan Banks. “But you will face court-martial, and so help you God if you are wrong. Saying something isn’t constitutional isn’t going to fly.”
A soldier like Charles Dyer, who in his July4Patriot persona advocated armed resistance against the government, could risk charges of treason. As a Marine sergeant based out of Camp Pendleton, Dyer posted videos to YouTube last year, his face half-covered with a skull bandana. “With the DHS blatantly calling patriots, veterans, and constitutionalists a threat, all that I have to say is, you’re damn right we’re a threat,” he said in one. “We’re a threat to anyone that endangers our rights and the Constitution of this republic…We’re gathering in defense of our way of life.” For a while, he ran a training compound in San Diego, teaching civilians his Marine combat skills.
Dyer, who with Rhodes’ blessing represented Oath Keepers at an Oklahoma Tea Party rally on July 4, was charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with uttering “disloyal” statements. He ultimately beat the charge, left the Marines, and reappeared unmasked on YouTube encouraging viewers to join him at his makeshift training area in Duncan, Oklahoma—”I’m sure the DHS will call it a terrorist training camp.” In January, Dyer was arrested on charges of raping a seven-year-old girl. When sheriff’s deputies raided his home, they found a Colt M-203 grenade launcher believed to have been stolen from a California military base. He now faces federal weapons charges and is being hailed by fringe militia groups like the American Resistance Movement as “the first POW of the second American Revolution.”
Shortly after I asked Rhodes about Dyer—before his arrest hit the news—his testimonial vanished from the group’s website. Rhodes once endorsed Dyer in glowing terms, but now claims he was never a member because he hasn’t paid dues. Yet Dyer publicly referred to himself as an Oath Keeper, and Rhodes had previously insisted—to Lou Dobbs and anyone else who would listen—that you didn’t need to pay dues to be a member.
In an interview prior to Dyer’s arrest, Andrew Sexton, another uniformed YouTube star who argues the need for armed resistance, criticized Dyer for making himself a target. Sexton, an Army reservist who served in Afghanistan with US Special Operations Command, also keeps his Oath Keepers ties under the radar. Most soldiers, he told me, don’t talk openly about such things, but it’s easy enough to tell which ones have been woken up. The Department of Defense, Sexton added, will be shocked by the number of service members willing to turn against their commanders when the time comes. “It’s an absolute reality,” he says. He views last April’s DHS report on right-wing extremists as a “preemptive attack because they know it’s coming.”
Rhodes isn’t calling for violence—indeed, he insists that his group is about laying down arms rather than turning them on citizens. Yet when he writes that “the oath is like kryptonite to tyrants, as the Founders intended. The time has come for us to use it to its full effect,” some followers take that as a call for drastic action.
Chip Berlet, of the watchdog group Political Research Associates, who has studied right-wing populist movements for 25 years, equates Rhodes’ rhetoric to yelling fire in a crowded theater. “Promoting these conspiracy theories is very dangerous right now because there are people who will assume that a hero will stop at nothing.” What will happen, he adds, “is not just disobeying orders but harming and killing.”
Rhodes acknowledges that there are certain risks. Freedom “is not neat or tidy,” he says. “It’s messy.” For example, he concedes that “there may be a downside” to police refusing to engage during a riot situation. “Someone could be beaten or raped, but the potential risks involved are far less dangerous than having soldiers or police always do whatever they are told.”
LEE PRAY thinks Rhodes downplays the threat Oath Keepers represents to a rogue administration. “They have to be careful because otherwise they will be labeled as terrorists,” he says. “You have to read between the lines, but I wish they were more up-front with their members.”
It’s not hard to see the appeal of Oath Keepers for guys like Pray and Brandon, frustrated young men nervous about their future prospects. They signed up to defend the greatest country in the world, only to be cast aside. Even their injuries were suffered ingloriously. Brandon can’t sit for long after being flung from a pickup truck; Pray now walks with a cane, possibly for good. The men sincerely believe their country is headed for disaster, but as broken warriors they are powerless to do anything about it. They have tried writing to Congress, signing petitions, and voting, all to no avail. Oath Keepers offers a new sense of pride and comradeship—of being part of something momentous.
And when the time comes, Pray insists he is battle ready. “If the government continues to ignore us, and forces us to engage,” Pray says, “I’m willing to fight to the death.” Brandon, for his part, is resigned about their odds fighting the US military. “If we take up arms, realistically we would lose, and they would label us as terrorists,” he says. Pray nods sadly in agreement. But they’ll take their chances. They consider it their duty.Gov. Cuomo has quietly told associates that he is resigned to the fact that he can’t run for president in 2016 if Hillary Rodham Clinton enters the race, as is widely expected, sources told The Post.
“The governor has told people in recent weeks that there’s not a chance for him to run if Hillary gets in the race because she’ll easily wrap up the Democratic nomination,’’ said a Cuomo administration insider with direct knowledge of the situation.
“He knows that and he accepts that, and so he won’t even be thinking at all in those terms — unless Hillary decides not to run, which seems unlikely,’’ the source continued.
While Cuomo has repeatedly claimed he has no interest in running for president, his sharp turn to the political left this year after two years governing as a moderate convinced many Democrats and Republicans that he was laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign.
For now, Cuomo is expected to focus his political energies on trying to run up as huge a re-election victory next year as possible, with many on the inside saying he hopes to top his father Mario’s landslide margin over Westchester County Executive Andrew O’Rourke in 1986, when Mario got just over 64 percent of the vote.
But matching his father’s showing won’t be easy. Andrew Cuomo’s polling numbers have plummeted in recent months, especially among upstate voters, as he has moved politically leftward.
A University of New Hampshire poll late last week showed how hard it would be for any Democrat to challenge Clinton.
The poll found her the blowout favorite to win the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation primary in 2016, backed by 61 percent of Democrats. Vice President Joe Biden ran a distant second, with just 7 percent.
Cuomo was tied for an even more distant third with Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, at 3 percent.
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While Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has yet to endorse a candidate for mayor, insiders predict he will follow Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and back former city Comptroller Bill Thompson, who lost narrowly to Mayor Bloomberg four years ago.
Silver and Tisch are longtime friends and political allies and many on the inside say Tisch wouldn’t have endorsed Thompson last week without Silver’s approval.
“Shelly backing Billy, the only black in the race, would win him a lot of points with the African-Americans in the Assembly, who help keep him as speaker,’’ said a longtime Thompson backer.
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A majority of voters oppose efforts by Cuomo and other Democrats to impose a New York City-style publicly financed campaign system on statewide campaigns for the Legislature, a little-noticed section of a statewide poll earlier this month showed.
The Quinnipiac University survey found 53 percent against and just 37 percent in favor of having taxpayers underwrite state-connected political campaigns.
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Cuomo is being blasted by the leader of the pro-fracking Joint Landowners Coalition (JLC) in the Southern Tier for claiming in a recent interview that one of the reasons he has held off giving fracking the go-ahead is that a child could fall “into a [natural-gas] well casing.’’
“If the governor had ever visited a well site, he would not posit such an outrageous and unfounded statement about safety,’’ said JLC President Dan Fitzsimmons.
Industry representatives, meanwhile, said they never heard of a case of anyone falling into one of the heavily engineered and tightly capped, 5,000-foot-plus-deep wells, which are used in the fracking process. A spokesman for the governor didn’t respond to a request for an example of such an accident.Thousands of Afghans and Iraqis may escape deportation to Turkey as the EU's €6 billion (£4.7 billion) deal descended into chaos.
In a major blow for Brussels, Turkish government sources said they would not change their domestic law to grant Afghans and Iraqis refugee status in Turkey, and to prevent them being deported to warzones.
The EU says those changes are essential to make the deal compliant with international law, and therefore to commence deportations.
Only Syrians are recognised as potential refugees under current Turkish law. But 24 per cent of those landing in Greece are Afghan, and 15 per cent are Iraqi, and a high proportion are eligible for asylum.
Confusion reigned on Lesbos, the main destination for the many of the refugees hoping to reach Europe, following the passing of Saturday's midnight deadline beyond which all arriving will be deported.
Some 1,660 people have landed on the island since then as the flotilla of flimsy dinghies continues. Migrants “react with disbelief” when told they will be deported, one aid worker said.
EU sources admitted the 2,300 EU officials due to be sent to the islands will not start to arrive until next Monday.
"A decision came through from Brussels for political management of the crisis, but there is no clarity on how to execute this," Spiros Gallinos, the Mayor of Lesbos told Sky News.
"It was a rushed, if not forced, decision. For one and half years the EU policy makers dragged their feet. Then overnight they came up with a decision they want us to enforce within two days.”
"The orders seem to change every hour," one police officer said.
Photo: AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris
“They will return and try again,” warned Marios Andriotis, an advisor to the Mayor. “We have been saying from the beginning to do the registration in Turkey and ship those who are in need of protection over here."
Friday’s €6bn aid-for-deportations deal with Turkey contained no written commitment to change Turkish law, merely a commitment to comply “with the relevant international standards”.
But officials insist they received verbal assurances in private meetings with the Turkish delegation that they would change the law.
“For us, the commitment is to change the law,” said an EU source. “If they don’t, we won’t send people back.”
Another source insisted: "They made the commitment in the meetings."
But a Turkish diplomat insisted: "Turkey does not need to pass further legislation."
Photo: REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
Further adding to the confusion, Turkish government sources insisted no-one would be forcibly sent back - a baffling claim given the EU is converting reception centres into barbed-wire-laced detention camps to hold migrants, who will be removed by a taskforce force of 1,000 Greek soldiers and 1,500 foreign police officers onto chartered holiday ferries.
In further confusion, sources at EASO, the EU’s asylum agency that will be advising migrants on their claims, said that people with immediate family in Europe could avoid deportation and win the right to rejoin their loved ones in Western Europe.
The proportion of women and children has surged to six in ten this spring, as families attempt to follow menfolk who successfully made the trip to Germany and Sweden last summer.
Photo: AP Photo/Manu Brabo
However, this was contradicted by European Commission sources, who said its legal position is that rules on family reunification do not “trump” the power to send people back to Turkey.
It was also confirmed that the one-for-one relocation scheme, which will see migrants deported swapped for Syrians in Turkish camps, is voluntary, raising questions about how many states will volunteer places.
The deal has repelled international organisations. The UNHCR refugee agency said it had stopped co-operating on the Greek islands, including suspending a bus service used to take migrants to closed reception centres, saying it objects on principle to detention.
"The deal is being implemented prematurely; the necessary safeguards are not yet in place,” said Boris Cheshirkov, a spokesman for the UNHCR, which has been tasked with supervising the deal. “Greece does not yet have the capacity or staff to deal with this and the facilities are not up to standards that guarantee a dignified environment."
Amnesty International said the deal “is seriously legally and morally flawed."
Officials brushed off accusations the European Commission had lost its “moral authority”.
“We have to make this work. We don’t have time for comments," Jean-Claude Juncker's spokesman said.
Photo: AP Photo/Petros GiannakourisIn the wake of Wikileaks’ Vault 7 revelations, Buzzfeed has been caught by Wikileaks publishing false claims purportedly made by Apple that it had “patched the vulnerabilities mentioned in the Wikileaks dump of CIA cyber tools.” Wikileaks tweeted that Apple had not fixed any newly discovered vulnerabilities, labelling the claim “fake news.”
Buzzfeed’s phrasing misleadingly encouraged an assumption that Apple had stated all of the vulnerabilities exposed by Vault 7 had been patched. However, the statement by Apple does not claim total coverage. In Buzzfeed’s own article Apple states: “…our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS…” Apple’s claim merely stated that some of the exploits used by the CIA had been addressed in the event that they were organically discovered.
The factually inaccurate claim comes on the heels of Buzzfeed’s disastrous January 2017 report claiming to have a dossier proving that the Russian government held blackmail on Donald Trump. The dossier was immediately labeled as falsified by Wikileaks based on the inaccurate style, facts and dates contained in the report. The Atlantic also ran a report where Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, denied that he had ever been to either the Czech Republic or to Russia as the “dossier” published by Buzzfeed claimed.
Buzzfeed’s financial records reveal special interest sources of funding and close ties to leading figures in the DNC that further call into question the organization’s dedication to journalistic integrity. Buzzfeed received a $1,500,000 donation in August and September 2016 from Priorities USA Action. Priorities USA Action lists George Soros as one of their main donors. DNC propaganda chief David Brock also sat on the board of Priorities USA Action until 2015, when he resigned in the wake of a New York Times article which called into question Brock’s ties to DNC donor Mary Pat Bonner.
Buzzfeed’s ties to George Soros and other leading DNC figures raise concerns about their commitment to fair and unbiased journalism. Their willingness to run inaccurate information about Wikileaks releases and embarrassment after featuring falsified documents as evidence of political wrongdoing demonstrates that the organization is willing to place agenda before factual reporting. This willingness will likely only create further issues for Buzzfeed, as it and other press groups struggle in the midst of an all time low in public trust of the media.
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MoreNew Impossible - Devadatta (Light 6★)
First Appearance: 8/18 10pm - 11:59pm
New Series - Pirate Chronicles
Evo Bartholomew Roberts (Fire 6★)
Type: Balanced
Sling: Pierce
Ability: Null Damage Wall
Gauge: Null Warp
SS: Reveals all of a boss's weak points on contact.
Bump: Big Bomb
Asc Edward Teach (Water 6★)
Type: Balanced
Sling: Bounce
Ability: Demon Resistance / Demon Slayer
Gauge: Recovery / Null Warp
SS: Passes through enemies while attacking.
Bump: Spread Pierce-struction XL3
Sub: Energy Circle S
Evo Alwida (Dark 6★)
Type: Balanced
Sling: Pierce
Ability: Null Gravity Barrier
Gauge: Null Block
SS: Leads teammates against the enemy.
Bump: Homing Pierce-struction 8
Drop Monsters - Ribe (Water 6★) & Son Kamomeno (Fire 5★) & Carrick (Dark 6★)
Lethal Monster - Karen Navis (Light 6★)
New Transcension - Oda Nobunaga (Dark 6★)
Time: 8/15 3pm
Type: Balanced
Sling: Bounce
Ability: Null Damage Wall
Gauge: Counter Slayer
SS (16+8): Uses an overlord's charisma to lead teammates against the enemy.
Bump: Slice 'n' Dice Destruction
Sub: Dimensional Blades Destruction
New Transcension - Oda Nobunaga X (Water 6★)
Time: 8/15 3pm
Type: Balanced
Sling: Bounce
Ability: Mine Sweeper L
Gauge: Null Gravity Barrier
SS (16+8): Uses an overlord's charisma to lead teammates against the enemy.
Bump: Energy Circle L
Sub: Energy Circle M(Newser) – A missing mom who was apparently in no big hurry to be found has been tracked down and now has another chance to get to know the children she left 42 years ago. After he was contacted by the Doe Network, a volunteer group that investigates cold missing-person cases, Indiana State Police Detective Sergeant Scott Jarvis managed to find Lula Ann Gillespie-Miller in a small town in south Texas, KWQC reports. In 1974, Gillespie-Miller, then 28, disappeared soon after giving birth to her third child. She told her family she was too young to be a mother, signed the children over to her parents, and wasn't heard from again, apart from a letter in 1975.
Jarvis, with the help of the 1975 letter, was able to follow Gillespie-Miller's trail from Indiana to Tennessee to Texas. He contacted Texas Rangers, who went to her home and confirmed that the 69-year-old is the woman who disappeared decades ago, NBC reports. Police say she didn't explain why she left her family behind in Indiana, but she agreed to have her contact information passed to her daughter, Tammy. Thanks to Jarvis' hard work, "this Easter weekend, Tammy Miller hopes to make contact with the mother she has never known," police said in a statement. (After 30 years, this missing man remembered his name.)Fifi, a 9-year-old chihuahua, was euthanized after being attacked by another dog on Monday. (Photo: Amanda Reyna/Special to the Statesman Journal)
A Salem family is mourning the loss of their family pet following an alleged violent dog attack Monday afternoon.
As Amanda Reyna was walking her children from Washington Elementary School near Lansing Avenue NE and Glendale Avenue NE, a black-and-white female pit bull-type dog ran out of a nearby home toward her 5-year-old son.
Before anyone could react, Reyna's 9-year-old longhair chihuahua, Fifi, ran in front of her son and blocked the other dog from charging him.
Fifi was no match for the larger dog. Reyna said she, her children, her friend Sara Rojas and Rojas's 10-year-old daughter watched in horror as the dog snatched Fifi up and thrashed her tiny, 10-pound body.
Rojas said the dog bit Fifi multiple times.
The dog's owner rushed out of their home during the commotion. He punched and pried open the dog's mouth to get her to release Fifi.
The dog dropped Fifi's limp body, and the owner hauled the dog back into his home, not giving Reyna his name or apologizing, she said.
"My husband went over to try talking to them while I tried to take care of my dog and my traumatized children," she said.
Fifi was bloody and breathing heavily when they rushed her to a nearby emergency veterinary clinic. Reyna said there was blood in her lungs. There was nothing they could do to help her pull through, she said.
Amanda Reyna's family is mourning the death of their 9-year-old chihuahua Fifi following a dog attack Monday. The family buried Fifi in their yard. (Photo: Amanda Reyna/Special to the Statesman Journal)
Fifi was euthanized. Reyna and her family buried her in the yard.
Rojas said the dog's owners, who also run an adult care home out of their house, did not want to discuss the attack after Fifi was euthanized. The owner gave them $120 to pay for the euthanization.
The dog's owner did not respond to the Stateman Journal's request for comment.
Fifi's death has been hard on Reyna's family, especially the children who witnessed the attack. Reyna said her 5-year-old doesn't quite understand that Fifi is gone forever.
"That was his puppy who stepped in and saved him," she said.
Another neighbor told her they spotted the dog wandering through the neighborhood in the days after the attack. Reyna contacted animal control and submitted a report.
She learned it was not the first time someone had complained about the dog.
"It should have never gotten this far," she said.
In March 2016 and July 2016, Marion County Dog Services received two complaints about the dog running at large. Dog control officers have limited authority with enforcement but are able to issue citations for "dogs behaving badly," said dog services manager Dean Freeze.
According to Marion County code, the keeper of the dog commits a civil infraction if their dog runs at large, disturbs a person with prolonged or frequent noise, scatters garbage, trespasses on private property, damages property, chases vehicles or is a female in heat at large.
The citations include fines, but it's up to the owners to comply.
However, having a "potentially dangerous dog" — a dog that menaces a person, attacks a domestic pet or bites a person — is considered a much more serious offense, Freeze said.
A hearings officer can impose corrective action ranging from requiring a dog to be leashed and muzzled at all times to euthanizing a dog.
Freeze confirmed that dog services is investigating the attack. A dog control officer contacted the dog's owner and obtained a statement. They will make an assessment and take action most likely within the week, Freeze said.
Until then, the dog will remain at the owner's residence in the neighborhood.
Reyna is making sure to avoid the house until she knows the case has been resolved. The yard of the home, which is near Washington Elementary and Waldo Middle schools, is not fenced, and she's worried the dog could attack a child.
Rojas said she's contacted the police, animal control, neighborhood watch and protective services to try and get some resolution and keep the dog from hurting anyone else.
"It's been awful," she said. "All the children were afraid."
Reyna echoed Rojas' worries about their children and others who walk, bike and play in the neighborhood.
"This is so scary," Reyna said. "It could've been them instead of my dog."
For questions, comments and news tips, email reporter Whitney Woodworth at wmwoodwort@statesmanjournal.com, call 503-399-6884 or follow on Twitter @wmwoodworth
Read or Share this story: http://stjr.nl/2o34uHX'The sea gave her back': Wonder in Israel as ancient Roman statue buried for centuries is uncovered by powerful winter storm
A long-lost Roman statue buried for thousands of years has been unearthed by massive winter storms that have lashed the coast of Israel this week.
The mysterious white-marble figure of a woman in toga and 'beautifully detailed' sandals was found in the remains of a cliff that crumbled under the force of 60mph winds and enormous 40ft waves.
The statue, which lacks a head and arms, is about 4ft tall and weighs 440lbs. It was found at the ancient port of Ashkelon, around 20 miles south of Tel Aviv.
Welcome back: A Roman statue buried for centuries is removed from the shore of the Mediterranean sea in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon on Tuesday
Timeless: The statue is winched up out of the ocean. It was discovered in the remains of a cliff that had recently collapsed from the force of winds, waves and rain at the old port after a storm hit the Israeli coast
Lady of the sea: The statue, made of white marble, stands about 4ft tall and weighs 440lbs. It is of a headless, armless woman wearing a toga and 'incredibly detailed' sandals
It dates back to the Roman occupation of what was western Judea, between 1,800 and 2,000 years ago.
The incredible find, which was discovered by a passer-by, will now be put on display in a museum.
'The sea gave us this amazing statue', researcher Yigal Israeli said. 'The statue fell into the sea when the ancient maritime cliff collapsed'.
But the find has been tinged with heartbreak for researchers after the storms destroyed the breakers protecting the Roman-era port of Caesarea, threatening to wash away one of the world's most important historic sites.
Easy does it: A workman guides the statue as it is slowly lowered to the ground after being hauled up from the bottom of the cliff
Sneak peek: Israelis gather around the statue as it is prepared for transport to a museum
Sne |
aintop removal mine.
Mountaintop removal coal only provides, in fact, less than 10 percent of all coal production.
Fed up with the regulatory crisis and circumventions by outside coal companies, coalfield residents have been rising up against reckless strip-mining practices against the country, from Alaska to Alabama to Arizona.
In southern Illinois, scores of black crosses were found at coal mines, strip mines, coal-fired plants, coal ash piles, and at the Southern Illinois University Coal Research Center.
Citing Illinois as the birthplace of the coal industry, and “ground zero in the Obama administration’s plan to dangerously experiment with carbon capture and storage technologies for coal-fired plants,” a new Black Cross Alliance campaign announced plans to construct symbolic black crosses at coal mining and coal-burning landmarks in the state and across the nation to serve as a public warning: It is no longer acceptable for the Obama administration–and state and regional government officials—to be complicit in maintaining deadly coal mining and coal-burning communities as shameful national sacrifice areas in 2010.
Invoking William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech, the Black Cross Alliance called on the Obama administration and the state of Illinois to halt billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for multinational coal corporations, and bring an end to the scandalous coal wars in Illinois by re-investing in a sustainable clean energy policy for the future for the coalfield regions.
The Black Cross Alliance declared: You shall not crucify us any longer upon a cross of coal.
“While the rest of the nation–and world–launches into the exploding new global market of clean energy development and green jobs,” the Black Cross Alliance asked, “why have the coalfield regions in the country been left out of the renewnable energy movement and slated for a new generation of increased coal production?”
For more updates on Appalachia Rising, see: www.appalachiarising.org
AdvertisementsWe sat down with Sean "Day[9]" Plott to pick his brain about StarCraft II, shoutcasting, and what exactly goes into producing Day[9]tv.
How did you get into shoutcasting?
My brother was one of the first big shoutcasters for StarCraft. Around the WCG 2005, he began traveling all around the world doing commentaries while I focused heavily on improving my play. As influenced by my brother, I dabbled in some commentary (primarily on Team Liquid) and my role was primarily as an analyst.
What are your goals for each shoutcast? Are there certain elements you try to cover each time, or is it something that you play by ear?
For the daily, I study and prepare in advance to create a focused, educational theme. I try to avoid just hopping in and saying "Hey, let's analyze a game," and instead lean more towards watching a couple of replays and selecting the appropriate ones that fit the daily's theme. The same prep even goes into Funday Monday's, except in that case the goal is to be funny. :)
Can you describe your process for creating a shoutcast? What tools do you use?
For the tools, I use a fairly rudimentary setup involving VH Capture to grab the screen and Flash Media Encoder to encode to Justin.tv. However, to actually formulate the replay, I generally have a bunch of ideas floating in my head for what I want a daily's topic to be. I will select one in the morning and try to structure the show around that. Sometimes, I want to see how a matchup is evolving. Other days, I want to talk about how to crack a certain strategy. I will end up spending a while watching through a few replays quickly to narrow down on a clear set to use on the daily. If I am just going to focus on one specific game, I will re-watch it and sometimes compare it to other games.
There are always a bunch of replays the viewers never see that influence the discussion of the replay or content in any given daily. You'll always hear me say things like "he's heading to do X, Y, or Z, but he COULD do A or B," and that is always a consideration for any daily. The studies of the replays not shown are what gives me A and B.
Any tips for keeping track of everything going on during a match?
You have to play. A ton.
Playing StarCraft: Brood War for 12 years will train your eyes to spend most of the time staring at the minimap, not the main screen, so that makes it much easier to catch everything going on in a match. The experience I have in StarCraft II as a player will also help remind me of things: "Oh… he has X amount of sentries right now, zerg should probably have Y roaches out by now." In short, I think training as a player is really the only way to help you become a sharp observer.
What advice would you give to those who are looking to get into shoutcasting (or trying to improve)?
The most important thing is to keep doing it. Don't try to hide in the shadows "carefully sculpting your craft." You have to iterate tons and tons and tons. Improve publically, not privately. Yes, playing the game and studying will help, but the best way to do anything is to just DO and not worry so much about it. Comments and feedback can be very helpful for trying to improve, but you should always be EXTREMELY careful and analytical when reading comments. Sometimes vocal minorities will complain harshly while the majority is actually very happy and satisfied.
You have to do tons of comparisons to what comments are like over time, compare them to the casts that have the most hits, that sort of thing. Just make sure you have a clear sense of what it is you’re working on and how you’re testing and measuring it with the public.
What is your shoutcasting/work schedule like?
Between the team members, it takes six to seven hours to produce a show, two to five hours to prepare the actual content, two hours for the streaming, and then generally another hour to do all of the associated bookkeeping (uploading, descriptions, tagging, etc). Funday Mondays generally take all day. Sometimes we'll do a daily on very little prep, but that's about the average. I do this Sunday through Thursday, and I also have daily meetings with my team. We don’t meet on the weekends, since I am generally casting other events. When I'm not actively producing a shoutcast, I'm working on a couple other fun, StarCraft-related projects. :) Basically, seven days per week, nonstop.
How did you get started on Day[9]tv?
It was a bit of a process. The forums were a difficult media to try to be an "expert" in, because so often the strong comments are drowned out by chatter and opinionated players. Absolutely some members will eventually gain social currency by being consistent and offering strong advice, but I wanted something more concrete. I tried to drift into audio podcasts to create a level of authority. Though initially successful, it wasn't quite true to the form of the community (very malleable and interactive) and didn't match well with the form of the underlying content (StarCraft is a game, it is very hard to try to describe micro with just words and no video). Also, audio podcasting took much longer.
So, one day I tried to experiment with the medium of live video because it was faster, and the video allowed me to demonstrate strategies on-screen. The live chat also made it a bit more interactive and community oriented as well, and from there it continued to grow and evolve into what it is today.
What's the most important factor in making a show like yours a success?
The biggest thing is commitment and dedication. I take what I do very seriously and have never missed or "forgotten" a daily accidentally. I have been sick, or missed due to school or other events, but this is something that myself and my group of peers really put ourselves into.
Many of your broadcasts are dedicated to strategy and helping players understand the intricacy of StarCraft II. What was your motivation behind this approach?
Much of my motivation for the episodes stems from problems or curiosities that I develop from playing or watching the game. I'm representative of what the hardcore competitors of StarCraft II are like -- my show is an analysis show because I'm a player and I just enjoy the act of analyzing.
When I sit down and start analyzing a game for a daily, I'm actually utilizing the same techniques that I use for improving my own play privately. The only difference is I'm talking while doing so. At the end of each show, I feel like I've also learned a good bit, so I take that knowledge and go play with it! It all comes back to the fact that I am a player at heart and the strategy and training goes hand-in-hand with that.
Do you have a favorite StarCraft II match (or daily)? Are there certain dailies that you hold near and dear to your heart?
My favorite match still has to be mana vs naama in game 3 from Dreamhack. When things get really, really tense in live matches, I tend to get excited and nervous -- it's just so tense and awesome! The whole time I was just like "oh my gosh, is mana really going to pull this off? IS HE REALLY GOING TO PULL THIS OFF?!"
As far as dailies near and dear to my heart, #100 will always have a special place, because it's about my whole life of StarCraft. If you want to know a lot about how much this game has meant to me you should check out daily #100. Funday Mondays are always fun, so I like those a lot. Another one that stands out is #252, because I conveyed some awesome information about new ways to approach and think about the game. That was a daily that I took lots of time to think about and delve into the mechanics of StarCraft II gameplay and training mindset and habits. I also liked daily #233, TLO vs White-Ra. At first glance, it seems weird, but if you slow it down and think about the steps the players take, it makes a lot more sense. That one was also a bunch of fun because I collaborated with Husky on it.
We'd like to thank Day[9] for taking the time to talk to us. Check out the links below to watch the dailies and videos referenced in the interview.
Daily #100 - Day[9]'s life of StarCraft: http://blip.tv/file/3486428
Daily #233 - TLO vs White-Ra: http://blip.tv/file/4593518
Daily #252 - Secrets of Hotkeys, APM and Mouse Movement: http://blip.tv/file/4712303
MaNa vs Naama Game 3 from DreamHack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9mCj9jFMSU
Social Links
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/day9tv
Twitter: http://twitter.com/day9tv
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/day9tv
The Day[9] Daily is shown at 7:00 p.m. PST Sunday through Thursday on http://www.justin.tv/day9tv.BRADENTON, Fla. – A Florida man said he was so tired of being hounded by his city’s code enforcement department about the condition of his home, that he decided to make a patriotic change.
Brent Greer painted his house to look like an American flag. He also painted a sign to thank his neighbors for their support.
Greer said it should not be up to the city to tell him what his house should or should not look like.
“[The paint job is] to remind the city and all those who live here that this is America. This is a free country. This is my home,” Greer said.
Greer said he planned to paint the Liberty Bell on the second floor of his house ahead of his June 17 code enforcement board hearing.BOULDER CREEK – The Bear Fire started on a 30-acre property that was the site of a chop-shop bust in 2015 and is now littered with dozens of charred cars, trucks and tractors, according to witness accounts.
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PG&E says company split is doable, but warns bills could rise as a result “It definitely originated from there,” said Tom Byrd who lives just north of the property, which is situated between Bear Creek Canyon Road to the south and Rons Road to the north.
Byrd, president of the Bear Creek Canyon Road Association, said he watched the fire “coming directly out of that property” on Monday night.
Byrd said he had a clear view of the growing inferno from Rons Road about 11 p.m. Monday, where he and another neighbor worked with shovels to try to prevent the flames from jumping the roadway. Boulder Creek Fire Chief Kevin McClish arrived shortly after and was one of the first firefighters at the scene.
“I got a call from a neighbor saying there’s a fire starting down on that property. I went down on the Rons Road and I could hear — there were a lot of explosions going on, ammunition lighting up, other explosions, I don’t know what they were,” said Byrd, who was forced to retreat when flames climbed the tree tops and exploded, spreading flames across Rons Road.
McClish said that when he arrived, the fire was just a few acres, running up both sides of the canyon south of Rons Road. County records show that area is within the bounds of the property where Byrd said the fire started.
Another neighbor, Marvin Hinshaw, said he saw the fire spreading from the same property Monday night before evacuating his home on Dons Road, which overlooks the area.
The witness accounts are consistent with information from Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office. Sgt. Chris Clark on Tuesday said the Bear Fire is believed to have originated in the area of Bear Creek Canyon Road in which the property sits.
On Thursday, charred husks of dozens of old cars flanked each side of a private road running through the property.
Sheriff’s office vehicles were parked at the base of the gated roadway called Diane’s Way and multiple investigators were walking on the property.
CHOP SHOP
The property made headlines in 2015 when law enforcement officers, operating on a tip, recovered 13 stolen motorcycles, cars and a trailer from the site.
Resident Julia Cabibi was charged with possession of stolen vehicles, drug possession and being a felon in possession of a gun and ammunition, according to the sheriff’s office.
Cabibi pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of a stolen vehicle on Feb. 3, court records show.
In September, a slew of drug charges were dismissed and Cabibi was ordered to serve three years of probation.
A telephone number previously listed for Cabibi was out of service Thursday.
Multiple neighbors, including Hinshaw, said Cabibi still lives at the property which is known for late-night comings and goings and what Byrd called “unsavory” activity.
AREA IN QUESTION
“It’s affectionately referred to as the ghetto, or not so affectionately,” said Maggi Quinlan, who lives nearby and was one of the first people to report the fire after she saw glowing and smoke from her deck at about 10:30 p.m. Monday.
Quinlan said about seven years ago, so much garbage began to pile up on the property that it was visible in a satellite image brought to a road association meeting.
How the fire could have started on the property remains unclear. Multiple fire pits were visible from the roadway, scorched by flames, and farther up, generators, gas canisters and what appeared to be fuel tanks were visible further into the property, intermingled with dozens of burned husks of cars.
The 320-acre Bear Fire started Monday night as flames torched treetops and climbed a steep ridge above Bear Creek Canyon Road, searing underbrush throughout the old-growth stands.
The steady fire threatened 300 homes and 1,000 residents, who were advised to evacuate Bear Creek Road from Boulder Creek to Las Cumbres up Skyline Boulevard.
Nearly 1,000 firefighters assembled hand crews, working chainsaws and axes to remove forest fuels and establish a complete fire line. By Thursday, that goal was accomplished with expectations that the fire would not continue to spread, with a chance of rain and light wind Thursday night.Saturday October 20st
Have you thought about publishing but not sure when your paper is “good enough”? Are you interested in learning how to navigate the publication world? What does it mean when people talk about different tiers of journals? Join us for an informal yet educational workshop designed to help both undergraduate and graduate students understand the publication process from beginning to end for archaeological journals of all kinds. A panel of prolific archaeologists, publishers and editorial staff will discuss the publication process including issues such as when to submit, when is a paper ready and how publications help you. A question and answer session with the panelists and a small reception with lunch will follow the workshop.
Workshop Moderators:
Nicole Raslich (Michigan State University)
Susan Kooiman (Illinois State University)
Workshop Panel Participants: Thomas Emerson
Lynne Goldstein
William Lovis
John O’Shea
John Richards
James Skibo Student Workshop Committee Members/Organizers: Aaron Comstock (Ohio State University)
Richard W. Edwards III (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
Susan Kooiman (Illinois State University)
Nicole Raslich (Michigan State University)
Andy Upton (Michigan State University)
Heather Walder (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Dr. Robert Sasso, Coordinator (University of Wisconsin-Parkside)
Registration for the MAC 2012 Student Workshop is limited to 70 participants, and is on a first come, first served basis. Lunch will be provided for all registered attendees. To register, please fill out the MAC 2012 Student Workshop Registration Form.Proposals for a default block on internet pornography have been criticised as impractical and potentially counterproductive by technology experts and civil liberties campaigners, setting them at loggerheads with groups such as the NSPCC ahead of a potentially stormy government consultation.
David Cameron announced last week that the government would consult on methods to improve online child protection, including a system whereby filters on adult material were set as default. Anyone wanting to access such content would have to "opt in" with their internet service provider.
The idea, advocated by a number of MPs as the best way to safeguard minors, was the chief recommendation of an independent parliamentary inquiry into online child protection, chaired by Tory backbencher Claire Perry and published last month. It has also been vociferously championed by the Daily Mail.
But according to many in the technology community the proposal is unrealistic. They say that a combination of web-aware children and ever-resourceful pornography sites would leave a network-level block struggling to be effective.
Worse, they argue, it could lull parents into a false sense of security and make them believe they need to take no further action. Mumsnet, the popular and powerful online forum, withdrew its support for the idea after an outcry from its tech-savvy members. "If you're a successful porn company with lots of money at your disposal, you're going to constantly change your web address, you're going to be constantly redirecting," said Stuart Miles, founder of technology website Pocket-Lint.com. "It would be impossible to block these things. And that's even after you've taken the decision as to what you deem to be 'acceptable' porn and 'not acceptable' porn."
Supporters of a default block acknowledge that it would not be an instant cure- all and are adamant that the role of parents remains vital. But they insist the threat posed to children by increasingly explicit pornography is such that any measure to combat it should be embraced. "Opt-in", they believe, is the best there is. "It's no panacea at all," said Jon Brown, head of strategy and development at the NSPCC. "Of course there are going to be other ways in which young people are going to be able to access porn should they want it. But it's another inhibitor." Relying on parents to do the work was not always realistic, he added. "While parents of course have a role to play and responsibility … the reality is that some of our more vulnerable children are going to be in homes and in family situations where those controls and that scrutiny isn't in place," he said. A 2008 YouGov survey found that 27% of boys said they accessed pornography every week.
Last year's Bailey report into the sexualisation and commercialisation of children recommended so-called "active choice" as a means of restricting children's access to adult material – a system whereby users are forced to decide whether or not they want controls. The report prompted the "big four" ISPs – Sky, BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk – to sign a voluntary code of practice according to which they would aim to make "active choice" obligatory for all new customers from October this year. However, as fewer than 5% of customers change their provider during a typical quarter, the measure was not expected to reach a high proportion of users.
A spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said "active choice" remained the Government's preferred option, but that it would look at how it could be advanced, for example by examining whether devices such as laptops could come with filters, or whether ISPs could roll out active choice to existing customers. "The experts have told us that prompting parents to make that choice is the best way to get a result because it makes people engage with it and think about it," he said. No date has yet been set for the consultation.
Accusing Cameron of including the "opt-in" proposal in the consultation as a sop to socially conservative voters, Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert said: "This is the prime minister trying to say what he thinks will please the Daily Mail readership. There is lots of evidence from the Bailey report and others that active choice – making parents think about it and make a decision – is the best way of actually providing protection for children."
If the government does stick with "active choice", the ISPs will be pleased. They remain implacably opposed to any system whereby they would, as one employee said, in effect "become judge and jury" of the nation's morality.
Their parental controls, they say, offer the best protection for children. TalkTalk's HomeSafe, the only ISP package with a network-level filter, has seen more than 350,000 customers sign on in the past year. In the parliamentary report, such tools are said to "improve content filtering considerably".
Proponents of the "opt in" option are adamant that the ISPs, which make huge profits from selling internet access, should shoulder more responsibility. Perry's report pointed to the precedent set by mobile phone networks, which have already implemented an opt-in filter. While saying that government regulation of the internet should always be done "with the lightest touch", it urged ministers to seek "backstop legal provisions to intervene should industry progress prove inadequate".
The NSPCC's Brown said: "The internet, of course, in terms of its development and history, has been very libertarian and unregulated, and our view is that probably, now, cautiously and sensibly, we ought to be looking at what appropriate controls should be put in place to ensure that parents are supported in helping to protect children from harmful content."
But many see this as a dangerous path to tread. They object to the idea of adults being put on what they say would in effect become a "porn users' register" and argue that no higher power should have the right to determine, in effect, what legal material they should and should not consume.
Jules Hillier, deputy chief executive of sexual health advisory service Brook, whose website was temporarily blocked last year in the mobile phone networks' filter, said the unexpected restriction had made her worry about the ethics, not to mention the efficacy, of such a block. "It did make me think quite a lot about who is it who has the policy responsibility to say 'yes, that site is OK' and 'that site's not'," said Hillier. "Who is it? Because that's not what telephone companies or internet service providers are for."
Jim Killock, of the civil liberties organisation Open Rights Group, said that a network-level block could lead to a phenomenon known as the Streisand effect, whereby trying to suppress something online actually leads to greater publicity.1. Click the check box to the left of a qualifying Tablet of your choice below2. Click the check box to the left of the $100 Amazon.com Gift Card below3. Click the "Add to Cart" button and a $100 discount will be reflected at checkout4. Both products may also be added to your Shopping Cart by selecting "Add Both to Cart" on the product detail pageLimit one per customer. Items may be shipped separately. The promotion applies only to products sold by Amazon.com. It does not apply to the same products sold by other sellers. Offer good through March 30th, 2013, or while supplies last. See complete terms and conditions below.
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▪ If you remove any of the promotional item(s) from your Shopping Cart or violate any of the terms and conditions listed above, the promotion will be invalid, and the Gift Card offer will not apply.(Reuters) - Video game publisher Trion Worlds has raised $85 million in a new round of funding as the privately held company aims to expand to Asia this year and launch new titles, CEO Lars Buttler told Reuters on Thursday.
Trion, which makes the Internet fantasy game “Rift,” has now raised more than $185 million since it was founded five years ago. The company is eyeing the public markets, and could join the recent wave of gaming IPOs such as Nexon and Zynga, Buttler said in an interview.
Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, one of Canada’s largest pension fund administrators with $110 billion in assets, led the round of funding, while the European media conglomerate, Bertelsmann, also participated. Previous investors in Trion are some of the best known media companies such as Comcast and Time Warner.
Buttler declined to say how much the company is valued at with these new investments.
“Rift” the company’s first title, which came out last year, generated $100 million in revenue in 10 months in 2011. Lars said the game is profitable and makes money from players who buy the game, pay monthly subscription fees and purchase virtual items.
The game will be coming out in South Korea between April and June and China at a later date.
Buttler said the funding will serve as the company’s “warchest” and it may be used for an acquisition or to licence a game.
Rift competes with “World of Warcraft,” Activision Blizzard’s massive multiplayer game with 10.3 million players but which has been in decline.
So-called massive multiplayer games allow thousands of people to play simultaneously over the Internet.
Trion, which is based in Silicon Valley, is also working on a new shooter game called “Defiance” that will be released to coincide with a television show of the same name on the Syfy Channel.Sanderson Farms Inc., one of the biggest U.S. chicken producers, is blaming the recent player-protest controversy in the National Football League for slower sales of chicken wings, the game-time favorite.
Wing prices had a banner year for much of 2017, boosting profits at processors like Sanderson. But spot prices slumped in each of the last three months and are now 14 percent lower than a year earlier, according to one U.S. government measure. Amid the NFL dispute, it’s unclear where prices are headed from here, Joe F. Sanderson Jr., chief executive officer of Sanderson, said Thursday on a conference call to discuss earnings call.
“The only thing puzzling me right now is wings,” he said. “We’ve been talking to our wing customers and they’re the ones that are telling us that they’re seeing less traffic in their stores. They attribute that to the NFL.”
Food sellers have differing views on how much impact player protests during the national anthem at NFL games have had on revenue. While Papa John’s International Inc. last month blamed the NFL’s handling of the controversy for hammering pizza sales, Wingstop Inc. said it hadn’t seen any impact from waning football viewership.
Sanderson shares fell 12 percent to $146.83 at 1:37 p.m. in New York, on pace for the worst slump since December 2008. The company posted lower-than-expected earnings per share in the fourth quarter as chicken prices weakened from rising production and hurricane-related disruptions.Ruth King presents five ways we can address racial ignorance and division to help ourselves and our sanghas become whole.
As Buddhist and mindfulness practitioners, we have an opportunity to understand the dynamics of racial suffering and the flesh we put on its bones. Honoring our relatedness, our belonging, and our impact is a necessity for awakening in general and for transforming racial suffering in particular—in our own hearts, and in our communities and institutions.
As an African American Western Buddhist practitioner and teacher, I have sat on my meditation cushion in silence, with hundreds of other yogis, ripening my capacity to live in gentle and wise awareness. I’ve done this, sometimes for months at a time, without ever speaking to the yogi who sat beside me, and within me there was great comfort in knowing that despite our differing paths, we had somehow landed on our cushions and were opening our hearts together. This, in my mind, is a miracle.
But over the years, participating in dharma programs mostly attended and led by white people, I often felt my heart quake and stomach tighten after hearing teachers and yogis speak from a lack of awareness of themselves as racial beings. I didn’t hear blatant racist comments with intent to harm. Rather, there was a more subtle obliviousness to whiteness as a collective and its privilege and impact, and an assumption that we were all the same or wanted to be. In those moments, despite my best efforts, I was reminded of race and of being invisible and would spin into a hurricane of anger, confusion, and despair, asking myself: Why did you come? What did you expect? Are you delusional? Why do you need your experience to be acknowledged here? Why don’t you wake up and stop kidding yourself?
Race has ricocheted on my practice in painful ways with regularity, and while I would have liked to avoid “going there” (dealing with racial ignorance and its pain again and again), oddly I recognized that “going there” was “being here.” While I was able at times through this precious practice to self-soothe, let go, soften, and experience this suffering with fleeting degrees of clarity and grace, there was something untouched and unsettled by this solitary inquiry that eventually ignited a desire for deeper understanding and collective exploration.
When we apply Buddhist teachings to Western culture, we must take into consideration the impact of our deeply rooted history of colonialism, racial enslavement, and exploitation. White dominant culture as a historical collective continues to benefit from racial injustice, knowingly or unknowingly. Western Buddhist practitioners and organizations are in denial if they believe they are exempt from the stain of this history and its persistent contribution to separation and suffering.
When we look around, we can readily see that most of the recognized Insight Meditation retreat centers are headed by whites and typically lack racial diversity. Added to this, and of delicate significance, is the fact that our practice is generally in silence. Subordinated cultures have a history of experiencing silence as oppressive, and exploring this tender territory on retreat is often misunderstood by white teachers. Much harm occurs for people of color when this pain is felt deeply and met by an inadequate response, within a formal structure, where personal contact is limited. This dynamic accentuates white dominance, denial, color blindness, and individualism; for people of color, latent experiences of oppression are intensified, and the environment begins to feel unsafe. Given this, and other examples like this, we can perhaps begin to understand why our sanghas, largely led by white people, may be chronically, racially, even appropriately divided.
Having taught in multiyear engagement programs such as Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leaders Program and the Dedicated Practitioners’ Program, I’ve seen many white practitioners express anger and discontent when racial suffering is directly explored, many of whom felt that focusing on race involved clinging to concepts and was therefore inconsistent with Buddhism. Some whites have been so upset that they have dropped out of the program altogether, saying, This is not what I signed up for. People of color have dropped out as well, saying the same thing but stating different reasons, namely that they were disappointed these programs were not safe or welcoming communities to engage in or begin to heal the realities of racial suffering. In such habitual stalemates, racial hurt and ignorance are further conditioned.
There are sincere attempts to bridge racial divisions within sanghas, but it’s often awkward—a dance between white delusion or guilt, and aversion experienced by people of color. For example, I hear white sangha members say, When I look at you, I don’t see race. As an African American woman, this well-meaning comment renders my experience invisible, my history whitewashed, my people at risk, and our relationship questionable. Not seeing race is privilege, and it’s not an option for me as a Black woman in America.
At the core of racial suffering is denial about our belonging—that is, our kinship and our membership in each other’s lives. The separation inherent in the entrenched patterns of racial suffering is not just a division of the races. The consciousness—or unconsciousness—that supports racial suffering cuts people out of our hearts, then has us try to live as if “cutting” does not hurt. We have come to accept this dismemberment as normal and move about our lives in search of spiritual freedom and contentment, as if we are not bleeding from the wounds of separation. It’s as if we were orphans in search of our family, not realizing that they are “the other”—the ones we despise, don’t see, or think we know. We have convinced ourselves that we can live with missing body parts—with some folks and without others—and still be whole, happy, and peaceful. But the reality is that we live in a state of pervasive unsatisfactoriness and confusion, not able to see or touch a deep sense of belonging, nor put language to it. We work harder at belonging because we only make use of a fraction of our wholeness and overcompensate with what remains: righteousness or avoidance that masks fear. We waste energy that our communities need to heal and transform. In these moments of dismemberment, we have forgotten that all of our parts matter.
Our challenge is to practice in ways that reflect tender and wise kinship with all beings. We must ask ourselves, how can we create a sangha that genuinely cares about racial suffering and belonging?
To begin—and we are always beginning—here are a few practical strategies that we can incorporate into our practice.
Set an Intention
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is face.
—James Baldwin
There is no shortage of information on racial ignorance, hatred, and injustice—we need only Google it! Some people lack interest in matters of race, while others feel overloaded and burdened by it and need to shift how they hold the suffering. Delusion, aversion, righteousness, and distraction are just some of the common strategies that keep us from facing the deeper truth of racial suffering and from experiencing the intimacy of our shared and diverse humanity.
We must be clear in our intentions regarding what we want to wake up to, and then attend to them mindfully. We all need an intention beyond righteousness. Ask yourself, what is your vision of racial healing? Why is this important to you personally? What do you need to face up to and own in order to stay awake to racial suffering? How would this benefit all beings?
Once you have set an intention that would support racial awareness and healing, have it be a focus in your mindfulness practice. The Buddha speaks of the four bases of success: (1) You must be interested; (2) You must apply effort and energy; (3) You must think about what you are trying to do, and; (4) You must look at the results or impact of what you have done.
Be curious about what arises as you inquire, and explore with an attitude of kindness and tenderness.
Form a Racial Affinity Group
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
—Albert Einstein
We all want to touch a deeper truth about our belonging—something greater than the stories we’ve been told or tell ourselves. Fundamentally, we all need a place where we can be safe, curious, and unedited so that we can discover the ignorance and |
most-expensive patients—those who make more than $70,000 in claims in 2015. Thanks to these two programs, insurance companies are able to artificially lower their premiums for consumers—by between 10%-15% in 2014, according to CMS—while charging the taxpayer for their losses. Reinsurance alone cost taxpayers $7.9 billion in 2014. But consumers will pick up that tab once these programs disappear at the end of 2016. Health insurers are aware of this fact, and it’s in their interest to avoid the negative attention—and angry customers—that dramatic premium increases will cause. They thus have an incentive to spread out the coming hikes over both 2016 and 2017, rather than confine them to next year.
After 2017, the annual increases should shrink to 3-6%, but the damage will have already been done. The cost arc will bring its own kind of political and fiscal death spiral within a few years, Parente predicts:
By 2023, I estimate that the average family plan could be 61% more expensive than it is in 2015, with individual plans only one or two percentage points behind. These increases are so high that direct taxpayer subsidies to consumers are unlikely to keep up. So the cost, both financially and politically, will become increasingly intolerable.
Let’s remember two points on that argument. One, Barack Obama and the Democrats actually pegged contribution for subsidized health insurance to a percentage of salary, which means that the subsidies will have to get paid — and that will sink the program into a massively deep ocean of red ink. Two, people making above 400% of the poverty line won’t get subsidies at all, and they will get very, very angry at the massive cost increases in health-insurance premiums and the tax increases that will be necessary to cover subsidies they don’t get.
On top of that, most of the people who get insurance won’t see any benefit from the costly comprehensive insurance they’re forced to buy. That’s because the deductibles are so high that most care will come out of their pockets, along with the skyrocketing premiums. WCPO in Cincinnati offers a look at how the “low $50 co-pay” has vanished in ObamaCare plans, and how that impacts consumers when they actually need medical care — especially through emergency rooms:
Note too that the problem of high deductibles doesn’t just come into play in ERs. A wellness check may be covered outside of deductibles, but any other service will come from right out of your pocket until you’ve spent the thousands of dollars needed to qualify for insurance payouts.
So what does WCPO suggest to lower medical costs while in the deductible range? Using the private marketplace and getting direct price signals. Do research on the lowest cost options. Try to get providers to compete on price. That is exactly the form health-insurance reform should have taken all along, which would have resulted in an emphasis on hospitalization/critical care insurance at much lower premiums, along with HSAs — options proscribed by ObamaCare.
Instead, as I wrote this week at The Fiscal Times, consumers are getting hammered by cost increases of more than 50% in some states while ObamaCare fails entirely at its ostensible goals:
The Obama administration hasn’t done any better in its other goal of driving the cost of care down for American families. Even Slate wondered last week just when the Democrats would start taking ownership of “skyrocketing premiums” in the third enrollment year of the Affordable Care Act. Oregon approved a 25 percent increase from its largest health insurer, and a 33 percent increase from the next largest. BlueCross BlueShield in Tennessee needs a 36 percent increase after getting a 19 percent increase the year before. In my state of Minnesota, BCBS wants to hike rates 54 percent, and 51.6 percent in New Mexico. At the same time, deductibles have also skyrocketed, leaving people with higher monthly payments and even less ability to access the insurance that those premiums provide. Slate’s Helaine Olen heaps scorn on Obamacare opponents and fails to admit that their predictions of spiraling costs have come true, but she does admit that the system does not work at controlling costs – the most significant reason to have government overhaul the health-insurance system in the first place. What have we accomplished in the last five years since the passage of Obamacare? We still have roughly the same number of uninsured, estimated to be roughly 30 million people, although the rate of uninsured has dropped significantly. Costs for the insured are skyrocketing, however, and many of the newly insured will find that high deductibles mean they will still have to fund their routine care out of pocket. Provider networks have narrowed considerably, making access even more difficult than before. Emergency room visits for routine care have actually increased. The bureaucracy that runs all of this cannot fix its fraud problem, not even after having it specifically pointed out to them by the GAO and given a year to resolve.
There’s no fixing a structure doomed to failure. The only option is to repeal it and introduce market-based reforms that eliminate price-signal opacity, especially in routine care. “You have to know where to go and where not to go,” the father says in the video, just like any other marketplace. You shouldn’t be forced to spend $15,000 on membership to it beforehand.Amber Orrange scored a career-high 26 points to help the 15th-ranked Stanford women's basketball team escape with a 62-55 victory over visiting Colorado in the Pac-12 Conference opener for both teams on Saturday night.
"I tried to be aggressive and take what the defense was giving us," Orrange said. "They were switching on screens so the bigs were on our guards and we attacked."
Lili Thompson added 17 points as the Cardinal (9-4, 1-0 in the Pac-12) won its third straight and six of eight overall.
"We put a lot of pressure on Amber and Lili and they came through," Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said. "They worked hard the whole game."
Briana Roberson hit a 3-pointer to put Stanford ahead, 42-31, early in the second half but the Buffaloes scored 12 unanswered points to take a 43-42 edge with 10:14 remaining.
"We faced a little adversity but we just had to be patient in moving the ball forward," Orrange said. "We were fine."
Bonnie Samuelson hit a 3-pointer to end Stanford's scoring drought and put the Cardinal ahead to stay, although Colorado was within four with less than a minute to play.
Stanford continues the homestand with a conference game against Utah on Monday at 5 p.m., to be televised on the Pac-12 Networks.
The Buffaloes drew within 59-55 on a pair of free throws from Jamee Swan with 45 seconds to play.
Orrange and Samuelson combined to go 3 of 4 from the foul line the rest of the way while helping limit Colorado to one shot attempt.
Thompson, who scored 16 points in two games against Colorado last year, also matched Kaylee Johnson with a team-high five rebounds.
"We attack and the defense has to decide if they want us to make layups," Thompson said. "We have to be prepared to kick out to Bonnie, Karlie and Briana and those are the games when they will knock down shots."
Orrange was 10 of 16 from the field and the Cardinal shot.415 overall, including a 6 of 15 effort from long range. She has 1,110 career points, moving past Josyln Tinkle and Jillian Harmon into 30th place on the school's all-time scoring list.
Stanford is shooting.401 from beyond the arc as a team, with Thompson a 48 percent (24 of 50) 3-pointer shooter. The Cardinal is fourth in the nation in 3-point shooting.
Roberson has made seven of 13 3-pointers (.538) while Bonnie Samuelson (.417) and Karlie Samuelson (.436) are over 40 percent from long range.
Stanford improved to 8-0 against the Buffaloes since they joined the Pac-12. Colorado last defeated the Cardinal in an NCAA tournament game in 2002.Spread the love
Germantown, WI — An incredible story from Friday morning starts out with a black lab named John Boy, approaching a police officer.
Germantown police officer, Jeff Gonzalez deserves credit for not only refusing to do what so many other cops do when dogs approach them, but actually getting out in the freezing weather to see why this dog was loose.
“He stood there and barked a little bit, then I rolled down my window and called to him. Then he wagged his tail and got more friendly until I got out of my car. And then he ran a little bit,” said Gonzalez.
John Boy was seemingly trying to get the officer’s attention in an effort to help his owner.
“Yeah, he sure did. He pointed me in the right direction,” said Gonzalez.
John Boy led the officer up the street to a house where his owner, Krystal, was unresponsive. Krystal, who suffers from a heart condition, was slumped over in a chair outside her front door, still in her pajamas. It was dangerously cold out.
“To be honest with you, I thought she was dead. And when I went up, she was very cold to the touch; her lips were blue. But I was able to determine she was breathing and had a pulse. I called for assistance, and my partner was close. So together we got her in the house,” said Gonzalez.
“Basically what he told me was, he said that they thought that she was dead. So it’s hard,” said Tianne Wendt, Krystal’s daughter about the initial call from officer Gonzalez.
Thanks to this miraculously loyal dog and a police officer who defied the odds, Krystal is now in stable condition in a local hospital and John Boy didn’t freeze to death. This unlikely duo has transformed potential tears of sadness into tears of joy.
As if that wasn’t amazing enough, the family told Fox 8 News that they adopted John Boy. He was returned three times by three different families prior to ending up in the home of the owner whose life he would eventually save.
Follow @MattAgoristThis 2005 Kia Sorento (chassis KNDJC733655347854) is offered by a used car dealer but more importantly features a swapped 468ci Chevrolet big-block V8 with a 700R4 overdrive automatic transmission and 4-wheel drive. For what it’s worth, it looks like the vehicle is in decent condition other than the dirty interior and hideous wheels and stick-on hood scoop seen fitted. Honestly, we aren’t sure of the point of this swap other than puzzling onlookers at shows or drag strips but we applaud the builder for their sense of humor. Find it here on eBay in Burlington, New Jersey with reserve unmet and bidding still under $5k. Special thanks to BaT reader Brian A. for this submission.
Unfortunately few details are given describing the car’s mechanical condition other than the mileage, which is 90k total with less than 3k on the swap. In addition to the swapped engine and trans, the transfer case sounds like a custom unit as well. Almost predictably the Chevrolet V8 looks like a tight fit with little room to spare.
A gaudy chrome B&M shifter and custom gauges have been added, while most everything else appears stock. The driver’s seat has several cigarette burns, the e-brake boot is torn, and the cargo area is exceptionally dirty even by used car standards. Even so, things are decent enough for driver standards.
In all honesty this swap is amusing at best but we’d rather see this drivetrain used to create something better like last year’s Super Sleeper Chevette or to power a rolling Jaguar project, etc. Anything else, really.LOS ANGELES — “I don’t know, bro. I was screwed up in the head.”
M. Night Shyamalan, ruminating last month about career choices gone wrong, spoke those words and then burst into a giddy giggle. Just kidding! But the tenderness in his eyes betrayed him: There was some truth in that tease.
In contrast to his first four studio movies, which were all substantial hits, starting with “The Sixth Sense” in 1999, Mr. Shyamalan’s last four films have been a series of misfires. “Lady in the Water,” “The Happening,” “The Last Airbender” and “After Earth” severely tarnished his reputation among moviegoers. The guy who brought us those clunkers — and, yes, we know, “The Sixth Sense” — wants us to buy tickets again?
Pass.
But here comes a hairpin twist nobody anticipated: Mr. Shyamalan, 45, seemingly humbled and more mature, took a hard look at his professional life, made a course correction, and the result, a quirky comedic thriller called “The Visit,” may well deliver a surprise cinematic comeback, or at least the start of one.“It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.” ― H.G. Wells
Humans don’t wake up ready to give 100%.
Our daily startup sequence has more similarities to older PCs that run best if restarted daily than modern devices that are always ready to go. Most of us benefit from going through some type of morning routine to get ourselves set for optimal output.
A well defined morning routine is important because it decreases the number of choices that you make in the beginning of your day, which reduces decision fatigue.
This concept was explained recently in a short podcast by Tim Ferriss:
“Imagine you have 100 points for making decisions every 24 hours. The more decisions you rack up in one area, the fewer decisions you can effectively make elsewhere. If you make a ton of unnecessary decisions: which email to check, what to do first in the morning, what breakfast to have, you are going to deplete your hit points, and that will lead to poor decision making later, because you’re going to run out of your 100 points.”
An effective morning routine should essentially be a mental do-confirm checklist with the goal of getting minimizing or eliminating unnecessary decisions as you get ready for the day.
My typical morning has five things that rarely deviate:
Water. The first thing I do is drink a large glass of water. As much as I wish I could start with coffee, water is what wakes me up in the morning.
The first thing I do is drink a large glass of water. As much as I wish I could start with coffee, water is what wakes me up in the morning. High protein breakfast. For at least the last 10 years, I have eaten two eggs almost every morning, typically with some sausage or ham. Rare exceptions are when I’m traveling or eat at a restaurant. (I’d love to eat bacon every day, but don’t typically have time to do the full bacon method). Sometimes I’ll have a small handful of berries, depending on the season.
For at least the last 10 years, I have eaten two eggs almost every morning, typically with some sausage or ham. Rare exceptions are when I’m traveling or eat at a restaurant. (I’d love to eat bacon every day, but don’t typically have time to do the full bacon method). Sometimes I’ll have a small handful of berries, depending on the season. Coffee. Usually French press with freshly ground beans. Caffeine is a wonderful thing.
Usually French press with freshly ground beans. Caffeine is a wonderful thing. Walk the dog. Although I typically only have time for a 5-10 minute walk on work days, I always find it refreshing to get outside and move around. Bonus: it keeps the dog from plotting against me.
Although I typically only have time for a 5-10 minute walk on work days, I always find it refreshing to get outside and move around. Bonus: it keeps the dog from plotting against me. Shower. I always feel mentally fresher after a shower, and given a chronically busy schedule, I used to say, “a shower is worth 2 hours of sleep.” We now know that sleep is much too important to skimp on, but my patients probably prefer that I take a morning shower anyway.
Over time, I’ve essentially designed my work wardrobe in the style of Steve Jobs’ daily uniform, so that I could get dressed in the dark (which occasionally happens) and still match.
On my way to work I usually listen to an audiobook on Audible (I recently finished and highly recommend Hatching Twitter) or a podcast.
What would I change about my routine?
I’m hoping to try adding about 10-15 minutes of meditation each morning right after waking, which is a common practice of many successful people. I simply need to form this into a habit.
Resources for designing your morning routine
Two websites exploring morning routines that are worth checking out are Morning Do and My Morning Routine, especially their list of recommended articles.President Pranab Mukherjee, US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama stand for the national anthem during a banquet hosted at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Sunday. PTI Photo
President Pranab Mukherjee and US First Lady Michelle Obama look on as US President Barack Obama shakes hands with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a banquet hosted at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Sunday. PTI Photo President Pranab Mukherjee and US First Lady Michelle Obama look on as US President Barack Obama shakes hands with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a banquet hosted at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Sunday. PTI Photo
As he started his speech at Rashtrapati Bhavan, US President Barack Obama on Sunday night said that he wanted to wear a Modi kurta.
"Tonight I was thinking of wearing a Modi kurta myself," Obama said. Click here for LIVE updates
Obama raised a toast at the banquet hosted in his honour by President Pranab Mukherjee.
"We feel your friendship, 'dosti' and I am deeply honoured," the US president added.
He recalled a headline back home which asked who is the new fashion icon other than Michelle Obama and said "I was thinking of wearing a Modi kurta myself."
He appreciated Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying he is tough and has a style.
"I most often said that my story could happen in America and of course Mr Prime Minister, your story can happen only in India."
Recalling Modi's childhood days when his father was a tea vendor and his mother was working in other households, Obama said, "Tonight their son welcomes us as the Prime Minister of world's largest democracy.
President Pranab Mukherjee, US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama stand for the national anthem during a banquet hosted at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Sunday. PTI Photo President Pranab Mukherjee, US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama stand for the national anthem during a banquet hosted at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Sunday. PTI Photo
"Now we all know about Prime Minister's legendary work ethics. He (Modi) was explaining to me Sunday that how he got only three hours sleep Sunday which made me feel bad. I was doing ok with five.
"What I didn't know that he survived an attack by a crocodile. So he is tough and he also has style.
Obama recalled his earlier visit to India when he had joined some children in Mumbai on the eve of Diwali. "Last time we were over here, we joined some children in Mumbai for Diwali and we danced.
"It was clear what the Indian press thought and one headline was President Obama visits India and the other said Michelle Obama rocks India. It is true that Michelle Obama is better dancer than me."Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF and Scribd versions.
Appalachian coal producers recently announced a new round of layoffs, eliciting a flurry of press releases from politicians that blamed the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, for the coal industry’s problems. While Appalachian coal production is falling, the EPA’s rules to cut carbon pollution and improve air quality are not the driving force behind the coal industry’s decline in Appalachia.
In September 2014, Alpha Natural Resources announced that it had laid off hundreds of workers in the company’s West Virginia coal mines, with the potential for more layoffs later this year. Earlier in the month, Patriot Coal also announced layoffs at its operations in Boone County, West Virginia. In their press releases, both companies acknowledged the challenging market conditions but placed an equal amount of blame on the EPA and its rules to clean up fossil-fuel-fired power plant pollution. Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) quickly blamed the EPA as well, saying these layoffs were “another example of how the lives of thousands of men, women, and children are being ripped apart by the actions of the EPA and its callous disregard for hardworking Americans.” West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) promised to “continue our efforts against the federal regulations that devastate our state, our communities and our families by forcing power plants in America and around the world to use a less attractive fuel source.”
The reality is much more complex than these sound bites portray. Appalachia’s coal communities are confronting a confluence of market factors that are years in the making. Alpha Natural Resources Chairman and CEO Kevin Crutchfield acknowledged as much in a document for investors, describing the coal market as “extremely challenging.” He cited numerous market factors, including low domestic and international prices for both thermal and metallurgical coal, soft natural gas prices, and increased imports—primarily from Colombia.
Many coal mines in Appalachia are closing or idling, with potentially significant effects on communities across the region. In order to mitigate these effects, it is important to understand the compounding market conditions contributing to the decline of Appalachian coal. Those who point fingers at environmental regulations are obscuring a more intractable reality about the market challenges confronting the Appalachian coal industry. Placing the blame on the EPA’s efforts to reduce pollution, mitigate climate change, and protect human health may provide an attractive political argument, but it simply clouds the discussion and slows progress toward meaningful solutions.
This issue brief discusses some of the market challenges Alpha Natural Resources and other companies in the Appalachian coal industry face.
Cheap and abundant natural gas
The sudden abundance of natural gas from shale deposits in the United States has put significant pressure on the coal industry nationwide. Between 2007 and 2012, natural gas production from shale increased fivefold in the United States, driving natural gas prices down from a 10-year high of $8.86 per million British thermal units, or BTUs, in 2008 to an average of $2.75 per million BTUs in 2012 and $3.73 per million BTUs in 2013.
These low prices—combined with the air-quality benefits that come with burning gas rather than coal for electricity—have eroded coal’s position as the go-to energy source for power generation. Coal accounted for half of the country’s net generation of electricity in 2004, compared with the 18 percent provided by natural gas. Coal’s share dropped to 39 percent by 2013, with natural gas accounting for 27 percent of the nation’s electricity generation. During the first half of 2014, natural gas power plants accounted for more than half of the new electricity-generating capacity that utility companies placed into service.
This trend is likely to continue well into the future. The Energy Information Administration, or EIA, estimates that natural gas production will increase 56 percent between 2012 and 2040 under a business-as-usual scenario. Given these ample supplies of cleaner-burning natural gas, the EIA anticipates that electric power producers will choose gas rather than coal when adding new fossil-fuel-fired generation capacity in the coming decades. The EIA projects that natural gas-fired plants will account for 73 percent of capacity additions through 2040, compared with just 1 percent for coal.
Competition with other U.S. coal
Appalachian coal is not only losing market share to natural gas but also to other U.S. coal basins.
The largest, easiest-to-access coal seams in Appalachia have already been mined, forcing coal companies to spend more resources to extract coal from lower-profit seams. Coal companies in the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming can extract more than 10 times as much coal per employee hour as coal companies operating in the Appalachian Basin. (see Figure 1)
As labor productivity in a mine declines, coal prices often must rise in order to make the mine economically viable. Consequently, Appalachian coal is more expensive than coal from other parts of the United States. For example, the spot price for Northern Appalachian coal averaged almost $63 per ton for the week ending August 29, 2014. In contrast, the spot price was less than $12 per ton for Powder River Basin coal and $44 per ton for Illinois Basin coal. (see Figure 2) Although not as cheap to produce as Powder River Basin coal, Illinois Basin coal costs less to mine than Appalachian coal because the coal seams are thicker and closer to the surface.
The high cost of Appalachian coal acts as a significant market barrier. The average mine-mouth price—the price of coal before factoring in transportation costs—for Appalachian coal began climbing in 2004, and the Energy Information Administration predicts it will continue to increase by 1.6 percent each year through 2040 due to declining mine productivity. (see Figure 3) Accordingly, the EIA projects that Appalachian coal production will continue to decline in the coming years “as coal produced from the extensively mined, higher-cost reserves of Central Appalachia is supplanted by lower-cost coal from other regions.”
Appalachian coal’s declining competitive advantage
The price differential shown in Figures 2 and 3 makes it difficult for Appalachian coal to compete. Until recently, Appalachian coal’s saving grace was its relative proximity to the East Coast power plant fleet and its comparably low-sulfur, high-energy content. Generally, low-sulfur coal makes it easier for power plants to control their emissions of sulfur dioxide and meet Clean Air Act requirements.
However, Illinois Basin coal continues to make inroads in markets formerly cornered by the Appalachian coal producers. With the advent of effective scrubbers, the relatively low-sulfur content of the Appalachian coal no longer offers the same competitive advantage over higher-sulfur coals. The Energy Information Administration predicts that that coal production from the Interior Coal Region, including the Illinois Basin, will increase in the coming years, reaching “new highs as scrubbers installed at existing coal-fired generating units allow them to burn the region’s higher-sulfur coals with lower delivered costs.”
Recent announcements from electric utilities demonstrate the reality of these predictions. In 2013, the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, and Southern Company, which operates power plants throughout the southeast, announced that they would no longer purchase coal from Central Appalachia. The TVA indicated that it decided to switch coal sources “mostly because of price.” Southern Company said that switching to cheaper coal from the Illinois Basin would result in savings that “translate … into hundreds of millions of dollars a year for our customers.” For both companies, scrubbers installed on smokestacks negate the need to pay a premium for lower-sulfur coal.
Consequently, the West Virginia Coal Association has called the Illinois Basin the Appalachian coal industry’s “biggest challenger.”19 Similarly, in its second quarter financial announcement, Alpha Natural Resources noted that competition from the Illinois Basin “intensified” in 2014.
Even before the Illinois Basin emerged as a major competitor, Appalachian coal faced stiff competition from the less labor-intensive Powder River Basin coal from west of the Mississippi River. In 1999, coal production west of the Mississippi surpassed the eastern coal basins for the first time, a trend that is unlikely to reverse. (see Figure 4) Between 2001 and 2012, coal production from the Powder River Basin grew from 35 percent of total U.S. production to 41 percent. During the same time period, Appalachia’s share of U.S. coal production fell from 38 percent to 29 percent.
Competition from foreign coal imports
Appalachian coal also faces competition from abroad. Coal imports for the first six months of 2014 increased 43 percent compared with the same time period last year. Imported coal has become particularly attractive to power plants along the East Coast due to congestion in the U.S. rail system, the high cost of transporting goods by rail, and falling global coal prices. The National Mining Association has noted that “U.S. power plants on or near Eastern or Gulf ports can access coal much more cheaply from … traditional offshore exporting countries than they can from the U.S. interior.”
In its second-quarter financial announcement, Alpha Natural Resources noted that increased imports, primarily from Colombia, were putting pressure on the U.S. coal market. The United States imported 1.6 million short tons of coal from Colombia during the first quarter of 2014, a 50 percent increase from the same period the previous year. A spokesman for Alpha Natural Resources noted, “Colombia produces a high quality thermal coal” that is “inexpensive to mine” and “relatively inexpensive to ship” to power plants along the East Coast of the United States.
As a result, Colombian coal is simply cheaper than coal from Appalachia. Power plants in the eastern United States can buy Colombian coal for $75 to $82 per ton compared with $79 to $86 per ton for Central Appalachian coal. In addition to lower labor costs, Colombia has the advantage of being able to transport the coal by ship, which is cheaper and more efficient than rail. It is approximately $11 cheaper per ton to ship coal from Colombia to Florida power plants than it is to transport coal from Central Appalachia.
Falling international coal prices
Appalachian coal companies exported 31 percent of the coal they produced in 2012, up from 25 percent in 2011 and 19 percent in 2010. As a result, the region’s coal industry is increasingly dependent on foreign markets.
Recently, global coal prices have fallen due to a confluence of factors, including slower than- expected global coal demand and rising coal output. On September 25, European coal futures hit a five-year low due to concerns about oversupply. With the current unfavorable state of the global coal market, U.S. coal producers are exporting less: U.S. coal exports fell 17 percent in the first half of 2014 compared with the first half of last year.
The international picture could change as the world’s leading producers respond to falling coal prices and cut production. Nevertheless, the recent dynamics of the global coal market had a measureable effect on Alpha Natural Resources and Arch Coal, another major coal producer in Appalachia.
Alpha Natural Resources generated 45 percent of its revenue from the export market in 2013, primarily from the sale of metallurgical coal. In August, the company alerted investors to the challenges posed by the “oversupplied” global metallurgical coal market and noted that global prices for thermal coal were “below the break-even point for most U.S. producers.” When announcing potential layoffs, Alpha Natural Resources again raised the global supply glut as a key concern, stating that the “international price of coal shipped to power plants in Europe has been hovering at a four-year low, while prices for metallurgical coal used to make steel have declined more than 20 percent in less than a year, reflective of oversupplied markets.”
Similarly, Arch Coal announced in July that it was going to idle the Cumberland River Coal Company complex, which spans counties in Virginia and Kentucky. Arch Coal said it was “actively responding to currently challenged metallurgical coal markets.” In its second-quarter financial statement, Arch Coal noted that “prevailing soft seaborne thermal and metallurgical prices are likely to limit U.S. coal exports this year.” Arch Coal also acknowledged the cyclical nature of the global market—and the extent to which Appalachian coal producers are vulnerable to these cycles—by expressing some optimism that an increase in global steel production and planned cutbacks in global supply will “bring better balance to global metallurgical markets over time.”
The decline in coal jobs began long ago
The coal industry and other critics are keen to point to the Obama administration’s environmental and climate initiatives as the precipitating factor in the decline of Appalachia’s coal industry. But employment in the nation’s coal mines has been falling for decades as production has shifted from underground mining to surface mining, which is more mechanized and less labor intensive. Figure 5 displays the national picture of coal-mining employment since 1985, showing a steep downward trend until leveling off around 2001. Notably, nationwide coal employment under President Barack Obama has been higher than or equal to the levels seen under the George W. Bush administration.
In Central Appalachia, the shift from underground mining to surface mining has had a tremendous impact on employment. Direct coal employment in the region fell from 70,000 miners in 1985 to 35,600 miners in 1997—a 50 percent decline in only 12 years. This occurred even though Central Appalachian coal production was on the rise during that time.
Conclusion
All of these market forces have put pressure on Appalachian coal companies, resulting in the recent layoffs. When a coal company decides to close a mine or lay off workers, the effects on local communities are significant. However, it is both disingenuous and counterproductive to blame the Environmental Protection Agency for these layoffs. Ignoring the complex market forces and structural barriers only delays meaningful discussion about ways to reinvigorate coal communities across Appalachia.
Alison Cassady is the Director of Domestic Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress.The world is moving on with digital transformation irrespective of industries, countries and service line. Organizations want to adopt the technologies in faster paces, especially by “Digital Megatrends”: mobility, analytics, cloud computing and social media.
This digital evolution is also reshaping the role of Human Resources. It involves deepening and broadening collaboration between HR and other business units to improve the performance and analysis of talent management, and a greater focus on driving business results through the strategic use of technology. It’s important for executives to get engaged in long-term strategic planning for business needs and even leveraging their organizations to drive profits.
According to the surveys from Oxford Economics and Tower Watson in Digital HR Transformation:
More results from the surveys:
So to compete successfully in the new digital economy, HR should:
■ Use technology effectively to execute on business imperatives and extend collaboration with other departments, incorporating mobile, analytics, social media and the cloud to ease the transition to a strategic role.
■ Consider the competitive risk of not leveraging technology to contribute to business strategy. Organizations in developed economies are not adopting technology as quickly as their counterparts in fast-growing economies and may risk being left behind in the global competition for talent.
■ Embrace the transition to strategic thinking and driving business results.
(Taken from Oxford Economics and Tower Watson)
Digital transformation is to enable people to think and to transform and here is HR Digital Strategy plays an exponent role in driving the Organization’s Business Transformation. Digital Strategy is the most valuable and powerful asset in the Digital Transformation environment or any future transformation to come.
Digital Transformation is about the capacity of the organization and therefore the people’s minds to not only adapt to change, but to drive change, to drive innovation. The real value to HR in the Digital transformation is to enable the whole organization to think creatively. Enable the organization into a deep dive into its need, its values, purpose & mission. And this is the foundation for the real successful business strategy into the Digital Era.
HR digital strategy or HR technology strategy should actually support the overall strategic objectives of HR and the organization. And HR must take ownership of the digital strategy and ensure that it aligns with the HR strategy which should be in alignment with the business strategy. Moreover, it should emphasize more than just efficiency and effectiveness as a driver for the adoption of technology, and choose solutions to allow for future growth and flexibility, while focusing on deploying solutions that meet the current and future needs of the organization.
Drivers which can lead Digital Strategy for HR are: (Below Tips/Drivers are from Talent Culture)
According to Talent Culture, developing an HR digital strategy begins with taking a deeper look at business priorities and validating how current systems are and are not supporting the organization’s goals. This helps create a path toward synchronizing the organization’s priorities with the HR digital strategy. A successful HR digital strategy should be aligned to the needs of the business, agile, focused on strategic enablement rather than just efficiency and effectiveness, and should be owned by HR in partnership with IT.
And it’s Strategy, not Technology which drives the Digital Transformation according to MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte.Story highlights Congressman to call for "very stringent requirements" on disbursed military equipment
Some claim the response in Ferguson shows militarization of law enforcement
Veterans: Police are getting military weapons without the same training and rules
Lt. Gen. Honore: "You're in trouble" when SWAT team is called for civil disturbance
To people on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, and many around the world who watched it unfold, it seemed like a scene out of another country.
"They are now firing into the crowd," a reporter says Wednesday night as loud blasts and fiery sparks show tear gas canisters apparently being shot by police. Screams follow.
"They're firing rubber bullets," a reporter with KARG Argus Radio is heard saying on video. "They're attacking reporters; they are attacking civilians. They are firing up on the media."
Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson said pepper bullets were used. A CNN crew also found spent crowd-control stun grenades lying in the street.
All the details of what happened amid protests over a police officer's fatal shooting of an unarmed teen have yet to come in. Multiple law enforcement agencies from the city, county and state levels have been dispatched to calm the protests. In the chaos, it was not immediately clear which agencies did what exactly -- though Ferguson Mayor Jay Knowles did say Thursday that St. Louis County police have been "in charge tactically since Sunday."
JUST WATCHED Mom: How many times was my son shot? Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Mom: How many times was my son shot? 02:09
JUST WATCHED Calls in Congress to demilitarize police Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Calls in Congress to demilitarize police 02:58
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JUST WATCHED On the streets in Ferguson Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH On the streets in Ferguson 04:15
Change is coming. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced Thursday the Missouri State Highway Patrol will head up security because "at this particular point, the attitudes weren't improving."
Even if things turn around quickly, though, it won't erase the memories |
would be an easy transition - "If you're good at entertaining you feel like you should be able to lead a classroom," he said - but he soon discovered the heightened responsibilities that go hand-in-hand with the job.
"The smallest mistakes can really touch a child," said Gardner, who incorporates his love of music into everything from his classroom décor (one bulletin board displayed student work under the header "Red Hot Chili Papers") to his method of getting his students' attention (striking a single note on a handheld chime). "When I make a mistake in front of an audience I'm like, 'Eh, I'll get to do this again.' But kids remember everything you do, and that hit me pretty hard early on. You really have to be careful and keep in mind the views of every child."
Unlike Gardner, who grew up idolizing teachers and always had an interest in the profession, Bummers singer/guitarist Jeff Pearl generally detested school, so when his mom suggested he pursue a career in education his initial reaction was, "Ehhh, we'll see," which, judging by his tone, translated roughly to "Are you out of your mind?"
A Valentine's Day visit to the Harmony School in Bloomington, Indiana, altered this perception.
"All the teachers were onstage with the kids covering all these Beatles songs for the parents, and I was blown away," said Pearl, 30, who is currently in his second year teaching kindergarten at St. Vincent Family Center in Olde Towne East following a stretch at Cranbrook Elementary and a stint teaching English and debate in South Korea. "I thought, 'Well, if I can take my love of music and have fun with it…'"
Teaching has turned out to be an ideal fit. The guitarist described himself as "a goofball," admitted he has the artistic skills of a 6-year-old ("A lot of these drawing are mine," he said waving to some crude sketches tacked to the classroom bulletin board) and said he regularly tells his students growing up is the worst thing he's ever done.
"These kids just understand me," he said. "And I get them."
Like Gardner, Pearl regularly incorporates music in his lesson plans, and he said most days he totes a guitar to work. He also taught the kids how to read the calendar with a "Hip-Hop Days of the Week" song. Alternately, the students have inspired a couple of Bummers tunes ("A kid will say a weird phrase and I'll say, 'Oh, I'm going to make that a song,'" he said), and his class has evolved into something of a burgeoning fan base for the rising surf-rock crew.
"If [the students] want a treat I'll be like, 'What's the greatest band ever?'" he said. "And they're like, 'Bummers, dude!'"
While Gardner and Pearl could accurately be termed musicians-turned-educators, Samantha Kim described herself more as a lifelong teacher who stumbled onto a side career in pop music. At 10 years old the local violinist shadowed her sister's high school orchestra teacher for Take Your Daughter to Work Day ("Even though he wasn't my father," she said), and the experience cemented her desire to pursue a career in music education.
"I don't think most kids decide on [a career] that early," said Kim, 29, who currently works as an orchestra director at a public school in Granville in addition to playing in the folk-leaning Ghost Shirt. The musician will also be performing at the fourth annual Beatles Marathon, which takes place at The Bluestone on Saturday, Dec. 28. "When I was younger it was because I loved music so much I wanted to be around it all the time. Now that I'm well into my career it's become so much more. I know it sounds cheesy, but I get to be a part of who [the students] are, and they become a part of who I am."
All three educators stressed the difficulty of balancing the demands of the job and band life - "I don't sleep," Pearl said matter-of-factly - but at the same time all expressed immense pleasure in finding a career so well-tailored to their unique personalities and skillsets.
"You can put your heart in [teaching]," Gardner said. "And that's why I started playing music."
Ryan Vile, who plays keyboard in power-pop collective The Girls!, actually started playing music for far more analytical reasons. Vile, who described himself as an "awkward and nerdy looking" child, tended to gravitate toward more logical pursuits, and he only joined a band because it seemed like a challenge for someone who, in his own words, lacked a real artistic sensibility.
"Music seemed really extra challenging for me," said Vile, 35, who works in cyber security for a bank. "Now the joke is I sit at a keyboard all day and then go to band practice and stand at a keyboard all night."
Even though a career in computer technology appears far-removed from his new role as a gigging musician, Vile said playing in a band has given him a confidence that carries over into his day job, as well as helped him develop his people skills.
Adam Hardy, drummer in rowdy rock duo Cliffs, also attributed his full-time gig as a delivery driver for local clothing company Homage with helping him establish new skillsets.
"I get to see something that started in a basement evolve into a multinational company," said Hardy, 26, whose knack for loading the band's tour van has come in handy when packing the company delivery truck ("I'm like a Tetris master"). "It's cool to see that transition and then compare that to other things I do in the band, like talking to vendors or to different [concert] venues."
Watershed singer/guitarist Colin Gawel, 44, has similarly applied lessons gleaned from a life time in rock 'n' roll to his role as owner of Colin's Coffee, a small, inviting spot tucked away in an Upper Arlington shopping plaza.
"You're always on a budget, so it's, 'What can we do for free?'" he said. "We're on Twitter and Facebook because they're free, and I think a lot of that comes from being in a band like Watershed where you send out mailings and whatever."
After purchasing the shop seven years ago, Gawel also stripped things back to focus on a few key elements (namely coffee) because it reflected his more streamlined approach to making music. If he didn't use effect pedals onstage, he reasoned, his business should be similarly free of flash. This sensibility is reflected in everything from the humble sign posted in the parking lot that reads "Colin is in" ("Literally, Colin is in the shop," said the guitarist, who mans the counter most mornings) to Gawel's dressed-down wardrobe. On a recent visit in early December he looked something like the protagonist from Radiohead's animated "Paranoid Android" video sprung to life, decked out in jeans and a T-shirt and with a stocking cap perched high on his head.
"I've never had [to wear] a tie," he said, and laughed. "I don't know what I'd do if I wasn't here. I'd probably have more money, but I don't think I'd be as happy.
"It's that musician's mentality of, 'It's lots of work [and] fun, but no money.' So you're not going to see me rolling around in a Porsche with vanity plates that say 'COFFEEMAN' anytime soon, but I love it."Penn State offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead is now the head coach at Mississippi State, and the focus now turns to what will easily be his most critical hire in Starkville — defensive coordinator.
As we reported days ago, Dan Mullen has offered Tod Grantham his defensive coordinator position at Florida. As we reported, Grantham is expected to accept. Sources tell FootballScoop Penn State defensive coordinator Brent Pry is not expected to be a candidate.
Sources told FootballScoop that Moorhead targeted Michigan defensive coordinator Don Brown to join him at Mississippi State, but Brown will remain in Ann Arbor. Brown was selected by his peers as the FootballScoop Defensive Coordinator of the Year in 2015.
Brown and Moorhead worked together for one season at Connecticut.
But Moorhead’s pursuit of Brown provides a window into how he is looking to fill his most crucial assistant coaching position. Moorhead is looking to bring the best of the best to Starkville.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.My mom is disabled and has a lot of physical issues, but if you looked at her you wouldn't really notice it unless you knew her or watched her face. I keep telling her she needs to get a GAC because it is hard for her to stand for long periods of time, but she's afraid a cast member will turn her away or people will make fun of her. Is this something that happens often?
Trust me, a lot of people are the same way so your mom is not alone. In recent years CMs at all the US parks have been dealing with a lot of people abusing the system, claiming they have an disability when they just want to skip the lines, This is INFURIATING because we know that there are people like your mom out there who really need accommodations. Let me tell you that Cast Members should NEVER deny your mom use of the system just because she doesn’t “look” like she has a disability (and if they do please report that scum immediately). We’re using a different system now for disability access similar to Fastpass, and Guest Relations and the Cast at attractions will be able to help you out. Don’t be afraid to use it if your mom needs it!by Robert Devet
Jean Coleman, executive director of the Nova Scotia Association for Community Living, believes that new Community Services rules to qualify for discretionary grants are unworkable. Photo Robert Devet.
KJIPUKTUK, (HALIFAX) - It was never entirely clear why earlier this year the Department of Community Services chose to cut discretionary grants to a variety of organizations that work of behalf of vulnerable Nova Scotians.
Groups like the Nova Scotia chapter of the Canadian Mental Health Association, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, the Metro Food Bank, the Nova Scotia Association for Community Living and People First were all affected.
Through a Freedom of Information request the Halifax Media Co-op has now received information that sheds some light on the Department's reasoning.
What we uncovered doesn't bode well for organizations that help people struggling with poverty,mental health issues and/or disabilities.
Some of the conditions organizations need to meet to qualify for government support are simply not realistic, community advocates tell the Halifax Media Co-op.
And never having been informed by Community Services about those standards doesn't help, they say.
Most information that we received through the Freedom of Information request is so heavily redacted, that it is meaningless. But a powerpoint presentation to senior management dated February of this year contains actual requirements.
Some conditions are rather straightforward.
In order to qualify for funding you have to be a Registered Canadian Charity, or registered at the Registry of Joint Stocks. You have to have a full time Director or Coordinator. You have to operate in Nova Scotia. The list goes on.
Other conditions, in particular the need to be outcome focused and to measure and report the impact of Community Services dollars, may sound simple but present huge hurdles.
“We make a difference in people's lives. But to quantify (that difference) is very difficult,” says Jean Coleman, executive director of the Nova Scotia Association for Community Living (NSACL).
“How do you measure someone who is in crisis for whatever reason,” Coleman wonders.
Coleman's organization supports people labeled with intellectual disabilities and their care givers. Some of its programs are well defined in terms of scope and targets. But much of the help it provides is ad hoc, and highly individualized.
Now the group faces a $24,000 annual cut to an original $79,000 grant. That's a 30 percent cut to its entire yearly operating budget.
Stella Samuels is a NSACL staff person who frequently provides hands-on support to the people who, often at the end of their tether, come looking for help.
“It is so varied, it's so broad, it has to do with housing, it has to do with food security, it has to do with income assistance,” Samuels tells the Halifax Media Co-op. “We make sure that school boards follow their human rights policies, we help people manage their healthcare needs.”
“We often help people transition from one life stage to another,” she says. “Leaving high school and figuring out what to do in adulthood. I have several families where the parents are dying and they need to make sure that their sons and daughters have security for the rest of their lives. We help people through their entire lifespan,” Samuels says.
Much of what organizations such as the NSACL do is difficult to fit into a neat monthly report to Community Services. But what bothers Coleman even more is that the department never told the group that these were the standards they should meet.
“We (recently) had a meeting of some other groups that have received cuts,” says Coleman. “We all received phone calls on the same day, and all with the same message, that we don't follow the roadmap, and by the way, you've lost your funding.”
“We're helping a young man who is working in the community but he has no place to stay and he has no money for food. And he has just begun. How can you work when you don't have a place to lay your head?,” Coleman asks.
“When you are dealing with human lives, there is no tick off box,” Coleman says. “The most vulnerable people in Nova Scotia are going to be harmed by this (cut).”
And the presentation suggests that there may be more cuts to come.
All service provider agreements and grant funding to external organizations are under the microscope. The Discretionary Grants program is simply the first to undergo review and redesign, the presentation states.
Follow Robert Devet on Twitter @DevetRobertThe threat exploded at the recent Black Hat conference when security researcher Peter Galloway told what he had done on a recent vacation: he went back to his Airbnb rental and attacked the WiFi network. Said Galloway: “Within five minutes flat, I owned the network.”
Read that again because what Galloway is saying is that – after he seized control of the network – he also owned just about everybody who used it to browse or send email. That means your every online move probably is his to see if you are also on that network.
Your banking, your email, your contacts, your every private thought is his.
Frightened?
Know: there are ways to protect yourself. Below there are two options that should keep your data safe.
The problem with vacation rental WiFi
Understand this first, however: this vulnerability is not unique to Airbnb. Any short term rental has the same susceptibilities. That means Vrbo, Homeaway, you name it.
Also know: this is a lot worse than the risks on hotel WiFi and those risks are so big that many experts have long advised travelers just to ignore the public WiFi in a hotel room or lobby. But WiFi in a short-term rental may be dramatically more dangerous.
That’s because the bad guy usually will be able, easily, to physically access the router – and have his way with it. In many cases, a paperclip is all that is needed to gain permission to reset the router. From there, the bad guy can do whatever his evil heart desires. For instance, he can add a custom DNS server that in effect routes all network traffic through his own computer. That can persist for weeks, months, maybe years – because how often do you think Airbnb hosts exam their routers for security issues?
Here’s the scenario: a cyber criminal checks into a high priced sharing economy rental for one night. The posher, the better and that is because the guests are that much likelier to themselves be affluent. He takes control of the router and manipulates it into forwarding traffic through his computer where he can sift it.
And he has that data stream for months – probably, really, until the router is replaced. Most experts say a router will typically last 5 to 10 years before the owner replaces it. Think on that. For an investment of a one night stay, the criminal is probably buying access to years of traffic. That’s everything from email log ins to online banking credentials and, with a little luck, maybe a stock brokerage account and health insurance credentials too.
What do you need to do to protect yourself?
Start by asking the host where the router is. Offer a pretext: I’m having trouble connecting, let me see the router and I’ll know if I need to do anything special on my end.
If the router is publicly accessible, you need to go into defense mode.
If it is under lock and key, it’s your call – but if you easily talked your way in to see it, know that a criminal could do likewise.
That’s why, without precautions, we cannot recommend using Wi-Fi in a sharing economy lodging – even if you personally are friends with the owner (because how is he/she to know a past guest has not seized control of the router?). In fact even if you are the owner.
You have two options when it comes to using Wi-Fi at a shared economy lodging.
Option 1: Do not use it.
Create a Wi-Fi hotspot on your phone and tether a tablet or laptop to it.
On iPhone, open SETTINGS, click Personal Hotspot, slide the button to on. Done.
On Android, open SETTINGS, under Wireless & networks, click more….then click Tethering & portable hotspot. Slide to open the hotspot.
Your data will ride on the cellular data network – not the accommodation’s WiFi – and cellular networks usually are very secure.
The one downside: you can go through a lot of data using a hotspot. Don’t even think about streaming video and, honestly, songs, even large images and the occasional gargantuan PowerPoint will ding your monthly data charges. Stick with email, using simple apps, a little web surfing, tho, and a hotspot is fine. It is what most security professionals turn to in their worried moments.
Option 2: Use a VPN.
Rocket VPN is free for light users. The plus of a VPN is that it encrypts your data so that even if it is intercepted – and it will be when a criminal has hijacked the router – all the crook will see is computer gibberish.
The one downside of VPN: you may see a hit on speed but, honestly, you probably won’t notice it if doing routine tasks like sending email, posting to Facebook, and conducting mobile banking.
The good news: either of these avenues will let you stay in an Airbnb lodging knowing your data is safe. They are safe, they work, use them to travel more securely no matter where you stay."My plan includes a pledge to restore manufacturing in the United States."
President Donald Trump promised to revive manufacturing on the campaign trail. One year in, the industry is on the same trajectory as when he took office.
"My plan includes a pledge to restore manufacturing in the United States," Trump said in a campaign rally in Detroit, Mich., on Oct. 31, 2016.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that jobs have been on a slight uptick. Between November 2016 and November 2017, the number of manufacturing jobs rose by 189,000.
But the growth reflects a continuation of the trends former President Barack Obama's fiscal and monetary policies set in motion, experts told us.
Robert Scott, director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, likened patterns in manufacturing industry to an aircraft carrier.
"It is very hard to move," Scott said. "Once you get it going it's hard to slow down and once it's stopped it's hard to get it moving again."
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
"Manufacturing has dropped by about 30 percent since the 2000s," said Susan Houseman, vice president and research director at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. "It's ticked back up in recent years but hasn't even come close to regaining employment levels before the recession. So you have to paint a picture of manufacturing that's very weak still."
Economists attributed the harsh drop since 2000 to several factors: decreased domestic demand, the automation of manufacturing processes and drops in exports relative to imports, also known as the trade deficit. The latter was a frequent target of Trump's stump speeches, but experts say he's done little to address it.
"The goods trade deficit has increased 7.3 percent this year relative to the same period in 2016, reflecting the complete failure of the Trump administration to take any significant action to reduce the growth of this deficit," Scott said.
The North American Free Trade Agreement -- which Trump promised to renegotiate -- is not nearly as problematic as the trade imbalance with more powerful countries like China, Japan and Germany, according to Scott.
Trump broke his promise to declare China a currency manipulator in April, although his new National Security Strategy declares "the United States will no longer turn a blind eye to violations, cheating or economic aggression."
That stance has yet to materialize in specific trade policies. And there has been no public updates on the investigations Trump directed into unfair steel trade practices or China's alleged intellectual property theft.
Soon after taking office, Trump created the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative, a council comprised of 24 chief executives, but he disbanded it with a tweet after several members resigned following Trump's response to Charlottesville in August.
The most concrete accomplishment in reinvigorating manufacturing, then, comes in the form of business optimism.
"I do not believe he has done a lot to change the position of U.S. manufacturing, but he has imbued a strong sense of optimism in the business sector that encourages investment," said Martin Baily, a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings. "Lowering the corporate tax rate will bring foreign investment into the United States."
The National Association of Manufacturers reported record-high confidence levels in a survey that Trump tweeted.
Bradford DeLong, an economics professor at U.C. Berkeley, said new tax legislation may have the opposite effect. By incentivizing investment, DeLong argues, the tax bill funnels away money foreigners may have otherwise spent on domestically manufactured goods.
"It's not going to be as large a shock as was delivered to the manufacturing sector by the 1981 or the 2001 and 2003 cuts in taxes," DeLong said. "But it is very likely to be the big factor driving the change in the manufacturing employment share over the next two years. And it is likely to drive it down."
Trump has been taking small steps to improve U.S. standing in trade relations and has improved confidence in the manufacturing industry, but he's got a long way to go to reach the level of output enjoyed before 2000.
We rate his promise In the Works.ESP proponents claim that ESP skeptics are psychic, and use their powers to suppress ESP
Clay sez, "Stuart Ritchie, a psychology doctoral student in Edinburgh, worked with two colleagues to try to replicate the results of a famous recent experiment, claiming people could predict in advance whether they were about to be shown erotic images. When the three failed to find any such evidence for ESP they sent their results out for publication, and the British Psychology Journal, one of the journals to which it was sent, in turn sent the trio's article out for review. When Ritchie et al got the responses back '...there were two reviews, one very positive, urging publication, and one quite negative. This latter review didn’t find any problems in our methodology or writeup itself, but suggested that, since the three of us (Richard Wiseman, Chris French and I) are all skeptical of ESP, we might have unconsciously influenced the results using our own psychic powers.' They are still looking for a place to publish their findings
Anyway, the BJP editor agreed with the second reviewer, and said that he’d only accept our paper if we ran a fourth experiment where we got a believer to run all the participants, to control for these experimenter effects. We thought that was a bit silly, and said that to the editor, but he didn’t change his mind. We don’t think doing another replication with a believer at the helm is the right thing to do, for the reason above, and for the reason that Bem had stated in his original paper that his experimental paradigms were designed so that most of the work is done by a computer and the experimenter has very little to do (this was explicitly because of his concerns about possible experimenter effects). So, after this very long and unproductive delay, we’re off to another journal to try again. How frustrating.
Wait, Maybe You Can’t Feel the Future
(Thanks, Clay!)
(Image: Marina Psychic Tells Past - Present - Future, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from dsifry's photostream)Do you know Alles? It’s one of the best Polish lingerie brands and I still feel that there’s so little about them on the internet. I guess I haven’t seen a full review of their product yet. In Poland they’re mainly recognized by their nursing bras – pretty, modern, comfortable and with wide sizing. Anyway, their “regular” bras are also really great. Every style is usually made in a few different constructions divided to: U (which stands for “usztywniony” – padded), PU (which stands for “półusztywniony” – semi-soft), M (which stands for “miękki” – soft) and P-UP (push-up). Working in a brafitting shop that offers their products I can see the company’s changing, improving constructions and fabrics and adding new styles.
Znacie Allesa? To jedna z najlepszych polskich marek biustonoszy, a nadal mam wrażenie, że bardzo mało jest ich w sieci. Nie natknęłam się chyba do tej pory na pełną recenzję ich biustonosza. W Polsce znani są głównie ze względu na fajną gamę karmników – ładnych, nowoczesnych, wygodnych i w szerokiej rozmiarówce. Bardzo fajne są natomiast także ich „zwykłe” staniki. Każdy model wychodzi zazwyczaj w kilku konstrukcjach podzielonych na: U (usztywniony), PU (półusztywniony), M (miękki) i P-UP (push-up). Pracując w salonie brafitterskim oferującym ich produkty widzę także, jak firma się rozwija, poprawia konstrukcje i materiały, dodaje także nowe kroje.
It’s a pity that they’re making soft bras so rarely! Happily I managed to grab one of their bestseller styles in a soft version (M). 😉
Szkoda tylko, że tak rzadko odszywają miękkusy! Na szczęście udało mi się dorwać jeden z ich bestsellerowych wzorów właśnie w konstrukcji M. 😉
THE DESIGN | WYGLĄD
The name is adequate to the pattern – this bra is decorated with vintage flower garden on a navy base. Aren’t you bored with flowers yet? I am definitely not, I’ve been loving them for years now and I don’t stop adoring them and being surprised with them at all. Well, I’m just this kind of romantic soul. 😀
Nazwa jest oczywiście adekwatna do wzoru – biustonosz zdobi kwiecisty ogród w stylu vintage na granatowym tle. Nie znudziły Wam się jeszcze kwiaty? Mi absolutnie nie, od lat kocham takie nadruki i nawet w najmniejszym stopniu nie przestaję się nimi zachwycać czy zaskakiwać. Ot, taka romantyczna dusza. 😀
In case of Garden and most of other styles by this brand the pattern is printed on a great quality satin made of microfiber. It’s really nice to touch! This bra is finished with a simple lace.
W modelu Garden oraz w większości staników tej firmy nadruk jest naniesiony na świetnej jakości satynę z mikrofibry. Jest niezwykle przyjemna w dotyku! Całość wykończona jest prostą koronką.
To complete the set I own two pairs of panties – I just couldn’t decide. Alles is faultless when it comes to bottoms, they are always amazing. They’re made of the same fabric that covers the bra. I particularly took a liking for the higher ones. Those are my first briefs in this kind of style and I have to admit I feel great wearing them. They’re really comfy, but they also fit my body shape in my opinion. I was kind of worried about my boyfriend’s opinion (most of the people would consider them grannies pants nowadays…), but it was unnecessary. 🙂
Do kompletu posiadam dwie pary majtek – nie mogłam się zdecydować. Alles jest bezbłędny jeżeli chodzi o doły, absolutnie zawsze są powalające. Wykonane są z dokładnie tego samego materiału wierzchniego biustonosza. Szczególnie upodobałam sobie model z podwyższonym stanem. To moje pierwsze figi o takim kroju i muszę przyznać, że czuję się w nich świetnie. Są bardzo wygodne, ale też moim zdaniem bardzo pasują do mojego typu sylwetki. Trochę obawiałam się reakcji mojego chłopaka (w końcu w dzisiejszych czasach większość osób niestety uznałaby je za babciowe…), ale niepotrzebnie. 🙂
THE SHAPE AND CONSTRUCTION | KSZTAŁTOWANIE I KONSTRUKCJA
Garden is not a kind of remarkably uplifting balconette, but do our busts really have to always look like two perfect balls right under our chins? 😉 Both band and cups are covered with soft and flexible satin lined with more stable mesh. Theoretically the band seems to be too stretchy, but it works surprisingly well. Unfortunately Alles makes most of their bras (and zero soft cup bras) from the band 65 (about 30), so I needed to alter mine down. I’ve also noticed that the band seems to stretch while wearing it throughout a day and after washing it comes back to its primary state. By the way – I ALWAYS hand wash my bras.
Garden nie jest wybitnie podnoszącą balkonetką, ale tak naprawdę czy nasz biust zawsze musi wyglądać jak dwie idealne kule pod brodą? 😉 Zarówno obwód jak miseczki pokryte są miękką i rozciągliwą satyną podszytą bardziej stabilną siateczką. Teoretycznie obwód wydaje się mocno rozciągliwy, ale ku mojemu zdziwieniu naprawdę bardzo dobrze pracuje. Niestety Alles szyje większość swoich biustonoszy (w tym wszystkie miękkie) od obwodu 65, więc ja mój egzemplarz musiałam zwęzić. Zauważyłam też taką zależność, że stanik jakby lekko się naciąga podczas noszenia w ciągu dnia, a po praniu wraca do swojego pierwotnego wymiaru. Tak przy okazji – ZAWSZE piorę staniki ręcznie.
The upper part of the cup is made of an elastic lace, which gives considerable reserve of space which can be helpful in case of asymmetrical breasts. And here’s another surprise, cause looking at it I would never say I could fit in it. I’ve bought it in my regular European size or rather its sister size – 65G. Theoretically this bra in this size is too small for me, but after scooping and correct putting on a bra the soft wires and elastic lace are expanding and BAM! Everything’s great. 🙂 The central gore lays on my sternum, the wires are ending after my breast tissue and there’s no quadraboob situation. I need to add here that my breasts are close set, so in case of women with wider set boobies this trick wouldn’t work unfortunately.
Górną część miseczki tworzy elastyczna koronka, co daje spory margines dopasowania, na przykład przy asymetrii. I tu kolejne zaskoczenie, gdyż patrząc na biustonosz nigdy nie powiedziałabym, że się w niego zmieszczę. Kupiłam go w moim najczęstszym rozmiarze europejskim, czy też raczej jego siostrzanym rozmiarze – 65G. Teoretycznie w tym rozmiarze ten stanik jest na mnie za mały, ale po wygarnięciu i właściwym ułożeniu biustu miękkie fiszbiny i elastyczna miska naciągają się i BAM! Wszystko gra. 🙂 Karczek przylega do mostka, fiszbiny sięgają za pierś, górą nic się nie wylewa. Trzeba tu dodać, że mój biust ma wąską podstawę, także u kobiet z szerszą podstawą taki trik by niestety nie zadziałał.
Being a kind-of-too-small makes this bra veeery low cut on the sides. And here’s another warning, if you have got a lot of tissue under your armpits to hide, then I wouldn’t recommend to fit like I did plus possibly choosing this bra in general, because it just won’t hide too much. BUT thanks to this low cut this bra is so remarkably comfortable. SERIOUSLY. It’s very very super comfortable. 🙂 It makes me love to wear it in lazy days under looser clothes. If we add to it excellently made bottoms, then we get a beautiful and ultracomfortable set. Every each of us needs this kind of underwear at least from time to time.
Taka niby-przymałość powoduje natomiast, że biustonosz ma jak na moje wymiary baaardzo niskie zabudowanie. I tu kolejne ostrzeżenie, jeżeli macie sporo boczków do ukrycia, to raczej nie polecam próbować ani takiego dopasowania jak przedstawione u mnie ani chyba ogólnie tego biustonosza, bo po prostu niespecjalnie cokolwiek zostanie tam zebrane. ALE z kolei dzięki tak niskiemu zabudowaniu stanik jest wręcz niesamowicie wygodny. SERIO. Jest bardzo bardzo super wygodny. 🙂 To sprawia, że uwielbiam go nosić w bardziej leniwe dni pod luźniejsze ubrania. Jeżeli dodamy do tego te świetnie wykonane majtki, to otrzymamy przepiękny i ultrakomfortowy zestaw. Każda z nas potrzebuje takiej bielizny przynajmniej od czasu do czasu.
Alles makes rather undersized panties. I’ve bought mine in size 38 and my usual European size is 36. Maybe in case of classic style (here: higher) 36 would be ok, cause there’s a large strechy area, but they’re only sewed from 38.
Majtki z tej firmy zazwyczaj wypadają nieduże. Ja dla przykładu kupiłam je w rozmiarze 38, zamiast najczęściej wybieranego europejskiego 36. Być może z modelu klasycznego (tutaj: podwyższonego) wystarczyłoby 36, bo mamy tu dużą powierzchnię naciągu, ale są one szyte dopiero od 38.
Whom to would I recommend Alles? To every woman that prefers comfort to perfect fitting to current esthetical standards. I’m not talking about fitting in respect of brafitting rules, in case of construction those bras have got a big thumbs up!
Komu polecę Allesa? Każdej kobiecie, która przekłada wygodę nad idealne dopasowanie biustonosza do obecnych standardów estetycznych. Nie mówię o dopasowaniu pod kątem zasad brafittingu, konstrukcyjnie te staniki mają naprawdę dużego plusa!
Buziaki
xoxo
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that mammary glands are basically VERY VERY similar to hair follicles. In fact, the way they grow, is by invagination of epithelial layer of skin into the fat pad of the mammary gland, and in the process signalling creation of adipocytes, just like, hair follicles and sebaceous glands. Estrogen Receptor by the way is quite similar to Androgen Receptor.
Anyways, in males, Inactive follicles (lets call them dormant), are activated by a signal (testosterone and DHT) to produce hair shaft and grow (just like mammary glands). Its very important to know that during development hair follicles are originated from different populations. For example, dermal part of the hair follicles on the head come from a different part in development than in the body. Their nature is so different they can be quite different physiologically than follicles from the body. This is the main reason Body hair transplantation will not work, and never will. Because these follicles are developmentally different.
Its very important to know that during development hair follicles are originated from different populations. For example, dermal part of the hair follicles on the head come from a different part (neural crest cells) in development than those fibroblast in the body. Their nature is so different they can be quite different physiologically than follicles from the body. This is the main reason Body Hair Transplantation will not work, and never will. Because these follicles are developmentally different.
Now back to hair loss, some males are susceptible to hair loss, this is highly based the person's genetic background and almost environment plays no rule.
It was found out that people who are castrated early on (before puberty hits) will never go bald. Actually I think Hippocrates found this out. Long Long time ago. Basically, sine these people dont produce testosterone, they can't have DHT and they don't go bald. This however, is not quite right. As testosterone, in small quantities, can be made elsewhere, maybe in adrenal glans (I think!). So they basically CAN go bald, but, since their population has always been so small and they have low testosterone they won't go bald.
There is one other condition, call androgen insensitivity syndrome. Now, these people also dont go bald, these people, in contrast to castrated people, have usually a mutation (more than 400 known mutations are there) in their Androgen Receptor (AR) gene. Many of these mutations dont let these Androgen Receptor genes to get into the nucleus and transcribe a set of genes that can cause baldness (or hair pubical or facial hair growth).
So even though they might be prone to baldness, they do not go bald. (imagine introducing a normal AR gene in their nucleus, they will go bald if they have the genetics back ground for it, this experiment would be like the original experiment of injecting testosterone in Castrated People).
Now another population was identified that they also did not go bald, and they were people who did not have 5-alpha reductase gene (or some mutations in it that made this gene not active), and so these people also did not go bald. As you know, 5-alpha reductase converts Testosterone (TT) to Dehydrotestestrone (DHT), these people also had a smaller Prostate (like the other two populations), so Pharma got interested and stepped in to make a product. They basically cultured a basic cell type, and added thousands of different chemicals to these cells, to see which one, inhibits DHT production and boo, finasteride was born. It was easy to get finasteride approved because it was already approved for benign prostate hyperplasia, that's one reason finasteride is there and other anti-androgen are not here. IT WAS EASIER TO GET AN APPROVED DRUG APPROVED FOR ANOTER DISORDER!
With Finasteride, however, androgen receptor is still able to bind other hormones and get into the cells (like testosterone). Interestingly, no matter how much people increased the dose of Finasteride, it never reversed hair loss in significant proportions, in already miniaturized hair follicles.
Even castration of people did not help hair follicles to come back to life. This was very disappointing for big pharma, they jumped around like idiots, and they did not know what to do. SO THEY GAVE UP, and that's why mostly smaller START-UPs are trying to get into the game.
Before propecia, another drug, minoxidil also was approved that no one had any idea how it increased hair numbers and how it made some hairs to go terminal. Some said K changes, some said, more blood, some said nutrition. However, I will get back to Minoxidil.
Anyways, researchers, still did not know what to do, and so they started to look deeper.
They started to look into stem cells, of the hair follicles. Now, these stem cells are adult stem cells, a set of cells that dont divide often and when they do, they create one cell (progenitor cell) that can divide so fast producing a set of other cells ( Transit amplifying cells) that can differentiate to cells of the hair follicle (for example dermal papillae or matrix cells [which is epithelial]).
Scientists found out that, hey, hair follicles are alive in the bald scalp and they have the stem cells but they are just not activated, and they lack the signal to call them to get activated. This was interesting, and it made the birth for many companies.
There were a set of signals known to activate adult stem cells, of these, WNT signals were the best known. However, the way these signals work needs a decade more research, there dozens of WNT molecules, and each of them gets modified in dozens of ways and each cells have dozens of receptors for these WNT molecules and each of those receptors bind dozens of other receptors (co-receptors) that each can have dozens of different responses, and each of these responses can act synergistically, or separately.
So we are far from understanding these signalling pathways, and secretion molecules.
There are now, a set of different signalling pathways, like BMP, SHH, FGF, an so on. Anyways, however, some companies tried to mimic these pathways but it will never work out for the simple fact that that it is complex, an no constitutive activation of one signalling pathway (as it is a secondary response) will cause complete activation.
Imagine, you want to tell an asian to go buy you a certain flower and come back home with that flower and put it in the right jar next to a window. Now, you know certain words, when you through those words out, you will have some effect on this Chinese girl (who dont understand english) but you will never be able to exactly tell this girl by saying some words randomly, or even mimicking some words you've head else wear (like walk) in for example by watching TV shows (other adult stem cells, the technology of Samumed or Histogen) to go and do this complex process, this is just too complex. So any technology or company pursuing secondary signals is doomed to fail, because its impossible as of now to know the signals.
I dont get much into details, however, take my word for granted when I say cloning hair follicles is also not possible any time soon. We are FAR FAR from that. Any company claiming that it is near is LYING, through away Replicel, aderans, intercytex, and other companies that say they will do that. They wont. Its possible but it takes a long time to learn the signals. To learn when to add BMP, when to add WNT, when to add FBS. When to co-culture with Keratinocytes, when not to. So it needs tons of research, and no single company is capable of doing this.
Anyway, getting back, to research. From time to time, some factors where shown to be involved in hair follicles. Some pathways, some kinases, some proteins, some inhibitors, they made hair follicles grow, they made them shrink.
But these factors were also so confusing, and almost no one knew what was going on. They still don't. It was hard to make sense of these factors. For examples, it was known that TGF-Beta makes hair shrink and go to Catagen, no longer staying long enough in anagen to produce hair shafts.
IL-6 ( a cytokine increased in hairless scalp, like PGD2) is shown to cause hair follicle to shrink.
WNTs caused hair follicles to grow, they activated beta-catenin but how was it making its effect. Why minoxidil had some effect? Why Arthritis drugs were effective? What was the role of immune system? What were cytokines doing in the hair follicle, and how did they affected hair follicles. #2 Member Join Date Nov 2015 Posts 61 So about 5 months ago, I started to read almost every paper and PUBLICATION I could get my hands on. I read about hair follicles, adult stem cells, hair cloning, hair immune system, … and here is how I found all the connections and patterns, and led it me to develop a theory that could potentially grow hair.
Once again, publishing this here, does not mean, it’s not true [It also does not mean it's true], so once again take it with a grain of salt. I am pro open science, so that’s why I am writing it here. Also don’t think just because you’r reading it here, it’s not original. It’s actually original, and if you look into literature and internet you will not see one person or scientist mentioning this finding that I am about to say. #3 Member Join Date Nov 2015 Posts 61 Any ways, back to the story, I sat down and tried to think how all these connect, and here is what I found. Some scientists that you hear their names here all the time, have told me that this is highly probable and I might be right. None, I guess, however, has yet found time to test this, as they have to go through papers and grants and stuff to do experiments, and some experiments they can never do. While I was able to do a thoughtful small experiment, That's why I think, we need to do what has happened in Computer Science and bring it to biology, self-driven motivation to make science progress.
However, ONCE AGAIN, please if you don't know what you are reading, NEVER try this, also this is quite EXPENSIVE and, so you needs lots of money to follow it.
Anyways, It all came to me, when I read about castration-resistant prostate cancer. Thanks to researchers studying Prostate Cancer (PC), the complex biology of Androgen Receptor has been under heavy investigation. This has led to fascinating discoveries regarding AR activation, localization and dynamics. Not only involved in hair loss, AR is also the major deriving force behind malignancy of Prostate Cancer (PC) cells. Among current therapies for PC is the complete inhibition of testosterone production to stop androgen-dependent growth of PC cells. However, in some of the cases, a recurrence of PC will happen by appearance of a set of androgen-independent malignant cells (CRPC). However, these CRPC cells are still AR dependent. This led researchers to further study mechanisms by which AR activation can happen regardless of androgens. Interestingly, it seems some post-translational modification (phosphorylation) of AR is both necessary and sufficient for activation and nuclear localization of AR in an androgen-independent manner. Notably, the role of cytokine receptors (such as IL-6 receptor) is gaining more ground amongst researchers. #4 Member Join Date Nov 2015 Posts 61 Also I told you earlier about the involvement of Androgen Receptor in male pattern baldness or CMB. Androgen Receptor (AR) is conclusively involved in Common Male Baldness (CMB). Upon binding to androgens, notably dehydrotestestrone (DHT), AR translocates into nucleus to transcribe a set of AR-responsive genes. Finasteride, an FDA approved drug for CMB, inhibits production of DHT by blocking the action of 5 alpha-reductase. However, Finasteride is not capable of inducing hair regrowth in the majority of already miniaturized hair follicles (HFs). Given that an increase in AR levels alone is not the causative agent deriving HF miniaturization, its quite probable that AR nuclear localization and/or cytoplasmic retention and not its increased levels is the cause of CMB. AR is a very complex transcription factor that undergoes multitude of post-translational modifications which dictate its function and dynamics. Interestingly, androgen receptor nuclear localization can occur in an androgen independent manner. In fact, androgen-independent AR nuclear transport and activation is a common phenotype of castration-resistance prostate cancer (CRPC) cells. Here, I propose a unifying theory for the onset and progression of CMB and will tell you how I hacked a small section of my hair loss. #5 Member Join Date Nov 2015 Posts 61 Recent findings regarding the involvement of cytokines in the progression of CMB, the inability of potent anti-androgens to reverse HF miniaturization, involvement of AR in the malignancy of castration-resistance prostate cancer (CRPC) cells, and paradoxical AR levels observations in facial and scalp hair follicles, led me to develop this unifying theory of CMB. To better understand my theory, I’ll start by explaining these seemingly unrelated factors in the context of AR nuclear localization and will tell you about some key experiments that I did to conclusively test the fidelity of my theory.
Now here is the explanation of my theory: CMB usually beings with observable miniaturization in the vertex and frontal regions of the scalp and progresses forward and backward, respectively. The progression continues until the two miniaturized regions meet one another. Histological studies showed that cytokine levels are increased in the bald scalp of males with advanced CMB compared to haired scalp (occipital regions). This is important as cytokines are involved in AR androgen independent nuclear localization. Cytokines surpassing a threshold level, therefore, can switch miniaturization of HFs from AR-dependent androgen-dependent (ARDAD) to AR-dependent androgen-independent (ARDAI). This, however, has not escaped my mind that ARDAD and ARDAI nuclear localization can synergistically control AR dynamics. This can explain why early administration of Finasteride is extremely more effective. Since, it theoretically can stops ARDAD switch to ARDAI as the dominant AR nuclear localization signal in miniaturized HFs. Once switched, ARDAI HF miniaturization creates an indefinite loop of positive feedback further strengthening its androgen independent nuclear localization. This potential explains pattern formation and progression through involvement of immune cells (cytokine production). #6 Member Join Date Nov 2015 Posts 61 Recently, pharmacologic inhibition of JAK-STAT signalling pathway by Tofacitinib, has been shown to be involved in early activation HF anagen cycle in mice. Interestingly, in mice AR localizes to nucleus during telogen and catagen but not anagen (in hair bulbs). The binding of Interleukin 6 family of cytokines to its receptor cause STAT3 phosphorylation. Notably, STAT3 phosphorylation is involved in ARDAI nuclear localization in CRPC cells through unknown mechanism(s). This further supports that ARDAI nuclear localization might be involved in miniaturization of HFs. Other papers have shown that Beta-catenin and androgen receptor also co-localize in cytoplasm, recent findings of Dr. Watt regarding beta-catenin and androgen receptor nuclear transport in anagen and other HF cycles, basically, proves why Samumed or Histogen are seeing some basic regrowth but not much. Their technology might work, but basically they to keep Beta-catenin constantly in the cell nucleus, and it's almost not possible if AR is constantly active, so they WON'T work. When you activate WNT pathway, what you do is you activate beta-catenin, and this causes beta-catenin to get into nucleus, and in unknown process you keep Androgen Receptor out nucleus, proving that their effect might work from Androgen Receptor axis of signalling. #7 Member Join Date Nov 2015 Posts 61 Basically Setipiprant will not work (or at least I HIGHLY believe so), as there are lots of cytokines that are increased in the hair follicles microenvironment. Like IL-6, TGF-Beta, PGD2, … and so on. An just stopping one, is not going to have an effect. It’s like a domino, you can’t stop the domino, while it’s in the middle you have to stop it from the start. Even if you stop the receptor for PGD2, what you do is that you cause a build up of PGD2 and subsequently 15d-PGJ2, but the problem is 15d-PGJ2 acts intracellularly, and no receptor has yet been found for 15d-PGJ2. But when you read the paper on PGD2, you see that 15d-PGJ2 is way more detrimental to hair follicles than PGD2, and in a course of 3 days completely blocked the growth rather than 7 days for PGD2. So I’m saying the most effective way is to target L-PGD2 synthase (if at all), as well as PGD2 receptor with Seti. Now since the experiments was done ex vivo, they literally did not include 15d-PGJ2 in their experiments to see if it’s effect can be blocked through GPR-44. So it’s a black hole, one should genetically lower levels of PGD2 synthase, add PGE2 periodically and block GPR-44 to see an effective increase in hair growth. However, again, it's acting as a secondary signal, and it will not work, prostaglandin theory is looking at a small picture and forgetting the large picture. #8 Member Join Date Nov 2015 Posts 61 Now knowing this I set out to see if individually I can test, whether my theory is true, or not. And It seems after thousands of years, I can say, we have a treatment effective enough that can reverse hair follicle miniaturization with one single simple intervention with no side effects, Yes, I know it seems like a fairy tale, but it’s true ( at least so far). Now, Why I am publishing this here, and I'm not trying to monetize it. It's because, I believe in open science. Something like a Github of biology. Like an open source code for biology. It's hard knowing that FDA, even though, extremely useful, sometimes is on the way. Also another reason, that, I do not want to monetize this, is because this treatment will never be useful for the majority of people. It will be ridiculously expensive, at least until the next ten years or so. So no seed funding venture or angel investor is (or will) likely be interested. #9 Member Join Date Nov 2015 Posts 61 again, I know this may be a bit hard for lay people to understand, but please read more about it. Okay, so about a month ago, I sat down thinking how can I prove my theory. I had access to most of the inhibitors that I wanted, also I should have paid for it, it was an instant access. (I am lucky). Basically, Androgen receptor inhibitors are three types:
#1 Recently developed pure AR antagonists (non-steroidal), (these include MDV3100, ODM-201, ARN-509 and other safe AR antagonists).
#2 Non-pure non-steroidal AR antagonists such as (such as RH58841 [We know about this], Flutamide, Bicalutamide and many others)
#3 5-alpha reductase inhibitors (finasteride, dutasteride) can cause regrowth. [these are actually not AR antagonists but I brought them here so you know them] #10 Member Join Date Nov 2015 Posts 61 Based on my theory so far, any of Pure AR non-steroidal antagonists, (these include MDV3100, ODM-201, ARN-509 and other safe AR antagonists) should be able to reverse HF miniaturization (to some extent). ODM-201 should probably be the most effective one, as it doesn't cross blood brain barrier (you won't get brain fog, like finasteride or MDV3100), and also it works on all different types of signalling pathways working on AR, and also has a short half life. And also just because pure antagonists are cancer drugs, it doesn’t mean they are more dangerous than other anti-androgens, You have to look at IC50, and other things, site of actions. Any ways, I say they are not dangerous, but still, I did not have the balls, nor the lack of ethics to try it. It's also very new, so expensive. + Reply to Thread Bookmarks Bookmarks Digg
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HTML code is Off Forum RulesThe Deployable Operations Group (DOG) was a United States Coast Guard command that provided properly equipped, trained and organized Deployable Specialized Forces (DSF) to Coast Guard, DHS, DoD and inter-agency operational and tactical commanders. Formerly headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, it was established on 20 July 2007, and was commanded by a captain and was decommissioned by the Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Robert Papp on 1 October 2013. Although many of the units existed long before the 2007 commissioning. Upon decommissioning, the units previously assigned to the DOG were split between Coast Guard Pacific and Atlantic Area commands.
From 2007-2013, the DOG and DSF deployed throughout the world in support of national interests and requirements as tailored and integrated force packages. This included response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, in support of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and more recently deploying specialized counter piracy boarding teams to the Middle East to combat piracy operations.
The DOG's purpose was to develop systems and processes for standardized training, equipment, organization, planning, and scheduling of rapidly deployable specialized forces to execute mission objectives in support of tactical and operational commanders.[1]
The DOG was the Coast Guard's element of specialized forces, but is not a part of United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) because the Coast Guard does not operate under the Department of Defense. DOG units' missions include high-risk, high-profile tasks such as counter-terrorism, diving operations, intelligence-cued boardings, shipboard take-downs and threat assessments involving nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons
The DOG also had medics who were attached to medical teams operating within differing commands.These medics supported roles in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other areas with Navy and Department of Defense groups.
The DOG managed Coast Guard personnel assigned to the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC).[2] It was also involved in the selection of Coast Guard candidates to attend United States Naval Special Warfare training and serve with Navy SEAL Teams.[3] While the program is currently suspended there are still several Coast Guardsmen serving on SEAL Teams.
DOG units [ edit ]
DOG deployable specialized forces (DSF) was composed of approximately 3,000 Coast Guard personnel, including the following unit types:
Port Security Units (PSU) [ edit ]
Port Security Units are deployable expeditionary force protection. They can be deployed domestically, or abroad in support of various Department of Defense operations.
Tactical Law Enforcement Teams (TACLET) [ edit ]
Tactical Law Enforcement Teams provide specialized Law Enforcement Detachments (LEDET) to conduct counter-narcotics law enforcement and maritime interdiction operations from U.S. and allied naval vessels. There are currently two units, Tactical Law Enforcement Team South based in Opa-locka, Florida and the Pacific Area Tactical Law Enforcement Team (PACTACLET) based in San Diego, California.
Maritime Safety & Security Teams (MSST) [ edit ]
Maritime Safety and Security Teams (MSSTs) are Anti-terrorism (Force-Presence) units created under the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 (MTSA) in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The eleven MSSTs provide waterborne anti-terrorism and shoreside Anti-terrorism, force protection for strategic shipping, high interest vessels, and critical infrastructure. MSSTs are a quick response force capable of rapid worldwide deployment via air, ground or sea transportation in response to changing threat conditions and evolving Maritime Homeland Security (MHS) mission requirements. Multi-mission capability facilitates augmentation for other selected Coast Guard missions. Other federal agencies that MSST's train with are U.S. Navy VBSS Teams, FBI, and their local SWAT Teams.
MSST special capabilities include:
Waterside Security
Maritime Law Enforcement
K9 explosive detection teams
MSRT Precision Marksmen Observer Team
Maritime Security Response Team (MSRT) [ edit ]
Members of the USCG MSRT DAS hook and climb onto a target.
The MSRT is the only unit within the Coast Guard that has counterterrorism capabilities to conduct action against hostile targets. The MSRT is trained to be the first responder to potential terrorist threats, deny preemptive terrorist actions, execute security actions against armed hostiles and/or non-compliant threats, execute tactical facility entry, participate in port level counterterrorism exercises, and educate other forces on Coast Guard counterterrorism procedures. Although the MSRT's focus is primarily on the safety and security of homeland defense, it is capable of rapidly deploying worldwide in response to incidents.[4] Other specialized units and federal agencies that MSRT routinely train with are U.S. Navy SEAL teams, U.S. Navy HSC Squadrons, Navy EOD, Special Mission Units, the U.S. Secret Service, FBI, U.S. Border Patrol's BORTAC, and US Customs and Border Protection SRT. Their motto, as seen on their unit patch, is "Nox Noctis est Nostri", which translates to "The Night is Ours".
MSRT Special Capabilities include:
Counterterrorism (CT)
Direct Action (DA)
Advanced Interdiction (AI)
Hostage Rescue/Personnel Recovery
Small Unit Tactics
Counter Assault
Tactical Maritime Law Enforcement
Medium to High risk boardings (Level III & IV)
Airborne Use of Force (AUF)
K9 explosive detection teams
CBRNE
Elements of the MSRT's primary assault force are known as a Direct Action Section (DAS). Members of a DAS may include a Team Leader, Comms/JTAC's, Breachers, Medics, Precision Marksmen, Observation members (snipers/observers), and team members trained to identify Chemical Biological Nuclear Radiological (CBRN) threats. These assault force teams train extensively in advanced close quarters combat and advanced combat marksmanship. They are well equipped to quickly and surreptitiously board suspicious vessels, secure gas and oil platforms or secure land based targets by fast-roping from helicopters or using other undisclosed methods to neutralize enemy personnel. The Tactical Delivery Team (TDT), boat assault force, are trained in advanced vessel delivery tactics and stealthy delivery of the main assault force (DAS) as well as follow on forces.
National Strike Force (NSF) [ edit ]
The National Strike Force (NSF) was established in 1973 as a direct result of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972. The NSF provides highly trained, experienced personnel and specialized equipment to Coast Guard and other federal agencies to facilitate preparedness for and response to oil discharges, hazardous materials releases, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) incidents.
The National Strike Force (NSF) includes five units with over 200 active duty, civilian, reserve, and auxiliary personnel. It is commanded by a captain.
The National Strike Force Coordination Center (NSFCC) provides support and standardization guidance to the three strike teams.
(NSFCC) provides support and standardization guidance to the three strike teams. Each Strike Team is a highly trained cadre of Coast Guardsmen who maintain and rapidly deploy with specialized equipment and incident management skills wherever needed. The strike teams are recognized worldwide as expert authorities in the preparation for and response to the effects resulting from oil discharges, hazardous substance releases, weapons of mass destruction events, and other emergencies on behalf of the American public. There are three strike teams within the NSF. The Atlantic Strike Team is based at Fort Dix, New Jersey, the Gulf Strike Team is based at the Coast Guard Aviation Training Center in Mobile, Alabama, and the Pacific Strike Team is based at Novato, California.
is a highly trained cadre of Coast Guardsmen who maintain and rapidly deploy with specialized equipment and incident management skills wherever needed. The strike teams are recognized worldwide as expert authorities in the preparation for and response to the effects resulting from oil discharges, hazardous substance releases, weapons of mass destruction events, and other emergencies on behalf of the American public. There are three strike teams within the NSF. The Atlantic Strike Team is based at Fort Dix, New Jersey, the Gulf Strike Team is based at the Coast Guard Aviation Training Center in Mobile, Alabama, and the Pacific Strike Team is based at Novato, California. The Public Information Assistance Team (PIAT) provides emergency public information services to Federal On-Scene Coordinators primarily during oil spills and hazardous material releases. It is located at the National Strike Force Coordination Center.[5]
Regional Dive Lockers [ edit ]
The DOG has two Regional Dive Lockers that provide full-time diving capability for three primary missions: Ports and Waterways Coastal Security (PWCS); Aids to Navigation (ATON); and ship husbandry and repair in remote polar regions. Regional Dive Locker East (RDLE) is located at Portsmouth, Virginia, and Regional Dive Locker West (RDLW) is located at San Diego, California.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]The Tory council which last year unveiled plans for an ‘easy council’ model in which residents would be charged extra for services has voted through massive pay increases – doubling the allowances received by cabinet members and increasing the allowances of the council leader by more than 50 per cent. Leader of Barnet council Lynne Hillan will now be able to claim up to £54,000 a year for the role, a rise of nearly £20,000 – on top of a £10,000 basic allowance.
Only one Tory councillor voted against the measures at Hendon town hall last night, Kate Salinger, who has been removed from all her committee posts by the Tory group, and stripped of all her duties. Under the new measures, cabinet allowances are up £17,000 to £34,000, while at the same time, opposition councillors will lose out, gaining minor allowance increases but losing their £500 travel expenses.
One of those to benefit from the doubling in cabinet allowances is Brian Coleman (pictured right), in charge of transport and the environment, who was already in receipt of more than £100,000 of taxpayers’ money.
Coleman is a member of the London Assembly, for which he was last year paid £52,910, and is chairman of the London Fire Board – which recently voted itself a 25 per cent pay rise – and for which Coleman is paid £26,833, all in addition to his wages from the council.
A Standard investigation last year put his total cost to the public purse at £104,503.50. Coleman claimed £2,275 travel expenses for eight months in his role as chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority and also ran up a taxi bill of £8,231 in his position as Assembly Member for Barnet and Camden, including a £656 bill on one day.
The pay increases come at a time of “austerity” and massive cuts in public services; indeed, only on Monday, local government minister Grant Shapps said:
“It is not justifiable for hikes in councillor allowances when public sector workers are facing a two-year pay freeze. We’re all in this together, and those who hold public office need to lead by example.”
Coleman, however, says:
“I think residents will be delighted at a sensible scheme within Barnet. The London Councils scheme recognises the work councillors of all parties do. We have to look at allowances every four years and have done what 20 other councils have done… “The cabinet is getting nothing like its entitled to according to Sir Rodney Brook (report author). I will take the money I’m entitled to. No more, no less.”
URGENT APPEAL: We need to raise £10,000 in the next few weeks to keep holding the right to account. Help us build a better media and back the crowdfunder to keep Left Foot Forward's progressive journalism alive.Ongoing discoveries at a 17th-century archaeological dig near the Ocklawaha River are providing new insights into the culture of the Acuera, a Timucuan tribe that was living in the region where Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto led an expedition in 1539.
MOSS BLUFF - Ongoing discoveries at a 17th-century archaeological dig near the Ocklawaha River are providing new insights into the culture of the Acuera, a Timucuan tribe that was living in the region where Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto led an expedition in 1539.
Through luck, hard work and the study of records collated by one of his mentors, University of Florida doctoral candidate Willet Boyer III tracked down what he believes to be Santa Lucia de Acuera, a lost site that was at one point the most remote Franciscan mission in all of Florida.
Evidence of missionary construction uncovered a year ago has since led Boyer's team to unearth the complete footprint of a large building that seems to have been the church, as well as the corner of a nearby smaller structure that was likely either the mission's cocina (kitchen) or friary.
"For this spring's fieldwork, which we anticipate running through April, what we are hoping to do is determine the nature of this building," Boyer said. "Our main goal is to outline the area and see how large this building is."
"By working here, I've found that the pottery is more interesting than the arrowheads," said Robin Corsiglia, who developed an avid interest in archaeology during his youth and has been volunteering at the site since retiring from Lockheed Martin a little over a year ago.
"Back in (19)61, every time they'd grade the roads I'd find the arrowheads that had come up," he said.
Reconstruction
While arrowheads can be found at the riverside dig, the beads, metal pieces and pottery buried within three trash pits adjacent to the newly unearthed structure are what led Boyer to suspect he has found the friary, although bits of animal bone within the pits may be indicative of kitchen scraps.
Work is slow and complicated because — as the mission was founded about 1627 and likely lasted until the Timucuan Rebellion of 1656 — nothing remains of the 350-year-old site save for tiny object fragments and discolored soil. These indicate where structural posts and other building features were located.
Despite these difficulties, Boyer is combining his archaeological finds with an analysis of the few surviving documents from the period to form a fascinating reconstruction of the Acuera culture worthy of a "CSI" episode.
"Unlike the other Timucua, who were Catholicized, these people were not," Boyer said. Despite having a mission within their village for up to three decades, "they stayed true to their traditional ways."
"There is a record from the 1640s where Governor Ruiz de Salazar sent a soldier from the St. Augustine garrison to arrest a shaman among the Acuera. The record suggests this shaman had a pretty substantial following; so even while the mission was here, you had religious leaders who were practicing openly," he said.
Boyer suspects the Acuera were unique in their resistance to conversion due to the deeply religious nature of their pre-existing society, noting that almost every personal or place name associated with them had supernatural connotations.
"These people apparently were seen by other Timucuan and by themselves as ritual keepers," Boyer theorized.
Unprecedented
Physical evidence backing up this assertion can be found within the building suspected to have been the mission. While sifting through the earth along what was once the center of the structure's western wall, Boyer's assistants uncovered a small whelk shell that appears to have been deliberately placed.
Additionally, the northwest corner of the building had a 9,000-year-old bolen point arrowhead at the same depth, which suggests it too was set there deliberately.
Whelk shells would have been gained through trade with coastal tribes and were used to hold a ritual beverage known as the black drink, while the millennia old arrowhead likely held special significance for a tribe whose name translates as either "keepers of time" or "ancient ones."
To Boyer's knowledge, the placement of such items within the structure of a mission is unprecedented.
"Whoever the friar was, they apparently dealt very well with him personally, because they could have run him out of here any time they wanted," he said. "They apparently respected him as a person enough to let him live here all that time, but obviously that didn't persuade them that what he was selling was what they wanted.
"Where I go with the long-term research will depend upon funding and upon where I end up," said Boyer, who expects to soon defend a doctoral dissertation based on his work at the site. "At some point, I'd like to travel to the Vatican and see if we can uncover some of the documents there."When I was growing up, my father was tough on me. Curfews were enforced with military rigor, and anything less than an A-plus on my report card brought lengthy punishment. I would have done anything for him to say “Good job, son” even once, but that moment never came. I never understood why he did the things he did, until the day I went back through time and became him.
To be totally honest, before I warped through space-time to instantaneously voyage to 1972 to meet, court, marry, and impregnate the woman who would become my mother, I just thought that my father was an irrationally cruel and cranky man. But as I experienced everything my father did and gradually felt the pressures of raising myself as a child, I began to see the world through his |
most massive. It’s not yet clear where the material needed to form rings comes from.
Last year, a study of Saturn’s moons pointed to a collision as the cause of the gas giant’s rings. Matija Cuk of the SETI Institute and colleagues found that the orbits of Tethys and Dione hadn’t changed much since the solar system formed more than 4 billion years ago.
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They suggested that resonant interactions of an earlier generation of moons caused a catastrophic collision just 100 million years ago that resulted in the debris that makes up Saturn’s rings.
Their theory was that largest pieces of this debris then formed Tethys, Dione and Rhea, while fine particles spread out to form rings. These mid-sized moons orbit Saturn in the diffuse area beyond its rings, and as time goes on, they hoover up everything in their path, so particles that spread inward formed the present rings inside the so-called Roche limit, where tidal forces break up large objects like moons.
To investigate if a collision could have caused the rings, Sébastien Charnoz and Ryuki Hyodo of the Paris Institute of Earth Physics in France modelled the event.
They found that if big chunks of the moons survived this smash-up, the debris would form a single new moon so fast that particles would not drift inward to form rings.
On the other hand, if the impact completely shattered both original moons, it could form two or more new moons, and “the particles would stop spreading within a few tens of years, giving them no time to spread enough to reach the Roche limit” and form the rings, says Charnoz.
“The process is so efficient that 20 to 30 generations of moons could have formed,” he says.
“This is an important result,” says Larry Esposito of the University of Colorado in Boulder, a specialist in planetary rings. “Although some large moons may repeatedly reform, Saturn’s rings cannot be produced by this scenario.”
Journal references: DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.07554
Read more: Saturn’s flying saucer moon Atlas has a smooth fluffy edgePlayer, Position Trending Last Week Roster Status Notes and Comments
Jose Constanza, OF N/A 40-Man Showed that he can be a valuable rug-rat on the basepaths last year. He rode a hot streak to a lot of playing time, but finished the year on a really cold note. A pretty one-dimensional player, but the Braves seem to value speed, and if they carry a backup center fielder, then he has the inside track.
Todd Cunningham, OF N/A NRI A great college hitter, Cunningham hasn't wow'ed with the bat yet in pro ball, but he's still young and the Braves clearly believe in him with this invite to spring training. He'll use this opportunity to learn from a great center fielder in Bourn, and try to impress the Atlanta coaching staff.
Luis Durango, OF N/A NRI Durango could be the main competition for Constanza. They're very similar one-dimensional players, and Durango has more extended Major League service time, and could be a more dynamic player. It could come down to who has the hot bat at the end of the spring.
Stefan Gartrell, OF N/A NRI A mid-average power hitter who is finding himself stuck in four-A status. He will need to have a really impressive spring to make the club, and even then it's a longshot without an injury to one of the other Major League corner outfielders.
Brandon Hicks, IF N/A 40-Man Hicks is the favorite to win the last spot on the bench. He will still need to hit this spring, and show his versatility in the field, but he should be pretty close to a lock for the Atlanta bench. I also predict that at some point this spring, if he's hitting well, that there will be talk about Hicks winning the starting shortstop job over Pastornicky or Wilson. He's less of a fielder, but could be a much better hitter as the starting SS.
Jordan Parraz, OF N/A NRI Parraz is the classic case of a high draft pick who hasn't panned out... yet. He's got decent speed, mild pop in his bat, and hits for a decent average. Like Gartrell, he would need to have a lights-out spring to make the club.
Tyler Pastornicky, SS N/A 40-Man The odds on favorite to win the starting shortstop job with the Braves, but he'll still need to do some hitting this spring, and show he's ready mentally. I fear that the Braves may be making a similar mistake with Pastornicky that they made with Jordan Schafer several years ago -- moving him to quickly to the Majors after only limited time in the upper minors. Pastornicky will have competition this spring with Hicks, Simmons, and Wilson.
Andrelton Simmons, SS N/A NRI This is the guy I consider the Braves future long-term shortstop. There's no question about his arm or his defensive ability, though he may need some more reps before he's ready. Some people question his bat, but I believe he's just about ready to contribute. It will be interesting, with the glut of shortstops in the Braves system, to see if they put Simmons at AAA to star the year. I also believe there will be some talk about him starting over Pastornicky this spring.
Drew Sutton, IF N/A NRI If Brandon Hicks can't win the backup util job this spring, then Sutton could step in and snag it. He actually might be a more preferable option to Hicks. Sutton has much more Major League playing time than Hicks, and can play everywhere on the infield and in the outfield. He's kind of an Omar Infante lite. Sutton is also adept at getting on base, a skill the Braves need.
Joe Terdoslavich, IF N/A NRI J-Terd will probably get a lot of playing time filling in after Chipper exits spring training games. The Atlanta staff should get a good feel for whether he'll be able to hold down the hot corner defensively or not. Being around Chipper Jones should help.The U.K. government and a film classification board have finalized a program to give age ratings to music videos produced in the country and streamed online, with minors restricted from watching videos rated for users 18 and older.
Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music will submit music videos produced in the U.K. to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), the same organization that rates movies in the country.
The U.K. government introduced the process as a pilot project in October 2014, and has adopted it as a fixture, it said Tuesday in a press release.
"Many children have easy access to music videos online and some parents are rightly concerned that some of these contain imagery or lyrics not appropriate for a young audience," reads the release.
The move followed concerns over raunchy or explicit imagery in popular music videos such as Rihanna's S&M, Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines and Miley Cyrus's Wrecking Ball.
Dizzee Rascal's video is currently the only video submitted to the British film ratings board that has received an 18 rating. (Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)
Since the pilot program began in October, 132 videos were submitted to the BBFC. Fifty-six have been rated for ages 12 and up, and 53 for ages 15.
Only one video, Dizzee Rascal's Couple of Stacks, is rated 18. The horror-themed video features the rapper Dizee dismembering several people with a knife in what appears to be a haunted house, much like a campy slasher B-movie.
On YouTube, the video will not play without confirming your age by signing in with your Google account.
"Movies in the cinema and music DVDs are age rated to inform the viewer and help parents to make informed choices," said Joana Shields, minister for internet safety and security. "We welcome this voluntary step from industry to bring internet services in line with the offline world."
The content warnings will appear for users outside the U.K. — Couple of Stacks is unviewable in Canada without signing into Google — but since this is a British initiative, videos made elsewhere will not be rated, or age-gated.Education Minister Chris Hipkins says the feedback from students and teachers is that overassessment is a real issue with NCEA.
A complete shake-up of NCEA will look at whether all students should attempt the level one qualification and whether teenagers are being overassessed.
The secondary school qualification, which replaced School Certificate, Sixth Form Certificate and Bursary was introduced in 2002 and Labour signalled ahead of the September election that they would review it if in government.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced the terms of reference for the review on Thursday, which will initially lead to a discussion document for public consultation in April next year.
SUPPLIED NCEA is undergoing a complete shake-up, including whether all students should attempt it.
It comes on the back of Hipkins announcing on Tuesday that National Standards, the assessment system used in primary and intermediate schools, has been officially scrapped.
READ MORE:
* National Standards have officially ended in primary schools
* National Standards will no longer exist but schools can still use them
* Labour promises to scrap national standards and review NCEA
* Education Minister's shake-up will scrap national standards
Hipkins said overassessment of students and teacher workload will be addressed as part of the review, which starts early next year. NCEA will not be scrapped altogether as part of the review.
"Students and teachers have told us overassessment is a real issue and impacts their wellbeing and workload. This and the importance of teaching life skills in schools, such as resilience, creativity, communication and adaptability, will form part of the review."
"The review will also look at the role of each level of NCEA, particularly the structure and relevance of NCEA Level 1 and whether all young people should attempt it."
National's education spokeswoman Nikki Kaye was supportive of the review, which she said the former government had also announced ahead of the election.
"There doesn't need to be politics involved, there's a genuine process underway and we're supportive of that process."
Kaye said it was important for public confidence in the education system that any changes were well communicated and she agreed that there were issues around NCEA level 1 and whether all students should be sitting it.
The NCEA review is an "opportunity to refine and strengthen our key national qualification for young people leaving school, and to ensure that NCEA remains relevant in the modern world," Hipkins said.
"The Government is committed to delivering a future-focused education system that equips students with skills and knowledge to be globally competitive.
"The introduction of NCEA represented a significant modernisation of the system of secondary school assessment. However, the full potential of NCEA has yet to be fully realised. This review will build on what has been achieved with NCEA to date, and respond to emerging needs and opportunities."
The Ministry of Education will run the review, starting with range of stakeholders and opening up for all New Zealanders to comment and contribute.
A Ministerial Advisory Group of "innovative thinkers, who can challenge traditional thinking on senior secondary education and assessment" will lead the review.
"I am also keen to hear from young people who are currently working towards an NCEA. I have set up a youth advisory group and will be seeking their insights early on in the process, and I want other students to contribute as well during the wider public consultation phase," Hipkins said.
* Comments on this article have been closed.It seems there’s a good reason the vowel-changing children’s song focuses on apples and bananas — those two fruits dominate children’s fruit intake in a new study. (Sorry — the ear worm’s been running through my head since I read the study, so it’s seeped in.) The good news from today’s Pediatrics study is that U.S. children are eating about 1.25 cups of fruit a day — the recommendation is 1-2 cups a day — and that just over half of it is from whole fruit.
But that’s where the good news ends, unfortunately.
“It’s simultaneously horrifying and not at all shocking that a full third of all ‘fruit’ being consumed by children is in juice form, a number that leaps to 40.9% in the under 5 crowd,” said Yoni Freedhoff, an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa, about the study’s findings. “Juice is not sating and lacks the fiber and nutrition of whole fruits. Juice is primarily water with a great deal of free sugar and hence is more fairly compared with soda, than the fruit it once came from.”
Indeed, after whole fruit, juice makes up the next biggest proportion of kids’ fruit intake. While 53% of kids’ fruit intake comes from whole fruit, a third of it comes from 100% fruit juices. The other 14% comes from mixed fruit dishes, including fruit drinks. But that’s across all age groups and races/ethnicities. The percentages move around a bit from one demographic group to the next.
The proportions among teens match the overall percentages with bigger disparities across racial and ethnic groups. Asian adolescents get 60% of their fruit from whole fruit, compared to 55% among white and Latino teens and 43% among black teens. Among younger kids, grade schoolers, those ages 6 to 11, are eating more whole fruit (57%) than preschoolers (49%). Instead, the preschoolers are getting 41% of their fruit through juice, compared to the 28% of daily fruit grade schoolers drink.
What’s the problem with juice?
“Liquid calories from juices have been shown to decrease satiety cues which may contribute to excessive calorie intake in children,” explained Laura Gearman, a pediatric registered dietitian at the University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital. “Excessive intakes over an extended period of time will lead to weight gain and contribute to obesity in children.”
The data come from an analysis of responses from just over 3,000 children and teens, ages 2 to 19, surveyed in the 2011-2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a biennial survey conducted by the CDC. Adolescents and parents of the younger children provided a full account of what the children ate in the past 24 hours. When combined, the data generally represent eating habits across the population.
“The good news is children are eating some fruit,” Gearman said. “We need to work on shifting intakes to be 100% from whole fruits, rather than some from fruit juices. Given the popularity of a few fruits among children — apples, banana, melon — it seems we could also work on having a wider variety of fruits more easily accessible to children.”
More than a fifth of grade schoolers’ fruit intake comes from apples (or eepples), and nearly one in ten (9%) of preschoolers’ fruit intake is bananas (or beneenees). Meanwhile, 5% of preschoolers’ fruit diet includes berries, which constitute 4% of grade schoolers' fruit intake. Overall, about half of all kids’ fruit comes from apples, apple juice, citrus juice and bananas.
“It is likely that accessibility plays a major role in the higher intakes of apples and bananas than other whole fruits in children,” Gearman said. “Not only are they available at any grocery store, but can be found at convenient stores, coffee shops and even in vending machines.”
Opples and bononos are also less perishable, easier to store, and easier to eat on-the-go than most other fruits, Gearman pointed out. But 17% of those apples are drunk as juice for preschoolers (9% for grade schoolers). While variety is ideal, “especially in young children who are still developing likes and dislikes to foods,” Gearman said, a whole upple or bununu is always a better choice than no fruit or a juice.
“While fruit juice may be a convenient and child preferred source of fruit in the diet, parents should try to use whole fruit to meet intake guidelines,” Gearman said. “Whole fruits provide the benefit of fiber over 100% fruit juices and do not contain added sugar, fat or sodium, which other fruit-containing foods may have.”
What do you do to encourage whole fruit eating instead of juice? German recommends involving kids in the shopping, preparing and serving of fruits. She also suggests creative preparations, such as cutting whole fruit into fun shapes, serving it frozen or combining it with other foods.
Ultimately, though, the person with the purse holds the most power.
“If you don’t have to chew it to eat it, it’s not a fruit,” Freedhoff said. “Even if you can’t encourage your kids to chew more of them, ending your household’s regular purchase of juice is a realistically attainable goal.”
My book, The Informed Parent, with co-author Emily Willingham, is available for pre-order. Find me on Twitter here.Introduction: A recent newspaper article highlighted one family’s frustrating experiences when trying to get permits from the City of Vancouver for a home renovation (Attempts to renovate, instead of demolish, land Kitsilano family in city hall reno hell, by John Mackie, Vancouver Sun, 16-July-2016). How many cases are there like that? Online comments to the article plus a Twitter discussion pointed out that problem is not rare by any means and that there are systemic issues at City Hall leading to huge and costly delays in permits being issued.
Bryn Davidson ((Principal/Design, with Lanefab, Twitter @Lanefab) contributed many insightful comments to the discussion, so we asked him for more, and he kindly cooperated. Below is his contribution, in Q&A format. Perhaps the most poignant comment was this:
“To my mind, addressing permitting times could result in a larger impact on housing supply than either the effort to crack down on vacant homes or short term rentals.”
City Hall just created a new general manager position, to lead a new department (Development Services, Buildings and Licensing), and her responsibilities include the challenge to “transform [the City’s] permitting and licensing processes and improve service and turnaround times for applicants.” So maybe we can expect to see some improvements in permit processing times this year.
****************
Q&A with Bryn Davidson (Principal/Design, with Lanefab)
Give us a quick background on you/ Lanefab?
We are a design/build firm crafting full size homes and lane houses. We built the city’s first lane house in 2010, and – since then – we have built many of the top energuide rated homes in the city. For years we’ve worked closely with both staff and council to improve the rules and regulations around lane houses and green buildings. We have some strong opinions about permitting, but in general we’re proud to be part of a city that has ambitious green goals and a willingness to be a leader.
What kind of permitting delays are you facing?
Our company mostly deals with fairly simple permits in the “RS” (single family) zones in the city. At the moment, it is taking about 4 months for a lane house permit and about 6 months for a main house. In the past (pre 2014) we might have expected 6 weeks to two months as a processing time but for the last couple of years the delays have been much longer. If you’re doing a ‘conditional’ application, or one that requires a development permit (in addition to the building permit) then it can be even longer. It can take 1.5 to 2 years to complete the design and permitting of some projects in the “RT” (duplex) zones. I often suggest to clients that they sell their RT lot and buy RS!
Where are the delays coming from?
It’s a perfect storm of demand, new regulations, and some mis-steps on the part of the City. There are record numbers of projects being submitted, and the staff are totally swamped. I can empathize with that, but at some point if we’re going to talk about housing as being a ‘crisis’ then we need to respond in kind.
The big trigger was the rollout of the new building code that was originally supposed to happen mid 2014 but was enacted in January of 2015. The new code brought in a wide range of new requirements related to energy efficiency, including the need to do walls that are more insulated than the 2×6 framed standard most people were used to. Because there was a lot of anxiety about this change, there was a big wave of submissions as builders tried to get their project in before the code went into effect. Now, after enactment, we’re dealing with a whole city full of builders and regulators who are struggling to adapt to the new systems.
On top of these building code changes there were a range of other policy shifts as well; new requirements for making homes more ‘accessible’ for the elderly and disabled, new tree retention rules, and rules targeting the demolition of old houses.
In principle we – as a company – support the Greenest City goals and the intent of these various rule updates, but the layers of good intentions transformed into a maze of bureaucracy. In 2014/2015 I think that council really missed the mark by asking staff to take on a whole lot of additional scope, but not properly staffing or funding the transition. We’ve been playing catch-up ever since.
What is the City doing in response?
This wave of permit applications seemed entirely predictable (to those of us in the industry) but it seemed to take the City by surprise.
It got pretty crazy in late 2014/early 2015.
We were pre-booking intake appointments 6 months out. We were booking an appointment just to drop off the drawings, and we were booking it before even starting the design work.
We heard stories of intake appointments being made for houses that were being offered for sale, so that the new buyer/builder would already be in the queue. At a certain point the system became entirely divorced from reality, and the City took the sensible step of replacing the intake queue with a first come, first served process. More recently the City hired a batch of new plan checkers, and they’re now rolling out new software to manage the permitting process. As of the last few months they’ve started requiring payment of permit fees up front so as to weed out those who weren’t fully committed to the process.
The City is definitely engaged in a concerted effort to make improvements, but I still don’t think that council really quite views it as a ‘crisis’.
How have permit delays impacted your work?
We are a small design and construction company (we’re not a developer) and we craft both full size homes and lane house at a rate of up to 10 homes a year. Our business model really depends on the timely issuance of permits. If you’re a big developer then the permitting process is just lumped in to a multi-year project, but for us it has a really huge impact.
We currently have 9 homes waiting for permits, but fortunately (for the moment) we’ve got enough work to keep our construction crews busy.
This wasn’t the case in Dec. 2014 when we also had 9 projects pending, but all of our active builds were wrapping up.
At that time we had to lay off staff, and we were pushed within inches of bankruptcy simply because of the delay in permitting. (I am still very bitter about this period of time…)
Overall I’d estimate that the permitting process is the single biggest bottleneck in our project delivery process, and we could probably do about 20% higher volume if we could get a permit in 6 weeks. When I look at the billions of dollars in permits being issued each year, I wonder if others are in the same position, and what the cumulative economic impact on the city is.
To my mind, addressing permitting times could result in a larger impact on housing supply than either the effort to crack down on vacant homes or short term rentals (but of course I’m completely biased in that assessment!).
Your comments appear to be mostly about new buildings, but what are your observations about issues getting permits for renovations of existing buildings?
We do new construction mostly, but we’ll sometimes renovate a heritage house or do a “full-gut” renovation/addition to a bungalow. The timing for these is definitely longer than what it was 3 or more years ago. The biggest challenge is when you’re trying to renovate in a zone that has added character guidelines or it requires an amendment to a development permit. These are a huge pain, and I’ve been generally trying to avoid those types of projects because it is too easy to lose money.
As an example, we’ve spent months and months working to get a simple two car garage added to a corner RT site with an existing single family house. On another project we spent weeks going back and forth because a stair in the backyard was deemed “architecturally unresolved”. In RS this would have been fairly simple, but working with RT can border on the absurd.
In general the challenge with renovations is that there are a number of ‘triggers’ that you hit that can make the price and permit requirements of the project jump suddenly. These include the need to upgrade the sewer, to add fire sprinklers, or bring the building up to the current energy code. You may want to do a small renovation, but you end up gutting and re-doing the whole house. If you want to do a small renovation, you need to make sure you don’t trigger one of those upgrades.
More and more we’re shifting toward new construction because there isn’t much of the old house left once you’ve done all of these upgrades (on top of the fact that the land is so expensive that people often choose to invest in new construction vs. renovation given that the renovation isn’t that much cheaper and the new home will have a higher asset value).
In the District of North Vancouver we’re doing a renovation/addition to a heritage-listed home designed by Arthur Erickson. We’ve had to go through design review, and a heritage review, but the process was probably half as long as doing the same thing in the City of Vancouver.
What more could City Hall be doing to solve the problem of slow permit processes?
As I see it there are a few main actions:
Ramping up the staffing and resources to speed up the current system, Improving the processing methods and system (i.e. who has my permit?!), Reducing the number of requirements, Giving staff a mandate to “Git ‘er done”
The staffing ramp-up probably needed to be ~1.5 to 2 time what was done, but it’s hard to know because there will always be a long lag time between council’s decision to ramp up staffing, and actually seeing improvements. The operational improvements are a work-in-progress, so it’s hard to comment. That leaves us with actions 3 and 4.
Those two items are a bit fuzzy, but it comes down to the fact that there is a hierarchy of information that the City is reviewing, and not all of those items are equally important. The City should absolutely be scrutinizing issues related to life safety, and should be managing the details related to energy and carbon emissions, but when I get a landscape reviewer telling me to “provide a layered look by adding a second row of planting” in a planter bed, or someone says a lane house is “too two-storyish”, or I get a request to update a dimension from 19 feet to 19.01 feet my head starts to spin.
I think that any time the processing time goes over 2 months then there should be a range of minor requirements that can simply be glossed over — i.e. “Git ‘er done” This would be more about management style and customer service, rather than a shift in policy. If the lack of housing in Vancouver constitutes a crisis, then we can’t spend so much time fretting about little design details.
Beyond the nuts and bolts of permit review, what more could be done?
At a deeper level we – as a city – are really starting to wrestle with a kind of identity crisis related to our ‘single family’ neighbourhoods, and – ultimately – we can’t address permitting times without also looking at the regulations that our planners are spending so much time enforcing.
Our land prices and housing demand are pushing us inexorably toward a form of land use that should probably be much more urban (row houses etc like you might see in Montreal, or Barcelona) but we remain quite attached to the idea of the detached single family home. At the same time we’re realizing that our goals for reducing carbon emissions from buildings are running straight up against policies which push us toward highly articulated (and energy inefficient) detached homes. As a result we keep layering in more and more regulations aimed at trying to shoehorn all of the needs of a city into the physical form of a suburb.
In the past the City has really micro-managed design at the lot-by-lot level through the extensive use of design guidelines. We’ve been pretty good at treating our neighbourhoods like curated set pieces, and many view that approach as having been successful, but it comes at a cost in terms of the staff hours involved to review a single house, and it leaves us with a kind of pleasant monotony – what I like to call Prozac urbanism – where the lows are rounded up, and the highs are rounded down, and everything is slow.
This is a much broader discussion than what we can cover here, but I think that there are both immediate and longer term improvements we can make to our RS and RT zoning bylaws. To address both our permitting crisis – and our broader housing crisis – we need to shift gears and start a shift from carefully cultivated suburbanism, to a more urban approach that embraces a more diverse, messy, adventurous – and faster – approach to city building.
****************
How to reach the author.
Bryn Davidson
B.Eng. M.Arch. LEED-AP
bryn@lanefab.com
Twitter: @lanefab
Lanefab Design / Build
Custom homes (and laneway Houses) 362 E.10th Ave. Vancouver
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The United States really only ever had two options for confronting Iran’s nuclear program. First, America, largely on its own, could have invaded Iran, secured its military sites, and ousted the Supreme Leader (the invasion option). Second, it could have struck essentially the kind of deal that President Obama recently appears to have secured (the diplomatic option).
The world should be extremely skeptical of the agreement with Iran. In addition to Iran’s history of flouting international nuclear obligations, for the past decades it has made a policy of working against the interests of the United States and its allies in the region. But as much as the agreement may be a hard pill to swallow, it may be the better of the two available options. If the deal is defensible at all, it is not because it better alleviates the nuclear threat from Iran. Rather, the deal with Iran, if implemented as part of a more comprehensive foreign policy, could allow the United States to direct the bulk of its energies to confronting what are actually its greatest threats, namely China and Russia, each of which seek to test America’s supremacy in the world.
Before looking more closely at the merits of the invasion and diplomatic options, it is worth considering why these really were America’s only two options. Over the years, people have suggested various alternative courses of action. Three of the most common alternative proposals are: tactical strikes on select nuclear and military facilities; an agreement in which Iran completely abandons its nuclear program; and maintenance of the status quo of sanctions and moderate nuclear activities. For the reasons explained below, none of these are more promising than the invasion and diplomatic options.
Tactical Strikes Are Not a Long-Term Solution
The tactical strike option, though appealing for its relative ease, is a poor option for several reasons. First, it is not clear that all of Iran’s key nuclear facilities could be destroyed without using nuclear weapons. Iran’s Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant near Qom, for example, is constructed from what appears to be a repurposed tunnel complex, buried deep under a mountain. The United States has developed weapons to target such facilities—such as the Massive Ordinance Penetrator—but it is unclear how effective such weapons would be against deeply buried targets.
Second, a tactical strike is likely to prompt Iran to retaliate against America’s regional allies. Israel, even if it did not take part in the tactical strikes, would be targeted either directly or indirectly through Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan also may be pulled in to state-on-state hostilities as Iran tries to extract a cost for such a strike. Though the tactical strike option would be intended to limit hostilities, there is a real chance that the United States would be dragged into a much broader and more engaging fight in support of its allies.
Third, and most significantly, a tactical strike is at best a temporary solution to the Iran nuclear problem. Even if the United States succeeded in destroying Iran’s key nuclear infrastructure, Iran could simply rebuild. Indeed, Defense Secretary Carter recently described the effect of such a strike as merely “a setback.” A direct military attack on Iran would only increase the perceived utility of an Iranian nuclear deterrent. Thus, the United States may be faced with the prospect of having to initiate periodic tactical strikes in a game of nuclear whack-a-mole. As the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey, recently stated: “the military option isn’t use once and set aside... it remains in place.”
Not only is this an unsustainable policy in the long-run, it presents serious intelligence challenges. Each round of periodic strikes is predicated on the successful and timely identification of new targets. As capable as America’s intelligence community is, this would be a challenging task.
In the end, this option is likely to lead to either an invasion to conclusively end Iran’s nuclear program, or a nuclear-armed Iran the first time America fails to timely identify the proper targets. In the meantime, the Middle East probably would become an even more conflict-ridden region, as Iran reaffirms its commitment to a nuclear weapon while retaliating for the tactical strikes. The United States would have little choice but to participate in that conflict.
Iran Would Not Agree to Completely Abandon Its Nuclear Program
Some politicians and commentators say that Iran should agree to completely abandon its nuclear program before sanctions are lifted. This is fantasy. Iran would never agree to such terms. Iran is a proud country, and there is pride to be had in the technical mastery of nuclear materials. Furthermore, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a party, provides that all state parties are entitled to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy as long as they abide by their non-proliferation obligations. Though Iran has violated the Treaty before, if it were to come clean, it would not suffer the humiliation of being the only state to forsake altogether its right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Any realistic nuclear agreement with Iran will allow for the continued use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The best agreement would limit Iran’s nuclear activity to largely benign and easily verifiable projects. For example, the best agreement might limit Iran to the use of low-powered research reactors and the production of medical isotopes. This brings us to the “status quo” option: if the United State had held out longer, how much better of a deal could it have achieved?
Continuation of the Status Quo Would At Best Produce a Slightly Better Agreement
If the United States had waited longer before beginning negotiations with Iran, allowing the sanctions regime to further damage Iran’s economy and forestall its acquisition of conventional weapons, the United States might have secured a better deal. For example, a better deal, reached after allowing sanctions to work for a few more years, might have made possible: the complete abandonment of Iran’s uranium enrichment activities; the storage of all Iran’s enriched uranium outside of the country; a phased approached to sanctions relief; harsher restrictions on when and how Iran could resume conventional weapons and missile imports; and/or more automatic, anywhere, anytime inspections.
Of course, there is no guarantee that such additional concessions could be obtained. It is always tempting to wait for more leverage to strike a better deal, but if negotiations are to be tried, at some point one must take the plunge.
It should also be noted that when one begins negotiations is not completely in one’s own control. For example, it is unlikely that former President Ahmadinejad would have agreed to negotiate restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program no matter how badly Iran’s economy had suffered. Current President Rouhani, however, clearly presented a better opportunity for dialogue. There is no telling when another such opportunity would have come along.
Waiting also has costs. First, the nuclear issue is not the only issue of interest to the United States in the region. Persistent, simmering crises make it difficult to develop long-term strategies on other important issues like trade, human rights, and fighting Islamic extremism. Second, waiting also means that the only direction Iran would have to move on its nuclear program in the interim is forward. If sanctions were allowed to act longer, Iran’s broader economy would continue to suffer, but it almost certainly would continue to develop its nuclear program. In the meantime the breakout time for Iran to build a nuclear weapon would shrink. It also would mean that if or when negotiations were attempted, it would have more nuclear bargaining chips than it does now. On the one hand, its broader economy would be even more desperate for sanctions relief, but, on the other hand, there would be more of a nuclear program that the world would have to roll back. The net effect of these altered dynamics make it difficult to say what the result of negotiations would be. Perhaps a better deal could be struck, but it is not guaranteed.
President Obama’s critics say that he should have waited longer, that a better deal could have been struck. They may very well be right. In the end, however, a deal with Iran was always going to be struck on the central bargain of sanctions relief in exchange for 1) transparency about past nuclear activities, 2) restrictions on nuclear activities going forward, and 3) increased verification. As long as a deal credibly addressed each of these aspects, in the long run the particular details probably are less important. The real question is whether to try a deal at all, or conclude that the only solution is military invasion.
This Deal Is Better Than Invasion… For Now
An invasion of Iran would be the most effective method of removing Iran’s nascent nuclear threat. But this course of action would come with serious consequences. The most obvious argument against invasion is that it would be very costly in blood and treasure. American lives would be lost, Israeli lives would be lost, and still more Iranian lives would be lost. There probably would be global economic consequences, though these might have been short-lived.
Beyond the cost of invading Iran, America’s broader interests counsel against directing the bulk of its strategic, economic, and military energies toward Iran. The greatest threats to the United States over the |
ely-mounted Magneti Marelli motor package through 2,400kms over its allotted 15 days.
“We are quite satisfied with the private testing but there is still plenty to do on the dyno before Donington,” Mahindra boss Dilbagh Gill told Motorsport.com.
“We always said that in the first two years we would get to know the championship. This year we have aspirations to move up, we are clear on this as an aim.”
In terms of continuity and stability within its Campos-run squad, Mahindra stands just as good a chance as Andretti in making the jump to the top table.
Nick Heidfeld, a huge asset and a sort of motorsport WD40 in terms of developing and fixing a racing car, stays. He is a major cog in the season three programme along with chief designer - ex-Red Bull and Caterham F1 staffer Lewis Butler - and software guru Angus Lyon.
In testing, the team has used GP3 racer Alex Palou, Tiago Monteiro and one other driver in addition to Heidfeld.
Motorsport.com understands that Palou and Monteiro will not be joining the team in a racing capacity in season three, but a teammate for Heidfeld will be announced ahead of the first Donington Park test on August 23.
Tiago Monteiro, Mahindra Racing Photo by: Neil Hudson
NextEV NIO
Car NextEV TCR Formula 002 Drivers Nelson Piquet Jr, Oliver Turvey Days complete 11
The newly-named NextEV NIO team is believed to be sticking with its twin-motor set-up for season three, and if that is accurate it should be applauded.
Why? Because innovation is at the heart of the all-electric championship, and the Chinese owned team is staying true to its identity as a daring visionary start-up. Fair play to them.
The team's new system, dubbed the NextEV700R, is likely to be much modified and closer to the weight limit, which for season three is reduced to 880kg.
A significant weight-saving development plan has been underway for some time as relationships with both key technical suppliers Omni Gear and Rational Motion GmbH continue. The team has evolved as well, with former Team Aguri engineering chief Gerry Hughes forming a much consolidated squad of people.
Ben Hanley has been drafted in on occasion to assist with testing when Nelson Piquet Jr and Oliver Turvey were indisposed due to other commitments over the summer.
NEXTEV TCR Formula E Team 2017 livery Photo by: NextEV
Renault e.dams
Car Renault Z.E. 16 Drivers Sebastien Buemi, Nicolas Prost Days complete Undisclosed
Last years championship-winning team has been characteristically cagey on its new Renault Z.E. 16, which was one of the first season three packages to test back in May.
Although it would not state how many private days it had done, Motorsport.com understands the full allocation of 15 was used.
It is true that Renault e.dams can only make a certain amount of progress in season three, as it strives to eke out more efficiency from its title-winning package. An evolution of its Renault Z.E. 15 set-up is likely to see further weight reduction.
An enhanced damping system via its close relationship with Sachs will also aim to find valuable tenths as it chases the last slivers of efficiency.
It is unclear as to what Renault e.dams has focused on with its key partners - gearbox specialist Sadev and the providers of the motors and inverters Zytek Automotive - as is their wont; publically the champions don’t discuss their partners.
With its mighty resources pushing even harder to promote its expanding electric car sales all over the world, the ‘Regie’ will be up for the fight to retain its titles against the ever-closing pack.
Sébastien Buemi, Renault e.Dams Photo by: Michelin Sport
Techeetah
Car TBA Drivers Jean-Eric Vergne, Ma Qing Hua Days complete 0
Techeetah effectively took over Team Aguri’s slot on the season three grid, but ran out of time to complete any private testing at all and, as a result, will be on the back foot come Hong Kong in October.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that the Chinese-owned squad has a Renault powertrain to bolt on to the back of the former Team Aguri cars.
It is unknown quite why and how it took so long to get the China Media Capital deal through (it started in March) and some of the finer points are still being finalised, such as whether Nissan will appear on the car this season with a view to a more concentrated involvement from season four onward.
The Techeetah squad gave Motorsport.com outlines of its plans last month – and with Jean-Eric Vergne as lead driver it could be a serious dark horse contender, but probably only in the second half of the season.
Jean-Eric Vergne, DS Virgin Racing Photo by: Spacesuit Media
Venturi Formula E
Car Venturi VM200-FE-02 Drivers Stephane Sarrazin, Maro Engel Days complete 15
Venturi has been working quietly away on their season three package, dubbed the VM200-FE-02.
It is likely to be a refined and very much slimmed down version of its season two package which was, depending on who you spoke to, either 20kgs or 24kgs over the 888kg minimum.
Stephane Sarrazin has conducted the majority of testing on the car which is expected, like many others, to have a two-gear, single motor configuration and re-designed suspension.
The squad has already confirmed that the Frenchman's teammate for season three will be Mercedes GT ace Maro Engel, who reckons his street racing pedigree makes him a good fit for the all-electric series.
Mike Conway, Venturi Photo by: FIA Formula E
Jaguar Racing
Car Jaguar I-Type 1 Drivers Adam Carroll Days complete 15
Jaguar will be under intense scrutiny as the manufacturer readies itself for a first foray into international motorsport since the debacle of its doomed F1 campaign from 2000-2004.
With a healthy budget, second-to-none engineering capabilities, and at least one top-class driver, Jaguar should be right at the front from the off, shouldn’t it?
Well, Formula E isn’t that simple, so getting consistently among Renault, ABT and DS will have to wait for season four. A solid position in the top half of the field in their first season will be the aim.
Jaguar in Formula E is a fantastic coup for the series and the Indian-owned company should be lauded for following their future electric engineering ambitions. With the likes of Craig Wilson (who started his career as Production Manager at Jaguar in 1988), Gary Ekerold, Okan Tur, John Russell and Tim Newton in the team, it will not want for a lack of engineering, sporting and operational skills.
Little in the way of news about its private testing has been available so far, apart from confirmation to Motorsport.com that all 15 days have been used and that the new front wing section and Michelin tyres has been tried.
Expect the man with most experience of the car so far - Adam Carroll - to be at Donington, as he continues to prepare for what could be a long overdue career break. Jaguar are expected to also have up to three other drivers in the cockpit at later this month before a final squad is announced.
Motorsport.com understands that Anthony Davidson, who has been in discussions with the team, is now less likely to take up a race seat.The nations' top intelligence official is declassifying three secret U.S. court opinions showing how the National Security Agency scooped up as many as 56,000 emails annually over three years and other communications by Americans with no connection to terrorism, how it revealed the error to the court and changed how it gathered Internet communications.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper authorized the release Wednesday.
The opinions show that when the NSA reported to the court in 2011 that it was inadvertently collecting as many as 56,000 Internet communications by Americans with no collection to terrorism, the court ordered the NSA to find ways to limit what it collects and how long it keeps it.
According to the Associated Press and newly released documents, the National Security Agency collected thousands of emails belonging to Americans with no ties to terrorism.
Two weeks ago, President Obama reiterated promises that the NSA does not have a domestic spying program during an interview with Jay Leno.
“We don’t have a domestic spying program,” Obama said, according to the media pool report. “What we do have is some mechanisms that can track a phone number or an email address that is connected to a terrorist attack.... That information is useful.”
You know, I think it would be better with more oversight, but there are some things they are doing that I fundamentally think are unconstitutional," Paul said on "Fox News Sunday." "Our founding fathers, when they wrote the Fourth Amendment, said a single warrant goes toward a specific individual and what you want to look for.... The constitution doesn't allow for a single warrant to get a billion phone records.... They basically, I believe, are looking at all of the cell phone calls in America every day."
Earlier this week, Republican Senator Rand Paul said NSA spying on Americans is not only constitutional, but that it can't be "saved" by more government oversight.WASHINGTON -- President Obama has quietly approved guidelines in recent weeks to allow the Pentagon to target Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, broadening previous plans that had limited the military to counterterrorism missions against al Qaeda after this year, U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News.
The president's decisions also allow the military to conduct air support for Afghan operations when needed. Mr. Obama issued the guidelines in recent weeks, as the American combat mission in Afghanistan draws to a close, thousands of troops return home and the military prepares for a narrower counterterrorism and training mission for the next two years.
U.S. Marines, British forces end combat mission in Afghanistan
Flash Points: What's next for Afghanistan after U.S. withdrawal?
Mr. Obama's moves expand on what had been previously planned for next year. One U.S. official said the military could only go after the Taliban if it posed a threat to American forces or provided direct support to al Qaeda, while the latter could be targeted more indiscriminately.
"To the extent that Taliban members directly threaten the United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan or provide direct support to al-Qaeda, however, we will take appropriate measures to keep Americans safe," the official said.
The Taliban's presence in Afghanistan far exceeds that of al Qaeda, adding significance to Mr. Obama's authorization. The president's decision came in response to requests from military commanders who wanted troops to be allowed to continue to battle the Taliban, U.S. officials told The Associated Press.
The New York Times first reported the new guidelines.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that the order the president signed gives the military authority to do three things in 2015:
Protect U.S. forces and coalition partners. This was always going to be part of the mission since U.S. troops always have the right to defend themselves. But that involves more than just firing back in self-defense. If the U.S. detects a group of Taliban or Haqqani fighters preparing to attack American or coalition troops, the U.S. troops can go after them. However, U.S. troops can't conduct offensive operations on any Taliban forces they locate. Those forces have to be threatening U.S. troops. Conduct counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda. This, too, was always going to be part of the mission. It has long been known that within the 9,800 American troops remaining after the end of this year there would be 1,000 to 2,000 special operations forces who would continue to go after al Qaeda and other terrorist networks like Haqqani. U.S. can provide close air support - airstrikes - to Afghan forces in extremis - in other words, in trouble. U.S. air cover will not be a standard part of every Afghan ground operation but will be available if those forces are in extremis.
The decision to expand the military's authority does not impact the overall number of U.S. troops that will remain in Afghanistan. Earlier this year, Mr. Obama ordered the American force presence to be cut to 9,800 by the end of this year, a figure expected to be cut in half by the end of 2015.
The president wants all U.S. troops to be out of Afghanistan a year later, as his presidency draws to a close.
U.S., Afghanistan reach bilateral security agreement
Some of the Obama administration's planning for the post-2014 mission was slowed by a political stalemate in Afghanistan earlier this year. It took months for the winner of the country's presidential election to be certified, delaying the signing of a bilateral security agreement that was necessary in order to keep U.S. forces in the country after December.
In Kabul, officials with the Afghan Defense Ministry declined to comment Saturday, while officials with the presidency could not be reached.
However, Afghan military analyst Jawed Kohistani said the move likely would be welcomed as President Ashraf Ghani's new administration upon taking office immediately signed a deal with the U.S. to allow a residual force of 12,000 foreign troops in the country.
"We have heard from many military officers who are involved in direct fighting with the Taliban and other insurgents that still there is a need for more cooperation, there is need for an ongoing U.S. combat mission and there is need for U.S. air support for the Afghan security forces to help them in their fight against the insurgents," Kohistani said.For at least a month, Apple iCal users have been getting hit with a particularly annoying (and, frankly, ingenious) form of spam, in which they receive invites to events like “Value Brand glasses as low as 19.99” with a URL attached at the bottom. Thanks to a quirk of iCloud and iCal integration, victims receive an email about the invite in their iCloud email; also see the spam invite in their iCal pop-up on their desktop; and even sometimes get reminders on their iPhones about the cheap Oakleys.
It’s unclear what happened to cause the sudden uptick in this form of spam. It’s actually a somewhat old type of spam — users were reporting similar attempts back in 2008. My best guess? A group of Chinese spammers hit upon the idea, had a large email list from somewhere, and leased some time on a botnet to blast out the iCal invites, thus avoiding the pretty sophisticated spam filters in place for email clients nowadays.
If you’ve been getting hit, here’re two methods to stop it, one dead simple but that will cut off your iCloud syncing, and one that’ll still let you use iCloud but requires a bit more legwork.
Let’s start with simple first, which is best if you don’t use your iCloud calendar all that much, but use your desktop calendar quite a bit.
1. Go to your computer’s System Preferences and select iCloud
2. Log into to your account and then unclick, “Use iCloud for contacts, calendars, reminders, notes, and Safari.” (Note: You may need to sign out and then sign back into your iCloud account to get to this screen.) This will mean you won’t sync to iCloud from your desktop, but you also won’t be hit with desktop notifications about cheap Louis Vuitton bags.
But what if you want to keep using your iCloud calendar from your desktop? Then you’re going to have to get a bit more crafty.
1. Don’t dismiss or respond at all to the event invites — all this does is confirm that your email address is indeed active, ensuring you’ll get hit with more spam in the future.
2. Instead, set up a dummy calendar for all the spam invites you’ve gotten so far. Name it whatever you like, and then reclassify all the spam messages you’ve gotten as belonging to that calendar. Next hit “Edit” and then delete the calendar with all the invites about Ugg boots — without the spammers getting any notification about whether you’ve seen the invite or not.
3. Unless you want clearing out spam invites to become a general housecleaning duty, next go to your iCloud calendar on your desktop (you won’t be able to do this from your phone). Hit the gear icon in the lower left-hand side for Preferences and then hit Advanced. Change how you receive notifications from “in-app” to “email.” You’ll still get hit with spam, but it’ll land in your inbox instead of popping up while you’re trying to get work done — and hopefully your email spam filters are a bit better than Apple’s iCloud at spotting spam. This does mean, however, that you’ll need to also stay on top of your inbox a bit more for legit invitations for things that you do want to have on your calendar.
Hopefully, Apple can figure out a way to block the mass invites via iCloud. In the meantime, these are the best workarounds to avoid the whole mess altogether.Kenya Moore is a married woman!
The 46-year-old Real Housewives of Atlanta star twirled down the aisle last weekend, in an intimate beach getaway in St. Lucia surrounded by family and friends, PEOPLE can exclusively confirm.
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Her husband — a businessman she first met a year ago and began dating a few months later — is choosing to stay out of the spotlight for now, his identity being kept private from the press.
“I’m just ecstatic,” the star tells PEOPLE. “This man is the love of my life and I’m so happy to begin our lives together as husband and wife.”
Peter Kramer/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Fans of the reality star might have had a clue of the tropical wedding location based on Moore’s recent Instagram posts — one of a sunset and the other, a beach-side breakfast (where two glasses of champagne, two forks and two pairs of sunglasses can be easily seen).
“All I need,” Moore captioned one shot in hashtag — adding “thankful.”
Moore has been a fixture on RHOA since the show’s fifth season, known for her “Gone with the Wind Fabulous” attitude, her “Moore Manor” home, and her larger than life feuds with Porsha Williams, Phaedra Parks and Shereé Whitfield.
A former Miss USA, Moore’s has exposed her dating life on the hit Bravo series too — dating (and breaking up with) ex-boyfriends Walter Jackson and Matt Jordan over the course of her four seasons on the show, and often talking about her desire to start a family.
RELATED VIDEO: NeNe Leakes Returning to Real Housewives of Atlanta for Season 10!
Moore is expected to return to RHOA for its 10th season, too, filming for which will begin shortly and will include the return of original Housewife NeNe Leakes. While no other official casting decisions have been announced yet, Williams, Whitfield, Kandi Burruss and Cynthia Bailey are all likely to return — while Parks has reportedly been let go.
Kim Zolciak-Biermann — a frenemy of Leakes and fellow original RHOA Housewife — is said to also be returning to the show next season, a source confirms to PEOPLE. She appeared as a guest on the show in the season 9 finale, attending Whitfield’s housewarming party and fighting with Moore.
In addition to RHOA, Moore has had an extensive career as an actress in Hollywood — with appearances in films like Waiting to Exhale and Deliver Us from Eva and roles on TV including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Girlfriends, and In the House. She also appeared in Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens and competed on season 7 of The Celebrity Apprentice.Black Friday has come and gone, Cyber Week is drawing to an end, and you’re broke. It’s ok, you won’t need to spend a single cent to download the eight paid iPhone and iPad apps on sale for free we’ve found for today’s list. You’ll even find a few more freebies if you check back in yesterday’s post.
MUST SEE: 10 free Chrome hacks that will change the way you browse the Internet
These are paid iPhone and iPad apps that have been made available for free for a limited time by their developers. There is no way to tell how long they will be free. These sales could end an hour from now or a week from now — obviously, the only thing we can guarantee is that they were free at the time this post was written. If you click on a link and see a price listed next to an app instead of the word “get,” it is no longer free. The sale has ended. If you download the app, you will be charged.
Tag Journal
Normally $3.99.
Journal/diary, ideal for everyone: students, writers, journalists and travelers will love it! Record your life events, thoughts and ideas with photos, short videos, notes and voice recordings. «If you’re looking for an all-in-one journaling and note taking app, Tag Journal may just be it. Aside from a few interface quirks, it’s probably one of the best journaling apps available, and for those familiar with Markdown, definitely check it out, you’ll be glad you did. » — http://www.imore.com «Outstanding. Tag Journal brings one of the best designed UIs. It brings light and colorful palette, but retains its minimalism. » — http://www.macreview.com «Everyone who enjoys writing needs to have a diary at their fingertips whenever the mood strikes. Tag Journal is the perfect tool for all writers!» — Brett Terpstra. http://www.berttterpstra.com Tag Journal is a universal iOS 8 app, with seamless synchronization to your iPhone and iPad using iCloud. Keep your journal/diary organized using colorful tags to retrieve your events easily. Features:
– Sync via iCloud to iPhone and iPad apps.
– Photos and short videos (7s): shoot on the spot or insert from your camera roll.
– Sound recording
– Notes with time stamp
– Colored Tags
– Colored Notes
– GPS location and Foursquare
– Internal browser with your favorite links
– Full-screen photo mode
– Apply effects on photos with Aviary
– Search by date or by text
– Distraction-free writing interface
– Write text in full screen mode with Undo/Redo
– Word and character count
– Merge, Move and Attach Notes and text entries
– Multiple elements selection
– Find and replace
– Advance by character and by word easily
– Markdown Syntax Highlighting
– Two text Previews
– Accessory ‘Spanish/Rest of the World’ keyboard with most-used symbols
– Markdown made easy for applying styles, quotes and lines
– Email in PDF, Markdown, HTML and Print
– Send to iMessages
– Send to Facebook and Twitter
– Passlock (may be different for each device)
– View PDF
– Open PDF in…
– Open Markdown in…
Download Tag Journal
Video Shrinker
Normally $2.99.
Just one minute of HD video can take up over 40 MB of space! 4K video can use 375 MB per minute! Use Video Shrinker to decrease your video file sizes by 80% or more. – Free tons of space!
– Easily Identify large videos.
– Fine tune video export settings to get the quality & file size you want.
Download Video Shrinker
Shoot by ProCam
Normally $1.99.
Shoot by ProCam is a powerful manual camera designed with the photography purist in mind. Shoot offers a distilled camera experience through a streamlined UI, pro specs, and blazing fast performance. If you’re looking for the best manual camera controls and the highest photo quality, then Shoot is the app for you. FEATURES – Manual exposure, shutter speed, ISO, focus, and white balance controls.
– Tap location accurate manual focus assist / zoom.
– Unprecedented manual adjustments precision achieved through a scroll and steppers system inspired by DSLR cameras.
– Highest quality photos with uncompressed lossless TIFF file format support.
– Intelligent 3-shot HDR.
– Live light level histogram.
– Live shutter speed, ISO, focus, and WB values.
– Selftimer / shutter delay.
– Thirds grid and horizontal tiltmeter.
– Fill torch light.
– Metadata / EXIF reader.
– Direct photo sharing – Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Messages, and Mail.
– Today Widget for quick launch from the lock screen. NOTE – Only 4:3 aspect ratio supported.
– Video recording not supported.
– Aperture on iPhone is fixed and cannot be manually adjusted.
– Shoot is not a universal app and has not been optimized for iPad.
Download Shoot by ProCam
WriteRight
Normally $3.99.
WriteRight is the best writing app with countless synonyms, antonyms and phraseology for iPad, iPad Mini and iPhone, built upon Markdown. It makes smart replacements preserving conjugation, gender and number. «WriteRight is unmistakably a writing app. » — Gabriel Ponzanelli from http://www.disturbancesinthewash.net «I like to do my second round of proof-reading in WriteRight to change expressions that I use too much and spice up my writing replacing words with synonyms/antonyms I should use more» — Federico Vittici from http://www.macstories.net «Simply, spectacular. There’s really nothing not to like about WriteRight. This is a full featured text editor which comes with ability to help you enhance your writing style. — http://www.macreview.com « Everyone who enjoys writing needs to have a text editor like WriteRight, I offer my personal recommendation to check it out!» — Brett Terpstra WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT WRITERIGHT? WriteRight offers you synonyms or antonyms together with phraseology. WriteRight recognizes conjugated words, either feminine or plural, or in different tenses and persons in the case of verbs. WriteRight replaces words with their conjugated synonym counterparts, matching gender and number, person and tense. WriteRight is capable of identifying and replacing not only single words, but multiple-word expressions, phrasal verbs, adjectivals, adverbials and prepositional phrases, even in their conjugated forms. INNOVATIVE APPROACH FOCUSED ON PROVIDING ENRICHED CONTENT IN ENGLISH/SPANISH: – Synonyms, Antonyms & Phraseology frequently updated and always at your fingertips. – Comfortable Pinch to Zoom increases/decreases Menlo editor font up to 4 sizes. – Advanced Previews: Continuous, US Letter, DIN A4 and Manuscript US Letter and Manuscript DIN A4, including Helvetica Neue Light, Georgia and Times New Roman typefaces within classic Manuscript parameters for writers and publishers. (iPad version) – Full Markdown support. CUSTOMIZED KEYBOARD: – Optional keyboard with frequently-used symbols & powerful multifunctional Markdown keys. (iPad version) WIDE RANGE OF GESTURES AND FUNCTIONS: – Previews with page numbering and time stamp (iPad version)
– iCloud folders in colors chosen by the user
– Select and transfer as many files as you want into one selected folder, easily and quickly
– Increase/decrease editor font by 4 sizes
– Find and replace
– Go to start/end of document with gesture (iPad version)
– Quick navigation through long texts (iPad version)
– Advance by character and by word with ease
– Undo/redo
– Character/word count SAVE AND SYNC: – Seamless sync between iPad and iPhone
– Seamless iCloud/Dropbox integration
– Saves instantly and automatically in iCloud/Dropbox EXPORT: – Send.txt,.md, and.rtf by email
– Copy.txt,.md and.rtf
– Print in US Letter, DIN A4, and in Manuscript in both those formats (iPad version)
– Generate and send PDF
– Share document using link
Download WriteRight
TitleFx
Normally $1.99.
Make a statement with your photos by adding dynamic text. TitleFx makes it easy to get stunning results with the most full featured text on photo app available for the iPhone and iPad. Start with over 50 wonderful fonts. You can also pick from 200 fun symbols! You have complete control over font size, position, rotation, character and line spacing, and transparency. All adjustments use interactive slider controls that give you direct control and stay out of your way. Select a color and then pick from a dazzling array of text effects, to make your text standout. These effects are unique to TitleFx and include simple drop shadows and gradients, as well as emboss, cutout and chrome effects. You can even render any font as an outline. There are also tasteful text backgrounds. Make as many text objects as you want. Managing them is as simple as touching the one you wish to edit. You can change anything at any time, but a full undo/redo mechanism is available. Your compositions are also save in a Recent Edits list so that you may go back at any time and continue editing. You can also save a favorite layout which can be used as your custom starting point, or for watermarking. Export to the usual social media suspects or at full resolution to your Photo Album. Specifics:
– 50+ wonderful fonts
– size, position, rotation, character/line spacing, and transparency controls
– color picker
– 30 awesome text effects
– crop editor
– undo/redo
– elegant interface
– saved edit sessions
– export to everything
– export at full resolution
Download TitleFx
My Folder 2
Normally $0.99.
My Folder is the best way to manage your local files.
View files:
My Folder can open the most popular file formats. Shortcuts:
Access your favorite folders directly from the home screen. With a few taps you can easily create a shortcut for a folder. My Folder Connect:
Access all the files from your computer using a wifi connection. My Folder is an universal app, available for iPhone and iPad.
Download My Folder 2
PicVid
Normally $4.99.
PicVid – edit photos from videos with great tools, from filters, effects to stickers and text, all you need is bundled in. – Extract photos from video
– Crop, rotate, and straighten your photos
– Share with friends
– Adjust brightness, contrast, and saturation
– Gorgeous photo effects
– Amazing filters
– Tons of fun stickers
– Focus mode
– Sharpen and blur
– Add text
– Crop image
– Dynamic ToneCurve
Download PicVid
YConvert PRO
Normally $0.99.
YConvert PRO is the fastest way possible for converting units. YConvert PRO converts hundreds of units from different categories including Angle, Data, Energy, Force, Length, Mass, Pressure, Power, Speed, Temperature, Time and many more to come! YConvert PRO was developed to be fast, accurate, lightweight, designed for iOS8 and yet easy to use.
It also has settings to satisfy your needs.
The built in calculator lets you easily use YConvert PRO without the need to exit the application for calculations. YConvert Pro has no advertisements at all! So,what are you waiting for? Download YConvert PRO and start converting units now! Because your feedback is very important to us pleas contact us if there are any conversions you need that are missing. Any suggestions are welcome!
We will add more units with our frequent updates!
Download YConvert PRO
Ninja Stick Man Fighter
Normally $4.99.
Ninja Stick Fighter, Stick ‘Kungfu’ is to show.
At the core of the martial arts lies simplicity, and focus.
This is an innovative fighting game. All this is funny enough. By using full physics based animation system to simulate character’s actions.
You can control the Little Ninja, fighting and jump with his little buddy. The ninja stick man will react by real and funny actions. The simplicity of your Ninja stick-man avatar opens up a world of combat precision, in which each move must be timed for the perfect kill. No any inner purchases. You can enjoy it full.
Download Ninja Stick Man FighterThrough the power of smart sensors and the magic of the cloud, children being parched is on its way to becoming a thing of the past — at least, if the Gulülu team has anything to say in the matter. The company’s bottle, launching on Kickstarter today, is the newest, most high-tech weapon in the battle to get kids to imbibe enough liquids throughout the day.
The idea is to turn the act of drinking water into an integrated game. The water bottle has a small screen built in, and additional sensors mean that shaking two bottles in close proximity to each other make the pets “friends,” enabling them to interact.
The bottles have rechargeable batteries and a wireless charging dock to keep the battery topped up. The company claims the Gulülu will stay juiced for four days before another recharge is required.
The bottles use multiple embedded sensors to measure not just how much water is disappearing from the bottle throughout the day, but also to attempt to determine whether the kid is actually rehydrating, or trying to be cheeky, pouring the water out in the flower bed outside the school. The idea is that only actually drinking is rewarded, and that the digital pets thrive best if the bottle’s owners use them as intended.
My gut tells me that Gulülu is an expensive solution to a non-existent problem.
For parents, in addition to having a chance to try to influence their children to drinking more water, there’s an additional incentive: The Gulülu syncs with the cloud and lets parents monitor how their kids are getting on via the iOS and Android apps. Parents can also schedule “sleep” or “school” modes, during which the pets go to sleep and become unresponsive, so the pets don’t become a distraction during sleeping or learning hours.
Gulülu has prototypes ready to go, and today launched a Kickstarter campaign to get the product through the final production phase, with early-bird pricing starting at $89, followed by regular-priced Gulülu bottles at $99 each. The company estimates a shipping date of September, and the recommended retail price will be $129 once the products start making an appearance on shelves.
It’s an interesting product, and it’s easy to imagine a world where every child in your vicinity is running around shaking their Gulülu bottles at each other and the product turns into a huge hit. For that to happen, however, two things need to click into alignment. Parents need to both feel that hydration is a big enough problem to solve and decide that a $129 water bottle is the right way of going about tackling the issue. My gut tells me that Gulülu is an expensive solution to a non-existent problem. Time will tell, and it’ll be interesting to keep an eye on the Kickstarter campaign either way.Image copyright PA Image caption The miners' strike 1984: Could we really see similar bitter protests over fracking?
Lancashire County Council versus Downing Street hardly seems like a fair fight.
But these are the two protagonists in the next battle over fracking in the UK. There can only be one winner.
Earlier this year, councillors in Lancashire rejected Cuadrilla's application to drill a handful of shale gas exploratory wells. There would be too much noise and the impact on the landscape would be too great, they said.
The decision did not go down well in Downing Street.
For the Conservative government has made it abundantly clear it wants to see fracking in the UK as soon as possible - hence the raft of new licences issued on Thursday.
"Shale gas is a fantastic opportunity for the UK," says a Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) spokesman. By its reckoning, the industry could be worth billions of pounds, creating more than 60,000 jobs and increasing the UK's energy security.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Cuadrilla was fracking before a government moratorium was imposed in 2011
For this reason, the government will do everything it can to help clear the obstacles to widespread fracking.
It has already removed many. For example, if local councils take too long deciding on fracking applications such as Cuadrilla's, it will take the decision out of their hands after 16 weeks.
It has also changed the rules on property rights - fracking companies no longer need permission from landowners to drill horizontally deep underground. And just this week, ministers pushed through plans to allow fracking under national parks.
Perhaps most importantly, the government has decided to invoke long-held powers to decide planning appeals on matters deemed of national importance.
So Cuadrilla's appeal against Lancashire County Council's decision will not be decided by a planning inspector, but by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Greg Clark.
No prizes for guessing which side he'll come down on, say environmentalists.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Fracking companies argue the disruption from drilling is not as great as many fear
No wonder energy expert Prof Paul Stevens at the Chatham House think tank says he's "quite sure central government will approve [Cuadrilla's application]".
Long road
But this doesn't mean we're about to see fracking wells springing up across the UK - far from it.
For a start, the planning process remains incredibly onerous. Cuadrilla, for example, first received a fracking licence in 2008 - those companies awarded licences later are just embarking on a very long and trying journey.
And even Cuadrilla still has a long way to go. If the company wins its appeal, as seems inevitable, there is still a huge amount of work to do.
The company will have to meet planning conditions and build the fracking site - by its own reckoning drilling could commence towards the end of next year, at best.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's David Shukman explains how fracking works
Then follows an extended period of what is known as flow testing, the results of which are unlikely to be known before 2018 - late 2017 at a pinch.
If the results are positive, then Cuadrilla needs to submit a planning application for commercial production, rather than exploratory drilling. This effectively means that "planning permissions and permitting have to be sought again," says Cuadrilla's chief executive Francis Egan.
This involves obtaining permits from a bewildering number of bodies, including the Environment Agency, the Mineral Planning Authority, the Health and Safety Executive, the Oil & Gas Authority and Decc.
If everything goes to plan, Mr Egan says "the likelihood is that commercial production would begin at the end of this decade".
The so-called dash for gas is clearly a complete misnomer.
Court referral
But planning is just one of many obstacles to fracking in the UK - even if all frackers gain all the necessary permits to drill, there is no guarantee we'll see meaningful amounts of shale gas production in the UK.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Proposals for fracking in the UK are deeply controversial for many
For a start, the economics of shale gas may not stack up given the low price of gas. In Europe, the gas price is linked to the oil price, and many experts believe the oil price will remain low for many years.
Meanwhile the question of property rights has not been fully resolved - associated horizontal drilling may be fine, but fracking companies still need |
taking on this new-old challenge with Team Europe. He hadn't planned a drill in three years. But he needn't have worried. The switch has been flipped back on, the proverbial riding a bike, and Krueger isn't the only one who is pleased.
"There's an enthusiasm about him that's invigorating," Maurice said. "It's exciting to be around somebody that bright with that much energy."
Though he wouldn't have believed it, he can see where Krueger is coming from when he calls himself not an X's and O's guy, having experienced his interest in people, in human interaction, in figuring out how to get the most out of everyone and every situation, in taking the long-term view that often gets lost for NHL coaches.
"Ralph's an open book," Maurice said. "For that it's been a completely one-sided enjoyable experience for me. I've tried to -'steal everything I can' isn't the right word because he's offered it up. He's just great in terms of sharing his ideas about the game. I told him, hey, I'm stealing that, I'm stealing that. There's some thievery going on."
Semmens, for his part, is flying to Toronto to finally check out this whole ice hockey thing. He had seen Krueger for the past couple of years, worked with him daily at Southampton, but he didn't really know this other side. So, as he said recently with a verbal shrug, "Well, I just thought if he's going to do this thing, then I ought to come and check it out and get my head around it."
It might be his last chance.
With the exposure to this new road, to the heights of the chairmanship, Krueger isn't sure if he'll ever go back to coaching after the World Cup is over. This could be it for him. He hadn't initially seen the move as giving up on hockey, as forsaking the sport that had gotten him to this point.
"I'm chairman/president now, much more involved with the corporate arm than a president would be in sports in North America," Krueger said. "So I'm de facto owner in my role. And that is something where your process is so much more global, big picture, patient with the small steps, compared to the world I came from. So this is an education for me that can take me back to hockey if I'd like to.
"Probably not into coaching, this is probably the last gig of that I would expect. But I never even thought that I was quitting hockey at that time because it was such a crazy project that I didn't know if I'd last six months."
Perhaps being a general manager in the NHL could be in his future. Perhaps he'll remain in the Premier League for the rest of his career. He's already working on his next book.
He wouldn't want to put a limit on where he can go, though. He still has too much energy, and there's no telling how he'll use it.Daniel Tomelin has some exciting news — and he hopes you can read this without giggling. He may have the longest cucumber in the world.
The slender green fruit — yes, it's a fruit — measures 44.5 inches in a straight line from tip to tail, according to the most recent reckoning by an independent gardening expert.
"If I was to try to stretch it out a little more, I'm pretty sure I could get it to 45," said Tomelin, a Kelowna gardener. He's hoping to make one last official measurement before cutting the cucumber down, but it needs to happen pretty soon.
"I am so nervous that I'm going to go out there and slugs will have torn it apart. I have it off the ground, because slugs were starting to lick at it and etch their initials into it," he said.
The current Guinness World Record holder is a Welshman whose colossal cuke was measured at 41.5 inches in 2011.
In order to literally preserve his achievement, Tomelin has built a fermentation vessel, and plans to pickle the cuke with the intention of claiming the world's longest pickle, as well.
"Maybe I'll sell it to some hotdog manufacturer that wants to make yard-long hotdogs," he said.
He credits using deep mulch for the cucumber's incredible span. But specimens of this variety, known as the painted serpent, usually coil instead of growing in a straight line.
"Just by some freak it was dangling in outer space without anything underneath it and it just decided to go straight," Tomelin said.
He added that it would likely take up to 12 weeks before he hears back from the people at Guinness.
blindsay@vancouversun.com
Twitter.com/bethanylindsayNothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die
-Matsuo Bashō
After years of self-imposed isolation, literally having never left his parents’ house, a seventeen-year-old kid in Japan finally walked outside. He was known to the legendary Japanese Internet forum 2channel as Neomugicha. A Dadaist short circuit in the name, perhaps since the name literally means Neo-BarleyTea. Neomugicha hopped on a bus in the town of Saga on the island of Kyushu. After forty minutes on the bus, he stood up, pulled knives out of his jacket and hijacked the bus holding twenty people hostage for fifteen hours. He killed a passenger and stabbed three women in the neck.
After the incident that took place sometime in the year 2000, a panicking Japanese government underlined that there may be up to a million kids just like him: he is a Hikikomori, part of the lost generation of Japanese kids, post-modern hermits, a lost generation of young recluses who never leave their homes and rely on their parents to survive.
Copycats followed from Neouuroncha (Neo-OolongTea) to Neomugishu (Neo-BarleyWine), a stream of 2channel users tried to come up with their own version of potential sensationalist attacks. This is also where the social stigmata and early hysteria around the Hikikomori started to take root.
2channel is the place where a parallel Japan comes to life. It is almost as if the country jumps into a second skin and reinvents itself while engaging with a seemingly endless range of topics. Its impact on popular culture and opinion is of gargantuan proportions. From inciting mass suicide, beating the stock market, imposing (and succeeding) Nike to take down their billboards, all the way to weird erotic parodies, or joyful analysis of poop’s patterns, nothing is taboo. Absolutely everything is covered in the forum. If the Internet became the place to reinvent oneself through the shelter of anonymity, Japan’s 2channel forums are the places where the concept is pushed to the point of vertigo.
And the Hikikomori’s feeble thirst for life is often born and exhausted within it.
In one of those Tokyo spring days where cherry petals dance madly in the air turning the whole city in a gigantic-verging-kitsch snowball, I walk into my classroom at the University of Tokyo. Today we are discussing Kenkyo, the Japanese virtue of modesty. We try to unlock the intricacies of Japanese cross-cultural communications. My students are engaging and brilliant and as always I am amazed by the amount of insight they are ready to share. After an intense two-hour discussion, I decide to end the class on a light note. “Let us not be Kenkyo for once, forget about your ‘modesty state of mind’ (as one of my students put it) and tell me something you do better than everybody”. They laugh, some turn red and then, in order to avoid straight answers, I hear all kinds of spin offs “I am very good at being the ugliest in the class”, “I am very good at knowing everything about obscure sports”, “I am great at elevating others”, “I am the best at being uglier than the ugliest in the class”. And then one student began with “I am good at… at… at…” He could not articulate it. After a few awkward moments of silence he stands up, goes to the farthest corner of the classroom and mimicking the presence of four walls with his arms he says, “I am great at isolating myself.”
In a country where social misfits see their weirdest, and sometimes, sweetest desires fulfilled by an ever growing industry that commodifies everything from manga massage parlors to howls cafes, the Hikikomori becomes an obscure alternative to mainstream society.
Illustration by Yuta Onoda for Wall Street Journal
Image via Monty Sponge blog
An identikit of an average Hikikomori: likely a school dropout, may or may not have specific skills, most likely unemployed unless he has an online gig of sort, lives in his room in his parents' house, never steps out of the house, spends the day daydreaming, reading, roaming the internet, flipping TV channels, floating in his room.
And the typical image: a meal left at the door by his parents. Another: the room’s window covered with all sorts of rags and papers to avoid light filtering through. This self-reclusive nest is strewn with few possessions: books, video games, music instruments, plastic bottles, a random aquarium, a TV set, an empty bento box. In their enclosed space objects come to life and assume their own order and independence; becoming worlds within worlds. And here resides the Hikikomori like a mythological god in his own tomb.
The Otaku Connection
To some, the Hikikomori is an extension of the Otaku culture: somebody self-consumed in his interests, a compulsive collector of anime and manga memorabilia, lacking basic social skills and with a skeleton in the closet: the Akihabara Massacre. In 2008 a man killed seven people and stabbed ten more in the heart of Akihabara, a neighborhood in Tokyo entirely devoted to anime and manga, ground zero of Otaku culture.
For a country that is largely atheist, going to Akihabara is the closest experience to going on a religious pilgrimage in the middle of the vertical madness of Tokyo. After the massacre, just like with the Neomugicha incident, a ripple effect of social stigma hit the Otaku community. Much like the Hikikomori, Otaku is one of those puzzling Japanese post-modern cultural expressions. Often middle aged men can be seen at street events awkwardly dancing in sync to improbable songs sung by semi-improvised teenaged girls with short skirts and a Lolita aftertaste. You can see them incarnated in the ultimate adoring fans of the idol girls groups AKB48 or the Takarazuka. Both groups are entirely made out of women, the first are adolescents projecting a myth of purity, the second a theatre group rotating around an all-women cast interpreting men’s roles. The fans take this playfulness around gender very seriously finding the fictional context a safe zone of acceptance of gender bending that is otherwise pretty invisible in Japanese society.
The Akihabara neighborhood of Tokyo, a popular gathering site for otaku.
The complexity of the Otaku obsessions with collecting and idolizing is said to have a cultural relation, a crossroad of sort, to the Hikikomori. Both are born out of marginality and a desire for self-expression beyond the given boundaries of Japanese society and some Otaku indeed turn Hikikomori. But the Hikikomori tap into a larger sphere of revolt and, at times, self-destruction.
Within the Hikikomori context, marginality finds its expression in the ultimate slow deliberate implosion, social withdrawal, or better reclusiveness that becomes a spark for an involuntary form of counter-culture. This instance of rebellion is born within a desperate and genuine desire to fade and yet be alive and, most of all, connected while being disconnected.
Yes, the Hikikomori is the grand ball of contradictions, tomorrow’s dreams and nightmares are calcified together. For some Hikikomori, technology becomes a final connection to life, one that is manipulated by a fantasy that, while sinking into pain, it frees itself in suspended narrations of virtual love, communities and cyber identities. Implosions, distance from the over-exposure of contemporary life, degree zero of human interactions, anonymous virtual connection, giving form to sexless love, tearing apart imposed models of beauty; the Hikikomori find their center in the fluctuation of these narratives.
Our consumer universe thrives on the addictive mind. The greatest achievement of our schizophrenic contemporary culture is the selling of distraction; while it claims to love life, it starves it with super imposed addictions. The Hikikomori spark out of the in-between space of this specific culture of addiction and distraction. It is almost as if they inhabit the nowhere where we all come from, tapping into that suspended space of non-action that from time to time keeps us company. The fundamental difference is that they make it the center of their lives.
Seclusion as a National Foundation
It may be compelling to notice that self-seclusion is not new to Japanese history. The nation even institutionalized it during Tokugawa shogunate with its Sakoku edict in 1635, the closing to the outside world and the entire nation entering two centuries of semi-isolation. Japan’s love affair with isolation went as far as producing a literary genre, the Heian Period’s Recluse Literature with masterpieces like Yoshida Kenkō’s Essays on Idleness, Kamo no Chōmei’s An Account of a Ten-Foot-Square Hut and poems by Saigyō Hōshi point to a fascination to these ideas. These maverick thinkers and poets were unplugging from the heaviness of societal duties in a radical way, well beyond the tendency to join a Buddhist monastery. Chōmei writes:
Those who are powerful are filled with greed; and those who have no protectors are despised. Possessions bring many worries; in poverty there is sorrow. He who asks another's help becomes his slave; he who nurtures others is fettered by affection. He who does not, appears deranged. Wherever one may live, whatever work one may do, is it possible even for a moment to find a haven for the body or peace for the mind? (…)
Knowing myself and the world, I have no ambitions and do not mix in the world. I seek only tranquility; I rejoice in the absence of grief. (Trans. Donald Keene)
In Japan, renouncing the world does not seem to be only a human affair. The Hikikomori have their own foundational Goddess. In the Shinto tradition we find the myth of Amaterasu - a sun Goddess who withdrew and hid in a cave leaving the world in darkness. Amaterasu is the bright sun we find symbolically represented in the Japanese flag. The first Emperor of Japan declared descent from her light, but it is her darkness that has been claimed by the Hikikomori. Afraid and concerned for her brother’s tyrannical behavior, Amaterasu at some point is said to have abandoned the kingdom of her light and embraced the shadows of a rock cave, where she remained cloistered until a scheme organized by other Gods and Goddesses lured her to come out. Today many Hikikomori use her name and its variations as online aliases. The clash could not have been greater: a foundational myth for both the nation and its ultimate outsiders.
The Clinical Hypothesis
Dr. Tamaki Saitō is the person responsible for the initial clinical understanding of the phenomenon. In his book Adolescence Without End, Saitō points out that this phenomenon cannot be defined just as a form of depression. He also seems to be particularly concerned with the episodes when the Hikikomori turn violent.
The phenomenon begins in the late eighties when the Japanese economic bubble burst but then soon entered a boom that continues until today. According to the first surveys of the Japanese government, at the beginning there used to be at least 700,000 Hikikomori, mostly men but women were also affected. This number is growing. It is thought that the cases among women may be under estimated because of the social acceptance of women to stay home, making their potential withdraw invisible.
As time went by the average age shifted, the first studies in the late eighties pointed out to about 21 years of age. However, now it is believed that the average Hikikomori is around 31 years old. The Hikikomori do not seem to be linked to any specific disorder. For some, the symptoms of Asperger's play a role, others lean on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM4) and point to a more generic "social avoidance disorder," but there is no cohesive diagnosis. In dealing with the issue of Japanese social withdrawal, experts tackled behavioral and psychiatric questions; from school non-attendance, violence at home, the lack of social skills all the way to basic phobias of interpersonal relations and apathy. Much emphasis has been given to Erickson’s Identity Diffusion Syndrome. In his work, Dr. Akhtar helps us to unlock the syndrome breaking it down into six basic traits: “1) contradictory character traits, 2) temporal discontinuity in the self, 3) lack of authenticity, 4) feelings of emptiness, 5) gender dysphoria, and 6) inordinate ethnic and moral relativism.” Indeed many of these pointers are important to contextualize and start to understand such an acute widespread social muddle. But keeping in mind these crucial perimeters, as time goes by it is becoming increasingly clear that beyond a few cases with an underlying psychiatric condition, the majority of cases have roots in the social sphere. It is also starting to become apparent that not every Hikikomori is violent and that the early social stigma linked to those early extreme cases needs to be addressed.
Can we question the Hikikomori phenomenon beyond these given perameters? Can we go past the first psychological/sociological analysis that accompanied the early signs of the phenomenon? Is there a connection to language?
Cultural Frameworks
It has been said to the point of redundancy that Japan is a sort of Galapagos of culture, from tradition to hyper contemporary trends, what happens in Japan seems to be grounded in a unique sensitivity directly anchored to both the geography of the nation and the political need and desire to be sheltered. In this sense it is essential to place the Hikikomori phenomenon within defining cultural and historical tenets in Japan. So on one hand it is crucial to point out to a culture bound syndrome, what seems to be a specific ancestral fear of interpersonal communications born within the specificity of the Japanese experience, (Taijin kyofusho) and on the other it is also essential to adventure into new leaps.
Here is one of the many cultural short-circuits for this lost generation: the Japanese concept of Gambari, meaning to do one’s best and endure difficult situations in order to achieve one’s goals. It is considered one of the highest virtues in Japan, and it is one against which the very essence of the Hikikomori clashes definitively.
The concept seemed to have reached new inaccessible levels of muscularity with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Abenomics, an aggressive hyper-productive soul-defining economic policy that tried to pull Japan out of its decades long recession. Japan defines identity as an extension of the association with groups, from the company for which one works all the way to the kind of hobby one undertakes (and the Japanese bring the whole concept of “hobby” to unreachable levels of professional madness with both jaw dropping talent and consumer obsession with gear.) So the withdrawal from society can be read as an attempt to escape this collective understanding of identity. Now matching this national inclination with Abe’s attempt to reach hyper productivity implies inflating this specific form of alienation to new levels. The potential societal rewards that come with the Gambari spirit through cozy feelings of belonging and the direct contribute to the nation’s struggle, represent for the Hikikomori an initial severance from the community. This appeal to productivity becomes a strong fertilizer for the concept of Gambari. It is easy to imagine how it could lead to further estrangement and isolation along with a potential new generation of Hikikomori.
This specific crossroad links directly to another defining concept when it comes to Japanese sensitivity, Sekentei, loosely translatable as reputation, a sort of social appearance but a specific one that rotates around the psychological pressure that comes from within the community. Often the Hikikomori stem out of a refusal of this concept. If we were to trace back the beginning of the isolating process, for some it is probably those defining moments in which Sekentei, again a respectability of sort, was lost or scarred at some point in their lives. This is often traced back to school incidents or episodes of bullying. In the generalized understanding of Sekentei, the withdrawal from social interactions and its corollary of seclusion implies yet a new layer of loss of this sense of respectability. This new tear effectively creates further distance between the Hikikomori and mainstream society. The overall concept of belonging is devastated by over imposed layers of meaning and cultural understandings of one’s place in society. In this sense the Hikikomori is effectively trapped in a cage of social constructionism.
This clash crystalizes in the concept of Aimai. In Japanese the word Aimai covers the grey zone of ambiguity, obscurity, indistinctness in every day interactions and communications. The Japanese are generally tolerant of ambiguity and often dwell on it. Ambiguity is said to be a crucial tool when it comes to avoiding conflicts and, by extension, it fosters harmony. But in the Hikikomori context this zone of ambiguity is the foundational pillar that pushes progressively into the obscurity and indistinctness integral to the phenomenon’s roots. In other words Aimai once inserted into this new post-modern context, becomes the seed that leads into the larger and darker frame of the Hikikomori.
Vagueness here becomes crucial in creating a rapture that will eventually lead to withdrawal. Stemming out of these problematic cultural hiccups, this secluded generation found shelter in a sort of resolute inconclusiveness, a complexified form of inconclusiveness that puts distance between them and convenience; between them and the pre-programmed societal duty born within the allure of convenience.
In response to an article that appeared in Japan Today that once again underlined the clichés of violent Hikikomori, a reader launched into a confused and moving stream of consciousness:
“I am a Hikikomori. I have been for a number of years. I really do not like this 'tough-love' business at all! We have become like this due to mounting stress and pressures! The education system really needs to go to the hangar for a complete overhaul. Seriously. The rote memorization and monotonous manner of teaching is so outdated! It really is little wonder many of us turn Hikikomori! I could have chosen crime or worse, suicide. But I didn't! I chose self-incarceration where I live. It is lonely, boring, sad, no love, no sex, and as we humans need contact with other people, I will be the first to admit that it is a damn shame to have to be forced into this position. Most of us like myself included are non-violent. It is a shame to hear and learn that some of us have resorted to violence. We need more critical thinking sort of education, with a greater flexibility and tolerance. That is the Buddhist way of doing things. Perhaps our education system lost that end. PLEASE stop blaming us! We have been victimized by YOUR system! We are your children! We are indeed the future of Japan! Thank you!”
The reference to the educational system and its failures should also be at the center of any attempt to unlock this enigma. Standardized, strict and verging-on-inhuman entrance exams are only the tip of an iceberg that makes the idea that “students should compete against each other” central to teaching practices. A theory reinforced by the “grading on a curve” system where teachers are forced to squeeze and adjust grades often at the expense of those very students who do not abide to the survival of the fittest tour-de-force that is imposed on them. A pedagogical boomerang that not only disregards decades of critical pedagogy, but ends up being one important reason for these young students to turn Hikikomori.
Also interesting is the appeal to this idea of being the future of Japan, particularly intense here given how insanely rapidly the population is shrinking: it is predicted that people over 65 and above will make up about 40 percent of the total Japanese population by 2060. Not only that, the government forecasts that Japan’s population, about 127 millions at the moment, will decrease to around one third over the next 50 years. This would mean that there will be just about 43 million Japanese by 2110. The Japanese have been drilled with this foreshadowed nightmare future scenario to the point of redundancy.
The Hikikomori in Book and Film
In the book Shutting Out the Sun by Michael Zielenziger, one passage is particularly striking. A mother trying to unlock the mystery that surrounded her son and the seclusion he chose for himself says, “Hikikomori are kids who value the intangibles (…) they can see the intangibles but cannot speak out because there is no place in Japanese society that allows them to. So a person who challenges, or makes a mistake, or thinks for himself, either leaves Japan or becomes a Hikikomori”. That “no place” is forcefully carved out within the house and within oneself; the “intangible” that a pragmatic society does not value, those moments of suspension, vacuums that we are ready to fill with hyper activity as opposed to liberating them into the non-action of the imaginative power. If we play, and limping along, we lean on the idea that the unconscious is not only within ourselves but also that there is an unconscious generated within society, the Hikikomori can be understood as the materialization of our societal unconscious.
The Hikikomori phenomenon is now finding a form of narrative legitimacy in cinema, manga and pop culture. It is creating its own iconography. The novel Welcome to NHK (acronym for Nihon Hikikomori Kyōkai or The Japanese Hikikomori Association) plays with the name of Japan national broadcasting giant (NHK) and a story of a conspiracy to create the Hikikomori. The novel became a manga series and a twenty-four episodes anime series. Since then Hikikomori characters multiplied in anime and manga: Rozen Maiden, Serial Experiments Lain, Tatami Galaxy, Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day, to name a few. We now also have a Hikikomori Pokémon, dozens of blogs, some like the Hikikomori Traveler even overflow into straight forward oxymoron, and most of all several movies, a few random titles: Tokyo!, Left Handed, Tokyo Plastic and the recent American Hikikomori. In the west in the past three years at least three novels came out tapping into the Hikikomori narrative, Kevin Kuhn wrote his Hikikomori, Jeff Backhaus’s Hikikomori and the Rental Sister, and in Germany Milena M. Flasar wrote Ich nannte ihn Krawatte (I Called him Necktie.)
Postmodern Hermits
Given this enlarging context, the Hikikomori term is rapidly becoming a trope that ignites different meanings. The initial understanding limited to a clinical analysis may start to be obsolete or, at the very least, it needs to be expanded beyond this first framework. Hikikomori now dances around concepts of counter-culture, hermitage, a sort of sweet awareness of being adrift as much as around the sphere of potential psychological disorders. The word redefines the borders of previous understandings of isolation. So self-inflicted painful isolation becomes a confused extension of spiritual practices and the hyper connectivity that comes with computers nullifies the idea of isolation as degree zero of experience. It is in these juxtapositions of concepts that are apparently not in dialogue, that lies something crucial to unlock such a specific contemporary sensitivity, one that goes well beyond the extreme cases making the headlines. While tackling issues of revolt, the philosopher Julia Kristeva underlines “when revolt exists our spectacle oriented society marginalizes it as one of its tolerated alibis.” And so it is that the Hikikomori is instantly turned into a scarecrow; but while it is marginalized, the multiplication of media outlets gives it back to us in its diverse incarnations; its reinvention is mostly done without intention.
Extreme withdraw challenges the concept of memory; as years turn into decades memory is formed within four walls and a potential computer connection. Gaston Bachelard in his The Poetic of Space points to an essential overlapping of personal history and ancestral memory, one that can give us new keys to further understand the complexity of the Hikikomori:
“If beyond memories, we pursue our dreams to their very end, in this pre-memory it is as though nothingness caressed and penetrated being, as though it gently unbound the ties of being. We ask ourselves if what has been, was. Have facts really the value that memory gives them? (…) Did they ever exist? Something unreal seeps into the reality of the recollections that are on the borderline between our own personal history and an indefinite pre-history (…) thus, on the threshold of our space, before the era of our own time, we hover between awareness of being and loss of being. And the entire reality of memory becomes spectral.”
Alone locked within four walls, “hovering between awareness of being and loss of being” the Hikikomori creates a new context where “facts” lose value and “nothingness caresses and penetrates being.” It is within this concept of memory that the apocalyptic vision of the Hikikomori takes root. In The Writing of the Disaster, Maurice Blanchot underlines something crucial: “The disaster is related to forgetfulness – forgetfulness without memory, the motionless retreat of what has not been treated – the immemorial perhaps...” The “motionless retreat” and the “immemorial” as the ultimate scare: cultural extinction. A fear that, given the numbers on the shrinking population mentioned earlier, permeates Japanese society. The ghost of the collective loss of memory dances around the country. Japan’s exponential love for consuming accelerated this process with the multiplication of desires and commodities. At the same time the Japanese government seems to be unwilling to connect the dots between over consuming and what it is left behind in the process, namely its most radical incarnation, the self-reclusion of a chunk of its population.
But above all the Hikikomori phenomenon seems to ask one old yet still fundamental question: does what we know limit what we can imagine? In this sense the Hikikomori seem to initiate a trend that appears to be nothing more than the extension of an old archetype: retreating from the world, hermitage. What elements go into the creation of mythopoetic spaces and experiences and how are those interpreted and transmitted across different cultural, linguistic, and formal boundaries? The act of rising up against a given/imposed reality and the act of severing contact with the outside has to be considered both as a propulsive force just as much as a refraining impulse, this is a nodal point. An invisible presence, a pointer to a cluster of knots that ultimately are present within ourselves whether or not we acknowledge them.
It is essential to understand that it is absolutely impossible to define the Hikikomori in traditional terms. As new meanings and perceptions are constantly molded around the Hikikomori, it is time to give a new breath and a new spin to the process of understanding it.
A Tokyo Moment
As I laze my day away in a sleepy corner of the Inokashira neighborhood in Tokyo and I get closer and closer to collapse in a desperate love for this country, I cannot help but notice that all my neighbors, no exceptions, have the curtains closed. It is a bright spring day and an intense warm light hits my windows, the only ones with open curtains. In spite of living in a city with 36 million people and on a road where every tiny space has a house in it, you can spend hours without hearing a fly buzz. It feels like being in a country road somewhere in Vermont. My neighbors slip in and out of their houses so quietly that when caught in the act, they seem disoriented and I feel like I just stole a crucial piece of their soul. They quickly disappear around the corners of my neighborhood with a mix of grace and the flying lightness of a thief.
This is more or less when I started to be intrigued by such generalized behaviors. Is it a delicate balance of people respecting each other's spaces in a city that otherwise would implode? Are the Hikikomori an error of sort, a spin off of recessions and bubbles gone rancid? Or is this phenomenon a pointer to something else? As I try to understand, it is becoming increasingly clear that it may be something else. A “something” that I start to recognize as familiar. As I study it further, I realize that I am starting to be part of it, tapping into the ancestral necessity to retreat.
Meanwhile the Hikikomori phenomenon through its anime and manga incarnations hit the road: South Korea and China, the new destinations. As the social implications keep scaring the mainstream, I like to think of them as a band of mavericks, adrift yet confusingly turning their backs to the arrogance of mediocrity.
Flavio Rizzo has a Ph.D in Comparative Literature from the City University of New York and an Italian Laurea in Cinema Studies from Roma Tre University. He taught Comparative Literature and Film Studies at the City University of New York. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Center for Global Communication Strategies of the University of Tokyo. He is a writer and filmmaker. Among other works, he has a documentary on filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (recognized with the Cinema Avvenire Award at the Venice Film Festival) and one on the Coca Wars in Bolivia.
Image ©Justin Haynes on FlickrThe Canadian Press
OTTAWA -- For the first time, the Supreme Court of Canada has recognized a First Nation's title to a specific tract of land -- a historic decision with major implications for contentious energy projects such as the Northern Gateway pipeline.
Thursday's 8-0 decision, which overturned an appeal court ruling, will essentially make it easier for First Nations to establish title over lands that were regularly used for hunting, fishing and other activities.
The landmark ruling is the Supreme Court's first on aboriginal title and will apply wherever there are unresolved land claims.
"The claimant group bears the onus of establishing aboriginal title," Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote in the decision.
"The task is to identify how pre-sovereignty rights and interests can properly find expression in modern common law terms."
Title, however, is not absolute, the top court declared; economic development can still go ahead on land where title is established as long as one of two conditions is met.
Economic development on land where title is established would require the consent of the First Nation. Failing that, the government would have to make the case that development is pressing and substantial and meet its fiduciary duty to the aboriginal group.
In other words, the decision places a greater burden on governments to justify economic development on aboriginal land.
The court also makes it clear that provincial law still applies to land over which aboriginal title has been declared, subject to constitutional limits.
Chief Roger William of Xeni Gwet'in, one of six bands that make up the Tsilhqot'in First Nation, said he welcomed the Supreme Court's decision to grant a recognition of aboriginal title to 1,750 square kilometres of territory.
"First Nations across this country have taken legal action, entered into treaty, practised their language and demonstrated use of the land and through this they have supported us -- we thank you," he said in a statement.
The case dates back to the early 1990s, when the Tsilhqot'in First Nation first began using the courts and a blockade to stop logging operations in the area, setting off a two-decade legal odyssey that has cost tens of millions of dollars.
The Tsilhqot'in, whose territory is near Williams Lake, B.C., is made up of six aboriginal bands that together include about 3,000 people.
One of those bands, the Xeni Gwet'in, claimed aboriginal title over two areas it considered its traditional land. A forestry company attempted to secure access to those areas beginning in 1980s, eventually setting off the current court case.
In May of 1992, the Tsilhqot'in staged a blockade to prevent work on a bridge related to proposed forestry activity, which ended when then-premier Mike Harcourt promised there would be no further logging in the area without the consent of the Xeni Gwet'in.
Much of the area in dispute was turned into a provincial park in 1994, but the band and the province have been fighting over the remaining land ever since. The area at the centre of the court case represents about five per cent of what Tsilhqot'in band considers its traditional territory.
The trial, which began in November 2002 and continued for nearly five years, heard evidence that the Tsilhqot'in have been present in the area for more than 250 years.
But the trial also heard the Tsilhqot'in were "semi-nomadic," with few permanent encampments, even though they saw the area as their own and protected it from outsiders.
Jody Wilson-Raybould, British Columbia regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations, called Thursday's decision a "game changer." Unlike other provinces, British Columbia does not have modern-day treaties with its First Nations, so the ruling has significant implications.
"The court has clearly sent a message that the Crown must take aboriginal title seriously and reconcile with First Nations honourably," she said in a statement.
"The decision is an opportunity to truly settle, once and for all, the land question in B.C. -- where our nations are not simply making claims to the Crown under an outdated federal policy but where there must be true reconciliation based on recognition and where the outcome of negotiations is certain."Note: Videos may contain authoring issues that have been fixed, and are for preview purposes only. Video recording courtesy of Lowlander.
C3 releases for April 24, 2015:
New! Middle Class Rut C01 3-pack (Neversoft and StackOverflow0x)
Middle Class Rut – “Lifelong Dayshift” M
Middle Class Rut – “New Low” M |
edit and post fic; if I don’t approach it in just the right way, I end up going “Oh that’s too much effort, I can do that later” and writing some more instead of showing people what I’ve already written.
So, do you finish stories before you post them? How much planning goes into each fic?
I’ve done it both ways, planning out a fic in its entirety, and flying by the seat of my pants. When I have no goal whatsoever, usually the fic turns out like “Freeze Out”, where I stall in the water. (Sorry to anyone waiting for that to wrap up… I’ll get back to it… eventually…) But with original fiction, I definitely always drum up an outline first.
With your later fics, you seem to be exploring more AU-style themes. The aro/ace fic is, as far as I’m aware, a first in the fandom (though ace!elsa is not). This one, along with the seek!Elsa fic, were both Elsanna Fervor prompts. How do you publish so fast, and what inspired you to write these particular stories? EF gets numerous prompts – what made these ones special?
That’s a tough question to answer. I see all the prompts in EF and I just sit back and think, “Do I need to write this?” Not in a bad gatekeeper-ey way, but as in, do I feel that spark of creativity coming to life when I think about this AU? Is it so intense that I can’t ignore it? If I do, I write it; if not, I leave it there for someone else to play with. Mostly, I think that’s served me pretty well. As for the speed… I mean, sometimes the muse is with me, sometimes it’s not. Who knows?
That makes sense. Now, with a few of your stories (not all) there seem to be themes running through them with the intention of educating people. The aro/ace fic, for one; you attempted to show a different type of relationship, and that regardless of sexual and romantic attraction (or lack thereof) two people can still form a happy, complete relationship with one another. Is this something you specifically set out to do, or did it occur naturally due to the content of the story and the characters’ personalities?
Wow, you picked up on that! Yeah, I’ve always thought that it’s important in media to not only tell a story, but to outline how I envision that things should be. Not from all characters (because obviously a story about a utopian society in which everyone treats each other perfectly and nothing bad ever happens is boring), but from the heroes, and occasionally even from the antagonists. But I never try to hammer it in there where it doesn’t belong; it has to be pertinent to who they are and what they’re doing.
What is the best writing advice you’ve ever heard?
It’s a toss-up between “Write every day” (Ray Bradbury) and “Your first draft doesn’t have to be perfect” (Ernest Hemingway; I’m paraphrasing in both instances). Those are both very important, they keep me moving when I want to nope out.
You seem to like a challenge – what is the hardest thing you’ve ever written?
The answers to this interview! Haha, sorry. Honestly, I would probably say it’s a novel I started that was very personal, and autobiographical despite being fiction. It was so hard I stopped! But eventually, it’s going to be revived, I’m sure.
I just want to chat quickly about your other major fic, Freeze Out. It is also different to your other stories (you just like writing lots of different things, it seems) because it follows a different formula. It reads like any other office-fic, except… it isn’t. What inspired this story? What made you decide that they would be related?
Well, at that time I was even MORE dedicated to Elsanna always being “icest”… but I also just thought it would be an unusual twist if it came out that late in the fic, instead of from the very beginning (or not at all). It had been done before I’m sure, but less often, so that appealed to me. A lot of the time, these stories tell themselves; I’m just the conduit.
This is the only fic I’ve read where Elsa is intersex, and it doesn’t boil down to it being g!p for smut. Was this aspect of her important for you to write, do you think? And, did you plan on this right from the beginning?
Yes, though I wasn’t committed to putting it in the story from the beginning; I debated making it Elsa’s ice powers instead, but it just seemed too overdone. So in the end, I went with my first instinct. Intersex characters don’t get a lot of love (other than, as you said, girls who magically grow a dick - which is fine for smut purposes but otherwise there needs to be more realistic representation). I’ve always been fascinated with uncommon people and things and ideas, and writing gives me a way to shed light on them, to talk about them more.
Uncommon people? How else do you feel that applies in your stories, and in how you write them? Are there any other examples you feel are noteworthy?
Aro and ace, for one; they aren’t insignificant in number but definitely when compared to allosexual/alloromantic. Then there’s anything LGBT in general; we’re a small percentage of society. Different races, different nationalities, different occupations. Anything like that is more interesting than “White girl falls in love with white boy who has a Traditional Office Job and they have 2.5 children.” I’ve read and seen enough of those.
Do you have any advice for people wanting to write a story where the sex and gender of their characters are not black and white? Any crutches or stereotypes that one should avoid?
Hmm. Just put yourself in their shoes. Imagine you’ve been told you’re This or That all your life, and you realise you aren’t. If they’re newly coming to grips with it, some confusion or even self-loathing might be necessary, depending on how they usually handle stress. If they’re a few years along, you can probably do away with that. Then, once you’ve established how they feel about themselves, work on how the other characters would react to them.
How did you become comfortable with it? Was it just due to years of writing femmeslash, and expanding on minority characters just grew from there?
Actually yeah, hit the nail on the head. A very natural progression a little at a time.
As with the Cake fic, do you have plans to finish this one?
Someday! Always someday… eheheh… heh.
Not least of all because of “The Cake Fic” (My Sister’s Mistress doesn’t help, either, I assume), you’re known for writing sex. And, not just that, but kinky sex. Do you think there’s a difference between writing sex for readers, and writing it for the characters? How do you show this in your stories – say the difference between the sex in Polar Opposites and Freeze Out, versus My Sister’s Mistress and The Cake Fic?
You always have to consider the audience. With a story like MSM or MSB, it’s intended for a smut audience; I have tried PWP, but I cannot cannot cannot write a story with zero plot or background. It doesn’t feel organic and doesn’t stimulate me creatively (even if it does in other areas lol). However, the idea is basically: get to the smut faster. Worry about doing something more unique in smut instead of more unique in plot. Channel your energy where it needs to go. With a non-smut story, it’s more about what feels organic for the two people involved to do under those circumstances than catering to a particular “kink”, I guess.
Possibly should have asked this earlier, but how long have you been writing for? Is it something you’ve always wanted to do? And, possibly important, too – how did you discover fanfiction?
I’ve been writing for about fifteen years; I had fics before those on FFn now, but they were crap and worthless; I hadn’t figured out how to write properly yet, how to tap into my muse. I had written fan stories before I found fanfiction, I just didn’t know what to call them; it was a huge relief discovering I wasn’t the only one who liked to do what I did!
You actually have a really impressive track record for completing stories. Tell me – what’s your secret? How do you remain so into a story that you can write to the end?
Oh, that’s been… a really, REALLY long-term effort on my part. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and was on medication for it until the end of elementary(primary) school. That’s still true, and I still bounce around somewhat, but I’ve learned how to aim my bounces, if that makes any sense; I bounce from one productive thing to another, instead of from productivity to wandering around in a forest and contemplating why Twinkies are so sproingy. If you look at the “first published” and “last updated” dates for “Evolution of Friends” on FFn, you’ll see how long I took to get THAT one done!
Six years, geez. Makes me feel better about my slow updates. Has that made you better at managing your time, too? You’ve had to figure out your own schedule – does it make it easier to use your time wisely, perhaps I should say?
It does and it doesn’t. I’m still bad at time management (as anyone who has hoped I would be on time for something can attest). But I have learned to indulge in leisure time a little less. Mostly because for me, writing is also leisure time; it’s the “fun” activity that feels most rewarding.
Is there a story that has received far more positive feedback than you had anticipated?
Cake Fic, really. I didn’t think anybody would read it at all!!!!
Well, you were definitely wrong in that regard ;) Do you think you’ve learned anything about the Elsanna fandom based on the responses and feedback to your fics?
Yes. I’ve learned that, like any other fandom, it has a huge community of really awesome people… and one or two jerks. I get really sad when people say “Well that’s it, this fandom went to hell,” because it’s almost never true. They all have those bad apples in the barrel, and it’s up to us if we let them ruin it for the rest of us.
So, do you get writer’s block at all? How do you, personally, overcome it?
Every writer does - except maybe R.L. Stine and James Patterson, they’re machines. With me, I used to get more frustrated by it than I do now, it would really torture me. Now I’ve learned to just work on something else. If I absolutely can’t write that day, there’s always my neglected Netflix or Xbox (someday I might actually break 5000G).
You mentioned above that you’ve both planned fics well in advance, but also just done it chapter-by-chapter. When you think up your ideas, do you do it with Elsanna in mind? Or do you occasionally retrofit them to fit an Elsanna fic?
Oh no, the idea is always begun with who the characters are in the beginning. Though I have had someone tell me I should change the names for SEEK and pull a “Fifty Shades” (to use a horrible but pertinent example).
So you have no plans to attempt to publish any of your Elsanna fics?
Hmm… we’ll see. For now, I’m generally keeping OF and FF spheres separate.
Now we get into the slightly more general questions: Who is your favourite character to write?
Out of Elsanna? Anna, for sure! There’s also Weiss from RWBY, who is endlessly entertaining to me; just that exact brand of snootiness balanced with her insecurity and genuine desire to be a good person. Something about that holds my attention.
Why Anna (unfortunately I haven’t seen RWBY, so I can’t comment, but Weiss sounds interesting)? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it seems that many people choose Elsa. Of course, you do tend to focus on Anna a lot in fic, but to you: why is she so interesting?
It’s a really interesting phenomenon. Most people watch Frozen, they buy the merch, read the fanfic, etc. And they somehow forget that Anna is the protagonist of the story. It’s all about Elsa, since she’s the one who goes through the transformation into the person she wants to be. Not to take away from the HUGE importance of that, but why is there less love for the one who already knows who she is, and fights so hard to help her sister discover the same? Plus, I’m a lot like Anna in some ways; stubborn and loyal to a fault. Also, dorky.
Also, favourite character/film from Disney in general?
Don’t put me in this position!!! Either Anna or Belle, even though I haven’t put much Belle in my fics.
Is there a reason for that? Or just that you’ve found better/more accurate characters to use?
Partly that Belle gets used a LOT in Elsanna fics, especially with all the Belsa in r9k. It made me want to unearth more varied personality types and lesser-used characters. But then again, I usually stick Rapunzel in there somewhere, too, like most Elsanna authors - though that’s because she was literally IN Frozen, I think, haha.
Do you have any advice for people just beginning to write?
Don’t stop! Write more and read more. Grammar counts - especially if you want to be published. Tell the story you want to tell, not what you think they want to hear. And again, DON’T STOP.
And, finally, do you have anything you want to say to your fans?
EAT YOUR VEGETABLES AND GO TO BED
Well, there you have it. The wonderful Forkanna, who is honestly just an interesting gal all around. Thank you for letting us probe you, your fics, and your writing habits (hopefully it wasn’t too invasive ;) )
If this has piqued your interest at all, go ahead and check out her stuff! This interview was an absolute pleasure to conduct, and we hope just as much fun to answer. Until next time!“You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge”. If you’ve attended any dubstep night in the past twelve months, chances are you’ve heard this classic sample resonate in the room. Gaining support from the likes of Mala, Pinch, J:Kenzo, N-Type, Sleeper and Tunnidge, to mention but a few, “Street Knowledge” has been one of those dubplates that still echoes in memories of past nights. The tune finally gets a release on Chestplate, District’s usual home, alongside two heavy numbers that sit well in both District’s and Chestplate’s discography.
Opener “Drowsy” is an aggressive assault that doesn’t wait long to bring in its distorted leads and manic growls, splattered over layers of trappy hi-hats and round kick drums. Following this destabilizing outburst, “Street Knowledge” almost sounds soothing: though each percussive sound seems chiseled to mount heaviness, the track is a dive into a world of minimal subfrequencies that ascend and descend, leaning itself towards introspection just as much as it can cause damage on a dancefloor. Rounding things up, “Locking Up” hits with similar weight, its intense bass, minimal percussion and echoed voices channeling traces of that classic dubstep sound while still sounding fresh.
It isn’t hard to get why these tunes have been doing the rounds: finely crafted and surrounding the listener in their atmosphere, they make up for another great release to add up to Chestplate’s canon.
CHST039 is released August 12th and available from Unearthed Sounds, Redeye, Juno, Intense Records and the Chestplate Databeats Store.Image caption Mr Abdel-Monaim is being treated for minor burns, doctors and officials say
A man has set himself on fire outside the parliament building in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.
He shouted anti-government slogans before pouring fuel on his clothes and setting himself alight, witnesses said.
Policemen nearby managed to put out the flames, and the man is now in a stable condition in hospital, officials said.
The action echoes that of a 26-year-old Tunisian whose self-immolation sparked a wave of protest in the country that brought down the government.
Also on Monday, a Mauritanian man said to be unhappy with the government there was taken to hospital after setting himself on fire.
Bread dispute
The man in Cairo has been identified as Abdu Abdel-Monaim Kamal, a 50-year-old restaurant owner and father of four from the city of Ismailia, east of the capital.
The website of Egypt's leading Al-Ahram daily said he had repeatedly held heated arguments with local officials over the price of bread.
A health ministry spokesman said Mr Abdel-Monaim would probably be released within 48 hours, after being treated for superficial burns, mostly to his chest, neck, hands and legs.
The BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo says that security is tight at the hospital, in order to prevent any outbreak of protests.
Following the Tunisian unrest, the incident will be ringing alarm bells in the Egyptian government, our correspondent adds.
'Mood of despair'
Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid in mid-December, after police prevented him from selling vegetables without a permit. He died in early January.
His action was followed by weeks of increasingly violent protests across Tunisia over unemployment, corruption and high food prices which resulted in the resignation of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali last week.
Many in Egypt have voiced the same grievances as the Tunisians.
There are deep economic problems in Egypt and the prices of some basic food items, such as tomatoes, are notoriously high, our correspondent says.
An Egyptian Facebook group has called for street protests on 25 January, which the organisers are calling a "day of revolution against torture, poverty, corruption and unemployment".
But despite popular support for the Tunisian demonstrations, there have so far been no similar large-scale protests in Egypt, says our correspondent.
The overwhelming mood of the country is despair and hopelessness - not anger - and after decades of repression, many Egyptians do not believe that they can change things through protests, he adds.As the head of the Muslim Women’s Network, Shaista Gohir is determined to give a voice to those who need it to fight against abuse, persecution and inequality
“We had a lady call because her neighbour’s daughter kept coming round to her house,” Shaista Gohir, chair of the national charity Muslim Women’s Network UK (MWN), tells me. “She couldn’t understand why this 13-year-old Muslim girl wanted to spend so much time with her. Finally, she had a long chat with the girl, who told her that when her parents went out her older cousins would come round. The cousins had been sexually abusing this girl for two years.”
Gohir says she convinced the neighbour, who was worried the parents might marry off their daughter if they found out about the abuse, to call social services. “But she still felt bad about not telling the girl’s parents herself. In the end, she told the father and he believed his daughter.
“But the next day the mother came round shouting abuse – she was angry at the neighbour, because the abusers were her sister’s children and she thought it made her family look bad.”
Cases like this, says Gohir, are why, on 15 January, the charity launched a national helpline for Muslim women. The charity – whose three part-time staff run a network of more than 700 organisations and members – offers specialised help and support to women on issues from mental health to abortion, taking into account their cultural and religious backgrounds. It also campaigns and provides training and workshops. The helpline, staffed by 10 trained volunteers, will allow it to reach more women than ever before, says Gohir, whose relentless energy fuels the small charity’s big ambitions. What motivates her? Dressed in smart businesswear, she replies calmly but bluntly: “Anger drives me.”
Brought up by a single mother who worked long hours in a clothing factory, Gohir says she understood from an early age the injustices women can face. “I had to come home from school and feed my brothers and cook and clean – an 11-year-old acting like an adult. Even in a single-parent family, I saw how women would take responsibility for men’s bad behaviour.”
After graduating with a science degree, she was pressured into marrying and ran away from home. “I didn’t know about women’s groups,” she says. “I went to the first place I could find: a rented room in a house full of strangers with no heating.”
Gohir began working in environmental health, and although she reconciled with her relatives, she still desperately wanted a stable family. “My goal was to get married and have children,” she says. “I just wanted to have a nice family unit.”
But after marrying “the best husband in the world” and having three children, something changed. “I don’t know what happened,” she laughs. “It was around 2004, and I kept seeing the Muslim Council of Britain on TV. They were the only [Muslim] voices on TV, the only ones talking to the government. It didn’t seem right that they were all men.”
In response, she set up an online poll, Muslim Voice, to try to gather a more representative sample of opinions; eventually, she was asked to join Muslim Women’s Network. Last year, the charity’s harrowing report into the sexual exploitation of Asian girls was cited in the Jay report into the Rotherham scandal. More than 1,400 victims, most of whom were white, were said to have been attacked in the town by men, the majority of whom were British Pakistani. But MWN’s report suggested Asian victims faced extra barriers to reporting abuse and had not been spotted by the services that worked with other abuse victims.
Gohir and her colleagues had collated case studies from charities across the country that detailed the experiences of girls and young women who had been repeatedly raped by multiple attackers, often beaten, and blackmailed into silence. The conclusion was that Asian victims were not only less likely to report abuse, thanks to cultural barriers, but they were also at risk of being “revictimised” if they did; forced into marriages, or disowned by their families for “shaming” them. Gohir says she was shocked by the scale and the brutality involved, but not by the fact there were more Asian victims. “After Rochdale [where nine men were jailed for abusing young girls], I was going to meetings and no one was taking me seriously, because [Asian victims] don’t show up in the statistics. I started looking for case studies – and they were there.”
Since the report, MWN has held meetings to raise the issue of Asian victims, and has created information packs for communities and schools. It has also run child sexual exploitation workshops for taxi drivers, training them in how to spot and report suspected abuse.
“Growing up, I heard tons of stories about abuse,” she says. “Women would retell these experiences as though it happened to someone else, but never admit it was about them.”
Gohir is outraged that offenders can go unpunished because of the cultural emphasis on “honour”, and women’s role in upholding it, that means someone reporting the abuse of a girl could be accused of bringing “shame” on her family. “I wish the words shame and honour could be deleted,” she tells me. “That is the root of our problems – from forced marriages to not reporting domestic violence.”
Interviewing victims, she admits, is taking an emotional toll and bringing up buried memories. “I have to space [the interviews] out,” she says. She tells me about one woman who was raped by six relatives and family friends when she was between the ages of nine and 12. “When I hear the stories, I can’t sleep at night.” But Gohir remains optimistic; she talks about the number of women who are speaking out, and puts this down to increasing independence – both social and financial – among the younger generation of Muslim women in the UK, as well as an increased media focus on the issue.
“A lot of these women are suffering in silence, and they aren’t strong enough to vocalise that they want help,” Gohir says. “I don’t mind taking the flak.”
To contact the Muslim Women’s Network UK helpline, call 0800 999 5786 or visit mwnhelpline.co.ukAccording to data from the U.S. State Department’s Refugee Processing Center, almost all of the Syrian refugees resettled in Virginia since October have been placed in towns with lower incomes and higher poverty rates, hours away from the wealthy suburbs outside of Washington, D.C.
Of the 121 Syrian refugees placed in Virginia so far, 112 have been placed in communities at least 100 miles away from the nation’s capital; 105 were placed in cities where median incomes fall below the state average.
The D.C. suburban counties of Fairfax, Loudoun and Arlington are all among the nation’s wealthiest and, according to U.S. census data, collectively have roughly 1.7 million residents. The three counties have resettled a grand total of nine Syrian refugees, all nine of whom were placed in the city of Falls Church.
The other 93 percent of Syrian refugees in Virginia were all placed at least 100 miles away from the nation’s legislators: Charlottesville (116.9 miles away, according to Google Maps), Harrisonburg (130 miles away), Newport News (171 miles away), Powhatan (137 miles away) and Roanoke (240 miles away) received the rest of the state’s Syrian refugees.
The federal government placed 21 Syrian refugees in the city of Roanoke (population 100,000), where the median household income ($39,530) falls well short of the statewide median ($64,792), according to U.S. Census data. Roanoke’s poverty rate, 21.9 percent, is almost double the state average of 11.8 percent. Despite having both fewer and poorer people than the wealthy suburbs outside the nation’s capital, Roanoke was tasked with resettling twice as many Syrian refugees.
Charlottesville (population 47,000) has a median household income ($47,218) — less than half Fairfax County’s median household income of $112,000. Charlottesville also has a poverty rate of 25.9 percent — more than double the statewide average. Charlottesville resettled three times the number of Syrian refugees as Fairfax, Loudoun and Arlington combined.
Newport News, a city of 182,00, has a median income ($51,000) — well below the state average. The federal government placed 51 Syrian refugees in Newport News.
Harrisonburg (population 53,000), was the poorest Virginia city tasked with resettling Syrian refugees. It has a median household income of $38,807 and a poverty rate of 28 percent. Harrisonburg received six Syrian refugees.
Powhatan, where the median household income ($75,000) is above the state average, resettled seven Syrian refugees.
Follow Peter Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHassonWorkers behind Russian-linked Facebook Inc. accounts helped organize or finance real-life events before and after the 2016 election, often working directly with U.S. activists and playing both sides of the same hot-button issue -- even on the same day.
In July 2016, as outrage swelled over fatal shootings in Dallas and Minneapolis, alleged social-media agitators tied to Russia worked quickly to capitalize on the emotionally charged atmosphere.
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Workers linked to a Russia-based firm organized two gatherings, both for July 10: In Dallas, a "Blue Lives Matter" rally honored the five police officers slain there on July 7; and near Minneapolis, nearly 300 people rallied in support of Philando Castile, a man fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop.
The events show that the Russian-linked account activity went far beyond paying for polarizing ads dropped into Facebook members' news feeds. At least 60 rallies, protests and marches were publicized or financed by eight Russia-backed Facebook accounts from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., according to a review by The Wall Street Journal, which looked at archived versions of now-deleted Facebook posts and interviewed activists, attendees and others familiar with the events, most of which were posted on Facebook.
Facebook said in September that it had found 470 such accounts that it says belonged to Russians and that sought to exploit social divisions in the U.S. through provocative issue ads. The eight accounts the Journal examined are among those Facebook unearthed, according to people familiar with the matter. Facebook said it closed the accounts.
Much of the scrutiny of the Russian accounts so far has focused on their online activity, but the live events demonstrate how the alleged use of social media by Russian forces served as a launchpad for deeper infiltration into the American democratic process. Many rallies were sparsely attended, but some attracted news coverage, helping the accounts seem legitimate, add followers and enlist activists to plan future events.
People representing "Black Matters US," one of the Russia-backed accounts, pressured Los Angeles activist Nolan Hack to plan events that would raise the account's visibility. "They'd say, we need to continue to up the protest numbers. We need to continue to get more people to know about us," Mr. Hack said. "I would say -- who cares about that? We're not trying to win a reality show here."
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At least 22 of the 60 events actually took place, such as a May 2016 protest of an Islamic center in Houston planned by "Heart of Texas", a Russia-created page that supported Texas secession and posted the "Blue Lives Matter" rally in Dallas two months later. On June 25, 2016, following the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla, "LGBT United" organized a candlelight vigil, where one of the victim's brothers spoke. Both were covered by local media and attracted a dozen or more attendees.
It is unclear if the other 40 or so events occurred as publicized. Collectively, the eight accounts analyzed by the Journal were "liked" nearly two million times, archived websites show.
"Getting someone to physically show up somewhere is huge," said Sarah Oates, a political communications professor at the University of Maryland. "That is a level of political commitment that is a whole degree stronger than getting someone to comment."
This week, executives from Facebook, Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google are scheduled to appear before Congress to answer questions about Russian activity found on their platforms by congressional investigators examining alleged Russian interference in the U.S. democratic process. Russia has denied any interference in the election.
"We take this very seriously and that's why we're taking strong action to improve security on Facebook by investing in new technology and hiring more people," a Facebook spokesman said, when asked about the events.
Disclosures by Facebook about covert Russian influence on its platform around the election have centered on 3,000 ads bought by accounts connected to pro-Kremlin firm Internet Research Agency. The Russian actors also, however, churned out free posts, including event listings. Facebook has estimated that the ads were seen by 10 million people, but academic researchers believe the content, such as free posts and event listings, could have reached many times that.
Russian entities likely promoted events because the Kremlin believes protests destabilize democracies, according to Ms. Oates, who studies Russian propaganda. Event listings show how Russia-backed pages organized protests for and against the same issues. The page "Born Patriotic" planned 17 pro-Trump rallies on the same day in August 2016 while "Black Matters" hosted anti-Trump rallies after the election.
The Russia-backed pages often contacted U.S. activists over Messenger, a free messaging service from Facebook, or by phone to ask for help organizing events, according to activists. In other cases, activists reached out after seeing a Facebook event, such as the planned protest in Minneapolis following Mr. Castile's death by an account named "Don't Shoot."
Some of the organizers say they spoke to people with British, South African and other non-U.S. accents who said they represented the accounts.
The pages covered some event costs, like travel and equipment rental, and sent funds to activists through bank cards or money-transfer services like MoneyGram, activists said. But the people behind the accounts were also hasty planners and often failed at basic logistics, such as securing permits -- and appeared eager for their events to provoke reactions or make headlines, said activists who worked with them.
Representatives from the Facebook page "United Muslims of America" asked Mike Ghouse, an interfaith activist, to speak at a Sept. 3, 2016 event in Washington, D.C. billed as "a peaceful rally, to make mosques and their neighborhood safe!"
The group sent Mr. Ghouse placards they intended to use that included anti-Trump messages, causing him to back out, he said. "I said they should be more pluralistic, more inclusive because there's no need to attack Trump," Mr. Ghouse said. "They wouldn't, so I didn't go."
Some events stoked public discord. At the rally in front of the Islamic center in Houston, about a dozen protesters gathered, some waving confederate flags or holding a sign that said "#WhiteLivesMatter," according to video footage.
Across the street, about 60 counter protesters assembled in an effort that didn't appear to have any Russian ties. Some of them held a banner with Adolf Hitler's photo and the words, "Follow your leader: kill yourself."
Photos and videos from Houston and some of the other events later appeared on Facebook, Google's YouTube, as well as Twitter and its live-streaming video service Periscope.
--Jack Nicas contributed to this article.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 30, 2017 10:45 ET (14:45 GMT)WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The world has moved closer to the threat of a pandemic of a new kind of flu, with 149 people suspected to have died from it in Mexico and new cases being detected around the globe.
Just how bad is this new flu strain, how far will it go and how long will the outbreak last?
Here are some questions and answers about the outbreak:
HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE DIED? HOW MANY ARE INFECTED?
All deaths so far have been in Mexico, where 20 of the 149 reported fatalities have been confirmed to be from the H1N1 swine flu virus. There are 1,600 suspected cases in Mexico and 64 confirmed cases in the United States, and a few cases in Canada, New Zealand, Britain, Spain and Israel.
WHY ARE THERE ONLY DEATHS IN MEXICO?
No one is sure. It is important to remember that health officials are now taking a snapshot of the past — they are not reporting on new infections at this point, just tracking down old infections and they are only finding them where they are looking. The Mexican authorities looked in hospitals, where serious cases will, of course, be found. U.S. health officials found their cases during routine screening of people with flu-like symptoms, most in walk-in clinics, so they have naturally found milder cases.
Influenza experts say they fully expect to find deaths in other places, including the United States and elsewhere, as the search goes on. One problem is that people die of respiratory diseases regularly and the cause is often not determined.
WHY WOULD IT KILL SOME AND NOT OTHERS?
Seasonal influenza kills 250,000 to 500,000 people every year in a normal year and all sorts of factors determine who dies. Elderly people often die but sometimes perfectly healthy adults and children die. Sometimes flu makes people susceptible to bacterial infections, called secondary infections, and if the virus and the bacteria are circulating at the same time in the same place there can be clusters of deaths.
WHAT KIND OF FLU IS IT AND HOW IS IT SPREADING?
The virus is an influenza A virus, carrying the designation H1N1, but it contains DNA from avian, swine and human H1N1 viruses. It appears to have evolved the ability to pass easily from one person to another, unlike most swine H1N1 viruses which only very occasionally infect people and usually only infect one person and then stop there.
Flu viruses are all passed on by sneezing, coughing or when people pick up the virus on their hands. This one likely originated in pigs, but the Mexican government and the World Health Organisation have ruled out any risk of infection from eating pork.
HOW SERIOUS IS IT?
The Geneva-based WHO has declared the flu a “public health emergency of international concern” and raised the threat level for a pandemic, a global epidemic of new disease. H1N1 swine flu poses the biggest risk of a large-scale pandemic since avian flu re-emerged in 2003, killing 257 out of 421 infected in 15 countries.
It is not clear yet whether this virus could actually become a pandemic.
HOW IS THIS FLU DIFFERENT FROM ORDINARY FLU?
The swine flu is characterized by common flu symptoms — sudden fever, muscle aches, sore throat and dry cough — but may cause more severe vomiting and diarrhoea.
New flu strains can spread fast because no one has natural immunity and a vaccine can take months to develop. This strain is confusing because it is an H1N1 — a type that has been around since the 1918 “Spanish Flu” pandemic that killed at least 40 million people globally.
Usually if a new flu strain is related to one that has been around for years, people have some immunity and they no longer can cause pandemics. But this new strain has taken on genetic elements from animal viruses, and this may be genetically unique enough to pose a pandemic threat.
HOW BAD COULD IT GET?
A 1968 a “Hong Kong” flu pandemic killed about one million people globally. The 1957-58 pandemic killed about 2 million. The 1918 pandemic killed between 40 million and 100 million, according to some estimates. However, the WHO says the world is now better prepared to withstand a flu pandemic. Vaccines and antiviral drugs are available that were not around during previous pandemics.
In 1918, there was a first wave of mild flu in April. It then seemed to disappear during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer but came back severely in August. WHO and CDC officials say it is possible this virus could behave in the same way, or completely differently.
ARE THERE ENOUGH DRUG |
this obviously most-hostile of atmospheres with nowhere to turn for help or solace. However, news reports of such violence and youth suicides alike have been sporadic and filtered through the lens of translation and based on often patched-together facts—a fault not of those trying to help gay rights in Russia nor of journalists, but an issue of attempting to collect information in an often-covert manner and then transmit it to news media in other languages. It has not been an easy task to either obtain fully accurate data on the entire scope of violence, suicides, and other harmful conditions and actions in Russia although specific examples—in some cases captured on video by the very attackers responsible for them then broadcast on the Russian social media site VK—have been tragic, compelling and often beyond scary.
I was the co-author of a scientific review paper that considers the medical literature germane to the plight of LGBT youth in Russia currently and how the legal and social environment has encouraged criminal violence against and hopelessness within such populations. The study was written with two Russians, with the lead author a Russian public health researcher and physician in practice in Moscow and the other author a Russian journalist. Our research was published in December in the Harvard University-published, peer-reviewed, public health journal, Health and Human Rights. The entire paper can be read online here:
Dr. Kucheryavenko, Mr. Guskov, and myself wrote this paper to convey within well-researched scientific parameters standard to the nature of review papers of medical literature like this one the exact gravitas of the very disturbing situation in Russia today. Oleg Kucheryavenko, as a doctor in clinical practice as well as a young but already well-respected public health researcher, desired to publish this paper at some risk to his own career in Russia where authorities and even academic supervisors (he is still a resident physician) might well frown upon the topic and desire instead work that is far less political. His reasons for its publication were that the world needs to be aware of the situation in more exacting terms than are often employed by the general news media and also because he hoped to see it as a catalyst for further reportage and research on this essential topic. President Putin and others can play up the puppet show of “protecting the children” from supposed corruption by gays who wish (of course!) to make Russian kids “turn gay”, but the real, tragic, situation is that people who were already homophobic have seen these anti-gay laws as tacit approval to commit acts of bullying and downright violence against gay youth. It is youth—teenagers—who are suffering most due to this surge of homophobic violence.
Youth suicide in Russia—not that of gay youth alone but of all teens—is a chronic, deep, and poorly-supported problem. There are few organic (parents, teachers) nor formal (helplines, hospitals) resources for suicidal Russian teens to turn to other than their own peers; for gay youth, the situation is expectedly even more dire. Data is even hard to collect on suicidality due to the stigma attached to it and the suicides of gay youth are especially under-reported it is estimated because many families do not wish to draw attention to the fact their child was gay and this factored into his or her decision to commit suicide. We are looking at a health problem akin to HIV/AIDS in the early 1980s in the United States: under-reported, shoved under the rug, misunderstood even by many doctors, and something simply hoped by many to go away in the night and trouble them no further. But though suicide is not caused by a pathogenic virus, it is no less crucial and certainly no less deadly. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, US) considers suicide a condition of the highest collective concern for public health and also one that is most-worthy of study by epidemiologists concerned with non-pathogenic health problems. In contrast, in Russia youth suicide is given attention only by a select few medical specialist groups and a small cadre of caring and concerned physicians, nurses, social workers and researchers. Again, the specific situation of gay youth is provided even less in the way of research or resources and clinical provisions for intervention.
The Winter Olympics may be a catalyst for us as an international community to look deeper into the situation for LGBT populations in Russia, but it must be a continued concern—a constant discourse until we obtain improvement. The real worry should not be that something horrible will happen to visiting Western athletes—the chances are very strong nothing bad will, and they will all be able to compete in their sports and go home—with or without medals. The Russians are not stupid: President Putin promised a safe and secure Olympics for all involved and he’ll make good on that promise insofar as he can. World-class athletes, gay or otherwise, are not those who most need our attention or help. Russian youth who are gay or even suspected of possibly being gay; Russian youth away from the more rational major cities like Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and Krasnoyarsk and instead in smaller communities in rural areas where religious conservatism is more common and stronger—those are the people who need our continued concern and efforts at obtaining justice and freedom from oppressive laws and bullying. Freedom from a constant status of a personal hell that encumbers one to the point of encouraging him or her to take his or her own life. Freedom from feeling that one’s sexual orientation is afoul of the government when it is instead only natural and apolitical.
Plenty of news stories have showcased this same issue, and I am very thankful for that attention, but my point here is to go a bit further: Please read the results of our study, please consider the nuances of a health problem caused not by a virus or other pathogen but by people—humans who have the ability to be rational and caring if they so choose but instead have taken upon themselves to partake in wanton acts of violence that harm the most vulnerable of their fellow man—minority youth—and in some cases bring about their deaths directly or indirectly. That is an issue that will remain after the Olympics have packed up, the gold has been won, and Sochi returns to being a Russian resort city. Please do not forget about the people who most need our care at that time.Authored by Gaius Publius via Down With Tyranny blog,
"We don't want a unified Korean peninsula... We [also] don't want the North Koreans to cause more trouble than the system can absorb."
—Hillary Clinton, 2013, speech to Goldman Sachs
Our policy toward North Korea is not what most people think it is. We don't want the North Koreans to go away. In fact, we like them doing what they're doing; we just want less of it than they've been doing lately. If this sounds confusing, it's because this policy is unlike what the public has been led to assume. Thanks to something uncovered by WikiLeaks, the American public has a chance to be unconfused about what's really going on with respect to our policies in Korea.
This piece isn't intended to criticize that policy; it may be an excellent one. I just want to help us understand it better.
Our source for the U.S. government's actual Korean policy — going back decades really — is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She resigned that position in February 2013, and on June 4, 2013 she gave a speech at Goldman Sachs with Lloyd Blankfein present (perhaps on stage with her) in which she discussed in what sounds like a very frank manner, among many other things, the U.S. policy toward the two Korea and the relationship of that policy to China.
That speech and two others were sent by Tony Carrk of the Clinton campaign to a number of others in the campaign, including John Podesta. WikiLeaks subsequently released that email as part of its release of other Podesta emails (source email with attachments here). In that speech, Clinton spoke confidentially and, I believe, honestly. What she said in that speech, I take her as meaning truthfully. There's certainly no reason for her to lie to her peers, and in some cases her betters, at Goldman Sachs. The entire speech reads like elites talking with elites in a space reserved just for them.
I'm not trying to impugn Clinton or WikiLeaks by writing this — that's not my intention at all. I just want to learn from what she has to say — from a position of knowledge — about the real U.S. policy toward North Korea. After all, if Goldman Sachs executives can be told this, it can't be that big a secret. We should be able to know it as well.
What Clinton's Speech Tells Us about U.S. Korea Policy
The WikiLeaks tweet is above. The entire speech, contained in the attachment to the email, is here. I've reprinted some of the relevant portions below, first quoting Ms. Clinton with some interspersed comments from me. Then, adding some thoughts about what this seems to imply about our approach to and relations with South Korea.
The Korea section of the Goldman Sachs speech starts with a discussion of China, and then Blankfein pivots to Korea. Blankfein's whole question that leads to the Clinton quote tweeted by WikiLeaks above (my emphasis throughout):
MR. BLANKFEIN: The Japanese -- I was more surprised that it wasn't like that when you think of -- all these different things. It's such a part of who they are, their response to Japan. If you bump into the Filipino fishing boats, then I think you really -- while we're in the neighborhood [i.e., discussing Asia], the Chinese is going to help us or help themselves -- what is helping themselves? North Korea? On the one hand they [the Chinese] wouldn't want -- they don't want to unify Korea, but they can't really like a nutty nuclear power on their border. What is their interests and what are they going to help us do?
Clinton's whole answer is reprinted in the WikiLeaks tweet attachment (click through to the tweet and expand the embedded image to read it all). The relevant portions, for my purposes, are printed below. From the rest of her remarks, the context of Blankfein's question and Clinton's answer is the threat posed by a North Korean ICBM, not unlike the situation our government faces today.
MS. CLINTON: Well, I think [Chinese] traditional policy has been close to what you've described. We don't want a unified Korean peninsula, because if there were one South Korea would be dominant for the obvious economic and political reasons. We [also] don't want the North Koreans to cause more trouble than the system can absorb. So we've got a pretty good thing going with the previous North Korean leaders [Kim Il-sung and Kim Jung-il]. And then along comes the new young leader [Kim Jung-un], and he proceeds to insult the Chinese. He refuses to accept delegations coming from them. He engages in all kinds of both public and private rhetoric, which seems to suggest that he is preparing himself to stand against not only the South Koreans and the Japanese and the Americans, but also the Chinese.
Translation — three points:
The U.S. prefers that Korea stay divided. If Korea were to unite, South Korea would be in charge, and we don't want South Korea to become any more powerful than it already is.
We also don't want the trouble North Korea causes South Korea to extend beyond the region. We want it to stay within previously defined bounds.
Our arrangement with the two previous North Korean leaders met both of those objectives. North Korea's new leader, Kim Jung-un, is threatening that arrangement.
It appears that China has the same interest in keeping this situation as-is that we do. That is, they want South Korea (and us) to have a Korean adversary, but they don't want the adversary acting out of acceptable bounds — coloring outside the lines laid down by the Chinese (and the U.S.), as it were. Clinton:
So the new [Chinese] leadership basically calls him [Kim Jung-un] on the carpet. And a high ranking North Korean military official has just finished a visit in Beijing and basically told [him, as a message from the Chinese]: Cut it out. Just stop it. Who do you think you are? And you are dependent on us [the Chinese], and you know it. And we expect you to demonstrate the respect that your father and your grandfather [Kim Jung-il, Kim Il-sung] showed toward us, and there will be a price to pay if you do not. Now, that looks back to an important connection of what I said before. The biggest supporters of a provocative North Korea has been the PLA [the Chinese People's Liberation Army]. The deep connections between the military leadership in China and in North Korea has really been the mainstay of the relationship. So now all of a sudden new leadership with Xi and his team, and they're saying to the North Koreans -- and by extension to the PLA -- no. It is not acceptable. We don't need this [trouble] right now. We've got other things going on. So you're going to have to pull back from your provocative actions, start talking to South Koreans again about the free trade zones, the business zones on the border, and get back to regular order and do it quickly. Now, we don't care if you occasionally shoot off a missile. That's good. That upsets the Americans and causes them heartburn, but you can't keep going down a path that is unpredictable. We don't like that. That is not acceptable to us. So I think they're trying to reign Kim Jong in. I think they're trying to send a clear message to the North Korean military. They also have a very significant trade relationship with Seoul and they're trying to reassure Seoul that, you know, we're now on the case.
Clinton ends with a fourth point:
From the U.S. standpoint, the current problem is now on the Chinese to fix.
Clinton:
So they want to keep North Korea within their orbit. They want to keep it predictable in their view. They have made some rather significant statements recently that they would very much like to see the North Koreans pull back from their nuclear program. Because I and everybody else -- and I know you had Leon Panetta here this morning. You know, we all have told the Chinese if they continue to develop this missile program and they get an ICBM that has the capacity to carry a small nuclear weapon on it, which is what they're aiming to do, we cannot abide that. Because they could not only do damage to our treaty allies, namely Japan and South Korea, but they could actually reach Hawaii and the west coast theoretically, and we're going to ring China with missile defense. We're going to put more of our fleet in the area. So China, come on. You either control them or we're going to have to defend against them.
The four bullets above (three, and then one) give a very clear definition of longstanding U.S. policy toward the two Koreas. I think the only surprise in this, for us civilians, is that the U.S. doesn't want the Korean peninsula unified. So two questions: Why not? And, do the South Koreans know this? I'll offer brief answers below.
The "Great Game" In East Asia — Keeping the Korean "Tiger" in Check
South Korea is one of the great emerging nations in East Asia, one of the "Asian tigers," a manufacturing and economic powerhouse that's lately been turning into a technological and innovative powerhouse as well.
For example, one of just many, from Forbes:
Why South Korea Will Be The Next Global Hub For Tech Startups American business has long led the way in high tech density or the proportion of businesses that engage in activities such as Internet software and services, hardware and semiconductors. The US is fertile ground for tech start-ups with access to capital and a culture that celebrates risk taking. Other countries have made their mark on the world stage, competing to be prominent tech and innovation hubs. Israel has been lauded as a start-up nation with several hundred companies getting funded by venture capital each year. A number of these companies are now being acquired by the likes of Apple, Facebook and Google. Finland and Sweden have attracted notice by bringing us Angry Birds and Spotify among others. But a new start-up powerhouse is on the horizon – South Korea. [...]
In other words, South Korea has leaped beyond being a country that keeps U.S. tech CEOs wealthy — it's now taking steps that threaten that wealth itself. And not just in electronics; the biological research field — think cloning — is an area the South Koreans are trying to take a lead in as well.
It's easy to understand Ms. Clinton's — and the business-captured American government's — interest in making sure that the U.S. CEO class isn't further threatened by a potential doubling of the capacity of the South Korean government and economy. Let them (the Koreans) manufacture to their heart's content, our policy seems to say; but to threaten our lead in billionaire-producing entrepreneurship... that's a bridge too far.
Again, this is Clinton speaking, I'm absolutely certain, on behalf of U.S. government policy makers and the elites they serve: We don't want a unified Korean peninsula, because if there were one, an already-strong South Korea would be dominant for obvious economic reasons.
As to whether the South Koreans know that this is our policy, I'd have to say, very likely yes. After all, if Clinton is saying this to meetings of Goldman Sachs executives, it can't be that big a secret. It's just that the South Korea leadership knows better than the North Korean leader how to handle it.
[Update: It's been suggested in comments (initially here) that Clinton's "we" in her answer to Blankfein's question was a reference to China's policy, not our own. I'm doubtful that's true, but it's an interpretation worth considering. Even so, the U.S. and Chinese policies toward the two Koreas are certainly aligned, and, as Clinton says, "for the obvious economic and political reasons." (That argument was also expressed in comments here.) I therefore think the thrust of the piece below is valid under either interpretation of Clinton's use of "we." –GP]The past year was a good year for the music industry as sales rose to their best highest point in eight years. According to the IFPI’s annual Recording Industry In Numbers report, revenue from physical media fell by 8.7%, compared with 13.8% in 2010, but were vinyl sales up nearly 29%. Digital revenue continued to grow, increasing 8%, compared to 5.6% in 2010, with digital track sales growing 19% to 3.7 billion songs. Australia leads the way in the digital space with 60% growth, compared with 8% growth in the U.S. and 10% in the U.K. $1.27 billion in digital singles were sold in the U.S., while the U.K. accounted for $176.2 million. Digital sales made up 31% of the total revenue of the music market and reached $5.3 billion in sales. Overall global music revenue fell by just 3% in the last year, however. “2011 marked the least negative result in global recorded music sales since 2004, when revenues were flat,” the report read. The IFPI credits services like Spotify, iTunes, and unlimited-access operators like Rdio, MOG and Rhapsody for bringing new revenue models to customers that have helped the U.S. music market.
[Via PaidContent]
ReadA conservative legal organization went to court Friday in Hawaii over a law that forces pregnancy care centers to provide free advertising for abortion.
“They are requiring pregnancy centers [that] just give away diapers and baby clothes to refer women to the state, to a website that connects them with certainly abortion causing drugs, and … abortionists,” Kevin Theriot, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.
“This is an important case because Hawaii goes even further than California did, and they are clearly singling out pregnancy centers,” Theriot said.
The Hawaii law is similar to a law passed in 2015 in California, which required “licensed medical centers that offer free, pro-life help to pregnant women to post a disclosure saying that California provides free or low-cost abortion and contraception services,” according to Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.
The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates and Calvary Chapel Pearl Harbor’s “A Place for Women” pregnancy care center filed the lawsuit on July 12. Hawaii’s law, Senate Bill 501, went into effect July 11.
The lawsuit, Calvary Chapel Pearl Harbor v. Chin, seeks that Hawaii stop the enforcement of the law and give back federal funds the state received “conditioned on the state’s commitment not to force pro-life pregnancy centers to make abortion referrals,” according to Alliance Defending Freedom.
Theriot, along with Ken Connelly, a legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, argued at U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii in Honolulu Friday morning on behalf of Hawaiian pregnancy care centers.
National Institute of Family and Life Advocates founder and President Thomas Glessner said in a statement to The Daily Signal that the law is detrimental for pro-life institutions.
“Hawaii’s threat to pro-life pregnancy care centers and medical clinics counts among the most egregious violations of constitutional religious and free speech rights in the nation,” Glessner said.
The law, Alliance Defending Freedom says, dictates that pregnancy care centers provide funding and referrals for abortion.
It also requires pregnancy care centers to display signs or provide notices that advertise that the center provides low-cost or free family planning services, which include abortion-inducing drugs, and further requires pregnancy care centers to offer contact information for those services.
Theriot said he hopes the Supreme Court will intervene in the California case, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra. The court is expected to consider taking the case in early October. He added:
The case has national implications. It certainly has implications for the five small pregnancy centers here in the Hawaii islands, and we’re hopeful that the judge will take notice of that, and at least recognize that there is a serious threat to the rights and the ability of these pregnancy centers to survive, and go ahead and put the law on hold while we figure out exactly what is going on nationally, especially if the Supreme Court decides to take it up.
Conservative leaders hope to see the law dismantled.
“This is like the government forcing the local pacifist group to post directions to the nearest military recruiting depot,” Cathy Ruse, senior legal fellow at the Family Research Council, said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal.
She added:
In the war of ideas, the government should never force one side to carry the flag of the other. It’s not fair. More than that, it’s government-forced speech, and that’s not constitutional.
Melanie Israel, research associate for the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation, said the law is unfair to the state’s pregnancy care centers.
“Pro-life pregnancy centers provide vital services, education, supplies, counseling, and compassionate options to women experiencing a touch pregnancy,” Israel said, adding:
The abortion industry sees these centers as a threat, because they offer women choices beyond abortion. The state government’s attempt to force these centers to promote a procedure that directly violates the core mission and purpose of their work is an affront to rights of conscience and free expression.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal that the law must be stopped.
“The court should immediately block the law and allow pregnancy resource centers to continue their life-saving and life-supporting work without having to go against their moral beliefs and promote the abhorrent act of abortion,” Hawkins said.After debuting 64-bit processor support back in 2013, it’s looking like a future version of Apple’s iOS, quite possibly iOS 11, will drop support for 32-bit applications, completing the move over to an entirely 64-bit ecosystem. This news comes courtesy of an error message discovered in the first iOS 10.3 beta, which appears when attempting to run a 32-bit app, suggesting that those apps won’t work on future version of Apple’s mobile operating system.
This isn’t the first time that Apple has given preference to 64-bit support either: towards the end of last year the company removed a number of non-compliant apps from the App Store and sent an email out to developers reminding them to include 64-bit support in their builds.
Usually we’re not too concerned about what Apple does with iOS, but given that Android has also been a 32-bit/64-bit compatible operating system for a little while now, it’s possible that Apple’s anticipated decision could have implications for Google’s mobile ecosystem as well. So let’s explore how and why Apple might be making such a move, and whether or not Android should look to follow suit.
RIP 32-bit emulation mode in iOS 11? pic.twitter.com/byMFuJPuVN — Peter Steinberger (@steipete) January 31, 2017
32-bit vs 64-bit
First a brief background to 32 and 64-bit. Essentially this number defines the size of the data registers supported by a processor’s architecture. A 64-bit CPU has registers that are twice the size of a 32-bit equivalent, allowing it to handle higher precision data and even processing some pieces of data faster.
In order to tell a CPU what to do with these registers we use instructions, and ARM’s transition from its 32-bit ARMv7-A to 32/64-bit ARMv8-A architectures introduced a number of new instructions to make use of these enhanced capabilities, known as the AArch64 instruction set.
In order to ensure backwards compatibility with the move to ARMv8, the architecture was designed to support the company’s existing AArch32 and Thumb-32 instruction sets. However, this means that portions of the CPU’s core pipeline, and therefore precious silicon space, are still dedicated to ensuring that these legacy instructions work alongside the new hardware options.
Importantly, it is not possible to use code from these two execution states (ARMv7 and ARMv8) within a single application. There is no interworking between A64 and A32 or T32 instruction sets. Therefore, code written in A64 for ARMv8 processors cannot run on ARMv7 Cortex-A series processors.
However, code written for ARMv7-A processors can run on ARMv8 processors in the AArch32 execution state. That means that for iPhone customers, older ARMv7-only handsets like the iPhone 5 probably won’t work with iOS 11.
The how and why
The revelation about Apple ending 32-bit app support suggests that the company is looking to move over solely to the AArch64 execution state. This would ensure that all future versions of iOS and apps are using some of the unique features only available with AArch64.
These include larger address pointers to access larger memory pools, a simplified assembler, automatic event signaling, double-precision float point and advanced SIMD operations, and hardware accelerated cryptography with up to 3 to 10 times the performance. However, developers will lose access to the old AArch32 and Thumb-32 instructions in the process, hence the need to update apps.
It's possible that Apple is looking to free up as much silicon space as possible by dropping old architecture support.
As well as forcing software developers to make use of the latest architecture features, there are also some interesting implications for Apple’s next in-house CPU design.
While we’re not entirely sure about exactly what Apple will be able to get away with, it’s possible that the company is looking to free up as much silicon space as possible by dropping old architecture support. This could reduce silicon manufacturing costs, or perhaps the saved space could be used to beef up the rest of the CPU, GPU, or to introduce some other features.
It’s possible that Apple may be able to further optimize its CPU design for 64-bit use only by ditching some, if not all, of the legacy hardware required by supporting 32-bit instructions. Providing this doesn’t break the company’s licensing agreement with ARM, that is.
Normally, ARM mandates that CPU designs based on its architectures support the entire instruction set, so perhaps Apple will have to design a chip with the bare minimum AArch32 and Thumb-32 support to pass ARM’s conformance test. However, ARM’s own Cortex-A32 is a 32-bit only version of its ARMv8 architecture, so there seems to be some flexibility about exactly which instruction sets are mandatory.
Should Android follow suit?
There are pros and cons to going solely 64-bit, but it’s not unfeasible that Google and smartphone processor developers, such as Qualcomm and MediaTek, could do the same for exactly the same reasons listed above.
Of course the Android ecosystem is much larger than Apple’s, so the sheer number of hardware configurations immediately makes such a change much harder to organize without causing disruption. Still, Google could, in theory, do something similar and mandate that apps destined for Google Play move over entirely to 64-bit.
Such a situation might be fine for even today’s low cost smartphones and tablets, as entry-level smartphones are shipping with 64-bit capable processors these days. However, Android is also used on devices with processors that aren’t as powerful, many of which aren’t 64-bit compatible and/or are reliant on optimizations available in the Thumb-32 instruction set that would be lost in the move to 64-bit only.
A number of Android Auto infotainment systems are built on older ARMv7-based processors, as are a selection of even top of the line smartwatches. The Huawei Watch, Sony Smartwatch 3, and the LG Urbane 2nd Edition are all powered by a 32-bit ARM Cortex-A7. Google also recently unveiled the Android Things platform for Internet-of-Things development, and a number of the development boards are also based on chips that won’t work with 64-bit apps.
This isn’t to say that Google couldn’t push smartphones towards making the most of what 64-bit has to offer. In fact, we’re already in a situation where Nougat won’t be coming to devices that can’t support Google’s latest encryption standard. However, keeping comprehensive support for legacy and lower power technologies, while also allowing developers to make the most of modern improvements and easily port their software is a best of both worlds solution. So it’s likely that Android will be sticking with 32-bit support for the foreseeable future.Makeshift beach on the Seine has devoted each day to a world-famous beach but ‘Tel Aviv on the Seine’ criticised as ‘Israeli government PR’
The decision to dedicate a day of beach festivities in Paris to Tel Aviv sparked condemnation on Monday, with leftist and pro-Palestinian groups saying it sends “a very bad message” of support for Israel’s policies.
Every summer, the French capital turns the banks of the Seine into a makeshift beach known as Paris Plages and has this year devoted each day to a famous beach around the world.
Left-wing councillor Danielle Simonnet reacted angrily to the beach being named “Tel Aviv on the Seine” on 13 August, after the Israeli coastal city.
“For the Israeli government, this is a nice bit of PR that Paris is serving up on a plate,” Simonnet told France Inter radio.
“I fear it will go very badly and I think it sends a very bad message,” she said.
Simonnet was supported by pro-Palestinian group CAPJPO-Europalestine, which called for protests if “this obscene event is not cancelled”.
“It is out of the question to allow such an immoral event to go ahead in a public space,” the group said, adding that it was “not about religion but about international law, human rights and human dignity”.
Critics said the timing of the tribute to Tel Aviv was particularly ill-advised, coming after a Palestinian toddler burned to death in a 31 July arson attack in a West Bank village, suspected to be the work of Jewish extremists.
Family members of toddler in critical condition after West Bank arson attack Read more
The child’s father died at the weekend of his injuries.
Linking the attack to Israel’s ongoing construction of settlements on land the Palestinians want for a future state, Simonnet called for the beach event to be cancelled or reorganised into “a peace protest, in support of fraternity, in support of the fight against all forms of racism and anti-Semitism, and to back recognition of the Palestinian state”.
A petition urging Paris authorities to axe the Tel Aviv day of the event had gathered more than 16,000 signatures by Monday evening.
But the mayor’s office vowed it would not be swayed.
Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s deputy, Bruno Julliard, said Israel’s critics should distinguish between “the brutal politics of the Israeli government and Tel Aviv, a progressive city”.
“We will not cancel this event because it would be to agree with radicals,” he said. “We do not want to punish [the] population and cities that strive for peace.”
Eytan Schwartz, foreign policy advisor to the Tel Aviv mayor, Ron Huldai, praised Hidalgo’s “courage” in “rejecting pressure and attempts to have this event cancelled”.
“We are delighted with our cooperation with the city of Paris, which stands by its friends,” he told AFP.A US foundation is offering $1.4 million in prize money for new technologies to clean up oil spills. Prompted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, philanthropist Wendy Schmidt decided to fund the prize.
The X Prize Foundation, based in Playa Vista, California, will organise the competition. The foundation rose to prominence in 2004 when another of its prizes led to the development of SpaceShipOne, a private, reusable spacecraft.
Competitors will be invited to test their technologies in 2011 in a 203- by 20-metre tank owned by the US government’s Minerals Management Service. A moving bridge that simulates a boat pulling cleanup equipment and a wave generator create ocean-like conditions in the New Jersey-based facility, says Dave DeVitis, a lab engineer.
A wide range of new technologies could help. Di Gao of the University of Pittsburgh has demonstrated a filter that attracts water and repels oil, allowing the water to pass through while separating out the oil.
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Actor Kevin Costner has funded the development of a centrifuge-based system to separate oil from water. The technology, created by Louisiana-based firm Ocean Therapy Solutions, has already been deployed in the Gulf of Mexico, however, so it is not clear whether it could enter the competition, which is meant to spark new solutions.
Another approach is to build boats with holes in their hulls to skim oil from the ocean surface and collect it within. A huge tanker ship called A Whale was modified by Taiwanese shipping company TMT to collect oil in this way. It was sent to the Gulf of Mexico but was never used because of its disappointing performance in tests.
Steve Potter of SL Ross Environmental Research, a Canadian oil-spill consulting company, says he thinks there are ways to improve on existing cleanup technologies. But he did not want to elaborate in case he decides to compete for the purse: “If I tell you my idea, then I won’t win the prize.”Are you there? Send your stories, images, video to iReport.
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Seven Taliban attacked Kabul's Hotel Inter-Continental in a brazen, carefully orchestrated operation that began Tuesday night and continued into Wednesday, ending with their deaths and those of 11 other people some six hours after it began, police said.
"We are still searching the hotel; the death number may increase," said Chief of Criminal Investigations Mohammad Zahir on Wednesday morning. Twelve people were wounded or injured, he added.
"The situation is secure," Interior Minister Bismullah Khan said. By then, the top floor of the hotel was ablaze, but within a couple of hours, the flames were gone, though smoke continued to rise from the wreckage.
Two security personnel were killed in the attack, he said.
By dawn, security forces were allowing reporters to approach the hotel, and some guests were seen departing.
Saiz Ahmed, a U.S. citizen in Kabul for a Ph.D. project, was among them. "I'm sure none of us thought we were going to make it," he said after having stayed on the floor of his darkened bedroom for more than five hours listening to gunfire and occasional bomb blasts. "I wrote my little will -- just in case."
Read Ahmed's account from inside the Kabul hotel
The Taliban penetrated the hotel's typically heavy security in the attack, and one of them detonated an explosion on the second floor, said Erin Cunningham, a journalist for The Daily in Kabul.
Rocket-propelled grenades were launched from the roof of the hotel toward the first vice president's house. A few moments later, the hotel was rocked by three explosions, one of which knocked her off her feet, Cunningham said. U.S. forces were on the scene, she added.
At about 2 a.m., four hours after the attack began, International Security Assistance Force helicopters fired at insurgents on the roof, killing as many as three of the gunmen, ISAF spokesman Maj. Tim James told CNN.
An hour later, ISAF said the Afghan security forces had cleared the roof and were clearing the rest of the hotel.
At 4 a.m., police believed that all the attackers were dead, "but one was alive and hidden, and he started to resist" and continued to do so until 6:20 a.m., Zahir said.
At least one of the attackers detonated his explosives, said Afghan Lt. Gen. Mohammad Ayoub Salangi, the city's chief of police.
A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, said in an e-mail that the suicide attackers entered the hotel after killing the security guards at the entrance.
"One of the suicide attackers told us on the phone that they are in the lobby and chasing guests into their rooms by smashing the doors of the rooms," Mujahid told CNN in an e-mail he sent as the incident was unfolding.
There were no indications that U.S. military or diplomatic personnel were at the hotel, U.S. officials told CNN.
The Inter-Continental is popular among international guests. A news conference had been scheduled to take place there Wednesday to discuss the planned transition of security from international to Afghan forces that U.S. President Barack Obama announced last week. Obama was briefed on the attack while en route back to Washington from Iowa, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.
Members of the Afghan National Security Forces were on the scene, but the city police had the lead, ISAF Maj. Jason Waggoner said in a statement. Waggoner said ISAF forces provided "some limited assistance."
Electricity around the hotel was shut off, said Jerome Starkey, a reporter for The Times.
The United States condemned the attack on the hotel, with State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland saying it "once again demonstrates the terrorists' complete disregard for human life."
The hotel was developed by the InterContinental Hotels Group and opened in 1969. But it has had no association with the group since the Soviet invasion in 1979, though it continues to use the name and logo without connection to the parent company.
The incident came on the same day that Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell announced that NATO and other members of the international community involved in Afghanistan have decided to increase the |
fights Terminators sent back in time to eliminate a resistance fighter who is trying to destroy him. A trap laid for RoboCop traps his mind when he interfaces with the computer that will become Skynet, and Skynet and the Terminators are born. In the future RoboCop's mind within Skynet's systems rebuilds a body for himself and heads out to help the resistance fight back.
In 2033, Skynet sent the T-Infinity Temporal Terminator to kill Sarah Connor in 2015. Ironically, the T-Infinity was later destroyed and its data was analyzed by the Resistance to gain the location of Skynet's Hub. The Resistance then launched a missile directly to the Skynet Hub, destroying Skynet once and for all.
Superman vs. the Terminator [ edit ]
Another crossover comic, Superman vs. the Terminator: Death to the Future sees Skynet forming a cross-temporal alliance with Superman's foe the Cyborg, dispatching various Terminators into the past in an attempt to eliminate Superman, Supergirl and Superboy. When Superman is accidentally drawn into the future when the resistance attempt to retrieve a Terminator sent into the past including a future version of his friend Steel, Skynet manages to incapacitate him using kryptonite, having acquired information about how to duplicate it based on data hidden in a salvaged Terminator skull by the Cyborg. Although Skynet sends Terminators into the past equipped with rockets and other bonus features to delay Superboy and Supergirl, Superman and Steel are able to destroy Skynet in the future by detonating a massive electro-magnetic pulse, Superman returning to the past to destroy the last of the Terminators. Although the storyline ends with Cyborg and Lex Luthor speculating that they will be in charge of Skynet when it is activated, this is never followed up.
Attractions [ edit ]
T2 3-D: Battle Across Time [ edit ]
In the Universal Studios theme park attraction T2 3-D, based on Terminator 2, a T-800 machine and a young John Connor journey into the post-apocalyptic future and attempt to destroy Skynet's "system core". This core is housed inside an enormous, metallic-silver pyramidal structure, and guarded by the "T-1000000", a colossal liquid metal shape shifter more reminiscent of a spider than a human being. However, the T-1000000 fails, and the T-800 destroys Skynet once John has escaped through a time machine.
See also [ edit ]In an emailed response to public records request, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office released a lightly-redacted copy of its non-disclosure disagreement with the FBI. The document is dated December 7, 2012, and uses the same template of the NDA between the FBI and the Erie County Sheriff that was released by the ACLU on April 7, 2015.
The NDA includes these references to public records requests:
7. The San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department shall not, in any civil or criminal proceeding, use or provide any information concerning the Harris Corporation wireless collection equipment/technology, its associated software, operating manuals, and any related documentation (including its technical/engineering description(s) and capabilities) beyond the evidentiary results obtained through the use of the equipment/technology including, but not limited to, during pre-trial matters, in search warrants and related affidavits, in discovery, in response to court ordered disclosure, in other affidavits, in grand jury hearings, in the State’s case-in-chief, rebuttal, or on appeal, or in testimony in any phase of civil or criminal trial, without the prior written approval of the FBI. If the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department learns that a District Attorney, prosecutor, or a court is considering or intends to use or provide any information concerning the Harris Corporation wireless collection equipment/technology, its associated software, operating manuals, and any related documentation (including its technical/engineering description(s) and capabilities) beyond the evidentiary results obtained through the use of the equipment/technology in a manner that will cause law enforcement sensitive information relating to the technology to be made known to the public, the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department will immediately notify the FBI in order to allow sufficient time for the FBI to intervene to protect the equipment/technology and information from disclosure and potential compromise.
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8. In addition, the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department will, at the request of the FBI, seek dismissal of the case in lieu of using or providing, or allowing others to use or provide, any information concerning the Harris Corporation wireless collection equipment/technology, its associated software, operating manuals, and any related documentation (beyond the evidentiary results obtained through the use of the equipment/technology), if using or providing such information would potentially or actually compromise the equipment/technology. This point supposes that the agency has some control or influence over the prosecutorial process. Where such is not the case, or is limited so as to be inconsequential, it is the FBI’s expectation that the law enforcement agency identify the applicable prosecuting agency, or agencies, for inclusion in this agreement.2017 Kawasaki Ninja 1000 ABS
Kawasaki’s flagship, open-class sport touring bike with power and comfort, the Ninja 1000 ABS returns for 2017 with added electronics, normally reserved for race models. Built for riders wanting sporty handling and smooth, powerful acceleration, the Ninja 1000 ABS has all of that, but in a relaxed, comfortable riding position—creating a motorcycle with liter-bike performance, but a level of comfort and versatility that allows the miles to roll on with ease. Now, with the added electronics, the 2017 Ninja 1000 ABS will give riders increased confidence on their next ride.
New for 2017 are wider fairings, a new double-bubble windscreen, 5-way adjustable clutch lever and seat, all aiding in increased rider comfort, making the 2017 Ninja 1000 even more enjoyable. Hard, KQR color-matched saddlebags may be selected from among a variety of Kawasaki Genuine Accessories, further enhancing the touring comfort of the Ninja 1000 ABS.
ELECTRONICS
Utilizing technology previously reserved for the Ninja ZX-10R sportbike, the 2017 Ninja 1000 ABS motorcycle features a 6-axis Bosch Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) that includes electronic rider aids such as: Kawasaki Cornering Management Function, Kawasaki TRaction Control (KTRC), and Kawasaki Intelligent anti-lock Brake System (KIBS).
The system uses minimal hardware but complex Kawasaki proprietary software. The strength of Kawasaki’s cutting-edge electronics has always been the highly sophisticated programming that gives the ECU an accurate real-time picture of what the chassis is doing. Kawasaki’s proprietary dynamic modeling program makes skillful use of its formula as it examines changes in multiple parameters, enabling it to take into account changing road and tire conditions.
The new Bosch IMU enables inertia along five DOF (degrees of freedom) to be monitored: acceleration along longitudinal, transverse and vertical axes, plus roll rate and pitch rate. While the sixth axis, yaw rate, is calculated by the ECU using Kawasaki original software. Bosch’s latest IMU is compact and very lightweight, weighing only 40 grams.
Using the latest evolution of this advanced modeling software, KCMF monitors engine and chassis parameters throughout the corner – from entry, through the apex, to corner exit – modulating brake force and engine power to facilitate smooth transition from acceleration to braking and back again, and to assist riders in tracing their intended line through the corner.
Three modes cover a wide range of riding conditions, offering either enhanced sport riding performance or the peace of mind to negotiate slippery surfaces with confidence. Modes 1 and 2 prioritize maximum forward acceleration, while Mode 3 provides rider reassurance by facilitating smooth riding on slippery surfaces. Riders may also elect to turn the system off.
In Modes 1 and 2, highly sophisticated programming allows a degree of slip – a certain amount of slip is required to maximize acceleration. The ideal slip ratio varies according to conditions. The system looks at a number of parameters to get an accurate real-time picture of what is going on: front and rear wheel speed (slippage) and various engine, machine and rider input parameters are monitored. The IMU-enhanced feedback allows even more precise management than on the previous model.
KIBS AND BRAKING
KIBS is a multi-sensing system, using the input from numerous sources, to provide the best braking possible. In addition to front and rear wheel speed sensors (standard for any ABS system), KIBS also monitors front caliper hydraulic pressure and various information from the engine ECU (throttle position, engine speed, clutch actuation and gear position). High-precision brake pressure control enables the system to avoid reduced brake performance due to excessive pressure drops, allows lever feel to be maintained when KIBS is active, and helps ABS pulses feel smoother (not heavy).
High-precision brake pressure control also offers a number of sport riding benefits: less rear lift under hard braking, minimal kickback during operation and accounting for back-torque. With the addition of the new KIBS systems comes improved rear brake pad material and optimized spring.
ERGONOMICS
The relatively upright position—compared to supersport models—offers both control and comfort for riders. Separate, raised clip-ons are mounted on top of the forks, for relaxed arm position, while maintaining a sporty and comfortable riding position.
A new 5-way adjustable clutch lever can be set to suit the size of the rider’s hands, aiding in rider comfort. Mirrors are positioned 20mm farther outward and have a greater range of movement, offering easier adjustability.
Both rider and passenger seats deliver increased comfort. The redesigned rider seat has a wider seat area, offering greater support, and enabling longer stretches without having to stop due to discomfort.
The passenger seat is longer with thicker urethane padding and a design that swells at the front, resulting in a larger seat area that keeps passengers from sliding forward. Dampers on the underside of the seat also help reduce vibration. Ergonomically sculpted passenger grips are easy to hold and naturally positioned, contributing to even more passenger comfort.
The fairing design also covers part of the frame, contributing to a good ergonomic fit and helping to protect the rider from engine heat for added comfort.
STYLING
Supersport-style full-fairing bodywork gives the Ninja 1000 ABS motorcycle a distinct, head-turning look. The sleek styling also offers a good measure of wind protection, aiding to reduce rider fatigue. Front cowl design is much sharper, giving the 2017 Ninja 1000 ABS a much sportier appearance and greatly increasing its Ninja family resemblance. Chin spoilers similar to those on the Ninja H2 and Ninja ZX-10R motorcycles strengthen the resemblance.
Turn signals are built into to the fairings to aid in the slim profile and sporty look. Supersport-style front fender contributes to both aerodynamics and racy looks.
ENGINE
Powerful 1,043cm3 liquid-cooled, 4-stroke in-line four-cylinder engine pulls strongly from all rpm. Adding to rider exhilaration, the engine delivers superb engine response, a strong mid-range hit and an intoxicating intake howl. Revised engine settings offer even smoother power delivery, facilitating control and contributing to rider comfort and confidence.
Downdraft throttle bodies allow for the shortest path to the engine, helping for ideal low-mid range power. The throttle bodies are oval sub-throttles allowing for a slim profile of the engine as well.
The Ninja 1000 ABS features many enhancements that allow for a smoother engine feeling and less vibration to the rider. One major feature is the secondary balancer on the engine crankshaft, which eliminates excessive vibration.
CHASSIS
Thanks to a rigid, lightweight aluminum frame and compact engine design, the weight is not only low and centered inside the motorcycle, but the overall profile is also slim. This centralization allows for sharp handling, neutral steering and a light turn-in. Lightweight and highly rigid, the frame uses the engine as a stressed member.
The frame is a 5-piece cast aluminum construction, consisting of steering stem, left and right main frames, and two cross pieces. The front part of the rear frame is an example of form and function combined, allowing the side covers to be eliminated. This also allows the width under the seat to be narrower, offering riders a shorter reach to the ground.
SUSPENSION
Up front you’ll find 41mm inverted front forks with stepless compression and rebound damping and spring preload adjustability. Settings offer both sporty performance (contributing to light handling on the street and in the hills) and comfort.
Rear suspension positions the shock unit and linkage above the swingarm, allowing for greater mass centralization. The rear shock features rebound and preload adjustability, with a remote preload adjuster facilitating setting changes to suit tandem riding, luggage or rider preference. This is ideal for quick, on-the-go adjustability when traveling.
INSTRUMENTATION
An all-new instrument panel layout features a large analogue tachometer flanked by warning lamps on one side, and a gear position indicator and multi-function LCD screen on the other. The LCD screen features a negative-lit display, adding to the instrument cluster’s sporty, modern appearance. Gear position indicator increases shifting precision and confidence, while also lending to the Ninja 1000 ABS’s sporty image.
Complementing the gear indicator is a new shift light, the tachometer’s needle changes color (from white to pink to red) to indicate the rider-selectable shift-up timing. During normal operation the shift indicator lamp is off, and the tachometer needle is white. When engine speed is within 500 rpm of the selected shift-up timing, the shift indicator lamp flashes, and the tachometer needle turns pink. When the pre-chosen rpm is reached, the shift indicator lamp flashes rapidly, and the tachometer needle turns red. Riders can set the shift-up timing between 5,000 and 11,000 rpm in 250 rpm increments. The shift indicator function can also be turned off completely.
In addition to the digital speedometer and gear position indicator, display functions include: odometer, dual trip meters, remaining fuel range, current and average fuel consumption, external temperature (new for 2017), coolant temperature, clock and the Economical Riding Indicator.
Colors:
Candy Lime Green / Metallic Graphite Gray
Metallic Spark Black / Metallic Graphite Gray
MSRP:
2017 Kawasaki Ninja 1000 - $12,199
2017 Kawasaki Ninja 650 ABS KRT Edition
With improved styling resembling that of its bigger siblings, the stylish 2017 Ninja 650 features new components. Built for the street rider who wants the performance of the Ninja family, but with more street-focused ergonomics and control, the Ninja 650 is new with a twin-spar frame and the redesigned, race-proven 650cc parallel twin.
The mid-sized member in the Ninja lineup, the Ninja 650 is built to satisfy the needs of riders who want to step up from a Ninja 300, but don’t want the high technology, cost and high performance of the Ninja ZX-6R.
The Ninja 650 is truly a member of the Ninja family, with a new front cowling that takes styling cues from the Ninja ZX-10R motorcycle, but with comfortable ergonomics so riders can enjoy this ride for more miles. The Ninja 650 will also be available without ABS.
STYLE
The Ninja 650’s new upper cowling fits with the Ninja family identity. The chin spoiler below the headlight emulates the design theme from the Ninja ZX-10R. Accompanying the new front cowling is a sharply redesigned headlight.
New mirrors contribute to the stylish look and enhance visibility. Further adding to the sporty look is a X-shaped LED taillight.
ENGINE AND TRANSMISSION
Kawasaki’s 650cc parallel twin has been a winner on the race track in the AMA PRO Flat Track series, and is also a proven street engine. Designed with a steady and smooth torque curve and progressive clutch, the power plant for the Ninja 650 is great for riders of all experience levels, making for a fun and easy ride for riders gaining experience and for those with thousands of miles under their belts.
The engine of the 2017 Ninja 650 features a new, slimmer intake and throttle body ports which allow for finer atomization of fuel and improved engine air-flow. These changes result in improved, smoother power down-low. Camshafts also now feature reduced overlap and less duration. The exhaust pipe length has also been shortened.
These changes result in an engine that’s smooth and progressive with better low-to-mid range power. The engine retains its smooth off-throttle power delivery, with a steady climb to max output. The torque curve is now smoother and more consistent to redline. Along with more performance and better emissions the 650cc engine also has improved fuel consumption.
A new assist and slipper clutch allows for a lighter clutch pull and reduces rear-wheel hop during downshifting. This is ideal for new riders learning and for those wanting a carefree ride.
CHASSIS
A new high-tensile steel, trellis frame uses the engine as a stress-member, bringing engineering development from performance bikes like the Ninja H2 to a lightweight, entry-level platform. Minimized bends cut down on stress-points in the frame and result in a lighter overall weight by nearly 40 pounds. The rear section of the frame is twin-tube, for added rigidity and improved carrying capacity.
The new gull-arm swingarm provides space for the central mounted exhaust, while creating a strong mount from the frame pivot point to axle. The new horizontal back-link suspension design features a linkage with progressive ratio, creating better suspension action and improves the rider’s feel of the road.
ERGONOMICS
The Ninja 650 tows the line between racy sportbike and comfortable commuter. New top-mount clip-on handlebars further showcase its sportbike heritage, but the slightly higher positioning, combined with the new, lower seat height, allows the rider to sit upright with relaxed hand positioning. The grips are mounted slightly forward, to aid in the slightly aggressive stance, making the Ninja 650 a great motorcycle on the weekend canyon ride or on the Monday commute.
This year the Ninja 650 seat height has been lowered 15mm, for a more stable foot placement when stopped and lower center of gravity. This year features a newly designed adjustable windscreen for added wind protection.
Colors:
Ninja 650 - Metallic Spark Black
Ninja 650 - Pearl Blizzard White
Ninja 650 - Candy Burnt Orange
Ninja 650 - Lime Green/Ebony (KRT Edition)
MSRP:
2017 Kawasaki Ninja 650 – $7,399
2017 Kawasaki Ninja 650 ABS – $7,799
2017 Kawasaki Ninja 650 KRT Edition – $7,999
2017 Kawasaki Z900 ABS
Designed for maximum riding pleasure, the new Z900 mounts a 948cc in-line, 4-cylinder engine into a new, ultra-lightweight, trellis frame. Sugomi is a Japanese word that describes the intense aura and energy of an object that is felt in those viewing it. The new Kawasaki Z900 is designed to evoke the thrill of motorcycling in those who see it up close.
The purposeful choice of a 900cc-class in-line-four was intended to reward the rider with crisp, smooth response and exhilarating acceleration at every twist of the throttle. The engine becomes more exciting the higher the revs climb, its smooth power delivery aids control. The lightweight chassis responds quickly to rider input; the nimble handling lends itself to spirited sports riding.
Like many legendary Kawasaki 900cc-class in-line four machines before the Z900 (Z1, Ninja/GPz900R, Ninja ZX-9R), the Z900 motorcycle’s package delivers a sublime balance of power and handling – ideal for a supernaked model.
The 948cc engine delivers the exhilarating excitement of power and freedom to the rider with every release of the clutch. This is a lightweight, nimble supernaked meant to redesign the large-displacement naked bike market. The crisp response of the Z900’s in-line-four cylinder engine is perfectly balanced by its light, agile handling. Exhilarating without being overly intimidating, the combination is simply sublime.
ENGINE
The new liquid-cooled, DOHC, 16-valve 948cc inline four-cylinder engine offers impressive power and strong torque. Designed to complement the new chassis, with a lightweight, strong engine with plenty of torque, the 73.4 x 56.0 mm bore and stroke were chosen to create an engine design that exemplifies the thrill of acceleration.
Silky smooth response from mid-high rpm provides excellent driveability, with hard-hitting power delivery above 6,000 rpm. Good over-rev characteristics mean that power does not drop off suddenly at high rpm.
Four individual 36mm throttle bodies offer ideal mid-range power and the sub-throttles ensure smooth, sensitive throttle response. The downdraft throttle body layout creates the shortest distance possible for the fuel-air mixture, contributing to performance.
The manufacturing process used for the pistons on the Z900 motorcycle take a lesson from Kawasaki’s premiere supercharged sportbikes, the Ninja H2 and Ninja H2R. Lightweight and rigid, the pistons are formed using a unique casting process (similar to a forging process) that scrapes unnecessary material to achieve the ideal thickness. This enables a lightweight piston, on par with forged pistons.
The Z900 uses “sound research” in creating the intake layout. This results in a mix of performance techniques and enhanced intake noise. Inside of the upward mounted airbox are varying length intake runners, with the two outside cylinders being longer than the inside two. This results in a tuning that helps both low and top end power output and provides an exhilarating intake noise during large amounts of throttle input. Twist the throttle and all of the rider’s senses are activated.
The exhaust system features a four-into-one-pre-chamber-into-silencer layout, with joint pipes linking the exhaust headers (headers 1-4, 2-3 are linked) contributing to stronger mid-range torque for improved feeling. Silencer’s dual-chamber internal construction contributes to performance as well as the exhaust note, while ensuring noise regulations are met.
Use of stainless steel material on the end-cap and silencer cover adds a high-quality feel, while contributing to a stylish design that looks compact and light.
TRANSMISSION AND CLUTCH
Short gear ratios for first through fifth gears contribute to the Z900 motorcycle’s strong acceleration in the rpm range used in everyday riding, while sixth gear is a true overdrive gear.
The Assist and Slipper clutch on the Z900 borrows from engineering knowledge learned on the race track and with models like the Ninja H2R and Ninja ZX-10R is. The clutch uses two types of cams (an assist cam and a slipper cam).
When the engine is operating at normal rpm the assist cam functions as a self-servo mechanism, pulling the clutch hub and operating plate together to compress the clutch plates. This allows the total clutch spring load to be reduced, resulting in a lighter clutch lever pull when operating the clutch.
When excessive engine braking occurs the slipper cam comes into play, forcing the clutch hub and operating plate apart. This relieves pressure on the clutch plates to reduce back-torque and help prevent the rear tire from hopping and skidding during quick deceleration.
CHASSIS
It’s noticeable as soon as you snap the kickstand up, just how lightweight the Z900 really is. Starting with the chassis, which is a new, high-tensile steel, twin-spar, trellis frame, this design contributes significantly to the bike’s light, nimble handling.
The approach to have the fewest bends and most straight lines in the frame allowed for a chassis that disperses stress extremely well. The frame design also trims all unnecessary material, helping cut down on weight.
The engine is rigid-mounted in five points on the engine, aiding in the nimble handling. Twin-tube type rear frame contributes to the bike’s low seat height with easy reach to the ground.
Up front is a pair of 41mm inverted front forks which feature stepless rebound damping and spring preload adjustability. Adjustment is via the conveniently located fork top caps.
Horizontal-backed linked rear suspension positions the shock unit and linkage above the lightweight aluminum swing arm. This arrangement contributes to mass centralization, while ensuring that the suspension is located far enough from the exhaust that operation is not affected by heat. The rear shock is also adjustable, featuring rebound and preload adjustability. Settings offer both sporty performance (contributing to light handling on the street and in the hills) and comfort.
COLORS
Z900 ABS – Pearl Mystic Gray/Metallic Flat Spark Black
Z900 ABS – Metallic Flat Spark Black/Metallic Spark Black
Z900 – Pearl Mystic Gray/Metallic Flat Spark Black
Z900 – Metallic Flat Spark Black/Metallic Spark Black
MSRP
2017 Kawasaki Z900 ABS - $8,799
2017 Kawasaki Z900 - $8,399
2017 Kawasaki Z650 ABS
The Kawasaki Z650 motorcycle is designed to engage your senses: your sights with its raw and refined look; your touch with the chassis’ feedback to the rider; and your hearing with the specially engineered tune of the exhaust and intake. The open cockpit design allows you to experience your surroundings, hear the sounds of the city or country road and feel the wind.
The stripped down body work, slim lines and exposed engine and suspension components resonate the bike’s raw theme, where only the necessary parts remain. It’s a purpose-built motorcycle with tight body work and a light curb weight. There’s beauty in its simplicity.
The 2017 Kawasaki Z650 is the performance bike made for everyday riding. While influences from the generations of KZ and Z models have made this Z650 what it is today, it’s still very much its own model, a new-school performance motorcycle for the all-around rider. This motorcycle suits a range of motorcyclists, whether they’re looking for a real performance motorcycle that’s comfortable and capable of lightweight handling, or a smooth, lightweight streetfighter, that’s fun and easy to ride.
ENGINE
Kawasaki’s 650cc parallel-twin engine design has been a proven performer on the track. The new 650cc found in the Z650 however, is purposely tuned for street motorcycles to give the motorcycle a more even and steady torque curve.
The engine features a slim intake and throttle body ports, which allow for finer atomization of fuel and improved engine airflow. Camshafts have reduced overlap and less duration, allowing for better mid-range power. The engine ultimately has a smooth off-throttle power delivery, with a steady climb to max output.
CHASSIS
The high-tensile steel trellis frame uses the engine as a stress member, bringing engineering development from performance bikes to a lightweight, entry-level platform. Minimized bends in the frame cut down on stress-points and result in a lighter chassis. The rear section of the frame is a twin-tube, carried from the backbone of the frame, for added rigidity and improved carrying capacity.
Kawasaki engineers developed a new gull-arm swingarm with a pivot width similar to the wheel axle, creating a straight line from pivot point to axle, increasing leverage and strength of the rear suspension. Utilizing a horizontal back-linked rear shock with linkage makes for easy tuning, improved comfort and a progressive character.
ERGONOMICS
The naked bike ergonomics feature the best of both worlds, in terms of a comfortable and an aggressive stance. The seating position and foot placement is low and forward, but with upright handlebars which allow for comfortable riding. The handlebars also increase leverage for adept, precise handling.
Much thought was placed into the positioning and angle of the handlebars and grips. The Z650 grips are placed for a natural position for the rider’s wrist, aiding in comfort and control. The narrow handlebars increase confidence and ease of use when making slow-speed corners.
The Z650 motorcycle features a comfortable passenger seat and comes standard with passenger pegs, for easy two-up riding.
INSTRUMENTATION
The instrumentation features an LCD display, a major plus for performance-conscious riders is the tachometer/shift light that flashes when reaching a user-selected rpm.
The instrumentation also includes a digital sweeping LCD tachometer, and gear position indicator. Riders can pick their favorite rpm display from a selection. A carbon-fiber appearance panel wraps the complete look of the instrumentation, for a clean and tight package.
COLORS
Z650 ABS – Pearl Flat Stardust White / Metallic Spark Black
Z650 ABS – Metallic Flat Spark Black / Metallic Spark Black
MSRP
2017 Kawasaki Z650 ABS $7,399
2017 Kawasaki Versys-X 300 ABS
At 296cc, the Versys-X 300 is the smallest-displacement model in the adventure-touring category. It offers the best comfort and convenience of any sub-300cc model, as you’d expect from a bike designed to be the ideal travel partner.
Not only is it light and nimble, but with the narrow chassis and low seat height, it’s an ideal motorcycle for new riders—The Versys-X 300 offers easy access to motorcycle adventuring. With a relaxed upright seating position, front fairing and windscreen, sporty and nimble handling, it’s also an ideal motorcycle for a variety of riding conditions. From the rough paved roads, to the morning commute, the Versys-X 300 is an easy-to-ride motorcycle that makes adventure-style motorcycling more accessible than ever before.
A unique package, the adventure-style Versys-X 300 motorcycle offers convenience and comfort as the first touring capable machine in its displacement category. The Versys-X 300 is categorized as a “Multi Purpose Adventure Touring on Road” bike and is the entry model to the Versys family.
STYLE
The Versys-X 300, while the youngest in the family of Versys motorcycles, sets itself apart from the rest in many ways. It’s not only a lightweight, capable machine, but it also features a rough-road adventure style and rugged look.
The front cowling is long and tall with a chin spoiler in the bottom section. This design is meant to be equal parts functional and stylish, aiding in the adventure look, while maintaining ample wind protection. Air ducts positioned under headlights also reduce hot air buildup inside the cowl, a simple engineering design that increases comfort and helps reduce riding temperature. Large side openings in the side panels offer an efficient place for hot air to be released from the radiator.
The 4.5-gallon fuel tank contributes to the adventure-style image and function while maintaining a slim design. The Versys-X 300 features a 19-inch front aluminum rim and a 17-inch rear aluminum rim, both with steel spokes.
The large two-up seat features excellent comfort and load-bearing qualities with a seat cover carefully stitched from multiple pieces, creating a premium feel on par with more expensive models.
It wouldn’t be a Versys without a rear carrier with easy to use grips and strap hooks for adding luggage. A wide variety of Kawasaki Genuine Accessories will be offered to take the Versys-X 300 even further, and to help riders create a personalized motorcycle that meets their needs.
ENGINE
The Versys-X 300 motorcycle utilizes the proven performance of its liquid-cooled 296cc parallel-twin engine, which is tuned to deliver strong low- and mid-range torque for crisp throttle response, as well as excellent power on the open road. Much of its prowess can be attributed to its advanced digital fuel injection, which helps manage cold starting while providing excellent throttle response. The Versys-X 300 features a unique slim exhaust design that keeps the header pipes close to the engine, for added protection against the elements. The exhaust piping is also unique to the Versys-X 300 motorcycle, helping to produce low and mid-range torque characteristics best suited for an adventure-style touring model. It also means easy-to-manage power delivery and added ground clearance. Further aiding in the adventure styling and capability is a right-side mounted muffler that helps keep heat away from the passenger.
The radiator features a unique fan cover that helps direct hot air out and under the motorcycle, reducing heat to the rider and passenger. An optimal air cleaner box shape and intake duct layout are designed based on Kawasaki engineers’ airflow analysis. This produces great low- to mid-range power and reduces noise.
CLUTCH AND TRANSMISSION
The six-speed sequential transmission features a positive neutral finder, making it a cinch to select neutral when stopped. A premium FCC clutch with assist and slipper functions reduces lever effort. The Versys-X 300 motorcycle features revised friction area for the assist and slipper clutch spring rate and lever ratio. This expands clutch control range, and facilitates moving off from a start, resulting in a clutch with a light pull and easy feel.
The Versys-X 300 features gear ratios ideal for adventure-style riding with a shorter final reduction ratio. This produces optimized balance between fuel consumption and power feeling and improved low-mid range feel and response.
CHASSIS AND SUSPENSION
The high-tensile, highly rigid backbone pipe frame, with great capability to handle rough paved roads, was built to handle high stress, but the construction plays an important role in simultaneously producing a lightweight motorcycle. The frame features a simplified construction with thin brackets and lightening holes. Another major engineering target was a capable front-end feeling, which contributes to rider confidence.
The engine is used as a stress member of the frame further increasing the strength while keeping it low weight.
Out back is a long-stroke, bottom-linkage Uni-Trak suspension with gas-charged mono-shock and adjustable preload. This helps ensure handling stability and allows riders to touch down with ease, increasing comfort.
The rear shock mount and rear section of the frame were built with increased amounts of bracketing and surface area, in order to increase the rigidity. This allows for more durability and increased suspension action.
Up front you’ll find long-travel 41mm Showa forks. The forks aid in great front-end feel and provide comfort on various roads. A major bonus for the Versys-X 300 is its wide steering angle, which assists in low speed maneuverability and overall usability. When designing the Versys-X 300, the front suspension was an important part in terms of form and function, with great care taken into making the front suspension fit the adventure look from handlebar to axle.
The 2017 Kawasaki Versys-X 300 motorcycle is available with and without ABS.
Colors:
Candy Lime Green/Metallic Graphite Gray or Metallic Graphite Gray/Flat Ebony
Metallic Graphite Gray/Flat Ebony
MSRP:
2017 Kawasaki Versys-X 300: TBD
2017 Kawasaki Versys-X 300 ABS: TBD
2017 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10RR
Designed to give racers a competitive edge, the Ninja ZX-10RR has dropped any equipment unnecessary to quick lap times; however, the machine is also suited for street use. The Ninja ZX-10RR meets emissions regulations and featuring proper street lighting, and features an engine tune that’s suitable for street riding.
The Ninja ZX-10RR motorcycle doesn’t hide the fact that it’s a purpose-built machine, the purpose, even faster lap times. The Ninja ZX-10RR is designed as a single-seat model, keeping with its race-ready priority. Lack of passenger footpeg mounts and a rear seat, along with a lightweight exhaust mount, contribute to weight savings. The single-seat cover, which comes standard, also contributes to the bike’s racy image. The KRT (Kawasaki Racing Team) Winter Test snowflake logo on the cover matches the one on the windscreen.
Every model will feature a “RR” logo stamped/engraved into the side cover to further distinguish the Ninja ZX-10RR from the standard model. The ignition key is also adorned with a “RR” logo, adding another special touch. The 2017 Ninja ZX-10RR comes standard with ABS.
ENGINE
Using the potent 2016 engine as the starting point, the Ninja ZX-10RR sportbike features added improvements, creating an even stronger performing platform. Changes offer enhanced reliability under racing conditions, the results of feedback from Kawasaki’s racing efforts in the Superbike World Championship.
The Ninja ZX-10RR is a true race machine, keeping the performance features of its standard sibling, but with enhanced features true racers will appreciate. For instance, the cylinder head is redesigned to give clearance for race-kit high-lift cams, also the crankcase has high rigidity reinforcements.
Another engineering development derived from Kawasaki’s WSBK racing efforts includes DLC (Diamond-Like Carbon) coating on valve tappets, which facilitates mid/long-distance engine break-in, and offers reduced mechanical loss and increased performance for a race-tuned engine (i.e. tuned for high performance).
The architecture of the proven 998cc engine retains its 16-valve, DOHC, inline four-cylinder layout and its over-square 76 x 55mm bore and stroke dimensions.
The Ninja ZX-10RR motorcycle features a lightweight crankshaft, which allows for quick revving and great throttle response and acceleration. It also has ideal low- and mid-range power output, which is appreciated when exiting a corner on the racetrack or on a favorite stretch of blacktop. Another advantage of the reduced reciprocating mass is better cornering turn-in and easier side-to-side transitions.
The cylinder head design incorporates additional clearances for the accessory race-kit larger cams, as well as large coolant passageways like on the standard model, to help provide engine reliability. Long-reach spark plugs are another part of the package, helping to boost ignition efficiency.
Electronic throttle valves allow precise control of the intake airflow, contributing to efficient power delivery and seamless integration of the electronic aids such as the Sport-Kawasaki TRaction Control (S-KTRC), the new Kawasaki Launch Control Mode (KLCM) and Kawasaki Engine Brake Control (KEBC).
The titanium-alloy exhaust system helps with weight reduction and mass centralization as well as the power to weight ratio by removing significant weight from the bike.
Titanium-alloy headers use a special heat-resistant alloy, which is unique to Kawasaki in a motorcycle application and feature a connector pipe joining headers three and four to help smooth the engine response. The heat handling capacity contributes to durability, while the alloy also allows thinner pipes thickness, reducing weight even more.
TRANSMISSION
The Ninja ZX-10RR features the same great cassette-type, close-ratio transmission as the Ninja ZX-10R motorcycle. The gear ratios are idealized for circuit riding. Short ratios for second through sixth gear deliver strong corner exit acceleration. The close ratios also give stable downshifts and works with a slipper clutch.
Formerly, the Ninja ZX-10R allowed clutchless, auto-blip downshifts only through fitment of race kit parts; now the Ninja ZX-10RR provides that as a standard feature. This allows quick upshifts and downshifts without the need of a clutch, nor does the rider need to match RPMs. This results in a more enjoyable experience and quicker lap times.
BODYWORK
Aiding in the ZX-10RR’s race-driven look is the paint scheme: Kawasaki Racing Team: Winter Test Edition. The Ninja ZX-10RR sportbike will be offered in the same paint scheme that the Kawasaki WorldSBK team uses for their off season |
agree to a tobacco ban in the next contract.
"Such an agreement would protect the health of players and be a great gift to your young fans," the senators wrote.
Commissioner Bud Selig endorsed the ban in March, but the players union hasn't committed to one. Weiner, who said in June that a "sincere effort" will be made to address the issue, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Some baseball players interviewed by The Associated Press last month were receptive to the idea, but others viewed a ban as an infringement on their freedom.
Meanwhile, the health officials from St. Louis and Arlington wrote in a letter to Weiner that with tobacco companies banned from advertising on TV, they "literally could not buy the ads that are effectively created by celebrity ballplayers using tobacco at games."
The officials, Dr. Cynthia Simmons, the Public Health Authority for Arlington, and Pamela Walker, the St. Louis interim health director, urged players in the World Series to voluntarily abstain from using tobacco, in addition to calling for a permanent ban.
The Centers for Disease Control says that smokeless tobacco can cause cancer, oral health problems and nicotine addiction, and stresses it is not a safe alternative to smoking. Despite the risks, the CDC's most recent survey found that in 2009, 15 percent of high school boys used smokeless tobacco a more than one-third increase over 2003, when 11 percent did.A number of people asked me about Robert T. Kiyosaki and his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. When I said I didn’t think he was a real-estate guru, they insisted he was. Several told me I would like him, that he preaches a message like mine. Eager to find such a guru, I bought his book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, in a bookstore.
Summary
Rich Dad, Poor Dad is one of the dumbest financial advice books I have ever read. It contains many factual errors and numerous extremely unlikely accounts of events that supposedly occurred.
Kiyosaki is a salesman and a motivational speaker. He has no financial expertise and won’t disclose his supposed real estate or other investment success.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad contains much wrong advice, much bad advice, some dangerous advice, and virtually no good advice.
You may wonder if I just criticize or have I written a better book. I wrote a bunch of them. Here’s one on advanced fundamentals of real estate investment and another on basics. Click on either for more information about it or to order it. My Succeeding book is more similar to the actual subject of Rich Dad.
Wikipedia says, “On August 20, 2012, Kiyosaki's company, Rich Global LLC, filed for bankruptcy in Wyoming Bankruptcy Court.”
Dangerous advice "If you're gonna go broke, go broke big"
Convinces people that college is for suckers Law-breaking advice Advocates committing a felony : have rich friends for trading stock based on non-public inside information, he says "That's what friends are for."
: have rich friends for trading stock based on non-public inside information, he says "That's what friends are for."
Recommends tax fraud by deducting vacations and health club dues
Brags about using a partner weasel clause in which his cat is his partner Bad liar Can't keep track of his story
Shouts from the rooftops how rich he is, but refuses to disclose real estate portfolio because he " doesn't want people to know he has money "
, but refuses to disclose real estate portfolio because he " " Apparently lied about going bankrupt in 1985
about going bankrupt in 1985 Claimed his net worth is $50-$100 million depending on the day; his Rich Dad Poor Dad coauthor said in court that he only made $9 million
his Rich Dad Poor Dad coauthor said in court that he only made $9 million His "best teacher ever" changed repeatedly
'92 - Ralph Kiyosaki (Poor Dad) '97 - Rich Dad '06 - Buckminster Fuller
The blueprint to becoming a "Financial Genius" I'm not the only critic Wall Street Journal: "Rich Men, Poor Advice"
Smart Money Magazine: "Karma Chameleon" Fiction posing as non-fiction Oprah needs to confront Kiyosaki about calling a fiction book non-fiction just like she did with James Frey
He asks why Rich Dad has to be any more truthful than Harry Potter
Admits fictionalizing on copyright page of Rich Kid, Poor Kid
Admits to 20/20 that he doesn't teach people how to get rich
"Marine corps made him what he is today" - he was laterally transferred to the Marine Corps from the Merchant Marine and Navy, he never went through the entry-level Marine training
the entry-level Marine training Lied about desertion while serving in Vietnam (admitted later he just missed the boat)
about desertion while serving in Vietnam (admitted later he just missed the boat) Became a helicopter pilot to "lead men" (platoon leaders and company commanders lead men; pilots lead machinery)
Rich Dad, Poor Dad triggers the following items on my Real Estate B.S. Artist Detection Checklist: 1, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 20, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 38, 39, 46, 49.
Below I provide the back-up for the above accusations.
Kiyosaki sued by co-author Sharon Lechter
Sharon Lechter, Kiyosaki’s co-author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, sued him in Clark County, NV (Civil Case #07-A-549886-C). It was filed on 10/12/07. I would be interested in seeing the complaint. Apparently, little has happened in the case other than motions to dismiss.
On 9/4/08, the Arizona Republic newspaper carried a story that said Kiyosaki had paid an undisclosed sum to Lechter to settle the suit.
Creature of Amway
Over time, I have received numerous reports that Kiyosaki is primarily a creature of Amway (now Quixtar) and other multi-level marketing organizations. Reportedly, his books were not selling until he allied himself with that crowd. Then the volume of sales to those MLM guys made him a “best-selling author,” which caused normal non-MLM people to think the book must be good. Click here for an email I received along those lines. There is an unauthorized Web site about Amway at www.amquix.info.
Some readers have said that if I am going to criticize Kiyosaki’s book, I must offer a version of how to better yourself that does not have the flaws of Rich Dad Poor Dad. No problem. That would be my book Succeeding, which, somewhat to my surprise, is my top seller of the 38 different books I sell.
In the summer of 2007, the Ohio state government Division of Real Estate and Professional Licensing published an extraordinary statement by a consumer of Robert Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad Poor Dad and Cash Flow game. Be sure to read it at http://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-real-estate-investment-blog/69580419-ohio-real-estate-investor-s-warning-statement-on-robert-kiyosaki-and-bill-gatten-s-complex-pactrust-for-real-estate-investing.
Selected emails from visitors to this page
Collection of age-old clichés about money
A reader suggested that Rich Dad Poor Dad is nothing but a collection of clichés about money. Old clichés. Clichés that have been around since way before Kiyosaki claims “rich dad” originated them. The reader further said that Kiyosaki then appears to have simply made up a bunch of accompanying phony stories to fill the cliché collection out to the length of a book. She may be right. For example, Kiyosaki’s fear-and-greed advice (see below) is an age-old Wall Street cliché about securities prices.
Another reader put it this way,
But you have to admire a guy who can spin two or three paragraphs of very ordinary financial platitudes into such a range of books.
Now admits 'fictionalizing'
On 8/15/01, a reader told me Kiyosaki now has the words “Although based on a true story, certain events in this book have been fictionalized for educational content and impact,” in the fine print on the copyright page of Rich Kid Poor Kid. I had not previously been aware that “educational content and impact” justified lying. Also, I am now confused as to why Kiyosaki’s books are on the nonfiction best seller list if they are fictionalized. Probably because as A Million Little Pieces author James Frey discovered, it’s a lot easier to be a “best-selling author” with a fictional book labeled non-fiction than with a novel.
'Poor dad'
The idea behind Kiyosaki’s title is that his real father was upper middle class. He graduated from Stanford, Chicago, and Northwestern Universities, all on full scholarship, ultimately earning a Ph.D. He pursued a career in education and became the head of the education department of the State of Hawaii. He owned the home in which the Kiyosaki family lived. Kiyosaki calls him his “poor dad.”
'Rich dad'
One day, he asked his father how to make money. His father said he had not made much money and did not know how to make it. He suggested that Robert ask the father of his next-door playmate, Mike. That boy's father was a successful local businessman. He was also an eighth-grade dropout and ultimately a multimillionaire with a bunch of small businesses like construction, restaurants, and convenience stores. Kiyosaki developed a father-son relationship with the neighbor. That is who he is referring to when he uses the phrase “rich dad.”
One visitor to this site asked me if I was sure “Rich Dad” really exists. No, I’m not. In fact, I now lean to believing that there never was a “Rich Dad,” that Kiyosaki made the whole thing up. If I had written such a book, I would have named him in the book, if only out of gratitude. It is noteworthy that Kiyosaki refuses to identify “Rich Dad” and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin was unable to figure out who it was, in spite of the rather obvious “next-door neighbor Mike whose father owns convenience stores, restaurants, and a construction company” clues. The man was purportedly around 30 to 45 years old in 1955. So he would be 83 to 98 now. How many people on that one street in Honolulu could possibly fit that description?
As I recall, the first convenience store was 7-11 and I believe they became widespread around the 1960s. It’s possible Kiyosaki is using the phrase “convenience store” loosely and really means corner groceries, which did exist in the 1950’s.
But I also find the mix of business unlikely. The guy owns “convenience stores, restaurants, and a construction company.” I guess I can imagine a guy who owns convenience stores and a construction company. It’s odd, but not impossible. However, I have less ability to picture a restaurateur who also owns a construction company. I knew one. His restaurant went out of business. For one thing, the restaurant business is extremely management-intensive. At good restaurants, the owner is usually there almost all of the time. Same is true of construction. Plus restaurateurs that I’ve known are very different kinds of people from construction guys.
Kiyosaki’s real father (“Poor Dad”) was named Ralph Kiyosaki. I encourage readers in Hawaii to try to research Ralph’s home ownership when Kiyosaki was nine years old (1955) and try to figure out which adjacent or nearby homeowner might have been “Rich Dad.” If we can find a person who fits the description, and he is either a public person or dead, I will publish the identity.
A bunch of people have told me “Rich Dad” was a now-dead guy named Kim or Kimi. Fine. Get Kiyosaki to say that. Or get Kim’s surviving relatives, like Kiyosaki’s friend Mike, to say it. A bunch of yahoos on the Internet saying it means nothing. People on the Internet see Elvis at their 7-11.
1992 book versus 1997
In 1992, Kiyosaki wrote a book called If You Want to Be Rich and Happy, Don’t Go To School? It is “dedicated to Ralph H. Kiyosaki, former Superintendent of Education, State of Hawaii, the best teacher I ever had.” This would be “Poor Dad.” But Rich Dad Poor Dad, which came out in 1997, says quite emphatically that Rich Dad was the best teacher he ever had.
So maybe “Rich Dad” was the second best teacher he ever had. No. Actually, the 1992 book also identifies the second best teacher Kiyosaki ever had: F. Marshall Thurber.
OK. So maybe “Rich Dad” was third. No. Kiyosaki’s 1992 book has an unusually long acknowledgment section. It lists 111 people, none of whom appears to be “Rich Dad.” That is, none are singled out except for his “Poor Dad” parents, in-laws, business partner, and editors.
Mind you, according to the 1997 book Rich Dad Poor Dad, “Rich Dad” supposedly became central to Kiyosaki’s life starting in 1955 when he was nine. So where was “Rich Dad” in 1992 when Kiyosaki was so diligent at identifying the people who had been important in his life?
In a 4/18/06 Yahoo! column, Kiyosaki now says the best teacher he ever had was Buckminster Fuller. It would be a bit of an understatement to say that Fuller was not an eighth-grade dropout who owned convenience stores.
“Getch yer programs right here! Ya can’t keep track of Kiyosaki’s best teacher he ever had without a program!”
EST then Money and You
A man who says he has known Kiyosaki since the military in Hawaii says Kiyosaki got his start in the “tell other people how to live their lives” business as a result of taking then becoming a speaker in the Money and You organization.
Money and You was a seminar company started by Marshall Thurber, an est graduate. Est was a notorious seminar company in northern California run by Werner Erhard. Werner Erhard is apparently one of many aliases used by John Paul (Jack) Rosenberg, a Philadelphian who started in life as a car salesman and who then moved through a series of aliases, sales careers, and wives before coming up with the name Erhard and the est seminars. They were famous for not letting participants go to the bathroom and for maddeningly vague advice. For a while, they were going to cure world hunger by getting a lot of people just to think about it.
Money and You was reportedly a useful seminar. Shortly after Kiyosaki went to mainland U.S. from Hawaii to run away with Thurber’s circus, Thurber decided to shut it down. Thurber let Kiyosaki and some other speakers take over the business. They promptly emphasized the Australian and New Zealand markets which have, at times in their history, overvalued products and services from the U.S.
Their run in Australia ended when the Australian equivalent of 60 Minutes did an exposé about Money and You.
Basically, it appears that Kiyosaki is a good salesman, although we sort of have to take his word for it pending confirmation from Xerox. Good salesman is the universal description of all the expensive so-called real estate investment gurus. They are sales guys, not real estate guys. Apparently Kiyosaki is yet another example.
This caller also said that Kiyosaki’s wife Kim appears to be the one who invested in Phoenix real estate. “Bob” appears to be the Ralph Kramden (main character of the Honeymooners TV series) of the family, perennially hatching one-hare-brained get-rich-quick scheme after another (like Kiyosaki’s Money and you, velcro surfer wallets, and Rock T-shirt businesses) while his wife invests in basic stuff. I am not ready to anoint her a financial genius. One would have to inquire as to whether their real estate investments in Phoenix appreciated more than those owned by the average person. Most likely, they made the same return on their properties as Joe and Jean Average Phoenix homeowner. If so, they would be as qualified as Joe and Jean homeowner to write a book about it. As I have said in many articles in my newsletter Real Estate Investor’s Monthly, extraordinary performance in real estate is measured by the degree to which your returns exceed those of ordinary homeowners who claim no expertise. In fact, in most periods since World War II, ordinary homeowners have done great return-wise just because they were in the right place at the right time. On Wall Street, they say that in a bull market, everyone thinks he a genius. And some, like Kiyosaki, who are merely married to people who invested in real estate during a bull market, claim that they (the non-investing spouse) are geniuses as a result.
Reportedly, Kim got the idea to invest in Phoenix real estate from a female fellow employee of Money and You who said the Phoenix market was going to be good. That female Money and You employee is the one who should have written us a book on real estate investment. She may be the brains of the outfit if Kim did not add any value to her advice. (Actually, the employee probably was just guessing and her having guessed right is meaningless. In fact, predicting market-wide appreciation in real estate values is impossible to do. Decisions can only be evaluated based on what the decision-maker knew at the time, not on results. You can get good results from bad decisions, e.g., a winning lottery ticket; and vice versa, e.g., attempting a 25-yard field goal that goes wide right when you are down by two points with three seconds left in the game.)
If Kiyosaki claims to be a competent real estate investor, he needs to show addresses of properties he bought that reveal greater returns on those properties than were earned on similar properties at the same time by persons who claim no extraordinary expertise. I suspect an examination of properties he or his wife owned will show that he earned that same returns as local homeowners and that the only thing extraordinary about his purchases is that he had a large amount of book royalties to use to buy them.
The guy who called me has the impression that Kiyosaki’s tortured psyche and insecurities stem from growing up as an obese kid in Hilo in the 1950s. Since he did not know Kiyosaki until the military, that information must have come from Kiyosaki.
No more Bob
Kiyosaki went by Bob for most of his life. Since he became the famous author, he insists that everyone call him “Robert.” Sure, Bob.
20/20 investigation of Kiyosaki
ABC 20/20 did a program about Kiyosaki who has now written 18 books. You can read their story about it at http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=1982669&page=1. The date on the Internet story is May 19, 2006 so the story must have been aired on 20/20 around then. Basically, they gave three people $1,000 each and told them to try to start a business that would show a profit within 20 days. One lost all he money. Another made zero. The third made $243.
Kiyosaki was brought in to coach them and to advise them during the 20 days. Based on the article, it sounds like about all he did was whine about the three would-be entrepreneurs, the short time frame, and so forth. He also pronounced their failures a success—typical Kiyosaki logic—because they learned from them. The ABC 20/20 story ends with,
“Which begs the question: Does anyone really need 18 books to learn to fail?”
Obviously, Kiyosaki has sold 26 million books on the promise that they would help you succeed. Then, when people who have been personally coached by him fail, he blames them and, like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, declares their failures to be successes.
I guess it would be too much to ask for him to admit, “Gee, I guess my advice was of no value to these three.”
If I had been asked to participate in such a challenge, I would have said I have no expertise in telling anyone how to make a profit with $1,000 in 20 days. I do not know how I would have done that if I had been given the money. Probably write a short book and use the $1,000 to print it and create a series of Web pages about it. See my book How to Write, Publish, and Sell Your Own How-To Book for the details on how to do that. It would be interesting for 20/20 or a similar program to give $1,000 to Kiyosaki himself and let he himself show how to turn it into a profit using some method open to his readers. You would have to have a microscope on him every second and prohibit any undisclosed actions or conversations to prevent him from using methods not available to his readers.
What business has Kiyosaki ever made a profit in? With regard to his 26 million books, he is not a businessman. He is only an author. The businessmen generating those sales and profits are his publishers.
'Couldn't put my finger on it...'
I have received numerous emails about this analysis by me that you are currently reading of Rich Dad Poor Dad. There have been several recurring themes in those emails. One is people saying that they liked Kiyosaki’s book, but that it caused them some discomfort or second thoughts or unease. They often say they could not put their finger on what was bothering them—or words to that effect—until they read this analysis.
'Made me think about my finances'
The most common favorable comment I get about Kiyosaki from those who generally agree with my analysis is that “At least he got me to think about my finances.” That’s pretty lame.
The IRS makes you think about your finances every April 15th. You have to think about your finances whenever you fill out a loan or credit-card application. I also think about my finances frequently when I pay bills or receive income. People who are unhappy with their financial lives—which is the typical Kiyosaki fan—probably think about their finances every time they get into their shabby car or return to their unsatisfactory home (e.g., living with parents, bad neighborhood, too small, etc.).
There are lots of books that do a better job of getting you to think about your finances. I suggest my Succeeding and How to Get Started in Real Estate Investment as well as The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John C. Bogle and Jane Bryant Quinn’s Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People. These are books that actually have what Kiyosaki falsely claims to provide.
I think these “made me think about finances” comments are inarticulate at best and dishonest at worst. What is really going on is a lot of people are schlepping along doing a half-ass job of managing the financial aspects of their lives. Rich Dad Poor Dad slaps them up side the head and tells them to clean up their acts. That’s good, but the book goes on to deliver a pack of lies that make getting rich seem much easier than it really is and make education sound much less valuable than it really is. Basically, people want to get rich quick without effort or risk. Kiyosaki is just the latest in a long line of con men who pander to that fantasy.
Can the ordinary person get rich? Yes
Is it as easy as Kiyosaki makes it sound? Not even close.
Can it be done as fast as Kiyosaki says? Nope.
Is education as worthless as Kiyosaki says? Every pertinent study has shown that the more education you have, the higher your net worth and income. Also, educated people live longer, have fewer divorces, better health, and so forth.
Here are U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures on education that were released on 8/17/07:
Weekly earnings by amount of education
amount of education median weekly earnings doctoral degree $1,441 professional degree $1,474 master’s degree $1,140 bachelor’s degree $962 associate degree $721 college dropout $674 high school grad $595 high school dropout $419
Unemployment rate by amount of education
amount of education unemployment rate doctoral degree 1.4% professional degree 1.1% master’s degree 1.7% bachelor’s degree 2.3% associate degree 3.0% college dropout 3.9% high school grad 4.3% high school dropout 6.8%
On the other hand, the public-school system is an easy target for criticism. It is generally run by union bureaucrats who graduated at the bottom of their college classes. Colleges are also subject to criticism for letting students spend five or more years getting low-income educations in subjects like philosophy and social work. Wisely-chosen education—defined broadly as reading books, talking to successful people in the field you are interested in, attending courses, and subscribing to trade publications—generally provides the highest return you can earn on your money and time.
Kiyosaki is just telling lazy and/or stupid students a line of bull that lets them avoid responsibility for their poor academic performance and gives them a convenient scapegoat to blame for their lousy financial situations. There is also more value to education than just its financial rewards. If you like philosophy and are willing to take a vow of poverty, you ought to study philosophy. Not everyone suffers from Kiyosaki’s need to impress people with how much money he has made (or claims to have made from sources other than selling books to Amway distributors).
…most people want to believe rather than to know, to take for granted rather than to find out
James Thurber
Motivation
Another compliment readers often pay Kiyosaki is along the lines of, “Well, at least he motivated me.”
Yeah, by lying to you. That’s like me telling you I buried $100,000 in your backyard which is yours for the taking. Would that motivate you? No question. You would probably spend the next two weeks digging up your backyard. After you found out it was a lie, would you think I was a great guy for having thus motivated you to get all that healthy exercise? I doubt it.
‘Missing the point’
Since I posted this analysis, a number of Kiyosaki “cult members” have contacted me to denounce me for “missing the point” of Kiyosaki’s book. “OK, Please tell me the point.” The odd thing is that each person has a different version of what the point of Kiyosaki’s book is—and it is never something I recall reading in the book. In fact, if a book has a point, multiple readers ought to come up with the same answer when asked what that point is. If they come up with different answers, it is either because the author was incompetent at communicating his point, or because the book has no point, or because the author deliberately obfuscated the point.
From now on, if you think I missed the point, don’t paraphrase Kiyosaki’s point to me. Give me an exact quote and the page number in Rich Dad, Poor Dad where it appears. I suspect everyone who is tempted to send me the point of Rich Dad will be unable to find in the book any of the wonderful advice they imagined was in there. It has been several years since I first said this and I have yet to get my first quote of “the point.”
On 7/18/06, I finally got a quote from someone who says I missed the point. Here it is.
Please open your copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad and turn to page 77. Look half way down the page. You will see this:
"Rule one:You must the know the difference between an asset and a liability, and buy assets. If you want to be rich, this is all you need to know. Its rule No. 1. It is the only rule. This may sound absurdly simple, but most people have no idea how profound this this rule is. Most people struggle financially because they do not know the difference between an asset and a liability."
I did not miss that at all. In fact, I discussed the matter of his definitions of assets and liabilities squarely and repeatedly in this review. Furthermore, the vast majority of the book has nothing to do with that point and some of the book contradicts that point, like Kiyosaki bragging about his Rolex. I also note that in eight years, this is the only person who thought that was the point of the book.
The only time different people look at the same thing and come up with different answers as to what it is they are looking at is when the thing they are looking at is amorphous, like a cloud or a Rorschach inkblot—or a politician.
Politicians try to be all things to all people. That requires them to say nothing (amorphousness), but to sound like they are saying something (“the point”). They toss in a little spin to try to get all those people with those different views to see in the politician things that they like. Kiyosaki slogans like “Don’t work for money. Make money work for you,” are amorphous in their actual meaning, but have the effect of “spinning” the reader into thinking he has just gotten good advice.
Here’s a pertinent passage from Temple University professor John Allen Poulos’s book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper.
A similar argument helps clarify why inane I Ching sayings or ambiguous horoscopes seem to many to be so apt. Their aptness is self-provided. In effect, their cryptic obscurity provides a random set of ‘answers’ that the devotee fabricates into something seemingly appropriate and useful.…psychologists count on the amorphousness of Rorschach ink blots to elicit evidence of a person’s core concerns.
My own supporters occasionally commit the mistake of reading things into my writings. I once got an email complimenting me on my writings. The writer’s favorite quote by me was, “When everyone is digging for gold, sell shovels.” I thanked him for his compliments, but said, “I never said that.” He then wrote back that he searched all over my Web site, but could not find it.
Cult
What Kiyosaki is really doing is operating a cult of personality. Anna Quindlen had an excellent article about such cults in the 8/14/00 Newsweek. She was talking about politicians and said they seek to elicit the words, “I don’t know why. I just like the guy.” Politicians want to be judged by their personalities, not their character or policies. To members of Kiyosaki’s cult, it matters not how many false or probably-false statements I find in Kiyosaki’s writings. They just like the guy. Personality is an appropriate criterion for selecting someone to hang around with. But it is a highly inappropriate criterion for evaluating Kiyosaki’s advice, because he’s not going to let you hang around with him and your family’s finances are serious business.
I am not a politician. When I write something, I want to make sure everyone gets the point—the same point. Here is the point of this analysis:
Rich Dad, Poor Dad contains much wrong advice, much bad advice, some dangerous advice, and virtually no good advice.
The 48 Laws of Power
Here’s an interesting letter I got from a reader:
“I'm glad I found your Web site on Kiyosaki, and all the other snake oil salesmen. I was deluding myself into believing him, even though I had that little voice in the back of my mind sending me warning signals (not to mention my wife)... Anyway, thanks for the info. Every once in a while, I do a search on Google and come up with a gem like your Web site. This is living proof that the Internet can be used for good purposes by people who are TRULY generous. Once again thanks for your work. A few years ago I read a book by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers called "The 48 Laws of Power" (Viking, 1998). It is a "Machiavellian approach to the systematic study of power." Basically, it is written as a how-to book. It gives the cynical lowdown on increasing and maintaining one's power over others. It is truly an interesting and thought-provoking study in human nature. I thought you might be interested in the following quote, which I feel is particularly apt in describing the power strategy that gurus like Kiyosaki like to follow: "Law 27 - PLAY ON PEOPLE'S NEED TO BELIEVE TO CREATE A CULTLIKE FOLLOWING. Judgment - People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow. Keep your words vague but full of promise; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking. Give your new disciples rituals to perform, ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf. In the absence of organized religion and grand causes, your new belief system will bring you untold power." (p. 215) Keep up the good work,”
Another reader said Law of Power 32 is pertinent too.
Law 32—Play to People’s Fantasies
“The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes from disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: Everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.”
You can see all the laws at http://www2.tech.purdue.edu/cgt/courses/cgt411/covey/48_laws_of_power.htm.
Short on specifics
About every third email I get about this analysis tells me that they agree with me that Kiyosaki is short on specifics about how to get rich. In the first week of February, 2008, yet another woman told me she “agreed with my saying he is short on specifics,” I said Kiyosaki had made her blind to the statement I made in huge letters (below after this sentence) and she switched subjects to my ungentlemanly behavior in making such a comment. Although she did not deny that I had pointed out in huge letters that I never said any such thing.
I never said Kiyosaki was short on specifics!
Not only does Kiyosaki’s hypnotic effect on many people result in their seeing things in his book that are not there, now they are seeing things in my analysis that are not here. Amazing! No wonder the guy can sell 26 million copies of nothing.
I would say that Rich Dad covers an overly broad array of financial subjects—real estate investment, stock market investment, note investment, and going into business for yourself. No one could adequately cover all those areas in such a short book. On the other hand, Rich Dad has a lot of specifics—as you will see below in this analysis. The problem is not that he is short on specifics, it is that the book is a bunch of bull, including when he gets specific. To say that the only fault of the book is that it lacks specifics is ridiculous.
Since I posted this item with huge letters saying I did not say he was short on specifics, the quantity of emails I get “agreeing” with me that he was short on specifics is unabated. Have these people all had lobotomies? Actually, yes. Rich Dad Poor Dad is a lobotomy by book reading.
Money is all that matters
On page 14, he approvingly quotes “rich dad” as saying, “Money is power.” [Since I wrote this analysis, Kiyosaki has changed the layout of the book making these page numbers wrong for subsequent editions. They are correct for my edition, which says published by TechPress, Inc. and has 1997 and 1998 copyrights.]
On page 92, he tells of his “rich dad” keeping him waiting for long periods—when he was nine years old!! “He was ignoring me on purpose. He wanted me to recognize his power and desire to have that power for myself one day.” On page 172, he says, “I have found the principles of finding value are the same regardless if it’s real estate, stocks,...or a new spouse...”
On page 154, Kiyosaki says “the reason you want to have rich friends” is to get inside stock market information that you can make low-risk profits. He ends that discussion with the sentence, “That is what friends are for.” That is the narrowest, most mercenary definition of friendship I have ever seen. I doubt Kiyosaki is the only person who feels this way about his friends, but he may be the only one dumb enough to say it in a book.
My Succeeding book tries to get you to always keep in mind the paramount importance of living a balanced life with emphasis on friends and family and doing the things that you find rewarding for reasons other than mere monetary income.
Although his family was not rich, he attended a predominantly wealthy elementary school because of an anomaly in the school-district boundaries. The wealthy kids had newer toys and refused to invite Kiyosaki and his friend to parties, telling Kiyosaki it was because they were “poor kids.” Sounds like he was scarred deeply by that humiliation and has lived his whole life since trying to prove to some rude nine-year olds from the 1950s that he now has the money to be worthy of their party invitations. He told Meet the Street that he has never been back to Hawaii. I suspect such a visit would rid him of these demons from his childhood.
How much money does Kiyosaki have?
A number of people have accused me of being jealous of Kiyosaki—I guess because they think he has more money than I have. Others have said they are going to follow him because he is fabulously wealthy and that’s what they want to be.
How do we know this?
I know approximately what my net worth is. But I have no idea of what Robert Kiyosaki’s net worth is. Neither does anyone else.
He implies he has money. He has had four books about how to get rich on the business best-seller list. He brags about owning a Porsche, Mercedes, Rolex watch, $400 golf club. The Honolulu Star Bulletin—the newspaper where Kiyosaki grew |
second most of any conference.
Hard to argue against the facts.
ESPN Stats & Information College Football Conference Power RankingsThe Newark Liberty Airport May 27, 2017 in Newark, New Jersey. (Photo11: Kena Betancur, AFP/Getty Images)
The FAA is investigating after air traffic controllers saw a drone near a jet that was landing at Newark Liberty International Airport.
United Airlines Flight 135 was descending near the airport Sunday when air traffic control alerted the crew about a drone "in the vicinity of the runway," United said in a statement. The crew of the jet, arriving from Zurich, Switzerland, monitored the drone and landed safely, United said.
The FAA said the incident occurred two miles southwest of the airport at 11:55 a.m. Sunday. The FAA is investigating and that local authorities had been notified, the agency said in a statement.
A month ago, a 54-year-old Arizona man was arrested on charges of endangerment and unlawful operation of an unmanned aircraft after a drone grounded aerial efforts to combat a massive wildfire about 100 miles north of Phoenix.
Last week the FAA tweeted: "Flying your # drone this weekend but not sure how high to fly? FAA's resources can help: http://faa.gov/uas # DosAndDonts # DroneQuestion" The primary piece of advice was not to fly a drone above 400 feet.
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Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2wdjw0yTSN’s Insider Trading had a segment the other day in which they mentioned Toronto’s interest in Anaheim defenceman Sami Vatanen. This isn’t particularly surprising — it was speculated that the Maple Leafs were looking at defencemen when general manager Lou Lamoriello and head coach Mike Babcock popped up in Nashville during the Western Conference final between the Nashville Predators and Ducks.
It’s no secret that the Leafs need to improve the right side of their defence and Vatanen plays on the right side. Anaheim also needs to shed some guys for the expansion draft.
It makes sense, right?
The problem with that line of thinking is this: Vatanen is a good third pairing guy/power-play specialist. Toronto had one of the best power plays in the league but could desperately use some help on the right side when 5-on-5. However, a good third pairing guy (particularly one who costs $4.875-million per season) who’s good on the power...Private stationed at Fort Meade on 9/11 gives astounding interview
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
A woman who claims she was stationed at Fort Meade on September 11, 2001, has given an explosive interview about how she personally heard military commanders make the decision to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11.
A person using the pseudonym Elizabeth Nelson told The Project Camelot website that she personally heard officials agree on the order to shoot down Flight 93. The decision was apparently made because the plane was flying in a no-fly zone near to Camp David and heading toward Site R, a military facility in known as the “backup Pentagon”.
Nelson stresses that at no time was there any talk of “hijackers,” and the plane was shot down purely because communication had been lost and standard operating procedure mandated that the plane be intercepted and destroyed.
Because the woman refuses to provide her real name, the authenticity of her story is very much up for debate, but in a 40 minute MP3 recording (click here to listen) of the interview, she relates what she witnessed in as sincere and genuine a way as one could expect. This individual has seemingly little to gain from making up such a story, unless it’s part of a deliberate disinformation campaign.
Nelson says that she was stationed at at Fort Meade under the Kimbrough Ambulatory Care Center Hospital and was training as a radiologic technologist having finished basic training three weeks prior. On 9/11, her rank was Private First Class.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Nelson relates how 9/11 started as a routine day before a higher ranked soldier suddenly emerged from another room and exclaimed, “Holy shit! I just saw a plane crash into one of the Twin Towers.”
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
Nelson and her colleagues then gathered around the TV in the hospital lobby before they saw the second plane hit the tower. Despite the fact that the first plane strike was not broadcast on live television, Nelson was adamant that the soldier was referring to the first plane when he first spoke. Nelson says that when she first saw the live TV pictures, only one tower was on fire, so the soldier could not have been referring to a replay of the second hit. In the interview, Nelson speculates that the first hit could have been broadcast on an internal military channel. President Bush once famously claimed that he had seen the first plane hit and thought that it was a case of pilot error, despite there being no live TV footage of the first plane strike.
While the majority of the personnel on the base scrambled to protect the facility as part of standard operating procedure, Nelson and a colleague were offered up by their First Sergeant to act as assistants to the Commander of the Base.
“All the other departments of soldiers – the nursing department, the clerical, administrational department – everybody sent their base soldiers there and I didn’t see them anymore. So basically the hospital was not fully active at that point. Everything was on hold,” said Nelson, adding, “And so I remember the room that they took us into. And they told us that we were in charge of, you know, getting coffees, any kind of snacks from the cafeteria – not cafeteria, like from the snack machines or from the place where you can get little snacks – in charge of making photocopies because she and I had the access codes for the rooms, to get in there.”
Nelson and her colleague were sat at the far end of the room and told to face the wall as the meeting of top officials on the base commenced.
“And there was probably six or seven men around this very large table, just like you would see in a big office somewhere. And they had this funny phone. It was like a conference-call phone. And I remember them sitting there and they were talking through this phone. And it seemed to me that they were talking to one or two other places,” said Nelson, adding that she suspected the men were in contact with the West Point military base an hour north of New York City.
The men were trying to ascertain what was going on and quickly expressed concern about Camp David and “Site R” and stating words to the effect of, “Protocol is that this is a no-fly zone. We have to take this plane down. Yes, it’s a passenger plane. It needs to be taken down. It’s a no-fly zone.”
According to Wikipedia, Site R, otherwise known as The Raven Rock Mountain Complex (RRMC) or the Underground Pentagon, is a United States government facility on Raven Rock, a mountain in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The facility houses the ANMCC (Alternate National Military Command Center), JSSC (Joint Staff Support Center), OSD/DHS (Office of the Secretary of Defense/Department of Homeland Security), and the 114th Signal Battalion. RRMC also houses the emergency operations centers for the Army, Navy and Air Force.
“I didn’t hear a thing about hijackers,” states Nelson, “We just heard that this plane was flying in a no-fly zone and they couldn’t make contact with the plane, or something like this. There was no communication. Protocol says it has to be taken out. And so I was in this room when the decision was mutually made by the people talking on the phone in the room that I was in, to shoot this plane down.”
“It didn’t feel like anybody knew that there was anything with terrorists,” added Nelson, saying that the officers mentioned the attack on the twin towers but only in the context that they didn’t know where Flight 93 was heading. She got the impression that they were genuinely unaware of the wider 9/11 plot, as would be expected in a compartmentalized structure, and that they were simply following military protocol.
Nelson recalls how she later felt revulsion after she saw news reports about how Flight 93 had supposedly been taken down by brave passengers.
“I remember the distinct feeling inside of me of when I saw on the news that there was this story that there were terrorists on this plane, and that the people overtook the pilot and crashed the plane, – I mean, overtook the terrorists and crashed the plane themselves. And how this was leaking out as these people being heroes,” she states.
“And I remember the extreme moral frustration inside of me, of feeling: But that’s not true! That’s not true at all! We shot this down. And a huge conflict inside of me, of knowing that the world is made to believe this story that’s not true.”
Nelson subsequently felt frustrated when anyone talked about the manufactured myth of the Flight 93 heroes.
“I also remember the confronting feeling when I would be around … because there were civilians that worked in the hospital as well. And then when they would talk about the heroes and these things, the conflict that I had inside of myself was wanting to bust out and say: That’s not true!,” she states.
“They didn’t crash the plane. If they would have crashed it, there would have been a skeleton of the plane. There was no… Nothing. It was blown up.”
Nelson speculated that the errant aircraft could have been originally heading for New York City (Building 7?) before the passengers retook control of the aircraft and started aimlessly flying it elsewhere.
“The only thing I can think is if the third plane was also intended for somewhere in the city [New York City] as well, and that the people actually did take over the hijackers and divert the plane so that the plane ended up flying aimlessly someplace else. And of course the people don’t know how to talk over the radio or any of these things. And that’s maybe something that happened,” she states.
The biggest argument against Nelson’s claims is the hard to accept notion that she and another Private were allowed to sit within earshot of top military commanders making monumental decisions about national security. If the commanders had needed people to make photocopies of documents and bring snacks and drinks as Nelson describes, then why not just have them on call in a different room? One would expect that a military complex have sophisticated communication connections that would have easily facilitated such a scenario.
Then again, if all the other active duty personnel were busy defending the base it could be argued that in the midst of the chaos, Nelson and her colleague were called upon.
Whether or not Nelson’s story is true, the fact that Flight 93 was shot down is one of the most glaring holes in the official 9/11 story.
Footage of the crash site showed barely any debris whatsoever. Compare this to any other plane crash in history and the contrast is astounding.
The debris field of Flight 93 was eight miles wide – investigators found a second debris field three miles away from the main crash site at Indian Lake, and a third debris field in New Baltimore, eight miles away. This is entirely consistent with the plane having been shot down.
Several eyewitnesses described hearing explosions before Flight 93 crashed and others said they heard missiles.
The Flight93Crash website has a compilation of eyewitness reports all attesting to the fact that the plane was shot down.
Donald Rumsfeld himself said that Flight 93 was “shot down” in an apparent slip of the tongue on December 24, 2004.
This article was posted: Wednesday, April 8, 2009 at 12:18 pm
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Comment on this articleTRINITY LAKE, Calif. - A family friend of the three hikers found in Trinity County said she was ready to go searching for them, until she learned the devastating news that deputies found them, two of whom are dead.
The three women were found by deputies with the Trinity County Sheriff's Office in the Trinity Alps Wilderness area Tuesday. Two of the adults died, while the teen, who is a daughter of one of the women, was found severely dehydrated.
The Trinity County Sheriff's Office said they went camping in northern Trinity County on June 5.
Deputies found their empty vehicle early Tuesday morning near a trailhead in the Trinity Alps Wilderness area.
"Just sadness and shock," family friend Andrea Cruz said learning the news.
Cruz said the two sisters and a daughter from Glendora, California decided to take a big camping trip that was supposed to last for several weeks.
"Trinity Lake was just one of their stops. Nobody knew they were missing for a few days," Cruz said.
Cruz said they realized something was wrong when no one had heard from them.
"Husband and son, Adrian, they came up night before last, once it was confirmed that hey, they're missing, nobody has seen or heard from them, they went ahead and drove up," Cruz said.
Cruz decided to take action as well.
"I live up north, you know, let's get a search party together and let's go up there and find them," Cruz said.
Right as Cruz was about to head out, she learned they had been found by the Trinity County Sheriff's Office.
"This doesn't happen to people you know. With all the people that have gone missing here in the area lately, it's traumatic," Cruz said.
Cruz said she is close with another sister of the women, who is having a hard time. As for the survivor, who Cruz says is a daughter of one of the hikers, there's a long road to recovery.
"Physically, she seems that she'll be ok," Cruz said.
The Trinity County Sheriff's Office have not released the exact cause of their deaths.
"Right now there's so many unanswered questions, so much unknown as to what exactly happened and why it happened the way that it did," Cruz said.
She added investigators are waiting for the minor to recover before they can find the answers to those questions.
"This has to be very traumatic for her," Cruz said.The day after the first Democratic presidential debate, Donald Trump called Bernie Sanders a maniac.
"This socialist-slash-communist," Trump said to raucous cheers. "I call him a socialist-slash-communist, because that's what he is."
Well, no. The terms "socialist" and "communist" are often confused, thanks in large part to the Cold War. Layer on top of that the nuance of the term "democratic socialist," which is how Sanders describes himself, and it's easy to see why people might generally be confused. (Even if they aren't intentionally blurring that line, as it's safe to assume Mr. Trump might have been doing.) As our Dave Weigel and David Farenthold reported this week, voters are not clear on the difference, either.
To offer America a bit of a primer, I reached out to Dr. Lawrence Quill, chairman and professor of political science at San Jose State University, over e-mail. He explained the difference between communism, socialism, capitalism and democratic socialism -- in very professorial terms.
Capitalism — or really the concept of "liberalism" — arose in the 17th century, and centers on the right to private property. In Adam Smith's foundational "Wealth of Nations," Quill notes, "is recognition that capitalism is going to make the lives of a good majority of the population miserable, and that there will be a need for government intervention in society and the economy to offset the worse effects."
Socialism was in part a response to capitalism, largely through the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Socialism focuses on the inequalities that arise within capitalism through a number of possible responses. Quill outlined some possibilities: "[T]he state might 'wither away' or collapse altogether, in others it would regulate the production of goods and services, in yet others it would become thoroughly democratic" -- all with the aim of reducing that inequality.
You can see that's where democratic socialism arises. That philosophy, Quill writes, seeks "democratic control of sectors of society and economy in order to avoid the pitfalls of an unregulated market and -- this is most important -- the kind of terrible authoritarian government that emerged in the Soviet Union."
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made waves as a democratic socialist presidential candidate. Here's what you need to know about being a democratic socialist and how it's different from socialism. (Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Communism "was the endpoint of Marx's ideas," Quill writes, though Marx didn't delineate what it would look like, exactly. "We find hints in works like 'The German Ideology" (1846) where there is a description of working life that is unalienated, i.e. creative and various -- we hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, and become opera critics in the evening." During the Cold War, though, the idea came to be inextricably and pejoratively associated with the Soviet Union and with the elimination of private property. The term, in Quill's words, "served as a shorthand for all things un-American" -- which was the way that Trump used it.
Quill's most important point is that "all of these terms are 'umbrella concepts'; in other words, they are host to a family of related ideas, not all of them compatible with one another." We tend to use the terms concretely, which necessarily introduces inaccuracies. Or, as Quill put it, "they [can] serve as excuses not to think, as belief systems that discourage explorations of the mismatch between theory and practice and the inconsistencies of any grand theory."
So that's the college-level curriculum. Next, I scaled it back a bit and talked to Tori Waite, who teaches high school history at Del Mar High School in San Jose. After all, since most of us were first introduced to these ideas in high school, perhaps we just need a refresher.
"When we teach about the different types of economies," Waite said, "the first thing we do is we talk about economic questions. How is it made? Who makes it? Who gets to buy it? Based on the economy, different people answer those questions."
Simplifying Quill's explanation: "In a communist country, the government answers those questions. There's no private business. There's no private property. The government decides."
"In a capitalist society, the people make those decisions. The businesses, the market decides how much products will cost, how many there are, where it will be made."
"In the socialist system, there's a mix of both. The government operates the system to help all, but there is opportunity for private property and private wealth. That's generally how we talk about it." Back to Quill's point: A socialist government could control all of the means of production -- or it could, for example, use taxes to redistribute resources among the population.
Both Quill and Waite note that the United States is not a purely capitalist society. There are and have long been socialist aspects to how the government makes decisions and applies its power, while still striving to keep the marketplace as free as possible. And, of course, while allowing democratic decisions to guide what it does.
The example of the United States serves as a reminder that these ideas exist on a three-dimensional scale, in which differentiation is often tricky. Which brings us to our quiz, in which you will be asked to concretely differentiate between systems. Given the example at hand, can you identify which economic system we're talking about?
(Waite generously provided both the feedback and overall grades that you will receive for doing so. And as a reminder, you will probably disagree with some of the answers. That's the nature of thing, and why college students spend so much time at coffee houses arguing over nonsense.)
Good luck.Whether you’re looking for a mild sourdough to pair with butter or a tangy, full-flavored bread that will stand up to a rich soup or strong cheese, these are the tweaks that can help you achieve your ideal sourdough.
We recently had the good fortune to attend a class at King Arthur Flour on the science of sourdough. The class, taught by microbiologist Debra Wink, focused on all the different tools the baker has to control the natural sourdough fermentation process. While Debra waxed poetic about six-carbon chains and weak hydrogen bonds, KAF pro baker Amber put us through our paces with two of King Arthur’s iconic sourdoughs: the mild and delicate Pain au Levain and the tangy Vermont Sourdough.
What we brought away from the class was a deeper understanding of the science behind some of our favorite sourdough tweaks. Below, we survey three key factors for influencing acidity in sourdoughs: temperature, flour choice and maturity. There are other factors as well, but these are the ones we find to be both easy to implement and highly effective.
Print the Key Factors Table
Key Factors Influencing Acidity in Sourdough
Less Sour More Sour Mother culture white flour
mature when fully risen
ferment at 70-76F / 21-24C (when not stored in the refrigerator) some rye and/or whole wheat flour
mature after fully risen
ferment at 82-85F/ 28-29C (when not stored the refrigerator) Pre-ferment
white flour
ripe at or before peak rise
ferment at 70-76F / 21-24C some rye and/or whole wheat flour
ripe after peak rise
ferment at 82-85F/ 28-29C Main Dough less whole grain / rye flour
rise to 1½ – 2 times volume
ferment at 70-76F / 21-24C more whole grain and/or rye flour
rise to 2¼-3 times volume
ferment at 82-85F/ 28-29C Final Shaped Proof ferment at 70-76F / 21-24C ferment at 82-85F/ 28-29C
retard at 40-50F / 4-10C
Sources: Debra Wink, Michael Gänzle, Brød & Taylor
Temperature. Temperature is the one variable that bakers can control at every stage of the bread making process, from Mother culture through the final shaped proof. It’s an easy variable to manage using water temperature and a Proofer.
For less acidity, use water at around 80F / 27C and a Proofer setting of 70-76F / 21-24C to favor the yeast and create milder flavors. When the Mother culture is being kept at room temperature (for instance, for a few feeds leading up to bread making), consider giving it one or two short feed cycles, rising at 75F just until peaked.
, use water at around 80F / 27C and a Proofer setting of to favor the yeast and create milder flavors. When the Mother culture is being kept at room temperature (for instance, for a few feeds leading up to bread making), consider giving it one or two short feed cycles, rising at 75F just until peaked. For more acidity, use 90F / 32C water and consider fermenting the Mother culture (when not in the refrigerator) and pre-ferment at about 82-85F/ 28-29C, which is warm enough to begin to give desirable acid-producing bacteria (LAB) an edge. Yet it won’t be hot enough to damage yeast populations, which are necessary for the ongoing health of the Mother culture and for good structure and rise in the bread.
Whole Grain and Rye Flours. Whole grain and rye flours provide minerals and enzymes that can influence acid production in sourdoughs. The higher mineral content of whole grains acts as a buffer in the dough so that more acid can be produced during extended fermentation. And the complex carbohydrate and enzyme content of rye flour helps produce unique sugars that tip the balance of acids in favor of acetic acid, which has more aroma and flavor and is more noticeable in the dough than lactic acid.
For milder sourdough, use less whole wheat and less rye, or consider sifting the bran out of whole wheat flour to create high-extraction flour. If using small amounts of whole grain, save it for the main dough, where it will have less time to contribute to acidity.
, use less whole wheat and less rye, or consider sifting the bran out of whole wheat flour to create high-extraction flour. If using small amounts of whole grain, save it for the main dough, where it will have less time to contribute to acidity. For more tang, incorporate some rye flour and/or whole wheat flour early in the bread-making process, such as regular Mother culture feeds and the pre-ferment. Rye flour in particular will help your culture produce some acetic acid.
Maturity. In our experience, tweaking maturity is a highly effective way to control sourdough flavor. This applies to refreshing the Mother culture, fermenting the pre-ferment and rising the main dough (bulk fermentation). It does not apply to the final proof, because the point at which the shaped loaf is ready to bake should only be determined by the balance between gas production and structure. As Ms. Wink taught in her class, the reason maturity is so effective is that the acid producers (LAB) have a faster growth rate than yeast, so harvesting the culture when it is more ripe quickly shifts the population balance towards greater numbers of LAB.
To limit acidity, refresh the Mother culture when it has just risen to its final height. Similarly, harvest the pre-ferment when it has just peaked or even before the peak, and limit the main dough (bulk) fermentation to a doubling of volume.
, refresh the Mother culture when it has just risen to its final height. Similarly, harvest the pre-ferment when it has just peaked or even before the peak, and limit the main dough (bulk) fermentation to a doubling of volume. To push for more acidity, allow the Mother culture to rest at its peak rise height for a while before refreshing. During the rest, the yeast population will hold steady while the acid producers (LAB) grow. Allow the pre-ferment to do the same – rest for a period after reaching its peak rise, then use it to mix the main dough. For the main dough (bulk fermentation), rise the dough to more than double its volume. Many sourdoughs can rise to 2½ times their starting volume and some will do great with a threefold rise.
In part two of this series, we use these factors to play with our tried-and-true Country Sourdough Recipe.Woolworths takes down Anzac 'Fresh in our Memories' website after social media backlash
Updated
Supermarket giant Woolworths has ended a controversial Anzac Day campaign that saw the company's logo and the phrase "Fresh in our Memories" placed over the images of former soldiers.
The campaign, which the supermarket chain insisted was not a marketing move, drew strong criticisms on social media and sparked memes that hijacked the concept.
Late on Tuesday Woolworths took down its Fresh in Our Memories website.
"We regret that our branding on the picture generator has caused offense, this was clearly never our intention," Woolworths said in a statement.
"Like many heritage Australian companies, we were marking our respect for ANZAC and our veterans.
"We continue to be proud supporters of the RSL and Camp Gallipoli in this important year and look forward to working with them into the future."
The campaign had allowed people to upload their own images of people affected or lost to war to a picture generator.
The generator then created an image that is emblazoned with the words "Lest we forget, Anzac 1915-2015".
At the bottom of the image the generator inserted the phrase "Fresh in our Memories" and a Woolworths logo.
Woolworths promotes itself as the "Fresh Food People" and the word "fresh" is heavily promoted by the supermarket chain.
"How dare you appropriate the image of an Anzac soldier to sell your wares in the way that you have," said a message to the Woolworths official Facebook page.
"Do you know who the soldier is? Did he survive? Or don't you even know or care? I actually feel quite ill," the message said.
The message was just one of many on social media attacking the supermarket chain's strategy.
The supermarket group's website had shown images of two men who appeared to be World War I diggers with the Woolworths logo covering part of them, and a picture of a woman who appears to be a nurse with the logo over part of her.
The supermarket giant had hoped people would use the generator to create images that could have been used in social media profile pictures.
"We encourage you to share a memory of someone you know who has been affected or lost to war, by changing your profile picture on social media to that person," Woolworths said on the website that was later taken down.
But the move sparked a strong response on social media.
"This marketing campaign is crass," said one of many tweets attacking the move.
Another likened the supermarket chain to "monsters".
"Is Anzac Day really a commercial opportunity?" said another tweet.
Woolworths said it was a national partner of the RSL and Camp Gallipoli.
"Our small logo on the site is in line with other corporately sponsored centenary of Anzac activity," the supermarket group said.
"'Fresh in our Memories' is not a marketing campaign," Woolworths said.
"As one of Australia's largest employers, Woolworths has spent months collecting stories from our staff for the site," it said.
Before the site was taken down many people hijacked the image generator to creates their own memes.
Topics: world-war-1, community-and-society, australia
First postedThe brand new updated iMacs for 2011 include a seemingly out of place setting in the Keyboard System Preferences: Keyboard Illumination. That’s right, despite being a desktop machine that ships with the same familiar keyboards we all currently know, the new iMac includes the same keyboard illumination option that MacBook Pro’s do. Does this suggest Apple is working on an external backlit keyboard, and if so, was it originally intended to ship with the new iMacs?
The keyboard setting was found by 9to5Mac, and they also cite MacGeneration who noticed there is an ambient light sensor included in the new iMacs, the sensor sits right alongside the FaceTime HD camera just like in a MacBook Pro:
Ambient light sensors automatically adjust both the display brightness and keyboard backlight brightness on the MacBook Pro’s.
Put these pieces together and it suggests Apple just might be working on an external backlit keyboard. It’s also entirely possible that Apple just borrowed some kernel extensions from the new MacBook Pro’s and the ‘illuminate keyboard’ option is sitting in the System Preferences erroneously, but I’m crossing my fingers for a backlit Apple Wireless Keyboard.A development company controlled by Osama bin Laden’s half brother revealed last year that it wants to build a bridge that will span the Bab el Mandeb, the outlet of the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. If this ambitious project is ever realized, the throngs of African pilgrims who traverse one of the longest bridges in the world on a journey to Mecca would pass hundreds of feet above the probable route of the most memorable journey in human history. Fifty or sixty thousand years ago a small band of Africans—a few hundred or even several thousand—crossed the strait in tiny boats, never to return.
The reason they left their homeland in eastern Africa is not completely understood. Perhaps the climate changed, or once abundant shellfish stocks vanished. But some things are fairly certain. Those first trekkers out of Africa brought with them the physical and behavioral traits—the large brains and the capacity for language—that characterize fully modern humans. From their bivouac on the Asian continent in what is now Yemen, they set out on a decamillennial journey that spanned continents and land bridges and reached all the way to Tierra del Fuego, at the bottom of South America.
Scientists, of course, have gained insight into these wanderings because of the fossilized bones or spearheads laboriously uncovered and stored in collections. But ancestral hand-me-downs are often too scant to provide a complete picture of this remote history. In the past 20 years population geneticists have begun to fill in gaps in the paleoanthropological record by fashioning a genetic bread-crumb trail of the earliest migrations by modern humans.
Almost all our DNA—99.9 percent of the three billion “letters,” or nucleotides, that make up the human genome—is the same from person to person. But interwoven in that last 0.1 percent are telltale differences. A comparison among, say, East Africans and Native Americans can yield vital clues to human ancestry and to the inexorable progression of colonizations from continent to continent. Until recent years, DNA passed down only from fathers to sons or from mothers to their children has served as the equivalent of fossilized footprints for geneticists. The newest research lets scientists adjust their focus, widening the field of view beyond a few isolated stretches of DNA to inspect hundreds of thousands of nucleotides scattered throughout the whole genome.
Scanning broadly has produced global migratory maps of unprecedented resolution, some of which have been published only during recent months. The research provides an endorsement of modern human origins in Africa and shows how that continent served as a reservoir of genetic diversity that trickled out to the rest of the world. A genetic family tree that begins with the San people of Africa at its root ends with South American Indians and Pacific Islanders on its youngest-growing branches.
The study of human genetic variation—a kind of historical Global Positioning System—goes back to World War I, when two physicians working in the Greek city of Thessaloníki found that soldiers garrisoned there had a differing incidence of a given blood group depending on their nationality. Beginning in the 1950s, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza started formalizing the study of genetic differences among populations by examining distinct blood group proteins. Variations in proteins reflect differences in the genes that encode them.
Then, in 1987, Rebecca L. Cann and Allan C. Wilson of the University of California, Berkeley, published a groundbreaking paper based on analyzing the DNA of mitochondria, the cell’s energy-producing organelles, which are passed down through the maternal line. They reported that humans from different populations all descended from a single female in Africa who lived about 200,000 years ago—a finding that immediately made headlines trumpeting the discovery of the “Mitochondrial Eve.” (Despite the Biblical allusion, this Eve was not the first woman: her lineage, though, is all that has survived.)
All about Eve
The fast, relatively predictable rate of “neutral” mitochondrial mutations—ones that are neither beneficial nor harmful—lets the organelles operate as molecular clocks. Counting the differences in the number of mutations (ticks of the clock) between two groups, or lineages, allows a researcher to construct a genetic tree that tracks back to a common ancestor—Mitochondrial Eve or another woman who founded a new lineage. Comparison of the ages of the lineages from different regions permits the building of a timeline of human migrations.
Since 1987 the data bank on human diversity has broadened to encompass the Y chromosome—the sex chromosome passed down only by males to their sons. The male-transmitted DNA carries many more nucleotides than mitochondrial DNA does (tens of millions, as opposed to just 16,000), enhancing investigators’ ability to distinguish one population from another. Analyzing mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA from human populations has turned up hundreds of genetic markers (DNA sites having identifiable mutations specific to particular lineages).
The route humans took from Africa to the Americas over the course of tens of thousands of years can now be tracked on the map as if the travelers were moving, albeit extremely slowly, on a series of interconnected superhighways. Alphanumeric route signs, such as I-95, can be recast as alphanumeric genetic markers. In the case of the Y chromosome, for instance, cross the Bab el Mandeb on highway (genetic marker) M168, which becomes M89 when heading north through the Arabian Peninsula. Make a right at M9 and set out toward Mesopotamia and beyond. Once reaching an area north of the Hindu Kush, turn left onto M45. In Siberia, go right and follow M242 until it eventually traverses the land bridge to Alaska. Pick up M3 and proceed to South America.
Mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome remain powerful analytical instruments. The National Geographic Society, IBM and the Waitt Family Foundation have joined in a privately funded $40-million collaboration through 2010, research that is primarily devoted to using these tools. With the help of 10 regional academic institutions, the so-called Genographic Project is gathering DNA from up to 100,000 indigenous people worldwide. “What we’re focusing on is the details of how people made the journeys,” says Spencer Wells, who heads the project. In a recent report its researchers found that the Khoisan people of southern Africa remained genetically separate from other Africans for 100,000 years. In another study, they demonstrated that some of the gene pool of Lebanese men can be traced to Christian Crusaders and Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula.
Power Tools
Genetic researchers have sampled the DNA of many people living along the migratory routes they have discovered. Yet the seeming certainty of the data sometimes deceives. Scientists who study human origins still would prefer a fossil they can hold in their hands over a genealogical tree. DNA differs from the radioactive isotopes used to date fossils. The rate of mutation can fluctuate from one stretch of DNA to another.
But paleoanthropologists are in a fix. Fossil remains are rare and too often incomplete. The earliest migration from Africa to Australia shows up in mitochondrial and Y genetic material (thanks to Andaman Islanders, among others), but the physical artifacts are largely missing along the route.
The answer to the absence of stones and bones: more DNA, from wherever. To bolster the case for genetics, researchers have looked to microbes that have hitched a ride on humans, inspecting their genes to look for similar patterns of migration. Freeloaders include bacteria, viruses and even lice. Besides microorganisms, the Human Genome Project and related efforts to look across the expanse of whole genomes have yielded a set of power tools that are helping to compensate for deficiencies in genetic methods. “You can look at so many different places in the genome from many individuals and in many populations to achieve more statistical power in testing different hypotheses,” says Tim Weaver, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis.
During this decade, researchers have made dramatic discoveries by simultaneously comparing a multitude of variable, or polymorphic, sites interspersed throughout the genome’s three billion nucleotides. The first whole-genome studies earlier in this decade looked at differences among populations in short repetitive stretches of DNA known as microsatellites. More recently, the scope afforded by whole-genome scans |
took us under their wing and introduced us to other local players. That is the magic of the arcade culture, which continues to live on through us. Fighting games are a medium to test your mettle, but fundamentally they are also about making bonds with other gamers through competition. And those bonds endure after the competition ends. I’ve made lifelong friends playing Street Fighter. Friends who have stuck around long after our playing days are over.
What we have is not at all like a pro sport, and there’s no reason to twist it to a pro-sporting model, or any other model for that matter. Just call it what it is, because it’s totally awesome. We play fighting games competitively, against a worldwide community of players. Many of us travel around the country (some around the world!) doing the thing we love. Along the way we meet a lot of great people and see things that we would never have seen if not for our love of gaming.
Ok, but why not just call this thing an eSport too? Do we have anything to lose? Yes, in fact we do (and here’s the part where I piss a bunch of you off. Sorry about that.), because the eSports movement’s obsession with following a traditional sporting model is toxic. The very term “eSports” is argumentative and counterproductive.
Destructoid.com recently put out a public call for blogs on eSports. Among some other blogs, they got back this gem which basically rejected the concept out of hand. According to the author:
“Videogames will likely never become as popular as true sports, very simply because they are not a sport — they are a GAME. In my parent’s era, they played billiards, darts, bowling, poker, bridge or Canasta. There was both a social and a competitive element. Today, people play videogames. Just as billiards, poker and bowling have all been televised, so too may gaming be televised, but it will never be the same as actual sporting events and because of the different genres involved. Gaming will, to some degree, always be a niche form of televised entertainment, unlikely to appeal to the broader masses.”
Not such a raving review. Now here’s the crazy part. This author is actually bullish on the prospects of competitive gaming! In the same piece she writes:
“That being said, competitive gaming will continue to evolve and increasingly it will likely be broadcast in some form. That form may not be on your TV, but maybe on your computer, your PS3 or your Xbox as a livestream.
…
Gaming is gaming. Get over it. There is no need for gaming to be “sports” and the people that play games professionally are not “cyber athletes.” They are gamers. Period. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.”
So here is my fundamental problem with the term eSports. It immediately invites an unnecessary comparison to real sports. It puts people on the defensive. The author is not objecting to the idea of playing games competitively, or that lots of people will watch it as a form of entertainment. She objects to calling it a sport, in the same way that many people don’t think bowling or chess is a sport. It’s easy to say that people like this are just uneducated and don’t get it, but the reality is that this whole eSports concept still does not have mainstream support, even among gamers.
And starting a conversation about competitive gaming with an implicit argument (games are spooorrrrts!) isn’t a great outreach strategy. More often than not the term just leads to a debate about “what counts as a sport.” When you do that, you’ve already changed the subject away from something awesome (the competition and the people) to a boring debate about words, and whether gamers could someday hope to latch on to some of that sports-hero cool. When you’re doing it right, you don’t need to borrow anything from anyone.
The eSports drive to emulate sports leagues is also puzzling. The sports model inherently tries to borrow legitimacy from something else rather than standing on its own two feet. It wants to be awesome by association, rather than going the harder route of being so awesome that nobody can deny it. I know and love the fighting game community, and I know it is ALREADY awesome, without borrowing any cool by association. Other kinds of competitive games are awesome as well, and in many ways all of this stuff is more persuasive than the sporting content you’ll find on television. It’s precisely because the content is so awesome on its own that this obsession with a sports model frustrates me.
So the danger in calling Street Fighter an eSport is that we lose the ability to talk about what the fighting game scene is really about, using competitive gaming to build relationships with real people, and instead get rolled up into the whole eSports messaging about games as professional sports. This bears repeating: the fighting game scene has thrived because of the heart and passion of gamers and because of the ways in which we are exactly not like a pro sports league. Calling Street Fighter an eSport betrays our very identity.
The good news is that competitive gaming IS thriving, both in fighting games and the traditional eSports scene. In the fighting game community we need to think about what we value and why we’re playing these games in the first place. Hopefully the eSports folks out there will do the same. What we have is so unique and so great that there’s no need to pigeon hole it into a predefined box. We can find our own path, just like we always have. Long live Starcraft. Long live fighting games. Long live competitive gaming!
[image via KarafaceBarack Obama might be employing “the audacity of mope” after the failure of his gun-control initiative, but he’s mostly alone. According to a new poll from the Washington Post and Pew, there is no rising tide of outrage over the failure to pass any kind of gun-control legislation this month. In fact, there are about as many people delighted over it as angry, especially among those who actually cared enough to pay close attention to the debate:
The Senate’s defeat of a package of popular proposals aimed at curbing gun violence last week seemed certain to foment public outrage at out-of-touch politicians who don’t listen to their constituents.
Only if one ignored the actual polling on issue prioritization. Even at the height of the media coverage of the Newtown shooting, the number of people who considered guns a top public-issue priority never climbed out of the single digits, according to Gallup. By the time the bills failed, only 4% thought of guns as the most important public issue facing the country, down from 6% in early February. The only angry people were on CNN and MSNBC. And bear in mind that the Gallup question would have included people who thought protecting gun rights were the most important issue, too.
That explains these results:
Yes, a plurality (47 percent) describe themselves as either “angry” or “disappointed” about the failure of the gun legislation but 39 percent call themselves “relieved” or ”happy” about what happened. That’s a far cry from the 90-ish percent support that expanding background checks – the centerpiece of the proposed legislation — enjoyed. And, among those who said they were “very closely” keeping tabs on the vote, the split was even closer; 48 percent said they were angry/disappointed while 47 percent were relieved or happy. (That piece of data is indicative of the passion gap on the issue between those supporting gun rights and those pushing for more restrictions.) Viewed broadly, the new Post-Pew poll numbers suggest that, in the end, the Senate vote last week wound up functioning in the minds of most Americans as a sort of stand-in for how they feel about gun rights more generally as opposed to the specifics (background checks in particular) of the legislation. So, not surprisingly, those who who were most angry about the failure of the gun bill were reliably Democratic groups like those with postgraduate degrees and those living in the Northeast.
Be sure to check out the graph accompanying this claim, because the scale of the “anger” speaks volumes. Only 31% of postgrads felt “anger” over the results of the vote — and they were the most angry demographic in the poll. The only other demos in the poll with 20% or more angry were Northeasterners, Democrats, and those 65 years of age or older. As I wrote this weekend, it’s basically the Richard Jenkins character in Liberal Arts (and again, which is a very good film).
In comparison, there are a baker’s-dozen demographics with 20% or more happy about the collapse of the legislative effort. That includes the demographic-of-the-whole “all adults” (20%), and independents (26%), and the West (28%) — which surprisingly outstrips the South (22%) and Midwest (20%).
Chris Cillizza argues that the results show people weren’t actually listening to Obama’s argument:
To their credit, the President and his White House tried like hell to emphasize that the proposals in the bill were ones that drew support across party lines. But, their failure to make that case effectively speaks to the entrenched views much of the country holds on guns. The conclusion? Most people simply weren’t really listening to the argument President Obama was trying to make.
They only started making those arguments, though, after demonizing gun owners and the NRA and demagoguing on a tragedy that those solutions didn’t actually address. Had the White House taken the more moderate tenor and position immediately rather than seizing on a ban of so-called “assault weapons,” they might have made progress on expanded background checks, and may have even gotten the NRA (which has previously endorsed those in concept, if not in the details) to either support them or remain agnostic.
Here’s a pro-tip for politicians: If you want to make a reasonable case, don’t start by blaming all gun owners for the acts of a madman, and then insinuate that their opposition to legislative non-sequiturs means they don’t care about children or crime. This became a referendum on the principles of gun rights because Obama and his administration made it one, and they fell on their face for that reason."Want me looking in your bedroom?"
Democratic state Senator Nina Turner of Cleveland is fast becoming the queen of semi-satirical legislation that points out the absurdity of proposed Republican legislation.
Last fall, in response to a proposed Republican bill that would have required anyone receiving public assistance — including the unemployment they’ve paid for — to be drug-tested at their own expense, she and state Rep. Bob Hagan suggested a bill mandating the drug testing of state legislators.
Now, in response to a raft of anti-abortion bills that put women’s reproductive choices in the hands of the government, she has offered her “men’s health” bill.
According to ProgressOhio,
Turner's legislation would include provisions to document that the symptoms are not psychological in nature, and would guide men to make the right decision for their bodies. Physicians would be required to obtain a second opinion from a psychological professional to verify that a patient has a true medical malady before the medication could be prescribed.
The site has also posted a petition you can sign to support Turner’s effort. It says,
I stand with Senator Turner and others to demand Sexual Health Equality for men! Men having been legislating Women's Reproductive Health Choices for years now and I want to return the favor. The legislation follows the FDA's recommendation that the evaluation of erectile dysfunction should include a determination of potential underlying causes and the identification of appropriate treatment following a complete medical assessment. When a man makes a crucial decision about his health and his body, he should be fully aware of the alternative options and the lifetime repercussions of that decision. I advocate for this legislation to ensure that all men using PDE-5 inhibitors are healthy, stable, and educated about their options — including celibacy as a viable life choice.
Next up: celibacy as a viable life choice for legislators? Ha! That'll be the day. — Anastasia PantsiosLife aboard the Trump campaign plane was an unforgettable and bizarre experience, featuring scenes like press secretary Hope Hicks steaming the candidate’s pants while he was wearing them, a new book says.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that “Let Trump Be Trump,’’ by former aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, said Trump would “rip off the faces’’ of his targets with “expletive-filled tirades.’’
The authors said they “both had moments when they wanted to parachute off Trump Force One,’’ according to the Post.
Trump liked music — very loud music. People “couldn’t hear themselves think’’ as Elton John blared from speakers.
Trump also loved McDonalds, with one dinner featuring “two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish, and a chocolate malted.”
Lewandowski said a campaign staffer named Sam Nunberg was punished by being left behind at one of the fast-food restaurants. His offense: ordering a burger that was taking too long to prepare.
“Leave him,’’ Trump ordered. And they did.
Trump didn’t require a trained chef. “On Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza and diet coke,’’ according to the book.
One of the jobs assigned to Hicks, who is now Trump’s communications director, was to make certain his suits were pressed.
“‘Get the machine!’ ” Trump would yell, according to the book.
“And Hope would take out the steamer and start steaming Mr. Trump’s suit, while he was wearing it. She’d steam the jacket first and then sit in a chair in front of him and steam his pants.”
The authors recount an incident where Trump was in a helicopter when he learned that former campaign boss Paul Manafort said Trump “shouldn’t be on television anymore,” and that Manafort should replace him on TV.
Trump was angrier than Lewandowski had ever seen him, the book says. He ordered the pilot to fly at a lower altitude so he could make a call.
“I’ll go on TV anytime I goddamn f–king want to and you won’t say another f–king word about me. Tone it down? I wanna turn it up,’’ he thundered. “You’re a political pro? Let me tell you something. I’m a pro at life. I’ve been around a time or two. I know guys like you, with your hair and skin…”
Lewandowski said it was “one of the greatest takedowns in the history of the world.’’A story emerged over the weekend of a 13-year-old male student who kissed a 14-year-old female student against her will “on a dare.” He’s now facing assault charges. Guess what? Forcing yourself on someone is assault.
The belief that women aren’t entitled to body autonomy is so deeply engrained in our culture that we actually can hear a story about a teenager being “forced” to kiss someone and completely forget that she’s even a part of the narrative. No one is up in arms about this girl, or how she feels about having her space violated. No one cares that she’s now hearing the backlash from a country who apparently doesn’t think that she has the right to exist peacefully without someone forcing himself on her. Do you think I’m being dramatic? Let’s take a look at the media spin for a minute.
Does this image the Drudge Report used in their story about the incident look like a pair of teenagers?
How about the Counter Current News‘ choice of this image of a seemingly smitten tween?
Here’s what the Drudge Report has to say about what happened:
“By all means, give this kid detention. Make him apologize to the girl. Tell his parents to teach him better manners. But don’t charge him with assault. That would be a far greater crime than a stolen kiss.”
What do “manners” have to do with this, and what exactly is a “stolen kiss?” So, is it a “stolen caress” when some jerk gropes a woman on the subway? No. It’s assault. Touching another human without permission is assault — whether you believe it is or not. News report after news report referred to the incident as “just a kiss.” A kiss is consensual. Not forced. This is not a kiss. It’s assault. And these are not children – they’re teenagers.
To the thousands of internet commenters who seem to think this is just “political correctness” gone awry: what would you say to your daughter if she came home and told you someone forced himself on her at school that day? “Oh, don’t worry honey. No big deal.”
We need to be teaching young men to understand that it is absolutely not okay to force themselves physically on young women. What kind of message are we sending young girls with our collective reaction to this incident? You don’t matter enough to defend – or even mention. There are no details about the story beyond that charges were filed. We have no idea why the authorities were involved. Clearly, administrators at the school found the situation disturbing enough to actually call in law enforcement. Is anyone even thinking about that for a minute? No, because we’re too busy being worried about how a misdemeanor assault charge may affect this fine young man’s future.
I don’t have a single female friend who doesn’t have a story about being violated as a teenager. From having their bra straps snapped so hard that they had welts on their shoulders to being held under water at the local swimming pool because they refused to kiss a boy. But these are all things that young women need to endure because “boys will be boys” right? We need to just shrug off the complete disregard of our autonomy and space.FILE - In this Monday, April 11, 2011 file photo, U.S. envoy Chris Stevens, center, accompanied by British envoy Christopher Prentice, left, speaks to Council member for Misrata Dr. Suleiman Fortia, right, at the Tibesty Hotel where an African Union delegation was meeting with opposition leaders in Benghazi, Libya. Libyan officials say the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans have been killed in an attack on the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi by protesters angry over a film that ridiculed Islam's Prophet Muhammad. The officials say Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed Tuesday night when he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff. The protesters were firing gunshots and rocket propelled grenades. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Libya's interim president has apologized to the United States for the attack on the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi that killed the American ambassador and three of his staff.
Mohammed el-Megarif described the attack as "cowardly" and offered his condolences on the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and the three other Americans. Speaking to reporters, he vowed to bring the culprits to justice and maintain his country's close relations with the United States. He said the three Americans were security guards.
The attack on the Benghazi consulate was carried out by protesters angry over a film that ridiculed Islam's Prophet Muhammad. They used machine guns and rocket propelled grenades.
"We extend our apology to America, the American people and the whole world," el-Megarif said.Mischievous goodness from Crossroads GPS, which entered the following submission to HHS' pro-Obamacare propaganda video contest. Something tells me this entry won't win a dime of taxpayer-funded prize money:
"It's fun paying for things you don't even use!"
So when I did some actual analysis of this latest idea, it did not surprise me to learn that this claim is dead wrong. Once the time value of money is taken into account, the average young person will be worse off under Obamacare even if they live long enough to be a near-elderly person who pays premiums that are well below actuarially fair rates. In the short run, millions of young will be better off without Obamacare. A recent study by the National Center for Public Policy Research shows that: About 3.7 million of those ages 18-34 will be at least $500 better off if they forgo insurance and pay the penalty. [And] more than 3 million will be $1,000 better off if they go the same route...But in the long run, the story is the same. It is relatively straightforward to test this claim empirically.
Bonus points for the serious-sounding voiceover lady dropping a "come on," mid-clip. We've written about why Obamacare is especially bad medicine for young people on numerous occasions. Put simply, the law relies on over-charging younger and healthier Americans to subsidize older and sicker people. If the the former group declines to throw money away and chooses to pay the mandate tax instead, Obamacare's business model collapses. That's why the administration has reached out to celebrities to try to woo young people into taking action that cuts against their clear economic interests. The spot above singles out said celebrities for some richly-deserved mockery. (Sports leagues, like the NFL, have taken a pass on joining the Obamacare promotion brigade). Liberal commentators retort that the young will eventually benefit from Obamacare because young people tend to grow old. Chris Conover responds to that argument atTwo additional points: First, maybe the younger sethave been willing to buy into a system that jacks up their costs in order to help cover more people...if it had been marketed as such. Maybe not. Instead, they were told their premiums would drop dramatically, when in fact the opposite will be the case -- including for the majority of young people who qualify for government subsidies. Other side effects of the law are also disproportionately harmful to young people: High youth unemployment rates and the trend toward part-time and temporary hiring. Second, why should young folks pour money down the drain to prop up a law that even one of its chief supporters now admits is an unsustainable placeholder? Yes, the young grow old -- but based on Harry Reid's recent concession, the new, expensive system probably won't be in place by the time the current crop of young Americans would be most likely to need it. Unlike Social Security and Medicare -- huge, insolvency-bound programs that young people are forced to pay into -- Obamacare has an opt-out route. It makes all the sense in the world for young people to take advantage of it. Meanwhile, the administration continues to pooh-pooh real concerns about the adverse affects the "Affordable" Care Act is having on businesses large and small. These developments are dismissed as "anecdotal" evidence or outright lies. Empirical evidence reveals that the White House is wrong, and the so-called anecdotes continue to pour in. Last week it was UPS and UVA. Now Delta Airlines joins the list:
We'll see what actions Delta takes to defray the $100 million in added costs. Whatever they choose to do, it won't happen in a vacuum. Just as DHL and FedEx are undoubtedly analyzing (and possibly emulating) what UPS has done, United, American and other major US carriers will be watching Delta like a hawk. When one industry leader takes the plunge on, say, dropping coverage for spouses and families, that company's action makes it easier for its competitors to follow suit. The resulting spiral will lead to more Americans what happened to the president's "you can keep your plan" pledge, with some workers actually pleading with their bosses not to offer employer-based coverage any more.
UPDATE - You can't keep your plan, Jersey edition.Conservative Hungary has declared that EU politicians not up to the task of securing the continent’s safety “have no place among the leaders of Europe” following recent terror attacks.
“European leaders are responsible for guaranteeing the security of the continent, and those who are incapable of doing so have no place among the leaders of Europe” declared Péter Szijjártó, the Minister for Foreign Affair and Trade under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
“Their job [is] to do something to combat the threat of terrorism, [but] the standard of the European reactions to the latest attacks in Barcelona and Finland is worrying.”
Polish government says #Barcelona attack “the tragic end of inciting millions of people to cross the sea to Europe” https://t.co/EvYn4duxVZ — Jack Montgomery ن (@JackBMontgomery) August 22, 2017
“Europe’s leaders express their condolences following such attacks, but then continue their statements by saying ‘we will not allow ourselves to be intimidated’ and will not allow the lives of European people to be changed,” he said.
Szijjártó indicated that such words are, in his estimation, simply empty rhetoric, indicative of people who are “misunderstanding reality”.
He suggested that “if this is all they are capable of” then the peoples of Europe are in great danger.
Hungarian PM: Weak borders mean “no security or development, just chaos, fear, anger and trucks driving into people” https://t.co/tmSPzA4Vca — Jack Montgomery ن (@JackBMontgomery) June 21, 2017
“Security has now also become an important criterion when planning trips within Europe, and the true issues concerning European security remain unsolved because many are incapable of discussing them in an objective manner,” Szijjártó asserted.
“One must take a look at who the perpetrators of these attacks are: illegal immigrants or people who arrived or whose families arrived in Europe as immigrants, and whose integration has been unsuccessful.
“There have of course been successful social integration processes, but there have also been failed ones, and parallel societies have come about in some places.”
'NO Whites Allowed After 8 pm' graffiti in Birmingham is more evidence of the #NoGoZones reported by @RaheemKassam. https://t.co/WqmeUUQWax — Jack Montgomery ن (@JackBMontgomery) August 17, 2017
Examples of failed integration and parallel societies are not hard to come by in Western and Northern Europe.
Breitbart London recently reported how scores of so-called ‘Shariah Police’ are enforcing Islamic customs in the Chechen community in Berlin, beating native men who are seen with Chechen woman, and cursing and harassing the women themselves when they fail to obey Islamic dress codes.
Grafitti warning ‘NO Whites Allowed After 8 pm’ has been spotted in Birmingham, England, which is projected to be minority white British no later than by 2020, if it is not already.
In fact, the Chief Rabbi of Barcelona, Meir Bar-Hen, believes the situation is so acute that the recent terror attack in the city prompted him to tell congregants “Europe is lost” and urge them to buy property in Israel.
“This place is lost. Don’t repeat the mistake of Algerian Jews, of Venezuelan Jews. Better [to get out] early than late.”
Fo llow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomeryStandard deviation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Studies relying on large sets of aggregate data are informative in understanding group trends but tell us next to nothing about individuals. That is, the results of such a study - no matter how big or how well done - cannot reasonably be interpreted as suggesting that a particular religious person is any less intelligent than a particular atheist.
Intelligence, as assessed by modern intelligence tests, appears to be normally distributed throughout the population. Using the mean and standard deviation from modern IQ tests (typically 100 and 15, respectively), we can calculate the portion of the population which will obtain IQ scores in various ranges. Most people (68% to be precise) will fall within 1 standard deviation of the mean (i.e., they will have IQ scores between 85 and 115). Another way to frame this would be to point out that most people are, by definition, of average intelligence.
Very small differences become statistically significant when the sample size gets large. This is important because these some differences, while statistically significant, are too small to have much practical importance.
Finding a negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity is certainly interesting, but is a far cry from indicating that religious belief somehow causes people to be less intelligent.
The abstract of a meta-analysis by Zuckerman, Silberman, and Hall (2013) recently appeared online pending publication in, and it is getting quite a bit of attention in the atheist community. The title will clue you in to why it is generating so much discussion: "The relation between intelligence and religiosity: A meta-analysis and some proposed explanations." I have not had the chance to read the paper yet, and I'm cautious about making too much of it based on the summaries I have read. Still, there are a few points that should be considered when trying to understand studies of this sort:I mention these points for two reasons. First, I am seeing quite a few atheists gloating about the results of this study, and I expect few understand the limitations. From what I have read so far, these include but are not limited to the narrow definition of intelligence used by the authors, the reliance on studies conducted in the West and emphasizing U.S. Protestants, and the inclusion of studies that have been criticized by other researchers in the data set. Second, I am seeing too many comments like, "Duh! Was there ever any doubt?" Because we are likely talking about small differences here, I'm not sure such reactions are warranted based on this one study. This stuff tends to be quite complex and far from obvious.Author questions why Manning is being punished for doing 'precisely what Barack Obama swore he would do on coming into office: increase government transparency and highlight the constructive role of whistleblowers in society' [EPA]
Fethiye, Turkey - When American civil rights attorney Chase Madar told me he was writing a book entitled The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breach in US History, I knew right away that Madar was mentally ill, abusing a range of pharmaceuticals and possibly also epileptic.
My diagnosis was confirmed with the book's release this month. What else would compel a lawyer to suggest that there is "an injustice hardwired within the system of laws itself"?
A studious ignorance
As Madar demonstrates in The Passion, similarly scientific methods of diagnosis have been employed in the case against Manning, the 24-year-old Army intelligence analyst from Crescent, Oklahoma who is accused of transferring hundreds of thousands of documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
As a result of the leaks, the world has learned more about topics ranging from the etiquette of US soldiers operating Apache gunships in Iraq to US State Department machinations to prevent an increase in the hourly minimum wage in Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, from 22 to 61 cents.
Quoting extensively from segments of the chatlogsascribed to Manning - which, in the words of Madar, reveal the young man's "intent is conscious, coherent, historically informed and above all it is political" - the author notes that the information contained therein has "for the most part been studiously ignored by a mass media determined not to comprehend Bradley Manning's motives".
"Manning is guilty of precisely 'what Barack Obama swore he would do on coming into office.'" - Chase Madar, civil rights attorney
In the chatlogs, Manning offers a variety of straightforward justifications for leaking government material: "[I] want people to see the truth... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public." As Madar documents, however, the possibility that a rational human being has made a decision in accordance with his own rational principles is categorically dismissed by media pundits who prefer to expound ad infinitum on the sexual, emotional, psychiatric and pharmacological reasons for Manning's behaviour.
One of these pundits is "Joy Reid, a Harvard-educated blogger, commentator and Obama loyalist" who invokes Manning's homosexuality and transgender aspirations in her analysis of the Army whistleblower as "a guy seeking anarchy as a salve for his own personal, psychological torment".
Obama: paranoid schizophrenic?
Madar argues at the start of the book that Manning is guilty of precisely "what Barack Obama swore he would do on coming into office": increase governmental transparency and highlight the constructive role of whistleblowers in society.
One has to wonder about the implications for said society when the entire political and media establishment has unleashed its impromptu expertise in the field of psychoanalysis against Manning while not even the liberal-left cares to scrutinise a president who, as Madar writes, "has preserved, streamlined and often intensified his predecessor's bellicose foreign policies" and "has presided over more leaks prosecutions under the Espionage Act of 1917 - a use that the statute's authors never intended - than all his predecessors combined".
Madar's debunking of efforts to pathologise Manning's actions is meanwhile accompanied by his own replacement diagnoses such as that "[r]ight now, classification is the disease of Washington, secrecy its mania and dementia its end point". With the help of tragicomic details such as that Washington managed to classify approximately 77 million documents in 2010 and that it took the National Security Agency until 2011 to declassify documents from 1809, Madar outlines the perils of over-classification, especially given the post-9/11 "elephantiasis-like expansion of state apparatuses intended to ensure the control of information": "If a society like ours doesn't know its own history, it becomes the great power equivalent of a wandering amnesiac, not knowing what it did yesterday or where it will end up tomorrow."
As for the classification of information such as that the Strait of Gibraltar is a vital shipping lane, Madar wonders: "Have we in America become so infantilised that tidbits of basic geography must now be state secrets?"
The Sovietisation of the US
Regarding the nine months of pre-trial solitary confinement to which Manning was subjected at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia - during which time he was denied any form of exercise in his cell, required to respond every five minutes to his guards and forced to sleep naked after pointing out that he could conceivably kill himself with his underwear - Madar poses the question: "Why was Manning treated like the inmate of a Soviet psychiatric prison?"
As the author goes on to demonstrate, however, Manning's treatment was not nearly as foreign, in terms of "legal and penal norms", as many would believe. Citing horrifying statistics on the number of US inmates being held in long-term solitary confinement, an arrangement far more conducive to psychosis than rehabilitation, Madar comments:
"Manning's isolation cell at Quantico Marine Base was anything but an anomaly. It was an invisibly normal feature of the American landscape, just like baseball diamonds and strip malls... Long-term solitary confinement, even of pretrial suspects, is just one of the things the American government does, like paving roads and delivering the mail."
Madar also exposes as false and naïve the notion that atrocities associated with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other landmarks of the War on Terror constitute a "colossal and shameful exception to our laws and customs", when they are "at base a simple extension of our everyday 'normal' way of doing criminal justice".
Details of abuse and torture at domestic detention facilities, referenced by Madar, suggest that Guantanamo is indeed a shining testament to "American values". As for the international utility of racial profiling policies in out-Sovieting the Soviets, it is useful to review the following passage from The Passion:
"It is no coincidence that many of the public figures who have pointed out the essential congruence of the Global War on Terror with US domestic criminal justice - journalists like Margaret Kimberley and Bob Herbert, and law professor James Forman, Jr - are African American. Black Americans, whose overall incarceration rate today is probably higher than that of Soviet citizens at the peak of the gulag, have long had ample reasons[,] and now as much as ever, to doubt the fundamental rightness of the American justice system."
An indictment of the law
After a review of the impunity with which certain international actors are permitted to break the law - as in the case of the United Nations charter, which should have precluded war on Iraq in 2003 but which "was as gleefully flouted as if it were an archaic town ordinance prohibiting jump-rope on the Sabbath" - Madar's treatise ultimately evolves into an indictment of the law itself:
"We lawyers tend to think that law is by nature something good and just and that it's dirty politics that fouls everything up. But the WikiLeaks disclosures reveal something far more troubling than violations of the rule of law; [what] they reveal is the pathology of the laws themselves."
For example, the infamous "Collateral Murder" video allegedly leaked by Manning - in which a US helicopter fires on Iraqi civilians and then on the van, complete with children inside, that arrives to rescue the wounded - did not elicit a condemnation from major international human rights organisations. Explains Madar: "The reason for their silence is disquietingly simple: the gunship's actions were, under the Rule of Law as codified and accepted in international humanitarian law (IHL), perfectly legal."
In a recent article for TomDispatch, Madar meanwhile notes that the Manning chatlogs indicate that "[t]he young private saw very clearly what so many professors and generals take pains to deny: that the primary function of the laws of war is not to restrain violence, but to justify it, often with the greatest lawyerly ingenuity."
Humanity as crime/disease
Incidentally, one of Manning's chatlog comments provides the very psychological motivation that his army of volunteer psychoanalysts has been tripping over itself to produce:
(03:35:44 PM) bradass87: i think ive been traumatized too much by reality, to care about consequences of shattering the fantasy
Components of the "reality" to which Manning refers include not only incidents such as that portrayed in the "Collateral Murder" video but also his witnessing of US complicity in the detention, by the torture-happy Iraqi Federal Police, of nonviolent civilians who had printed a scholarly critique of the Iraqi regime. In the chatlogs, Manning expresses his hope that the release of 260,000 State Department cables "explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective... might actually change something".
He subsequently writes:
"i feel connected to everybody... like they were distant family", and "we're human... and we're killing ourselves... and no-one seems to see that... and it bothers me".
Manning's humanity, all the more notable for its cultivation in the context of a dehumanising military system, stands in stark contrast to the "sudden geyser of concern" among the US military and media that - as Madar notes - accompanies WikiLeaks' failure to redact all names of local informants and collaborators from the Afghan War Logs. Drawing attention to the conspicuous lack of a similar geyser with regard to civilian casualties of drone strikes, not to mention the Department of Defense's admission that there were no reports of reprisals against named informants, Madar concludes: "But why dwell on the vulgar certainty of real casualties when you can keen and wail for the civilian deaths that might be caused someday, hypothetically, by WikiLeaks?"
The deployment of effective rhetoric throughout The Passion of Bradley Manning (see also "[S]ome three million Americans have a security clearance: did none of these people who came into contact with the 'Collateral Murder' video see fit to release it to the public?") underscores the soundness of Madar's final diagnosis:
"If the [WikiLeaks] disclosures have failed to |
’au choix des projets du budget participatif – de sorte à concentrer la mobilisation citoyenne.Il n’est pas non plus à exclure que des mesures validées par le suffrage populaire, soient en contradiction avec le projet écologique plutôt tourné vers la sobriété de l’actuelle majorité grenobloise. Le comble étant que ces propositions entérinées par la votation, pèseront dans les finances, par ailleurs en piteux état de la Ville… La municipalité a anticipé l’épineuse question du financement des initiatives qui vont lui être soumises. « Si par exemple l’objet de la pétition ayant recueilli 2000 signatures est de “mettre partout des caméras de vidéosurveillance”. Cela aurait un coût! Et ce n’est évidemment pas une mesure que soutient notre majorité! Le financement de cette opération serait mis au débat durant la période précédant la votation. Notre majorité se prononcerait aussi sur la manière dont pourrait être financée cette mesure. Les Grenoblois voteront ainsi en connaissance de cause…». L’équipe d’Eric Piolle préfère miser sur « l’intelligence collective ». « Seule la démocratie peut défaire ce que la démocratie a faite », lance sentencieusement Pascal Clouaire. Si nous voulons donner du pouvoir d’agir aux habitants, il faut que nous sortions de notre zone de confort. Donc on va recueillir des propositions et aussi des problèmes. »Cyril Lage, créateur de Parlement & Citoyens et co-fondateur de Démocratie Ouverte se dit naturellement partisan de ce type de dispositif. Ce qui ne l’empêche pas d’en percevoir déjà les travers : « Les groupes d’intérêts extrêmement bien structurés vont instrumentaliser ce droit. Cela peut être la porte ouverte à faire passer tout ce qu’on veut. » Rompu aux systèmes de démocratie participative, il détecte une autre faille plus problématique pour la cohésion sociale : « Etant donné que l’objet de la pétition, de fait, n’évoluera pas jusqu’à la votation, on ne sera pas dans la co-construction, mais plutôt dans le clivage. Les gens feront bloc contre bloc …» Aucun outil de démocratie participative n’est parfait. « L’équipe municipale ne s’interdira pas de faire évoluer les règles du jeu, si cela s’avérait nécessaire », lâchait Pascal Clouaire, lors de la conférence de presse.Did you play any of these indie games over Halloween? I know I couldn’t get myself off Space Beast Terror Fright, but now I see myself looking to the future. Although 2017 has been a good year for indie titles in general, the first quarter of 2018 is looking good for a number of new games. There seems to have been a big expansion this year in developments, thanks largely in part to competitive eSports tournaments, as well as gamers having more flexibility in game making with the use of dedicated server hosting, which has allowed players to create their own leagues with their own rules. Gaming is getting back into the hands of the gamers!
Lately, some incredibly inventive people have been making some fantastic games, so with that independent spirit in mind, I have found a few indie titles that you really need to check out in 2018.
Ooblets
One of the more lighthearted (but nevertheless immensely enjoyable) games on the horizon, Ooblets is a game about farming, creatures, and adventure that sees you managing your farm and growing and training little creatures called Ooblets. Taking inspiration from games like Pokémon and Animal Crossing, you're able to explore strange lands within the gaming world as well as battle wild Ooblets and other Ooblet trainers.
Ghost Song
The science fiction aficionados out there will definitely appreciate Ghost Song. Born out of an obsession for Super Metroid and influenced by a few other games along the way, Ghost Song is a 2D platformer that takes place on the mysterious moon Lorian V. What makes the game unique is that approximately half of the game is open world, giving the player an option to explore it or not. You can also discover new powers and abilities, many of which can be easily missed if not careful, encouraging the player to go above and beyond as you explore the moon.
Chasm
If you were let down by big-budget games like No Man's Sky, then hopefully Chasm can fill the void in your heart. The game features six massive, procedurally assembled areas in a platform format, and it takes inspiration from hack 'n' slash games such as Castlevania and Metroid. It's a pixel purist's dream come true as you take on the role of a soldier named Daltyn who arrives in a remote mountain town to discover it taken over by paranormal forces. You're required to explore the mines below the town and fight hordes of deadly enemies in a quest to save not only the township but possibly the world.
The Last Night
For those who have just watched the new Blade Runner film and can't get enough cyberpunk in their lives, then The Last Night should be at the top of your wish list. You play as Charlie, a second-class citizen living in a crowded city of augmented denizens who live life in a "gamified existence," which you are unable to experience thanks to an accident as a child. The narrative is rich, the visuals gorgeous in a way reminiscent of Ghost in the Shell, and the gameplay immersive. It's quite possible that you will feel as though you're Rick Deckard himself, off to retire a replicant escaped from an off-world colony.
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What indie games are you looking forward to in 2018? Let us know in the comments below.President Donald Trump's wealthiest friends from his home state have begun pushing for changes to the Republican tax bill, The Washington Post reports.
Over the weekend, Trump went to a fundraiser hosted by Blackstone Group head Stephen Schwarzman, where he also met with his old friend, real estate mogul Richard LeFrak, who reportedly spoke to Trump about making changes to the bill.
LeFrak and another donor, possibly more than one, told the president that the bill in its current form could hurt New York, particularly the wealthy.
"The president was a little vague in his response on that," an unnamed attendee of the event told the Post, claiming that Trump said, "'Well, we've got to see what happens. Maybe there are ways to try to be helpful.'"
According to the Post, multiple friends of Trump's have expressed their concerns that the tax bill could lead to the wealthy in states like New York losing out on deductions to state and local taxes. Although Trump has yet to request that Congress make changes to the bill, he did indicate on Wednesday that he is open to modifications.
"There are very, very few people that aren't benefiting by [the tax bill], but there's that tiny little sliver, and we're going to try to take care of even that very small group of people that just through circumstances maybe don't get the full benefit of what we're doing," he said.
Business advocate Kathy Wylde, leader of the Partnership for New York City, told the Post that several executives has contacted the White House about their concerns.
"They're killing the goose that lays the golden egg," she said.The new Bonsai Book for 2019 by Harry Harrington
Bonsai Books· Bonsai Tools· Bonsai For Sale· Carving Tools· Bonsai Pots· Bonsai T-Shirts
August 2010: This Privet/Ligustrum ovalifolium was given to me in August 2010. It had been growing for a number of decades as part of a large hedge in London before being dug up by the owner and planted into a large container in 2009. On initial inspection, the tree didn't have great potential for bonsai, consisting of a number of straight, taperless trunks, all connected at the base.
The tree however was in great health and despite having been collected and chopped down from a height of approximately 2 metres the year before, had responded with very strong growth.
Privet are an exceptionally resilient plant species and can be treated far more harshly than most other tree species for bonsai. This means that it is possible to carry out aggressive pruning and chopping of the trunk (or trunks) to produce a suitable 'bonsai trunk'. After'shaping' of the new bonsai-trunk, the remaining live parts of the tree push out many new shoots that can then be used to build a new branch structure.
The majority of the time, it is the surface or below-soil-level areas of a collected Privet that make the best bonsai-trunks. The multiple shoots/trunks that emerge from the base of a field- or garden-growing Privet are often too thin and straight in their own right to make a good trunk for bonsai; but their bases do make excellent material albeit with the sometimes extensive use of deadwood and carving effects.
Achieving a good trunk for bonsai meant that it was necessary to remove almost all of the multiple shoots/trunks on my tree, leaving just the trunkbase to be developed over the forthcoming years.
Rather than simply chopping each trunk, I find a more interesting and natural effect can be achieved by sawing halfway through each trunk.......
.........and then ripping them away from the base.
More and more of the trunks were removed, each being chopped at a height that increased the taper of the trunkbase.
By leaving the bottom of the trunk at the back/left of the tree, the base was given a greater impression of taper.
The tops of newly-chopped trunks were also carved using a die-grinder to increase the taper. The trunkbase of the tree here was just under 7"/17cm.
>>Large Privet Bonsai Progression : Page 1 2 3 4 5 6AP Images
Well, how about that.
For the second straight year, the Cleveland Cavaliers walked away from the NBA draft lottery with the No. 1 pick—this despite entering the night with a scant 1.7 percent chance of taking the top prize.
The Milwaukee Bucks, who boasted a lottery-high 25.1 percent shot, wound up with the No. 2 pick, while the Philadelphia 76ers walked away with No. 3
You can read how the rest of the lottery shook out here.
Right now, we're going to scope out what some NBA players—future top-pick teammates and notable All-Stars included—had to say about the night's proceedings.
Get your popcorn and steak sauce, folks. This is gonna be fun.
Oh, Kyrie Irving. You have no idea. Unless, of course, you do. In which case, you did a terrible job of disguising it.
Fast-forward to the final envelope.
Uh oh.
Let's just say there were a lot of these tweets.
Including one from Detroit Pistons point guard Brandon Jennings, whose former team wound up No. 2.
To his credit, Jennings was quick with the conciliatory follow-up. A class move given his team got hosed and lost its first-round pick altogether.
Some, like Kendall Marshall of the Los Angeles Lakers—who ended up with the No. 7 pick—were slightly more blunt. And also probably overly paranoid.
Little known fact: Despite having only a 1.7 percent chance of winning on the last number, DeMarcus Cousins took home the Sacramento Bingo Championship the other night.
Of course you did, Patrick Paterson. You're a wizard.
Like Iriving, Austin Rivers is a former Duke standout. That warrants some friendly ribbing.
Outright exasperation wasn't uncommon.
Neither was straight-up comedy.
Yes, Kevin Saraphin, you're right. A 35-win Dream Team.
We certainly admired Ty Lawson's honesty.
Although not as much as Dahntay Jones'.GREEN IS GOOD
by Meg White
You'd be hard-pressed to find two words more closely associated with America than "disposable" and "plastic." Does it follow then, that banning single-use plastic bags is un-American?
If so, you'll have to add "treason" to my list of transgressions this month: I'm going without.
More on that in a bit. First, let's take in the latest news regarding a ban on disposable plastic bags. The head of the United Nations environmental program made waves earlier this month when he suggested a global ban on throw-away plastic bags. From McClatchy:
"Single use plastic bags which choke marine life, should be banned or phased out rapidly everywhere. There is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme.
His remarks accompanied a UNEP report on the global challenge of marine pollution identified plastic as the most pervasive litter in the world's oceans.
As I mulled over the virtual uproar over banning plastic bags worldwide, my stomach growled. I went to the fridge and grabbed my lunch, which was wrapped in a plastic grocery bag. Opening up the bag, my sandwich posed another layer of plastic to navigate, this one brought to you by your friends at Ziploc.
Am I part of the problem? I asked myself. Should I try out a ban on myself?
The phrase "ban on plastic bags," however, is misleading. Media reports that breathlessly gush about a citywide or countrywide "ban" are usually referring to a tax on single-use plastic bags, as is the case in Ireland. The country was the first to institute what it called the "plastax" -- a surcharge on each plastic bag that now amounts to the equivalent of about 33 American cents -- in 2002.
It may not be a ban, but it tends to have the same effect. The New York Times reported last year that in Ireland "plastic bags became socially unacceptable -- on par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after your dog."
Though, in the hometown of The Gray Lady, you're more likely to face a fine for ignoring Fido's output than Filene's. Earlier this month New York City ditched a proposal to add a five-cent tax to plastic bags.
The idea is catching on elsewhere, however. African countries such as Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda have restricted and/or taxed the use of plastic bags. San Francisco banned plastic bags from large grocery stores and pharmacies in favor of recyclable paper or compostable bags in 2007. From Philadelphia and Seattle to China and Australia, everyone seems to be getting in on the act. Even Los Angeles, the city where nothing is more natural than plastic, will ban the bags by 2010.
My fair city hasn't quite gotten the memo yet. Despite attempts to institute a plastic bag ban in Illinois and Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley's vision of the greenest city in the world remains his own personal delusion (although, the Chicago City Council was able to ban the tiny plastic bags used by drug dealers last year, which clearly impressed me).
But I can rail against Chicago's greenwashing program only so long before finding ways in which I can be more environmentally friendly without municipal aid. Feeling that a citywide ban on single-use plastic bags is far from reach, not to mention a worldwide one, I thought I'd try it out myself.
Unsure about my ability to live without plastic, and aware of the efficacy of wide-open scrutiny, I thought I'd try it Super Size Me style: For the next month, I'm going without disposable plastic bags.
I was inspired by a number of things. Writing about the giant floating "islands" of garbage, mostly plastic, was one such inspiration. And the idea of 100,000 marine animals dying each year because I left my tote at home is troubling, if a little overly dramatic. If you're still feeling cynical, try staring at the ever-whirling tally of the number of plastic bags that have been consumed this year -- around a half million every minute -- at the top of this Web site.
Now, this is not going to be easy for me. I don't have a vehicle, so stowing a reusable tote in my trunk is not an option. I'm also too squeamish to wash out Ziploc-style bags to turn them into something re-usable. Can I survive a month without Ziploc?
The single-use plastic bag is about as old as I am, having been introduced 25 to 30 years ago in this country, depending upon whom you ask. For those of us who don't remember a time before the option of "paper or plastic," the task may be more daunting. But I figure if I can keep in mind that such a time did exist, and humanity made it pretty far without plastic bags, the task will be measurably easier.
In order to track my progress, I'm going to use the following self-tax system: I will charge myself (to be deposited in a glass change jar for each infraction) 10 cents every time I throw away plastic that is not commonly banned, such as the aforementioned Ziploc, plastic wrap or garbage liners. And I will charge myself the symbolic 33 cents the Irish pay if I catch myself using one of those naughty single-use bags, even if it is a second or third use. I'll be dropping off my massive collection of single-use plastic bags this Saturday at my local co-op, which does not buy bags but relies on neighbors such as myself to drop their bags off to be re-used by customers.
And as a part of BuzzFlash's effort to show that action on the Internet is more than just signing petitions, I encourage you to take up this challenge along with me. Go for the next month without plastic bags.
I'll report back to the BuzzFlash community every week to let you guys know how it's coming. I urge you to play along at home, as they say. Keep score with me, and maybe we'll save up enough in self-inflicted taxes to donate to a worthy environmental cause (suggestions welcome). But I'm hoping my change jar will be relatively empty a month from now.
So stay tuned for my bag-less updates. And in the meantime, join in the discussion by commenting below.
GREEN IS GOOD
Image courtesy of Samuel Mann's photostream on Flickr.Gotham has Batman — and now Brooklyn has its own scrappy superhero.
An edgy new Web comic by an award-winning artist centers on “The Red Hook” — a street-smart superhero inspired by the gritty waterfront neighborhood.
Dean Haspiel, 46 — best known for his work on the late alt-comic legend Harvey Pekar’s “American Splendor” series and mainstream comics such as Marvel’s “X-Men” — says his newest pulp character is unique because of his human flaws.
“He has a sordid past and that’s part of why he’s interesting,” Haspiel, of Red Hook-neighboring Carroll Gardens, told The Post.
“Who wants to read about a knight in shining armor? That’s boring,” he said.
The Red Hook is a former boxer and street thief who sports red spandex — and, of course, packs a mean right hook — and who accidentally falls into the business of saving lives.
“He’s sort of forced into the situation,” Haspiel said. “He’s a reluctant superhero. He’s not out to save the world.
“Who thinks that way?”
The story is set entirely in the eponymous Brooklyn neighborhood, where “The Hook” bounds across rooftops, smacking around bad guys and making quick getaways.
Haspiel set the story in the area due to its lingering feel of small-town lawlessness — making it ripe for a tale about crime and mayhem, he said.
“It feels to me like the setting for a modern-day Spaghetti Western,” Haspiel said.
He said the neighborhood attracts independent thinkers, artists and even some crafty criminals. “It’s home to a certain kind of people,” Haspiel said.
The comic artist’s past projects include Emmy-award-winning art for the HBO series “Bored to Death” and freelance work on characters ranging from Batman to Spider-Man.
He recently published a preview of “The Red Hook” on his lit-art Web site Trip City and plans to launch a crowd-funding campaign to publish a full-length graphic novel next year.
“It pays homage to Brooklyn,” he said. “Hopefully, it attracts some buzz.”
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The Post has a comics blog called Parallel Worlds, where today you’ll find more on Dean Haspiel. You can find it at nypost.com/parallelworldsThis is my first instructable. I hope you like it. It's my 3th pair of poi I made myself, each one was better than the last. I made a 4th version too, but I lost them. Then I changed these into even more awesome poi with swivels and ball handles (they're in the last step).
Don't know what poi are? Check this out:
Jonathan Alvarez - Bending Light (with 3 light poi. A bit unusual because poi is normally done with 2, but it's a good explanation of poi)
Rastaxel - Poi in the park (a good demonstration of sock poi)
The poi:
These are much softer than tennis balls or many other practice poi. It's made from rice in socks. They could also be made from crunched candle wax in plastic bags. They don't tangle too much like tennis ball poi since you can pull them apart. I used a rope-making technique (reverse wrapping cordage) to make my new poi a little stretchy and bouncy. And it should, in theory, be stronger than the same piece of cloth not made into rope. They're virtually indestructable and should last a very long time, depending on how well you make it (I'd guess 10 years minimum with my poi).
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The time you'll need:
For these poi I worked about 6h continuous, but with taking pictures along. My next pair of poi, the ones with a 4 strand rope, took me 3 days about 2-3h a day. I already got the materials though. And I didn't really make any mistakes. You'll need a little patience but not too much.
The money you'll need:
I didn't spend any money on my poi, I had all the materials in my house. For the cloth, you'll need an old t-shirt or something. Or just buy a piece of cloth. I recently bought some cloth for €30 to make another 10 poi or so. You'll need some cordage too, for tying the handles to the poi and for sewing. Paracord is pretty cheap. But maybe first check if you have anything similar at home and test if you can make a tight gaucho knot with it (step 6) or something like that. Besides that, you'll need some old socks and rice which you probably have at home. Or you'll need some candle wax instead. I found a bag of 100 tealights for only €1 a while ago.
The value I would give to my poi would probably be around $50 because it's so pretty and good quality. So I would say it's well worth the effort to make it.
Things I used:
- piece of cloth, roughly 70cm x 50cm (28 inch x 20 inch), maybe a little more to be sure. Check below for more details
- one of the inside threads of paracord for sewing. Fishing line should also work. Or just any very strong thread. This will make the sewing line stronger than the cloth itself.
- two socks to fill with rice or plastic bags to fill with pulverized candle wax.
- rice or candle wax. Or some kind of powder. At first I used about 80 or 100g. But I made them heavier now. As I got better I realized they were too light. Podpoi (the famous led poi from flowtoys) are 128g per poi head, this should be a good place to start.
For loop handles:
- some paracord. About 4 x 1m (4 x 40 inch or 3.3 feet) for this particular knot.
For swivel and knob handles:
- 2 swivels and knobs, bought online (mine come from home of poi). It's also possible to make knobs from bouncy balls with a drill, or something else if you're creative. Watch out for hard materials as they're painful when they hit your knuckles if you're trying to catch them.
Only the knobs or only the swivels are also possible of course.
- scissors
- small pliers
- a needle
- a lighter, for burning the ends of the paracord
- something to draw lines on the cloth
- ruler
- some strings for holding the rope into place
- perhaps a grater for powdering candle wax
Cordage:
I used paracord for tying the loop handle on the rope with a special knot (gaucho knot). You'll need about 4 x 1m. If you don't have paracord, be creative! Maybe another thick cord will work as well. I used one of the inside threads for sewing. You can also use fishing line or another thin cord, but make sure it's strong enough.
Cloth:
You'll have to use cloth that doesn't unravel if you cut it, and with a thickness of about 1mm. I don't know if other thicknesses will work as well for making the rope. I found a sheet somewhere in the woods and it was perfect for making poi. It's bright red, it doesn't unravel and it is very soft for handling. I used about 70cm x 50cm. Recently I found this cloth in the store. In dutch it's called'sweaterstof', but I don't know what it's called in English. 'Sweater fabric' seems to be something else. It's a synthetic fabric that's a little plushy on one side and smooth on the other side (gemoltoneerd in dutch, napped in English).
If you want to be sure if the rope will work, try cutting 2 (or 4) strands and follow step 4 for making a test rope. Then you can also check the thickness. Don't forget to make it tight enough, and then apply the same tightness to the poi's.
The weight
At first I used about 2 x 80g of rice, but then I made them heavier (I'm guessing around 130g). You'll feel the poi better if they're heavier, and you'll have more control in the wind. You can always open the poi and adjust the weight. For my new poi I used pulverized candle wax (7 or 8 tealights per poi) and pulverized it into plastic bags with a grater. The rice and the wax are both very soft if you hit yourself. The wax is softer, especially if you keep a little air in the plastic bags. They only hurt if you hit your eyes or your balls.
If you don't have rice or candles you can use any kind of powder. Water balloons are possible too but they break easily. And that's no fun... if it's unintended.
See the last step for my new version of these poi.
If you have any questions about this instructable, just message me or make a comment. I hope it's clear enough. I think they're easy to make but maybe this instructable could be a little complicated, I tried to explain every little detail.We touched on the rather strange goings on in New York’s 21 congressional district race last weekend, but the fascinating candidate put up by the Democrats just keeps bringing me back to the well. Millionaire filmmaker Aaron Woolf met up with his opponent, Republican small businesswoman Elise Stefanik for a debate this week. In the midst of the action, he suddenly popped up with an observation which left everyone scratching their heads.
“I don’t know if you have ever worked manually for a living like I have and I’m certain that [Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello] probably has-I don’t know if you can say something to a 49-year-old who’s working with their body-with their hands-it’s very different thing than sitting behind a desk and operating a computer.”
After Woolf originally made such a big deal out of Stefanik’s dating history, making comments about whether or not she’s ever “worked with her body” might not have been the best strategy. (Not to mention the question of exactly how much manual labor a filmmaker is doing on a weekly basis.)
This episode was odd enough to catch the attention of the gang on The Five. (Video follows) The analysis of Bob Beckel as to the competency of Woolf’s campaign staff is not to be missed.started playing clarinet at age 9. An obsession with guitar followed at age 13. Before she knew it, she was playing all sorts of instruments, and composing musical cues that didn't fit neatly into any category. Fortunately for us, her music still defies easy categorization. As equally comfortable composing for film and video games as writing hard-hitting vocal and guitar tracks, Tatiana is a self-taught juggernaut of creativity.
Boasting intricate arrangements that bring to mind Pet Sounds-era Brian Wilson, Tatiana is known for self-producing, mixing, arranging, and recording everything herself.
Dive into the swirling pool of her music. You may get dirty, but that’s okay. You’ll emerge inspired nonetheless, and perhaps even a little spooked.
How many musicians can you say that about?
~Robert Crisp -- Savannah, GeorgiaJust when you thought Furby couldn't get any cuter and smarter, it has.
Roughly four years after Furby underwent a modern reinvention to re-emerge with LED eyes and app-connectivity — and a cuddly Furbacca version — Hasbro has announced the Furby Connect, an even more adorable hamster-owl robot.
New to the Furby Connect are full-color LED eyes capable of even greater expressions, more advanced Bluetooth LE connectivity with smartphones and tablets, and a new LED antenna on its head that doubles as a joystick.
When the original Furby launched in the late '90s, the TV commercials gave me nightmares. I was among the first group of press to check out and review the redesigned Furby in 2012. It was less creepy than the original, but I still didn't want to keep it in my home.
Furby Connect, however, is too kawaii to resist.
The first thing you'll notice on Furby Connect are its color LED eyes and larger ears. There's more articulation to the twitch of its ears and jiggle of its body when it sings and dances or gets its belly rubbed.
Bigger, articulate ears Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE HD color LED eyes Image: brittany herbert/mashable
The 2012 Furby introduced app connectivity, allowing you to do simple things like fling different kinds of food from a mobile device into its mouth. Furby Connect takes this a step further; it can also lay digital eggs and poop out things (all kinds of things) into a digital toilet when you place the toy over a paired device's screen.
The Furby Connect app is available for both iOS and Android devices. Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE
The app, available for iOS and Android devices, also lets two Furby Connects talk to each other. If you've ever played with two Furbies simultaneously, you'll know what to expect. They're chatty and bursting with energy.
In addition to mini-games, the Furby app now comes with kid-friendly videos and music curated by Hasbro. It can sing and dance along to the entertainment.
Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE
But Furby Connect is more than just additional app content. It's not as intelligent (or as useful) as Amazon's Alexa, the assistant built into the Echo, but still, Hasbro's made Furby aware of what's happening in the world.
The new @OfficialFurby Furby Connect singing and dancing to the app. How cute is this? Fully story on @mashable pic.twitter.com/BhaU8eJTkk — Raymond Wong (@raywongy) June 30, 2016
Furby Connect is even more connected to the Internet. For example, updates pushed through the app's service (you won't need to update the app itself on a weekly basis), tell Furby Connect what songs are trending — at least, after they're curated by Hasbro in partnership with Jukin Media and KIDZ BOP and deemed safe for kids. It also knows which viral videos are popping, and even provides commentary on them. In one demo, Furby Connect cheered on a grandma playing the drums.
Furby Connect's new LED antenna is also a joystick. Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE
The LED antenna on Furby Connect's head doubles as a joystick controller. While it's possible the antenna joystick may be used for controlling mini-games in the future, Hasbro isn't including that feature at launch for the app's built-in mini-games.
One of the most annoying things about Furbies has always been that they're nearly impossible to shut up. You have to silence them by removing the batteries or wait for them to give up and hibernate.
The Eye Mask silences Furby Connect. Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE
Hasbro's solved that pesky problem with an eye mask. Snap the mask onto Furby and it mutes itself and turns off all of its wireless radios. As Kris Paulson, Hasbro's director of design and development integrated play, told me, the mask makes it a lot quieter when transporting Furby Connect around in a suitcase.
Furby Connect requires four AA batteries and can run for six hours continuously. Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE
It's hard to believe Furby turns 18 this year. It's rare for a toy to get reinvented over and over and retain so much charm. From what I saw, the Connect looks like it's the best Furby yet.
Furby Connect is now available for pre-order in two colors (pink and teal), exclusively on Amazon. More colors (purple, coral and light blue) will be released in fall 2016. The price tag is $99.99. Not cheap, but when have intelligent robot toys ever been cheap?
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.DREW HINSHAW:
They just have no good answers right now. This is a huge debate. The CDC thinks it's a really horrible idea to basically give people gloves and painkillers and say, 'okay you know, feed your family members while they have Ebola.'
On the other hand, people like UNICEF think 'what else are you going to do.' People are stuck in a house with their dying relatives.
The rules are that you shouldn't touch them, that you shouldn't go near them, that you should leave them in a bedroom essentially to die, but that's just not a tenable option for most people when their loved one is dying, they get to a point where compassion overrules self-preservation.
That's exactly how Ebola has been spreading house-to-house and unless there is just a huge increase in the number of hospital beds available, it will continue to happen.By Kerem Kocalar
GAZIANTEP, Turkey
Over 42,000 Syrians have returned to Jarabulus in northern Syria since the town was liberated from Daesh, according to a Turkish official at the migration office on Thursday.
People have been returning to their homes in the town, which lies just across the Turkish border, ever since the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) freed it in August last year.
The Syrians who went back included women and children; they were brought to Jarabulus after undergoing security checks at the Karkamis customs gate in Gaziantep, an official at the Gaziantep migration office in southern Turkey, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to the media, said.
An average of 200 people a day have been returning to Jarabulus from Turkey, the official added.
FSA fighters on the border have been helping civilians go to Jarabulus; so far, 42,406 civilians have reportedly returned.
Operation Euphrates Shield, which began in late August last year and ended in March, 2017, was aimed at eliminating the terrorist threat along the Turkish border with the use of the FSA, backed by Turkish artillery and air cover.
Since the civil war erupted in Syria in 2011, Jarabulus had been controlled by Daesh and intermittently by the PKK/PYD terrorist group.By Kelly Metz-Matthews, Staff Writer
I had a massage in the middle of the workday yesterday. Hortensia, our in-office massage therapist, provided me a 15-minute respite from the chaos that is, occasionally, my life. Of course, I could have been sitting at my desk, slamming through my ever-growing to-do list. But, the truth is that I was getting sluggish. A headache had begun its dull throb against my temples and my eyes, after six hours focused on the computer screen, were going glassy. I needed a break. Thanks to our corporate massage program, I got one. And I’ll tell you what, I came back to my desk reenergized and ready to crank out the rest of my work. So, thank you, Hortensia. You’re the best.
What Massage Actually Does
If you aren’t a regular massage client, let me take a moment to tout the benefits of massage generally. If you are getting massage already, I suspect none of this will be new to you. But, just for fun, read on.
Studies have repeatedly shown that massage, amongst other forms of touch therapy, lowers stress. More specifically, one recent Cedars-Sinai study showed that moderate-pressure Swedish massage decreases stress hormones and increases white blood cells. What does that mean exactly? It means that massage boosts the immune system. Other studies have found that massage lowers blood pressure and increases serotonin. Serotonin, incidentally, acts as a natural antidepressant. Not bad, eh?
The list goes on. Google “benefits of massage” and you’ll find yourself inundated with articles, studies, and blogs, many based purely on science—not the junk kind, but the university kind.
Why Employers Should Care
Wondering what this has to do with work? A lot, actually. Work is a pretty major factor in our daily stress levels. Even for those of us who love our jobs, work can |
1817, Clinton, Eddy, and Griscom, joined by hundreds of other New Yorkers, had formed a clone organization on the banks of the Hudson: the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism (SPP).
Several months before the founding of the SPP, New York's Humane Society (which at that time specialized in helping humans rather than dogs and cats) announced rather forlornly the result of recent research revealing a startling fact: no less than 15,000 men, women and children - the equivalent of one-seventh of the city's total population - had been "supported by public or private bounty and munificence" the previous winter.
In their book Gotham, historians Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace have eloquently described the SPP's point of view, expressed in response to the above data. In the grand tradition of the London Society, the SPP said it believed that "willy-nilly benevolence" only made things worse. "Giving alms to the undeserving poor not only undermined their independence but also drove up taxes and sapped the prosperity of the entire community." Thus, "for their good as well as everyone else's … the SPP recommended that all paupers in the city be cut off from all public assistance forthwith." Soon the Humane Society itself announced its intention to disband, in the wake of its realization that the very act of giving charity had "a direct tendency to beget, among [the citizenry] habits of imprudence, indolence, dissipation and consequent pauperism."
"Tough love" was in. Cruelty equaled kindness. Frugality equality generosity. And all three were not only cheap, but easy. A few ministers sang out against the reverse-logic of the SPP, but far more praised the organization than damned it. God himself, it seemed was on the side of self-reliance. A generation later, Social Darwinists would express a similar point of view: that the strong must be allowed to flourish, and not be hamstrung by the needs of the clawing weak. Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species would not see print until 1859. Indeed, Darwin himself was but eight years old in 1817, and would not depart on the voyage of HMS Beagle until 1831. Nevertheless, the seeds of what was to become the philosophy of Herbert Spencer (born 1820), not to mention the nearly identical philosophy of the 20th century's Objectivist saint of selfishness, Ayn Rand, were quite evident in the grand pronouncements of the London Society and its New York equivalent, the SPP.
A few notable men of New York, such as John Jacob Astor and the young Peter Cooper, repudiated the SPP, ignored the trend toward avarice, and continued their philanthropy, even expanding it in many areas to try to make up for some of the rapacity of their contemporaries. But Vanderbilt did not.
Only very late in life, in efforts to please his much younger second wife, (Frank Crawford Vanderbilt, whom he married in 1869), did "the Commodore" engage in two relatively paltry acts of giving.
During 1870, Vanderbilt spent $50,000 to purchase the unused Mercer Street Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. In turn, he gave life interest in the property to Frank's friend Charles Force Deems, a Methodist cleric and proprietor of a congregation he had dubbed the Church of the Strangers. (The church catered to people like Frank: former Confederates who, having lost everything during the Civil War, washed ashore as "strangers" in New York.) According to the terms of Vanderbilt's limited gift to Deems, control of the property was to revert to Vanderbilt or his heirs/assignees following Deems's death. The deed on the property, which Vanderbilt knew would appreciate greatly in value through the years, always remained in the name of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Several years later, at the request of Nashville's Methodist Bishop Holland McTyeire (a cousin-in-law of Frank's), Vanderbilt provided $1 million (less than 1% of his total net worth) to fund Nashville's planned Methodist "Central University," subsequently renamed Vanderbilt University. Although he did not bother to attend the dedication ceremonies during the autumn of 1875, Vanderbilt's gift was nevertheless hailed as the largest single act of philanthropy in American history to that time. Attention to the fine print, however, revealed that a substantial percentage of the $1 million endowment was, by Vanderbiltian order, to be kept in the first mortgage bonds of Vanderbilt's own New York Central & Hudson River Railroad. Thus, as with the church on Mercer Street, Vanderbilt's charity was hardly outright.
Not long before his death, Vanderbilt confided to one of his doctors that he had been "insane on the subject of money-making" all his life. Subsequently, in devising a will which gave more than 95% of his fortune to just one of his eleven surviving children, Vanderbilt said he intended to keep his property "compact... I will not have it scattered. I will leave it as a monument to my name." Thus he left behind him the legacy he most coveted: a vast hoard of stocks, bonds, greenbacks and railroads, but next to nothing in the way of good works or improvement of society.
Luckily for the planet and mankind, contemporary moguls such as Gates and Buffet have chosen to leave something more.Tribe Wins Again, Takes 14th Consecutive CAA Title
The William and Mary men's cross country team won its 14th Colonial Athletic Association championship in a row, and 21st overall Saturday. The Tribe placed seven runners on the all-conference team to easily out-pace Northeastern, 25-44. The Huskies' Wes Gallagher won the individual title in 24:42.02.Leading the way for the Tribe once again was, who finished second overall in 24:46.56. Freshmanwas the bronze medalist in 25:05.17, the best finish for a true freshman since All-Americanwas second in 2004. Sophomorewas fifth in 25:16.66, andwas sixth overall in 25:26.64. Juniorrounded out the scoring in ninth place at 25:49.87, andand freshmanalso joined on the all-conference team in 10th place and 11th place, respectively.The Tribe's 14-straight wins is tied for the second-longest active streak in the nation and tied for sixth-longest ever, behind only Iona's 23 in a row in the MAAC and tied with Wisconsin's 14 wins in the Big Ten (the Big Ten meet is Sunday). Between the CAA and Southern Conference combined, W&M now has 36 conference championships, third-most in NCAA history. The Tribe's 21 total CAA championships is the most-ever for a men's team in conference history, and second overall behind the W&M women's tennis team (22).William and Mary will take next week off to host the annual Massey Cancer Center 5K, which has raised more than $100,000 for cancer research and treatment at MCV's Massey Center over the years. The run/walk fundraiser will begin at 5:15 p.m. at Zable Stadium next Friday, Nov. 8, and participants and donors are still welcome to sign-up and pledge at Massey5k.com. The Tribe's next championship race will come on Friday, Nov. 15, at the Southeast Region Championships in Charlottesville.2. Northeastern 443. UNCW 894. College of Charleston 1065. Hofstra 1151. Wes Gallagher (NU) 24:42.024. Zach Krause (NU) 25:13.127. Zach Fraielli (NU) 25:31.188. Daniel Rono (HU) 25:42.6912. Adam Seften (CofC) 26:05.1713. Jacob Sears 26:10.8715. Nick Tyrey 26:31.0818. David Pennesi 26:38.2424. Tom Feeney 27:10.6325. Ian MacFawn 27:11.35A few of Toronto’s street names hint at the rapid outwards expansion that took place on the city’s waterfront over the past century, like the concentric rings in a tree trunk.
“People are shocked and amazed when they learn how far out the shoreline has been extended over the years,” says Gary Miedema, associate director at Heritage Toronto.
This week, a more tangible reminder of Toronto’s transient shoreline became visible in a construction pit at 90 Harbour St.: the west wall of what used to be Harbour Square wharf.
At one time, the shoreline of Lake Ontario ran alongside each of these three urban thoroughfares, before infilling extended the city further into the harbour.
“We stopped work in that area of the site and immediately called an archaeologist,” says Guy Belanger, who heads the project.
The partially buried remains of the wharf jut from a large mound of earth at the construction site where a new office and condominium complex is being built by development company Menkes.
But the shore of Lake Ontario today — now bordered in the downtown area by Queens Quay, is half a kilometre south of Front.
“However, it’s not just tourists, it’s also Torontonians that are confused as to why Front St. is called Front St.,” says Miedema.
The agency, which is partially funded by the city, raises awareness about Toronto’s rich cultural and architectural heritage through a series of walking tours.
David Robertson, a senior archaeologist with Archaeological Services Inc. who inspected the wharf wall, says it’s not an unusual find.
Belanger says the company has unearthed other wharves in previous excavations.
“I’ve seriously lost count of how many of these we’ve uncovered,” says Robertson. “I’ve probably come across two to three of them a year over the last nine years.”
Robertson says he approved the removal of the wharf after examining the structure over the past couple of weeks.
“These things are a very basic piece of waterfront infrastructure,” he says. “They’re not very remarkable — they mark a period of development, but that’s about it.”
Robertson added that contamination from the old rail yard above is another reason these wharves aren’t preserved.
But just how did the wharf become landlocked in the first place?
Miedema says it wasn’t global warming or drought that initiated this change, but rather the infrastructure demands made by an increasingly industrialized city.
“It began with the railroads coming to town along the waterfront in the 1850s,” says Miedema. “And with rail comes industry, because of the ease of access it provides.”
By the beginning of the 20th century, with a burgeoning rail network itself built on infill, and a paucity of berths for large ships, there was a need to address the acute shortage of real estate along the city’s shoreline.
In May 1911 a federal law was passed that saw the creation of the Toronto Harbour Commission — a body that was charged with managing, controlling and developing the facilities of the harbour. A year later, the commission unveiled a $19-million dollar plan (equivalent to about$400 million today) that would transform the waterfront into a modern port.
According to Derek Hayes’ Historical Atlas of Toronto, changes to the harbour included reclaiming more than three square miles of new land, transforming Ashbridge’s Bay into an integral part of Toronto’s new port, and dredging the shallow harbour shoreline to a depth of more than seven metres to allow access to sea-going freighters.
“Creating new wharves and docks for the shipping made perfect sense,” says Miedema. “The water was the way in, and the easiest and cheapest way out of the city.”
The Harbour Square wharf, completed in 1913, was one of the new permanent features designed to accommodate these larger ships. The submerged foundations of the wharf consisted of a series of cribs — each a structure composed of a series of logs laid perpendicular to one another, as in a game of Jenga. Each crib was filled with rock to add ballast to the structure.
It is these cribs that are currently visible at 90 Harbour St.
The Toronto Harbour Commission building — today the offices of the Toronto Port Authority at 60 Harbour St. — was built on this wharf four years later.
But further land reclamation efforts affected Harbour Square wharf, and between 1926 and 1928 the structure was subsumed by lake fill.
Miedema says it’s ironic that the area, which for much of its history was a working harbour, has now become a recreational district lined with condominiums.
“But it does say something about the incredible ingenuity of human beings and their ability to entirely change the environment in which they live and work, for good and bad,” says Miedema.
“And the discovery of this old wharf wall is a nice reminder of the incredible story behind the changing shoreline of the city.”
U-boat comes to Toronto
On June 10, 1919, German U-boat UC-97 pulled up alongside Harbour Square wharf in Toronto’s harbour.
This was not part of a Teutonic invasion, but rather one stop on the submarine’s tour en route to the Great Lakes Training Centre in Chicago.
The U-boat was part of a fleet that had surrendered to the British navy at the end of the First World War. It was one of five submarines given to the U.S. Navy by the British Admiralty.
Torontonians flocked to Harbour Square wharf to inspect the submarine.
The 491-ton vessel now sits on the bottom of Lake Michigan in 300 feet of water, having been scuttled by the U.S. Navy in 1921.
The wreckage of UC-97 was located in 1992 by the Chicago-based company A&T Recovery.GAA stadium shortcomings to scupper Ireland's Rugby World Cup bid? October 31, 2017
The newly redeveloped Pairc Ui Chaoimh The newly redeveloped Pairc Ui Chaoimh
Ireland's 2023 World Cup bid is in trouble as three of the GAA stadiums involved are currently not up to the required standard to host the tournament.
Ireland's all-island bid was today rated weakest of the three in the critical area of stadium infrastructure and "flagged as a risk" by World Rugby's technical review group, with South Africa moving into the driving seat.
Followig a deep technical appraisal of all three bids, World Rugby have selected South Africa as their preferred candidate, with France second and Ireland last. The Rugby World Cup board will recommend South Africa as RWC 2023 hosts, with a vote taking place on November 15th to select the winning nation.
Widely regarded prior to today as the most likely nation to host the competition in six years' time, our bid has been dealt a potentially fatal body blow after the technical review group gave a negative verdict on Pearse Stadium, Fitzgerald Stadium and the newly-rebuilt Pairc Ui Chaoimh, noting that they require a great deal of work to bring them up to Rugby World Cup standard, while it was also noted that Casement Park is still subject to a planning approval:
"The amount of upgrade work required introduces complexity and therefore a significant risk factor that is not is not inherent in the other two bids. Pairc Ui Chaoimh, Pearse Stadium and Fitzgerald Stadium require a significant level of overlay which is flagged as a risk, given the amount of work required to bring these venues up to RWC standard.
"Casement Park is scheduled for redevelopment by 2020 and will also require a significant level of overlay. At time of writing, we understand that this venue is still subject to final planning approval.
"All but two of the venues require significant levels of upgrade and / or installation of technology and telecoms infrastructure. Telecommunications diversity needs to be added at all but two venues."
Most Read StoriesThe Obama administration has stringently refused to provide records on its aggressive amnesty programs that may reveal coordination with outside lobbyists, prompting legal action from an immigration reform group.
In response to the refusal, the Immigration Reform Law Institute decided to sue the Obama administration Friday to force a release of that information from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
The information sought isn’t just limited to a single record, but spans eight different requests that have been stonewalled by USCIS.
IRLI wants to know the funding sources behind programs like President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parental Accountability, as well as whether these programs are in compliance with the Anti-Deficiency Act.
The Anti-Deficiency Act is a law designed to prevent government agencies from signing contracts that obligate them to pay more funds than they currently have available.
IRLI also is interested in how many fee waivers the Obama administration has handed out to DACA-recipients, as well as how these programs affect waiting time periods for people who apply for legal permanent residency through proper channels.
But that’s not all.
IRLI also suspects that top administration officials have attacked low-level employees, who are frustrated with the administration’s aggressive approach to re-engineering the immigration system. There also may be communication between these top officials and outside lobbyists from the tech industry hungry for more visas to support foreign labor and from open borders activists.
On the tech industry side, the lawsuit asks for USCIS to provide any communication from 2012 between officials and representatives of Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard and Facebook.
“It’s hoped much of this information will assist state and local governments and aggrieved members of the American public that wish to challenge the Administration for the giant strains imposed on its communities, labor markets, and school, health care and welfare-budgets due to its ongoing non-enforcement agenda,” IRLI said in a statement.
For IRLI executive director Dale L. Wilcox, the idea of the suit is “raise public awareness regarding Obama’s lawless, open-borders policies, and assist states, localities, and the taxpaying-public across the nation who must bear this unfair burden caused by unregulated immigration.”
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.See our special update on Syd Barrett - His life, his mental illness, and his recent passing away (July 7, 2006)
More information on street drugs and schizophrenia, other causal factors. Note - in the story below, we've linked to sections where the author has described some of (what are now known to be) common symptoms of schizophrenia. Follow the links to learn more.
Photos: Syd Barrett - 1970s, and approximately in 2001
Trouser Press
February 1978
p. 26-32
by Kris DiLorenzo
The color black is not a solitary real color. Nor is it the total absence of color. A black hole in space, in fact, is a concentrated area so densely packed that nothing, not even light, can penetrate it. Blackness is actually all colors at once, so many colors merging at such intensity that the riot of their profusion produces, to the superficially perceptive eye, only nothingness: black. Try it with your crayons or magic markers: everything at once, too much simultaneous input layered repeatedly, gives you blackness.
You all know who Syd Barrett is even if you think you don't. Without him there would have been no Pink Floyd. Barrett dominated the band during their first years, writing most of their material, singing lead vocals and playing lead guitar. He left the band (or the band left him) for reasons of mental health, and in 1970 with the aid of his replacement in the Floyd, David Gilmour, recorded two solo albums: The Madcap Laughs and Barrett. Syd then performed with Stars, an ensemble in the Cambridge area, but left them after three gigs and virtually vanished from the public eye.
For the past five years Barrett has generally been written off as an acid casualty, but more often lamented as a musical visionary whose interior landscape became too disorienting for him to handle. Some of the stories one hears about Barrett are disconcertingly true, others only sound like Syd, but most of his acquaintances express the same conclusion: intuitive and fragile,
Barrett was a unique talent and an erratic mind on the edge of a different type of existence - as well as a man who indelibly affected those who came into contact with him. Several people close to Syd at various times in his life offer their perspectives in this article, and the resulting portrait is Picasso-like: a profile viewed simultaneously in different dimensions of seeing.
Glen Buxton (formerly guitarist with Alice Cooper);
Duggie Fields (designer, artist and Barrett's flat-mate for several years);Lindsey Korner (Barrett's girlfriend during the Pink Floyd days);
Bryan Morrison (former Pink Floyd manager and publisher, still Barrett's publisher);
Mick Rock (photographer for Hipgnosis in London during the 60's);
Jerry Shirley (formerly with Humble Pie and Natural Gas, drummer on Barrett's albums and currently with A&M's Midnight);
Twink (drummer for Pretty Things, Pink Fairies, Tomorrow, Stars and
Rings, who still believes in Syd); and
David Gilmour, for devotion above and beyond the call of rock 'n' roll.
There is no question that Syd Barrett was one of the "umma" (the brotherhood of prophets - see Herbert's "Dune") and "just mad enough to be holy." Barrett's madness was not quite a sudden explosion, however, but rather a gradual implosion, the clues to which he articulated in his music long before his behavior signalled distress. Syd's songs contained warnings from the beginning: he dealt with instability and the primal need for comfort via authority's fairytales ("Matilda Mother"), the desire for control of a situation and the outsider/observer role ("Flaming"). The lyrics of "Jugband Blues" (on Floyd's Saucerful Of Secrets) also spelled out some of his conflicts. By the time of The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, Syd's songs clearly revealed raw spots in his psyche amid the poetically jumbled voodoo of his writing.
Ten years since the release of Pink Floyd's first album, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, it's difficult for those unfamiliar with Pink Floyd's music or the burgeoning British music scene of the 60's to attribute great importance to Syd Barrett. All it takes to be convinced of Barrett's significance, however, is a careful listen to Piper, A Saucerful Of Secrets (the second LP), and the singles he wrote for the group (on Relics and Masters Of Rock, a Dutch collection). What Syd created in sound and imagery was brand new: at that time America hadn't even heard of Hendrixian feedback and distortion as part of a guitar's capabilities, and the Beatles were just recording Sergeant Pepper (at the same time and in the same studios) as Pink Floyd were cutting Piper. Barrett's music was as experimental as you could get without crossing over entirely into freeform jazz; there simply were no other bands extending the boundaries of rock beyond the basic 4/4 sex-and-love themes.
Syd certainly listened to American jazz, blues, jug band music and rock, as did most young British rock 'n' rollers of the time. He used to cite Bo Diddley as his major influence, yet these inputs are no more than alluded to in his music, which contains every style of guitar playing imaginable: funky rhythm churns up speeding riffs that distort into jazzy improvisation. At times an Eastern influence surfaces, blending vocal chants, jangling guitar and devotional hum in tunes like "Matilda Mother" and the lovely "Chapter 24," based on the I Ching.
Barrett's guitar work maintained a psychedelic, dramatic ambience of incongruous contrasts, violent changes and inspired psychosis. No technician a la Eric Clapton, Barrett simply knew his own particular instrument well and pushed it to its limits. Compared by critics to Jeff Beck, Lou Reed (in his early Velvet Underground days) and Jimi Hendrix, Barrett lacked only the consistency to match their achievements.
His trademark (and Achilles heel) was sudden surprise: trance-like riffs would slide abruptly into intense, slightly offbeat strumming ("Astronomy Domine"), choppy urgency gives way to powerful, frightening peaks ("Interstellar Overdrive"), harmless lyrics skitter over a fierce undertow of evil-sounding feedback and menacing wah-wah ("Lucifer Sam"). Stylized extremes made Barrett's guitar the focus of Floyd's early music; his instrumental mannerisms dominated each song even when Syd merely played chords. Barrett's rhythms were usually unpredictable; one never knew what process in Syd's brain dictated when to speed up or slow down the pace, when to sweeten or sour the sound, and when to wrench the tempo totally out of joint, shifting gears to turn rhythms inside-out. As a result, Barrett's playing was variously described by critics as "clumsy and anarchic," "adventurous and distinctive," "idiosyncratic,"
"revolutionary" or "brilliant and painful."
Indisputably Barrett was an innovator. Whether he was entirely conscious or in control of his art is impossible to determine; perhaps it's enough to say that he was indeed effective. His work with Pink Floyd still ranks as some of the most expressive, sensational playing recorded by a rock guitarist. Even 10 years later Barrett's solos stand as fixed entities in the overall scope of Pink Floyd's music; it's a rare long-term Floyd fan who doesn't know every note, each frenzy of feedback and electronic eccentricity. Yet Syd borrowed no familiar blue licks as the young Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were wont to do.
Barrett's songwriting genius was original and extremist as well. His singing was highly stylized; obscure chanting vocals, high-tension verses and explosive choruses alternating with deadpan storytelling and hypnotic drawls. He utilized fairytale technique, surrealistic juxtaposition of psychedelic detail and plain fact, childhood experience and adult confusion. Like the Beatles, Barrett combined dream imagery and irony with simple, direct tunes, strong, catchy melodic hooks with nonsense rhymes and wandering verses that sound like nothing so much as what goes on inside people's heads when their minds are running aimlessly.
Although some of Barrett's songs seem to be straightforward stories, one always discovers a twist: multiple meanings to a line that belie the childlike wonder of the words ("Gnome"), innocuous lyrics devastatingly undermined with a questing guitar or unlikely special effects ("Scarecrow," "Jugband Blues").
Certainly psychedelia asserted its influence on Barrett's writing; there are descriptions and perceptions one can attribute only to drugs or hallucinatory schizophrenia, but others are strictly the products of his unaffected imagination.
As a songwriter Barrett has been compared with Pete Townshend and Ray Davies. Dave Gilmour echoes that evaluation: "Syd was one of the great rock and roll tragedies. He was one of the most talented people and could have given a fantastic amount. He really could write songs and if he had stayed right, could have beaten Ray Davies at his own game."
Syd's influence on Pink Floyd continued to manifest itself long after he left the band. Carrying on without him was difficult at first, since the public and music business obviously thought Syd was all the band had. Initially Gilmour's style conformed to the Barrett prototype established on the first album, and their music retained Syd's spirit, but their songwriting gradually changed. In the years following Syd's departure he remarked that the band wasn't progressing, and in a real sense this was true.
Even Pink Floyd's three most recent albums to a large extent expand and develop themes and riffs Syd laid down with them in 1967. The point of view Barrett used in his songs, an alternation (and occasional fusion) of second and third persons, still predominated Pink Floyd compositions; pieces of his solos find their way into Gilmour's, tracks from Saucerful rearrange themselves on Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You WereHere. Even 1977's Animals displays Barrett's dark humor and takes off on his "Rats" premises. The dramatic mixes Syd applied to the Floyd's early recordings are now magnified by 16-track studios but employ the same technique: whole walls of sound rocket from one side of the room to the other, the guitar careens in and out of different speakers, submerged speech and incidental sounds chatter beneath instrumentals; their use of sound as an emotional tool is absolutely Barrettonian.
The most obvious impact of Syd Barrett-in-absentia has been on the concerns of much of Pink Floyd's music since 1969. They began dealing with the politics of reality in the outside world and became obsessed with the internal world of madness. The lyrics to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" are in perfect context on an album that clearly expresses the band's outrage at the whoring business of rock and roll and its toll on a human being like Barrett:
Remember when you were young,
you shone like the sun
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes
like black holes in the sky,
Shine on you crazy diamond.
You were caught on the crossfire of
childhood and stardom,
blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target for far away laughter,
come on you stranger,
you legend, you martyr and shine! *
* Copyright 1975 Pink Floyd Music Publishers, Inc.
Syd did indeed wear out his welcome with Pink Floyd. He became nearly impossible to follow musically as he reached for more abstract constructs, constantly re-phrasing, shifting and re-writing as he performed, expressing a compulsive need for uniqueness without considering logic. He worried about being considered "redundant," was anxious about growing older without accomplishing everything he wanted, and at one point said in exasperation to his roommate Fields, "Duggie, you're 23 and you're not famous!"
By 23 Syd was already internationally famous and began the rollercoaster ride to oblivion. Onstage he often found it inconceivable to play, standing among the amps with his back to the audience, staring at his guitar as if he'd never seen one before. Occasionally he exhibited flashes of virtuosity that dazzled audiences and made them hope for more, but Barrett was incapable of performing for its own sake. He wanted to achieve something indefinable each time he set out to play, and frequently this Olympian vision prevented Syd from producing anything at all for fear it not be perfect, brilliant and innovative.
Paralysis generated fear, and many Pink Floyd concerts found Barrett treating his guitar as if it were a treacherous grenade; at other times he would simply disappear for the duration and a substitute would have to be called in.
Barrett's musical ideas were metamorphosing, too; as he became more withdrawn personally, his songs tended to deal only with internal reality and became more obscure. He was becoming more of a conceptual artist than a musician, and eventually broke the barrier between form and content (and genius and insanity) by becoming what he had sung about.
Why didn't anyone see Barrett metaphysically waving his arms in the air? Perhaps because during London's turbulent '60s scene it was difficult, especially in a love-and-drug stupor, to distinguish incipient dementia from contrived brinksmanship. Barrett, as a genuine innovator and avant-gardist, probably had more leeway to act peculiar than most of the artiste/intellectual crowd he hung out with. Certainly no one around Syd was in a stable enough state to estimate the strength or weakness of his grasp on ordinary reality. Most of Barrett's craziness was accepted as "just Syd" until it became impossible for the Floyd to perform with his spells of onstage paralysis and offstage freakouts. The incredible struggle Gilmour and Waters of Pink Floyd endured during the recording of Barrett's solo albums, the sheer energy and patience it took to motivate Syd and keep him on the track, was the final straw. When Barrett dissolved Stars, it was apparent that he could not continue musically until he recovered from his shell-shock.
By all accounts Syd Barrett's career began like thousands of others among the crowd of young people during the first psychedelic rush of the '60s. He attended art school, became involved with other art and architectural students (among them the nucleus of the embryonic Pink Floyd) and finally left school for music. Syd's home in Cambridge, where his mother ran a boarding house, was the local social hang-out for the Cambridge students and drop-outs who later moved to London to form their own artistic enclave; until just a few years ago Barrett was still oscillating between his flat in London and his mother's in Cambridge.
Like all local "freak" scenes, the Pink Floyd crowd had a nexus; flats in London's Cromwell Road and Earl's Court became mecca for Cambridge hippies and budding mods. Mick Rock remembers one of Syd's flats as "a burnt-out place, the biggest hovel, the biggest shit-heap; a total acid-shell, the craziest flat in the world. There were so many people, it was like a railway station. Two cats Syd had, one called Pink and one called Floyd, were still living in the flat after he left. He just left them there. Those were the cats they used to give acid to. You know what heavy dope scenes were like."
When Pink Floyd "made it," Syd Barrett was about 21 years old. "They used to rehearse in the flat," Duggie Fields says, "and I used to go downstairs and put on Smokey Robinson as loud as possible. I don't know where they all arrived from, but I went to architecture school so did Rick [Wright, the Floyd's keyboard player] and Roger [Waters, bassist]. I don't quite remember how I met them all. I just remember suddenly being surrounded by the Pink Floyd and hundreds of groupies instantly." Barrett felt ensuing changes keenly. Within a few months after his "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play" (the first Floyd singles) made Pink Floyd stars, Lindsey Korner says "chronic schizophrenia" set in. It wasn't drugs particularly that set Syd off, she insists; from the time she first met him Korner considered Syd one of the sweetest, most together people, even though Syd's previous girlfriend says he was off the wall a little even then. According to Lindsey "it got a bit crazed" during the fall of '67; by Christmas Syd had started to "act a little bonkers."
"Oh, he went more than slightly bonkers," Fields affirms. "It must have been very difficult for him. I think the pressures on Syd before that time must have upset him very much, the kind of pressure where it takes off very fast, which Pink Floyd did - certainly in terms of the way people behaved towards them. I used to be speechless at the number of people who would invade our flat, and how they would behave towards anyone who was in the group; especially girls. I'd never seen anything like it. Some of the girls were stunning, and they would literally throw themselves at Syd. He was the most attractive one; Syd was a very physically attractive person - I think he had problems with that.
"I saw it even when he was out of the group (by the beginning of 1969). People kept coming around and he would actually lock himself in his room. Like if he made the mistake of answering the front door before he'd locked himself in his room, he found it very difficult to say no. He'd have these girls pounding on his bedroom door all night, literally, and he'd be locked inside, trapped. He did rather encourage that behavior to a certain extent, but then he didn't know what to do with it; he would resent it."
In 1967 Pink Floyd toured America for the first and last time with Syd Barrett. During their LA stay the band was invited to visit the Alice Cooper entourage, quartered in a house in Venice during their stint as the Cheetah club's house band. Cooper and his band had heard the Floyd's Piper at the Gates and their reaction, guitarist Glen Buxton recalls, was, "Wow! These guys should be reckoned with!" So Pink Floyd came to dinner. "Syd Barrett I remember," Buxton says emphatically. "I don't remember him ever saying two words. It wasn't because he was a snob; he was a very strange person. He never talked, but we'd be sitting at dinner and all of a sudden I'd pick up the sugar and pass it to him, and he'd shake his head like 'Yeah, thanks,' It was like I heard him say 'Pass the sugar' - it's like telepathy; it really was. It was very weird. You would find yourself right in the middle of doing something, as you were passing the sugar or whatever, and you'd think, 'Well, damn! I didn't hear anybody say anything!' That was the first time in my life I'd ever met anybody that could actually do that freely. And this guy did it all the time."
If leaving Pink Floyd were hard for Barrett, so were his last months in the band. Shirley explains: "When he plays a song, it's very rare that he plays it the same way each time - any song. And some songs are more off-the-wall than others. When he was with the Floyd, towards the very end, Syd came in once and started playing this tune, and played it completely different. Every chord change just kept going somewhere else and he'd keep yelling (the title), 'Have you got it yet?' I guess then it was Roger (who kept yelling back, 'No!') who kind of realized, 'Oh, dear.'"
Similar episodes became more frequent until the Floyd reached breaking point. "It was getting absolutely impossible for the band," Shirley recalls. "They couldn't record because he'd come in and do one of those 'Have you got it yet' numbers, and then onstage he would either not play or he'd hit his guitar and just turn it out of tune, or do nothing. They were pulling their hair out, they decided to bring in another guitarist to complement, so Syd wouldn't have to play guitar and maybe he'd just do the singing. Dave came in and they were a five-piece for about four or five weeks. It got better because Dave was together in what he did. Then the ultimate decision came down that if they were going to survive as a band, Syd would have to go. Now I don't know whether Syd |
up to the Citadel on the Capitol Hill but were in such haste that they neglected to close the city gates.
The Gauls were astonished by their easy victory. They piled up the enemy weapons in great heaps as an offering to their gods and decapitated their fallen foes. Grizzly trophies dangled from bloodied hair, tied to Gallic spears, chariots and horse harnesses. The time of the battle was just after the summer solstice. At night, like some baleful eye, a nearly full moon shone upon the grim field of slaughter.
The next day the Gauls set off towards Rome. The sunset painted the horizon red as the Gauls tramped up to the city gates. Ahead of the main Gallic host the cavalry had carried out reconnaissance. To what must have been an astonished Brennus, the cavalry reported that they had encountered no enemy pickets, that the gates to the city were not shut and that no troops manned the walls. Suspicious of the virtually effortless way they had defeated the reputable might of Rome, the Gauls suspected a trap. Instead of marching right into the undefended city, they bivouacked between Rome and the nearby River Anio and sent further patrols to reconnoiter the walls.
Within the walls of Rome, the wailing and lamentations for the fallen at the River Allia were replaced by a silent terror of the enemy. Throughout the night, the yells and galloping of enemy cavalry could be heard outside the city walls. For those inside the city the tension was nearly unbearable. But due to Gallic indecision, no attack came during the night.
The citizens decided that the city itself was doomed. There was a lack of fighting men and the walls, which consisted of little more than an agger (earth rampart) and a ditch, were wholly inadequate. The only defendable spot was the Citadel on the steep Capitol Hill, where the Senate and the men of military age, along with their families, sought refuge. The priesthood fled from the city, taking with them the most sacred religious relics. As to the common folk, the plebs, many followed the priests’ example and streamed out of the city in unorganized mobs to seek safety in the countryside or within neighboring cities.
About three days after the battle at the River Allia, the Gauls entered the city unopposed. Although they had carried out nightly cavalry reconnaissance, they could not have been very thorough. The Gauls were surprised at the large number of people who, along with their possessions, had already slipped through their grasp. The Gauls stationed a squad of troops around the Capitol Hill, and then, like frenzied wolves, let loose their wrath on those that remained behind or on those who were still in the process of fleeing. For the next few maddening days and nights, the Romans on the Capitol watched helplessly as below them their cherished city was torched. From out of the roaring inferno, as from the fiends of hell, resounded the bellow of the barbarians and the pitiful cries of citizens put to the sword.
After nothing survived amidst the ashes and ruins, the Gauls stormed the Citadel. In stark contrast to the battle of Allia, the Romans now put up a stout defense. The Gauls came on with a battle-shout and locked their shields above their heads to protect themselves against missile fire. The Romans let the enemy advance about halfway up the hill to where the ground was steepest, and then charged. Because of the steep gradient the Romans proved unstoppable and completely scattered their foes.
Wisely deducing that any further attempts to take the Capitol would be fruitless and only result in more Gallic casualties and that in any event time was on their side, the Gauls surrounded the Capitol in a blockade. The problem was how to feed their own troops since the fire had burnt the grain supplies in the city and the surrounding fields had been stripped bare by fleeing citizens. The Gauls decided that half of their numbers would scour the countryside for provisions while the other half continued the siege.
At Rome, a period of relative calm set in. The Romans remained secure within their hilltop fortification while the besiegers continued their investment. Elsewhere there was more activity. At the city of Ardea the Roman general Marcus Furius Camillus, the renowned conqueror of Veii, rallied the citizens against Gallic raiding parties. Not far from Ardea, they surprised and slaughtered a large throng of Gauls. Meanwhile, the Roman troops still encamped at the ruins of Veii fought against various Etruscan bands. Sensing easy spoils, the Etruscans made forays into Roman territory. Volunteers from the rest of Latium steadily swelled the Roman army at Veii. All that was needed was a capable leader. It turned out to be Camillus. With the consent of the Roman Senate, notified by a secret messenger, Camillus was nominated Dictator by order of the people.
According to Roman tradition, the Gauls attempted to infiltrate the Capitol by stealth. At night, a small party scaled the hill near the Temple of Carmentis, a goddess of birth. The climb was precarious but the party gained the summit and completely eluded the Roman sentinels. The Gauls did not even wake the guard dogs. Fortunately for the Romans, the Gauls next passed by the temple of Juno, the goddess of marriage and the wife of Jupiter. Here were kept a flock of sacred geese which put up such a racket that the Roman guard was finally roused. Led by Marcus Manilus, a veteran soldier, the guards confronted the infiltrating Gauls. Manilus faced two of the enemy, one of which wielded an axe. Manilus’ sword flashed and sliced through the axe-man’s right wrist. Blood spurted from the stump as the severed hand and axe hurled through the air. Manilus instantly confronted the second Gaul and smashed his shield into his adversary’s face. The Gaul tumbled backward, right over the parapet and down the cliff. The rest of the Gauls who had gained the parapet were dealt with likewise while a volley of javelins and stones dislodged the Gauls who still clung to the rocks. For his bravery, the surname Capitolinus was bestowed upon Manilus. The result of the fiasco was that the Romans kept stricter watch. The Gauls too tightened their security around the hill, for they had come to realize that messages were passing between Veii and Rome.
Despite their valiant defense of the Capitol, the Roman condition was far from desirable. The blockade continued for seven months and reduced them to famine. The Gauls equally suffered from malnutrition, along with severe outbreaks of malaria. Their dead piled up in such great numbers that efforts were no longer made to bury them. The corpses were simply piled into heaps and burnt.
Hunger so gnawed at the defenders of the Capitol that they gave up any hope of being relieved by Camillus. All that was left was to sue for a peace. A conference between the consular tribune Q. Sulpicious Longus and Brennus ended with the Romans agreeing to pay 1000 lbs of gold for the peaceful withdrawal of the Gauls. When it was time to weigh the gold, the Gauls produced heavier, false counter-weights. The Romans complained but to no avail, for Brennus threw his own sword on the scales and haughtily proclaimed “Woe to the vanquished!”
What happened next is shrouded in legend. Livy wrote that Camillus and his army now appeared on the scene. He at once ordered the Gauls to leave the gold and to march away from the city. When they refused to do so, a chaotic battle erupted as Romans and Gauls fought each other within the streets and alleys of the ruined city. The end was that the famished and disease-stricken Gauls were easily routed and driven out of the city. At the eighth milestone on the road to Gabii, the Gauls rallied but were again defeated by Camillus’ pursuing force. Plutarch mirrors Livy’s tale, except that he maintains that the skirmish in the city resulted in few Gallic casualties and that the Gauls retreated in good order until their defeat on the road to Gabii. In contrast to Livy and Plutarch, Polybius makes no mention of Roman heroics and tells us that the Gauls raised the siege because their own lands were threatened by an invasion of the Veneti, a pre-Celtic people of north-eastern Italy. Diodorus gives us yet another account in which the Gauls left Rome of their own free will after receiving the gold. Later they were defeated on two separate occasions, by Camillus at the town of Veascium and by the Caeretans in Sabine territory.
Most modern historians consider Camillus’ defeat of the Gauls to be little more than a fanciful revision by classical historians who were loath to admit Rome’s defeat at the hands of mere barbarians. But there is probably a bit of truth in the classical accounts. Perhaps the Gauls accepted the ransom because of pestilence and malnutrition within their own ranks and because of rumors of the Veneti invasion and a possible large gathering of fresh Roman forces in the countryside. On their way home the Gauls no doubt spread into smaller bands to ease their living off the land. Romans and other tribes might well have ambushed many of these bands and recovered part of the ransom gold.
Whatever the truth of the Gallic departure, the Romans ever after called their defeat at the Allia the dies ater (“black day”). The sack of their city left a deep impression on the Romans. Clearly the army needed improvement and the city defenses strengthening, to prevent future disasters at the hands of the Gauls. The first of these problems was addressed by Camillus. He began a series of army reforms that were further enhanced during the late fourth century wars against the Samnites, the tough mountain tribes of the south-central Apennines. The easily disordered phalanx was abandoned in favor of the tight, independent unit of the maniple. The maniple averaged 60 to 120-men strong, placed at intervals in a line. The maniples were much more elastic, both in attack and defense, than the old phalanx. Each maniple could independently fall back or advance, as the situation required, without messing up the whole battle line.
Volleys of javelins were used to prepare the way for combat with the short sword. The round shield was replaced by the more familiar Samnite scutum, a large semi-cylindrical four-cornered shield. Alongside the new army, Rome’s agger was raised and backed by a 12-foot thick and 24-foot high solid stone wall, circling the whole city for a distance of over five miles. Greek contractors may have built the wall, the labor being done by the Roman army and by Veientine captives.
The defeat at the River Allia discredited Rome in the eyes of her neighbors. The loyalty of Rome’s Latin allies began to waver while erstwhile enemies, the Aequi, Volsci and Etruscans, reopened old wars. What was won in over a hundred years was lost in a single battle. Fortunately for the Romans, for a long time after the battle on the Allia, the Gauls only raided into peninsular Italy sporadically. Instead, the Gauls concentrated on consolidating their hold on the north Italian plain, which, until the end of the Republican period, became known as Gallia Cisalpina.
AdvertisementsMost Americans are probably tired by now of hearing about Julian Assange, but those still paying attention to his story could do worse than his interview with David Frost on Al Jazeera.
Now in his early 70s, Frost is one of the most capable interviewers on television today.
Frost gives Assange ample opportunity to answer his thoughtful questions (without badgering or interruption); he makes no effort to moralize or demand apologies; and he is certainly no tabloid schmuck. Instead of prurience, he offers intelligence, wit and — this is the thing that strikes the American viewer most — seriousness. For 24 full minutes. An interview of this length, on these subjects, would probably never make its way into American living rooms; and if it did, who would be watching?
The conversation even turns, at one point, to the question whether Assange is an “anarchist,” a question I explored in a previous post. Their exchange, which starts around 11 minutes in, runs as follows:
Frost: Do you think of yourself- when you see references to yourself as anarchic, or an anarchist, is that an accurate description of what you are? Assange: No, it’s not at all an accurate description. Frost: Why not? Assange: That’s not what we do. We’re an organization that goes about and has a long record all over the world of exposing abuses, by exposing concrete documentation, proof of bad behavior. That’s not anarchy. That’s what people do when they’re civil, is that they engage in organized activity that promotes justice. Frost: So therefore it’s — in that sense you’re not anarchic because you’re actually, you’re in favor of authority if it’s doing the right thing. Assange: Correct. Correct. Frost: You’re not automatically opposed to authority. Assange: You know, having run an organization I understand the difficulties in building institutions, having a good institution. Institutions are very important. I mean anyone who’s worked in Africa, as I have, knows that successful civil institutions don’t just come from nowhere. It’s a — you’ll find a difference going between particular African countries or European and African countries well, clean roads and so on don’t just come from nowhere. There is an institutional infrastructure behind this. But secret institutions start to become corrupted in their purpose. They’re able to engage in secret plans which would be opposed by the population and carry them out for their own internal purposes. So they’re not performing the function that people demand that they perform.
The conversation moves on from there to the question who Assange considers his real enemies, but to my mind this exchange is the heart of the entire interview. It all turns on Assange’s distinction of anarchy from civility — and the positioning of Wikileaks as organized activity that promotes justice. He is eager to put himself and Wikileaks on the side of good government and the “people,” on the side of civil “institutions” and good “clean roads and so on.” He’s even on the side of “authority,” he assures Frost, if it’s “doing the right thing.”
You can easily imagine how this line of argument — which positions Assange as a member of the fourth estate, and Wikileaks as a watchdog — might play into the defense at a trial for espionage or subversion. Whether these arguments will ever be heard over the shouting and fear-mongering of the politicians, pundits and Palins is another question altogether.According to government data, these types of searches are rare: about 36,000 people are referred to secondary screening by United States Customs and Border Protection daily, and roughly a dozen of those travelers are subject to a search of their electronic devices.
Courts have long held that Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches do not apply at the border, based on the government’s interest in combating crime and terrorism. But Mr. Pascal’s lawsuit and similar cases question whether confiscating a laptop for days or weeks and analyzing its data at another site goes beyond the typical border searches. They also depart from the justification used in other digital searches, possession of child pornography.
“We’re getting more into whether this is targeting political speech,” Ms. Crump said.
In another case the A.C.L.U. is arguing, House v. Napolitano, border officials at Chicago O’Hare Airport confiscated a laptop, camera and USB drive belonging to David House, a computer programmer, and kept his devices for seven weeks.
The lawsuit charges that Mr. House was singled out because of his association with the Bradley Manning Support Network. Pfc. Bradley Manning is a former military intelligence analyst accused of leaking thousands of military and diplomatic documents to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks.
In March, Judge Denise J. Casper of Federal District Court in Massachusetts denied the government’s motion to dismiss the suit, saying that although the government did not need reasonable suspicion to search someone’s laptop at the border, that power did not strip Mr. House of his First Amendment rights. Legal scholars say this ruling could set the stage for the courts to place some limits on how the government conducts digital searches.
“The District Court basically said you don’t need individualized suspicion to search an electronic device at the border,” said Patrick E. Corbett, a professor of criminal law and procedure at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich. “What they were troubled with was the fact that the government held these devices for 49 days.”
Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security, declined to discuss the policy in an interview, but a spokeswoman for the agency said in an e-mail: “Keeping Americans safe and enforcing our nation’s laws in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully screen all materials — electronic or otherwise — entering the United States. We are committed to ensuring the rights and privacies of all people while making certain that D.H.S. can take the lawful actions necessary to secure our borders.”
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The statement also referred to the agency’s policy on border searches of electronic devices, which says that officers can keep these devices for a “reasonable period of time,” including at an off-site location, and seek help from other government agencies to decrypt, translate or interpret the information they contain. If travelers choose not to share a password for a device, the government may hold it to find a way to gain access to the data.
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The agency did provide recent statistics on how many travelers this policy affects. From Oct. 1, 2011, through Aug. 31, 2012, 11.9 million travelers were referred to secondary screening after entering the United States. Of those searches, 4,898 included an electronic device. In the previous year, 12.1 million people underwent additional screening, with 4,782 searches of electronic devices.
While there is little public information about who is pulled aside for extra scrutiny, some people whose laptops have been searched say they feel they were selected based on their academic, journalistic or political pursuits.
Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker and the recipient of a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship, estimates that she has been detained more than 40 times upon returning to the United States. She has been questioned for hours about her meetings abroad, her credit cards and notes have been copied, and after one trip her laptop, camera and cellphone were seized for 41 days.
Ms. Poitras said these interrogations largely subsided after a Salon article describing her experiences was published in April, but she is editing her latest film in Europe to avoid crossing the border with her research and interviews. (The film, the third in a series about the war on terror, focuses on domestic surveillance.)
“I’m taking more and more extreme measures, to the point where I’m actually editing outside the country,” she said. “They use the border as a way to get around the law.”
Mr. Abidor said he had also changed his travel patterns: because he is regularly detained at the border, he keeps little data on his laptop and rents a car when driving back to the United States from Canada, so he is not stranded waiting for the next train. Still, he said he experienced “a near panic attack” every time he returned to the United States.
“I have not done anything illegal, nor have I tried to hide anything I’ve done,” he said. “I’ve told them where I’ve traveled. I’m studying something that’s legal. I learned a language millions of people speak. I don’t understand how a variety of legal acts can lead to suspicion.”
Even when suspicion of illegal activity exists, it can be based on old records that do not display the nuances of a case when an individual’s passport is scanned. One traveler suspects his laptop was searched at the border because of a juvenile conviction — dating a 15-year-old when he was 17 landed him on the sex offender registry.
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“I’m guessing they probably saw my record on their computer system,” he said, speaking on the condition that his name not be used. “It’s very unpleasant to know that people can pull it up, take it out of context and turn it into something horrible.”
In other cases, travelers say they have no idea why they were singled out. A laptop belonging to Lisa M. Wayne, a criminal defense lawyer, was searched after she returned from a trip to Mexico.
Ms. Wayne said her main concern was the information about clients’ cases stored on her laptop: she is a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which is a co-plaintiff in the Abidor suit, along with the National Press Photographers Association. But at the time of the search, she was unaware of her rights and felt pressured to hand over her computer.
“It was very clear to me that the longer I objected or interrogated them, the longer I was going to be detained, and I had a connecting flight,” she said. “It’s an intimidating experience. It was not consensual other than, you comply with the rules.”Chelsea's margin of dominance in the English top flight this season is reflected accurately by the Premier League table. Debates have been had, opinions voiced, arguments made -- but the table never lies.
There will be no last-day drama at the summit, no palpitations, no wondering what is happening elsewhere. The title race was won three weeks before the campaign will conclude. The Blues are worthy champions; they set the pace from the first match and have sat atop the table since Aug. 30. Yet the man responsible for masterminding their journey to glory, Jose Mourinho, has been overlooked time after time for the Manager of the Month award.
It's certainly a curious scenario, and one that merits investigation. Conspiracy theorists will point to a negative agenda against Mourinho emanating from within the selection panel that comprises ex-players, representatives of the FA, Premier League and League Managers Association. The Blues boss said as much when asked for his point of view on the situation.
Jose Mourinho has yet to win the Manager of the Month award this season, despite Chelsea's consistently impeccable form.
"I don't care," he said. "There is something that is not right because, in four years in the Premier League, I've won the Manager of the Month three times. So, for sure, they don't like me. But I don't care. I just want my team to win."
Interestingly enough, back in 2006, Mourinho became the first manager to win the title without winning the monthly award, which was first presented in August 1993. The same has happened again this season, a fate that has yet to befall any other manager.
The Portuguese isn't shy in voicing his opinion, and he does have the resources at his disposal to be successful -- but then so do a host of other managers. Expectations at the Premier League's leading clubs are always high. Cash has been spent at these clubs -- squandered in certain cases, some might argue -- and the buck has to stop somewhere, usually with the manager.
When measured against Manuel Pellegrini, Arsene Wenger, Louis van Gaal, Brendan Rodgers and Mauricio Pochettino, Mourinho has proven himself to be the best this season. A case can be made by the panel members for those managers working with more modest budgets, but often there appears to be a sympathy element to the decision-making process. Perhaps more transparency is needed when it comes to understanding the parameters involved.
This season's awards were made as follows. A comparison of playing records between the club managed by the recipient and Mourinho makes for fascinating reading.
August
Garry Monk
Swansea: P3 W3 GF6 GA1 | Chelsea: P3 W3 GF11 GA4
September
Ronald Koeman
Southampton: P3 W3 GF7 GA1 | Chelsea: P3 W2 D1 GF8 GA3
October
Sam Allardyce
West Ham: P3 W3 GF7 GA2 | Chelsea: P3 W2 D1 GF5 GA2
November
Alan Pardew
Newcastle: P4 W3 L1 GF4 GA1 | Chelsea: P4 W3 D1 GF6 GA2
December
Manuel Pellegrini
Manchester City: P6 W5 D1 GF11 GA4 | Chelsea: P6 W4 D1 L1 GF11 GA3
January
Ronald Koeman
Southampton: P3 W3 GF5 GA1 | Chelsea: P4 W2 D1 L1 GF11 GA6
February
Tony Pulis
West Brom: P4 W2 D2 GF5 GA2 | Chelsea: P3 W2 D1 GF4 GA2
March
Arsene Wenger
Arsenal: P4 W4 GF9 GA2 | Chelsea: P3 W2 D1 GF5 GA3
April
Nigel Pearson
Leicester: P5 W4 L1 GF9 GA6 | Chelsea: P5 W4 D1 GF7 GA2
Month by month, a clear pattern emerges. Unfashionable teams stringing together a decent set of results and beating a quality team along the way. Swansea beat Manchester United at Old Trafford on the opening day of the season and Monk picked up the Manager of the Month award. West Ham beat Manchester City in October, and Allardyce won the award. Newcastle defeat Liverpool in November, Pardew won. Southampton beat Man United and Arsenal in January and Koeman wins his second award of the campaign.
There is one curious anomaly within this pattern, in February, when Pulis bagged the award as West Brom beat Swansea and Southampton and drew with Burnley and Sunderland. Maverick Mourinho must have had a good chuckle when he saw the Baggies boss brandishing the trophy.
Hauling Leicester out of the relegation zone was good enough to see Foxes boss Pearson win the award for April, despite his side being brought down to earth with a resounding thump at the end of the month by Chelsea.
Along the way, Pellegrini and Wenger also found favour with the panel. Most months have seen Chelsea play more games than their rivals -- thanks to runs in the Capital One Cup and Champions League -- but clearly this is not taken into consideration, nor is the Special One's ability for working within UEFA's financial fair play regulations.
Should the Stamford Bridge gaffer be named Manager of the Year, then that might go some way to redressing the balance -- but that eventuality seems uncertain, less so now because Mourinho has been sarcastic about the monthly award. Tim Sherwood, he's a nice guy, got Aston Villa out of trouble and guided them to Wembley -- give it to him.
Mourinho may have said he doesn't care about the award, but he does, or he wouldn't be so prickly when quizzed about the subject. Rightly, the Blues boss has said all he cares about is Chelsea winning, and they have done that more than most.
Rival club owners, managers, players and supporters appear unified by one opinion that is endorsed by football pundits and writers alike: Mourinho is the best manager in the Premier League. The fact that members of the Barclays panel have failed to grasp this fact during the course of this season devalues the award.
Mark Worrall is one of ESPN FC's Chelsea bloggers. You can follow him on Twitter: @gate17marco[1] The major road it connects to is High Street, and north is at the bottom. John Speed's 1605 map of Oxford, with Gropecunt Lane, by then Grope or Grape Lane, highlighted in blue.The major road it connects to is High Street, and north is at the bottom.
94 High Street next to the narrow entrance to Magpie Lane on the right.
Magpie Lane is a narrow historic lane in central Oxford, England.[2] It leads south from the High Street where it is at its narrowest, now completely pedestrianised as a pavement, and north from the cobbled Merton Street.
To the west is Oriel College (including the Rhodes building of 1910 at the northern end) and to the east is University College, two of the oldest Oxford colleges. On the northeast corner there is a 1902 house, now the Quod restaurant. A small cul-de-sac street, Kybald Street, leads off Magpie Lane at the southern end to the east, giving access to the rear of University College and Kybald Twychen, owned by Corpus Christi College.
South from Merton Street, the lane continues as Grove Walk (a.k.a. Merton Grove or Grove Passage) between Merton College to the east and Corpus Christi College to the west, giving pedestrian access via railinged gates to Dead Man's Walk, Merton Field, and Christ Church Meadows. The building in the south-western corner of Merton College is also called Grove. The name perhaps has been derived from this area having been used as an orchard.
History [ edit ]
In the 13th century, Magpie Lane was known as Gropecunt Lane or Grope Lane,[3] as it was an area where prostitutes plied their trade. John Speed's map of 1605 lists it as such. In the 17th century, it was named Magpie Lane because of an alehouse in the lane that used a magpie as a sign. By the late 19th century, the lane was known as Grove Street but in 1927 the name was changed back to Magpie Lane.[3]
The houses between Kybald Street and Merton Street were demolished in the 1960s by Corpus Christi College to provide space for more modern student accommodation.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Coordinates:by
Mad Max: Fury Road- What it Say about the Stupidity of the anti-feminist movement
Is This Film Worth My Time? I’m not here to join the stampede of critical praise, though I will support that this is the best action film of 2015 so far, and one of the best of the decade.
There’s a story that there was a member of the KKK who left the organization one day after watching his children play, and seeing that they were playing with Superman as the good guy beating up the KKK. In a similar way, for those still clinging to r/theredpill and the rest, its time to give up. Archaeo-misogynist blogThe Return of Kings, even without seeing the film, has decided to warn all men against seeing this feminist propaganda. If you don’t consider Mad Max to be manly, then you don’t understand what manliness is.
And interestingly enough, that’s what Fury Road is all about.
Here’s the main villain: Immortan Joe (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne), ruler of Citadel, leader of the War Boys. He controls the major fresh water supplies and food from atop his mesa. Joe leads an alliance with The Bullet Farmer (Richard Carter), who controls the gun smiths, and the People Eater (John Howard), who runs Gas Town.
These are Immortan’s War Boys. They’re a bunch of paint huffing teenagers, raised up to seek the glory of Valhalla. They spend their days working on customizing cars, re-enacting 1990s mosh pits, and generally being as extreme as possible.
Immortan’s empire, in many ways, is really inefficient, and Mr. Flamethrower Guitar is exhibit A. That guy is being carried around in a high capacity military 20 ton truck. If you wanted to build a war rig, that truck would be top choice. It is stupendous to think of how much electricity (and gasoline) Immortan is spending just to keep his troops supplied with continuous heavy metal solos. But all those Warped Tour peripherals serves a purpose. That purpose is to keep his adolescent soldiers in a perpetual froth of unquestioning enthusiasm.
Like a bunch of beta chimpanzees in a war troupe, they’re whooping it up, throwing poop at each other, and beating their chests, all while Joe collects the profits and buries the occasional young man who wasn’t lucky enough to dodge the bullets from Joe’s enemy of the week.
Let me introduce you to the character with the major character arc:
This is Nux. He starts out as just another war boy, carrying around Max as a blood donor, chasing after girls in a souped up VW Beetle. It’s Nux who develops as a person, who learns to make decisions, who actually has drama. And he proves to be just as important to the heroes as Max (Tom Hardy) and Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron).
George Miller has made the perfect critique of modern capitalist ersatz masculinity- the posturing, bellowing, more extreme than thou circus of atrocity that is foisted off as being an expression of gender. The cult of dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, the displacement of youth into thanatic posturing, the shunting of gender into emblems (cars, slave girls, guns, masks) and fighting. Masculinity has been marketed and commodified ever since the first baldness tonics and army recruiters, but it was perfected, elevated, into a science in the cold war. Whether your icon is Don Draper or the World of Gor, it’s possible to just live in a hermit crab shell of accumulated products that signify an iconology of manliness, whether that product is a Humvee modified to roll coal, or a complete 4000 Point Space Marine army. We don’t just have one sweeping, entrancing mirage of masculine realization to delude the marks; we have a catalog, a vast archive, with a dozen new models rolling onto the sales floor every year.
Each of the major villains is part of a classic establishment triptych. Immortan Joe, with his medals, his talk of glory, and his armor, is the general, the military. The Bullet Farmer, with his preaching and ranting, is a religious figure, an old testament judge, a blending of Dominionist Christianity and the NRA. And The People Eater, lord of Gas Town, is a fat, greedy, pig-snouted merchant baron. In other words, its the same triumvirate fucking up the future as it was fucking up the past and the present.
Fury Road is about learning to see past the false iconology of commercial patriarchal masculinity, and learning that real manhood begins when you begin defining masculinity by your terms rather than by the terms that others indoctrinate to you. One of my favorite aphorisms is that a real man is not afraid to be seen drinking a froufy girly drink at the bar.
I don’t have a right to create a universal definition of masculinity any more than any feminist has a right to define one absolute definition of femininity. It is the right of any man to define his own meaning of masculinity as surely as it is the right of any women to define her own meaning of femininity. Just as it is the right of everybody else to criticize and satirize those attempts at definition.
Don’t fall for the trap of the polarizers, the extremifiers, whether they are Immortan Joe, or Aaron Clarey, or Abu Al-Baghdadi. Ideologies and faiths and philosophical principals are not games, and the only badge you get for being the most extreme is one that proclaims that you are an asshat to the rest of the world. Don’t confuse the shadows of the absolute for the reality of the concept which casts the shadows.
Mad Max doesn’t need a gigantic scary name. He doesn’t need a Mohawk haircut, or a car festooned with spikes, or chainsaws or piercings. He survives, he gets what he needs, and sometimes he even manages to make a difference. Max is so confident that he doesn’t need to be in charge, he doesn’t need to be the big man. In fact, much of why people call Max Mad is because he is the one that walks away from being the big man. The Main Force Patrol wants him to lead the precinct. Pappagallo wants Max to lead his people. The Children want Max to lead them beyond Thunderdome. It is his anti-social individualism, in a world where society is at a premium, that causes others to call Max the Mad One. But that’s not madness. That’s a supremely self-aware and confident individual.
Fury Road is not a feminist film. It’s a rationalist, humanist film- a film in which the forces of maturity ally in order to fight against the forces of insecurity and overcompensation. Immortan Joe is a juggalo, for crissakes, and he’s forcing everybody around him to adopt a dress code more suited to a Disturbed music video than to desert survival. Mad Max eventually gets backup in the form of a troop of wizened biker grannies. If you can’t see past female characters for the continuum of the film in the milieu of post-apocalyptic cinema, I can’t help you, not anymore than I can help the people who confuse Obama care for North Korean Marxism.
Who is this film perfect for? Anybody who likes fire tornadoes, car chases, steampunk cyborgs, gritty vigilantes, Australians, and action movies.
Who will not like this film? Men who are threatened by the presence of women who express opinions of their own.
What is the summary of this films concept? Mad Max gets hired to ride shotgun on a convoy of refugees.
How does this film compare to others like it? It’s the biggest, grimmest, most visually sweeping film of the series. It’s poetry written in sand, fire, and shrapnel.
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PinterestWhat's New In The Avatar Special Edition, And Why You Should Go See It By Katey Rich Random Article Blend Last Exorcism, the thriller afterthought Takers-- you know exactly what you're getting with the re-release of Avatar. Yes, blue face paint and "I see you" became jokes at some point as it became the biggest movie of all time, but slip back into a theater, put those 3D glasses back on, and you'll instantly be transported back to last December, when the notion of watching an entire movie about giant blue aliens felt revolutionary and exciting.
I thoroughly enjoyed the two and a |
and all TCP flooding options. This wide range of methods allowed Mirai to perform volumetric attacks, application-layer attacks, and TCP state-exhaustion attacks. For more information on DDoS techniques, read this intro post by Arbor Network
Krebs attack
Krebs on Security is Brian Krebs’ blog. Krebs is a widely known independent journalist who specializes in cyber-crime. Given Brian’s line of work, his blog has been targeted, unsurprisingly, by many DDoS attacks launched by the cyber-criminals he exposes. According to his telemetry (thanks for sharing, Brian!), his blog suffered 269 DDOS attacks between July 2012 and September 2016. As seen in the chart above, the Mirai assault was by far the largest, topping out at 623 Gbps.
Looking at the geolocation of the IPs that targeted Brian’s site reveals that a disproportionate number of the devices involved in the attack are coming from South American and South-east Asia. As reported in the chart above Brazil, Vietnam and Columbia appears to be the main sources of compromised devices.
One dire consequence of this massive attack against Krebs was that Akamai, the CDN service that provided Brian’s DDoS protection, had to withdraw its support. This forced Brian to move his site to Project Shield. As he discussed in depth in a blog post, this incident highlights how DDOS attacks have become a common and cheap way to censor people.
The rise of IoT botnet further increased the commoditization of DDoS attacks as a censorship tool.
OVH attack
Brian was not Mirai’s first high-profile victim. A few days before he was struck, Mirai attacked, OVH one of the largest European hosting providers. According to their official numbers, OVH hosts roughly 18 million applications for over one million clients, Wikileaks being one of their most famous and controversial ones.
We know little about that attack as OVH did not participate in our joint study. As a result, the best information about it comes from a blog post OVH released after the event. From this post, it seems that the attack lasted about a week and involved large, intermittent bursts of DDoS traffic that targeted one undisclosed OVH customer.
Octave Klaba OVH’s founder did report on Twitter that the attacks were targeting Minecraft servers. As we will see through this post Mirai has been extensively used in gamer wars and is likely the reason why it was created in the first place.
According to OVH telemetry, the attack peaked at 1TBs and was carried out using 145,000 IoT devices. While the number of IoT devices is consistent with what we observed, the volume of the attack reported is significantly higher than what we observed with other attacks. For example, as mentioned earlier, Brian’s one topped out at 623 Gbps.
Regardless of the exact size, the Mirai attacks are clearly the largest ever recorded. They dwarf the previous “record holder,” which topped out at ~400Gpbs and even one-upped the largest ones observed by Arbor Network, which maxed out at ~800Gbps according to Arbor’s annual report.
The scale of Mirai attacks should be treated by the community as as wake-up call: vulnerable IoT devices are a major and pressing threat to Internet stability.
The rise of copycats: September 30
In an unexpected development, on September 30, 2017, Anna-senpai, Mirai’s alleged author, released the Mirai source code via an infamous hacking forum. He also wrote a forum post, shown in the screenshot above, announcing his retirement.
This code release sparked a proliferation of copycat hackers who started to run their own Mirai botnets. From that point forward, the Mirai attacks were not tied to a single actor or infrastructure but to multiple groups, which made attributing the attacks and discerning the motive behind them significantly harder.
Clustering Mirai infrastructure
To keep up with the Mirai variants proliferation and track the various hacking groups behind them, we turned to infrastructure clustering. Reverse engineering all the Mirai versions we can find allowed us to extract the IP addresses and domains used as C&C by the various hacking groups than ran their own Mirai variant. In total, we recovered two IP addresses and 66 distinct domains.
Applying DNS expansion on the extracted domains and clustering them led us to identify 33 independent C&C clusters that had no shared infrastructure. The smallest of these clusters used a single IP as C&C. The largest sported 112 domains and 92 IP address. The figure above depicts the six largest clusters we found.
These top clusters used very different naming schemes for their domain names: for example, “cluster 23” favors domains related to animals such as 33kitensspecial.pw, while “cluster 1” has many domains related to e-currencies such as walletzone.ru. The existence of many distinct infrastructures with different characteristics confirms that multiple groups ran Mirai independently after the source code was leaked.
Clusters over time
Looking at how many DNS lookups were made to their respective C&C infrastructures allowed us to reconstruct the timeline of each individual cluster and estimate its relative size. This accounting is possible because each bot must regularly perform a DNS lookup to know to which IP address its C&C domains resolves.
The chart above reports the number of DNS lookups over time for some of the largest clusters. It highlights the fact that many were active at the same time. Having multiple variants active simultaneously once again emphasizes that multiple actors with different motives were competing to enslave vulnerable IoT devices to carry out their DDoS attacks.
Plotting all the variants in the graph clearly shows that the ranges of IoT devices enslaved by each variant differ widely. As the graph above reveals, while there were many Mirai variants, very few succeeded at growing a botnet large enough to take down major websites.
From cluster to motive
Cluster Notes 6 Attacked Dyn and gaming related targets 1 Original botnet. Attacked Krebs and OVH 2 Attacked Lonestar Cell
Looking at which sites were targeted by the largest clusters illuminates the specific motives behind those variants. For instance, as reported in the table above, the original Mirai botnet (cluster 1) targeted OVH and Krebs, whereas Mirai’s largest instance (cluster 6) targeted DYN and other gaming-related sites. Mirai’s third largest variant (cluster 2), in contrast, went after African telecom operators, as recounted later in this post.
Target Attacks Clusters Notes Lonestar Cell 616 2 Liberian telecom targeted by 102 reflection attacks Sky Network 318 15, 26, 6 Brazilian Minecraft servers hosted in Psychz Networks data centers 104.85.165.1 192 1, 2, 6, 8, 11, 15... Unknown router in Akamai’s network feseli.com 157 7 Russian cooking blog Minomortaruolo.it 157 7 Italian politician site Voxility hosted C2 106 1, 2, 6, 7, 15... Known decoy target Tuidang websites 100 -- HTTP attacks on two Chinese political dissidence sites execrypt.com 96 -0- Binary obfuscation service Auktionshilfe.info 85 2, 13 Russian auction site houtai.longqikeji.com 85 25 SYN attacks on a former game commerce site Runescape 73 — World 26th of a popular online game 184.84.240.54 72 1, 10, 11, 15... Unknown target hosted at Akamai antiddos.solutions 71 — AntiDDoS service offered at react.su.
Looking at the most attacked services across all Mirai variants reveals the following:
Booter services monetized Mirai: The wide diversity of targets shows that booter services ran at least some of the largest clusters. A booter service is a service provided by cyber criminals that offers on-demand DDoS attack capabilities to paying customers. There are fewer actors than clusters: Some clusters have strong overlapping targets, which tends to indicate that they were run by the same actors. For example, clusters 15, 26, and 6 were used to target specific Minecraft servers.
Mirai was not operated by a single entity, but by a collection of bad actors that ran their own variants for diverse nefarious purposes.
Mirai’s takedown the Internet: October 21
On October 21, a Mirai attack targeted the popular DNS provider DYN. This event prevented Internet users from accessing many popular websites, including AirBnB, Amazon, Github, HBO, Netflix, Paypal, Reddit, and Twitter, by disturbing the DYN name-resolution service.
We believe this attack was not meant to “take down the Internet,” as it was painted by the press, but rather was linked to a larger set of attacks against gaming platforms.
We reached this conclusion by looking at the other targets of the DYN variant (cluster 6). They are all gaming related. Additionally this is also consistent with the OVH attack as it was also targeted because it hosted specific game servers as discussed earlier. As sad as it seems, all the prominent sites affected by the DYN attack were apparently just the spectacular collateral damage of a war between gamers.
A gamer feud was behind the massive DDoS attack against DYN and the resulting massive Internet outage.
Mirai’s shutdown of an entire country network? October 31
Lonestar Cell, one of the largest Liberian telecom operators started to be targeted by Mirai on October 31. Over the next few months, it suffered 616 assaults, the most of any Mirai victim.
Early one these attacks received much attention due to early claims that they substantially deteriorated Liberia’s Internet general availability. For example Akamai released the chart above showing a drop in traffic coming for Liberia. However this drop was later on found to match a holiday in Liberia and the attack most likely only affected few networks.
The fact that the Mirai cluster responsible for these attack has no common infrastructure with the original Mirai or the DYN variant indicate that they were orchestrated by a totally different actor than the original author.
A few weeks after our study was published, this assessment was confirmed when the author of one of the most aggressive Mirai variant confessed during his trial that he was paid to takedown Lonestar. He acknowledged that an unnamed Liberia’s ISP paid him $10,000 to take out its competitors. This validate that our clustering approach is able to accurately track and attribute Mirai’s attacks.
The DDoS attacks against Lonestar a popular Internet provider demonstrates that IoT botnets are now weaponized to take-out competition.
Deutsche Telekom going dark: November 26
On November 26, 2016, one of the largest German Internet provider Deutsche Telekom suffered a massive outage after 900,000 of its routers were compromised.
Ironically this outage was not due to yet another Mirai DDoS attack but instead due to a particularly innovative and buggy version of Mirai that knocked these devices offline while attempting to compromise them. This variant also affected thousands of TalkTalk routers.
What allowed this variant to infect so many routers was the addition to its replication module of a router exploit targeting at the CPE WAN Management Protocol (CWMP). The CWMP protocol is an HTTP-based protocol used by many Internet providers to auto-configure and remotely manage home routers, modems, and other customer-on-premises (CPE) equipment.
Beside its scale, this incident is significant because it demonstrates how the weaponization of more complex IoT vulnerabilities by hackers can lead to very potent botnets. We hope the Deutsche Telekom event acts as a wake-up call and push toward making IoT auto-update mandatory. This is much needed to curb the significant risk posed by vulnerable IoT device given the poor track record of Internet users manually patching their IoT devices.
IoT device auto-updates should be mandatory to curb bad actors’ ability to create massive IoT botnets on the back of un-patched IoT devices.
Mirai original author outed?
In the months following his website being taken offline, Brian Krebs devoted hundreds of hours to investigating Anna-Senpai, the infamous Mirai author. In early January 2017, Brian announced that he believes Anna-senpai to be Paras Jha, a Rutgers student who apparently has been involved in previous game-hacking related schemes. After being outed, Paras Jha was questioned by the FBI. However, as of November 2017, there is still no indictment or confirmation that Paras is Mirai’s real author.
Deutsche Telekom attacker arrested
In November 2016, Daniel Kaye (aka BestBuy) the author of the MIRAI botnet variant that brought down Deutsche Telekom was arrested at the Luton airport. Prior to Mirai the a 29 years british citizen was infamous for selling his hacking services on various dark-web markets.
In July 2017 a few months after being extradited to Germany Daniel Kaye pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a one year and a half emprisonnement with suspension. During the trial Daniel admitted that he never intended for the routers to cease functioning. He only wanted to silently control them so he can use them for DDoS botnet to increase his botnet firepower. As discussed earlier he also confessed being paid by competitors to takedown Lonestar.
In Aug 2017 Daniel was extradited back to UK to face extortion charges after attempting to blackmail Lloyds and Barclays banks. According to press report he asked the Lloyds to pay about £75,000 in bitcoins for the attack to be called off.
Takeways
The prevalence of insecure IoT devices on the Internet makes it very likely that, for the foreseeable future, they will be the main source of DDOS attacks.
The Mirai incidents will go down in history as the turning point at which IoT devices became the new norm for carrying out DDoS attacks.
Mirai and subsequent IoT botnets can be averted if IoT vendors start to follow basic security best practices. In particular, the following should be required of all IoT device makers:
Eliminate default credentials : This will prevent hackers from constructing a credential master list that allows them to compromise a myriad of devices as MIRAI did.
: This will prevent hackers from constructing a credential master list that allows them to compromise a myriad of devices as MIRAI did. Make auto-patching mandatory : IoT devices are meant to be “set and forget,” which makes manual patching unlikely. Having them auto-patch is the only reasonable option to ensure that no widespread vulnerability like the Deutsche Telekom one can be exploited to take down a large chunk of the Internet.
: IoT devices are meant to be “set and forget,” which makes manual patching unlikely. Having them auto-patch is the only reasonable option to ensure that no widespread vulnerability like the Deutsche Telekom one can be exploited to take down a large chunk of the Internet. Implement rate limiting: Enforcing login rate limiting to prevent brute-force attack is a good way to mitigate the tendency of people to use weak passwords. Another alternative would be using a captcha or a proof or work.
IoT botnets can be averted if IoT devices follow basic security best practices.
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A bientôt!(NaturalNews) During a recent speech he made before thein Rome on December 3, Pope Benedict XVI, the current leader of the Roman Catholic Church, called for what can only be described as a unified world government, which he dubbed a "new evangelization of society" that aligns with the spirit of visions brought forth by previous popes.While addressing the council, Pope Benedict XVI made numerous references to this "new evangelization" as an integral part of the Roman Catholic Church's world mission. And when defining what this phrase actually means, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about how individualism must be transformed into a type of communalism marked by interconnectedness and "family formation" on a global scale.Part of this entails the "construction of a world community," as translated from the original speech, which was given in Italian. And to guide this world community will be a "corresponding authority" whose purpose it is to serve and promote the "common good of the human family." In other words, a "New World Order," in no uncertain terms, is the ultimate goal of the Roman Catholic Church.Pope Benedict XVI is not interested in just any New World Order, however. He made it clear that the Roman Catholic Church's responsibility is to guide those who are actually bringing about this world government in how to promote an "anthropological and ethical framework around the common good." Along with this, will be a comprehensive reform of the corrupt international monetary and financial systems, of course in line with Roman Catholic doctrines.Such language may initially sound benevolent to some, but what does it all really mean? Based on the Roman Catholic Church's sordid history of consolidating power and mandating its religion on societies through a blending of church and state, it is hard to call such a proposition by Pope Benedict XVI anything other than a call for a dictatorial New World Order guided and controlled by the Roman Catholic Church."These latest remarks made by the Pope and the Catholic Church come as no surprise considering that in 2010 the Catholic Church sought the establishment of a new Central World Bank that would be responsible for regulating the global financial industry and the international money supply," wrote Andrew Puhanic fromabout Pope Benedict XVI's latest speech."It was reported (back in 2011) that the Vatican sought 'a supranatural authority' which would have worldwide scope and 'universal jurisdiction' to guide and control global economic policies and decisions." ( http://www.infowars.com/vatican-calls-for-central-world-bank/Louisiana native Brandon Jacobs should be headed to New Orleans next week for his second Super Bowl in two years. Instead, the running back is busy being a full-time dad because the San Francisco 49ers waived him to start the playoffs after suspending him before that.
But Jacobs wouldn't change a thing.
"My emotions are I want the 49ers to win the game," Jacobs told Mike Garafolo of USA Today on Thursday. "I don't have any regrets about not being there whatsoever. I don't feel like I should've done things differently. I don't feel anything else. I'm a hundred percent happy where I am."
Jacobs might not regret it now, but it's hard to imagine he won't regret it later. You only have so many chances to win a Super Bowl ring in your home state.
Jacobs struggled to find a foothold with the 49ers. Even once he was healthy, he couldn't get on the field. He voiced his displeasure with the situation a few times, and 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh lost patience. The final straw came when Jacobs posted on Instagram a series of pictures of his time with the New York Giants.
"I am on this team rotting away so why would I wanna put any pics up of anything that say niners," Jacobs wrote at the time. "This is by far the worst year I ever had, I'll tell you like I told plenty others. I don't understand why people are angry at me because I wanna do what I am paid to do."
The 49ers had enough. If Jacobs' skill set could have helped San Francisco, the team would have played him. But his inactive reserve status and tendency to complain were enough for him to get the boot.
"Conduct detrimental to the team, to me, is bashing the team, getting in trouble, distracting the team, whatever. However, I don't think it was that bad," Jacobs said. "It came across being disrespectful or whatever it was. I didn't mean to disrespect anybody or hurt anybody's feelings. I didn't have any disrespect. I didn't mean to do any of that. I was told I would get some of the pie and I didn't. That kind of made me a little upset and made me snap."
Jacobs plans to play football in 2013, but we're not sure he'll get another chance. He will, however, make a cameo in Louisiana next week. Jacobs will do his Mardi Gras thing on Feb. 1, riding in a parade with the "Krewe of Hercules" in a parade in Houma, La.
Follow Gregg Rosenthal on Twitter @greggrosenthal.One of the hottest director job openings in town is Deadpool 2, and it understandably has top emerging directors circling. While Deadline too has heard for the past few days that John Wick‘s David Leitch made a strong impression on 20th Century Fox, today’s reports that he is the clear front-runner that make his coronation imminent might be a bit too breathless. Sources insist that while Leitch is in pole position, the studio is still meeting with shooters pitching their vision. Those names, Deadline hears, include Oscar nominated The Martian scribe Drew Goddard and up and comer Magnus Martens (Luke Cage, Banshee), among others.
Deadline last week broke the news that Tim Miller, who directed this year’s original starring Ryan Reynolds as the foul-mouthed superhero Deadpool, has left the sequel over creative differences. Deadpool shocked Hollywood in February with a $152.2M opening that no one saw coming. It continued to roll domestically and overseas, topping out at north of $782M worldwide. Fox plans to release the sequel in 2018.
Leitch had been working as a stuntman for more than 20 years before teaming with Chad Stahelski to direct 2014’s John Wick, the Keanu Reeves uber-actioner that banked &86M globally and spawned a sequel that Lionsgate started selling at Cannes the following year. Stahelski is back onboard to direct Reeves and other returning castmembers.
Goddard has been poised to make his big move as director. That was going to happen with The Martian, which he wrote, until he jumped from that project to direct his other big scripted studio pic, the supervillain-centric Amazing Spider-Man spinoff Sinister Six. Unfortunately, that wa squashed after Sony and Marvel teamed up to do the new version of Spider-Man, which Jon Watts is directing with Tom Holland as the young webslinger. Goddard also served as EP on 10 Cloverfield Lane and such TV fare as The Good Place, The Defenders Daredevil and Lost.
Norweigian Martens has directed episodes of such TV shows as Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D, Luke Cage, Power, 12 Monkeys and Banshee. He also directed the regarded Norwegian film Jackpot, which is being remade with Will Gluck directing and Mila Kunis starring.
Miller made himself a director to be reckoned with after his blockbuster directing debut on Deadpool. Fox moved him right into another potential franchise, Influx, a Mark Bomback-scripted adaptation of the Daniel Suarez novel eyed as a film trilogy. Clearly, there is an opportunity for another emerging helmer to make a mark with this sequel, which is why it’s such a coveted job. Stay tuned.AMC
I can almost make out his expression. If I wait a second longer, I'll know from the look on his face whether he's a threat or not. But it's a second I don't have. So I pull the trigger. And he falls the same way, every time I think about it.
Looking back, I suppose it's more likely than not he was just trying to get away from the shooting. But I'll never know.
This bothers me.
It's not a moment that defines me. I don't let it. But there's no doubt it shaped me. It taught me what I was capable of doing to other people.
Who understands this sort of thing? Does the public that sent me to Iraq get it? I'm not sure, but when I think about how to explain what it's like, I always go back to fiction.
There is a moment, early in the series of Breaking Bad, when loser chemist Walter White decides he doesn't possess the brutality to be a criminal. A drug dealer named Krazy-8 tries to kill Walter and his fellow meth-entrepreneur, Jesse Pinkman, and now Krazy-8 is locked in a basement after inhaling Walter's toxic chemicals. The deal is simple: Jesse must dispose of another body, and Walter with Krazy-8.
His written checklist of why to let Krazy-8 live is extensive (It's the moral thing to do); on the side labeled "kill him," there is only one item (He'll kill your entire family if you let him go). Walter searches for any reason not to kill him. He learns about his childhood and his interest in music. They share a memory of a cheesy jingle written for a furniture store Krazy-8 worked at as a kid. Exhausted at the prospect of murder, Walter sets to retrieve the key to free Krazy-8. "This line of work doesn't suit you," he tells Walter.David Villa is rounding into form at just the right time.
After failing to score in his last three league matches, the New York City FC star broke out with a brace on Saturday, scoring the 50th and 51st goals of his MLS career to power NYCFC to a 2-1 home win against the Seattle Sounders.
On Tuesday, the league announced that the Spanish legend was voted Alcatel MLS Player of the Week for Week 16 by the North American Soccer Reporters (NASR) for his performance. He’ll look to build on his brace – and his award – on Saturday, when NYCFC travel across the Hudson to take on the rival New York Red Bulls in Heineken Rivalry Week action (1:30 pm ET | FOX and FOX Deportes in the US, MLS LIVE in Canada).
Villa drew NYCFC level at 1-1 in the 52nd minute on Saturday, coolly placing a penalty kick down the middle for his 50th career MLS goal. The strike made Villa the fifth-fastest player in MLS history to reach the half-century mark, with the striker accomplishing the feat in his 78th regular season appearance.
Villa bagged the winner for NYCFC in the 77th, getting on the end of a Jack Harrison cross and volleying home from six yards to give the hosts their 2-1 lead.
The brace marked Villa’s 13th career multi-goal game for NYCFC, the most in MLS over that span. The reigning MLS MVP is now tied for second in the MLS Golden Boot standings with 10 goals and leads the league in combined goals and assists with 16 in 15 matches.
Entering Saturday’s match at the Red Bulls, NYCFC sit in third place in the Eastern Conference with an 8-5-3 record.
The MLS Player of the Week is selected each week of the regular season by a panel of journalists from NASR. The group consists of members of print, television, radio and online media.GMIC: October 22-23, 2013
Location: Moscone South; San Francisco, CA
What does it mean to crowd source? How would a company collect money that they can raise to benefit them and to what does that entail?
With so many products and services being launched, what makes one particular company stand out from their potential competitors? What is it about their products and/or services which makes them worthwhile for investors to actually invest in?
There are so many new products and services, and a good portion on them do have a lot of users and subscribers, but does mean that their company will be able to stand the test of time?
Many companies from all over the San Francisco Bay Area are launching and publishing their companies that involve social apps and games. People have come from all over the world to join in on the industry.
What is the evolution of mobile gaming? What kind of mobile games are people playing and with what benefit? What are some of the cinematic changes are ahead? As it can be with expensive budgets, the games that are being played, have more and better graphics. Mobile games aren’t just on smartphones but are readily available on tablets.
We have to be unique and find that extraction to be “big” and successful. There are so many competitors and many others can outperform one another on price for their products and services. What can we do in the next couple of years to make sure we get the best for venture capitalists?
What’s achievable within a company and creating something that will stand to the test of time? What is the innovations that such projects can benefit with the investments that were involved? Obviously there are tons of transactions that are taking a toll in marketing and changes. Oddly, most are converting to online advertising. All companies need to master online marketing by means of acquisition.
What can be mapped in the channels to marketing to scale to get more customers? Companies are forgetting to analyze how many consumers and the demographics who are investing their product and is a problem. It doesn’t matter what it is unless, the static are in place. Where is the feedback in all of this? Companies should also incubate their business plans to testing and getting the science to succeeding in this modern area.
What formats are the applications and games available in and if it’s not currently available, when will it be? Engineers tend to not forget that the average person isn’t aware of how all of these new technologies function.
So what can be done about this? Well, companies need to keep track of the data that is coming in for their products and services for the mobile devices. This is the future to improve as hardware changes, software needs to adapt to the change of times. It is important to generate revenue so that developers continue to upgrade their products along with the best connections that are available in the current time.
Licensing is important to get the application shared amongst others. Mobile carriers require multi formats when licensing, so all the programming that is involved needs to be checked thoroughly before the final submission to avoid problems once they’re launched.
What about monetization? Most games and apps are free on the open markets such as Android and iOS. Advertising can help a company monetize their applications but it is of the concept, “It takes money to make money”. Companies need to execute a plan to generate profit once their games are released with the use of mobile advertising for that consumers will in turn buy into the applications so that developers can be able to afford to generate more and better games ahead. There are many way to monetize, but research is highly required and what types do end users want can vary on the pricing model.
So what does creating a social or gaming application mean to you if you are a developer? What would it mean to you if you are the user and what are you looking for to use?
AdvertisementsHe's the master of political satire but even Armando Iannucci finds it hard to parody Donald Trump.
"In the Loop" director Iannucci, who also created hit series such as "Veep" and "The Thick of It," says the U.S. presidential campaign and Brexit have made politics far more entertaining "than any fiction could be."
"A lot of people keep asking me if I am going to do a 'Thick of It Brexit' or a 'Trump Veep' and the answer is no! If we plotted a lot of these lines in fiction we'd be told we had barely credible story lines," he told CNNMoney's Nina dos Santos.
"When the politicians are providing us with the fiction there's no place for people like me," he added.
Related: Is the U.S. election killing the economy?
Days before Trump and Hillary Clinton go head-to-head in the first of three presidential debates, Iannucci says he's disappointed with the level of discourse coming from the campaign trail.
He isn't taking sides, but neither candidate inspires him.
"There is something about Hillary Clinton that provokes nothing -- and that is her problem," he says. "There is something about Donald Trump that provokes everything -- and that's his problem."
"For me, he provokes anger, and deep, deep, exasperation because anyone who listens to him for 5-10 minutes can hear the flaws in his arguments, but there is exasperation that he still gets away with it. Anyone who listens to Hillary Clinton for 10 minutes can hear nothing."
Iannucci, who has also taken aim at the media business with his 1990s show "The Day Today," says the media's reliance on Trump providing election cycle entertainment has crowded out fact checking.
Related: Donald Trump denies plans for 'Trump TV'
"Anything Donald Trump does is so eccentric that that in itself becomes a story. It feeds the news cycle and that crowd out room for analysis of what he is doing," he said.
-- Chris Liakos contributed to this reportA transgender woman was riding a train in France earlier this year when she was approached by an attendant. She presented her electronic ticket and ID card, but what happened next spurred some to accuse France's national rail service of transphobia.
In a post on Twitter, Marie Furic, president of anti-discrimination organization AcronymeS, shared the story of her transgender friend who was fined in France because the name on her train ticket and physical appearance were not consistent with the information on her ID card.
"Did you know this? If you are Trans, you can have a fine in the TGV, just for that reason," Furic posted on Twitter on Nov. 20 -- the date of the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance -- along with a photo of the ticket her friend received.
The fine actually dates back to May 31, 2013, when Furic's friend was riding France's high-speed train, the Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV), between Lyon and Paris.
"This person appears with a ticket and a valid [national identity card] but the latter appears physically dressed as a lady. This lady is named Mr. [redacted]," the ticket reads.
Believing the passenger was committing fraud, the train attendant fined her 135 euros (about $180) in addition to the cost of the train ticket, bringing the total to 227 euros (around $307).
Le saviez tu? si tu es Trans, tu peux avoir une amende dans le TGV, rien que pour cette raison pic.twitter.com/Ac7blZGdbl — Marie FURIC (@FuricMarie) November 20, 2013
Though the transgender woman initially paid the fine to avoid a confrontation, she filed a complaint and obtained a refund -- and a private apology from an agent of the company -- three weeks later, Furic told Le Huffington Post.
"She had been openly humiliated in public in the TGV but, not wanting to make waves, she paid the fine on the spot," Furic explained.
Though Furic is taking to Twitter to share the story, her friend still wishes to remain anonymous. (As Le HuffPost notes, the transgender woman has since had her legal name changed.)
Social media users have accused the SNCF -- the state-owned rail company that operates the TGV -- of discrimination against transgender people.
For its part, SNCF addressed the concerns on Twitter, explaining the rail network reviewed the circumstances of the ticket in June and ultimately decided to issue a reimbursement for her trip given the "good faith" of the traveler.
"The company is extremely vigilante toward every form of discrimination against its customers as well as its agents," SNCF concluded in the statement.
Discrimination against people based on their sexual identity is currently illegal in France. Last year, the French senate voted to add sexual harassment and discrimination against transgender people to the country's penal code.A man who broke into a Pine Bluff apartment Tuesday night was killed in a struggle with a gun, police said another man at the scene told them.
In a news release sent early Wednesday, Pine Bluff police said they are investigating the late-night slaying and talking with a man who lived in the apartment and was shot in the arm.
No arrests had been made at the time of the release.
The injured man told police three men broke into the apartment on East 36th Street and he began struggling with one of the intruders, who was armed.
In that struggle, the man who lived in the apartment was shot in the arm. The report described his injuries as minor. The intruder, whose name has not been released, was fatally shot.
The other two intruders fled the scene, the man told police.
It was the seventh killing of the year in the city of 44,000.
Read Thursday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp, and then he built an even bigger one. Just two weeks into his presidency, Trump’s new FCC gave its first gift to the telecom industry: a free pass for AT&T and Verizon to divide up the internet and start to make it look more like cable television. FCC chairman Ajit Pai shot a giant flare into the sky to show ISPs the swamp was clear, and then the crocodiles moved in.
It seems like the stakes are high for everything this year, but the internet is under an urgent threat. Communications giants are wealthy, smart, and opportunistic, and so far our new government seems to be no match for them — whether we’re talking about an FCC that has cowed to the industry it’s supposed to regulate or a Congress and White House that still don’t seem to understand how the internet works. (No, it’s not like a bridge.)
The internet is under an urgent threat
That vacuum of knowledge and principle explains how the ISP industry got its second big gift in Trump’s first 100 days. In April, telecom giants somehow convinced lawmakers to roll back an Obama-era rule that would prevent ISPs from selling your web browsing history without your permission. Even more than the FCC’s retreat from zero-rating regulation, this move showed the industry’s raw influence over this administration; it’s hard to imagine a more unpopular move than letting people’s internet providers mess with their privacy. And yet, lawmakers who passed the bill argued that it was in the spirit of fairness that ISPs should be able to secretly sell your data.
Now, the FCC and Republicans under Trump want to give the telecom lobby a third, massive gift by dismantling the hard-won net neutrality regulations that preserve the internet as we know and love it. Chairman Pai announced that the FCC plans to roll back Title II, and ISPs are thrilled. Maybe Pai just wants to hear again from the millions of people who confidently told the FCC in 2014 not to give the internet away to some of the most hated companies in America.
A small coalition of tech companies are quietly putting up a fight, but Trump’s first 100 days have emboldened net neutrality’s enemies. And as America’s telecoms continue to consolidate, they’re only getting more powerful.A seven-year-old boy has been forced to marry a female dog in a rural Indian village because his horoscopes foretold his first wife would die young.
Mukesh Kerayi had also grown a tooth in the upper part of his mouth - which, according to traditional tribal beliefs in Jharkhand, India - |
instead of creating a new library, the session will try to review one or more existing libraries. Later this was also used to test-drive some of the ideas and tools that were suggested during the Boost Infrastructure Workshop as improvements for the review process.
Thinking Asynchronously: Designing Applications with Boost.Asio
This talk by Christopher Kohlhoff started with an introduction to the ASIO library for asynchronous network and, more generally, IO programming. It then continued by covering more advanced topics such as the best ways of dealing with the inversion and non-continuity of control as well as the state (such as buffers) lifetime management.
To me, the asynchronous approach felt too complicated for a typical program. Yes, there are applications that need to handle hundreds of thousand of connections simultaneously. But for the rest of us, multiple threads with blocking or select/poll-based IO could make things much simpler. In fact, for quite some time now I had an idea of unifying non-blocking IO (select) and synchronization primitives (condition variables) to allow, for example, a thread to wait for a socket to be readable by waiting on a condition variable instead of calling select(). It was interesting to discuss this with Chris and hear his thoughts on the idea.
Native XML Processing Using Multi-paradigm Design in C++
This presentation by Sumant Tambe was about LEESA, a tool that offers an XPath-like EDSL for XML access. It was nice to hear CodeSynthesis XSD, on which LEESA is built, mentioned in the talk as well as the fact that some people in the audience clearly found the data binding interface generated by XSD more natural ;-).
Boost Infrastructure Workshop
This was a very interesting session led by Dave Abrahams. He started the workshop by asking people what they thought was broken or needed improvement when it came to the Boost infrastructure and what areas they would be interested working on. Items that ended up on the blackboard included migration to github, migration to CMake, buildbot, review process, and migration to WordPress for the Boost website.
The review process in particular seemed to be a serious bottleneck which started an interesting exchange of ideas about the possible solutions. I proposed a crazy idea to get away with reviews altogether and Dave confirmed that it was indeed crazy. I also attended a couple of more infrastructure workshops in the following days focusing on finding ways to improve the review process.
Intel’s C++ Software Transactional Memory Compiler
This was an introduction to the software transaction memory (STM) by Justin Gottschlich. STM is another way to support concurrency that is modelled after the database transactions. What baffled many in the audience including myself is what happens when an exception is thrown from within a transaction. In the proposed specification such a transaction would be considered as successfully committed.
The Proposed Boost B-tree Library
In this talk Beman Dawes described his B-tree library which has an interface that is modelled very closely after the standard map and set containers. So essentially you get persistent associative containers with the B-tree representation. What was interesting is the performance of fully-cached B-tree containers compared to their standard counterparts (which are normally implemented as RB-trees). Because a B-tree keeps related nodes close to each other in memory (or on disk) and modern processors employ multiple levels of caching, one can tune a B-tree to outperform RB-tree when it comes to the lookup operations.
Parsing C++ with GCC plugins
I had to attend this talk since I was the speaker and I think it went quite well. I got the impression that after my presentation people had a pretty good idea about what it takes to parse C++ with a GCC Plugin. Fortunately, the comparison to Clang didn’t start a flame war. Luckily for me, Sebastian, who is a Clang contributor, only showed up after I was through with this part. We also had a very nice discussion about possible applications we can write now that we have a complete and mature C++ parser at our disposal.
Threads and Shared Variables in C++0x
This was the keynote by Hans Boehm. The talk went through thread pretty quickly and concentrated mainly on the C++ memory model and atomics. While you can find all this information in the standard or working papers, what was really valuable to me were the questions from the audience and the resulting discussions. I hope you can hear those in the video. We also got a chance to practice this a bit in the lock-free programming talk that followed.
Lockfree Programming Part 2: Data Structures
This was an introduction to lock-free data structures by Tony Van Eerd. Tony used the new atomic support from C++-11 throughout his code so if you are not familiar with this, I suggest that you first watch Hans’ presentation that I mentioned above.
I had no background in lock-free data structure so it was surprising and interesting to discover that there is no, for example, a single lock-free queue implementation. Instead, there is a queue with a single supplier and a single consumer or a queue with a single supplier and multiple consumers. And all of them have quite different implementations. What was less surprising is how hard it is to reason about the correctness of the lock-free implementations. The goal with such data structures is always to impose as little synchronization (in terms of memory fences or similar) as possible. Understanding why a certain synchronization is necessary or not is really hard.
Object-relational mapping with ODB and Boost
Had to attend this talk as well. Overall I think it went very well. There were quite a few questions where people were imagining how they would use ODB in their applications and wanted to clarify some things. I liked that. In particular, support for database schema evolution was a common question so I know what to concentrate on next. Everyone seemed to like the C++-embedded query language and the fact that it is very fast to compile.
Why C++0x is the Awesomest Language for Network Programming
The first part of this talk by Christopher Kohlhoff was the end of his Monday ASIO talk that he had to rush through. When it came to C++0x, the only feature that made a real difference was the rvalue-references. Chris could use them to minimize the amount of allocations and deallocation in ASIO.
Chris also tried to use lambdas, which seemed like a natural fit for asynchronous programming. However, because of the memory management difficulties, stack-less coroutines turned out to be a much better fit. So the last part of the talk was about his implementation of coroutines in C++. Needless to say, the underlying implementation isn’t pretty. For example, from his talk I learned that we can do these kind of things:
int i = 0; switch (s) { for (; i < 10; ++i) { case 0:... }... }
BoostCon 2012 Kickoff Meeting
This was a planning meeting for next year’s BoostCon. The big takeaway out of this session was the decision to try and convert BoostCon to a more general C++ conference. It felt like there was a total agreement among the participants that C++ lacks such a conference and that now, with C++0x almost certainly becoming C++11, it would be a great opportunity to do this. I sure hope that it will happen.
Boost.Generic: Concepts without Concepts
In this talk Matt Calabrese showed how he implemented a large portion of the C++ concepts feature which was dropped from the upcoming standard using the C++ preprocessor. The resulting macro-language is quite similar to the original syntax, if a bit ugly. But overall, the amount that Matt managed to achieve given the constraints is impressive. We also got a glimpse at the complexity of the underlying implementation which left me thinking that this code is probably not going to be usable in any real project any time soon (compiler support issues, slow compilation, etc). Maybe some bits and pieces can be used, though.
Boost.Process: Process management in C++
This presentation by Boris Schaeling was essentially a post-mortem on a library that was rejected by a review process. What was surprising to me is that Boris first did a pre-review of this library on the Boost developer list. He then addressed whatever deficiencies were pointed out to him and submitted the library for the “real” review expecting smooth sailing.
Future of Boost Panel
I only managed to attend half of the Future of Boost panel and still catch my plane out of Aspen. But I am sure I stayed for the most interesting part. In a nutshell, Boost now has a formal executive committee which will be responsible for making high-level “policy” decisions. As Dave said, up until now it wasn’t clear who can or should make such decisions. The initial membership consists of the long-time Boost moderators.
Overall, I enjoyed the conference a lot. BoostCon attracts a large number of very smart C++ people and it was fun sharing my ideas and hearing what others are up to. If you are a C++ “go to” guy in your company and you sometimes feel that your colleagues are too slow, come to BoostCon and you will know what it feels like to be on the other side of the equation;-).The market and policy factors that have led farmers to “dispose of skim milk in lagoons,” as the board chair of Dairy Farmers of Ontario put it recently, are not going anywhere. This is not a blip.
The Globe and Mail has reported that “since late May, roughly 800,000 litres of milk has been poured into farm manure pits, called ‘lagoons’.”
We got here from a combination of cultural shifts in eating habits and unrelenting bad policy. This puts the lie to the idea that the “stability” supply management creates in the marketplace is an unalloyed good. Does it matter that prices are stable if farmers aren’t able to sell their milk? The cost of food rose 3.8 per cent over the last year in Canada, and we’re dumping milk on manure piles.
One factor is a simple cultural change in the way Canadians eat. Per capita consumption of fluid milk has been declining in Canada for decades, while consumption of other dairy products – cream, butter, cheese, yogurt, ice cream – has grown or remained fairly steady. Of course nature has decided that you don’t get butterfat without skim milk, so farmers are finding themselves with excess skim milk.
This trend away from drinking milk has shown up in some other countries too, but it is not universal. If globalization has changed the way we eat, it has also changed the way people eat in Asia or South America. Consumption of fluid milk in China and India, for example, while still much lower than in North America on a per capita basis, is on the rise. Rather than turn our excess milk into powder to export it, we dump it on manure piles. We don’t have enough production capacity here to turn the milk into powder, because Canada has decided that not having much of a dairy export market is a reasonable price to pay for its supply management regime. Stability, at all costs.
Theoretically, what happens when there is a surplus of any good is that the price drops. But in Canada, while prices can change, they are not nearly as flexible as they would be if they depended on simple supply and demand. Consumer prices for fluid milk depend in part on the prices set by provincial co-ops or marketing boards, based largely on cost-of-production formulas. Prices for skim milk powder depend on the “support prices” set by the Canadian Dairy Commissioners, based on “results of the cost of production study, arguments presented by various stakeholders, an evaluation of the processors’ margin, economic indicators such as the consumer price index as well as their own experience and knowledge of the industry.”
None of this serves farmers, producers or consumers. It’s time to recognize that marketplaces evolve and policies should too.The only financial institution indicted on criminal charges following the 2008 economic meltdown was a family-owned bank with six branches based in New York’s Chinatown and assets of under $300 million.
It was the 2,651st largest bank in the country.
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, the latest documentary from award-winning filmmaker Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Life Itself), is the story of how the Abacus Federal Savings Bank and a number of its former employees were hit with a 240-count indictment alleging grand larceny, fraud, conspiracy, falsifying business records, and residential mortgage fraud.
The film, which opens May 19 in New York followed by a national rollout, tells a tale of cultural misunderstanding compounded by possible racism and prosecutorial overreach. It’s the ultimate David vs. Goliath story, pitting the Sung family, owners of the bank, against the power of the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
The case was “about this community, comprised of Chinese immigrants, and a lack of willingness to understand the community,” says Jiayang Fan, who wrote about Abacus for The New Yorker.
“[The Manhattan DA] took a heavy-handed approach from the beginning, and refused to change their opinion.”
District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and his office “saw this as a major PR move kind of case,” says filmmaker James. “In his indictment he talks about how this is the first bank to be indicted, and he links it to the mortgage crisis, which is ridiculous, because Abacus refused to get into all the credit default swaps that were going on.”
Abacus’ troubles began in 2009, when a loan officer with the bank was accused of stealing money from a mortgage closing. He was fired, as were two other crooked loan officers the bank discovered. The district attorney’s office soon became involved, and in 2012 brought charges against the bank and 19 former employees, alleging they had inflated the income of mortgage applicants and falsified documents in order to obtain mortgages through the Federal National Mortgage Association, otherwise known as Fannie Mae.
Several of the defendants pled guilty, and agreed to testify for the prosecution. The only deal the DA offered the Sung family was to plead guilty to a felony and pay a large fine, which would have effectively meant the end of Abacus. The Sungs refused and went to trial.
“I knew this was not how they normally go about things, this was not how cases were supposed to go,” says Chanterelle Sung, a lawyer who at one time worked for the same DA’s office which indicted her family. Sung alleges that the DA told the family of the indictment “literally one day before the indictment and the arraignment,” which meant the Sungs had no time to offer any kind of response.
“I realized this was political, this was going to be a show,” she says. “[The DA] was going to be the first prosecutor to indict a bank. He wanted to have the first word out to the media, that’s why I felt they didn’t give us advance notice.”
Sung is not engaging in hyperbole when she talks about “a show.” The most gasp-inducing sequence in James’ film is the “perp walk” of those indicted, with former Abacus employees marched through the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse in front of the New York media. The perp walk is a common practice in New York criminal justice circles, but the sight of over a dozen Asian men handcuffed and chained together seemed a deliberate attempt to humiliate them in the most hurtful, and in some eyes most racist, way.
“I felt very powerless,” says Sung. “As much as I had worked in that office, I felt there was nothing I could do to stop this from happening. And I thought ‘this is how far they are taking things.’ They were willing to take things to the extreme.”
“There are certainly plenty of people who felt there was a racist aspect” to the perp walk, says James. “Racism like that is rarely intentionally meant, that someone in that position would set out in an overly racist way to treat these people the way they were treated. But it’s hard to look at that and not see the profound insensitivity.”
Whether or not racism was involved in the Abacus case, it is obvious that a certain amount of cultural insensitivity and misunderstanding definitely was. The bank’s customers, many of them recent immigrants, came from a repressive society where financial dealings were based on trust, not paperwork, cash was favored over credit, and there was a blurry line between a gift and a loan. In this respect, they were like many other immigrant communities.
“This is not unusual, historically or otherwise,” says James. “I can’t believe [the DA’s office] didn’t become aware of these realities, and then decided to dismiss them as not relevant, that fraud was fraud. And this fraud has historically gone on in communities that predate the Chinese. Most have found their footing in cash economy jobs.”
What this meant in particular was that many of the Abacus mortgage applications contained income figures the DA considered fraudulently inflated, but were actually based on cash the applicants did have, but had not reported to the IRS. In fact, during the five years between arraignment and the end of the Abacus trial in 2015 (the trial lasted four months, but no spoilers here as to the outcome), the bank sold 3,000 loans to Fannie Mae, and only nine defaulted—one of the lowest default rates in the entire country.
“Fannie Mae was aware of all this,” says James. “They told Abacus, ‘We understand the unique nature of the community you serve,’ and the reason they did that was Abacus had an outstanding record with mortgage loans.”
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail ultimately asks the question why the Manhattan DA went after Abacus and none of the “too big to fail” banks more complicit in the meltdown. “The other banks would have been more difficult cases to pursue,” says Fan. “Abacus was confined to one community, and doesn’t have tentacles in other places. Going after banks like Bank of America would have been a very daunting endeavor. If there was going to be a bank that would be an easy win, it would be this one.”
James points to the doctrine of “collateral consequences,” or what the criminal conviction of a major corporation and its officers could mean to the company’s employees, the community at large, investors, etc. “Is it better to put them out of business, or fine them, have then correct their practices, and let them go on?” says James.
Given these standards, the potential demise of a community bank like Abacus with its minority clientele could only mean one thing, according to James: “We have such different standards regarding the application of justice in this country.”By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News
The glasses were created during volcanic events on the Moon US scientists have found evidence that water was held in the Moon's interior, challenging some elements of the theory of how Earth's satellite formed. The Moon is thought to have been created in a violent collision between Earth and another planet-sized object. Scientists thought the heat from this impact had vaporised all the water. But a new study in Nature magazine shows water was delivered to the lunar surface from the interior in volcanic eruptions three billion years ago. This suggests that water has been a part of the Moon since its early existence. The discovery came from lunar volcanic glasses, pebble-like beads collected and returned to Earth by the US Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This confirms that water comes from deep within the mantle of the Moon
Alberto Saal, Brown University In the decades since, scientists have sought to determine the nature of a class of chemical elements known as volatiles in the multicoloured glasses. In particular, they searched the glasses for signs of water - but the evidence has remained elusive. This was consistent with a general consensus that the Moon was dry. The team, from Brown University, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Case Western Reserve University, used secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) technology to detect extremely minute quantities of water in glasses and minerals. "We developed a way to detect as little as five parts per million of water," said Erik Hauri, from the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC. "We were really surprised to find a whole lot more in these tiny glass beads, up to 46 parts per million." Lost to space The team then confirmed through a series of tests that hydrogen had been present all along, and the samples had not been infused by hydrogen-rich solar winds or tainted by other volatiles. "This confirms that water comes from deep within the mantle of the Moon," said lead author Alberto Saal, assistant professor of geological sciences at Brown University. "It has nothing to do with secondary processes, such as contamination or solar wind." Orange lunar soil found by astronaut Harrison Schmitt in 1972 The researchers believe the water was contained in magma which erupted via "fire fountains" on to the lunar surface more than three billion years ago. About 95% of this water vapour was lost during the volcanic activity. "Since the Moon was thought to be perfectly dehydrated, this is a giant leap from previous estimates," said co-author Erik Hauri, from the Carnegie Institution. "It suggests the intriguing possibility that the Moon's interior might have had as much water as the Earth's upper mantle. But even more intriguing: If the Moon's volcanoes released 95% of their water, where did all that water go?" Since the Moon's gravity is too feeble to retain an atmosphere, the researchers speculate that some of the water vapour from the eruptions was probably forced into space. But some may also have drifted towards the cold poles of the Moon where ice may persist in permanently shadowed craters. Ancient rocks The research also might yield additional insight into how long water had been on Earth. "It suggests that water was present within the Earth before the giant collision that formed the Moon," Dr Saal explained. "That points to two possibilities: Water either was not completely vaporised in that collision or it was added a short time - less than 100 million years - afterward by volatiles introduced from the outside, such as with meteorites." The glasses analysed in the study colour the lunar soil green or orange. While most glasses collected on the Moon were produced by melting of rocks during meteorite impacts, these lack the typical characteristics of so-called impact glasses. In addition, their ages are similar to those of surrounding basaltic rocks, linking them to the Moon's geological evolution. Verifying that water is at the Moon's poles is one goal of Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, due to launch later this year. It is the primary objective of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCross) scheduled for launch in 2009. Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
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The claim by the biotech industry that GMO crops can be contained and kept away from organic farmers who have chosen not to use genetically modified ‘suicide’ seeds is being proven grossly fallacious. A third of organic growers are now reporting problems with cross contamination, according to a new survey. More than 80% of farmers who participated in the survey are ‘concerned’ about the impact of genetic seeds, and 60% are ‘very concerned.’
As one organic farmer, Oren Holle puts it, “the USDA has been extremely lax and, in our opinion, that’s due to the excessive influence of the biotech industry in political circles.”
The results of this survey are being reported just as the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has extended the public comment period (recently ended) for a controversial study on how GM and non-GM crops can “coexist,” and also after controversial propaganda has been pushing GM crops as a solution to world hunger – even the Catholic Church has been promoting biotech venom.
Thus far, the USDA Advisory Committee on Biotechnology, and the 21st Century Agriculture (AC21) have concluded that there is insufficient data to decide just how bad GMO contamination is, and the true ramifications of GMO contamination of organic farms. The AC21 recommendations came out in November of 2012, and were highly criticized for leaning in favor of the biotech industry – even in the face of growing reports that cross-pollination was happening everywhere.
As farmer Holle, President of the Organic Farmer’s Agency for Relation ship Marketing (OFARM) says, “The USDA said they didn’t have this data, but all they had to do was ask.”
It is quite obvious to most farmers that GMO crops have not had regulatory oversight as they should, and that this is likely just a stall tactic by the FDA. The agency has been more than just lax, but grossly irresponsible in allowing GMO to be planted prior o knowing the long-term effects on human, animal, and ecosystem health. The political end-game was always more important than protecting the health of the people.
The growth of GM crops have not grown as fast and furious anywhere else as in the USA. Other countries such as Russia and France are currently considering bans, and much of Europe has no-GMO zones.
The US, conversely, has gone from using about 2% GMO seeds in the 1990s to over 90% currently. The new poll taken also shows that more than half the farmers questioned believe that GMO and non-GMO cannot co-exist, and others said that ‘good-stewardship’ was insufficient to make sure that non-GMO crops were not cross-pollinated with GM seed.
“The USDA’s focus on coexistence and crop insurance is misplaced,” Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch said, referring to an AC21 recommendation that GM contamination problems be dealt with through a federal insurance scheme set up to lessen the impact of natural disasters.
As usual, it is too little too late, and biotech knows it. Their seeds are spreading like a virus and we have to stop this – NOW, before all of our arable land in the US is forever contaminated with their puerile biotech poison.And there was general acclaim for Alan Greenspan, who stepped down as chairman at the beginning of the year, for presiding over one of the longest economic expansions in the nation’s history. Mr. Geithner suggested that Mr. Greenspan’s greatness still was not fully appreciated, an opinion now held by a much smaller number of people.
Meanwhile, by the end of 2006, the economy already was shrinking by at least one important measure, total income. And by the end of the next year, the Fed had started its desperate struggle to prevent the collapse of the financial system and to avert the onset of what could have been the nation’s first full-fledged depression in about 70 years.
The transcripts of the 2006 meetings, released after a standard five-year delay, clearly show some of the nation’s pre-eminent economic minds did not fully understand the basic mechanics of the economy that they were charged with shepherding. The problem was not a lack of information; it was a lack of comprehension, born in part of their deep confidence in economic forecasting models that turned out to be broken.
“It’s embarrassing for the Fed,” said Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “You see an awareness that the housing market is starting to crumble, and you see a lack of awareness of the connection between the housing market and financial markets.”
“It’s also embarrassing for economics,” he continued. “My strong guess is that if we had a transcript of any other economist, there would be at least as much fodder.”
Many of the officials who appear in the transcripts have since spoken publicly about the Fed’s failings in the years before the crisis. But the transcripts provide a raw and detailed account of those errors as they were made. Evidence of problems in the housing market accumulated at each meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets policy for the central bank.
“We are getting reports that builders are now making concessions and providing upgrades, such as marble countertops and other extras, and in one case even throwing in a free Mini Cooper to sweeten the deal,” George C. Guynn, then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said at the June meeting.
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The committee consists of the governors of the Federal Reserve and the presidents of the 12 regional banks.
“The speed of the falloff in housing activity and the deceleration in house prices continue to surprise us,” Janet Yellen, then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said in September.
One builder she spoke with, she said, “toured some new subdivisions on the outskirts of Boise and discovered that the houses, most of which are unoccupied, are now being dressed up to look occupied — with curtains, things in the driveway, and so forth — so as not to discourage potential buyers.”
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For a famously private institution known for its cryptic, formulaic statements, the meeting transcripts offer a rare glimpse of senior officials in relatively unguarded conversation, somewhat akin to the tapes that some presidents have made in the Oval Office. The Fed officials exchange jokes, gossip about people who are not present, and speak much more frankly about the economy and policy than they did in the public remarks that they made contemporaneously.
The results are unlikely to burnish any of their reputations, inasmuch as they could not see the widening cracks beneath their feet. But the Fed’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, appears as the most consistent voice of warning that problems in the housing market could have broader consequences.
The general consensus on the board, summarized by Mr. Geithner, was that problems in the housing market had few broader ramifications. “We just don’t see troubling signs yet of collateral damage, and we are not expecting much,” he said at the September meeting.
Mr. Bernanke initially agreed, telling colleagues at his first meeting as chairman, in March, “I think we are unlikely to see growth being derailed by the housing market.”
As the year rolled along, however, Mr. Bernanke increasingly took the view that his colleagues were too sanguine.
”I don’t have quite as much confidence as some people around the table that there will be no spillover effect,” he said.
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As for Mr. Geithner, who became Treasury secretary in 2009, his spokesman, Anthony Coley, said, “Secretary Geithner was an early source of initiative at the Fed to reduce risk and make the financial system more resilient even before 2006.”
Some Fed officials argued that a housing slowdown would be good for the broader economy.
“I really believe that the drop in housing is actually on net going to make liquidity available for other sectors rather than being a drain going forward, and that will also get the growth rate more positive,” Ms. Bies told colleagues at the committee’s June meeting. Ms. Bies could not be reached for comment Thursday.
And even Ms. Yellen did not believe that the problems in the housing market would have broader consequences. “Of course, housing is a relatively small sector of the economy, and its decline should be self-correcting,” she said.
One fundamental reason for this blindness was that Fed officials did not understand how deeply intertwined the housing sector and financial markets had become. They also were convinced that financial innovations, by distributing the risk of losses more broadly, had increased the strength and resilience of the system as a whole.
“I would say that the capital markets are probably more profitable and more robust at this moment, or at least going into the six-week opportunity, than they have perhaps ever been,” Kevin Warsh, the Fed governor who watched Wall Street most closely, said at the meeting in September 2006. Three months later Mr. Warsh said almost exactly the same thing. He did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment Thursday.
For the Fed 2006 began with the departure of Mr. Greenspan, who presided in January over his final meeting as Fed chairman and was then widely regarded as the epitome of a central banker, a master who had guided the American economy through almost 20 years of remarkably consistent growth.
“I’d like the record to show that I think you’re pretty terrific, too,” Mr. Geithner said in adding his voice to the chorus of tributes at that final meeting. “And thinking in terms of probabilities, I think the risk that we decide in the future that you’re even better than we think is higher than the alternative.”
Ms. Yellen said: “It’s fitting for Chairman Greenspan to leave office with the economy in such solid shape. The situation you’re handing off to your successor is a lot like a tennis racquet with a gigantic sweet spot.”Rocco Rossi is the king of social media but a pauper in the polls. A Northstar Research Partners analysis of how often and how positively Toronto’s mayoral candidates get mentioned online — measured over a period of six weeks — found Rossi got the best buzz, with 28 per cent of the chatter about him considered positive.
Etobicoke Councillor Rob Ford got more overall mentions during the May 1 to June 11 period, but the polarizing figure was as likely to be scorned as applauded. So why is Rossi, a former political fundraiser and non-profit executive, a darling on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other such sites, while two recent opinion polls put him at only 10 and 15 per cent of decided support — well behind Ford and George Smitherman? Because he has an army of online supporters, many from the marketing world, posting comments and shaping the online debate to generate positive word-of-mouth, says Patrick Gladney, Northstar’s director of social media.
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“Rossi’s aggressive online marketing is driving positive buzz,” Gladney says. “He has a team of people who are the architects of his image online, called ‘Rocco’s army.’ If anything, they are inflating the positive impressions of him.” “As we get closer in, I would expect more of the public to enter the conversation, perhaps giving a more accurate reflection of how people feel towards the candidates — masking the impact of having a social-media-savvy campaign team.” Sachin Aggarwal, Rossi’s campaign manager, makes no apologies for the full-court press. “We know that people get a huge amount of their media from online and informal sources online, so we are trying to drive as much ‘earned’ media as we can,” he said. Gladney said that, this far out from the Oct. 25 election, candidates such as Ford benefit from being talked about — whether the chatter is positive, neutral or negative. “It shows that people are at least aware of who you are, even if they don't agree with everything you say or do,” he said.
Gladney used software to capture more than 50,000 online “documents” about the top six candidates, winnowed to 3,590 by excluding comments from the candidates themselves, mainstream media and the like. Comments were then rated as positive, negative or neutral. Gladney said you can look at the disparity between Rossi’s social media and poll results two ways: “Either he hasn’t really gathered much traction with voters despite an active social media presence, or he has held his own despite the inroads made by candidates like Ford,” who joined the race in March and quickly rose to front-runner status in the polls.
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Ford, a fierce critic of city spending whose few stated policies include pushing the province to allow mixed martial arts competitions, is a “part protest, part populist” candidate and magnet for online debate, Gladney said. Only 7 per cent of comments about Smitherman were deemed positive, with 26 per cent negative and 67 per cent neutral. Gladney said reaction to the former deputy premier’s transit plan drove the negative chatter, as well as questions about his record in cabinet. Joe Pantalone, deputy mayor and standard-bearer for many of Mayor David Miller’s policies, is “pretty nondescript” online, with 81 per cent of comments deemed neutral. Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti’s radical policies, including arming bylaw control officers and turning the Gardiner Expressway over to transit and pedestrians, “are not being received positively online — in fact, almost universally negatively.” Polls suggesting growing voter support for Women’s Post publisher Sarah Thomson, whose platform revolves around expanding the subway, weren’t reflected in the social media chatter, Gladney said. “There was a general lack of awareness about who she is or if she’s even running.”Please enable Javascript to watch this video
DENVER -- The 7-Eleven store at East 17th Avenue and Pearl Street in Denver looks like most other convenience stores.
There are gas pumps, the signature 7-Eleven Slurpee on the door and an ATM inside.
However, looks can be deceiving. Ben Carlson knew something about the ATM just wasn't right.
"It felt like it was glued on there," he said.
Carlson said he typically pulls and tugs at card readers to make sure there's not a skimmer hidden nearby. However, this is the first time he yanked one off the machine.
"It felt like all my paranoia was warranted finally," he said. "It was tough to get off. Everybody in the store thought I was nuts because I was tearing an ATM machine apart."
Police across Denver metro area say they're seeing more card skimmers, not just on ATMs, but also at gas pumps.
"It is happening, and not just here, but all across the country," said Jenny Fulton, a spokeswoman with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.
Fraud detectives say there are several things that can be done to minimize the risk of becoming a victim of identity theft because of a card skimmer.
Their best advice is to always pay for gas indoors.
However, if paying at the pump, they strongly recommend not using a debit card. A thief could not only steal credit card information, but also the bank account number.
Also, always look for fraud-tampering labels on credit card panels at the pump. If the tape is torn, a criminal has likely opened it and another pump should be used.
Last, authorities recommend choosing gas pumps closest to the front doors of the building.
"The criminals who are using (the skimmers) are going to use the outer pumps, typically," Fulton said.
Skimming devices are becoming smaller and more sophisticated. Criminals don't even have to physically retrieve them.
They can download personal information using Bluetooth from a half block away.
Some gas stations are also becoming more sophisticated in the ways they try to protect customers from identity theft.
King Soopers and City Market stores have new alarm systems that immediately shut down a pump if it's tampered with.
As for Carlson, he'll continue to closely inspect ATMs, always worried a thief could be trying to steal his personal information.Update 6:50 p.m. EST: The overwhelming response to DigitalGlobe's call has crashed the site, Fox reports.
“It’s a good reason to have our site crash,” a spokesperson told FoxNews |
. Failure to raise it would lead to a disastrous, first-ever default on U.S. obligations like interest payments.
Lawmakers will need to revisit major programs, including the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and expiring tax credits for a range of industries. The annual budgeting process will be greatly complicated by the return of tight spending caps on the Pentagon and domestic agencies after two years of hard-fought relief. There will be a Supreme Court vacancy to fill along with less headline-grabbing but still complex and necessary chores, such as reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration.
“Given the heavy weight of some those issues, some of them are not going to be delicate by any stretch of the imagination,” said Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C.
Whichever party controls the Senate, the majority is likely to be razor-thin and senators will focus immediately on the 2018 election, when Democrats will be defending tough seats in GOP-leaning states.
In the Republican-led House, the number of moderate-minded GOP lawmakers is likely to be reduced, potentially giving more power to the House Freedom Caucus, which frequently opposes routine legislation and impedes deal-making by leadership.
And Ryan is widely seen as having presidential ambitions in 2020, which may complicate his willingness to cut deals with the White House.
“Ryan will have a decision to make,” said the second-ranking House Democratic leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland. “Do I want to be perceived as the leader of the obstructionist party, or do I want to be seen as the constructive opposition which works with the president and the Senate to achieve progress?”
Before getting to next year, lawmakers must first get through the post-election lame-duck session. The election results will determine much of what is possible, but prospects for action may be slim apart from completing work on the needed spending bills, which Congress could end up punting with yet another extension.
Ryan is holding out hope for progress on criminal justice reform legislation sought by Obama and members of both parties, but McConnell suggested Thursday that was unlikely. And Obama is pushing hard to advance his legacy-shaping trade deal for Asia, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but McConnell and Ryan have indicated that is unlikely. McConnell has said repeatedly he has no plans to advance Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, this year.
Beyond that, lawmakers must complete a water projects bill with the Flint money in it and could come together around a medical research bill.
Before leaving town, congressional leaders devoted some of Thursday to blaming each other for their slim record of accomplishments so far this year, taking credit for what did happen, and insisting that if nothing much happens in the lame-duck it will be the fault of the other party, not their own.
“My hope is that after the election, they’ll drop their political shenanigans and we’ll get on at doing the serious business of actually appropriating,” Ryan said of Democrats.
Democrats, of course, begged to differ.
“Republicans have not done their basic work of government,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “And that is the truth.”
___=
Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.EMBED >More News Videos Police said nationally, agencies participated in the National John Suppression Initiative between June and August.
A former Houston police officer was among the more than 250 people arrested in the Houston area as part of a nationwide prostitution sting this summer.According to court records, Darrin Dewayne Thomas has been charged with prostitution, a misdemeanor offense. He is currently out on $500 bond.In 2011, Thomas surrendered his peace officer's license for life after allegedly stealing more than $500 in cash during the course of his duties as an HPD officer.At the time he was relieved of duty, Thomas was working as a senior police officer in the North Patrol Division. He had been with the department since 1994.Thomas is expected in court at the end of August.The Walking Dead meets Lila Black
The Quantum Gravity worlds are close to disaster, the dead walks again and the veil between the worlds are so thin that you may pass on by mistake. Lila and her bike are back and so are her husbands, the demon Teazle has turned into the Angel of Dead and the Elven Zal is not quite the same after returning from the Sisters either.
Lila Black is a feisty heroine half machine and half human but all attitude that makes these books so enjoyable to read. This is the final book in the Quantum Gravity series so you expect a lot of answers and Down to the Bone delivers. I certainly enjoyed that we got down to so much of the lore and unveiled the real play while keeping a pretty fast pace. We also get to see the story from the point of view of Zal and Teazle beside Lila a bit more than in the previous books.
One thing that attracts me as a reader science fiction to these stories is the coherent science of the universe. There is magic but it follows rules much like science does. The worlds are all different and each world has their own powers and natures all following ‘scientific’ rules.
This was a great read with good pacing that becomes breathtaking towards the end. I warmly recommend this read.
Information
Title: Down to the Bone
Series: Quantum Gravity 5
Author: Justina Robson
Hardback: 344 pages
Publisher: Gollancz (2011)
Copy: Brought myself
Order by: Amazon US | UKBeşiktaş have signed Fulham winger Kerim Frei for €3 million on a four-year-deal according to DHA.
• Mison: The perfect storm
Frei, 19, joined the London club from Grasshoppers Zurich in 2010 and made his first team debut for the club in the Europa League in July 2011.
Signing a contract extension last year, Frei's future appeared bright at Craven Cottage. However the summer has seen him heavily linked with a move to Turkey, first with Galatasaray and now Beşiktaş.
The news comes following confirmation from Beşiktaş president Fikret Orman that talks had begun over the transfer of Frei from Craven Cottage.
Speaking to Lig TV, Orman said: “We are in the process of trying to sign Kerim Frei, we have been in contact with him for a long time. I approached Kerim following the Champions League final and we have been in talks since. If our terms are met we want to sign Kerim."
Under Orman, the Eagles have looked to implement a new strategy that will see more young players implemented into the first team. Despite being born in Austria, and raised in Switzerland, Frei opted to represent Turkey at international level - a nation he qualifies for through his father.Chief Information Officer Post In CBI July-2014 | cbi.nic.in
CENTRAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION(CBI)
(Administration Division)
5-B, 7th Floor, CGO Complex, Lodhi Road, New Delhi
Official Website:-cbi.nic.in
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) invites applications from eligible officers from Indian central officers for filling the following post :-
1.Chief Information Officer:- 1 Post, Pay Band: Rs.37400-67000 + GP: Rs.8700
Age Limit:-
Maximum age limit for this post is 56 Years.
Application Fee:-
Not Applicable for this post.
How To Apply:-
Interested officers can apply by filling application form in given format along with copies of documents and certificates sent to the office of the Dy. Director (Pers.), Central Bureau of Investigation, 5-B, 7th Floor, CGO Complex, Lodhi Road, New Delhi-110003. Applications should be reach there on or before 20/10/2014.
Last Date:-
20/10/2014Sanders Scored Over Use of Photos
Lebanon — With just days before the New Hampshire primary, the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., is taking heat from Upper Valley residents who say his campaign used their images on mailers without their permission.
When American Legion state officer Tom Wiley, of Canaan, was called by the Legion’s top officer in New Hampshire, Wiley didn’t know what it was about, but he said the tone of state Cmdr. John Graham made it clear something was wrong.
“He called me, quite straightforwardly, and asked me, had I endorsed any candidate,” Wiley said Saturday. “He asked specifically about Bernie.”
It was a sensitive subject, Wiley knew, both because the American Legion fiercely protects its image as a nonpartisan organization, and because Wiley is in the early stages of a campaign himself, for the post of New Hampshire’s Department Commander. If he were found to be guilty of flouting the group’s bylaws, it could sink his chances. “I said, ‘No, I’ve never even shook his hand,” said Wiley.
Wiley learned Graham had fielded a call from a Legion member in Plaistow, N.H., and that Wiley’s image was prominently included on the front page of a glossy campaign mailer, next to the words “Veterans fought for us. Bernie fought for them.”
Worse, in the photo Wiley is wearing a white American Legion hat, which identifies him as an officer of the organization’s New Hampshire Department (each state’s posts fall under a single Department).
“I said, ‘oh my God,’ ” said Wiley. “I went out to the mailbox that day, and my flier was in there. It was addressed to my wife, not to me.”
The flier also includes photographs of Lebanon Post 22 Cmdr. Robert St. Pierre, Laura Holland, the Auxiliary president, and Hannah Griswold, the past junior Auxiliary president, who were identified by Wiley.
The Legion’s national offices in Indianapolis quickly turned up a second Sanders campaign flier featuring Holland’s image. According to Wiley, Philip B. Onderdonk, the Legion’s national judge advocate, asked the Sanders campaign to stop using the images, though John Raughter, a national spokesman, declined to comment on the matter, other than to reiterate the Legion’s avoidance of political stances.
“The American Legion Constitution prohibits the organization from endorsing political candidates or parties,” Raughter wrote in an email Saturday.
Shouldn’t Have Happened
Wiley remembers when the photograph was taken.
It was during a Veterans Day event hosted by the Legion in Lebanon’s Colburn Park. Sanders, who was already a presidential candidate at the time, addressed the crowd from the bandstand after a parade, but made no partisan remarks, as was noted in Valley News coverage of the event.
Wiley said Sanders’ participation in the event was conditional on Sanders’ avoiding political statements.
While on the bandstand behind Sanders, Wiley said, he noticed there was a lot of press at the event, which made him slightly uncomfortable because he does not like to have his picture taken. “I moved from one side of that bandstand to the other (to get away from) a TV camera. I looked, and darned if there wasn’t another camera on the other side. I couldn’t get away from them.”
Wiley said the offending picture was taken by a woman who bore no obvious affiliation to the Sanders campaign or any media organization. He said he did not talk to the woman about the picture.
He had no idea, he said, that it would turn up in his mailbox four months later.
Experienced campaigners from both sides of the aisle said using a person’s image in a campaign advertisement without their permission is unethical. A well-oiled campaign will ensure that everyone whose picture is taken is asked to sign a release form at the time the picture is taken, they said.
Scott Tranchemontagne, who heads a public relations firm, was a political consultant for a variety of Republicans, including presidential candidates, between 1994 and 2010. “The first rule that any campaign staffer in charge of producing these types of materials is, you shouldn’t use an image without clearing the permissions,” Tranchemontagne said. “Those are basic rules of campaign materials production that were clearly disregarded in this case.”
Campaigns that cut corners up front often wind up paying for the mistake with just this sort of embarrassment, he said.
“Campaigns are about driving messages in support of your candidate and avoiding mistakes and pitfalls, because when you make mistakes and pitfalls, you open yourself up to the criticism of, ‘how did you let this happen?’ ” he said. “If you’ve got a conservative Republican featured in a Bernie Sanders mailer, then the other side can really use it to disparage your campaign.”
Lebanon City Councilor Karen Liot Hill, who has worked on more than a dozen Democratic campaigns over the last 10 years, agreed this shouldn’t have happened.
“The norm is that campaigns are very careful about this and that they generally gain consent,” she said.
Hill, who was at the Veterans Day event, said Sanders went above and beyond to avoid turning it into a campaign appearance.
“I heard someone ask a political question, and I heard him say ‘There’s a time for that. Today is a day for veterans and today, I want to focus on veterans.’ He was not politicking.”
Hill said that, while it might be presumed that attendees of a campaign event are supporters, the Lebanon parade was a community event.
“It’s not a campaign event,” she said. “I don’t think these people had expectations that their photos would be used in this way.”
Both consultants said Sanders isn’t the first candidate to make this mistake, and he probably won’t be the last.
“It’s a nonpartisan mistake,” Tranchemontagne said. “It happens to campaigns of all shapes and sizes and political parties. I see it happen at least once or twice every cycle.”
It may be unethical, but that doesn’t mean it violates election law, according to Brian Porto, a professor at Vermont Law School.
“I was interested to see whether the scenario you describe would violate New Hampshire election law,” Porto wrote in an emailed response to the Valley News. “It does not because no names were published. … Interestingly, the statute does not prohibit merely publishing someone’s picture without a name. I don’t know whether that means the campaign knew exactly how to avoid legal problems under the election laws or it just got lucky.”
Porto said the individuals who were featured were unlikely to prove that their First Amendment right to free speech had been violated, but they could potentially seek damages for “invasion of privacy, false-light publicity, or fraudulent misrepresentation, depending on what causes of action New Hampshire tort law allows.”
Tranchemontagne said such cases rarely see the inside of a courtroom.
“The remedy for these people is to discontinue that mailer and produce a different one. It costs additional money but it’s become a problem for the campaign,” Tranchemontagne said. “They should also contact the people directly and make an honest and sincere apology. Usually that is enough to make amends.”
Possible Pattern
There is a question as to whether the incident involving the Legion members is part of a larger pattern.
The Rev. Stephen R. Silver, pastor of the First Congregational Church of Lebanon, had an experience similar to Wiley’s.
Silver and his 9-year-old son, a Boy Scout, participated in the Veterans Day parade, and posed for a picture with Sanders during the event.
Silver said he was not asked to sign a release form, and had no idea that a picture featuring the three — Silver, his son and Sanders — would be prominently featured in a campaign mailer that he said has been mailed all throughout the state. Silver said the appearance that he endorses Sanders, or any political candidate, compromises his ability to minister to church members.
“I know in our church, we have Democrats, we have Republicans, we have independent voters. They’re all there,” he said. “I want them to know that they can all feel comfortable coming to me.”
After learning his face was on the Sanders mailer, Silver said, he clarified his role to Sunday churchgoers. He also wrote a letter to the Valley News and put a posting on Facebook.
“I do not wish to be seen offering my support to any particular candidate and have asked the Sanders campaign to cease and desist from using this image, in any form, immediately,” Silver wrote in the letter.
Complaints about the mailers with the photographs from the Lebanon Veterans Day event came the same week the Sanders campaign released a campaign ad on YouTube that included a graphic saying he had been “endorsed by” the Valley News.
The newspaper has made no endorsement in the Democratic race.
His campaign apologized to the newspaper and replaced the video on YouTube with a new version. Both the old and new version quote an editorial that appeared in the Valley News more than a year ago that welcomed a Sanders candidacy, noting “Sanders has been genuinely outraged about the treatment of ordinary Americans for as long as we can remember.”
Wiley said the American Legion understands he was not at fault in the incident and is taking no action against him. The only bad effect, he said, is that he is now subject to the ribbing of his Legion fellows.
“They’ll come up and ask you for their autograph,” he said, “or they’ll ask me how the campaign is going.”
A spokesman from the Sanders campaign said he was looking into the issue.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.One of the biggest stories of 2014 so far has been the death of net neutrality. After the FCC voted last week to move forward with Tom Wheeler’s net neutrality plan, several tech companies released statements in which they reaffirmed their long-held positions opposing the proposed changes. Netflix especially has stood out as a figurehead for the net neutrality movement in recent weeks and on Tuesday, BTIG Research reported that Netflix CFO David Wells was asked about “the FCC’s view that peering and interconnection are not the same issue as net neutrality and are more like cousins or siblings.”
In his response, he stated that “if they are first cousins, they are a bit like 18th century royalty cousins and might have had a child along the way.”
For those who might not recall, Netflix has been forced by Comcast and other ISPs to cough up a “ransom” in order to resolve slowdowns caused by peering congestion. For a terrific explanation of exactly what peering is, Level 3’s VP of Content and Media recently explained it quite well while calling out Comcast, TWC and other ISPs for “deliberately harming” their own broadband service.
Wells was later asked about Verizon CEO Lowell McAdams’ nearly identical argument, in which McAdams claimed that net neutrality was a separate issue. Wells once again reiterated that it’s basically the same issue as net neutrality since it involves having to pay an ISP extra just to make sure its traffic reaches its customers at a reasonable speed.
“I would say, how can it be nothing to do with net neutrality when it still affects the ability to access content in a manner that’s consistent with what you’re paying the ISP for?” he said. “So, I guess I would respectfully disagree.”
BTIG Research has combined the original comments from the FCC and Verizon in the video below, along with Netflix’s responses:Sweat is not fat crying, it is your muscles and organs crying.
By Sam Yang - Get similar updates here
Just as it would be inappropriate to gauge a therapy session on how much you've cried, the same rule applies to sweat and working out. Some people react to stimuli by sweating, some people sweat regardless. Some can get their heat rates up without sweating, while others will sweat profusely no matter the ease of the activity. It would be irrational to assume someone who is always crying to be emotionally healthy, just as it would be to assume someone who is always sweating is physically fit. (In fact, excessive sweating can be a sign of health issues.)
Fool's Gold: Obvious Choices Can Lead to Uneducated Decisions
Sweat is one of many reactions the body will go through, but the reaction that is most important is that of adaptation. We rely on sweat because it's obvious. You can see it, smell it, feel it, and sometimes you can hear it dripping onto the floor—physical fool's gold. What you cannot see with the naked eye, initially, is whether sweat made your body any better.
The Common Approach Is Literally Stupid
Your brain is made of fat and water, and it needs both to rebuild and work properly. But the common approach to exercise is to reduce fat and sweat to reduce water weight. There is truth to the stereotype of dumb exercisers, because depleting your brain of fat and water can only make the brain dumber. This is not a judgment but a scientific truth.
Equal Parts Science, Trust, Tracking, and Patience
Like any investment, the productivity of a workout is difficult to gauge in real time. You must trust the process. Base your workouts around science, then trust the science over sweat, vomit, and tears. Keep track of your workouts and log your progress to see what the data shows. Rely on the evidence before you.
Track for the Body:
Total fat percentage
Visceral fat (fat around the organs)
Hip to waist ratio
Body Mass Index (BMI)
Waist to height ratio
Skeletal muscle percentage
Log all meals
Log quality and quantity of sleep
Stress (rating your stress from 1 to 5 every day)
Weight
Two-week running weight average
Track for the Workouts:
Number of workouts a week
Types of workouts (what exactly you did and any progress change)
Protocols (for instance are you following: high intensity training, German volume training, 5x5, CrossFit WOD, etc.)
Duration (how long your workout lasted)
A holistic approach to data: seeing the relationships between all the variables. What's important is using this information to calculate the optimal effective dosage of workouts. Improvements take time, have enough information to calculate a two-week running average, as what you do or eat now will actually show up two weeks from now.
If you act harmfully, but you do not see the effect of your behavior instantly, you may continue the harmful action. However, adverse outcomes may take time to appear. Inversely, if you act healthfully but prematurely stop when there is no immediate results, you will rob yourself of future benefits. (It's the same as someone who removes money from a savings account because they don't realize it takes 30 days for interest to accumulate and pay out.) Sweat fosters instant gratification, which is why it's misleading.
Being upset that an acorn didn't turn into a mighty oak tree overnight may cause you to uproot that acorn and try something else. In the future, will you associate the lack of trees with your past actions? If you only pay attention to those instant reactions, like sweat, you might not. You might end up in a state of confusion and limbo, losing weight and getting fit for brief periods accidentally, never knowing what triggered those adaptations. An oak tree is merely a steadfast acorn.
Sweat Obsession Can Create an Unhealthy MindsetBefore the 1996 Telecommunications Act was signed into law, almost no one in America had high-speed Internet access. Think about that – virtually no broadband just 20 years ago. Today, a 12-year old believes she has a constitutional right to a broadband connection, a 50-inch HD television, and an iPhone.
The ’96 Act unleashed nearly 1.4 trillion dollars of private sector investment over the next decade that laid the fiber and built the networks that enabled the ecosystem of devices, services and applications that fuel our daily lives.
We are proud of what the ‘96 Act has meant to our country.
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That historic law has given birth to new companies and industries. The law started a great telecommunications revolution, and these new companies are its direct beneficiaries. A whole new vocabulary developed, with a distinctively American accent: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Spotify.
Two decades later, we have entered a new phase in the digital revolution that was set off by the passage of the ’96 Act, as each of our devices, appliances, and everyday machines now connect with one another. Cars are personal computers on wheels. Watching video on our watches isn’t the stuff of Dick Tracy cartoons anymore. Refrigerators can order groceries when the milk runs out. In 1996 we called this new era the “Information Age.” Today, we should call it the “Internet of Things Age.”
The ‘96 Act continues to be our communications constitution because we passed it with strong bipartisan support. It’s no wonder that the tenets of the Act – promoting competition, expanding consumer choice, spurring economic growth – are principles that both Republicans and Democrats agree on to this day.
These goals remain as vital today as they were in 1996 when President Bill Clinton William (Bill) Jefferson ClintonInviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Howard Schultz must run as a Democrat for chance in 2020 Trump says he never told McCabe his wife was 'a loser' MORE signed the bill into law. He signed the bill with a digital pen to represent the bridge we built to the 21st century, literally underwriting the digital revolution.
That’s why we should take time to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this truly historic law.
Recently some critics of the law have suggested that the ‘96 Telecom Act was written about old rules, about an old network. They have suggested that the bipartisan work we put into that bill no longer applies to telecommunications networks of today.
But if it was just legislation about the old phone network, we would have simply held the bill signing in front of a phone booth. But we didn’t. Instead, we signed the ‘96 Telecom Act in the Library of Congress, the American shrine of knowledge.
Today, because of the ‘96 Act, volumes of information extend beyond the stacks of books in the Jefferson Library and into the homes and schools of every kid in America. The pencils and paper tablets of yesteryear have given way to the pixels and electronic tablets of today. Kids growing up in Massachusetts and Texas can now read the works of Jefferson on their iPad.
As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the ’96 Act, we believe that the law we passed two decades ago will continue to promote the innovation, investment, and the free flow of ideas that will drive our economy well beyond the 21st century. The 1996 Telecommunications Act was a model of bipartisanship and a roadmap for how Congress can once again begin to function together.
The ‘96 Act was the future then. The ‘96 Act is the future today. The ‘96 Act will be the future tomorrow.
Markey is Massachusetts’ junior senator, serving since 2013. He sits on the Commerce, Science and Transportation; the Environment and Public Works; the Foreign Relations; and the Small Business and Entrepreneurship committees. Fields served in the House from 1981 to 1997. Both were instrumental in creating the Telecommunications Act.poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201701/108/1155968404_5279823566001_5279824628001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Vice President Joe Biden said several world leaders have already asked him for assurance that Donald Trump’s comments about the intelligence community aren’t serious. Biden accuses Trump of playing 'into the Russian narrative' The vice president calls the claims of compromising information on Trump 'unsubstantiated,' but he blasts the president-elect for disparaging the intelligence community.
Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday downplayed explosive allegations that Russia has compromising information on President-elect Donald Trump, saying such claims are “unsubstantiated,” but he also warned that Trump’s constant statements casting doubt on U.S. intelligence “play into the Russian narrative” of a weakened America that allies can’t rely on.
Speaking to several reporters in his West Wing office, Biden said several world leaders have already asked him for assurance that Trump’s comments about the intelligence community aren’t serious.
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He also said he sees a sharp divergence on these issues within the incoming administration based on conversations he’s had with Vice President-elect Mike Pence: “Mike is significantly more informed about Russian conduct, potential intentions and [Vladimir] Putin’s behavior than the president-elect is, based on what the president-elect says.”
On the specific allegations that the Kremlin has compromising personal information on Trump, Biden confirmed that top intelligence officials briefed him and President Barack Obama on the claims, but he called them “totally ancillary” and “had nothing to do with what the president asked for.”
The vice president said he had read the entire document that includes the claims, some of which were included in the larger intelligence report on evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin called for cyberattacks on Democratic targets to tilt the election Trump’s way.
He said he and Obama largely dismissed the unverified information themselves as anything but awareness of documents and discussions that were making the rounds.
“The president was like, ‘What does this have to do with anything?’” Biden said, adding that there was no order from the current White House to the intelligence agencies to check the claims. “Neither of us asked for any detail.”
Yet the situation was still striking, Biden said. After over 40 years in government, hearing rumors about illegal conduct or encounters with women didn’t surprise him, but “it surprised me that it made it to the point where the FBI thought they had to pursue it.”
Biden also argued that secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson shouldn’t be confirmed unless and until he provides proof that he’s totally divested from interests that could enrich him on the job.
In the wide-ranging discussion on Thursday, Biden said he believes that despite the problems that the Democratic Party faces after its many 2016 losses, the Republican Party is in deeper trouble, both legislatively—“watch them undo Obamacare, this is going to be worth the price of admission,” he said, marveling at how the GOP will try to change people’s sense of health care back from being a right—to a larger social shift that conservatives are behind on.
“If you’re a Republican, this new Republican Party, you’re going to be tilting against windmills,” he said.
And he again bemoaned the Democratic Party’s embrace of “yielding to pedigree” instead of being the voice of the common person, fighting for dignity and embracing government as a shield against abuse of power. The world and the economy are changing, he said, but his party has been failing to explain real solutions to people—of all races, not just the white working class—who look at the struggles they’re facing and “they don’t know what to do.”
What’s going on, he said, is a churn not unlike other moments of massive technological advancement, where the answers haven’t caught up to the changes.
“Remember when you were in school and you studied the Luddites? That’s kind of where we are,” Biden said. “This is just a new version of ‘Smash the machinery.’”
Regarding Trump’s campaign against the intelligence community, Biden said, “it’s very damaging to our standing in the world for a president to take one of the crown jewels of our national defense and denigrate it,” Biden said, describing disconcerted leaders telling him, “basically, ‘Say it ain’t so, Joe.’”
Biden also took aim at Trump’s repeated comments Wednesday drawing some unclear comparison between leaks of intelligence briefings he’s gotten to Nazi Germany.
“The one thing you never want to invoke is Nazi Germany, no matter what the circumstance is, even if you’re trying to make a point that may—and I’m not suggesting it did—that may be relevant,” Biden said. “It is an overwhelming diversion from the point you’re trying to make.”
Biden called “correct” the conduct of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who oversaw the intelligence report last week and briefed Trump—and which appears to have included the unverified memos alleging a range of salacious behavior and contact between the president-elect’s team and Russia.
Trump has vigorously pushed back against the allegations, calling them “fake news” and has repeatedly blasted leaks of U.S. intelligence assessments about Russia. He has also cast doubt on the intelligence community, questioning the motivations behind the conclusion that Putin tried to help elect Trump. That conclusion has further fueled the conspiracy theory that Trump did not legitimately beat Hillary Clinton in the presidential race.
Trump’s reaction to the intelligence reports, Biden argued, is perhaps understandable from someone who has never been in government and never been exposed to the kind of work produced. Reaching into his briefcase, he held up an iPad with the seal of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on its black case, explaining that the code word-protected device gives him a full daily read-out of intelligence from throughout the world, with a feature that allows him to ask questions that are answered within hours.
“I have been impressed with the quality of the intelligence we have gotten. Disappointed a couple times when—and it’s totally understandable—it would have been nice if the intelligence community could have seen around the corner and thought how quick ISIL had metastasized and been able to move on Mosul,” Biden said, adding, “He may point to things where the intelligence community didn’t get it right. Most of the time, it’s that they didn’t get it in advance, as opposed to getting it wrong.”
Biden said he’s been pleased that Pence has been “very receptive” to hearing his advice, though he said that as the head of the transition team, the vice president-elect appears to have been overtaken with those responsibilities in a way that has limited their conversations. The lack of senior staff appointments in the vice president’s office has been an impediment as well, he argued, noting that there hasn’t been a national security adviser for the new vice president’s office for his own national security adviser to brief.
But Biden said he’s personally written a collection of memos for Pence, detailing what to say and what not to say in hotspots like Ukraine and Iraq, who to trust and not to trust, and “my perspective on the things that could explode most easily.”
The sensitivity to even what may seem like small issues and knowing when to intervene just to quash misunderstandings is part of what the world needs from America, Biden said, and depends on a functional relationship between the president and his intelligence agencies.
“If you don’t end up on the phone and say, ‘Whoa guys, let me tell you what’s going on,’ then you may have a shooting war. You may end up having things unravel,” Biden said.
In this, Biden said that he hopes Trump’s experienced advisers speak up, and have the access to shape the new president’s thinking, citing Defense Secretary-nominee James Mattis (whom he approves of) and incoming national security adviser Mike Flynn (whom he disagrees with but respects) as examples.
“It really matters that you have really smart people around you who understand context—context is all important—and can translate, particularly to a president who has no exposure whatsoever. That’s not a criticism. It’s reality,” he said. “Instincts are great—they’re even better if you have information.”
Biden started the interview by saying, sarcastically, “everything’s good and rosy.” His worries were evident in nearly every sentence.
“It’s hard to know what the president-elect’s position is, because his style is so different than any president or president-elect that I’ve been associated with,” he said. “You don’t know what he means. Start off it’s going to be a 1,000 foot wall and 80 feet thick and they’re going to pay for it, now we’re down to, ‘Well, it’ll be a wall part of the way, there’ll be overheard imagery, and maybe we’ll have a tariff and such and such.’ I never know what he means.”
As Democrats prepare to take Trump and the Republicans on, Biden dismissed the suggestion of a crisis in the party, but insisted that there has to be a real embrace of identifying problems and then explaining solutions in a way Hillary Clinton never managed, all while remembering the constant waves of titillating news that Trump surfed and the truly narrow margin he won.
“This idea that this was a great, overwhelming win—for Christ’s sake, three million fewer people voted for him, not withstanding the Electoral College, and what was it, 170,000 votes in three states?” Biden said. “Come on, man.”VICTORIA, BC - Vancouver Whitecaps FC U-23 (0W-1L-0D) narrowly missed earning a point on the road Sunday, falling 3-2 to Juan de Fuca Plate rivals Victoria Highlanders FC (1W-0L-0D) on a late penalty kick scored by Riley O’Neill at Royal Athletic Park.
HIGHLIGHTS: VICTORIA HIGHLANDERS FC 3-2 WHITECAPS FC U-23
The match was slow going in the beginning, but eventually the ‘Caps got it going as midfielder Cody Cook converted a beautiful low header on a perfectly placed corner kick by Reynold Stewart. The tally put Vancouver up 1-0 at 29 minutes.
However, Victoria wasted no time in responding, as Carlo Basso got a header of his own past Whitecaps FC U-23 goalkeeper Nolan Wirth. Basso redirected a nice cross from Cam Stokes to tie the game up 1-1 at 34 minutes.
Coming out of the half, Vancouver looked to have restored their lead, but a Nicholas Prasad goal off of a Stewart free kick was called offside.
At 82 minutes, the game turned again, as Vancouver midfielder and Winnipeg native Ali Musse put a quick strike into the top corner to put the ‘Caps up 2-1.
However, the Highlanders responded again quickly two minutes later, as Victoria sub Wesley Barrett took a pass from Basso and fired a bullet past Wirth’s outstretched fingertips.
Four minutes after that, 'Caps striker Yassin Essa ripped a 20-yard shot on target only to be denied by Victoria goalkeeper Elliott Mitrou who made a superb save.
In the first of minute stoppage time, a ball into the box found Basso, and as Wirth came out to challenge him, he was deemed to have fouled the Highlanders striker, giving the home side a last gasp penalty kick. O'Neill converted into the lower-right corner to win the game for Victoria, who now have the advantage in capturing the Juan de Fuca Plate. Vancouver will have a chance to redeem themselves later this month as they host Victoria in their home opener on Friday, May 23 at UBC Thunderbird Stadium in Vancouver.
Despite the defeat, assistant coach Steve Meadley cited the team's youth as a reason for optimism as the season progresses. “We’re all just coming together. It’s a great learning experience for the new players to come into the club and learn the way we play. They’re all good, solid players who definitely have talent and ability and as the days of training kick on here, they will learn our system, and we will be much more efficient with our performance as a team.”
Next up for Whitecaps FC U-23 is a match against Kitsap Pumas (0W-0L-0D) on Sunday, May 11. The Blue and White head to Bremerton, Washington to take on the Pumas at Gordon Park Field |
who was named MVP of the final versus Toronto after racking up eight saves, almost defied physics with the acrobatic, one-handed save that required quickness, flexibility, strength, soccer IQ, and much more. It not only kept the match tied at 0-0 in the second overtime period but also preserved what ended up being a historic season.
To get a more scientific analysis of the play, GeekWire caught up with Miguel Morales, an associate physics professor at the University of Washington who also happens to be a life-long soccer fan and was watching the match when Frei made the save.
“This was fun for me to watch it as a fan, when everything happened so fast, and then go back and watch it in slow motion,” he said. “The physics analogy is about how far Frei can go to cover the net. It’s speed multiplied by time. Athletes at that level are almost playing a chess match, where the moves take a few hundredths of a second between each other. There are a lot of really good athletes out there and a lot of people who have pretty high speeds. But I think what really separates out somebody like Frei is the time. It’s all the little things that steal you those few hundredths of a second, so you can get a little farther because you’re making decisions faster, or setting things up.”
Here’s more from Morales breaking down the amazing play by Frei, who ended up getting a tattoo to commemorate the save.
Morales: “The first thing I saw was actually from his teammates in a series of moves that stole a little bit of time here and a little bit of time there. Jozy Altidore, who headed the shot, was coming into the box from further than normal. That’s because Sounders defenders Roman Torres and Chad Marshall were playing him so hard throughout the game when he got the ball up front. Later in the match, he started playing back a little bit so he could come at the ball.
Ideally, Altidore wants to head a hooking line drive cross at the six or eight yard box. If you do that, there’s no time. It doesn’t matter how fast the goalkeeper is — you just can’t cover that much of the net.
Torres and Marshall had already stolen a tenth of a second by pushing the play from the 8-yard line back to the 12-yard line.
Then, Torres pushed Toronto forward Tosaint Ricketts, who made the pass, all the way down to the goal line. Ricketts made a beautiful cross, but he had to loop it because Marshall was positioned in the passing lane. It’s not coming in at speed; that gives you another few hundredths of a second. Leading into Frei’s incredible play, his teammates already stole him a couple little ticks. He made use of that.
Morales: On the actual play, the first thing I noticed was his foot placement when the ball was struck. To use another analogy, if you’re standing and you want to suddenly go to the left or if you want to run forward, the first thing you have to do is step back and plant your foot. If you want to go to the left, you have to plant your foot to the right so you can push off and go.
But Frei didn’t have to take that step. As a really good goalkeeper, his feet were already out and his foot was in the position where as soon as the ball was struck, he had already taken that step. That steals another few hundredths of a second. He’s ready to move.
It’s fascinating because you hear people talk about — and it’s so hard for a fan to understand — but you hear about all kinds of professional athletes talk about footwork. What are they talking about? I’ve been struck with Earl Thomas and Richard Sherman of the Seahawks talking about watching film and watching their footwork. If you don’t have your feet in the right place, you have to take that extra half-step. That costs you time. You have to be anticipatory. You have to be ready to move when it is there. The footwork that Frei had was a key part of him being able to make the play. And it happened before the ball is struck.
At that point, it’s a quick step, an incredible jump, and a huge reach out with one hand. You could not have touched it with two hands; you have to use one.
Morales: Then the thing that struck me at the end was the strength in his arm. If you think about having somebody throw you a soccer ball — which is not a light ball — from 12 yards out, and you stick your hand straight over your head in the full outreach position and not allow the hand to move more than a couple centimeters when that hits, that’s incredible shoulder strength in order to keep that stiff.
Not only was it the shoulder strength that didn’t allow the ball to cross the goal line, but also the wrist and hand strength in order to not have the ball bend his hand back and deflect into the corner of the net. You see that all the time, even with professional goalies, when the ball is struck hard enough and they get a hand on it but aren’t able to deflect it far enough. The amount of leverage Frei had on that, that’s why these folks live in the weight room. You have to have that amazing combination of quickness and strength. You can’t have one or the other. That’s just an amazingly athletic little piece of the play.
As a fan, it just happened so fast. All you can do is cheer. And be stunned. But then to go back and see all these little decisions that separate out the very best players — it really is kind of a chess match that’s happening at speed and all these little decisions that have to be made. That’s really what separates out the great athletes in a team-like game, is that ability to process information.”Launch gallery Photo: Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune
A decade ago, TV writer John Rodgers was trying to figure out how low George W. Bush’s approval ratings would go. A friend predicted 27 percent, because that was the percentage of the vote the hapless Alan Keyes received in his comically lopsided Senate race against Barack Obama. “Twenty-seven percent of the population of Illinois voted for him,” his friend said. “They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgment.” (Bush would drop to 25 percent in the Gallup poll, making it a pretty impressive prediction.)
The Tribune just polled Rahm Emanuel’s approval rating. What do you know: it is 27 percent.
It’s a big poll for a local politician, almost 1,000 respondents, and Emanuel gets killed on basically every question. The only thing resembling a bright spot is that “only” 41 percent of respondents think he should resign, versus 51 percent who don’t. But the racial breakdown is dramatic. Whites are 26 percent for resigning versus 69 percent against, while blacks and Hispanics have basically same split: 51 percent and 50 percent for resignation, respectively, versus 40 percent against. It’s a big blow for a politician who needed the black vote to win a surprisingly contested second term.
How bad is 27 percent? It’s real bad. According to my search of Tribune job approval polls, since the era of Daley dominance began no mayor has ever been this unpopular. In fact, it’s so bad that it’s six points below the previous worst.
Richard J. Daley
He served before the age of regular job-approval polling, but a Gallup poll taken 10 years after his death in 1986 gave him a 73 percent job-approval rating. Before his last election, Daley won a Trib poll in a four-way mayoral primary with 55 percent.
Michael Bilandic
Remember him? He was the machine politician whose handling of the 1979 blizzard—both logistically and politically—is a famous cautionary tale for urban leaders. Prior to it, he had a 48-percent approval rating, according to a WBBM poll; afterwards, he fell to 33 percent.
Jane Byrne
She won because of Bilandic’s collapse, but a year later had a mere 35 percent job-approval rating—and, according to the Tribune in 1980, her good/excellent numbers were actually lower than Bilandic’s.
Harold Washington
Racial tensions caused problems for Washington in City Council, but his top-line numbers were good: 54 percent approval versus 36 percent disapproval in 1985 (though the split was 33/58 for whites), and 67 percent approval in 1987. The Trib used the northwest and southwest sides as a proxy for white voter approval that year, and he notched 47 percent in the former and 32 percent in the latter.
Eugene Sawyer
Washington’s successor was unable to fill his shoes, but his numbers weren’t atrocious. In 1988 the Tribune polled residents on a number of questions about his performance; 55 percent thought he was not “strong, decisive, and independent”; 54 percent thought he was not an “effective leader”; and 45 percent said he wasn’t “good at getting things done.”
Richard M. Daley
For most of his tenure, Da Mare maintained high approval ratings: 80 percent in 1991, 79 percent in 1999. After the Hired Truck scandal, arguably the biggest of his time in office, it slipped to 53 percent in 2005. By late 2009, after the parking-meter deal turned into a disaster, even the great Daley slipped to a Byrne-level 35 percent.
As for Rahm? His highest job approval ratings are among whites, but they’re bad, too: 37 percent, a mere four points above Harold Washington’s approval rating among whites in 1985.
ShareA rendering of Apple's so-called iWatch. Federico Ciccarese Apple will unveil a wearable computing device on Sept. 9, according to Re/code's John Paczkowski.
The so-called iWatch will debut alongside the iPhone 6, also expected to be unveiled that day with two screen sizes: 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches. (The iPhone 5S has a 4-inch screen.)
Paczkowski had previously reported that the iWatch might come out in October, but it appears Apple has bumped up its plans.
Apple's wearable will likely have HealthKit and HomeKit integration, enabling users to track their health and fitness and use the wearable to control other smart devices at home.
Apple hasn't yet sent out invites to the Sept. 9 event. It usually announces product launches about a week before they happen.
NOW WATCH: This Hidden iPhone Feature Will Literally Turn HeadsBy Jill Fraser
MELBOURNE, Australia
Australia’s government has announced proposed policy changes under which adult asylum seekers who travel to its shores by boat will be banned for life from entering the country.
This means that even asylum seekers who have chosen to return to their home country will be banned from obtaining any kind of visa, even as tourists.
“The door to Australia is closed to those who seek to come here by boat with a people smuggler -- it is closed,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters in Sydney on Sunday.
At a joint press conference -- ironically held at the same time hundreds of refugee advocates marched in rallies planned around the country calling on Australia to “bring them [refugees] here” -- Turnbull and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton dashed all hope that this will ever occur.
Turnbull and Dutton announced that the tough new proposals, to be tabled in parliament next week, would prevent all refugees and asylum seekers currently being held in processing centers on the Pacific islands of Manus and Nauru from ever coming to Australia.
“The laws will to apply to any asylum seeker sent to Nauru or Papua New Guinea's Manus Island for offshore immigration processing since July 19, 2013 - the date Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd declared: 'As of today, asylum seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia,” Turnbull said.
“The government will introduce legislation in the next parliamentary sitting week to amend the migration act to prevent irregular maritime arrivals taken to a processing country for making a valid application for an Australian visa.”
Referring to the scenario as “a battle of will between the Australian people, represented by its government” and “people smugglers”, Turnbull said the law change was necessary to support key government border protection policies.
Human rights lawyer David Manne told Anadolu Agency that Turnbull and Dutton had failed to make a case justifying the need for the proposed changes.
“Given the extremely harsh measures already in place the central question is, why is this deemed necessary, particularly when the government has been saying that the harsh measures currently in place have been so successful,” Manne said during a phone interview.
“This does nothing to resolve the appalling and unsustainable situation for people left in limbo on Nauru and Manus or address their plight,” he added.
“What it does is seek to impose a lifelong sentence by way of a VISA ban on innocent people who fled from abuse.”
Under the proposed changes, the immigration minister would also have power to lift the ban if they believe it's in the public interest for someone to be allowed in to Australia.
Greens Immigration spokesman Senator Nick McKim issued a statement maintaining that the proposed changes run “contrary to international law and our obligations under the Refugee Convention”.
McKim accused the government of sinking to “a new low in its latest attempt to punish innocent people seeking asylum”.
Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek said it was too soon to say if Labor would support the bill.
Nicholas Reece, formerly senior strategist to ex-Prime Minister Julia Gillard and a Principal Fellow at the Centre for Public Policy at the University of Melbourne, told Anadolu Agency he wouldn’t be surprised if Labor supports the bill “because it’s not inconsistent with their current policy position” -- albeit that “Labor’s policy is more humane and promotes transparency.”
Manne said that extinguishing all hope of detainees on Manus Island and Nauru will “exacerbate their existing high levels of stress and anguish”.
Refugee advocates are voicing concern.
The ABC reports Save the Children saying the decision would also impair the chances of many refugees of reuniting with their families who are already in Australia.
"We know from our past experience working on Nauru that these kinds of announcements can lead to significant unrest and despair among the refugees and asylum seekers who are barely hanging on after spending, in many cases, over three years living in limbo," Director of Policy and Public Advocacy Mat Tinkler said.
"Without offering these children and their families a realistic, humane and viable resettlement option, the Australian Government is only further exacerbating the mental anguish and loss of hope that we have seen build on both Nauru and Manus,” he added.
"We have grave concerns that this kind of announcement will push people over the edge."
Right-wing One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has welcomed the policy and is taking credit for it, declaring on Twitter it was "good to see that it looks like the Government is now taking its cues from One Nation".
McKim argued that the policy is a "desperate attempt to reabsorb the votes from Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party" -- which returned to Parliament in July.Grow Vegetables give you 16 great ideas for harvesting your own produce easily and affordably. Don't get stung by high prices at the grocery store for vegetables that have been trucked in from all over the world, grow you own and be in control of what you eat. Whether you have a spacious backyard, or live in a tiny apartment, we have projects to get you growing today. All projects come from Instructables.com, are written by vegetable-growing experts, and contain pictures for each step so you can plan your new crop today.
Instructables is the most popular project-sharing community on the Internet. We provide easy publishing tools to enable passionate, creative people like you to share their most innovative projects, recipes, skills, and ideas. Instructables has over 40,000 projects covering all subjects, including crafts, art, electronics, kids, home improvement, pets, outdoors, reuse, bikes, cars, robotics, food, decorating, woodworking, costuming, games, and more. Check it out today!
Sarah James
Editor, Food & Living
Instructables.comIn the real life version of Ottawa, Parliament Hill looms over the downtown, the Rideau Canal bisects the city, and the Senators take to the Canadian Tire Centre ice way out in Kanata.
In Minecraft Ottawa, none of that's set in stone.
The recently-unveiled GeoOttaWow lets Minecraft players explore and refashion Ottawa's streets, houses, train tracks, as well as major buildings like Parliament Hill and City Hall.
"I think we're one of the first in Canada to do this, so that's a good thing," said Coun. Rick Chiarelli, chair of the city's information technology sub-committee, on CBC Ottawa's All In a Day Friday afternoon.
For those unfamiliar with how the game works, Minecraft lets players dig (mine) and build (craft) nearly anything they want using Lego-like blocks and bricks.
The game — which has no levels to complete or mandatory objectives to accomplish — has proven immensely popular. In 2014, its Swedish designers Mojang were bought by technology giant Microsoft for $2.5 billion.
GeoOttaWow came about after a staff member took the city's open data and uploaded it over the holidays, said Charles Duffett, the city's chief information officer.
Duffett told All In A Day host Alan Neal that the freedom of being able to shape the nation's capital to your liking gets people — especially young people — invested in the future of their city.
Game teaches 'principles of civil planning'
"Now you have kids who are experimenting with basic principles of municipal planning. So if they think, for instance, that an outdoor stadium should be somewhere, they can build one — and then they can look at what impact it would have on that area, and what the concerns would be," said Duffett.
Ottawa is one of the first cities in Canada to be made available on Minecraft, said Coun. Rick Chiarelli, chair of the information technology sub-committee. (CBC)
"They may discover they're learning some principles of civil planning."
Other places in the real world have made themselves available on Minecraft, perhaps most notably the entire country of Denmark, which can be torn down and built back up according to players' whims and desires.
According to Chiarelli, in one important way, the Minecraft version of Ottawa is even better than the real thing.
"It also shows all the streets plowed."New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that a man forcibly having sex with his minor wife, if she is above 15 years of age, should not come under IPC Section 375 (rape). This exception in the rape law, the Centre said, is to "protect the institution of marriage," Hindustan Times reported.
The government was responding to a plea filed before the court by the NGO Independent Thought, urging the court to include all minors, irrespective of marital status, under Section 375. Currently an exception to the rape law states that, "Sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not rape."
Marriage law in India does not allow a woman to be legally married before the age of 18. Consensual sex with a minor outside of marriage is also considered rape by the law. Given all of this, Times of India quoted the NGO's lawyer Gaurav Agrawal as arguing, "We see a girl under 18 years of age as a child in POCSO Act, but once she is married, she is no more a child under the exception 2 to Section 375 of the IPC. This is totally inconsistent. The truth is that a girl under 15 is still a child, married or not. The parliament has to protect the child."
The Centre, however, through its lawyer Binu Tamta, resisted the NGO's plea. Tamta argued that child marriages were a reality in India and that "the institution of marriage must be protected. Otherwise, the children from such marriages will suffer."
"Isn't this an incentive for child marriage?" Justice Madan B. Lokur asked, on hearing Tamta's defence.
The government claimed there are 23 million child brides in the country and reading down the exception to Section 375 would make the men involved more susceptible to persecution, at which Justice Deepak Gupta said, according to Hindustan Times, "This reflects badly on the government."
According to the Telegraph, the apex court has given the Centre two weeks to provide data relating to the prosecution of those involved in child marriage, the number of prohibition officers appointed by states as per the Prohibition of Child Marriages Act, 2006 and medical records on the impact of such marriages on children.It looks like there are big changes underway at Bleacher Report. At least two prominent people (Marc Kohn, the senior director of video programming, and Barrett Sallee, the lead SEC writer and national CFB video analyst) have already left the company, and Awful Announcing sources indicate that around 50 positions may be cut this week. It appears that Kohn is leaving for a video role at Barstool Sports, while Sallee’s post doesn’t indicate a destination (beyond the radio roles he’s currently serving in), but it sounds like there are many more changes to come. It also sounds like B/R may be drastically changing what they cover. Here’s the key part of Sallee’s post on his departure:
Tuesday was the last day that you’ll see content from me under the B/R banner. Due to changes in direction, the need for day-to-day coverage of college football was no longer needed.
Beyond those two prominent departures, sources have told Awful Announcing that most of the college football and CFB recruiting staffers have been laid off, and that the video department is being downsized. The video change in particular is interesting, as Kohn was promoting B/R’s future in that realm as recently as October. Here’s the key part of what he told sportsvideo.org’s Brandon Costa then, in relation to their live productions of three high school football games:
“We’re going to be involved in this space for some time to come,” he explains, “but, right now, we are really focused on being able to zero in on these three games, learn a lot, and then figure out where we are going to take this next.”
Maybe Bleacher Report won’t be taking those high school live productions anywhere next. And maybe their college football coverage will be dropping off as well. It’s notable that it’s under “More Sports” on their homepage, behind the likes of college basketball and the NHL (that’s apparently a common move in the offseason, but has been done later after National Signing Day in the past). Keep in mind that Bleacher Report is owned by Turner, too, and Turner has good reasons to cover the NBA, MLB and college basketball thanks to rights deals (and has to cover the NFL, given its popularity), but has much less incentive to cover college football than ESPN or Fox. It will be interesting to see how Bleacher Report’s video and college football coverage evolves from here.
Update: A source close to the situation told AA that Kohn’s departure is separate from the other cuts, as he left on his own to take the Barstool job. The source also emphasized that Bleacher Report is growing overall, hiring 170 people over the last year, and currently has 45 open positions, and that they’re focused on their premium content (doubling down on video with emphasis on compelling storytelling and shareable content such as Game of Zones and Gridiron Heights, as well as text from big-name writers like Mike Freeman, Howard Beck and the key contributors to B/R Mag). The source said these cuts in particular are a very isolated situation and mainly involve B/R reducing duplication and essentially shutting down any last pieces of its user generation roots. The source also indicated that Bleacher Report remains committed to video and covering college football, regardless of Turner’s rights agreements, including content from its top CFB writers and other day-to-day coverage that comes from aggregated sources.
It should be noted that Sallee was not a “user-generation” hire. He’s a respected writer and reporter who joined Bleacher Report from College Football News in March 2012, and provided plenty of credibility for their site. Also, while Kohn’s departure was of his own volition, he’s a prominent loss as well. These other cuts may have an impact too. While B/R is hiring elsewhere, it’s clear they’re changing how they do things. We’ll see how that works out.MADISON, Wis. -- Wisconsin can win the Big Ten championship on Saturday. Yet there remains a giant what-if hovering over this Badgers season.
What if quarterback Joel Stave had been named the starter back in mid-August? Would he have still developed the "yips" that caused him to miss the first four games? And would Wisconsin be playing not just for a Big Ten title this weekend vs. Ohio State but also a playoff berth?
STAVE "YIPS" TIMELINE Here is a timeline of Joel Stave's battle with the "yips," a mental block that made it difficult for him to complete even a simple, short pass. Aug. 22: Wisconsin decides to start Tanner McEvoy over Stave at QB for the opener against LSU. Stave's yips begin right after that decision. Aug. 30: Stave throws several erratic passes during warmups before the LSU game and does not play. Wisconsin blows a 17-point lead as McEvoy throws for only 50 yards with two interceptions. Sept. 2: Wisconsin releases a statement in the morning from head coach Gary Andersen saying Stave will be shut down with a shoulder injury. That night, Andersen retracts the statement and says Stave isn't hurt. Stave tells reporters that he has a mental block. Sept. 30: Stave meets with reporters and says the yips have passed. Oct. 4: Stave makes his 2014 debut, replacing McEvoy late in the first half at Northwestern. He throws three interceptions as Wisconsin loses 20-14. Oct. 11: Stave makes his first start of the season in a 38-28 win over Illinois. It's the first of seven straight wins for the Badgers behind Stave, who has thrown for seven touchdowns and just one interception as the starter. -- Brian Bennett
It's an intriguing question. Perhaps the Badgers don't blow a 17-point second-half lead in the opener against LSU if Stave could have helped provide some semblance of a passing threat. Maybe they don't lose to Northwestern on Oct. 4, when a clearly rusty Stave tried to lead a comeback despite throwing three interceptions.
We'll never know the answer, of course, and neither Stave nor Wisconsin are all that interested in revisiting the past. They'd rather talk about what came next, and how Stave might now be playing the best football of his career.
"It's one hell of a journey, when you go back and start looking at what that young man has been through," Wisconsin coach Gary Andersen said last week. "And he overcame it himself, which is the greatest thing."
Stave will tell you he didn't get through those difficult weeks alone. He leaned heavily on his family and friends, though initially he kept his struggles to himself. He has admitted the mental block that prevented him from delivering even a short pass with any accuracy began right after Andersen anointed Tanner McEvoy as the starter. This despite the fact that Stave had started all 13 games the previous season and by all accounts had outplayed McEvoy earlier in training camp.
His older brother, Bryan, remembers talking with Stave right after Andersen informed the team of his decision.
"He was obviously disappointed, but he seemed pretty upbeat like nothing was really bothering him as much as it," Bryan Stave said. "But I know how competitive he is, so I knew things were killing him inside."
Still, Bryan said Stave's family didn't really know about the throwing problems in the preseason. The issue first started to become public when Stave looked erratic in pregame warmups before the season opener against LSU. The Tuesday after that loss is when Andersen announced Stave had an injured shoulder, before retracting that hours later as Stave told the media about his mental hurdles.
It was a bizarre series of events, to say the least, and the following day his parents, Bryan and his sister Rachel convened an emergency meeting in Madison. They went out for a late-night dinner and talked about his situation for about two hours. The family's message: we love you, no matter what.
"We let him know that for us, it's not about football," said Karl Stave, Joel's dad. "It's about making good decisions and being in a good position to be productive in life. Football is great, and we support him there, but we wanted to make sure he understood there's much more than that for us."
Karl and Barb Stave made sure all three of their children -- Rachel was a diver for Wisconsin before injuring her neck last year -- became well-rounded, active people. They didn't allow video games or have cable TV in their Greenfield, Wisconsin, home. Joel and Bryan both play the piano and guitar, and Joel is majoring in civil engineering, just like his dad. Though playing sports was a huge part of their children's lives, it was supposed to be just one facet of them.
"It's one hell of a journey, when you go back and start looking at what that young man has been through. And he overcame it himself, which is the greatest thing."
So Stave's recovery centered on making football a game again, not a pressure point. A couple of hours after he sat out Wisconsin's Week 2 win against Western Illinois, he and his brother returned to Camp Randall Stadium to throw the ball around. Bryan, who's a good athlete in his own right, said he sailed a pass from the 42-yard line through the field goal uprights. Joel congratulated him, then backed up five more yards and ran to his left before zipping a throw between the uprights and into the stands.
"He threw it about 60 yards on the run and made it look like it was nothing," Bryan said. "So I knew then that there was nothing physically wrong with him. He just had to get back to having more fun."
Stave also threw with his best friend from high school back home on the Badgers' bye week, and he would get in extra tosses every day after practice with receiver Jordan Fredrick.
"I knew at some point I was going to come out of it and I was going to be fine," Stave told ESPN.com. "I had to always have that mindset that I'm fine, that it's just a game and that I was going to be better for having come through this."
Wisconsin has used a two-quarterback system since Stave returned against Northwestern, bringing McEvoy in as a running option. But Stave has started the past seven games, and the Badgers have won them all. He has thrown seven touchdowns with just one interception during that span.
The past two games may have been his finest moments. At Iowa, he converted several key third downs in a 26-24 win, including a third-and-13 pass to Melvin Gordon and a 12-yard scramble on third-and-8 to salt the game away.
Wisconsin QB Joel Stave is having fun again. Need proof? Look at the wins and the TD passes. Jeff Hanisch/USA TODAY Sports
Last week in the de facto Big Ten West Division championship game, Minnesota all but dared Wisconsin to pass the ball by playing their safeties close to the line of scrimmage. Stave went 11-for-18 for 215 yards and two touchdowns while also drawing some pass interference penalties against one-on-one coverage down the field.
Andersen said Stave is "probably as comfortable since we've all been here together" in his reads and understanding of the protection scheme.
"He is seeing the field very, very well," Andersen said. "I'm not an offensive guru, but I look at him and I think he's a very talented quarterback playing out there right now and doing a very nice job."
Stave's teammates respect the work he put in to get back on track. Center Dan Voltz called him "the hardest-working player on the team, day in and day out." Right tackle Rob Havenstein said Stave was the team's "savior" against Iowa and he "has really stepped up as the leader of this team." Running back Corey Clement said Stave's confidence "is skyrocketing right now."
Improbable as it sounds, Stave will be the closest thing to a star quarterback in the Big Ten championship game, as Ohio State will have a first-time starter in Cardale Jones. Stave was redshirting as a freshman when Wisconsin beat Michigan State in the 2011 game and was out with a broken collarbone when the Badgers beat Nebraska in Indianapolis in 2012. So he's really looking forward to this moment.
"They're a top 5 team and kind of a brand name," he said. "Being able to play a team like that for a championship is everything you want."
The what-if question may always linger around this Wisconsin season. But the reality of what happened with Stave is pretty important to remember, too.
"It was definitely a life lesson for him," Karl Stave said. "There are disappointments in life. But you've got to battle through it, and the sun will come up the next day."We usually think of the Civil War as the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history based on the number of men who went off to fight and never returned home. The definitive book on how this veritable avalanche of death changed American social culture was written by the historian Drew Gilpin Faust, who otherwise spends her days running a little university in Cambridge, Mass. Her book describes how in just four years, more than 600,000 men perished at a time when the country's total population (including slaves) was slightly above 31 million.
To put this into perspective, total mortality in World War II was 405,000 out of a national population count of 132 million. In other words, in the conflict with the second-highest number of casualties, the mortality rate was.003 percent. The Civil War mortality percentage was.019, almost ten times the casualty rate of World War II. And in fact, the Civil War numbers may be understated, according to recent scholarly publications, by as much as 25%. Wow!
Given my interest in the medical response to gun violence, I decided to look at the Civil War data in a little more depth. First, and this is a well-known fact, two-thirds of all Civil War mortality, perhaps even higher on the rebel side, were not from battlefield injuries, but from contagious diseases which spread like veritable wildfire among stationery troops. The biggest killer was typhus, which continued to decimate armies up through World War I. Next in line was 'acute diarrhea,' followed by dysentery, pneumonia and various types of 'fevers,' that were classified as'miasmatic' disease.
All of the above information and much more can be found in a remarkable document, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, a 6,000-page collection that was prepared and published by the United States Surgeon General five years after the war came to an end. Most of the data was collected from military medical units that were located at or near the battlefields themselves, or ran the military hospitals that sprang up in larger cities, particularly Washington, D.C. By war's end there were more than 20,000 beds in military hospitals in and around the nation's capital, one of which happened to provide a bed for my mother when she gave birth in 1944 to me.
Roughly 90,000 men in the Union army were killed in battle or died from gunshot injuries either during or after they were being treated for their wounds. The figure has to be used with caution because, in fact, the numbers for troops who lost their lives while fighting did not come from the Surgeon General, but from the Office of Adjutant General, which was responsible for verifying battle deaths in order to figure out pension/survivor benefits during and after the war.
Now check this out. In fact, physicians and surgeons treated more than 235,000 cases of gunshot wounds over the course of the conflict, of which less than 15% ultimately died. That would be a pretty impressive case fatality ratio for what was the birth of trauma surgery, except that roughly 70% of all gun wounds were to the extremities, particularly arms and hands, two areas of the body which are not particularly vulnerable to injuries which lead to death. What this reflected, Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg notwithstanding, was that most battles involved troops who were stationed behind stone walls or in trenches with the torso well out of sight.Jack Dempsey/Associated Press
Sprite 6 Mix is the delicious and refreshing joint venture between LeBron James and Coca-Cola.
Perhaps you have heard of either of them.
The Atlanta Business Chronicle's Jacques Couret reports that the Miami Heat star is getting his very own beverage, which will be available by "mid-March."
Couret gives us an idea of what we can expect as far as the drink's taste: "The limited edition 'Sprite 6 Mix' by LeBron James combines the taste of traditional Sprite with a cherry and orange flavor, Atlanta-based Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) said."
Sneaker and sports-apparel deals are nice and all, but it has to be peculiar to know that you can consume a commercial beverage that you helped concoct.
Four MVP awards, two championships and 10 All-Star nods were clearly not enough, so we can go ahead and say this James kid is doing alright. In fact, it's safe to say he finally made it.
ESPN's Darren Rovell shows off the bottle you can look for shortly in various stores around the nation:
Rovell's ESPN report features a statement from James, who sounds absolutely ecstatic to have his name emblazoned across a soft drink.
"I never imagined I would have my own flavor someday," James said. "I had a great time working with the Sprite team to turn my favorite flavors into a pretty cool variation of one of my favorite brands. I'm proud of what we created and I'm excited for my fans to try it."
Sadly, much like your favorite athlete wearing your favorite team's uniform, the opportunity to experience this is fleeting. The special-edition beverage will be available for a limited time only and come in both "19.2-ounce cans and 20-ounce bottles" (via Rovell).
The ESPN business reporter also brings up the fact that the 29-year-old NBA superstar has had a deal with Coca-Cola Co. since his rookie season with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Jesse D. Garrabrant/Getty Images
Since that time, James has enjoyed a wealth of endorsements |
school to admit women or go private. Today, Adams thinks it’s good that VMI went co-ed. But that’s beside the point. Like it or not, the high court has spoken.Australian investors love property, it has been a star performer. Most of us can't wait to buy that next investment property. A well structured investment property portfolio can be a great source of wealth creation. It will provide long term capital growth, give you tax savings today, and be a source of income in the future. It's no wonder that we love our bricks and mortar.
Over the past five years, more and more Aussies have been buying investment properties with their super funds. Many are using a special type of home loan designed for SMSFs. It's called a 'Limited Recourse Borrowing Arrangement' (LRBA),
Setting up a super loan requires an accountant and financial planner. They will help you adjust your super fund so it is set up for a SMSF mortgage. You will need a financial plan recommending you purchase a super property. You might also need to do a little tweaking of trust deeds before you are ready to go.
The market for SMSF lending is small, but is growing fast. In June 2009, the SMSF share of the mortgage market was just under $500 Million. By June 2014, this figure had grown more than 17 times and was over $8.5 Billion. Superannuation lending is one of the fastest growing sectors in the Australian mortgage industry. Australians are already using property as a way to build wealth for retirement. It makes sense that we'd want to use our superannuation for this. After all, the purpose of super, is to be our retirement savings vehicle.
Like all mortgages, you need to qualify for a SMSF Loan. The bank will assess a superannuation home loan based on:Dolores Bojorquez, of Campbell, drove to the store to do some grocery shopping one morning this past fall. When she returned home an hour later, she found that thieves had climbed in through the kitchen window of her locked house and taken at least $10,000 in jewelry — including her wedding ring — as well as two new TVs.
Just like that, the 78-year-old retired cook became a victim of the fastest-growing category of crimes in the Bay Area: property crime. For all the attention paid to violent crimes, burglary, theft and auto theft each year touch tens of thousands of local residents — and often leave them feeling violated.
“Every time you go to get something, you realize it’s not there. Every day I seem to notice one more thing,” Bojorquez said. “And they can’t be replaced.”
Property crime in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Contra Costa, Alameda and San Francisco counties jumped by a combined average of 17.5 percent from 2011 to 2012, totaling 261,207 incidents over the past two years, according to data collected by this the Bay Area News Group. In 2012, that amounted to one property crime in the five-county area every four minutes — and it is continuing to surge in the first few months of this year.
As residents have fretted and seethed, law enforcement officials and criminal justice experts have debated the cause. Many point to police budget cuts, which have forced strapped departments to focus on battling higher-profile or violent crimes. A number of police chiefs also blame the state’s efforts to reduce prison overcrowding by sending felons to local jails, where they serve shorter sentences and get back on the streets faster. However, no comprehensive data is available to prove the chiefs’ theory.
The Bay Area News Group analysis shows burglaries in the five South Bay, East Bay and Peninsula counties jumped by a combined average of about 23 percent from 2011 to 2012 (not all agencies provided data). Vehicle thefts saw the largest spike, about 35 percent over the same period.
Some Bay Area cities experienced an even larger hike in burglaries, including an increase of 43 percent in Oakland, 63 percent in Gilroy and 59 percent in Colma.
“Property crimes in general are spiking,” San Mateo police Chief Susan Manheimer said. “Crews that are loosely connected to each other and the outlying urban areas are coming in and just having a field day in our local communities.”
Although most police departments haven’t compiled data for the start of 2013, burglary, theft and vehicle theft seem to be continuing to rise in the agencies that provided numbers to this newspaper. During the first three months of this year, burglaries in San Jose rose by 9.2 percent compared with 2012, while vehicle thefts rose by 49 percent. In San Mateo, burglaries in the same period of 2013 were up by 45 percent.
Campbell police Capt. David Carmichael says the combination of lower police staffing levels and the state’s effort to reduce prison populations, known as “realignment,” make it “hard to imagine that wouldn’t result in crime increases.”
But San Jose police Sgt. Jim Unland, president of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, says blaming realignment at this stage is a “political red herring” used by some city leaders to draw attention from budget decisions that have shrunk police staffing.
“I’m sure it isn’t helping, and it sounds good to say. But show me the hard data,” he said. “This (burglary) problem has been going on for two years. ”
However, at least one city is tracking problems with prisoners who were released faster. Antioch police say they are following more than 100 such cases and attribute two homicides and a pair of officer-involved shootings to that group.
“They say these are nonviolent offenders, but that’s only their last offense,” Antioch police Lt. Diane Aguinaga said. “These people are violent.”
Not every city saw property crime spike last year. Cities such as South San Francisco and East Palo Alto saw burglaries and theft drop by double digits. In South San Francisco, which was one of the epicenters of a burglary rush last spring, police zeroed in on the crime near a cluster of hotels where crooks targeted the electronics and luggage in visitors’ rental cars. Officers ran extra patrols and trained clerks to watch for thieves. The result of those efforts, South San Francisco police Sgt. Bruce McPhillips said: Burglaries were down by nearly 15 percent in 2012 from the year before.
Police and experts agree that Great Recession-driven budget cuts that left the region’s biggest cities — San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland — with up to 25 percent fewer officers are a key factor in the spike.
San Jose had more than 1,400 sworn officers in 2008 but currently has just 911 officers ready to deploy. In September, the department reassigned four of the six burglary detectives to street patrol. That left two San Jose detectives dedicated to investigating the 1,369 reported burglaries for the first three months of the year, according to Officer Albert Morales.
“When you look at the last 20 years, there’s been a substantial drop in crime from the early 1990s, and a great deal of that was attributed to policing strategies,” said Alex Gerould, assistant professor of criminal justice at San Francisco State. “When you have a 20 percent cut (in police), you reduce the ability of police to mobilize specialized task forces that saturate particularly troublesome neighborhoods and areas.”
Less intense enforcements allow the small percentage of thieves responsible for most crimes to find “seams and opportunities,” Gerould added.
That’s why Unland, of San Jose, is suggesting a regional burglary task force similar to the Regional Auto Theft Task Force in Santa Clara County. In an era of dwindling manpower, he said, each agency in the county could contribute an officer — part-time or otherwise — to a task force focused solely on catching burglars wherever they operate.
Criminals tend not to respect jurisdictional lines. In January, a former San Jose State football player was sentenced to seven years in state prison for burglarizing Bay Area homes in multiple counties.
Kariem McFarlin, of Alameda, targeted affluent homes, including the Palo Alto residence of the late Steve Jobs, where he stole $60,000 worth of Tiffany & Co. jewelry, several Apple gadgets, kitchen appliances and the California driver’s license of the late Apple CEO. Prosecutors say McFarlin also was responsible for burglaries in Alameda, Marin and San Francisco counties.
“Criminals don’t care about city boundaries,” Unland said. “These aren’t the kids who do this every once in a while. These are the ones that commit burglaries every day.”
Contact Mark Gomez at 408-920-5869. Follow him at Twitter.com/MarkMgomez. Contact Joshua Melvin at 650-348-4335. Follow him at Twitter.com/melvinreport. Contact Robert Salonga at 408-920-5002. Follow him at Twitter.com/robersalonga.'Stand Your Ground' law: What's legal?
The "Stand Your Ground" law, which enables people who perceive a threat to use deadly force without first trying to retreat from a confrontation, was a landmark when it passed in 2005. Since then, 16 more states have adopted similar laws, which are far more lenient than the widely adopted "Castle Doctrine," which allows people to defend themselves in their homes.
At the center of the controversy surrounding the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin is a Florida law that changed America's definition of self-defense.
George Zimmerman, the community-watch leader who shot Trayvon during an altercation in a gated Sanford community last month, told police he was acting in self-defense. They have not pressed charges.
About Florida's law:
Q: How did law enforcement respond to the law?
A: Prosecutors across the state opposed the law before it was enacted Oct. 1, 2005. In the following five months, there were at least 13 shootings in Central Florida where self-defense was claimed. Out of six men killed and four more wounded in the cases, only one was armed. Some Orlando-area police agencies simply stopped investigating shootings involving self-defense claims and referred them directly to state prosecutors to decide.
Q: The law lets people use force if they "reasonably believe" it's necessary to defend themselves. What defines "reasonable" in the perception of deadly threat?
A: Professor Scott E. Sundby of the University of Miami School of Law says that part of the law is included in many self-defense statutes. "The court leaves that amorphous question to the jury to decide," he said.
Deciding whether someone acted reasonably is also a critical part of the "the fact-intensive inquiry" prosecutors must make before deciding whether charges are warranted in a shooting, Sundby said. That is presumably what is happening in the Seminole-Brevard State Attorney's Office now.
Q: Can an unarmed person legally pose a deadly threat?
In case after case during the past six years, Floridians who shot and killed unarmed opponents have not been prosecuted. Former National Rifle Association President Marion Hammer, a major force behind the law's passage, cited her own size and age in 2006 interview with the Sentinel about what she would do if confronted by a younger and larger aggressor.
"I'm 4-foot-11. I'm 67 years old," she said. "If you came at me, and I felt that my life was in danger or that I was going to be injured, I wouldn't hesitate to shoot you."
Q: What do critics of the law say?
Arthur C. Hayhoe, director of the Florida Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, calls the law "a right to commit murder."
"I predict this case is not going to be charged — it's going to be dismissed," he said of the case against Zimmerman. "Almost every case between two individuals where one was armed and the other was not is dismissed."
Even supporters of the law say it has its limits.
" 'Stand Your Ground' is not a 007 license to kill," said Sean Caranna, founder of Florida Carry, a group advocating gun owners' rights. He stressed that shooting in self-defense requires " a real fear your life is in danger."
hcurtis@tribune.com or 407-420-5257
Justifiable use of force
776.012 Use of force in defense of person. — A person is justified in using force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other's imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:
(1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony; or
(2) Under those circumstances permitted pursuant to s. 776.013.Donald Trump may be dividing the country and attacking members of his own party, but Republicans still need him to sign a tax-reform bill—the light at the end of the dark Trump tunnel. Cutting taxes is critical for Trump, too: Wall Street and G.O.P. donors may be able to forgive his failure to repeal Obamacare (and its 3.8 percent tax on investment income), but not overhauling the tax code would be an unpardonable sin.
With that in mind, one might have expected the White House to have provided an update by now on the one-page, double-spaced, bullet-point tax “plan” it released in April, which might as well have simply read “tax cuts!” over and over again in 16-point font. After all, then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer said last month that the administration would be dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on a bill in September. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, too, insisted that September would see Team Trump releasing “a full-blown” plan. Instead, the administration seems to have given up on its own bill entirely.
Politico reports that despite Donald Trump desperately needing to score a legislative win, the White House is not expected to “release its own version of a tax-reform plan and will instead leave that to congressional leadership and the major tax-writing committees.” Naturally, the West Wing is now claiming it never said any of the things it is on the record as having publicly said:
There are a few reasons Team Trump might want to let Congress take the lead on this one. For one, the president doesn’t care much about policy details and has been distracted with more entertaining diversions, like picking fights with half the Republican leadership in the Senate, announcing a troop surge in Afghanistan, threatening to shut down the government if Congress doesn’t fund his border wall, and giving neo-Nazis cover for the violence in Charlottesville. “It’s utterly inexplicable,” Michael Steel, a Republican communications veteran, told Politico. A House G.O.P. aide was slightly less charitable: “Doing anything other than the f***ing Charlottesville equivocating would be lovely.”
Still, the president may figure he has good reason to keep riling up his base at campaign rallies and leaving self-proclaimed wonks like Paul Ryan to sweat the details. In addition to having the attention span of a gnat on speed, Trump’s disinterest in the tax-reform debate could insulate him if the effort fails, while still allowing him to take credit if it succeeds. Per The Washington Post:
Donald Trump FOLLOW Paul Ryan FOLLOW Follow to get the latest news and analysis about the players in your inbox. See All PlayersI have seen with my own eyes or know of houses in Latin America that have been painted 20 times by 20 different short-term teams; fake orphanages in Uganda erected to get Westerners to give money; internet centers in India whose primary purpose is to ask Westerners for money; children in African countries purposefully mutilated by their parents so they would solicit sympathy while they beg; a New England-style church built by a Western team in Cameroon that is never used except when the team comes to visit; and slums filled with big-screen TVs and cell phone towers.
I have seen or know of teams of grandmothers who go to African countries and hold baby orphans for a week every year but don’t send a dime to help them otherwise; teams who build houses that never get used; teams that bring the best vacation Bible school material for evangelism when the national church can never bring people back to church unless they have the expensive Western material; teams that lead evangelistic crusades claiming commitments to Christ topping 5,000 every year in the same location with the same people attending.
Short-term missions is fraught with problems, and many wish such trips did not exist, at least in the common form today. Writing in his book Toxic Charity, Robert Lupton says, “Contrary to popular belief, most missions trips and service projects do not: empower those being served, engender healthy cross-cultural relationships, improve quality of live, relieve poverty, change the lives of participants [or] increase support for long-term missions work.” Ouch! What follows will surely frustrate many. Each of these headings deserves much study, and I would encourage you to do so before you launch out into cross-cultural ministry.
Money, Power, and Dependency
Let’s start with some statistics from Lupton’s book, Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It):
Africa has received $1 trillion in benevolent aid in the last 50 years, and per capita income is now lower, life expectancy has stagnated, and adult literacy is lower.
85 percent of aid money flowing to African countries never reaches the targeted areas of need.
U.S. missions teams who rushed to Honduras to help rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Mitch spent on average $30,000 per home—homes locals could have built for $3,000 each.
The money spent by one campus ministry to cover the costs of their Central American missions trip to repaint an orphanage would have been enough to hire two local painters and two new full-time teachers and purchase new uniforms for every student in the school.
No one wants to think their generosity hurts people, but books like Dead Aid and When Helping Hurts have alerted us to the problem. So what is going on? The answer is complex and involves issues of basic economics, power, dependency, and bad motives.
Economics If you have too much of something, the price of the product will drop. An East African country used to have a large clothing industry that employed many people. Then, in our generosity, the West started donating clothing. As a result, people lost their jobs, and if you drive around major cities in Africa, you will see hundreds of vendors selling donated shoes, belts, shirts, and more for less than a dollar. On one level the issue boils down to relief and development. Relief aid should only last for a few months. The problem with most trips is that we perpetuate relief instead of moving toward development work. Haiti is a perfect example. In the four decades before the 2010 earthquake, $8.3 billion had been given, and yet the country was 25 percent poorer than before the aid began.
Power How does someone say no to Christians from the world’s most powerful country? It is very difficult to create authentic relationships between people with such disparate power. So if the most powerful Christians (in your mind) say they are coming to help you (even if you don’t want them to), how are you supposed to respond? Plenty of national leaders I know have been notified by U.S. churches that they are sending teams. The national leaders then have to scramble to create something for them to do. It’s normally a disaster. So the New England-style church in Cameroon is never used (and was not asked for), but it sure did make the U.S. team feel good about serving. The American woman who goes to Uganda every year to teach flag dancing to Christian women is only frustrated that no one is making flags and dancing.
Dependency If you regularly do something for someone that they can do themselves, you create unhealthy dependence. Do not misunderstand: we are not talking about emergency relief situations. I am talking about long-term care. Parents who constantly do things for their kids are blamed for enabling and spoiling them. We rarely think in these terms when it comes to charity work. Construction projects are usually the biggest culprit. I will never forget being on a service project to build a house for a family in West Virginia while I was in high school. The men who lived there watched us do the work. And it’s not just construction. A Westerner is targeted by beggars. Kids have hit me when I didn’t give them money. It is heart-wrenching to know their parents force them to not wear clothes, withhold food (when they are usually able to provide), and purposefully injure them so they can make money. That’s not what parents are supposed to do, but what they do works, thereby legitimizing such methods in their eyes. One reason this happens is because we are stuck in providing relief instead of moving toward development work.
Motives The Bahamas receives a short-term missionary for every 15 residents. Our generosity, sad to say, is often tied to a “cool” location and feeling good about what we do. The farther away from home we travel, the more spiritual-seeming the trip. We need to be the ones to paint the church, build the ditch, and put on vacation Bible school. We can’t just send money. We have to send people. This is what causes me to question motives. While I believe there is a thoughtful way to be involved in some sort of cross-cultural, short-term ministry, wise partnership and wise use of money (stewardship!) would seem to dictate we cancel many—most?—of our trips.
Cultural Imperialism and Rhetoric
A little knowledge acquired on short-term trips can be dangerous. Just imagine that three short-term teams from China come to the United States and serve in Lincoln, Nebraska, San Francisco, California, and Detroit, Michigan. They then return to their churches and tell everyone what the United States is like, how the people act, how they struggle with their culture, and how Christians are living for Jesus. Would they really have an picture of the United States? Of course not, but we seem content to tell everyone what Africa is like after visiting Nairobi.
We often have no clue about the cultural expectations that inform the worldview of people around the world. It’s hard enough to see our own! So an innocent game like painting the faces of kids who show up to a church outreach in Africa turns into community outrage and child abuse as face painting in the region is associated with the demonic. The rhetoric of our fundraising appeals for these trips also reveals a problem. “We have to get this done.” “They really need our help.” “Thousands of people came to Christ in our outreach service for the third year in a row.” “The believers there are so content in their poverty.” The list goes on. There is temptation to return home with PowerPoint slides, gripping stories, and numerical results. We want to get things done quickly. We prefer microwave ministry to the slow cooker. Ministry that can be done quickly is not messy and does not cost much.
Effect on Goers, Not Receivers
Imagine a team from France calls your church and says they want to visit. They want to put on VBS (which you have done for years), but the material is in French. They have heard about how the U.S. church has struggled and want to help you fix it. They want to send 20 people, half of them youth. Only two of them speak English. They need a place to stay for free, with cheap food and warm showers if possible. During the trip half of the group’s energy will be spent on resolving tension between team members. Two people will get sick. They’d like you to arrange some sightseeing for them on their free day. Do you want them to come? Most trips I know focus on those who are going, not on those receiving the teams. We send youth so they can have an experience or so God can really grip their heart. You may want your adults to gain a larger heart for the nations. Even if research shows that short-term trips do not affect the lives of participants in the long-term, we still send teams.
Hope
I have only scratched the surface of the problems. But I do not want to leave you completely discouraged. I believe short-term ministry has a place, and if done well can bring about healthy interdependence in the global church. In the next article I will explain how.Obama To Issue Executive Order Granting Himself Lifelong Supply Of Executive Orders
WASHINGTON, D.C.—President Barack Obama announced his plans to issue an executive order before leaving office which will decree that he gets to issue an unlimited number of executive orders whenever he wishes after his presidency, and indeed for the rest of his life, according to a White House press release Monday.
According to sources, the commander-in-chief got the idea from watching the Disney film Aladdin, during the scene when the Genie prohibits the main character from wishing for more wishes. He reportedly jumped up from the couch and declared to nearby Secret Service agents, “Wait a minute—I AM the Genie.” After a cursory two-minute perusal of a dusty copy of the Constitution one of his secretaries found in a basement filing cabinet, Obama concluded there was nothing specifically prohibiting him from executive-ordering himself an infinite number of post-presidential executive orders.
“Phenomenal cosmic powers!” Obama reportedly declared as he danced around the Oval Office, overjoyed that he wouldn’t have to stop giving unilateral declarations just because he will not be President anymore.
At publishing time, the President was drafting another order to grant himself indefinite, unrestricted use of military drones after his presidency, to use as he sees fit.The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine saluted the heroic operation carried out by three young strugglers in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday morning, which led to their martyrdom and the killing of two armed occupation forces and the wounding of several more, as a qualitative achievement in the resistance of the Palestinian people against the occupation.
The Front considers that this operation is a breakthrough in the security cordon imposed by the Israeli occupation forces on the city of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, breaking the arrogance of the Zionist security which sees in the city and in Al-Aqsa an impenetrable fortress.
The resistance was able to engage directly with occupation forces in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa, cconfirming that their is no Zionist soldier or settler safe in the land of Palestine, even in the most heavily guarded areas.
The Front also said that this heroic operation sent a strong message to the occupation soldiers and the criminal Zionist government that their measures and attacks against the Palestinian people will only be met by more operations and resistance.
Further, the PFLP warned against any attempts by the occupation to undermine and attack Al-Aqsa Mosque and its holy position. Any retaliation will be resisted by the Palestinian people and their heroic youth with a real impact on the occupation, its soldiers and settlers.
The blood of the heroes of Jerusalem has mingled with that of the heroic martyr Bara’a Hamamdeh in Dheisheh camp, confirming to all that intifada, resistance and unity are our path to liberation from the occupation and must derail all of the liquidationist plans targeting the Palestinian people and their cause. This operation clearly differentiates the fighters who believe in resistance and the defeated forces who conspire against our cause.
The Front urged greater unity and cohesion to confront retaliatory measures in Jerusalem, emphasizing that strengthening the steadfastness of our people in Jerusalem is a national priority and responsibility.Disadvantages
Advantages
Relevant Matchups
Is Mii Swordfighter Viable?
CT | Nyani vs Crownless King
With the rulesets for Smash 4 at Evo being decided soon and Mii Fighters as one of the top discussion points, we're taking this week to learn a lot more about these characters and the people who play them. Welcome to #MiiWiik! Since the game's release, Mii Swordfighter has gotten a lot of flak and was considered the outright worst in the game until Trela was able to win with him against top players in tournament. He still is ranked 4th from the bottom on the Smash 4 tier list in his 1-1-1-1 incarnation. Is there more to this character than meets the eye? We brought inMii Swordfighter experts to find out!Routa, UnknownKid, AntonyKun, Colgate, and Clash Tournament's own Nyani have all come together to share their knowledge of this character and their potential in Smash 4. Start sharpening those swords as we see if Mii Swordfighter can make the cut!Having been considered one of the weaker characters in the game, it comes as no surprise that the character has some weaknesses. All five experts mentioned one thing in particular: his slow movements. As Colgate explained,This compiles with unsafe aerials to create a difficult time setting up neutral.Another thing mentioned was a lack of an 'escape option'.Routa told us. UnknownKid agreed adding,Another difficulty the experts mentioned was a lack of easy kill setups.Routa confessed.Nyani agreed that Swordfighter has a tough time killing.However Mii Sworfighter is not without his strengths, and by far the one mentioned most was his ability to wrack up damage quickly though a power juggling game.Colgate told us.Nyani has a lot to say on his combo abilities and damage wracking as well.While his ability to quickly gain damage on the opponent was a serious plus, Routa had something else to mention.he said.The character that Mii Swordfighter has the most trouble against is the same as most other characters.Antokun joked. Colgate explained further saying,By looking at the top 15 characters on the tier list, Nyani had a few thoughts on which matchups she thought were best for Mii Swordfighter among the top tiers. " I'd say out best matchups there are Meta Knight, Villager, and ZSS. We outrange Meta Knight and Dthrow->Uair actually kill confirms on him pretty okay due to his weight and fall speed. Also, a default-size Swordie is in that weird weight group that falls out of MK's Shuttle Loop a lot. With ZSS, it's hard for her to approach us if we have Tornado and Chakram. We can also beat a lot of her aerials out with Utilt, and she's gimpable with Dair once her Down B is spent. Villager can't really camp us, because Chakram goes right through both Tree and a Lloid Rocket before it starts moving. If you take Reversal Slash, you also have a way to deal with slingshots and bowling ball edgeguards."Colgate also mentioned Mario as among the characters Mii Swordfighter does well against. "He can juggle Mario well, and box him out with his sword. His dair is also deadly for linear vertical recoveries like Mario's."Colgate told us. Nyani however, didn't have as much confidence.However she too mentioned his potential with secondaries.Routa felt that is strong depended on which moves and sizes were available for use. "Guest 1111? Haha you wish. Guest XXXX? Well Guest XXXX could do some nice things, but I wouldn't still call him viable on a national level, but once you give him the size... Oh boy you are in for a treat. Judging by his MU spread (the Any Size XXXX) I would say he is viable in national level."A special thank you to all of the Mii Swordfighter experts who contributed to this article. To learn more about Mii Swordfighter consider checking out CT | Nyani's guide on the character and visit the Mii Swordfighter forums here on Smashboards. Learn something exciting about Mii Swordfighter? Tell us in the comments below and stay tuned for the rest of #MiiWiik here on Smashboards!Want to impress your guests? Make this vegan Thanksgiving Menu consisting of seitan steaks, crispy potato croquettes, pan-roasted Brussels sprouts, lingonberry jam and cranberry moscow mules! All made from scratch!
Although we don’t typically celebrate Thanksgiving in Austria, my boyfriend and I do. We cook up a feast and enjoy a lovely meal together. And yes, it’s all about the food for us!
As a vegan, Thanksgiving (or any festive dinner) with relatives can be very difficult. Especially when you still have to face snarky comments about your dietary choice. I’ve been there!
It might seem challenging at first, making a vegan Thanksgiving, but there are actually many options! So I created a complete vegan Thanksgiving Menu consisting of a main dish, two sides, a sauce, and a cocktail.
Thanks to vital wheat gluten, homemade seitan is not that hard to make at all! First, I’ve steamed the seitan steaks and then pan-roasted them in a grilling pan for the authentic grill marks. Looks so real! Don’t you think?!
Brussels sprouts are the perfect seasonal side dish! These are pan-roasted in soy sauce. Easy to make and so delicious!
Side Dish – Potato Croquettes
Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. These vegan Potato Croquettes bring potatoes to the table – but in a fancy way!
Sauce – Lingonberry Jam
Lingonberry jam is not your typical sweet jam. This one is quite tart, so it’s the perfect condiment for seitan steaks. Also, the lingonberry jam and potato croquette combo is super delicious!
Cocktail – Cranberry Moscow Mule
A good cocktail makes any dinner better. This fruity version of Moscow Mule is the perfect addition for all the fall flavors on the plate. Garnish with fresh cranberries and rosemary twigs to make it super festive!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Enjoy the time and amazing food with your loved ones! :)
I’d love to hear what’s on your table for Thanksgiving! Let me know in the comments below.
Are you looking for even more Thanksgiving ideas? Check out all my Thanksgiving recipes here or check out my Festive Thanksgiving Recipes Pinterest Board.
Affiliate Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that I have recommended. While clicking these links won't cost you any extra money, they will help me keep this site up and running!The rain man: Amateur weatherman follows his sun compass to snap stunning pictures
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For many, it is a hobby that would require far too much patience.
But one photographer waits for hours just to capture the perfect images of storm clouds breaking.
Kris Dutson, 53, has spent ten years scouting out the ideal locations across Britain to capture the most astonishing atmospheric shots on his camera as rain falls.
Perfect rainbow: Kris Dutson's most recent photograph taken at North Poorton, Dorset. Following heavy rain last month this brilliant rainbow formed
Remarkable: Clouds pile up over a hill top on a bright day at Colmers Hill, Bridport in Dorset. The photographer spends hours researching the best locations to capture cloud pictures
He carries meteorological charts and a sun compass with him and will patiently wait for clouds to break before capturing the perfect shot.
Kris, from Compton Valence, near Dorchester, Dorset, scours the countryside for the most beautiful and interesting scenes to shoot.
He sometimes waits for months on end before returning to a particular spot at the right time of year to catch these astonishing images.
One of his incredible photos shows a perfectly-formed rainbow stretching across vivid green fields, glowing in front of a moody grey sky.
Another captures billowing white cumulus clouds rising imposingly behind the deep green peaks of Colmer's Hill, near Bridport, Dorset.
Storm clouds gather: Rain approaching the cliffs at Burton Bradstock in south west Dorset. Patient Kris often waits for hours before taking a photograph
Red sky at night: The sun sets over Colmer' Hill in Bridport, Dorset with a covering of cloud overhead. The beautiful glowing skyline was caused by the ash cloud which caused airline chaos
Beauty spot: Stunning picture of Lulworth Cove on the Jurassic Coast at dusk as rain clears. The site attracts one million visitors a year - but few see a sunset as beautiful as this
Others show sinister grey clouds gathering above fields of barley, daisies and rape, while others capture the striking cloud formations above the Jurassic coastline.
One striking image captures a full moon illuminating mist as it rolls over fields, and another shows a stunning panoramic view across Hardy country.
Father-of-four Kris, who has been a photographer for 30 years, said: 'I must be one of the only people in the country hoping for rain.
'I like a nice bright, sunny day to go to the beach, but when I hear people grumbling about the forecast I do rub my hands together with glee.
'My pictures are all based around the weather and the atmosphere it creates - it's absolutely key.
'If it's bright and sunny with blue skies, most people can take a nice picture but they're quite bland.
'But the moody weather enhances the landscape and gives it a feeling. Dark clouds and patchy sunlight makes it atmospheric.
Dark skies: Rain clouds gather over the Mynydd Moel mountain in the Cader Idris range in north Wales. The top of the mountain is completely covered
Beautiful darkness: Moonlit valleys in Compton Valence, Dorset. When most people stay indoors weather nut Kris spends hours out and about waiting for the rain to clear or a break in the clouds to get the perfect shot
Dramatic scenes: A rainbow at the Devils Dyke near Brighton West Sussex, left, and sunset after a storm on Pulpit Rock, Portland Bill in Dorset, right
The white cliffs of... Sussex: A storm clearing from the Seven Sisters cliffs near Eastbourne on the English Coast
'I travel around Dorset a lot and whenever I come across a location I think might work for a picture I mark it on my sat nav.
'I carry a sun compass, which looks like a credit card with marks around the side, which will tell me what time the sun rises and sets at each point throughout the year.
'Sometimes I think a particular shot will work at dawn, but the sun might not be in the right place for the next six months, so I'll make a note of it in my diary and come back.
'I'll check the weather forecast to see when there will be the right conditions, such as dark clouds in the sky. Sometimes the weather doesn't play ball, so I'll go back the following year.
'I can't compromise or cut corners, so there's a lot of planning and science behind each shot. I need to be very patient, but it's worth it.
'Getting the right shot on the day can take anywhere between minutes and hours.
'I'm very lucky.'
Home Counties: A storm brews over a field of barley in Wiltshire close to Sixpenny Handley in a dramatic image caught by photographer Kris Dut |
,000 full-time public school teachers their assignments and now threaten the job security of more than 400 school aides and 82 parent coordinators.
At last month’s “Save Our Schools” rally in Washington, D.C., education author Jonathan Kozol criticized the drive toward fewer teachers and larger classes.
JONATHAN KOZOL: Class size is soaring in the poorest schools. I walk into classes with 35, 40, 42 children packed into a single room. Originality? Forget it. Creativity? Forget it. Critical thinking, asking questions? There’s no time for children to ask questions. If they learn to ask demanding questions, they might start to question why the people we elect to office will not keep their promises.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, a Manhattan appeals court ruled unanimously yesterday the City of New York should release performance rankings of thousands of public school teachers to the public. Known as “Teacher Data Reports,” the rankings grade more than 12,000 of the city’s 75,000 public school teachers based on how much progress their students make on state standardized tests. The teachers’ union opposes the ruling, arguing the reports are deeply flawed, subjective measurements that were intended to be confidential.
JUAN GONZALEZ: The court decision comes just days after the New York Times reported that annual allegations of test tampering and grade changing by educators have more than tripled since Mayor Bloomberg took control of New York City’s school system. The revelation is the latest in a string of cheating scandals across the nation. In Atlanta, a recent government probe found that 44 schools and 178 teachers and principals had been faking standardized test scores for the past decade.
Matt Batesky, a global history teacher at Lyons Community School in Brooklyn, criticized the emphasis on school testing.
MATT BATESKY: One of the things that we do constantly now is just test prep all the time. Our curriculum is basically, “Here is our test. How can we get our students to pass it?” because it’s so high stakes that if the students don’t pass it, they don’t graduate. And if they don’t graduate, you know, that hurts the student and it also hurts our school.
JUAN GONZALEZ: In other education news, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan plans to use waivers to rewrite parts of the nation’s signature federal education law, No Child Left Behind. The controversial law’s reauthorization has been stalled in Congress.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, to discuss these developments, we’re joined now by a woman who’s long been known as an advocate of No Child Left Behind, charter schools, standardized testing, and using the free market to improve schools. But she’s had a radical change of heart in recent years. I’m talking about the influential education scholar Diane Ravitch. She was assistant secretary of education and counselor to Education Secretary Lamar Alexander under President George H.W. Bush and appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board under President Clinton. She’s the author of over 20 books, a research professor of education at New York University, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Her latest book chronicles how and why she decided to break with conservative education policies she once championed. It’s called The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.
We’re also joined by Brian Jones, a Harlem elementary school teacher for the last eight years, a member of the Grassroots Education Movement and narrator of a documentary called The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman.
Diane Ravitch and Brian Jones, thanks so much for being with us.
DIANE RAVITCH: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: And I just wanted to start by saying, as we were playing Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Diane, you said you were there.
DIANE RAVITCH: I was. I was at the Mall and marched, and it was one of the great moments of my life. So I’m very happy I had that chance to hear him.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s move from the 1963 March on Washington and the dream that Dr. King had to where you think education is today.
DIANE RAVITCH: Well, we have been, for at least the last decade and more, trapped in this standardized testing obsession. And we have the No Child Left Behind law, which George W. Bush sponsored, and it was overwhelmingly endorsed by Congress in 2001. And it has imposed on the schools utopian goals that, by the year 2014, 100 percent of children will be proficient. And if they’re not proficient, your principal will be fired, the teachers will be fired, the school will be closed, or it will be turned over to private management or turned into a charter school.
So, I can’t imagine what they were thinking, except that there was this idea that there had been a Texas miracle. That’s what George W. Bush ran on, was the Texas miracle. And we now know there was no Texas miracle. And yet we’re stuck with a law that no one has the wits to change, and it just stays there, crushing schools across the country with standardized testing. So we had, for example, President Obama in his State of the Union address this year said the most important way to win the future is to encourage innovation, creativity and imagination. We will never do that with the route that we’re taking now, with all of this emphasis on high-stakes testing and attacking teachers. And, you know, what’s going on across the country—budget cutting in state after state, increasing class sizes—this is all terrible for the future.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And when you hear about all of these testing scandals now that are breaking out, where obviously educators, under pressure to produce results so that they can save their jobs, are erasing test results—but not just a few, we’re talking about, in the case of Atlanta, possibly Washington, D.C., and some other cities, massive fraud that’s gone on.
DIANE RAVITCH: Well, there was a pretty dramatic scandal in Washington, D.C., which USA Today broke open. And that was, there was one particularly celebrated school, where the principal had gotten awards. He was used in advertisements for the district: “Do you want to be the next…” — and they had his picture and names in the ads. He’s resigned, because the rate of erasures in his school, from wrong to right, was so dramatic, they said you could win the Powerball more easily than come up with this rate of erasures. So, we’re seeing these scandals because we have a system that incentivizes cheating. We’re saying to people, if you don’t meet a goal that we know is impossible, you’ll be fired.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain how the cheating exactly works. The teachers switch the answers after the kids hand in, so the kids don’t even know that their answers have been changed?
DIANE RAVITCH: Well, there are many ways to cheat, and I’m sure that Brian has seen—I’m sure he hasn’t done it, but he knows the ways. But it’s been documented in Washington and Baltimore and Atlanta. There were people—there were teachers and principals literally changing the answers from wrong to right, and they were going through these Scantron sheets and making the erasures. And so, there was an electronic analysis. Interestingly enough, New York City, when mayoral control began, eliminated the erasure analysis, which is the easiest way to see that the answers had been changed from wrong to right or right to wrong. They’re usually almost always changed from wrong to right. That’s one way.
There are other ways in which you can not test certain children, discourage them from coming to school, because they’re low-scoring, keep those kids out of your school, which some schools do. Particularly charter schools will push out low-performing kids or simply not accept them. And then there’s statewide institutionalized cheating. New York State saw its test scores go up year after year. And then, last year, after the mayoral election, announced that the test scores that we had boasted about for so many years were actually not true, and all the scores dropped across the state. That was institutionalized cheating.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And the state did that merely by changing what they would consider the number of questions had to be answered right to reach a certain level.
DIANE RAVITCH: Right.
JUAN GONZALEZ: So, and basically dumbed down the—
DIANE RAVITCH: They dropped the passing mark.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan plans to use waivers to rewrite parts of the nation’s signature federal education law, No Child Left Behind. I want to turn to a clip of the interview he recently did on CNN.
BROOKE BALDWIN: What will these schools have to prove, have to offer, to get a waiver?
SECRETARY OF EDUCATION ARNE DUNCAN: Well, we’re still working through that package. We will announce the final package next month after Labor Day. But I’ve tried to hit on a couple of the key points. Where there are high standards, we want to partner with folks. Where they’re dumbing down standards, reducing them, that’s not a state we want to partner with. Where districts and states are focusing on growth and gain rather than absolute test scores, how much are folks improving, we want to work with them. Where they’re being very thoughtful and creative around teacher and principal evaluation, we want to work with them.
BROOKE BALDWIN: What about—
SECRETARY OF EDUCATION ARNE DUNCAN: Where they’re willing to challenge the status quo in very low-performing schools, dropout factories, where 50, 60, 70 percent of students are dropping out—where we’re seeing real courage, Brooke, that’s where we want to partner.
AMY GOODMAN: Diane Ravitch, what about these waivers?
DIANE RAVITCH: Well, he’s giving states—or offering them a waiver from the mandates of No Child Left Behind and substituting the mandates he likes, none of which have any evidence behind them. When he talks about improving teacher evaluation, what he really means is Race to the Top things like judging teachers by test scores. There is hardly a testing expert in the country who thinks that this is a good idea, and there is none that I’ve been able to find who thinks it’s a good idea to release these ratings to the media, because they are largely inaccurate.
They say you can identify those at the extremes, the best and the worst. And frankly, if you have a principal who doesn’t know who their best and worst teachers are, they’re not a very good principal. But in the middle, there is so much inaccuracy, instability, that they’re—not worthless, but they should be confidential. What Secretary Duncan is doing is saying, if you want to get the federal funding, you have to evaluate teachers by test scores, you have to be prepared to close schools. This is NCLB brought up to an even higher level. And you also have to be prepared to increase the number of charter schools, which are private management.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Brian Jones, you’re a teacher in the trenches. Can you talk about the pressures on teachers these days with this emphasis on standardized testing and what it means actually to the kind of work that you do?
BRIAN JONES: Well, to me, the students are cheated even before the test is taken. Look, the cheating, the real social cheating, happens in the way that the high-stakes standardized testing distorts school itself.
Let me tell one story. I was doing a science experiment with a group of fourth graders. We were in the middle of a week-long science experiment, and we had—everyone had trays out on their tables, and they were pouring and mixing and investigating. We were having all kinds of rich discussions. And an administrator came in and said, “You have to stop what you’re doing right now,” handed—put down a pile of workbooks and said, “You have to begin doing this right now.” I begged her, in front of the students, “Please, let us just finish this experiment right now, in the next few minutes, and then we’ll do that.” She said, “No, you have to put all this away right now and get working on the workbooks.” So, the kids are cheated ahead of time. It teaches teachers to jump through these hoops, to not encourage critical thinking. It teaches all of us that knowledge is somewhere produced by Pearson or by one of these test companies, and you can’t create it, you can’t investigate it, you can’t do any of that. All you have to do is, more or less, remember it.
Here’s another way students are cheated. In elementary school, which I teach, we tend to go through genre studies. We take a genre of literature at a time and go through it. Well, now what more and more schools are doing is teaching the test itself as a genre—that is, studying the features of a test, as you would a novel, or as you would historical fiction or mysteries. You’re laughing, but this is very serious. Any teacher watching this knows what I’m talking about, that you, in elementary school, in many schools, especially the schools where that gun to the head is already cocked—in the poorest schools, in the schools that teach the most disadvantaged students, students of color, in schools in Harlem—you have to teach students how to take a test. You have to tell eight-year-olds about multiple choice, right? And the thing that gets me is that the, you know, wealthy individuals who promote these policies send their own kids to schools that look nothing like that, where inquiry is promoted, where they don’t spend all day obsessing about how they’re going to do on someone else’s test.
JUAN GONZALEZ: In the private schools, where athletics starts in the third grade—
BRIAN JONES: Of course, right.
JUAN GONZALEZ: —with teams of all kinds of intramural teams that the schools have.
BRIAN JONES: Right, right.
AMY GOODMAN: When does testing start?
BRIAN JONES: Well, it depends on the school, but I’ve seen schools that begin right away, that begin the first week of school, where they begin with pretests to try to, you know, tell the kids—if you ask a kid in Harlem—go to any school in Harlem and ask a young elementary school student, “What’s the point of school? Why are you here?” They’ll tell you, “It’s to pass tests, so that I can get a job.”
There’s nothing about—you know, I heard Jonathan Kozol speak at the Save Our Schools march, and he said something that really stayed with me. He said, at the wealthy schools, at your Phillips Exeter and Andover Academies, you know, those kids get to feast on the treasures of the earth. They get to enjoy literature and savor it. And they get to savor their savoring of it. And in our schools, too often kids are given these kind of cardboard passages that are meant to show them what a noun is. But there’s no joy in it. And there’s no—I would argue there’s no real learning.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to break, and we’ll come right back. Brian Jones, Harlem elementary school teacher, and Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guests are Brian Jones, an elementary school teacher in Harlem for eight years, also an actor, and Diane Ravitch, assistant secretary of education. We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! Juan?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Diane Ravitch, I want to ask you about the business side of all of this education reform, not only in terms of the testing companies, but increasingly the new wave of reform now is the question of online learning. The school’s chancellor of New York City, Joel Klein, resigned to go work for Rupert Murdoch in a company that Rupert Murdoch bought that’s going to specialize in basically replacing the teacher in the classroom with online learning. Could you talk about that?
DIANE RAVITCH: Sure. There is a narrative. You can read about it in Chubb and Moe’s most recent book called Liberating Learning, where they imagine online learning replacing teachers, where there’s a teacher somewhere, let’s say, in a barn in Kansas monitoring 100 or 200 computer screens, 24/7. And I recall that Chancellor Klein said at the time, we could reduce our teaching staff by 30 percent if we could have more online learning. New York is now investing—I forget how many hundreds of millions of dollars—in IT contracts, technology contracts, because they see online learning as the future.
I can tell you, because I reviewed the research just last night, because I was having a Twitter debate with someone, there is no research behind this. They say, “We don’t have any evidence.” Personally, I believe that children need teachers. They need an adult, a grown-up. They need the interaction with other students to talk about things, to debate, to discuss. What I’ve heard from many people is children sitting at home on a computer interacting with a blinking screen, all they’re doing is answering questions. And frankly, you don’t know who answered the questions. If they submit an essay, you don’t know who wrote the essay.
But we have states like Florida now mandating online courses. The state of Utah, where the state superintendent ran for office with huge contributions from online companies, is mandating online learning. Rupert Murdoch gave a speech not long ago, when he bought this company Wireless Generation. He bought it for $360 million, and he said at that time, “This is a $500 billion industry, and we want to be the leader in that industry.” So there is a lot of money in play here and no evidence that it’s going to improve kids’ education. And, you know, my view is, it’s the poor will get computers, the rich will get computers and teachers.
AMY GOODMAN: Talking about big business, big business and the tests.
DIANE RAVITCH: Right. And the testing industry itself is a multibillion-dollar industry that has grown and fattened over the past decade. Pearson, for example, McGraw-Hill, the two big ones. Pearson has a $500 million contract with the state of Texas, another, I forget how many, hundreds of millions with Florida. Now they’ve just taken the New York contract. This is a multibillion-dollar enterprise. So, it will be very difficult to back away from what we’re locked into now, the kind of intellectual wasteland of so many of our public schools, because there is big business in keeping it this way.
BRIAN JONES: And if you publish the test, then the school is—I mean, they would be suicidal not to purchase the test preparation materials made by the same company that makes the test. So think about all those disposable workbooks that you have to then buy every year, in huge quantities, for every student.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Brian, you were heavily involved with this film, The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman.
BRIAN JONES: Right, right.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Clearly, Waiting for Superman had a major impact across the country, in terms of this debate and was very much promoted by some of the television networks, as well. Why did you get involved in that, and what were you trying to do with the counter-documentary?
BRIAN JONES: Well, this film was made, Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman was made, by a group called the Grassroots Education Movement. And we just felt that the film, having seen it, was so outrageous and so full of lies and slander and so slanted, before we even had done the homework of figuring out who was really behind it and who had funded it and all of that, just on its own, on its face value. But the other thing about the film is it was so effective. It was such a well-made film. I mean, it really takes you in. It’s artfully done, a beautifully made film. So, we thought, well, you know, we might have some idea how to use iMovie, and maybe we can make our own film. So—
AMY GOODMAN: Who funded Waiting for Superman?
BRIAN JONES: Oh, well, it’s funded by all of the same forces that you’ve—it’s the same names that have lined up again and again. It’s actually escaping my mind at the moment. Do you remember?
DIANE RAVITCH: Well, I can tell you that the two major producers—
AMY GOODMAN: Bill Gates was among them.
DIANE RAVITCH: No, the two major producers were Participant Media, whose CEO was previously the CEO of a for-profit chain of post-secondary institutions, vocational schools, for-profit. And the other company, Walden Media, is headed by a very conservative billionaire named Philip Anschutz, who contributes to the Discovery Institute, which is against evolution, and to all the right-wing think tanks that advocate for privatization and vouchers.
AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now!’s Jaisal Noor spoke with author Lois Weiner about teacher unions. She’s the author of The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and Their Unions. I wanted to play a clip from that interview.
LOIS WEINER: Unlike school boards, unions are membership organizations. And we can’t just blame union leaders. We have to understand that the issue here is that teachers don’t see the unions as vehicles for struggle. And I think that if that—I think that if that doesn’t happen, we really are going to see the destruction of public education in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Lois Weiner. Brian Jones, talk about the relationship between teachers and unions.
BRIAN JONES: Well, I think right now what we’ve seen is that teachers need to be more active in their unions. There needs to be a movement of ordinary teachers to challenge what we see, because we’re the ones who see it it happening in the classroom. I think we need to unite with parents and try to build a kind of social justice unionism that takes on not only questions of our working conditions, which are learning conditions, but also questions of curriculum and pedagogy. The group I’m a part of, the Grassroots Education Movement, gemnyc.org, is trying to do just that right here in New York.
AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds. Can you address the issue of unions and teachers?
DIANE RAVITCH: Well, to me, the big issue today is there’s a narrative that says teachers are the problem in American education. I have been arguing poverty is the problem. We tie right into your segment on Dr. King. Poverty is the problem. Thirty-five percent of black kids live in poverty. Twenty percent of all American kids live in poverty. That’s the problem.
AMY GOODMAN: Diane Ravitch, Brian Jones, thanks so much for being with us.This article, by Anne Bayefsky, originally appeared at FoxNews.com.
Guess who is the number one violator of women’s rights in the world today? Israel. Violating the rights of Palestinian women.
At least that is the view of the UN’s top women’s rights body, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). CSW ends its annual meeting on Friday, March 20 by condemning only one of the 193 UN member states for violating women’s rights – Israel.
Not Syria. Where government forces routinely employ rape and other sexual violence and torture against women as a tactic of war. Where in 2014 the Assad regime starved, tortured and killed at least 24,000 civilians, and three million people – mostly women and children – are refugees….
Not Iran. Where every woman who registered as a presidential candidate in the last election was disqualified. “Adultery” is punishable by death by stoning. Women who fight back against rapists and kill their attackers are executed. The constitution bars female judges. And women must obtain the consent of their husbands to work outside the home….
The Obama administration has an answer to this dilemma. Vote against the resolutions, while paying the fees to run the bodies that adopt them. Join and legitimize the institution, while consoling the delegitimized that it feels their pain.
Read the rest of Bayefsky’s article here.PHOENIX, Arizona, March 5, 2014 (ENS) – Endangered jaguars will have 1,194 square miles of critical habitat in southern Arizona and New Mexico for their recovery, under a rule finalized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday.
The gold and black-spotted jaguar, Panthera onca, is the world’s third-largest cat, after tigers and lions.
Jaguars once roamed from southern California through the Southwest and lived in Louisiana, Kentucky and North Carolina, but only six, possibly seven, jaguars, all males, have been detected in the United States since 1982, says the Service.
No documented females or breeding pairs have occurred in the United States for over 50 years. The last female jaguar in the United States was shot by a hunter in 1963 on Arizona’s Mogollon Rim.
Jaguars still live in Mexico and points south, and have been seen within 40 miles of the Mexico-U.S. border. But the big cats have largely disappeared from their U.S. range due to clearing of forests and draining of wetlands and killing to protect livestock. The species is categorized as Near Threatened on the authoritative IUCN Red List.
Conservationists say protected habitat in the United States will allow jaguars to naturally repopulate their former range as they move northward from the nearest core population in Mexico.
“Welcome home, American jaguar,” said Michael Robinson of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, which has filed three lawsuits over many years in support of jaguar recovery.
“I’m hopeful that decades from now we’ll look back on this historic decision and see it as the first on-the-ground action that eventually led to the return of a thriving population of these beautiful big cats to this country,” Robinson said.
The critical habitat designation prohibits federal agencies from destroying or “adversely modifying” the designated habitat by granting permits for mining or other commercial activities that would make the habitat unsuitable for jaguars.
There is currently a jaguar living on U.S. Forest Service land in the Santa Rita Mountains outside Tucson in the footprint of the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine. The critical habitat designation makes it illegal for any federal agency to fund or authorize activities, such as mining, that would harm jaguar habitat.
This jaguar is the first of the big cats documented in the United States since 2009, when, during an illegal capture operation, the Arizona Game and Fish Department injured, then euthanized, a jaguar that had lived at least 16 years in the Atascosa and Pajarito mountains.
The Rosemont Copper Mine is proposed by Augusta Resource Corporation, a publicly-traded metals company based in Vancouver, Canada. Rosemont hosts a large copper/molybdenum reserve, and the company estimates it would produce 243 million pounds of copper per year, which would make it the third largest copper mine in the United States. The project is located in Pima County, Arizona, in an undeveloped area 30 miles southeast of Tucson.
James Sturgess, Rosemont Copper senior vice president of corporate development and government affairs, has said, “Our project will not adversely affect the ability of conservation organizations to conserve and recover this species. In the meantime, this question is being dealt with today within the existing NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] process.”
“We are confident that thoughtful analysis will relegate the faux science and bullying tactics of the Center for Biological Diversity as activism, and that the agency will see that designation of critical habitat in other areas may be warranted for the conservation and recovery of the species, but not the northern Santa Rita Mountains,” said Sturgess.
But the new critical habitat designation does include the Santa Rita Mountains. It consists of six units, each containing one or more mountain ranges in which jaguars have been recorded in recent years or through which they are thought to have traveled.
The designation includes the Baboquivari, Pajarito, Atascosa, Tumacacori, Patagonia, Santa Rita and Huachuca mountain ranges in Arizona; the Peloncillo Mountains that straddle the Arizona/New Mexico border; and the northern tip of the San Luis Mountains in New Mexico’s bootheel region.
Missing from the designation, says Robinson, are the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona and stretches of the high, forested Mogollon Rim, including its easternmost terminus in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest. These areas were historically occupied by jaguars and still have suitable habitat for recovery.
“While we’re disappointed that the protection omits the best U.S. habitat for jaguars – the rugged Gila headwaters in New Mexico and the pine-clad Mogollon Rim in Arizona – this decision is a milestone that protects much of the borderlands that the first generation of returning jaguars is exploring and inhabiting,” said Robinson.
The critical habitat designation comes after years of litigation by conservation groups. It has been almost 17 years after the Service first protected jaguars under the Endangered Species Act in response to a lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity.
In 2009, conservationists won another lawsuit challenging the Service’s 2006 determination that critical habitat was “not prudent” for the jaguar because there were too few jaguars in the United States to protect.
On March 30, 2009, in a consolidated case brought by the Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife, the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona set aside the Service’s previous “not prudent” determination and required the Service to issue a new determination on whether critical habitat designation is prudent.
The court did not order the Service to designate critical habitat, but ordered the Service to reevaluate whether designation of critical habitat for the jaguar is prudent.
Following a review that included ongoing conservation programs for the jaguar, and new information and analysis, the Service determined that “the designation of critical habitat for the jaguar would be beneficial to the species” and that “designation is prudent.”
“Therefore,” said the Service in its final rule, “we are required to designate critical habitat for the jaguar to fulfill our legal and statutory obligations.”
Meanwhile, another conservation group, WildEarth Guardians, reached a multi-species settlement agreement with the Service in May 2011, which requires the agency to make listing and critical habitat determinations on 251 candidate species by the end of 2016.
The Service first proposed critical habitat for the jaguar in August 2012, later revised the proposed habitat to exclude some areas and include others and then was granted two extensions for the final rule: the first so the agency could consider new jaguar sightings in Arizona in the first half of 2013 and the second because of delays in the economic analysis due to the government shutdown, explained Taylor Jones, endangered species advocate for WildEarth Guardians.
Although WildEarth Guardians and the other groups did not collaborate on the jaguar critical habitat designation, Jones expressed appreciation for their work. “Without the Center’s lawsuit on the jaguar specifically, which forced the Service to reconsider its “not prudent” determination, we would not have been able to ensure a timely proposed and final rule in our settlement agreement,” she said.
“Our agreement prevented undue delays, guaranteeing finalization of the critical habitat rule by a date certain,” said Jones. “The two settlements built on each other and created a win for the jaguar, biodiversity, and conservation.”
“The habitat protections finalized today will help ensure that jaguars may once again safely roam the wilds of Arizona and New Mexico,” said Jones. “We call on the Service to quickly take the next steps to ensure a self-sustaining jaguar population is reestablished in the U.S.”
Peer-reviewed research shows that species with designated critical habitat are twice as likely to make progress toward recovery as those without such habitat. The Fish and Wildlife Service now plans to release a draft jaguar recovery plan this spring.
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2014. All rights reserved.Just when I thought it was safe to listen to the news, I got them old dejection, inspection and election-rejection politics blues again.
I turned on the radio and heard a news story: George Orwell's 1984, the classic novel about totalitarian mind control, had become a major bestseller.
They said the trigger for the boost in sales was President Trump's advisor Kellyanne Conway, who dismissed a reporter's accusation that President Trump had lied. Conway called it an "alternative fact." Instantly, the media was all atwitter, invoking the ghost of George Orwell and the dread of Big Brother Trump newspeak the manipulation of language and truth.
But something in the story gave me a truth ache.
Even the Amazon numbers are puzzling. An NPR report said, "The Amazon bestseller list has become something of a political barometer. … Now the classic dystopian novel, 1984, written by George Orwell and published in 1948, is number one."
Dystopia is the opposite of utopia an ideal, perfect state. Dystopias are a favorite of science fiction writers who dwell on utopian worlds gone wrong.
The report said, "The Amazon best seller list is updated hourly so it can swiftly track a surge in a book's popularity. A spokesman for Signet Classics, which currently publishes1984, said sales have increased almost 10,000 percent since the inauguration and moved noticeably upwards on Sunday."
Then it said, "As the story took off so did sales of 1984. Earlier this week Signet Classics ordered a 75,000-copy reprint of the book …"
Stop. If a 75,000-copy reprint reflects a 10,000 percent increase, how many copies were sold before the spike? And what constitutes a "bestseller"?
You'd think the bible of the publishing industry, Publishers Weekly (PW), would know, right? Well they don't.
A 2013 report asked, "How Many Copies Does It Take to Be an Amazon Bestseller?"
"Amazon, the biggest bookseller in America, is also famously one of the most tight-lipped. Sales rankings are available on the website and are updated hourly, but the company doesn't provide information on how many unit sales it takes to make a title an Amazon bestseller. Like everyone else, PW couldn't get sales numbers from Amazon …"
After some calculations, the reporter estimated, "It likely takes around 300 copies per day to reach Amazon's top five, depending on the day of the week and the time of year."
So the sales spike seems to have been a few hundred books. Is this news? Or is this "fake news"?
Brooke Borel, author of The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, wrote, "Depending on who you talk to, 'fake news' may refer to satirical news, hoaxes, news that's clumsily framed or outright wrong, propaganda, lies destined for viral clicks and advertising dollars, politically motivated half-truths, and more."
(Digression: I hate to nitpick. OK, I lied; I love to nitpick. The NPR report gave the publication date as 1948. Just for the record, 1984 was published on June 8, 1949.)
It looks like the media who can't forgive President Trump for winning are searching the Amazon book forest for a magic potion to discredit him. The fake-news attacks on President Trump sound like the Obama birth certificate lunacy in reverse.
But lies are nonpartisan. Democrats just call them "narratives." Ask the experts in Orwellian narrative: The New York Times' David Samuels asked Jon Favreau, Mr. Obama's speechwriter in 2008, whether he or Ben Rhodes (speechwriter and Iran-deal sleazeman) had ever thought of their work "as part of some larger restructuring of the American narrative."
Favreau replied, "We saw that as our entire job."
An old line in show business has it, "The most important thing is honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
The Talmud (Shabbos 55a) says "The seal of the Holy One is truth."
Of all the attributes of G-d, why is His seal truth?
The fiery fighter for truth the Kotzker Rebbe (d. 1859) said, "Truth is the seal of G-d because it can't be simulated. Once you imitate it, it's no longer truth."
The first definition of "great" in the New Oxford American Dictionary isn't "very good." It's "of an extent, amount, or intensity considerably above the normal or average … very large and imposing." Thus, a "great man" may or may not be a "good" man.
The American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy defined "the great man theory," quoting the 19th-century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle:
"'The history of the world is but the biography of great men.' Carlyle argued that heroes shape history through the vision of their intellect, the beauty of their art, the prowess of their leadership, and, most important, their divine inspiration."
Winston Churchill shared Julius Caesar's grievous fault of ambition. In The Great Man Winston Churchill, Robert Payne wrote: "He wanted fame, glory … He wanted everything. First, he wanted to be a commander of armies, to be a conqueror and king-maker, directing the destinies of whole peoples and whole continents …"
Now guess the source of this item:
"We do not yet know if Donald Trump will prove to be a good president, but the 'Great Man' theory of history began to apply to America's 45th commander-in-chief from the minute he took office."
No, it wasn't Fox News. It was the United Arab Emirates The National.
So get over it, guys. Good or bad, the deal is done. All the king's horses and all the ex-president's men can't put Hillary Dumpty back together again.
Comment by clicking here.
Previously:
• Holy Humor
• CAUTION: Joking Hazard
• Kludge Fixtures
• Canditedium: Just don't call me disinterested
• In Sanity: How Members of the Tribe do craziness
• You gotta like a guy who can 'feel or act' another's feelings in the mind's muscles --- still …
• The World of Words is Changing --- OY! What's a Jew to do?
• Unruly: Dos, Jews, and don'ts
• 'Noodging' Is Sacred
• Manipulated or Convinced?
• Lost in Translation
• Holy Tongue
Mordechai Schiller is a copyeditor and columnist at Hamodia, the Daily Newspaper of |
Attacks 'could begin within hours' Earlier today, the UN Security Council passed a vote calling for "all necessary measures" against forces loyal to the Libyan leader. The vote - 10-0, with abstentions from Russia, China, Brazil, Germany and India - will allow foreign enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya and ground Colonel Gaddafi's air force, reportedly as early as today. The move comes as Libya's deputy foreign minister told a news conference that his country was ready for a ceasefire with the rebels, despite Gaddafi reportedly vowing: "They will never have peace." Jubilant insurgents at the rebel stronghold of Benghazi greeted the news with cheers, singing and gunfire.
The BBC reported that attacks on forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi by the British and French air forces could begin within hours of the UN passing resolution 1973/2011, with anti-aircraft defences the likely first targets. While the US was not expected to be involved in first attacks, the BBC said: "British and French are likely to get logistical backup from Arab allies." UN statement The Security Council called for an "immediate ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against and abuse of civilians". In a strongly worded statement on its website, it condemned the "gross and systematic violation of human rights, including arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances and summary executions".
The statement said the no-fly zone banned all flights, except humanitarian ones, from Libyan air space "in order to help protect civilians". "[The resolution] specifically calls on Arab League states to co-operate with other member states in taking the necessary measures." The resolution authorises member states to "take all necessary measures... to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamhariya, including Benghazi, while excluding an occupation force," the UN said The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said in a statement on Twitter that the Security Council had responded to the "Libyan people's cry for help". "The Council's purpose is clear: to protect innocent civilians," she wrote.
Libya's deputy ambassador to the UN, one of the country's first diplomats to speak out against Colonel Gaddafi when the protests began this year, said the vote sent a clear message to his leader.
"It is a clear to the Libyan people that they are not alone," he told reporters, Reuters said.
"It is also a clear message to Colonel Gaddafi and those who are supporting him that there is no place for dictatorship... there is no place for atrocities, for mass killing." Colonel Gaddafi has already criticised the resolution, with The Guardian reporting him telling Portuguese television station RTP: "This is craziness, madness, arrogance. If the world gets crazy with us we will get crazy too. "We will respond. We will make their lives hell because they are making our lives hell. They will never have peace." The Libyan leader vowed just hours before the vote to oust the rebels from Benghazi. International reaction
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said the resolution was an important step towards curbing the Libyan regime's violence against anti-government rebels. "These measures strengthen enforcement of the UN arms embargo and broaden the reach of the financial sanctions," the pair said in a joint statement. "The Australian government was among the first to call for decisive action by the international community, including a UN-mandated no fly zone. "Through this action, the UN Security Council has invoked the Responsibility to Protect for the second time in three weeks and has taken decisive action to protect civilians in Libya." French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said France would support military action against Colonel Gaddafi within hours.
Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will join international forces ready to enforce the no-fly zone, US Congress and UN diplomatic sources say. Germany said it abstained from the vote because of fears that the resolution could lead to a protracted conflict within the region. "We should not enter a military confrontation on the optimistic assumption that quick results with few casualties will be achieved," German ambassador to the UN, Peter Wittig, said. Canada sends six jets
Canadian television network CTV reported that Canada would be contributing six air force jets to help enforce the no-fly zone. Britain's Royal Air Force is expected to send Tornado attack aircraft equipped with precise weapons from their bases in Marham, east England, and Lossiemouth in Scotland, Agence France-Presse reported. Chinese envoy Li Baodong, who holds the rotating council presidency this month, said: "We are going to take action very quickly. "I urged all the delegations to get instructions from their capitals as early as possible," he said.
Libya warns of Mediterranean attacks Meanwhile, in Tripoli, Libya warned it could target military and civilian air and sea traffic in the Mediterranean in case of a foreign military intervention, the official Jana news agency reported. "Any military operation against Libya will expose all air and maritime traffic in the Mediterranean to danger," Jana quoted Libya's defence ministry spokesman as saying. "And any civilian or military moving traffic will be the target of a Libyan counteroffensive," he said. "The Mediterranean basin will be exposed to grave danger, not just in the short term but also in the long term." With Gaddafi forces claiming to be at the gates of Benghazi, a decision has become imperative.
France and Britain have led a campaign at the 15-nation council for a no-fly zone over Libya. While this was resisted by China, the US has taken an increasingly tough line seeking broader measures against the threat posed by Colonel Gaddafi. No-fly zone may not be enough The United States has said a no-fly zone may not be enough and stressed the need for strong Arab participation in any operation. The chief of the US Air Force, General Norton Schwartz, told US legislators in Washington that imposing a no-fly zone over Libya "would not be sufficient" to halt Colonel Gaddafi's forces. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on a visit to Tunis that the US "will look for a broad base of participation, including from Arab nations".
NATO has already planned for a no-fly zone and its chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen earlier urged the UN security council to agree on a resolution quickly, warning "time is running out" to stop Colonel Gaddafi. "If Gaddafi prevails, it will send a clear signal that violence pays. That would be unacceptable from a humanitarian and democratic perspective," Mr Rasmussen said. "NATO stands ready to protect the civilian population if there is a demonstrable need, clear legal basis and strong regional support." China has opposed military action, Germany has also spoken out against no-fly zones. Russia, India, South Africa and other nations have expressed various degrees of doubts, diplomats said.
Loading Russia had wanted a resolution demanding a ceasefire to be passed first, but this did not get enough backing to go for a vote. Glenda Kwek and agenciesJared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have some new neighbors.
Ivanka Trump still isn’t technically involved in her dad’s administration, but she and husband Jared Kushner have taken an important step in ensuring they’re indispensable to President Trump: They bought a house in Washington, D.C. According to the Washingtonian, Ivanka has completed a deal for a six-bedroom, $5.5 million house in D.C.’s Kalorama neighborhood.
Oh, and guess who happens to have purchased a house in the same neighborhood, less than two blocks away? Barack and Michelle Obama. The president and First Lady reportedly purchased an 8,000-square-foot house for $6.35 million back in May so Sasha could finish high school in D.C. Which means Ivanka and Jared will also be within walking distance of the Clintons and the Bidens. We can only imagine the block parties.SG-17 said: Paying for sex is rape. You can't pay for consent. It degenerates women into nothing more than a commodity.
But like I said, if just one of the 3 player characters was a woman GTAV wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is, because as it is women have no agency in the game and thus the depictions of women are detrimental.
The way GTA uses satirical stereotypes of American culture is fine, for the most part. Prostitution crosses the line, and the lack of women player characters turns the game into a male circlejerk fantasy. Click to expand...
If paying for sex is rape, dating would illegal.I am with you for the depiction of women in GTA being overwhelmingly negative, but my concern for social good clashes with my hate of censorship, and banning sales of a game is especially concerning when it is justified by being called "a male circle jerk fantasy." That's a moral judgment and it takes a lot of hubris to make that call. If it could be proved that GTAV directly contributed to harm against women (something like the link between smoking and cancer), I would be more supportive of this move (and I don't think that link is outside the realm of possibility). At the very least it contributes to a culture of degradation and disrespect. I don't believe that is enough to ban its sales.But here is the thing: Target is a private corporation and is not obligated to sell you all the things you want. The government is not censoring or banning sales of the game, so for all of you who disagree with the decision, shop elsewhere. In effect this is protesting the decision, as an impact on their sales (especially over the holidays) will provide more of an impetus for change than a strongly worded letter.I am glad there is so much discussion about these issues now, and I look forward to checking back on gaming culture in some years, to see the sexist critics become the crotchety old racists of the future.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Morris dancers accused of'mocking black people'
A group of Morris dancers abandoned a performance in Birmingham city centre after being heckled for their use of black face paint.
The dancers, from Alvechurch in Worcestershire, were accused of being racist because some of their members' faces had been blackened.
One man filmed himself confronting them as they performed near the Bullring.
The Alvechurch Morris dancer group has not commented on the incident.
More on this and other stories from Birmingham and the Black Country
Image caption The use of black face make-up by Morris dancers, such as this group seen performing in Whitby, has become an issue for several groups across the country
The use of black face make-up by Morris dancers has become a controversial issue, with Shrewsbury Folk Festival banning the practice after receiving complaints.
Supporters, however, say the practice dates back centuries and is not linked to race.Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
Count Vancouver in among the Evander Kane suitors.
During intermission of a WHL Vancouver broadcast on TEAM 1410, Canucks GM Jim Benning said that his club would be interested in acquiring Kane, the controversial Jets forward that’s currently sidelined 4-6 months following shoulder surgery.
Transcript of the interview:
TSN 1040: How busy will Mar. 2 be? How busy might the Canucks be on deadline day?
Benning: It’s hard to say. I’ve talked to other general managers and there’s some uncertainty next year with the Canadian dollar and where the salary cap’s going to go to. I think that’s going to have an impact on how many deals are made, but if we can do things to make our team better now and in the future, then we’re going to look at them, and we’ll see where it goes.
TSN 1040: Any Evander Kane? His name’s out there. Would there be an interest in Evander at all if you had the opportunity?
Benning: We can’t really talk about other teams’ players, but we would be interested for sure.
Here’s the full audio of the interview (Kane material is at the very end.)
Two quick takeaways:
1) There may be accusations of tampering. The NHL is pretty stringent when it comes to talking about players on other teams; in 2009, Maple Leafs head coach Ron Wilson was found guilty of tampering and fined an undisclosed amount after he expressed interest in Vancouver forwards Henrik and Daniel Sedin — before they reached free agency.
That said, the Kane situation deals with a player currently under contract, which may not constitute tampering. Around the same time as the Sedin incident of ’09, the Canucks also filed a separate charge after then-Leafs GM Brian Burke appeared on television and discussed a rumored Vancouver-Tampa Bay trade.
NHL deputy commissioner called Burke’s actions “unfortunate and inappropriate,” but explained they didn’t constitute tampering under league rules.
2) This is the strongest confirmation that the Canucks want to bring Kane back to Vancouver. Many have thought the 23-year-old’s long pined for a return to his hometown; he was born and raised in the city and played his junior hockey for the Giants, helping the team capture the 2007 Memorial Cup.
In a post earlier today on TSN, Bob McKenzie wrote that Vancouver “would be at the top” of the list of teams interested in acquiring Kane:
The Canucks want to make the playoffs, make no mistake. But the new regime of general manager Jim Benning also knows as important as it is to stay competitive and strive for playoffs, there’s a long-range vision, too, and getting a 23-year-old Kane fits into that plan.
The rub, though, is Winnipeg is sure to want a package that includes one of the Canucks’ best young prospects – centre Bo Horvat and/or Jake Virtanen – and that’s a non-starter for Vancouver. Is there a package that includes a Canuck roster player and a different prospect (Jared McCann, for example) that might intrigue the Jets?
Perhaps we’ll find out.↬ A Simplistic View of the Stock Market
As can be seen in Figure 1 the GDP in the US has been on a very stable growth path for the last 50 or so years. There is certainly deviation from steady growth but the variations are overwhelmed by the growth path. Macroeconomics provides some convincing models for the long-term trend and the short-term variations, so this 2% growth in real GDP (3.3% nominal growth here) does seem to be a reasonably supportable trend.
We would expect the value of the stock market to follow a similar stable path if what it reflects is the long-term discounted value of the firms generating the GDP. This would be especially true if investors were planning on holding stock for a long-time and thus were mostly insensitive to the short-term variations.
Figure 2 shows the performance of the US stock market over the same 50 year period. It seems to deviate much more sharply from the simple regression line. However, when viewed in a log scale the regression still seems to make sense, and those deviations match quite nicely to times of market under or over-valuation, such as the 2001 and 2008 booms and the bear market of the 70s and 80s. So if we believe that the fundamentals of the economy imply stable yearly growth the regression line in the graph should be a decent measure of the true value of the stock market.
Figure 3 shows the percentage difference between the value of the S&P500 and of its regression (as shown in Figure 2). The first thing that jumped at me is that according to this the financial crisis was the best time to enter the stock market in 20 years, and that the market is still undervalued. Another interesting result is that the dot-com boom was the largest by far, dwarfing both the 2008 boom and the valuations of the 60s.
As advertised, this is a very simplistic analysis. Don’t go buy stock based on this. Off the top of my head here are some reasons why this is flawed:
2% real growth in the US economy may not be sustainable going forward
Use of debt by companies has probably changed over these years, shifting the total value between stocks and bonds
The percentage of the economy represented in the stock market may have changed, with more or less private ownership
After all the caveats this still gave me a much more immediate feel for the risk involved in these markets. The wild swings reported by hour-on-hour CNBC-style coverage are the microscopic features of the underlying growth (7% in the regression line).It used to be easy for Web server administrators. If you ran a Windows shop, you used Internet Information Server (IIS), if you didn't, you used Apache. Now, though, you have more Web server choices and one of the leading alternatives, the open-source NGINX Web server, is gaining fast.
According to Netcraft, the leading Web server analytics company, NGINX, with its over 40-million Web domains and 8.5% of all Web domains, is catching up with the big two. Indeed Netcraft analysts believe that "If current trends continue NGINX will soon overtake Microsoft to have the second largest number of active sites."
NGINX has moved into this position because it's very, very fast. The company claims that NGINX can deliver 10 times the performance on the same hardware. I don't know about that, but I do know on my own servers that NGINX is very fast and uses far less resources than Apache or IIS. It does this by being event-based. That means it doesn't spawn new processes or threads for each Web page request. The end result is that even as the load increases, memory use remains predictable.
NGINX can also be used to improve performance because it can be used as a reverse proxy. In this mode, NGINX looks like just another Web server to users. Behind the scenes, though the reverse proxy is used to load balance Web requests among several back-end servers, or to provide caching for a slower back-end server.
The net result is that NGINX provides very fast and stable Web services with minimal hardware. You don't have to take my word for it. Of the top 1,000 Web servers in the world, 22.4% use NGINX. These include such Web heavyweights as Facebook, Hulu, and WordPress.
Now, NGINX also has some cash to help it get even more clients. The company has just received $3 million in a fully subscribed Series A round from BV Capital and Runa Capital, and an entity affiliated with MSD Capital, Dell CEO Michael Dell's private investment firm. The funding will be used to support the company's plans for its new commercial arm, Nginx Inc., and its expansion into the U.S.
They're investing in it, because, as Thomas Gieselmann co-founder of BV Capital, said in a statement, "Several of the companies we invested in were able to solve significant scaling issues by switching their web platforms to NGINX. NGINX transparently and effectively enables the growth of the largest sites on the Internet today."
With this funding the NGINX teams plans on opening its new San Francisco headquarters by year's end and by the middle of 2012, the company will be offering what it calls "a commercial-grade connection processing and optimization software platform, which will enable advanced performance, traffic management, extended configuration and security features for hosting, cloud and enterprise server infrastructure. NGINX will also offer flexible options to upgrade existing web installations to modern and efficient high density web software." In short, NGINX is taking their open-source project and aimming straight for the top of the corporate Web server market.
At the rate NGINS is growing, and IIS is declining, I expect that by the end of 2012, NGINX may well be the number two Web server in the world. If you're involved at all in Web services, it's time to look into NGINX. It's going to be part of your future.
Web server statistics image courtesy of W3Techs.
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Microsoft readies new Express version of its IIS Web serverFloreana Island's postal service hasn't evolved from its origins hundreds of years ago. But unlike Darwin's finches, it doesn't need to adapt to survive.
Instead of stamps and postmen, the Galapagos isle relies on a barrel and the kindness of travelers to move its mail. Twice a day including Sunday, boatloads of unofficial mail carriers land in Post Office Bay and walk a few sandy yards to a wooden barrel crammed with postcards and notes left by past visitors. The guests, mainly cruisers eco-touring the Ecuadorian islands, sort through the stacks, looking for addresses within delivery distance of their homes. They also drop their own messages into the receptacle, adding another link to the chain of mail.
"Sometimes it's faster than the regular mail," said our guide, Carlos, as he yanked dozens of letters from a plastic bag. "You come one day and drop it off two days later."
The practice started in the late 1700s as a way for English whalers to communicate with friends and family back home. The men heading out to sea would deposit their correspondence, which sailors returning home would collect and deliver.
The "post office" looks like an installation piece by Robinson Crusoe, with artful piles of driftwood and other organic detritus surrounding the elevated barrel. Stickers, scrawlings and a poster of Golden Age Hollywood stars adorn the artifacts as if they were a bathroom wall in a bar.
Since this was our fourth day of traveling together, our group of 16 knew one another's home towns, and we hollered out international cities hoping to make a match. A New Yorker named Maura approached my parents with "Brookline," thinking that the Boston neighborhood might be close to their home in western Massachusetts. She kept one destined for Cambridge, Mass., planning to drop it off during an upcoming trip there. The Swedish family grabbed a Stockholm-or-bust postcard and gave me a patient grin when I asked whether a holiday in Copenhagen was in their future.
In my cluster, I found cards addressed to California, Toronto, France and Germany. One for Vancouver said, "We are stranded on Postcard Island. Send help. Quick. Stop." A sheet of thin, fraying paper covered in tiny print needed a lift to Romania. I was tempted to deliver it myself, worried that it might disintegrate before a Romanian-bound traveler could save it. After flipping through countless images of sea lions and blue-footed boobies, I finally scored: East Capitol Street, Washington, D.C.
It was exciting to make a connection, but then I realized that I actually had to deliver the postcard -- or else let down the writer as well as a centuries-old tradition. Buying a stamp and mailing it is considered cheating, Carlos warned us. But arriving at a stranger's house with a "surprise" from someone you've never met could be a little creepy, no?
To her credit, Kathy Brennan was a model recipient. I left a note in her mailbox saying that I wished to deliver a special something from her friend Nancy and asking her to call me to arrange a time. When we talked on the phone, she was excited to hear that I knew Nancy, until I admitted that I had no idea who Nancy was, but that I was her messenger. Even after that, she invited me over.
In her living room, I handed her the postcard of two frolicking sea lions, explaining its journey from a barrel in the sand to a rowhouse in Washington.
"I'm amazed that you picked up this card and hand-delivered it to me," said Brennan, who has traveled to Africa and Patagonia with Nancy but couldn't make the Galapagos trip. "It's like the message in a bottle. You never know if it's going to reach someone. This is the ultimate travel story."
Later, I called the letter writer, Nancy Buermeyer, to find out when she'd "mailed" the card. Amazingly, it was the day before I'd arrived in Post Office Bay.
"I mailed postcards to friends who did not get them yet," said the San Francisco resident. "Turns out you are more efficient than the Ecuadoran and U.S. postal services."
I asked her why, of all her friends and family, she chose Brennan to send a note to. Buermeyer explained her criteria, which were calculated to increase the odds of a delivery: The friend must live in a metropolitan area, in a building with an accessible mailbox or front door and "would be okay with having a wayward traveler showing up at your doorstep." Brennan passed on all counts.
For the note I posted at Floreana Island, I was less scientific, addressing it to the first person I could think of. I can't wait to hear how my trip to the Galapagos was.JaQuan Lyle is set to take an official visit to Kansas on February 24th, according to ZagsBlog.com. Kansas is set to play Oklahoma that day, which happens to be his birthday.
Lyle, a 6-foot-5 point guard is considering Oregon, Providence, UConn, Oklahoma State and Memphis.
More from ZagsBlog.com on Lyle:
Lyle is also tight with incoming big man Cliff Alexander, who could help take over up front assuming Joel Embiid goes to the NBA as the likely No. 1 pick. “Me and Cliff, we’ve been tight since about our eighth-grade year and our relationship just grew, so now he’s like a brother to me,” Lyle told SNY.tv last week. “Just the opportunity to play with him would be wonderful. Cliff makes me better, I make him better. Every big man wants a point guard who can get them the ball in the right place that they can score, make the job easier for them. And every point guard wants a big man who can get them open and get them an opportunity to make them look better.”AP Jeff Minich is a former Yahoo and an ad-tech industry veteran who has held product management and marketing roles at Adobe, Optimine, and most recently AdRoll. He wrote this post in response to the recent assault on Yahoo and its CEO by hedge fund manager Eric Jackson.
Eric Jackson has had a lot to say about Marissa Mayer and Yahoo lately. He's a smart guy, I read his column and think he's generally an astute investor.
But when it comes to Marissa and Yahoo, his analysis feels very shortsighted and, well, misinformed. It's particularly so when it comes to his assessment of Yahoo's operating structure and the trajectory of its core business.
When I disagree with someone, I always like to put myself in their shoes to better understand where they're coming from. So let's look at things from Eric's perspective.
The value of his Yahoo stake has more than doubled since Marissa took over two years ago... but nothing, at least according to the most recent income statement, has changed with the core business of Yahoo. It's still in decline.
He's looking at a post-Alibaba-IPO scenario where much of the value of the Alibaba transaction has been extracted for Yahoo shareholders... and then what? If you're truly pessimistic about the prospects of Yahoo's core business, you're probably worried the company is going to continue its slow decline into obscurity, unable to compete with Google and Facebook in a mobile-first world.
In that case, selling Yahoo to Alibaba makes perfect sense. Eric and other shareholders will get a one-time bump in value for their Yahoo stakes from the acquisition premium and savings from taxes that would have gone to Uncle Sam if Yahoo had sold its Alibaba shares. In this Alibaba-acquires-Yahoo scenario, Eric's Ironfire Capital and other shareholders may get another 30-40% return in the short run while Yahoo gets absorbed into a much faster growing and successful global company. This is where I think Eric is shortsighted. I believe his long-term shareholder interests are better served by leaving the company in the hands of Marissa.
Before I explain why I'm optimistic, let me just say I'm not one of Marissa Mayer's fanboys, not by any stretch. I worked at Yahoo through five CEOs — Carol Bartz, Tim Morse, Ross Levinshon, the disaster of Scott Thompson, and finally a year under Marissa.
I worked in the Ad Products Group and managed audience targeting for Yahoo's premium display business. My product sat at the heart of monetization for Yahoo Display and was among the fastest growing and highest yielding (e.g. price per ad) components of the Yahoo Display business.
It was a proverbial "green shoot" in an otherwise blackened landscape for Yahoo Display. In spite of that track record, Marissa made decisions and leadership changes related to the premium display business that made it difficult for me to continue working there. So I left the company a year ago along with some of the top minds in display monetization, most of whom ended up in places like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other direct competitors to Yahoo.
Marissa should have embraced these bright minds and incorporated their expertise and knowledge into her new native ad and mobile vision. She chose not to and Yahoo display revenue, at least in the short term, suffered as a result.
What I didn't get then, but understand now, is Marissa most likely made a conscious decision to put the legacy display business on the backburner to focus on building a new, more modern monetization platform capable of driving predictable and systematic long-term growth for Yahoo.
Could she have been more elegant and integrative in her approach? Probably. Is her new strategy working? Based on the last earnings report, I believe there are some compelling clues that it is. On the surface, I can see why investors like Eric might be discouraged, with revenues and price per ad still falling.
But look deeper into the Q2 report and there is one number that jumps off the page: Number of ads sold increased 24% year over year. You might think this is a non-event given that price-per-ad also declined 24% in the quarter (which actually results in the 7% year over year display revenue decline). But read between the lines and another surprising metric emerges from the Q2 report.
Native ads now make up 40% of all impressions sold on Yahoo, up 100% quarter over quarter. That's huge. It means Marissa's native ad play has a pulse. This is her big bet in display and, based on the current trajectory, native ads should become the majority of impressions sold on Yahoo! by the end of Q3.
In just over two years Marissa will have flipped the entire display business at Yahoo on its head... from one almost wholly dependent on the whims of a few agencies and large advertisers to a much more robust business with a diversified customer base capable of spanning many thousands of large and small advertisers.
Price per ad should rebound as the native targeting capabilities improve and demand continues to rise. If price per ad improves, even just a bit, and the current growth rate in native ads continues, Yahoo will be a growth company again in 2015. Eric Jackson gave up on Marissa a quarter or two too soon. It's a classic example of Wall Street short-term thinking. Now lets take a look at some of Eric's other mis-givings about Marissa:
She Hired Henrique de Castro
I can't really disagree that this was a mis-hire. Even Marissa admits that. To her credit, she course-corrected quickly at a very painful PR cost. It's water under the bridge at this point.
She Increased Headcount
Eric uses Interactive Corp (IAC) as a benchmark to make the argument that Yahoo's headcount is bloated. He neglects to mention that IAC is about one-third smaller than Yahoo by revenue.
Second, less than 5% of IAC revenue comes from Media. Original content creation is expensive and requires more headcount than the kind of services that drive most of IAC revenue (e.g. personals with match.com and search with ask.com). This is especially true when you are creating geo-specific content across diverse global markets.
But even assuming Eric is right about the IAC comparison, show me one example of a high-tech company that cut their way to growth? It just doesn't work that way. Marissa needs to completely rebuild the car while still driving it. That means sustaining the legacy business while building completely new platforms for mobile, video, content, and native ads.
This is no small task, particularly given the fact that Yahoo is a huge global enterprise operating in dozens of different geographies and serving over 800 million active users. Marissa understands how damaging layoffs are to a company's psyche.
I lived through several at Yahoo and it was extremely unpleasant and demoralizing. What Marissa has done instead is quietly filter out low-performers after each quarterly review period and then replaced those people with fresh new blood. My former colleagues tell me there is virtually no place for slackers at Yahoo anymore. That's a good thing.
She Wasted $2 Billion on Acquisitions
Eric clearly hasn't tried to recruit good engineers in the Silicon Valley lately. Hiring quality talent is difficult even when you're a market leader and growing fast... there's just too much competition for engineering talent right now. A few months ago I saw a guy holding a cardboard sign on the street in San Francisco. He wasn't begging for money, he was looking for engineers! That's how bad it is.
By making many small acquisitions, Marissa has accelerated the process of rewriting Yahoo's core engineering DNA. This is critical for the long-term success of the company. Eric's view that the money was wasted neglects the fact that to be competitive Marissa needs an army of talented, hard-working engineers. Retrofitting a 12,000 person company with new layers of key talent takes time and money, but it's the only way Yahoo will ever start building competitive products again.
Mobile Adoption Would Have Happened With Or Without Marissa
Do you remember the Yahoo mobile experience before Marissa? I do, and it was awful. You were better off accessing the desktop Yahoo site through a mobile web browser. There were about 50 mobile engineers at the company before Marissa arrived. Embarrassing but true. The reason there were so few was because the company was stuck in a backward looking bean-counter state where engineering investment followed current revenues rather than future growth opportunities.
The lack of investment was a total failure of previous leadership teams. Marissa has spent a good amount of time and effort cleaning up this mess and the results are starting to show with apps like the Yahoo News Digest (this one has actually become a daily habit for me), Weather, and Flickr. There is more work to do for Yahoo on the mobile front, but the re-invention of almost all of the company's core products on mobile was a major undertaking, and one Marissa directly deserves credit for.
Eric has other complaints like the increase in stock-based compensation. This feels like he's piling on just to make his point. He then goes on to warn that investors should be worried about Marissa's stewardship of the upcoming Alibaba IPO cash haul. As a former Yahoo, and one who worked very close to its core monetization efforts, my take is that investors interested in the long-term potential of Marissa-fied Yahoo should be cautious of Eric Jackson's line of thinking. He's armchair quarter-backing and attacking her just ahead of what could be significant upside as a result of her retrofit of Yahoo's core monetization platforms and content experiences. She deserves a few more quarters to let this reinvention take hold.I was so pleased to come home from work today to see my gift had arrived. I was delighted to see it was beautifully wrapped and had a letter, which I read first. This got me very, very excited about the gift.
First, I got excited about the idea of a garlic farm. WHAT could be in the garlic farm gifts??? I had no idea (at this point!), but I was pretty flipping excited. See, I love food, and I especially love local things that aren't available everywhere. So to receive goodies from the Isle of Wight that I could eat... yes. So much yes. And I loved hearing about my Santa's trip to Osborne House and I could imagine that I would have equally been excited about the labrador and all the fancy rooms!
Then I read next that the next thing was fairy tale-esque... and a piece of bespoke artwork BY MY SANTA. At this point, I couldn't contain myself and I opened everything.
First: GARLIC. Black garlic! This is something I've never tried, which is surprising, because I love garlic and I love gourmet goodies like this. I'm super tempted to just eat one plain, but I have also started looking up some awesome recipes for this. Even just a simple bruschetta must be amazing with this kind of treat!
Second: Celebration Chutney! As I make the bread for our house, I'm going to bake a bread specifically to go with the flavours of this chutney. I cannot wait to have a liberal spread of it on some toast. I LOVE spiced things and so I know I will enjoy this.
THIRD AND SUPER AMAZING: LOOK AT THIS ARTWORK I RECEIVED! =D Is it not the most beautiful thing ever? It is so PERFECT for me and beautifully fairy-tale. I really, really love this and I'm going to put it up on the mantelpiece in my study space. I research fairy tales (and food, hence the love for the above =P), so this just makes my study area atmospheric. And I don't know if it is based on some of the pictures of me on my profile, but my boyfriend did comment that it had a likeness to me when I wear my hair curly, so even if it isn't, I'm going to choose to think that this is what I would look like if I grew horns and became a member of the fae.
I've also stalked my Santa's artwork and I just want to say that it is all absolutely stunning and I feel so lucky to have received this from her. =)
THANK YOU SO MUCH, Santa!Retractable wheel Desk October 11, 2010
I needed a desk that looked solid and part of the builtins surrounding it, but that could be moved fairly easily without lifting it. To move around easily, I wanted it to have wheels, but I didn’t want them to be visible at all. I also didn’t want the desk to move once it was in position (no accidental rolling). If I installed braking casters under the desk, the whole desk would have to be elevated and the wheels would be partially visible. Furthermore, I’d have to get to the break levers on each of the wheels, which would be awkward.
I went in a different direction, inspired by an old episode of The New Yankee Workshop. In the episode, Norm creates a work table that sits solidly on legs at the same height as the table saw. Simple retractable wheels are made with door hinges and casters. I liked this so much for the workshop that I made one.
My desk would use a similar technique, only more compact and, because of that, slighly more mechanically complicated. The wheels are completely hidden when retracted.
The best way to describe this is through a series of pictures. First, to provide the overall picture, the desk currently looks like this (the drawers do not yet have fronts – |
stratification of individuals into categories of higher-risk for CD can identify those that would benefit from more invasive and costly definitive testing. The GRS is flexible and its performance can be adapted to the clinical situation by adjusting the threshold cut-off. Despite explaining a minority of disease heritability, our findings indicate a genomic risk score provides clinically relevant information to improve upon current diagnostic pathways for CD and support further studies evaluating the clinical utility of this approach in CD and other complex diseases.
Author Summary Celiac disease (CD) is a common immune-mediated illness, affecting approximately 1% of the population in Western countries but the diagnostic process remains sub-optimal. The development of CD is strongly dependent on specific human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes, and HLA testing to identify CD susceptibility is now commonly undertaken in clinical practice. The clinical utility of HLA typing is to exclude CD when the CD susceptibility HLA types are absent, but notably, most people who possess HLA types imparting susceptibility for CD never develop CD. Therefore, while genetic testing in CD can overcome several limitations of the current diagnostic tools, the utility of HLA typing to identify those individuals at increased-risk of CD is limited. Using large datasets assaying single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), we have developed genomic risk scores (GRS) based on multiple SNPs that can more accurately predict CD risk across several populations in “real world” clinical settings. The GRS can generate predictions that optimize CD risk stratification and diagnosis, potentially reducing the number of unnecessary follow-up investigations. The medical and economic impact of improving CD diagnosis is likely to be significant, and our findings support further studies into the role of personalized GRS's for other strongly heritable human diseases.
Citation: Abraham G, Tye-Din JA, Bhalala OG, Kowalczyk A, Zobel J, Inouye M (2014) Accurate and Robust Genomic Prediction of Celiac Disease Using Statistical Learning. PLoS Genet 10(2): e1004137. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004137 Editor: Joshua M. Akey, University of Washington, United States of America Received: August 1, 2013; Accepted: December 8, 2013; Published: February 13, 2014 Copyright: © 2014 Abraham et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The celiac disease genotype data was generated under WTCCC award WT084743 and Coeliac UK funding. Part of this work utilized the computing resources of the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative (project VR0126). This study makes use of data generated by the Wellcome Trust Case-Control Consortium. A full list of the investigators who contributed to the generation of the data is available from www.wtccc.org.uk. Funding for the project was provided by the Wellcome Trust under award 076113 and 085475. MI was supported by an NHMRC early career fellowship 637400. MI and GA were supported by University of Melbourne funding. JATD was supported by an NHMRC Postgraduate Medical Scholarship. This work was partially supported by the Australian Research Council, and by the NICTA Victorian Research Laboratory. NICTA is funded by the Australian Government as represented by the Department of Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy, and the Australian Research Council through the ICT Centre of Excellence program. This work was made possible through Victorian State Government Operational Infrastructure Support and Australian Government NHMRC IRIIS. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Introduction Improving the diagnosis of celiac disease (CD), a common immune-mediated illness caused by dietary gluten, remains a clinical challenge [1], [2]. Despite a prevalence of approximately 1% in most Western countries, lack of awareness and failure to implement appropriate serological, histological and genetic testing means that less than 30–40% of those affected by CD are diagnosed [1], [3]–[5]. Undiagnosed CD is associated with reduced quality of life, substantial morbidity, and increased mortality, however, prompt diagnosis and treatment lowers the burden of disease and may reduce the rate of complications such as osteoporosis, autoimmune disease, and malignancy. Optimizing the diagnosis of CD is now recognized as an important goal for clinicians [6]. CD is characterized by a variable combination of gluten-dependent clinical manifestations, CD-specific antibodies and small bowel inflammation (villous atrophy) [7]. Traditional guidelines for the diagnosis of CD rely on demonstrating villous atrophy and improvement of symptoms, laboratory abnormalities, and/or small bowel inflammation upon exclusion of dietary gluten [8]. Current clinical practice is to screen for CD by detecting CD-specific serum antibodies and then confirm the diagnosis by undertaking small bowel biopsy to demonstrate typical villous atrophy. Serologic screening for CD with transglutaminase-IgA antibodies is reported to be highly sensitive and specific for CD (both >90%), imparting a high positive predictive value (PPV) of over 90% when assessing most populations [9], [10], although the PPV can fall to 45–70% in community screening settings [11], [12]. In practice, serological and histological assessments have technical limitations that generate both false negative and false positive diagnoses. A key feature of CD is its strong dependence on the presence of susceptibility genes encoding for HLA DQ2.5, DQ8, and/or half the HLA DQ2.5 heterodimer (typically DQ2.2), seen in approximately 99.6% of all patients with CD [13]. These genes encode immune-recognition molecules which facilitate CD4+ T cell recognition of specific gluten-derived peptides, a critical step in disease pathogenesis [14]–[18]. Recognizing the crucial role of these genes, the latest consensus diagnostic guidelines for CD recommend testing for these HLA heterodimers (HLA typing) as a first-line investigation for asymptomatic individuals identified at-risk of CD, such as 1st-degree relatives of an affected individual or those with suggestive symptoms [7]. However, a major flaw of HLA typing as a diagnostic tool is that a substantial proportion of the community, typically reported to be 30–40%, express HLA DQ2.5, DQ8, and/or DQ2.2, thus making the presence of these HLA types poorly predictive and of low specificity for CD [13]. Indeed, a recent Australian population study revealed that 56% of the community possessed at least one of these CD susceptibility haplotypes [5]. Thus, while HLA typing can exclude CD in the community with high confidence when the susceptibility haplotypes are absent, these haplotypes will be present in 30–56% of the population, the majority of whom would not have CD. Therefore, if assessed as a stand-alone test, HLA typing has exceptionally high sensitivity and negative predictive value (NPV) but very poor specificity and low positive predictive value (PPV) for CD. Since a positive result poorly predicts the presence of CD, HLA typing is not useful as a stand-alone diagnostic tool for CD. While the relative-risk for CD can be stratified based on the HLA subtype (CD risk DQ2.5>DQ8>DQ2.2) [19], these categories have low positive predictive value and do not provide clinically-informative attribution of CD risk [20]; HLA results are therefore interpreted as a binary outcome: CD susceptibility positive or negative. Despite these limitations, HLA typing is now widely utilized in clinical practice and typically determined using polymerase chain-reaction sequence specific oligonucleotide (PCR-SSO) hybridization, which is time and labor intensive, and costly (AU $120/sample, Medicare; in the USA cost varies but is typically US $150/sample or greater). It is important to distinguish between three different approaches to analyzing the HLA region for association with CD. The first approach, currently in clinical practice, is HLA typing, as described above, where the HLA result is considered a binary variable and its utility is to exclude CD. A second approach, such as that taken by Romanos et al., utilizes the same HLA-DQ haplotypes, stratifies individuals into several nominal risk levels then fits a statistical model to empirically estimate the true risk in each group [21], [22]. While HLA-DQ haplotypes may be inferred from typing several HLA SNPs, importantly the HLA SNPs are only used to assign the HLA type and the SNPs themselves are not directly modeled. The third approach, such as that used here, is based on direct concurrent modeling of many thousands of individual SNPs for association with CD in order to produce a more fine-grained predictive “genomic risk score” (GRS). GRSs have been enabled by the advent of genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which perform unbiased testing of many thousands of SNPs for association with CD. Using GWAS, recent studies have identified multiple non-HLA SNP associations with CD [23], [24]. GWAS are primarily concerned with the detection of variants associated with disease in order to gain insight into the disease etiology and genetic architecture. Due to the high number of significance tests, controlling for false positive associations is a major, valid concern. Therefore, SNP-based risk scores have tended to be constructed from the SNPs found to be significantly associated with the disease status [22], [25]. However, due to the stringent multiple-testing corrections utilized in GWAS there may be other SNPs that fail to achieve genome-wide significance but may be predictive of disease status nonetheless and including them in the model could potentially result in higher predictive ability than achievable by models based solely on genome-wide significant SNPs. In contrast to the GWAS approach, the main overriding aim of a GRS from a clinical perspective is to achieve maximal predictive capacity, the inference of genetic architecture is secondary. We have recently designed computational algorithms which efficiently fit L1-penalized multivariable classification models to genome-wide and whole-genome SNP data [26]. Such models were then shown to be preferable to several other methods such as the standard method of summing the per-SNP log odds (polygenic score) [27], mixed effects linear modeling [28], [29], and unpenalized logistic regression, with both better precision for detecting causal SNPs in simulation and better case/control predictive power [30]. These advantages were consistent across several complex diseases, including two British studies of CD. However, the diagnostic implications of penalized models have not been previously examined nor has the robustness of such models in other populations or the advantage over HLA-typing approaches. In contrast to existing studies that examine a small number of genome-wide significant SNPs, we have shown that many more SNPs (potentially hundreds) are required to achieve optimal predictive ability for CD. Further, the standard GWAS approach of considering each SNP separately when estimating its effect size does not consider its correlation with other SNPs. We have shown that unpenalized predictive models based on these top SNPs suffer from lower predictive ability than L1-penalized models since the pre-screening introduces multiple highly correlated SNPs into the model, of which a substantial proportion may be redundant in terms of contribution to the predictive ability. Similar L1-penalized approaches have also recently been successfully applied to inflammatory bowel disease case/control Immunochip data, where models based on several hundred SNPs have led to high predictive ability [31]. Here, we provide a proof-of-concept that the GRS for CD, induced by L1-penalized support vector machine models, are able to achieve a predictive capacity and robustness that provides information not afforded by current diagnostic pathways utilizing HLA typing alone. This GRS has the potential to provide greater clinical diagnostic utility by enabling each individual to be assigned a more informative risk score beyond the simple designation of “CD susceptible” or “CD non-susceptible”, or “high risk” versus “low risk”. To enable useful comparisons between diagnostic approaches, we model the GRS as a stand-alone test to “diagnose” CD, while at the same time acknowledging that real world clinical practice will need to draw upon clinical history, CD-specific serology and small bowel histology to confirm the diagnosis of CD. We assess the predictive power of the GRS both in cross-validation and in external validation, across six different European cohorts, showing that the models strongly replicate. We test our GRS on three other autoimmune diseases: type 1 diabetes, Crohn's disease, and rheumatoid arthritis, finding some predictive ability for T1D status but none for the others, thus largely supporting the specificity of the scores for CD. To overcome limitations of previous studies utilizing GWAS case/control studies, where ascertainment bias incurs substantially higher rates of false positive results, we undertake genomic prediction of CD in “real world” settings where the prevalence of CD is far lower and evaluate the performance of the GRS using PPV and NPV at several levels of CD prevalence. Unlike HLA typing, the GRS allows flexibility in determining who is considered at higher risk for CD by selecting a clinically determined user-specified threshold. We demonstrate how these scores can be practically applied at various prevalence levels to optimize sensitivity and precision. Finally, we show how the model can be calibrated to produce accurate predicted probabilities of disease.
Discussion In this study, we have sought to exploit the strong genetic basis for CD and leverage comprehensive genome-wide SNP profiles using statistical learning to improve risk stratification and the diagnosis of CD. Our models showed excellent performance in cross-validation and were highly replicable in external validation across datasets of different ethnicities, suggesting that the genetic component is shared between these European ethnicities and that our models were able to capture a substantial proportion of it. Importantly, even without explaining a majority of CD heritability, the models were robust and accurate, showing that it is not necessary to explain most of the heritability in order to produce a useful model. The most frequently employed tools to diagnose CD are serology and small bowel histology, but both have limitations. Differences in the sensitivity of antibody recognition of commercially employed CD-specific antigens such as tissue transglutaminase, deamidated gliadin peptides, and endomysial antigen, as well as the human operator performing the assay can all influence findings and affect reproducibility of serological testing [9], [46]–[49]. Serologic testing in children is reported to be less reliable before the age of 4 and up to 50% of children normalize elevated antibodies over time [50], [51]. While small bowel histology remains the ‘gold standard’ confirmatory test, it is dependent upon patients willing and available to undergo endoscopy, adequate sampling by the gastroenterologist, and appropriate pathological processing and interpretation [52]–[54]. The frequencies of false positives and false negatives in CD serology assays vary widely and also partly depend upon what degree of histologic inflammation is considered compatible with CD [52], [54]–[58]. Notably, the accuracy of both serologic and histologic testing for CD is dependent on the ongoing consumption of gluten. It is clear that clinically significant variability exists in serologic and histologic work-up for CD and new tools to improve the accuracy of CD diagnosis would be of benefit to clinicians. Given the strong genetic basis for CD, genomic tools are logical and appealing because they are relatively robust and less subject to the kind of variability seen with serologic and histologic assessment, are independent of age, and do not rely on dietary intake of gluten. A major shortcoming of clinical HLA typing for risk prediction of CD is its poor specificity. HLA testing would result in virtually all CD cases detected but at the cost of approximately 30–56 people incorrectly implicated for each true case of CD. A significant advantage of the GRS approach is that it can be adapted to the clinical scenario in order to maximize PPV and diagnostic accuracy. By promoting accurate clinical stratification, the GRS could reserve invasive and more expensive confirmatory testing for those who would most likely benefit from further investigation to secure a diagnosis, and it would avoid unnecessary procedures in those who are HLA susceptible but unlikely to have CD. This provides both clinical and economic benefits. HLA typing does not provide the flexibility afforded by the GRS and cannot be effectively employed to identify those who would benefit from endoscopy. For instance, if HLA typing were used as a guide for further investigations, at 10% CD prevalence it would generate over five unnecessary endoscopies per correct endoscopy and at 1% CD prevalence it would generate 30–56 unnecessary endoscopies. Small bowel endoscopy is not a trivial undertaking – the procedure is costly (approximately AUD $750–$1000 for the procedure and associated pathology), has potential complications, necessitates a full day off work, and many patients are reluctant to undergo it. The GRS can be used to exclude patients unlikely to have CD with a performance comparable to HLA typing. Testing with these parameters may be useful in the clinical scenario of assessing individuals at average risk of CD. A common example would be when a person has commenced a gluten-free diet prior to assessment for CD by serology or small bowel examination and are unwilling or unable to resume oral gluten intake in order to make testing reliable. This is an increasingly common clinical dilemma as the number of people following a gluten-free diet without adequate initial testing for CD continues to rise. In the United States approximately 30% of the adult population are interested in cutting back or avoiding dietary gluten [59]. The GRS can also be used to stratify the risk for CD in patients who present with suggestive clinical features. These risk factors include having a first-degree relative with CD or problems such as recurrent abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea or constipation, fatigue, weight loss, unexplained anemia, autoimmune disease (including thyroid disease, T1D, autoimmune hepatitis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Sjogren's syndrome), infertility or early-onset osteoporosis [3], [60]. Supporting the recently revised diagnostic guidelines for CD, which promote HLA testing as the 1st line investigation for higher-risk cases, genetic testing of CD is likely to be more informative in these sub-populations exhibiting higher-than-normal prevalence. While clinical guidelines recommend screening for CD in these high-risk populations [61], testing often poses a diagnostic dilemma as serologic assessment alone cannot confidently exclude a diagnosis, especially given the higher pre-test probability. HLA typing is not particularly informative as the CD HLA susceptibility haplotypes HLA-DQ2.5 and DQ8 are commonly present (manifesting in over 90% of patients with T1D and in 65% in first-degree relatives of individuals with CD) [62], [63]. Stratifying these higher-risk patients based on a GRS will allow improved identification of those where small bowel biopsy is likely to be informative. Thus, a GRS should reduce the number of unnecessary small bowel biopsies in first-degree relatives who carry HLA susceptibility for CD but do not have it. We have found that our CD models had only moderate predictive ability for T1D, which is consistent with previous findings showing some shared genetics between T1D and CD [38]. Despite the substantial overlap of genetic factors for autoimmune disease, the CD models had negligible predictive ability for Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis. These results indicate that our GRS is specific to CD and less likely to incorrectly identify patients with other autoimmune diseases as having CD, but further work is required to determine whether CD can be as confidently predicted in individuals with T1D as it is in non-T1D populations. Another major clinical challenge that may benefit from genomic risk prediction is determining the natural history of potential CD (formerly termed ‘latent CD’) when there is serologic but not histologic evidence of CD, and identifying which patients are more likely to develop overt CD with small bowel inflammation [64]. Current practice is to follow-up all patients with immunologic evidence of gluten intolerance in order to capture those who will eventually develop overt disease. An analogous clinical scenario is that of children with positive CD serology, of whom 50% will fail to develop small bowel changes consistent with CD during follow-up [50], [51]. In both clinical situations, it is reasonable to expect that a GRS can improve risk stratification of such patients for developing overt CD. Of course, environmental factors are important in the development of CD and the exact extent to which environmental versus genetic factors contribute to the development of overt CD remains unknown. Long-term follow-up studies of patients with potential CD will be necessary to establish the role of genomic risk prediction in this important subgroup. Future work will look at optimizing our GRS as a tool to predict CD risk. Validation of our model in real-life practice will be important to confirm the clinical benefit of the GRS in conjunction with serology and/or over HLA typing alone, as well as to what extent other clinical predictors such as sex, age, and family history can contribute to clinically relevant risk prediction. Future prospective studies will enable direct optimization of clinical utility (accuracy, practicality, throughput and cost) afforded by the GRS, for example in conjunction with CD serology. These studies will also provide a rigorous evidence base for suggested clinical guidelines of GRS usage. Importantly, appropriate GRS cut-off levels to maximize diagnostic accuracy (optimal PPV and NPV for each given clinical scenario and CD prevalence) could be obtained by local prospective validation. Such studies can identify the ultimate clinical role for the GRS: whether it can effectively replace HLA typing and also whether it is a stand-alone test or one to accompany CD serology. Hadithi et al showed that in patients at high-risk of CD the addition of HLA typing to CD serology had the same performance as either testing strategy alone [65], but the greater precision of the GRS over HLA typing may better complement CD serology. Understanding where the GRS fits in the diagnostic algorithm to optimize precision and cost-effectiveness will be essential, as is the role it might play in the diagnostic work-up of CD in populations with lower levels of clinical risk. Health economic modeling will address the cost-benefits of using the GRS in the diagnosis of CD, taking into account the cheaper cost of GRS over HLA typing, and include the downstream benefits of potentially reducing endoscopies (substantial cost savings and value to patients from reduced discomfort) as well as potential improvements in quality of life from the detection of CD. Further, it may be that other statistical modeling approaches yield improvements in predictive power, for example non-additive models that consider epistatic interactions between SNPs. Another avenue for improvement is considering each CD subtype separately, recognizing potentially different genetic bases for these conditions. Based on our results, we do not expect substantial improvements from increasing sample size alone, however this will be important for adequately powered studies of lower frequency genetic variants of assumedly greater effect size. In summary, this study demonstrates that simultaneous modeling of all SNPs using statistical learning was able to generate genomic risk scores that accurately predict CD to a clinically relevant degree. This was despite the models explaining only a minority of disease heritability. The GRS better enables clinicians to stratify patients according to their risk of CD compared to HLA typing alone and, we predict, more accurately determines those suitable for confirmatory testing in the form of small bowel biopsy. Reserving this invasive, time consuming and costly procedure for higher-risk cases is likely to improve the accuracy, cost and public acceptance of testing for CD, and by extension, benefit the overall diagnosis of CD in the community. By better prioritizing higher-risk patients for confirmatory testing, genomic risk prediction carries promise as a clinically useful tool to add to the clinician's diagnostic armamentarium. Ultimately, we envisage a clinical scoring algorithm based on the combination of clinical features, serologic, and genetic information that will accurately predict people with biopsy-confirmed CD and perhaps ultimately overcome the reliance on small bowel histology altogether. Further, the costs of genotyping a select number of marker SNPs with a low-plex, high throughput technology are already far lower than the costs of full HLA typing, resulting in a test that is cheaper, more flexible and more precise than HLA typing. More generally, this study demonstrates that statistical learning approaches utilizing SNPs can already produce useful predictive models of a complex human disease using existing genotyping platforms assaying common SNPs and suggests that similar approaches may yield comparable results in other complex human diseases with strong genetic components.
Methods Ethics Statement All participants gave informed consent and the study protocols were approved by the relevant institutional or national ethics committees. Details given in references van Heel et al [23] and DuBois et al [24]. All data was analysed anonymously. Data We analyzed six CD datasets: UK1 [23], UK2, IT, NL, and Finn [24], and IMM [66]. The main characteristics of the datasets are listed in Table 1. In addition we used three WTCCC datasets (T1D, Crohn's, and RA) that have been described elsewhere [30], [37]. UK1 used the Illumina Hap330v1-1 array for cases and Hap550-2v3 for controls, UK2 used the Illumina 670-QuadCustom-v1 for cases and 1.2M-DuoCustom-v1 for controls, the NL and IT datasets used the Illumina 670-QuadCustom-v1 in both cases and controls, and the Finn dataset used the Illumina 670-QuadCustom-v1 for cases and Illumina 610-Quad for controls. The WTCCC data (T1D, Crohn's, and RA) used the Affymetrix 500K array. In all of our models, we used autosomal SNPs only, and did not include the gender as a covariable, as models built separately on the two genders using the same sample size and case∶control balance showed very similar performance in cross-validation on the UK2 dataset (results not shown). For analyses of the MHC region, we defined the MHC as all SNPs on chr6 in the range 29.7 Mb–33.3 Mb. Quality Control For each of the UK1, UK2, IT, NL, and Finn datasets, we removed non-autosomal SNPs, SNPs with MAF<1%, with missingness >1%, and those with deviations from Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium in controls P<5×10−6. We also removed samples with missingness >1%. We tested identity-by-descent between samples in UK1 and UK2 and removed one of a pair of samples with pi-hat ≥0.05 (either between the datasets or within the datasets). The QC for the IMM Immunochip data has been previously described [66]; we estimated 5763 Immunochip samples to have pi-hat ≥0.125 (PLINK IBS) with any UK2 sample, and those were removed, leaving 10,304 Immunochip samples in total, with 18,252 SNPs shared with the UK2 dataset (post-QC). The QC for the WTCCC data (T1D, Crohn's, and RA) has been previously described [30], [37]. Assessment of Population Structure Effects To assess the impact of potential cryptic population structure, we estimated the top 10 principal components (PCs) for the UK2 with EIGENSOFT 4.2 [67], after removal of regions with high LD (see Text S1 for details). The principal components themselves showed almost no predictive ability (AUC = 0.52), and models trained on all SNPs accounting for these PCs showed indistinguishable performance from the non-adjusted model, both in cross-validation on the UK2 dataset and in external validation on the Finn, NL, and IT datasets (Figure S5), demonstrating that confounding of our UK2 models by population structure was negligible and was not a contributing factor to the high predictive ability. Statistical Analysis We used L1-penalized support vector machines (SVM) implemented in the tool SparSNP [26] (https://github.com/gabraham/SparSNP) as the classifiers. The L1-penalized SVM is a sparse linear model, that is, many or most of the SNPs will receive zero weight in the model, as determined by the L1 penalty. The use of a sparse model fits with our prior expectation that in autoimmune disease most SNPs will not be associated with disease status. The inherent sparsity of the model obviates the need for subsequent filtering of SNPs by weight, in order to decide which ones show strong evidence of association and which are spurious, as would be required in a non-sparse (L2-penalized) model. In addition, in extensive simulation and in analysis of real genotype data, including the two celiac disease datasets UK1 and UK2, we have previously shown the advantage of L1-penalized SVMs over commonly used approaches such as polygenic scores (sum of the log odds), linear mixed models (GCTA), and unpenalized logistic regression [30]. The advantage of sparse models over standard linear mixed models in predicting autoimmune disease has been recently confirmed in type-1 diabetes as well [68]. We have also shown that our L1-penalized SVMs achieved essentially identical performance to L1-penalized logistic regression (glmnet) in cross-validation over the Finnish subset of the celiac disease dataset, while being substantially faster [26]. Unlike single marker approaches that estimate the effect size of each SNP separately, the L1-penalized SVM is a multivariable model, where the estimated effect of each SNP is conditional on all other SNPs, thereby implicitly accounting for the linkage disequilibrium (LD) between SNPs. Besides imposing sparsity, the L1 penalty tends to produce models where one representative SNP is selected out of a group of highly correlated SNPs, while the rest remain with a zero weight, in contrast with L2-penalized or unpenalized models where many or all of these SNPs may receive a non-zero weight. For an in-depth discussion of these issues and the effects of varying LD levels on the performance of multivariable models, see [30]. The L1-penalized SVM model is induced by minimizing the L1-penalized squared-hinge loss over N samples and p SNPs, where x i is the p-vector of genotypes for the ith sample in allele-dosage coding {0, 1, 2}, y are the binary phenotypes {−1, +1}, β is the p-vector of weights, β 0 is the intercept (also called the bias, which is not penalized), and λ is the L1 penalty. We also investigated adding an L2 penalty to the model (elastic-net), however, based on initial cross-validation experiments, we found no advantage in the L2 penalty and subsequently did not use it. All of our models were additive in the allele dosage {0, 1, 2}. The genomic risk score for a new sample x i consisting of p genotypes is then where the continuous value is later thresholded at different values to produce a binary predicted class. The model was evaluated over a grid of penalties, in 10-fold cross-validation, repeated 10 times. The optimal number of SNPs in the model was decided based on the model with the highest average AUC across the replications. The final model was a consensus model, averaged over all 10×10 = 100 models, and containing approximately the number of SNPs determined earlier. Post processing and plotting of the results was performed in R [69], together with the package ggplot2 [70]. Measures of Predictive Performance To quantify the predictive performance of the models in cross-validation and external validation, we employed receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves (sensitivity versus 1 minus specificity), the area under the ROC curve (AUC) [71], and the proportion of phenotypic variance explained [32]. To quantify predictive performance in different population settings, we used the positive and negative predictive values, which can be estimated as and where “sens” is the sensitivity = TP/(TP+FN), “spec” is the specificity = TN/(FP+TN), and “prev” is the population prevalence. The PPV/NPV are equivalent to the posterior probability of a person having/not having the disease given a positive/negative diagnosis, respectively. When the PPV and precision are estimated in data with identical prevalence (that is, the observed prevalence in the data is identical to the prevalence in the population for which we wish to estimate PPV), they are equivalent. Precision is defined as TP/(TP+FP).
Supporting Information Figure S1. LOESS-smoothed AUC in 10×10-fold cross-validation for the random subsamples of the UK2 dataset, in increasing sample size proportions of the original data (n = 6785). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004137.s001 (EPS) Figure S2. Results of externally validating the predictive models, trained on UK2 in cross-validation, and tested on the other CD datasets. Legend: Romanos HLA: 3-levels of risk (low, medium, high) [21] based on imputed HLA type (HIBAG); Romanos HLA+57 SNPs (Immunochip only): 3-level HLA risk plus 57 Immunochip non-HLA SNPs [21]; Monsuur HLA SNPs: logistic regression on individual HLA SNPs [36] (5/6 SNPs or proxies thereof were found in the UK2/Finn/NL/IT datasets, 3/6 were found in the subset of UK1 shared with UK2); GRS MHC SNPs: SparSNP run on individual SNPs on chr6 within 29.7 Mb–33.3 Mb; GRS non-MHC SNPs: SparSNP run on individual autosomal SNPs outside MHC; GRS all SNPs: SparSNP run on all autosomal SNPs. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004137.s002 (EPS) Figure S3. ROC curves for CD model trained on SNP subsets of the UK2 dataset that were assayed for the WTCCC-T1D dataset: All SNPs (76,847 SNPS), MHC SNPs (186 SNPs in the MHC region of chr6, 29.7–33.3 Mb), and Non-MHC SNPs (76,661 SNPs outside the MHC). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004137.s003 (EPS) Figure S4. Calibration plots, comparing predicted score in 5% quantiles against observed proportions of cases falling within the bin. The score comes from models trained on the UK2 dataset, and tested on the rest of the datasets. The bars show 95% confidence intervals using the Agresti-Coull method for proportions. We randomly split the test datasets into two halves. In the first half, we plotted the original quantiles of the scores and fitted a LOESS smooth to them. We did this for the original case/control data (prevalence of 40%), shown in (a), and for a subsampled version of the data with prevalence of 10% (c). We then used the LOESS smooth to correct the original quantiles, forming a calibrated score, one for each dataset (Finn, IT, NL, UK1), which was then applied to the second half of the data, shown in (b) and (d) for prevalence of 40% and 10% respectively. The second half of the data was not used in the calibration step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004137.s004 (EPS) Figure S5. (a) LOESS-smoothed AUC from 10-fold cross-validation for the UK2 model (all autosomal SNPs), accounting for the top 10 PCs (included in training but not in testing). (b) External validation of the best UK2 model that accounted for the PCs (PCs excluded from testing). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004137.s005 (EPS) Table S1. The predictive model. The SNPs are sorted in decreasing order of the absolute value of their model weight averaged over the 10×10 cross-validation folds. Stability is the percentage of times a SNP was selected to have non-zero weight over the 10×10-cross-validation folds. Intercept: −0.757226. To annotate the SNPs we used Bioconductor 2.12 together with the packages VariantAnnotation 1.6.5 and TxDb.Hsapiens.UCSC.hg18.knownGene 2.9.0. We considered a SNP to be genic if it was annotated to fall inside one of the regions {spliceSite, intron, fiveUTR, threeUTR, coding, promoter} and intergenic otherwise. For intergenic SNPs, we also annotate the nearest gene and the distance to it. All positions are in hg18 coordinates. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004137.s006 (PDF) Table S2. Summary of screening results at different prevalence levels for the combine dataset Finn+IT+NL dataset, using different cutoffs to declare the samples as disease cases (expressed as % of the population). The smaller the cutoff, the stricter the definition of a disease case. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004137.s007 (PDF) Text S1. Supplementary Methods. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004137.s008 (PDF)
Acknowledgments We thank the investigators of the van Heel et al., 2007, Dubois et al., 2010 and Trynka et al., 2011 papers (David van Heel, Cisca Wijmenga, and Lude Franke) for providing the celiac disease data.
Author Contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: MI GA. Performed the experiments: GA. Analyzed the data: GA MI OGB JZ AK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: GA JZ AK JATD. Wrote the paper: GA MI JATD.We've all been there. You're in a nice quiet theater trying to enjoy a movie and somebody nearby won't stop talking, is making way too much noise opening their candy bar, or is kicking your chair. This is how not to handle that situation. A Kentucky man was getting annoyed with a boy behind him who was kicking his seat during a screening of Star Trek Beyond. So he got up and swore at the child. When the kid's father got involved, the frustrated man pulled a gun. Well, that escalated quickly.
The event took place at a Cinemark theater in Paducah, Kentucky at 11:50 am on Saturday. Apparently, after the man in question swore at the kid, asking if he was going to continue kicking the seat, the father got involved and an actual fight |
ules derrière la tête, puis la démembre et l’emporte vers son nid pour nourrir les larves.
La vie trépidante et belliqueuse de la frelonne y est pour beaucoup. Les femelles sexuées et fécondées à l’automne, destinées à devenir reines, sont les seules à survivre pendant l’hiver. Au printemps, ce sont elles qui, sortant de leur léthargie et de leur cachette saisonnière, fabriquent un nid, généralement dans un arbre, puis y pondent et reconstituent une colonie. Et quel nid! Composé de différentes galettes de papier mâché, il peut atteindre jusqu’à 1 m de haut et 80 cm de diamètre.
Le piège des pièges
C’est après avoir disséqué 77 de ces spectaculaires habitacles qu’une équipe de chercheurs de l’Institut de systématique, évolution, biodiversité du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle et de l’Institut de recherche sur la biologie de l’insecte de Tours a sorti la première publication scientifique sur la structure et l’évolution des colonies de Vespa velutina, bien connues en Asie mais peu étudiées.
Les biologistes ont ainsi pu quantifier la bête : un nid produit 13 000 individus entre avril et décembre, avec un maximum de 2 000 individus présents au mois d’octobre, et au moins 550 femelles sexuées, celles qui assureront la descendance l’année suivante.
« Elles partent par vagues successives à l’automne et, quand on connaît sa capacité de dispersion de 60 kilomètres, il est clair qu’aucun piégeage ne peut freiner ce front d’invasion », explique Quentin Rome, responsable du programme d’étude du frelon asiatique au Muséum national d’histoire naturelle.
Pire, le piégeage de printemps favorise la survie des reines en les privant de batailler à mort contre leurs congénères prises dans le guêpier. Explications : 95% des frelonnes ne survivent pas à l’hiver. Sur celles qui restent en vie au printemps, 95% meurent à leur tour en combat singulier avec leurs sœurs et cousines. Quentin Rome :
« Elles essayent de voler le nid qu’a commencé à préparer une autre et se bagarrent pour cela. C’est un système de régulation naturelle : plus il y a de reines présentes, plus la mortalité est élevée, si l’on en piège certaines, on libère le terrain pour d’autres qui n’auront même pas à se battre. »
Un nid de frelons asiatiques - Pierre-Selim/Flickr/CC
La seule solution pour se débarrasser du frelon asiatique, arrivé dans l’Hexagone par le Lot-et-Garonne à la faveur d’une importation de poteries chinoises en 2004, et qui a désormais colonisé 70% du territoire français, serait de tuer toutes les reines, sans exception. Les questions morales posées par une telle entreprise mises à part, les chances de réussites sont faibles.
« En tout cas, pour l’instant, le moins que l’on puisse dire, c’est que les pièges utilisés attrapent beaucoup d’insectes, mais très peu de frelons », note Quentin Rome.
Quel est le vrai impact des pièges?
En 2010, en Vendée, la Fédération départementale des groupements de défense contre les organismes nuisibles, un syndicat agricole, a coordonné 400 pièges répartis sur le département. Leur maigre butin se composait, à la fin du printemps, de 6 fondatrices pour 195 nids répertoriés. L’année suivante, les guet-apens avaient fait prisonnières 10 fondatrices pour 485 nids recensés! Le syndicat qui assure toujours le suivi du frelon en Vendée explique désormais sur son site Internet que « la mise en œuvre d’un piégeage à grande échelle se révèle tout à fait inopérante » et appelle les particuliers, en dehors des apiculteurs, à éviter ces techniques.
Aujourd’hui pourtant, les modèles de pièges circulant sur Internet et réalisables en un tournemain à la maison se vantent d’être sélectifs. La largeur du trou d’entrée empêche les plus grosses espèces d’y tomber et une éponge disposée au-dessus du liquide sucré servant d’appât permet aux petits insectes de survivre à la noyade et de ressortir rassasiés. Quentin Rome signale :
« En réalité, on ignore dans quel état ils ressortent après avoir bu un coup! Il y a une mortalité cachée à ces pièges, on ne connaît pas encore l’impact exact des campagne de piégeage sur la faune locale. »
1 089 insectes capturés par semaine
En 2009, à Bordeaux, une étude menée sur des pièges classiques – une bouteille renversée avec un liquide sucré au fond – a montré que seuls 0,55% des prises étaient des frelons asiatiques, et qu’en revanche chaque piège capturait 1 089 insectes en moyenne par semaine. En rajoutant une sortie pour les petits insectes, la sélectivité s’améliorait nettement, avec 6 insectes par piège et par semaine, mais seulement 1% de frelons! Pas convaincant…
Plusieurs laboratoires de recherche, dont celui de l’université de Tours, planchent sur la mise au point d’appâts à base de phéromones, qui permettraient d’améliorer fortement l’efficacité des pièges sans tuer tout ce qui vole autour.
Reste que la colère gronde dans les jardinets et les haies des pavillons de banlieue. Le réseau des centres antipoison français n’a pourtant pu établir aucune corrélation entre l’arrivée de Vespa velutina et une éventuelle augmentation des piqûres d’hyménoptères en France. Reste la piste de la haine des immigrés, même ailés.
« Les gens ont peur des frelons et si, en plus, ils ne sont pas de chez nous… » soupire Quentin Rome.
Mais alors, comment faire?
Si les grandes manœuvres de piégeage de printemps des reines se révèlent nulles ou presque contre Vespa velutina, reste qu’il faut protéger les ruchers des attaques.
Les expériences menées avec des apiculteurs ont montré que les pièges à bière ou à jus sucré, disposés trop loin des ruches, demeuraient inefficaces. Mais qu’en revanche les pièges façon bouteille renversée, disposés tout près des ruches et bien appâtés, pouvaient limiter les dégâts.
L’idéal étant d’avoir recours au jus de cirier fermenté : la cire des cadres de la ruche, fondue dans de l’eau et mélangée avec du miel, attire immanquablement les frelons asiatiques.
Un outil contre le stress des abeilles
Avec certes moins d’impact pour les autres insectes, cette méthode fait tout de même des dommages collatéraux. André Lavignotte l’a bien compris.
Cet apiculteur béarnais qui possède vingt ruches à Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) est devenu un porte-voix discret mais engagé de méthodes plus douces pour cohabiter avec les Vespa velutina. Il a ainsi mis au point une muselière.
Ce grillage à mailles suffisamment larges pour laisser sortir les abeilles, mais trop étroites pour laisser entrer les frelons, protègent les ouvrières lorsqu’elles se placent sur leur planche d’envol, à l’entrée de la ruche, lieu favori des attaques du prédateur.
« Je n’ai pas perdu une ruche depuis plusieurs années! », se réjouit André Lavignotte.
Ses observations alimenteront sans doute l’une des hypothèses des scientifiques. Les chercheurs soupçonnent en effet que les colonies d’abeilles domestiques meurent non pas parce qu’elles sont décimées par le frelon, mais parce qu’elles deviennent trop stressées pour sortir de la ruche. S’affaiblissant alors fortement, elles ne survivent pas à l’hiver ou aux maladies.Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
Linda Harvey, a host of the Ohio based Christian radio station WRFD has warned that the passing of same-sex marriage laws might cause Jesus Christ to marry another man.
The Christian radio host this month said that same-sex marriage encourages children to have gay sex and that gay people aren’t human and should therefore not be protected under the US constitution.
Now discussing the fact that under the implementation of same-sex marriage in some states have caused the words ‘bride’ and ‘groom’ to be replaced with ‘person A’ and ‘person B’, the host considers what would happen if Jesus came back to earth.
She began :”On official marriage documents, the words ‘bride’ and ‘groom’ were going to disappear. When advocates of homosexual marriage say how would two men or two women being allowed to marry change your marriage, here’s one way. Nonsense like this starts showing up and the legitimacy of man-woman marriage is automatically on defense against pretenders to the throne.”
She warned: “Homosexuality, far from being marriage, is always a grave sin in Scripture.”
Switching to Jesus, Mrs Harvey said: “A Christian concept that illustrates the unchanging standard of man and woman as the model for marriage: in the New Testament, Jesus is referred to several times as the ‘bridegroom.’ And when he returns, he will return as a bridegroom seeking his bride: the church, which is the body of all believers, also called the Bride of Christ. It’s a beautiful analogy.
“What happens to such a concept in a same-sex marriage? Does Jesus as bridegroom seek another groom? No, that would be a twisted and frankly offensive spin on a profound and marvelous concept.”
She concluded: “As Christians, we must never accept the idea of same-sex marriage. It certainly doesn’t work as sound Christian doctrine and it will be shown before long not to work as revolutionary secular law either.”FeelTheBern.org has launched,
Learn about where Bernie stands on all the issues! #WeWantDebate — Tell the DNC we want more debates! Sign the official petition FeelTheBern.org has launched! Thirty-two days ago — a Bernie supporter was frustrated about the mainstream media's Bernie blackout, and depressed that with Bernie being the most-searched for presidential candidate on the internet, curious voters were landing on content surfaced by search engines that didn't tell the full and fair story about the campaign and Bernie's record.
So this supporter pulled together 125 unpaid volunteers to work on a project, based on smart political framing and leveraging the power of search and social media that would organize all the great YouTube videos, legislation PDFs, and old news articles about Bernie into an easily-discoverable, easy-to-understand website.
That project launched today:
Think of it as the Wikipedia of Bernie Sanders, only more beautifully-designed and more thoughtfully-written, leveraging the viral power of videos and infographics, and written in an entirely FAQ-like conversational format. If knowledge is power, this site could be hugely empowering to many voters — especially given polls show so many Americans still don't even know who Bernie is (!).
It's now a living and breathing thing — and we need you to share it with everyone you know! And the FeelTheBern.org crew will be updating it as news breaks, information surfaces, and the campaign rolls on.
Read more here Join the conversation
Bernie Birthday Bomb! Moneybomb, that is — Bernie Sanders believes in supporting a strong middle class, and so do we! To symbolize our support for this important issue, we will be launching Bernie's Birthday Moneybomb!
Participation is simple: On September 8th, donate a minimum of $8 in support of a strong middle class (and also as a birthday gift to Bernie!) After donating, reach out on social media with the hashtags #Bernie2016 and #FeelTheBern.
Our last moneybomb Thunderclap reached over a million people. Let's make a new record! If successful, this event will raise a huge amount of money for the best option we have against corporate interests infiltrating politics.
Join the Thunderclap Join the Facebook Event
More Democratic Debates! Six is not enough — Bernie is petitioning the DNC to organize more debates, and sooner. The current schedule
PThe current DNC schedule only has four prior to the Iowa Caucuses, and the first debate is four days after the deadline to update your registration in New York.
Sign the Official Petition
Joining Forces! We're on a roll — Vote for Bernie and Grassroots for Sanders have officially joined forces! Working together, we have seen significant and ongoing expansion of the grassroots community. In the past 10 days alone, a Bernie supporter was frustrated about the mainstream media's Bernie blackout, and depressed that with Bernie being the most-searched for presidential candidate on the internet, curious voters were landing on content surfaced by search engines that didn't tell the full and fair story about the campaign and Bernie's record.So this supporter pulled together 125 unpaid volunteers to work on a project, based on smart political framing and leveraging the power of search and social media that would organize all the great YouTube videos, legislation PDFs, and old news articles about Bernie into an easily-discoverable, easy-to-understand website.That project launched today: FeelTheBern.org Think of it as the Wikipedia of Bernie Sanders, only more beautifully-designed and more thoughtfully-written, leveraging the viral power of videos and infographics, and written in an entirely FAQ-like conversational format. If knowledge is power, this site could be hugely empowering to many voters — especially given polls show so many Americans still don't even know who Bernie is (!).It's now a living and breathing thing — and we need you to share it with everyone you know! And the FeelTheBern.org crew will be updating it as news breaks, information surfaces, and the campaign rolls on.Bernie Sanders believes in supporting a strong middle class, and so do we! To symbolize our support for this important issue, we will be launching Bernie's Birthday Moneybomb!Participation is simple: On September 8th, donate a minimum of $8 in support of a strong middle class (and also as a birthday gift to Bernie!) After donating, reach out on social media with the hashtags #Bernie2016 and #FeelTheBern.Our last moneybomb Thunderclap reached over a million people. Let's make a new record! If successful, this event will raise a huge amount of money for the best option we have against corporate interests infiltrating politics.Bernie is petitioning the DNC to organize more debates, and sooner. The current schedulePThe current DNC schedule only has four prior to the Iowa Caucuses, and the first debate is four days after the deadline to update your registration in New York.andhave officially joined forces! Working together, we have seen significant and ongoing expansion of the grassroots community. In the past 10 days alone, Sanders for President has been adding new subscribers at a rate never matched before. At over 86,000 members strong (and *still* rising), we have gained over 7,000 of those subscribers since Monday this week, and it's still rising! It's important to remember that the election is still over a year away, so we're at the tip of the iceberg here. If you want to be more involved, like our Facebook page and follow us on twitter for timely news and shareable media. A Grassroots For Sanders Production This email is not authorized or endorsed by any party or candidate.TOPANGA CANYON (CBSLA.com) — A stretch of Topanga Canyon Boulevard will be closed Saturday and Sunday in the Santa Monica Mountains as Caltrans crews continue to stabilize slopes that were left weakened by storms that lashed the area in January.
A 3.5-mile stretch of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, also known as State Route 27, will be closed from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days between Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu and Grand View Drive in Topanga, according to Caltrans. The exact hours of the closure are subject to change, depending on how the work plays out.
Crews will work to secure the hillsides along the roadway, taking steps such as drilling into rocks and placing bolts to stabilize the slopes, as well as hydroseeding.
The same stretch of road was closed in January immediately following the storms that led to some mud flows that blocked the street.
During the closures, Caltrans will also do work north of the affected area on Topanga Canyon Boulevard guard rails, possibly resulting in closures of the shoulder and up to one lane of traffic.
(©2017 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)"Rickson by armbar " is an old MMA forum joke, reaching back to the old days when Rickson Gracie held a near mythical place among certain fans. These fans would annoyingly predict an effortless Rickson victory no matter the opponent. While meant as a jab at Rickson's fans it ironically has become a digital monument to his grappling skill.
Son of Helio Graice, Rickson was raised in the art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and due to a combination of technical skill and physical gifts, he became known as one of the best grapplers of his generation. Rickson spent much of his fighting career taking part in largely undocumented Vale Tudo matches in Brazil, but did step on to larger MMA stages later in life.
While many associate high level Brazilian Jiu Jitsu with complicated moves, Rickson's success came from relentless fundamental technique.
This Judo Chop will start with a macro-view of Rickson's grappling game then break it down into parts. Rickson had a wonderfully diverse grappling background, training under his father Helio Gracie and also his cousin Rolls Gracie. Rolls encouraged his students to keep an open mind when it comes to other grappling arts. As a result Rickson had experience with not just the Gracie brand of jiu jitsu, but also Judo, Sambo and wrestling.
gif heavy after the jump...
Rickson embodies the simple formula jiu jitsu fighters used to great success in Vale Tudo and is taught in beginner's classes at jiu jitsu academies all over the world: clinch, takedown, achieve a dominant position, strike and then submit.
To the left is an example of this old school Vale Tudo style of jiu jitsu. Rickson is facing a nameless Judoka with some boxing experience in a challenge match in California. Rickson charges in for a body lock and is able to take the judoka down. The judoka's grappling background betrays him, as his judo instincts cause him to roll to his stomach to avoid being pinned. Rickson then takes the back and sinks in a choke, using strikes to get his opponent to first create openings for the hooks and then the choke.
Lets now take a look at each phase of Rickson's fundamental assault:
Clinch and Takedown
All fights start standing, and one of the most important skills for a grappler to have is the ability to close distance safely and then take the fight to the ground. Controlling the distance to minimize the risk of being hit repeatedly with heavy strikes is vital, spending as little time in that sweet spot of distance is the key. A grappler either wants to be out of range or clinched in so close he can't be struck with any real power.
Here we see Rickson using a classic sequence from the Gracie Jiu Jitsu Academy's beginner's program, designed for self defense purposes, against Yoshihisa Yamamoto.
The primary problem for a grappler when looking for a takedown is finding a way to close from being too far to be hit to clinched quickly and safely. Rickson starts out side of easy striking range, and throws a step forward jab. As soon Yamamoto's hands come up to protect himself, Rickson drives forward, tangling up Yamamoto's arms to prevent counter-punching.
Once in the clinch Rickson works for double underhooks, and then scores a quick outside trip takedown by stepping his right leg in to force Yamamoto back and then stepping his left leg behind Yamamoto to score the trip. Rickson lands in half guard, which he quickly turns into the mount.
Here we see Rickson again getting a body lock immediately in the clinch. Again he goes to an outside trip takedown, this time by circling around to the side and using his right knee to trip up his opponent.
Rickson clearly favors these outside trips, possibly because they give him a chance to land directly in mount. At worst Rickson lands in a loose half guard and is then able to begin working to advance his position. Another benefit of this is that landing in the full guard, which happens when a fighter uses an inside trip, leave openings for sweeps or submissions.
Dominant Position
When the phrase Brazilian Jiu Jitsu comes up many MMA fans think of dynamic bottom players, using some exotic guard to confound and sweep opponents. While this is absolutely part of the art, it is only half the picture. At the very core of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is the concept that there are positions on the ground that grant a fighter advantages through leverage and gravity that negate an untrained opponent's strength. Dominant positions afford these advantages, which is why dominant position precedes submission in most cases. Rickson was always looking to improve his position to achieve the mount or back and then submit, rather than rushing for submissions.
Rickson's top game is all about pressure; to this day high level black belts train with Rickson and marvel at how much pressure he is able exert from top position. It is not an easy thing to see and not something can be circled with a telestrator, but it is a vital part of grappling. Good pressure from top position allows the top man more freedom to move and advance position and can be uncomfortable for the bottom fighter. Any grappler can tell you the misery of being trapped under a fighter who can put down a great deal of pressure, when simply breathing becomes an effort.
Here is a good example were you can see some of the pressure being put down by Rickson.
Rickson's opponent, Yoshinori Nishi, is using what is now called the "lockdown", which is a type of half guard. It simply means that Nishi has triangled his legs and hooks the foot of the left leg under Rickson's ankle, trapping it.
Rickson has his left arm hooked under Nishi's head and driving the whole left side of his body down, keeping Nishi pinned while his right hand is pushing on Nishi's knee to break open the half guard. What allows you to see Rickson's top pressure is how hard Nishi is working to try to disrupt Rickson's base and how little effect it is having. Nishi gets an underhook and tries to off balance Rickson to no avail. Nishi then tries to roll Rickson in the other direction, straining with the effort and Rickson simply rides that momentum into mount. At no point is Nishi able to really move his hips or get his back off of the mat, and it seems to fit with descriptions of sparring partners saying Rickson on top feels like 'a truck parked on you'.
This is not to say that he does not have a guard game. Rickson's style was one where only played off his back when the situation was forced upon him and when he is on his back he looking for a way to get back on top.
In a pair Vale Tudo matches in his early twenties, Rickson faced the much larger Rei Zulu, who came from a rival jiu jitsu school founded by a few outcast students of the Gracies.
Zulu was able to slam Rickson several times early and it was very clear that Zulu had a huge strength advantage over Rickson. It also becomes quickly obvious that Rickson is the better grappler, as Zulu was unable to pass his guard.
Rickson was able to to get an underhook from guard, which creates an opening to slide around to the back. Zulu panics and grabs a head lock, which actually just allows Rickson to continue around to the back.
This another excellent example of Rickson staying calm and employing fundamentals. Taking the back off a headlock is, again, one of those techniques taught to beginners, but gets forgotten because headlocks are so seldom used.
Strike and Submit
One of the biggest benefits of the mount or back position is that the top man has all the offensive options and the only real option for the bottom fighter is to escape. Once Rickson had mounted an opponent he was more than content to strike to a stoppage if his opponents refused to do anything. But in reality these strikes were not mean to stop the fight, they were to set up more grappling.
Despite his reputation for armbars, Rickson actually is very cautious about surrendering position in search for submissions. Rickson is in many ways embodies the old "position before submission" saying, fighting a very positional aware game where the goal was always to get to the mount, and catch the back when the opponent tries to scramble.
Without the gi, the submission attacks from the mount position are fairly limited, so early BJJ fighters would strike from the mount to force their opponent to move, setting up the take of the back.
The term "flow" is used a great deal in BJJ training, and the ability to flow with an opponents is one of the skills that separates the novice from the advanced grappler.
Here is a fantastic example of taking the path of least resistance. Rickson has mounted and starts to strike, and his opponent bucks hard. Rather that drive his hips down and try to stifle the buck, Rickson raises up his hips to allow opponent to roll under him. He posts his hands on the canvas to prevent from being thrown off and then sinks both hooks in quickly.
Once on the back, Rickson normally looks to establish belly-down back control. When Rickson drives his hips forward from this position it puts a huge amount of pressure on the bottom fighter. From here it is almost impossible to mount an active defense, and Rickson's opponent chooses to simply defend his neck. It is arguably the most dominant position in all of martial arts as there is practically no offense from the bottom position, even in a no rules situation.
Rickson begins to strike to force his opponent to move his hands and when he finds a small opening Rickson slides his right arm across the face. Rickson then pulls the head up to expose the neck, and slides his arm in to lock in the choke.
While that approach is a very rough approach, this doesn't mean Rickson is not able to play a grappling chess type of game. Rickson is subtly a move ahead of opponents on the ground and leads them right into traps. A fantastic example of that is this rear naked choke below.
Rickson has the back and is working for a choke. His right arm is worked under the chin and he rolls his opponent so his right elbow is on the ground. This is proper technique, it gives greater leverage for the choke and prevents escape the ground stops the opponent from turning into the choke.
The choke is being defended well, as Rickson is unable to get his right arm under the chin. His opponent starts working to spin to the left, getting Rickson's right elbow in the air and starting an escape. But Rickson is waiting for this, he quickly slides his left arm under the chin and locks in a rear naked choke on the other side. Rickson's style was not flashy, it was built solidly on the basics taught to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu students in fundamentals classes.According to the Media, President Obama and the slick-haired Al Sharpton, we white devils are supposed to feel very sorry for the plight of the black teen.
I believe Americans, by and large, do have sympathy for any person or group who’ve had life deal them a bad hand.
However, young black thugs, you’ve got to work with us a little bit because you’re kind of operating against the storyline the aforementioned are singing about y’all, and thus, making it difficult for us to soulfully commiserate.
Of what, pray tell, do I speak?
Well, homeslice, it goes something like this: For us to give a crap about your below-par existence we’d like to hear less and less about…
- Your ghastly grades in school
- Your ridiculous dropout rates
- Your colossal out of wedlock birthrates
- Your embracing of a musical culture that celebrates the shooting of cops and doing filthy, vile things to someone’s daughter
- Your love affair with drugs and alcohol
- Your #hatethem tweets aimed at white people
- Your flash mobbing and robbing places and people
- Your audacity to blame everybody and their dog for your odious behavior
- And your ginormous, misplaced racial chip on your shoulder
Yes, if you could/would chill on some of that stuff, well … That’d be great. That would make us crackers think, “Hey, maybe you’re serious about getting out of the ditch you’re in.”
Another difficult thing that makes it hard for us to believe you’re just poor, helpless victims of the machine is when a couple of teens from your crew gun down an innocent, twenty-two-year-old, white, Aussie student just to spice up the inherent boredom which accompanies the dog-days of summer. That act of uncut evil helps us not. Yep, that heinous stunt really makes all this “poor you” crap fly right out our windows.
And lastly, and I hate to be negative, but there was one more incident perpetrated by two black teens this week that also unraveled the sweet story Sharpton and the President would have us believe. It was the beating death of an eighty-eight-year-old, WWII vet in Spokane, Washington. That demonic deed, coupled with the murder of Chris Lane this week, makes it impossible for anyone with a brain to feel anything towards your personal dilemma except, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.”
So, young black thugs, if you’d like us to empathize, trust and help you with a hand-up, howzabout cease and desist with the inhumane behavior, huh? Until then, we’ll be suspicious of young black teens, traveling in groups, taking an unusual interest in our person, especially if they’re dressed like gangbangers and are acting suspiciously.
Call us weird.Local fans cheered the band Passion Pit when they played the Lawn on D in September.
It’s hard to argue that the Lawn on D is anything but wildly popular. In the 16 months since the South Boston park opened, more than 230,000 people have visited to watch concerts or take a spin on its glow-in-the-dark swings.
Figuring out how to pay for all that fun? That’s another story.
The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority on Monday announced it would give the park a reprieve, allowing its 2.7-acre facility to remain open through 2016, despite the fact that the agency spent $2 million more to run the park than it took in.
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Over the summer, officials at the agency acknowledged that its expenses might be too high to justify keeping it open and began to reassess its future. But in a presentation to board members Monday, MCCA chief strategy officer Johanna Storella spelled out plans for how the park could become self-sufficient over the next three to four years.
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The goal would be to curb expenses at the facility, located along D Street on the east side of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, in part by taking its management in house, while significantly growing corporate sponsorships and rental revenue.
Storella said the MCCA is close to signing a major sponsorship contract with Citizens Bank that could bring in $250,000 next year. Smaller corporate sponsorships will be pitched for event series, such as movie nights and music performances.
A spokesman for Citizens declined to comment.
The organization has good reason to want to keep it open. Not only is the Lawn a popular draw to the Seaport, it can be a key selling point when the agency is pitching the adjacent convention center to potential clients — a gathering spot for less formal convention activities.
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The agency charges $17,500 a day to clients that want to rent the entire park, a figure that will probably increase in 2016. It is also weighing whether to build an enclosed private space that could be rented out while the rest of the park, including the swings and an outdoor bar area, remains open to the public for free.
DINA RUDICK/GLOBE STAFF/FILE Cassondra Richards of Boston and Mario Rodriguez of Queens, N.Y., enjoyed the public art at the Lawn on D shortly after its opening in 2014.
Kristen Lepore, Governor Charlie Baker’s top budget aide and a member of the convention center authority board, seemed impressed with Storella’s presentation.
“The goal is to keep Lawn on D open while moving toward self-sufficiency,” said Lepore, whose boss controls a majority of the board’s seats.
But Lepore also sounded a cautious note, recommending that the agency wait on pricey lawn upgrades, a capital expense that could total more than $400,000, for now. The reason: The Lawn on D’s future could still be limited if the agency doesn’t succeed with this revenue push.
“I’m worried about having that big expense now when in a year or two from now, if it doesn’t work, we end up closing it,” Lepore said.
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The budget that Storella presented projects that revenue will climb from about $424,000 in 2015 to $1.3 million next year, through a combination of sponsorships and fund-raising.
The park’s annual revenues would eventually grow to $2.3 million in 2018, based on Storella’s estimates. Expenses, meanwhile, are expected to be $2.5 million for each of the next three years, down from nearly $2.8 million this year.
The agency doesn’t need the board’s approval to reopen the lawn in May because the money will come from its already approved operating budget, Storella said. Future park funding however could be deliberated by the board when it sets the budget for the next fiscal year that begins in July.
The agency is already planning to bring back much of the programming that made the Lawn popular in 2015 — including musical events such as Kids Really Rock and PorchFest. It is also considering new ideas, such as a “Rhythm and Brews” Friday night music series and a lunch series featuring local chefs.
As in the park’s first two years, the vast majority of events will be free to the public, in an effort to offer what the agency calls “a community amenity.”
The push to expand the Lawn’s revenue sources comes at a tumultuous time for the agency. The board is in the final stages of a hunt for a new executive director to replace James Rooney, who left to become the new chief executive at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce in July.
Looming over these deliberations is the prospect that someday, plans for a convention center expansion could be revived. Baker put a $1 billion expansion on pause in April and has shown little interest in moving it forward. At the time, the governor also replaced most of the board members.
The agency is also in talks with organizers for an IndyCar race that would take place on Labor Day weekend next year. Because the park falls along the course, it could be repurposed for race-related activities and therefore removed from public use for as many as five weeks. But event organizers would pay to use the space, Storella said, potentially generating even more money.
If capital projects are green-lighted, one of the biggest is the proposed private rental space, which could cost nearly $500,000 but eventually become a profit center for the Lawn. That project would feature an enclosed tent area, lawn games, lounge seating, and other furnishings, with seating for up to 200 guests. Storella said a number of companies have requested that such a space to be built.
Board member Paul Sacco, president of the Massachusetts Lodging Association, praised the agency’s efforts.
“I’m already getting... feedback that [the Lawn is] competing with other hotels in the area, and that tent will push that even further,” he said.
But Greg Sullivan, research director at the right-leaning Pioneer Institute think tank, and a vocal critic of the convention center expansion, said it might make more sense for the agency to study development options rather than plow more money into operating a park.
“This is a prime developable piece of property that’s owned by the public in an area that’s undergoing tremendous real estate development,” he said.
MICHELE MCDONALD FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE/FILE Tim Conway (top) and his son Eamon, 5, of Charlestown rode sleds at the Lawn on D’s Slope Fest last February.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jonchestoLargest Cat Breeds
We all love cats, both domestic and wild. There are a number of large cat breeds that are willing to cuddle all day long! They might not be as big as lions, but they’re far bigger than the average house cat.
#1 – |
ised and just plain factually wrong coverage of cycling is common in the media. But the corporation supposedly holds itself to higher standards. There is an attempt at neutrality, at balance.
And this is where the phenomenon becomes so fascinating: nothing illustrates how poisonous and skewed the public narrative about everyday cycling has become in Britain as much as programmes which believe they’re being balanced when in fact the very way they treat the subject shows huge bias, often unconscious.
All three shows were radio phone-ins. All began with the premise that there is a pressing public safety need for cyclists to be more regulated, either compelled to take out insurance or pass tests, or in one instance to be “banned in cities”.
If I’d been able to quote the shows’ producers, all would doubtless have said such opinions were “in the news”, or “a talking point”. And of course, talk radio by its nature thrives on combative exchanges. But it’s illustrative to try and think which other vast and incredibly disparate group would be treated in such a sweeping way. None, I’d guess.
I’d also struggle to think of another subject where the presenters would be so under-researched and ill-prepared that basic myths and factual errors were left unchallenged. I’d also wonder where else the hosts could express their own sometimes idiotic and highly contentious opinions without any censure.
Finally, as ever with the issue of the media treatment of cycling, we come to the sharp end: what effect does it have on real life on the roads? My own view – and I realise it’s impossible to prove – is that there is sufficient evidence about poor attitudes towards cyclists translating into less safe driving behaviour, that we can say such “controversial talking points” do, in a tiny but incremental way, put people’s lives and welfare in more danger.
And that, above all, is why the BBC refusing to engage with this worries me so much. And that’s also why I take it all a bit personally.
You and Yours, 26 May
“Do you think it’s time to ask cyclists to take a test before they’re allowed on the roads?”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest British Cycling policy adviser Chris Boardman. Photograph: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images
This phone-in episode of the Radio 4 show is a slightly curious one in that it tried to be balanced in some ways. The saintly Chris Boardman, British Cycling’s policy adviser and perhaps the nation’s most sensible voice on the issue, was in the studio virtually throughout, offering reasoned context to the angry callers.
What was worrying was the inspiration for the subject. Several days earlier, alarming CCTV footage had emerged showing a cyclist bowling over a three-year-old girl on a Blackpool pavement and, the girl’s family said, swearing and riding off. The 23-year-old rider involved insisted he had stopped at the scene and had apologised to the family.
Nonetheless, the subject was “in the news”, so You and Yours decided to press ahead with the subject. There are two main objections here.
The first is that the premise is utterly absurd. No one in government, even the fringes of national politics, is thinking about making cyclists take tests, for all sorts of reasons.
More than that, incidents like Blackpool are extremely rare, unlike deaths and serious injuries caused to pedestrians on pavements by motor vehicles. Boardman quoted the statistic that around 36 people a year on average are killed on pavements by motor vehicles, with about one every three years by a cyclist. Similar data for London shows that over five years, 12 pedestrians were killed on pavements, not one by a cyclist.
Even a cursory look at the news shows how one-sided this issue is. Since You and Yours was broadcast, dozens of pedestrians have been injured and even killed on the pavement by motor vehicles. In Oxfordshire. In north London. In Mansfield. In Altrincham. In Swanage. But where’s the You and Yours phone-in about cars killing people on pavements?
The BBC press office put me in touch with the programme’s editor, Chas Watkins, who gamely if unconvincingly talked me through the editorial process.
However, this chat was in connection with a previous piece about attitudes to cycling, and in the end there was no space to quote Watkins. I thus asked the BBC press office: any objection if I re-use his quotes in this piece, not least to make sure You and Yours gets a fair hearing? The answer: no.
Of course, I could still print the quotes – they’re on tape – but it would be a bit discourteous, as the interview was done under a slightly different premise. As it is, you’ll just have to guess why You and Yours thought this was a worthwhile subject.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cyclists commute to work during London tube strike on 9 July. Photograph: Cartel/REX Shutterstock
Stephen Nolan Show, 25 June
“Would you support a move to introduce licences, licence plates and road insurance for cyclists? A new petition to do just that has just been launched.”
This BBC Radio Ulster phone in carried the same idiotic premise as You and Yours, but unlike the Radio 4 show made no attempt to be balanced, or to introduce any facts. Nolan has won 12 Sony radio awards, so he’s clearly no fool. He can’t surely be very proud of this show.
Radio phone-ins do, by their nature, attract cranks and obsessives. Where Nolan and his team failed was in not offering any counter-narrative. Indeed, Nolan added to the slightly febrile anti-cyclist scapegoating, one where those on two wheels were variously referred to as “these people”, “the bicycle people” and “idiots”.
Caller after caller unleashed absurdly over-generalised slurs. “They show no respect for any other vehicle users,” said one caller, John a lorry driver. “They’re a disgrace,” said another, Bertie, calling cyclists a menace to mothers with children: “They just mow right through them, and if you say anything to them you only get the f-word.”
Throughout, Nolan chuckled away in agreement. John opined that cyclists should not be allowed on the roads “three deep”. Nolan answered: “You could have it that they shouldn’t be allowed on the road at all.”
When Bertie suggested cyclists be obliged to have their name on their coat or helmet, Nolan gave up any pretence of balance. “Absolutely!” he yelled back. “They should have a big, bright sign on their helmet.”
At one point Nolan said cyclists “get in my road when I’m driving home”, not explaining what “his” road was. A clue came later when another caller, Ken, complained of cyclists not paying “motor tax”. Nolan responded: “Exactly, Ken!”
More curious still was the premise for the programme, with the peg being that a petition had been launched calling for cyclists to have compulsory tests, licensing and insurance.
Ah yes, a petition. As far as I can tell, this is the petition. It currently has 25 signatories. At the time the show was broadcast it had, I’m told, four.
Four people. At the moment there are petitions on the same website with more signatories calling for someone to be made head of chemistry at Warwick University, for paper boys and girls to be paid more, and for Sainsbury’s to move cereal bars to the snack aisle. Are any of them getting their own Nolan show segment? Why not?
I asked to chat to someone from the show, and asked a series of questions about the editorial process behind the segment. Instead I was sent this statement, which decided to ignore just about every one of them:
The editorial for The Nolan Show is determined largely by the news of the day and issues affecting the people of Northern Ireland. Listeners will be familiar with Stephen’s often tongue in cheek style of broadcasting. He hosted a balanced discussion on this subject and the public were also invited to give their opinions on the matter. The issue was dealt with in line with our usual editorial guidelines.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A no cycling sign, City of London, UK Photograph: Bjanka Kadic/Alamy
BBC Radio Kent, June 26
“Should cyclists be banned in cities?”
“Should cyclists be banned in cities?” yelled a truly bizarre tweet from the station promoting this phone-in. “Where in Kent is the most dangerous place to cycle?”
Pardon? As various people replied on Twitter, this was a truly bizarre way to introduce the subject, not least as not one British national or local politician, to my knowledge, has ever considered this as a serious policy.
Again, things didn’t get any better in the show, helmed by stand-in host Neil Francis, a man who veered between jarring Partridge-isms (“Have you got, as we have got with America, a special relationship with lorry drivers?” he asked a puzzled-sounding Alan in Hoo) and open expressions of his own generally idiotic views (pondering why it takes a long time to drive around London’s Trafalgar Square, Francis opined: “It all comes from cyclists taking over”).
Again, there was an attempt at some balance. A self-proclaimed cycle campaigner called James from Maidstone had a few minutes’ air time, though even he took the niche view that cycle helmets should be compulsory (“I think most sensible cyclists would welcome that,” said Francis to this).
But there was, equally, not even the most basic research. Another Maidstone caller, Chris, ranted about cyclists riding more than 60cm from the kerb, which he said was prohibited in the Highway Code. This is, of course, nonsense – some cycle trainers recommend people cycle at least 60cm from the kerb – but Francis and his production team were oblivious.
Our host was more interested in either his increasingly bizarre links (“We’ll get a move on to someone who’s a little bit more angry then you.”) or his own increasingly trenchant opinions, calling for example for a “really stringent” test for cyclists.
“If you are a cyclist, what makes you such a big deal on the road?” he fumed at one point. “I mean, what kind of test have you done? Isn’t the test a little bit too easy? Motorists have to jump through hoops and pay a lot of money before they’re allowed on the road, behind the wheel. So what do cyclists do?”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Commuters hiring Boris bikes outside Waterloo station, London. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/REX Shutterstock
Are such editorial expressions normal for the BBC? Why was the show even debating an idea – banning cyclists from city – which is currently proposed by precisely no one?
We’ll never know. Again, my questions and requests for a chat with someone were ignored. Instead I was sent this meaningless waffle:
BBC Radio Kent engages in lively debate every day and our phone in on cycling was no different to any other. The subject of this debate was designed to challenge audiences which resulted in a passionate argument on air from both sides. Our presenters adhere to the BBC’s strict editorial guidelines on impartiality.
So there we have it. On this evidence, too many parts of the BBC don’t care about covering cyclists in a fair or responsible way. They don’t want to engage when they get it badly wrong. Most worryingly, whether consciously or not, they don’t appear to care if these actions make the lives of cyclists on British roads very slightly less safe.
And if anyone at the BBC disagrees, they are welcome to have their say.
Update:
When writing the piece I meant to add the caveat that not all BBC treatment of everyday cycling is bad, and particularly praise the news coverage of people like Tom Edwards, transport correspondent for BBC London. I forgot – that was my mistake. For those not in London, Tom covers cycling issues in the capital fairly and thoroughly.
I was also contacted by the presenter of a BBC Radio 5 Live cycling-related show called BeSpoke. While mainly connected to cycle sport, he said it has dealt with everyday cycling in a fair manner. I’d never heard it, but previous episodes can be listened to here.ShakeAlert early warning system. (Photo: USGS)
SEATTLE (AP) — An early warning system for earthquakes has been expanded to Oregon and Washington, joining California in testing a prototype that could give people seconds or up to a minute of warning before strong shaking begins.
The system isn't ready to issue public quake warnings yet, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which has been working with university partners to develop the ShakeAlert system.
But this version allows early adopters in Oregon and Washington to begin using the early signals to figure out what they need to do in the event of an earthquake. Such pilot projects are helping to make the system more reliable and pave the way for broader use.
Read more about preparing an earthquake kit
Officials with USGS, the University of Washington and others held a news conference Monday in Seattle to announce the system's roll out across the U.S. West Coast. California has been testing the production prototype since early 2016.
Even a few seconds of advanced notice can help people to duck and cover or cities to slow trains, stop elevators or take other protective measures, agency officials say.
In Washington state, a Seattle area firm RH2 Engineering has signed on as a pilot user to test the system to prevent water tank spills, The Seattle Times reported. The firm develops municipal water and sewage plants and hopes to use the system to be able to close valves in the event of an earthquake.
"The advantage of earthquake early warning is that it gives us forewarning that the shaking will occur, and we can be sure the valve is fully closed by the time the shaking starts," the firm's Dan Ervin told the newspaper. The company is working on software and hardware to process the warning signals and automatically close valves.
The early warning system detects earthquakes using a network of ground motion sensors. The amount of warning time depends on distance from an earthquake's epicenter. Locations very close to the epicenter may not get any warning, but others farther away could get anywhere from seconds to minutes.
The University of Oregon is working with the Eugene Water & Electric Board, Oregon's largest public electric and water utility service, to install sensors on its hydroelectric facilities, canals and water treatment plant, the Daily Astorian reported.
The USGS says it will cost $38.3 million in capital investment to complete the ShakeAlert system so that it can begin issuing alerts to the public. It will cost about $16.1 million each year to operate and maintain it.
Read or Share this story: http://stjr.nl/2pmX6q2Openin blasted of tha sun settin behind some tall rock outcroppings. Da sky is mostly cloudy n' tha cloudz reflect tha light of tha dyin sun. I aint talkin' bout chicken n' gravy biatch. Pan down ta show a patched up tent bein jostled bout from tha inside fo' realz. A rolled up tarp lies next ta tha tent. Right back up in yo muthafuckin ass. Sokka is inside a tent, tryin ta assemble dat shit. Right back up in yo muthafuckin ass. Sokka can be heard gruntin n' fussin bout as tha pimpin' muthafucka tries ta finish settin up tha shelter n' shit. Katara strutts up in tha frame, her back ta tha camera, wit a pile of fire wood up in her arms.
Katara Um, aren't you forgettin tha tarp?
Sokka Right, gots it... [Tosses tha wrapped up tarp inside tha tent.]
Katara Sokka, you supposed ta put tha tarp on top of tha tent. Yo ass know, so our phat asses don't git drizzled on, biatch? [Cut ta a overhead blasted of tha two, Sokka gesturin widely as he replies ta his sister.]
Sokka Ordinarily, you'd be right yo, but seein how tha fuck itz tha dry season, you not. Besides dat tarp cook up a pimpin' warm blanket.
Katara But what tha fuck if it do rain?
Sokka [Spreadin his thugged-out arms wide up in exasperation.] What if it don't, biatch? Then I would have put up tha tarp fo' nothing.
Katara Yo ass is infuriating!
Sokka Katara, why don't you worry bout gatherin firewood, cuz dat kindlin is lookin pretty sorry bout dat bullshit.
Katara [Angrily.] Well, if you don't like mah firewood- [Throws tha sticks at Sokka whoz ass shieldz his dirty ass from tha wood. Y'all KNOW dat shit, muthafucka! I be fly as a gangbangin' falcon, soarin all up in tha sky dawwwwg! Dude standz up in anger afta tha hail of sticks subsides.]
Sokka [Angrily.] Fine by me, if you not gonna do yo' thang- [Dude tears tha tent down n' tha two stare at each other angrily as Aang approaches.]
Aang Okay, I gots tha grub if you muthafuckas gots the- [Da siblings turn away from each other up in anger wit they arms folded.] hey, wherez tha campfire, biatch? And what tha fuck happened ta tha tent?
Sokka Why don't you ask Miss Know-It-All, Biatch of tha Twigs.
Katara Oh yeah, biatch? Well, you Mista Lazy Bum, Mackdaddy of tha [Picks up n' throws a twig at Sokkaz head.] Tents muthafucka! [Sokka turns around, lookin angrily at her muthafuckin ass.]
Aang [Laughs.] Okay, listen muthafuckas, harsh lyrics won't solve problems, action will. Why don't you just switch thangs?
Katara Soundz good.
Sokka [At tha same time.] Whatever.
Aang [Grinnin while gloating.] Yo ass peep that, biatch? Settlin feudz n' makin peace, all up in a thugged-out dayz work fo' tha Avatar. Shiiit, dis aint no joke. [Turns his head ta peep Momo n' Appa fightin over a watermelon. I aint talkin' bout chicken n' gravy biatch. Momo continuously tries ta fly away wit it, while Appa pins it down. I aint talkin' bout chicken n' gravy biatch fo' realz. Aang takes tha melon n' uses airbendin ta slice dat shit. Momo seems ta be complainin bout how tha fuck he gots tha much smalla half n' Appa gots tha bigger half.] Come on, Momo, thatz fair fo' realz. Appaz gots five stomachs. [Appa smokes his half of tha melon.]
Da scene fades ta show tha crew standin on tha edge of a big-ass canyon.
Aang There it is, muthafuckas, Da Great Divide.
Katara [In awe.] Fuck dat shit, I could just stare at it forever n' shit. [Zoom backward ta show Sokka up in tha foreground.]
Sokka Okay, I've peeped enough.
Katara How tha fuck can you not be fascinated Sokka, biatch? This is tha phattest canyon up in tha entire ghetto. Right back up in yo muthafuckin ass.
Sokka Then I be shizzle we'll be able ta peep it straight-up clearly from tha air while we fly away.
Gan Jin tribesman [Shovin past Sokka.] If you lookin fo' tha canyon guide, I was here first!
Katara Ooh, canyon guide, biatch? Soundz informative.
Gan Jin tribesman Believe me, he mo' than a trip guide, he a earthbender, [Oblivious ta tha fact dat Sokka is behind him, mockin his muthafuckin ass.] n' tha only way up in n' outta tha canyon is wit his help, n' tha pimpin' muthafucka takin my tribe across next.
Sokka Calm down, we know you next.
Gan Jin tribesman Yo ass wouldn't be all kindsa calm if tha Fire Nation fucked wit your home n' forced you ta flee biaaatch! My fuckin whole tribe has ta strutt thousandz of milez ta tha capital hood of Ba Sin Se.
Katara Yo ass be a refugee!
Gan Jin tribesman Huh, tell me suttin' I don't give a gangbangin' fuck.
A big-ass crew of skankyly dressed playas is shown struttin toward dem wild-ass muthafuckas.
Katara Is dat yo' tribe?
Gan Jin tribesman It most certainly aint son! Thatz tha Zhang tribe, a funky-ass bunch of low-life gangbangas. They've been tha enemiez of mah tribe fo' a hundred years. [Whistlez ta dem wild-ass muthafuckas.] Yo, Zhangs muthafucka! I be savin a spot fo' mah tribe so don't even be thinkin bout jackin dat shiznit son!
Zhang leader Where is tha rest of tha Gan Jin, biatch? Still tidyin up they camp site?
Gan Jin tribesman Yes Yes Y'all yo, but they busted mah crazy ass ahead of dem ta hold a spot.
Zhang leader I didn't give a fuck tha canyon guide took reservations.
Gan Jin tribesman Ha, of course you didn't son! Thatz tha ignorizzle I'd expect from a messy Zhang. So unorganized n' ill-prepared fo' a journey. [Da Zhang tribe thugz yell up in protest behind dem wild-ass muthafuckas. Katara n' Aang peep each other worriedly yo, but turn round ta peep a big-ass pile of rocks bein levitated up n' thrown away. Da canyon guide standz behind where tha rocks used ta be.]
Canyon guide Sorry bout tha wait, youngsters. Whoz locked n loaded ta cross dis here canyon?
Katara Uh, one of them, I think. [Camera pans left ta reveal tha Zhang n' tha scout.]
Gan Jin tribesman [Rushin forward.] I was here first, mah partyz on they way.
Canyon guide I can't guide playas whoz ass aren't here, so peek-a-boo, clear tha way, I be comin' thru fo'sho. [Cut ta a wider blasted showin tha Zhang filin past tha three lil playas n' tha fumin Gan Jin scout.]
Zhang leader [Mockingly.] Guess you muthafuckas will gotta make tha trip tomorrow.
Da blasted shifts ta a cold-ass lil close-up tha scout, whose eyes twitch up in anger n' shit. Da camera zooms backward n' pans left ta reveal another tribe enterin tha canyon entrizzle area. Da scout points ta dem up in triumph.
Gan Jin tribesman Wait, here they come biaaatch! [A crew of clean, finely dressed playas is shown comin toward dem wild-ass muthafuckas.]
Zhang leader [To tha canyon guide.] Yo ass aint seriously gonna cave tha fuck into these spoiled Gan Jins, biatch? I mean we refugees too! And we've gots sick playas dat need shelter.
Canyon guide I... uh... well...
Gan Jin tribesman We've gots oldschool playas whoz ass is weary from traveling.
Zhang leader Sick playas git prioritizzle over oldschool people.
Gan Jin leader Maybe you Zhangs wouldn't have all kindsa muthafuckin sick playas if you weren't such slobs.
Zhang leader If you Gan Jins weren't so clean, you wouldn't live ta be all kindsa old.
Katara [Over tha two jumpin off bout some shiznit tribes.] Well Aang, locked n loaded ta put yo' peace-makin game ta tha test?
Aang I don't give a fuck, a gangbangin' fight over chores is one thang yo, but these playas done been feudin fo' a hundred years.
Katara [Steppin forward.] All Y'all listen up! This is tha Avatar, n' if you give his ass a cold-ass lil chance, I be shizzle his schmoooove ass can come up wit a cold-ass lil compromise dat will make mah playas horny.
Aang Uh, you could share tha earthbender n' travel together?
Gan Jin leader Absolutely not son! We'd rather be taken by tha Fire Nation than travel wit dem stinkin gangbangas!
Zhang leader Us thugs wouldn't travel wit dem pompous fools anyway dawwwwg! [Da two tribes begin ta shout at each other again.]
Aang [Shouting.] All right herez tha deal, you all goin down together n' Appa here will fly yo' sick n' coffin dodgin' across muthafucka! Do dat seem fair, biatch? [Both leadaz nod up in agreement, n' tha scene fades ta show tha sick n' coffin dodgin' boardin Appa.]
Aang [To Appa.] Sorry, Appa, you gonna gotta do dis on yo' own.
Sokka Aang, dis feudin tribe shiznit is straight-up bidnizz. Is you shizzle itz a phat scam gettin involved up in this?
Aang [Grinnin broadly.] To rap tha real deal, I aint sure. But when have I eva been?
Katara Dat punk tha Avatar, Sokka, makin peace between playas is his thang.
Sokka [Dismayed.] His thangz gonna make our asses cross dis whole canyon on foot aint it, biatch? [Cut ta a overhead wide blasted of tha two tribes n' tha others.]
Canyon guide Okay, now comes tha shitty news. [Cut ta a gangbangin' frontal blasted of tha guide.] No chicken allowed up in tha canyon, it attracts [Dude make motions wit his handz ta illustrate tha skittery monstas dat might lurk up in tha canyon.] dangerous predators. [Both tribes yell up in protest.]
Gan Jin Leader No chicken?! This is ridiculous.
Canyon guide Oh, you babies can go a thugged-out dizzle without chicken, biatch? Would you rather be hungry, or dead, biatch? [Dude raises a earth pillar ta tower over tha rest yo. Dude continues, cuppin his handz ta his crazy-ass grill ta amplify his voice.] Now, our crazy asses headin down up in ten minutes fo' realz. All chicken betta be up in yo' gut or up in tha garbage!
Da Zhang tribe quickly whips up n' shoves chicken tha fuck into they grills, which standz up in stark contrast ta tha Gan Jin tribe, whoz ass smoke slowly wit chopsticks.
Aang [To tha playas on Appa.] Appaz goin ta take phat care of y'all 'till we git there, so peek-a-boo, clear tha way, I be comin' thru fo'sho. [To Appa.] See you on tha other side, dawg dawwwwg! Yip yip! [Appa roars n' takes off. Da camera fades ta show both crewz of playas climbin down tha fuck into tha canyon. I aint talkin' bout chicken n' gravy biatch. Da trip guide earthbendz ta form a funky-ass bridge up in a gap up in tha path.]
Aang Sick bending!
Canyon guide Da thangz much mo' than bending, kid. Y'all KNOW dat shit, muthafucka! Folks want shiznit. I aint talkin' bout chicken n' gravy biatch. [Turns ta tha travelers.] Many of yo ass is probably wonderin how tha fuck canyons is formed. Y'all KNOW dat shit, muthafucka! Experts tell our asses dis canyon was most likely carved tha fuck into tha ground by earth spirits whoz ass was mad salty at local farmers fo' not offerin dem a proper sacrifice.
Katara n' Sokka look up in fear as a avalanche of rocks comes fallin toward them, n' tha canyon guide earthbendz it away from dem wild-ass muthafuckas.
Canyon guide Dude dat schmoooove muthafucka he, guess tha spirits is still mad salty dawwwwg! Hope you all brought sacrifices.
Cut ta a wide blasted of tha canyon floor n' tha canyon wall on tha right side of tha screen. I aint talkin' bout chicken n' gravy biatch. Da view pans slowly rightward before cuttin ta a cold-ass lil closer, overhead blasted of tha crew now all up in tha bottom of tha switchback trail. They have just entered tha canyon floor. Shiiit, dis aint no joke. Da guide standz up in front of tha two tribes n' tha kids. Katara, Aang, n' Sokka peep each other up in exasperation n' tha scene fades ta show dem standin all up in tha bottom of tha canyon next ta a big-ass boulder.
Canyon guide Okay, mah playas stand clear of tha wall. [Dude throws tha boulder n' destroys tha bridge dat schmoooove muthafucka had made earlier.]
Aang Why'd you do that?
Canyon guide These playas is fleein tha Fire Nation, aren't they, biatch? Gotta make shizzle we can't be followed. Y'all KNOW dat shit, muthafucka! We bout ta be safe now, nahmeean, biatch? [Yells out, as he is picked up by a big-ass animal. It aint nuthin but tha nick nack patty wack, I still gots tha bigger sack fo' realz. Aang blows away tha dust ta reveal a cold-ass lil canyon crawler.]
Sokka We gotta help him! [Dude throws his boomerang all up in tha crawler, which drops tha canyon guide n' comes afta Sokka instead.] Okay, now we gotta help me biaatch! [Katara comes ta his thugged-out aid n' do a wata whip on tha crawla yo, but her ass is quickly thrown aside fo' realz. Aang jumps down n' sendz a multiple blastz of air all up in tha crawla n' drives it away.]
Aang [To tha canyon guide.] What was that?
Canyon guide [On tha ground.] Canyon crawla n' shit. [Groans up in pain.] And there be a shizzle ta be more!
Katara Yo crazy-ass arms, they broken!
Canyon guide Without mah arms, I gots no bending. In other lyrics-
Aang We trapped up in dis canyon.
Da camera fades ta show dem grouped together.
Sokka I thought tha whole point of ditchin our chicken was so we wouldn't gotta deal wit thangs like canyon crawlers.
Gan Jin leader It aint nuthin but tha Zhangs muthafucka! They took chicken down here even afta tha canyon guide holla'd at dem not to.
Zhang leader What, biatch? If there be a mah playas whoz ass can't go without chicken fo' a thugged-out day, itz you pampered Gan Jins!
Gan Jin leader I hope you horny. We stuck up in dis canyon wit no way out.
Zhang leader Why don't you fuck yo ass, chicken hider?
Aang Look, stickin together is tha only way to-
Zhang leader I aint struttin another step wit tha likez of them!
Gan Jin leader Now there be a suttin' we can smoke on.
Aang [To tha canyon guide.] Any ideas?
Canyon guide No bendng... we need ta git outta dis canyon... I won't take a thugged-out dirtnap down here biaaatch! I won't become part of tha chicken chain!
Gan Jin leader See biaaatch! We goin ta become part of tha chicken chain cuz of you, nahmean biiiatch, biatch? [Points ta Zhangs.]
Zhang leader Sure, unjustly blame tha Zhangs like you always do!
Gan Jin leader Gladly.
Aang [Angrily.] Enough! I thought I could help you muthafuckas git along yo, but I guess thatz not gonna happen. I aint talkin' bout chicken n' gravy biatch. [Jumps onto a tall rock.] We should split up, Gan Jins on dis side n' Zhangs on dat side. We bout ta travel up in two separate lines. [Da two leadaz nod at each other n' start struttin fo' realz. Aang jumps down ta Sokka n' Katara.] Sokka, you go wit tha Zhangs n' Katara, you go wit tha Gan Jins. Right back up in yo muthafuckin ass. See if you can smoke up why they don't give a fuck bout each other all muthafuckin day.
They split up n' tha camera pans ta show dem struttin separately. Da scene chizzlez ta show Sokka up in tha Zhang camp.
Sokka So, you muthafuckas aren't goin ta put up yo' tarps?
Zhang leader What for, biatch? Its tha dry season.
Sokka Exactly!
Zhang leader Besides, our slick asses like ta use tha tarp as a funky-ass blanket.
Sokka [Smiling.] Finally, one of mah thugs gets dat shiznit son!
Katara is shown all up in tha Gan Jin camp, where they is puttin up tarps over they tents.
Katara Yo ass straight-up be thinkin it'll rain?
Gan Jin leader Fuck dat shiznit yo, but you can never be too careful, right?
Katara smilez n' tha camera fades ta nightfall, where they is chillin round they campfire. Da Gan Jin leader looks round n' pulls a piece of bread outta his sleeve. Katara looks stunned ta peep all tha other tribe thugz bustin tha same.
Gan Jin leader Would you care fo' some bread, Katara?
Katara So dat shiznit was you muthafuckas whoz ass had chicken!
Gan Jin leader Oh come now, you straight-up be thinkin dat tribe of gangbangas aint smugglin chicken, biatch? Why should mah playas go horny when tha sneaky Zhangs is stuffin they faces?
Katara [Hesitates.] Well, I guess itz all gravy if everyonez bustin dat shit. [Takes tha bread n' smokes dat shit.] So, why do yo' tribe don't give a fuck bout tha Zhangs so much?
Gan Jin leader Yo ass seem like a smart-ass hoe Katara, I bet you would trip off hearin some history. [Fades ta show a big-ass gate wit a gangbangin' finely dressed playa hustlin toward dat shit. Voice-over.] Da patriarch of our tribe, Jin Wei, was a earthbender warrior whoz ass was assigned a blingin duty, transportin our sacred orb from tha pimped out eastsideern gate, ta tha pimped out westside gate. Takin tha orb from tha eastside ta tha westside represents tha sunz risin n' setting. Dat shiznit was our tribez ancient redemption ritual. It aint nuthin but tha nick nack patty wack, I still gots tha bigger sack. But as he approached tha gate, Jin Wei was beat down by one of tha Zhang, a vermin named Wei Jin, whoz ass looked all up in tha orb wit envy. That coward Wei Jin knocked Jin Wei ta tha ground, n' stole our sacred orb. [Camera goes back ta tha Gan Jin leaderz face.] Our playas have never forgotten. I aint talkin' bout chicken n' gravy biatch. Yo ass can never trust a Zhang.
Katara glares all up in tha Zhangz camp n' tha scene fades ta show tha Zhang tribe n' Sokka chillin round tha campfire.
Zhang leader [To Sokka.] Care fo' some meat?
Sokka Would I! [Takes tha meat n' bites down hungrily.]
Zhang leader I know what tha fuck you must be thinking, we wack fo' endangerin dem hoes by brangin chicken down here.
Sokka Hm-hmm.
Zhang leader Da Gan Jin be thinkin so badly of us, they probably assumed we brought chicken up in n' decided ta brang chicken up in theyselves. Thatz why we brought chicken in.
Sokka [Still smokin.] Hmm.
Zhang leader Our conflict wit tha Gan Jin goes back over a hundred years. [Fades ta show a skankyly-dressed playa hustlin all up in a big-ass gate. Voice-over.] Our forefather Wei Jin was leavin tha westside gate of our village, when da perved-out muthafucka saw a gangbangin' git into in tha distance. Dat shiznit was a playa of tha Gan Jin tribe, Jin Wei, collapsed on tha ground. Y'all KNOW dat shit, muthafucka! Noble Wei Jin stopped ta help his muthafuckin ass. Jin Wei was transportin a sacred orb, a straight-up bangin relic used up in his cold-ass tribez redemption ritual. It aint nuthin but tha nick nack patty wack, I still gots tha bigger sack. Wei Jin tried ta tend ta tha manz woundz but Jin Wei insisted tha orb was mo' blingin, n' axed his ass ta take it back ta his cold-ass tribe. Kind Wei Jin promised ta bust help fo' tha playa as soon as his schmoooove ass could yo, but as Wei Jin crossed tha border ta return tha orb tha fuck into Gan Jin territory, da thug was arrested. Y'all KNOW dat shit, muthafucka! This type'a shiznit happens all tha time. Instead of thankin his ass fo' his kind n' selfless deed, they sentenced his ass ta twenty long muthafuckin years on lockdown. I aint talkin' bout chicken n' gravy biatch. [Back ta Zhang leader.] We Zhangs aint NEVER gonna forget dat injustice.
Sokka Thatz just shitty. [Looks at her piece of meat.] Yo ass gonna finish that?
Fades ta show Aang chillin wit Momo far from both camps.
Aang Sure would be sick ta be chill |
either the Liberals or NDP.Image caption Portrait of Bartolomeo Ferracina by Pietro Longhi and The Temptation of St Anthony by Sebastiano Ricci are among the four paintings held by the Louvre Image caption The Miracle of Saint Eloi by Gaetano Gandolfi and Saint Francis of Paola by Francesco Fontebasso are among the four paintings held by the Louvre previous slide next slide
Seven paintings taken from their Jewish owners in the 1930s are being returned to their surviving relatives as part of an ongoing French effort to give back looted, stolen or appropriated art.
The works include four paintings that currently hang in the Louvre in Paris.
Six of the pieces were owned by Richard Neumann, an Austrian Jew who sold off his collection at a fraction of its value in order to leave France.
The seventh was stolen in Prague from Josef Wiener, a Jewish banker.
All seven were destined for display in an art gallery that Adolf Hitler wanted to build in Linz, the Austrian city in which he grew up.
The gallery was to have been filled with artworks looted across Europe by the Nazis from museums and private collections, many of them Jewish.
The claims of the families involved were validated by the French government in 2012 after years spent researching the works' provenance.
The six works from the Neumann collection are to be restored to his grandson Tom Selldorff, now 82 and a resident of the US.Vortigern and Rowena, or Vortigern, an Historical Play is a play that was touted as a newly discovered work by William Shakespeare when it first appeared in 1796. It was eventually revealed to be a Shakespeare hoax, the product of prominent forger William Henry Ireland.[1] Its first performance was April 2, 1796, when it was ridiculed by the audience. Its titular protagonists, Vortigern and Rowena, are figures from Britain's traditional history.
History [ edit ]
Ireland had produced several earlier documents he claimed represented the writings of Shakespeare, but Vortigern and Rowena was the first play he attempted. He shortly followed it with a forged Henry II. He had announced his "discovery" of the lost play as early as December 26, 1794, but did not show his father a manuscript until March 1795. He also provided a purported correspondence between Shakespeare and a printer explaining why the play was unpublished, as well as a deed accounting for how it came to be in hands of the Irelands.[2] According to the deed, Shakespeare had willed all the manuscripts to an ancestor of the Irelands, also named William Henry Ireland, who had saved him from drowning. Years later, Ireland explained that he came up with this story to establish his right to the manuscripts in case a descendant of the bard might claim them.[3]
Hearing of a newly recovered "lost" Shakespeare play, Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan purchased the rights to the first production at Drury Lane Theatre in London for 300 pounds and the promise of half the revenues to Ireland's family. After reading the play, Sheridan noted its relative simplicity compared to Shakespeare's known works. Actor John Philip Kemble, the manager of Drury Lane, and who would play the title role in the play's only production, had serious doubts about Vortigern's authenticity. Sarah Siddons, who had been cast as the title female role, dropped out one week before the scheduled opening for unknown reasons, though it is suspected that Kemble had successfully turned the famous actress against the work as well. [4] Irish Shakespearean scholar Edmond Malone published An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments on March 21, 1796, about the authenticity of Vortigern and the other documents "discovered" by Ireland. Siddons' role of Edmunda was taken by Mrs Powell when it opened on 2 April 1796.[5] The play did have its supporters; Henry James Pye and James Bland Burgess wrote prologues for it, while Robert Merry wrote an epilogue.[6]
When Vortigern and Rowena opened on April 2, 1796, Kemble used the chance to hint at his opinion by repeating Vortigern's line "and when this solemn mockery is o'er," and the play was derided by the audience. It was never performed again until 2008. Some early critics accused William Henry Ireland's father Samuel of the forgery, though William assumed responsibility in two printed confessions. Samuel himself continued to regard the play as authentic and edited it in 1799, including a foreword in which he attacked Malone's findings and denounced the "illiberal and injurious treatment" he had received.[6] Nevertheless, neither Ireland's reputation recovered from the fiasco, and William eventually moved to France, where he lived for several decades. He tried to publish Vortigern and Rowena as his own work when he returned to England in 1832, but met with little success.[7]
Characters [ edit ]
Constantius – King of Britain
Aurelius - A Brother of Constantius
Uter - A Brother of Constantius
Vortigern - Adviser to Constantius
Wortimerus - A Son of Vortigern
Catagrinus - A Son of Vortigern
Pascentius - A Son of Vortigern
Hengist - Leader of the Saxon Mercenaries
Horsus - Brother of Hengist
Fool
Servant
Page
Barons, Officers, Guards, &c., &c.
Edmunda - Wife of Vortigern
Flavia - Daughter of Vortigern, Ambrosius' Lover
Rowena - Daughter of Hengist
Attendants on Edmunda
Synopsis [ edit ]
The story begins as the King of the Britons Constantius offers half his crown to his adviser Vortigern for his loyal service. Vortigern immediately plots the king's murder in order to take the crown for himself. Meanwhile, the court Fool warns two of Vortigern's children, Pascentius and Flavia, of the bad times ahead and the three of them leave the court with Flavia in drag. Constantius' sons Aurelius (Ambrosius Aurelianus) and Uter (Uther Pendragon), studying in Rome, receive word of Vortigern's treachery and go to Scotland to raise an army against their father's killer. In response Vortigern summons an army of Saxons, led by Hengist and Horsus, to defend him from the Scots. He falls in love with Hengist's beautiful daughter Rowena, and proclaims her his queen, much to the chagrin of his wife Edmunda and his two remaining sons, Wortimerus (Vortimer) and Catagrinus (Catigern), who flee. Vortigern's family eventually all join Aurelius and Uter's army, and Aurelius and Flavia declare their mutual love. In the end the Saxons are routed and Aurelius defeats Vortigern but spares his life, and then marries Flavia. The final speech is delivered by the Fool, who admits that the play is not very tragic, as "none save bad do fall, which draws no tear".[6]
Sources [ edit ]
Like other apocryphal plays attributed to Shakespeare, The Birth of Merlin and Locrine, Vortigern and Rowena takes the Matter of Britain as its subject, drawing especially from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and Raphael Holinshed's Chronicle, the same source used by Shakespeare.[1] Shakespeare used Britain's mythical history in several of his plays, including King Lear and Cymbeline, based on the stories of Leir of Britain and Cunobelinus, respectively. The play is essentially a pastiche of Shakespeare, with Vortigern serving as a Macbeth figure; other Shakespearean elements include the use of Holinshead and Flavia's cross-dressing.[1]
Modern revival [ edit ]
The play experienced a comedic revival by the Pembroke Players at the Pembroke College New Cellars, Cambridge, on November 19, 2008. [8] The production was directed by Pembroke third-year Alexander Whiscombe, and starred David Harrap in the title role with Eystein Thanisch as Aurelius.[9][10] The American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia included the play as part of its Staged Reading Series in November, 2013.[11]
Notes [ edit ]A Muslim man who stabbed a Romanian prostitute to death was sentenced to jail for at least 29 years on June 27. 21-year-old Farooq Shah stabbed a knife through Mariana Popa’s chest while riding past her on a bicycle along a stretch of road that is infamous for sex workers in Ilford, Essex. Popa, who was 24-years-old and six weeks pregnant with her second child, had been in Britain for less than a month and was trying to earn money to support her family. Reportedly, Shah did not think it right for Popa to be prostituting herself near the mosque situated nearby though he denied that allegation during trial.
After being stabbed on October 28 last year, Popa staggered into a nearby pizza shop and fell into her pool of blood as Shah rode away on his bike. CCTV footage revealed Shah was waiting around the corner of a garage close to where prostitutes are known to work. The footage also shows Shah stabbing Popa twice in the chest after she walked up to him and attempted to say something.
While Shah’s distinctive appearance matched that of the killer’s as seen on CCTV footage, he claimed he was the victim of mistaken identity.
His lawyer Ian Bourne said, “The footage may be showing another person with very similar characteristics to the defendant. All these images are poor in terms of quality. And the appearance of a bald or shaved head Muslim man with a bushy beard isn't unique in Ilford.”
However, Shah was found guilty of lying about a completely different incident where a stolen phone was found on him but he claimed that a mysterious man had sold the phone to him while he was returning home drunk and high from smoking cannabis the same night of the murder.
Judge Christopher Kinch ruled that Shah be jailed for life and serve at least 29 years behind bars.Scott Walker’s appeal to American conservatives is obvious. He’s as hard-nosed and unwilling to compromise as any conservative activist, but as deft as a seasoned party operative who knows how to pile up victories in hostile territory. Walker has bested Democrats in three consecutive statewide elections (an attempt to recall Walker in 2012 failed), and he has governed Wisconsin (a Democratic-leaning, labor-friendly state) as an unflinching hardliner since 2011.
That trifecta of executive experience, conservative governance, and blue-state electoral success has eluded movement conservatives in recent presidential elections, and Walker promises to break the streak.
But Walker has drawbacks, too. He’s a bit too socially conservative and reactionary for certain donor-class Republicans. He’s an operative at heart, which makes him susceptible to getting caught saying irreconcilable things to different audiences, and he courts a reputation for being a little bit dim.
But Walker's biggest liability may be this: He is incredibly dull. Not just plodding-speaker dull, though he’s often that, too, but an actually boring person. Mitt Romney is nobody’s caricature of a party animal, but he could legitimately boast of being an industrial titan, a fixer, and a man of the world. Hillary Clinton isn’t particularly charismatic, but her life story is filled with dramatic tension, and nobody who masterminded #Benghazi can be credibly dismissed as boring.A report on the use of blockchain technology as a mechanism for storing state records is set to be delivered to the Vermont legislature by 15th January.
According to a summary of the bill, the study is intended to explore “opportunities and risks” for storing electronic facts using blockchain technology. The final version of the bill also requires that the report focus on addressing “unresolved regulatory issues”.
The mandate for the study was part of an economic development bill signed into law last summer by Governor Peter Shumlin.
The law instructs the state’s Attorney General, the Secretary of State and the Department of Financial Regulation to develop the report and draw from insight from the Center for Legal Innovation at Vermont Law School and the Uniform Law Commission.
According to attorney Carl Lisman, a ULC commissioner who has taken part in the drafting of the report, it is “almost, but not yet, complete”. He declined to divulge details on the contents or conclusions of the report.
While the state may be looking to adopt the technology for record-keeping purposes, Vermont has already taken steps to regulate aspects of its local digital currency ecosystem.
Susan Donegan, commissioner of the state’s Department of Financial Regulation, told CoinDesk last year that her agency is applying existing statutes to businesses working with the technology.
Representatives of the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the Department of Financial Regulation and the Center for Legal Innovation at Vermont Law School did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s requests for comment.
Vermont legislature image via Shutterstock'Bradford is very inbred': Muslim outrage as professor warns first-cousin marriages increase risk of birth defects
Professor Steve Jones, from University College London, said the common practice in Islamic communities for cousins to marry each other increased the risk of birth defects
Inbreeding among British Muslims is threatening the health of their children, a leading geneticist warned yesterday.
Professor Steve Jones, from University College London, said the common practice in Islamic communities for cousins to marry each other increased the risk of birth defects.
‘There may be some evidence that cousins marrying one another can be harmful,’ he told an audience at the Hay Festival.
‘We should be concerned about that as there can be a lot of hidden genetic damage. Children are much more likely to get two copies of a damaged gene.
‘Bradford is very inbred. There is a huge amount of cousins marrying each other there.’
Studies have shown that 55 per cent of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins – and in Bradford, this rises to 75 per cent.
Other research has found that children of first cousins are ten times more likely to have recessive genetic disorders and face deafness, blindness and infant mortality.
But Prof Jones’s comments provoked anger among some Muslim groups yesterday.
Bradford city centre. Studies have shown that 55 per cent of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins - and in Bradford, this rises to 75 per cent
Concern about the risks to children from first-cousin marriage has been described as the last great taboo
Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, which promotes the image of Muslims in Britain, said: ‘I know many Muslims who have married their cousins and none of them have had a problem with their children.
‘Obviously, we don’t want any children to be born disabled who don’t need to be born disabled, so I would advise genetic screening before first cousins marry.
'But I find Steve Jones’s comments unworthy of a professor. Using language like “inbreeding” to describe cousins marrying is completely inappropriate and further demonises Muslims.’
Concern about the risks to children from first-cousin marriage has been described as the last great taboo.
Former environment minister Phil Woolas was rebuked by Downing Street in 2008 for saying British Pakistanis are fuelling rates of birth defects by marrying their cousins, with the spokesman for then prime minister Gordon Brown saying the issue was not one for ministers to comment on.
Mohammed Saleem Khan, chief executive of the Bradford Council for Mosques, said: ‘It is important to discuss these issues, but I just do not know of any firm evidence backing up Professor Jones’s claims. I think we need more conclusive studies so we can know for certain if there is any genuine risk.
‘Marriages between cousins is certainly common within south Asia, but it is becoming less so in Britain and also in Bradford. Islam allows you to marry anyone you want, so in many ways Islam promotes diversity.’
In his talk, Prof Jones said inbreeding was not confined to Muslims, and historically had occurred in every part of society, including the royal family.
He said: ‘We are all more incestuous than we realise. In Northern Ireland lots of people share the same surname, which suggests a high level of inbreeding.It's no secret President Donald Trump isn't popular with the majority of Americans, but a new poll this week shows he is beginning to lose some of the demographics that thrust him into the White House.
The Quinnipiac University survey found that just 36 percent of voters approve of the job Trump is doing, while 58 percent disapprove. That's a "near-record" negative rating and a drop from last month, the poll noted. In its April 19 poll, Quinnipiac University found Trump's approval rating stood at 40 percent with 56 percent disapproving.
Perhaps even more troubling for the president: The folks who made up his base in November's election appear to be growing weary. White voters are fleeing.
Trending: Why Did Rosenstein Agree To Take Part in the Comey Farce?
Forty-seven percent of white voters with no college degree approved of Trump's job performance, while 46 percent disapproved, the survey found. That's a steep drop in support from last month, when 57 percent approved of Trump, and compare that to exit polls in November that found 67 percent of non-college-educated whites voted for Trump, the highest such figure for any candidate since 1980.
Just 48 percent of white men approved of Trump's job performance, while 46 percent disapproved in the latest Quinnipiac survey. In its April 19 poll, a majority of white men, 53 percent, approved of the president and 38 percent disapproved. Exit polls found 62 percent of white men voted for Trump in November.
Most independent voters already didn't approve of Trump, but his support among that subgroup dropped as well. Just 29 percent approved of the president in Quinnipiac's latest poll, down from 38 percent last month. But exit polls in November found Trump won among independent voters, with 46 percent support compared to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's 42 percent.
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In the latest survey, 61 percent of voters expressed the sentiment that Trump is dishonest, while 59 percent said they thought he didn't care about the average American and 66 percent thought he wasn't level-headed.
"There is no way to spin or sugarcoat these sagging numbers," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, in a statement. "The erosion of white men, white voters without college degrees and independent voters, the declaration by voters that President Donald Trump's first 100 days were mainly a failure and deepening concerns about Trump's honesty, intelligence and level headedness are red flags that the administration simply can't brush away."
The Quinnipiac survey polled 1,078 voters over the phone from May 4 through May 9. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Trump's approval rating has mostly hovered around 40 percent recently—the weighted average from data-focused website FiveThirtyEight had him at 41.3 percent Thursday—but his support has seemingly taken a dip in the wake of Republicans in the House of Representatives passing the American Health Care Act, otherwise known as Trumpcare. A Morning Consult/Politico survey released Wednesday found the president's approval rating dipped four percentage points, to 44 percent, after the passage of the bill, which just 38 percent of respondents supported.
More from NewsweekOur friends at Download Squad are told by a reliable tipster that HTC is building a Tegra 2-based Chrome OS tablet for Google with a 1280 x 720 multitouch display, 2GB of RAM, at least 32GB of storage with the possibility of expansion, GPS, a webcam, and the usual wireless connectivity, including a 3G radio.
We've been waiting on pins and needles for Google to announce some official Android tablet plans for so long we'd almost forgotten about Mountain View'soperating system -- but from what we're hearing, Chrome OS is about to jump to center stage with a tablet debut on Verizon just before the holidays.Launch is pegged for Black Friday on November 26, and apparently the plan is to offer the device for extremely cheap or free on subsidy, which makes sense -- it is just a browser, after all, and "free" sounds mighty nice compared to the iPad's $499 entry point. (Of course, you'll undoubtedly be tied to a Verizon contract, but we'll just let that slide for now.) We'll see how much of this comes true in the next few months -- we're certainly intrigued.The author of the Download Squad post, Lee Matthews, apparently fabricated all these specs -- in comments, he confirms that they're "pure speculation," and this his source only provided the launch date and Verizon partnership. That part certainly seems plausible, but we wouldn't necessarily believe any of this -- it's pretty suspect to just make things up.One of our own actually proven tipsters just hit us to say this whole thing -- including launch date -- sounds suspect, and that ARM-based Chrome OS tablets won't hit until late 2011 at least. It'll be Atom-based netbooks until then, we're told. That lines up with everything else we've ever heard from Google and its partners, so we're calling this entirely bunk until we actually see some hardware.Bernie Ecclestone has talked in recent weeks about expanding the F1 calendar to 24 races.
The early signs are next year’s F1 schedule could be the longest ever – with the new Indian Grand Prix taking the championship up to 20 races for the first time.
It seems increasingly likely the 19 venues visited this year will all be retained for 2011.
The Turkish and Chinese rounds had been in some doubts, the former seeing very poor crowds in recent years and the latter reaching the end of its original seven-year contract this year.
But Ecclestone dropped hints during the Turkish Grand Prix weekend that the race would be staying on the calendar.
Mercedes, who supply three F1 teams including their own factory outfit, are understood to be keen on keeping a race in China, an important market for them.
Other races whose long-term future had seemed uncertain now look more secure. The owners of the Hockenheimring have said they expect to sell more tickets this year (thank you, Michael Schumacher) and Silverstone has finally nailed down a long-term contract.
With India set to join the calendar next year F1 looks set to visit 20 venues in 2011:
2011 F1 race locations
View F1 race locations 2011 in a larger map
NB. Indian Grand Prix location is approximate
The teams have raised some objections to the amount of long-distance travelling this will involve. Their concerns make a lot of sense when you look at how the calendar is organised.
Why are Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, two races that are reasonably close together, at opposite ends of the calendar? Would it not make sense to run these races on consecutive weekends to save flying all the way there and back?
The same goes for the Malaysian and Singapore rounds. And would it not also make sense to move the Chinese round closer to the Korean and Japanese races?
Despite the team’s concerns the signs all point to the calendar getting larger. The 2012 United States Grand Prix could move the calendar up to 21 races.
(As an aside, if that race is paired with the Canadian round as seems likely, a June race in Texas would be held in punishing heat. The only previous F1 race in Texas – the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix, held in July – was one of the hottest races ever.)
On top of that Ecclestone is looking into possible future races in Rome and Russia.
The prospect of a larger calendar is obviously good news for fans of the sport and, in the long term, is probably a benefit for F1 too.
But how far the teams can accommodate more races in distant venues, at a time when they’re trying to bring their costs down, remains to be seen.
Read more: F1 2011 SeasonA Commonwealth Divided?
Much has been said regarding the major differences of opinion between various groups in the nation as a whole. Those differences are clearly evident in Virginia. There are so many gaps that it is difficult to know where to begin the discussion. There is a huge race gap that has been present for years. The gender gap is also prevalent in this race as are an age gap, marriage gap, and a regional gap. The education gap is smaller, and there is just a hint of an income gap. None of these are particularly novel, but they are quite pronounced in this election. Crosstabs may be found here.
Job approval; direction of country and state
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of Virginians think the country is on the wrong track, while 27 percent think it is headed in the right direction (unchanged from the November 2015 Roanoke College Poll). Job approval for President Barack Obama is at 45 percent with 40 percent disapproval (up slightly from November). Nearly half of voters (48%) have a favorable view of President Obama, and 38 percent have an unfavorable view. Congress remains mired in single-digit approval at 8 percent.
Governor Terry McAuliffe's approval has increased from 38 percent in November to 51 percent in May, while disapproval is at 23 percent (down two points from November). Governor McAuliffe's favorable rating is at 44 percent, and 23 percent of voters hold an unfavorable view of him. Voters remain more optimistic about the Commonwealth with 47 percent saying it is headed in the right direction and 41 percent thinking things are on the wrong track. On a related topic, 61 percent of voters agreed with the governor's executive action that restored voting rights to all convicted felons who have completed their sentences and probation/parole (28% opposed).
Analysis
"This is not a 'feel good' poll," said Dr. Harry Wilson, director of the Institute for Policy and Opinion Research. "We have talked about 'lesser of the evils' choices for several years, but this race may epitomize that statement...and we've barely begun the real nastiness."
"With each of the major party candidates so far under water in terms of unfavorable ratings, it is a little frightening to think where this could end. Third-party candidates could draw some support, and we'll be including those as those candidates are determined and are listed on Virginia's ballot."
Methodology
Interviewing for The Roanoke College Poll was conducted by The Institute for Policy and Opinion Research at Roanoke College in Salem, Va. between May 9 and May 17, 2016. A total of 610 likely voters in Virginia were interviewed. Telephone interviews were conducted in English. The random digit dial sample was obtained from ASDE Survey Sampler and includes both Virginia landline and cell phone exchanges so that all cell phone and residential landline telephone numbers, including unlisted numbers from Virginia exchanges, had a known chance of inclusion. Cell phones constituted 34 percent of the completed interviews.
Questions answered by the entire sample of 610 residents are subject to a sampling error of plus or minus approximately 4 percent at the 95 percent level of confidence. This means that in 95 out of 100 samples like the one used here, the results obtained should be no more than 4 percentage points above or below the figure that would be obtained by interviewing all likely voters in Virginia who have a home telephone or a cell phone. Where the results of subgroups are reported, the sampling error is higher.
Quotas were used to ensure that different regions of the Commonwealth were proportionately represented. The data were statistically weighted for gender, race, age, and political party. Weighting was done to match the demographic groups' representation in the 2012 Virginia exit poll. The margin of error was not adjusted for design effects due to weighting.
A copy of the questionnaire and all toplines may be found here. More information about the poll may be obtained by contacting Dr. Harry Wilson at wilson@roanoke.edu or (540) 375-2415 or the Roanoke College Public Relations Office at (540) 375-2282.
The Roanoke College Poll is funded by Roanoke College as a public service.
For more about the Institute for Public Opinion Research, click here.
CONTACT: Dr. Harry L. Wilson, Director, IPOR
(540) 375-2415 (Office)
wilson@roanoke.eduSeason Wrap Up
It seems that general manager Billy Beane has no problem finding pitching for his team and even when he trades away his best pitchers, he always has some waiting in the wings. The problem for Beane is finding proven hitting that can produce on a daily basis without needing much in the way of a paycheck. The team finished 75-86 which was good enough for third place in the AL West. Beane once again attempted to find a way to conquer the larger market teams with his 28th ranked $47.9 million payroll last year. It’s hard to tell where the team would have gone if they were not mired with injuries throughout the season. While they were not producing on the field, they were setting records off of it, as they sent players to the disabled list an amazing 25 times during the course of the season. While manager Bob Green tried many different line-ups throughout the season, the team could never find its stroke and finished the year last in the AL in runs scored and batting average. Despite the turnover, the pitchers still found ways to impress as they ended the season fourth in the league with a 4.01 ERA.
Holes to Fill
While it’s hard to see the A’s doing much on the open market this off season with their lack of spending power, they do have many holes that need to be filled in their everyday line-up. Their defense wasn’t terrible in 2008 as they posted a.984 fielding percentage which was good enough for seventh in the league, but since there is no telling how many games their lack of offense cost them, they may need to sacrifice some of that defense next season in order to add some pop to their line-up. The team will attempt to get their stat heads together this off season and try to find a gem in the free agent market whose statistics are riding just under the noses of other front offices around baseball. It is conceivable that Beane may be able to find one of these in a corner outfield position hidden in the market, but with almost all teams employing at least one person who uses the averages that Beane became famous for, singling out that player and getting them for less then market value, may be harder than ever. At this point in the off season, Beane is really lacking any names that would spark serious interest in the trade market in order to woo a bat away from someone else. Although the A’s do have a lot of young talent throughout their system, as always, they may be reluctant to give three or four of these players up to receive just one bat in return. Whether they do this will probably depend on how close Beane deems the team to being able to compete for a playoff spot next season.
Free Agents
At the beginning of the off season, the Athletics had four players who entered free agency in relievers Alan Embree and Keith Foulke, outfielder Emil Brown and designated hitter Frank Thomas. Early in the off season, the A’s made their decision on Embree as they decided not to pick up his club option for the 2009 season. This was probably a good move for the team as they are stocked with pitching and can probably get more (or about the same) production for less cost. Thomas did not help himself once he got to Oakland as he had just 19 RBIs in 55 games. If someone is going to give him another chance in the league, it certainly isn’t going to be the Athletics who pride themselves on production. Foulke will probably not be back either for basically the same reasons Embree’s option was not picked up. This would be the same tune for any veteran free agent pitcher the A’s would have during almost any off season. Brown will likely face the same fate as the other three players as he will probably be offered a deal that is far more than the A’s will want to pay on the open market.
The Outlook
While the A’s are probably not going to be able to catch the 100 game winning Angels, they could move up a spot in their division if Beane is able to work his magic yet again this off season. In the past year, the A’s have shipped some big names around the league including Marco Scutaro, Nick Swisher, Mark Kotsay and Dan Haren. While some of the talent they received in return is producing throughout their system, this has perhaps left the Athletics with a lack of real trade bait this off season. Bobby Crosby may be a name that pops up in trade talks as his contract will be up after the 2009 season, and the A’s will probably not make an offer to him, unless for some reason he really wants to stay in Oakland. They have already probably made the most publicized trade of the off season when they acquired Matt Holliday from the Colorado Rockies for a deal that was focused around closer Huston Street (who lost his job at the end of the bullpen last season to one of Beane’s young and talented arms). Holliday could provide some of the pop that was missing from a line-up that was starved for runs last year. While he probably won’t hit like he did in Denver, because no one does, he will still bolster Geren’s everyday line-up. As always, the A’s have a number of kids in their system who are almost ready to start contributing at the big league level. They played 21 different rookies during the 2008 season, and it doesn’t look like that trend will be slowing down any time soon (although they would be hard pressed to reach a number that high again). Even though some of the players acquired in the deals mentioned above did not statistically perform like the team thought they would, Beane’s thinking is usually that they just need more time with his coaches and that they will be ready once they get the call from the big club. One has to wonder how successful Beane would be if he had more money to spend. With a new stadium not to far down the road, that may provide some extra revenue for the coming seasons and allow the team to actually keep some of the talent they have spent so much time grooming.
Bill Jordan is a contributor to BaseballReflections.com and can be reached by e-mail at BillJordaniv@yahoo.com.(Photo: Richard Brand / Flickr)
Although “renewable” energy is growing faster than ever before, it is neither carbon neutral, “clean” nor sustainable. We need to transform into low-energy societies that meet human – not corporate – needs.
Renewable energy is growing faster than ever before. Sure, some countries are lagging behind, but others are setting widely praised records.
Germany has installed over 24,000 wind turbines and 1.4 million solar panels, and renewables generate 31 percent of the country’s electricity on average – and as much as 74 percent on particularly windy or sunny days. According to the German government, 371,400 jobs have been created by renewable energy. Norway generates 99 percent of its electricity from renewable energy. Denmark already generates 43 percent of electricity from renewables and aims to phase out fossil fuel burning by 2050.
Many view such news as rays of hope in a rapidly destabilizing climate. We all need some good news – but is renewables expansion really the good news people like to think? Can we really put our hopes for stabilizing the climate into trying to simply replace the energy sources in a growth-focused economic and social model that was built on fossil fuels? Or do we need a far more fundamental transition towards a low-energy economy and society?
Here’s the first problem with celebratory headlines over renewables: Record renewable energy hasn’t stopped record fossil fuel burning, including record levels of coal burning. Coal use is growing so fast that the International Energy Authority expects it to surpass oil as the world’s top energy source by 2017.
Perhaps the 1,500 gigawatts of electricity produced from renewables worldwide have prevented a further 1,500 gigawatts of fossil fuel power stations? Nobody can tell. It’s just as possible that renewables have simply added 1,500 gigawatts of electricity to the global economy, fueled economic growth and ever-greater industrial resource use. In which case, far from limiting carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, renewables may simply have increased them because, as discussed below, no form of large-scale energy is carbon neutral.
As long as energy sources that are as carbon-intensive and destructive as fossil fuels are classed as “renewable,” boosting renewable energy around the world risks doing more harm than good.
Germany’s Energy Transition illustrates the problem: Wind turbines and solar panels have certainly become a widespread feature of Germany’s landscape. Yet if we look at Germany’s total energy use (including heating and transport), rather than just at electricity, energy classed as renewable accounts for just 11.5 percent. The majority, 87.8 percent, of Germany’s energy continues to come from fossil fuels and nuclear power (with waste incineration accounting for the difference of 0.7 percent). Coal consumption, which had been falling until 2008, has been rising again since then. Germany remains the European Union’s (EU) top coal consumer. Net electricity exports are being blamed for the rise in coal burning and carbon dioxide emissions, yet they account for just 5 percent of Germany’s electricity – and electricity accounts for less than half of the country’s energy use.
The picture looks even worse when one examines the mix of energy classed as renewable in Germany: Solar photovoltaic (PV) makes up 11.5 percent of renewables, wind, 16.8 percent. The bulk of it – 62 percent – comes from bioenergy, much of which is far from low carbon or sustainable. It includes biofuels, many of them made from imported soya and palm oil that are being expanded at the expense of tropical forests and peatlands and that destroy the livelihoods of small farmers, indigenous and other forest dependent peoples worldwide. It includes biogas made from 820,000 hectares of corn monocultures in Germany – a key driver for biodiversity loss in the country. And it includes wood pellets linked to forest degradation across Central Europe. On closer examination, therefore, 24,000 wind turbines and 1.4 million solar panels have scarcely made a dent in Germany’s fossil fuel burning and carbon emissions.
Norway’s situation is unique in that virtually all of the country’s electricity is generated from hydro dams, which were gradually expanded over the course of more than a century. Fossil fuels (mostly oil) still surpass renewable energy in Norway’s overall energy mix (with electricity accounting for less than half of the total), though only marginally so, |
don't trade him and let him hit the market next year, they stand to receive a third-round compensatory pick in 2019. Therefore, they might eventually view it in their best interest to try to recoup more.
"In this league, things change so fast and players can get blindsided all the time with decisions," Cousins said. "They'll cut you on your birthday. They'll cut you on the day your child is born. They'll cut you on Christmas Eve. You never know what will happen.
"I'll always keep an open mind so I won't get blindsided, but from what I heard in conversations, I felt very much supported and felt the owner and president of the team want me to be the quarterback there and to be the quarterback there for a long time."
Cousins said he is not taking it for granted that the Redskins will let him be an unrestricted free agent next offseason, despite the high cost of the franchise tag and the risk of the transition tag. On the latter, if the Redskins failed to match another offer, they would receive no compensation. With the franchise tag, they could receive compensation via trade, but it's also a risk because of the salary-cap space it would use.
"If a team has franchise tagged me two years in a row, it's because they expect me to play at a high level," Cousins said. "If we play at a very high level and if we win a Super Bowl next year, I'm pretty confident they'll tag me and bring me back. If the season goes the way everyone wants it to and hopes it will, then let's hope I'm getting tagged again. There's still more of this story to write."
Over the past two years, Cousins has thrown for a combined 9,083 yards, 54 touchdowns and 23 interceptions. But he also just lost two of his top targets: Pierre Garcon and DeSean Jackson.
The Redskins have signed wide receiver Terrelle Pryor Sr. to pair with tight end Jordan Reed and wide receiver Jamison Crowder. Pryor said the receivers will be getting together soon with Cousins to work out.
"I want to play with a guy like Terrelle Pryor," Cousins said. "That's a great acquisition, a player that will help us a lot on offense. I'm excited about the players we have on offense. The line has played well for a couple years. We have some good players up and coming.... I'm excited about what's in place."Cyclists should not be fined for mounting the pavement to escape dangerous sections of road, a transport minister has told police amid claims officers are ignoring official advice.
Robert Goodwill urged police not to penalise cyclists for moving off the road at congested junctions after complaints £50 fines are being handed out too readily.
He said enforcing laws which prohibit cycling on the pavement is a matter for police, but added that discretion should be exercised “where a cyclist is using the pavement alongside a dangerous section of road out of fear of the traffic”.
Mr Goodwill reiterated guidance from 1999, when fixed penalties for cycling on pavements were first introduced, which states that the goal is not to penalise “responsible cyclists”.
In a private letter to a cycling safety group who raised the issue, he also advised campaigners to take it up with Sir Hugh Orde, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), to ensure the advice is followed.
The guidance, which was first issued by Home Office Paul Boateng 15 years ago, states: “The introduction of the fixed penalty is not aimed at responsible cyclists who sometimes feel obliged to use the pavement out of fear of the traffic, and who show consideration to other pavement users.
"Chief police officers, who are responsible for enforcement, acknowledge that many cyclists, particularly children and young people, are afraid to cycle on the road, sensitivity and careful use of police discretion is required.”
Campaigners have been concerned at the increase in fines being handed to cyclists since the launch of Operation Safeway, the major road safety drive launched in the wake of six cyclists’ deaths in a two-week period last year.
Almost a third of penalty notices issued under the operation, which has seen hundreds of police staged at major junctions across the capital, have been handed to cyclists despite the fact they make up a small minority of road users.
Donnachadh McCarthy, spokesman for Stop Killing Cyclists, claimed police officers stationed at London Bridge told him they had been advised to ignore any guidance and issue fines every time cyclists were spotted on the pavement.
In one unconfirmed case, he said, a cyclist had reported being fined for riding a “Boris bike” a matter of feet from its docking station to the kerb.
He said: “Fining vulnerable cyclists for cycling responsibly on the pavement at extremely dangerous junctions like Vauxhall Cross is a bedroom tax on two wheels as there is no safe alternative for them to cycle on.”
Mr Goodwill wrote to the group after they raised their concerns with ministers, telling them “I agree that the police should be using discretion in enforcing this law”, and advised them to write to Sir Hugh Orde.
He later said in a statement: “Pedestrians should expect to be able to use the pavement without fear of being in a collision with a cyclist and we are determined to discourage dangerous behaviour, which is why last year we increased the fixed penalty for this offence to £50.
“Enforcement is a matter for the Police but we endorse their approach of showing discretion in instances where a cyclist is using the pavement alongside a dangerous section of road out of fear of the traffic, but is being mindful to not put pedestrians at risk.”
National Policing Lead for Cycling Assistant Chief Constable Mark Milsom said: “We welcome the re-issued guidance from the Minister for Cycling in respect of cycling on the pavement and have re-circulated this to all local forces.
"The issue of cycling on the pavement, as in other areas of law enforcement, varies according to local circumstances. The ministerial guidance supports the importance of police discretion in taking a reasonable and proportionate approach, with safety being a guiding principle."Videos: President Trump Stops Motorcade, Gets Out to Thank Supporters at Mar-A-Lago Rally
President Donald Trump stopped his motorcade outside the route to his Mar-A-Lago home and stepped out to thank supporters holding a rally. The supporters were gathered on Bingham Island which is is located on the inlet bridge connecting Palm Beach to West Palm Beach.
Video posted to Twitter by Trump Street Team FL shows the presidential motorcade coming to a halt and Trump stepping out of a black SUV to wave and say thanks. Trump stayed behind the SUV while Secret Service agents formed a security perimeter.
BREAKING: 🔥President Trump stops Motorcade near Mar-A-Lago to wave at supporters and say Thank You 🇺🇸 #Florida #BreakingNews #March4Trump pic.twitter.com/5TAzftYWPm — Florida Street Team 🇺🇸 (@ppv_tahoe) March 4, 2017
BREAKING VIDEO: President Trump Brings motorcade to complete stop on Southern Blvd just to wave at supporters | Video By @itskevnow #FL pic.twitter.com/BzCJOd5Hk9 — Florida Street Team 🇺🇸 (@ppv_tahoe) March 4, 2017
Other views.
JUST IN: Trump pops out of motorcade to wave at Bingham supporters https://t.co/lbTZeidDFD pic.twitter.com/EAbuFKzNXc — The Palm Beach Post (@pbpost) March 4, 2017
The Palm Beach Post reported Trump will be having dinner Saturday night with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and several other cabinet members.
“4:45 p.m. UPDATE: Attorney General Jeff Sessions will have dinner tonight with President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the White House said. Other members of Trump’s administration — including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly and White House counsel Don McGahn — will join the president and Sessions.”When Bill O’Reilly got his start on Fox News, he was charmingly irreverent, a moderating factor on a right-leaning news network; and I liked him for it. I was 14 years old, and would go on, in my teen years, to read one of O’Reilly’s early books, along with Christopher Hitchens’ "Letters to a Young Contrarian," and eventually Dinesh D’Souza’s "Letters to a Young Conservative" and Friedrich Nietzsche’s "Beyond Good and Evil." I was hashing out a political identity into my 20s, and, as this awkward reading list suggests, it was complicated. It’s perhaps a shame that today’s O’Reilly is not complicated.
In the segment where O’Reilly calls Salon a “hate site,” and his program ambushes a handful of San Francisco civil servants, I was struck more by the “talking points memo” working in conjunction with O’Reilly’s monologue than with the breach of decorum or even the comparison of Salon to white-supremacist outlet Stormfront. The real danger of that O’Reilly segment isn’t so much the ambush tactics or the sensationalism as the sloppy thinking O’Reilly performs for his viewers, which gives the appearance of justifying that sensationalism.
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For this reason I’ve decided to work through that O’Reilly segment, which Salon’s Scott Eric Kaufman has reported on, paying close attention to those moments when O’Reilly uses both rhetorical tricks and logical fallacies to convey a provocatively hateful message about undocumented immigrants, a message that, ironically, comes a lot closer to hate speech than the simple act of advocating on either a conservative or progressive media outlet like National Review Online or Salon.
O’Reilly kicks off the segment by addressing the “evil” of the coldblooded murder of Kate Steinle before airing a clip of an interview with Steinle’s parents, who speak of the “battle of evil and goodness.” I mentioned Nietzsche’s "Beyond Good and Evil" above because it’s a powerful critique of Manichaeism, the belief in a dualistic moral struggle of good versus evil. Manichaeism makes it easy to oversimplify conflicts and tragedies by defining actors as pure good and pure evil. This is exactly what O’Reilly will go on to do in his “talking points.” He writes, “Every sane person knows that gunning down a 32-year old woman in the street is an act of pure evil.” The memo goes on: “There are many Americans who will not act to prevent that kind of evil from taking place.”
Here we can see two important rhetorical moves designed to bring audiences to the conclusion that, despite the culpability of the evil man who murdered Steinle, we are to identify that murderous evil both with undocumented immigrants and with people who don’t agree with O’Reilly’s hard-line immigration views. O’Reilly first sets up the scenario as though it’s as simple as good people versus evil people (as opposed to, for example, a more complicated policy nexus of immigration and gun control issues). Then he swiftly aligns “the Americans who will not move to act to prevent that kind of evil from taking place” with the evil itself. In these steps O’Reilly effectively conflates the evil of coldblooded murder with the evil of some Americans who will fail to act on some measure that O’Reilly will assign as a cure for that evil.
What, then, is that measure? O’Reilly begins by blaming the media, which “does not oppose sanctuary cities,” “sanctuary city” being a term with no legal meaning that refers generally to cities that don’t spend city funds and resources to enforce certain federal immigration policies. O’Reilly claims that the “sanctuary city policy” (it’s not a coherent policy at all) “is supported by people who believe that poor illegal immigrants should not be held accountable for violating immigration law,” “folks cloaking themselves in compassion, thinking they’re being humane to the poor who want better lives.” Crucially, however, O’Reilly goes on to re-label these people “hundreds of thousands of bad people.”
Here we can see, again, O’Reilly invoking the Manichaean framework with which he started, only this time, the “evil” one isn’t simply the individual who murdered Kate Steinle, but the “hundreds of thousands” of undocumented immigrants, whom O’Reilly lumps together as “bad people.” This is the point of O’Reilly’s slippage from the evil of murder to the evil of being an undocumented immigrant, to use a negative example of one to stand in for the whole. O’Reilly completes the slippage by claiming that “it is insulting when pro-sanctuary city people equate poor immigrants with violent criminals,” going on to further conflate all undocumented immigrants with violent criminals with one phrase: he calls them “brutal undocumented people.”
From this point, O’Reilly moves onto San Francisco city supervisors, holding them up as an example of the next link in a tenuously constructed chain of evil that begins with a murderer, who, by his undocumented status, becomes a stand-in for all undocumented immigrants, and ends with the civil servants of San Francisco and the broader left, presumably the kind of people who “will not move to act to prevent that kind of evil from taking place.” O’Reilly states unequivocally that Kate Steinle “is dead because of policies that endanger the public,” conflating once again the act of murder with the refusal to support O’Reilly’s specific vision of border security. O’Reilly’s closing judgment is that “it’s a damn shame that all Americans cannot support a policy that would protect people like Kate Steinle … if you saw the heartbreaking interview with her parents last night, how could you not support tough measures against criminal illegal aliens?”
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In all of this we should note three tactics of distortion. First, by framing the entire issue of Steinle’s murder as a Manichaean problem of good versus evil, O’Reilly is able to pretend for his viewers that there can only be one problem (lax immigration law), which is itself a manifestation of evil. Both gun control and wider issues of how to distribute limited city funds and resources (O’Reilly isn’t exactly a fan of higher taxes) are as significant factors in this tragedy as immigration law.
Second, O’Reilly’s entire argument relies on the fallacy of composition, which presumes that if something is true of a part of a whole, it must then be true of the whole. This is why, because an undocumented immigrant is alleged to have committed a murder, O’Reilly goes on to call all undocumented immigrants things like “bad people,” “brutal undocumented people,” “violent criminals” and “criminal illegal aliens.”
Third, O’Reilly avails himself of the fallacy of false equivalence in two ways. He equates the culpability for murder with the politically mainstream disagreement between San Francisco city officials and O’Reilly on immigration policy; and he equates sites like Salon and MediaMatters with the self-proclaimed white-supremacist outlet Stormfront, confusing yet again mainstream, partisan media outlets with neo-Nazis. A simple test to reveal the fallaciousness of the comparison would be to ask yourself how long a site like Salon or MediaMatters would exist, drawing articles from prominent policymakers, politicians, artists, academics and journalists, if any of these sites regularly proclaimed white supremacy as its reason for being.
Though it’s a little laborious to go through talking points like O’Reilly’s in this manner, it’s important to reverse-engineer them from time to time to expose what lies at the heart of the machine. In this case we find that the source of hatred isn’t a side of a mainstream political debate about immigration policy, but a desire to paint all undocumented immigrants as murderous villains, “bad people,” “brutal undocumented people” on the side of evil who threaten to put out the white light of America.Grilled, gourmet, dirty and even chili dogs being served from a food truck were the bulk of the nearly 1,500 votes cast in part 1 of our 2014 best hot dog vendor contest started 2 weeks ago. And today we are proud to announce our Top 15 and the opening up of part two.
We received votes from all over North America, but for this poll we could only select the mobile food vendors with the 15 most votes submitted. We will be running this poll for the next two weeks and will close it out on Friday, May 2nd at 12 PM (midnight) Central Time. The winning truck or cart will be profiled here at Mobile Cuisine and will hold the title of Top Mobile Hot Dog Vendor for 2014.
This years contestants are:
American Wiener – Tampa, FL
Biker Jim’s Gourmet Hot Dogs – Denver, CO
Dang Good Dogs – Durham, NC
Detroit Coney Island – Kansas City, MO
Dogzilla Hot Dogs – Orange County, CA
Frank Gourmet Hot Dogs – Buffalo, NY
Good Dog Hot Dogs – Houston, TX
The Greasy Wiener – Los Angeles, CA
Haute Sausage – Chicago, IL
Japadog – Vancouver, BC
Let’s Be Frank – San Francisco, CA
Nana’s Heavenly Hot Dogs – San Diego, CA
Sassy Hot Dogs – Dallas, TX
Short Leash Hot Dogs – Phoenix, AZ
Willy Dog – Hamilton, Ontario
THE POLL IS CLOSED.
Please note, if you have issues voting with the polling software, you can submit your vote to contest@mobile-cuisine.com or in the form below. The software we use only allows one vote per individual and from time to time, the software can block users from voting based on their ip address.At sunrise, on October 9, 1991, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's 1,880 workers began to open the 3,100 umbrellas in Ibaraki and California, in the presence of the artists at both sites. This Japan-USA temporary work of art reflected the similarities and differences in the ways of life and the use of the land in two inland valleys, one 12 miles (19 kilometers) long in Japan, and the other 18 miles (29 kilometers) long in the USA.
In Japan, the valley is located north of Hitachiota and south of Satomi, 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Tokyo, around Route 349 and the Sato River, in the Prefecture of Ibaraki, on the properties of 459 private landowners and governmental agencies. In the USA, the valley is located 60 miles (96.5 kilometers) north of Los Angeles, along Interstate 5 and the Tejon Pass, between south of Gorman and Grapevine, on the properties of Tejon Ranch, 25 private landowners as well as governmental agencies.
Eleven manufacturers in Japan, USA, Germany and Canada prepared the various elements of the umbrellas: fabric, aluminum super-structure, steel frame bases, anchors, wooden base supports, bags and molded base covers. All 3,100 umbrellas were assembled in Bakersfield, California, from where the 1,340 blue umbrellas were shipped to Japan.
Starting in December 1990, with a total work force of 500, Muto Construction Co. Ltd. in Ibaraki, and A. L. Huber & Son in California installed the earth anchors and steel bases under the supervision of Site Managers Akira Kato in Japan and Vince Davenport in the USA. The sitting platform-base covers were placed during August and September 1991. From September 19 to October 7, 1991, an additional construction work force began transporting the umbrellas to their assigned bases, bolted them to the receiving sleeves, and elevated the umbrellas to an upright closed position. On October 4, students, agricultural workers, and friends, 960 in USA and 920 in Japan, joined the work force to complete the installation of The Umbrellas. Each umbrella was 19 feet 8 inches (6 meters) high and 28 feet 5 inches (8.66 meters) in diameter.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude's 26 million dollar temporary work of art was entirely financed by the artists through their The Umbrellas, Joint Project for Japan and U.S.A. Corporation (Jeanne-Claude Christo-Javacheff, president). The artists do not accept sponsorship. All previous projects by Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been financed in a similar manner through the sale of the studies, preparatory drawings, collages, scale models, early works, and original lithographs.
The removal started on October 27 and the land was restored to its original condition. The umbrellas were taken apart and most of the elements were recycled.
The Umbrellas, free standing dynamic modules, reflected the availability of the land in each valley, creating an invitational inner space, as houses without walls, or temporary settlements and related to the ephemeral character of the work of art.
In the precious and limited space of Japan, the umbrellas were positioned intimately, close together and sometimes following the geometry of the rice fields. In the luxuriant vegetation enriched by water year round, the umbrellas were blue. In the California vastness of uncultivated grazing land, the configuration of the umbrellas was whimsical and spreading in every direction. The brown hills are covered by blond grass. In that dry landscape, the umbrellas were yellow.
From October 9, 1991 for a period of eighteen days, The Umbrellas were seen, approached, and enjoyed by the public, either by car from a distance and closer as they bordered the roads, or by walking under The Umbrellas in their luminous shadows.It’s hard to imagine a time when Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon didn’t exist. Its imagery has become so diluted into popular culture that it’s easy to forget its actual value as a rock & roll artifact.
Most of all, it stands as a beacon for an era of record cover design that we’ll never come into contact with again. Partly because artists and musicians have moved on to some other way to connect art and music, and partly because no label is going to hand over fifty grand for the artwork of the packaging if they don’t have to.
While any designer could probably have retired for the rest of their careers following the Dark Side cover, the thing is, it was just one in a number of celebrated sleeves designed by art house collective, Hipgnosis.
Hipgnosis was a trio made up of Storm Thorgerson, Aubrey Powell, and Peter Christopherson. Disbanding in the 80s, Thorgerson continued to work on record covers until his death in 2013, and Christopherson, who was a member of Throbbing Gristle, died in 2010. Powell now directs films, including Monty Python’s latest, Monty Python Live (Mostly). At the time, Powell and Thorgeson shared a flat with Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett. Barrett inspired the name of the collective after he wrote “hipgnosis” on their front door. “Hip” referring to cool as a subculture, “gnostic” to organized religion, and “hypnosis” for the “artificially induced trance state resembling sleep characterised by heightened susceptibility to suggestion.”
From 1967 to 1982, they created cover art for Led Zeppelin, 10cc’s, Def Leppard, AC/DC, Scorpions, Paul McCartney & Wings, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, ELO, T.Rex, Yes, Black Sabbath, and many more, along with several other Pink Floyd covers. “Every Christmas we’d put all the artwork we’d done the whole year around the walls of the studio. It was extraordinary the output, what we’d managed to achieve between us,” says Aubrey Powell, speaking to me from London.
He describes the 15-year partnership as “very much like Andy Warhol’s studio in New York, where everybody pitched in,” whether that be coming up with ideas, or shooting scenes, and the vitality they shared as “extraordinary”.
“Storm had a young son, who he took care of and he generally stayed in England most of the time while I mostly spent my time out of England, photographing various ideas that we’d come up with Peter Christopherson,” he says.
“When we worked in England together and at the studio, the volume of work was so great during the 1970s that we couldn’t spend time designing at the same time as actually doing the physical work of photography. In those days, photoshop didn’t exist, and so our work was very much a very tactile business, very hands on.
“We used to meet very late at night. Probably two or three nights a week, til four in the morning sometimes, when we’d sit up and have design sessions — very much brainstorming sessions to try and create different ideas. We were very much in a lateral thinking kind of way, and often they were at Storm’s apartment and his apartment was always full of the most loose and loaded cannons you can imagine: there would be the guy in the corner throwing knives at a wall; there’d be a couple of Japanese groupies, drug dealers, all sorts of people and other designers, and it used to become free-for-alls. Probably Storm or I would come up with the initial idea for something and then other people would start throwing in ideas. It was hectic to say the least. At the very end it was always the same three of us left, and we’d hone it down to some succinct idea that made sense and would work, but it was a very free-for-all kind of atmosphere in those thinking sessions.”
It feels clichéd to reference Almost Famous in an article about 70s record covers. But the scene where William Miller flicks through his sister’s records in quiet awe paints a pretty good picture of how you imagine records and their sleeves were treated by music fans back then.
As Powell said in an interview several years ago, “In those days album covers were very important to the person who bought them because there wasn’t MTV, there weren’t music videos, and there wasn’t the saturation of YouTube or any other available source to learn about your favorite rock & roll star… You’d buy an album and scour the cover while playing it, looking for clues as to what made those artists tick.”
Before the 70s, most covers were just portraits of the artist or band, but as music became more abstract so did its cover art. In his book Classic Album Covers of the 1970s, Powell describes it as “the most important shot the artist had at getting across his self-image.”
And Hipgnosis’ style and designs were what these artists wanted. “The surreal photo designs that Hipgnosis produced were without any doubt what drew bands to us,” Powell tells me. “It was the salad days of album cover design… We could do what we wanted. We never took a brief from a band who told us what to do. We very rarely put photographs of the band on the front cover. We were almost always more interested in the design and what the design meant, and to make a design that was stimulating and interesting and enigmatic in some way.”DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — Sinjar, Iraq, is shaping up to be the essential gem in someone's crown, but there are several contenders. Turkey, Iran and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) are all vying for control of the strategic area — all for different reasons.
Turkey is working to make good on its threat to demolish PKK strongholds in Iraq by continuing to bombard the group's positions. Though such operations have been ongoing for years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stepped up the rhetoric earlier this month, vowing, “If the authorities there don’t solve the problems of Qandil and Sinjar and if [Iraq] does not undertake what is to be done, then we will raze those places to the ground."
He has followed up the threats with a series of air raids. The pro-government Daily Sabah reported Turkish forces killed 96 PKK fighters in the mountains of Qandil and Zap and destroyed or seized caches of PKK explosives. Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider the group to be a terrorist organization.
The PKK's main headquarters is in the Qandil Mountains in northeast Iraq near the Iran border. Sinjar — known to the Kurds as Shengal — is home to the Yazidis, a Kurdish religious minority, and is in northwest Iraq near the Syria border. Erdogan is interested because when the PKK came to the region in 2014 to fight the Islamic State (IS) and defend the Yazidis, they then refused to leave despite strong reactions from Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. This eventually made Sinjar a prime target for Turkey.
When Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), which are supported by Iran, showed up at Sinjar five months ago and began taking over control of villages from Yazidi forces known as the Sinjar Resistance Units, it became clear that Iran was interested in the area.
The PMU also became the driving force of the Iraqi army's operation last month to recover Kirkuk from the KRG. Kurds said there were Iranian soldiers in the predominately Shiite PMU who, after helping to take over Kirkuk, headed north to Sinjar.
Turkey’s interest in Sinjar because of the PKK presence was understandable, but why was Iran, which had no religious or ethnic ties to Sinjar, suddenly so interested?
In 1991 during the first Gulf War, Iraq under Saddam Hussein had fired Scud ballistic missiles into Israel from Mount Sinjar. Some people are wondering if that's what Iran has in mind now.
Others, such as Mehmet Alkis, a doctoral student at Marmara University who closely monitors the Middle East and Iraqi Kurdistan, said Iran is also seeking to realize its dream of a Shiite crescent.
“Strategically and politically, Iran wants access to the Mediterranean. That's the best way to export its oil and gas. It is also true that it wants to secure itself against Israel. Iran wants to control a line from Sulaimaniyah, Kirkuk, [Sinjar] [all in Iraq], Rojava [northern Syria], Deir ez-Zor [Syria], Damascus and Lebanon that will be both its strategic corridor and the base of the Shiite crescent. [Sinjar] is right between Iraq and Syria,” Alkis told Al-Monitor. “This is a vital connection for Iran that will also enable it to sever the links between the Kurds."
Iranian control of Sinjar could be considered a threat to some, but Tehran is building strength to act as a deterrent force and isn't likely to engage in a direct war easily, according to Alkis.
Alkis attributes Turkey’s keen interest in Sinjar to the roles of both the PKK and Iran. "Turkey doesn’t want Sinjar to become a new Qandil to be used by the PKK [as a stronghold]. Turkey will not allow a Kurdish corridor to emerge, even if it is controlled by Iran, which could also be a threat against Turkey. Turkey’s goal is to sever the Kurdish links or control the area itself."
Alkis said he doesn't know if Turkey could manage to control the area or whether it has developed such a plan. But he does know Turkey doesn’t want Iran in the area any more than Erdogan wants the PKK there.
Mohammad Keyani, who was a deputy of the Kurdish Gorran movement in the Iraqi parliament from 2010 to 2014, is among those who see a potential Iranian angle. “Turkey and Iran are [vying for] Sinjar. For Iran, [Sinjar] is the key to an Iran-Syria connection via Iraq. If Iran can control [Sinjar], it will have easy access to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Also, don’t forget there are Sunni areas in [Sinjar]. To keep Sunnis under observation is important for Iran.
He added, "Syria believes that if Sunnis become stronger and Turkey continues supporting them, it could create trouble for Iran. To sever the ties between Sunnis in Iraq and those in Syria, border control is essential for Iran. As for the KRG, to control the Kurdish movements, especially the Syrian Kurds, Iran has to control [Sinjar]. The United States is sending weapons to Kurds via the Semalke crossing of [Sinjar]."
Keyani believes Turkey has additional reasons to be concerned with Sinjar: “First, it is close to the Syrian border. Syrian Kurds are now controlling a large territory. Turkey wants to end this. It doesn't want a [situation] similar to Iraq to emerge. Second, [Sinjar] is close to Tal Afar, where Turkmens live. Turkey still has historical interest, even ambitions, in Ninevah province. If it can’t physically control it, it will want to have a proxy" to do it, such as the Barzani family or former Ninevah Gov. Atheel al-Nujaifi, who is now commander of the Turkish-backed Ninevah Guard Sunni militia. "If you ask me, Barzani will regain his status with Turkey by preventing the other Kurds from gaining prominence.”
Keyani said that in the short run it won’t be possible for Iran to threaten Israel with missiles from Mount Sinjar. “It will not be easy to deploy those missiles, to bring them over. [However], a threat that can materialize in Iraq is a total takeover by Iran. But the United States will not allow that. That's why the United States opposed the [Kurdish independence] referendum. Americans wanted a strong Kurdish region that will have a strong influence on the central government. The United States didn’t want Iraq to fall under [Iran's control], but sadly the Kurds didn’t understand it,” he added.
Iran and Turkey, which had differences over Syria's civil war, found themselves on the same front when the issue became a Kurdish one. Yet these two countries, which have been competing for hundreds of years, can't agree to stay on the same line of action forever, even when the issue is the Kurds. At the end of the day, they will confront each other at Sinjar, if not militarily, then politically. Turkey, Iran or the PKK — whoever controls Sinjar — will have an indisputable advantage in Iraq and Syria. The domination of Sinjar will be vitally important to the future of the region's Kurds.SCEE CEO Jim Ryan has made new comments which may support Vice President Michael Denny’s statement that Gran Turismo 6 is coming to the PlayStation 3 console.
From an interview posted on the official PlayStation Blog:
PSB: Where does the PlayStation 4 announcement leave PlayStation 3? JR: Typically history can help us only so far here. We’re actually still selling PS2s in regions such as the Middle East seven years after we introduced PS3. There are a number of reasons why the transition might be a bit more accelerated this time round, but PS3 is a very important part of our portfolio, certainly in 2013, 2014 and probably beyond that. I’d point to the software line-up on PS3 that we have coming up – God of War: Ascension next month, The Last of Us, which is looking great, and Beyond later in the year. And there’s other stuff yet to be announced which is highly significant too. There’s a lot coming on PS3 and it’s going to be very important to us for some time yet.
His answer was similar to Michael Denny’s (who was also present at this interview), who also cited The Last of Us and Beyond, but perhaps let Gran Turismo 6 – which would certainly be a “highly significant” title for the console – slip out.
Thanks to “Tesla” for the tip!
More Posts On...Bugatti SCRAMP re-launched the famed Monterey Historic Automobile Races
In four weeks tens of thousands of the world’s automobile community will sharpen their focus on all the activities that comprise Monterey Classic Car Week that runs from August 11-20. Since assuming control of historic racing at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in late 2009, the Sports Car Racing Association of the Monterey Peninsula (SCRAMP) is poised to usher in its eighth edition of the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion in spectacular fashion and kick-off the entire week on Friday evening, Aug. 11 with its race car show on Alvarado Street.SCRAMP re-launched the famed Monterey Historic Automobile Races that originated in 1974 with just 66 entries into what is widely considered to be the premier historic racing event in North America and one of the top three worldwide that attracts more than 900 entry requests for the 550 grid positions.“When SCRAMP took the helm of the historic races in late 2009, our collective vision was to keep propelling it onto the international stage,” explained Gill Campbell, CEO and general manager of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. “Through the tireless efforts of our volunteer board, hundreds of volunteers, dedicated staff and the amazing caretakers of these historic cars who race them, the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion is the destination of choice for visitors from around the world to come and experience motor racing’s bygone eras.”Economic Engine for Monterey CountyUnder SCRAMP’s direction, the event is hitting on all cylinders. In the 2015 California State University, Monterey Bay economic impact study, SCRAMP’s Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion accounted for $18.5 million of direct visitor spending.There is a steady increase in attendance, from 50,172 in 2010 to last year’s record 70,525. A concentrated effort to engage with automobile manufacturers to showcase their newest models alongside historic cars has been successful and now regularly features such companies as Porsche, Ford, Acura, Audi, McLaren, Jaguar, and of course Mazda. Each year, companies return not only bringing executives, but clients and hosting international journalists who provide extensive coverage of the Monterey area.Recognizing SCRAMP’s efforts, the historic gathering has been honored with multiple award nominations. The Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion has been runner-up three consecutive years for the International Historic Motoring Awards that are presented in London, and last year was nominated for the prestigious FIA Members Heritage Cup that was awarded in Vienna, Austria.“Being nominated is quite an honor, and we have been second to such events as the longstanding Silverstone Classic (England) and Monaco Grand Prix. So we are in privileged company,” Campbell added.For the second consecutive year, SCRAMP is partnering with The Enthusiast Network for editorial coverage in such magazines as Automobile and Motor Trend, live streaming of the races and a one-hour television special that will air on the CBS Sports Network.This year’s edition of the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion is slightly different in that it forgoes honoring a single marque and instead honors the 60th anniversary of the track itself, which SCRAMP built in 1957. Complementing the anniversary are the 60thanniversary of Formula Junior, which is attracting an international racing contingent, and 70th anniversary of Ferrari.Photo by Bob HeathcoteThe E-word -- Eta, or "much filth," the |
for our great country!"Emma Stone is this year’s highest-paid actress, according to Forbes, banking $26 million pretax in Forbes’ 12-month scoring period.
The actress beat Jennifer Aniston, who took the second spot on the list with earnings of $25.5 million, and Jennifer Lawrence, who came in at number three with $24 million. Lawrence had topped Forbes’ ranking two years in a row, last year making $46 million.
Aniston, according to the publication, continues to make millions due to films like the upcoming “The Yellow Birds,” and endorsement deals with Emirates Airlines, Smartwater and Aveeno. Most of Lawrence’s paycheck comes from the upcoming Darren Aronofsky thriller “Mother!” and a longstanding Dior endorsement.
The majority of Stone’s paycheck, according to Forbes, comes from her “La La Land” deal, which also won her a Best Actress Oscar. The film garnered rave reviews and grossed more than $445 million at the global box office. Stone will next be seen in “Battle of the Sexes” opposite Steve Carell.
Also Read: Emma Stone Says Her Male Co-Stars Have Taken Pay Cuts Because 'We Are All Equal'
Stone has spoken out about the gender pay disparity in Hollywood before — last month, she said that some of her male co-stars have taken pay cuts to ensure pay equality.
“That’s something they do for me because they feel it’s what’s right and fair. That’s something that’s also not discussed, necessarily — that our getting equal pay is going to require people to selflessly say, ‘That’s what’s fair,'” Stone said. “If my male co-star, who has a higher quote than me but believes we are equal, takes a pay cut so that I can match him, that changes my quote in the future and changes my life.”
Melissa McCarthy topped spot number 4 with $18 million, and Mila Kunis rounded out the top five with $15.5 million.
READ MORE See Emma Stone's latest POWER MOVE. PowerRank: 178
Together, the top 10 highest-paid actresses earned a combined $172.5 million between June 1, 2016 and June 1, 2017, before fees and taxes. Figures are pretax and don’t take into account the fees for agents, managers and lawyers.
This year, three woman surpassed the $20 million mark, one down from 2016. The cumulative total is down 16 percent from $205 million last year.The Ka’anapali Beach walk is tons of fun for everyone in your group. There are ocean activities galore, hotels and resorts to explore, and plenty of shops and restaurants to enjoy. There is so much to do along this half mile strip, you could spend your whole Maui vacation here!
The beauty of Ka’anapali, which translates to “rolling cliffs,” is a unique experience for all of us, of course, as we are each unique individuals. Here are some of the things you can seek out when you are there.
There is a walking path all along Ka’anapali Beach, right between the resorts and restaurants and the sunlit sand. Many people like to jog along this path in the morning. It provides a nice place to stroll and listen to the waves during the day. At sunset, after the torches are lit, spending time along this walk together can be especially romantic.
If you’re ready to eat, several Beachwalk restaurants can satisfy your island appetite.
At the Hula Grill you can actually put your feet in the sand while you drink and dine at their Barefoot Bar! This place is right on the edge of Ka’anapali Beach, and it is sure to please the whole family. They have a delicious chef’s tasting menu as well as a kids’ menu. As night falls, a hula dancer on their outdoor stage gracefully interprets the rhythms and words of live Hawaiian music.
Leilani’s On The Beach is another of the famous Ka’anapali restaurants with an ocean view! They offer entertainment during their “Aloha Hour,” a keiki (kids) menu, and all kinds of locally-sourced menu choices. We can’t forget their wine and cocktail list, and if you really love the place, you can rent Leilani’s large dining room for special events!
In addition to restaurants, Ka’anapali Beach is lined with several fantastic resorts! Exploring Ka’anapali Parkway heading north (starting at the end closest to Lahaina Town), you’ll discover the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa, Marriott’s Maui Ocean Club, Ka’anapali Ali’i, The Westin Maui Resort and Spa, Aston at The Whaler, the Ka’anapali Beach Hotel, and the Sheraton Maui Resort and Spa.
The Hyatt Regency is the place to stay if you want great golfing nearby and a variety of restaurants and lounges onsite. Their Marilyn Monroe Spa offers a fun list of luxurious treatments, many of which are given next to expansive ocean views. Swim and play in their huge pools, relaxing whirlpools, and a water playground with a rope bridge! Plus, we’ll tell you a secret – this is the place to find penguins on Maui!
The Marriott Ocean Club is a family hotel. Most of the staff has been working there for over 30 years. One bellman said he has served the same vacationing families again and again – some of whom are now bringing their new great-grandchildren along! He also said, smiling, that he does his best to make all guests feel like family as soon as they arrive. In addition to the great staff at the Marriott, you’ll find giant chess and checker boards that await your thoughtful plays, and there is a Starbucks right on the beach. Sip your perfect beverage while watching the jetskis, parasails, or humpback whales play – depending on the season. While you relax you can dive into a good book, watch the people go by, or simply be.
One of two lavish condominium resorts on the beach – the Ka’anapali Ali’i offers privately owned condos surrounded by all the facilities you’d expect from a large hotel. Maintain your beach bod in the fitness center, switch gears and take advantage of the beachfront grills for dinner, and if you’ve had enough of ocean swimming for the day – enjoy the pools located just off the beach.
The Westin offers the largest lobby on Ka’anapali Beach, by far. You’ll see pink flamingos stretching their wings, swans floating on the ponds, rainbow macaws greeting you from their cages, and koi and cichlids plying the fresh waters below. Tropical flowers abound, including many species of delicate orchids, and there is no way to forget the huge waterfall that greets you at the lobby entrance. (You can even follow a path to walk behind the rushing water!) While you’re watching the birds and fishes, you can also browse through the many shops and local vendors located here.
Aston at The Whaler is the second condominium resort on Ka’anapali Beach. Here, you can enjoy vacation living in spaces ranging from studio to two bedroom. Each comes with a kitchen as well as daily housekeeping services and complimentary wifi. Kids 5 – 12 can spend time at “Camp Ka’anapali,” giving their parents even more of a vacation!
Ka’anapali Beach Hotel is one of the oldest hotels on the west side of Maui. It is known as “Hawai’i’s Most Hawaiian Hotel,” because the staff is highly trained in an authentic understanding of Hawaiian culture. Cultural workshops are available to all the guests who stay here. Some of the classes offered are Hawaiian Language (‘Olelo Hawai’i), ‘Ukulele, Lei Making, and Hula. In addition, Auntie Malihini gives tours of the KBH grounds, explaining how each Hawaiian plant is used in traditional medicine.
The Sheraton Resort and Spa is a large hotel with a swimming pool that flows like a river, a hot tub, and expansive lawns for playing games like bacci ball, table tennis, giant Connect 4, and croquet! It’s right on the north end of Ka’anapali Beach, so good snorkeling is just outside your hotel room door. They put on a decadent luau, and every evening there is a sunset ceremony in which a cliff diver leaps from the iconic Black Rock into the sea. The Sheraton was the first resort built on the west side of the island – all the way back in 1963!
Even if you are not staying in one of the hotels on the Beachwalk, you can still enjoy one of the world’s best beaches, and all the shopping it affords. Check out Whaler’s Village for great parking and more items to buy than you could ever spend your money on. You’ll find the perfect pieces of clothing, jewelry, art, and food.
Wondering what do to with the non-shoppers in your group? They can explore the whaling museum on the third floor or the play area in the courtyard. (In fact, this is the only shopping center I know of with the skeleton of a sperm whale hanging from the ceiling.) There are also hula lessons, hula shows, and lei-making classes. Whaler’s Village Shopping Center is located outdoors, so while you’re shopping, dancing, singing, and exploring, wear sunscreen and a hat, and carry your reusable water bottle with you to beat the heat.
If you’re done with staying dry, snorkeling at Black Rock on the north end of the beach can be a lot of fun. Sea turtles are often seen, and plenty of colorful fish live in the area.
Just an FYI, please do not snorkel on your own. You should always have a buddy no matter where you go in the ocean. When you see something amazing underwater, it’s much more fun to be able to point to it and say something unintelligible through your snorkels together! And even more importantly, in case either of you has any issues in the water, the other is there to see it, be there, and wave for help if necessary.
If you go snorkeling alone, even if there are other people in the water close by, they cannot tell if you’re distressed or not. Face down, you look just like any other snorkeler. We want you to be as safe as possible, so please always swim with a buddy.
If you want to see someone jump from Black Rock, see our video on the bottom of this page. If you plan to climb any of the rocks in the ocean, including Black Rock, pay close attention to what you are about to touch.
Sea urchins often spend time on rocks and in crevices. If you are stuck by an urchin, break off the spines as close to skin level as possible, wash the area well, and soak (or compress) the affected area in white vinegar to dissolve the remaining pieces.
The spines are made of calcium (a base), so acetic acid will break them down. This can take a few weeks. Urchin spines are definitely on Hawaiian time. The urchins in Hawaii are not poisonous, but you may find their defense mechanism to be an unexpected, uncomfortable, and fairly long-lasting souvenir.
If you’re ready to get into the water, stop into your nearest Boss Frog’s to rent snorkeling and beach gear. There is not much shade on Ka’anapali Beach, but you can rent beach umbrellas from us to make the perfect shady spot wherever you like. Our staff is always happy to help you find what you need, and to answer any questions you may have.
We know you’ll have a great time on Ka’anapali Beach. Enjoy!Looking for news you can trust?
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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
For years, “not in my backyard” has been the battle cry of residents in Cape Cod who stand opposed to an offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound. The giant turbines will forever mar the beauty of the landscape, they say.
Energy is ugly. Some forms more so than others, as nuclear near-meltdowns in Japan, the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and deaths in a West Virginia Coal Mine explosion have driven home in the last year. Energy kills plants, plankton, and people. It imperils the environment, poisons the oceans, and is threatening to turn part of Japan, one of the most advanced nations on the planet, into a contaminated zone for decades to come.
David Daniel knows this all too well. He built his dream home on 20 acres of lush wilderness, alive with panthers, wild boar, and deer, in Winnsboro, East Texas. Then a nightmare called tar sands appeared on his doorstep.
Tar sands are sandy soils laden with a tar-like substance called bitumen. Getting oil out of them is a dirty, dangerous, and deadly process. Daniel knew none of this when a neighbor phoned in the fall of 2008 to say that he’d seen trespassers on the property. “I went back [from work] and I found survey stakes that cut my property in half,” he recalls. Several months later, an eminent domain letter arrived, telling him that a pipeline carrying oil from Canada’s “oil sands” would cut through his pristine property. When he complained to TransCanada, the company in charge, its lawyer responded with a veiled threat: “Should I put the letter in the ‘cooperative’ or the ‘uncooperative pile?'”
So began the Daniel family’s struggles with TransCanada, whose powerful US backers include Koch Industries (best known for its stealth attacks on the federal government, and big spending on climate-change-denial campaigns). By the time TransCanada’s surveyors entered the Daniels’ lives, the corporation was already hard at work pushing a pipeline that would run from the Canadian border to Texas’s Gulf Coast, along the way slicing through the Daniels’ land and the properties of countless other Americans.
At no time did TransCanada’s representatives volunteer information about tar sands, leaving Daniel to do his own research. When he asked how tar sands oil would affect the pipeline, TransCanada responded only that the effects would be determined after the pipeline was put in place. “They made us feel like lab rats on our own property,” he says.
Behind his painful schooling in corporate arrogance lies a startling fact: Canada is the leading oil-supplier of the United States. Let me repeat that: the US imports more oil from Canada than (yes) Mexico, which ranks second, and (believe it or not) Saudi Arabia, which ranks only third. Tar sands are largely responsible for Canada’s new petro-status. Nearly a million barrels of tar sands oil arrive in the US every day. By 2025, Canada is expected to be producing 3.5 million barrels of tar sands oil daily. Most of that, says Ryan Salmon of the National Wildlife Federation, will be imported to the US And believe me, when it comes to energy ugly, tar sands could take the cake.
Not Tar, Not Oil
In fact, “tar sands” is a colloquialism for 54,000 square miles of bitumen that veins sand and clay beneath the boreal forests of Alberta, one of Canada’s western provinces. Black as it is, bitumen isn’t actually tar, though it looks and smells like tar, and has its consistency on a very cold day—hence, that term “tar sands.” (The corporations that produce the stuff prefer “oil sands.”)
Unlike oil, bitumen does not flow. Gouged and steamed out from under the forest, it is wrenched from the soil, barreled, and then refined into synthetic crude oil—at shattering environmental costs. The tar sands industry has ravaged Alberta’s forests, poisoned its air and water, and wrecked the livelihoods of its indigenous peoples. Moreover, producing synthetic crude from a barrel of bitumen generates at least twice as much greenhouse gas as producing a barrel of normal crude oil. At 1.5 million barrels of tar sands oil a day, that’s a lot of global warming.
But for corporations intent on profits in a world rocked by Middle East and North African uprisings that might threaten global oil supplies, and by declining reserves of normal crude, environmental catastrophe is trivial collateral damage. The tar sands’ great selling point in the US is that it comes from a friendly neighbor. Russ Girling, president and CEO of TransCanada, typically touts tar sands as improving “US energy security and reduc[ing] dependence on foreign oil from the Middle East and Venezuela,” At a White House meeting in early February, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper assured President Obama that “Canada is the largest, the most secure, the most stable, and the friendliest supplier of that most vital of all America’s purchases: energy.”
A complex alchemy turns bitumen into synthetic crude. Canadian journalist and tar sands expert Andrew Nikiforuk calls this final product “the world’s dirtiest hydrocarbon oil.” Canada used to transform bitumen from its rawest into its ultimate form, sending synthetic crude through pipelines to the US. Now, however, with Canada’s refineries maxing out, US refineries are increasingly taking up the task of turning bitumen into the mock crude that makes even my Prius environmentally unfriendly. That means what’s coming to Americans in ever increasing quantities is a very raw form of diluted bitumen called DilBit, whose transport will make lab rats of us all.
Under jaunty names like “Lakehead,” “Alberta Clipper,” and “Keystone,” a vast pipeline network is already pumping this diluted bitumen to the Midwest and into the American heartland. The 1,900-mile-long Lakehead pipeline, owned by Canada’s Enbridge Inc., skirts one of the world’s largest stretches of fresh water, the Great Lakes.
Last June, Enbridge’s main competitor, TransCanada, opened a $5 billion, 2,147-mile pipeline it dubbed Keystone I, which plunges from Canada straight through the eastern parts of the Dakotas and Kansas to the Gulf Coast. Now, TransCanada is pushing hard for an extension, the Keystone XL, the one that will run through David Daniel’s land on its way to the Gulf coast.
In February, 2011, a landmark report by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that diluted bitumen is “the primary product” carried by the Keystone I. The proposed Keystone XL, write the report’s authors, will be dedicated only to DilBit whose “combination of chemical corrosion and physical abrasion can dramatically increase the rate of pipeline deterioration.” So imagine this recipe for pipelines from hell: take thick, raw, corrosive, acid-ridden bitumen and add volatile natural gas to propel it since the bitumen doesn’t flow by itself; next, crank up the temperatures and pressures far higher than those needed to move ordinary crude oil (again, to help the stuff on its way). It doesnʼt take a rocket scientist to understand some of the possible dangers of moving tar sands oil in this state through our communities.
The Tar Sands Come to Kellogg’s
Last July, as BP’s catastrophe in the Gulf was making news around the clock, the US experienced its first big DilBit moment. Part of Enbridge’s Lakehead line broke, oozing black gunk into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River near Battle Creek, Michigan, iconic home to cereal-maker Kellogg’s. Twelve hours passed before workers responded to the surge of sludge, which by then had passed from the tributary into the river itself. The dark slop could be seen from bank to bank in the Kalamazoo, making its way to Lake Michigan.
High levels of benzene filled the air and local residents had to be evacuated from their homes. When the sludge passed through Battle Creek, the Kellogg’s factory even stopped making cornflakes. The spill was arrested before it could reach Lake Michigan, but not before a million gallons of DilBit had fouled a 30-mile-long stretch of the Kalamazoo, one of the biggest spills in Midwest history.
This was, however, no “ordinary” oil spill, as DilBit spills are much harder to clean up. Once DilBit hits water, the bitumen in it doesn’t float; it quickly sinks into river sediment. Exposed to sunlight, it forms a dense, sticky substance hard to remove from rock and soil.
Special dredging and other equipment is needed for any effective cleanup. The booms you saw skimming the Gulf last summer are inadequate, and the US doesn’t yet have DilBit cleanup technology. So while cleanup crews worked on the Kalamazoo and its banks after the spill was discovered, they left a whole lot of DilBit behind. Adequate cleanup isn’t expected until at least late 2011, according to the NRDC’s Susan Casey-Lefkowitz.
At the time of the Kalamazoo spill, Enbridge’s CEO, Patrick Daniels, claimed that there had never been a leak “of this consequence” in the company’s history. According to Enbridge’s own reports, however, between 2000 and 2009 the company was responsible for 610 pipeline spills in Canada, totaling 5.5 million gallons. (Not all were DilBit, which makes the picture worse, not better, since ordinary crude is less corrosive and volatile than DilBit.) In Michigan, 12 spills from Enbridge’s pipelines preceded the larger one in the Kalamazoo. Two months after that spill, another part of Enbridge’s Lakehead pipeline leaked 256,000 gallons of DilBit into Romeoville, a suburb of Chicago.
Keystone’s underground pipeline to the Gulf Coast, which opened only nine months ago, has already leaked seven times. They have been small leaks, but significant nonetheless as they point to larger, more distressing problems. “It seems odd to us that a brand-new pipeline would have these little spills throughout,” says Casey-Lefkowitz. “It raises questions about the quality of construction.”
“TransCanada is building its pipelines according to strength regulations designed for conventional pipelines decades ago,” adds Anthony Swift, co-author of the NRDC report. Swift says the company “has not yet provided a meaningful strategy for dealing with some of the characteristics of diluted bitumen.”
The proposed Keystone XL, also underground, would carry up to 900,000 barrels of DilBit (37,800,000 gallons) south every day, passing through some of the most sensitive ecosystems in the US, including rivers, wildlife preserves, and wide expanses of prairie. In addition, it would run through the Ogallala aquifer, a 174,000-square-mile expanse of water that lies under eight states from the Dakotas to Texas and provides 30% of the nation’s irrigation for agriculture, as well as drinking water for 82% of the people within its vast boundaries.
The pipeline would pass through areas where landslides and earthquakes are known threats. Part of Keystone I already traverses an area of seismic activity in Nebraska, where a recent tremor—3.5 on the Richter scale—shook the ground throughout the southeast part of the state. It also runs through the easternmost part of the Ogallala. Before Keystone I was built, a National Wildlife Federation report warned, “Some portions of the aquifer are so close to the surface that any pipeline leak would almost immediately contaminate a large portion of the water.”
TransCanada cannot begin constructing Keystone XL without both a presidential permission and a State Department environmental impact statement (EIS), made necessary because the project crosses international borders. The State Department issued that EIS in April, 2010 in the wake of public hearings in towns along the pipeline route. Environmental organizations, landowners, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were sharply critical of the EIS. Among other things, says the NRDC’s Anthony Swift, the statement failed to demonstrate “the need for the pipeline, its safety, and its greenhouse gas impacts.” Especially troubling, according to Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, was the failure to consider an alternate pipeline route that would not slash through the Ogallala aquifer.
Last month, under pressure from mounting opposition to the pipeline by a coalition of grassroots groups, the State Department held further meetings in Washington to hear their grievances. (The EPA also met with coalition leaders.) Ben Gotschall, a fifth generation Nebraska organic rancher, called the State Department’s environmental statement “insulting.” It suggested, he said, neither that stronger than normal pipeline materials should be used, nor that there might be alternative routes to the one currently proposed. TransCanada’s only concern, he insisted, was cost, while at stake was the “life and livelihood of millions of people.”
“My family has been producing grass-fed beef for five generations,” said Gotschall. “We do this organically, without chemicals and with minimum fossil fuel inputs… Nebraska farmers and ranchers were producing food long before we had the benefit of fossil fuels and we can and will find a way to produce food long after fossil fuels are gone. But we will never be able to produce food without clean water. To me, this pipeline is an issue of national security that threatens our domestic food and water supply.”
If the pipeline goes through, a handful of giant corporations will profit, among them Koch Industries which handles about 25% of tar sands imports to the US, and is among the biggest of US tar sands refiners. Meanwhile, the grassroots opposition uniting farmers and ranchers, environmentalists and scientists is growing in the heartland states.
Last month, the coalition demanded that the State Department issue a supplemental environmental impact statement. On March 16th, Ben Gotschall e-mailed: “If you haven’t heard already, the State Department has called for a supplemental draft EIS… This is a victory for all of us who have been fighting this from the beginning.” On March 24th, 25 mayors sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “We are concerned,” they wrote, “that expansion of high carbon projects such as the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will undermine the good work being done in local communities across the country to fight climate change and reduce our dependence on oil.”
Yet in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, domestic fears over nuclear energy are spiking, while months of turmoil in the Muslim world have highlighted a growing US dependence on Middle Eastern oil. As a result, it will surely become harder to derail the efforts of TransCanada and Koch Industries to ram a pipeline filled with toxic tar sands oil right through David Daniel’s property.
Will a pipeline leak one day kill off his old growth hardwood trees, foul his three natural springs, and poison the deer now roaming his land? If TransCanada’s checkered history is any guide, it’s a real possibility. Energy kills. In Japan. In the Gulf. In Appalachian mines. And in the Corn Flake capital of the world. If Winnsboro, East Texas, is added to the list, it won’t be a surprise, not to David Daniel anyway. He knows what we all know now: in the hands of corporations whose only concern is profit, energy is ugly.
Ellen Cantarow is a journalist whose work on Israel/Palestine has been widely published for 30 years, including at TomDispatch. Her long-time concern about climate change, related to both political and environmental disaster in the Middle East, has recently led her to explore big oil territory.
[Note on sources: Thanks to both Michael Klare, who suggested the tar sands topic, and Andrew Nikiforuk, who shared information by e-mail. Nikiforuk’s book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent should be required reading on this topic. Thanks also to Anthony Swift and Susan Casey-Lefkowitz of The National Resources Defense Council for supplying additional information about the differences between DilBit oil spills and ones. NRDC’s crucial report, “Tar Sands Pipelines Safety Risks,” can be read in.pdf format by clicking here.]Augusta – The ACLU of Maine today filed a Freedom of Access Act (FOAA) request for records related to the arrest of Black and Hispanic people in Maine. At a town hall meeting in North Berwick last night, Gov. LePage stated he keeps a binder with pictures of “every single drug dealer who has been arrested in our state.” He went on to claim that 90 percent of those arrested are Black or Hispanic.
Studies show that Black people and White people use and sell drugs at similar rates. Significant disparities in arrests, such as the nine-to-one disparity suggested by Gov. LePage, can often be attributed to racial profiling by law enforcement.
Racial profiling violates the U.S. Constitution’s core promises of equal protection under the law. Further, the practice alienates communities from law enforcement and causes law enforcement to lose credibility and trust among the people they are sworn to protect and serve.
The following can be attributed to Alison Beyea, executive director of the ACLU of Maine:
“According to the governor, Maine police are nine times more likely to arrest people of color for selling drugs than white people, even though we know white people are just as likely to commit drug offenses. This alarming disparity in arrests raises significant concerns that Maine law enforcement is participating in unconstitutional racial profiling.
Racial profiling goes against the very principles and values on which our country was built. Sadly, the LePage administration does not seem to understand that in this country there is a rulebook for government action, and that rulebook is called the Constitution. The Constitution is clear that our government cannot treat people differently because of the color of their skin. We cannot let our elected official abandon that cherished value.
We look forward to examining the governor’s records so we can get to the bottom of this and hold our elected officials accountable to the Constitution and the rule of law.”
The full text of the ACLU request is available here.Algeria's former counterterrorism chief was sentenced on Thursday to five years in prison for destroying documents and disobeying military orders, his lawyer said.
Abdelkader Ait-Ouarabi, known as General Hassan, was tried behind closed doors in a military court in second city Oran in the country's first ever prosecution of a high-ranking secret service officer.
Lawyer Khaled Bourayou described the sentence as "retribution", saying his client had "not benefited from extenuating circumstances such as his age, his health and his contribution to the anti-terrorist battle".
Journalists had not been allowed to attend the hearing, even before the judges ordered it held behind closed doors.
For two decades, General Hassan had embodied the army's fight against religious insurgents.
He was forcibly retired on the orders of a military judge at the end of 2013 and placed under surveillance, then arrested in August.
Analysts interpreted his removal as President Abdelaziz Bouteflika consolidation of his hold over the intelligence services, which some considered a "parallel state" within Algeria.
In September, the president also replaced General Mohamed Mediene - better known as General Toufik - after 25 years at the head of the powerful DRS intelligence agency.
In a statement published in Algerian newspapers on Thursday, General Hassan's lawyers said that he was "a collateral victim of the ferocious clan war being waged at the highest level of politics".
The former general was "one of the valiant officers who saved the country from the perils of terrorism", Bourayou and Ahmed Touphali Tayeb said.
"If he is condemned, what signal will Algeria be sending to all those who - here and worldwide - are waging a relentless battle against internal and transnational terrorism, which has increased in ferocity in recent years?"High carbohydrate, low protein diet could be as effective as low calorie diet for health, researchers say
Updated
In the latest diet wars salvo, a new study has found low protein, high carbohydrate diets could be just as effective as low calorie diets at promoting a long life as well as a healthy heart and good digestion.
Scientists know the only proven way to live longer is to drastically restrict calories.
But now researchers from the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre have found the same benefits with a low protein, high carbohydrate diet.
"We have known for many years that caloric restriction diets increase lifespan in all manner of organisms," Professor Stephen Simpson, academic director of the Charles Perkins Centre and report author, said.
"However, except for the fanatical few, no one can maintain a 40 per cent caloric reduction in the long term, and doing so can risk loss of bone mass, libido and fertility."
Scientists compared two sets of mice, those on calorie-restricted diets and those on a low protein, high carbohydrate diet.
"We've shown that when compared head-to-head, mice got the same benefits from a low protein, high carbohydrate as a 40 per cent caloric restriction diet," Professor Simpson said.
"If the same applies to us, this would mean healthier ageing, with more pleasure and less pain than caloric restriction."
Do you know more about this story? Email investigations@abc.net.au.
But there was one downside.
"While a low protein, high carb diet is likely to have beneficial effects later in life, it did increase hunger and the chance of weight gain," Professor Simpson said.
These latest findings about high carbohydrate, low protein diets follow earlier studies showing the regime promotes longevity and good cardio-metabolic health.
"We have again shown that changing the macronutrient composition of a diet is vitally important, and in this case is a more feasible intervention than caloric restriction for managing human health," Professor Simpson said.
Findings contradict documented benefits of fasting
The findings seem somewhat at odds with the latest diet trend, intermittent fasting (IF).
Drastically cutting kilojoules is reported to help you to lose weight, and some advocates say it reduces your chances of developing some chronic diseases and may even extend your life.
Associate Professor Amanda Salis, from the University of Sydney's Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise & Eating Disorders, said research had found some forms of fasting really could help some people to lose weight.
In particular, there is strong evidence behind the popular IF diet, where you fast a few days of the week, but eat normally without restriction on other days.
"About 30 studies have looked at IF diets in healthy overweight or obese adults and they've consistently found that if you restrict energy intake periodically over time then you do lose weight," Associate Professor Salis said.
"The thing about the research with these diets is that there are so many variations of IF that are used and are successful, so there's no one best way - it's trial and error.
"But popular fasting diets are 5:2 [which involves eating normally five days and fasting for two] and alternate day fasting."
Topics: diet-and-nutrition, health, science-and-technology, research, australia
First postedBelow is a white paper previously published by Endgame, reproduced with permission. "Endgame uses data science to bring clarity to the cyber domain, allowing you to sense, discover, and act in real time."
Authors: Zachary Hanif, Telvis Calhoun, and Jason Trost {zach, tcalhoun, jtrost}@endgame.com
I. Abstract
Malware collection and analysis are critical to the modern Internet security industry. This increasing tide of ‘unique’ malware samples and the difficulty in storing and analyzing these samples in a scalable fashion has been frequently decried in academic forums and industry conferences. Due to the increasing volume of samples that are being discovered in the wild, the need for an easily deployed, scalable architecture is becoming increasingly pronounced. Over the past 2.5 years Endgame received 20M samples of malware equating to roughly 9.5 TB of binary data. In this, we’re not alone. McAfee reports that it currently receives roughly 100,000 malware samples per day and received roughly 10M samples in the last quarter of 2012 [1]. Its total corpus is estimated to be about 100M samples. VirusTotal receives between 300k and 600k unique files per day, and of those roughly one-third to half are positively identified as malware [2]. Effectively combating and triaging malware is now a Big Data problem. Most malware analysis scripts are unprepared for processing collections of malware once they surpass the 100GB scale, let alone terabytes. This paper describes the architecture of a system the authors built to overcome these challenges that uses Hadoop [13] and Apache Pig [14] to enable analysts to leverage pre-existing tools to analyze terabytes of malware, at scale. We demonstrate this system to analyze ~20M malware samples weighing in at 9.5 TB of binary data.
II. Introduction
Malware authors utilize multiple methods of obfuscating their executables to evade detection by automated anti-virus systems. Many malware authors utilize packing, compression, and encryption tools in an effort to defeat automated static analysis; authors continually pack and repack their samples and check them against automated scanning engines. These samples are shared between interested parties, thereby inflating the number of samples that require analysis. These samples are relatively low value: many of them are never released into the wild, and moreover, as their core functionality has not been altered, analysis of these samples represents a needless redundancy. For samples that are in the wild, autonomously spreading malware often have algorithms which alter key elements of their executable payloads before transmission and execution on a newly compromised system in an effort to evade detection from network security sensors and other simpler protections. Collection of autonomously spreading samples by honeypot systems such as Amun [2] and Dionaea [3] therefore collect huge numbers of samples that appear unique when compared using cryptographic file checksums, yet represent functionally identical software. Further complicating the issue are the samples that are collected by both systems that represent false positives: samples that have mistakenly triggered a heuristic, or benign samples that were submitted to an online scanning engine.
BinaryPig hopes to provide a solution to the scalability problem represented by this influx of malware. It promotes rapid iteration and exploration through processing non-trivial amounts of malware at scale using easily developed scripts. It was also built to take advantage of pre-existing malware analysis scripts.
III. Prior Work
While there is no lack of published descriptions for malware analytic models and feature sets, to our knowledge, there are no salient papers that discuss the architecture behind the feature and data extraction from a static perspective [7], [8], [9]. As distributed data processing has engineering concerns that are generally unseen in centralized processing infrastructure, and the majority of papers that we explored while researching during the construction of this system focus on the results of derived analytics, it is assumed that the systems which coordinated the extraction, results and sample storage, and other distributed processing concerns were either considered to be too simplistic, too specialized, or too ungainly for publication. As these papers have been published, however, the authors believe that while systems similar in function to BinaryPig exist, our offering represents something novel in the form of an extensible, free, open-source framework [10].
The most prominent papers surrounding data extraction infrastructure are represented in a tangential area of research: malware dynamic analysis. There have been a number of excellent discussions surrounding various methods of dynamic analysis at relatively large scales [8], [9] as well as work that lends itself to simply adding new analytical methods to an existing framework [18], none of this work takes advantage of architecture that is likely to exist within an organization that deals with large sums of data - essentially, again the extraction and storage infrastructure that drives many papers that have been published recently |
could tell the government — accurately! — that it was repatriating $3 billion to hire and invest in the US. But that would free up $3 billion already in the budget for other purposes, including supposedly banned purposes like executive pay hikes, higher dividends, and stock buybacks.
And indeed, that’s the kind of thing that happened for the most part. “A $1 increase in repatriations was associated with an increase of almost $1 in payouts to shareholders,” Dharmapala, Foley, and Forbes conclude. Other analyses, like this one by Harvard Law School’s Thomas Brennan, are more optimistic, but even Brennan concludes that the largest corporations only used 12 percent of the money they brought back on research and development or new investment. The rest went to buying up other companies and reducing debt (both allowed under the law) and paying back shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends (not allowed).
However you look at it, a quite small share of the money went to hiring new people or making new investments or conducting new research.
And this is intuitive if you think about it for a second. If Apple sees a profitable research or investment opportunity in the US in 2017, it’s not going to think to itself, “Let’s not do that thing that makes us money, because all our cash is stored overseas.” Apple will just borrow money at today’s rock-bottom interest rates and fund the investment that way. It’s a little weird for a company with $261 billion in cash, most of it overseas or otherwise tax-sheltered, to borrow money, but with its three-year interest rates at only 1.8 percent, borrowing is only slightly more costly than using money it already has in the bank.
So it’s not really a surprise that study after study, from the Congressional Research Service and the Senate Government Affairs Committee, has found the 2004 repatriation holiday was a bust.
The real cost is long-term
We know that low-tax repatriation, like that included in the Republican tax bill, doesn’t stimulate economic growth. But maybe that’s okay, right? The Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that the repatriation raises $338.8 billion over 10 years by taxing all those trillions in overseas profits, with the proceeds heavily concentrated in the first year, 2018. That sounds pretty good!
But if you look at the JCT tables you'll notice that by 2027, this provision actually starts to lose money. Ironically, that’s because of the provision’s behavioral effects, effects that Republicans tend to tout when they imply economic growth.
If you’re a corporation and you’ve been stockpiling profits overseas to avoid US taxes, and then you get a special one-time tax break, that convinces you that stockpiling profits overseas is a great idea. Not only do you not face full US taxes, but sometimes you get a very special discount courtesy of Congress! The 2004 tax holiday effectively rewarded companies for keeping profits abroad.
It stands to reason that such a reward would encourage more of that behavior in the future, and that is exactly what happened. As Harvard Law's Brennan writes, “Since the holiday window, there has been a dramatic increase in the rate at which firms add to their stockpile of foreign earnings kept overseas. The long-term result has been an aggregate increase in new foreign earnings added to the overseas stockpile that is greater than the amount of funds repatriated pursuant to the holiday. From this perspective, it seems that the AJCA may have been a net failure in achieving the policy goal of returning foreign earnings to the United States."
That’s why, historically, the JCT has scored pure repatriation holidays as costing money, not raising it. The holidays encourage vastly more tax evasion going forward, which in turn reduces future revenue, more than offsetting the initial windfall from companies bringing the money back.
The Republican bill is different from the 2004 proposal, in that it pairs a repatriation holiday with a dramatic reduction in the corporate tax rate, from 35 to 21 percent. That brings the US tax rate closer to that of tax shelters like Ireland, and reduces the incentive companies have to play elaborate games to shift profits abroad. This in turn partially offsets the incentive repatriation creates for shifting profits abroad.
But over time, the perverse incentives of repatriation become more important, and by the late 2020s and 2030s, this provision is a pure revenue loser in addition to doing nothing to foster economic growth.A SOUTH Australian policeman has been arrested for drink-driving after allegedly blowing three times over the legal limit.
The man was detected after complaints from a member of the public about his driving at Smithfield northeast of Adelaide overnight, police say.
He allegedly blew.165, more than three times the.05 legal blood alcohol limit in South Australia and has had his car impounded.
The 39-year-old police officer from Aldgate, southeast of Adelaide, was arrested at a Craigmore address and has been charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and exceeding the prescribed concentration of alcohol.
His vehicle was seized and impounded and his driver's licence was immediately disqualified for 12 months.
He has been bailed to appear in the Elizabeth Magistrates Court on February 15 2010.
A South Australian police spokesman said he did not know if the officer had been suspended from duty.Russian military aircraft have not breached any state borders, including those of Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry has said. Ukraine’s acting defense minister has also retracted claims by Kiev that Russian jets “violated Ukrainian airspace seven times.”
“Russia’s means of objective airspace situation control did not record any violations of air boundaries of the states adjacent to Russia, including those of Ukraine,” Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement Saturday.
Pentagon officials quoted by US media Friday claimed that “Russian fighter jets flew into Ukrainian airspace a handful of times over the last 24 hours,” calling it “a continued provocation.” The officials were not named.
“The unfounded claims of Pentagon officials on the alleged ‘breaching of airspace of Ukraine by Russian fighter jets’ appears to have been based on rumors and speculation,” a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman told Itar-Tass on Saturday.
“Those media allegations are populist in nature, they contain no information on the time and place of the incident, as well as no data on altitude, speed and the direction of aircraft, as well as no other objective parameters,” the spokesman said.
The US sources must have “dreamed it all up,” or “a little bird told them that,” the spokesman added.
The Defense Ministry spokesman called on Pentagon officials to stop “spreading unverified ‘facts’ through the media,” saying that “it does not at all help de-escalate the situation in Ukraine.”
Instead, the US Defense Department should “use the many years’ experience of cooperation on information interchange” with the Russian side.
The Ukrainian coup-imposed acting defense minister, Mikhail Koval, on Saturday told journalists that no violations of state borders by the Russian aircraft or troops have been recorded.
“Four [Russian] transport airplanes Il-76 were flying along our state border but they did not cross the borderline,” Koval was quoted as saying by Interfax-Ukraine.
The “peak of activity” of the Russian Armed Forces conducting military exercises near the Ukrainian border was recorded on April 24-25, he said. The closest that the Russian troops came to the Ukrainian border was 2-3 kilometers, Koval said.
According to the Ukrainian official, the Russian drills were meant to discourage Kiev from continuing with the so-called “anti-terrorist operation” in three southeastern regions of Ukraine. However, he added, the military operation continues “although its pace is not high.”
Koval’s statements, made during the Saturday briefing, apparently contradicted the allegations earlier made by the Kiev government against Russia.
“Russian military aircraft today at night crossed and violated Ukrainian airspace seven times. The only reason is to provoke Ukraine... and to accuse Ukraine of waging war against Russia,” the coup-imposed Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk claimed during his visit to the Italian capital, Rome. Yatsenyuk, who had previously made similar unfounded allegations of “Russian tanks in Crimea” and “nuclear weapons in Iran,” was speaking to reporters in English.If you are a tiny majority in a land that welcomed and nurtured you; and if you have an option to go back to your “homeland", would you cash in on that option? Or not? Why would you leave and why would you stay? The writer talks to the Jews in Mumbai and discovers that identity—both personal and national—is linked not just to genes, race and creation myths, but also to the agility with which an exiled group can adapt their myths to their new land.
***
I am in Bombay to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, at the home of Yael and Ralphy Jhirad. They are friends of a friend and have kindly invited me—a stranger—to dinner at their home. En route, I stop at an aunt’s house in Chembur, about half an hour from the Jhirad home in Napean Sea Road, yet a world away in terms of mindset.
When I say that I am dining with Jewish people, my aunt, Viji, blinks and nods in the fashion of people who are faking knowledge—who act as if they know what you are talking about when they really don’t.
“Jewish people? Umm... hmmm. Umm... hmmm," she says.
So, I come right out and ask her if she knows what Judaism is. Does she know any Jewish people?
“Aren’t they like Jains?" she asks hopefully.
No, I reply. Hasn’t she heard of Jews in Kerala where she grew up? Cochin had a large population at one time in Jewtown.
Yes, Jewtown. Where good cardamom was available, she nods.
I explain to my aunt about how Jews searched far and wide for a homeland. My aunt tut-tuts in sympathy before bursting into a cackle. “And to think that they ended up in India. From the frying pan to the fire."
India isn’t their homeland; Israel is, I say.
My aunt has lost interest. She is listening raptly to Carnatic music on the radio.
“Leela Samson is a Jew," I say quietly.
That makes her sit up. My aunt is an old-school bharatanatyam dancer who trained in Kalakshetra, the institution that Samson headed before being ousted. She admires Leela Samson.
“But Leela looks like the Hindu," she says.
“She is a Yehudi," says my uncle who has just walked in. He is using the local name for Jews.
“Yes, a Yehudi—like Jana, my real estate agent who you met when you visited me in New York," I say to my aunt. “Remember her? Jana?"
This time, my aunt nods more convincingly. She remembers my friend Jana Kolpen, who made terrific eggless brownies. Jana, among other things, happens to be a Jew.
It may shock my Jewish friends in New York to hear this, but many Indians haven’t heard of Jews or Judaism; not even Indians who live in Mumbai, where some 4,000 Bene Israeli Jews live.
The quiet anonymity of Jews in India is in stark contrast to, say, America, where Jews are a visible, prominent and influential minority. In Long Island, where my cousins grew up, the top public schools that attracted Jewish families moving to the suburbs in the early part of the century also attracted Indian immigrants a few generations later.
The two communities got along. They shared values: a commitment to education, the ability to delay gratification, hard work, a certain pessimism (or fatalism) that comes from being old cultures; and a love of specific types of food—gefilte fish and unleavened bread for the Yehudis and buttermilk-based kadhis and spicy rasam for the Hindus.
When we lived in the US, some of our closest friends were Jews. We seemed to have a natural connection, to the point where I thought that if my daughter had to marry a non-Indian, I would be okay if she married a Jew.
Here is the thing, though: all the Jews I know live in the States. I didn’t know a single Jew while growing up in Chennai. Celebrating Rosh Hashanah with the Jhirad family is a tentative first step towards correcting this gap. The Jewish diaspora celebrates it over two days so that it overlaps with the single day that it is celebrated in Israel.
I fly to Mumbai for the two days of Rosh Hashanah. Through introductions from friends, I connect with several Jewish families in Bombay who give me tips about which synagogues to visit and at what time. Ralphy and Yael Jhirad are prominent members of the Bene Israel community. They conduct Jewish tours and document Jewish life in India. By living in India as Jews, they experience the intersection of two of the world’s most ancient faiths.
The Jewish link to India is both ancient and modern. Its modern avatar began in the late 1980s when prosperous American Jews became fascinated with Eastern spirituality, much like The Beatles.
In October 1990, eight Jewish leaders came to India to visit the Dalai Lama in exile in Dharamsala. As described in the influential book, The Jew in the Lotus by Rodger Kamenetz, the delegation expected to listen and learn from his holiness. Instead, the Dalai Lama flipped things around by asking a question relevant to his people. “Tell me the Jewish secret to spiritual survival in exile," he asked.
Tibetan Buddhists, said his holiness, could learn something from the Jews, who had preserved their religion and identity in exile for more than 2,000 years. Ever since the siege of Jerusalem.
The siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD had all the elements of war, colonization and subsequent destruction, played out in many cultures time and time again (you’d think the world would have learned by now): high taxes in ancient Rome leading to discord among its citizens; growing religious divisions between the Jews and the Pagans; one sect mocking the other; Judas of Galilee forming an extremist political sect called the Zealots—named so because they would be zealous in their faith; infighting among the Zealots (somewhat like the infighting between the Indian maharajahs when the British showed up in India), leading to the breaching of Jerusalem.
The Roman general—and would-be emperor—Titus stormed the walls and entered the city. He razed Jerusalem to the ground and exiled the Jews. They have wandered the earth for 2,000 years, searching for a homeland till the formation of the state of Israel in 1948.
All religions have certain core values—inchoate, and not necessarily reflected in ritual practice.
Hinduism is known for its tolerance; its acceptance of the many faiths that sought its shores without feeling threatened. Buddhism for its Zen-like equanimity. Judaism is about survival and preservation in spite of obstacles, in exile, and through suffering.
The Jews, as the Dalai Lama said, could teach us a thing or two about religious identity and preservation: both in exile and in a secular democratic world where religion seems to have lost its place.
As the rabbis told the Dalai Lama, religions today need to make their peace with an increasingly uncaring flock, to stay relevant in a world that is embroiled in religious discord and seemingly has no use for religious discourse.
Take you, for instance, the reader of this text. What is the role of religion in your life today? Do you pray? Is it just rituals—chanting verses in archaic languages, be it Hebrew, Latin or Sanskrit? Or is it a comforting routine—going to church or temple once a week or month?
Is religion part of your identity? Or is it something that you seek to distance yourself from? Is it an occasional activity with dubious benefits—like going on a pilgrimage or doing a puja in times of stress? Or is it simply a connection with your heritage, homeland and ancestors?
Are these questions making you uncomfortable? Do you think religion is a private act to be done in the confines of home, with family, not something to declare publicly? Every faith has both types of practitioners.
The spiritual leaders in Kamenetz’s book call these practices—rituals, pilgrimages, chanting—the exoteric aspects of religion. Underneath the exoteric are the esoteric practices, “the deep attunement, the deep way", known only to a small band of practitioners.
Hinduism has tantra; Judaism has the Kabbalah; Buddhism has the vajrayana or tantric Buddhism. These esoteric practices include literature and incorporate lifestyle, chanting, specific breathing and meditation techniques. Sadly, only the sexual element of these esoteric practices has been highlighted, and made the object of scorn or vulgarity.
How to combine the exoteric with the esoteric is a problem that most world religions face. Kamenetz’s book is an attempt to answer this question through conversations with Jewish Buddhists or JU-BUs (poet Allen Ginsberg is one); and Hinjews who were attracted to Hinduism. New-age teacher Ram Dass, aka Richard Alpert of Harvard University, could be considered a Hinjew. He wrote the book Be Here Now about his association with Neem Karoli Baba and meditation.
As for me, I find myself drawn to the esoteric aspects of religion for reasons that I find hard to articulate. If pressed, I will say that I like the mixture of beauty, art, the sensual and the spiritual.
Embracing these deeper, secretive practices seems more holistic—rather than dividing faith into the sacred and the profane. Judaism and Hinduism, ancient religions both, are well-equipped to bring mysticism, meditation, music and, yes, sacred food into spirituality—fusing the exoteric with the esoteric.
Consider the halva: a favourite food in both religions, served during Rosh Hashanah by the Bene Israeli Jews, and during most Hindu festivals. The halva is soft, gooey, rich and full of heart. It could be a person’s first food and his last. Indeed, I think babies would eat better if they got halva as their first food instead of that Gerber goo. The recipe itself is fairly simple but painstaking.
The Indian-Jewish version involves grating coconuts—a six-hour-long, labour-intensive process. The grated coconut is then juiced and squeezed to get the “first coconut milk" that sweetens the halva.
Traditional Jewish halva is made with rice flour, all-purpose flour or maida, and sugar in the ratio 1:1:2.5. To this, add coconut milk and a pinch of salt. All the ingredients are mixed with a little water. The entire quantity is poured into a large pan and heated over a sigri or coal fire. After that, the art is in the stirring. Most Bene Israeli families used to hire a man a few days before Rosh Hashanah just to sit and stir a cauldron full of halva for hours at a stretch.
Once the halva reaches the consistency of, well, halva, or thick batter, it is poured into a large plate. Dried fruits and nuts are sprinkled on top: skinned sliced almonds, skinned sliced pistachios, pine nuts, sliced hazelnuts and others. The whole mixture is allowed to cool for 24 hours.
I have eaten many halvas in my life, but none as good as the one I ate for Rosh Hashanah at the Jhirad home. The coconut milk gave it depth and density without increasing the sweetness.
Yael Jhirad is soft of voice and considerate of disposition. When I land in Bombay, she tells me to go to the Gateway of India at 5pm. Jewish people gather at the seashore for a ceremony called tashlich—casting away your sins into running water before starting the New Year afresh.
Men symbolically empty their pockets and write out sins, mistakes and misdemeanours on small pieces of paper before throwing them into the waters of the Arabian Sea. In some parts of India, Jewish boys fly kites as a way of starting the New Year on a high—quite literally. Such gatherings served a softer purpose: matchmaking. They allowed parents to show off their sons and daughters,resplendent in New Year finery.
New Year in most ancient societies was timed to the harvest. It was a bountiful period—a time to look forward, tempered with a long-term perspective. In Bengaluru, where I now live, families eat bitter neem leaves along with jaggery for Sankranti, the New Year.
It’s like saying, “Hey, the New Year is here and it’s gonna be good—well, sort of. Hard knocks are part of life and just so you internalize it, we are going to make you eat some neem—the bitterest leaf on earth. Swallow that. With equanimity."
The Jewish New Year is forward-looking too, but not with the giddy exuberance of a young nation like the US. The tashlich is a way of remembering the past; shaking off the cobwebs; discarding accumulated sins and mistakes; gaining perspective.
This then is what living through a few millennia does to a people: it prevents them from enjoying the moment with the unadulterated glee of an innocent child. It makes them aware that tragedy is around the corner. Ups and downs. It is all just a matter of time.
Most Hindus, and I am guessing, Jews, are acutely aware of this. They touch wood while giving a compliment; cross their fingers when someone notices their spate of good luck; and would never answer the question, “How are you?" with a “Fabulous, just fabulous."
As seen in the hilarious film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the Greeks spit on a child’s head if somebody gives the child a compliment. The best you can get from anyone who belongs to an ancient civilization, whether they are Chinese, Indian or Jewish is, “Okay—could be better." After all, why invite the envious eye?
After the tashlich, the whole congregation goes back prepare for Seder or dinner.
“The Jewish equivalent of sacred food is keeping kosher; adhering to certain dietary laws in the context of tradition," says Nathan Katz, distinguished professor emeritus at Florida International University and editor of the Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies. “It is a way of turning ordinary food into sacred food through ritual transformation, which is essentially what happens in Hindu prasad also."
I speak to Katz by phone. He and his wife are visiting India “for love", he says. “Not for conferences; or research; or with any purpose but just because we love it here." Over a few months, they are travelling along the Himalayas—from Uttarakhand to Himachal Pradesh to Darjeeling to Sikkim and Meghalaya—pretty much all the places I have not visited, having grown up in India.
Katz knows the Jhirads, “of course", he says, as do most Jews who traipse through Bombay.
The Jhirad home is in an inconspicuous apartment complex, no different from the thousands dotting the city. When I walk in for Sedar at around 8pm, there are several people gathered around a table brimming with food.
Sitting beside me is Michael Oskin from Connecticut. Across the table is Ayelet McDonald, a native Israeli science teacher on a two-year contract with a school in Mumbai. Beside her is Matt Daniels, a 30-something graphic designer and teacher who grew up in Detroit but has lived in India for more than 10 years. He and his girlfriend, Meghana Srivastava, run a restaurant, The Verandah, in Goa.
Yael’s brother, Aaron, is on my other side at one head of the table. Yael and her son, Avniel, sit beside Ralphy at another end. A few minutes later, Yulia Egorova, a professor at Durham University in England, walks in. Egorova has authored a number of books on Indian Jews, two of them with Tudor Parfitt, whose celebrated study on the DNA of the Lemba in Africa and the Bene Israel in India made front-pages worldwide.
After some small talk, Ralphy, a tall genial man with an easy smile and a warm manner, begins the proceedings. He is nursing a bad cold but that doesn’t stop him from walking around the table, filling our wine glasses and making sure everyone has enough to eat. Avniel reads the blessings from the holy book.
What makes some children participate in religious activities while others don’t? Is it the simplicity of the religion; the fact that it has a single holy book? Or is it the fact that religious rites are conducted in a language that children understand?
Hinduism is at a disadvantage on both these counts. Many of the religious rituals, be it Ganesh puja or Durga puja, involve prayers in Sanskrit. Nobody except the priests is really sure about what to do. When you perform these pujas or prayer-rituals at home, even the parents/adults don’t quite know what to do.
How do you get the children involved? Each state celebrates different festivals in a distinct fashion, so if you live in a cosmopolitan city like Bengaluru, with neighbours who are from different states, there is no unifying date, purpose or ritual that you can follow.
Even Deepavali, Hinduism’s biggest holiday, was celebrated in a fractured way in the apartment complex that I live in. The north Indians celebrated it on 11 November, Tamils celebrated it on 10 November, and the government declared a holiday on 12 November. We weren’t even sure which day to call and wish our neighbours.
Historians believe that the reason why Hindus don’t have a strong religious identity—if you exclude the Hindutva movement—is because they didn’t call themselves Hindus until the 19th century; or at least until the Muslim invasions of the 12th century. I think of all this as I watch Ralphy and his son conduct the prayers and read out the blessing in a confident manner. Avniel is so confident in his recitation of Hebrew, I think. Maybe I should teach my kids Sanskrit. But first, I need to learn the language myself.
Food is passed around. Each dish has a meaning. A bowl of ruby red pomegranate seeds for bounty; apples dipped in honey for sweetness; dates which are food from the tree; bananas which are food from the earth; string beans, or rov in Hebrew, which means to multiply; young garlic with stalks—leafy vegetables are called karsi, which sounds like the word karet, meaning cut off or destroy. Similarly, the beets are called silka, which sounds like siluk, meaning removal.
“A lot of the dishes are chosen because of their symbolic meaning," says Ayelet. “Because of how they sound."
“The festival is all about leadership. About being the head," says Yael. “So, we choose the head of the goat; the head of the fish."
Preparations for Rosh Hashanah begin a week earlier in the Jhirad household. They keep track of when Mumbai’s Jewish community does the kosher slaughtering of the meat. Ralphy travels two hours one way to buy meat from a kosher butcher a day before Rosh Hashanah. Yael scouts the market for greens with stalks—young garlic stalks are not always available, she says.
She starts stocking nuts—expensive in India—for the halva; makes sure that kosher wine is available—brought from Israel by obliging friends and family; and invites Jewish visitors who are passing through Mumbai for dinner at her house. “I have helped my mother and grandmother with Rosh Hashanah since I was a child, so I am pretty organized," Yael says with a smile.
More food is brought out in large platters—lamb meat, a goat’s head, goat’s brain, kidneys, rice pulao, potato chops, chicken curry, fish head (generally pomfret) grilled with minimum spices.
Being a vegetarian, I stick to the rice and eat gargantuan quantities of the halva. I stare at the fish’s head that is passed around and reassess my rash statement about it being okay if my daughter marries a Jew. Can I stare at a fish’s head every New Year? Or do I politely refuse to join the festivities?
Everyone murmurs about similarities and differences. Matt Daniels, for example, is an Ashkenazi Jew with ancestors from Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. The Jews of Mumbai are Sephardic. “At home in Detroit, the Rosh Hashanah food is very Eastern European—very Russian and Slavic," he says. “Beef brisket, chicken soup—which is called Jewish penicillin." Their family makes “that bizarre Jewish ‘delicacy’ called Gefilte fish" during other holidays, not Rosh Hashanah, he says.
A lot of Jewish holidays centre around the triumph of the Jewish people against their enemies; a reaffirmation of the belief that god is on their side. Hanukkah celebrates their triumph over the Greeks; Passover, the Pharoah; Purim, the Persians.
“Every time someone tries to kill us, we eat," my Israeli friend, Shai, used to joke. “They tried to kill us. We won. Now, let’s eat."
What makes a religion feel beleaguered and how does it change people who belong to that faith? Could the Jewish drive for achievement be linked to the fact that they have always had to prove themselves—to the insecurity that comes from not having a homeland? And could India’s placidity and acceptance be linked to the fact that the Hindu majority never felt beleaguered, even though they had reason to—being ruled by foreign masters after the 12th century?
If you remove Hindu fundamentalists from the equation, the Hindus are not bitter or even fussed about the past. They move on. The ruthless desire for revenge, for redemption, doesn’t seem to be part of the Hindu psyche. Is this because Hinduism developed organically in India, and until very recently, orthodox Hindus didn’t cross the oceans?
When you live in the comfort and embrace of your native land, you become complacent, you develop an inner strength and security (which is part of the reason why Indians who live in foreign lands return to India—to give this comfort to their children).
The only time I felt like I had to prove myself was when I became an immigrant and carried the burden of “being Indian" on my shoulders. Hindus didn’t have to go out and proselytize like the Christians, as if to prove our worth to our faith. Hinduism doesn’t demand that its faithful go to war for it—like Islam does. We were not thrown out of a country because of religion, like the Jews were, time and time again. Is this what makes the Hindu tolerant? Is this what gives him or her this unshakeable sense of security?
“Ancient religions like Hinduism and Judaism don’t have the inherent internationalism and missionary zeal like the younger religions do," says Katz, who also happens to be a Jainism scholar.
I guess that when a religion lasts a few millennia, the faithful realize that converting a few hundred people, or even a few thousand, is a drop in the ocean. Is this why the Bene Israel didn’t convert others to their faith; or get converted, during their 2,300-year sojourn in India?
Or did they—convert, I mean? The question isn’t innocuous. Indeed, it is the source of much angst and controversy for the Bene Israelis, not the least because rabbis in Israel demanded proof of identity when Indian Jews emigrated there.
It is close to midnight when we finish. Ayelet, Yulia and I get on a Uber cab together. Chattering like parakeets, we whiz through the quiet, dark streets of Mumbai.
I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. I have a long day tomorrow that begins at the Keneseth Eliyahoo synagogue.
This is the first in a three-part series.
Comments are welcome at feedback@livemint.comAmazon to hire 1,000 at San Marcos distribution center
Amazon is expanding its reach in Central Texas with a new center in San Marcos. Click on to get an inside look at the company's high-tech facility in Schertz. Amazon is expanding its reach in Central Texas with a new center in San Marcos. Click on to get an inside look at the company's high-tech facility in Schertz. Photo: Bob Owen /San Antonio Express-News Photo: Bob Owen /San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 19 Caption Close Amazon to hire 1,000 at San Marcos distribution center 1 / 19 Back to Gallery
Amazon.com has begun hiring more than 1,000 people to staff its new 855,000 square-foot distribution center in San Marcos, the company announced Tuesday.
The online retailer is hiring full-time, permanent employees for its new facility, slated to open later this summer, Amazon spokeswoman Ashley Robinson said. It’s looking for managers, support staff and workers to package orders, she said.
RELATED: 12 things you can buy and get delivered in S.A. through Amazon Prime Now
"We knew Amazon coming to San Marcos meant quality jobs for our residents," San Marcos Mayor Daniel Guerrero said in a news release. "On behalf of everyone who was involved in the project, I am happy to see this day, the day in which Amazon opens hiring for our people. We are looking forward to a long relationship with Amazon here in San Marcos."
The center is still under construction but is ramping up staffing before it opens later this year, Robinson said.
RELATED: S.A.-area employment tops 1 million for the first time
The center will join Amazon’s other Texas-based distribution centers in Schertz, Coppell, Haslet, Dallas and Fort Worth.
jfechter@express-news.net
Twitter: @JFreportsTEHRAN – President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday that there is no religious discrimination in Iran and followers of different religions are living in the country peacefully.
Followers of different religions in Iran are living side by side and they share each other’s sorrow and joy, Ahmadinejad said in a meeting with Bishop of Armenian Orthodox Church in Cilici Aram I Keshishian.The problems of mankind result from atheism, said the president.Ahmadinejad stated that mankind is frustrated with the situation of the world and is waiting for the savior. Islam and Christianity believe that one day the savior will come and this is the source of unity between the followers of divine religions, he opined.War, occupation, aggression, discrimination, and poverty must be eradicated in the world, Ahmadinejad stressed. If the religious faithful stay together they can play a constructive role in ending the current crises in the world, he added.Keshishian, for his part, expressed satisfaction that all religious minorities live peacefully in Iran.“In Iran, Armenians live with Muslims in friendship and brotherhood,” he stressed.The Spanish National Court in Madrid on Friday issued a European search and arrest warrant for Carles Puigdemont and four of his ex-cabinet members who failed to appear in court to face questioning over a Catalonian independence referendum.
Investigating judge Carmen Lamela also rejected Puigdemont's request to testify by videoconference from Brussels, where he has been since Monday.
The Catalan leader fled to Belgium with several of his colleagues after Madrid sacked his regional government following a unilateral declaration of independence from Spain.
According to the judge, Puigdemont and his associates are being sought for five different offenses, including rebellion, sedition, embezzlement and breach of trust. They are among 20 regional politicians ordered to appear before the courts over the secession bid.
Thousands of pro-independence protesters gather in Barcelona to demand the eight jailed Catalan leaders be released
On Thursday, eight Catalan leaders, including former Vice President Oriol Junqueras, were sent to prison without bail pending an investigation into the secessionist campaign and a potential trial. They could remain in custody for up to four years. Former Business Minister Santi Vila, who stepped down from the cabinet before the independence declaration, was granted bail of 50,000 euros ($58,300).
Read more:
- Catalonia: 'Rajoy will not make concessions to anyone'
- Opinion: Puigdemont and his Catalan disappearing act
- Bosch: Spanish government 'never been proportionate or fair'
Watch video 03:35 Share Catalonia - Resistance in a divided country Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2mkVV Catalonia - Resistance in a divided country
Brussels 'to study' warrant
Judge Carmen Lamela filed a request with a Belgian prosecutor to detain the five Catalan leaders, as well as issuing separate search and arrest warrants to alert Europol in case they flee Belgium. Belgium has a maximum of three months to decide whether to extradite Puigdemont to Spain.
A spokesman for Belgium's state prosecutor confirmed the authority had received the warrant.
"We will study it, and put it in the hands of an investigating judge. That could be tomorrow, the day after or even Monday," spokesman Eric Van Der Sijpt said. "We are not in any hurry."
Just hours earlier, Puigdemont told Belgian state broadcaster RTBF he was ready to hand himself in to Belgian authorities but would not surrender to judicial officials in Spain.
"I will face justice, but (only) true justice... I told my lawyers to tell the Belgian judiciary I am completely ready to cooperate," he said. "I have not fled (Spain), but it is impossible to prepare well there (for my defence)."
Listen to audio 04:41 Share Inside Europe: Catalonian separatists and Spanish justice Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2muyj Inside Europe: Catalonian separatists and Spanish justice
The Catalan leader's Belgian lawyer Paul Bekaert, who has helped Basque separatist militants challenge Spanish extradition, said his client did not see the climate as "conducive to testifying." He added that his client would appeal if a Belgian judge approved an extradition to Spain.
Puigdemont also insisted he was prepared to run in a snap Catalonian regional election called by Madrid on December 21, even if it means campaigning from Belgium.
"We can run a campaign anywhere because we're in a globalized world," he said.
Protests in Barcelona
DW reporter Charlotte Chelsom-Pill said a large crowd of pro-independence protesters gathered in Barcelona again on Friday to show their opposition to the warrant, as well as to Thursday's jailing of eight Catalan leaders.
Catalan civic group Asamblea Nacional Catalana (ANC), meanwhile, called for street demonstrations across the northeastern region.
"Today, at 7 |
every patrol officer with one.VIZ Media is proud to announce that the Blue Dragon anime is now available on iTunes, and that's not all! They are having a special promotion for the launch and you can download the first episode of the show for free until March 10th. I was really into the game on 360, so I'm glad to give this first episode a shot to see how it acts as an extension of the game.
You can learn more about the series, as well as check out artwork, character details and more on the official site for the show. Ken Sasaki, the Sr. Vice President of Strategy & Business Development for VIZ had these words to say:
"We are excited to add the beloved Blue Dragon animation to the growing library of VIZ Media titles now available on the iTunes store. VIZ Media is committed to giving fans the best in animated entertainment and we are thrilled to provide the best options in delivering exciting animated content in a high quality digital way."
So what are you waiting for? Go download your first episode for free now!
You are logged out. Login | Sign upThe luck of the Powerball lottery has struck three times but none of the winning tickets were sold in Florida.
The winning numbers were 5, 25, 30, 58, 59, with a Powerball of 32.
Lottery officials said late Wednesday that three tickets matched all six numbers and the holders would split the $448 million jackpot, according to an Associated Press report. One winning ticket was sold in Minnesota and two were sold in New Jersey.
The bad news is the federal government will claim about a quarter of the winnings up front and a little more on income-tax returns.
But don't worry, there is a silver lining. The state of Florida won't dip its fingers into the pot.
The Powerball jackpot, a multistate lottery, is bloating to near-record levels and now is $448.4 million — the fourth largest in U.S. history.
Earlier this year, a Pasco County octogenarian became the largest sole jackpot winner when her machine-generated ticket matched the winning numbers — 10, 13, 14, 22, 52, and a Powerball of 11 — to collect a $590 million jackpot.
Gloria MacKenzie, 84, took her lump sum of $370 million ($270 million after taxes) in May after purchasing the ticket at her Zephryhills supermarket.
She chose the lump sum rather than collecting $590.5 million in 30 annual payments.
Sales peaked between 8 and 9 p.m. on May 18 — the night MacKenzie won — when more than 22,700 tickets were sold per minute in Florida.
During the peak buying time for the current jackpot — between 7 and 8 p.m. Wednesday — 15,630 tickets were sold in the state per minute.
"Any time that the jackpot gets over $300 million, player excitement goes through the roof and ticket sales go up," said Florida Lottery spokeswoman Meagan Dougherty.
Since the most recent winner was a Floridian, Dougherty said superstitious players may think the state is lucky and buy tickets from stores where winning tickets were sold in the past.
"Who knows? The Publix in Zephryhills may be booming," Dougherty said.
The largest jackpot in U.S. history stands at $656 million, won in the Mega Millions lottery of March 2012. Winners in Maryland, Kansas and Illinois split the prize.
Could you be the next winner to issue a statement asking reporters for privacy?
The odds are 1 in 175 million, according to the Florida Lottery.
The prize for matching just the five balls is $1 million. And the odds are better: 1 in 5.15 million.
For $1 more, hopefuls can play "Power Play" to multiply their nonjackpot winnings. For five matching balls, the ticket holder would collect $2 million, or double the top prize.
If you should get lucky, Florida Lottery officials advise contacting a lawyer or financial planner to help manage your nouveau-riche status.
And wait. It takes 15 days for lottery officials to collect all the revenue and award prize winners.
Staff writer Susan Jacobson contributed to this report. arehernandez@tribune.com or 407-420-5471 or @ahernandez_OSColony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is a mysterious phenomena that kills off colonies of not only domesticated bees but wild bees as well.
Despite a lot of research since CCD was first recognized in 2006 the causative factors have not been identified and bee colonies world-wide are simply vanishing at an alarming rate.
In the US alone, the consequences, both environmental as well as economic are huge, and according to the USDA "bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion in added crop value, particularly for specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables." Moreover, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organisation "of the 100 crop species which provide 90% of global food, 71 are pollinated by bees"
Five years ago when CCD was starting to get a lot of attention over in my Network World Backspin column I discussed (under the snappy title of "To Be Proactive or not to Bee") the soon thereafter discredited idea that radio signals from cellphone networks could be responsible. While, it turned out, cellphones weren't the cause, the failed theory raised an interesting question: If cellphones had been responsible, would our society be willing to give up using them?
I got a lot of email on the question and the vast majority of people said that if that was indeed the case they would be happy to give up their cellphone though they all thought everyone else wouldn't be willing.
The question I didn't ask, and in hindsight should have, was even if people were willing to forgo their cellphones, what would the cellphone service providers do? Would they have been willing to stop a very profitable business just to do the right thing? How would they have handled the problem? Would they have grasped the opportunity to put the environment first or would they have spun the issue so that as little as possible happened for as long as possible?
We'll never know whether cellular service providers' corporate profits would have won out over the bees but the question of corporate responsibility for CCD has just come up again. This time, the industry involved is the agricultural chemical business and, even more specifically, Bayer, the huge German conglomerate which is a giant in agro-chemicals.
Bayer produces nicotine-based pesticides called neonicotinoids such as imidacloprid. These products are harmless, in low doses, to humans but more or less lethal to bugs and while these chemicals can be applied safely, so it is claimed, the sheer scale of their use and the fact that not everyone who uses them is careful in their application is problematic. It now appears from three recent studies that even when used properly, where bees are concerned, these chemicals are toxic. Moreover, the Bayer products were approved by the EPA for use based on a study funded by Bayer which was later discredited by EPA scientists!
So, there's a lot of evidence that to points to Bayer pesticides as a, if not the, causative agent behind CCD.
Given Bayer's profits or the possible extinction of bees which would you choose?
First, let's consider what would happen if Bayer was to actually choose to stop selling neonicotinoids. If subsequent research shows that neonicotinoids aren't the problem, Bayer will have lost a few hundred million dollars but gained a lot of goodwill for adopting a "better safe than sorry" policy. If that was the case then maybe there's some way that Bayer could be compensated out of public funds worldwide. If, on the other hand, neonicotinoids are guilty as charged, then the consequences for Bayer would be far less harsh given that it appears they mislead the EPA in the first place.
Alternatively, let's say Bayer refuses and carries on selling neonicotinoids which are ultimately found to be the problem. Now the combination of having mislead the EPA and not acting responsibly makes Bayer look really, really bad. This scenario would make the phone bugging scandal that has hammered Rupert Murdoch's empire look trivial; Bayer could find itself in real trouble in every jurisdiction they operate in worldwide; every legislative body in every country would want a slice of Bayer's corpse.
The smartest thing Bayer can do is to immediately halt sales of neonicotinoids and fund transparent, independent studies to establish the facts.
You can have a hand in persuading Bayer's board to act responsibly: Avaaz.org has a petition that will be publicized at the Bayer shareholder's meeting in Germany tomorrow, Friday, March April 26. The text of the petition is:
We call on you to vote to stop production and sale of neonicotinoid pesticides until and unless new independent scientific studies prove they are safe. The catastrophic demise of bee colonies could put our whole food chain in danger. If you act urgently with precaution now, we could save bees from extinction.
Please join the more than 320,000 people who have signed the petition.
Your signature may be all that stands between bees and their extinction.Popular Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul is no stranger to breaking with his party, but in a recent television appearance the libertarian-leaning Rep. went even further than any member of Congress in defending whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
Speaking to Fox Business host Judge Napolitano on Thursday about recent revelations at the Federal Reserve, Paul’s typical candor showed through.
“What we need is more WikiLeaks about the Federal Reserve,” he said. “Can you imagine what it’d be like if we had every conversation in the last 10 years with our Federal Reserve people, the Federal Reserve chairman, with all the central bankers of the world and every agreement or quid-pro-quo they have? It would be massive. People would be so outraged.”
Paul, a longtime critic of the US Federal Reserve, is the incoming chairman of a House subcommittee on monetary policy. His most recent book, titled “End the Fed,” takes aim at central banks the world over, blaming fiat money systems and fractional reserve banking for the world’s increasingly volatile economies.
“In a free society we’re supposed to know the truth,” Paul insisted. “In a society where truth becomes treason, then we’re in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it.
He added: “This whole notion that Assange, who’s an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for treason — I mean, aren’t they jumping to a wild conclusion? […] I mean, why don’t we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?”
The Texas congressman echoed his message from Fox Business in a twitter post early Friday.
“In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth,” he wrote. “In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.”
Many Republicans have called for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, an Australian, to be prosecuted under the US Espionage Act, or for his site to be deemed a “foreign terrorist organization.” The Department of Justice said it was looking into who leaked the massive caches of documents to Assange and whether or not he could be prosecuted.
The site experienced a series of domain take-downs by mid-day Friday, but was back online via an IP address, with mirrors popping up across Europe.
Data released by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday showed that foreign banks were among the biggest recipients of some $3.3 trillion in emergency loans offered by the US central bank amid the 2008 financial crisis.
More than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities were sold to Deutsche Bank, a German lender. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, got more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds. Corporations like Caterpillar, General Electric, Harley Davidson, McDonald’s, Verizon and Toyota also relied the programs.
This video was broadcast by Fox Business on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2010, as snipped by MoxNews.One important artifact of last night's announcement that Osama bin Laden has been killed is the footage itself--the instantly iconic clip of President Obama sharing the news with the American people.
At 11:35 p.m., standing at a podium in the East Room of the White House, the president uttered these words: "Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that has killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children."
I expect that most people will see this clip dozens, if not hundreds of times in the coming weeks. It is already being canonized on cable television and can't help but have an impact on the direction of Obama's presidency. As any number of cable analysts are already pointing out, it will certainly rank among Obama's signature first-term achievements.
There is a very short list of similar such moments. One obvious example that springs to mind is George W. Bush's impromptu declaration from atop a pile of rubble to Ground Zero rescue workers just after 9/11: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!"More families are still leaving Baltimore than moving in, and while many of the reasons are well known, a new analysis of where they land and why has made city officials and advocates believe their efforts are changing attitudes — and some decisions.
It's no longer a given that people who move to the city for college or their first job will leave once it's time to buy a house, a bigger home or send their kids to school, according to the city officials who plan to release the report Thursday during a news conference led by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.
"We now know people are looking for ways to stay," said Seema Iyer, associate director of the Jacob France Institute at the University of Baltimore's Merrick School of Business, which helped conduct the review for the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance.
"It's not like they are itching to get out but have to do what's best for family and feel forced to leave," she said. "And that's something we can capitalize on."
She called it a "push-pull," with many people not going far when they felt pushed out: "To Towson, just over the city line."
In surveys, residents say they were pulled to the city by good neighbors, historic houses, the ability to walk to shops, restaurants and other amenities.
She said some junctures when people make decisions to stay or go are known, such as when they buy a house. But other points, such as when they retire, were less obvious. Officials can focus on the needs of different groups who want to stay but think there is more incentive to leave.
Rawlings-Blake announced an initiative in 2010 to attract 10,000 more families to the city by 2020. In support of that effort, her administration has sought to address property taxes, schools and crime.
Officials cite progress, including property tax cuts totaling 14 cents of the pledged 20-cent reduction by 2020, though there were no reductions this year. There are new investments in city schools, though Gov. Larry Hogan recently declined to provide more. Some charter schools have gotten so popular that they have waiting lists.
And even after the rioting and protests related to the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, people still came out to a city housing fair hosting by the advocacy group Live Baltimore. More than half the attendees signed up just after the initial unrest, said Steven Gondol, the group's executive director.
The unrest even "prompted a lot of people to roll up their sleeves and get involved," he said.
Still, the city's population slipped by a tenth of a percent in the latest Census estimate. And the number of school-age children has been in free fall, dropping 23 percent between 2000 and 2010.
Officials acknowledged that migration trends in place since the 1950s would not be easy to reverse, but they said in some cases they may be able to provide influential information to people facing a life decisions, such as their neighborhood school's test scores or incentives to buy houses in the city.
"This report demonstrates that the foundation we have laid is the right foundation for continuing to grow our city," said Rawlings-Blake in a statement. "Many of the issues raised align with policies we have put in place to make life better for city residents, including property tax reductions, millions of dollars for new school construction and new rec centers as well as thousands of demolitions for vacant structures. This is a blueprint for continued success, and validation that the choices we have made to grow this city were the right priorities for what residents care most about."
meredith.cohn@baltsun.com
Components of change since 2010
Increases in:
White, Latino, Asian
Single
College educated
Decreases in:
African-Americans
Families
Source: Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators AllianceComing December 5, the hardcover Canto Bight — named for the casino city from Star Wars: The Last Jedi — is a collection of four interconnected novella-length adventures of the exotic aliens and creatures who frequent the locale. StarWars.com is excited to debut an excerpt from John Jackson Miller’s “The Ride,” in which Kaljach Somni, down to his last card after years of chasing jackpots, has a chance encounter with a trio of brothers. They’re blessed with seemingly endless luck and might be his best (and last) chance to strike it big — if he can survive one wild night.
Vestry clasped both her pairs of hands. “Master Sonmi, you work for the casino. We work for the casino. Exactly who profits from you sitting here alone for another ten hours?” She pointed. “Go home.”
“I don’t have a—”
“Then eat something. But go.”
Kal’s throat went dry as he saw Minn’s hands move toward the undealt cards, ready to dispose of the decks. Please, don’t—
“Oooh, it’s zinbiddle!”
Kal turned to see a diminutive reptilian in a formal black coat, accentuated with a dazzling stellabora lapel bloom. The green-skinned creature flashed a smile so broad it nearly bisected his face as he dropped a fat tray of coins onto the tabletop to Kal’s right. “Deal me in,” he said, hopping up into the chair beside Kal.
Kal stared at the ebullient arrival, mystified, before looking to the dealer, who suspended her cleanup. He told Vestry, “I guess I’m in luck.”
The pit boss stared silently at the players. Kal could swear he saw her mouth form the words, That’s what you think.
“I was at the yacht races,” the newcomer said. “Were you at the yacht races?”
“No.”
“You should have been at the yacht races.” He offered a chubby green hand. “Dodibin. Dodi for short—but don’t call me that.”
“Don’t call you Dodi?”
“Don’t call me short.” He looked stern for a moment—and then laughed. “And you are Kaljach.”
Lucky guess, he began to say, before remembering his badge. “Kal is fine.” He watched as the Suerton—the species he thought Dodi was—unloaded his chips. Then Dodi pushed a large stack onto the instant-win marker, a side bet the casino covered from its rake.
“That’s a long shot,” Kal said.
“Excellent.” Chipper, Dodi rocked back and forth in his chair as Minn started dealing.
It was no skin off Kal’s nonexistent nose; the side bet was against the house, not him. Though he would have loved to cover it, because there was no greater joy than taking money off someone too stupid to—
“Zinbiddle!”
Kal gawked. “You got it?”
Dodi flipped up his cards, all in the proper suit and sequence. “Dealt pat.”
Kal hadn’t even looked at his cards yet. He quickly did, and took note of what Dodi had shown, before Minn recovered them all. That was the risk in riding “final station,” the seat on the dealer’s right; Kal saw more cards that way, but occasionally an instant winner would cut a hand short. Fortunately, the odds said that wouldn’t happen very—
“Zinbiddle,” Dodi chirped.
“She’s still dealing the hand!” Kal spouted. Calling early was a dumb move, disqualifying if the hand wasn’t as declared. Unless the fool actually had it?
“Well, what do you know?” Dodi said, overturning his four cards as soon as they’d landed. “I had a feeling.” He’d left his winnings from before on the instant-win marker; he’d won again. Minn went to work exchanging Dodi’s coins for higher-denomination ones.
And now, Kal saw, Vestry was back, keeping a discreet watch from behind Minn. She knew everything, or so she put on. What did she know about this guy?
The good news was Kal was only out two initial stakes, and the decks, if anything, had swung even more into his favor. If a hand ever lasted long enough for him to play, he could start building out his pyramid in pursuit of the progressive. But he was beginning to wonder what he was up against—
—and wondered some more when he heard a voice like Dodi’s, only lower-pitched, from behind. “There you are!”
Kal turned to see another Suerton, looking much like Dodi apart from a few extra centimeters’ height, more pronounced ears, and a necklace of silver ringlets. “Thodi!” Dodi said, hopping off his chair. “Kal, meet Thodi, my brother.”
“I’m the smart one,” Thodi said, and smiled. “At your service.” He glanced at Dodi’s stack on the table. “What are we doing?”
“Winning,” Kal said.
“Well, I know that.” Thodi pushed Dodi. “Step aside for the master, my good chump.”
Dodi resisted. “I was doing fine on my own.”
“I doubt that.”
Minn was befuddled. “Who’s playing, gentlebeings?”
“I was hatched first,” Thodi said. “Ten seconds earlier. Mom said.”
Dodi smirked at Kal. “He always gets me with that.” The slightly younger brother withdrew, and Thodi climbed into the chair. He looked down at Dodi’s winnings. “Oh, now, see, you’re making these silly blind bets again.” He pulled the stacks of coins back from the table and began to sort them. “What you need to do is add up the values of your cards, and bet that. If the number is even, double it. And if it’s prime, you bet your age.”
Wow, Kal thought. That is completely wrong.
“Thodi,” Dodi said, “that is completely wrong.”
“You’re just a gambler,” the elder Suerton said. “Me—I’m a gamer. Watch.”
Thodi played the hand his way—and, in the end, was completely wrong. Kal won some coins, but not many. He must not be that old, Kal thought. But he could live with it. The green guys’ fortunes seemed to dim as the brothers bickered—and that meant the hands lasted longer, giving Kal more data about the decks with every card. And the Ion Barrage chance was ever closer.
This is it! Kal fought to stay calm. Forget the brothers. This was him against fate, months and months of it. This hand, he’d be all in, buying extra draws as necessary to build his pyramid. And then all his problems would be—
“Hi ho!” shouted someone in the aisle.
“Wodi!” the brothers replied in unison. “Over here!”
“What now?” Kal said. He shot an anguished look at Vestry, whose steely reserve had yet to crack. Her eyes were on the aisle, where a Suerton with a bounding gait approached—and then receded, in pursuit of a droid carrying liquid refreshments.
Dodi poked Kal in the ribs. “Wodi, my kid brother. You’ll like him, Kal. Dad used to call him the kind of guy who’d fly all the way to Alderaan if he heard a party was starting.”
“Didn’t Alderaan blow up?”
“Well, Wodi wasn’t responsible.” Dodi pursed his giant lips as Wodi, having scored a tray of beverages, let out a loud whoop. “At least, I don’t think he was. When did it happen?”
Canto Bight is available for preorder now.
StarWars.com. All Star Wars, all the time.(KUTV) A man is in the Utah County Jail, suspected of trying to take pictures of a little boy inside a restroom of an LDS Church, at 3200 North, 600 East in Lehi, Utah.
Police booked 39-year-old Jeffery Aaron Young, a husband and father of small children, on allegations of voyeurism and tampering with evidence.
Lt. Toby Peterson said Young, "may have been attempting to take photographs" of the child in "a bathroom stall."
The boy told others last November that he saw a man near the stall, when he went to use the restroom. Then, as the boy was inside the stall, he saw a camera or cell phone between the wall and the partition.
Startled congregants got a description of the man from the child, and kept an eye out for him.
That man, believed to be Young, was seen two more times in later weeks near the restroom.
At one point, people followed him outside, got his license plate as he drove away, and called police.
"We take these things very seriously," said Peterson, who said Young attended a different LDS Church just blocks away from the incident.
Police said they found Young at his own congregation in late December. He was apparently identified by several people as "the suspicious male," who had been spotted at the other church. The little boy said Young "was probably him."
In a probable cause statement, it's alleged Young told police he had stopped at the 3200 North, 600 East church to use the bathroom, because, "new medicine" had caused stomach problems, and he was "too embarrassed" to use the bathroom at his own congregation.
Then this week, a police investigator paid a visit to the home of Young, who allegedly said he has stopped at the nearby church on more than one Sunday to use the restroom.
The investigator asked to search his phone, but police said Young refused.
The next day, officers were back at the house with a warrant for the phone, but police said Young told them he took the device five miles away to a dumpster in American Fork.
According to police, he took them there, and officers found the phone in several pieces.
The suspect allegedly smashed the phone, and put it in water, before dumping it. Peterson said the phone, or what's left of it, is being submitted to a lab to see if any images can be retrieved.
Larry D. Curtis contributed to this report.Songquan Deng / Shutterstock.com
The city came roaring back after the recession, but its divides also deepened.
When the economic crisis hit at the end of 2007, a raft of pundits proclaimed that New York City’s reign as the world’s leading global city was over. Today, the degree to which New York has recovered from the recession is astonishing. In fact, it has rebounded not just from the most recent financial crisis, but from a series of blows over the past fifteen years or so—the terrorist attacks of September 11, the tech crisis of the early 2000s, and two significant hurricanes. Each time, the city emerged stronger than ever. Indeed, New York’s ability to attract investment and generate new, creative, high-tech industries has created such pressure on its real estate markets that its biggest problem is no longer an underperforming economy. Now, the city’s major concerns are its increasingly unaffordable housing market and the growing economic divide that helped carry Mayor Bill de Blasio into office in 2014. For the past several years, I, along with my colleagues Steven Pedigo, Rosemary Scanlon, and Hugh Kelley at the NYU School of Professional Studies have undertaken a detailed examination of the factors underpinning the city’s remarkable economic comeback. The resulting study, titled “New York City: The Great Reset”, tracks the changes in the city’s economy at a granular level, tracing its industrial and occupational clusters, changing real estate patterns, and the evolving makeup of its class structure and demography. To get at this, we conducted detailed interviews and focus groups with 57 experts in finance, real estate, technology/start-ups, education, media, arts and culture, and philanthropy. In particular, we used detailed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and EMSI to track the industries and occupations that have driven the city’s transformation.
What we found is evidence of a comeback that surprised even us. Since 2007, New York has generated jobs and moved the economy forward in ways few would have anticipated even a couple of decades ago. From its nadir in 2009 to 2014, the city generated 423,000 new jobs—and this number continues to grow. New York’s Key Occupations So, what are the key factors that enabled New York to bounce back? New York has always had a diverse economy, which lies at the core of its economic resilience. Today, the city’s ability to grow new industries and shift its economy can be seen in its ongoing evolution from a finance-driven economy to a full-blown creative economy. Its creative class—workers in science, engineering, art, design, media, and entertainment as well as finance, business, and law—spans 1.4 million workers. Making up 35.4 percent of the city’s workforce, the New York creative class generates $117 billion in wages, more than half (52 percent) of the city’s total. The chart below, from our study, provides an in-depth look at the city’s creative economy and its key occupational clusters. The bigger the bubble, the higher the total employment. The x-axis represents employment growth from 2009-2014, while the y-axis represents the location quotient, or the concentration of occupations in New York relative to the rest of the nation. Occupations in the upper right hand corner exhibit substantial growth and a large concentration of workers—as a result, they are key to New York’s competitive advantage. Check out, for instance, the size of the bubble for arts, design, entertainment, and media. It may not be as big as those for health care or business and finance, but it represents the field with the city’s biggest advantage. In contrast, the city has a large concentration of lawyers, but not a lot of growth in that sector. The same can be said of business and finance, management, and education.
The city has also seen substantial growth in startups and tech. Hundreds of startups have launched since 2007, and the city attracts roughly $3 billion in venture capital investment per year. It has the largest number of tech jobs in the nation, according to data from EMSI, and was recently named the world’s second leading startup ecosystem. New York’s Economic Divides This success has come at a cost. The city has become increasingly divided not just between rich and poor, but between its creative class and its sagging service and working classes. The creative class in New York earns a median wage of $90,200 per year—59 percent more than the median for the city as a whole and more than 2.2 times that of service class workers. Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter. The best way to follow issues you care about. Subscribe Loading... The larger service class, made up of 1.9 million workers or roughly half of the city’s workforce, works in comparatively low-paying, low-skill occupations such as administration, retail sales, food service, and health care, and earns a median wage of less than $40,000 per year. These jobs are growing even faster than those of the creative class. Meanwhile, the working class sector made up of factory workers, truck drivers, and construction workers, which once comprised the backbone of the city’s economy, has shrunk to just 17 percent of its workforce—even during a construction boom. The table above, also from the report, charts the class composition of the five boroughs. Creative class jobs are highly concentrated in Manhattan, where they comprise nearly a million workers—39 percent of the city’s creative class total. Brooklyn is home to just 166,902 creative class jobs, and those jobs pay on average $72,778 compared to $90,000 and above in Manhattan. Queens, where the creative class makes up 22 percent of the workforce, has 121,651 creative class workers, with the remainder in the Bronx (80,544) and Staten Island (26,045)—all with pay considerably less than similar jobs in Manhattan. The service class makes up a somewhat larger share of the workforce in the outer boroughs. It comprises 53 percent of the workforce in Staten Island, 50 percent in the Bronx, 51 percent in Brooklyn, and 52 percent in Queens, compared to 48 percent in Manhattan. Manhattan’s service class wages are the highest at $44,916, compared to $30,389 in Queens, $29,641 in the Bronx, $29,211 on Staten Island, and $28,840 in Brooklyn.
While Manhattan has transformed into a post-industrial hub, Queens and Staten Island retain a relatively large blue-collar working class. The working class makes up 26 percent of the workforce in Queens and 21 percent on Staten Island, compared to just 13 percent in Manhattan. Blue-collar workers take home a median salary of $45,266 on Staten Island compared to just $37,151 in Brooklyn. This class divide is etched in the city’s geography, as shown on the map below (based not on where each class works, but where they live). On the map, the creative class is marked in brown, the service class in teal, and the working class in light green. In terms of residency, the creative class is massed in Manhattan and adjacent parts of Brooklyn and scattered in small clusters in the other three boroughs. The service and working classes cluster in the remaining neighborhoods, which tend to be further from amenities, transit, and Manhattan employment centers. The service class predominates in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, with a few pockets in Manhattan, the Lower East Side, East Harlem, and Washington Heights. The working class is mostly located in South Brooklyn and the Rockaways, Staten Island, Queens, and the Bronx, and the number of blue-collar jobs across New York is declining. Toward Inclusive Prosperity How can the city continue to grow, overcome its divides, and generate a more shared and inclusive prosperity?
First and foremost, it’s time for New York to raise the minimum wage, received by 1.2 million New Yorkers, from a meager $8.75 per hour to $15 per hour, and then index it to the local Consumer Price Index (CPI) maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition, the city can generate more good jobs by cultivating its entrepreneurial ecosystem and making it more inclusive. It needs to start investing in training, upskilling, and other forms of assistance for workers in retail, food service, and health care as opposed to technology and small businesses alone. New York would also benefit from creating on-ramps into startup and high-tech fields, such as teaching coding or making scholarships and internships available to promising students. The city must also recognize that only half of its 300,000 technology jobs are held by college graduates, and many high-tech companies are in need of customer-service representatives and logistics professionals in addition to coders. Although New York’s comeback has been enviable, its success has brought a series of new class divides, growing inequality, and gaping unaffordability. Second, the city needs to build more housing and expand its affordable housing options. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has made it his goal to “build and preserve” 200,000 affordable housing units over the next ten years. His “five-borough, ten-year plan” includes a $41 billion capital budget, and aims to address the needs of low- and middle-income housing. This is an excellent place to start, but more can certainly be done. Targeted rezoning, for instance, could lead to residential conversions, new construction, and densification, all of which could help increase the number of affordable housing units. Private “land trusts” in underutilized neighborhoods could also supply high-density, affordable, walk-to-work housing by buying out existing landlords. Tax rebates or direct subsidies for renters can also be used to boost the amount of low- to moderate-income housing. Third, it’s time for the city to substantially expand transit and improve connectivity to improve access to jobs, increase mobility between poorly-served neighborhoods, and stimulate more housing construction. There are less expensive ways to do this than adding new subway lines. New York needs to repair and update its infrastructure and invest in transit corridors. More dedicated bus lanes, connections between neighboring subway stations, new bus routes, faster service for buses and trains, “smart” buses, and even expanded ride or bike-sharing technology could also significantly improve transit-deficient neighborhoods. Mayor de Blasio’s expanded express bus service, for instance, is a step in the right direction, as is New York’s decision to invest its own capital dollars in a citywide ferry system. Although New York’s comeback has been enviable, its success has brought a series of new class divides, growing inequality, and gaping unaffordability. As the world’s most powerful and dynamic city, New York must now leverage its newfound economic growth to create a more inclusive and shared prosperity of which all classes and all neighborhoods can be a part. Top image: Songquan Deng / Shutterstock.comMark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have sounded warnings about automation. And the American public appears to be listening. As the U.S. suffered first monthly job decline since 2010 in September, they have persistent concerns about the future of the economy — and their place in it.
Most Americans expect these advancements to have a negative impact on both the workforce and the U.S. economy, according to a new survey of more than 4,100 people in the U.S. released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C. Perhaps surprisingly, some 67% of people are worried rather than enthusiastic (22%) about algorithms evaluating and choosing job candidates. However, people are more sanguine when it comes to driverless cars (54% express worry) and robot caregivers (47% express worry).
The findings suggest workers are fearful of automation:
• 72% of Americans are worried about robots replacing human jobs — more than double the share (33%) that is enthusiastic
• 77% of people think it’s realistic that robots and computers might one day be able to do many of the jobs currently done by humans
• And yet only 30% think it “very or somewhat likely” that their own jobs or professions will be done by robots or computers in their lif |
what the government calls an "open source" (as in not classified) investigation.
In this article, I will be discussing elements of Director Comey's statement, along with a detailed investigation report from the US Department of State (USDOS).
Ironically, it appears that Secretary Clinton's insistence on the use of her personal email system had an unintended consequence: much of her email to State Department staff wound up in their spam bins.
Both of these sources cite additional internal investigations and reports, most of which have not been made public. Even so, the aggregate statements made by the FBI and USDOS investigators can be considered "official," because they are statements by authorized members of government agencies. They represent each agency's formal findings.
Many of you have contacted me with concerns that I did not cite specific news articles, which may or may not have had more inflammatory information. That is intentional. When doing this level of investigation -- one intended to stand up to the test of time -- it's critical that hearsay, rumors, and innuendo be filtered out of the process in the quest for a baseline of factual information.
As is always the case with any documents, official or otherwise, what was said or published most likely only scratches the surface. Even so, the information we have available to us via open and declassified information is enough to give us a detailed perspective that, in this case, is damning enough as it is.
Finally, while the political implications of these investigations are fascinating, I will not be discussing those implications in this article. This article is intended solely to provide investigatory disclosure, not political prognostication.
Source materials
In this article, I'll continue to explore the recently released Office of the Secretary: Evaluation of Email Records Management and Cybersecurity Requirements [PDF] prepared by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the United States Department of State Office of Evaluations and Special Projects.
I will also use the transcript provided by the FBI of Director Comey's briefing, Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton's Use of a Personal E-Mail System.
Additionally, we will use two interconnected official documents known colloquially as the FAM/FAH. These are the United States Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual and Department of State Foreign Affairs Handbook. State describes these documents as:
The Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM) and associated Handbooks (FAHs) are a single, comprehensive, and authoritative source for the Department's organization structures, policies, and procedures that govern the operations of the State Department, the Foreign Service and, when applicable, other federal agencies. The FAM (generally policy) and the FAHs (generally procedures) together convey codified information to Department staff and contractors so they can carry out their responsibilities in accordance with statutory, executive and Department mandates.
The FAM/FAH are, effectively, the employee handbooks for State Department employees.
Finally, the OIG investigation repeatedly cites a State Department memorandum known as 11 STATE 65111 (June 28, 2011). Unfortunately, I have not been able to find an original of this unclassified document, although the version I'm pointing to here (on the FOX News site) seems to match the extracted portions articulated in the OIG report.
State Department policies during Clinton's tenure
Hillary Clinton became the 67th US Secretary of State on January 21, 2009 and left office on February 1, 2013.
As such, any policies that were in place prior to her entering office in 2009 apply to Hillary Clinton and her staff, while policies enacted after February 2013 do not.
This is important, because there have been some discussions about messages retroactively classified, and about government programs like the Capstone Approach, which was introduced in August of 2013, seven months after Mrs. Clinton left office.
Some of the media reports cite these issues, but it's relatively obvious that, absent an available time machine, guidelines enacted after the Secretary left office should not be used to pass judgement over her behavior while in office.
OIG cites two organizations within the Department of State that manage information security: the Bureau of Information Resource Management (IRM) and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS). When the OIG conducted its investigation into the Clinton period at State, investigators spoke to IRM and DS officials, and determined that during Clinton's tenure:
Department employees must use agency-authorized information systems to conduct normal day-to-day operations because the use of non-Departmental systems creates significant security risks.
The OIG report goes on to say:
Among the risks is the targeting and penetration of the personal email accounts of Department employees, which was brought to the attention of most senior officials of the Department as early as 2011.
Not only was Mrs. Clinton the serving Secretary of State in 2011, the 11 STATE 65111 document cited in the OIG report is listed as from "SECSTATE WASHDC." In other words, it was sent to State employees under Secretary Clinton's signature.
Over the years, policies at State got more rigorous and sophisticated, but as early as 2005, the FAM required use of authorized information systems. In 2008, the FAM was updated to allow the use of "privately owned computers only with DS and IRM approval."
The OIG report therefore clearly confirmed that the use of private computers, which they describe as "computers, mobile devices, Internet connections and personal email" was not permitted without prior approval. Since that policy was in place when Mrs. Clinton arrived at State, she was subject to its requirements.
In fact, in 12 FAM 625.2-1 (July 28, 2008), written approval of DS and IRM was required. An additional policy described as 12 FAM 683.1 (December 2, 2009) limited the use of PDAs in areas that were strictly unclassified ("such as the cafeteria").
The State Department also had specific guidelines on accessing "sensitive but unclassified" (SBU) information on personal gear. According to what was 12 FAM 682.2-4 (August 28, 2008), "management and employees must exercise particular care and judgement when remotely processing SBU information."
For those with a penchant for reading government policy manuals, please note that this guideline moved to 12 FAH-10 H-173.4 on January 11, 2016.
This policy will be important to remember when we review the FBI director's statement in more detail later in this analysis.
Another relevant policy is 5 FAM 751.2 (February 27, 2002), which prohibited State Department employees "from auto-forwarding their email to a personal email address to preclude inadvertent transmission of SBU email on the Internet."
This, of course, was part of the problem I identified in my book regarding the Bush administration's use of a private email provider out of "an abundance of caution" in complying with the 1939 Hatch Act:
I estimate that more than 103.6 million White House email messages have been sent over the open Internet, via SMARTech, a 12-person Internet service provider located in downtown Chattanooga.
So, while agencies like State identified the risks of open Internet transmission as early as 2002, regulations provided a convenient loop hole for avoidance, and therefore added risk. As we'll see however, Secretary Clinton's office never cited the Hatch Act as their justification for operating a private server. Instead, it's just something they did.
The Department of State made it clear to employees as far back as 2002 that transmission of SBU information over the Internet was strictly prohibited. That got modified during Colin Powell's term as SECSTATE, in part because Mr. Powell insisted on using his own private laptop to communicate to the outside world. Even so, 12 FAM 544.3 (November 4, 2005) states:
Transmissions from the Department's OpenNet to and from non-U.S. Government Internet addresses, and other.gov or.mil addresses, unless specifically directed through an approved secure means, traverse the Internet unencrypted.
Before we move on to specifics of Secretary Clinton's behavior, it's important to note that many of these policies were for sensitive, but unclassified, information. Classified information was subject to far more stringent requirements, some of which the FBI disclosed that Mrs. Clinton violated as well.
Systemic disregard of security policy
A disturbing observation coming out of this analysis is how completely Mrs. Clinton disregarded security policy. Even more disturbing was her apparent lack of regard for the added security requirements for highly classified information.
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If you'll recall from our policy discussion, there are limits imposed on where PDAs (and, by extension, smartphones) are used near classified information. According to the OIG report, Secretary Clinton insisted on using BlackBerry devices instead of a secured smartphone.
This was not unique to Secretary Clinton. President Obama did not want to give up his BlackBerry either. This was back when people actually still used BlackBerry devices.
I wrote three articles discussing the issue for CNN back in 2009. As became clear, Mr. Obama used both a BlackBerry for limited personal communications and a more advanced and secure phone for other communications.
The difference, according to the OIG report, was that Mrs. Clinton insisted on using her BlackBerry in classified areas:
The Assistant Secretary of DS then sent a classified memorandum to Secretary Clinton's Chief of Staff that describe the vulnerabilities associated with the use of BlackBerry devices and also noted the prohibition on the use of BlackBerry devices in sensitive areas. According to a DS official, shortly after the memorandum was delivered, Secretary Clinton approached the Assistant Secretary and told him she "gets it."
Apparently Secretary Clinton didn't fully get it. As the policy discussion stated earlier, State employees were required to get permission to use unclassified private computers. Yet, according to OIG, "OIG found no evidence that the Secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server."
It is possible Mrs. Clinton didn't ask for approval or guidance because she knew she wouldn't get it from cybersecurity-aware officials. According to the OIG report, "DS and IRM did not - and would not - approve her exclusive reliance on a personal email account to conduct Department business, because of the restrictions in the FAM and the security risks in doing so."
Secretary Clinton also apparently disregarded FAM policy when it came to SBU information. The policy (12 FAM 544.2) states that if SBU information needs to be transmitted outside of the State Department secure environment, "they should request a solution from IRM."
Yet, "OIG found no evidence that Secretary Clinton ever contacted IRM to request such a solution, despite the fact that emails exchanged on her personal account regularly contained information marked as SBU."
The OIG report goes on to describe that 12 FAM 682 (August 4, 2008) requires that those employees using personal or private gear submit to what was essentially a security review of their setups.
According to the OIG report, "DS and IRM reported to OIG that Secretary Clinton never demonstrated to them that her private server or mobile device met the minimum information security requirements specified by FISMA and the FAM."
Ironically, it appears that Secretary Clinton's insistence on the use of her personal email system had an unintended consequence: much of her email to State Department staff wound up in their spam bins.
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This was discussed in November of 2010 in an email chain. Secretary Clinton's Deputy Chief of staff sent her a note stating, "We should talk about putting you on state email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to get spam."
Read that last sentence carefully. It means that not only was Secretary Clinton using a private email address, but that email address was not known by State Department staffers and therefore they could not white list messages coming from her. As a result, some messages coming from the sitting Secretary of State got routed to their spam folders.
Worse, rather than adopting a State Department email address or even letting employees white list her personal email address, Mrs. Clinton told her Deputy Chief of Staff, "Let's get separate email address or device but I don't want any risk of the personal being accessible."
The OIG's review of Mrs. Clinton's email showcases some very odd behavior that was not addressed by the FBI. Secretary Clinton apparently was very concerned about some or all of her email messages being attributable to her.
Before we delve further into this, it's important you understand the role of the Executive Secretary. This is not, as might be in the business world, the boss's private assistant. Instead, according to State:
The Executive Secretariat (S/ES), comprised of the Executive Secretary and four Deputy Executive Secretaries, is responsible for coordination of the work of the Department internally, serving as the liaison between the Department's bureaus and the offices of the Secretary, Deputy Secretary, and Under Secretaries. It also handles the Department's relations with the White House, National Security Council, and other Cabinet agencies.
At the time, the Executive Secretary was a gentleman named Stephen D. Mull. Today, Mr. Mull is the United States Lead Coordinator for Iran Nuclear Implementation. So, when you read the next paragraph, please keep in mind the official making this recommendation is the person now charged with keeping the world safe from Iran's nuclear arsenal.
In August of 2011, Secretary Clinton's personal email server was "down." At that time, according to the OIG report, Mr. Mull in his role as Executive Secretary, said he wanted to provide Mrs. Clinton with two devices, "one with an operating State Department email account (which would mask her identity, but which would also be subject to FOIA requests), and another which would just have phone and internet capability."
It is possible to interpret this statement in two ways. The first, which is disturbing to contemplate, implies that our current lead nuclear coordinator seemed complicit in an activity designed to mask the Secretary of State's identity from Freedom of Information Act requests.
The other interpretation, that if "her identity" is strictly parsed to mean the actual email account, is understandable in that any government employee might not want his or her personal email address made available to the general public.
In any case, the two phone idea never happened because Secretary Clinton's Chief of Staff stated it "doesn't make a whole lot of sense" and ignored the proposal.
The OIG report also shows something of a misinformation campaign waged between Secretary Clinton's immediate staff and those of the various bureaus within State. According to the OIG report, two staff members in S/ES-IRM discussed concerns about Secretary Clinton's personal use with an unnamed person who was then the Director of S/ES-IRM.
The following three statements from the OIG report relate to this situation:
The Director stated that the Secretary's personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further. OIG found no evidence that staff in the Office of the Legal Advisor reviewed or approved Secretary Clinton's personal system. The Director stated that the mission of S/ES-IRM is to support the Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary's personal email system again."
So, that worked out well.
At this point, it's clear that security policies were regularly violated. The question any reasonable IT person might ask is whether Mrs. Clinton or her staff actually understood the implications of a violation in email security. There are two documented instances that seem to demonstrate they were, in fact, aware of the risks.
The first incident disclosed in the OIG investigation concerns hacking attempts against Secretary Clinton's personal email server.
On January 9, 2011 a person described as "the non-Departmental advisor to President Clinton who provided technical support to the Clinton email system" (in other words, the Clintons' personal geek) contacted the State Department Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. In an email, the advisor wrote, "We were attacked again so I shut [the server] down for a few min."
Note the phrasing of "attacked again," implying that there were previous known attacks against the Clintons' private server.
An email chain resulted, going from the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations to the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Chief of Staff for Planning stating that they should not email Secretary Clinton "anything sensitive" and that she would "explain more in person."
The second documented incident showing Secretary Clinton's awareness of security concerns took place on May 13, 2011. On that day, "two of Secretary Clinton's immediate staff discussed via email the Secretary's concern that someone was hacking into her email after she received an email with a suspicious link."
OIG reports, "The next morning, Secretary Clinton replied to the email with the following message to the Under Secretary, 'Is this really from you? I was worried about opening it!'"
This clearly shows that Hillary Clinton herself was aware of the risks of a phishing attack, email identity impersonation, and suspicious links. It also shows the possibility that her devices or those of her associates might have been compromised.
The report by FBI director Comey seems to confirm this assessment. Mr Comey stated, "...we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal e-mail account."
The OIG report points out that 12 FAM 592.4 (January 10, 2007) requires "employees to report cybersecurity incidents to IRM security officials when any improper cyber-security practice comes to their attention."
12 FAM 682.2-6 (August 4, 2008) states "Notification is required when a user suspects compromise of, among other things, a personally owned device containing personally identifiable information."
And yet, "OIG found no evidence that the Secretary or her staff reported these incidents to computer security personnel or anyone else within the Department."
The FBI's analysis
Now that you understand the inside story of Mrs. Clinton's use of personal email while at the Department of State, let's look at the statistics reported by FBI director James Comey:
110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification.
These were from the 30,000 messages provided to the FBI. In addition, after additional recovery efforts, the FBI was able to identify "three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level."
Director Comey stated that the FBI was not going to recommend criminal charges be filed against Mrs. Clinton, stating there was no evidence of overt criminal behavior or disloyal intent.
Instead, Comey accused Clinton of extreme carelessness:
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
When we think of carelessness, we often think of sloppiness or lack of care. Google defines "careless" as "not giving sufficient attention or thought to avoiding harm or errors," "(of an action or its result) showing or caused by a lack of attention," and "not concerned or worried about."
In my nearly decade-long investigations into government management of email at the very highest levels, one pattern has become apparent: email security is never given the attention it deserves by those in power.
Based on my detailed analysis of Secretary Clinton and her staff with regard to their use of email, it now appears clear that the issue was not about a lack of knowledge or understanding of the security issues regarding email.
Instead, like Janice in Accounting, it seems they just didn't give a f*ck.
You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.Is it just to allow the 24 other Cincinnati Reds to define Votto’s value? Is his value not defined only by HIS performance? Is it now generally accepted that the Most Valuable Player must have valuable supporting cast as well?
While not having the clear claim for best player in the National League, Votto certainly has a case to be made. Statisticians will look to Votto’s counting stats and their minds will be decided against him. With an impressive but unspectacular 99 Runs and 95 RBIs, Votto does not sit in the same regard as fellow MVP candidates. To understand Votto’s value, and his claim for MVP contention, one must refer to his rate statistics. Votto is slashing an astounding.317/.453/1.035, besting his career highs as well as his current MVP competition. On a team with a below average OPS+ Votto is well on his way to leading the entirety of Major League Baseball in the very same stat. The Canadian slugger is getting on base in an astounding 45% of his plate appearances. Nearly half the time he steps to the plate he reaches base. Votto has often been playfully mocked for his perceived ‘walk first’ mentality, but this season Votto is putting it all together and showing he can hit, walk, and even play defence.According to tech pundits, Microsoft telemetry reports that only about one third of Surface owners ever use their pens. That’s a real shame. But how is that number going to grow if new owners aren’t given a frictionless opportunity to experience just how far Windows 10’s pen integration has come?
Since the release of the Surface Book, Microsoft's hardware prices have been creeping steadily higher. Worried about falling tablet market share, the company's marketing team has apparently decided that the Surface Pro should be called the “ultimate laptop.” The Surface Pro is not a laptop. It's an expensive tablet without a bundled type cover, prices of which have now soared up to $160.
With “optional” keyboard and pen, the highest end 2017 Surface Pro will set you back just under $3000. And despite the premium price tag, a convertible laptop like the Yoga 720 15 will run circles around the Surface Pro’s dual core i7 for half the price.
Last quarter’s earnings report showed a significant dip in Surface revenue that was blamed on lack of new product in the sales channel. But I’m afraid without more competitive pricing and bundling, the Surface brand will continue to slide and soon be eclipsed by lookalike products from HP, Dell and Lenovo.
And that would be a terrible shame, because the new Surface Pro and Surface Pen are truly a killer combo: the absolute best Surface Pro for artists released to date.
I had hoped to test the i7 model with Iris Plus graphics, but I just couldn’t justify the price: $1599 for 8 GB/256 GB before pen and type cover. The entry level m3 model at $799 before add-ons was just too similar to the specs of my Surface Pro 4, so I opted instead for the $1299 i5 with 8/256 GB.
For its Kaby Lake generation of processors, Intel has rebranded the m5 and m7 processors as Core i5 and i7 respectively. I assumed that the Surface Pro’s fanless i5 models contained these 4.5W processors, so I didn’t expect to see much of a performance boost over my two-year old SP4.
Fortunately, I was dead wrong. The fanless i5 is a 15W Core i5-7300U that smokes every other U-series i5 that I’ve benchmarked.I'm a little late posting this. I was a couple eggnog in when I filled out my redditgifts form so I think all I put as my interests was cats and rum. My secret santa sent me Captain Morgans Private Stock spiced rum and it is delicious! Also found out I love tattoos and included a book about the history and origins of old school traditional pieces. I love it!! I filled it out with my roommate who is obsessed with Hello Kitty so she asked that I request that it have a detailed Sanrio character drawn in it. On the inside of the box was Keroppi! Also alot of bubble wrap which I enjoyed popping as I drank some rum. Best of all he wrote he did it all at work so he is truly a man I can admire. Thank you!!!!!Let's assume that the New York Times was right this week when it asserted that in 2013, "the only issue that truly unites Republicans is a commitment to shrinking the federal government." Even though there's ample evidence that the GOP doesn't actually want to shrink the government, let's nonetheless assume that Republicans are trying to rhetorically brand themselves to the concept of small government, past votes be damned. And let's assume that gerrymandering means the GOP will control at least one house of congress for the remainder of the Obama presidency.
Does that, then, mean the next four years will automatically be mired in stalemate? Not necessarily, if Democrats call Republicans' bluff and use the GOP's small government argument for progressive ends. Indeed, with House Speaker John Boehner showing a penchant for violating the so-called Hastert Rule and allowing transpartisan bills to pass, the "small government" argument could be a perfect instrument for congressional Democrats to pick off just enough Republican votes to pass meaningful legislation in five key areas:
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1. Ending - or at least limiting - the Drug War: To know the Drug War has been a disastrous failure at the policy level, take 10 seconds and look at this animated graph. And it hasn't just been any run-of-the-mill policy failure involving unjust incarcerations, negative health consequences and little success in combating drug addiction - it's also been an extremely expensive Huge Government boondoggle. Yes, depending on how you count it, government has spent somewhere between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion on the Drug War over the last 40 years. According to the conservative Reason magazine, the Drug War now costs about $120 billion a year in direct expenditures. With Republicans showing a willingness to at least entertain questions about America's existing drug policy, the "small government" argument could be the key to ending America's longest war.
2. Reducing the military budget: As recently as last May, Republican leaders were still trying to add money to a defense budget that is already one of the largest in American history. But in just a few months, austerity mania opened up the real possibility that progressives have a chance to achieve their goal of a smaller Pentagon. First, the GOP was split on whether to simply accept the sequestration's Defense Department cuts, and then the GOP officially endorsed those cuts, to the point where senior Republican Sen. John Cornyn is now making the public case that the cuts will not harm America's ability to defend itself.
Cornyn, of course, is absolutely right. Even if the sequestration cuts are fully enacted, the military budget will still be bigger in real dollars than it was throughout much of the Cold War. Thus, unless you want to argue that the nuclear-armed Soviet Union was less of a threat than al Qaeda, or that Ronald Reagan was weak on national security, the numbers mean a Democratic small government argument applied to the Pentagon will not inherently endanger the country.
3. Limiting regressive tax expenditures: Speaking of entitlement programs, economist Jared Bernstein and his colleagues at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities correctly identify tax expenditures - aka spending programs baked into the tax code - as among most regressive Huge Government entitlements out there (and yes, as this CBPP paper shows, that term "entitlement" is a perfect word to describe them). Even tax expenditures that seem progressive like the home mortgage deduction often end up being regressive in practice. They are also incredibly expensive, costing taxpayers more every year than big-ticket items such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that are often labeled "big government." Limiting these tax expenditures, then, is a perfect "small government" crusade.
4. Limiting agriculture subsidies: The conservative Heritage Foundation criticizes them as "America's largest corporate welfare program." Liberal Robert Reich derides them for "go(ing) mostly to big agribusinesses that hardly need them." I'm talking, of course, about agriculture subsidies, which are projected to cost taxpayers at least $46 billion in the next decade. Not only that, they serve to subsidize unhealthy processed foods, which contribute to an obesity crisis that is driving up health care costs in myriad ways. To Republicans interested in reforming entitlements in the name of "small government," Democrats can hold up agriculture subsidies as an agribusiness entitlement program that should be first on the chopping block.
5. Ending ongoing bank bailouts: Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi and other economic observers have expertly documented how an alphabet soup of obscure Federal Reserve programs and so-called Quantitative Easing comprises an ongoing taxpayer bailout of the biggest financial institutions. Though many voted for these bailouts, Republicans nonetheless love talking about how their (supposedly) "small government" ideals (supposedly) makes them hate bailouts. With a few shrewd amendments forcing some floor votes in Congress, Democrats could pretty easily expose whether that's actually true.
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When I appeared on MSNBC's Up with Chris Hayes this weekend, the assembled panel discussed the consequences of using conservative austerity arguments for progressive objectives. There are certainly upsides to the tactic - after all, there is persuasive power in appropriating an opponent's argument for one's own goals. However, there are also downsides - namely, appropriating the GOP's "small government" argument not-so-subtly affirms the destructive idea that "small government" is always a laudable objective, when it often is not.
Regardless of whether you think the tactical upsides outweigh the downsides, the fact that the "small government" argument could right now be deployed so powerfully for progressive goals means that the next four years aren't necessarily a bust. On the contrary, in light of the five aforementioned possibilities, the current posture of the Republican Party, unto itself, does not mean nothing can get done in the next four years. Democrats could make real progress - if they choose to make a progressive case in such a shrewd fashion.
That, though, assumes they want to make that progress in the first place - which is anything but a safe assumption. After all, many Democrats have loyally voted for the drug war, bigger Pentagon budgets, expanded tax expenditures, huge ag subsidies and massive bank bailouts. But if a few more of them stopped casting those kind of votes, now might be a moment of convergence - a unique moment where the GOP's "small government" desperation combines with progressive movement activism to bring about some much-needed change.WayForward Technologies, despite their indie gleam nowadays, has actually been around for quite some time. Founded in 1990, works from the California-based software developer leaned closer towards the edutainment and licensed genres until the turn of the 21st century. In 2002 came a unique Game Boy Color title named Shantae, starring the eponymous half-genie heroine guarding the seaside Scuttle Town. Despite lackluster sales, Shantae became a critical hit; the series has stuck around since then with two more titles under its belt and a fourth game on its way.
Matt Bozon, WayForward's Creative Director and Shantae co-creator alongside his wife Erin, spoke up about Shantae's origins in a recent interview with The Mary Sue. Chris Isaac of TMS asked Bozon why WayForward went ahead with an unapologetically girly female lead, then followed with another question regarding why belly-dancing was made such an important part of her character. Matt responded with how Shantae ultimately came to be, thanks to Erin:
"Shantae was created by my wife, and it began when I asked her what she would make given the opportunity to design a video game character. We were just making conversation. She disappeared, and I found her later working on drawings of Shantae in dance poses and hair whip poses. I asked her a bunch of questions about the character, what was going on in the drawings, what the game might play like. I suppose it matters that I didn’t create Shantae, I was introduced to her, and that makes her feel very real. I developed the cast and world around the character to create a contrast… as though Erin’s character is trapped in a world of my weird humor and imagination. Shantae’s personality has developed a lot since then, but she’s still the same in many ways… sweet, innocent, willful, and also fallible.
"Erin’s idea was to have two main moves. One was whipping with her hair, and the other was dancing to either charm creatures, or transform into them. Music and dance were not big parts of gaming in the early ’90s, so we thought we could introduce something new. Everything was sprite art back then, and it looked very cute – that was our intent anyway. We wanted to make something delightfully different that would surprise and challenge player’s ideas of what could be a “super power”."
Shantae's character and the world around her are also an amalgamation of a number of influences, and her inception was also an answer to gaming's lack of female mascots, as Bozon explained.
"Castlevania, Mega Man, and Zelda inspired her gameplay. But Erin, who designed the character in the early ’90s, was inspired by I Dream of Jeanie. The poses, dance sequences, and hair flip when performing magic had something to do with it. We were at CalArts at the time, and a lot of us were also discovering shows from Japan like Nadia, Ranma ½, and the films of Hayao Miyazaki which were not well known in the US back then. Many of these shows featured female lead characters, and it seemed natural that gaming could stand to have another female mascot in addition to Alisia Dragoon, the Guardian Legend, and Athena! So, there was a lot happening in the world of entertainment, and Shantae was a product of many inspirations!" — Matt Bozon, Creative Director
The interview also touches on the series' future, Bozon's thoughts on Shantae as a fan favorite for the Super Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot, and the impending PlayStation 4 and Xbox One releases for Shantae and the Pirate's Curse.
In addition, Matt noted how the two non-funded chapters from the Kickstarter for Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, "A Dish Served Cold!" and "Clockwork Night!", could be later developed as DLC for the game if there is enough demand.
Source: The Mary SueThis article originally appeared on ModernFarmer.com.
Related Content Are Floating Farms in Our Future?
Tommy Romano never thought he’d be a farmer. On the surface, his professional background seems about as far from agriculture as you can get. He studied Bioastronautics at the University of Colorado Boulder, and after graduating, worked for several aerospace companies in California and Colorado.
Romano’s duties included test engineering, satellite operations, ground station development and operations, control system design and data analysis—in other words, he helped develop ways to help keep humans alive and healthy in outer space. These days, however, he’s using his knowledge of space-habitat design to advance food systems right here on Earth.
So, what do astronauts and arugula have in common? They both need the same things to live.
“Just like humans, plants need nutrients, vitamins, water at the right temperature, and sunlight,” Romano says. “I use my knowledge of controlled environments to maintain the optimum conditions for the plants at all times within the growing environment. We make sure all those parameters are in the right range so the plants can grow.”
Romano’s operation, Infinite Harvest uses similar technology and philosophies to those used on the space station—only on terra firma.
Unlike other vertical farms that use market-ready technology, Romano developed Infinite Harvest’s proprietary building management system from the ground up, using his knowledge of space habitat design. It controls all aspects of the air, water, and lighting systems. “Much like the International Space Station, we use and reuse as many things as possible to minimize waste and increase energy and water efficiencies. Recycling and regenerative systems are highly integrated into our design,” he says. “For example, the heat exhaust waste from one component in the system may be used to heat something else in the facility, rather than using a boiler to specifically create heat. This drives down the energy required and waste produced by the system.”
Just as every aspect of space-station operations are monitored closely by automated systems, so are Infinite Harvest’s leafy greens. “In space, if something starts to fail, or an emergency arises, the computer system will either alert the crew, take some autonomous corrective or safe-ing action, or both,” Romano explains. “Our building management system does the same thing, ensuring continuous operations so that the plants never stop growing.”
By now, you’ve probably heard about vertical farms and the many advantages this way of growing has over open farming. Vertical farming can be done all year long in urban environments with no lulls in food production. Floods, droughts, hail, and pests aren’t issues because everything about the plants’ environment—temperature, light, food, humidity, water—is meticulously controlled. Since there are no pests, there’s no need for pesticides and herbicides, and no harmful runoff. Perhaps most importantly, vertical farming requires a fraction of the arable land and water used in traditional farming—a key factor in Colorado, whose population continues to grow rapidly even as the West continues to experience mega-droughts.
Not everyone is a fan of vertical farming, though. For thousands of years, farming meant getting down and dirty—literally. Some critics say vertical farming just isn’t the “real” thing.
“Many question the nutritional value of hydroponically-grown vegetables because there’s no dirt to provide the required nutrients or micro-organisms,” Romano says. “But just think how the soil nutrient content can vary from one corner of farmland to the other, or from day to day due to rain or water run-off. A controlled system is just that—a system that controls the amount of minerals and nutrients at the right time and amounts throughout the grow cycle of the crop. This gives hydroponic-based systems the potential to grow crops that have more nutrients than soil-based crops.”
At Infinite Harvest’s 5,400 square-foot grow facility in Lakewood, Colorado, Romano oversees a team of ten greenhouse technicians who manage planting, harvesting, packing, and delivery. Baby kale, arugula, microgreens, and two varieties of basil (Thai and Genovese) grow in neatly-stacked trays that tower to the warehouse ceiling. A neon, pinkish-purple hue—LED lights |
Left Party) has lambasted the idea, saying the alert to stockpile enough food for ten days and enough water for five days, "could completely unsettle people".
Many have taken to social media mocking the proposals, posting pictures of empty shelves and looted supermarkets. The hashtag "Hamsterkaufe", or "panic buying" has also been trending on Twitter in Germany.
Germany is currently on high alert after two Islamist attacks and a shooting rampage in Munich by a mentally unstable teenager in July.
Germany's Defence Minister said earlier this month the country was in the "crosshairs of terrorism" and called for the military to train more closely with police in preparation for potential large-scale militant attacks.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe nowThe Duo Is Chasing Perfection In Their Latest Episode
Tale of Us are releasing the fifth edition of their Afterlife podcast. The show debuts spaced out techno tracks, which are the foundation of Tale of Us sets. The podcast is an odyssey through the realm of consciousness, often fleeting. The Berlin duo has perfected their own brand of heady minimalism and it’s slowly but surely taking over the (techno) world.
In the most comprehensive display of the Afterlife sound so far, Tale Of Us compile 12 of the tracks they’ve been playing to great effect over recent months into an impressive and truly singular statement of their sound.
As well is possible from recorded music, these tracks bottle the spirit of the Afterlife events. A mixture of richly accomplished artists and new talents provide a focused and consistently high-quality collection. Label heads Tale Of Us collaborate with Ovend on the mesmerizing ‘Red Sky’, setting the bar for their guests. Acclaimed acts such as Hunter/Game, Mathew Jonson, Recondite and Woo York are amongst a wealth of ability in the likes of Aether, Denis Horvat, Keith Carnal, Per:sona, Black Peters, Darse and Mathame. A body and brain dance through the realm of consciousness.
The compilation is set to release on June 16th on Afterlife Records.
01. Aether “Beyond The Lights”
02. Tale Of Us & Ovend Red Sky
03. Denis Horvat “Bruto
04. Keith Carnal – Cloudy Monday
05. Per:sona “393”
06. Recondite “Hundred1”
07. Black Peters “Avenue B”
08. Mathew Jonson “The Prophet”
09. Darse “Horus”
10. Mathame “Timeshift”
11. Hunter/Game “Illusion”
12. Woo York “Hypernova”
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Ayika clung tightly to both Mama Mua and Mizumi as she struggled to maintain her footing on this magically propelled raft of ice crashing and skimming its way down a winding stream through grassy hills and fields of the Inner Ring. Mizumi was mostly hanging from her arms as she repeatedly failed to maintain her grip and balance on the frozen conveyance Mua's waterbending had created. They raced by another huge and sprawling mansion glowing orange amid dark rolling fields under the stars, and at that moment they heard a howl in the distance behind them. The Mask had noticed Mua's subterfuge of the misleading fog trail. Fortunately, this waterway took them close enough to the tramway station that they were able to leap off and run the rest of the distance to the cavernous entrance.
The tram station attendants were a little shaken up by the sudden appearance of three foreign women, one of them looking rather like she had been thrown through a door and then rolled across five meters of stone flagging. However, Mizumi flashed her gold passport and launched into a forceful and concise explanation of their need to flee from what was happening at Erliao's party. It was either her force of will that convinced the attendants or the fact that she would occasionally slip into the Fire Nation language that led them to believe this issue was more political than they were being paid for. Either way the three women were allowed onto the tram now scheduled to depart where they collapsed in the seats of the Noble's Car.
But they were not leaving. The tram still sat in its track in the middle of the vast marble station. Ayika stuck her head out the window to scream at the earthbender transportation adepts in her most biting mix of Middle Ring and Harbor Town dialects. The earth bender who leaned around from his perch behind the tram might still have ignored this curious tribal girl if her complaints had not been punctuated by a commotion outside the tall station doors that ended with two armored guards sliding across the smooth marble floor like metal bottomed pucks. The Purple Mask was standing in the doorway and against the dark night behind him there was the suggestion of vaporous wings boiling off his back. The adepts decided that it was in fact time to depart, suddenly in complete agreement with the plan to get down to the other side of a large wall.
The Mask swiveled his head around as if sniffing the air but for once Ayika was glad that everything in the Inner Ring was built on such as preposterous scale. By the time the Mask had run a quarter of the distance across the station floor the tram was sinking down to descend through the transport tunnel and more off duty earthbender adepts were running out to intercept his path. Then there was only unlighted stone outside the cabin's windows and Ayika, Mizumi, and Mua sank down into their seats with relief as the tram sank too.
Mizumi was the least relaxed. "Do you not think he will be able to follow us down this tunnel?"
Ayika waved her hand feebly. "Relax, these points are some of the most defended parts of the walls. Even a possessed man like that would not be able to fight through half the army."
They both turned at the sound of a soft thud. Mua slammed her fist into her thigh again. She was trembling and not just from the amount of waterbending power she had exerted. "It does not make sense! That's not how possession works! If a driftin spirit begins to creep in then it upsets the balance of the mind or the health of the body as its influence washes through. To willingly welcome in a spirit to ones body is the height of the shaman's art but even then the shaman receives only wisdom or a very specific aspect of the spirit's authority. I have seen shaman warriors back home! They do not fight like that! They do not lose their human eyes! What are those masks!?"
The one other occupant of their car, a neatly dressed man in the very front row of seats, gripped his bag tightly and scooted as close to the wall as his seat would allow. The three women continued to ignore him.
Ayika felt just as lost and confused but Mizumi was looking at her expectantly so she tried to concentrate. "I think there are two forces at work here, the masks and the spirit world disruption. Gold Toad told us that there was an anchor or something out there and that is what must be causing this change. That is the mask that Ma'er presented to Lizhen, and what the Masks killed him to steal back. Whatever that is it is what's drawing the spirit world close and somehow Ma'er's assistant, Tian, is hiding out in the city with it. Now the toad spirit told us that you have spent nearly all your spirit world favors, Mua, and I of course have no credit but there has to be some way we can find it and stop these possessions or at least weaken them! Even if it means spending your last favor."
Up in the front of the car their fellow passenger was trying very hard to not be involved in any of their business. From an outside perspective this attempt looked like hunching over in his seat while shivering.
"The Gold toad Told you about that favor?" Mama Mua was indignant with an intensity that bordered on horror.
Mizumi did not appreciate that reaction. "Of all this information you did not know, that is what you take away from that speech?! Woman, what are your priorities?!"
The rumbling motion of the tram changed pitch as their downward slide halted and the earthbenders kicked them off onto the path the normal elevated course out over the Middle Ring. In many ways the night was just as dark outside the wall as it was within but the dim glow of the festival candles and oil-fed street lamps from below was comforting.
Muzmi looked out the window-space back the way they had came. "Well, I can say that I had never thought I would look on those absurd walls with fondness but for once I am very grateful. The elevation of the Inner Ring must be at least one hundred...What is happening down there?"
Ayika jumped up to her side. She put her face right up against the window and shielded her eyes against both the interior light and the exterior wind. She saw where Mizumi was looking. "Oh, that's the entrance to the Jade Stairs. You know, the way to walk up to the Inner Ring. I'm not sure who actually uses that, but there must be some strong licensed porters who make their living...Wait, what is that?"
The commotion that had drawn Mizumi's attention made its self known. The little lights in the distance were rushing around out of the dark mouth of the stair entrance in a crazy fashion; glowing ants spilling forth from a crack in the sidewalk. In fact they seemed to be chasing something. Something that was moving in the direction of the elevated tram line. Ayika had a sinking feeling that she knew what that something was.
"Mama Mua? I think we'll be having a problem pretty soon. You said the possessed were drawn to shamans?" The earthbending powered tram traveled quickly, but it stopped at stations Even if their earthbender would prefer not to. Ayika had seen those Masks move faster than any normal human ever could. To someone like that the track-line far above the streets would be just another road.
Mizumi had made the same realization. "Er, perhaps Mua can form those fogs again? Or...no, we are on a track, it would not do much to hide our path. But we must do something!"
Ayika kneeled backwards on the tram seat and looked Mama Mua in the eyes, though the woman declined to meet her stare. "That man may have come to the Inner Ring to kill Erliao but I do not think whatever man made those plans is still in control. When I first heard the Masks talking among themselves they were most concerned with avoiding attention and capture. What we have seen tonight does not match that. This...thing, did not feel like a man at all. It feels alien. This spirit does not care about the conspiracy it was brought in to aid." Mua was still looking away, her face twisted in the turmoil of her own internal thoughts. Ayika switched seats so she could turn around to face the shaman directly. "You still have one favor owed by the spirit world."
That got Mua's attention. Her head snapped up, smooth dark cheeks already darkening further with bruises from her first encounter with the Purple Mask.
It was obvious the woman's first instinct was outright refusal. She had set out tonight not expecting to survive and now that Erliao was dead, even if by another's hand the specifics of escaping were looking like an exceedingly onerous task. The fact that Ayika was asking her to expend even more in pursuit of that forgotten hope for survival caused a flash of anger. Mizumi came over and sat backwards beside Ayika to add her hard stare to the ocular assault, just as down behind the back of the seat her hand sought Ayika's and squeezed reassurance.
Neither of the girls could be sure exactly why but Mua's anger abruptly softened. The woman smiled darkly as she turned to look out the window into the nighttime landscape of lights that streamed along below them.
Her voice was slow and lazy, absent of all the stress that had been boiling within her till now. "Now that the word of Erliao's murder has gotten out guards'll be closing the gates between the rings. Not that this'd stop me but Ah doubt that thing coming up behind us will give me the chance to show ya." She slowly breathed out. "Ahh, that favor. You don't know what Ah did to earn that. What I paid."
"Nia, please." Ayika said, projecting out with every bit of force her personality could muster. She imagined she could feel energy flowing up from where Mizumi's palm grasped hers. They were racing along on the tramway high above the ground but in this moment of desperation Ayika felt rooted down to the bones of the earth. The Nine-Step-Shadow would not complete its prophecy tonight. She would not let it, even if she had to fight it off with her bare fists.
The tram was just beginning to slow in approach to the first Middle Ring Station but Mua stood up so quickly that Ayika and Mizumi both jerked back in surprise. Mua's colorful festival dress was torn and dirtied but somehow it all still seemed to be part of the design. Even her bruises and bloody scrapes seemed drawn on by the designer's brush as the classical depiction of a character out of legend. She reached up and one graceful brown hand plucked off her beaded blue skull mask.
"Ah well, the dead miser has as much as the spendthrift. And besides, Ah've always wanted to see this one again." Mua stretched out one hand towards them. Ayika stood up in expectation of some partnership among shamans but Mua instead gently grasped at Mizumi's wrist. Mizumi blinked in surprise as Mua's fingers began to inspect the gold bracelet she was wearing.
"This's real?"
"Er, yes? That is to say, I believe that the gold is alloyed with other metals for improved hard, but I do not know why..."
"That'll do."
Mizumi suppressed a yelp as Mua was suddenly holding up the bracelet in front of her face. Ayika had to raise her eyebrows in respect. That lift had been so smooth and quick that even the best street-thief would be impressed. Mua was not concerned with their reaction. Nor did she seem concerned with the otherworldly roar which faintly echoed behind them and caused the tram to lurch slightly as their earthbender missed a step of his magical propulsion technique. Mizumi, unaccustomed to the city tramway, almost fell off her seat at the sudden shaking but the two Water Tribe women took the swaying up into their bodies and remained planted securely.
In another flourish Mua summoned forth a tiny steel knife in her other hand, such as for cutting thread. In a flourish she nicked the side of her wrist and then touched the gold bracelet to the small cut. "Blood and gold," Mua said. "That's about right for a god of law, isn't it? Could probably call for less but time's a bit of a factor even if it is the night of the festival. Girl," she addressed Ayika without looking at her while she held the red stained jewelry out in front of her in the middle of the tram's central isle. "You'll assist. Just add your callin' to mine."
It occurred to Ayika that Mua had enough not yet scabbed abrasions on her skin to spare any amount of blood without the involvement of a knife but now was not the time to criticize her as overly dramatic. Ayika clambered around Mizumi to stand with Mua in the center aisle of the tram. "What spirit are we calling? Shouldn't I know for my assistance to work?"
Mua's eyes were already closed as she concentrated on something deep within herself. Outside, Ayika imagined she could already hear the footsteps of the possessed Purple Mask in slavering pursuit.
"You have me spending my last resource, girl. We're summoning Blind Dog Lord."
The tram came to a halt at its first Middle Ring destination and the poor man stuck in the front of the Noble's car raced out the door the second a suddenly startled station attendant opened it. That same attendant peeked inside the car at the moment all the lamps in the station flickered slightly in unison. The attendant quickly snatched back his head and left alone the three foreign women performing a mysterious ritual. Mizumi yelled after him and then leaned out the window to hold a shouted conversation with the earthbender adept whose magic drove the tram. Fortunately, having seen what was chasing them was ample motivation for him to agree with a desire for speed.
Ayika had her eyes held closed as she heard the tram doors open and their fellow passenger dart out. The she heard Mizumi yell one last thing and the tram began to rumble again with the first hints of motion. Ayika was trying to recapture the feeling of the spirit world drawing close but she could not shake off her knowledge of the Purple Mask racing towards them to crush their heads in its otherworldly strength. Then she heard another someone moving around to descend from the upper deck of the tram car and opened her eyes as she remembered that Ba Sing Se tram cars did not have an upper deck. Never the less, this one now did.
Something about the quality of the light in here had changed and now by its unreal illumination a narrow wooden staircase ran up the back wall of the Noble's Car through a suddenly existent gap in the ceiling. Slow and steady footsteps above them now made their way towards it. Mizumi jumped to her feet, her hand shooting up inside her sleeve again before she recognized that whatever was happening here was beyond any solution that a knife could provide. But at a loss for anything else to do she smoothly stepped up to just behind Ayika and centered her balance as if prepared to attack all the same. Ayika noticed that she could on longer make out the passing station outside the tram windows. A darkened blurriness lit by dim smears of lantern-light had now filled each gap and they seemed to have somehow drifted out of sync with the rest of the world.
Mua's eyes were still closed as she stood with her back to the stairs, hands gripped tightly to the blood smeared gold bracelet, her lips moving faintly in silent whispers. Then a foot came down on the top of the phantom steps with a creak. Ayika stepped backwards and bumped into immobile Mizumi as there was another creak and black robes slowly flowed down the stairs, swaying forward with each slow and heavy step. The ceiling of the tram was eight feet above the floor and as this apparition descended, slowly revealing a broad golden belt set with a jade buckle, it was clear that it would occupy every bit of that space. It was not until it took the last step onto the floor that Mua turned to face the spirit Blind Dog Lord.
Ayika's Grandma Aka had told her stories of Blind Dog Lord. Some gods were made by the ministers, they were noble men chosen to be empowered with ritual offerings after their deaths. Some were natural formations of powerful belief that created a mold for some formless spirit to flow into and embody. Others were spirits who had nominated themselves and possessed the strength to uphold their claim. Blind Dog Lord was all of these or something else entirely. His robes were something like those of a government official but in some ancient fashion. The sleeves and hems were long enough to completely hide the body that wore them. The purpose of this concealment was made mysterious by the fact that his head and neck emerged unmasked as that of an aged canine who's notched ears brushed the ceiling, grey, emaciated, and with dry yawning sockets where eyes should be. But this sight was not pitiful as it might seem, instead authority and power roiled off the spirit with such intensity that Ayika felt her knees buckle involuntarily in a bone-rooted instinct to drop in genuflection.
Blind Dog Lord opened his mouth with its single yellow fang and each woman felt some small portion of air drawn up out of their lungs. He took a single step forward until he was looking straight down at the Water Tribe shaman.
The voice rolled out like the heavy collapse of distant mountains. "Nia Mua of the Water Nation, born in Cloudy Valley under Jade Dragon Mountain. Your request for audience is granted. Speak now of your petition and know that it is heard."
Before this looming spirit of black, gold and jade, Mua in her ripped dress of colorful ruffled sashes over bloody brown skin looked like a spirit herself. Both were equally removed from the normality of this city. The tram vibrated with the burst of acceleration from each magic motion the worried adept executed, oblivious to what was going on in the car. Then Mua gave a single soft bark of a laugh.
"I suppose in your mind just showin up makes us even. With all Ah sacrificed to earn that. I suppose Ah could've expected."
The spirit gave no sign of responding to the underlying bitterness. He said, "Cost is counted. Service is met with recompense. Even now."
Ayika bit the inside of her lip, recognizing the misdirected focus on Mua's face. So she herself spoke up.
"Mama Mua, we've kind of got a time pressure moving in! Initiate the exchange!" She suddenly remembered her manners. "Um, my Lord Spirit."
There was no motion in Blind Dog Lord's form but Ayika felt attention suddenly press down on her like the full weight of the Outer Wall. Behind her Mizumi felt it too and wished that she could somehow interpose herself.
The spirit spoke again. "I know what pursues you. None will interrupt."
Mua sighed, "Blind Dog Lord, I request that you intercede to protect us from those spirits who are chasing us with the bodies of their possessed hunan allies."
Suddenly, Ayika interrupted. "No!"
Mua spun around in confusion at Ayika's outburst. "What? This was your idea!"
"No, I mean I..." Ayika thought quickly. This was the most powerful spirit she was ever likely to meet face to face and they were requesting a service. There had to be a way to solve more than just one of their problems. The Purple Mask was coming but there were also other Masks out there doing something terrible to the connection with the spirit world and Nine-Step-Shadow was still drawing closer to one of the three of them. She actually had a chance to fix things. If only she could find a way to master the words.
Ayika struggled to make her clumsy mouth obey her racing brain. "We request that... you ensure that...All the spirits who...choose or are forced to follow we three here before you...with ill intent...be banished from influencing this world or have their power reduced to the point of impotence!"
Her hands were shaking and her armpits felt damp with the burst of mental exertion she had just went through but Ayika was triumphant. She did not think she had ever felt her brain work faster before in her life. She did not think she could safely fit more into a single request without twisting the rules of language and grammar beyond their breaking point. Still, all the stories of wishes gone poorly her grandmother had ever told her were swimming through her head mocking her for her confidence.
Mua stared at Ayika in confusion before turning back to the spirit with a shrug. "Sure, what the girl said. That."
Blind Dog Lord straightened up, somehow now even taller than the tram car ought to allow yet still comfortably fitting inside. Then he answered.
"No."
"What?!" Mua snapped. "After all Ah paid to...!"
The spirit held up one sleeve-covered hand. "A wise administrator does not interfere in what is written. As much as I may disapprove, spells of life and death are being cast over this, my sliver of the city and it is not my place to interrupt a ritual before its completion. Such an operation is years in the making and ten thousand minds are its components even though they do not know it. I too have superiors. I too have debts."
Ayika was at a loss. The prayed for rope had just been yanked back from the grasp of the drowning sailor. "But, but...if you don't..." Nine-Step-Shadow was a spirit of death and it was still drawing closer. At Erliao's mansion it had only been a few paces away. And if it was not foretelling Mua's death then it could...
Blind Dog Lord interrupted. "But I will gladly comply with the intent of the original request." Those withered spectral lips tucked back in what might have been a canine smile. "Priest Nia Mua, I lend you a portion of my power. My authority, respected as it is within this small section of the city, may not be able to halt the great machinations but local festivals are well within the purview of my court. The rules of rituals are precise and exacting, and harsh on those who break them but the rules of the Festival of Veils are...looser. Tonight it is acceptable that the visiting spirits find their subsidized crossings canceled even before the sun rises. That will remove the pursuing threat you summoned me to resolve."
With that final word the spirit suddenly moved. Before Ayika or Mizumi could react the spirit's sleeve drew back and something dark shot forward into the center of Mua's chest. Mizumi pushed forward but Ayika held her back as she realized that the spirit's arm had not pierced Mua's shuddering body but instead had disappeared inside it with a cloud of hazy light at the border between them. The rest of Blind Dog Lord's looming body slowly began to fade away, becoming nothing more than a transparent shadow rising before the woman until it vanished entirely. The pervasive touch of the spirit world seemed to retreat and lead them back to the realm of normality.
Ayika reached out towards the shaman's arm.
"Mama Mua, are you...?"
Mua spun round but her eyes did not see them. In fact they began to roll up into her head. She was looking at something far beyond the little rows of seats in this tram car. Then her hands shot up and she began to make the smooth sinuous motions of waterbending. However, they were in a dry train in an elevated stone station so nothing happened. Outside the now unshadowed windows Ayika could see the station guards frowning at them and waving the tram's earthbender adept back to his driver position at the rear of the car. After a moment the tram resumed its motion and they slowly began to rumble of the station.
"That is...unsettling," Mizumi said looking at Mua's performance. She sounded as if she could not remember an appropriately strong word to describe this behavior. "At least the lights are back to normal. I mean that I can see outside the tram again now and...oh."
There was the sound of yells from outside them. Ayika ran to the side of the car and suck her torso out the window to look back at the elevated stone track slicing across the city under the shadow of the gibbous moon. Light from festival streets bled up at allowed Ayika to pick out the approaching shadow. The Purple Mask had finally caught up to its prey and he dashed forward with a screeching roar. Ayika heard their adept yell something not fit for the mouth of a government employee and the tram blew through the next Middle Ring station without slowing down in the slightest. By now the glowing shadow that clung to the Mask human host were gaining a distinct outline. The purple edges of filmy wings wavered into sight as the possessed man darted and pushed past terrified station guards in pursuit of the departing tram.
Ayika yelled back inside the car. "The Mask is still here! Mua, you have to get him to...!"
Mizumi interrupted. "That is not what I was talking about. I think she is already addressing the problem."
Ayika had trouble hearing Mizumi exactly over the rumble of the tram wheels from her position half outside the car. "What are you...Oh."
The corner of her eye noticed what was coming just as it spilled up over the edge of the open-walled tram station. It was fog, massive, endless waves of thick white vapor rising from the streets and alleys below. Then Ayika spun around to look out across the city and saw it was everywhere. As far as she could see across the Middle Ring, roofs were vanishing like sinking ships beneath the slow undulations of an airy sea that swallowed even the shining lights of the festival. Sheets of white mist blended with the festival lights to blanket the city in a shining golden haze. Then the fog thickened and the light faded. The endless web of lantern-strung streets melted away into the depths as the white finally rose up to swallow the tram tracks themselves.
Just before the mists closed over them Ayika turned back to see the Purple Mask encounter a drift of the vapor slowly dancing his way. As the mist touched him he suddenly thrashed and collapsed forward as the glowing spirit shadow disappeared from around him. Ayika's last sight was three station guards leaping on the now prone man's back. Then they were lost in a dark sea as in the very edge of hearing there was a faint sound that might have been the echoing howl of a dog.
Ayika pulled herself back into the car trusting that the earthbender adept could both follow a track and was as interested as getting to the next station as they were.
"Well that...worked?"
She looked back at Mizumi who was still regarding the swaying motions of Mama Mua with a level of suspicion that indicated those knives in her sleeves could reappear on less than a second's notice. Ayika said, "Is she out of it yet?"
Mizumi frowned and leaned a little closer. "I do not think..."
Mua coughed loudly and Mizumi jerked backwards barely halting herself before she slashed out with the blade that sure enough was now clutched in her fist. For her part, Mua was holding onto a seat-back for support as she continued to cough. When she finally straightened up she did not pay any attention to Mizumi's knife or the steady stream of muttered profanity in the Islander language. Instead she turned around until she found Ayika.
"That...is not pleasant."
"And what was it?"
Mua shrugged her shoulders, a gesture which a distant part of Ayika's brain noted made her wide cut top briefly slide even lower down her chest before returning to its previous post.
"Blind Dog Lord was sending a message. But for doing stuff effectively in the material world even spirits like him need some material conduit. He decided to use my waterbending. Bending acts a bit odd when it interacts with spirits." Here she looked out the window, such as it was. They were still rushing along but there might as well have been a sheet hanging over the portal. "Even stodgy old spirits like him tend to be flamboyant when they get about it."
Mizumi said, "All right. I may not understand spiritual matters but we seem to have reached some resolution there so we should probably look to our other problems. I can only assume that we have drawn attention tonight. City law enforcement attention, and more than we would like. The earthbender operating this tram will probably try to have us arrested at the next station on general suspicion. We should take this time to prepare our alibis. After all, despite our best efforts I do not think we have actually done anything against the local law. Well, Mua tried to kill a minister but the victim was murdered by someone else so that will be hard to prove the attempt happened, us being the only witnesses." Mizumi did not sound as if she was even convincing herself.
Mua's coughing now turned into hoarse laughter. "Alibis? Law? They've not got us chained yet, girl. I'm a waterbender surrounded by a sea of fog. No one's catchin us. That is, if ya two are up to boltin once we hit the next station."
Mizumi's gold mask shifted in the suggestion that she had raised an eyebrow to indicate that she saw Mua was bruised black, blue, and looking uncertain about keeping her own knees under her while the other two women were miraculously unscathed. Silently Ayika had to agree. If Mua was planning to continue bending then Ayika and Mizumi would be carrying her before too long.
With skeptical inhalation Mizumi continued, "That still leaves the matter of the ring gates. I understand protocol is to close them in response to crisis. You yourself told us that. The murder of a minister and the subsequent rampage of a possessed man in a mask seems to me to be a crisis."
Mua waved her hand to dismiss these worries. "Relax. I also told ya that closed gates mean nothin to me. I've got mah own ways around this city."
...In Screenwriting, the truth matters…
Today we’re going to talk about The Truth. Not this sort of truth. Or this. Or even this.
We’re going to talk about the kind of screenwriting truth that connected six out of the nine Best Picture nominees in the 2014 Oscars. The kind that will in all likelihood connect a similar percentage next year – I’m looking at you Mr. Turner, The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything, Foxcatcher, Unbroken, American Sniper, Selma and Wild. And, in a both self-aggrandising and self-promoting link, the kind of truth that also informs my new film Kajaki.
It can be based on, inspired by, or from a. It can even be A or The. Audiences go crazy for them, critics take them disproportionally seriously and, probably for both those reasons, producers and commissioners and broadcasters seem to push them into production more readily than they might.
We’re talking about the True Story kind of truth.
It’s a sub-genre of films that Venn diagrams together everything from thriller to horror to comedy to (most commonly) drama. One which has always been popular but seems to be enjoying a resurgence (take a look at this long list here from just the last five years) as the aforementioned producers, commissioners and broadcasters maybe realise that Extraordinary True Stories are a better – and often cheaper – bet than expensive-to-option books and plays, let alone, God forbid, original ideas.
But it’s a curious beast, the True Story movie. It’s not a documentary. It’s not a drama-doc with low-fi reconstructions and objective analysis. It is a full-on, scripted, performed, edited, lusciously soundtracked and emotionally manipulative drama. The same as any other kind of crafted drama. So where’s the truth in that?
Jonathan Dean wrote an interesting article in last weekend’s Sunday Times (paywall) where he made the point that real lives are not neat and structured, in the way that films demand them to be. So any attempts to impose ‘resolution’ or ‘lessons’ on biopics or stories based on true events are doomed to end in contrivance, he argued. You may as well just make it up.
There is something in this, but it isn’t the whole story. If you twist the biography to suit the conventions of genre / demands of an audience / rules of dramatic structure to the point where it becomes unrecognisable, or disrespectful, or indeed absurd, then yes, you probably should have just made it up. Or you were just going about it the wrong way. David Ayer was recently spending a lot of time justifying his “based-on-a-true-story” script of U-571 while promoting his not-based-on-a-true-story new movie Fury, and has apparently now learned to tell the difference between the two.
Lessons learnt…
But I think we do learn lessons in our own lives. And we do have resolution. After the occasional exceptional incident or set of circumstances we might step back and reflect upon how they may have changed us, and we take stock, and we move on. And we’ll probably then relate both the incident and the lesson to those around us in the form of ‘you’ll never believe what happened to me last week…’ And of course that is what storytelling is, and does. So true can be dramatic.
And the ‘you’ll never believe’ bit is probably the key to why true stories can and do and should be allowed to work as drama. Because they are true, and not made up, audiences load them with more significance. They are truly stranger than fiction, more compelling than fiction. BETTER than fiction.
Which brings us back to my movie. I mentioned in my last post that, having set out looking for events to inform a fictional British war movie, we hit up on the events at the Kajaki Dam on September 6, 2006. And we soon realised that the true events of this horrific day made for much better drama than anything we could make up.
The reasons for this are manifold. For one thing, it actually happened (see above for why that is a good thing). For another, there were enough separate incidents during the day itself (no spoilers here) that the drama kept developing, and kept changing shape, in the way that film structure demands. So there was little or no need for invention.
But it went beyond that. The more we looked, the more interesting, odd details and moments and lines we found, which we really could not have made up and which added to the warts-and-all realism we found so captivating. We broke various screenwriting rules to accommodate this. There is no classic hero’s journey here. The first act does not function as first acts classically do. There are probably too many characters. But all of these rules were worth breaking for the incremental truth quotient they delivered. Real is not neat, as Dean observed. But drama doesn’t need to be, either. That’s the line you have to tread.
And most importantly, we put in the hours to talk to everyone involved. I mean everyone, and I mean hours. Two, three or four hours spent with each person who was in that minefield. In the pub, or in their front rooms. Surrounded by photos of their wives and children (occasionally by their actual wives and actual children). Hearing them talk. Hearing the way they talked. Learning what was important to them, during and after the incident. Getting to know them. Seeing them.
To character biog, or not?
One of the screenwriting ‘tools’ I have never embraced is the old character biog thing. A few hundred words of back story and motivation for each character. It always felt forced to me.
Well this was the real thing. This was hours and hours of first-person character biogs, and let me tell you it was worth it. From every meeting the director and I came back with our pockets stuffed with gems of dialogue, of incident and insight, and it all went in. Every pass of the script made it better and tighter and |
Join me in the fight to turn the tables and do whatever it takes to take back your privacy.
Help spread the word! Share Tweet 31k shares on Facebook shares on FacebookIn response to the establishment media’s contrived ‘fake news’ crisis designed to marginalise independent and alternative media sources of news and analysis, 21WIRE is running its own #FakeNewsWeek awareness campaign, where each day our editorial team at 21st Century Wire will feature media critiques and analysis of mainstream corporate media coverage of current events – exposing the government and the mainstream media as the real purveyors of ‘fake news’ throughout modern history…
Understanding the complex relationships that make up human endeavors permeates every aspect of society and politics. The ability to be informed about events is a basic motivation to search out news about what is exactly happening in the world we all live in.
Journalism purports to report the first draft of history. In practice, the press and media coverage is systemically bereft of relevant facts and completely void of objectivity. The currency of the realm is trust for all journalists. Their collective credibility is bankrupt for a very simple reason; their newscasts are based upon lies, newspeak and intentional deception.
Carlin Romano in We Need ‘Philosophy of Journalism’, asks an essential question that is not at all addressed by the Fourth Estate: “How can it be that journalism and philosophy, the two humanistic intellectual activities that most boldly (and some think obnoxiously) vaunt their primary devotion to truth, are barely on speaking terms?”
Essentially, every component of the mainstream media multiplex is foremost a business. The business model is to operate under the aegis of monopolies. Even a casual observation of the interlocking ownership of big media must acknowledge that the concentration of likeminded Oligopolists are in unison to construct a consortium of predisposed narratives that has nothing to do with seeking the truth.
When the term Pressitude is used to characterize the profession, the uninformed or limited literate news consumers often find comfort in turning on their network disinformation program. Those who take pride in obtaining their news from ‘papers of record’ like the New York Times and the Washington Post rely upon a different motivation. Their aversion to any source that contradicts the establishment worldview is so painful to consider that they adopt a feeble rationalization for self-preservation, which demands rejection of any argument, verifiable facts or documented evidence that challenges their scripted storyline of reality.
The example of Sharyl Attkisson, and Judith Miller, have been treated differently by their own employers. The first demonstrating courageous investigative reporting; whereas the second produced a fabricated account that deceived the public about nonexistent WMDs in Iraq. Attkisson was ostracized, while Miller is now a FOX News contributor.
Miller’s Pulitzer Prize, awarded while employed by the NYT – is no badge of honor. The term “Yellow Journalism” is most closely associated with Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. Their sensational duelling newspapers and extra editions shared the “Fake News” prototype during the late 19th century and early 20th century. What once was conveyed by a cartoon image is now a 24/7 cable news cycle. Granted, the 21st century is different, but the spin and outright lies follow the same pattern of misinformation. Deception, falsification and distortion are absorbed as nonchalantly as a My Pillow advertisement that inundates the propaganda that masquerades as news.
The orthodox version of American media journalism was crafted under the guidance of William S. Paley of CBS, setting the highest standard for news reporting at that time. Names like Edward R. Murrow, Elmer Davis, William L. Shirer, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith and Eric Sevareid are icons in the industry. For those who contend that this era invented “The most trusted man in America” Walter Cronkite, one must not forget that the broadcast news division ran budget deficits, while the parent network was most profitable.
Yet for all the celebrated accolades that CBS News coveted, the underlying message behind the script was Edward Bernays’ propaganda. Fast forward to the internet age and you find that these one-time news bureaus no longer control their monopoly over the news cycle.
Immediacy in information dissemination no longer guarantees accuracy in the report anymore than corporatist editing ensures the believability of the popularly accepted viewpoint. Nevertheless, the predominant originator of “Fake News” comes from a far more sinister source; government brainwashing. Indeed, at the very core of vast news media apparatus are state-sponsored operatives and embeds. Any pretense that there is any independence within establishment media outlets is a symptom of the chronic idiocy within the popular culture. Inserting the government fake news version, using unreliable sources to shape an echo chamber of official fiction is the paradigm for mass indoctrination. Controlling gatekeepers to filter out any conflicting accounts uses both covert and overt censorship. The flagship news purveyors devote their resources to discredit genuine freelance reporting from any ideological perspectives. Mainstream Media (MSM) has the mission to smear any alternative news source and label them as disrepute journalists.
The American Press Institute states that Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth. Then refines this criterion by adding conditionality to the standard: “Journalism does not pursue truth in an absolute or philosophical sense, but in a capacity that is more down to earth.”
By inserting a subjective value element, any reasonable expectation that the work product is trustworthy is suspect. It becomes the task of the reader or viewer to critically analyze the underlying bias and intention to inculcate the culture. When Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “The medium is the message,” he was foreseeing the extent of the newspeak affixed within the medium was not fully appreciated.
Corporations select journalists for their adherence to nihilism in reporting. The MSM’s denial of objective facts and practicing deception by generating actual fake news has produced generations of naïve, ill-informed and confused souls – placing a purdah veil over the heads of trendy clones, fostering the shearing of the sheeple society.
Escaping this planet of press corps apes requires a withdrawal from the sophism. The coordinated accusations of “Fake News” attacks by the dinosaur media upon autonomous internet reporting is a sure sign that suppressing truth to power is the only storyline that matters to these secular relativists and muckraking crusaders to maintain their stranglehold on headline sound bites.
The selection agenda which determines what constitutes news is an editorial function that bears witness to the parameters for public conditioning. All other reporting is declared as ‘conspiracy theory.’ Even a casual assessment of the foreign press provides a contrast to the perception spin machine from K Street or Madison Avenue. As the monopoly media manipulation resorts to their faux news narrative, astute observers understand that their broadcast lies are the real Fake News.
***
Author SARTRE is a special contributor to 21st Century Wire. Learn more about his writing and join-in on more forum discussions at BATR.Story highlights Trump took to Twitter Tuesday evening to once again deride US intelligence agencies
It's his latest attempt to undermine their conclusion that Russia hacked Democratic groups
Washington (CNN) President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter Tuesday evening to deride the US intelligence agencies due to brief him on alleged Russian hacking of American political groups.
The "Intelligence" briefing on so-called "Russian hacking" was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017
It was his latest attack on a key body he will rely on as commander in chief and again put him at odds with the agencies' unanimous conclusion that Russia hacked Democratic Party groups and individuals to interfere in the US presidential election.
Trump suggested that intelligence officials postponed an " 'intelligence' briefing on so-called 'Russian hacking' " that they were set to deliver to him this week because they might need more time "to build a case." He called the alleged delay "very strange."
Trump tweeted Wednesday, "Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta' - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!"
Julian Assange said "a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta" - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017
Trump said last week that he would receive an intelligence briefing on the Russian breaches this week and suggested it would come early on, telling reporters on New Year's Eve that they would know more about the subject "Tuesday or Wednesday."
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Download Warranty FormFBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and his wife, Dr. Jill McCabe. (fellowshipofminds.com)
(CNSNews.com) -- Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit today on behalf of retired FBI Special Agent Jeffrey A. Danik, seeking records on FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and political donations made in 2015 to McCabe's wife by groups overseen by Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Danik worked for the FBI for nearly 30 years.
As Judicial Watch explained in a press release, "In 2015, a political action committee run by McAuliffe, a close friend and political supporter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, donated nearly $500,000 to Jill McCabe, wife of [Andrew] McCabe, who was then running for the Virginia State Senate."
"Also, the Virginia Democratic Party, over which McAuliffe had significant influence, donated an additional $207,788 to the Jill McCabe campaign," stated Judicial Watch. "In July 2015, Andrew McCabe was in charge of the FBI’s Washington, D.C., field office, which provided personnel resources to the [Hillary] Clinton email probe."
The FOIA lawsuit (Jeffrey A. Danik vs. U.S. Department of Justice), filed in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, is seeking records about Andrew McCabe's alleged "conflicts of interest" regarding his wife's (Dr. Jill McCabe's) political campaign, "and McCabe's reporting to the FBI of any job interviews or offers," said Judicial Watch.
The FOIA seeks any text messages and emails of FBI Deputy Director McCabe containing the following: “Dr. Jill McCabe,” “Jill,” “Common Good VA,” “Terry McAuliffe,” “Clinton,” “Virginia Democratic Party,” “Democrat,” “Conflict,” “Senate,” “Virginia Senate,” “Until I return,” “Paris,” “France,” “Campaign,” “Run,” “Political,” “Wife,” “Donation,” “OGC,” Email,” or “New York Times.”
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said, “We’re honored to help Mr. Danik hold accountable the FBI—the agency he served for decades. We believe Mr. McCabe’s text messages and emails will be particularly enlightening to the public seeking answers about the [Hillary] Clinton email debacle.”
(Screenshot: WTKR-TV)
Danik said, “I am saddened by how the FBI’s reputation has been tarnished by the poor judgement and ethics of its leadership. I know I’m not the only retired (or serving) FBI special agent who is concerned about Mr. McCabe’s conflicts of interest on the Clinton email matter."
"The agency seems to be illegally hiding records about this scandal," said Danik, "which is why I’m heading to court with Judicial Watch.”As a sixth grader, I went to a big Christian summer camp where the speaker said to thousands of us, “Hi, my name is Dave and I’ll be your speaker this week. I came with Lauren, my smoking hot wife.”
At the time, I accepted this as fact. “That’s Dave and he has a smoking hot wife. And he’s going to tell me about a relationship with Jesus.”
In hindsight, however, I kind of want to throw up. I’m sure Dave said a lot of great things that night, but over the years, the “smoking hot wife” line stayed with me while hardly anything else did. And with that one line, Dave contributed to a narrative of sex and relationships that youth leaders and speakers would continue to work in for years to come.
Through abstinence talks and dating talks and relationship talks, my understanding of marriage has become strewn with oft-repeated lines like “I don’t deserve my smoking hot wife” and “sex is awesome and feels great but you need to wait. I did.”
Well-meaning as they were, speakers used these lines to preach the Gospel, but the main thing I took away was a shallow understanding of sex and marriage. I found myself believing in two lies: “marriage and sex are completely different” and “sex is about me.”
Marriage and Sex Are Completely Different
Most talks and sermons on physical intimacy and marriage are compartmentalized. It is about sex… and then marriage, or it is about marriage… and then sex. Sex becomes an “add-on” to marriage much like a shed out back is an “add-on” to a house. It doesn’t have anything to do with the actual relationship, nothing to do with the structural integrity of the house itself. It’s just a bonus.
Or vice versa. We’re told to save sex until we’re married, and the marriage itself can easily become the add-on. Sex is the foundation and the main house; the rest of the relationship is just the shed out back.
Sex and marriage, through this compartmentalization, become mutually exclusive and independent from each other.
But the Bible seems to be focused on the holistic person. It was Jesus who healed a man’s spiritual sins and his physical ailments (Luke 5:22-24). It was the spiritual faith of the hemorrhaging woman that healed her physical wounds (Luke 8:43-48). Jesus was spiritually distraught and sweats physical blood (Luke 22:44).
Repeatedly, Jesus does away with the status quo. He seems to think that words like “physical” and “spiritual”—although necessary descriptors of reality—are not reality itself. All the different aspects of being human can’t be compartmentalized. And in marriage, two complex people become one (Mark 10:8). They enter into intimate community and become a holistic being. A being that is intricate and incapable of being spliced apart.
I began to realize this truth the other day. My friend, who is married, was telling me that sex doesn’t just happen by turning off the lights and turning on the Marvin Gaye. He said it consists of kindness; of a day spent listening to his wife; of small talk over dinner. He said it looks like service and mutual respect. The in-the-moment passion is not just summoned from a bottomless abyss of attraction; it is created through communal living and mutual love.
Sex Is About Me
The “smoking hot wife” line is one of many popular phrases used by youth pastors when they’re talking about marriage or sex. Another thing I heard a lot In abstinence talks was the acknowledgement that, “Sex is awesome. It feels amazing.” However, I never heard the perspective of the “smoking hot” wives.
Sex takes two people, but only one side was speaking; only one side told me how great it was.
Because of this, my understanding of sex became naturally one-sided. What I heard was, “I’m going to love having sex. It will make me feel great.”
This mindset places myself over everything else. The “amazing feeling” can happen with any woman. The particular woman, my wife, is only a means to an end. She is merely serving my need to feel “amazing.”
In other words, sex has nothing to do with relationship and everything to do with rugged individualism. It has everything to do with the feeling I get from it. It has everything to do with me.
Reading the Bible, this mindset does not stand up. The Bible speaks time and again of loving the other as an end, not merely as a means to get to another end. It speaks about sacrifice and love. It says Christ loved the Church so much that He died for her, and it says this sacrifice is a picture of marriage (Ephesians 5:25).
Christ did not love the Church for what she could do for Him. He loved the Church for who she was.
The Bible calls me to sacrifice for my future wife and put her first, over my desires or feelings.
Sex and Reality
As a single man, I look forward to being in a relationship. As an abstinent man, I look forward to the day I get to have sex. I see sex as a communication of commitment, an act of covenant love. And it sounds like fun.
I also believe it is worth it—totally worth it—to wait for marriage to have sex. I believe it flows in a deeper, more worthwhile, current than the common trend of casual sex. I believe abstinence is sacramental in the same way that a fast is sacramental: it is an active choice to place my mind on things above. And when marriage happens, when the kiss and the first dance and the tears from parents are over, when we have arrived at the hotel by the airport, I believe waiting will be worth it.
But it will not be worth it for the reasons the speakers with “smoking hot wives” suggest it will be.
It will be something deeper; something covenantal.Think MJ simply retired while playing for the Bulls in 1993? Think again... This article was referenced by sports writing legend Jack McCallum of Sports Illustrated here (who did not deny that Jordan may have been asked to walk away from the NBA due to his gambling habits by Commissioner David Stern) and by Henry Abbott in his ESPN.com TrueHoop blog. Don’t Wanna Be Like Mike “I’m no Pete Rose” - Michael Jordan October 6, 1993. Not what you’d call a red-letter date in history. But in the sporting world, especially the NBA, nothing could’ve been more shocking. Michael Jordan, the biggest and brightest star in the entire sporting world, suddenly announced his retirement from the NBA. Having just led his team, the Chicago Bulls, to its third World Championship in as many years, and still reeling from the tragic murder of his father James Jordan in July of that same year, MJ had had enough. But almost forgotten in the hubbub surrounding his retirement was the NBA’s ongoing investigation into allegations of Michael Jordan’s gambling problem. Not surprisingly, just two days after Jordan’s speech, the NBA announced its five month long investigation had ended with the league apparently finding nothing of significance. Under this squeaky clean surface, however, bubbled true ugliness. For I don’t believe that Michael Jordan willingly “retired” on that October morning, but was directed by the NBA and its commissioner David Stern to seek counseling for his growing addiction to gambling. An addiction that was well known both inside and outside the league, and one that had to be kept as invisible as possible so as not to tarnish the image of both Michael Jordan and the NBA. High Stakes In the 1970’s, Dr. J brought excitement to the NBA. In the 1980’s, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird added fuel to that smoldering fire with their skill and rivalry. But in the late 80’s and early 90’s, Michael Jordan turned that fire in an inferno. And with him, came an economic boom unlike anything the NBA had ever seen. For Michael Jordan wasn’t just an NBA superstar. He was the NBA. It was estimated at one time that 70% of all basketball fans considered themselves Chicago Bulls fans –meaning Michael Jordan fans. Almost single-handedly, Jordan made the NBA into a commercial powerhouse. Ticket sales increased league wide (Jordan almost always played to sell-outs, both home and away). Merchandise (mainly Bulls jerseys with the number 23 emblazoned on them) flew off shelves. And most importantly to the NBA, the money taken in from TV revenues went through the roof. In 1985 (Jordan’s rookie year), CBS paid the NBA $188 million for a 4-year TV contract. In 1989, NBC was willing to shell out $600 million for that same amount of time. Who do you think the #1 attraction was? However in the fall of 1991, a series of events began that threatened not only the image of Michael Jordan, but the millions of dollars his name meant. Money on the Line Michael Jordan craved competition. It was this passion that led to his compulsive gambling. He gambled on just about anything. While at North Carolina, he used to bet fellow players sodas or small amounts of money on free throws or games of “Horse.” Although not necessarily sanctioned by the team, it went largely ignored. These activities carried on into the pros, and with the huge influx of money, the stakes steadily increased. He played poker with his teammates on road trips and was known to be quite the shark. Bulls coaches would warn the younger players not to play poker with him – he was that good. He even gambled on the outcome of video games.(1) But it was golf, his second passion, which proved to be his downfall.
He began betting small, maybe $100 on a hole or a putt. But as his confidence on the golf course grew, so did the amounts of the bets. And why not? Jordan had plenty of money and he was a good golfer. Just not good enough to avoid losing to the wrong people. In 1991, Jordan and a group of friends went on a week long gambling spree at his Hilton Head home in North Carolina, golfing all day and playing poker all night. By the time it ended, Jordan was into James “Slim” Bouler for $57,000 and Eddie Dow for $108,000. This in and of itself wouldn’t be such a big deal except for the fact that Bouler was a convicted cocaine dealer and had two probation violations for carrying semiautomatic weapons. This was just the beginning for Jordan. On October 21, 1991, Jordan paid the $57,000 to Bouler who turned around and placed the money in an account for the “Golf-Tech Driving Range.” The IRS quickly seized it, believing the funds may have been ill gotten since Bouler was again under investigation for dealing cocaine. Now the shit hit the fan for Jordan. In the wake of these dealings coming to light, Jordan told the press that the $57,000 was merely a loan to a friend to start a golf range. That lie carried a lot of weight. So much so that U.S. District Court Judge Graham C. Mullen ruled that the IRS violated Bouler’s rights in seizing the $57,000 check. Judge Mullen admitted that he based his ruling on Jordan’s claims that the money was a loan – even though he never actually questioned Jordan.(2) That seemed to suffice. For a while. Then in February of 1992, Jordan’s gambling associate Eddie Dow was robbed of $20,000 and murdered just outside his home. In Dow’s belongings they found photocopies of three checks that totaled $108,000 – the exact amount Jordan had lost to him months earlier. Two of the checks were from Jordan’s personal account. The third was a cashier’s check made out by Jordan. Then, almost one year to the day after originally paying Bouler the $57,000, Michael Jordan was in court at Bouler’s trial for drug and money-laundering charges. Under oath, during a nine minute testimony, Michael Jordan admitted that the $57,000 was not a loan but indeed a gambling debt. Tip of the Iceberg? In June of 1993, another Michael Jordan gambling story broke. This one hovered around the book Michael & Me: Our Gambling Addiction…My Cry for Help! written by San Diego businessman Richard Esquinas. Esquinas claimed that during a ten-day period in 1991, Jordan had lost $1.25 million to him gambling on golf. No one initially believed his story, until Esquinas produced the correspondences with Jordan and the canceled checks to back it. At the beginning of 1992, Esquinas contacted Jordan several times asking Jordan to pay off the bet. After a few token payments (some sent to Esquinas by Jordan’s wife Juanita) and many broken promises, Esquinas offered Jordan an out. Jordan agreed to settle the matter at $300,000. In March of 1993 Jordan had Chicago attorney Wayne A. McCoy send Esquinas $100,000. Then in May of that same year, McCoy sent Esquinas another $100,000. But by then, Esquinas had lost his patience waiting for his money and he published the book. Jordan didn’t lie this time. Instead, he issued a statement. “I have played golf with Richard Esquinas with wagers made between us. Because I did not keep records, I cannot verify how much I won or lost. I can assure you the level of our wagers was substantially less than the preposterous amounts that have been reported.” (3) Even with that admission of guilt, Jordan managed to deny any sort of problem. He told player friendly NBC reporter Ahmad Rashad “If I had a [gambling] problem, I’d be starving. I’d be hocking this watch, my championship rings, I would sell my house. My kids would be starving. I do not have a problem. I enjoy gambling.” (4) For a man that made hundreds of millions of dollars to claim that “if” he had a gambling problem, he’d be “starving” is quite laughable. He went on to say to Rashad, “My wife, if I had a problem, would have left me or certainly would have come and said seek help…my wife never said anything, and she’s the chief of finances in our household.” It’s obvious she must’ve known something since she’s the one who originally paid Esquinas.
During the time this story broke, Jordan decided to make an ill-advised trip to Atlantic City – right in the middle of the 1993 playoff series against the New York Knicks. Jordan claimed to the media that he was gone well before midnight the night before Game 2 in New York; however, he was seen in the casino well past midnight and into the wee hours of the morning. That was the last time Jordan would do that – during the playoffs. It has been reported on more that one occasion that when Jordan played in New York or New Jersey he’d venture down to Atlantic City, or if he were in Los Angeles or Utah he’d likely make a pit stop in Las Vegas. The day after this new gambling story broke about Jordan and Atlantic City; NBC announcer Bob Costas had a halftime interview with NBA Commissioner David Stern. During that interview, Costas badgered Stern about the story – much to the disdain of NBA Sports President Dick Ebersol who was screaming in Costas’s earpiece to lay off and switch subjects.(5) Costas, much to his credit, did not back down and asked the tough questions that should have been asked. But to little avail. NBC laid off the story from that point onward. Jordan became quite tight lipped as well. He stopped talking to the media. Even though such silence - especially during the playoffs - is a fineable offense in the NBA, Jordan never received a single fine. For Stern and the NBA, Jordan’s silence might have been a blessing in disguise. Breaking Point By now, the NBA had had enough. They had been through this once before in 1992 with the Bouler ordeal. That two-week “investigation” ended with Commissioner David Stern announcing, “This situation has been investigated with complete cooperation of Michael and his attorneys and [the head of the NBA investigation] Judge Lacey has assured us that there appears to be no reason for the NBA to take action against Michael.” (6) But in reality, the “two week investigation” consisted of a 2½-hour meeting between Jordan, his attorneys, and top NBA officials. The NBA never questioned either Bouler or any of the local or Federal investigating officers in the case, and never asked to see the records from Bouler’s trial. No wonder there appeared to be no reason to take action against Jordan. Jordan was merely given a slap on the wrist and told to watch who he associates with. He himself claimed to Chicago Tribune writer Bob Greene, “Was I gambling with goons who had bad reputations? Yeah, I was. Should I not gamble with goons anymore? Yeah, I shouldn’t gamble with goons.” But now, in 1993, Jordan was on strike two and a half. During this second, and much more thorough investigation, the league was to discover that not only were the amounts involved larger, but also that the accusations were much more damning. According to the book Money Players: Days and Nights Inside the New NBA, in July 1993 the NBA interviewed Esquinas in its New York offices. During that interview, Esquinas told the investigators that in March of 1992, he had overheard a telephone conversation Jordan was having with an unknown person. During that phone call, Jordan talked about a betting line; saying “So you say the line is seven points.”(7) Of what game, it is unknown. But this was a serious accusation. If Jordan was indeed gambling on sports, then he had broken that sacred, unwritten rule for professional athletes. The question is, how credible did the NBA think this allegation was? I think they took it as quite credible. They most definitely did not want Jordan to become the NBA’s version of Pete Rose, who was a certain Hall of Famer in baseball until he was suspended for life over gambling. Rose, the all-time hits leader in the MLB, never made it into the Hall of Fame despite all of his on the field accomplishments because off the field, he was a sports gambler. Baseball was more than Pete Rose. But Jordan was more than basketball. He was Nike. He was McDonalds. He was Chevrolet. He was even considered a national hero by winning a gold medal for Team USA (the “Dream Team”) in the 1992 Olympics. Jordan meant a lot of money to a lot of people. $40 million dollars a year in endorsement deals alone. And here it seemed that he was spinning out of control. Inching closer and closer to a revelation that would not only bring down a man, but what seemed like an American institution. What was potentially even more threatening to the league than MJ’s gambling was the fact that he was consistently associating with seeming criminals. He was putting himself in a position where he could easily be blackmailed. Perhaps blackmailed into doing something on the court like shaving points or worse – throwing games. I think at this point the NBA and Commissioner David Stern stepped in and talked to Michael Jordan about “retirement.” Retirement I don’t believe that the news conference called on October 6, 1993 was what it purported itself to be. There were no tears in Michael Jordan’s eyes. There was no sadness, no cracking voices. Merely a statement followed by some quick, easy to answer questions, and then “retirement.” According to his own statement, why did Jordan decide to retire? First, he stated, “I just feel that at this particular time in my career, I’ve reached the pinnacle…that I don’t have anything else to prove to myself.” Quite hypocritical considering 17 months later he was back playing for the Bulls. I guess even after being named Rookie of the Year, leading the league in scoring for 7 years in a row, being named MVP twice, winning the NBA Championship three times, and being hailed as the greatest player to ever play the game, Jordan found something else he needed to prove. Then came, “The biggest gratification, the biggest positive thing that I can take out of my father not being here with me today is that he saw my last basketball game, and that means a lot.” Having occurred in July of 1993, the murder of James Jordan surely weighed heavily on Michael’s mind at the time. Although some have speculated that his father’s death had something to do with Jordan’s gambling, I don’t believe that to be the case. James Jordan wasn’t a saint, truth be told. He was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison (which were suspended) for being a cog in a larger embezzlement scheme in 1985, and at the time of his death, he was the subject of several lawsuits concerning the unpaid bills of his clothing company, JVL Enterprises, Inc.(8) Even though there are some odd facts surrounding his murder (like the fact that a man like Michael Jordan’s father decided to sleep in his car on the side of a rural highway rather than find a hotel or stay overnight at a friend’s home), there is no real evidence to support a conspiracy. However, the pride Michael felt in his father seeing his last game seemed to be rather fleeting.
Finally he stated, “Now that I’m here, it’s time to be a little bit unselfish in terms of spending more time with my family, my wife, my kids, and just get back to a normal life, as close to it as I can.” When asked, what will he do now, Jordan replied, “In retirement, you do whatever comes to mind. Relax. Enjoy the time you’ve been deprived of for many years.” I guess what came to Michael’s mind was playing baseball. Not spending time with the wife and kids, unless of course they were on the bus with him and the rest of the Birmingham Barons while traveling from small town to smaller town across the Southern US. Which brings up an interesting point. The only reason Jordan was even given an opportunity to play baseball was because Chicago Bulls’ owner Jerry Reinsdorf also owned the Chicago White Sox. The Barons were an affiliate of the White Sox, so MJ could easily pass through the filters that would’ve normally kept him off the team. Reinsdorf stood to lose as much as anyone with MJ’s retirement (just compare Bulls tickets sales today compared to when MJ played). Yet he was one of the first people Jordan contacted regarding a potential “retirement.” How did Reinsdorf respond? By paying Jordan $4 million and leaving a contractual window open for him to return (9) – even though after being ask would he ever return, Jordan replied, “No – if so, I’d still be playing.” Let’s face the facts; Jordan was a horrible baseball player. In his one full season in Birmingham, he hit.202 – even with opposing teams' catchers telling him which pitch was coming next. White Sox General Manager Ron Schueler was quoted at the time as saying that Jordan’s chance of making the majors was “a million-to-one shot.” So was he truly living a childhood dream of his to play baseball, or was it something more? I believe there was more to his minor league career than waving at curve balls. I believe the NBA came to Jordan and laid it out for him. They didn’t want to see him go down for gambling, but at the same time, they couldn’t seem to control him. So they asked him to “retire” and seek some help. Allow the media investigations (if there even were any) to cool down and soon the public will forget all about it. Go play baseball so you can keep in shape and remain at least somewhat in the spotlight. Then, when the time is right, Jordan would be allowed to return to the NBA as the mighty king he once was. At a certain point in time, Michael Jordan stopped playing by the NBA’s rules and began playing by his own. The NBA, not wanting to upset its cash cow, bent as far as it could to accommodate him. Be it with the lack of foul calls, or limited media access, or getting away with a crime, the NBA was always willing to do it for Michael. He made a very interesting comment during his retirement press conference. When asked, “will you miss the sport?” he replied: “I’m pretty sure I’ll miss the sport. To come back is a different thought – I can’t answer that. I’m not making this a ‘never’ issue. I’m saying right now I don’t have the mental drive to come out and push myself to play with a certain focus. Five years down the line, if the urge comes back, if the Bulls will have me, if David Stern lets me back in the league, I may come back.(emphasis added)” No reporter there bothered to ask him, why wouldn’t the Commissioner let you back in, Michael? It’s a very interesting choice of words. One that lends itself to a very different interpretation of the situation. Even during his second (and more formal) retirement, Jordan had to again tip his cap to Stern. In thanking a few people that came before him, Jordan said, “And Mr. Stern and what he’s done for the league and gave me the opportunity to play the game of basketball.” How, exactly, did Stern give him an opportunity to play basketball? By drafting him? By offering him a contract? By putting him in the starting line-up? No. By, as MJ said at his first retirement press conference, |
of Pope Benedict XIV and deported Jesuits from South America after relocating the Jesuits and their native workers, and then fighting a brief conflict, formally suppressing the order in 1759. In 1762 the Parlement Français, (a court, not a legislature), ruled against the Society in a huge bankruptcy case under pressure from a host of groups – from within the Church but also secular notables and the king's mistress. Austria and the Two Sicilies suppressed the order by decree in 1767.
Portugal and Its Empire 1759 [ edit ]
The Marquis of Pombal, who oversaw the suppression of the Jesuits in Portugal and its empire, by, who oversaw the suppression of the Jesuits in Portugal and its empire, by Louis-Michel van Loo, 1766.
There were long-standing tensions between the Portuguese crown and the Jesuits, which increased when the Count of Oeiras (later the Marquis of Pombal) became the monarch's minister of state, culminating in the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1759. The Távora affair in 1758 could be considered a pretext for the expulsion and crown confiscation of Jesuit assets.[8] According to historians James Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwartz, the Jesuits' "independence, power, wealth, control of education, and ties to Rome made the Jesuits obvious targets for Pombal's brand of extreme regalism."[9]
Portugal's quarrel with the Jesuits began over an exchange of South American colonial territory with Spain. By a secret treaty of 1750, Portugal relinquished to Spain the contested Colonia del Sacramento at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata in exchange for the Seven Reductions of Paraguay, the autonomous Jesuit missions that had been nominal Spanish colonial territory. The native Guaraní, who lived in the mission territories, were ordered to quit their country and settle across the Uruguay. Owing to the harsh conditions, the Guaraní rose in arms against the transfer, and the so-called Guaraní War ensued. It was a disaster for the Guaraní. In Portugal a battle escalated with inflammatory pamphlets denouncing or defending the Jesuits who for over a century had protected the Guarani from enslavement through a network of Reductions, as depicted in The Mission. The Portuguese colonizers secured the expulsion of the Jesuits.[10][11]
On 1 April 1758, Pombal persuaded the aged Pope Benedict XIV to appoint the Portuguese Cardinal Saldanha to investigate allegations against the Jesuits.[12] Benedict was skeptical as to the gravity of the alleged abuses. He ordered a "minute inquiry", but so as to safeguard the reputation of the Society, all serious matters were to be referred back to him. Benedict died the following month on May 3. On May 15 Saldanha, having received the papal brief only a fortnight before, declared that the Jesuits were guilty of having exercised "illicit, public, and scandalous commerce," both in Portugal and in its colonies. He had not visited Jesuit houses as ordered, and pronounced on the issues which the pope had reserved to himself.[11]
Pombal implicated the Jesuits in the Távora affair, an attempted assassination of the king on 3 September 1758, on the grounds of their friendship with some of the supposed conspirators. On 19 January 1759, he issued a decree sequestering the property of the Society in the Portuguese dominions and the following September deported the Portuguese fathers, about one thousand in number, to the Pontifical States, keeping the foreigners in prison. Among those arrested and executed was the then denounced Gabriel Malagrida, the Jesuit confessor of Leonor of Távora, for "crimes against the faith". After Malagrida's execution in 1759, the Society was suppressed by the Portuguese crown. The Portuguese ambassador was recalled from Rome and the papal nuncio expelled. Diplomatic relations between Portugal and Rome were broken off until 1770.[12]
Suppression in France 1764 [ edit ]
The suppression of the Jesuits in France began in the French island colony of Martinique, where the Society of Jesus had a major commercial stake in sugar plantations worked by black slave and free labor. Their large mission plantations included large local populations that worked under the usual conditions of tropical colonial agriculture of the 18th century. The Catholic Encyclopedia in 1908 said that missionaries occupying themselves personally in selling off the goods produced (an anomaly for a religious order) "was allowed partly to provide for the current expenses of the mission, partly in order to protect the simple, childlike natives from the common plague of dishonest intermediaries."
Father Antoine La Vallette, Superior of the Martinique missions, borrowed money to expand the large undeveloped resources of the colony. But on the outbreak of war with England, ships carrying goods of an estimated value of 2,000,000 livres were captured, and La Vallette suddenly went bankrupt for a very large sum. His creditors turned to the Jesuit procurator in Paris to demand payment, but he refused responsibility for the debts of an independent mission – though he offered to negotiate for a settlement. The creditors went to the courts and received a favorable decision in 1760 obliging the Society to pay, and giving leave to distrain in the case of non-payment. The Jesuits, on the advice of their lawyers, appealed to the Parlement of Paris. This turned out to be an imprudent step for their interests. Not only did the Parlement support the lower court on 8 May 1761, but having once gotten the case into its hands, the Jesuits' opponents in that assembly determined to strike a blow at the Order.
The Jesuits had many who opposed them. The Jansenists were numerous among the enemies of the orthodox party. The Sorbonne, an educational rival, joined the Gallicans, the Philosophes, and the Encyclopédistes. Louis XV was weak; his wife and children were in favor of the Jesuits; his able first minister, the Duc de Choiseul, played into the hands of the Parlement and the royal mistress, Madame de Pompadour, to whom the Jesuits had refused absolution for she was living in sin with the King of France, was a determined opponent. The determination of the Parlement of Paris in time bore down all opposition.
The attack on the Jesuits was opened on 17 April 1762 by the Jansenist sympathizer the Abbé Chauvelin who denounced the Constitution of the Society of Jesus, which was publicly examined and discussed in a hostile press. The Parlement issued its Extraits des assertions assembled from passages from Jesuit theologians and canonists, in which they were alleged to teach every sort of immorality and error. On 6 August 1762, the final arrêt was proposed to the Parlement by the Advocate General Joly de Fleury, condemning the Society to extinction, but the king's intervention brought eight months' delay and in the meantime a compromise was suggested by the Court. If the French Jesuits would separate from the Society headed by the Jesuit General directly under the pope's authority and come under a French vicar, with French customs, as with the Gallican Church, the Crown would still protect them. The French Jesuits, rejecting Gallicanism, refused to consent. On 1 April 1763, the colleges were closed, and by a further arrêt of March 9, 1764, the Jesuits were required to renounce their vows under pain of banishment. At the end of November 1764, the king signed an edict dissolving the Society throughout his dominions, for they were still protected by some provincial parlements, as in Franche-Comté, Alsace, and Artois. In the draft of the edict, he canceled numerous clauses that implied that the Society was guilty, and writing to Choiseul he concluded: "If I adopt the advice of others for the peace of my realm, you must make the changes I propose, or I will do nothing. I say no more, lest I should say too much."[13]
Decline of the Jesuits in New France following its conquest by the British [ edit ]
Following the British 1759 victory against the French in Quebec, France lost its North American territory of New France where Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century had been active among indigenous peoples. British rule had implications for Jesuits in New France, but their numbers and sites were already in decline. As early as 1700, the Jesuits had adopted a policy of merely maintaining their existing posts instead of trying to establish new ones beyond Quebec, Montreal, and Ottawa.[14] Once New France was under British control, the British barred the immigration of any further Jesuits. By 1763 there were only twenty-one Jesuits still stationed in what was now the British colony of Quebec. By 1773 only eleven Jesuits remained. In the same year the British crown laid claim to Jesuit property in Canada and declared that the Society of Jesus in New France was dissolved.[15]
Spanish Empire 1767 [ edit ]
Charles III of Spain, who ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish realms
The Suppression in Spain and in the Spanish colonies, and in its dependency the Kingdom of Naples, was the last of the expulsions, with Portugal (1759) and France (1764) having already set the pattern. The Spanish crown had already begun a series of administrative and other changes in their overseas empire, such as reorganizing the viceroyalties, rethinking economic policies, and establishing a military, so that the expulsion of the Jesuits is seen as part of this general trend known generally as the Bourbon Reforms. The aim of the reforms was to curb the increasing autonomy and self-confidence of American-born Spaniards, reassert crown control, and increase revenues.[16] Some historians doubt that the Jesuits were guilty of intrigues against the Spanish crown that were used as the immediate cause for the expulsion.[17]
Contemporaries in Spain attributed the suppression of the Jesuits to the Esquilache Riots, named after the Italian advisor to Bourbon king Carlos III, that erupted after a sumptuary law was enacted. The law, placing restrictions on men's wearing of voluminous capes and limiting the breadth of sombreros the men could wear, was seen as an "insult to Castilian pride."[18]
When an angry crowd of those resisters converged on the royal palace, king Carlos fled to the countryside. The crowd had shouted "Long Live Spain! Death to Esquilache!" His Flemish palace guard fired warning shots over the people's heads. An account says that a group of Jesuit priests appeared on the scene, soothed the protesters with speeches, and sent them home. Carlos decided to rescind the tax hike and hat-trimming edict, and to fire his finance minister.[19]
The monarch and his advisers were alarmed by the uprising, which challenged royal authority and the Jesuits were accused of inciting the mob and publicly accusing the monarch of religious crimes. Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes, attorney for the Council of Castile, the body overseeing central Spain, articulated this view in a report the king read.[20] Charles III ordered the convening of a special royal commission to draw up a master plan to expel the Jesuits. The commission first met in January 1767. It modeled its plan on the tactics deployed by France's Philip IV against the Knights Templar in 1307 – emphasizing the element of surprise.[21] Charles's adviser Campomanes had written a treatise on the Templars in 1747, which may have informed the implementation of the Jesuit suppression.[22] One historian states that "Charles III never would have dared to expel the Jesuits had he not been assured of the support of an influential party within the Spanish Church."[20] Jansenists and mendicant orders had long opposed the Jesuits and sought to curtail their power.
Secret Plan of Expulsion [ edit ]
Manuel de Roda, adviser to Charles III, who brought together an alliance of those opposed to the Jesuits
King Charles's ministers kept their deliberations to themselves, as did the king, who acted upon "urgent, just, and necessary reasons, which I reserve in my royal mind." The correspondence of Bernardo Tanucci, Charles's anti-clerical minister in Naples, contains the ideas which, from time to time, guided Spanish policy. Charles conducted his government through the Count of Aranda, a reader of Voltaire, and other liberals.[13]
The commission's meeting on 29 January 1767 planned the expulsion of the Jesuits. Secret orders, to be opened at sunrise on April 2, were sent to all provincial viceroys and district military commanders in Spain. Each sealed envelope contained two documents. One was a copy of the original order expelling "all members of the Society of Jesus" from Charles's Spanish domains and confiscating all their goods. The other instructed local officials to surround the Jesuit colleges and residences on the night of April 2, arrest the Jesuits, and arrange their passage to ships awaiting them at various ports. King Carlos' closing sentence read: "If a single Jesuit, even though sick or dying, is still to be found in the area under your command after the embarkation, prepare yourself to face summary execution."[23]
Pope Clement XIII, presented with a similar ultimatum by the Spanish ambassador to the Vatican a few days before the decree would take effect, asked King Charles "by what authority?" and threatened him with eternal damnation. Pope Clement had no means to enforce his protest and the expulsion took place as planned.[24]
Jesuits expelled from Mexico (New Spain) [ edit ]
José de Gálvez, Visitador generál in New Spain (1765–71), was instrumental in the Jesuit expulsion in 1767 in Mexico, considered part of the in New Spain (1765–71), was instrumental in the Jesuit expulsion in 1767 in Mexico, considered part of the Bourbon Reforms
In New Spain, the Jesuits had actively evangelized the Indians on the northern frontier. But their main activity involved educating elite criollo (American-born Spanish) men, many of whom themselves became Jesuits. Of the 678 Jesuits expelled from Mexico, 75% were Mexican-born. In late June 1767, Spanish soldiers removed the Jesuits from their 16 missions and 32 stations in Mexico. No Jesuit, no matter how old or ill, could be excepted from the king's decree. Many died on the trek along the cactus-studded trail to the Gulf Coast port of Veracruz, where ships awaited them to transport them to Italian exile.[25]
There were protests in Mexico at the exile of so many Jesuit members of elite families. But the Jesuits themselves obeyed the order. Since the Jesuits had owned extensive landed estates in Mexico – which supported both their evangelization of indigenous peoples and their education mission to criollo elites – the properties became a source of wealth for the crown. The crown auctioned them off, benefiting the treasury, and their criollo purchasers gained productive well-run properties.[26][27] Many criollo families felt outraged at the crown's actions, regarding it as a "despotic act."[28] One well-known Mexican Jesuit, Francisco Javier Clavijero, during his Italian exile wrote an important history of Mexico with emphasis on the indigenous peoples.[29] Alexander von Humboldt, the famous German scientist who spent a year in Mexico in 1803-04, praised Clavijero's work on the history of Mexico's indigenous peoples.[30]
Francisco Javier Clavijero, Mexican Jesuit exiled to Italy. His history of ancient Mexico was a significant text for pride for contemporaries in New Spain. He is revered in modern Mexico as a creole patriot.
Due to the isolation of the Spanish missions on the Baja California peninsula, the expulsion decree did not arrive in Baja California in June 1767, as in the rest of New Spain. It got delayed until the new governor, Gaspar de Portolá, arrived with the news and decree on November 30. By 3 February 1768, Portolá's soldiers had removed the peninsula's 16 Jesuit missionaries from their posts and gathered them in Loreto, whence they sailed to the Mexican mainland and thence to Europe. Showing sympathy for the Jesuits, Portolá treated them kindly even as he put an end to their 70 years of mission-building in Baja California.[31] The Jesuit missions in Baja California were turned over to the Franciscans and subsequently to the Dominicans, and the future missions in Alta California were founded by Franciscans.[32]
The change in the Spanish colonies in the New World was particularly great, as the far-flung settlements were often dominated by missions. Almost overnight in the mission towns of Sonora and Arizona, the "black robes" (Jesuits) disappeared and the "gray robes" (Franciscans) replaced them.[33]
Philippines [ edit ]
The royal decree expelling the Society of Jesus from Spain and its dominions reached Manila on 17 May 1768. Between 1769 and 1771, the Jesuits were transported from the Spanish East Indies to Spain and from there deported to Italy.[34]
Jesuit exile to Italy [ edit ]
Bernardo Tanucci, adviser to Charles III, instrumental in the expulsion of the Jesuits in Naples
Spanish soldiers rounded up the Jesuits in Mexico, marched them to the coasts, and placed them below the decks of Spanish warships headed for the Italian port of Civitavecchia in the Papal States. When they arrived, Pope Clement XIII refused to allow the ships to unload their prisoners onto papal territory. Fired upon by batteries of artillery from the shore of Civitavecchia, the Spanish warships had to look for an anchorage off the island of Corsica, then a dependency of Genoa. But since a rebellion had erupted on Corsica, it took five months before some of the Jesuits could set foot on land.[13]
Several historians have estimated the number of Jesuits deported at 6,000. But it is not clear whether this figure encompasses Spain alone or extends to Spain's overseas colonies (notably Mexico and the Philippines) as well.[35] Jesuit historian Hubert Becher claims that about 600 Jesuits died during their voyage and waiting ordeal.[36]
In Naples, king Carlos' minister Bernardo Tanucci pursued a similar policy: On November 3 the Jesuits, with no accusation or trial, were marched across the border into the Papal States and threatened with death if they returned.[37]
Historian Charles Gibson calls the Spanish crown's expulsion of the Jesuits a "sudden and devastating move" to assert royal control.[26] However, the Jesuits became a vulnerable target for the crown's moves to assert more control over the church; also some religious and diocesan clergy and civil authorities were hostile to them, and they did not protest their expulsion.[38][39] There were popular protests in some areas against the expulsion, including Mexico, which the crown put down by force. According to historian Clarence Haring, however, "royal magistrates and prelates seemed to vie with one another in carrying out the royal orders."[40]
In addition to 1767, the Jesuits were suppressed and banned twice more in Spain, in 1834 and in 1932. Spanish ruler Francisco Franco rescinded the last suppression in 1938.[citation needed]
Economic impact in the Spanish Empire [ edit ]
The suppression of the order had longstanding economic effects in the Americas, particularly those areas where they had their missions or reductions – outlying areas dominated by indigenous peoples such as Paraguay and Chiloé Archipelago. In Central Chile the suppression of the Order led among other things to a sharp decrease in the import of black slaves from Peru, which although small in comparison to neighboring colonies had led the Order to own the largest number of black slaves in Chile, 1300 approximately.[citation needed] In Misiones, in modern-day Argentina, their suppression led to the scattering and enslavement of indigenous Guaranís living in the reductions and a long-term decline in the yerba mate industry from which it only recovered in the 20th century.[41]
With the suppression of the Society of Jesus in Spanish America, Jesuit vineyards in Peru were auctioned, but new owners did not have the same expertise as the Jesuits, contributing to a decline in production of wine and pisco.[42]
Suppression in Malta [ edit ]
Malta was at the time a vassal of the Kingdom of Sicily, and Grandmaster Manuel Pinto da Fonseca, himself a Portuguese, followed suit, expelling the Jesuits from the island and seizing their assets. These assets were used in establishing the University of Malta by a decree signed by Pinto on 22 November 1769, with lasting effect on the social and cultural life of Malta.[43] The Church of the Jesuits (in Maltese Knisja tal-Ġiżwiti), one of the oldest churches in Valletta, retains this name up to the present.
Parma [ edit ]
The independent Duchy of Parma was the smallest Bourbon court. So aggressive in its anti-clericalism was the Parmesan reaction to the news of the expulsion of the Jesuits from Naples, that Pope Clement XIII addressed a public warning against it on 30 January 1768, threatening the Duchy with ecclesiastical censures. At this, all the Bourbon courts turned against the Holy See, demanding the entire dissolution of the Jesuits. Parma expelled the Jesuits from its territories, confiscating their possessions.[13]
Poland and Lithuania [ edit ]
The Jesuit order was disbanded in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1773. However, branches in the lands of the Russian Partition of the First Partition of Poland were not disbanded, as Russian Empress Catherine did not acknowledge the Papal order.[44] In the Commonwealth, many of the Jesuit order possessions were taken over by the Commission of National Education, the world's first Ministry of Education. Lithuania complied with the suppression.[45]
Russia [ edit ]
Jesuits were supported by Empress Catherine the Great, a patron of learning, who welcomed exiled Jesuits to Russia in 1773 after their expulsion from other parts of Europe. The order of dissolution was delayed in the Russian Empire until long after her death, when the Society had been reinstated in other places. Under pressure from the Russian Orthodox Church, Tsar Alexander I exiled the Jesuits in 1820.[44][45]
Papal Suppression of the Jesuits 1773 [ edit ]
After the suppression of the Jesuits in many European countries and their overseas empires, Pope Clement XIV issued a papal brief on 21 July 1773, in Rome titled: Dominus ac Redemptor Noster. That decree included the following statement.
Having further considered that the said Company of Jesus can no longer produce those abundant fruits...in the present case, we are determining upon the fate of a society classed among the mendicant orders, both by its institute and by its privileges; after a mature deliberation, we do, out of our certain knowledge, and the fullness of our apostolical power, suppress and abolish the said company: we deprive it of all activity whatever... And to this end a member of the regular clergy, recommendable for his prudence and sound morals, shall be chosen to preside over and govern the said houses; so that the name of the Company shall be, and is, for ever extinguished and suppressed. Pope Clement XIV, Dominus ac Redemptor Noster[46]
After papal suppression in 1773, the scholarly Jesuit Society of Bollandists moved from Antwerp to Brussels, where they continued their work in the monastery of the Coudenberg; in 1788, the Bollandist Society was suppressed by the Austrian government of the Low Countries.[citation needed]
Austria and Hungary [ edit ]
The Secularization Decree of Joseph II (Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790) issued on 12 January 1782 for Austria and Hungary banned several monastic orders not involved in teaching or healing and liquidated 140 monasteries (home to 1484 monks and 190 nuns). The banned monastic orders: Jesuits, Camaldolese, Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, Carmelites, Carthusians, Poor Clares, Order of Saint Benedict, Cistercians, Dominican Order (Order of Preachers), Franciscans, Pauline Fathers and Premonstratensians, and their wealth was taken over by the Religious Fund.
His anticlerical and liberal innovations induced Pope Pius VI to pay him a visit in March 1782. Joseph received the Pope politely and presented himself as a good Catholic, but refused to be influenced.
Switzerland [ edit ]
After the Sonderbund War of 1847 the Jesuits were banished from Switzerland. The ban was lifted on 20 May 1973 via referendum.[47]
Restoration of the Jesuits [ edit ]
As the Napoleonic Wars were approaching their end in 1814, the old political order of Europe was to a considerable extent restored at the Congress of Vienna after years of fighting and revolution, during which the Church had been persecuted as an agent of the old order and abused under the rule of Napoleon. With the political climate of Europe changed, and with the powerful monarchs who had called for the suppression of the Society no longer in power, Pope Pius VII issued an order restoring the Society of Jesus in the Catholic countries of Europe. For its part, the Society of Jesus made the decision at the first General Congregation held after the restoration to keep the organization of the Society the way that it had been before the suppression was ordered in 1773.
After 1815, with the Restoration, the Catholic Church began to play a more welcome role in European political life once again. Nation by nation the Jesuits became re-established.
The modern view is that the suppression of the order was the result of a series of political and economic conflicts rather than a theological controversy, and the assertion of nation-state independence against the Catholic Church. The expulsion of the Society of Jesus from the Roman Catholic nations of Europe and their colonial empires is also seen as one of the early manifestations of the new secularist zeitgeist of the Enlightenment.[48] It peaked with the anti-clericalism of the French Revolution. The suppression was also seen as being an attempt by monarchs to gain control of revenues and trade that were previously dominated by the Society of Jesus. Catholic historians often point to a personal conflict between Pope Clement XIII (1758–1769) and his supporters within the church and the crown cardinals backed by France.[1]
References [ edit ]
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Prison Break star Wentworth Miller has hit back at a follower on Twitter who called him a “little bitch” and said he is not “a real man”.
The troll responded to Miller when he posted an article titled ‘4 Ways Sexist, Macho Culture Hurts Men.’
“A real man on camera and nothing but a little bitch in real life,” the troll wrote.
“Normally I would just ban this person,” responded Miller.
“Their sentiments have zero nutritional value and, in my opinion, reflect an antiquated belief system that is not only harmful but on its way out.”
Adding: “That said, the attitude expressed does open the door to some interesting topics. Like gender performance, gender policing, shaming, sexuality, projection, toxic masculinity, and the lowering of public discourse.”
He later expanded on the response with a longer Facebook post about why he decided to speak out following the comments.
I’ve read some lovely comments today. There was a lot of food for thought.
I also read a lot of advice. Much of which boiled down to “It’s only words.” “Sticks and stones.” Etc.
I recognize, and appreciate, that this is coming from a positive, supportive, protective place.
If only it was true.
Words matter. Labels matter. The way in which we speak to and about each other matters. Politicians spewing hate from the podium one day translates into real world violence the next. We know this.
What’s more, IMO, “You shouldn’t let it get to you” is code for “man up.”
With respect, I consider it to be another form of gender policing.
For the record, this person’s comment was momentarily unpleasant. Then it was over.
It affected me because I’m a human being.
I feel things. Then I move through them. And one of the ways I do that is by examining the situation and looking for the gift. The gold. The lesson.
And as someone who’s been called a “little bitch” before (because #sexism #misogyny #homophobia #toxicmasculinity), this felt like an opportunity for dissection and discussion. And I took it. Hence the repost.
This page will continue to be a place where words matter. If that’s of interest to you, stick around. – W.M
The star has in the past been open about having contemplated suicide and struggled with depression.
Earlier this year, he starred in the PSA for the Mighty, which shares personal stories about mental health issues, disability, and disease.
It was posted during the Suicide Prevention Week in the US.
“Each year, depression affects an estimated 15 million people in the United States and 350 million worldwide. If depression is part of your story, there is hope…don’t be afraid to take the first step. Someone cares.”
Check it out below:
Miller back in March hit out at a meme mocking him for his weight gain after leaving his most iconic role.
The actor was a huge name while starring in Prison Break, but was forced to deny gossip about his sexuality at the time.
He spent several years away from the spotlight after Prison Break ended in 2009 struggling with depression – before coming out as gay in 2013, admitting he “chose to lie” previously for the sake of his career.
If you have been affected by issues in this article, and live in the UK, call the Samaritans on 116 123. If you are a young person in the US in crisis, feeling suicidal, or in need of a safe and judgment-free place to talk, call the Trevor Lifeline now at 866-488-7386. If you are an adult in need of support in the US, please call the National Suicide Prevention Helpline on.By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, Feb. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Premature babies who spend their first few days of life in the neonatal intensive care unit may be exposed to a possibly harmful chemical widely used in the manufacture of hard plastics, new research says.
The chemical, bisphenol A (BPA), is used to make many of the ventilators, intravenous lines, catheters and other devices tiny babies need to stay alive in those first critical days.
BPA is believed to be an endocrine disruptor, which means it may interfere with the hormone system in humans. Some research has linked BPA with reproductive and developmental problems, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Last July, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned BPA from baby bottles and sippy cups.
The lead author of the new study, published online Feb. 18 and in the March print issue of Pediatrics, stressed that her paper did not come to any conclusions regarding health effects of BPA.
"This was an exposure assessment study," said Susan Duty, an associate professor of nursing at Simmons School of Nursing and Health Sciences in Boston. "We did not set out to determine any health outcome so I cannot speak to health effects from these particular exposures."
Most human exposure to BPA comes through diet: BPA can leach into foods and beverages from the containers in which it is packaged.
In this study, though, that turned out not to be the case. BPA levels in urine samples taken before and after feeding (either breast-feeding or formula feeding) were the same in the 55 infants who participated in this study. All were premature newborns staying in a hospital neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
But babies who needed four or more medical devices had 1.6 times higher BPA levels in their urine when compared to those who were exposed to three or fewer devices.
Respiratory devices were linked with higher BPA exposure than other devices.
And, although in all cases urine concentrations of BPA were lower than those cited as potentially harmful by the U.S. Environmental and Protection Agency, they were still 16 to 32 times higher than those seen in children from the general population, Duty said.
Also, she added, "there is controversy about the effect of low-dose BPA exposures because some studies of exposure during vulnerable time periods of child development report effects on behavior and executive function in children and shortened [anal-genital] distance in male offspring."
Duty pointed out that the particular NICU she studied had made "a conscious voluntary decision to choose products without BPA whenever possible and still we found these associations with BPA."
It's unclear if there are alternative ways to make the devices needed to keep tiny, vulnerable babies alive.
Sharon Wilkerson, dean of the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Nursing, cited one study that had found differences in exposure levels between hospitals, "suggesting that some products may be better than others."
On the other hand, BPA strengthens plastic and plays a cementing role.
"We don't want a catheter in the vein to come apart because that would be worse than the BPA," Wilkerson said. "There's a fine line of making sure that as we try and get people to use less BPA in the production of products, we don't jeopardize the outcome from that."
A group representing the chemical industry said the study is not cause for alarm.
"This study found that exposures to BPA from the use of life-saving medical equipment on premature infants in the NICU were low and well within safe limits established by regulators," said Steven Hentges, of the Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group at the American Chemistry Council.
In a council news release, Hentges added that "the BPA exposures for all of the infants in this study are short-term, limited to the time when life-saving medical treatment is necessary, and well below government-set safe intake limits for BPA, which are conservatively set."
A medical expert not involved with the study said more information is needed.
"Clearly, this study found more exposure but the question is what does that mean," said Dr. David Mendez, a neonatologist with Miami Children's Hospital in Florida. "We just don't know enough right now.
"If we find that BPA is a real player in the long-term health outcomes of babies, we can come up with safer ways to deliver nutrition, to deliver our oxygen," he added.
For now, study author Duty said, "the first priority must be to provide the medical care needed to help these infants survive their premature birth."
More information
The U.S. National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences has more on BPA.In a reporting move that should earn him a Pulitzer, The Oklahoman's Ryan Aber made an open-records request for the University of Oklahoma's self-reported secondary NCAA violations and published what he found. I'll repeat -- these are self-reported violations, which mean the university turned itself in, and they are secondary, meaning they are very very dumb.
Among the actual violations were: Butt-dialing a recruit, accidentally texting the wrong person and responding to someone via text instead of Facebook message (which leads me to believe the NCAA created its secondary violations using the same criteria as teenage girls do when they're talking to a boy for the first time).
But perhaps the most ludicrous violation was for excessive pasta consumption:
Three current student-athletes received food in excess of NCAA regulation at a graduation banquet. The three had graduated from the school but returned for an additional season of competition. The players were provided pasta in excess of the permissible amount allowed.
The players' punishment was a donation of $3.83 to a charity of their choice.
I think this egregious punishment should be overturned immediately. Look, everyone loves pasta, we can understand how things got a little out of hand when exposed to that noodley temptress. Despite the clear athletic advantages the extra scoop of room-temperature buffet pasta gave these players, I think we should give them another chance to prove they're good guys.
But in the NCAA's defense, we can't let these athletes go too far down the spaghetti path. Otherwise this could happen:
UPDATE: The NCAA released the following statement on the matter: “While we appreciate Oklahoma's commitment, there are no NCAA rules regarding portion sizes, and any penalties were determined by the university.”
[Courtney Seymour had long considered her dog Greta, a nine-year-old chocolate and white boxer, an essential part of her family. So when Greta was diagnosed with degenerative myelopathy, an ailment that, like its human counterpart Lou Gehrig’s disease, causes paralysis and an inevitable painful death, Seymour was devastated.
Then came a sliver of hope from one of medicine’s most promising—albeit radical—new therapeutic approaches to genetic diseases. Seymour’s vet mentioned that a study at Tufts University was recruiting pet dogs with the disease to test an experimental treatment called gene therapy. Though there is no certainty of success, Seymour sprung at the chance, driving 150 miles from her home outside of Albany, New York, to Grafton, Massachusetts, so Greta could receive the treatment in March.
For decades, gene therapy has been envisioned as a way to cure disease by introducing new genetic material into people’s DNA. The technology is finally showing success in patients, with treatments moving closer to regulatory approval in the U.S. (see “Gene Therapy 2.0: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017”). Some of these therapies were first tested in research dogs, which have immune systems similar to humans and get many of the same diseases. But as humans seek better medical care for their furry family members, these therapies could soon be on the market for pet dogs, too.
Dominik Faissler, a veterinary neurologist at Tufts University who is leading the trial, is studying gene therapy for canine degenerative myelopathy with the goal of eventually helping people. He and his collaborators at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have so far treated five pet dogs with the disease, including Greta, and plan to treat five more in a small pilot study.
A mutation in the SOD1 gene has been linked to the disease in dogs, and an error in the same gene is associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, in humans. The treatment researchers developed is a single spinal fluid injection of a modified virus that can infect the nervous system. The virus is |
233rd Anniversary of The Shot Heard ‘Round the World from near the Old North Bridge in Concorde, Massachusetts. There are such things as lawful wars of defense and there are those among us who would trade blood for mammon and sacrifice our children to the god of government. Know the difference — warn your children — and your countrymen!
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." ~ Samuel Adams, Father of the American Revolution
Please help all you can — increasing your own understanding until you are competent to teach others to teach others.
The Best of Bill HuffHouse Top 40: Flipping Control Still A Tough Task For Democrats
Enlarge this image toggle caption Joe Raedle/Getty Images Joe Raedle/Getty Images
From the outset, Democrats needed a very big-wave election to get to the 30 seats they need to win back control of the House. Then, a video of Donald Trump surfaced showing the GOP nominee making lewd comments, and later multiple women accused him of groping them. That left some wondering if these scandals could trigger that wave.
But that simply hasn't happened.
Some races have shifted late in Democrats' favor, particularly in Republican-held suburban districts with high levels of voters with college degrees. Still, there has not been the wholesale move in polling that the party would need, even with Hillary Clinton's gains across the electoral map.
House Republicans were already going to have losses this year, having essentially maxed out their majority, hitting 247 seats after the 2014 midterms that gave them a majority the party hasn't seen since the Great Depression. And, in a presidential year when turnout leans left, Democrats were going to make gains.
However, Democrats' opportunities are limited, hampered by the unfavorable map that was handed to them post-2010 redistricting. Some mid-decade, court-ordered redistricting will give Democrats a slight boost to start off. They're favored to pick up one seat (maybe two) in Florida and one in Virginia, though Republicans are favored to gain one in Florida too.
From there, Democrats have 26 other seats held by Republicans that President Obama won in 2012. Those are among their prime targets, but even in those, they've left opportunities on the table. And much like some of their Senate colleagues fighting a much tougher fight to keep their majority, Republican incumbents in some of the toughest terrain have proven resilient.
Democrats, on the other hand, have just five districts they currently hold that Mitt Romney carried in 2012. One of those Republicans will win due to redistricting, and another looks like it could flip to the GOP side too. But in the three other districts, Democrats have the edge, and one of those (Collin Peterson in Minnesota) isn't seriously contested this year.
Republican leaders, like House Speaker Paul Ryan, knew there would be a growing urgency after Trump's downward spiral to shore up down-ballot races. Ryan shifted his focus to minimizing losses, and, all but acknowledging that Clinton will be the next president, he and party strategists began imploring GOP candidates to make a "check and balance" argument to voters — that with a Democratic president, there would need to be a GOP House to keep her legislative efforts in check. In an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, when asked if they'd rather have a GOP candidate who'd be a check and balance to Clinton or a Democratic candidate to help Clinton pass her agenda, it was 53 percent Republican, 40 percent Democratic.
Polling after the the Trump tape still had Republicans in a good position. NBC/WSJ and ABC/Washington Post polls gave Democrats a 3-point edge on the generic-ballot question: Would you rather have a Congress controlled by Democrats or Republicans? But, in context, those numbers were +15 and +13 for Democrats in 2006 and 2008, respectively, when they made big gains. And that was pre-2012 redistricting that curtailed the number of competitive seats.
Even if Clinton does come up with an electoral rout, flipping the House is still a huge long shot for Democrats. The biggest worry for Republicans, though, may be if reliable GOP voters, frustrated with their White House choices, may simply stay home. Such a scenario could further shift the map in Democrats' favor.
At the beginning of October, the most likely outcome seemed to be a gain of 10 to 15 seats for Democrats. Now, that number could rise to 20 seats, which would be a very good night for them, according to Democratic operatives.
Below we've ranked the top 40 House districts, in order of likelihood of flipping party control.I came home late from my first day of testing the iPhone X. My wife sent me audio clips over iMessage from the kids after I sent them pictures of myself, now beardless. "O-M-G. I can't even recognize Daddy!"
I couldn't recognize myself either. In the mirror, I looked smooth, like another version of me. I felt vulnerable. I had shaved my beard to test Face ID, Apple's new method for unlocking your iPhone by simply looking at it. But, what would it be like in public, on TV, when I hug my kids? At first, big personal changes feel uncomfortable but appealing. Everything seems different but also potentially refreshing.
My smooth face was the perfect metaphor for my experience with the iPhone X: The 10-year anniversary iPhone feels the same, but different. Weird, but good. I've been alternating between both feelings over the last week. And you, future iPhone X owner, might feel the same. But tough it out -- because after a few days, you're probably going to like where you end up.
Continue reading →
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All our recent iPhone X coverage is right here.
Be sure to stay tuned for more great content and reach out to @jetscott on Twitter with your questions![See update: both campaigns now say they wouldn’t pursue such a strategy.]
Roger Simon reports that a “senior,” “high-ranking” Clinton campaign official says that if the convention is close the Clintonites will try to “promise the sun, the moon, and the stars” to induce elected delegates pledged to Barack Obama to switch sides.
It’s possible that Simon got it wrong, of course, but so far we haven’t heard the indignant denial from the Clinton campaign that ought to have been automatic.
(The Obama campaign, which doesn’t rely as much on anonymous press handouts, is already out with a strong denunciation by David Plouffe.) And the story is credible on its face because it’s so much of a piece with stuff we know is true, such as the Clintons’ insistence that the rules about Florida and Michigan be changed to award her delegates “won” in uncontested primaries.
Shortly before Election Day of 2000 it seemed possible that Al Gore would win in the Electoral College vote while losing the popular vote. Back then, some Bush operatives were openly discussing pursuing a “faithless elector” strategy: inducing some of the electors pledged to Gore to defect to Bush. That would have been perfectly legal: in Constitutional theory, the electors are free agents. But the Bushoids’ mere willingness to consider such a strategy, and discuss it openly, was the first strong hint that they had no sense of limits.
We have now suffered for seven years with the consequences of putting such people in power.
Are we having fun yet? Do we want four or eight more years of the same thing?
No, planning to win the nomination by inducing pledged delegates to break their word isn’t at the same level of gravity as denying that Congress has the power of the purse, but it’s based on the same winning-is-everything principle. I’m willing to believe that HRC herself is a decent person. But she has surrounded herself with people who cannot be trusted with power.
Update Phil Singer of the Clinton campaign now denies any such intention. (Either the original Politico.com article has been changed or I read it too quickly, but it now names Singer, though it doesn’t quite make clear whether he’s the “senior” “high-ranking” Clinton campaign official mentioned at the top.)
In the new statement as posted on the Clinton website, Singer doesn’t deny having been the original source, or accuse Roger Simon of misquoting him in saying that Singer “assumes” that the Clinton campaign was in fact going after Obama delegates. So the simplest reading here is that Singer was talking out of school, or that this was a trial balloon and the Clintonites folded quickly when they felt the sh*t-storm of denunciation.
I’m glad that they recognize some limits, if only the limits of what they can get away with.
Second update A Clinton supporter writes a furious email denouncing me for misrepresenting the Simon report. (Full text of that report at the jump.)
The question is whether the phrase “the sun, the moon, and the stars” is propertly attributable to the unnamed senior Clinton official, or whether it’s Simon’s contribution.
Here’s the relevant part of the text:
This time, one candidate may enter the convention leading by just a few pledged delegates, and those delegates may find themselves being promised the sun, moon and stars to switch sides. “I swear it is not happening now, but as we get closer to the convention, if it is a stalemate, everybody will be going after everybody’s delegates,” a senior Clinton official told me Monday afternoon. “All the rules will be going out the window.”
Yes, this is ambiguous. But since the entire basis of the story was a Clinton campaign official’s suggestion that the Clinton campaign was going to go after Obama’s pledged delegates, and since that person says that “all the rules will be going out the window,” it seems reasonable to attribute the entire thought to the unnamed Clintonite. The notion that the Obama campaign would also be offering such inducements is nonsensical if it’s Simon’s own contribution, since he had already checked with the Obama camp and gotten no indication of any such intention. So I read it as reflecting what the Clinton official said.
But in the end it doesn’t matter much. It’s clear that the Clinton camp intended to try to flip Obama’s pledged delegates, that someone in that camp said as much to Simon, that either that person was Singer or that Simon confirmed it with Singer, and that the campaign backed off today when the proposed tactic drew universal denunciation.
Third update Another reader suggests an alternative hypothesis:
[Maybe] Simon was looking for a story or he was just sitting in a bar with a Clinton official and he’s spinning a theory of where the campaigns could go for delegates and he brought up whether pledged delegates could be induced to switch, and the stupid Clinton campaign official (Singer or whomever) goes along with it and “confirms” Simon’s scenario that both campaigns would end up competing in this way. Never an intended strategy by the Clinton campaign, not a trial balloon… though you could read it as either loose morals or incredibly poor judgment (or both) by this one press buddy in the campaign. The Obama campaign has certainly had better press discipline than the HRC one, which is a point in his favor — though of course its easier to have good press discipline when you’re the press darling already.
That could be right. Though if that were the case, it’s hard to see why the Clinton press release didn’t say so, and why it took the Clinton campaign six hours to say “No, we weren’t planning to poach delegates.”"Jimmy Butler is a better basketball player than Marcus Smart." That is a true statement, today. Now change that statement slightly to "Jimmy Butler was a better basketball player at 22 than Marcus Smart is." That is where we run into a problem. This is the argument that SHOULD be making the rounds on talk radio when discussing a potential swap that includes these two names.
Regardless, this statement happens to be flat out wrong.
As a matter of fact, Marcus Smart has been better than Jimmy Butler at every stage of his career thus far and I am not sure there is a reason to believe the trend won’t continue. Here is a closer look:
High School
Coming out of high school Smart was a five-star prospect, a McDonalds All American, the #1 Shooting Guard and #10 overall player in the county. He had his choice of college programs ultimately choosing to attend Oklahoma State over UNC, Oklahoma and Texas. He chose Oklahoma State to play with his high school teammate Phil Forte, who only shared two common options.
Jimmy Butler was not heavily recruited out of high school and attended Tyler Junior College in Texas.
ADVANTAGE: SMART
College
Smart had an immediate impact the minute he put on a Cowboys uniform. As a freshman, he averaged 15.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 3.0 steals per game. He led the Big 12 in Steals, was 6th in scoring and 6th in assists. He joined Kevin Durant and Michael Beasley as the only players to win both Big 12 Freshman of the year and Big 12 Player of the year in the same season. He was a Second Team All American and USBWA National Freshman of the Year.
He decided to go back to school for his sophomore season to improve his play at point guard, a position he had only played for one season. At the time of his announcement, Chad Ford had him ranked as the #2 prospect on his board and he would've been a Top 10 pick.
His sophomore year he saw slight improvements in his numbers but overall it was a rollercoaster season where he earned a reputation for flopping and had an ugly incident with a fan. He became the first player in NCAA Tournament history to have 20+ Points, 10+ Rebounds, 5+ Assists and 5+ Steals in a game (23/13/7/6) in his final game.
After Butler’s year at Tyler junior college he was ranked as a two-star recruit and the 127th Junior College Recruit in the country. He attended Marquette University and in his first year he played 20 minutes a game and averaged 5.6 points and 3.9 rebounds. He averaged 15/6/2/1 over his Junior and Senior years, earning Big East Honorable Mention both seasons.
ADVANTAGE: SMART
NBA
Smart was selected 6th overall in the 2014 draft. Butler was drafted 30th overall in 2011. Here are their second year numbers:
Regular Season
Butler (23 years old) 26 minutes/8.6 points/4.0 rebounds/1.4 assists/1 steals
Smart (21 years old) 27.3 minutes/9.1 points/4.2 rebounds/3.0 assists/1.5 steals
Playoffs
Butler (23 years old) 40.8 minutes/13.3 points/5.2 rebounds/2.7 assists/1.3
Smart (21 years old) 32.2 minutes/12.0 points/4.5 rebounds/3.0 assists/1.7 steals
Smart's second season was slightly better across the board and he was 2 years younger doing it. He showed flashes of stardom in the playoffs including a transcendent defensive performance against the must larger (and red hot) Paul Millsap in Game 4 of the first round to will his team to a W.
ADVANTAGE: TO BE DETERMINED
Overall
When Butler was 21 years old he was not even a top 10 player in his college CONFERENCE. When Marcus Smart was 21 years old he was playing 27+ minutes for a 48-win Boston Celtics team. He was the ONLY player in his draft class to play a significant role on a playoff team in 2016. Butler broke out at 25 years old and after 3 full seasons in the NBA. I think Marcus Smart is going to break out at 22 years old and after 2 full seasons in the NBA.
Jimmy Butler is a great example of a player who worked his way to the player that he is today. By every account I have heard, Marcus Smart has a work ethic and competitiveness that is unmatched. He also has more talent than Jimmy Butler. He just hasn’t reached his potential yet and if you think he has, you are the crazy one. Everyone keeps saying that we need to add a star. I fully believe we already have one.
Follow me on Twitter @dbardelliniAn international team of astronomers has published a new study suggesting that nearly all of the stars that will ever exist in our universe have in fact already been born.
REUTERS/NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage This full-field image of the nearby dwarf galaxy NGC 4214 taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is shown as released by NASA May 12, 2011. The Hubble image reveals a sequence of steps in the formation and evolution of stars and star clusters, evident in the glowing gas surrounding bright stellar clusters.
Related Study: The Universe Has Almost Stopped Making New Stars Wired
An international team of astronomers has published a new study suggesting that nearly all of the stars that will ever exist in our universe have in fact already been born.
Using three telescopes — the Subaru Telescope and the UK Infrared Telescope in Hawaii and the Very Large Telescope in Chile — the team put together the most robust survey of star formation yet.
(MORE: Cosmic Loners: Orphan Stars and Planets Wander the Galaxy
They found that the rate of star formation has decreased to such an extent that only 5% more stars than those that exist today will be produced in the remaining lifespan of the Universe.
David Sobral of Leiden University, the lead author of the study, tells TIME that the astronomers looked for a certain indicator—the H-alpha photons emitted by hydrogen atoms when a star forms—in their hunt for data “from stranger and smaller galaxies.”
They compiled snapshots of star-forming galaxies from different points of time in the Universe’s life span — at 2, 4, 6 and 9 billion years old — which took five years to put together. According to Sobral, “all of the action in the Universe occurred billions of years ago,” with half of all stars that ever existed created more than nine billion years ago and the remaining half created since then.
(MORE: How the Stars Were Born)
The findings have helped to explain the gap between the number of stars that can be observed and the number that scientists believe there should be in current existence. Sobral says that while there are plenty of dying stars which could help make new ones, there is a very narrow set of circumstances that enables star formation:
“You need the gas to become dense and cool enough to form stars. It’s true that when a supernova explodes, it helps, through shockwaves, to make the gas dense to trigger star formation. But if the explosion is too energetic, it can blow the gas out of the galaxy.”
The real conundrum for astronomers is explaining this phenomenon. “There is a big question in terms of really understanding why this is happening,” says Sobral. “It seems that the specifics of gas cooling and becoming dense is much harder now than it was many million years ago.”
(MORE: Star Lite: You Don’t Need Heavy Metals to Build a Good Planet)
Sobral and his colleagues are now looking at the selective samples to study the environment in which stars were formed to see how it has changed, if indeed it has, over time.
He also has comforting words for those saddened by the prospect of a future with fewer stars:
“This could be interpreted as quite depressing, but if you think about it, one of the reasons why we are around is because the rate of star formation is so low. If you were to maintain a steady trend of star production there is almost no chance that a planet like ours could survive.”
Sobral adds that the number of stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is quite high. Given that even the shortest lifespan of stars runs into the billions of years, it will be a very long time indeed before we see the last star being born.
(MORE: The Transit of Venus: Photographs from a Rare Celestial Event)U.S. Senate and Gage Skidmore, CC by 2.0
Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador (upper left), Sen. Jim Risch (lower left), Sen. Mike Crapo (upper right) and Rep. Mike Simpson (lower right).
"Donald Trump has been chosen by the Republican voters of this country to represent them in our bid for the White House this year. Mr. Trump is their choice based on rules established by the Republican Party. He is our nominee. He represents the wishes of the
Republican Party – not you as a Senator, nor others such as Mr. Romney nor the Bush family – he was chosen by us to represent us.
It was extremely disappointing to hear three days ago that you decided to no longer support Donald Trump as the Republican Candidate for President. As a Republican, you are expected to espouse certain ideals that all of us have in common. While many of us do not agree with positions you have taken in the past, still, as a Republican, we have
been willing to support and sustain you in your position as a Senator from our great state.
However, with your announcement that you would no longer support Mr. Trump, in our opinion, you have relinquished your right to be associated with the Party we represent. Effective immediately, the Idaho County Republican Central Committee will provide neither physical nor financial support to your effort to be re-elected. We will not distribute signs or other campaign literature on your behalf. Those of us who have put signs up for you, will remove those signs. You have lost our respect as a Republican and feel you are no longer worthy of the title of ‘Republican’ that we proudly wear. "
U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo took heat from some fellow Republicans in rural Idaho Oct. 12 following the congressman's public withdrawal of support for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.In a letter, Idaho County Central Republican Committee Chairman Jon Menough told the senator his public denial of the GOP candidate made him unfit for membership in the Republican Party:Crapo's office has not issued a response to the letter, nor would the Idaho Republican Party offer any comment on the divisions the Trump campaign has begun to present within the state GOP.The Republican exodus from the Trump camp began after the Oct. 8 release of a recording from 2005 in which Trump can be heard bragging about seducing, groping and kissing women."Grab them by the pussy," he can be heard saying. "You can do anything."The recording became a point of contention the next evening during the second presidential debate. Soon after its release, Crapo and Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson issued statements pulling their support from Trump, with Crapo calling his comments "disrespectful, profane and demeaning."Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter and Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador, both Republicans, both doubled down on their support of Trump, saying gaffes aside, the real estate mogul turned political contender remains a better choice than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.While Trump's candidacy is still supported by 21 Republican governors, nine have said they will not vote for the party's pick. Other high-profile GOP politicians, including House Majority Leader Paul Ryan and Arizona Sen. John McCain, have either renounced their support or backed out of campaign appearances with Trump.Introduction
President Barack Obama wants cities and towns to be able to offer high speed Internet service to their residents. Now the nation’s top telecommunications regulator may help that goal along.
The Federal Communications Commission said it will vote next month on requests by two southern cities, Chattanooga, Tennessee and Wilson, North Carolina, asking it to override state laws restricting the ability of local governments to provide broadband access.
The Center for Public Integrity first reported on the requests in July. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler appears amenable to the requests.
Wheeler has repeatedly said he would pre-empt state laws that ban or place barriers on cities that want to build or expand broadband networks if he were asked to do so.
Now Obama has weighed in. In a speech in Cedar Falls, Iowa, this week the president said he intends to help promote municipal broadband in areas that are underserved by the major telecommunications companies.
“If there are state laws in place that prohibit or restrict these community- based broadband efforts,” Obama said, “we should do everything we can to push back against those old laws.”
The change won’t happen without a fight.
Telecommunications giants including Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner Cable have spent millions of dollars to lobby state legislatures, influence state elections and buy research to try to stop the spread of public Internet services that often offer faster speeds at cheaper rates. AT&T alone spent more than $250,000 on lobbying in Tennessee alone last year, the Center for Public Integrity reported in August.
The Center’s report illustrated how municipal broadband service, especially in rural communities, can help boost businesses and create jobs. It contrasted the experience of Tullahoma, Tennessee, which has a strong publicly-owned broadband network, with Fayetteville, North Carolina, which was thwarted from allowing its residents to tap into the city’s gigabit broadband network by state law.
Tullahoma’s job market has thrived, while Fayetteville’s has stagnated in recent years.
There are currently 20 states that have laws restricting the ability of municipalities to offer Internet service.
Obama intends to make the case for allowing cities and towns to decide for themselves whether to build out municipal broadband networks in his State of the Union address on January 20.Former United States Republican party presidential candidate Mitt Romney, after a three-week flirtation with another run for president, has definitively said that he will not seek the White House in 2016.
"After putting considerable thought into making another run for president, I've decided it is best to give other leaders in the party the opportunity to become our next nominee," the Republican Party's 2012 nominee said in a statement on Friday.
As Romney sounded out his former team about putting together a new national campaign, he discovered that several of his past fundraisers had already made plans for 2016 and were committed to supporting former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the brother and son of former presidents.
The Associated Press news agency reported that several key former Romney donors said that in Bush they see someone who can successfully serve as president, as they believe Romney could. But they also think Bush has the personality and senior staff needed to win the White House, something the former Massachusetts governor could not bring together in his two previous presidential campaigns.
The former governor of Massachusetts had jumped back into the presidential discussion on January 10, when he surprised a small group of former donors at a meeting in New York by telling them he was eyeing a third run for the White House.
It was a monumental change for Romney, who since losing the 2012 election to President Barack Obama had repeatedly told all who asked that his career in politics was over and that he would not again run for president.
The exit of Romney from the upcoming campaign most immediately benefits the other favourites of the party's establishment wing, including Bush, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
The more conservative side of the field is largely unchanged, with a group of candidates that will likely include Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
Romney's aides had acknowledged a third campaign would have been more difficult than his second, but insisted he would have had the necessary financial support, noting his supporters raised more than $1bn during the 2012 election.After a week of no updates regarding BandFuse DLC we finally have an answer, and it’s kind of a big deal. Jeff Marshall updated the BandFuse facebook page today with a post announcing that Realta has partnered with Experience Hendrix to bring fifteen signature songs from the legendary guitarist’s music catalog.
As part of this partnership players will get access to 15 signature songs from the Jimi Hendrix catalog, the first of Which will be rolled as part of the initial 10 songs for DLC on January 28th 2014! DLC will continue to launch 10 new songs a month with selected tracks Hendrix, along with a special list of songs to coincide with the Experience Hendrix Tour in March!
– Jeff Marshall (@BandFuseJeff)
Below is the PR release which also details BandFuse’s strategy for Jimi Hendrix DLC.
ALL-TIME GREATEST GUITARIST EVER JIMI HENDRIX TO ELECTRIFY BANDFUSE: ROCK LEGENDS VIDEO GAME
Exclusive Multi-Phased Partnership to Incorporate Hendrix as an In-Game Legend, Include Special Video Content and Bring 15 of His Greatest Songs to BandFuse: Rock Legends Music Store
CAMPBELL, CA – November 26, 2013 – Realta Entertainment Group and Experience Hendrix, L.L.C. announced today a multi-phased partnership that will bring the musical legacy of Jimi Hendrix to BandFuse: Rock Legends, the music video game where legendary rockers transform players into real world guitarists, bassists and vocalists.
As part of this partnership players will get access to 15 signature songs from the Jimi Hendrix catalogue, which will be rolled out starting in January 2014 as downloadable content in the BandFuse: Rock Legends Music Store.
Later in 2014, Hendrix will be integrated into the game as a rock legend, which will include interviews with present day guitar greats talking about Jimi Hendrix’s technique and experimental style paired with archival video footage from his illustrious career.
“Jimi was never afraid to go beyond the limitations of traditional guitar teachings, and when fans jump into BandFuse they will be amazed at how cool it is to learn to play guitar like Hendrix,” said Janie L. Hendrix, President/CEO of Experience Hendrix L.L.C. “The game provides players with the ability to play his exact sound, capturing the fuzz, feedback and tones that made his style legendary.”
Earlier this week BandFuse: Rock Legends was announced as the title sponsor for the eighth edition of the celebrated Experience Hendrix Tour set to launch in March 2014. These special event performances represent an ongoing tribute to the music and legacy of Jimi Hendrix.BandFuse: Rock Legends will have playable kiosks at each stop of the 20-city tour, giving attendees a hands-on experience. The tour features two of the in-game instructors from BandFuse: Rock Legends, metal legend Zakk Wylde and funk master Bootsy Collins.
“We are ecstatic to be working with the Jimi Hendrix team to bring his immensely explosive talent to BandFuse: Rock Legends,” said Jeff Marshall, Director of Artist Relations, Realta Entertainment. “He was an unparalleled musical genius whose collective guitar works continue to be relevant and influential to budding musicians and music lovers the world over.”
Seamlessly connecting real guitars, basses and microphones to game consoles, BandFuse: Rock Legends empowers players to jam to a fully unlocked library of hit songs from rock to metal and punk to funk, featuring 55 massive genre-jumping songs. BandFuse: Rock Legends features in-game guitar and bass guitar instruction by a platinum cast of musicians including master guitar instructor Slash joined by Zakk Wylde (Black Label Society), Mike Ness (Social Distortion), Bootsy Collins (Parliament/Funkadelic, Rubber Band), George Lynch (Dokken, Lynch Mob), Zoltan Bathory and Jason Hook (Five Finger Death Punch), and Alexi Laiho (Children of Bodom).TEL AVIV – Jews are plotting to convert the entire world – including, if it exists, life on extraterrestrial planets – and are behind all of the recent terror attacks in Europe, a Jordanian journalist claimed in series of anti-Semitic articles published in the country’s Muslim Brotherhood publication, Al-Sabil.
Jamal Al-Shawaheen also claimed that while French authorities have beefed up surveillance of the country’s Muslims, Jews have not been subjected to the same treatment despite the fact that they are clearly behind the terror attacks plaguing France over the past couple of years.
Shawaheen slammed Ramadan TV shows that portray Jews in a positive light, saying they are an attempt to present the Jews as a moral people and impose an image of “the Israeli enemy state” as a natural part of the region.
In one article published in June and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Shawaheen asserted that since the “Jews believe that there is no room in the world for more than one religion – their own,” they have launched a campaign of “oppression” that begins by eliminating Islam and then Christianity, followed by eastern religions including Buddhism and Hinduism.
Their plan, says Shawaheen, is to “conquer territory and destroy peoples.”
“They believe in the ultimate motto that the entire world belongs to the Jews alone, and that others should leave it, either willingly or by force – it doesn’t matter where they go, so long as they leave the world,” the article stated.
Shawaheen even went as far as to claim that if life was discovered on other planets, the Jews, in their false belief that they are the chosen people, would claim Judaism is the only religion on those planets.
Everyone else would exist only to serve the Jews in every “humiliating capacity,” writes Shawaheen.
Shawaheen takes pains to emphasize that this is not only the view of rabbis or religious Jews but is widespread among all Jews. He adds that there is no such thing as a “secular” or “moderate” Jew.
This view is based on the Torah, avers Shawaheen, which guided Jews in all their actions throughout history, including forcing “the Roman prefect to crucify Jesus.”
The Jews’ “depraved methods” led to their persecution at the hands of Nazi Germany and also to warnings against them voiced by American presidents, Shawaheen writes.
Shawaheen slams the Palestinian Authority for being in cahoots with Israel and for still believing that peace is possible.
Referring to “martyred” terrorists who carry out attacks against Israel, Shawaheen writes that instead of lauding the heroic actions of “the new Fedayeen,” the Palestinian Authority condemns those attacks. This is exemplified by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ condemnation of the June 8 terror attack at Tel Aviv’s Sarona mall which claimed the lives of four people. An attack that in Shawaheen’s eyes was “minimal vengeance for everything the Israelis did and are still doing.”
In another article published the same month, Shawaheen muses on the possibility of terrorist attacks during the UEFA Euro 2016 soccer championship in France.
He notes that France’s increased security measures during the soccer championship missed one vital element – the Israeli one.
“Had they explored this direction, they would have found that the greatest danger to their security comes from there,” writes Shawaheen.
“The Jews and their relevant apparatuses are unquestionably behind all the attacks in Europe. France, which is hosting the European championship, should monitor the Israelis and Jews on its soil if it wants to minimize the cycle of anticipated [terrorist] attacks.”
Shawaheen’s third article slams the Ramadan TV series Bab Al-Hara for depicting the Jewish nation “as normal, peace-loving, cooperative, and even patriotic.”
Shawaheen terms the positive portrayal of Jews as a “plague” intended to “spread and promote [the idea] that all Jews have morals and religious obligations, and that it is natural to live side by side with them based on the assumption that they have their religion and others have theirs, without any differences.”
“This is the gravest matter ever conveyed by a drama series watched by the masses [and aired] on major networks. … All this appears to be preparation for imposing the Israeli enemy state [on us] as a natural element in the region,” he concludes.You remember Andy Weir. He’s the software engineer who published The Martian on his website for free, signed a Big Five contract, became a bestseller, and joined Philip K. Dick in the “Ridley-Scott-Made-My-Book-into-a-Movie Club.”
But for now, Weir is done with Mars. His next novel — Artemis, out this November — is set on the moon. Instead of a mild-mannered botanist, his new hero is a lunar smuggler named Jasmine Bashara. Instead of a survival story, Artemis is about a big heist gone wrong … and a planetary conspiracy. Read the first chapter here.
Andy Weir is in Chicago next week for the American Library Association’s Annual Conference, where he’ll talk about the book and his greenlit TV series on Monday, June 26 from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. I recently corresponded with him via email about what readers can expect from his sophomore effort, as well as how he’s coping with the pressure.
* * *
Adam Morgan: How will Artemis surprise fans of The Martian?
Andy Weir: It’s a very different feel. It’s another optimistic view of the future (I am who I am) but at the same time it’s gritty and (hopefully) realistic. It’s not about a space agency trying to push the boundaries of human exploration, it’s about normal people living normal lives in an extraordinary place.
Adam Morgan: How do you cope with sky-high expectations after a beloved, bestselling debut? Did it interfere with your confidence while writing Artemis?
Andy Weir: It was constantly on my mind. Am I a one-hit-wonder or actually a good author? Artemis will be how I find out. I’m stressed out about it. Also, even a well-written book is unlikely to reach the levels of success I enjoyed with The Martian. So I have to start out with realistic expectations. If readers say “It’s not as good as The Martian, but it’s still really good,” I’ll call that a win.
Adam Morgan: Why was Artemis “more difficult to write” than The Martian? Why was it “more interesting”?
Andy Weir: The Martian was a straight-up survival story. Artemis is much more character-driven. I’ve done my best to make compelling characters with depth, emotion, and conflicting motivations. It was difficult for me — character hasn’t been my strong suit — but I feel like I’ve grown as a writer. I want to at least try for more depth.
Adam Morgan: Are you more of a Mark Watney or a Jasmine Bashara?
Andy Weir: I’m a bit of both. Or, more accurately, they’re both a bit of me. Mark is me at my best. Jazz is me at my sneakiest.
Adam Morgan: Which is scarier: living on the Moon or Mars?
Andy Weir: Mars. No question. If something goes wrong on the Moon, Earth is right next door to help out. On Mars you’re on your own.
* * *
See the video below for more Andy and Artemis.
FICTION – SCIENCE FICTION
Artemis by Andy Weir
Crown
Published November 14, 2017
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which fathers were awarded joint legal and primary physical custody)."17 Even if we give the SJC-GBC the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were unaware that the study's author says the data was not collected for the purpose of analyzing gender bias in custody awards, and is not appropriate data for that use, it's still instructive to look at how they manipulated the numbers to come up with the kind of result they did. They asked the question: In what percent of cases in which the father requests custody is he granted any form of physical custody? But they neglected to ask the same question with respect to mothers, i.e.: In what percent of cases in which the mother requests custody is she granted any form of physical custody? Comparing those two numbers would be the obvious place to start analyzing court bias. How can we calculate the comparable number for maternal custody awards? Unfortunately, from the data available, we can't. As explained above, maternal sole physical custody can be inferred from the maternal sole legal custody column, but no such inference can be made regarding joint physical custody. Lacking that, the following analysis is the best that can be done. Here's the line from the above table dealing with fathers who requested sole legal custody: Legal Custody Granted Legal
Custody
Requested All
N = 700
n (%) Mother
N = 441 Father
N = 38 Joint
N = 199 Other
N = 22 Father 58( 8.3) 7 26 23 2 They were granted sole legal custody (and by implication sole physical custody) 26/58 = 44.8%. The SJC’s Gender Bias Committee claims 25% cases in which fathers were awarded joint legal and primary physical custody.18 The 25% number cannot be derived from the table above. I have so far been unable to get the raw data. Nowhere in the SJC-GBC’s report is there any indication that the MDRG study’s authors made the raw data available to them. In any case, the 70% number can be derived by adding the aforementioned 44.8% + 25% = 69.8%. But the sample size is only 58 cases over the course of 6 years, or not quite 10 cases per year! Here's the line from the above table dealing with mothers who requested sole legal custody: Legal Custody Granted Legal
Custody
Requested All
N = 700
n (%) Mother
N = 441 Father
N = 38 Joint
N = 199 Other
N = 22 Mother 515 (73.6) 380 8 109 18 A comparable analysis of requests by mothers for sole legal custody yields the result that mothers who requested sole legal custody were granted sole legal custody (and by implication sole physical custody) 380/515 = 73.8% (vs. 44.8% for fathers). With respect to mothers who were awarded joint legal and primary physical custody, the above table tells us nothing, so the best that can be done is to calculate the range of possible values. To come up with a number to compare against the SJC-GBC's 70% figure, we'd have to know which parent was awarded primary physical custody for the 109 cases in which joint legal custody was awarded. This number could be anything from 0 to 109. Thus the bottom end of the range is the 73.8% we've already calculated. To calculate the top end of the range, we add 109/515 = 21.2% to the 73.8% yielding 95%. From this, the following statements can be made: The rate at which mother's requests for sole custody were granted is 65% higher than the rate at which father's requests for sole custody were granted. (73.8% for mothers - 44.8% for fathers) / 44.8% for fathers = 64.7%
The rate at which primary physical custody was granted to mothers who sought sole custody is somewhere between (73.8% and 95%). The bottom end of that range is higher than the 69.8% rate for fathers! Again, remember that we haven't dealt at all with requests for joint custody, custody requests which were filed later than the initial divorce filing, custody requests which were modified after the initial divorce filing, or the skewing effect of a self-selected sample of fathers willing to undertake a custody battle against overwhelming odds. Even now, sixteen years after the Mass. SJC published this statistic, it continues to influence public policy, as shown by the fact that the National Center on Poverty Law trains its lawyers to believe this statistic, and Legal Services of New Jersey bases its arguments against a presumption of joint custody on this statistic, as does George Washington University law professor Naomi Cahn. In this paper, I have demonstrated how the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s Gender Bias Committee constructed a true but highly misleading statistic whose sound-bite quality has quite predictably led the public to reach a grossly inaccurate conclusion, and to support legislation that exacerbates the problem rather than solving it. 1 Landers, Ann, "Divorced dads speak up; they have rights, too," (Ann Landers' nationally syndicated column, 1/20/1997), http://www.s-t.com/daily/01-97/01-20-97/zzzadlan.htm, "... you are wrong when you say fathers have difficulty gaining custody. Recent studies have found that fathers who fight for custody win sole or at least joint custody in 70 percent of the cases." 2 Cafazzo, Debbie, "Tug of War," (The Tacoma Washington News Tribune, 11/11/2002, p. D.01), http://www.tribnet.com, "But a 1989 study of the Massachusetts court system found that when fathers actually sought custody, they received it about 70 percent of the time. Most of the time, the study said, they didn't ask." 3 Kraft, Stephanie, "Why Does He Do That?," (Valley Advocate of Easthampton Mass, 2/6/2003), http://www.valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content.html?oid=oid:1562, "His point is bolstered by a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court study showing that when fathers, including abusive fathers, fight for custody of their children in Massachusetts, they win more than three times as often as mothers." 4 Landsberg, Michele, "Children of divorce need our protection," (Toronto Star, 7/28/2003), http://www.thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1& c=Article&cid=1059257408551&call_page=TS, "In an official report of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1990, the researchers admitted that they began by sharing this perception about court bias in favour of women. They found the opposite to be true. (New England Law Review, Spring, 1990). Most women have physical custody of their children post-divorce - not because of bias, but through mutual parental agreement. When men do actually fight through the courts to get custody, they are awarded sole or joint custody more than 70 per cent of the time." 5 Boston, Gabriella, "Custody's high stakes," (The Washington Times, July 10, 2005), http://www.washingtontimes.com/familytimes/20050709-104258-3244r.htm, "Naomi Cahn, a law professor at George Washington University, says the 85 percent statistic is misleading. 'In most of those cases, the divorce is settled out of court and the father is not seeking custody,' Ms. Cahn says. 'But in the cases that fathers contest, they actually win either joint or sole custody in about 70 percent of cases.'" 6 Goldhill, Nancy, "Perils of Joint Custody," (National Center on Poverty Law, Poverty Law Manual for the New Lawyer, reprint of article from Legal Services of New Jersey Report, July-Aug. 2000), http://www.povertylaw.org/legalresearch/manual/Joint%20custody.pdf, "When fathers contest custody, however, studies consistently document that they win at least half of the time.... a Massachusetts study found this to be so in 70 percent of cases." 7 "N.O.W. Action Alert on Fathers' Rights," (N.O.W. website, 1996), http://www.now.org/organization/conference/1996/resoluti.html? NS-search-set=/32a83/aaaa005OIa8310c&NS-doc-offset=0&#alert, "WHEREAS many judges and attorneys are still biased against women and fathers are awarded custody 70% of the time when they seek it" 8 Abrams & Greaney, Gender Bias Study of The Supreme Judicial Court, Justice Ruth I. Abrams, Supreme Judicial Court, co-chair, and Chief Justice John M. Greaney, Appeals Court, co-chair, (Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, 1989) 9 Koel, et al, Middlesex Divorce Research Group (Amy Koel, Susan C. Clark, W.P.C. Phear, and Barbara B. Hauser), "Impact of Divorce, Single Parenting, and Step-parenting On Children," Chapter 4, "A Comparison of Joint and Sole Legal Custody Arrangements," (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1988, Hetherington & Arasteh, editors) 10 Ibid., p. 78, Table 4.4 11 Personal communication with Amy Koel, Ph.D., May, 1995. 12 Ibid., p. 78, Table 4.4 13 Ibid., p. 79 14 Ibid., p. 78, Table 4.4 15 Abrams & Greaney, op. cit., p. 62, "In two-thirds of the cases in which fathers sought custody, they received primary physical custody" 16 Koel, op. cit., p. 79 17 Abrams & Greaney, op. cit., p. 62 18 Ibid., p. 62
BreakingTheScience.org WebWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve threw a massive life-line to consumers on Tuesday with two new programs aimed at making it easier for them to obtain loans for homes, cars and on credit cards.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson arrives to speak at a news conference at the Treasury Department in Washington, November 25, 2008. REUTERS/Jason Reed
Under the new mortgage program, the Fed will buy up to $100 billion of debt issued by government-sponsored mortgage enterprises Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks. It will also buy up to $500 billion of mortgage securities backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae.
The central bank also launched a $200 billion facility to support consumer finance, including student, auto, and credit card loans and loans backed by the federal Small Business Administration. This will lend to investors who hold securities backed by this debt.
The launch of the two programs lifted investor spirits and drove up the blue chip Dow Jones industrial average more than 100 points, or about 1.3 percent, within minutes of its open.
“One of the big problems we have is that there has been a lack of demand for debt. You have seen the market for securitized debt such as credit cards or student loans dry up completely,” said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James & Associates in St. Petersburg, Florida.
“Here is the Fed taking a bunch of debt out of the market,” he said. “It should help unblock the credit markets.”
The new mortgage-support facility was intended to strike at the collapsed housing market, the core of the United States’ economic woes.
“This action is being taken to reduce the cost and increase the availability of credit for the purchase of houses, which in turn should support housing markets and foster improved financial conditions more generally,” the Fed said.
Investor appetite for both the debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the mortgage-backed securities they guarantee has dried up since the government seized the companies in September, and the Fed hopes to fill that void.
TAPPING TARP
“They are getting to the heart of the problem, it’s clean, it’s quick, it’s direct,” said Todd Abraham, co-head of government and mortgage bonds at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “It’s a good way to bring down mortgage rates.”
Under the consumer-finance facility, the Treasury will help cover any losses the Fed might face by providing $20 billion of credit protection from its $700 billion financial bailout fund, which Congress approved last month.
A Treasury spokeswoman said the $20 billion will come from the remaining unallocated $40 billion in the first tranche of the $700 billion financial rescue fund. That leaves Treasury with $20 billion, and once that is used it must ask Congress for access to the remaining $350 billion in the fund.
The Treasury noted that issuance of asset-backed securities in consumer lending categories such as credit cards, auto loans and student loans had essentially ground to a halt in October. Last year, issuance was roughly $240 billion.
“Continued disruption in the ABS market could further deteriorate credit availability for consumers and increase the prospects for further deterioration in the economy generally,” the Treasury said in a statement.
The Fed’s twin announcements marked the latest in a series of emergency measures by U.S. authorities to try to keep the economy from falling into a deep and prolonged recession. Late Sunday, the government stepped in to prop up the second largest U.S. bank Citigroup.
Most economists say the emergency steps represent a necessary, if ad hoc, response to the greatest financial shock the United States has experienced since the Great Depression.
Some, however, are worried the mounting costs of the measures, which have the potential to reach several trillion dollars, could eventually fuel a troubling inflation.
Slideshow (3 Images)
“It may mean (a) longer-run issue with inflation and inflation concerns,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Securities in Charlotte, North Carolina. “It may be too much of a good thing is a bad thing. We may be overpaying for bad assets.”
Policy-makers, however, have signaled a willingness to do whatever it takes to try to tamp down the risk of a severe recession.MISSISSAUGA — A little bug is causing big headaches for Malton residents looking to clean up after the devastating ice storm that recently battered Mississauga and other parts of the GTA.
The Asian long-horned beetle is an invasive pest that can wreak havoc on deciduous trees, particularly maple. The creature was discovered in the Malton area in August and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency put in place a quarantine zone as it works to eliminate the insect.
The CFIA has placed restrictions on moving trees, plants and wood outside of the 20-square-kilometre zone. The City of Mississauga is letting residents know these rules apply to tree debris from the recent storm.
The quarantine zone is bordered in the north by Finch Ave. W., in the east by Martin Grove Rd., in the south by Hwy. 401 and in the west by Dixie Rd.
Starting Thursday, residents in the quarantine area can drop off tree-related debris at 2699 Drew Rd. between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday.
The idea is to stop the spread of the insect outside the quarantine zone.
Some may scoff at the impact the beetle could have on trees, but the City was forced to adopt a 10-year, $50-million plan to deal with an infestation of the emerald ash borer. The municipality first became aware of the borers in 2008 when they started popping up on private property and, by 2010, the City had found the insect had spread to trees on municipal property.
Anyone who ignores the CFIA zone and moves wood out could be fined or charged.
In addition, the Region of Peel will undertake a special yard waste collection period beginning the week of Jan. 13. Workers will be picking up bundles of wood and brush that don't exceed 1.2 metres in length, 76 centimetres in diameter and weigh no more than 20 kilograms.
Residents outside of Malton can also take tree debris to community recycling centres, where the fees will be waived.Reading Time: 2 minutes
When the iPhone X rumor mill began churning everything seemed to suggest Apple tried to fit a Touch ID sensor under the display, but failed. Now Apple is flatly denying those rumors, saying it spent “no time looking at fingerprints” for the iPhone X at all.
The comment comes from Apple Senior VP of Hardware Engineering, Dan Riccio, as part of TechCrunch’s iPhone X Review. Here’s the relevant excerpt:
“Arguably the toughest challenge that we had is to replace Touch ID,” Apple’s Dan Riccio says. “It was very, very hard. If we were going to replace it we wanted to replace it with something that was at the end of the day both better and more natural.” Riccio also flatly counters the narrative that Apple was still trying to use Touch ID in the iPhone X this year. “I heard some rumor [that] we couldn’t get Touch ID to work through the glass so we had to remove that,” Riccio says, answering a question about whether there were late design changes. “When we hit early line of sight on getting Face ID to be [as] good as it was, we knew that if we could be successful we could enable the product that we wanted to go off and do and if that’s true it could be something that we could burn the bridges and be all in with. This is assuming it was a better solution. And that’s what we did. So we spent no time looking at fingerprints on the back or through the glass or on the side because if we did those things, which would be a last-minute change, they would be a distraction relative to enabling the more important thing that we were trying to achieve, which was Face ID done in a high-quality way.”
Basically, Touch ID was never really part of the picture.
Of course, it’s still possible Apple considered implementing Touch ID under the display during very early design phases, before the iPhone X had solidified. That is to say, the same way any company might consider new technologies; Samsung was allegedly also looking into an under-display sensor.
However, Riccio’s comment goes against the rumor zeitgeist which suggested ditching Touch ID was a fairly last-minute move. In the spring, many or most iPhone X ‘leaks’ (then believed to be the iPhone 8), still showed the device with a fingerprint sensor either on the back or in the screen, as corroborated by a Bloomberg report in April.
But then, it’s possible those leakers simply got their hands one of those very, very early designs. By the time these reports were published, Apple may have been long past making Face ID its sole focus.
We’ll likely never know the exact timeline of things, but one thing is clear: Apple sees your face as the future of biometric security, not your fingerprint. Unless the company sees huge fallout from facial recognition, there’s a good chance this is the last year we’ll see fingerprint sensors on new iPhones.
It was nice knowing you, Touch ID.Let Your Soul Be Armoured With Faith…
Did you think we were through showing you cool stuff?
The Warhammer Community team is attending the UK Games Expo today, and as well as talking about the new edition of Warhammer 40,000 (available to pre-order tomorrow, if you didn’t know) Andy Smillie and Pete Foley also showed off some more exciting stuff – with news on a new vehicle, a new Global Campaign and new books on the way later this year.
Let’s start off with this ceramite-armoured monster…
The “Repulsor”
This new tank is one of the new armoured vehicles that accompanies the Primaris Space Marines to war. Like their arms and armour, it was forged on Mars, and is recognisably of the same STC origins as its predecessors. Could this be ancient technology long lost and uncovered once more, or has Cawl been “tinkering” with Omnissiah-blessed technologies? This new war machine stands ready to crush its way to war alongside the tried and tested Predator and Land Raider tanks of the Space Marine Chapters.
The Repulsor is on its way soon. Stay posted for more details.
Next up, we revealed a new global campaign:
The Fate of Konor is a massive worldwide campaign that will decide the fate of one of the primary planets in the 500 Worlds of Ultramar. You’ll be able to battle at home or in stores across a variety of planets and war zones in the system, and your games will decide the eventual fate of one of the strategically important worlds in the segmentum and the Imperium.
The campaign kicks off in July – so you’ll have plenty of time to get your head round the new Warhammer 40,000 rules and paint up some new units for your army.
Last up, we got our first look at Chapter Approved 2017, a new book on its way later this year.
We’ve said right from the start that the new edition of Warhammer 40,000 is one that we’d work to make even better over time. This is one of the ways that will happen. Each year, you’ll have a new Chapter Approved, expanding your gaming options and making what we think is already the best Warhammer 40,000 ever, even better.
Expect the first Chapter Approved book in time for Christmas.
Wow, loads to look forward to there, and remember, the new edition of Warhammer 40,000 is just hours away from pre-order.
Don’t forget to grab yours tomorrow morning from games-workshop.com or your local gaming shop.Man dies after diving incident at Rottnest
Updated
A 39-year-old man who got into trouble while diving with friends at Rottnest Island in Western Australia has died in hospital.
Police say the man was diving with two friends off Rottnest yesterday when he surfaced and reported feeling unwell.
He was taken to the jetty at Thompson Bay but lapsed into unconsciousness.
He was transferred to the hyperbaric chamber at Fremantle Hospital by rescue helicopter but died overnight.
The man was one of three people admitted to hospital yesterday during diving incidents off Rottnest.
The island, which is 19 kilometres off the coast of Perth, is a popular tourist, swimming, fishing, and diving destination.
A 40-year-old woman came to the surface in difficulty and was treated on the island at the nursing post.
She was then flown to Fremantle by the rescue helicopter and remains in the decompression chamber.
And a 66-year-old man was treated at the nursing post after he was believed to have surfaced too fast.
Police say the man appears to be in reasonable condition and it is expected he will be flown from the island by the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
Topics: maritime, rottnest-island-6161
First posted'Glancing up you look directly into the face of leader, goggles now removed and hood pulled back, his roughly shaven head and face frames, stern but smiling eyes.
“Name’s Doyle” He says grabbing your free wrist in a common, albeit forceful, gesture of greeting. “This be my band o’ Skavs...best in New’ford, ain’t we boys!!” The group cheer half-heartedly and begin their slow ascent of the surrounding broken landscape, Doyle taking the lead.'
Varien arrives in New FaraFord with Solomon, and takes flight to explore the ruins of the once great city. Seeing figures near the rift site, he swoops in to help, and is greeted by Doyle. He is not quite finished but I’ve been playing around with rigging and alike, just getting use to it.
Comments and criticism welcome!Singer Bada proves that she is more than just a talented singer on the latest episode of “Running Man!”
On the August 14 episode of the SBS variety show, the guests are Yoon Jong Shin, Kim Kyung Ho, Bada, Jo Jung Chi, and Yoo Byung Jae.
Before the games begin, the guests make their entrance and, despite the early morning hour, Kim Kyung Ho belts out his signature song “People Who Make Me Sad” to the amazement of the cast members.
Bada enters next singing “MAD” and brightens the environment with her open and friendly personality.
She, however, shows another side to her when the games begin and she astonishes the cast members with her amazing swimming ability as she catches up to “Ace” Song Ji Hyo in the pool.
Jo Jung Chi, who normally has a weak image, bravely takes on Kim Jong Kook in the swimming tube challenge but despite a valiant effort, he is quickly overtaken. Yoon Jong Shin watches nervously and declares, “This game isn’t my forte.”
Check out the episode on Viki below!
Link to video: www.viki.com/videos/1096436v-running-man-episode-312
Source (1)Yesterday Mr Hopson, Chief Executive of NHS Providers, said architects of the schemes were so far failing to engage local communities, which “have the ability to sink plans they don’t support”.
“It’s very difficult for the NHS to proceed with wholescale change if you’ve got people out on the streets marching with placards and banners and saying “don’t do this”,” he said.
“Fundamentally you can’t make big changes to service provision without taking local people with you.”
The plans follow an admission in May that the provider sector overspent by a historic £2.45 billion in the last financial year.
The country has been divided into 44 areas, with each ordered to come up with a proposal that both closes the gap and caters for booming patient demand.
So far the plans involve the closure of one of five major hospitals in South West London, an A&E unit in the North East of England, the loss of almost 600 beds in Devon and the possible closure of two A&E units in St Helens and West Lancashire.
Mr Hopson yesterday said unit closures were too widely being regarded as a “silver bullet” to make the “overambitious and undeliverable” plans conform to tight budgets.
“We have become obsessed by the money and not got the public engagement right,” he said.
“We are also trying to do it too quickly.”
But Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS medical director, has this week there was “plenty of time” for the public to shape the changes.BEAVERTON – After spending 10 days in sunny and warm Arizona, the Timbers were greeted with rain and chilly temperatures when they returned to Portland this week. But even with the unfavorable weather, the Timbers were happy to be home.
"It's definitely good to be back," forward Kenny Cooper said. "We had a little time away from other each other the last two days, so it's good to get back together with the guys."
The Timbers returned to practice Tuesday as the team prepares for the next phase of its training camp this weekend at the preseason Cascadia Summit against Northwest Major League Soccer rivals
Sounders (Friday) and
Whitecaps (Saturday).
The games in Tukwila, Wash., won't be ordinary preseason games.
Two of the teams – Vancouver and Portland – are preparing for their first season in Major League Soccer. Throw in the historic rivalry between the clubs, add a dose of strong fan support and sprinkle in competition for roster spots, and the games will carry a electric atmosphere, even in the preseason.
"It's going to be a great time with the three sets of fans in Seattle. We'll take some (fans) up and I imagine Seattle and the Whitecaps will have their fans,"
said. "(The games) will give the guys a little sample of what the Pacific Northwest (soccer) is all about."
The Timbers (1-0-4 in preseason) received a preview of what to expect this weekend in their rugged
Saturday in Arizona.
"The coaches kind of pointed that out. They told us that (the game against Kansas City) is going to be more of what's it like to play in MLS physically," defender Steve Purdy said. "Kansas City really came out and they were pressing us. I think it was a good model game to see where we are at in terms of that type of play."
In anticipation of MLS play, Spencer continued to stress fitness while building a strong team mentality during Tuesday's practice.
"It's just trying to stay in that game-like mentality. It's just so important that you're always on the top of your game, whether it's in practice or whether it's in games," Spencer said. "If you don't, you are going to get punished."
The team also worked on finishing during the practice. Spencer spent time having the players work on a variety of crosses, entry passes and finishing kicks. The Timbers' defense has been exceptional, giving up only two goals in the preseson. But the offense has scored just two goals, though they have created plenty of chances.
"It's always the last thing you work on, the finishing. I'm very happy we're creating chances. Usually the last thing to come is the goals," Spencer said. "I think as time goes on, the guys get a little bit more loose and start to feel better and more confident in the bodies, they will start to put those chances away."
Spencer has been particularly pleased with the defensive play becasue of the quality of teams (Los Angeles Galaxy, Houston, Kansas City) the Timbers have faced.
"I know it's only spring training games, but we're still playing against the top (players) in the league like the (Landon) Donovans, the Juan Pablo Angels and the Brian Chings. We've kept them quiet," Spencer said. "That's something we can build on."
Notes: The Timbers acquired midfielder Jack Jewsbury from Sporting Kansas City in exchange for allocation money Tuesday. Jewsbury, 29, has played the past eight seasons with Kansas City, appearing in 195 regular-season matches and recording 15 goals and 21 assists during his time with the club.... Darlington Nagbe didn't participate in practice Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon, the Timbers announced that Nagbe will have surgery for a sports hernia and could miss the start of the season.... Spencer said midfielder Tony McManus has decided to stop practicing with the team. McManus, 30, had played with Timbers during the 2009 and 2010 seasons, when the team was playing in Division 2.... Bim Ogunyemi, who played the Timbers U-23 team last year and was released by Dallas, is now in camp and training with the Timbers.... There is no live television broadcast of the games this weekend, but all games will all streamed online atOver the past ten years, Ecuador has achieved major economic and social advances. We are concerned that many of these important gains in poverty reduction, wage growth, reduced inequality, and greater social inclusion could be eroded by a return to of the policies of austerity and neoliberalism that prevailed in Ecuador from the 1980s to the early 2000s. A return to such policies threatens to put Ecuador back on a path that leads not only to a more unequal society, but to more political instability as well. It is important to recall that from 1996 to 2006, Ecuador went through eight presidents.
Unfortunately, there is much confusion and misinformation about Ecuador’s achievements in recent years. It has all but become conventional wisdom that the economic and social progress in Ecuador, such as it is recognized, resulted simply from a commodities boom and a spike in oil revenues. This explanation ignores the innovative and important reforms that the Ecuadorian government has enacted that have played an instrumental role and allowed the country to emerge, relatively unscathed, from the 2009 Global Recession and the more recent collapse in oil prices. These reforms included bringing the central bank into the government’s economic team, a tax on capital exiting the country, a large increase in public investment, re-regulation of the financial sector, and countercyclical fiscal policy.
Neoliberal economic policies have been tried in Ecuador, and have failed to deliver. Compared to 1.5 percent annual per capita GDP growth from 2006 to 2016, per capita GDP growth averaged just 0.6 percent from 1980 to 2006. From 1980 to 2000, a period during which Ecuador had a number of loan agreements with the International Monetary Fund, Ecuador experienced a considerable economic failure, as GDP per capita fell by 1.5 percent over those two decades. This failure almost certainly resulted at least in part from the neoliberal policies of cutting spending, privatization, inflation-targeting, deregulation, and others that also made the Ecuadorian economy increasingly vulnerable to external shocks. In the 1960–1980 period, by contrast, per capita GDP growth was 110 percent.
Similarly, poverty increased by one-third between 1995 and 2001, when it reached 45 percent. Poverty did decline overall from 1995 to 2006, but by just 2.7 percent; by contrast, poverty fell by over 32 percent from 2006 to 2014. According to Ecuadorian government statistics, the Gini coefficient for net household income (a common measurement of inequality) decreased by over 10 percent between 2006 and 2014, after having increased by more than 7 percent from 1995 to 2006. The indicators from the pre-Correa years, as bad as they are, are bolstered by the fact that emigration of people from Ecuador under prior governments artificially held down Ecuador’s inequality, poverty, and unemployment rates.
For most of Ecuador’s modern history, its petroleum wealth has largely benefited a relative few. For example, a 2002 law supported by the IMF and World Bank required that Ecuador’s Stabilization Fund, an entity created with, and which received, revenues from oil exports, spend 70 percent of its revenues on debt payments, but just 10 percent on social spending.
Important reforms over the past decade have distributed oil revenues more equitably. Oil agreements that previously gave away Ecuador’s oil wealth to foreign companies were renegotiated, leading to increased revenues for the people of Ecuador (without these renegotiations, the rise in oil prices would not have generated substantially greater revenues to the government). These government revenues have been channeled into responsible state spending with impressive results: middle and secondary school enrollment shot up dramatically as higher education spending increased from 0.7 to 2.1 percent of GDP. As government spending on health services doubled, as a percentage of GDP, from 2006 to 2016, some 40 percent more patients were treated at public hospitals in 2014 than had been in 2006. The Ecuadorian government enacted a stimulus of about 5 percent of GDP that allowed it to weather the 2009 Global Recession with lost output of only about 1.3 percent.
The “Washington consensus” era in Ecuador did not benefit most Ecuadorians, and a majority of Ecuadorians let their feelings be known, through mass protests that helped to oust several presidents; and finally in the 2006 elections that ushered in an era of real change ― a historic break with the economic policies that had, in part, put the interests of Ecuador’s elite, of Washington, and of powerful international capital, ahead of the majority of Ecuadorians.
Our goal is not to tell Ecuadorians whom to vote for, or to interfere in Ecuador’s political processes. With the proliferation of misinformation and misunderstanding about Ecuador’s economy, however, we felt it necessary to correct the record.
Ecuador deserves leaders who will implement policies that benefit all Ecuadorians ― whoever they may be. It would be tragic for Ecuador’s next government to return to a less prosperous, less inclusive past.
Signed,
James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin
Ha-Joon Chang, Department of Economics, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Stephanie Kelton, Professor of Economics at University of Missouri-Kansas City, Former Chief Economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee
William K. Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City
Pavlina R. Tcherneva, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics and the Economics and Finance Program at the Levy Economics Institute, Bard College
Gerald Epstein, Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Jeff Faux, Founder, Economic Policy Institute
John Willoughby, Professor of Economics, American University
Dean Baker, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Gabriele Koehler, Development Economist, Munich
William Barclay, Founding Member of Chicago Political Economy Group and retired Sr. Vice President, Chicago Stock Exchange
Amitava Krishna Dutt, Professor of Economics and Political Science, University of Notre Dame and Distinguished Professor, FLACSO, Ecuador
Ben Zipperer, Economist, Economic Policy Institute
Jim Campen, Professor of Economics, Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Mustafa Özer, Professor, FEAS, Department of Economics, Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Turkey
Eileen Appelbaum, Senior Economist, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Alicia Puyana Mutis, Professor of Economics, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Mexico
Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India and Executive Secretary, International Development Economics Associates, India
Jorge Buzaglo, Associate Professor of Economics, Sweden
Ann Markusen, Professor Emerita and Director, Project on Regional and Industrial Economics, University of Minnesota
Matias Vernengo, Professor of Economics, Bucknell University and Co-editor of the Review of Keynesian Economics
Stephanie Seguino, Professor of Economics, University of Vermont
Kathleen McAfee, Professor, International Relations, San Francisco State University
Mark A. Price, Labor Economist, Keystone Research Center
Chris Tilly, Professor of Urban Planning, University of California Los Angeles
Gustavo Indart, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Toronto, Canada
Julie Matthaei, Professor of Economics, Wellesley College
Peter Bohmer, Faculty in Economics and Political Economy, The Evergreen State College
Genaro Grasso, Economist at University of Buenos Aires and University of San Martín, Argentina and Researcher at Institute of High Social Studies, IDAES and Cultural Center of Cooperation, CCC
Mark Paul, Postdoctoral Associate, Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University
Renee Prendergast, Reader in Economics, Management School, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Nicola Melloni |
French channel ports. Carbon dioxide detectors to pinpoint the breath of anyone hiding were foiled by cargos of onions and cheese emitting the same gas.
Prosecutor Amelie Le Sant confirmed: “This man was earning an awful lot of money. We believe in excess of £1million.
“We have passed on all the information we have in the case files to the authorities in London.
“Our hope is they can track down members of the gang over there.”
Getty Images 6 Migrants paid cash into Western Union accounts... collected by accomplices
Jamal brazenly travelled to Britain on bogus passports for gang summits.
He is thought to have been plotting to claim asylum here himself and then retire on his fortune.
Ms Le Sant said: “Evidence was gathered using wire taps.
“It proved how he and his gang were very well organised. When he was arrested he was waiting for £70,000 from his bankers in England.”
Jamal was taken to court in handcuffs. He wept, claiming he was a victim of “mistaken identity”. Fellow Iraqi Pirout Kadir, who was also part of the gang, got four years.
He had so many aliases he wrote bogus names in his baseball cap to remind him which one he was using.
Both were told that they will be deported after serving their sentences. Boss Jamal was also fined £17,000. The Home Office branded the pair’s activities vile and said its immigration arm had helped smash 185 gangs in a year.
AP:Associated Press 6 Iraqi Kurd, jailed in France yesterday, was king of the Calais Jungle camp
A spokesman said: “The UK is committed to tackling the causes of illegal immigration including the callous crime groups that exploit vulnerable migrants.”
British observers sent to the Dunkirk court included one from the National Crime Agency.
Charles Elphicke, Tory MP for Dover and Deal, branded the case shocking.
He said: “It is vital the Government recovers this money and spends it on helping victims of modern slavery.”
Alp Mehmet, of MigrationWatch UK, said: “This just shows what a massive business illegal immigration into this country is. Until we take dealing with it more seriously and devote adequate resources to stopping those behind it, it will continue to grow.”
A French investigator on the case said: “It’s likely Jamal was one of the most successful people smugglers ever in terms of money he made.
6 Mehmet, of Migrationwatch, said illegal immigration needs to be taken seriously
“We haven’t been able to identify all the UK ‘bankers’ involved in the organisation. That’s why we hope British colleagues can locate them and try and recover the money.
“The figure of £1million Jamal made personally is just a starting point. It’s possible he made much more.
“If we hadn’t been tipped off by informers within the camp it’s more than likely he’d still be in business now — and making more money.”I could rip Todd Haley, and it wouldn’t even be sport.
I could rip the Steelers’ offensive coordinator for a display so sickly — 14 first downs, 195 yards — that it not only wrought a 16-9 loss to a terribly beatable Tennessee team Sunday at Heinz Field but also had fans fleeing for the exits.
Early in the fourth quarter!
Of the season opener!
I could rip Haley for a third-and-11 receiver screen to Emmanuel Sanders in which tight end David Paulson, who can’t block, was sent out to block. Paulson whiffed, and Sanders was slammed for a 2-yard loss.
A loss!
I could rip Haley for having all of halftime to script the following sequence to open the second half: Dump to LaRod Stephens-Howling, run by Stephens-Howling, incomplete dump to Stephens-Howling.
And the first two plays of the next series plowed little LaRod right into the heart of the Titans’ stout line.
Five LaRods in a row!
He didn’t get featured like that in Pitt vs. The Citadel!
I could even rip Haley for the sequence that led to the lone touchdown, of all things: Counting every tick close to the two-minute warning and having first-and-goal at the Tennessee 4, the Steelers tried a pass shy of the goal line. Incomplete. Then another pass shy of the goal line. Incomplete. Then another pass shy of the goal line. Tackled short.
It wasn’t until Jerricho Cotchery was found just across the goal line that the Steelers scored with 1:26 left.
Imagine!
I could rip Haley from now till next Monday, time he’ll no doubt invest in drawing up more gems for LaRod, bum knee and all, to beat the Bengals all by his lonesome.
But no, I won’t do that.
I’ll let Mike Tomlin do it.
The coach was asked if there had been confusion leading to Isaac Redman’s opening-drive fumble into the Tennessee end zone that should have staked the Steelers a 9-0 lead, and Tomlin replied: “There was. We had a miscommunication in terms of the personnel group.”
Redman clarified: There were supposed to be two tailbacks on that play, Felix Jones the other. The aim is to keep the defense guessing which way the ball will go. But the Steelers’ players noticed upon breaking huddle that fullback David Johnson was out there instead, and only a few seconds were left on the play clock. Redman instructed D.J. to line up behind him in the unfamiliar tailback slot.
No way D.J. was getting the ball, of course, and it was probably all the Titans could do no to bust out laughing. Redman said they were all “pointing at me.”
Setting aside that the fumble resulted from a high handoff by Ben Roethlisberger, how does that happen?
Well, since Tomlin called it a “miscommunication,” and it didn’t occur on the field, that’s the coordinator’s job.
But wait. Tomlin wasn’t done doing my job in ripping Haley.
Asked why the running game wasn’t there after Maurkice Pouncey’s injury — a whole 28 yards on 14 carries by the backs — the coach’s answer was crushing in its candor: “We didn’t execute. They did. They had a nice plan. Our plan could have been better under the circumstances. Obviously, we had intended on using Kelvin Beachum some at tight end. When he had to go to center, that changed. We didn’t adjust well enough. I take responsibility for that.”
Fine, but responsibility for the “plan” that Tomlin cites is that of the coordinator.
So, um, wow.
Look, there was blame to go around, not least of which was cruel fate for cutting down Pouncey and Larry Foote to potentially season-ending injuries. Blame Kevin Colbert and Tomlin, too, for the still-inexplicable release of Jonathan Dwyer. Blame Tomlin for not having his team ready and for sitting Jarvis Jones on the series after he went all Jadeveon Clowney on Chris Johnson. Blame Sanders for flat-out not showing up. Blame Danny Smith’s special teams for two more dumb flags.
And by all means, blame the offensive line in full throat.
But sorry, I can’t get past that Haley had all summer to prepare for the Titans, including a kumbaya with his QB and a clarification of all terminology and other happy stuff, and this was the result?
A botched goal-line setup and an endless array of silly screens and sideline routes?
Roethlisberger blamed himself — “Not good enough, point blank” — but his exasperation was visible on the field, and only he can say if that was for execution or the “plan.”
Tomlin’s correct: The “plan” isn’t good enough. Hasn’t been good enough for a year and change now.
So who’s still sticking up for the planner?Even at the age of 68, Lucchino hasn't slowed down in the least, and his passion for winning is as strong as ever. In an interview with MLB.com, Lucchino gave a state of the union, of sorts, regarding the Red Sox.
Larry Lucchino is entering his 13th season as the president/CEO of the Boston Red Sox. During that time, Boston has claimed three World Series titles. In his three-plus decades in professional sports, Lucchino has been a part of five championship teams.
Larry Lucchino is entering his 13th season as the president/CEO of the Boston Red Sox. During that time, Boston has claimed three World Series titles. In his three-plus decades in professional sports, Lucchino has been a part of five championship teams.
Even at the age of 68, Lucchino hasn't slowed down in the least, and his passion for winning is as strong as ever. In an interview with MLB.com, Lucchino gave a state of the union, of sorts, regarding the Red Sox.
MLB.com: You've been fortunate enough to be part of a lot of championship teams during your career, but not a repeat champion. How much would it mean to be a part of that?
Lucchino: Listen, last year was special, and I've been lucky to be part of some championship teams before. And 2013 was special in so many different ways, whether it was worst to first, or the element of surprise that hit the media and the fan base, or the "Boston Strong" dimension of it, which was profoundly important to us.
But that was then, this is now. And we are still hungry. Make no mistake, the players, the front office, John [Henry], Tom [Werner] and ownership, we got into this to win, and win with some frequency. We are hungry to do it, but we recognize how hard it will be when 29 teams are aiming to knock your head off.
MLB.com: One thing that might help your team this year is the youth. How energizing is it to have some of the young players you have who should play significant roles this year?
Lucchino: You know, one of the great joys you can derive from baseball is watching young players mature and develop and contribute over time. Roland Hemond, an old GM from when I was with the Orioles, used to talk about how much he enjoyed that element of the game. I think everyone does. We're going to have that in spades with some of the players who should be important to us in the Majors this year.
And then there is wave after wave of Minor League players down in the system. I think we are lucky to be loaded, and that's not just a personal observation. Baseball America, ESPN, all of them put our farm system in the top five of baseball. I think that's going to be an extra dimension to the experience, not just this year but in the next couple of years.
MLB.com: Ticket sales were a big topic last year. After selling out every game from May 15, 2003, through the end of the 2012 season, your record-setting streak ended early in 2013. What are your projections for this year?
Lucchino: As you might expect, we're way ahead of where we were last year. I think we're almost 11 and a half percent ahead of last year, in terms of tickets sold. There is a definite excitement about winning. But there is also an excitement about this team, the players, the manager, the coaches. I think there's a confidence in the baseball-operations department. All of those things have come together. Most importantly, people enjoyed this team, respected this team last year. The aftermath of that will continue to help this year.
MLB.com: Do you think you might start another streak of sellouts this year?
Lucchino: Will we ever repeat the streak of 10 years of consecutive sellouts? I doubt it. I think the ticket market has changed, the presence of secondary ticket opportunities mitigates the need to buy early, to some degree. So that record may stand for a long, long time. We just want to sell enough tickets to have the financial wherewithal to be able to field the team we want and have the franchise we want.
Whether it's a complete sellout or 36,406, it almost doesn't matter going forward, as long as we generate the kind of revenues that are required to maintain one of the top payrolls in baseball, and to maintain the kind of financial stability that lets us bring in young players and provide the kind of fan experience you want.
MLB.com: Just observing your organization on a daily basis over the years, it feels like there has never been more cohesion from ownership to the front office to the manager to the coaching staff and down to the players than you have right now. Do you agree with that assessment?
Lucchino: Absolutely. That's something we've talked about in the office. That type of cohesiveness feels awfully good, and we've seen it in the clubhouse, we certainly feel it at the ownership levels. I think [manager] John Farrell and [general manager] Ben Cherington are prime examples of it, the way they've integrated themselves into the entire organization and brought a sense of team to their working relationship and to the entire organization.
We're really very pleased at the level of moral and mutual respect there is in the organization. This is a very exciting time to be a Red Sox fan for that reason, and because of the state of the farm system. The future is bright. We're not going to win every year, but we are going to a field a team that's worthy of the fans' support and has a chance in October. That is our annual goal -- October baseball.
MLB.com: As far as Fenway Park goes, you put a ton of renovations into the park for your first decade of ownership. What might fans or players see coming into the park this year that is different?
Lucchino: We've completed our 10-year renovation plan that required a private investment of $285 million or $290 million. We have the new seating sections and the new structure of the ballpark and all that. But what you'll see now are some extra amenities and comforts on the right-field roof. You'll see it in the third-base deck. There will be some improvements for the players themselves. We try to do that every year, if we can, particularly on the home side. I think they'll be pleased at the kind of ballpark they see on a daily basis.
MLB.com: In your time with the Orioles and Padres, you were a part of getting state-of-the-art ballparks built in Baltimore and San Diego. Are you ever envious of those types of places now?
Lucchino: The answer is no. When John Henry, Tom Werner and I came here, our group was the only group of the six [bidders] who wanted to serve and protect and enhance Fenway Park. The others all wanted the shiny new ballpark in place of Fenway. We think we made the right decision. We think the attendance the last 12 years validates that. We think the team's performance over the last 12 years validates that. We're proud of Fenway, the preservation and protection of Fenway Park. I think it's one of the rocks on which we've built the franchise.
MLB.com: You've been running baseball teams for going on three decades now. How much longer do you see yourself doing this?
Lucchino: I'm not ready to buy a bunch of books and go sit on a beach somewhere. All I want to do is go to some tense ballgames and enjoy the thrill of competition and winning and the satisfaction that comes from doing that in Boston. I love the situation I'm in right now. I love working with my partners. I love the relationship the Red Sox have with its city and its region. I love the centrality of baseball. I love Boston as a town and New England as a region. This is my home and where I want to be.
MLB.com: The Red Sox are expected to visit President Obama at the White House at the beginning of April. How special is that aspect of being a champion?
Lucchino: That's the cherry on top of the whole offseason experience. It's set for very early in April, and that's a good day for it. I know our players will get a big thrill out of it. We generally take some time to go to a military hospital or two while we are there. We're looking forward to it.
MLB.com: This is the fifth ring you've won as a professional sports executive. But you aren't the kind of guy who sits at your house and stares at your rings, are you?
Lucchino: No, no, they are very satisfying. But I stopped wearing the '07 ring a couple of years ago, because it seemed like it was getting old and stale. It was time for another one. But mostly I just keep them in a display box in my house, and it's often in a safe. Just on occasions, I'll look at them every once in a while for a little inspiration, but that's about it.
MLB.com: When the Red Sox won in '04, it seemed like there was almost too much hype around the team. It just seemed like there was a circus atmosphere. As an organization, did you learn from that?
Lucchino: That was such a special time and so worthy of savoring as a celebration after 86 years, but I think we learned something from our previous experiences. We do not want to be in a "stuck in last year kind of mode." We've tried to turn the page as Spring Training begins. I think part of the hunger and part of the desire to win again is to be a little careful with excessive celebrations of last year, as joyful and thrilling as it was.
MLB.com: I know you leave most of the contract stuff to Ben and his group, but when it comes to players like David Ortiz and Jon Lester, assuming there is some talk on extensions for those guys this spring, does ownership get more involved?
Lucchino: Yes, we do. We always have. We always have a seat at the table when it comes to particularly important contracts and long-term commitments, etc., be it financial or in terms of years. That's another thing we are kind of pleased with. There's kind of a process in place that allows for collaboration and contributions that will end up with a pretty solid portfolio of contracts.
MLB.com: One of your favorite sayings when you refer to what you want out of a team is "deep depth." Where did you come up with that?
Lucchino: Sure, that's one of my favorite phrases in baseball, because it's so darn important. I got it originally from Earl Weaver, who was the manager of the Orioles when I got into baseball. He talked about that, and the redundancy was great, because it made the point so vividly. We have tried to keep that going. Also in the '80s, Birdie Tebbetts, a great baseball man, used to talk to me about how to win and he said, "Larry, you don't win with the stars. You win with the 'Joe's,' the 22nd, 23rd, 24th and 25th guy on the roster. Those guys will have to make contributions for you to win."
That kind of depth is essential. It's been a part of my baseball philosophy for a long time, but we went back to it last year, in a good way. We do know there are three elements, at least, in baseball that are very, very hard to control. One is health, the second is chemistry, and the third is randomness. There's a big field with a small field, so a lot of random occurrences take place. You've got to have the depth to allow yourself to react and adjust to the changes that those three factors throw at you every year.
MLB.com: What has Farrell brought to this team since he returned to the Red Sox as the manager?
Lucchino: He's just the right guy for this team. There's no doubt that because of his experience, his presence and his exceptional working relationship with Ben Cherington, that's another important element of a strong front office. The manager and the general manager have got to be working hand in glove. And they put together a tremendous coaching staff last year that gets too little credit for all that was accomplished.
Even if the voting came out differently, John was the Manager of the Year, no doubt. People need to remember, we tried to get him in 2012, but we couldn't get Toronto to play ball with us. It was only when we tried to go back again in 2013 and gave them a solid Major League player [Mike Aviles], they were willing to acquiesce.
MLB.com: Going into this season, is there one question mark that might keep you up at night as you look at this team?
Lucchino: Most years, it's the same factor, and that's pitching. At the risk of sounding terribly repetitive, the depth of your pitching staff is what will be the largest strength or determinant. In 2004, we had a pitching staff where nobody missed a turn in the rotation. That was stunning. And last year, we had the kind of depth in the bullpen that we could react to the health problems that developed, so quality pitching depth, pitching youth, those things are the things I worry about. But I worry a lot. That's on my job description.
Ian Browne is a reporter for MLB.com. Read his blog, Brownie Points, and follow him on Twitter @IanMBrowne.An estimated 600 Indigenous people, fishermen, and others from the Xingu River basin have gathered to occupy the construction site of the Belo Monte Dam project in the state of Pará, Brazil.
The protest arrives one day after the second judge from the Regional Federal Tribunal voted against judge Selene Maria de Almeida’s landmark decision against the Belo Monte dam.
Judge Selene Maria de Almeida’s decision (which is not to be confused with last month’s decision by judge Carlos Castro Martins to suspend the construction of the dam) found that the government illegally issued the project’s environmental licenses because it failed to properly consult affected Indigenous peoples beforehand. That failure, according to judge Selene Maria de Almeida, is a direct violation of Article 231 of Brazil’s Constitution.
“The trial is now tied at one vote in favor, and one vote against,” says International Rivers. “The third and final judge must now give her decision on whether she agrees with the lawsuit that claims that tribes were not properly consulted. The trial has been delayed once more, and will reconvene for the final vote. Either way the final vote falls, both sides are ready to appeal the tribunal’s decisions to the Supreme Court.”
The protesters, on the other hand, have vowed to continue their protest until the Belo Monte dam project is brought to a decisive end.
Help support the peaceful protest: http://www.causes.com/campaigns/158177
Below: a report on the protest from Amazon Watch; and a declaration from the Xingu Alliance.
Hundreds Occupy Belo Monte Dam Site in Brazilian Amazon
Altamira, Brazil – Hundreds of indigenous leaders, fishermen and riverine people from the Xingu River basin have gathered to occupy the Belo Monte Dam construction site in a peaceful protest to stop its construction in Altamira, located in the state of Pará in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. They have vowed to permanently occupy the site and are calling on allied organizations and movements to join them.
The Trans-Amazon Highway (BR-230) has been blocked around the Santo Antônio village, where it passes the proposed construction site. Groups are demanding the presence of a Brazilian government high-level official at the site to initiate a new round of negotiations that are transparent, inclusive and respectful of the rights of local people affected by the dam.
“Belo Monte will only succeed if we do nothing about it. We will not be silent. We will shout out loud and we will do it now,” said Juma Xipaia, a local indigenous leader. “We only demand what our Constitution already ensures us: our rights. Our ancestors fought so we could be here now. Many documents and meetings have already transpired and nothing has changed. The machinery continues to arrive to destroy our region.”
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS) has requested explanation as to why the Brazilian Government did not act to ensure the rights of indigenous peoples affected by the dam, as requested by the IAHCR in April. According to the OAS, the Brazilian Government has an obligation of consulting and informing indigenous peoples who will be affected by the dam prior to construction.
Yesterday, the government of Brazil refused to attend a closed hearing convened by the IAHCR intended to foster dialogue toward resolving conflict and discuss failures in protecting the rights of indigenous peoples threatened by the proposed Belo Monte Dam. Plans for the project ignore international protections such as the right to free, prior and informed consent, and jeopardize the health, livelihood and ancestral lands of thousands of indigenous peoples.
Last Monday, a federal judge in Brazil voted that the environmental licensing of the controversial Belo Monte Dam is illegal given the lack of consultations with affected indigenous communities.
For more information, contact:
Caroline Bennett, + 1 415 487 9600, caroline@amazonwatch.org
Christian Poirier (in Brazil), + 55 116597 8359, christian@amazonwatch.org
Sheyla Juruna, indigenous leader from Brazil, available for interviews in Washington, D.C.
(Hi-res photos available upon request)
Declaration of the Xingu Alliance against the Belo Monte Dam
“We will not allow the government to establish this dam or other projects affecting the lands, lives and survival of current and future generations of the Xingu Basin”
We, the 700 participants of the seminar “Territories, Environment, and Development in the Amazon: the Fight Against Large Dams in the Xingu Basin;” we, the warriors of the Araweté, Assurini do Pará, Assurini do Tocantins, Kayapó, Kraô, Apinajés, Gavião, Munduruku, Guajajara do Pará, Guajajara do Maranhão, Arara, Xipaya, Xicrin, Juruna, Guarani, Tupinambá, Tembé, Ka’apor, Tupinambá, Tapajós, Arapyun, Maytapeí, Cumaruara, Awa-Guajá and Karajas tribes, representing indigenous peoples threatened by Belo Monte and other hydroelectric dams in the Amazon; we, the fishermen, farmers, and residents of coastal cities, impacted by Belo Monte; we, the students, trade unionists, social leaders and supporters of the struggles of peoples against Belo Monte; we together affirm that we will not allow the government to build this dam or other projects affecting the lands, lives and survival of current and future generations of the Xingu Basin.
During the 25th and 26th October 2011, we met in Altamira to reaffirm our alliance and determination to resist together the project to dam and kill the Xingu River, no matter what weapons nor moral, economic or physical threats are used against us.
During the past decade, the government has returned to developing one of the most nefarious infrastructure projects created by the military dictatorship in the Amazon. During this time, we, who are all Brazilian citizens, were not considered, were not heard, nor were we consulted on the construction of Belo Monte. This is a right protected for us by the Constitution and laws of our country, and by international treaties that protect Brazil’s traditional inhabitants, of which our country is a signatory.
Forced out of their land, expelled from the banks of the river by construction machines and suffocated by the dust they raise, the people of the Xingu have been brutalized by the consortium authorized by the government to clear our forests, cocoa plantations, gardens, orchards, gardens and houses on the Xingu River, destroying the river’s fauna, usurping our properties in the city and the countryside, raising the cost of living, exploiting workers, and terrorizing our families with the threat of a dark future of misery, violence, drugs and prostitution. And thus the government repeats the errors, the lack of respect, and the violence caused by so many other dams forcibly imposed upon the Amazon and its peoples.
Armed with only our dignity and our rights, and strengthened by our alliance, we here declare that we have formalized a pact to fight against Belo Monte, which makes us stronger than the humiliation imposed on us so far. We have signed a pact that will keep us together until this project is wiped from the map and the history of the Xingu, a river to whom we have a debt of honor, of life, and, if the survival of the Xingu requires it, of bloodshed.
Faced with the government’s intransigence in dialogue with us, and with their insistence on disrespecting us, from now on we occupy the construction site of Belo Monte and close access to it from the Trans-Amazon highway. We demand that the government send a representative here to sign a waiver to definitively paralyze all works, and to desist from building the Belo Monte Dam.
Altamira, Pará, Brazil, October 27, 2011As on December 31, a total of Rs 43,856 crore has been transferred to the beneficiaries through the Aadhaar payment bridge. (PTI)
Don’t be surprised if in the near future, filing a police complaint requires a person to produce Aadhaar number as all services, benefits and subsidies that are paid out of the Consolidated Fund of India will necessarily require the unique identity number.
After making Aadhaar compulsory for availing senior citizen discount on railway tickets, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and Employees’ Provident Fund, the government may soon make Aadhaar, issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India, a required identity proof for all such services.
“Increasingly yes, that will happen. Under the Aadhaar Act, passed by Parliament, any subsidy, benefit or service for which money is going out of the Consolidated Fund of India, the government is empowered to use Aadhaar,” said a senior government official requesting anonymity.
All government receipts such as taxes and loans make up the Consolidated Fund of India and all expenses barring the exceptional ones are met through this corpus. As on December 31, a total of Rs 43,856 crore has been transferred to the beneficiaries through the Aadhaar payment bridge.
The NDA government has made Aadhaar the cornerstone of its policies and schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) and others under the Digital India initiative such as DigiLocker, eSign and Jeevan Pramaan, among others, critically depend on the biometrics-based unique identity.
The current government had earlier tried to make the use of Aadhaar mandatory for availing services and subsidies, but the move was challenged in the Supreme Court by petitioners on grounds of data security.
However, the apex court in October 2015 allowed the government to use the identity on voluntary basis for selected purposes including MGNREGS, PMJDY, pensions by central and state governments, and the Employees’ Provident Fund Scheme, in addition to the already allowed use in the public distribution system and the distribution of cooking gas and kerosene.
In March 2016, the government passed the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016, as a money bill thus backing the unique identity by law which it earlier lacked. “Considering the advantage of Aadhaar, every department will be motivated to use this infrastructure because if you are going to interact with anyone, don’t you have a right to know who the person is?” asked the official quoted above, adding that non-usage of Aadhaar may be contended in the future.
“Tomorrow the CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General of India) can take objection that if a better system was available, why was it not availed to check who is receiving benefits. So, anywhere where there is subsidy and benefits are flowing, Aadhaar will be required,” the official added.
The Constitution bench of the Supreme Court is still to be constituted to hear the Aadhaar case.
According to the official, Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act says that to avail services paid out of the Consolidated Fund of India will require Aadhaar, and if one does not have it, she/he will be required to enrol. Also for those who are entitled for Aadhaar but don’t have a number assigned will get services by making an application that they did apply, but didn’t receive or there are no enrolment centres available in the area. However, one who does not want to enrol will have to forfeit the benefit because the the law says so.
Saurabh KumarSaline High School.jpg
Saline Area Schools announced Monday, May 22 it will abandon plans to work with Planned Parenthood on sex education curriculum.
(MLive file photo)
SALINE, MI - Saline Area Schools no longer will work with Planned Parenthood on its sex education curriculum, saying the partnerships proved "too divisive" for the community.
The Saline Area Schools Sex Education Advisory Council held a public hearing on May 15 regarding proposed changes to the high school sex education curriculum, which included having Planned Parenthood train students as peer educators to lead lessons on contraceptive methods and LGBTQ issues.
Sex ed curriculum at Saline Schools may add lesson on LGBTQ issues Saline Area Schools wants the public's input on proposed changes to the district's high school sex education curriculum.
A second public hearing was scheduled for May 30, but the school district announced Monday, May 22 that the hearing is canceled and Saline Schools will not be working with Planned Parenthood.
"Based on reviewing the comment/question cards, the discussion that took place at the first hearing on May 15th, analyzing survey data, and talking to people in the community, it is very apparent that moving forward with any Planned Parenthood connected curriculum, at this time, would be too divisive in the Saline Area Schools," states an email sent to Saline families by Steve Laatsch, assistant superintendent of instruction.
Instead of a formal public hearing on the proposed curriculum changes, there is a "community conversation" at 6 p.m. May 30 at the Liberty School media center. The conversation will cover topics like how to allow for peer-to-peer conversation within health classes; how to respect all opinions, views and values related to sex education, and how to integrate lessons that educate students on risks specific to LGBTQ students, such as bullying.
Laatsch and Mary Beno, Washtenaw and Livingston County educational health coordinator, will lead the conversation. Planned Parenthood representatives are not invited to attend.
Saline Area Schools also is accepting applications for the Sex Education Advisory Council, and the deadline to apply is May 31.
Planned Parenthood has worked with Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Milan and Dexter public schools as well as Greenhills School and Washtenaw International High School to provide training for peer educators, said Ruth Lednicer, director of media and communications at Planned Parenthood of Michigan.
Lednicer said in an earlier email to The Ann Arbor News that "All our Sex Education work is based on CDC recommended, medically accurate, age appropriate information."Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption A military vehicle was targeted in the bomb attack in the eastern province of Tunceli
A large explosion has rocked the Turkish city of Tunceli, killing seven people, mainly security personnel.
The blast targeted a vehicle carrying security forces.
The city is near the country's Kurdish area and suspicion will automatically fall upon Kurdish rebel group the PKK, says the BBC's Istanbul correspondent James Reynolds.
Fighting between Turkish troops and the PKK - the Kurdistan Workers' Party - has escalated in recent months.
Six members of the security forces and one civilian died in the attack in the Ataturk neighbourhood, said local media and hospital sources.
Turkish TV stations showed pictures of workers trying to put out fires in two burnt-out vehicles.
Reports said a vehicle carrying explosives was remotely detonated as an armoured vehicle carrying security forces passed by, sending a huge plume of dark smoke over the city.
Some reports said a civilian vehicle was also damaged in the explosion.
Tunceli province Mountainous region whose capital, Tunceli city, has a small population of about 40,000
Mainly Kurdish area
Scene of several recent attacks by PKK fighters against police and soldiers
Kurdish MP abducted last month by PKK
Large military and law enforcement presence, thought to outnumber civilians
One report, in Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News, said security forces arriving on the scene clashed with suspected PKK militants, with one militant killed.
No-one has yet said they carried out the attack, but Kurdish rebels are active in the city, which is the capital of the province of Tunceli.
'Hundreds dead'
This incident comes amid a surge in fighting in the three-decade conflict between the military and the PKK which in total has killed more than 40,000 people.
In mid-September, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said 500 Kurdish rebels had been "rendered ineffective" by Turkish forces in the space of a month.
Many have died in Turkish aerial campaigns against suspected PKK hideouts in the south-east of the country.
PKK fighters killed 17 Turkish soldiers and injured scores over three days in Bingol province last week.
Earlier this month, one soldier and three Kurdish militants were killed when insurgents attacked army outposts in Tunceli.
This has become the most violent period in fighting with the Kurds since the capture of the PKK's leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in 1999, our correspondent says.This year’s presidential primaries have already broken several rules of politics, and new spending data suggests another shift in modern campaigning – a decline in polling, at least among GOP candidates.
In the three months leading up to the Iowa caucus, many Republicans spent little to nothing on polling. Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush each spent just over $150,000 on campaign polls, while the two non-politicians in the race, Ben Carson and Donald Trump, declined to buy any polling research at all. The data is from the campaigns’ spending summaries for the final quarter of 2015, which are released under federal election law.
Ted Cruz was the only Republican who spent much on polls – over $380,000 – and his campaign threw another $3 million into separate data for “donor modeling.” In Iowa, Cruz’s campaign proved adept at using field and targeting data, not simply public opinion polling, to locate and mobilize his supporters.
RELATED: Clinton struggles to explain $600k in Wall Street speaking fees
“For winning a tactical battle in these early primary states, polling is a lot less useful and seems to fade in accuracy in every cycle,” said Michael Simon, analytics director for the Obama 2008 Campaign.
Donald Trump led many public polls in the primary pre-season, but those surveys proved wrong in Iowa and may have even led his strategy astray. Media polls |
that (we) replicated that local community model with a strong backbone of processes. The reason why we all had to do that is the biggest risk in this business is an event risk, like what happened in the Andhra. So, unless you are geographically diversified, you are exposed to risk. So, I think the learning that the microfinance industry has had is to know how do you convert that community approach into a national approach but leveraging the local knowledge. So, you need local people, who understand the local market, but you also need to build it on the top of some standardised process.The last day of baseball’s regular season reminded us that in sports, uncertainty equals excitement. Early last week, it looked like we were headed for a final few days in which every playoff spot would already be assigned, which would have limited the drama to decisions about rearranging rotations and starting or resting regulars. Instead, we got a weekend in which two teams had a chance to exchange wild cards for division titles and a third had the opportunity to claim a wild card and bump another team out of October altogether.
On Sunday, Pirates, Royals, and Mariners fans rooted for upsets, while Cardinals, Tigers, and A’s fans watched to see whether their clubs could avert disaster. As it turned out, all three leaders preserved their narrow edges, but because of the potential for change — not to mention Jordan Zimmermann’s no-hitter, Derek Jeter’s final final game, and Jose Altuve’s Twitter-assisted batting title — the day was never dull.
Click here for all of Grantland’s 2014 MLB playoff coverage.
If uncertainty makes a single day more exciting, then theoretically, it should do the same for the string of single days that composes a season. By quantifying each team’s accumulated uncertainty over the past six months, we can crown one club’s season as the most exciting of 2014.
To do so, we’ll need an assist from the Baseball Prospectus Playoff Odds Report, which provides a daily snapshot of how likely each team is to make the playoffs via a division title or wild-card berth based on thousands of simulations of the rest of the season that draw upon BP’s estimates of playing time and each team’s true talent. Every day, the leaguewide outlook for October changes as teams win or lose and players get injured or recover more quickly than anticipated. And every morning, the Odds Report adjusts the playoff probabilities up or down to reflect the latest developments.
Because it incorporates PECOTA’s preseason projections, the Playoff Odds Report rules bad teams that get off to slow starts in difficult divisions out of contention almost immediately. Teams that are projected to play well and get off to strong starts, however, have high percentages early on and never deviate far from them. Neither the hopeless, wait-till-next-year teams nor the shoo-in winners would experience the frequent swings in playoff probability of a team that was projected to be good but struggled, was projected to be bad but surprised, or played as anticipated but faced a dogfight down to the wire.
So which teams’ seasons were the most uncertain — and thus, by extension, the most exciting? The graph below, generated from data provided by BP/Brooks Baseball statistician Dan Brooks, who cooked up the idea of using playoff odds shifts as a proxy for excitement last season, shows the sum of the absolute values of each team’s game-by-game changes in playoff percentage, or the odds that a team will qualify for the playoffs by winning either a division title or a wild card. The higher a team’s sum, the more uncertain its fate throughout the year.
There’s one limitation here, of course: Story lines that don’t stem directly from the standings are lost on PECOTA and the playoff odds. For instance, the numbers don’t know that the Royals were fighting to end a streak of 28 seasons without a playoff appearance; that the A’s raised the stakes for their season through their activity on the trade market; or that many of the Dodgers’ and Mariners’ wins were enriched by the brilliance of Clayton Kershaw and Felix Hernandez, respectively. Even so, the results generally line up with what our intuitions would suggest.
It might seem cruel to declare the Mariners’ season the most exciting of all a day after the A’s eliminated them from the wild-card race by a single game. However, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer started it with a Sunday story about the Mariners’ elimination that labeled them “one of Major League Baseball’s most exciting teams.” We’re just providing statistical support. For our purposes, the regular season is about the journey, not the destination, and the Mariners’ journey was exciting enough to boost their attendance by a higher percentage than any other team and to earn one of baseball’s most embattled GMs an extension. The P-I pronounced 2014 a “roller-coaster” season for Seattle, and the up-and-down path of the Mariners’ day-by-day playoff odds sent the same message.
PECOTA’s projections (coupled with BP’s depth charts) gave the Mariners a 30 percent shot at the playoffs to start the season, but their odds declined to less than half that by late April after they started the season 7-13. The M’s worked their way back to.500 for good by June 1 and had an 18-10 month to raise their odds into the mid-50s, but a losing July plunged them back into the teens. In August, they were winners again, posting a 17-10 record while their competitors scuffled, and their odds peaked at 64 percent on September 6, when they led the Tigers by a game and a half in the second wild-card slot. A 9-12 finish doomed Seattle, since Detroit and Kansas City finished relatively strong.
The Mariners’ late-July acquisitions — Kendrys Morales, Austin Jackson, and Chris Denorfia — combined for a.216/.274/.307 line in 565 plate appearances, hitting worse as a group than James Jones or Corey Hart, two of the players whose offensive struggles made those deadline additions necessary. Had the M’s gotten anything from their midseason reinforcements, we’d be handicapping their chances in a tiebreak or the wild-card game. As it was, though, no team took us on as many detours into and out of contention as the Mariners, and judging by the results of a P-I poll, the team’s success-starved fans enjoyed the ride. As U.S.S. Mariner’s Jeff Sullivan put it, “Every day of this regular season, we got to give a shit.”
Now let’s take a look at the daily playoff odds for the five most uncertain/exciting teams after Seattle, three of which made the playoffs and two of which cratered to lose their grasps on the playoff spots they’d flirted with all year.
The Cardinals kicked things off with a playoff percentage more than twice as high as the Brewers’, indicative of PECOTA’s (and most analysts’) higher expectations for St. Louis. But the Brewers started the season 16-6 and surpassed the Cardinals’ playoff percentage on April 23. The two teams rivaled each other in playoff probability for most of the summer, but after the Brewers peaked at 92.9 percent on August 25, they went 9-22 to end the season, and their odds declined more quickly than Bernie Brewer on the Miller Park slide while St. Louis finished strong and proved PECOTA’s preseason assessment correct.
The Pirates, who started the season with odds even lower than the Brewers’, languished below 30 percent for almost the whole first half of the season but picked up the pace after the break. Aside from one day in early April, Pittsburgh didn’t have a higher playoff percentage than Milwaukee until September 7. While the Brewers were a mirage created by an unsustainable April bullpen performance, their hot start and rags-to-riches-to-rags trajectory took them on a more memorable trip than most Milwaukeeans could’ve anticipated. And with three of its teams placing in the top six, we can call the NL Central 2014’s most uncertain/exciting division.
The Nationals were always the team to beat in the NL East, so the Braves began the season with odds not much better than the Brewers. Like Milwaukee, they enjoyed some early success, but they stagnated in the middle months of the season, and their odds tanked as the Nats left them behind in the division. A 7-18 September in which they were outscored by 50 runs sealed their fate (and GM Frank Wren’s). The Royals followed a path to October not unlike the Pirates’, climbing above 40 percent courtesy of a 10-game winning streak in June but dipping below 20 percent as late as August 2, when they were only three games over.500. That day marked the beginning of an eight-game winning streak that put Kansas City in the thick of the race to stay.
We can look at the same data in a different way to see how each team arrived at its cumulative odds change for the season. This time, the x-axis is games instead of days. The steeper the line, the greater the rate of change in playoff odds over a given span. The first graph features AL teams, while the second stars the senior circuit.
These graphs show us when each playoff team made its move. The Dodgers, Nationals, Orioles, and Angels all have long plateaus toward the end of the season, when their playoff status was almost assured; hence their absence from the list of most exciting teams. Oakland also had a plateau for much of the season, but their line curls upward at the end to reflect the change in their odds as they flopped after the All-Star break and nearly lost it all. Teams that were never close to contention, of course, plateau earliest: The Astros, Cubs, and Diamondbacks, in particular, never won enough to move the needle far from “empty.” On two of those teams, a manager and/or general manager paid the price; the Cubs, though, promoted a handful of high-profile prospects, which made them one of the most exciting teams for fans who fixate on young talent.
There’s one more way to measure excitement: by cumulative change in BP’s “adjusted” playoff percentage, which computes each team’s likelihood of reaching the division series — a certainty for division champions, but essentially a 50-50 proposition for wild-card winners. A division title is a much more valuable prize than a wild card, so in theory, the race for a division title should be almost as exciting to a team that knows it can count on a wild card as the race for a wild card would be to a team that’s just hoping to make the playoffs. In practice, it probably doesn’t work this way, since some fans still think of the wild card as the big reward it was before the playoff field expanded to 10 teams and the wild-card winners became the postseason’s second-class citizens.
Using this method, the Mariners fall to seventh, since they were never really in the running for the AL West. The A’s and Angels move up a bit, because they were jockeying for the division lead even when they both looked like virtual locks for the playoffs. And the Tigers and Cardinals climb the leaderboard because they were always the favorites for the Central titles, even when they were having a hard time holding on to a wild card.
So congratulations to fans of the Mariners, the Braves, the Brewers, and the other exciting teams whose seasons ended on Sunday. You’d probably rather be rooting for a more predictable team that’s still alive, but there’s something to be said for an exciting six months of not knowing what’s next.Between now and Opening Day, HardballTalk will take a look at each of baseball’s 30 teams, asking the key questions, the not-so-key questions, and generally breaking down their chances for the 2017 season. Next up: The Chicago Cubs.
The Cubs finally ended their 108-year-long championship drought by winning the most thrilling World Series in years last November. Where do the Cubs go from here? There’s only one answer: repeat.
The roster the Cubs will go into the 2017 season with is not that much different from the roster they opened with in 2016. The biggest changes are in center field, as Dexter Fowler has gone to the division rival Cardinals, and Wade Davis now owns the closer’s role.
The Cubs acquired Davis from the Royals back in December in exchange for outfielder Jorge Soler. Davis, effectively, is replacing Aroldis Chapman who was acquired by the Cubs from the Yankees in July last season, then went back to the Yankees in free agency. Few relievers have ever been as dominant as Davis has been these last three campaigns. Since the start of the 2014 season, Davis owns a 1.18 ERA with 47 saves and a 234/59 K/BB ratio in 182 2/3 innings. The right-hander did battle a forearm injury last season, limiting him to 43 1/3 innings, so the Cubs are banking on the 31-year-old staying healthy.
Fowler had what was arguably the best season of his career last year after returning to the Cubs. He hit.276/.393/.447 with 13 home runs, 48 RBI, 84 runs scored, and 13 stolen bases in 125 games. The Cardinals offered him $82.5 million over five years during the offseason, so the veteran outfielder went from Illinois to Missouri. The Cubs have the left-handed-hitting Jon Jay – inked to a one-year, $8 million deal in November — and right-handed Albert Almora, Jr. on the depth chart in center to replace Fowler. The duo will likely operate in a platoon. As the market for center fielders wasn’t exactly bustling, the Cubs did about as well as they could have reasonably done addressing the position.
Other than those two spots, it’s all familiar faces for the Cubs. After winning the 2015 National League Rookie of the Year Award, Kris Bryant followed up with an outstanding 2016 season, resulting in the NL Most Valuable Player Award. He hit.292/.385/.554 with 39 home runs, 102 RBI, and an NL-best 121 runs scored in 699 plate appearances. Along with that, he was one of the best fielding third basemen. Bryant turned 25 years old in January and it’s scary to think what he can accomplish not having yet hit his peak. He should be the favorite to win the 2017 NL MVP Award and if the Cubs continue to pace the league, Bryant will be a big reason why.
Across the diamond, Bryant’s teammate Anthony Rizzo was nearly as impactful to the Cubs last season. The 27-year-old finished fourth in NL MVP balloting, hitting.292/.385/.544 with 32 home runs and 109 RBI in 676 PA. He, too, was slick-fielding at his position which the Cubs’ pitching staff certainly appreciated. Rizzo has been one of the scariest and most consistent bats over the last three years — hitting 32, 31, and 32 home runs – so it wouldn’t be surprising if he had a career year and found himself as the leading Cub in MVP discussions.
Slugger Kyle Schwarber will open up the season in left field, just as he did last year. His season abruptly ended, unfortunately, when he collided with Fowler in the outfield trying to catch a fly ball in Arizona on April 7. He suffered a torn ACL and LCL. Even without Schwarber, the Cubs made it all the way to the World Series, so he was able to return on October 25 to open the Fall Classic against the Indians. He performed admirably, contributing six singles, a double, and three walks in 20 plate appearances for a robust.500 on-base percentage. Now with a full and healthy season ahead of him, the 23-year-old Schwarber is primed for a big season. As manager Joe Maddon is considering Schwarber for the leadoff spot, more plate appearances will mean more opportunities to showcase his power.
Let’s hop into the starting rotation quickly. Four of the five members of baseball’s scariest rotation last year are returning to the Cubs in 2017: Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta, Kyle Hendricks, and John Lackey. Jason Hammel has been replaced by either Mike Montgomery or Brett Anderson, whoever pitches the best during spring training.
The veteran Lester pitched to a second-place finish in NL Cy Young balloting, going 19-5 with a 2.44 ERA and a 197/52 K/BB ratio in 202 2/3 innings. Sabermetrically, Lester pitched a bit better in 2014 with the Red Sox and Athletics, but by more traditional metrics his 2016 performance was the best of his career. Now 33 years old, Lester hasn’t lost much life on his fastball. Pitchers usually do as they get into their mid-30’s. The Cubs are hoping he can avoid age-related decline for at least one more season.
Arrieta was the league’s best pitcher in 2015 and he appeared to be well on his way to a second consecutive Cy Young Award as he carried a 1.74 ERA after his June 17 start against the Pirates. Clayton Kershaw – Arrieta’s steepest competition – was battling back issues. But Arrieta struggled the rest of the way, putting up a 4.31 ERA in his final 17 starts. His overall stats were fine – 18-8 with a 3.10 ERA and a 190/76 K/BB ratio in 197 1/3 innings — and he finished ninth in Cy Young balloting, but he was no longer the lights-out right-hander we saw in 2015. Fortunately, he figured things out just in time. After the Cubs lost his first two playoff starts against the Giants and Dodgers, they won his final two starts, both in the World Series against the Indians.
Hendricks deserves being mentioned as he led the majors with a 2.13 ERA. He finished third in Cy Young balloting, though, behind Max Scherzer and teammate Lester. Appropriately, Hendricks is very late-career-Greg-Maddux-esque, as he doesn’t feature an overpowering fastball. Rather, he relies on pinpoint command and mixing up his pitches to fool batters. Now that Hendricks is on the map, if he’s able to repeat what he did last year, the 27-year-old might take home some hardware.
The Cubs’ top-three is the best rotation top-three in baseball. Then you look at Lackey as their No. 4 and you realize why they won 103 games in the regular season last year. Lackey, now 38, put up a solid 3.35 ERA in 29 starts. His postseason starts were lackluster – eight runs allowed in 13 innings – but ate up just enough innings not to shortchange the bullpen.
The Cubs are very strong elsewhere, but in the interest of keeping these previews condensed enough to read during a break at the office, we’ll stop here. The Cubs’ catching situation is quite good with the young Willson Contreras backed up by veteran Miguel Montero. Hector Rondon, Pedro Strop, and Carl Edwards, Jr. are well-equipped to bridge the gap to Davis in the late innings. Jason Heyward will hope to finally figure things out offensively as he returns to right field. Shortstop Addison Russell appears poised to take the next step towards stardom. You can always set your watch to Ben Zobrist at second base. And last but not least, Maddon reprises his role as baseball’s oddest manager. We can only wait to find out what weird methods he’ll come up with to unite his team this time around.
A team hasn’t repeated as World Series champions since the 1999-2000 Yankees. If any team is going to do it, it will be these Cubs.
Prediction: 99-63, 1st place in NL CentralAdvertisement
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It was a dominant night from the top two leagues in CONCACAF. All of the MLS and Liga MX clubs in action on Wednesday won their matches. It was a relatively high scoring night with a total of 15 goals scored.
New York Red Bulls vs. Antigua GFC
The New York Red Bulls started their tournament run at home with a comfortable 3-0 win over Antigua GFC. They grabbed an early lead in the 14th minute when Alejandro Galindo had a ball go off his back and into his own net. Alex Muyl would add a second goal in the 62nd minute with a left-footed strike into a wide open net. Sacha Kljestan put the game away in the 80th minute as he slotted home a pass from Gonzalo Veron.
Pumas UNAM vs. W Connection FC
Pumas picked up the win on the road, as the Liga MX side defeated the Trinidad & Tobago club W Connection.
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Luis Quintana got the goal scoring underway with a volley from close range. The home side received an equalizer just before halftime from Hughtun Hector to make it a 1-1 contest.
Jose Van Rankin and Alfonso Nieto both produced goals for Pumas in the first half-hour of the second half to give their side a 3-1 advantage. Jamal Charles would make things interesting with a goal in the 83rd minute to bring W Connection within one. However, Omar Isias prevented the comeback with a late goal in the 95th minute.
Portland Timbers vs. CD Dragon
The Portland Timbers pulled out a late winner to claim all three points in their opening match. Jack McInerney opened the scoring in the 21st minute as he dispatched a Diego Valeri pass into the back of the net. CD Dragon tied the match in the 76th minute with a Kenroy Howell headed goal.
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Valeri would be the hero as he knocked in the game winner in a crowded box in the 90th minute.
Don Bosco FC vs. Monterrey
It was a dream start for the Monterrey Rayados, with the club from Nuevo Leon scoring three goals in the opening half. Edwin Bedoya put home the first goal with a nice volley from the middle of the box. Less than 15 minutes later Yimmi Zamora slotted home a right-footed shot. Aldo de Nigris finished off the scoring in the second minute of stoppage time to make it 3-0. It was a quiet second half goal scoring-wise, as it finished 3-0.You need to be a bit of an actor - sometimes Fernando Alonso
What are the essential elements of your pre-race routine? Fernando Alonso: I probably will disappoint some people when I say that I don't do anything strange! (laughs) I arrive at the track pretty early - something around three and a half hours before the race. Then there are some meetings with the engineers to go through the strategy and define the number of pit stops, etc. After that I go to the drivers' parade to say hello to all the fans around the track. When I come back I have 30 minutes free for me. I call my family, my girlfriend and give them an update - and then I go to the car. You see: a pretty standard procedure. Nothing funny. What are the essential ingredients of a good night out? FA: Being with friends. Not having to work the next day - and not having to wake up early the next day. In the end it is always down to the vibes of how the night goes. What essential items must you have in your driver's room/motorhome at a race? FA: Nothing really special. Or let me put it this way: I am quite precise on time so I have my room full of papers with all the exact times - down to every minute - of my race weekend schedule. I seriously cross out everything that I've done. This is my psychological countdown for the race. (laughs)
A good team mate? No cry baby; someone with a good sense of humour Fernando Alonso
What essential items must you always have in your fridge at home? FA: With so much travelling - sometimes up to three, four weeks - my fridge goes empty on the last day and what is not used up goes into the garbage bin. And when I come home it starts all over again: shopping, consuming, travelling... What are essential qualities of a good F1 team mate? FA: Fast, loyal to the team and a good sense of humour. We spend a lot of time together and there will always be some stressful moments - not necessarily between him and me, but in the team - so no cry baby but someone with a good sense of humour. That helps a lot. Your essential tip for avoiding stress at airports? FA: I don't really have one, sorry. I like to have a lot of time at the airport. I am no last minute show-up! That is stupid stress that I always try to avoid. So if my driver tells me that he's going to pick me up for the airport at 9:00 I always say make it 8.30. This extra half hour relaxes my day significantly! What are the essential qualities of an F1 driver? FA: You need to be a bit of an actor - sometimes. There will always be situations that come up where you have to be a bit of a fake.So you definitely need some acting qualities to make your day. You also need a good quantity of selfishness - not arrogance, but something to get you the respect of your surroundings.
The essential Grand Prix? For an enthusiastic fan experience: Monza Fernando AlonsoOne of the first verbs we learn in Chinese is 去, “to go”. This covers a great many everyday situations, such as “I’m going to Beijing”, “I went to eat lunch” etc. etc. But how about when the focus is more on the departure itself?
This post covers the differences between 去, 走, 离开, 出发 and 出国, all of which can be used when you’re taking leave of one sort or another, from exiting a room to leaving the country.
Learn these and you’ll really be going places with your Chinese (pun intended. sorry…)
去 / qù
As the below examples show, with the verb 去 (to go) you can specify a noun or another verb afterwards, to explain where you’ll be going or what you’ll be doing when you go. Example sentences:
明天我会去广州
Míngtiān wǒ huì qù guǎngzhōu
I will go to Guangzhou tomorrow
Míngtiān wǒ huì qù guǎngzhōu I will go to Guangzhou tomorrow 上个周末我去看望我妈妈了
Shàng ge zhōumò wǒ qù kànwàng wǒ māmā le.
Last weekend I went to visit my mother.
Shàng ge zhōumò wǒ qù kànwàng wǒ māmā le. Last weekend I went to visit my mother. 我要去食堂吃午饭
Wǒ yào qù shítáng chī wǔfàn.
I’m going to the canteen to eat lunch.
走 / zǒu
走 means “to leave” and places emphasis on the actual departure. It’s about generally making your exit, so unlike 去 you cannot specify a place or person after this verb. Example sentences:
我们走吧.
Women zǒu ba.
Let’s leave (i.e. let’s get out of here; often used in offices at around lunchtime!)
Women zǒu ba. Let’s leave (i.e. let’s get out of here; often used in offices at around lunchtime!) 他刚走了.
Tā gāng zǒu le.
He just left.
Tā gāng zǒu le. He just left. 我先走了.
Wǒ xiān zǒu le.
I’m leaving (literally “I go first”, say this when making a polite exit while others remain).
Image: www.flickr.com/photos/safaa35
离开 / líkāi
离开 also means “to leave”, but unlike 走 this verb implies permanence. You can 离开 a job, leave a person (i.e. a spouse), or leave a city to move elsewhere. With 离开 you can specify a place, person, company/job after this verb. Example sentences:
不要离开我。我爱你!
Bùyào líkāi wǒ. Wǒ ài nǐ!
Don’t leave me. I love you!
Bùyào líkāi wǒ. Wǒ ài nǐ! Don’t leave me. I love you! 月末我会离开公司.
Yuèmò wǒ huì líkāi gōngsī.
I’m leaving the company at the end of the month.
Yuèmò wǒ huì líkāi gōngsī. I’m leaving the company at the end of the month. 自从他离开北京，我再也没有见过他.
Zìcóng tā líkāi Běijīng, wǒ zài yě méiyǒu jiànguò tā.
I haven’t seen him since he left Beijing.
image: labradorpassage.com
出发 / chūfā
出发 means to start out or set off. It’s another verb that emphasizes the departure, but only in the context of going on a trip or journey etc.
Example sentences:
你整理好了吗？ 明天我要早些出发.
Nǐ zhěnglǐ hǎole ma? Míngtiān wǒ yào zǎo xiē chūfā.
Are you all packed? I want to start out early tomorrow.
Nǐ zhěnglǐ hǎole ma? Míngtiān wǒ yào zǎo xiē chūfā. Are you all packed? I want to start out early tomorrow. 这次旅行我们计划了很久。终于到了出发的时间了.
Zhè cì lǚxíng wǒmen jìhuàle hěnjiǔ. Zhōngyú dàoliao chūfā de shíjiānle.
We’ve been planning this trip for so long. Finally it’s time to set off.
Zhè cì lǚxíng wǒmen jìhuàle hěnjiǔ. Zhōngyú dàoliao chūfā de shíjiānle. We’ve been planning this trip for so long. Finally it’s time to set off. 我们出发时并没有预计到这么多问题.
Wǒmen chūfā shí bìng méiyǒu yùjì dào zhème duō wèntí.
When we set off, we didn’t anticipate so many problems.
出国 / chūguó
This means to leave a country, go abroad or emigrate. There is definitely a sense of permanence here too. Example sentences:
我 打算 出国 留学
I intend to study abroad.
I intend to study abroad. 她和她丈夫出国了.
She and her husband left the country.
We hope this clarifies matters, so next time you can articulate exactly which kind of departure you’re making in Mandarin! Feel free to leave questions in the comments section.
Post by Sarah Soulie
Twitter @SuxiaoyaToday, I am pleased to announce EVADE, our very first game for the Arduboy platform. We developed this game as a gift to our clients and team members abroad to say thank you.
This is the story of how a highly performing team can create a great application very rapidly using collaboration as a central pillar.
Eleven team members, 4 weeks, 100% awesome!
2016 has been an amazing year for Modus Create and we wanted to say thank you to all our clients and team members in a big way. In the last week of October, while planning our end of year activities, the executive team decided to do something different for our clients. Instead of sending cookies, fruit baskets or even wine, we decided to produce something that demonstrated the many facets of our creativity. The executive team landed on a game, but we left it up to our design and development team to set the scope and deliver.
To facilitate delivery, I selected four from our design team and six of our senior developers who had the bandwidth to contribute.
Our first meeting was simple. Here was the high level plan:
We need to develop a game.
It needs to fit in an Arduboy, which has 32KB of usable storage.
It needs to be fun and memorable.
We have less than 5 weeks to make it to production.
The work needs to happen at times that does not impact your client work.
The Design team comes up with the plot, art, animations.
The Development team integrate those visions into the working codebase for a device that has extremely limited specifications.
We have to program in C.
Lastly, have fun doing this!
Within 5 working days, we had a plot: You’re the sole survivor from a space colony who had been decimated by an alien invasion. Your only mission was to escape and evade (the enemy). It is from this plot that we came up with the name Evade for the space-shooter themed game.
With the plot now secured, three separate threads of work streams began in parallel; designing game assets, programming and lastly music and sound effect production. You see, no video game is complete without music to take you along on the adventure.
The design team immediately began working on designs for the game’s assets, which include the player ship, enemies, bosses, bullets, and the top menu. One awesome idea that the team came up with was to make a 1-bit version of the “Graffiti wall” that is in our office.
This image would become our “boot up” screen.
During development, our teams were faced with many challenges, mostly revolving around the physical space of the device, and using our Agile experience, we pivoted on an as-needed basis. The creativity of our team members allowed us to jump over hurdles with ease and within the next 4 weeks, the game was feature-complete and ready to ship with:
Custom sprites
A star field
A menu system
Three enemy types
Three boss types (watch out for boss #2!)
Custom explosion effects
Custom sound effects
Custom fonts
A musical soundtrack. Stage 1 can be heard here.
An insert explaining how to play the game.
Along with the video game, we created a cinematic trailer.
Sharing what we learned
Open source is part of the Modus Create DNA and we’re pleased to announce that the source code for EVADE is available for and can be found on Github. We’d love you to fork, star or even contribute to the codebase.
Through this project, our team has fallen in love with the Arduboy and learned a ton about working with the Arduboy platform. We are eager to share what we’ve accomplished and are working on a series of blog posts, which include things like overall programming of the Arduboy, squeezing code in, writing music, animating sprites and more.
In closingVinny Milano says he created the shirts he sells at Yankee Stadium and has a right to make a living. The MLB Players Association disagrees. Greg Cergol reports. (Published Wednesday, June 24, 2015)
The man behind the iconic Yankee Stadium "roll call" is preparing for a legal fight against the union representing the players he cheers.
"Bald Vinny" Milano, the leader of the stadium's "Bleacher Creatures," makes his living designing and selling baseball t-shirts. But this week the MLB Players Association demanded that he "cease and desist" from selling certain shirts on his website, including one commemorating Alex Rodriguez's 3,000th hit.
"I think they have really overstepped their bounds," the father of two from Bellmore, Long Island, said.
The union has taken issue with shirts relating to current Yankees players, claiming the designs infringe on MLB copyrights.
Among the shirts the union wants Milano to stop selling is the one with the word "McCannimal" for catcher Brian McCann and another that reads "Teixecutioner" for Mark Teixeira.
In a statement, MLBPA spokesman Greg Bouris said "the Players Association has the responsibility to protect the rights of its licensees and the players."
According to Milano, the players nicknames and shirt designs are all his own and do not infringe on any copyright.
"They don't own everything," Milano said from his sales table outside Yankee Stadium. "I'm creating my own stuff and they can't claim ownership on things that I create."
Milano has yet to respond to the MLBPA, but for now, continues to sell the t-shirts he says are most popular with his customers. He's been selling shirts like them for more than a decade.
"I will fight because that's who I am," he said.
Milano received support as he hawked his shirts before and after Wednesday's game.
"I think they should give these little guys a chance," fan Leo Clark said.
"How can MLB shut everybody down and makes money for themselves?" asked fan Jim Mooney. "I have no problem with what this guy is doing."I felt so loved when I received this gift from my secret santa. He was very prompt in following up when I had not received the gift by the estimated time. For some reason it was delayed, and one of the boxes inside appeared to have been opened, and the entire package had clearly been opened and resealed so I can only guess that it was held up in Custom's for a while for some reason!
I stated being interested in sustainable eating and natural health so this gift was right on the money! Its a lovely hand illustrated and written cookbook with excellent information on balancing diet and sourcing locally. It also came with several neat charts that I hung up in my kitchen so I can reference them. Thank you!SpaceX is deep into an internal mishap investigation following the loss during First Stage flight of a Falcon 9 rocket with the CRS-7 Dragon. While the Second Stage is considered to be the main culprit for the failure, investigators are currently gathering data to reconstruct the final moments of Falcon 9’s flight as recovery teams attempt to retrieve the rocket’s remains to further aid the fault tree data.
Recovering from Falcon 9’s Bad Day:
The loss of the CRS-7 mission is a harsh reminder that space flight is hard.
SpaceX has become the rock star of the rocket industry, with a massive global fan base and an ability – despite its relatively young age – to collaborate and compete with the veteran space industry in its area of business.
However, they are no strangers to challenges as the company began its tenure in the space launch business with mishaps, as three Falcon 1 flights in succession failed to successfully complete |
U.S. intervention or indirectly by support of militia groups or by sanctions.
We need representatives to sift through what the U.S. government says and what the media reports to find out for themselves the truth, the shades of truth and the untruths.
We need representatives willing to take the heat from both their fellow members of Congress and from the media pundits who will not go to those areas and talk with those directly affected by U.S. actions. We need representatives who will be our eyes and ears to go to places where most citizens cannot go.
Tulsi Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran who has seen first-hand the chaos that can come from misguided “regime change” projects, is not the first international observer to come back with an assessment about the tragic effects of U.S. support for lethal “regime change” in Syria.
Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire began traveling to Syria three years ago and now having made three trips to Syria. She has come back hearing many of the same comments from Syrians that Rep. Gabbard heard — that U.S. support for “regime change” against the secular government of Syria is contributing to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians and – if the “regime change” succeeded – might result in the takeover by armed religious-driven fanatics who would slaughter many more Syrians and cause a mass migration of millions fleeing the carnage.
Since 2011, the Obama administration supported various rebel groups fighting for “regime change” in Syria while U.S. allies – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – backed jihadist groups including Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, some of the same extremists whom the U.S. military is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. If Assad were overthrown, these extremists might take power and create even worse conditions for Syrians.
This possibility of jihadists imposing perverted extremist religious views on the secular state of Syria remains high due to international meddling in the internal affairs of Syria. This “regime change” project also drew in Russia to provide air support for the Syrian military.
Critical of Obama’s ‘Regime Change’
During the Obama administration, Rep. Gabbard spoke critically of the U.S. propensity to attempt “regime change” in countries and thus provoking chaos and loss of civilian life.
On Dec. 8, 2016, she introduced a bill entitled the “Stop Arming Terrorists Act” which would prohibit the U.S. government from using U.S. funds to provide funding, weapons, training, and intelligence support to extremists groups, such as the ones fighting in Syria – or to countries that are providing direct or indirect support to those groups.
In the first days of the Trump administration, Rep. Gabbard traveled to Syria to see the effects of the attempted “regime change” and to offer a solution to reduce the deaths of civilians and the end of the war in Syria. A national organization Veterans For Peace, to which I belong, has endorsed her trip as a step toward resolution to the Syrian conflict.
Not surprisingly, back in Washington, Rep. Gabbard came under attack for the trip and for her meeting with President Assad, similar to criticism that I have faced because of visits that I have made to countries where the U.S. government did not want me to go — to Cuba, Iran, Gaza, Yemen, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and back to Afghanistan, where I was assigned as a U.S. diplomat.
I served my country for 29 years in the U.S. Army/ Army Reserves and retired as a colonel. I also served 16 years in the U.S. diplomatic corps in U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. I resigned from the U.S. government nearly 14 years ago in March 2003 in opposition to President George W. Bush’s “regime change” war on Iraq.
In my travels since my resignation, I didn’t agree with many of the policies of the governments in power in those countries. But I wanted to see the effects of U.S. government policies and, in particular, the effects of attempts at “regime change.”
I wanted to talk with citizens and government officials about the effects of U.S. sanctions and whether the sanctions “worked” to lessen their support for the government that the U.S. was attempting to change or overthrow.
For making those trips, I have been criticized strongly. I have been called an apologist for the governments in power. Critics have said that my trips have given legitimacy to the abuses by those governments. And I have been called a traitor to the United States to dare question or challenge its policy of “regime change.”
But I am not an apologist, nor am I a traitor … nor is Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard for her recent trip to Syria.
Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and retired as a colonel. She also was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war in Iraq. She has lived in Honolulu since 2003. [A version of this story originally appeared atA California radio amateur and ARRL member was among the three winners of the Nobel Prize in chemistry. William Moerner, WN6I, of Los Altos, a chemistry professor at Stanford University, will share the prestigious award equally with two other researchers — Eric Betzig and Stefan Hell — for their work in high-resolution microscopy or nanoscopy. For many years scientists had believed that an optical microscope could never yield better than 0.2 micrometer resolution. The three scientists overcame that limitation through what the Nobel panel called “the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.”
“I was just incredibly excited and thrilled, and, of course, your heart races, and you say ‘Oh, can this be? Can this be?’” was how Moerner reacted when formally notified that he was a prize winner. “I’m incredibly happy about the recognition of the field, especially of all the workers and all the scientists at many places around the world who have contributed to the effort.” In Brazil for a conference, Moerner had already heard the news from his wife, who learned of it from an Associated Press reporter who had called their home for a comment.
As a Stanford University news release explained, “Optical microscopy was long limited by the presumption that it could never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. Moerner, Betzig, and Hell circumvented this limitation through the clever implementation of fluorescent molecules, which made it possible for optical microscopes to operate at the nanoscale and visualize individual molecules moving within cells.”
This year’s chemistry prize recognized two separate techniques. Working separately, Betzig, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Moerner laid the foundation for single-molecule microscopy, in which the fluorescence of individual molecules is turned on and off. The same area is imaged multiple times, letting just a few interspersed molecules glow each time, and superimposing these images “yields a dense super-image resolved at the nanolevel,” Stanford said. Hell’s stimulated emission depletion microscopy method uses one laser beam to stimulate fluorescent molecules and another to cancel all but a nanometer-sized area to yield a high-resolution image. Hell is with the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Germany.
Moerner holds a PhD from Cornell University and is the Harry S. Mosher Professor in Chemistry and Professor, by courtesy, of Applied Physics at Stanford University. The prizes will be awarded in Stockholm on December 10, the date that prize founder Alfred Nobel died in 1896. — Thanks to Dave Leeson, W6NL; Stanford UniversityThe Star Wars: Battlefront II controversy took the entire gaming community by storm. Gamers hated how EA was implementing its “microtransaction-based revenue model” on games ruthlessly. Seriously, we have had enough of it. After the happening, EA pulled off all of their in-game transactions from the game, make it a completely microtransaction-free game. Now, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen has responded once again. What does he say? Let us find out.
Blake Jorgensen, CFO at EA spoke today at the 37th Nasdaq Investor Conference, describing the company’s experience with the controversy. He said, “It’s been a great learning experience for us; we consider ourselves a learning organisation. If we’re not learning, that means we’re failing in some way and we’re constantly trying to watch what people do and how they play and listen to them to decide what’s the best way to build great games.”
Jorgensen also explained something similar at the end of November right when they removed microtransactions. He said, “If we’re not making some mistakes along the way and learning from them, that’s when you should worry about us.”
“The reality is there are different types of players in games. Some people have more time than money, and some people have more money than time,” he said. “You want to always balance those two.”
Many people might argue, “why are people getting mad at secondary items?”. The answer to that is, Battlefront II’s loot boxes had items that played a prominent role in enhancing the gameplay. Players could get items and heroes, which require never-ending hours to unlock, by paying for them. Take Darth Vader for example. To read the whole story, click here.
EA did learn a good lesson, thanks to the gamers’ riot. However, as confirmed by Jorgensen, microtransactions will make a comeback. Will they be implemented in the exact same ways, or we’d see some crucial changes? That, we’ll know very soon.
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Until next time, Happy Gaming!OTTAWA (Reuters) — Canada lost 5,700 jobs in January and the unemployment rate edged up to a two-year high of 7.2 per cent, in part because of further job losses in the oil-producing province of Alberta, underlining the economy's struggles with weak energy prices.
Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a gain of 5,500 positions and for the unemployment rate to stay at 7.1 per cent. It last hit 7.2 per cent in December 2013.
Statistics Canada said on Friday that in the year to January, employment increased by an anemic 125,500 jobs, or 0.7 per cent.
"Overall, the story is the economy is struggling to grow and it is struggling to produce much in the way of employment," said BMO Capital Markets chief economist Doug Porter.
The jobless rate in the energy-producing province of Alberta rose to 7.4 per cent, the highest since February 1996. January marked the first month since December 1988 that the Alberta unemployment rate exceeded the national rate.
The Bank of Canada last month decided not to cut interest rates but admitted it was not an easy call, as concern about a rapid decline in the currency clashed with an economic slump.
In January, the economy created 5,600 full-time jobs and lost 11,300 part-time positions.
"We're looking at something that is vaguely consistent (with) a slower pace of hiring, which makes perfect sense given the conditions in the wider economy," said David Tulk, chief Canada macro strategist at TD Securities.
The Canadian dollar weakened on the data, touching $1.3785 to the U.S. dollar, or 72.54 U.S. cents.
The six-month moving average for employment growth was 8,900, down from 10,700 in November.
While the weak dollar is hitting jobs, it is also helpingCanada's exporters.
The trade deficit unexpectedly shrank to $585 million in December from $1.59 billion in November as exports jumped by a healthy 3.9 per cent.
Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a deficit of $2.2 billion. Statscan said imports grew 1.6 per cent after three consecutive monthly decreases.
Exports to the United States, which accounted for 74.8 per cent of Canada's global total in December, grew 2.9 per cent while imports grew 1.3 per cent. As a result, Canada's trade surplus with the United States swelled to $3.19 billion from $2.63 billion in November.
Canada posted a record $23.32-billion trade deficit in 2015.In this comprehensive account of social issues rooted in the neoliberal reign of terror, Henry Giroux provides a crucial critique of free-market fundamentalism in 2016.
Henry A. Giroux, America’s Addiction to Terrorism (Monthly Review Press 2016), 288pp.
As well as explaining in detail some of the biggest issues faced by society today, Giroux very eloquently connects the dots between them and highlights their roots within the neoliberal project. Giroux discusses torture, militarisation, surveillance, racism, education and austerity among other things and draws the links to the military-industrial-academic complex. In this review, I will go through some of Giroux’s arguments and his suggestions for working-class resistance against them.
Torture
‘With the release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Report on Torture in December 2014, it became clear that the United States, in the aftermath of the loathsome terrorist attack of 9/11, has entered into a barbarous stage in its history, one in which acts of violence and moral depravity were not only embraced but celebrated’ (p.47).
Giroux argues that the US has a long history of using torture both at home and abroad, as well as abetting other countries in using torture. He quotes Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in saying that of ‘35 countries using torture on an administrative basis in the late 1970s, 26 were clients of the United States’ (p.48). From aiding right-wing Latin American dictatorships in carrying out acts of indiscriminate violence in their countries, to the CIA’s Phoenix Program in Vietnam which killed over 21,000 Vietnamese people using acts of gross barbarism such as throwing people out of planes and calling them ‘flying lessons’, state-sanctioned torture is ‘as American as apple pie’ (p.48).
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On the home front, Giroux gives the example of the FBI’s secret COINTELPRO program that was carried out between the 1950s to the 1970s and legally sanctioned the assassinations of those considered ‘domestic and foreign enemies’ (p.48). Aimed at hindering the activities of communist and black-nationalist organisations, the Black Panther Party were the targets of 233 COINTELPRO actions since 1969 including setting up the conditions for the Chicago Police’s execution style assassinations of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.
Post 9/11, this obsession with torture as a response to a national paranoia about security has intensified and been central to an increasingly militarised culture. President Bush and Vice President Cheney constructed a comprehensive apparatus of violence that included CIA black sites such as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay prison and rendition. They entirely bypassed international law and the protection of habeas corpus in creating an institutionalised process of secretly abducting and holding people both from the US and abroad without evidence or trial, transferring them to third countries and using methods that violate even the most conservative interpretation of the UN Convention Against Torture to which the US is a signatory.
Much of this extensive program was entirely secret – even after the publishing of the Report on Terror the full extent of the program is not known – but there was a concerted effort nonetheless to justify the areas that had become public knowledge. Cheney went on record to say that waterboarding and related tactics did not constitute torture, that “I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective,” and following the release of the Report, that “I think we were perfectly justified in doing it and I’d do it again in a minute” (p.51).
The Torture Memos of 2002 and 2005 highlighted that the highest levels of the administration and an entire network of politicians, lawyers and intelligence officers were complicit in the moral depravity of a system engineered to maximise human suffering using tactics such as sleep deprivation, cramped confinement in small boxes and with insects, sexual assault, waterboarding, hanging a naked prisoner upside down with shackles, enforced starvation and other even more brutal methods.
The justification of torture has created an appetite for violence – a desensitisation to the destruction of human life – that permeates society and is ‘embedded in the American social and political psyche’ (p.59). Polls show that 58% of the American public believe that ‘torture under certain circumstances can be justified’ and 59% believe that the CIA’s methods ‘produced crucial information that helped prevent future attacks’ (p.46).
Giroux points out that as ‘an economic policy that views ethics as a liability, disdains public good and enshrines self-interest as the highest of virtues’, neoliberalism is at the heart of breeding an environment where state sanctioned methods of torture and lawlessness both at home and abroad are rampant (p.59).
Racism
‘Racist brutality in the United States is abetted and legitimated through a discourse of demonization, stereotypes, and objectification’ (p.125).
The marriage of a culture of war and market fundamentalism creates several issues that are pertinent to addressing the state of racism in the US: unregulated gun culture, racist mass incarceration, the rise of the surveillance state, homicidal police violence and increasing impoverishment of black communities.
Police brutality is a form of state terrorism and has reached epidemic levels whereby aggression has become an organising principle of police strategy. This has been fuelled by a top-down agenda of militarisation of police forces. Giroux explains that since the early 1990s, under what was known as the 1033 program, the Department of Defense has provided over ‘$4.3 billion in free military supplies to local police’ (p.129).
This cultivation of violence and militarism has intensified since the start of the War on Terror after 9/11. Giroux explains that the horrific instances of fatal police violence carried out with impunity, such as the killings of Aiyana Jones (a seven-year-old black girl in her own home) or Tamir Rice (a twelve-year-old black boy with a toy gun) or hundreds of others, can only exist in a society where police violence has become normalised.
Giroux notes the irony that as neoliberal policies strip away the resources of public services, state institutions adopt criminal behaviour themselves in order to function. Ferguson, for example, where Mike Brown – an unarmed eighteen-year-old black man – was shot and killed, has been described as effectively occupied territory. In a ‘deadly brew’ of rampant police violence and predatory finance practices, such as exorbitant fines for minor and traffic offences, a 95% white police force supported itself by criminalising poverty and preying on a 70% black population (p.134).
The police and established structures of governance therefore lose their legitimacy in a context where a financial elite responsible for causing a global economic crash is allowed to go free with impunity, while black and brown youth are cast aside as an ‘excess population’. They are given citations, brutalised, incarcerated and too often killed for the pettiest of crimes such as jaywalking or selling loose cigarettes like Eric Garner.
Education
‘Under the reign of neoliberalism, with few exceptions, higher education appears to be increasingly decoupling itself from its historical legacy as a crucial public sphere, responsible for both educating students for the workplace and providing them with modes of critical discourse, interpretation, judgement, imagination, and experiences that deepen and expand democracy’ (p.154).
In a new McCarthyism of the post 9/11 era, institutes of higher education have been targeted by the right and overtaken by a military-industrial-academic complex that conjoins military interests and market values, changing education and critical thought into ‘corporate mentality’ training.
Although higher education has always had its limitations, it has now become an institution concerned to depoliticise the younger generation, essentially becoming nothing more than a job preparation service; exemplified by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s budget proposal which changed the purpose of universities from ‘the search for truth’ to ‘meet the state’s workforce needs’ (p.158). University campuses played a significant role in dissent against the Vietnam War and have since been seen as a threat to market forces and the pro-war agenda.
The clampdown on the functionality of higher education comes in a multi-faceted approach of massive spending cuts to universities, ferocious attacks on dissenting academics and a broad strategy of transforming the material taught. Giroux describes this system of ‘pre-specified subject matter and stripped-down skills that can be assessed through standardised testing’ as a ‘pedagogy of repression’ and quotes Hannah Arendt in calling it a totalitarian education that aims not to ‘instil convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any’ (pp.178, 186).
As well as lecturers and academics employed under increasingly precarious terms to ensure minimal dissent, the Kafkaesque public-education system has become an arm of the state apparatus that marginalises communities on racial and class lines. The growing burdens of student debt, the suspect status of the student body and selection committees made of mainly upper-class, middle-aged white men have worked to exclude youth from poorer and ethnic-minority backgrounds from accessing education.
Austerity
‘The passion for public values has given way to the ruthless quest for profits and the elevation of self-interest over the common good. Of course, the larger goal is to maintain the ongoing consolidation of class power in the hands of the 1 percent’ (p.101).
Austerity, according to Giroux, represents a rise in authoritarian capitalism which attacks people on class lines and weakens the social contract between the public and their government. Austerity measures have served to widen inequality and institutionally cause suffering and indignity. Young people seem to be the demographic most affected by slash-and-burn policies that leave them unemployed or underemployed and under a growing burden of debt.
The level of suffering caused by austerity is notable in statistics showing the huge increases in suicide rates as a result of economic difficulties by 2010 in countries hit hardest by spending cuts such as Greece (over 24%), Italy (52%) and Ireland (16%). In Greece, unemployment hovers at 27% – close to 50% youth unemployment, child poverty is at 40% and almost 50% of pensions received by pensioners are below the poverty line. Giroux references Thomas Piketty in saying that austerity measures in Greece have caused a colossal humanitarian crisis and goes on to say that the troika (IMF, EU and ECB) ‘unleashes a form of financial terrorism’ (pp.99, 102).
As well as the consolidation of wealth and power and the disregard for the misery it causes, Giroux argues that the austerity regime also individualises social issues and ‘go(es) hand-in hand with ideologies, policies and practices that depoliticize large portions of the population’ (p.102). The cruelty of these policies directly impacts upon people’s wellbeing, imposes constraints on their choices, inhibits their freedom and undermines faith in democracy and politics.
The emphasis of ‘a world of competitive hyperactive individualism’ that is a result of these policies makes prominent ‘economic Darwinism’, atomises powerlessness and leaves people alienated and prone to extremist politics (pp.103-4). Like the attacks on critical thought in education and the propagation of selfie culture, the de-politicisation of the masses serves the interests of the financial elite in hindering grassroots organising against a rotten system.
The fight back
‘Now is the time for working-class people to join with others to rethink the meaning of the political, to create new political formations, to rethink the possibilities of democracy without capitalism, and to organize for both short-term gains and long-term fundamental changes. It is time to flip the script’ (p.248).
On multiple occasions in the book, Giroux praises the Black Lives Matter movement and speaks of the movement as a vanguard of resistance against the US establishment today. However, he also talks about the Occupy movement and the mistakes made in failing to harness the energy it gathered into long-term organisation.
Giroux argues that ‘neoliberal capitalism is parasitic and sociopathic’ and can only be countered by the formation and strengthening of social movements with the ‘spirit of collective resistance and the promise of radical democracy’ (pp.106-7). It is clear that the only feasible strategy to overcome the neoliberal reign of terror is a comprehensive movement built from a broad coalition of struggles that organises against all aspects of the system of repression.
No Peace! No Justice! Please share this post.My colleagues, and others around the web, have been doing an admirable job combating the nonsense that Joe Mercola and Barbara Loe Fisher are peddling as part of their so-called Vaccine Awareness Week (VAW). It’s especially gratifying to see, considering the size of their organization and audience, that a rag-tag, loose association of bloggers can spread so much science so fast.
Yet as much distaste as I may have for the organizers of VAW, I have to admit that Riff Raff & Magenta are only part of the problem. After all, it’s not just bloggers who are fighting the good fight — our public health authorities, physicians, hospitals, and research community continue to promote evidence-based approaches to infectious disease control and combat the misinformation promoted by fringe academics, CAM practitioners, and other unsavoury characters. The public is not at a loss for good information, which raises the question of just why — after decades of research and overwhelming scientific consensus — the anti-vaccination sentiment finds such fertile ground with the public.
Put A Spell On You
Those that read my series on magical thinking last week will know that part of the problem rests in our mind design. One of the underlying operators of magical thinking identified in the research of psychologists like Paul Rozin is contagion, the notion that the properties of things we come in contact with can be transferred to one’s vital essence. Contagion seems to be an evolutionary adaptation that functions like a native, internal germ theory, triggering our disgust response when we’re in the presence of contaminants — especially other people’s fluids and excretions. While there’s an obvious benefit to such a mind design, this “template” is often misappropriated to aid in magical thinking. Thus toxin fears of all kinds — from EMF and Wifi to fluoride and vaccines — rely heavily on this mental quirk.
But there has to be more at work here, because the currency and success of the anti-vaccine movement are relatively recent phenomena. A generation ago, few questioned the efficacy and relative safety of immunization, and now people increasingly question both — which is especially odd considering that contagion doesn’t have to transfer only negative properties. Admittedly, it shows a negativity bias, but positive contagion can be seen in many magical beliefs, e.g. good luck charms, protective amulets, and crystal healing. So even if magical thinking is the reason people believe vaccines are dangerous (negative contagion), it doesn’t provide a complete answer as to why few seem to believe that vaccines are also effective (positive contagion). Indeed, the very notion that something could be dangerous and effective seems inherently counterintuitive.
To understand why this should be, we need to look at a different branch of our mind design — how we make decisions about risk. The research coming out of cognitive psychology points to two heuristics — mental shortcuts we use to make quick, unconscious decisions — that seem to have relevance to this topic.
Second That Emotion
The first of these is the affect heuristic identified by Paul Slovic. Affect, in psychological terms, refers to emotion, and the research shows that how we feel about an issue greatly impacts the decisions we make about it, especially our perception of its relative riskiness. To be more specific, issues that evoke positive emotions are intuitively viewed as less risky, and those that evoke negative emotions are intuitively viewed as more risky — a fact that led Dan Gardner to dub the affect heuristic the “Good/Bad Rule”. This is why people worry far more about the radiation from a nuclear reactor than from laying on a beach in the Caribbean. Mortality statistics be damned — compared to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, the Club Med vacation certainly feels like the antidote for civilization.
The affect heuristic is also why the notion that contagion can work positively and negatively at the same time — effective and dangerous — doesn’t occur to us. We can’t feel both positions at once: the ensuing cognitive dissonance would result either in suppressing one emotion or bringing the decision up a level from our heuristic to our rational decision making process. (For more on this, see my earlier discussion of dual process theory).
Heard It Through The Grapevine
OK, fine, so how we feel about vaccines impacts how risky we perceive them to be. But why should we associate them with negative emotions? Immunization saves lives — which is a good thing, right?
Well, it used to be. Time was when people had real experience with the diseases we were immunizing against, knew they were risky, and had positive emotional associations with the thing that helped you avoid them. But that was a long time ago, and in many ways immunization has become a victim of its success. I’m nearly 40, and the only time I’ve ever encountered the measles was when the Brady kids got them. The closest I came to the mumps was when Bobby kissed that possibly-disease-ridden hussy Millicent (turned out she was clean). Nowadays, thanks to immunization, we’re far more likely to hear a story about the dangers of vaccines than the dangers of a largely-eradicated disease — “nobody got sick” isn’t much of a story, after all. And stories matter because of another cognitive heuristic known as availability.
Although skeptics are fond of saying that “the plural of anecdote is not data”, our native cognitive processes beg to differ. Thanks to the availability heuristic, our perception of risk is indeed correlated to how many instances of a bad outcome we can recall. Start piling on stories, and all those anecdotes add up to a pretty clear picture to our mind — especially if those stories are emotionally resonant (affective).
And where might we find repeated, emotionally resonant stories about things that might kill us? Tune in at 10:00 to find out. As Dan Gardner oberves: “In journalism schools today, students are told there is a list of qualities that make a story newsworthy, a list that…always includes novelty, conflict, impact, and that beguiling and amorphous stuff known as human interest.”
Yes, the news media is in the business of telling emotionally resonant stories, over and over and over again until your eyes bleed. And then a few more times. Followed by a Where are they Now? retrospective. And it’s not just at 10:00 anymore with today’s 24 hour news cycle.
You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me
Now the cynical among us may see this merely as a big plot to keep viewers glued to the TV in order to sell them more Viagra, and there’s little doubt that commercial concerns play a role. But I’m inclined to a more charitable read, which is that journalists are human, and their assessment of what’s newsworthy is rooted in the mind design they share with their viewers. It’s rare that I doubt a journalist’s motives, and indeed rare that I doubt the motives of even the most shrill of the alarmists they interview. But being honest is not the same thing as being correct — you can honestly report a position for which there’s little or no actual evidence, providing you intend no deception.
The same is true of many others with a financial interest in propagating the anti-vaccination narrative — while there are certainly those whose profit motive trumps all else, for the most part marketers of so-called “natural” alternatives actually believe in what they’re selling. The mind’s ability to suppress cognitive dissonance through confirmation bias and social reinforcement is indeed impressive. If you doubt that, just try to have a cocktail conversation with a naturopath — it’s eerily similar to talking to a creationist.
Uptight (Everything’s Alright)
The result of all this is exactly what you’d expect. Those with naturally strong metacognitive capabilities will second-guess their mind design, realize it’s faulty, and put their trust in the data. Everyone else will be swayed by the cultural factors that impact that mind design, i.e. how many stories they’ve heard about the dangers of vaccination vs. the dangers of the disease itself; who they heard those stories from; and how emotionally resonant they were. Unfortunately, with the pervasiveness of our media and the marketing tenacity of the natural health industry, I fear that the anti-vaccination forces will continue to have the upper hand in this battle for hearts & minds.
At least for now. Because the stronger they get, the more herd immunity will be lost, and the more children in our community will die from preventable diseases. Nothing will get on the news faster, and the tide will start to swing back for exactly the same reasons it started swinging away in the first place. It won’t be driven by reason, but at least it’ll be effective.
And that’s some comfort. I guess.Images credit JakPak
I thought Wired Magazine was cruel, when they called the JAKPAK an epic gadget FAIL. So did Michelle at JAKPAK, who wrote "Pretty excited to see you guys stand up to the Wired article regarding the Jakpak. It is a great product." But they like it at the Consumerist and Fast Company, and I like it too.
What's not to like; it is more of a bivy sack than a tent, but a lot of people camp like that. In fact this looks better than most of the bivy sacks I have seen; I love the mosquito netting, although I suspect they will bite right through it. Cliff at Fast Company called it a great example of Hobotech, a term I am steal and personalize as hobotecture, (no, damn, Fast Company coined that too!) for lightweight mobile living.
Our correspondent Michelle demonstrates. More at JakPak
More Hobotecture, houses you carry on your back:
For multiple accomodation: Party Dress: The Ultimate in Movable ArchitectureTHE MATCHUP
After a 20-14 loss at the Cleveland Browns on Thursday night at First Energy Stadium, the New Orleans Saints (0-1) will face the Los Angeles Chargers (0-1) at 7 p.m. central Sunday at the StubHub Center in Carson, Calif., as they continue their 2017 preseason slate.
New Orleans and Los Angeles will be familiar with each other by kickoff after they participated in joint practices at the Chargers practice facility in Costa Mesa, Calif., on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The Chargers lead the regular season series 7-5 and have a 4-2 lead in the preseason, but New Orleans has captured the last three regular season meetings. The two clubs last met at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium on Oct. 2, 2016 with the Saints stealing a dramatic come-from-behind 35-34 victory.
New Orleans looks to rebound from Thursday’s loss at Cleveland, while Los Angeles lost to the Seattle Seahawks, 48-17 on Sunday in their StubHub Center debut.
In what started as a defensive battle in the first half, New Orleans kicker Wil Lutz drilled 22- and 42-yard field goals sandwiched around a one-yard touchdown run by Browns rookie RB Matthew Dayes. Following a scoreless third quarter that featured a sack by DE Alex Jenkins and DT David Onyemata, QB Ryan Nassib connected on a two-yard touchdown to WR Tommylee Lewis followed by a successful two-point conversion attempt by RB Daniel Lasco to give New Orleans a 14-7 lead. Cleveland barely escaped following a touchdown with 1:58 left. The game featured several notable individual performances by numerous Saints looking to earn a roster spot.
Saints signal callers completed 69.4 percent of their passes altogether on the evening in a contest where Drew Brees did not play. Nassib completed 10-of-14 throws for 110 yards with the scoring pass and a 118.2 passer rating. Chase Daniel started the contest and executed on four -of-six throws. Garrett Grayson completed 11-of-16 throws for a team-high 116 yards.
In his NFL debut, RB Alvin Kamara, one of the club’s three third round draft picks, powered the running game with four carries for 35 yards, including a burst for a 22-yard gain.
In addition to Lewis, WR Brandon Coleman paced the passing game with three receptions for 23 yards and WR Jake Lampman also had two catches for 33 yards.
Defensively, New Orleans allowed the Browns to only convert four-of-14 third down conversions and held them to 71 yards rushing on 22 attempts (3.2 avg.).Businessman Denis O’Brien is suing the Revenue Commissioners claiming they breached his privacy by providing details of his tax affairs to the media.
He claims the alleged disclosure arose from a document Revenue provided to certain news organisations during a case arising out of his tax liability for 1999/2000 relating to the sale of his shares in Esat Telecom to BT Hawthorn Ltd.
Revenue deny his claims and say almost all the information came from a public High Court hearing.
Mr Justice Paul McDermott on Wednesday ordered Revenue, in advance of the main case, to provide discovery of certain information to Mr O’Brien concerning disclosures made to the media. He refused discovery in relation to certain other categories of information.
The judge said the case arose out of an appeal by Mr O’Brien against a tax assessment raised by Revenue.
The matter went to the High Court on a “case stated” issue as to whether an Appeals Commissioner was correct in holding that a house he owned in Raglan Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin, was not his permanent home for the relevant tax year for the purposes of the Ireland/Portugal Double Taxation Convention.
The court found in Mr O’Brien’s favour in September 2013.
Mr O’Brien then sued Revenue, one of its inspectors of taxes, Michael K Brennan, and Revenue solicitor Etáin Croasdell, claiming the disclosure of certain documents to members of the media during that case breached his constitutional right to privacy.
He claimed articles in the Sunday Business Post, Sunday Independent and Sunday Times contained information on his private tax affairs which related to an in-camera hearing before the Appeals Commissioner.
He alleged the Sunday Independent article contained information not opened in court.
The Sunday Times had information and photographs said to have been taken from the “case stated” before the High Court, It also had a quote from “a source” saying the reason it took so long for the case to reach court was |
Tim Nowak, Kelly Sutherland. Linesmen—Brad Kovachik.“As usual the world was powdery and blue, like a rococo miniature. I was driving underneath the tree canopy and behind those trees were mansions and their many vehicles, gently arranged on the drive. It was the world as I had always known it, when being driven by my parents to music lessons or football practice or the first ever parties of my youth, the ones that ended at dawn with everyone staring at each other calmly in a field, feeling tired. That was how I always lived, out here on the outskirts of a giant city: the world occurred to me as a series of impressions seen from the windows of a car.”
Adam Thirlwell’s third novel, Lurid & Cute, is made up of such impressions—charming, nostalgic, not quite tethered to reality. The unnamed narrator—formerly a child prodigy, he tells us—is a privileged young man who has quit his office job to pursue his art, and who now lives with his wife at the house of his adoring parents. His talent, as he puts it, is mostly for thinking. The observations above occur to him as he drives his bloodied, comatose best friend to the emergency room, having discovered her suffering some kind of hemorrhage in his hotel bed after a night of ketamine and sex.
At thirty-six, Thirlwell dresses like a youngish teenager—silver sneakers, jeans, T-shirts emblazoned with the Eiffel Tower—and looks perpetually exhausted. In our Skype conversation, he had a way of speaking that, like one of his characters, “sometimes seemed like teasing and sometimes seemed like it wasn’t and it wasn’t always easy to be able to tell the two apart.” “Multiplicity! Levity! World History!” he later wrote to me in an e-mail about what he seeks in his reading. “Those kind of T-shirt slogans.”
Your dialogue is very funny. It seems very stylized but then, when you read it aloud, it’s perfectly realistic. Do you have rules for dialogue? Whose do you admire?
Maybe perversely, I love Henry James’s The Awkward Age, which is written almost entirely in dialogue and is therefore almost incomprehensible. Everyone is speaking in intimation and allusion—which is so much like life that the reader has desperately to work out what the degrees of irony and lying are. That kind of flatness seems to me the ideal. There’s a great moment in a Lampedusa essay where he praises the dialogue in Stendhal’s novels, because none of it is celebrated, nothing is quotable. I wonder if in novels, rather than plays or screenplays, the dialogue can become this baroque surface thing, because it’s free to be as close to audiotape as possible, without the burden of meaning anything, or conveying plot. Although I don’t know if this is some kind of London problem—how little is actually said in conversation. Okay, sure, there might be mutual understanding—but the sentences are only nonsense, or nonsense poetry.
One of my favorite conversations in the novel occurs when Candy, the narrator’s wife, suggests that the narrator get a job, or make his movie, “a movie about a massacre,” to which he simply responds, “I don’t think you can show it—”. He’s wearing a bloodstained T-shirt at the time.
Yes, for me, there’s an unusual amount of violence in this novel—hyperviolence. The narrator and his sidekick in crime, for instance, are very good at violence performed as if altruistically or gently—and I think with that kind of paradox or joke I wanted to describe a certain way of thinking. In Lurid & Cute, I wanted to remove world history from the picture. I had this idea of Debord’s at the back of my mind, that a generation with no sense of history is a generation without a strategy. I was imagining the narrator as a colonizing power, or someone born into a colonizing power, and I wanted to find a form for the way absolute innocence becomes maniacal, the way mania so fervently can protest its innocence.
Is there something inherently English in that combination of niceness and gore?
I guess so. I’ve always been interested in that tradition—De Quincey, say, or Charles Lamb—where the essay becomes this weird, almost infected thing, aesthetically and ethically. One of the essays I was reading was De Quincey’s “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” With De Quincey, the irony is always so extreme that it defeats any summary, but the rough argument entertained by the essay is essentially, Why can’t we aestheticize murder? There’s this lovely line where he writes, “Murders have their little differences and shades of merit as well as statues, pictures, oratorios, cameos, intaglios, or what not.” It’s that idea that actually anything can be aestheticized if you only look at it in the right way, which may not be the moral way.
Colm Tóibín, interviewing you at a recent reading in New York, said that when he first read an early essay of yours about Sebald, he thought you were a malicious little prick.
Well, I guess I did enjoy a certain lightness of tone for subjects whose seriousness was everywhere approved but which I doubted. There was a kind of sprezzatura narrative voice I developed, in both the fiction and the essays—a ruthless levity. One thing I love about the Central European and Latin American traditions—writers like Gombrowicz or Kundera or Borges—is the way the essayistic and the fictional are merged forms of each other. That’s the experimental area that most interests me. So I’ve always been interested in making criticism artful, allowing it a range of tones it isn’t usually allowed. I wonder if that’s why I like this essayistic form. It allows the inclusion of what seems off, inappropriate. An essay, like a novel, is a small collage, really.
I was struck by the number of “miniature” things in the novel—paintings, butterflies, blueberry cakes, even pets (“not quite possums or small lemurs but almost”). Where do they come from?
My private terrors? The sweet landscape around me?
The setting constantly draws attention to itself as a kind of absurdity—like that moment when the narrator tells us that “above us koalas or pigeons were playing in the jacaranda trees.” How did it develop on the page?
Definitely it was intended as a non- or impossible place. I had in mind this trick of Nabokov’s in Speak, Memory, where he goes butterfly hunting in Russia and emerges looking at ponderosa pines, which are only American. The locale kept getting stranger as I wrote and rewrote it, inserting more and more of those crazy juxtapositions. I think partly it was an homage to that Latin American tradition, in particular the way the Tropicália artists came up with this idea of “cannibal art”—that if you grew up on the so-called periphery of a world system, then you had to stop worrying about what was yours and what was other people’s, that you should just steal whatever you can. I liked the idea that London, which now feels to me like this broken-down, peripheral place, was essentially São Paulo fifty years ago. It’s in the language, too—the narrator is constantly stealing phrases, Hispanic or Russian or Chinese. He’s taking anything he can to describe his hallucinatory situation. Like sentences from his many “gurus” and “holy men,” who are really Proust, or Kafka.
The narrator describes marriage as “the largest urban sprawl in the world, so that whenever you think you have left it you are just in another concentric garden suburb.” Could the idea of suburbia also apply to the novel’s structure, as well as to its relationships?
I think you’re right—the novel’s decentered structure was a way of trying to replicate this suburban kind of foliage, or spread. Early on, I was reading and thinking about that brilliant book Learning from Las Vegas, with its defense of the sprawl, or strip. But I also think I associate suburbia with my childhood, and a sense that there’s just too much time there, that time is endless—and especially for our generation, so many of whom are unemployed or only partially employed. Also that the usual family units or sexual boundaries might ever so slightly disperse, in a way that might seem either utopian or frightening, depending on your perspective. As a way of organizing space and time, the suburbs seem to me like an almost metaphysical state, one that isn’t represented fully in what we think of as the suburban novel, which is brilliantly precise and all about social placing. I was interested in a novelistic structure that was suburban in a revised way, like a kind of cloud that would coalesce for a moment and then disperse—I guess because that felt more truthful to experience. There are so few scenes in everyday life! Why else would we go to parties? They’re desperate attempts to create the idea of a scene.
I’m reminded of my favorite “scene” in Politics, which begins with the warning that it will contain sex, then proceeds with much emotional analysis, and then ends—“But why was this a sex scene? Because while I have been explaining what Moshe and Anjali were feeling, they have been touching each other, quietly.” Are you aware of doing two things at once, of writing this essayistic, digressive voice, and then, underneath it, the action?
I think for me, plot is always spectacle. It’s a form of gravity, to give weight to the otherwise endless thinking. I suppose the link between that moment in Politics and Lurid & Cute is this obsessive wish to notate consciousness or to investigate how much thought spills over. Somewhere in Lurid & Cute the narrator talks about trying to accommodate the miniature outside to his giant inside, and I think that’s an everyday problem of arithmetic. There is something incommensurable with living about thinking. It melts all over the picture. Which is, after all, the original Kafka problem. “The outside world is too small, too clear-cut, too truthful, to contain everything that a person has room for inside.”
I think that’s why the orgy scene is so good—it’s more thinking than doing.
My poor narrator! And his desperate attempt to make an orgy look normal. He has to pretend that he has never had sex with his best friend, with whom he has been having an affair, in front of his wife. It takes an infinite amount of minute self-consciousness. Which I suppose is not the ideal orgiastic state. Those moments where suddenly the internal clock of the narrative has to match the imagined exterior of time always fascinate me. It happens in the interior artists I love, like James or Proust or Gertrude Stein. But also some of the films I most enjoy become actions in real time—like that old French movie Rififi, which includes twenty minutes, if I remember this right, of just a gang trying to open a safe.
The narrator tells us at one point that “More and more I was convinced that the most urgent task, in every megalopolis, was how to use your time—how, in other words, will you reveal it as grander than it seems.” How do you feel about your own time while you’re writing?
Oh, it’s constant fidgeting. With the momentary relief of total absorption. I suppose, sadly, my other main occupation is reading. This time it was a mixture of architecture books—Learning from Las Vegas, or books on LA’s ecology—and a miniseries I developed of narrative voices—Machado de Assis, Hamsun, Hrabal, Svevo, and especially Proust. I only began to read him properly while I was writing Lurid & Cute. I think I’m still trying to ingest him. But that worry of my narrator, that’s a wider worry. Where is seriousness located? Is there more of it elsewhere? I think I share that worry—metaphysically, politically, you name it.
The narrator shares other things in common with you—he has the same elfin look, he’s Jewish, interested in charm, interested in drugs, gifted. Why did you do that?
In an earlier draft of this novel, the narrator had a name—because I very much didn’t want him to be identified as me, given some of his less alluring moments—and then I remember quite far into the writing having a conversation with two writer friends in which I triumphantly announced that at last I’d got the voice, and then they both said, Now you need to drop the name. Their basic reasoning being that the name gave me the shield to write wildly, and now the further requirement to keep the wildness going was to drop that name, to risk that kind of identification. So I did that and made him small with big eyes and spiky hair.
What’s interesting for me isn’t that surface similarity, it’s what that similarity allows for—because the more you reduce the gap between the narrator and the novelist, the more you also reduce the gap between the novel and the reader. I’ve often wondered why I’m so drawn to the novel as stand-up, and I think it’s because it flaunts the fact of its performance—and yet at the same time flaunts its possibility as truth. The dream is to inhabit the voice entirely, but also use the character as a form of evasion—at the same time. Again, the model is Proust.
Your narrator eventually writes the novel we’re reading, having almost persuaded us that he could never do such a thing. You recently almost persuaded me that you wouldn’t write another novel. Would you ever try to make a different kind of art?
I wonder if I am trying to think myself into a different kind of mode. As if a novel could become performance art. Some kind of pure literal experience. But most of all, I perhaps have this dream of a film. Something where the real could take over even more thoroughly. But maybe that’s just the power madness of the woebegone powerless novelist talking. I mean, who wouldn’t want to do something where everyone has to sit in the dark and be forced to watch continuously whatever you put in front of them?
Emily Stokes is a senior features editor at The New York Times Style Magazine: T.Christopher Deedy was tasked with "supporting protection of dignitaries" for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit which will be attended by President Barack Obama and a host of other leaders later this week.
Deedy, 27, is accused of fatally shooting Kollin Elderts, 23, who he did not know, at 3am in the tourist district of Waikiki. He has been charged with second degree murder and released on $250,000 bail. He was off duty at the time of the alleged shooting.
Michael Green, a lawyer for the victim's family, said it followed an altercation in a Waikiki club. Later, at the McDonald's, Mr Elderts was said to have told Deedy he looked "pretty serious" and jokingly asked him, "Hey, are you going to shoot me or something?" According to Mr Green the federal agent replied "How would you like to get shot tonight?" then pulled out a gun, knocked Mr Elderts to the floor and fired three times. The sequence of events was captured on security cameras, he said.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed Deedy had been in Honolulu to beef up security ahead of the APEC conference, and has now been put on paid administrative leave.
She said: "This was a tragic incident in Hawaii over the weekend," adding that the State Department would co-operate fully with local police.Story highlights Sudan: Israeli vulture with GPS-equipped camera caught by officials in western Sudan
Israeli scientists say a number of vultures tagged with GPS to study migration routes
Expert: GPS tracking of this sort used in hundreds of studies around the world
Griffon vultures are an endangered species in the Middle East, Hatzofe says
A vulture captured by Sudanese authorities is actually an Israeli spy on a secret reconnaissance mission, a pro-government newspaper in the east African nation has claimed.
Government sources say the vulture, found in western Sudan, was tagged with a GPS-equipped camera to take and send pictures back to Israel, according to a December 8 story in the Alintibaha newspaper.
The bird also wore an ankle label reading "Hebrew University Jerusalem," "Israel Nature Service" and the contact details of an Israeli avian ecologist.
The ecologist, Ohad Hatzofe of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, has rejected the Sudanese government claims -- saying the vulture, which can fly up to 600 kilometers in a single day, was tagged with GPS equipment to study its migration pattern.
"The Sudanese accusations are untrue," Hatzofe told CNN. "The GPS gear on these vultures can only tell us where the birds are, nothing else."
He said: "This is ordinary equipment that is used around the world to detect movement of wildlife. There are hundreds of studies using this technology on everything from butterflies and sea turtles to sharks and whales."
Hatzofe also cast doubt on the practicality of using vultures as secret agents: "I'm not an intelligence expert, but what would be learned from putting a camera onto a vulture? You cannot control it. It's not a drone that you can send where you want. What would be the benefit of watching a vulture eat the insides of a dead camel?"
The Griffon vulture is an endangered species in the Middle East, according to Hebrew University Jerusalem professor Ran Nathan. His students, Roi Harel and Orr Spiegel, tagged more than 100 vultures -- 25 of them with GPS trackers -- as part of a project to observe the behavior and movement of younger vultures.
Hatzofe says the data from the tagged GPS vultures isn't transmitted solely back to Israel, but to the animal-tracking website Movebank, where other scientists can analyze the data.
The Israeli scientists first knew something was amiss in early December, when the GPS system (pictured above) indicated the vulture was on the ground and was moving along a road in western Sudan.
The Griffon vulture is not a migratory bird, but it isn't uncommon for them to make their way into northern Africa, according to Hatzofe, who says the vulture's wing tag included a message asking anyone who found the bird to contact him or the university.
"My email address is on the vulture," he told CNN, "but I never got a message."
The Israeli government declined to comment on this story, and repeated calls to Sudanese officials went unanswered.
Hatzofe says that the real danger of claiming that GPS-tagged birds are spies is that it could prompt government officials to kill animals they capture.
"There is nothing new about birds tagged for studies, and if governments will not reject these types of rumors, then others will grab their weapons and hunt down wildlife -- the exact opposite of what conservationists want."In the beginning of Columbus Crew SC, there was no MAPFRE Stadium. There was no no Nordecke; there were no chants of “Glory to Columbus” rattling the city’s night sky.
In fact, Crew SC reflects the city that it was born in, most notably in how much it has changed over the years.
But on the team’s first spring game night in 1996, on the field at Ohio State’s Ohio Stadium there were the staple colors, black and gold. There was the city’s first professional sports star, Brian McBride, ripping up and down the pitch during a 4-0 thrashing of soon-to-be rivals D.C. United. There was a college football city, starved for professional sports, watching this new game played in Buckeyes mecca.
And most memorably, as I noted that day from the crowd, there were flags:American flags, the flag of Columbus, and those of a host of other nations. The flag of Ghana waved high in the nosebleed seats. A group right below where I stood waved the Jamaican flag. In a section to our right, a small group of children, close to my age at the time, held the Somali flag in their hands, beaming.
The team’s come a long way since then—up to hosting the 2015 MLS Cup FInal this Sunday, Dec. 6. All those years of change reflect change in the city itself.
When discussing Crew SC’s importance to Columbus, it is necessary to first understand Columbus, the city in which I’ve spent most of my life. Columbus is quintessentially Midwestern, in layout, population temperament, and ice cream selection. It will never be New York or Los Angeles, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t keep occasionally trying to compete, sometimes at the cost of its own communities. At the same time, Columbus has almost always been a place where those who have been displaced—by urgent desire or by circumstances beyond their control—can resettle and find comfort.
Crew SC came along at an important time for the city In 1995, Columbus welcomed a large number of Somali refugees, drawn to it by its cost of living, plentiful jobs for multilingual adults, and welfare programs headed up by the Somali Community Association of Ohio, which helped refugees with recovery from Somalia’s civil war.
Today, Columbus boasts the second-largest Somali population in the U.S., many on the city’s Northside. Around this time, the number of Ghanaian immigrants in Columbus also rose, creating a culture shift in the heart of Columbus, especially among youth, many of whom were assimilating into new schools and looking for new outputs for energy and pride.
Cliché as it may be, soccer remains a universal language. So in 1999, when Crew SC got its own stadium, it stood as a central meeting point for these converging communities, where all the contents of Columbus’ melting pot could be poured out and blended together. And now, in a city marked by development, gentrification, and flux, it remains one of the most reliable places for this to continue.
The stands still fill with people from every corner of a city that, because of these forces, pulls them further and further away from each other every year. The Hudson Street Hooligans chant while La Turbina Amarilla plays their bass and snare drums along with the chants. Flags of nations still blanket the stadium—Mexico, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and still, of course, Somalia.
When the game ends, everyone drives to their respective parts of the city. Some people drive past places they can no longer afford; some people drive to expensive apartment buildings that replaced the lower-income housing that stood there before. There is no way to romanticize how a city can eat its own, and who it leaves behind in the process.
But Crew SC, for nearly two decades now, has provided a source of pride and unity. A home game is a place where you can come and see yourself reflected both on the field and in the stands, whether your parents escaped a country embroiled in civil war, or if you’re simply escaping your parents in the suburbs for the night.
When people doubt the power of North American soccer, I imagine they have never walked outside of MAPFRE Stadium at halftime of a game and seen young Somali kids on the mini-pitch, dazzling the kids from the suburban select teams with their footwork and energy. I imagine they’ve never seen a child’s eyes light up with the realization of what is possible when Wil Trapp, a product of a Columbus suburb mere miles from the stadium, takes the field in the city where he was raised.
They’ve probably never seen the eyes of a Ghanaian while Harrison Afful tears along the edges of the field, defending and attacking with reckless abandon. I imagine they’ve probably also never tried to make their way through the parking lot after a Crew SC victory, before giving up, getting out of their car, and chanting and singing along with whatever supporters are left, stretching their joy for as long as possible. These things, all of them, matter a great deal. The game is a beautiful game, indeed, and its meaning goes well beyond the game itself.
Late in leg two of this year’s 2015 Audi MLS Cup Eastern Conference Semifinal, with the series tied 3-3 on the aggregate, I had resigned myself to hoping for penalty kicks. And then, the team’s fortunes changed in an instant.
With only a few minutes left in extra time, beloved Crew SC star Kei Kamara, a refugee who escaped war in Sierra Leone with his family at 16, took a cross from Congolese left winger Cedrick Mabwati and headed home the game-winning goal.
It was a moment that will, without question, go down as one of Columbus’ greatest sports moments. And Kamara sprinted to MAPFRE’s north corner, stood tall, and bathed in the gold and black. It was clear, then, that the most important thing about Crew SC has never changed. As conflicting forces push and pull on the city I live, unsure of what it wants to become, the team is an important thing that still unites.
Follow Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib on Twitter at @NifMuhammadI just wanted to know your opinion, cause I dont think it should happen, but what are your thoughts on Jackie/Marco just dropping their relationship so Marco can be with Star? They go so well together, and Jackies face seems kind of scared when Star confessed, like she's scared of being compared to the rebel princess herself. It just seems like so much character development potential lost, just for Jackie to say "youll be so much happier with Star" or something weak just to shove forward starco.
I honestly have no idea. I’m sure that the writers know what they’re doing, but right now Jackie is so likeable, and her relationship with Marco is so good to both of them, that I can’t imagine how they’re going, eventually, if it’s meant to happen, to end it. I hope it’s not going to be something like “Star makes you happier”, because let’s face it, Jackie WANTED Marco, she’s not going to let him go like that, just to be altruist.
Whatever’s going to happen, it has to be handled extremely well, because it’s going to be a pivotal moment for the show, and for the characters. It’s not “one is objectively the best choice”, at best it might be “Marco has to choose for himself what makes him the happiest”.
Or, I mean, Jackie as well, she might be the one breaking up. Who knows. Anyway, nothing forced, nothing “I’ll just retire from the competition”, hopefully.Filmmaker Ken Burns views the Vietnam War as a virus that infected Americans with an array of chronic illnesses – alienation, a lack of civil discourse, mistrust of government and each other. And he hopes his new documentary can be part of a cure.
"What if the film was just an attempt at some sort of vaccination, a little bit more of the disease to get you immune to the disunion that it has sponsored?" Burns said in a recent interview. "It's important for us to begin to have creative but courageous conversations about what took place."
Burns and co-director Lynn Novick had just finished work on their Second World War documentary a decade ago when he turned to her and said, "We have to do Vietnam." The result is their 10-part, 18-hour series that will air beginning Sept. 17 on PBS.
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"For me, it was the sense that Vietnam was the most important event for Americans in the second half of the 20th century, yet we had done almost everything we could in the intervening years to avoid understanding it," Burns said. "As horrible as they are, wars are incredibly valuable moments to study, and I thought what Vietnam lacked was a willingness to engage in that."
The film brings together the latest scholarly research on the war and features nearly 80 interviews, including Americans who fought in the war and those who opposed it, Vietnamese civilians and soldiers from both sides. Burns and Novick have been showing excerpts of the film around the country in recent months, most recently at Dartmouth College last Thursday.
"I think this will be for a general American audience a kind of revelation, a cascade of new facts and new figures, and I don't mean numeral figures, but biographical figures that will stagger their view of what was, and hopefully get everybody, regardless of political perspective to let go of the baggage of the superficial and the conventional," Burns said.
Having been blamed for the war itself, many Vietnam War soldiers were understandably reluctant to share their stories, the co-directors said. But compared with his earlier series on the Second World War and the Civil War, Burns said there was one challenge he didn't face.
"One of the great tasks for us as filmmakers – amateur historians if you will – was how to cut through all the nostalgia and sentimentality that had attached itself to the Civil War and World War II," he said. "There's no such problem with Vietnam."
After watching the hour-long preview, U.S. Army veteran David Hagerman, of Lyme Center, N.H., said he can't wait to watch the entire series.
"It was powerful," said Hagerman, who spent his nine months in Vietnam running a treatment centre for soldiers addicted to heroin. While strangers now approach him and thank him for his service, he said coming home in 1972 was traumatic.
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"I walked into the Seattle airport and I was in my Army outfit," he said. "The reception I received was so negative and so powerful that I walked into the nearest men's room, took my uniform off, threw it in the trash and put on a T-shirt and a pair of pants."
Burns said while he doesn't buy into the notion that history repeats itself, it's clear that human nature doesn't change. And he acknowledges that many of the themes his series explores are uncannily relevant to the present.
"If I backed up this conversation and said, 'Okay, I've spent the last year working a film about a White House in disarray obsessed with leaks, about a huge document drops into the public of classified information … about a deeply polarized country, about a political campaign accused of reaching out to a foreign power during an election, about mass demonstrations across the country,' you'd say, 'Gee, Ken, you stopped doing history, you're doing the present moment,'" he said.
At Dartmouth, Novick and Burns were joined by U.S. Army veteran Mike Heaney, of Hartland, Vt., who is shown in the film describing losing fellow platoon members in a 1966 ambush and spending the night paranoid that a dead Viet Cong soldier lying next to him was just faking it and would rise up to kill him.
After the screening, he told the audience about returning to Vietnam in 2008, where he compared war wounds with former enemies turned fellow "grandpas." He said he's been able to cope thanks to the support of his family, as well as both Americans and the Vietnamese people.
"I don't expect to ever get closure on this kind of experience that I had," he said. "And that's okay."An Israeli student has been stabbed and critically wounded in Jerusalem and another person stabbed in Tel Aviv as tensions between Israelis and Palestinians continue to rise.
The 25-year-old Yeshiva student was stabbed in his upper body at Ammunition Hill in occupied East Jerusalem on Thursday, in the fourth such incident to take place in a 24-hour period, according to local media reports.
The alleged attacker, a 19-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem, was detained by police at the site of the incident.
RELATED: Is Israel maintaining the status quo at al-Aqsa Mosque?
"Police have him apprehended and he is being questioned," Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Al Jazeera.
In a separate incident a female Israeli soldier was stabbed with a screwdriver in Tel Aviv, and the perpetrator was shot dead according to the Israeli military.
Stabbing attacks
On Wednesday, three similar stabbing attacks were carried out.
In East Jerusalem's Old City, an Israeli man was reportedly stabbed and injured by Shurooq Dweiyat, a 19-year-old Palestinian woman. The man, who was lightly injured shot and critically injured her. Dweiyat says the Israeli man attacked her.
RELATED: Welcome to the New Middle East
Another Palestinian, 20-year-old Amjad Jundi, was shot and killed by police after stabbing an Israeli soldier and attempting to steal his weapon, Israeli police said.
The soldier sustained light injuries.
RELATED: Unrest spreads in the occupied West Bank
In Petah Tikva, a city in central Israel, an Israeli man was stabbed outside a local mall on Wednesday evening. He was in stable condition, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz.
Police detained the suspected attacker, a Palestinian man from the Hebron area of the West Bank.
1600 Palestinians injured
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, at least 1,600 Palestinians have been injured since October 3.
Eighty-seven have been injured with live ammunition, and 290 with rubber-coated steel bullets. On Monday, Abdel Rahman Abdullah, a 13-year-old from the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, was shot and killed by Israeli forces, prompting further protests and unrest.
Tensions have been mounting since clashes erupted at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem over access restrictions for Palestinians during Jewish and Muslim holidaysA bitter months-long battle over a Kitsilano bike lane proposal that pitted motorists against cyclists and neighbour against neighbour has ended.
Vancouver city council gave the green light Monday night to the $6-million Seaside Greenway and York Bikeway project, which includes a controversial plan to close off one kilometre of Point Grey Road west of Macdonald to commuter traffic, diverting 10,000 motorists to other roads.
“This has been seven months’ consultation but decades in the coming,” said Coun. Heather Deal.
“This route is going to become a jewel. People will adapt to it and we will be glad we did it.”
The most contentious sections of the plan — the Point Grey diversion and the York Avenue bikeway — garnered a 7-2 vote in favour from councillors, largely along party lines.
Six Vision Vancouver councillors and Green party councillor Adriane Carr voted in favour, while NPA councillors George Affleck and Elizabeth Ball voted against.
Mayor Gregor Robertson, who had just purchased a house near the proposed bike route, recused himself from the vote to avoid any potential conflicts of interest.
The plan fills in the last remaining gap in a 28-kilometre cycling route stretching from the Burrard Street Bridge to Jericho Beach. But it is also one of the most divisive issues in recent memory.
“We’ve divided this community,” said Affleck, who put forward a failed motion to defer the plan to October. “There are a lot of people in the city angry about this.”
At the heart of the issue, said Deal, was whether people thought Point Grey Road was safe or not.
There was no consensus among speakers Monday night, with some saying the seaside artery is safe, citing ICBC statistics showing there were no accidents between cyclists and motorists on Point Grey Road between 2008 and 2012, and others who say they regularly witness near-misses on the road.
Deal points out the plan shifts commuter access on Point Grey Road east to Macdonald instead of Alma. “That’s it. For that difference, you get an amazing continuation of our seaside route.”
In total, 217 people registered to speak on the issue over five nights of debate. Monday drew a noticeably smaller crowd than previous nights. The majority spoke out against the plan, calling it defective and costly, affecting many but benefiting only a few.
Markus von Berg said the plan provided a “modest gain” for cyclists but a major inconvenience for motorists, residents, and businesses along Macdonald, 4th Avenue, Broadway, and 10th Avenue, which will bear the load of diverted traffic.
“Why are you going from something working OK to something completely unknown, a complete shutdown,” he asked councillors. He suggested the city look at other traffic calming measures for the street, such as pedestrian-controlled intersections and use the savings to fund the bike share program.
Another speaker, James Sullivan, was gung-ho about the project.
“I think it’s a great thing for Vancouver to have this as a selling point,” he said. “It’s not the end of the world as people are saying.”The end of U2? WTF, they just gave us a free CD a few weeks ago, what the hell are you talking about? Now, that I have your attention, I’m not talking about that ending. I’m talking about “The Troubles”, U2’s last song on Songs of Innocence. Is there any group that cares more about the placement of a song on the CD than U2? NO, there is not. I swear they were done with SOI 3 years ago and spent the last two years haggling over song positions.
This past Sunday, Bono revealed that after grief comes rage, hence why “Volcano” follows “Iris”. Makes sense. It doesn’t explain the placement of “Your Blue Room” anywhere on any CD, but I digress. Has there ever been a U2 CD debate without a discussion about U2’s song selection to close out a CD or show? Again, the answer is no, which brings me to “The Troubles”.
I don’t Lykke this song, I LOVE this song. (See what I did there). Just when I think that my soul has been beaten into oblivion by the previous ten songs on SOI, here comes “The Troubles” with a flying drop kick to finish it off before the referee can throw in the towel. The song, according to Bono is about domestic abuse and should be mandatory listening at every couples therapy session and at each NFL (National Football League) training camp each year. It’s that powerful and that important.
Lyrically, it is unbelievably haunting. “Somebody stepped inside your soul, little by little they robbed and stole, Till someone else was in control.” Who writes lyrics like this…U2 does, that’s who! However in typical U2 fashion, the group that stands up for faith, hope and love acknowledge that getting out of any abusive relationship is not an easy thing,
“God knows it’s not easy,
Taking on the shape of someone else’s pain,
God now you can see me I’m naked and I’m not afraid
My body’s sacred and I’m not ashamed”
But the strongest line in the song for me is “I have a will to survive!” The power of that one line is overwhelming. Telling that Mofo in your life that you will not and cannot be broken is just an incredibly powerful statement. Not since “Dirty Day” has U2 delved into the dysfunctional family unit and the pain it causes |
yoob said.
Face in the crowd
Other than having good size, he didn’t stand out much when he was one of eight quarterbacks who tried out for Serra’s freshman team. He was a backup to one of his best friends Kevin Krystofiak and rarely played for an 0-8-1 squad.
Courtesy photo Dean Ayoob, Serra
“I think he got into a play or two as an outside linebacker,” then Serra varsity coach Tom MacKenzie said. “Honestly, I barely remembered his name back then. He was sort of a face in the crowd.”
When Krystofiak quit the next year to play basketball, the door opened wide for Brady. MacKenzie, who coached at Serra from 1979 to 2000, paid full attention once he saw Brady’s strong arm. At 6-foot-2 and 205 pounds as a sophomore, he also had excellent size.
“He was really adept at throwing the fade pattern,” MacKenzie said. “Right on the money. It was God given. In 31 years of coaching I’d never seen someone able to throw like Tom Brady. He was our future, someone we needed to develop and cultivate.”
He started on the JV team as a sophomore and that’s when he and Kirby started hooking up.
In their season opener against Mission San Jose, Brady hit Kirby on a 12-yard curl pattern for the game-winning touchdown with 30 seconds to play.
“His first-game ever, we’re down five with two minutes to go and he led us on a game-winning drive,” Kirby said. “It was awesome. It’s just like he does all the time now. Whenever he was in the huddle, he always seemed in control. He never panicked. He was always motivational, not negative. If we were way down he’d say, ‘C’mon, let’s get this going.’ He never yelled or blamed.”
He was supremely passionate about the game, however. Donahue recalled Brady stewing in the end zone that season following a loss to rival St. Francis ( Mountain View ).
“He had tears in his eyes,” Donahue said. “He wasn’t being a baby. He just hated to lose.”
According to Perry Carter, a JV football coach and the school's Director of Advancement, Brady passed for about 200 yards a game his sophomore season. He was an assistant during Brady's JV and varsity senior season.
“He just flat-out out-worked every one,” Carter said. “He was a student of the game and he stayed after every practice to throw extra passes.”
His arm was never in question. His footwork and speed was another matter.
Once-in-a-lifetime
MacKenzie knew for him to reach the next level, Brady needed work below the waist.
Screenshot from YouTube Tom Brady, Serra
Brady knew also.
“Most teen-agers will avoid at all cost what they aren’t good at,” MacKenzie said. “Tom Brady was the opposite. He’d take to heart what he needed to improve on.”
MacKenzie developed workout and quickness drills that Brady followed religiously. One, called the “5-dot drill,” he turned into his own.
He took the jumping and quickness exercise of MacKenzie and added nuances that he implemented daily for the next two years. It’s part of the reason, MacKenzie believes, Michigan came calling for Brady which led to his now almost iconic billing.
MacKenzie even has a memento of the drill, trucked away in his office.
“One day (during high school) Tom came in and I asked him to write down some of those new drills and I’d incorporate them with what I was doing,” MacKenzie said. “He wrote them down on some binder paper and I still have it in my files for me to keep forever.”
He won’t sell it on eBay?
“Never,” MacKenzie said. “That would be a travesty.”
With golden arm and hard-earned and new found athleticism, Brady threw for 3,514 yards and 33 touchdowns the next two seasons. The Padres, playing out of probably California ’s toughest league, the West Catholic Athletic League, went a combined 11-9 and didn’t make the playoffs.
No matter. MacKenzie said. Coaching Brady was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, lesser having to do with football.
“He was just always so well-liked and respected by his team and faculty,” he said. “He could always be counted on to be at the right place at the right time doing the right things. He did it all without being a goody two shoes or a suck-up.”
He was no party animal either, according to Ayoob.
“Everything I heard was that the first thing he did each morning was work out,” Ayoob said. “It seemed like he never wasted time. That’s why he was so successful.”
But he was never a dweeb or phony, Kirby said. He was funny and witty, but not a prankster.
“Just like the way he responded to that woman at the press conference (in 2008) who asked to marry him,” Kirby said. “He always had a good answer. He always had the right response.”
Cadillac loyalty
And that, all parties agree, is what makes him so impossible to sack from his pocket of stardom.
Getty images Tom Brady will be making his sixth Super
Bowl start Sunday, more than any quarterback
in NFL history.
“Everything I see in him now is what I remember about him back then,” Kirby said. “He never saw himself as a high school quarterback star. He didn’t let the attention get to him then. If anything, he tried to stay out of the spotlight, just like now.
“I think that’s why we’re all so incredibly proud of him. It’s really unbelievable not only that he’s reached such status but that he’s the same old humble Tom that we knew.”
The notoriety hasn’t hurt his pocket book. Or the school’s.
After winning his second Super Bowl MVP, he donated the Cadillac that came with the award to Serra, which auctioned it for $375,000. The money was eventually used for school renovations.
This came after winning his first Super Bowl MVP when he spoke at a school rally and signed more than 200 footballs to help with another fund-raiser.
“He sat there for more than two hours signing everything and anything we needed,” Donahue said. “He said, ‘if it’s for the Padres, of course I’ll do it.’ “
Who knows how much his autograph will be worth if the Patriots win their fourth Super Bowl on Sunday.
It’s hard to imagine that his star power can grow any larger.
Kirby said that in some ways he feels bad for Brady because his private life is gone, dragged through the mud and Paparazzi.
That’s another reason why he enjoys watching Brady on the field, winning championships, screaming audibles, re-kindling memories.
“When he looks down the line of scrimmage and I see him looking at Wes Welker and Randy Moss it reminds me of how he looked at me,” Kirby said. “And that feels pretty good.”The city is reportedly one step closer to turning Little Italy's Elizabeth Street Gardena private community garden dotted with statues between Spring and Prince Streets that hosts tai-chi, baby yoga, and movie nightsinto affordable housing for seniors.
The plan, which has actually been kicking around since 2012 as part of NYC's slow-moving SPURA project (the garden only opened its gates to the public in 2012), just got a big boostaccording to DNAInfo, the Department of Housing and Preservation (HPD) has applied for a $6 million grant from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) for affordable housing at 21 Spring Street, the lot that contains the garden.
HPD's plan calls for at least 60 units of affordable housing designated for seniors. At a Community Board 2 meeting earlier this month, HPD representatives told neighbors that any open space associated with the new development would likely only be accessible to residents.
Community Board 2 is not pleased. "CB2 has a real shortage of open space, and the location around the garden is the grayest part of our map," said CB2 Chair Tobi Bergman. "SoHo, Little Italy, NoHothere are no parks over there. SoHo has very long, densely-built streets, and people are confined to small interior spaces with little light and air."
According to Friends of Elizabeth Street Garden, Little Italy and SoHo make up 23% of CB2's population, and only 3% of its green space.
Local councilwoman Margaret Chin is in support of the affordable housing plan, arguing that the neighborhood "desperately" needs it. "As the number of seniors in this neighborhood grows, so does the demand for affordable housing units tailored to the needs of elderly New Yorkers," she said.
The catch for Chin and HPD, however, is that the LMDC requires a "high level of community interest and support" for all of its projectssomething it may not get from CB2.
"People are dedicated to the garden," Bergman said. "It literally has hundreds of volunteers." A public hearing on the project, hosted by the LMDC, is being scheduled for September.Tropicalia Festival is carving out a magnified space for the eclectic musical palettes that run rampant in Los Angeles Latinx indie scene by boldly curating powerhouse acts ranging from Cumbia to Alternative Rock to Hip Hop and everything in between. We’ve decided to highlight some of the most talented non-headlining artists to catch this weekend that like LAtindie culture, are never stagnant, always changing and forever ranging. These rising acts and the festival alike are proving that music has no borders. This new generation of artists are taking the confines of genres and redefining them to fit their rules, not the other way around.
11. Buyepongo
Performing fresh off the hype of the release of their latest album Tumbalo (which is being celebrated the night before at Zebulon) Buyepongo is sure to provide a set to remember. The band is a party in itself, containing a numerous amount of talented members bringing their individual flavors to their heavily instrumental group. Don’t let the size of the band fool you; their sound is one where cohesiveness meets adaptability and fluidity; taking listeners on a worldly journey through their lively beats. You’ll want to catch this set at the Modelo stage at 2:10-2:40pm if you’ve come prepared with your dancing shoes for the day.
10. Weapons of Mass Creation
Composed of 5 siblings and one family friend, this band is in every aspect of the phrase a family affair. The OC band is composed of a group of young emcee’s that have found a way to reinvigorate hip-hop with relevant takes on social justice. With sounds carrying the influence of the smoothest beats and rythyms of the past, lyricism reflective of modern day issues and a resulting vision foretelling the future of new age hip hop; WOMC have all the big shoes to fill with no desire to fill them. They lead their own paths, ensuring their sound and mission stay rooted to their own truth the whole way through. Catch the family function at the Modelo stage from 11:30-12:00 pm.
9. Yellow Days
Following the likes of soulful shoegaze crooners such as fellow Tropicalia performers like King Krule; Yellow Days is another UK act providing a new take on lo-fi indie music. Fitting to the overall theme of the festival; the musician doesn’t square into the confines of bordered genres. The 17 year olds melancholic music brings a humanistic realness that works to create a sense of shared togetherness in todays emotion ridden, millenial world. Catch his set for a mesmerizing, and relaxing break from the days rowdier sets at Dia de Los Puercos stage from 4:00-4:30 pm.
8. Las Cafeteras
You may have heard of cult classic tune La Bamba, but guaranteed you have not heard it performed like this. From the backyard of East LA Las Cafeteras have found the niche for fusing the traditional sounds of Mexico’s Son Jarocho, traditional African beats and Hip Hop’s lyricism to create a sound uniquely their own without losing their vision of remaining distinctly reflective of the community they hail from and embrace. Self proclaimed Chicanos, the musicians are no strangers to utilizing their music and art as a platform to bring light to prominent issues in their communities. For a dose of upbeat music affixed with activism; catch their lively set at the Tropicalia stage from 12:00-12:30 pm.
7. Jessie Reyez
Jessie Reyez has joined the ranks as one of the most treasured musical acts hailing from our neighbor above- Toronto, Canada. The soulful songstress burst onto the scene with her EP Figures and recently released Kiddo, which are as emotionally vulnerable as it is sonically. The Colombian-Canadian singer has been a strong proponent for feminine figures in the music industry. With her stand alone attitude and sultry music, Reyez has made a name for herself without compromising her space for anyone. You’ll want to catch one of the most promising acts of the year at Dia de Los Puercos stage from 2:05-2:35 pm.
6. Sadgirl
A Los Angeles favorite; Sadgirl provides the lineup with the perfect mixture of rockabilly, surf-punk and a signature DIY alternative sound that LA has a reputation of breeding. I have yet to see a show that hasn’t been filled to the brim with fans consistently dancing, moshing and/or swooning for the trio (regardless of their gender). Their natural chemistry on stage always breeds a feel good time for those watching off stage. If you want to catch an act with just the right amount of 50’s sound and LA attitude; Sadgirl’s set at the Mota stage from 5:30-6:00pm is the one for you.
5. Chulita Vinyl Club
If you’re over outdated boys only DJ clubs playing reruns of top 40s hits on laptops; Chulita Vinyl Club is here to spin your worries away. An all woman collective embracing a love for woman supporting woman, great music and skilled vinyl DJ’ing; CVC has quickly made itself a branded name within the rising LAtindie culture. Spinning the best jams both old and new; the all female DJs magically cater a fun filled experience for any audience. The ladies are easily some of the most sought after spinners for LA’s most cherished happenings from local shows to national festivals. Catch their set and craft on the 1’s and 2’s as they spin in between sets on the Tropicalia stage from 2:00-4:00 pm.
4. Thee Commons
Pioneers of (their own self label) “psychedelic cumbia punk” Thee Commons are coming fresh off a national tour parading around almost every town with their last LP release Paleta Sonora. An eclectic sound fusing traditional cumbia dance sounds with funkier grooves of experimentalism; Thee Commons have become just that; a common name within the Southern California and now national music scene, even playing Coachella this past year. Made up of brothers David and Rene Pacheco and their good friend Jose Rojas; the trippy trio is known for wild rousing shows bound to keep you dancing and singing along the whole way through. Their sets are also known to include crowd favorite covers of classics like Selena‘s “Carcacha” and Los Saicos’ “Demolicion.” Catch them at the Mota stage from 12:40-1:10 pm.
3. Jorja Smith
If you haven’t heard the name Jorja Smith; theres a high chance you’ve definitely heard her powerhouse vocals. At age 20; shes lent her talent to the tracking likes of top charting artists including Drake and Miguel. However, the R&B soulstress has made a deep impression on the music world in her own light. Utilizing a blending of stylized genres; Smith’s voice, and overall sound, is distinctly her own. With lyricism that revels everywhere from political commentary to transparent takes on love; the British songwriters music is one that is both concurrently stimulating as it is comforting. Catch this set to be soothed away at the Dia de los Puercos stage from 2:05-2;35 pm.
2. The Buttertones
A little rock n roll, surf, doo wop and quite nearly a pinch of every other genre in between, The Buttertones provide a show, in large thanks to their crazed fanbase, that can only be described as: quite the experience. The last show we’ve seen them play sold out in minutes with a line around the corner that didn’t die down all night all for the chance a space would clear in the venue. A set promised to be filled with dancing, lung projected lyrics to and from the stage and trust us, TONS of opportunities to live out fantasies of crowdsurfing; the twenty-something musicians churn out nothing short of a good time. For a taste of some of the best music the LAtindie scene has to offer; catch The Buttertones at the Dia de los Puercos stage from 12:10-12:40pm.
1. Cuco
The last time we had seen Cuco live was a $5 show at The Smell; and now he’s headlining one of the most anticipated festivals to hit Southern California. Thanks to a loyal fanbase, MITU’s viral media and a rebellion to the mainstream machismo culture that surrounds frontmen in the music industry; Cuco has quickly become a refreshing staple to a coming of age culture in Southern California. Now coming off a west coast tour and on the verge of taking the music world at large on at quite the rapid pace; the 19 year old singer has become a voice of a new culture that has allowed emotions to be cool again. You can catch the LA heartthrobs set at the Tropicalia stage from 2:40-3:10 pm.
// Honorable Re-Rising Mention: Os Mutantes
Not so rising; but a definite must for any “must-see” list; especially one for a festival named after a very genre of music they played a large role in procreating, Brazil’s Os Mutantes are a recommended watch. Tropicalia pioneers, a music genre that thrived in the face of Brazil’s political dictatorship in the 1960’s, found music as a powerful revolutionary tool in the face of oppression. Easily said, the bands reemergence and presence in a US setting in 2017 seem nothing short of fitting. A few years off their official reunion; and just a few days from a new track release directed towards the drumpf regime and his first lady; the band is proving their reemergence is just as much a re-rising sight to see as any of the new aged rising acts on the bill. Catch them at the Dia de los Puercos stage from 8:00-8:30pm.
These are some of our picks; but be sure to catch as many as you can if youre heading to Tropicalia Festival this weekend! Make sure to plan accordingly and schedule some time for the all you can tacos as well!
[ + ] TROPICALIA FESTIVAL
[Official Website] [Instagram] [Facebook] [Twitter]After Saying “I Should’ve Anticipated the Optics” of Golfing After Foley Beheading Speech… Obama Goes Golfing
Guest post by Kristinn Taylor
Daniel Halper at the Weekly Standard points out that contrary to media reports Obama was not contrite in his Meet the Press remarks about going golfing immediately after making a statement while on vacation last month about the videotaped beheading of American journalist James Foley by the Islamist terrorist group ISIS. Obama seemed to blame press coverage—saying he’s looking forward to a vacation from the press–rather than his conduct for the optics of being seen laughing it up on the golf course mere minutes after making a somber statement on what many consider to be an act of war on America.
As if to reinforce the point, Obama went golfing at nearby Ft. Belvoir, Virginia right after he taped the Saturday interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd at the White House, Politico reported.
““You know, I actually feel energized about the opportunities that we’ve got,” Obama told the “Meet the Press” moderator in a sit-down interview taped Saturday. And after finishing, the president quickly headed to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, for an afternoon of golf in 90-degree-plus heat.”
According to the pool report Obama spent four hours golfing Saturday.
WH pool: "After about 4 hours of golf, the motorcade rolled out of Fort Belvoir at 6 & arrived back at the WH at 6:25. No Obama sightings." — Toby Harnden (@tobyharnden) September 7, 2014
Transcript via Meet the Press:
CHUCK TODD: I got to ask, so– so during that vacation, you made the statement on Foley. You went and golfed. Do you– do you want that back? PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, it is always a challenge when you’re supposed to be on vacation. Because you’re followed everywhere. And part of what I’d love is a vacation from— CHUCK TODD: Yeah, you want to– PRESIDENT OBAMA: –the– the press and– and– because– CHUCK TODD: I promise you, 2 1/2 years, I think that happens. PRESIDENT OBAMA: Because the possibility of a jarring contrast given the world’s news, is always– there’s always going to be some tough news somewhere– is going to be there. But there’s no doubt that– after having talked to the families, where it was hard for me to hold back tears listening to the pain that they were going through, after the statement that I made, that you know, I should’ve anticipated the optics. You know, that’s part of the job. And you know, I think everybody who knows me, including, I suspect, the press, understands that that you know, you take this stuff in. And– it– it’s serious business. And– and you care about it deeply. But part of this job is also the theatre of it. A part of it is, you know, how are you, how, how are you, well, it’s not something that– that always comes naturally to me. But it matters. And I’m mindful of that. So the important thing is, in addition to that, is am I getting the policies right? Am I protecting the American people? Am I doing what’s necessary?
And when it comes to the policies, when it comes to the actions we’ve taken, I have no higher priority than keeping the American people safe. I think I’ve done a very good job during the course of these last, close to six years, doing so. And I intend to continue to meet that responsibility or meet that duty, for as long as I have the privilege of holding this office.Senate Republicans and GOP presidential contenders Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky jumped in on a congressional effort to strike against Common Core by advocating on behalf of a recent House bill that would increase the opportunity for students to opt-out of Common Core based PARCC testing which has been a force of frustration and unwarranted obstacles to both parents, students, and teachers alike; while additionally criticizing a version of the Senate education bill which did not go far enough.
The two senators joined forces during a meeting originally to discuss amending to the wildly hated No Child Left Behind law, by rejecting standardized tests mandated by the George W. Bush-era law. Cruz and Paul aim at empowering students by keeping government out of the right for parents to have their students to opt-out of the mandatory testing and exams.
In the past six months, students across the country have opted-out of intrusive PARCC exams (individual state devised Common Core curricula). School boards however have tried to fight back against the massive number of opt-outs by finding creative ways to either humiliate or harass students and their families. Long Island alone caught media attention when they saw some of the highest number of opt-outs in the country this past April.
The bill known as the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015 has the following key components:
This bill reauthorizes and amends the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). The bill addresses issues such as accountability and testing requirements, distribution and requirements for grants, fiscal accountability requirements, and the evaluation of teachers... The bill provides states with increased flexibility and responsibility for developing accountability systems, deciding how federally required tests should be weighed, selecting additional measures of student and school performance, and implementing teacher evaluation systems.
Opponents on left have criticized the opportunity for the opt-out function, saying that:
Opting out of standardized tests destroys the ability to get an accurate read on how students are performing in school and where achievement gaps between disadvantaged students and their peers lie.
Amendments to the No Child Left Behind bill passed in the House of Representatives last week, which included the opt-out clause, yet the two Republicans and presidential rivals felt that though the House bill was a good model to continue off of, the Senate bill did not go far enough and was substantially weaker in protecting the educational rights of students and their parents.
Popular conservatives Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have been a longtime advocates for a complete repeal of Common Core. Senator Rand Paul commented on the companion bill currently in the Senate chamber and how it “retains some of No Child Left Behind’s biggest flaws,” which "lack of adequate parental choice, a federal testing mandate and continued support for Common Core.” The flaws in the Senate's version of the bill were ultimately enough for 2016 contenders Senators Cruz, Paul, and even Marco Rubio to vote against it. Despite their vocal resistance to urge fellow Republicans to vote "nay", the bill ultimately passed in the Senate (the only 2016 GOP contender to vote for the bill was Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina).
While many teachers unions and other organizations against the opt-outs, even Obama appointed Education Secretary Arne Duncan has recently called for "states to evaluate how many tests students take and eliminate what they can." As of now Cruz and Paul are the only 2016 contenders to have a stable stance against Common Core, while other Republicans such as Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, and Jeb Bush have had a strange, off again-on again relationship with the education program which has upset so many Americans.For a six billion-year-old star, the sun is certainly in the news a lot lately, mainly because it is still a source of uncertainty and confusion to many of us.
The center of this confusion is the sun's ultraviolet A (long-wave) and ultraviolet B (shortwave) rays. Our understanding of exactly what kinds of damage each causes to the skin, and how best to protect ourselves, seems to shift every year as new research comes out. For example, it was once thought that only UVB was of concern, but we keep learning more and more about the damage caused by UVA. And new, improved forms of protection against UVA keep emerging. Keeping up with these new developments is a worthwhile challenge that can help all of us prevent sun damage.
What is Ultraviolet Radiation?
UV radiation is part of the electromagnetic (light) spectrum that reaches the earth from the sun. It has wavelengths shorter than visible light, making it invisible to the naked eye. These wavelengths are classified as UVA, UVB, or UVC, with UVA the longest of the three at 320-400 nanometers (nm, or billionths of a meter). UVA is further divided into two wave ranges, UVA I, which measures 340-400 nanometers (nm, or billionths of a meter), and UVA II which extends from 320-340 nanometers. UVB ranges from 290 to 320 nm. With even shorter rays, most UVC is absorbed by the ozone layer and does not reach the earth.
Both UVA and UVB, however, penetrate the atmosphere and play an important role in conditions such as premature skin aging, eye damage (including cataracts), and skin cancers. They also suppress the immune system, reducing your ability to fight off these and other maladies.
UV Radiation and Skin Cancer
By damaging the skin's cellular DNA, excessive UV radiation produces genetic mutations that can lead to skin cancer. Both the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the World Health Organization have identified UV as a proven human carcinogen. UV radiation is considered the main cause of nonmelanoma skin cancers (NMSC), including basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). These cancers strike more than a million and more than 250,000 Americans, respectively, each year. Many experts believe that, especially for fair-skinned people, UV radiation also frequently plays a key role in melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, which kills more than 8,000 Americans each year.
UVA
Most of us are exposed to large amounts of UVA throughout our lifetime. UVA rays account for up to 95 percent of the UV radiation reaching the Earth's surface. Although they are less intense than UVB, UVA rays are 30 to 50 times more prevalent. They are present with relatively equal intensity during all daylight hours throughout the year, and can penetrate clouds and glass.
UVA, which penetrates the skin more deeply than UVB, has long been known to play a major part in skin aging and wrinkling (photoaging), but until recently scientists believed it did not cause significant damage in areas of the epidermis (outermost skin layer) where most skin cancers occur. Studies over the past two decades, however, show that UVA damages skin cells called keratinocytes in the basal layer of the epidermis, where most skin cancers occur. (Basal and squamous cells are types of keratinocytes.) UVA contributes to and may even initiate the development of skin cancers.
UVA is the dominant tanning ray, and we now know that tanning, whether outdoors or in a salon, causes cumulative damage over time. A tan results from injury to the skin's DNA; the skin darkens in an imperfect attempt to prevent further DNA damage. These imperfections, or mutations, can lead to skin cancer.
Tanning booths primarily emit UVA. The high-pressure sunlamps used in tanning salons emit doses of UVA as much as 12 times that of the sun. Not surprisingly, people who use tanning salons are 2.5 times more likely to develop squamous cell carcinoma, and 1.5 times more likely to develop basal cell carcinoma. According to recent research, first exposure to tanning beds in youth increases melanoma risk by 75 percent.
UVB
UVB, the chief cause of skin reddening and sunburn, tends to damage the skin's more superficial epidermal layers. It plays a key role in the development of skin cancer and a contributory role in tanning and photoaging. Its intensity varies by season, location, and time of day. The most significant amount of UVB hits the U.S. between 10 AM and 4 PM from April to October. However, UVB rays can burn and damage your skin year-round, especially at high altitudes and on reflective surfaces such as snow or ice, which bounce back up to 80 percent of the rays so that they hit the skin twice. UVB rays do not significantly penetrate glass.
Protective Measures
Protect yourself from UV radiation, both indoors and out. Always seek the shade outdoors, especially between 10 AM and 4 PM. And since UVA penetrates glass, consider adding flat, tinted UV-protective film to your car's side and rear windows as well as to house and business windows. This film blocks up to 99.9 percent of UV radiation and lets in up to 80 percent of visible light.
Outdoors, dress to limit UV exposure: Special sun-protective clothes with UPF (ultraviolet protection factor) indicate how much UV radiation can penetrate the fabric; the higher the UPF, the better. A shirt with an UPF of 30, for example, means that just 1/30th of the sun's UV radiation can reach the skin. Laundry additives can also be washed right into regular fabrics to provide higher UPFs. However, you can enhance your sun safety simply by learning to evaluate everyday fabrics' sun protection qualities and choosing those with the best protection. For instance, bright- or dark-colored, lustrous clothes reflect more UV radiation than do pastels and bleached cottons; and tightly woven, loose-fitting clothes provide more of a barrier between your skin and the sun. Finally, broad-brimmed hats and UV-blocking sunglasses help shield the sensitive skin on your head, neck, and around the eyes - areas that usually sustain a lot of sun damage.
More tips on sun safety can be found in our Guidelines.
Sun Protection Factor (SPF) and UV Radiation
Since the advent of modern sunscreens, a sunscreen's efficacy has been measured by its sun protection factor, or SPF. SPF is not an amount of protection per se. Rather, it indicates how long it will take for UVB rays to redden skin when using a sunscreen, compared to how long skin would take to redden without the product. For instance, someone using a sunscreen with an SPF of 15 will take 15 times longer to redden than without the sunscreen. An SPF 15 sunscreen screens 93 percent of the sun's UVB rays; SPF 30 protects against 97 percent; and SPF 50, 98 percent. The Skin Cancer Foundation maintains that SPFs of 15 or higher are necessary for adequate everyday protection. For more extended or intense sun exposure, the Foundation recommends SPFs of 30 or higher.
Sunscreen Ingredients
Since both UVA and UVB are harmful, you need protection from both kinds of rays. To make sure you're getting effective UVA as well as UVB coverage, look for a sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or higher, plus some combination of the following UVA-screening ingredients: stabilized a avobenzone, ecamsule (a.k.a. MexorylTM), oxybenzone, titanium dioxide, and zinc oxide. You may see the phrases multi spectrum, broad spectrum or UVA/UVB protection on sunscreen labels, and these all indicate that some UVA protection is provided. However, because there is no consensus on how much protection these terms indicate, such phrases may not be entirely meaningful.
There are currently 17 active ingredients approved by the FDA for use in sunscreens. These filters fall into two broad categories: chemical and physical. Most UV filters are chemical: They form a thin, protective film on the surface of the skin and absorb the UV radiation before it penetrates the skin. The physical sunscreens are insoluble particles that reflect UV away from the skin. Most sunscreens contain a mixture of chemical and physical active ingredients.
FDA-Approved Sunscreens Active Ingredient/UV Filter Name Range Covered UVA1: 340-400 nm UVA2: 320-340 nm UVB: 290-320 nm Chemical Absorbers: Aminobenzoic acid (PABA) UVB Avobenzone UVA1 Cinoxate UVB Dioxybenzone UVB, UVA2 Ecamsule (Mexoryl SX) UVA2 Ensulizole (Phenylbenzimiazole Sulfonic Acid) UVB Homosalate UVB Meradimate (Menthyl Anthranilate) UVA2 Octocrylene UVB Octinoxate (Octyl Methoxycinnamate) UVB Octisalate ( Octyl Salicylate) UVB Oxybenzone UVB, UVA2 Padimate O UVB Sulisobenzone UVB, UVA2 Trolamine Salicylate UVB Physical Filters: Titanium Dioxide UVB, UVA2 Zinc Oxide UVB,UVA2, UVA1
If you follow our comprehensive Prevention Guidelines, you can enjoy yourself outdoors while staying protected from both UVA and UVB year-round, whatever the weather, wherever your locale.
Prevention Guidelines
Seek the shade, especially between 10 AM and 4 PM.
Do not burn.
Avoid tanning and UV tanning booths.
Cover up with clothing, including a broad-brimmed hat and UV-blocking sunglasses.
Usa a broad spectrum (UVA/UVB) sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or higher every day. For extended outdoor activity, use a water-resistant, broad spectrum (UVA/UVB) sunscreen with an SPF of 30 or higher.
Apply 1 ounce (2 tablespoons) of sunscreen to your entire body 30 minutes before going outside. Reapply every two hours, or immediately after swimming or excessive sweating.
Keep newborns out of the sun. Sunscreens should be used on babies over the age of six months.
Examine your skin head-to-toe every month.
See your physician every year for a professional skin exam.
Published on May 24, 2013. Updated on September 20, 2017.
Medical Reviewers
John H. Epstein, MD
Stephen Q. Wang, MDImage copyright Reuters Image caption Residents of Foah and Kefraya wait in Rashidin, near Aleppo
Evacuations from two government-held areas of Syria have resumed, monitors and reports say, days after an attack on a convoy carrying evacuees killed 126 people, many of them children.
Some 3,000 people have left the north-western villages of Foah and Kefraya, which have been surrounded by rebels.
Meanwhile, buses have moved dozens of others from Zabadani, near Damascus, under siege by pro-government forces.
Security has been tight after Saturday's attack near Aleppo.
The evacuations resumed early on Wednesday, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
At the Rashidin checkpoint, where the handover of evacuees was due to take place, buses were being carefully searched after the bombing there, an AFP correspondent at the scene reported.
Several dozen armed rebel fighters stood guard near the convoy.
Um Joud, 55, was part of those being evacuated from Foah. "I'm not afraid, because everything is in God's hands," she told AFP.
"Of course I would have preferred to stay in my home, but I left for the sake of my children and their lives and futures."
Image copyright AFP Image caption Saturday's bombing hit buses carrying evacuees from two besieged government-held towns
Last week's attack was caused by a vehicle filled with explosives which targeted a convoy of buses at the checkpoint.
Most of the killed were evacuees from government-held towns, including at least 68 children. No group has said it was behind the attack.
Wednesday's evacuations mark the end of the first stage of the deal, with a second phase due |
a mixture of tableaux, found objects and a few photos: in a wise decision, the most extreme images surviving are not on display here, though photos of officers worshipping at a Shinto shrine contain considerable shock value.
The 731 base takes a while to reach, but it is definitely well worth seeing. And, if you’d like to learn more about Unit 731, this is a good place to start.
731
Xinjiang Dajie, Ping Fang, Harbin
9-11am and 1.30-3.30pm, Tuesday to Sunday
Tickets are free but you need to show a passport. An audio guide costs 15 kuai.
Getting to the Unit 731 Base
The unit 731 base is roughly an hour on the bus from central Harbin. The 338 and 343 run from the bus stop in the alley down the side of the Kunlun Hotel on Tielu Jie, just to the west of the train station, and the fare is 2 kuai. The bus stop is Xinjiang Dajie: walk a few minutes back and 731 is on the same side of the road. It’s a good idea to ask a fellow passenger for “chee-san-yee” (731) so they can ensure you get off at the right stop.About Us Established in December, 1990, Felines & Friends is a non-profit organization, dedicated to the continuing welfare of cats (and the occasional dog or rabbit). A core group of dedicated volunteers constantly strive to make the world a better place for our four-legged friends. We, ourselves, rescue in our own neighborhoods. We help others to rescue, spay and neuter, and ultimately find homes for the strays in their work or home environments. We counsel and educate the public on the intricacies of cat behavior, medical conditions and proper placement. We attemp to locate donations of food, litter and, of course, money, in order to meet our obligations. When there isn’t enough money in our treasury, we dig deep into our own pockets to purchase needed supplies and medicines. Many of us work extra jobs so as to be able to continue to rescue. Felines & Friends holds weekly adoptions on Sundays, from 1 PM to 5 PM at Centinela Feed, 5299 Sepulveda Boulevard, Culver City. To view photos of our pets who are currently up for adoption, please see our "Adopt Me!" Photo Gallery. DESPERATE: Felines & Friends is desperately looking for only-cat foster homes. We have several kitties right now who do not wish to be around other cats. They LOVE people and are affectionate and sweet – unless they have to share their space with another feline. Even if you can only foster for a week or two, it would be a week or two that a very unhappy cat could be happy! Please e-mail to felinesandfriends.org and put FOSTER in the subject line. We will contact you immediately. Please pass this on.Wow, some really, really good points there, comparing MLP to Metal Gear. Though being one of the somewhat small amount of bronies who wasn’t as put off by the first Equestria Girls (well okay, I did hate the idea at first but then when one of my best friends said he had gone and seen it and that he thought it’s way better than everyone thought it would be,) I always associated classic MLP: FiM with Metal Gear Solid, and EqG with Rising.But only because of personal experience: I’ve been a long time MGS fan but hadn’t actually owned and played my own copy of the games until 2010, so when I became a brony in mid-2011 I was still way into the Solid games. Equestria Girls, on the other hand, like MGR it’s a spinoff of the main series, both came out in early to mid-2013, and both seem to have a "love it or hate it" effect on the fans. That, and I’ve seen some awesome fanart of EqG characters dressed as the cast of Metal Gear Rising. Sunset Shimmer as Sundowner is by far my favorite. I call her "Sunset Downer."Now as for Sunset’s role in a MLP/Metal Gear crossover of the main games, I amI’m not the only one who sees her as Solidus! I mean, in my headcanon Twilight is obviously Solid Snake but I also have her as Big Boss if we’re talking MGS3, Portable Ops, Peace Walker, etc. (and Celestia is The Boss,) Rainbow Dash is Raiden (another popular character match-up,) Fluttershy is Otacon, Trixie is Liquid, and of course Sunset is Solidus. And your points for why she is like Solidus are all amazing points, really inspiring to give me more ideas for my crossover.So I got stuck with a sniveling muggle for my reddit exchange.
They thought they could appease me with some new parchment (perhaps made of low-grade parchment meant for the backside of a troll.) Next a few feather-quills, probably plucked from the wings of a sorry excuse of a griffon. At least the muggle thought to send ink so I could write my hate mail for them later. They also included a book full of insults I could sling at them without so much as lifting my wand.
I hope they don't get to excited in thinking I'm impressed by this pile of mandrake droppings they call gifts. I was barely amused. You may live when the Dark Lord returns.
I hate you, Onward_and_Upwards
(But seriously... this is the best set of gifts ever. It definitely touched my snakey and mischievous side. You are the best.)The West is on the verge of a serious horse crisis. That's the upshot of a new paper in Science, which argues that the wild horse population is growing so fast that the government could soon be unable to manage the herds.
Wild horses run as they are gathered up by BLM near Tooele, Utah. (Jim Urquhart / Reuters)
Here's the back-story: There are currently an estimated 33,000 wild horses roaming freely on public lands in the western United States, descendants of horses brought by Spanish conquistadors. Under a 1971 law, the Bureau of Land Management is supposed to protect these horses and make sure their numbers don't get out of hand — so that they're not destroying the ecosystem or dying of starvation.
But that's easier said than done, and BLM has long struggled to bring the horse population down to what it deems the "appropriate management level" of around 23,622. There are, after all, only a few thousand people willing to adopt horses each year. And Congress has largely restricted the slaughter of healthy horses.
So, in recent years, BLM has been rounding up excess horses and shipping them off to long-term "retirement" facilities — mainly private ranches in Kansas and Oklahoma. The problem is that this is hugely expensive: There are now 45,000 horses in these facilities, and BLM's horse budget has soared from $19.8 million in 2000 to $74.9 million in 2012.
Lately, Congress has started reining in spending here. BLM has announced that it will remove fewer horses from public lands this year. At the same time, the wild horses keep breeding, with unmanaged herds able to triple in size in just six to eight years.
See here for more detail.
Put it all together, and it's a big problem in the making.
The Science paper, written by Robert A. Garrott of Montana State University and Madan K. Oli of the University of Florida, calculates that if current trends continue, BLM would have to spend some $1.1 billion over the next 17 years just to keep storing horses in these long-term facilities — a level far beyond anything Congress seems willing to contemplate. (See chart.)
And if round-ups are no longer an option, then the number of wild horses on U.S. public lands could start swelling — dramatically. "The worry is we'll end up like Australia," says Garrott. Out in Australia, the wild horse population has soared past 400,000, and the government is now reportedly considering shooting tens of thousands of horses in the outback, both to stop the destruction of range land and to alleviate the suffering of horses that have been slowly dying of thirst during a recent drought.
"Some horse advocates have argued that we should just let the horses self-regulate on public lands," Garrott says. "But what do we do when animals are destroying rangeland, competing with livestock and other wildlife and dying due to starvation and drought? That's not good for the horses, it's not good for the range, it's not good for anyone." He notes that BLM has already been straining to deliver water to horses in Utah and Nevada during this summer's drought.
In their paper, Garrott and Oli argue that it's long past time to get America's horse issues under control. That would start with an aggressive vaccine contraceptives program to cut the birthrates of the wild horses by half (that won't be cheap, since the horses need to be rounded up every few years). But contraception by itself, they note, is insufficient. BLM would also likely need to remove many of the existing wild horses from public lands to bring the base population down to around 23,000 or so.
Getting those numbers down is the hardest part, and the paper doesn't take a stance on how best to do this. Congress could, in theory, appropriate many more millions of dollars to have BLM store even more wild horses in long-term pastures. Or the government could cut back on livestock grazing in order to give the horses more room on public lands.*
Another option that gets touched on — and this one is far more gruesome — would be for the government to kill off thousands of healthy horses to bring the numbers down. Horse slaughter is subject to a huge amount of controversy, and horse-meat plants have been closed ever since Congress pulled funding for inspectors in 2007. (Lawmakers have since reinstated those funds, but the reopening of slaughterhouses has still been bogged down by legal disputes.) Needless to say, this idea would encounter fierce opposition.
Yet whatever the method, the Science paper argues, if Congress and BLM could figure out how to get the number of wild horses down to around 23,000 or so, then contraceptives plus adoptions could keep the population at a sustainable level, for good. And that would mean no more slaughter. No more spiraling costs. And, most significantly, the West's horses would avoid the painful fate of their Australian counterparts.
It's just that getting to that sustainable level has proved incredibly difficult over the years. "We think this can be resolved," Garrott says. "But it's going to take a real forward-looking plan."
* Update: Here's an additional point from the American Wild Horse Preservation Center. Using BLM figures, the center estimated that about 82.5 percent of the forage in wild horse herd management areas is actually reserved for livestock grazing, while just 17.5 percent of the forage is allocated to the horses themselves. So BLM could alleviate overcrowding by scaling back livestock grazing on public lands. That's likely to be controversial among ranchers, but it's worth noting here.
Related: For those who can't access the Science piece, the National Research Council came out with a big study on BLM's wild horse program earlier this year.by
A scary headline for a Saturday morning, and the rest of the story isn’t much better:
ARCTIC emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas jumped 30 per cent in recent years in a worrying hint that global warming might unlock vast stores frozen in permafrost, scientists say. “It’s too early to call it a trend but if it continues this way there will be serious implications,” said Paul Palmer, a scientist at Edinburgh University in Scotland who was among authors of the study of methane emissions from wetlands. The 30.6 per cent rise in emissions from the Arctic from 2003-2007, to about 4.2 million tonnes, was the biggest percentage gain for any region of the world’s wetlands in the study in the journal Science with colleagues in Scotland and the Netherlands. Arctic wetlands account for only two per cent of global emissions from wetlands, most of which are in the tropics. But many experts have pointed to risks that climate change could melt permafrost stores of billions of tonnes of methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. “It’s a warning the scientists have been giving for a while now – what we are seeing are signs of global warming,” Mr Palmer said. (source)
Mr Palmer’s pretty certain – this is “global warming” at work. But even the news story has to concede that only 2% of methane emissions actually originate in Arctic regions, but in any case I thought I’d pay the $15 and download the full paper from Science: Large-Scale Controls of Methanogenesis Inferred from Methane and Gravity Spaceborne Data, and see if the headline and the alarmism was really justified. So I started off with the abstract:
Wetlands are the largest individual source of methane (CH4), but the magnitude and distribution of this source are poorly understood on continental scales. We isolated the wetland and rice paddy contributions to spaceborne CH4 measurements over 2003–2005 using satellite observations of gravity anomalies, a proxy for water-table depth, and surface temperature analyses T s. We find that tropical and higher-latitude CH4 variations are largely described by and T s variations, respectively. Our work suggests that tropical wetlands contribute 52 to 58% of global emissions, with the remainder coming from the extra-tropics, 2% of which is from Arctic latitudes. We estimate a 7% rise in wetland CH4 emissions over 2003–2007, due to warming of mid-latitude and Arctic wetland regions, which we find is consistent with recent changes in atmospheric CH4.
The paper uses a model to estimate the global distribution of methane emissions according to changes in temperature and water-table depth. The temperature data originates from the NCEP/NCAR database. The total emissions of methane from global wetlands is claimed as 227 Tg/year (1 Tg = 1 million metric tonnes), from the IPCC AR4 report.
By analysing the temperature and water table distribution, the paper claims that arctic emissions have increased by 30.6% from 2003 – 2007. Since total emissions from the Arctic is only about 4.2 Tg/year in 2007 (about 2%), this means that in the period covered by the paper, those emissions have risen by about 1 Tg/year, which is less than 0.5% of total methane emissions. So whilst it is correct that the increase is 30%, this arises from the fact that it is calculated by reference to a tiny number as a percentage of a slightly tinier number.
To put this into perspective, here is the graphic from the paper showing the changes in emissions of methane from different sources between 2003 and 2007:
It is obvious that the areas where methane emissions are rising most rapidly are the tropics and the midlatitudes. And although the percentage change in the Arctic is large, the absolute change is very small. I haven’t even bothered to go into the temperature sources – but considering global temperatures as measured by satellite have been pretty steady since about 2001, there would have to be arguments that the contribution arising from the melting of permafrost should be negligible in this period. But I would assume that the NCEP/NCAR figures, since they are based on NOAA data, would show an increase.
The only mention of climate change in the paper is in the very last paragraph:
There is substantial potential for wetland emissions to feed back positively to changes in climate and therefore it is critical that we understand the extent of overlap between wetlands and regions that are most sensitive to projected future warming. We anticipate that the new constraints developed here will ultimately improve model predictions of this feedback.
“Substantial potential” – no evidence, just a hunch. Yet out of that one paragraph, a string of scary news stories has been generated, thanks to an author who has the preset “global warming” bias. The media spin cycle on full blast.PCs following voice commands isn't new. Windows comes with Speech Recognition and voice-command features, which when properly configured, can serve as a great accessibility feature. MSI plans to take voice commands a step further with what it calls "Voice Activated Motherboard" technology. The feature extends voice-commands to OS-independent ACPI functions such as powering on the PC from halted state (cold booting), suspend it, or powering down, both graceful (OS shutdown) and forceful (power off).The feature depends on a daughterboard accessory that requires a PCI-Express x1 slot. This daugherboard connects to the motherboard using a special header found on some recent MSI motherboards that has been labelled "JDLED3", and a mic/line input. JDLED3, we assume, gives the card some low-level connectivity to the board that it can't have through HAL. The rest of the daughterboard looks to have a some legacy circuitry and an ADC. On the OS side, MSI will deploy the Voice Genie software which can be used to get the device to recognize your voice and set your own voice commands. The software probably could even be used to suspend voice recognition. Otherwise, imagine telling your Teamspeak buddy in-game to "restart" the server or a map, and the board following a system restart command that sounds identical. MSI says that this accessory will have a "more than affordable price."02/27/19 Researchers discover how grapevine red blotch virus harms the vine Researchers now can focus on how management solutions to manage the disease and find solutions, said Kaan Kurtural, UC cooperation extension specialist and one of the paper's authors. "There are some treatments that are being offered to growers, but now that we better understand the disease, we know they won't help," Kurtural said in a written statement from UC Agricultural and Natural Resources. "Growers don't have to replace the infected vineyards immediately. But if 40 percent of vines are infected, they may want to consider replanting. At least now we know what the disease does, so they won't pay for snake oils."
02/27/19 U.S. Senator Charles Schumer Announces $68 Million In Federal Funding to Build New Grape Genetics Research Lab In Geneva Scientists are working In space leased from Cornell that leaves no room for growth.... Cornell University President Martha E. Pollack said, "I am so pleased that USDA is building a laboratory for the ARS Grape Genetics Research Unit on the Cornell AgriTech campus. It has been Cornell's privilege to lease space to the GGRU for many years, and we are pleased that these world-class scientists will now have a world-class facility of their own. Co-location of the federal lab cements the decades-long research partnership between Cornell and USDA that has helped fuel the explosive growth of the New York wine and grape industries... "
02/27/19 24th Annual Vineyard Economics Symposium Announces 2019 Date, New Location Wine Business Monthly has announced a new date and location for the 24th Annual Vineyard Economics Seminar, set for Wednesday, May 8, 2019 in Napa, California at the CIA at Copia. The full-day event will feature vineyard and agriculture experts and influencers active in the wine business locally, regionally and nationally. Registration is now open at VineyardEconomics.com.
02/27/19 Insects hijack reproductive genes of grape vines to create own living space on plant Scientists at The University of Toledo found the parasite forces the plant to use the same genes to make a gall that the plant uses to make a flower or fruit
02/27/19 Wine Industry Loses Leading Wine Importer, Edward Lauber Wine was more than a business for Mr. Lauber, it was also a main source of leisure and inspiration
02/27/19 BRIT and FIVS to Co-Manage International Sustainable Winegrowing Competition The Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT) is excited to announce a new partnership with Paris-based FIVS, a global organization designed to serve the wine, spirits, and beer sectors, to broaden and expand BRIT's unique international sustainable winegrowing competition and award.
02/27/19 Paddles Up! Willamette: The Pinot Noir Auction Announces Official Lots to be Sold at April 6th Trade Event The Willamette Valley Wineries Association announced today the lineup of Auction lots for the fourth annual Willamette: The Pinot Noir Auction, which will take place on April 6th at the Allison Inn & Spa in Newberg, OR. The Auction will offer 86 one-of-a-kind Willamette Valley Pinot noir lots from the 2017 vintage, as well as six Willamette Valley Chardonnay lots, made in collaboration by current and former Auction chairs.
02/27/19 Tonnellerie Maury Barrels now Available in North America Through Bouchard Cooperages Bouchard Cooperages is proud to offer French Oak barrels from Tonnellerie Maury in Bordeaux. After decades of use within some of the top Grand Cru Classé Châteaux in France, these barrels will now be available to wineries in North America for the first time.
02/27/19 USDA to support Hispanic Serving Institutions The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced fellowship applications to connect USDA resources with faculty and staff at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI). The 2019 Class of the E. Kika De La Garza Fellows Program is available through the USDA Office of Partnerships and Public Engagement (OPPE).
02/27/19 Farm Credit Bank of Texas distributes earnings Based on its $190.5 million in net income and its solid capital position in 2018, the Austin-based bank declared a record $117.4 million in patronage and distributed another $54.7 million in preferred stock dividends.
02/27/19 Upgraded tool highlights solution to tricky rootstock selection Wine Australia has released an upgraded Grapevine Rootstock Selector tool that will arm Australia's winegrape growers with enhanced knowledge about the rootstocks that suit their individual vineyards.
02/27/19 Old Vines That Still Make Great Wine There's a lot of buzz about the high-quality wines made from old vines. Whether or not you're a believer, old-vine vineyards represent some of the most dramatic and authentic representations of wine history, tradition and appreciation.
02/27/19 Small Indiana wineries lobby for expanded distribution Under current rules, alcohol producers must use a wholesaler rather than self-distribute. But small wineries can have trouble attracting wholesalers because of their size. Small wineries are lobbying lawmakers for access to a micro-wholesaler permit that would allow them to distribute up to 12,000 gallons of wine annually, The Indianapolis Business Journal reported.
02/27/19 Oakland's Vibrant Wine Scene Features Bottles Made for and by Black Americans Along with Oakland's Urban Wine Trail, which showcases tasting rooms in warehouses in the heart of the city, a subset of Oakland's wine scene is flourishing in the city's outskirts. Its sustainably sourced, award-winning wines are made for and by a historically underserved group of drinkers: black Americans.
02/27/19 Black-Owned Winery in Napa Valley Lands Partnership with Delta Airlines Brown Estate wines will be featured on Delta's 2019-2020 winter wine menu aboard its domestic Delta One flights, as per a statement released by the airline. To kick off the partnership, Delta will host a complimentary in-flight wine tasting of Brown Estate wines for passengers on Flight 1473, which leaves Tuesday from San Francisco at 2:30 p.m. and arrives in New York's JFK airport at 11:30 p.m.
02/27/19 My Wine Society, has Joined Forces With Aervana, a Leading Company in the World of Wine Aeration One of My Wine Society's newest partnerships is with the company Aervana, who makes multiple types of Aerators.
02/27/19 Acquisitions and New Positions, Coupled with Senior Level Experience, Strengthens Emmeti USA's Business in the American Market EMMETI S.p.A, along with its sister companies, Mectra, Sipac, & Logik, leading global equipment manufactures of palletizers, depalletizers, conveyors, case packers and other packaging line machinery, recently announced that the organization has been acquired by a privately held equity fund, comprised of American and British pension fund holders, and has merged to form EMS Group.
02/27/19 Distinguished Vineyards & Wine Partners to Sponsor Award-Winning Film, A Fine Line, Screening Tour Celebrating Women Chefs Distinguished Vineyards & Wine Partners is happy to announce that it will serve as the exclusive wine partner of the award-winning documentary, A Fine Line, during its nationwide Screening & Tribute Tour. Directed by filmmaker Joanna James, A Fine Line chronicles the challenges faced by female chefs in the male-dominated culinary industry.
02/27/19 Lucky Charms flavored beer to launch this weekend Smartmouth Beer is introducing its Saturday Morning Marshmallow IPA on March 2 in an all-day event that will also showcase trivia and food vendors.
02/27/19 Insects Hijack Reproductive Genes Of Grape Vines To Create Own Living Space On Plant The biologists discovered grape phylloxera - the insect that nearly wiped out wine production at the end of the 19th century in France - hijacks a grape vine's reproductive programs to create a leaf gall, which it uses as a pseudo apartment for the parasite to siphon off the plant's nutrients. The research is published in the latest issue of Nature Scientific Reports.
02/27/19 Naughty Tea Wine - A 100% Natural Alcoholic Sweet Tea Containing ZERO Grapes Southern Hospitality gets a grown up twist with Naughty Tea wine - a one of a kind, 100% natural, alcoholic sweet tea containing zero grapes and no artificial flavors or colors. Naughty Tea was just recently launched onto the U.S. market in Tennessee and has now found its way to South Florida as an alternative to cocktails, beers and wine spritzers.
02/27/19 Mary Gorman-McAdams, MW Appointed New Director of International Wine Center Mary Ewing-Mulligan, MW President of International Wine Center is pleased to announce that Mary Gorman-McAdams, MW has been appointed to the position of Director for the school beginning May 1.
02/27/19 Mt. Boucherie Estate Winery Appoints New Winemaker, Jeff Hundertmark Mt. Boucherie Estate Winery is proud to announce the appointment of Jeff Hundertmark as their new Head Winemaker. Having been the Winemaker at sister-winery Rust Wine Co. since January 2018, Jeff will now be overseeing winemaking operations for both properties and is recruiting a Winemaker to oversee day-to-day operations at Rust in Oliver.
02/27/19 Bacchanalia Gala Dinner + Auction Raffle and Fundraising Results Announced The Bacchanalia Gala Dinner + Auction, presented by Blakes, kicked off the 41st Vancouver International Wine Festival on February 23 at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver with a spectacular evening of wine and food, topped by a thrilling live auction.
02/27/19 Unique, Micro-Productions of Premiere Napa Valley Wines Now Available to Pre-Order Unique micro-production wines from the graceful 2017 Napa Valley vintage were the stars of the show at the Napa Valley Vintners' (NVV) Premiere Napa Valley barrel tasting and auction on Saturday, February 23, 2019. Wine collectors can now pre-order these extraordinary Napa Valley selections for their cellars by browsing the portfolio at premierenapavalley.com.
02/27/19 Using Data And Tech For Marketing In The Wine Industry CEO of Emetry, Paul Mabray, shares the origin of the name of his company, how open-minded the Wine County is to new technology and data gathering, how quickly e-commerce is growing for wineries, the other ways they use technology to involve and create interaction with consumers, the limits of having a tasting room when it comes to building a customer base, and what the wine industry is honing in on when it comes to marketing:
02/27/19 Fess Parker Winery Celebrates 30 Years After considering the options, Parker, who loved the outdoors as much as his characters did, figured the next best step was to start growing grapevines and making wine. A few neighbors were already doing so, and it seemed like a venture that could one day involve the whole family.
02/27/19 Merry Edwards' Next Chapter: A Pioneer for Women in Winemaking Looks Back, and Moves Ahead Last year, Edwards handed over winemaking duties to her assistant, Heidi von der Mehden, as part of her succession plans. "A decade ago, I started thinking about what I needed to do in my physical health so I could live until 90," quips Edwards, now 71, noting a regimen of Bikram yoga, gardening and keeping up with two grandchildren. Both Edwards and Coopersmith plan to stay on for at least the first year during the transition phase with Roederer. She says even though she won't be making the wines and running the business, she won't be sitting still. "We're used to traveling a lot for business, but not enough for fun, and there are lots of places we'd like to go."One of the easiest exchanges to do business on I have found is Coinbase. The reason is because the user interface and experience is simple. The platform is more for people doing long term investing and want a secure wallet. Also, you can exchange Bitcoin and Litecoin in addition to Ethereum.
I first opened an account with Coinbase and put in $2000 when Ethereum was at $89. I didn’t necessarily understand it much and just took a shot. The trade went through just fine with about a 1 day delay because there was so much volume trying to get into Ethereum. Then, I tested a $10 sell transaction to see if my bank account would receive it. Needless to say, it came in less than two full days.
I’m excited about the Coinbase platform because it has potential to be a huge future exchange at the front line for crypto-currencies. Just a few days ago, the CEO announced that 40,000 users signed up in just a single day. These technologies are going to change the future whether you believe it or not. User growth in wallets is expanding at exponential levels and this is beginning of what I see being the BOOM.
The reason is simple. These technologies have significant value and have the ability to change the way transactions are done all over the world. Innovation to the payment system hasn’t happened in forever and things still run on legacy based systems.
Get $10 Bitcoin After Signup
When you signup with Coinbase using the link below they give $10 free Bitcoin. This is a nice feature because over the net couple of years I believe every $10 in Bitcoin will become $40. A small investment can grow at an exponential rate. I haven’t found anywhere in the stock market where this value can be found.
The growth rate is really based around a similar trend as we see with all technologies. This trend is known as the S-Curve which has been seen with things like the Internet, Facebook, and other innovative ideas that changed the world. You can signup below and I think it is a smart choice because a small amount can change your life.
Conclusion: My target holding period is around 12-15 years in which I believe the bulk majority of gains will be made. Typically, cycles of game-changing technologies tend to slow down after a boom of about 15-20 years. Depending on price, I may take profits a little sooner but I’m in it for the long term.
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FacebookChristie's auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen auctions Amedeo Modigliani's Reclining Nude during a curated auction at Christie's entitled "The Artist's Muse" in New York November 9, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]
Chinese collector Liu Yiqian spent 1.084 billion yuan ($170.4 million) on a Modigliani nude painting at Christie's in New York on Monday, a new record for a Modigliani piece, according to Artron.net.
It is also the second-highest price ever for a work of art at auction, second only to Pablo Picasso's Women of Algiers, which sold for $179 million at Christie's in May.
The piece, Reclining Nude, was created by Italian modernist painter Amedeo Modigliani during 1917-18. The artist is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by elongation of faces and figures.
Liu Yiqian, the man who founded the Long Museum in Shanghai with his wife, always makes a stir with his buying. He bought an imperial embroidered silk Thangka for about $45 million and a Doucai Chenghua "chicken cup" for $36 million last year.
Some half-dozen bidders competed for the canvas, which had remained in the same private collection for some 60 years and was offered as the highlight of a specially curated "Artist's Muse" sale, comprising 34 works in total.
In a packed salesroom marked by deliberate but determined competition, bidding started at $75 million - already more than Modigliani's auction record of $70.7 million - and ticked upwards in $5 million increments before a telephone bidder prevailed at $152 million.
The final price was $170,405,000 including Christie's' commission of just over 12 percent. The auction house had estimated the canvas would fetch more than $100 million.
While nearly 30 percent of the "Artist's Muse" offerings went unsold - Lucian Freud's Naked Portrait on a Red Sofa was estimated at as much as $30 million but failed to sell - the auction took in $494.4 million in total. That was right in the middle of the pre-sale estimate of $442 million to $540 million.
A new record was set for an auction sale of work by Roy Lichtenstein, the pop artist best known for his vibrant, cartoon-style works. His 1964 painting Nurse fetched $95.4 million, within the $80 million to $100 million estimate.
Another artist record was broken when Thérèse, a Gauguin sculpture, sold for just under $31 million, beating the $25 million estimate.
Christie's autumn auctions continue on Tuesday featuring works from the red-hot post-war and contemporary art category.CLOSE The story of a real-life couple Katie and Dalton Prager who was compared to the fictional couple in the best-selling book and movie The Fault in Our Stars has reached its end Katie Prager dies just days after her husband Dalton. USA TODAY
Dalton and Katie Prager met when they were 18. Both had cystic fibrosis. (Photo11: GoFundMe)
(NEWSER) – The story of a real-life couple who was compared to the fictional couple in the best-selling book and movie The Fault in Our Stars has reached its end. Katie and Dalton Prager, who both had cystic fibrosis, met on Facebook when they were 18 after Katie saw a picture of Dalton in the hospital, CNN reports. Though doctors warned them not to meet in person because CF patients can pass dangerous bacteria to one another, they not only met, but got married. "My heart was racing, but I just went right up to him and hugged and kissed him on the mouth without even saying hello," Katie once recalled of her first meeting with Dalton, soon after they started talking in 2009, when his mom drove him six hours from their Missouri home to Katie's Kentucky home. Seven years later, Dalton succumbed to his illness Saturday, and on Thursday, his wife also died.
Dalton and Katie wed less than two years after their first meeting, and had some happy years in a home they bought in Kentucky. But in 2014, their lungs deteriorated; Dalton got a transplant that year, and Katie the year following. But he later fought lymphoma, pneumonia, and a viral infection, while Katie struggled with her transplant until doctors determined there was nothing more they could do and she entered hospice care. They last saw each other on their fifth wedding anniversary in July. Dalton's funeral was Wednesday, Kentucky.com reports. Then, "early this morning, [Katie] gained her wish of being at home, in her bed, surrounded by her mom, dad, brother and her dogs, dying peacefully, away from the hospital, tubes, IVs," Katie's mom wrote on Facebook. "I know Dalton was waiting with open arms." Click for more on their story.
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Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2dpcyAjVice President Joe Biden will be visiting Turkey at a time when the aftermath of the July 15 coup attempt has reiterated deep anti-Americanism in the country. There are various reasons for this mood, but Biden’s visit offers an opportunity for both sides to reconcile these differences, argues Kemal Kirisci. This piece was originally published by The National Interest.
Vice President Joe Biden will be visiting Turkey at a time when the aftermath of the coup attempt on July 15 has reiterated deep anti-Americanism in the country. There are four reasons for this mood. The Turkish public and officialdom believe that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s initial response to the coup, when he called for “peace and continuity,” betrayed the expectation of an “Egyptian-like outcome.” The leadership has also stated that the White House statement, finally in defense of Turkish democracy, arrived only after it seemed like the coup attempt was failing. Added to all this is the fact that Fethullah Gülen, the alleged mastermind behind the coup attempt, resides in rural Pennsylvania. These very quickly fed into a narrative that the United States either must have known about the plans and did not inform the Turkish government of the pending coup, or was actually directly involved in it. A former chief of staff of the Turkish military has also remarked that such a coup attempt would not have been realized without CIA’s assistance. Lastly, Washington insists that Gülen’s extradition hinges on whether Turkey can produce enough evidence that connects him to the coup attempt—a precondition that is aggravating Turkey’s sense of betrayal.
Anti-Americanism in Turkey: “We’ve never liked you.”
Anti-Americanism in Turkey is not a new phenomenon. Pew public opinion surveys show that Turks traditionally have an unfavorable view of the United States. However, this has not prevented both sides from working together on a wide range of issues in the past, despite the ups and downs in bilateral relations. For example, both Bill Clinton |
the station and many political agreements into disarray. Here, two major plot-lines are confirmed to really be one!
Episode 22 – The Fall of Night: Again, this is a season finale, so watch it. Again, this turns the show’s concept upside down. Prepare for Season 3, the season that probably defines the show in many people’s minds. It mixes a hard plot focus with a fair number of self-contained weekly stories, which seems to be what the fans wanted most.
Recommended watching:
Episode 3 – The Geometry of Shadows
Episode 6 – Spider in the Web
Episode 11 – All Alone in the Night
Episode 12 – Comes the Inquisitor
Episode 19 – Divided Loyalties
Season 3 – Point of No Return
Essential watching:
Episode 1 – Matters of Honor: Season opener. New character. Seemingly disparate plot elements once again come together. What is this, a machination I see? Watch this, or you’re not really watching B5.
Episode 5 – Voices of Authority: Here, the show begins to stretch its legs as a more epic story, rather than a purely grounded one. The very nature of the universe begins to come into play, as characters start preparing for inevitable conflict.
Episode 6 – Dust to Dust: Yet more story reduction, as the plot thickens substantially with the introduction of a Narn angle to a previously non-Narn narrative. It’s a small galaxy…
Episode 8, 9, & 10 – Messages From Earth (3 parts): It doesn’t get much more intense than this, and as our most beloved characters pass all manner of points of no return, we realize that the show has earned enough respect from its viewers that a seemingly impossible restructuring of its premise is accepted as real — which it is.
Episode 14 – Ship of Tears: The enemy of my enemy is my friend — for a while, at least. Once again, we see characters forced to make decisions they hate, and with good reason.
Episode 15 – Interludes and Examinations: While it’s no Game of Thrones, Babylon 5 did have a reputation for killing or removing major, beloved characters. No spoilers, but, yeah.
Episode 16 & 17 – War Without End (2 parts): Remember when I said that there was a plan? I wasn’t lying. This two-parter defines B5‘s total unwillingness to be approachable to new viewers, and the huge rewards it holds for people willing to invest in it. This is the episode that many think of when they make their Lost comparisons.
Episode 20 – And The Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place: Another of my favorite episodes. Showing true confidence in his audience, JMS sets up an exquisite final scene that pays off years of frustration in a satisfying, genuinely creative way. Classic B5, and a great example of what makes it unique.
Episode 22 – Z’ha’dum: This is the season finale of the show, one of the downsides of having a coherent plot being that the denouement takes whole years. Though there’s plenty of good stuff still to come, I would call the first of two major climaxes in the show’s 5-year run.
Recommended watching:
Episode 4 – Passing Through Gethsemane
Episode 11 – Ceremonies of Light and Dark
Season 3 is great, but that’s it for recommendations; there are fully 12 essential episodes listed above. For the purposes of condensing the show, that’s got to be it for the third season.
Season 4 – No Surrender, No Retreat
A note: JMS (hallowed be his acronym) had to make some changes at this point. What was supposed to be another two years of story, taking us to the end of the planned five-year run, now plays out in just the fourth season alone. “But there are five seasons!” you protest. “I scrolled down just to be sure!” Yes, but at the time Season 4 began production, the show was basically on ratings death-watch; JMS hurried the story to its conclusion on the assumption that a fifth season would never materialize.
Because of this, more arguably happens in the first six episodes of Season 4 than in the entirety of the first or second seasons. At the end of this basically-a-six-parter, we’re left with a substantially pruned list of plot-lines, and another 16 episodes in which to address them.
Season 4 is very difficult to break up, since the urgency of the storytelling has all but destroyed one-off episodes in favor of full serialization. It’s not really possible to skip forward in this season without missing something crucial — but by this point, the urge to skip should be fading anyway. Season 4 is the best season, in my opinion, dialing up the action, drama, and the relentless pace of revelation.
Prequel movie – In The Beginning
This is the second of the two essential B5 movies. As the name implies, In The Beginning takes place a decade before the events of Season 1. We’re watching it here because this is when it aired, and this is when JMS wanted you to have this information. Only a little of it truly expands your understanding, but these events have been referenced so frequently throughout the show that they become important by definition.
Season 5 – The Wheel of Fire
Essential watching:
Episode 1 – No Compromises: This is actually surprisingly dispensable in many ways, but it is still the first episode of the season and as such must be watched. If nothing else, it’s interesting to watch the show pick itself up and keep running after having such a committed ending the previous year. Good thing the plots were so numerous that there were still credible avenues for continuation. Some new characters arrive, and some old ones return.
Episode 9, 10, & 11 – Into the Kingdom of the Blind, A Tragedy of Telepaths, Phoenix Rising: The Psi Corp proves to be a surprisingly meaty source of plotting in the wake of Season 4. After much rumbling in the early, self contained episodes of the season, here things boil over. The Londo-G’Kar duo is also capering all over the galaxy, which is many fans’ pick as the single best element of the show, overall. This is some of the show’s best conspiracy stuff, the sort of thing evoked by B5‘s incredibly atmospheric hippy-electronic soundtrack.
Episode 16, 17, & 18 – And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder, Movements of Fire and Shadow, The Fall of Centauri Prime: So, there are some spoilers in the episode titles. Beyond that, these episodes show what incredible set-up work JMS did in the first four seasons, that he can just decide to write a further unexpected season with this much long term pay-off to it. A story he might have first imagined as a TV movie is played out in three tight, classic episodes.
Episode 20, 21, & 22 – Objects in Motion, Objects at Rest, Sleeping in Light: I’m not going to lie to you, these episodes choke me up a bit. It’s a testament to the sheer volume of story in Babylon 5 that it takes three whole episodes to wrap up people’s personal lives; these are not climactic episodes at all, but one emotional goodbye after another. Having been in so many different situations together, the cast finds it difficult to move on through anything less dramatic than a firefight. And so do we.
Recommended watching:
Episode 4 – A View From the Gallery
Episode 6 – Strange Relations
Episode 8 – Day of the Dead
Episode 12 – The Ragged Edge
The other stuff
The show is followed by a vastly inferior spin-off show called Crusade, but honestly it’s non-essential in its entirety. There’s a movie bridging the gap between B5 and Crusade, but it’s all pretty disposable. At this point, the show is about seeing cool ships do neat stuff in a familiar universe, not the stuff that made the original series so beloved.
Our Last Best Hope
Note that the final three episodes are a relatively slow, emotional finale focused mostly on wrapping things up with the show’s many characters. Even Star Trek: The Next Generation, a thoughtful show by any standard, had an action-packed two part Trek-stravaganza as its outro, and that was after seven years on the air. After just five seasons, Babylon 5 had made enough of a connection with its audience to be confident spending hours waving goodbye. Its characters feel real enough that we want to know enough to be able to imagine their lives after the events of the show.
Yes, it’s cheesy. Yes, it’s long. But Babylon 5 is a unique achievement. At the time there had never been another television program with its scope and ambition, and even by modern standards it’s a towering achievement in the medium. Watching Babylon 5 can be a slog, but it’s one that’s incredibly worthwhile.After winning the Tour de France seven times in a row, Lance Armstrong might well have been the greatest sportsman of all time.
Not only had he won the most coveted of all cycling races, he had done so after recovering from advanced testicular cancer.
Lance Armstrong maintains he has never used performance enhancing drugs.
He claims he has never tested positive in hundreds of drug tests.
Many who know him well now say he is lying.
"The doctor started asking Lance a couple of banal questions, and then boom, have you ever used any performance enhancing drugs? Lance, hanging onto his IV, rattled off EPO, testosterone, cortisone, growth hormone and steroids. My eyes popped out of my head."
Next on Four Corners reporter Quentin McDermott talks to people who worked for Armstrong, rode with him and some who raced against him. What they reveal will shock you.
The story they tell describes a ruthless competitor who will do anything to win races and earn millions of dollars in prize money and endorsements. These people tell a story that details over ten years of drug use, that began before he was diagnosed with cancer. They also tell a story of a man prepared to vilify former friends and employees if they dare to cross him.
How did he get away with it? Why did officials fail to act against him when, on three separate occasions, drug test results raised questions about his use of drugs? Why did the world governing body for cycling accept donations from him that clearly compromised its ability to treat Armstrong as they would any other competitor?
"The World According to Lance", reported by Quentin McDermott and presented by Kerry O'Brien, goes to air on Monday 15th October at 8.30pm on ABC1. It is replayed on Tuesday 16th October at 11.35pm. It can also be seen on ABC News 24 on Saturday at 8.00pm, ABC iview and at abc.net.au/4corners.
Transcript
"The World According to Lance" - MONDAY 15 OCTOBER 2012
(Excerpt of Lance Armstrong being presented with his seventh Tour de France trophy plays)
COMMENTATOR: It is the picture we will never see again.
LANCE ARMSTRONG: And finally the last thing I'll say for the people that don't believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics, I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry you can't dream big and I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles...
(End excerpt)
BETSY ANDREU: People say that Lance Armstrong was good for the sport of cycling because he made it so popular. What they don't realise is he irreparably damaged it with his corruption and with the doping.
KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: From cycling hero to drug cheat, the miracle that turned to dust.
Welcome to Four Corners.
Never has the weight of evidence involving drugs in sport been so complete or so damning. Never has the legend of a global sporting hero been destroyed so comprehensively. Yet, as his career disappears before his eyes, Lance Armstrong, seven times winner of the Tour de France, is still protesting his innocence.
The US Anti-Doping Agency, USADA, has drawn on the sworn statements of 15 professional cyclists, including 11 of Lance Armstrong's former team mates, and scientific evidence to reveal what it describes as the most sophisticated, professionalised, and successful doping program the sport of cycling has ever seen. It permeates the industry behind the sport.
But while Armstrong has been stripped of his titles and banned for life it still remains to be seen whether the world cycling body, the UCI, will finally act on the undeniable evidence of endemic doping which has touched Australia too.
Tonight's inside story features interviews with some of USADA's key witnesses, documenting more than a decade of fraudulent behaviour and an audacious cover up.
The reporter is Quentin McDermott.
(Excerpt of Lance Armstrong being presented with his seventh Tour de France trophy plays)
COMMENTATOR: Lance Armstrong salutes the crowd, seven times winner of the Tour de France. This most...
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT, REPORTER: In the coming weeks, cycling's governing body, the UCI will deliver its verdict on one of modern sport's most celebrated icons: the seven-time winner of the Tour de France, Lance Armstrong.
The United States Anti Doping Agency says that Armstrong was a drug cheat, part of an organised conspiracy by the US Postal Service team to dupe the public and fool the authorities.
BETSY ANDREU: The totality of the evidence is overwhelming. You're looking at the Bernie Madoff of sport. This is the biggest fraud in the history of sport. The biggest. He couldn't have done it alone.
PHIL LIGGETT, CYCLING COMMENTATOR: When money's involved, big money, then of course the cheats come as well.
(Photograph of young Lance Armstrong on his bike is shown)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Lance Armstrong entered cycling as a brash young competitor, full of enthusiasm but limited in his all-round ability. His mentor then was the Australian racer Phil Anderson.
(To Phil Anderson): Did he strike you in those days a cyclist who could eventually win the Tour de France?
PHIL ANDERSON: For me, no. To be a good Tour rider you have to be a good time trialist and you have to be a good mountain climber, and he wasn't particularly strong in those two areas. To me he didn't have what it took in those early years.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Lance Armstrong was then with the American Motorola team. So too was New Zealander Stephen Swart.
Stephen Swart says that in 1995, when Phil Anderson had left the team, the riders complained that their European opponents were doping.
(Excerpt from Stephen Swart's sworn deposition plays)
JEFFREY TILLOTSON, ATTORNEY: Did you talk with Lance Armstrong about the need to start using EPO to be competitive?
STEPHEN SWART: We had a discussion about it, yeah.
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: What did Mr Armstrong say?
STEPHEN SWART: He did say, you know, if we're going to the Tour, we've got to - we've got to perform. We need the results.
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: What does - what did that mean?
STEPHEN SWART: I think he just said - you didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out, you know. If we were going to be competitive, there was only one road to take.
(Excerpt from Lance Armstrong's deposition plays)
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: Was there a discussion about doping in any way with Mr Swart?
LANCE ARMSTRONG: The only aspect that is true is that he was on the team. Beyond that, not true.
(Excerpt ends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The doping allegations arose in a case brought by Lance Armstrong against an insurer based in Dallas, Texas, who provided huge bonuses paid to Armstrong for winning the Tour de France in successive years.
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: These are the cheques making the first two payments under the contract. These cheques represent when he won on the fourth and the fifth, making those payments for $1.5 million and then $3 million.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Attorney Jeff Tillotson represented the insurer, who refused to pay a further $5 million when Armstrong won his sixth Tour de France in 2004.
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: Obviously no-one would wanna guarantee a payment to an event that was fixed or to which someone was cheating because that's a risk no-one would take.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Well was it fixed?
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: Well my client and I we think now the evidence clearly shows that Lance Armstrong was in fact using performance enhancing drugs for both the fourth, fifth and sixth Tour de France races, which are the ones my clients had risk on.
We also think the evidence we developed showed that he had been using performance enhancing drugs long before we ever got involved, and even dating back to the beginning of his career. So in my client's mind yes, those races were fixed.
(Excerpt from Lance Armstrong deposition plays)
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: Mr Armstrong my name is Jeff Tillotson, I represent...
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Jeff Tillotson has done something USADA has been unable to do.
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: Whether it's a blessing or a curse, I remain the only lawyer to have actually taken sworn testimony from Lance Armstrong and to have had him deny, under oath with the penalty of perjury, that he used performance enhancing drugs.
(Excerpt from Lance Armstrong's deposition plays)
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: You understand that although we're in the conference room of your lawyers, you are giving testimony as if you are in a court of law? Do you understand that?
LANCE ARMSTRONG: Correct.
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: And that penalties of perjury attach to this deposition just like they would to a court of law proceeding?
LANCE ARMSTRONG: Of course...
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: Did you in fact...
(Excerpt ends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Tonight, for the first time, sworn depositions from Lance Armstrong and other key witnesses are being broadcast.
This evidence laid the foundation for later investigations, including USADA's.
(Excerpt from footage of Lance Armstrong's first Tour de France plays)
COMMENTATOR: Lance Armstrong has the advantage here, here's on the right side of these riders...
(Excerpt ends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Lance Armstrong's dream was to win the Tour de France.
(Excerpt continues)
COMMENTATOR: Now Armstrong goes, on the left of the picture.
Lance Armstrong in his first Tour de France. They all said he was too young, but he gets it on the line! Lance Armstrong...
(Excerpt ends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: In his first Tour he won a stage, but three years later, it looked like his dream had died.
In this film for his cancer charity, Livestrong, Armstrong described what happened.
(Excerpt from Livestrong film plays)
LANCE ARMSTRONG: I had excruciating headaches, blurry vision, coughing up of blood. I had been debating on whether or not I should go to the doctor for a long time, but finally went. He said 'Lance, I hate to tell you this, but you have advanced testicular cancer'.
(Excerpt ends)
(Footage of Betsy Andreu going through photos of herself, Lance Armstrong and friends)
BETSY ANDREU: Look how young we all look... geez...
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Lance Armstrong's closest friends gathered round.
Among them, Betsy Andreu and her fiancFrankie, who was close to Armstrong and rode with him on his team.
BETSY ANDREU (pointing to each rider in photograph): Frankie, Lance....
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Armstrong was due to consult with his doctors. What happened next shocked Betsy Andreu to the core.
BETSY ANDREU: When the doctors came I suggested we leave to give him his privacy, and he said 'that's OK, you can stay'. So we stayed. The doctor started asking Lance a couple of banal questions, and then boom, 'have you ever used any performance enhancing drugs?' Lance, hanging onto his IV, rattled off EPO, testosterone, cortisone, growth hormone and steroids.
My eyes popped out of my head and Frankie said 'I think we should leave the room', and we left the room. And Frankie and I had just been engaged six weeks previously, and I said 'that's how he got his cancer, if you are doing that I am not marrying you'.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Years later, Betsy and Frankie Andreu recalled under oath what had happened.
(Excerpt from Betsy and Frankie Andreu's testimony plays)
BETSY ANDREU: The doctor asked him a couple of questions, and then came the question, 'have you ever taken performance-enhancing drugs?' And Lance said, 'Yes.' The doctor said, 'what were they?' And he said, 'EPO, growth hormone, cortisone, steroids and testosterone.'
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: What is it Mr Armstrong said in response to the doctor asking him about use of performance enhancing drugs?
FRANKIE ANDREU: I don't know how the doctor phrased the question but Lance's response was that he'd taken EPO and testosterone and growth hormone and cortisone.
(Excerpt ends)
(Photograph of Lance Armstong with celebrities and Stephanie McIlvain is shown)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Also in the hospital that day was Stephanie McIlvain, who worked as a rep for one of Lance Armstrong's main sponsors, Oakley.
BETSY ANDREU: After we were deposed, the day after, Stephanie called, sobbing. Stephanie told me that her husband was called into one of the higher ups of the company where he is vice-president of global marketing for Oakley, one of Lance's sponsors, and Stephanie was told 'if you make the company look bad you're gonna lose your job'.
And so we said 'that's it, she's gonna lie. She's gonna lie, she's not gonna say it happened'.
(Excerpt from Stephanie McIlvain's deposition plays)
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: Were you ever in a hospital room or other part of the hospital with Mr Armstrong, where he said anything about performance enhancing drugs?
STEPHANIE MCILVAIN: No.
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: Do you have any recollection of any doctor in your presence asking Mr Armstrong if he used in the past any performance enhancing drugs or substances?
STEPHANIE MCILVAIN: No.
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: OK.
(Excerpt ends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Stephanie McIlvain gave her sworn deposition at Oakley's headquarters in California.
The year before, out of the blue, she'd received a phone call from an American cycling legend.
(Excerpt from taped phone conversation plays)
STEPHANIE MCILVAIN (subtitled): Hello...
GREG LEMOND (subtitled): Ah, Stephanie?
STEPHANIE MCILVAIN (subtitled): Yeah?
GREG LEMOND (subtitled): This is Greg LeMond calling.
STEPHANIE MCILVAIN (subtitled): Greg LaWho?
GREG LEMOND (subtitled): Greg LeMond.
STEPHANIE MCILVAIN (subtitled): (laughs) Hi, Greg, how are you?
GREG LEMOND: How are you doing?
STEPHANIE MCILVAIN: I'm doing well, hope I'm doing...
(End excerpt)
(Footage of Greg LeMond cycling in Tour de France wearing the yellow jersey plays)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Greg LeMond was a three-time winner of the Tour de France, who insisted he never took drugs.
(Excerpt from footage of Greg LeMond winning the Tour de France plays)
COMMENTATOR: And Greg LeMond is untroubled...
(Excerpt ends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: LeMond had fallen out with Lance Armstrong, who he suspected of doping.
And in 2004 he and Stephanie McIlvain spoke frankly about what occurred in the hospital.
(Excerpt from taped conversation plays)
GREG LEMOND (subtitled): I heard from a source outside of the group here of what happened at the hospital. And Betsy and I have talked a little bit, but, and I, I'm not asking you to do anything you would never want to do, but you know, if it did get down to where it was a, you know, a law suit, um, would you be willing to testify or...?
STEPHANIE MCILVAIN (subtitled): If I was subpoenaed, I would.
GREG LEMOND (subtitled): Yeah.
STEPHANIE MCILVAIN (subtitled): 'Cause I'm not going to lie. You know, I was in that room. I heard it. You know and..
(Excerpt ends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: What Stephanie McIlvain didn't know was that Greg LeMond was secretly recording their conversation.
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: Lance Armstrong's lawyers immediately backed off this issue and agreed in a written stipulation we presented to the panel that Stephanie McIlvain had been untruthful under oath and had told two different stories about what happened in the Indiana University Hospital room.
(Excerpt from Lance Armstrong's deposition plays)
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: You heard her testimony regarding certain...
(Excerpt ends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Even so, Lance Armstrong and his doctors insisted that he was never asked about performance enhancing drugs.
(Excerpt from Lance Armstrong's deposition continues)
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: Do you deny the statements that Ms Andreu attributed to you in the Indiana University Hospital?
LANCE ARMSTRONG: One-hundred per cent absolutely.
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: Did any medical person ask you, while you were at Indiana State University Hospital, whether you had ever used any performance-enhancing drugs or substances?
LANCE ARMSTRONG: No, absolutely not.
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: Can you offer or can you - can you help explain to me why Ms Andreu would make that story up?
LANCE ARMSTRONG: Well, she said in her deposition she hates me.
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: Is it your testimony that Mr Andreu was also lying when he said that he heard you say those things regarding your prior use?
LANCE ARMSTRONG: One-hundred per cent. (Pauses) But I feel for him.
JEFFREY TILLOTSON: What do you mean by that?
LANCE ARMSTRONG: Well, I think he's trying to back up his old lady.
(Excerpt ends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: How has Lance Armstrong treated you following this incident?
BETSY ANDREU: Oh I mean what he's- How he has described me to people he presumed would never meet me is pretty amazing. Think of just any derogatory adjective and, you know, basically I'm nuts, just crazy, I'm really jealous, I'm hateful, I'm vindictive, I'm bitter. And so this has been a quest to clear my name, because I never, ever, ever lied about anything, ever.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Two days after the Andreus gave their sworn evidence, Indiana University announced an endowment of $1.5 million for a chair in oncology to honour the doctor whose team treated Armstrong for cancer.
The endowment was funded by the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
(Excerpt from Lance Armstrong's deposition plays)
LANCE ARMSTRONG: I just want to be clear. These are very separate issues. And I'm endowing, I'm funding a chair for somebody who saved my life.
(Excerpt ends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Throughout the 1990s, riders and their teams worked hard to cover up the increasing use of performance enhancing drugs.
Their job was made easier by the fact that the drug of choice in the peloton at the time, the blood booster EPO, was undetectable.
So popular was EPO that the peloton invented a term for riders who didn't use it.
TYLER HAMILTON: The translation was 'riding on bread and water' and the Italian term is 'pan y agua', bread and water. So I was yeah, I guess for the first few months of the 97 season, I was riding on pan y agua, bread and water.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Tyler Hamilton's revelations about drug taking in cycling have created headlines around the world.
Like many top racers, Tyler Hamilton started out as a drug-free rider.
But when he joined the US Postal Service team he saw veteran riders getting preferential treatment; they would be given white lunch bags between races.
He wanted his lunch bag too.
TYLER HAMILTON: The doctor at US Postal Service said that, you know, I had enormous potential. So basically, eventually when I was invited to, when I was given my first white lunch bag, you know, it was a sign to me that they believe in me, they believe in my potential and they believe in me - my long term talent.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The lunch bags contained the banned drug EPO, designed to raise a cyclist's hematocrit level.
TYLER HAMILTON: Your hematocrit's a percentage of red blood cells in your body. Your red blood cells carry oxygen to your muscles, so basically the higher your red blood cell percentage the better your muscles are gonna operate under stress. So in layman's terms, the more red blood cells you have, the faster you're gonna ride a bike, you know.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: So what was the doctor's solution to raising those levels?
TYLER HAMILTON: Yeah, a couple of months before, maybe a month and a half before my first Tour de France, it was EPO.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Under UCI rules at the time, riders were allowed a hematocrit level of 50 per cent, but no higher.
Tyler Hamilton says doctors would tell riders what their 'glow-time' was with different drugs.
TYLER HAMILTON: You were given the limits on you know what product would, how long you'd, you glow for, how long you'd test positive for. So as long as you'd play by what the team doctors told you, you know, it was more or less pretty, at the time it was pretty easy to pass these tests.
You know I passed a couple of hundred doping controls myself you know.
(Footage of Lance Armstrong riding with the US Postal Service team in 1998 plays)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: When Lance Armstrong joined the US Postal Service team in 1998, following his recovery from cancer, he shared a room with Tyler Hamilton.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Did you both talk about drugs together?
TYLER HAMILTON: We did, we did, you know, it didn't, didn't, it wasn't... Every conversation wasn't about drugs, but yeah, we talked about it, you know, behind closed doors, absolutely, absolutely. Ninety-eight I was pretty green, so I asked a lot of questions and, you know, I learnt a lot.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Tyler Hamilton says Lance Armstrong was surprisingly relaxed about where he kept his EPO.
TYLER HAMILTON: When I was at his house in Nice, France, I asked him for some and he kindly said 'yeah, no problem'. And it was just on the inside door of his refrigerator, just in the box that it came in. And you know I was surprised that it was right there and kinda out in the open.
(Excerpt from 1998 Australian news report is plays)
NEWS REPORTER: French police began investigations into Festina after banned drugs, including steroids, were found in one of the team cars on July 8th. Festina's doctor, Eric Rijckaert, was questioned and later charged under France's anti-drugs act.
(Excerpt ends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: As the 1998 Tour de France got underway, the lid was blown off systematic doping in the peloton.
DICK POUND, FORMER PRESIDENT, WORLD ANTI-DOPING AGENCY: It was pretty clear that there was a major problem. You know, the French police are arresting team members or followers with industrial quantities of doping substances and equipment.
(Footage of Lance Armstrong from 1999 Tour de France plays)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The following year, the Tour de France was billed as the 'Tour of renewal'.
Teams were terrified of being raided, but Lance Armstrong came prepared, with a delivery man in tow called Motoman.
TYLER HAMILTON: Motoman was this gardener slash handyman for Lance Armstrong. The team I was on didn't carry performance enhancing drugs.
(Photograph of Lance Armstrong with Motoman (face obscured) is shown)
So to get EPO for the Tour de France, we came up with a plan. And the plan had Motoman involved where he would follow the race, always stay within probably a half hour drive of our, motorcycle drive, from our hotel. He basically had, you know, the container filled with EPO and he would basically just wait for a phone call on a secret phone, and when he had to do a delivery, he'd do a delivery.
(Excerpt from coverage of the 1999 Tour de France Prologue Le Puy du Fou plays)
COMMENTATOR: And Armstrong coming up now; now can he get off to a great start in the Tour de France? He is aiming at eight minutes and nine seconds; he's certainly ahead of Chris Boardman at this point. My goodness me, 8.02.51. Lance Armstrong, with that performance, Paul, I think may have done enough.
(Excerpt ends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: This is where the legend began.
On the very first day of his comeback Tour de France, Lance Armstrong won the Prologue.
(Excerpt from coverage of 1999 Tour de France with Lance Armstrong receiving the yellow jersey after winning the Prologue plays)
COMMENTATOR: Lance Armstrong has delivered a great blow...
(Excerpt ends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Three weeks later, less than three years after being diagnosed with cancer, he won his first Tour de France.
It would be the first of seven.
PHIL LIGGETT: He came back again and again and again, winning Tour after Tour. And he did it seven times, and of course it's a record and nobody's ever done it. And it's for many people it was unacceptable. It was impossible to do that without taking drugs.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Well what do you think?
PHIL LIGGETT: I, look, I admit I've, I've been very proud to commentate on Armstrong over these, over these years because I've seen a man and I've seen how he's battled the elements and I've seen how he's come forward, and I'm very sad. What do I think? Everybody else did it, so I find it very difficult not to think that Lance did it
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The evidence suggests Lance Armstrong was doping big-time.
(Footage of the Tour de France plays)
Tyler Hamilton says that after finishing a stage, he, Armstrong and their team-mate Kevin Livingston would inject themselves with EPO in the team's camper, just metres from the excited fans outside.
(Footage of US fans watching the Tour de France plays)
TYLER HAMILTON: That was nerve wracking, 'cause you were right there in the heart of the Tour de France, you know, thousands and thousands of people around your - hovering around your the team camper, and we had this performance enhancing drug. So I remember just trying to get rid of it as quickly as possible because you know there was one for Lance, one for Kevin and one for myself. And you know you quickly just stuck it in, got rid of it. And then it was quickly hidden away, typically in like a Coke can. All three vials would go into a Coke can and crush it, give it to a team doctor to dispose.
(Photograph of Lance Armstrong riding in the Tour de France is shown)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: But it didn't all go to plan. Lance Armstrong was tested for drugs during the Tour, and one of his samples revealed a significant level of a banned corticosteroid.
(Footage from team home video of Lance Armstrong and Emma O'Reilly during the Tour de France plays)
Emma O'Reilly was a soigneur on the team, whose duties included giving Armstrong a massage after his rides.
During one of these massages, she says, an urgent discussion took place between Armstrong and the team's management.
EMMA O'REILLY: The conversation that was occurring really was 'what are we gonna do? Here's the problem, we need a solution and how do we act upon the solution? And are we happy with the solution?' So it was - the problem was Lance had tested high in cortisone. The solution was potential prescription. 'What was the prescription for? Why was he taking it? Are we all happy with that? Yeah, we're happy with that. Right, let's go down then and speak to Luis', who was the team doctor, 'and get him to write the prescription'.
(Photograph of Dr Luis Del Moral is shown)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Dr Luis Del Moral has now been issued with a lifetime sporting ban by the US Anti-Doping Agency, USADA.
Emma O'Reilly says the doctor issued a prescription to Armstrong for a cortisone cream for saddle sores, and backdated it.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Had he complained to you about saddle sores?
EMMA O'REILLY: No, no, no. No, it wasn't about saddle sores. The whole thing was just a backdated prescription to help kind of explain his elevated cortisone level in the test at the Prologue.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Of course if he, if he had been prescribed this cream, then it should have been listed on the therapeutic use exemption...
EMMA |
He notes that researchers have been moving toward reforming the surveys for several years. And since there are other surveys besides the one being changed, there will be data to compare it to.
But that’s where he underestimates Obama. The president and his administration have been absolutely shameless in their misuse and abuse of statistics. And the media haven’t been much better in holding the administration accountable. You can never take any numbers spouted by the administration at face value.
Take Obama’s Thursday press conference claiming that 8 million people had signed up for Obamacare. All the reporters know by now that number doesn’t tell us how many actually paid their premiums, or how many of those previously had coverage, got it canceled, and so had to get new coverage.
Real Clear Politics’ Sean Trende in January analyzed the president’s claim that 4 million people had enrolled in Medicaid. But Trende’s detailed assessment put that number closer to 400,000—one-tenth of Obama’s claim.
Obamacare requires Medicare’s trustees to assume that the government will dramatically cut Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements for physicians and hospitals several years in the future. That required assumption cut, at least on paper, Medicare’s long-term unfunded liabilities by about $50 trillion. Medicare’s Office of the Actuary thought those reimbursement assumptions were so unrealistic that the office released its own paper providing an “alternative scenario” to the trustees’ report.
The New York Post’s John Crudele ran a series of articles exposing how some Census Bureau employees were manipulating unemployment data in the months leading up to the 2012 election to help the president.
The politicization of what is supposed to be reliable, nonpartisan, government-sponsored economic research is one of the saddest legacies of the Obama administration, second only to the politicization of what is supposed to be nonpartisan agencies, like the IRS and the Justice Department. And the president has been repeatedly helped along the way by supposedly independent organizations whose numbers also don't stand up to scrutiny.
While it’s possible the Census Bureau simply made a badly timed announcement, this administration has forfeited the benefit of the doubt. You have to assume Obama is manipulating the numbers to promote his agenda and career, because he does it so often.
Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow at http://twitter.com/MerrillMatthewsTaranis Antenna Mod
The FrSky Taranis is, in my opinion, the best radio transmitter money can buy. It’s not cheap, but it’s completely open source. I have a spare Turnigy 9x, but after a half year my gimbals are still almost rock solid, and the Turnigy receivers are to big. So, if it’s your first radio and you want a Taranis, buy one. There are many possibilities and features for the Taranis available.
But if it’s that good, why mod in the first place? You may ask. Now, because you gonna break stuff eventually. Your antenna is going to be the first of things to break (if you don’t store your radio well), and if you don’t care about warranty. You can fix it yourself. You will, because the gimbals will go bad after a year. So if you are scared to lose your warranty, do not progress any further. If you are not confident in soldering, do not proceed! I’m not responsible in any way. I’m only giving you a guideline.
How to chose between 3, 5 or 10 dBi antenna?
Simply saying, the higher the dBi, the further the signal goes. But the further the signal, how narrower the signal will send it in the field. See example here.
Well isn’t 3dBi the best one? Sure, it will send the radio signal everywhere, but the range is much smaller. What’s the sweet spot? Well that’s what you decide. The most effective way to know is to simply try. With this guide you can try different Wifi Antenna’s.
What do you need to mod your Taranis antenna:
FrSky Taranis
3, 5 or 10 dBi 2,4GHz RP-SMA Male Wifi Antenna (Value: $3,-)
2,4 GHz RP-SMA Female to U.FL IPX 1.13 Pigtail 20cm Cable (Value: $2,-)
Or a RP-SMA Female 120 mm low loss signal wire RG178 (Value $2,-)
Epoxy Repair (Dual-Component epoxy putty)
Soldering station
Tools (Philips Screwdriver, plier, etc)
Glue Gun
Heat Gun (for removing old glue, just be careful!!)
Steps:
First thing you need to do is unplug your battery! You don’t want to short-out your Taranis. Then before unscrew and opening your Taranis, make sure you got all switches in the default position. It can happen that a switch will fall out, then you can put it back in the good order.
Next are the philips screws, there are six of them in the backplate. There is no need to unscrew something on the front of your Taranis. Be careful with opening your Taranis. You don’t need to use force, it will open up very easily.
Once you opened up your Taranis you should see the 2,4Ghz stock antenna, the antenna wire and the spot on the board with the hot glue on it. Underneath the hot glue is the solder that connects the antenna to the board.
You can remove the hot glue by warming it up with a heat gun and wipe it clean with a cloth. Be careful not to burn your board or Taranis in the process.
When you are done with cleaning up the hot glue you can look at the solder.
I did my best to magnify it. So yes, that’s small and you need a good soldertip. Simply unsolder the antenna cable, because we don´t gonna use this anymore. You can clean the pads with a wig or simply with your soldertip. Just be careful of soldering on the circuitboard.
Use some proper pliers to disconnect the antenna plastic form your Taranis. Just a little force was needed.
Next up is making your connection cable for the new 2,4 GHz antenna. I have used the 2,4 GHz RP-SMA Female to U.FL IPX 1.13 Pigtail. Just measure 11 cm from the RP-SMA connector to the IPX connector and cut it. Once you cut the wire you will need to use a hobby knife to open up the little cable. Just push the cable gently with your knife, a half centimeter before the cut. Once you done that you will see a bush of wires (a shielding layer) and one isolated wire. Grab the bush of wires and gently roll it between your fingers. Make sure (and yes a looking glass will be great!) that you got all the wires. One hair is enough to mess with your antenna output. Once you’ve done that you can solder them together.
Next up is the tip of the isolated wire, you don’t need to cut it with a knife. You can easily do it between your nails. You need just 1mm of that wire and solder the tip.
Now you are ready to solder it back on the circuitboard of your Taranis. But before you do that, make sure you your wire is through the hole of your Taranis (have enough space, but better double check it). The easiest way to do this is that you first solder the bush to the circuitboard. That will make your life easier. The tip is very small and the connection is very ‘fragile’ if you move it.
Next up is make sure you got a good solder on your tip (use a magnifier if you have one). Then use a glue gun to cover it up again. This will give the connection more strength and it’s well isolated. To give your wire some room you can use the screwpillar and some hot glue to hold the wire free in your Taranis without moving it.
Then you need some Epoxy Repair (Dual-Component epoxy putty) to fill the hole were the original antenna should be. There are many ways to do this, and this is one of them. I’m not going to change the wire again so I need a rock solid solution. Just use a little of the putty and knid it well for about 1 or 2 minutes. When the putty is grey (see picture) apply it on the 10mm screw connection of the RP-SMA and make a little ball. Then push it in the hole. It must fill up nicely. Push the putty to make sure you got it all solid in the hole. You can remove any putty with a wet knife. The epoxy need to harden. It will take about 5-10 minutes. Make sure you hold it straight and the antenna is connected properly. I used some books to make sure it’s straight. When the epoxy is hard enough you can screw your Taranis together.
Use a sanding tool to smoothen the epoxy and you can paint it if you want. The epoxy can be painted! Screw your new x dBi antenna to the Taranis.
Note: Make sure the antenna is on your Taranis when powering on! Otherwise you can burn your transmitter.
You will need to test your Taranis in two ways. One is your RSSI and second is your SWR.
The RSSI [Range] on your Taranis must be stable when moving away from your Quadcopter. The fluctuations are there, but must be counting down equally the further you move away from it. Don’t be shocked by a bad RSSI at 85. It’s normal that you have a bad connection within 2 meters from your receiver.
To test if your antenna is actually good is to test the SWR (Standing Wave Ratio). You can access your SWR via a page in the Taranis Menu.
Menu > Page 12/12 > Screen 1 (set on “Bars” or “nums” whatever suits you) and set your first input on SWR. Then Exit > Exit. If you hold the Page button you can see your SWR.
Your SWR must be 0(zero) or 0 to 1(zero to one). Any greater number means your antenna or your connection to the circuit board is not good, you need to check that! To see if your antenna is working properly, you can grab the antenna. You will see an increase of numbers, when you do, applause! You have done it well!
If see a number bigger then 16 (and you are not holding the antenna), your quadcopter will have a very, very bad connection.
The only thing left is… Yes! Fieldtest your Taranis mod! Happy flying folks!
The tutorial was kindly written and provided to us by DutchWalnut_fpv. Make sure to follow him on Instagram and like our Facebook page, so you wont miss any new how-to´s.
RelatedGore was asked the question during an interview with the website LADbible.
"Resign," Gore responded.
The 2000 presidential contender and environmental activist is promoting his new documentary "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power," which documents Gore's trips around the world to teach advocates and influence climate change policy.
ADVERTISEMENT
"When enough young people put the pressure on and do it passionately, than the laws begin to change," he said commenting on the future of activism.
Gore's comments come over two months after Trump announced he would pull the U.S. from the nonbinding Paris climate accord, making the United States one of three countries that haven't committed to the deal.
Trump said in July Trump's climate policies have created "the biggest upsurge of activism in favor of the climate that we have ever experienced."
Gore went to Trump Tower in New York City to discuss the issue with Trump after the election, but Gore has said he has since lost hope in working on climate change with the Trump administration.
"I thought that there was a chance he would come to his senses. But I was wrong," Gore said on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" last month.
"The large carbon polluters have put more than a billion dollars into an effort to try to deceive people into people thinking its not real," Gore told LADbible.What construction looked like in 2014. Photo: Asmoth/Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons
Atlas Obscura on Slate is a blog about the world’s hidden wonders. Like us on Facebook and Tumblr, or follow us on Twitter.
In a remote forest clearing in Burgundy, France, a 13th-century castle is slowly being constructed using only the tools, techniques, and materials that would have been available to the builders of the day. It’s archaeology in reverse.
The Guédelon project was started in 1997 at this location, which was chosen because it was near an abandoned stone quarry, a pond for water, and in a forest that could provide wood. The whole exercise is an experimental archaeology endeavor that seeks to discover what it would have been like to create a castle centuries ago, not by making guesses from artifacts from the past, but by experiencing it in real time. Knotted rope is used to make measurements, stone is imperfectly cut to denote the station of the castle’s owner, and rock is chiseled by hand.
There is even a period-accurate back story attached to the project that informs the design and construction. According to the story, the castle (actually a chateau, although to modern eyes it could certainly be described as a castle) is being built by Guilbert Courtenay, aka Guilbert de Guédelon, a low-level noble who is constructing the new home in order to advertise his wealth and station. The elaborate back story, which was specifically started in a fictional 1229, helps the creators speculate as to exactly what type of amenities the space might have.
The project is ongoing and is expected to be completed in 2020. It can be visited and is, by around 300,000 people a year. Not only are many of the members of the project in period dress, but there is also a medieval restaurant to eat at. It may seem a bit kitschy on the surface, but their methods are pretty hardcore.
Submitted by Atlas Obscura contributor jlanam.
For more on Guédelon Castle, visit Atlas Obscura!
More wonders to explore:You must enter the characters with black color that stand out from the other characters
Message: * A friend wanted you to see this item from WRAL.com: http://wr.al/15IAg
— When Gov. Pat McCrory appeared on CNN Wednesday night, he was pressed by host Don Lemon about North Carolina's new body camera law, which will soon require a court order to release footage from police recordings.
"Why not release it to the public, though?" Lemon asked asked McCrory about the pending law.
"Don, I've got to respect the constitutional rights of our police officers and also the investigation," McCrory replied.
Lemon pressed back, "What about the constitutional rights of the citizens, though?"
McCrory said the law would help certain citizens.
"In fact, some citizens in videos we might need to protect in videos," McCrory said, "because a lot of times we have innocent people that might be in a video. We have videos that might be in domestic violence disputes and so forth. Listen, Don, I've got to get back to work. I've got a lot of work to do."
The exchange was one of several media reports focused on House Bill 972, which passed this summer. The bill doesn't go into effect until Oct. 1, but it has been cited by local police as one reason to withhold footage Charlotte police recorded during the Tuesday shooting of 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott.
Critics say that the Scott shooting illustrates the need to release police video and why the new law is too restrictive.
"This is just precisely the kind of situation I was afraid would occur," said Jonathan Jones, director of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition and an early critic of the pending law.
Jones pointed out that two different narratives of the shooting have emerged: Police say Scott had a gun, but family members have denied that.
Charlotte's police chief said Thursday that footage recorded by his officers' equipment doesn't definitively show whether Scott had a gun, but he has still not moved to release the video. If he waits until Oct. 1, it's likely that the city would need to obtain a court order to release the video under the new law.
Meanwhile, Tulsa, Okla., police have released video of another recent shooting of an unarmed black man, a move observers credit with helping to calm community reaction to that incident.
"This situation in Charlotte highlights the importance of law enforcement being transparent with these videos and the importance of of the public having ready access," Jones said.
While it may not answer every question, he said, "it sure would help the public have a better understanding."
Signed in July
The new body camera law passed 88-20 in the state House, and 48-2 in the state Senate. In the Senate, only Sen. Chad Barefoot, R-Wake, and Sen. Jeff Jacson, D-Mecklenburg, voted against.
McCrory, a Republican, signed North Carolina's body camera bill in July, saying it strikes the "necessary balance" between a public's right to know and protecting law enforcement officers. His administration, including Secretary of Public Safety Frank Perry, continue to defend the law from criticism.
"Uniformity, clarity, transparency and quickness – those are the four things this law provides," Perry insisted this summer.
Among the critics this summer was Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat running against McCrory in this fall's gubernatorial campaign, who said the law makes it too hard for the public to obtain footage.
"I would have preferred to have a presumption of public camera (footage), but having some exceptions where we know we need exceptions to protect witnesses, to protect an investigation," Cooper said in July.
Open government advocates said the law defeats the idea of police wearing body cameras in the first place.
"Body cameras should be a tool to make law enforcement more transparent and accountable to the communities they serve," Susanna Birdsong, policy counsel for the ACLU of North Carolina, said in a statement this summer. "But this shameful law will make it nearly impossible to achieve those goals."
Current law varies
While it's more restrictive than many would like, the new law provides a path to seek release of police video that hasn't existed before.
Current policies on body cameras vary across the state. Many departments treat such recordings as personnel records, which puts them beyond the reach of the state's public records law. By and large, release of videos remains at the discretion of local sheriffs and police chiefs.
That's the state of the law in Charlotte right now.
Lawmakers began working on the new law more than a year ago, as both police recordings became more common and a number of high-profile police shootings of unarmed black men dominated the news.
Authors of the new law said it would provide a process for seeking the release of video while still protecting the privacy of police and civilians.
"There are private things that could be very embarrassing to people, could be hurtful to people, and that doesn't need to be public," Rep. John Faircloth, R-Guilford, a former police chief, said during a June committee hearing.
Access limited
Under Faircloth's legislation, police recordings are not public records.
People who are depicted in police camera footage and their "personal representatives" may request permission from a police agency to view the video.
The law enforcement agency may grant access, but it can refuse on a number of grounds, including that the video contains information of a sensitive nature or could put someone's life at risk. A person who is denied disclosure can appeal to court.
Even if that person is allowed to view the tape, the law enforcement agency may not release a copy of the video short of a court order.
In addition to those involved in a particular incident, members of the public, such as reporters, can also go to court to seek a copy of the video. The way the law is written, even if a police agency wants to release the footage, it would likely have to go to court as well.
In order to release a copy of the video, the court must consider eight factors, including whether its release will advance a compelling public interest, if it contains sensitive material and whether release would harm the reputation or jeopardize the safety of an individual.
The court also may place conditions on the release of the video, including that it may not be shared with others.
If police officials in Charlotte don't release the video of the Scott shooting before Oct. 1, it may end up subject to the provisions of the new law. However, that's unclear because the measure does not speak to whether it applies only to new recordings or all videos held by police.
"Given the silence in the statute, my viewpoint is that it probably would apply," Jones said. "But I don't know what a court would say."Incorporating visual content in your marketing strategy is a great way to cut through the content noise.
While marketers on a modest budget can make room for videos, interactive data visualizations, and full-fledged online courses, cash-strapped bloggers and startups turn to infographics to have a fighting chance.
Not only are infographics affordable, they can also be easily reused across multiple distribution channels — be it through social media, blog posts, and newsletters. This allows you to squeeze the most engagement out of your infographic investments.
The Benefits of Infographics
How come infographics do so well for content marketing?
Because infographics tend to get more engagement on social media than any other form of content. This comes in the form of likes, comments, and shares.
The more social media users engage your post, the more visibility it gets – exponentially increasing your infographic’s reach (and traffic to your site).
Using data visualizations such as timelines, graphs, charts, and diagrams makes complex information more digestible to your audience.
As effective as infographics are for marketing, including them in your strategy isn’t a magic bullet. You should still be prepared to promote them as relentlessly as you can if you want to maximize their success. Of course, you also need to craft them with extra care to ensure their shareability.
Without further ado, below are the strategies you need to remember for infographic marketing.
1. Pick the Right Topic
First and foremost, a well-designed infographic is useless if no one cares about the information it offers.
To get the ball rolling, you can use a content research tool like BuzzSumo to quickly scrape the internet for popular content. Simply type in a keyword that’s relevant to your niche and get searching.
By default, BuzzSumo only pulls articles that are published within the past year. This means you can easily find trending topics, which are either new or has recently resurfaced in terms of relevance.
You can further refine your search using the available settings to the left:
You shouldn’t ignore the number of shares for each post. This will help you gauge how much attention a topic can generate in social media.
If you prefer a specific network over others, simply use the dropdown menu to sort the results:
The main advantage of picking a trending topic is that they’re easier to spread through social media. However, trends are often short-lived, and so is the demand for posts that cover them.
That said, you should also be on the lookout for evergreen content, which can generate traffic for a much longer period.
2. Create a Killer Infographic Script
After finding a suitable topic to work with, the next step is to write a compelling infographic script. Remember, the quality of an infographic is determined not only by its design, but also in the way it elaborates information through text.
Here is a breakdown of the important parts of an infographic script and how you should write them:
An Eye-Catching Headline
The first rule of infographic script writing is to use an eye-catching headline. This can be wacky, thought-provoking, or hints that your infographic is written by experts. For example, you can use something like:
“Terrible at Visual Content Marketing? Here are 20 Things You’re Doing Wrong According to Experts”
Feel free to spice up your headline with references to a meme, a celebrity, or anything popular. Just be sure to match your audience demographic and avoid headlines that are offensive, scandalous, or completely unrelated to the infographic itself.
The Introduction
An introduction should be no longer than 3-4 sentences. Its purpose is to build up your audience’s anticipation and set the tone for the rest of the script.
One strategy is to tell the backstory on how you acquired the data for your infographic. For example, did you perform 1-on-1 interviews with the experts? Was it a personal problem that inspired you to conduct your own research?
You can also start with an interesting statistic that directly relates to your target audience’s pain points.
Loads of Data-Driven Content
Data visualizations are the building blocks of a high-quality infographic. Not only do they communicate information more effectively, they also make your infographic more skimmable for those who are doing research.
Before identifying the visualizations you need to use, you must first plan a layout for the infographic’s body. Start by writing a couple of subheadings that pertain to the problem you’re trying to solve, the solution you offer, some examples, and other general information about the topic. This will help you determine what data is needed for each section.
Data Sources
If possible, you should include original data from your own research. Doing so will improve your authority in your niche and your credibility as an information provider.
But if you’re currently incapable of producing any data-based information, then you can always leverage the research done by others. Just don’t forget to cite them at the bottom of each section or by the end of the entire infographic. This will eliminate any doubts on the authenticity of your work.
Additional Tips
Proofread and polish your script before sending it over to your designer.
Check if the infographic’s content answers every question raised by the headline.
Don’t make the script too long. Aim for around only 300-400 words to avoid making the infographic look too busy.
3. Leverage Existing Content Distribution Channels
Just like any other form of online content, you can maximize the visibility of your infographic through distribution channels – starting with your very own blog.
According to statistics, infographics are 30 times more likely to be read than regular blog posts. In other words, forgetting to feature your infographic in your blog is the worst oversight you can possibly make.
Fortunately, you don’t need to do anything fancy to accomplish this step. Simply load your content management system or blogging platform and embed the infographic into a new post. To augment the content consumption experience of your audience, be sure to accompany it with text content that elaborates anything worth explaining.
When it comes to social media, consider launching ads to reach people who have similar interests with your existing followers.
Major platforms like Facebook can give you a head start with the option to create a “lookalike audience”. All you have to do is to choose a page with an existing following as the source:
4. Embedding Social Media Buttons
Launching social media ads is only the beginning. To reach even more people, you should also make it easier for your audience to share your infographic.
The most straightforward method is to embed social sharing buttons in your infographics with a free tool like AddThis. After logging in to your account, select Share Buttons from the list of available website tools.
Under “Select a Tool Type”, highlight Image Sharing and then click Continue.
In the visual editor, you can change settings such as the position of the sharing buttons and the available social networks.
If you want to specify the social networks you want to use, highlight Select your own under “Social Networks”.
You can also navigate to the Design tab to further personalize the appearance of your social sharing buttons. For example, you can change the button size, corner roundedness, and icon background color.
Feel free to play around with these settings and use the live preview to check which combination works.
When modifying the appearance of your sharing buttons, be sure to match the color scheme and theme of your site. You can also modify the Advanced Options such as the follow-up message, visibility on specific devices, and so on.
Once you are satisfied with your sharing buttons, click Save and Continue for the steps on how to integrate them into your website. For example, if you use WordPress, you can configure AddThis using the Share Buttons plugin.
That’s it! You now know how to make infographics on your site more shareable.
5. Optimizing Infographics for SEO
The next step is to make sure they are also searchable.
Not even the best infographic in the world will take itself to Google’s first page. Aside from accompanying them with SEO-friendly copy, you also need to focus on a few other factors.
Let’s start off with the basics.
Step 1: Optimizing the File Name
Take note that Google uses the file name to give context on what any visual content is about. A rule of thumb is to avoid something generic, like “untitled.png” or a random string of characters that your infographic designer shipped it with.
If, for example, your infographic is about content management systems, then a more fitting file name would be content-management-systems.png.
Step 2: Optimizing the Alt Text
A similar approach can be applied when optimizing your infographic’s alt text — the text that appears in case the image is unable to load. It’s also visible as the ‘tooltip’ when users hover their mouse over the image.
Just like with the file name, search engines like Google also use the alt text to determine the infographic’s topic. You can, however, be as descriptive as you want with your alt text (just don’t go overboard, adding a bunch of random keywords won’t help you).
Step 3: Optimizing the Meta Description
In terms of click-throughs, an infographic’s meta description should be one of your top priorities. Whatever you do, make sure you keep it from 135 to 160 characters in length. This guarantees that your description is displayed properly in search engine results pages.
Since meta descriptions should be tailored to users and not web crawlers, it must provide ample information on what your infographic is about. It’s also a good idea to include your target keyword once for indexibility.
To learn more about the nitty gritty of SEO optimization for images, check out this post.
6. Repackaging Infographics
One of the biggest advantages of infographics is their versatility. They can work with various content ideas, like roundups, reports, and step-by-step guides.
To make an infographic’s message even more impactful, you can repurpose and redistribute them as slideshows. This can be done with a free photo editing application like the GNU Image Manipulation Program or GIMP.
Upon launching GIMP, simply drag and drop the infographic you want to repurpose into the main window.
To crop the section, select the Rectangle Select Tool from the main toolbar and drag a box around the desired area.
With the desired area selected, click Image > Crop to Selection.
At this point, you can now export the image as a PNG or JPG file by going to File > Export As. Remember to pick a different file name as to avoid overwriting the original infographic.
In the export window, you can configure the quality settings and advanced options for the final output.
That’s how you can obtain individual slides for your would-be presentation. Simply undo all your changes and start over from the top, exporting each slide into individual image files as you go.
The slides alone can be individually shared on social media for more traffic. But when it comes to promoting the whole slideshow, you can leverage an online presentation platform like SlideShare. Doing so makes your presentation more discoverable to the online audience, particularly to the LinkedIn community.
If you want, you can also incorporate them in your webinar strategy with a platform like ClickMeeting, which allows you to showcase presentations as you interact with a live audience.
To import presentations to ClickMeeting, log in to your account and head to Storage > Presentations. Click Upload File and look for the presentation you want to use.
If you have the budget, you can also use the cropped materials for an animated video. ClickMeeting utilized this strategy for their infographic on developing more interactive, emotion-driven sales experiences.
Bonus: Submitting to Infographic Directories
You can maximize the online reach of your infographics by submitting them into directories. Not only will this lead to increased traffic, it can also generate a ton of feedback and insights from the online audience.
This is, by a clear mile, the easiest tactic.
To get you started, here are some of the most popular infographic directories that accept submissions:
More Visual Content Marketing Resources:
Category Content Marketing
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Featured image: Pixabay
In-post photo: FirmBee Pixabay
Screenshots captured by Vikas Agrawal on July 2017.Hornets Draft Buzz: Jonathan Isaac vs. John Collins
This is the deepest of deep dives when it comes to draft analysis, so sit back, get comfortable and enjoy all of the knowledge that the talented Brian Giesinger and Spencer Percy are about to hit you with.
Who would you like to see the Hornets draft: Jonathan Isaac or John Collins? Get involved in the conversation in the comments section below!
Why the Hornets should draft Jonathan Issac
Spencer Percy, Managing Editor of Queen City Hoops (@QCHspencer)
Let me disclaimer this portion of the article by stating that Charlotte would likely have to trade up to draft Jonathan Isaac, and while that’d be awesome, it’s unlikely.
To understand Isaac, one must accept the notion that it’s somewhat the tale of two athletes. He grew 6-inches late in his high school career, shooting up to 6’11. JI grew up playing on the wing, so there has been a major adjustment for him getting used to his new frame. The late growth spurt put Isaac on the map as an NBA prospect, so scouts are still getting to know him and his potential fit in the NBA – Isaac didn’t rise through the high school ranks as a shoe-in NBA player.
As a fluid athlete with elite measurements (7’1” wingspan – 9’0.5” standing reach) for a combo-forward, Isaac passes the eye test – you look at him and immediately think NBA player. JI should be able to defend positions 1-4 and is ready to make an impact on the defensive end on day-one. His offensive skill-set fits perfectly as a stretch power-forward, but the slim 210-pound frame will have to improve.
Defensive Potential
From a pure measurement standpoint, Isaac might be the most impressive prospect in this draft class. He’s got elite height and length for an NBA power-forward and has the fluidity as an athlete to play on the perimeter on both ends of the court.
Isaac finished 3rd in the ACC last season in Block Rate, with 6.84% of his defensive possessions resulting in a block – JI also finished as one of the few frontcourt players in the top-25 of Steal Rate, with 2.43% of his defensive possessions resulting in a steal – stats per KenPom.com.
Thanks to his length, JI can make a difference at the rim from the weakside.
He also uses that length and active hands to swallow up quicker ball-handlers. Again, because Isaac grew up playing on the perimeter, there is a very clear comfort level for him on the wing.
Isaac has a knack for reacting quickly on the defensive end. He can contain dribble penetration with his instincts and quick first step. For a near seven-footer, JI has awesome footwork that will earn him consistent minutes in the league over the long-haul.
The switchy nature of Isaac’s defensive potential is very intriguing, but the fact that his ceiling suggests he could become a wing-stopper, as well, is the most interesting wrinkle of his game to me. When tasked with guarding Jayson Tatum, quite possible the most polished offensive player in the ACC (maybe the nation) last season, Isaac held him to 12-30 (40%) – below Tatum’s season average of 45% – Tatum also turned the ball over 9 times in those two games.
Check out Isaac’s ability to anticipate Tatum’s direction with the dribble, slide his feet and use his length and active hands to snatch the ball away.
The defensive profile for Isaac is super exciting for any scout or GM on a team that realistically has a chance to draft him, but again, Charlotte will all but likely have to trade up to have a shot.
Offensive Upside
Less is certain for the future of Isaac’s game on the offensive end. The aforementioned fact that JI grew up playing on the wing before hitting a massive growth spurt late in high school plays a major role in the conundrum of figuring out which offensive position he fits best with in the NBA.
Isaac would likely tell you that he projects himself as a wing player on the next level with the ability to make plays off the dribble and create offense for others. That part of his game didn’t show any consistency during one season in Tallahassee.
Posting a paltry assist per turnover ratio of 0.77, Isaac simply wasn’t comfortable in pick-and-roll situations and doesn’t have the elite athleticism or quickness to beat his man off the dribble and collapse the defense.
When Isaac was able to get to the rim, finishing in traffic wasn’t his forte. That said, he did manage to carve out a knack for getting to the foul line with some effectiveness and converted on 78% when he got there – Isaac finished his freshman season with a FTA per FGA ratio of 0.46 – better than small-forward draft counterparts Josh Jackson, Jayson Tatum, OG Anunoby, Jaron Blossomgame, Tyler Lydon, Devin Robinson, Dillon Brooks, Dwayne Bacon and Justin Jackson, according to the DraftExpress.com database.
With the ball in his hands Isaac settled for pull-up jumpers at a high volume, but he has the ability to walk his defender down and create space with his footwork.
Leonard Hamilton’s Florida State team went 10 players deep, at a minimum, during Isaac’s freshman season. The ‘Noles were loaded with talent and guards Xavier Rathan-Mayes and Dwayne Bacon were known to pound the ball, hunting their shot, as the shot-clock ran down. There weren’t enough basketballs to go around in Tallahassee last season and this had an effect on Isaac.
Isaac only used 14.6% of his teams possessions per game – a very low mark for a prospect considered to be a top-10 pick – his usage rate ranked 83rd of the top 100 players in the DraftExpress database. Would JI have been able to show scouts more of his offensive game with more opportunities? Maybe. Maybe not. There are flashes from Isaac that show a prospect who can competently play on the wing offensively |
the criticism that always emanates in these situations while trying to do the best job we can. Let me also add that sometimes there is a notion that we are fair-weather friends, who come when times are good and leave as soon as our leave expires. I didn’t leave when my leave expired; there was absolutely no issue about extending my leave, if necessary. I left when the government and I could not agree on terms for me to stay on. In that sense, the notion that we come to India for our sabbaticals is just not an appropriate criticism.I say this because there was a column in a newspaper a few weeks ago which seemed to suggest that I went back even though the government asked me to stay because the University of Chicago was not willing to extend my leave. I think the appropriate answer to that is we never reached a point where the government made me an offer to stay on.There was no offer on the table. That’s fair to say.I am very hopeful. I think the government has done some very important things such as the goods and services tax reforms because politically a difficult task has been done. This is one situation where the dividends will pay off in the longer run even though there might be short-term disruptions. It will also help in curbing tax evasion in addition to uniting the country as a single market and reducing transactions. This is a major reform.The immediate concern is that private investment hasn’t picked up and, as a result, jobs haven’t been created to the extent that we need. In an emerging market the biggest source of jobs is construction. I think it is fair to say we need to do more here. We need to ensure that some of these reforms that have taken place – the real estate Act, GST, and so on – are also met with moves to enhance investment so that the country can make use of what the Economic Survey calls a sweet spot. There is a very good external environment and it is something that we should take advantage of now. Unfortunately, with private investment not picking up, so far we haven’t. I would say three big places we need to work hard on are cleaning up the banks and putting those projects that are languishing back on track to the extent possible, and then recapitalising the banks to ensure that they have the money to lend when growth picks up. Second, in the power sector, we have to be fairly careful that going forward we don’t have more distress. The reforms required by UDAY have to be accelerated, and discom losses have to be brought down faster.The third element that is extremely important is agriculture. We need to increase productivity in agriculture and also reduce the gap between what the farmer gets and what is paid by retail buyers. This means improving the quality of markets giving farmers access to productivity tools and insurance. All these we have been working on for some time but I always said the problem in India is not that we don’t know what to do. It is that we should have done it yesterday or last week.Actually, I am very focused on writing and research right now. And I don’t believe I have any sort of political aptitude. I am happy where I am.Conservative media and Religious Right leaders and activists are touting a new poll that supposedly shows Americans “overwhelmingly” side with “religious liberty” over gay rights. The new poll, conducted by Fox News contributor Patrick Caddell, adopts right-wing framing that pits religious freedom and LGBT equality in conflict with each other. Even in that context, a majority agrees that both religious liberties and the rights of gays and lesbians are important, and that “there can be a common sense solution that both protects religious freedom and protects gay and lesbian couples from discrimination.”
Of course, religious liberty and LGBT equality can happily coexist, despite claims to the contrary from the Right, but anti-equality advocates touting the Caddell poll suggest that the “common sense solution” is a “truce” that would allow business owners to discriminate against gay people based on their religious beliefs. Anti-gay extremist Peter LaBarbera is arguing that the poll shows that people see a war on Christians coming out of the “homosexual activist movement” and he is urging Americans to push for repeal of existing “sexual orientation laws and gender identity laws.”
The Caddell poll, an online survey of 800 voters, asserts that more than two-thirds of Americans – 68% — believe the government should not be able “to require by law a private citizen to provide a service or provide their private property for an event that is contrary to their religious beliefs.” More specifically, the poll claims that 82 percent of Americans supports the right of a photographer with religious objections to same-sex couples getting married to refuse to photograph a gay couple’s wedding.
Conservatives are complaining that the Caddell poll is being “ignored by the establishment media.” But there are some good reasons for that.
First, Caddell’s numbers are far out of line with other surveys that show Americans are uncomfortable with the can of worms that would be opened by allowing business owners to cite religion as a reason to opt out of laws that apply to everyone else. In an article in the Atlantic in June, Robert Jones of Public Religion Research Institute writes:
By a margin of nearly two to one, Americans oppose allowing a small business owner to refuse products or services to gay and lesbian people, even if doing so violates their religious beliefs (60 percent oppose, 34 percent favor). Most religious groups oppose these exemptions; white evangelical Protestants are the only religious group with majority support for these exemptions, and even among this group, support is only a bare majority (51 percent).
PRRI has also reported that white evangelical Protestants were the only religious group that gives majority support – and then only 51 percent – to so called “religious freedom” laws designed to protect business owners and others who do not want to serve LGBT people or couples.
By contrast, 59% of white mainline Protestants, 63% of non-white Protestants, and 64% of Catholics oppose allowing small business owners to refuse service to gay and lesbian people on religious grounds, as do nearly three-quarters (73%) of religiously unaffiliated Americans.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll published in March of last year found that “nearly seven in 10 respondents say business should not be allowed to refuse service to gays,” even if that refusal if based on the owner’s religious beliefs.” And an earlier poll, a 2013 survey by Human Rights Campaign and Third Way, reported that when asked specifically about wedding-related services being provided by small businesses, “64% of voters were still opposed to new laws that would allow small businesses to deny wedding-related services based on their religious beliefs, compared to 31% in favor.”
Other polls show more of a split among Americans on the issue, but they too are far from the results Caddell reports. A Pew Research Center survey from last year found Americans about equally divided about whether businesses that provide wedding services should be allowed to refuse service to same-sex couples on religious grounds or whether they should be required to provide services. And an Associated Press-GfK poll from earlier this year found that while a slim majority of Americans said wedding-related businesses should be allowed to refuse service to same-sex couples, only 40 percent said businesses in general should be allowed to.
Another reason journalists might view the poll with skepticism may be Caddell himself. Caddell is a Fox News regular who is useful to right-wingers by virtue of the fact that he describes himself as a Democratic strategist who helped get Jimmy Carter elected. But he has long since acted as an advocate for the Right by trashing the Democratic Party as the “tool” of special interests and saying “the left doesn’t care about ordinary people.”
Last year, on Sean Hannity’s show, Caddell denounced President Barack Obama as “a raging narcissist who has no grip on reality” and accused Republicans of not opposing him strongly enough. Caddell reportedly helped identify people to appear in an anti-Obama “documentary” distributed by the right-wing group Citizens United.
New York Magazine recently reported that Caddell has been speaking to Donald Trump “almost every day” about his campaign.The World Flying Disc Federation and BULA revealed the two versions of the game discs that will be used at the 2017 World Championships of Beach Ultimate in Royan, France. There will be a white disc and a fluorescent yellow disc. Both are championship level approved Discraft UltraStar 175g discs.
All games that are broadcast will be played with the fluorescent yellow game discs. Tests have shown that the yellow fluorescent disc stands out better on TV and online livestream, making it easier for the viewers to follow the game.
Heat absorbing tests show that the fluorescent yellow disc stays firmer than other colors when exposed to the sun, while in-competition tests showed that there is not a significant impact on play using a fluorescent disc.
Teams playing on fields without broadcast will have the option to choose between white and yellow, with the default being the traditional white disc. Teams are encouraged to play and practice with yellow disc before the WCBU starts.
Fluorescent discs can be purchased at Discraft online retailers. Discraft is a proud partner of the WFDF and WCBU2017.More than half of misogynistic posts by Twitter users in the UK and America are written by women, according to a new large-scale study. A report that analysed 19 million tweets over four years found three million posts including insults aimed at women. The users who had posted the insults were more likely to be female than male.
The research, conducted by social media monitoring company Brandwatch, found the people of Co Tyrone, in Northern Ireland and Methyr Tydfil, in South Wales, to be the most prolific offenders.
Yet the report, to be published by anti-bullying charity Yet the report, to be published by anti-bullying charity Ditch the Label, included words such as “bitch” that have been assimilated into common usage and are not always deemed offensive.
The charity said the findings demonstrated policy should to be aimed at reducing misogyny among both sexes.
More than 60 per cent of the offensive tweets posted by women used derogatory animal references such as “cow” and “bitch”. Men were instead likely to make personal comments about a woman’s intelligence, sexual orientation and/or anatomy.
UK news in pictures
22 show all UK news in pictures
1/22 13 October 2016 Queen Elizabeth II reviews the parade as she marks the Centenary of the Corps of the Royal Engineers at Brompton Barracks Getty
2/22 13 October 2016 Queen Elizabeth II reviews the parade alongside Lieutenant General Sir Mark Mans and Lieutenant Colonel Sean Cunniff from the back of her customised Range Rover Vogue as she marks the Centenary of the Corps of the Royal Engineers at Brompton Barracks in Chatham, England Getty
3/22 13 October 2016 British Prime Minister Theresa May walks with Spain's acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Spain Reuters
4/22 12 October 2016 Sunset over Mudeford, Dorset, UK Matthew Pinner/Rex Shutterstock
5/22 11 October 2016 Sir Rod Stewart with his wife, Penny Lancaster and children Alastair and Aiden after he received his knighthood in recognition of his services to music and charity at Buckingham Palace Getty
6/22 11 October 2016 Queen Elizabeth II greets Sir Rod Stewart and wife Penny Lancaster after he was awarded a knighthood in recognition of his services to music and charity earlier in the day as they attend a reception and awards ceremony at Royal Academy of Arts Getty
7/22 10 October 2016 Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters
8/22 10 October 2016 A general view of Stocks Farm which grows apples and hops and employs migrant workers to help harvest the fruit, in Suckley, Britain Reuters
9/22 10 October 2016 Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters
10/22 10 October 2016 A general view of Stocks Farm which grows apples and hops and employs migrant workers to help harvest the fruit, in Suckley, Britain Reuters
11/22 10 October 2016 Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry take a ride in a pod of the London Eye with members of the mental health charity 'Heads together'on world mental health day in London Reuters
12/22 10 October 2016 Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry take a ride in a pod of the London Eye with members of the mental health charity "Heads together" on world mental health day in London Reuters
13/22 10 October 2016 Eight year old Kate Cameron stands with Abernethy at the 119th annual autumn sale of pedigree highland cattle in Oban, Scotland. The show and sale is held over two days and is open to all highland breed enthusiasts, attracting many buyers from across Europe and North America Getty
14/22 6 October 2016 Sunrise over the Brasschaat bulk carrier in the North Sea off the Whitley Bay coast PA
15/22 5 October 2016 Yeoman Warders 'Beefeaters', parade during the installation of General Sir Nicholas Houghton as the 160th Constable of the Tower of London during a ceremony in front of the White Tower at Tower of London Getty
16/22 5 October 2016 An art installation titled The Phoenix In The Stone is projected on to Leeds Civic Hall ahead of Light Night Leeds. The Grade II listed Leeds Civic Hall is transformed into a giant projection piece entitled 'The Phoenix In The Stone,'created by Illuminos artists Matt and Rob Vale. The installation is the centre piece of this years Light Night Leeds celebrations which will illuminate the city over two nights on October 6th and 7th. The programme features more than 50 free-events featuring international and local artists who will transform Leeds's mix of historic and contemporary buildings and striking public spaces. PA
17/22 5 October 2016 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May is embraced by her husband Philip after giving her speech on the final day of the annual Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, Britain Reuters
18/22 5 October 2016 Work continues on HMS Audacious, the fourth Astute-class nuclear-powered fleet submarine of the Royal Navy, at BAE Systems, Burrow-in-Furness PA
19/22 4 October 2016 A stag walks with bracken stuck on its antlers due to breeding, in what is known as the rutting season in Richmond Park, south west London AP
20/22 4 October 2016 Trees stand shrouded in an inversion fog in Richmond Park, south west London AP
21/22 4 October 2016 Mute swans flex their wings as they preen themselves as the sun shines on the round pond in Hyde Park, London AP
22/22 3 October 2016 A judge takes a selfie as he follows a procession of judges in to the houses of parliament in London EPA
by Brandwatch has found that the words “slut” or “whore” are mentioned on Twitter around 3,000 times per day. Previous analysis by Brandwatch has found that the words “slut” or “whore” are mentioned on Twitter around 3,000 times per day.
In May a cross-party campaign called “Reclaim the Internet” – headed by Labour MP Yvette Cooper – was launched to address growing public concern about the impact of hate speech online.
On launching the campaign, Yvette Cooper told The Guardian : “Forty years ago women took to the streets to challenge attitudes and demand action against harassment on the streets. On launching the campaign, Yvette Cooper told: “Forty years ago women took to the streets to challenge attitudes and demand action against harassment on the streets.
“Today the internet is our streets and public spaces. Yet for some people online harassment, bullying, misogyny, racism or homophobia can end up poisoning the internet and stopping them from speaking out.
“ We have responsibilities as online citizens to make sure the internet is a safe space. Challenging online abuse can’t be done by any organisation alone. This needs everyone.”Manchester United have made an informal inquiry to Chelsea about the possibility of bringing Juan Mata to Old Trafford during the summer transfer window, sources from both clubs have told ESPN.
Juan Mata had been tipped to be used as a bargaining tool in Chelsea's move for Wayne Rooney.
It is unknown whether the contact has been part of the ongoing Wayne Rooney saga or whether the English champions would be open to a straight swap of the players, but they believe a deal could be possible.
Word from Chelsea throughout the summer has been that Mata is not for sale, and he is understood to be one of owner Roman Abramovich's three favourite players at Stamford Bridge.
An undercurrent of the summer, however, has been that Blues boss Jose Mourinho is not as keen on the Spanish playmaker. Although Mousinho is fully prepared to use him as one of the primary attacking players in his first-choice XI, he is said to think that offloading Mata may not be the worst decision if it ensured strengthening elsewhere -- especially up front.
Chelsea’s reported interest in Anzhi Makhachkala's Willian has only added to the uncertainty.
It is also understood Romelu Lukaku had been broached as a potential makeweight in any deal for Rooney, but his exit from Chelsea seems unlikely. Meanwhile, United's stance remains the same: Rooney is not for sale.
The Old Trafford club remain relaxed about eventually bringing in Marouane Fellaini and Leighton Baines from Everton before the end of the window, but their pursuit of Luka Modric has stalled. Carlo Ancelotti sees the midfielder as a key player for Real Madrid this season, with that feeling accentuated by Xabi Alonso's metatarsal injury.Illustration by Denis Carrier
Five decades of work on antidepressant drugs have not made them more likely to lift people out of depression. Medications and psychotherapies help some people with the disease, but fail many others. In a study1 conducted in real clinical settings, a common antidepressant produced a response in just under half of the participants, and achieved full remission in only 28%.
Failures to improve efficacy reflect continued ignorance of the molecular mechanisms of depression. Progress in other disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia, suggest that the best hope for insights is to identify specific genetic variants associated with the disease. However, success in depression will require studies of much larger collections of human DNA samples than in other diseases if statistically significant signals are to come through. The investments will be well worth it.
Serendipity's curse
Today's antidepressants all descend from serendipitous observations in human trials of two molecules more than 50 years ago: imipramine, synthesized as a potential antipsychotic drug, and iproniazid, designed to treat tuberculosis. Neither worked for its intended purpose, but both relieved the symptoms of depression. More than 20 antidepressants followed, all working in roughly the same way as these two — boosting signalling by neurotransmitters, mostly noradrenaline and serotonin. Although newer drugs are less toxic, none has greater efficacy than the first drugs of the 1950s2.
What went wrong? Researchers attempting to make new antidepressants developed rodent behavioural assays based on the effects of imipramine and iproniazid on healthy laboratory animals. Unsurprisingly, these assays selected new compounds that act similarly to the drugs on which they were based2.
To find more-effective drugs that help more people, we must look for drugs that work in different ways. In the past decade, some investigators have returned to observing drug effects in depressed people and found, for instance, that a dose of intravenous ketamine (which blocks one of the receptors for the neurotransmitter glutamate) relieves symptoms of depression rapidly and for up to a week. Although potentially leading to new treatments, observations of this sort are unlikely to yield deep molecular insights into the mechanisms of depression.
Any drug that perturbs several circuits and cell types in a complex system such as the brain yields an enormous number of divergent effects. Which of these myriad effects matters? Without independent clues of what happens in the brain to produce depression, researchers cannot seek out those drug effects that might counteract the pathology. After 50 years, we still do not know very much about how imipramine (sometimes) reverses the symptoms of depression.
Hurdles to overcome
Depression is difficult to study: it is hard to find features of the brain to focus on. The plaques and tangles observed in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease provided important early clues to amyloid-β and tau protein. In contrast to many other brain disorders, depression lacks distinctive pathology, not even the thinning of the brain's cortex seen in schizophrenia.
For now, animal models are more likely to be a source of distraction than insight. The cellular and molecular mechanisms — and thus possible drug targets — by which humans exert cognitive control over thought, emotion and behaviour differ markedly from those in mice and rats. Rodents lack the brain region crucial for human cognitive control, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
Source: Ref. 7
Deciphering signals in humans will be tough. People with major depressive disorder (MDD), according to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), span diverse ages of onset, mixtures of symptoms and impairments, and show varied treatment responsiveness. A person can be diagnosed with major depression by meeting any five of nine criteria. Thus, some participants enrolled in a study might overlap on only a single, varying criterion. Moreover, in the DSM-5, the threshold for being considered ill was determined arbitrarily. Unlike hypertension or blood pressure, there are no empirical studies of outcome that set the bar for a medical diagnosis.
Hidden clues
Amid these traps, one clue to molecular mechanisms of depression has long beckoned: genetic analysis. Spurred by recent technological developments, genetic analysis has begun to yield powerful clues in autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder3, 4.
But unravelling the genetics of depression also faces significant obstacles. The heritability — the fraction of phenotypic variance explained by genes — is 35% for MDD, compared with 65–80% for the psychiatric diseases for which genetic analysis is proving very successful3, 4. Several lines of evidence argue that risk of depression is highly polygenic, involving many hundreds of genes. This, combined with diagnostic 'noise' — that is, the heterogeneity and misdiagnosis of people with MDD — drives up the number of subjects needed to find significant genetic associations. Combined with our ignorance of disease mechanisms for depression, the tiny signal-to-noise ratio has doomed past searches for candidate genes and gene–environment interactions5.
The largest meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of depression (approximately 9,500 cases) has yielded no significant findings6. Similarly sized studies of almost all other conditions have convincingly implicated7 at least some genetic loci (see 'Signal search'). So far, 108 independent loci have been found to demonstrate genome-wide significance for schizophrenia4.
“The tiny signal-to-noise ratio has doomed past searches for candidate genes.”
Nonetheless, I am convinced that genetic variants for depression can be found. Type 2 diabetes also has a heritability of 35% or lower. Perhaps because this type of diabetes can be diagnosed simply and objectively, studies with fewer than 10,000 cases have identified many common genetic variants. More than 100,000 people with MDD will be needed to find enough loci to inform biology and therapeutics. Amassing a data set of this scale is difficult, but worthwhile and possible. A meta-analysis8 of genome-wide association studies published earlier this year for adult height included more than 250,000 subjects and has found 697 common variants thus far, explaining nearly one-fifth of the heritability.
Scientific toeholds
Diagnosing MDD is more challenging than measuring height, of course, but the extra effort and cost are justified to illuminate the world's greatest source of disability. We will need a global coalition to assemble the requisite number of samples. An assessment of common genetic variants for psychiatric disorders now costs less than US$100 per person; recruiting participants and the logistics of obtaining and shipping DNA samples have costs, but samples can be made available from many existing studies of depression and from registries in Scandinavia. Samples of other ethnicities are also being assembled.
It took about five years for the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium to collect and analyse nearly 40,000 schizophrenia cases. Similar efforts in depression are gearing up, and should proceed smoothly because the steps in the genetic analysis of psychiatric disorders are now well understood, a microarray (gene chip) fit for the task is available, and experienced scientists are prepared to perform the analysis.
Once genetic loci are identified and shared with the scientific community, many investigators, drawn by the emergence of biologically actionable clues, will rush to put the information to work. This is what has happened in the past decade in autism research. When I was director of the US National Institute of Mental Health, from 1996 to 2001, parent groups and the US Congress strongly encouraged me to increase investments in autism research. Seeing no clear scientific paths forward I was reticent, and requests for proposals generally yielded weak grant applications.
However, genetic insights9 transformed a featureless landscape into one with real scientific toeholds. This work has not yet yielded new treatments, but there is now a path. New genetic insights even led to clinical trials of treatments for Fragile X syndrome, which has both autism and intellectual disability as cardinal features. Although these trials were unsuccessful, drug companies have now begun to consider this condition as amenable to pharmacological treatment.
“I am convinced that genetic variants for depression can be found.”
Critics will counter that the genetic discoveries among certain autism spectrum disorders are rare mutations of large effect, and those to be expected in depression will be common variants with small effects on risk. The answer is that definitively identified risk alleles will point to genes involved in pathogenesis and these genes will, in turn, identify biological pathways that provide potential targets for therapeutics. Risk alleles also show whether candidate drugs should increase, decrease or otherwise alter the activity of the implicated pathway. In 2012, a variant in the gene that produces β-amyloid precursor protein was identified as protecting against Alzheimer's disease, providing powerful evidence that drugs targeting amyloid peptides might work.
Genetic loci for depression will be especially useful when considered in the context of variants that contribute to other neuropsychiatric disorders. Just as inflammatory diseases and autoimmune diseases have both shared and unshared risk alleles, major depression will have risk variants that overlap with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and several other psychiatric disorders. Comparing the effects of genes shared across diseases and those associated with just a single disease will hopefully be informative10.
To assess the biological significance of the genetics, reprogramming human skin fibroblast cells into neurons and gene-editing technologies will be hugely useful. Human skin cells can now be coaxed into forming increasingly specific types of neuron, and risk variants can be engineered into or removed from cells. As a result, researchers can interrogate hundreds of variants for their effects on human cells and, for the first time, screen drugs for psychiatric disorders in vitro. It will be difficult to relate cellular phenotypes to the symptoms of depressed individuals, but new technologies to examine circuits in vitro, in animals and in people could help.
Although the individual effects of specific risk alleles will probably be very low, the information they could yield is enormous. They will allow researchers to rely on understanding, and not just luck, to make inroads into one of the biggest causes of human misery.A woman farms with her cow in rural Bangladesh on May 13, 2007. (Photo: Jankie)
Industrial agriculture and financial sectors are hand-in-hand worsening climate change and then profiting from it, with an unprecedented number of land grabs over the last eight years, according to a report released Tuesday.
The campaign group GRAIN explained that land grabs are heightening food insecurity, entrenching corporate agriculture schemes, and increasing and intensifying land conflicts.
The wave of global land grabs borne out of the 2008 food and financial crises has now reached tsunami proportions, as GRAIN’s research shows that the number of land grab initiatives has ballooned from 100 in 2008 to 491 in 2016, spanning 78 countries across the globe with large concentrations in Africa, and to a lesser extent in Latin America, East Asia and the Pacific.
And climate change is compounding the situation.
“We now have even more evidence that climate change is caused not just by burning coal and oil for transport and energy, but by the industrial food system itself and the corporate quest for profits that drives its expansion,” the report states. “Indeed, climate change and land grabs are inextricably linked.”
The people suffering the brunt of this are small-scale farmers, pastoralists, and Indigenous communities, who are displaced by multinational corporations and financial investors scrambling for arable lands and water resources.
According to Kartini Samon, a GRAIN researcher from Indonesia, land grabs are also a form of neocolonialism.
“If we reflect on the old style of colonialism … (it) is really about extracting natural resources and cheap labor; expanding plantations in colonial lands like the case in Indonesia,” Samon told teleSUR. “The pattern is the same now, but using different strategies either through trade and investment agreements or implementing laws that legalize the process to happen.”
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, for instance, is a trade agreement on the verge of passage spearheaded by the United States that includes 11 Pacific Rim countries that encompass almost half of the global economy. It facilitates export-oriented industrial agriculture and allows corporations to sue governments over public interest laws that could cover anything from land to labor and environmental policies. And the TPP is just part of a decades-long legacy of free trade agreements perpetuating this pattern that Samon mentioned, starting in 1994 with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has served largely as a model for all the trade deals that came after it. These same principles are also championed by international financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
According to the GRAIN report, policy makers and corporate board rooms are trying to mask these destructive land deals in the language of “corporate social responsibility,” through voluntary “frameworks” and “guidelines” to minimize social and environmental costs.
“Yes, the language has been used to greenwash new land grabs,” said Samon. “Both politically and in practice, it rarely works to the advantage of local communities. Rather, it creates a mirage of accountability … these so-called responsible investment schemes or corporate social responsibility is nothing more than a public relations exercise.”
Violent land conflicts are another component of the past decade’s land grabbing phenomenon, which are hard to mask.
“The major issue for us comparing 2008 to now is that now we have seen so many conflicts erupt, people have died and people have been arrested,” Devlin Kuyek, a Canada-based GRAIN researcher, told teleSUR.
Kuyek said that this has a lot to do with the fact that now these deals have gone from being signed agreements to actually being implemented.
His colleague Samon agreed.
“In recent years we see how there’s growing repression and human rights violations happening to grassroots resistance and land defenders,” she said. “From Cambodia to Cameroon, from Indonesia to Ivory Coast, we see increasing threats and the use of violence to repress communities fighting back.”
But amid the violence, poverty and desperation caused by these land grabs, grassroots resistance is growing.
“There is more of a convergence of peasant movements, farmer organizations and of larger civil society movements recognizing the major issue here, and that is it’s a structural change that is required,” said Kuyek.
He added that because the policy making process is “so captured by corporate interests,” social movement organizing may be the best, if not last hope, to reversing, or even curbing the land grabbing scourge.
“The issue is about the transformation of power and you see the social movements that are active in agriculture and active on land issues understand that it’s about social transformation and I think where there’s a promise for change and where social movements have their strength is that sort of convergence of struggles,” said Kuyek.When I saw the trailer for Tom Clancy’s The Division back at E3 2013, I didn’t get it. Everyone else seemed to be drooling over the game while I couldn’t care less. Year after year, more of The Division would be shown and I just didn’t care. Then came launch date and I heard the positives of the game from the critics. I had a buddy who was getting it so I took a shot and purchased the game on launch day.
More than 300 hours later, I can safely say The Division was my favorite game of 2016. Apparently, that makes me a Donald Trump supporter for some odd reason.
With the release of the game, there was a slew of love coming from gamers and critics. This was before either group had to deal with the lack of an endgame and the rogues of the Dark Zone, but that’s for another post. What followed after the lovefest was the Trumpfest.
Articles like “Why ‘Tom Clancy’s The Division’ is Donald Trump’s Dream Game,” “Welcome to Trump’s America” and “The Perfect Game for Trump’s America” focused on the aspect of an all-powerful elite group of sleeper agents who are, essentially, above the law. Don’t get me wrong, this is a frightening proposition to think of, but these writers’ were focusing too much on real-world politics rather than in-game politics.
What lacked in these articles was the understanding of how terrible life has become of this digital New York City. In the accompanying novel for the game, “Tom Clancy’s The Division: New York Collapse,” you read what are basically journal entries by one woman who is trying to survive in the city that was just hit with an apocalyptic virus. After reading these entries, all you want for her is to be safe and, while the book doesn’t focus on the Division agents, her run-ins with those agents show how they’re the ones trying to help bring some normalcy to a ravaged city. They’re the heroes.
In the case of Andrew Todd’s review, the agents are no heroes:
“You are a government agent assigned to protect property from poor people. You do this by killing the poor people.”
Then again, I’m sure Mr. Todd didn’t read the novel, and for good reason, as reading a novel is hardly part of the job of a game reviewer. That said, there’s a case to be made that Todd and others who view The Division as Trump’s Final Fantasy intentionally misconstrued the game to align with their personal politics.
As mentioned later in that review, your first mission is to “kill some troublemakers.” Actually, it isn’t. You can view the video below and at 8:42, the mission is to find food supplies that the Rioters (the low-level gang in the game) have stolen and are going to try and sell back to the people. Mr. Todd also mentioned how the “troublemakers” were rummaging through a garbage bag, which again, wasn’t true.
In the case of the three articles, they all express a concern for killing people in “hoodies” and blue-collar workers. For the hoodie part, the timing of The Division’s release did not do the game any favors considering the Black Live Matters movement and the killing of Trayvon Martin. That said, as someone who recently moved to New York City and is experiencing his first real winter, there’s a reason why so many people wear hoodies around here. As for the blue-collar workers, known as The Cleaners, they seem to ignore that this particular gang is more akin to a cult. Think Scientologists, but with flamethrowers.
Maybe this lack of understanding of the game’s story and character motives is a knock against the developer, Massive Entertainment. It’s safe to say that Massive has had their share of stumbles since the release of the game, but it’s clear that some writers want to take their shots at Donald Trump even if it means subjecting a game to a bevy of false accusations to satisfy that itch.
As for why I played The Division for 300+ hours, well, frankly, this game scratches an itch. My own need for a co-op game where players team up to complete missions and look for loot. It also helps that the game has a realistic approach to weapons rather than a sci-fi theme like Destiny or fantasy theme like Borderlands.
But what I love the most, and something many have grown to hate, is that lovely Dark Zone. Never in a game have I felt so much tension as when I call for an extraction and see a group of players run my way. Do I see if they’re friendly? Do I run away? Do I wait to see how this plays out? Do I shoot first? These are the kind of decisions that are found in the online survival games like DayZ. But let’s face facts, those games are still kind of a mess.
When it comes down to it, I’m going to keep playing The Division and enjoy the digital New York City where my actions save digital lives, and not the political digital New York City, as written in articles, where I’m a soldier for Trump shooting every poor person I see.Well, this will annoy all the right people.
Someone created a parody Muppets video where the character called “Crazy Harry,” the show’s explosive expert, shouts “Allahu Akbar” as he blows up the other Muppets characters and the set, all to the tune of the 1985 song “We Are The World.”
Check it out:
40 years ago, The Muppet Show told the truth. pic.twitter.com/mvyZPaXj5l — John Panda Skjult (@skjultster) July 1, 2017
Crazy Harry was a staple on the old “Muppets Show” and was always blowing up the puppets. For example, this Civil War reenactment:
And here he is blowing up Gonzo:
And Animal:
***
Related:
Here's a thought: NYC truck terrorist could have yelled 'Allahu Akbar' randomly https://t.co/zqHf3Kb5ED — Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) November 1, 2017
Can we at least agree this mispronunciation of 'Allahu Akbar' is, inarguably, 100% true? https://t.co/aPuyvH3HGe — Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) November 1, 2017
Hot take from Linda Sarsour and others: We cannot criminalize 'Allahu Akbar' https://t.co/L5btykVHzu — Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) October 31, 2017
NBC News: Suspect shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ before stabbing officer at Flint, Mich. airport https |
pimping of minors as a form of trafficking under state law, as it is classified under federal law. The bill stalled last year before finally making it through the Assembly in late June. It goes before the state Senate appropriations committee this month.
Legal And Legislative Victories
Alameda County first began recognizing commercial sexual exploitation of children as a serious problem in the early 2000s, according to Barbara Loza-Muriera, a facilitator with the county’s Interagency Children’s Policy Council and program specialist with its Sexually Exploited Minors Network.
The juvenile court’s presiding judge at the time, Brenda Harbin-Forte, was part of the children’s policy council executive committee and was the first to raise the issue with the group, Loza-Muriera said.
She said Harbin-Forte was noticing that when she looked more closely at many young girls who came before her facing shoplifting or drug charges, she found that they were prostitutes.
Sure enough, Loza-Muriera said, law enforcement and social workers were also dealing with the problem, even though it hadn’t been identified as a prevalent issue up to that point.
“Juvenile justice people put things in categories, but this permeated everything,” Loza-Muriera said. “Truancy, stealing. It was a forest-and-the-trees kind of thing.”
The county quickly established a task force for dealing with commercial sexual exploitation of children and never looked back, she said. The group spent almost a year homing in on what they perceived as the two most pressing issues: the crime itself and the need to focus on sexual exploitation directly instead of peripherally.
County officials identify about 200 new sexually exploited children annually and case manage another 120 from previous years, Loza-Muriera said.
Anti-trafficking laws are derived from the U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment, which states that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude” shall exist in the U.S. except as punishment for a crime.
Prosecutors, however, didn’t have any federal statutes or sentencing laws to attack human trafficking—defined by the United Nations as “the acquisition of people by improper means such as force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them”—until Congress passed the federal Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000.
State lawmakers followed suit in 2005 when they added trafficking, the state’s first new crime category since 1999, to California’s penal code.
But human trafficking is a broad classification, and most trafficking involves immigrants and forced labor, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Domestic sex trafficking, particularly of minors, is not as widely acknowledged or understood, activists say.
Sharmin Bock, a deputy district attorney from Alameda County who is now running for district attorney in San Francisco, prosecuted the state’s first human trafficking case and has been working with Swanson to change the language of California’s penal code to reflect the reality of commercial sexual exploitation of minors.
She said the problem has reached epidemic proportions in Alameda County as the law slowly changes to take into account the emotional manipulation and psychological terror that pimps use to control the girls, many of whom start as young as 12 or 13.
“Children don’t identify as victims because they’re still under the coercive effect of their traffickers,” she said.
Prosecuting the pimps therefore requires convincing the girls to cooperate with police and showing jurors that the girls are victims, even if their trauma is not visible on the surface.
Police and prosecutors describe two types of pimps: “guerilla pimps,” who physically force girls to sell their bodies, and “Romeo pimps,” who foster emotional ties to the girls and act as though they’re in romantic relationships.
The Romeo pimps, who are much more common, start out slowly, gaining the girls’ trust before asking them to turn just a few tricks to help pay the rent or finance a trip together, according to Loza-Muriera. They expose the girls to violence and implicitly threaten them before finally making overt demands.
The girls, most of whom come from broken homes or unstable upbringings, believe they’re in legitimate relationships. They say they’re in love with the pimps even though they’re terrified of them.
“Despite what has occurred, one of the greatest challenges is ensuring the child is on the train when the train pulls into the courtroom,” Bock said.
As it currently reads, California’s penal code requires that “force, fraud or coercion” be demonstrated to prove that an individual has been a victim of trafficking.
But Bock and Swanson want to amend the language to conform with federal law, which says any commercial sexual exploitation of a minor is automatically classified as human trafficking.
“It would ensure California children receive the same protections under state law as federal law,” Bock said.
Swanson introduced AB 2319 in 2010 to amend the Penal Code, but it stalled in the appropriations committee because of budget concerns.
Adding trafficking charges to convictions leads to more prison time, which costs the state more money, Swanson spokeswoman Amy Alley explained.
Most of the 2010 bills that would have cost money were held indefinitely, so Swanson reintroduced the bill as AB 90 earlier this year, Alley said. It passed the state Assembly on June 27. The bill goes before the Senate appropriations committee on Aug. 15.
“It’s a very good bill, and we will not stop this campaign,” Swanson said. “I’m prepared to introduce it next year if that becomes necessary, but we cannot stop. We have to show zero tolerance.”
Statewide Shortcomings
Another common criticism of the California Trafficking Victims Protection Act is its sentencing guidelines, said Kathleen Kim, a professor at Loyola of Los Angeles Law School. Kim started one of the Bay Area’s first legal aid programs for victims of human trafficking, the Human Trafficking Project, in 2002.
She also helped write the trafficking victims protection act and served on a state task force established under the legislation.
Maximum punishments for traffickers on a federal level are in the 20-year range, but state law allows a maximum of five years in prison for trafficking an adult and eight years in prison for trafficking a minor. Politics drove that decision, Kim said.
“For the state legislation there was a lot of advocacy involved,” she said. “We wanted to be able to pass the anti-trafficking act with the least resistance and most support across all sectors.”
Higher penalties would have resulted in pushback from the California Public Defenders Association, she said.
Police and district attorneys therefore work hard to pile on the charges and build a case that can garner a lengthier prison term, said Sgt. Holly Joshi, a spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department who spent three years with the vice and child exploitation unit.
A drab hallway in the Police Department’s headquarters on Seventh Street leads to a cluster of cubicles that comprise the four-person vice and child exploitation unit. One of the outside walls is adorned with a “wall of shame” featuring photos of the more than 100 men—and a few women—the team has put behind bars.
Captions on the photos list their subjects’ sentences: 235 years, 240 years.
Facilitating underage sex with a client, known as a “John,” constitutes a lewd act on a child, which requires registration as a sex offender, Joshi said. False imprisonment, statutory rape, child pornography, and other related charges are not uncommon.
Pimping and pandering are also separate felony charges; pimping is defined as living off the earnings of a prostitute, while pandering refers to facilitating prostitution or recruiting prostitutes.
Police take statements from the girls and use physical and electronic evidence such as Internet postings and cellphone records to build their cases.
The Internet presents both challenges and opportunities for police, Joshi said.
“The moment they post a photo of a child online it’s child porn,” she said. “Often that makes the FBI get involved. Once you start posting on different sites it can easily become an interstate commerce thing.”
According to Kim, the more pressing problem with the state’s response to human trafficking is therefore not the sentencing laws, but the absence of a unified state response.
The California Trafficking Victims Protection Act established a statewide task force, but the group disbanded in 2007 after issuing a 128-page report containing non-binding recommendations.
The state attorney general’s Crime and Violence Prevention Center was then disbanded in 2008 because of California’s budget crisis, which essentially ended coordinated statewide efforts to address human trafficking.
Although the 2007 task force recommended that the state Department of Justice work with the California Health and Human Services Agency to document human trafficking, no such databases have been created.
Trafficking arrests are not included in reported crime data, and the only data collected about victims pertains to homicide, according to the justice department.
Kim served on the state’s 2007 task force and said that although many individual jurisdictions are committed to weeding out trafficking, her time with the state committee showed her the benefits of a broader coalition.
“It really brought together a diverse array of perspectives, all from stakeholders,” she said. “It was actually really fundamental to a more sophisticated understanding of the problem.”
A statewide task force could resemble a steering or advisory committee used to put knowledge into implementation, she said. It would facilitate the sharing of research about cases and ideas for collaborating with the federal government.
“I think it could be used to inform each other of what different localities are doing,” she said. “Also for cross-training purposes.”
Multi-jurisdictional communication is also important because many pimps take their girls outside the state or to other localities, said Oakland police Officer Jim Saleda, acting sergeant of the department’s vice and child exploitation unit.
For instance, some local pimps take the girls to U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego twice a month, as well as to cities hosting All-Star games and national championships, Saleda said. Reno, Las Vegas and Phoenix seem to be popular destinations, he said.
Nuisance Businesses
Local municipalities aren’t waiting for the state to take action, though. In Oakland, several lawsuits have been brought against businesses that the city claims foster prostitution, particularly sexual exploitation of minors.
The Oakland City Attorney’s Office filed suits in December against three motels under the state’s Red Light Abatement Act, which lets cities sue to close nuisance businesses and collect civil penalties and other damages.
According to the suits, the Economy Inn at 122 E. 12th St.; Sage Motel at 4844 MacArthur Blvd.; and National Lodge at 1711 International Blvd. are known places of prostitution, which the suit alleges management has knowingly allowed to continue.
The allegations made against the Economy Inn, located along a section of Oakland’s International Boulevard commonly called the “Track” because of the prevalence of prostitution there, are particularly egregious.
The suit alleges that on March 16, 2008, a John raped a 17-year-old prostitute near the motel. Less than a month later, the suit states, a minister helping a prostitute escape her pimp was shot by the pimp in the motel parking lot.
The lawsuit also describes an incident on June 27, 2010, in which officers rescued a 16-year-old girl who was kidnapped, taken to the Economy Inn, and forced into prostitution by a pimp working out of the motel.
A month later, a 14-year-old girl was raped by two men—apparently the attack was orchestrated by two pimps trying to indoctrinate the girl into the sex trade, according to the suit.
That August, a man was arrested in a room with two 14-year-old girls who police believe the man was pimping out.
The lawsuit alleges that the motel has been a haven for “guerilla pimps” who use violence to keep their prostitutes in line, including one kidnapped out of Sacramento in August 2010 and one taken from San Diego in October.
The pimps raped and beat the women in addition to forcing them to work as prostitutes, the suit says.
The Economy Inn did not return calls seeking comment.
No less notorious to the Oakland Police Department is the National Lodge, also located on the Track about five blocks from the Economy Inn.
“A male undercover officer can drive into the National Lodge parking lot and honk, and girls come out,” said Officer Hamann Nguyen with the vice and child exploitation unit.
Mike Patel, the motel’s owner and manager, said he takes care of his property but can’t control what happens on the street outside.
He said the men who bring girls to the motel are not registered there.
“When I see them I kick them out,” he said. “I call the police. But I can do nothing when they’re outside.”
Some neighbors, however, are not convinced. Jody Terrazas raised two daughters a couple of blocks from the motel and owns a business nearby.
She said prostitution activity has fluctuated during the 40 years she and her husband have lived in the neighborhood, but that it has been a glaring problem ever since the National Lodge opened.
The sex trade is now on full view in the streets, she said.
“It’s really tough,” she said. “It affects us all.”
She said she raised her girls, now 32 and 33 years old, in a cloistered environment because there are turf wars among pimps on the streets.
Several months ago, rival pimps started firing shots at each other near International Boulevard and 18th Avenue, Terrazas said. A pimp and a prostitute were hit while sitting in the pimp’s car.
The pimp then opened the door and kicked the injured girl onto the street before driving off, Terrazas said.
Neighborhood girls are also mistaken for prostitutes, and young boys are susceptible to being caught up in the trade, she said.
Mili Bolanos, a spokeswoman with Oakland Community Organizations, said that’s why residents have decided they’ve had enough.
Members of the community have marched down International Boulevard several times this spring and summer to fight the prostitution, she said.
Police Chief Anthony Batts and Mayor Jean Quan have attended some of the “Safe Streets, Safe Kids” rallies, the most recent of which was held on Thursday.
“It’s marvelous,” Batts said Thursday of the community engagement. “It’s exactly what I want to see.”
He took over a bullhorn to introduce the officers in charge of the neighborhood and answer questions about police efforts to combat prostitution and human trafficking.
Marchers wore signs that said “Make our neighborhood safe” and “Honk for safe streets, safe kids.”
“Part of what’s so hard in our neighborhood is that by seeing this our kids are subconsciously thinking it’s OK, that it’s part of life,” Terrazas said.
That is part of why Swanson has committed so much of his legislative career to fighting sexual exploitation, he said.
“I feel that there, but for the grace of God, go I,” he said. “I think my purpose in being an elected official is to protect the health, education and safety of these children.”
(Copyright 2011 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)The most compact Bass Big Muff ever is packed with the ginormous Bass Big Muff sound. Controls for Volume, Tone and Sustain let you sculpt your distortion and drive, while the Dry switch mixes your dry bass with the Nano Bass Big Muff’s distortion.
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Quick specs:
• Tailor your drive and distortion with Sustain, Tone and Volume controls
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The new Nano Bass Big Muff is the latest EHX bass guitar pedal. It delivers that huge Bass Big Muff sound in nano-sized package.Quick specs:• Tailor your drive and distortion with Sustain, Tone and Volume controls• New Dry switch mixes the dry bass signal, at unity level, with the distortion• True bypass for maximum signal path integrity• Rugged die-cast chassis• 9Volt battery included, optional EHX 9.6DC-200 AC adaptor available.
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Do you have something that you'd like to share with the Electro-Harmonix community? (a tip on getting a great sound, a cool site, a video, or whatever?) Please send your suggestions to:SSG had been undervalued since the very start of the group stage. Although CuVee did receive some good remarks, the rest of the team were low on the radar of expectations. The same went to the bot lane duo, Ruler and CoreJJ.
However, the current meta almost forbids any team with a bad bot lane to strive too high. It can be said that, Samsung making it to the semi finals proves how much their bot lane is extraordinary.
Ruler has shown a consistent and impressive performance against Longzhu. Never overextending. He will always try to do the best with the situation he is given. With this, Samsung claimed 3 wins off Longzhu Gaming. After the game, Ruler was interviewed. Let’s see what he has to say about the flip of expectations and his journey to the semi finals!
¤ Why do you think it was such a convincing… convincing win for Samsung today?
I think in the first game of the best of 5s was the most important factor. Overall, I think my team had a better focus in the teamfights.
¤ You did really well and up against Pray. What do you think about your own performance today?
For the first game, I was still nervous. I think I made some small mistakes during the teamfights. After game one, the head coach told me that I am a better ADC player than Pray and to have confidence in myself. That made me more relaxed and made me perform even better.
¤ You are going to have a tough semi finals with either WE or C9. Who do you think you are going to end up playing and what you think about those teams?
I think WE has a higher chance to come to the semi finals. I think Mystic is a fantastic ADC player. I would like to play against him. I am really looking forward to that match up.The Security Council is convening today to discuss the ever growing crisis in Syria. This meeting comes days after the week-old ceasefire deal collapsed – after Russia supposedly hit an aid convoy. Several world leaders expressed their opinions on how events have unfolded in Syria, as well as their suggestions for a concrete plan to end the conflict.
John Kerry’s plan aimed to de-escalate the situation just enough for humanitarian aid, ABC reports. He wants there to be a no-fly zone over “key humanitarian routes” so that aid convoys can safely get to those who are in the most desperate need. Kerry insists that such measures will “restore credibility to effort to end” the civil war.
While countries like Uruguay and France commented on the harsh regime and the need for a stable ceasefire, Venezuela’s representative took her speaking time to condemn larger political powers. She warned that larger powers were using the crisis to gain political control. Venezuela’s rep insisted that “citizens are not tired of their governments” but tired of other powers trying to govern them.
Now, Venezuela is not the only nation that suggested that the crisis was being manipulated for political gain. After detailing the requirements for a successful ‘National Reconciliation’ dialogue, Spain’s representative mentioned that he also believed that there were external actors “taking advantage” of the civil war, though he did not make any specific allusions as to which nations. The United Kingdom’s representative began his speech by reminding the room that the “barbaric” humanitarian crisis was worsened “by the actions and inactions of the countries in this room,” and insisting that all nations set aside their own political interests to create an effective resolution.
However, the Venezuela representative specifically mentioned the United States in her speech. She recounted how the claims about weapons of mass destruction were proved false after the U.S. invasion. While she did not specifically blame the United State for Syria, the connection between the Iraq issue and her passionate warning about ‘acting on lies’ to the international community implies that – at least – she believes the U.S. is trying to gain political clout through the Syrian crisis.
The Venezuelan representative ended her speech by asserting that her nation will support a ‘peaceful’ and ‘political’ resolution for change in Syria.
The Syrian Arab Republic’s representative also critiqued the United States’ actions in his country. He noted that the coalition was formed “outside international legitimacy” and without a role for Syria itself. He told the Council that originally the United States said that they would only be using force against ISIS, but has not kept their promise. According to the representative, American aggression made it so “proxy war [became] real war.” After listing several mistakes made by the U.S. military, he claimed that America wants to “demonize the Syrian government and its allies.” He alluded to ‘nations’ that use propaganda to “prolong the crisis” to further their political interests. He wants to find a political solution to the crisis determined by only Syrians, so that they do not become “another Libya.”Hey Chief!
As you know we are working on a massive update, completely different from every other update and we couldn't be more excited to show it to you (very soon!).
In the meantime, learn about the balancing update for your home village that will go live at the same time as the BIG update! This round focuses on powering up late-game spells and helping the grind through Town Hall level 9.
NEW: Clone Spell level 5 (Town Hall 11)
Clone Spell levels 1-5 clone capacity increased • Clone Spell level 3 now available at Town Hall 10
Weak Clone Spells are underwhelming, especially at Town Hall 10, so we’ve unlocked more cloning capacity. The newest Clone Spell reaches 40 capacity, letting you get 8 Balloons or even 2 Dragons per spell!
NEW: Freeze Spell level 6 (Town Hall 11)
When facing off against the Eagle Artillery, every second of a Freeze Spell counts. The newest level helps to give your troops the time they need.
NEW: Heal Spell level 7 (Town Hall 10)
The utility of Heal Spells becomes quite limited against the heal-blocking effects of the Inferno Tower. A new level will help make those healing opportunities more compelling.
7th Gold Mine and Elixir Collector now available at Town Hall 9 (was 10)
Resources are tight on Town Hall 9, so giving earlier access to these collectors will help ease the grind.
Bomb damage increased
This highly important change ensures that one Bomb will always destroy a Wall Breaker of equal level.
Balloon attack rate increased
Balloons have enjoyed very high use rates since their latest “fast drop” balancing. This change doesn’t affect the speed of the fast drop or damage per second, but an increased attack rate means each bomb does less damage. This softens their initial attack, but makes follow-up attacks happen sooner.
Upgrade Time/Cost Discounts:
Freeze Spell levels 1-5
Clone Spell levels 1-5
Heal Spell levels 4-5
There will be much more content to come on the other side - stay tuned!
Clash on!
- The Clash of Clans TeamThis is a story of Reddit, race and taking pictures of women without their consent. Remarkably, it has a happy ending.
Earlier this week, an unidentified man surreptitiously took a picture of Ohio State University student Balpreet Kaur and posted it on Reddit, in the Funny section, with the caption: "I'm not sure what to make of this." Implicit in his words was the invitation that we all gawp at Kaur because she is a woman who has facial hair. Kaur, a student of neuroscience and psychology, was unaware that her picture had been taken until a friend mentioned it on Facebook, by which time her looks, outfit and turban were all being mocked anonymously on the internet.
With a humbling display of maturity, Kaur joined the thread and explained: "I realise that my gender is often confused and I look different than most women. However, baptised Sikhs believe in the sacredness of this body – it is a gift that has been given to us by the Divine Being (which is genderless, actually) and [we] must keep it intact as a submission to the divine will."
She goes on to explain that this involves not depilating: "Just as a child doesn't reject the gift of his/her parents, Sikhs do not reject the body that has been given to us." She also says: "I'm not embarrassed or even humiliated by the attention [negative and positive] that this picture is getting because, it's who I am."
Well, that shut the "douchebags" up. In their place, the thread was flooded with positive comments, backslaps and a fair amount of personal body image sharing in support of Kaur. Even more impressive, the man responsible for posting the picture offered a tail-between-the-legs mea culpa. "I felt the need to apologise to the Sikhs, Balpreet, and anyone else I offended when I posted that picture. Put simply it was stupid. Making fun of people is funny to some but incredibly degrading to the people you're making fun of. It was an incredibly rude, judgmental, and ignorant thing to post."
And so began a new thread of Reddit users praising the man for his apology. So what have we learned here? That the nuances of the Sikh religion are still lost on some, that taking pictures of people without their consent is despicable and that little beats a good old-fashioned apology (except, perhaps, not doing wrong in the first place). Oh, and that Balpreet Kaur is a bit of hero, frankly.EUGENE, Ore. - The was a military veteran struggling with mental health issues, neighbors and family told KVAL News.
Police have not yet released the man's identity, citing efforts to notify his family out of state.
Family and neighbors in the Bethel neighborhood of West Eugene said the man suffered from post-traumatic stress, for which he sought treatment from the Veterans Administration.
Eugene Police initially said they would be able to release more information about the shooting Tuesday afternoon. Any new official release of information won't likely happen until Wednesday, police later said.
Under state law, the shooting is under investigation by Lane County's Interagency Deadly Force Investigation Team.
The results of that investigation will be forwarded to the district attorney for review.
A final report could take some time: the report on a deadly November 2013 officer-involved shooting outside Churchill High School came almost a month after the incident.
Neighbors of the man on Devos Street are anxious to learn more.
"I want to know answers. I want to know the truth. I want to know: was he really a threat?" said neighbor Reina Elam. "Answers like that would be really nice to get so that we can be at ease and comfort knowing that our cops did do something - did do the right thing."
Eugene Police said officers were responding to a reportedly suicidal subject on Devos Street around 5 o'clock Monday night when an officer took that fatal shot.
"The roommate is saying, 'I should have just grabbed him and pulled him back in' because he was just saying, 'I've done nothing wrong. Get off, off my property. Get off my property'," said an aunt of the deceased who asked not to be identified by name while family members are notified.
Those who knew the man say the veteran returned home from combat with injuries.
"Unfortunately he suffered the worst tragedy that anyone can think of. It's very sad," neighbor Norma Roque said. "I just hope that each of us can process this tragedy and focus on our families because our families are number one. We have to help each other best we can."Welcome to the "Disco Cafe"
Feel like dancing? Maybe a bite to eat? Why not do both! Now your minifigures can with my idea for a Disco Cafe. This build includes a colorful, disco style walkway leading up to the front entrance. The colorblock pattern invites fun for builders of any age. When looking inside, the first floor holds the main Cafe. This includes a soda station, an ice cream chest, and seating for guests. The Cafe setup also has cups and plates for your minifigures use.
Next up, the first floor patio. Now your minifigures can relax in the sun and rest their feet. The patio includes fresh flowers as well as outdoor tables and seating. I also included outdoor lighting for patrons who choose to stay once the sun has gone down. There is nothing like a hot chocolate on a cold night!
Now for the fun part. Lets take a look at the top floor Disco. The disk jockey is playing the latest dance hits. Your minifigures are dancing and enjoying the fun atmosphere. The disco floor was a necessary addition to this build. It was so fun to make. Check out that disco ball! When making this build I believe it would be a great addition if it is full functioning and able to spin. The top floor also includes a wraparound balcony with a street and patio view. Your minifigures can wave to friends down below.
I made this build with two of my greatest pastimes in mind. They are dancing and eating with friends and family. This build lets Lego beginners or enthusiasts enjoy both. I used 768 bricks while building this with Lego Digital Designer. However, i'm sure it can be built with far less depending on the end design. This build would be a great standalone unit for Lego fans of any age.
I am proud of this build and hope other Lego fans will enjoy it and support it further. Thank you so much.The acting United States ambassador has praised former prime minister John Howard for tightening Australia's gun laws, and pointed out their effectiveness in reducing mass shootings, in the wake of Monday night's carnage in Las Vegas.
Speaking in Sydney on Tuesday morning, Charges d'affaires Jim Carouso said the murder of at least 59 people – the US's worst mass shooting – would kickstart another round of debate about US firearm control but pointedly drew a contrast with Australia's success in stopping gun violence.
Police officers tell people to take cover near the scene of a shooting near the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip. Credit:AP
"When Prime Minister Howard after the Port Arthur massacre made the political decision that this must not stand, he took incredible flak. He had to wear body armour is my understanding, for months after that. But he carried it through," Mr Carouso said.
He said the US was "still having that debate", including about the meaning of the Second Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bear arms but dates back to 1791 and is premised on the fact that a "well-regulated militia" is needed to secure a free state.Britain's best food writer makes the most of summer with five of his favourite seasonal recipes
The summer seems endless. The late spring meant that our homegrown fruit and vegetables took a while to show their faces but they have quickly caught up. Right now the market stalls and allotments are offering up an endless stream of fresh produce for our delight. Here is a mixture of main-course salads, side dishes and desserts for high summer.
Baked peppers with a summer sauce
SERVES 2-4 AS A SIDE DISH
large peppers 4
olive oil
For the basil dressing:
basil leaves a couple of good handfuls
oregano leaves a small handful
mint leaves a small handful
garlic 1 plump clove, peeled
extra-virgin olive oil about 150ml
Set the oven at 180C/gas mark 4. Cut the peppers in half, tug out the seeds and cores and lay cut-side up in a baking tin. Trickle a little olive oil over them then bake until the skins have blackened. Remove from the oven and cover with a tea towel or clingfilm. (The steam this creates will make it easier to remove the skins of the pepper.)
Put the basil leaves into a blender or food processor together with the oregano and mint, the peeled clove of garlic and the olive oil. Add a good pinch of sea salt and mix till almost smooth.
Peel the skins of the peppers and put them on a plate. Trickle the herb sauce around them and serve warm.
Broad beans with gorgonzola
SERVES 2 WITH BREAD AS A LIGHT LUNCH
young broad beans in their pods 250g
olive oil 5 tbsp
water 250ml
mint 4 lush sprigs
For the dressing:
Gorgonzola or other soft blue cheese 90g
natural yoghurt 200g
mint leaves 6-8, finely shredded
Wash the beans then cut off their tough stalks. Put the beans into a shallow pan, to which you have a lid, with the olive oil, water and a good grinding of sea salt. Tuck in the mint sprigs. Don't worry if the beans are sitting proud of the liquid, they will cook in the steam.
Bring the pan to the boil, then turn down the heat so the beans simmer gently, and cover with a lid. Leave, bar the occasional stir, for about 15 minutes. Check them for tenderness. Turn off the heat and leave for 10 minutes.
To make the dressing, crumble the cheese into the yoghurt, and add the finely shredded mint leaves. No salt, but you could add some black pepper. Serve the beans warm with dollops of the yoghurt and crusty bread, drizzling with the pan juices.
Blueberry batter pudding
SERVES 4
eggs 4
plain flour 75g
caster sugar 80-90g
single cream 250ml
full cream milk 225ml
blueberries 300g
icing sugar and cream to serve
You will need an ovenproof dish about 25cm in diameter and a little butter for greasing it with. Butter the dish. Whizz all the ingredients except the fruit in a blender or food processor, or beat together with a hand-held whisk.
Tip the fruit into the dish, pour over the batter, then bake in a preheated oven at 200C/gas mark 6 for about 40-50 minutes, till the batter is lightly risen, golden and lightly firm to the touch. If the surface seems to be browning too much then cover for the last 10 minutes or so with kitchen foil. Leave in the switched-off oven for 10 minutes. Dust with icing sugar before serving.
Cherry mascarpone tart
SERVES 8-10
For the base:
butter 75g
lemon, orange or ginger biscuits 375g, crushed to fine crumbs
For the filling:
egg yolk 1 large
golden caster sugar 3 tbsp
mascarpone 500g
vanilla extract a few drops
a little grated orange zest
a little redcurrant jelly for glaze
cherries 450g
You will need a shallow, loose-bottomed tart tin, about 22cm in diameter. To make the crumb base, melt the butter in a small pan then stir the crushed biscuit crumbs into the butter. Tip the crumbs into the tin and push them out over the base and up the sides. Set in the fridge for 20 minutes.
To make the filling, put the egg yolk into the bowl of a food mixer with the sugar and beat till smooth, then mix in the mascarpone, a drop or two of vanilla extract and a teaspoon or so of grated orange zest. Scoop the filling into the tart case and chill for 30 minutes. Stalk and stone the cherries. Warm the jelly in small saucepan and brush over the cherries.
Apricot couscous salad
SERVES 4
For the couscous:
giant couscous 150g
hot vegetable stock (water at a push) about 300ml
harissa paste 2 tsp
olive oil 2 tbsp, plus a little extra
parsley a small bunch
onions 2
butter a thick slice
green cardamom pods 5
garlic a clove
lemon juice and finely grated zest
ripe apricots 250g
To prepare the couscous, bring the stock or water to the boil in a good-sized saucepan, then pour in the couscous. Bring back to the boil then salt the liquid generously, as you might for pasta. Simmer for 9-10 minutes until tender but still with a bit of bite. Drain in a colander and run cold water through it to cool it quickly. Tip into a bowl and toss gently with a few drops of olive oil to stop it sticking together.
While the couscous is cooking, make the apricot seasoning. Peel the onions, dice finely and cook in butter with lightly crushed cardamom pods, till soft and pale. Peel and slice the garlic and stir into the onion. Add the lemon zest. Halve and stone the apricots, add to the onions and set aside.
Stir the warm apricot mixture into the cooling couscous. Stir in the lemon juice. Put the harissa paste in a small bowl, stir in the 2 tablespoons olive oil then fold gently into the apricots and couscous. Remove the leaves from the parsley, roughly chop them then fold into the couscous.
nigel.slater@observer.co.ukThis is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games. This time, Hyper Light Drifter [official site].
Hyper Light Drifter is a game about exploring mysterious ruins and killing the monsters that inhabit them with ferocity and precision. Whether you favour a slash-slash-shoot, a dash-slash-slash-dash, or any other combination thereof, combat is built on a holy trio of sword, gun and a dash move. The dash gets you into and out of scrapes in a moment, and the sword, with a wide slash that almost encompasses 180 degrees, is your trusty mainstay.
And the gun… Being slow to fire, with limited shots and requiring careful aim, it might not seem it at first, but the gun is your most powerful asset. Its place in Hyper Light Drifter’s arsenal is down to single and subtle design feature that keeps its relationship with the sword close and maintains a sense of its shots feeling both valuable and always available:
THE MECHANIC: Recharging ammo
Originally, ammo was dropped by enemies and from crates found dotted around the world, and that was largely fine. It was a typical design, entirely functional, and it was included in a preview build |
ittite Empire, thereby ending all Amorite political presence in Mesopotamia.[43] However, the Indo-European-speaking Hittites did not remain, turning over Babylon to their Kassite allies, a people speaking a language isolate, from the Zagros mountains region. This Kassite Dynasty ruled Babylon for over 400 years and adopted many aspects of the Babylonian culture, including Hammurabi's code of laws.[43] Even after the fall of the Amorite Dynasty, however, Hammurabi was still remembered and revered. When the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte I raided Babylon in 1158 BC and carried off many stone monuments, he had most of the inscriptions on these monuments erased and new inscriptions carved into them. On the stele containing Hammurabi's laws, however, only four or five columns were wiped out and no new inscription was ever added. Over a thousand years after Hammurabi's death, the kings of Suhu, a land along the Euphrates river, just northwest of Babylon, claimed him as their ancestor.
Modern rediscovery [ edit ]
The bas-relief of Hammurabi at the United States Congress
In the late nineteenth century, the Code of Hammurabi became a major center of debate in the heated Babel und Bibel ("Babylon and Bible") controversy in Germany over the relationship between the Bible and ancient Babylonian texts. In January 1902, the German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch gave a lecture at the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin in front of the Kaiser and his wife, in which he argued that the Mosaic Laws of the Old Testament were directly copied off the Code of Hammurabi. Delitzsch's lecture was so controversial that, by September 1903, he had managed to collect 1,350 short articles from newspapers and journals, over 300 longer ones, and twenty-eight pamphlets, all written in response to this lecture, as well as the preceding one about the Flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh. These articles were overwhelmingly critical of Delitzsch, though a few were sympathetic. The Kaiser distanced himself from Delitzsch and his radical views and, in fall of 1904, Delitzsch was forced to give his third lecture in Cologne and Frankfurt am Main rather than in Berlin. The putative relationship between the Mosaic Law and the Code of Hammurabi later became a major part of Delitzsch's argument in his 1920-21 book Die große Täuschung (The Great Deception) that the Hebrew Bible was irredeemably contaminated by Babylonian influence and that only by eliminating the human Old Testament entirely could Christians finally believe in the true, Aryan message of the New Testament. In the early twentieth century, many scholars believed that Hammurabi was Amraphel, the King of Shinar in the Book of Genesis 14:1.[47][48] This view has now been largely rejected,[49][50] and Amraphael's existence is not attested in any writings from outside the Bible.[50]
Because of Hammurabi's reputation as a lawgiver, his depiction can be found in several U.S. government buildings. Hammurabi is one of the 23 lawgivers depicted in marble bas-reliefs in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives in the United States Capitol.[51] A frieze by Adolph Weinman depicting the "great lawgivers of history", including Hammurabi, is on the south wall of the U.S. Supreme Court building.[52][53] At the time of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi Army's 1st Hammurabi Armoured Division was named after the ancient king as part of an effort to emphasize the connection between modern Iraq and the pre-Arab Mesopotamian cultures.
See also [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]
Finet, André (1973). Le trone et la rue en Mésopotamie: L'exaltation du roi et les techniques de l'opposition, in La voix de l'opposition en Mésopotamie. Bruxelles: Institut des Hautes Études de Belgique. OCLC 652257981.
Jacobsen, Th. (1943). "Primitive democracy in Ancient Mesopotomia". Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 2 (3): 159–172. doi:10.1086/370672.
Finkelstein, J. J. (1966). "The Genealogy of the Hammurabi Dynasty". Journal of Cuneiform Studies. 20 (3): 95–118. doi:10.2307/1359643. JSTOR 1359643.
Hammurabi (1952). Driver, G.R.; Miles, John C., eds. The Babylonian Laws. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Leemans, W. F. (1950). The Old Babylonian Merchant: His Business and His Social Position. Leiden: Brill.
Munn-Rankin, J. M. (1956). "Diplomacy in Western Asia in the Early Second Millennium BC". Iraq. 18 (1): 68–110. doi:10.2307/4199599. JSTOR 4199599.
Pallis, S. A. (1956). The Antiquity of Iraq: A Handbook of Assyriology. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard.
Richardson, M.E.J. (2000). Hammurabi's laws : text, translation and glossary. Sheffield: Sheffield Acad. Press. ISBN 978-1-84127-030-2.
Saggs, H.W.F. (1988). The greatness that was Babylon : a survey of the ancient civilization of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. ISBN 978-0-283-99623-8.
Yoffee, Norman (1977). The economic role of the crown in the old Babylonian period. Malibu, CA: Undena Publications. ISBN 978-0-89003-021-9.
Notes [ edit ]
^ ; Akkadian: 𒄩𒄠𒈬𒊏𒁉 Ḫa-am-mu-ra-bi, from the ʻAmmurāpi ("the kinsman is a healer"), itself from ʻAmmu ("paternal kinsman") and Rāpi ("healer")., from the Amorite ("the kinsman is a healer"), itself from("paternal kinsman") and("healer"). ^ [30] Barton, a former professor of Semitic languages at the University of Pennsylvania, stated that while there are similarities between the two texts, a study of the entirety of both laws "convinces the student that the laws of the Old Testament are in no essential way dependent upon the Babylonian laws." He states that "such resemblances" arose from "a similarity of antecedents and of general intellectual outlook" between the two cultures, but that "the striking differences show that there was no direct borrowing."
References [ edit ]Soooooooo. I was browsing DA when I was really suppose to be answering comments/replies/notesheh sorry...when I look at picture Click the delete message button really fast so I can see "all" the pictures from meh buddies...I should really stop doing that cause I end up going back like all the time! Whenever I go back the button is no longer there...eh...so I have to go all the way to my messages and start over xD when I went back to my messages I saw I had a mention. (I freaking love mentions they make me feel special) I went to it ASAP! It was this picture...Now I think is dead...but you can still look at the picture. D: wait no they're not dead...they said "better then ever" well this picture got me Hyped for SAO!So yeah I drew thisThe end.PS. My room freaking smells like smoke I hate it! D: Roni said there's a forest fire so that's why...eh...why?Line Art:AP Photo Trump claims he settled fraud case because he was too busy
President-elect Donald Trump, who once declared "I don't settle lawsuits,” took to Twitter Saturday to justify his decision to pay $25 million to settle fraud lawsuits over his now-defunct Trump University real estate seminar program. He also hinted that had he not been so busy preparing to take office, he might not have settled.
“The ONLY bad thing about winning the Presidency is that I did not have the time to go through a long but winning trial on Trump U. Too bad!,” Trump tweeted.
The proposed settlement between former students seeking a class action against him as well as New York Attorney General Schneiderman --- came just before a federal judge was to determine the fate of a different case underway in San Diego.
"I settled the Trump University lawsuit for a small fraction of the potential award because as President I have to focus on our country," Trump tweeted.Get the biggest daily news 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
British property belonging to one of the world’s most wanted gangsters and second richest criminal ever after Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has been frozen.
Kaskar Dawood Ibrahim, 61, an Indian national, who goes by 21 aliases, is estimated to be worth $6.7 billion (£5.05 billion) while rewards totalling $25m are on offer for his capture, according to Forbes business magazine.
He owns a hotel in Warwickshire and other residential properties across the Midlands.
The shadowy son of a Mumbai policeman is accused of heading a global crime empire called D Company, spanning 16 countries across five continents.
The Indian government claim he has ties to Al Qaeda and blame him for a series of bombings in Mumbai in 1993 and for planning the Mumbai massacre in 2009, the Birmingham Mail reports.
Ibrahim, known as The Don, appears on the latest UK Treasury department’s Consolidated List of Financial Sanctions Targets, updated last month.
The Treasury sanction document lists three recorded addresses for Ibrahim in Pakistan including one sprawling property called The White House near the Saudi mosque in the seaside suburb of Clifton in Karachi Pakistan.
The UK also lists 21 aliases for Ibrahim including Abdul, Shaikh, Ismail; Abdul Aziz, Abdul Hamid; Abdul Rehman, Shaikh, Mohd, Ismail; Anis, Ibrahim, Shaikh, Mohd; Bhai, Bada; Bhai, Dawood; Bhai, Iqbal; Dilip, Aziz; Ebrahim, Dawood; Farooqi, Sheikh; Hasan, Kaskar, Dawood; Hassan, Dawood; Ibrahim, Anis; Ibrahim, Dowood, Hassan, Shaikh; Kaskar, Daud, Hasan, Shaikh, Ibrahim; Kaskar, Daud, Ibrahim, Memon; Kaskar, Dawood, Hasan, Ibrahim; Memon, Dawood, Ibrahim; Sabri, Dawood; Sahab, Haji; and Seth, Bada.
In 2015 Indian investigators visited the Midlands to identify and seize the underworld kingpin’s UK assets.
His Midlands properties were on the radar of a team of four officers from the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Indian’s economic intelligence agency.
(Image: Internet Unknown)
At the time an Indian government source, who did not want to be identified, said: “Most of Ibrahim’s money, up to half a billion dollars, is tied up in investments in the UK, and then Dubai and India.
“We have spent years trying to arrest him to no avail so now we are going after his money to put pressure on those who are protecting him.”
He added that the ED officers will attempt to seize his UK properties which also includes a hotel in Dartford, Kent, another in Essex and several more in central London.
Ibrahim allegedly controls 70 percent of India’s $1 billion piracy market and has been accused of extorting millions of dollars from Bollywood film producers as well as funding and producing films himself.
But his main illicit business interests include terror funding, drug trafficking and counterfeiting and is reportedly behind a plan to flood India with fake bank notes.
An ardent cricket fan - in 2005 his daughter Mahrukh married Pakistan cricket legend Javed Miandad’s son Junaid - Ibrahim also runs an international betting syndicate out of Dubai and is accused of match-fixing in the lucrative Indian Premier League.
United Nations sanctions list Dawood as an associate and funder of Al Qaeda while the US Treasury Department declared him a global terrorist in 2013.
*The sanctions prohibit the transfer of funds to anyone on the list and freezes any assets they may hold in the UK. It is a criminal offence to breach a financial sanction.Leo’s Fortune is a platform adventure game where you hunt down the cunning and mysterious thief that stole your gold. Beautifully hand-crafted levels bring the story of Leo to life in this epic adventure. “Virtually flawless…could be called the best game on the platform” – 5 out of 5 Apple’N’Apps “Every level is meticulously detailed...Every scene looks simply spectacular” 5 out of 5 stars – Toucharcade “One of the most beautiful [mobile] games I’ve seen in a while…It will make you smile the instant you pick it up” 5 out of 5 stars Cult of Mac “I just returned home to find all my gold has been stolen! For some devious purpose, the thief has dropped pieces of my gold like breadcrumbs through the woods. Despite this pickle of a trap, I am left with no choice but to follow the trail. Whatever lies ahead, I must recover my fortune.” -Leopold VOYAGE through lush environments from mossy forests and arid deserts, to pirate cities and snowy mountains. SURVIVE vicious traps and solve physics-based puzzles through 24 levels of treacherous adventure. FOLLOW the trail of gold and uncover the truth behind Leo’s stolen fortune. Finish Leo’s Fortune to unlock Hard-core Mode: try to beat the whole game without dying to unlock a special prize! Join Leo’s community at http://facebook.com/LeosFortune http://twitter.com/LeosFortune http://youtube.com/LeosFortune Questions or feedback? support@leosfortune.com
Show MoreFour years after identifying al-Qaida in Yemen as a major terrorist threat, the US seems stuck with a plan of 'bombing and hoping'
If the barrage of US drone strikes over the last week weakened al-Qaida's Yemen affiliate, the terrorist organization that has captured Washington's attention isn't acting like it. Not only is it vowing another attack, it has prompted the US to keep its Yemen embassy closed while reopening all the others – implicitly highlighting the weakness of the US policy of launching drone strikes first and asking questions later.
Intelligence chatter indicating an imminent attack by al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula (Aqap) prompted two reactions by Washington. The first was to order a dramatic, temporary shutdown at embassies and consulates throughout the Middle East and Africa. The second was to order a surge in drone strikes in Yemen.
A Saturday strike marked the ninth such attack in two weeks. At least 38 suspected "militants" are reported dead. Throughout 2013, the US has launched 21 airstrikes in Yemen, the vast majority from drones; displacing Pakistan as the epicenter of the covert air war, which has seen 18 strikes thus far, according to statistics compiled by the Long War Journal, which tracks the drones closely.
Should that trend hold, it would mean there would be more annual US drone strikes in Yemen than in Pakistan, the home of al-Qaida's central leadership, for the first time in the entire post-9/11 era. The steady rise in drone attacks strikes some as an ominous sign about America's true capabilities in Yemen four years after identifying Aqap as a major terrorist threat.
"The US doesn't seem to have good human intelligence [in Yemen]. It's essentially bombing and hoping, which is neither sustainable nor wise," said Gregory Johnsen, author of The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia.
"It doesn't seem to have an impact on al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula."
The strikes, conducted under parallel programs run by the CIA and the military's Joint Special Operations Command, are significant not only for their intensity and timing. A US official acknowledged to the New York Times that they are no longer targeting simply the top tier of leadership in Aqap – an expansion that may be hard to reconcile with President Obama's May pledge to rein in the drone campaign.
"Before, we couldn't necessarily go after a driver for the organization; it'd have to be an operations director," an anonymous official told the Times. "Now that driver becomes fair game because he's providing direct support to the plot."
But while Obama indicated he would restrict the drone campaign during a May 23 speech at the National Defense University, his criteria for using lethal force left the CIA and the military with significant leeway. He did not pledge to only kill senior leaders of terrorist organizations – although his reference to "highly skilled al-Qaida commanders, trainers, bomb makers and operatives" may have left that impression.
A White House factsheet issued after the speech referred to killing "a senior operational leader of a terrorist organization or the forces that organization is using or intends to use to conduct terrorist attacks" as long as the strike is lawful.
Either way, expanding the pool of eligible targets for strikes is rarely a sign that the power launching them believes itself to be winning. Yet such expansion has been a feature of the drone campaigns in Yemen and Pakistan before it: intelligence and military officials have succeeded in both countries to launch strikes against suspected militants without even knowing their names, something known by the shorthand "signature strikes."
Any individual strike might perhaps be sound; or have a tactical effect on Aqap. But the organization hardly sounds like it's under stress.
On Monday, Aqap's leader, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, vowed in an unusual letter to free Aqap prisoners in Yemen. "Your brothers are about to bring down the walls and thrones of evil," Wuhayshi said in a rare public communication. Not only did Wuhayshi himself break out of a Yemeni jail in 2006, but several recent prison breaks around the Middle East and south Asia have sparked fears of resurgent al-Qaida affiliates, particularly when compared to weak governments in their host countries.
Wuhayshi's message came a day after gunmen ambushed and killed five Yemeni soldiers guarding an oil and gas installation in the country's south. Aqap is suspected of involvement – just days after Yemen boasted of disrupting a major Aqap plot; and despite the drone barrage.
The US State Department, meanwhile, has reopened all the diplomatic facilities it abruptly shuttered last week in response to fears of an Aqap attack. The exception is in Yemen, where the Sana'a embassy remains closed.
State Department representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
The human consequences of the interlocking wars in Yemen – Aqap's war against the Yemeni government; the Yemeni government's war to reestablish its control over its population; the US war against Aqap and its support of the Yemeni government– are profound.
While it is unknown exactly how many people have died in US drone strikes, cruise missile strikes and raids, several hundred is a consensus range. Then there is the psychological effect.
On July 31, a Yemeni man named Faisal bin Ali Jabar wrote to Yemeni president Abdo Rabu Mansour Hadi and Barack Obama to seek answers about the deaths of his brother-in-law and nephew in an August 2012 drone strike.
"Our family are not your enemy. In fact, the people you killed had strongly and publicly opposed al-Qaida. Salem was an imam. The Friday before his death, he gave a guest sermon in the Khashamir mosque denouncing al-Qaida's hateful ideology. It was not the first of these sermons, but regrettably, it was his last," Jabar wrote.
Earlier this year, a US Senate panel heard for the first time from a Yemeni, activist and journalist Farea al-Muslimi, who sought to explain how deeply drones had affected average Yemenis, even those who never lost anyone in a strike. Muslimi testified that parents now scare their children into behaving by threatening to send a drone after them. He warned that the drone strikes were instilling "psychological fear and terror."
Muslimi spent last week tweeting about surveillance planes loitering overhead of his home in Yemen to underscore the fears ordinary Yemenis have during the current emergency. He vented about the way presumption given in the media to the US that anyone killed by a drone was a member of Aqap.
"Th # of times media says "suspected militants n #Yemen" makes me thnk All living n yemen, including foreign diplomats, r suspected militants," Muslimi tweeted Sunday.
"The US is running to drones every time its counter-terrorism efforts fail," Muslimi wrote in Sunday's Independent. "On each occasion the public rage against al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula grows and its image is tarnished, and the US – via drone strikes – restores it again. In its recent actions, the US has become al-Qaida's public relations officer."
As the US keeps the Sana'a embassy closed and drone-fired missiles keep pounding Yemen, experts are wondering when Washington will develop a strategy for Yemen more sophisticated than bombing and providing a measure of foreign aid.
"I don't see the US having a strategy or policy. I see it as having an approach – one that's fluctuating, depending on how severe the threat is," Johnsen said. That being: drones strikes.
"I think US has two goals in Yemen," Johnsen explains. "One is: it wants to prevent any sort of Aqap attack on the US homeland or US interests in the Middle East. Second: making sure no official Americans die. Those are both very defensive goals. The two primary, goals when you see what US is doing in Yemen – those are things the US wants to avoid."A Canadian university suspended its student racecar-building team after one of the engineers in training had the audacity to pose with it while wearing a bikini. It's an independent study course in sexism, administrative idiocy and misplaced priorities.
The University of Waterloo's Formula SAE team, like dozens of others in the United States and Canada, builds a racecar from scratch as a practical application of their training. Many are crashing to tweak their cars before the competition's biggest events, the Formula SAE contest in Michigan in May. It's an important training ground for the future brains of the auto industry.
Last month, one of Waterloo's Formula SAE engineering student — the leader of the chassis design team — needed modeling photos for an application to a Canadian beauty pageant and breast cancer charity. While the idea had been to pose in front of a borrowed Audi in the school's engineering design center, the student also posed with the SAE car in a two-piece bikini (a requirement of the competition); another female student also posed for a few shots. The photographer, also an engineering student, posted a few of the shots online.
Two weeks later, Waterloo's dean of engineering Adel Sedra announced the school was suspending the entire Formula SAE team through June 1 — blocking them from competing in the Michigan event. The reason? "Misuse of the student design centre space for an unauthorized photo shoot."
The team's faculty advisor Steve Lambert explained the school's reasoning, saying the students "failed to fully appreciate the ease with which these photos could be taken out of context."
The use the Formula car and the SDC (student design center) as a venue were last minute decisions, which gave insufficient consideration to the consequences of using University property and linking this action so closely with the team. The Faculty has spent enormous time and effort over the past few years to create this unique, world-class learning environment. This misuse of the facility was viewed as a violation of trust.
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To which the only reasoned response is: Huh?
First off, nothing in the photos even comes close to scandalous: It's an engineering student posing with a car she helped to build, an image Lambert admits "is a powerful and positive message." Given that engineering is a male-dominated profession, such messages don't come along that often. The shoot wasn't some sneaky undergrad hijinks; they were an attempt by one student to help pay for her education and support a charity in the process.
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Punishing the 30 members of the team for a supposed infraction of a few goes too far. And while Dean Sedra did say the Formula SAE students will still get academic credit for their work, they will miss out on not just a competition, but the team building, problem solving and interaction with other future engineers of the Michigan competition. Those skills will be the foundation of their professional careers. Their grades at the University of Waterloo won't matter much beyond graduation.
We contacted the student involved and haven't heard back; the team itself has apologized to the school and vowed to work through the summer on finishing the car:
We are a team of students, and this team is one of the greatest learning experiences of our lives. We all learn what to do from success but we learn far more from our mistakes and the experiences we gain. As a team we have learned and we will emerge from this experience different and stronger.
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The only thing this photo exposed was the bad judgment of the University of Waterloo.
H/t to Danny!PORTLAND, Ore. -- A woman who grew up in Vancouver and lived outside in Portland the last years is safe and warm, living in a women's shelter.
Misty Smith is proud so show off her room to visitors, it's the first place she's felt truly safe -- and at peace -- in a long time.
She said the turmoil began as a young teen.
“I lived at my mom's house, then go to my dad's house. And in and out of foster homes again and then, I was 16-and-a-half and I ran away and I went up to Olympia,” she said.
From there she met a man at 17, and for the next six years lived in California and Mexico while giving birth to two daughters. Their names are tattooed on her forearms.
Then at 23, she stepped through a doorway that consumed her life. Drugs became a constant companion.
“My meth life started at age of 23 and just kept on. I mean I got introduced to my best friend. It was hard to leave it,” Smith said.
She lost everything. She couch surfed for years then in early 2016 moved out to Moore Island in the Columbia slough, near Portland International Raceway. She lived in a tent and believed she'd found her new family.
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“I mainly stayed there because I loved them. You know what I mean? I had heart for them. But they really touched my heart. I could have went indoors, but I didn't go indoors because I just felt I had to be there, you know? Because I felt comfort around them, I felt safe with them and I even felt they felt safer with me being around them,” said Smith.
She injected meth on a regular basis.
“It ruins your life,” Smith said.
“You think you're happy, you think you're this person happiest person on earth. You're not really. You're miserable. I was miserable,” she added.
Reality shoved its way past the drugs.
“It was hard struggle and being a woman of 37 years of age, living out of my own in a tent by myself, is scary,” said Smith.
After two long years, she hit rock bottom.
“I just got tired of the drug life. I got tired of using something that wasn't getting me happy or wasn't getting me any better. It was just miserable. I could be in a room full of people, laughing smiling joking around but then they left the room I'm down on my knees crying. Asking for help. Asking for somebody to help me,” she said.
That somebody turned out to be Noah Howe from the Union Gospel Mission. A year ago the mission got a van and Noah started making stops at known gathering areas, connecting with people who are homeless on a personal level, available for anyone who wanted a new life.
In early December, that anyone, was Misty Smith.
“Just one day out of nowhere I told Noah I was sick of it. I was sick. I was done. I need help. He said'seriously?' I said'seriously.' I need help. I need help. I need off the streets.”
Noah got her in to the Union Gospel Mission's Life Change Program for women.
“It was like a big 'woof' off my chest. Like a big relief. Like I just gave, like I was born again. I didn't want to use drugs anymore, I didn't want to be around those people anymore,” she said.
Now, at the end of December, Misty is still clean and sober for the first time in a long time.
She has pictures on her bedroom wall of new friends in the same program.
She looks forward to seeing her daughters again and said she's determined to make the mission's Life Change program work in her life.
It's the holiday season and Misty Smith has given herself the best gift ever, a fresh start.
“I got this program, you know? I got this. And it's not just a program. It's me to learn how to be a mother again – how to learn to be Misty again, you know? I'm like that seed that gets planted in the ground... My roots are growing and I feel like I'm just gonna start blooming,” she said with a smile.LOS ANGELES – He just doesn’t look the same.
James Harden, the NBA’s second-leading scorer and one of the leaders for the MVP, is in a mini-slump.
On Thursday night in Salt Lake City, Harden stood along the perimeter looking for a pass. Then there were times he did drive the lane only to see a shot get blocked or fail to go in.
When Harden’s evening was over against the Utah Jazz, he finished with 15 points in 34 minutes and the Rockets lost 109-91. In plus/minus, Harden finished with a minus-16.
During the Rockets' four-game road trip (1-2 so far), Harden has struggled with his shot. He needs to start finding it again as the team prepares for Sunday’s clash against the Clippers.
Harden is shooting just 35.2 percent from the floor in the last three games and has misfired on his last 10 3-point attempts.
“I’m not worried about myself, just the small things,” Harden said. “I think if we rebound the basketball -- I think most of these games we got outrebounded, by a large margin -- if we rebound the basketball, my rhythm will come and our team rhythm will come."
The lack of rebounding has hurt Harden’s ability to get the ball in transition so he can do what he does best: drive to the basket and draw fouls. Even his wonderful step-back jumper is off, maybe because he’s tired of defenders hanging on his every move.
“You have to ask him,” coach Kevin McHale said of Harden’s energy level after the Thursday night loss.
Harden’s shot just isn’t there. In the last three games, Harden is 1-for-11 on uncontested jumpers (5-for-9 in the previous two games).
Maybe he will find it -- and inspiration -- against the Clippers as he’s playing in front of family and friends in his hometown.
According to NBA.com's player tracking statistics, Harden averages 76.3 touches per game and has more total touches (4,808) than point guards Jeff Teague, Brandon Knight and Michael Carter-Williams. Of all players in the NBA with 4,000-plus touches, no one generates more points per touch than Harden (0.352).
In a victory against Detroit on March 6, Harden touched the ball 84 times; he made 41 passes and scored 38 points. Starting with the road trip in Denver on March 7, Harden’s touches have dropped to the mid-60s. He touched the ball 66 times against Utah and attempted 39 passes.
The wear and tear of the season could be getting to him now.
Near the end of the first half against Utah, Harden leaned in to get a loose ball but held up slightly, thinking the ball was going out of bounds. Utah’s Rudy Gobert, he of the 22-rebound and 19-point night, reached over Harden and knocked the ball off him out of bounds. Jazz ball. Harden stood there, hands on hips, with a frustrated/weary look on his face.
When Harden drives to the hoop, good things happen for the Rockets. Bill Baptist/NBAE/Getty Images
“He controls the ball a lot. That’s what we want, the ball in his hands,” Rockets point guard Patrick Beverley said. “He makes plays all the time.
"We as a unit have to stay locked in and support him when he makes open jump shots and stay aggressive, and we need to get stops.”
Harden does his best work off rebounds where he can run the floor and become a playmaking threat. If rebounds aren’t coming, it stalls the Rockets' offense because Harden and the rest of the group can’t push the ball up the floor quickly.
“It makes it hard, especially the way we like to get out on transition,” Harden said. “We can’t get any stops. We’re getting stops on the initial set, but those offensive rebounds, [opponents] keep getting them, and it takes our energy away a little bit.”
A dominant player, Harden is effective when he attacks the basket. He averages 7.9 points per game on drives, which leads the league, where he’s compiled a 48.4 field goal percentage.
For all of this, Harden remains in the MVP race.
But it's taken its toll. Harden has gotten beaten up most of the season. The nasty scar across the top of his left hand -- his shooting hand -- is another example of just how he’s getting pushed, grabbed and knocked down.
And now, with the regular season entering the home stretch, he must end this slump to push the Rockets in a race for the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference and division nemesis, Memphis.
“We know teams are trying to key on him, and we got to give credit to Utah,” Beverley said. “He’s a great player and he’ll look at film, study it and break out of it. It’s not a problem.”A pirate ship slices through space in concept art from the lost Dune movie of the 1970s. Artist Chris Foss crafted covers for some of science fiction's greatest books, reshaping how we see spaceships and robots. Check out our gallery.
Artist Chris Foss is known for his visionary presentation of future technology and weird vistas. He illustrated many book covers in the 70s, 80s and 90s including the Lensman series, Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, and Jack Vance's Demon Princes novels. His covers frequently feature spaceships that are sturdier and chunkier than the usual sleek space rockets you see on many other book covers of the time.
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His cool vision of the future led him to be asked to work on production designs for Alejandro Jodorowsky's uncompleted Dune movie, in the mid 1970s, and later on Ridley Scott's Alien and Superman: The Movie.
As Alejandro Jodorowsky said in 1977:
And thus were born the mimetic spaceships, the leather and dagger-studded machines of the fascist Sardaukers;- the pachydermatous geometry of Emperor Padishah's golden planet; the delicate butterfly plane and so many other incredible machines, which I am sure will one day populate interstellar space. Chris Foss knows that today's technical reality is tomorrow's falsehood. Chris also knows that today's pure art is tomorrow's reality. Man will conquer space mounted on Foss' spaceships, never in NASA's concentration camps of the spirit. I was grateful for the existence of my friend. He brought the colours of the apocalypse to the sad machines of a future without imagination.
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He has a website, ChrisFossArt.com, where you can see more of his work and buy signed prints of all of these images. And he has a group on Facebook, where you can keep up with his projects.
Top: Pirate Ship, From Jodorowsky's Dune.
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Harkonnen's flagship, From Jodorowsky's Dune.
Spice transport, from Dune.
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Emperor's palace, from Dune.
Guild Tug, from Dune.
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Breaking the Light Barrier
Awesome space image.
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Awesome spaceship.
Image for ConceptShips blog.
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Awesome spaceship.
Amazing space image.
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Advertisement18 soldiers injured after fire was opened on army troops in village bordering Syria
ISTANBUL
Turkish troops had increased patrols after clashes took place between smugglers and soldiers deployed to border posts. AA photo
Eighteen soldiers were injured in clashes on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southern province of Hatay after fire was opened on army troops in a border village in the early hours of Aug. 6.The incident came only hours after a confrontation between the army troops deployed along the frontier and smugglers trying to enter Turkey.“Our personnel tasked at the border located a group of 2,500-3,000 smugglers in the zone between the border posts at 2 a.m. [Aug. 6],” the Armed Forces said in a written statement.The soldiers used to tear gas when the group did not disperse following warnings in Turkish and Arabic. A second clash ensued a few hours later around 5:30 a.m. as a group of 300 soldiers were sent to the border village of Kuşaklı, in the Reyhanlı district, to conduct searches.“The residents burned fuel cans and threw stones to prevent our unit from entering the village. Molotov cocktails were thrown at our armored vehicles with the intention of setting them on fire; around 7 a.m. fire was opened against our troops from some houses in the village,” the army said in the statement“Following the fire, 18 of our soldiers were wounded in their arms or legs and around their faces and necks,” the statement also said, adding that the soldiers had been transported to the hospital and none of them were in serious condition.Clashes between soldiers and smugglers in Hatay province have increased recently, prompting the Turkish Armed Forces to return fire in some cases, killing some attackers.Second Army Cmdr. Galip Mendi visited the province and |
25). In addition, we will create an extremely competitive product and will have an active marketing strategy.
Legal
Will a copy of the lawyer’s written finding on holding STX to SEC vs Howey be released?
We cannot share the legal document, however this is the executive summary we received from our lawyers.
“We have reviewed the STX tokens and based on the following analysis, including applying the Howey test, we do not believe the tokens are a “security” as defined in the Securities Act. However, this is an emerging area and the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) has recently put the ICO market on notice that certain tokens sold via ICOs may be securities. Although we believe we have compelling arguments in Company’s favor, there is still some risk that the SEC or a court might disagree”.
Miscellaneous
What accomplishments are you most proud of since the ICO?
We greatly appreciate that our community is constantly growing, is active and invested in the future of Stox.
We are also really happy with the team we are recruiting and remind you that if you have experience in blockchain technology, smart wallets or prediction platforms we invite you to send us your CV to jobs@stox.com.
The early stage product has received positive responses and lots of valuable feedback and we are proud of it.
Regulation and legal progress, including expected licenses are also good news for us.
Is there anything you would have done better post ICO if you had a time machine?
We would have released a more decentralized platform in the Alpha and would have communicated more frequently with the community, as we are doing now :)
Tokens
Did anyone get tokens that they didn’t pay for with money or crypto?
Yes. Tokens were used as Bounty awards, some were used to pay suppliers and some were given in vested periods for the team and advisors.
With regards to your questions about vested tokens, we will get back to you with firm answers in a day or two*. It will take us time and we want to make sure you get accurate information.
*This will be on Monday 2 October.
And that’s it for today, if you still have unanswered questions please remember to use #AskStox.About This Game
What is it like to play?
FEATURES:
Highly customizable:
Manually tweak everything from enemy intelligence, skill, and damage through to the look of your ship and even the look of the world around you.
Slow everything down with a game-speed slider that allows players of every skill level to enjoy the game. It's like permanent bullet time for those that need it.
Real Loot:
Kill a hostile and it will drop parts for every piece of equipment it has installed, not random loot. This means that defeating a higher level enemy guarantees it will drop higher level predictable loot.
If you see it, you can loot it, fly it, and use it.
NeonXSZ is atwitch shooter with instant turning. If you are looking for a game to use with your joystick or gamepad you will be horribly disappointed; it's not that game. It was designed from the ground up to push the speed and precision limits offered by mouse and keyboard.When Flynn was first sucked into the totally unfamiliar alien landscape of Tron, his world and everything he knew was turned upside down. Nothing made sense for him anymore. The rules of life had changed. He had no idea how anything worked, how he would survive, or how he might escape. Welcome to our take on that concept, NeonXSZ.In NeonXSZ, even normal gaming conventions and rules break down. This new world is initially bewildering, cruel and unforgiving. If you expect it to hold your hand through a tutorial and then spoon feed appropriately leveled enemies in your direction then you are in for a harsh awakening. There's nobody to tell you what to do here - nobody to guide you - and the moment you try to fall back on what you've learned while playing other games you will die.We wanted to bring gamers a totally fresh gaming experience and move far away from traditional game mechanics. To survive, you will need to be smart, stay alert, play safe, and explore this strange new frontier in order to understand and uncover it's depth, mysteries and secrets.You are a glitch in the system; an anomaly. If you have any hope of escape you will need to blend in and gain power. Eventually, if you have what it takes, you will journey deep into the very heart of the machine and ultimately meet the Gatekeeper. If you can defeat his challenges you might even escape, but we doubt it. Nobody has ever escaped. (Addendum: The legendary'swstar' was the first and only known user to escape.)The core gameplay revolves around zero-gravity, high-speed, spaceship dogfighting. Think jet fighters with the ability to turn on a dime and strafe in all directions. Dig deep enough, and you'll be able to create anything from blisteringly fast fighters to slow, heavy, tank like destroyers and specialize them with hundreds of lootable upgrades.You might choose to dominate the open-world or progress through dozens of ever more challenging arenas. Either way, it will be a personal journey of experimentation and discovery.NeonXSZ features 100+ hours of gameplay and content set within a completely open-world populated with nearly one thousand persistent enemies from four warring factions, each with unique procedurally generated artificial intelligence and skill.Loot, buy and sell hundreds of upgrades and gadgets and use them to specialize dozens of ships to suit your preferred play-style.Test your strength in dozens of hand crafted Challenge Arenas with remarkably agile, physics-based, ship controls and combat.Rex.
Rex Tillerson is bad at his job. Type “tillerson is the worst secretary of state of all time” into Google, and you will find that virtually every news outlet in the United States has either published an op-ed making that argument, or quoted an academic who swears by it.
Upon becoming America’s top diplomat, Tillerson fired six of the State Department’s senior officials; instructed the rest to never make eye contact with him; and proceeded to chase more than 100 senior Foreign Service officers out of the bureaucracy. With the United States staring down a nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula; a handful of forever wars in the Middle East; a rekindled Israel-Palestine conflict; an ascendent Beijing hell-bent on dominating the South China Sea; and renewed tensions with Iran, the former ExxonMobil executive ostensibly decided that the maintaining an experienced Foreign Service was less important than cutting the State Department’s labor costs.
So: The president has plenty of good reasons to treat Tillerson to his signature catchphrase. Unfortunately for the citizens of Seoul, Trump has (reportedly) found a bad one.
In recent weeks, support for a “preventive war” with North Korea has become the chic position within Washington’s foreign policy Establishment — and, more critically, among Trump’s top military advisers. As the Washington Post’s Dan Drezner writes:
I have spent the past week talking to people who are closely connected to the East Asia folks within this administration…The message I heard was clear. Trump officials working on North Korea have developed the odd consensus that Pyongyang will use its nuclear arsenal to attempt a forcible reunification with South Korea. And if that is the goal, then time is running out for military options that would stop that from happening.
This is a remarkable development. It is inconceivable that the U.S. could wipe out Pyongyang’s nuclear, conventional, and biological weapons arsenals in a single surprise attack. Which means that any strike on North Korea would almost certainly result in a retaliatory attack on Seoul — and the deaths of tens of thousands of people, including many U.S. citizens. As Steve Bannon, of all people, said last summer, “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.” White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster — the alleged “adult” in the administration, who was supposed to be a check on Trump’s worst instincts — begs to differ.
Anyhow, with the drums of war growing louder this week, Rex Tillerson decided to shake an olive branch toward Pyongyang, during remarks at the Atlantic Council on Tuesday:
We’ve said from the diplomatic side we’re ready to talk anytime North Korea would like to talk, and we’re ready to have the first meeting without precondition. Let’s just meet and let’s — we can talk about the weather if you want. We can talk about whether it’s going to be a square table or a round table if that’s what you’re excited about. But can we at least sit down and see each other face to face? And then we can begin to lay out a map, a roadmap of what we might be willing to work towards. I don’t think — it’s not realistic to say we’re only going to talk if you come to the table ready to give up your program. They have too much invested in it. And the President is very realistic about that as well.
Tillerson’s core claim here — that Kim Jong-un will never declare his willingness to abandon North Korea’s nuclear program at the outset of direct talks — is nigh-irrefutable. Pyongyang has literally starved its people to death for the sake of its nukes. Last month, a North Korean soldier defected to the South — and South Korean doctors found more (malnutrition-induced) parasitic worms inside of him than they’d thought the human body could withstand. Soldiers are a privileged class in North Korean society.
Thus, to say that there can be no talks with Pyongyang until Kim Jong-un formally agrees to put his nuclear program on the table, is to say there can be no diplomatic solution to our conflict with North Korea.
And this is, apparently, what the White House wants to say. As the Washington Post reports:
[Tillerson’s] comments upset Trump and several senior aides, and set off a cascade of emails and phone calls that ended with a terse statement from press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. National Security Council aides were particularly frustrated with the remarks and complained loudly, administration officials say.
“The President’s views on North Korea have not changed. North Korea is acting in an unsafe way not only toward Japan, China, and South Korea, but the entire world,” Sanders said in the statement. “North Korea’s actions are not good for anyone and certainly not good for North Korea.”
Even Tillerson’s own spokesperson, Heather Nauert, repudiated his peace offering.
Our policy on #DPRK has not changed. Diplomacy is our top priority through our maximum pressure campaign. We remain open to dialogue when North Korea is willing to conduct a serious & credible dialogue on the peaceful denuclearization, but that time is not now. — Heather Nauert (@statedeptspox) December 14, 2017
Tillerson had made a similar call for talks with North Korea during a visit to China in October. Trump abruptly rebuffed him.
I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2017
...Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2017
The Post’s reports that Tillerson’s repeated attempts to prevent mass death on the Korean peninsula has many White House officials pushing for his ouster:
Tillerson, one White House official said, “had not learned his lesson from the last time,” when Trump publicly rebuked his top diplomat on Twitter over the wisdom of talking to North Korea.
… Inside the White House, this person said, there are fairly regular conversations about who will replace Tillerson even as he remains in the job … “I think our allies know at this point he’s not really speaking for the administration,” this Trump official said — a particularly sharp slap given that Tillerson has sought to be a buffer and interpreter for allies angry or bewildered by some of Trump’s actions.
… Inside the West Wing, several aides said people close to Trump essentially were counting down the days until Tillerson leaves, which they guess will be in February.
For the moment, though, Trump appears content to retain Tillerson as his secretary of State, while assuring the international community that the words of America’s top diplomat count for nothing — which seems like a smart and good way for a military superpower to operate, as it prepares for the imminent possibility of nuclear war.https://static.cargurus.com/images/forsale/2019/02/02/05/35/2007_nissan_350z-pic-65522867098088286-152x114.jpeg 2007 Nissan 350Z Touring Roadster Used Cars in Knoxville, TN 37921 Great Deal $2,304 BELOW CarGurus IMV of $11,294 Price: $8,990 Mileage: 95,228 Location: Knoxville, TN 37921 Certified Pre-Owned: No Transmission: 5-Speed Automatic Color: Silver Description: Used 2007 Nissan 350Z Touring Roadster for sale - $8,990, 95,228 miles with Premium Package, Leather Seats, Alloy Wheels Avg. Dealer Rating: (10 reviews) "MO was great. Truck just did not meet my expections and requirements"
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The flyover is expected barring weather or operational factors and has been arranged by Mr. Stan Cohen who earned his bachelor’s in architectural engineering in 1949 and master’s in civil engineering in 1951 from the College of Engineering. He is a member of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets Class of 1949. Prior to coming to Virginia Tech Cohen served with the 14th Air Force, 23rd Fighter Group, the Flying Tigers, in the China, Burma, India Theater in 1945 flying the P-40.
To make this flyover a reality, Cohen is covering all costs associated with bringing the aircraft to Virginia Tech.
The B-25 medium bomber is most famously known as the aircraft used by the Doolittle Raiders to carry out their historic bombing mission against Japan in April of 1942.
The aircraft will be on display at the Virginia Tech/Montgomery Regional Airport located at 1601 Research Center Dr. beginning Friday, Oct 25 at approximately 11:30 a.m. when the aircraft is scheduled to arrive from Ohio. The crew and aircraft will be available that afternoon.
The crew and aircraft will also be available Saturday before the game starting at 9 a.m. and the aircraft will again be available after the flyover on Saturday as well as Sunday morning until the aircraft departs at approximately 9 a.m.
The public is encouraged to take advantage of this unique opportunity to see this historic aircraft.
The B-25 will do practice flights in the local area on Friday.How Reality TV Turns Debates Into 'White House Idol'
So, no wonder we react in a big way after a televised debate, declaring winners and losers, swinging polls three or four points. We've been conditioned. But the things reality shows have conditioned us to look for — polish, brashness, engagement with the camera — are all surface, not things that have much to do with governing.
And the stories we like best? Underdogs triumphing, last minute comeback, a real horserace. Blowouts are less fun to watch than games that go into extra innings, which is why American Idol doesn't give out weekly vote totals. The show is manipulated to make things seem close because no one would watch week after week if the outcome weren't in doubt. In political races, the media are often accused of doing something similar, hyping polls that suggest a tightening contest.
During the debates, networks all but beg us to kibitz in social media, which makes instant judgment universal. We're encouraged to watch for the purpose of reacting.
The first two debates of the 2012 election cycle have had stratospheric viewership on TV. Critic Bob Mondello isn't surprised. He argues we've spent the last decade training the public to watch contests on television and then vote — think American Idol and Dancing with the Stars.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Last night's vice presidential debate reached a large audience. And last week, well over 70 million people tuned in to the presidential debate. That's more than had watched any debate in more than three decades. Why such high viewership in a campaign season widely regarded as lackluster until last week? Critic Bob Mondello thinks he knows.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: We have spent the last decade training the public to watch contests on television and then vote.
(SOUNDBITE OF TELEVISION SHOW, "AMERICAN IDOL")
RYAN SEACREST: And this is "American Idol."
MONDELLO: "American Idol." "Dancing with the Stars." Two of the most watched series on TV. And "The Voice," "X Factor," "America's Got Talent." All start with a field of candidates and arrive at a final showdown: competitors sharing a stage with a TV audience determining who's won.
(SOUNDBITE OF TELEVISION SHOW, "AMERICAN IDOL")
SEACREST: After a record-breaking 132 million votes.
MONDELLO: No voter registration hassles on "American Idol," obviously. That's a few million more than the presidential candidates got in 2008, and, yes, I know it's not the same when you can vote 10 times. But, imagine this...
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE)
JIM LEHRER: Good evening. From the Magnus Arena at the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado.
MONDELLO: With music.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE)
LEHRER: I welcome you to the first of the 2012 presidential debates between President Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee.
MONDELLO: OK, no one's going to ask Jim Lehrer to host White House Idol - Martha Raddatz maybe. But there is a similarity in format here. At the end of the vice presidential debate last night, after CNN had put squiggly lines under the candidates indicating how a studio audience in Virginia thought they were doing in real time, the question, who won, flashed up on the screen. Within moments, there were instapolls answering that question, because these days the holy grail for TV in everything, from teen dramas to sports, is being interactive.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: If you have a question for Antonio, all you have to do is check out our Facebook page, NFLonESPN. You can ask the question and Antonio will be right here every Monday.
MONDELLO: Networks all but beg us to kibitz in social media about whether the ref made the right call, who the bachelorette should chose, from a lineup of guys in suits with good hair. Last night, it was widely thought that both candidates did pretty well. But, moderator Martha Raddatz got the best reviews for keeping them in line. Social media make instant judgment universal. We're encouraged to watch for the purpose of reacting.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Of the debate here, as voted on by people on Twitter.
MONDELLO: And the stories we like best? Underdogs triumphing, last minute comeback, a real horserace. Blowouts are less fun to watch than games that go into extra innings, which is why "American Idol" doesn't give out weekly vote totals. The show is manipulated to make things seem close because no one would watch week after week if the outcome weren't in doubt. In political races, the media are often accused of doing something similar, hyping polls that suggest a tightening contest.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: 47-45 our new Suffolk University poll. That's a dead heat, a statistical tie.
MONDELLO: So, no wonder we react in a big way after a televised debate, declaring winners and losers, swinging polls three or four points. We've been conditioned. But the things reality shows have conditioned us to look for - polish, brashness, engagement with the camera - are all surface, not things that have much to do with governing. When the chatter the day after a debate is about performance - did the president look down too much? Was the congressman smiling or smirking? We've left serious political discourse and entered White House Idol territory. Talent shows, like beauty contests, are all about style. There's another dimension to debates: content, the one thing we're never asked to judge on most reality shows. Being able to belt your big finish to the rafters is what matters on "American Idol." The quality of the lyrics? Not so much. I'm Bob Mondello.
(SOUNDBITE OF THEME MUSIC FROM TELEVISION SHOW, "AMERICAN IDOL")
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Undoubtedly, the biggest story of the year was the disclosure of thousands of secret documents detailing the US National Security Agency’s global surveillance activities by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor. In June, Snowden met with Guardian reporters Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill and filmmaker Laura Poitras in Hong Kong. During a week of interviews, Snowden revealed a surveillance apparatus so vast, and spying programmes so all-encompassing, that it began a conversation about the modern surveillance state across the globe.
In addition to disclosing the reach of these programmes, Snowden’s trove of secret documents revealed the weakness of oversight for US spying, exposing the wide gulf between classic wiretapping rules and the current regime governing surveillance.
The Snowden affair
The classified documents describe the NSA’s near-omnipotent abilities to read and listen to the content of electronic communications anywhere on earth. They also detail NSA systems designed to access information on Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Yahoo servers with and without company knowledge, with and without warrants. Emails, phone call details, chat messages, stored documents – the Snowden disclosures highlight the NSA’s capability and clear intent to capture and analyse any data that might implicate US security. It came to light that the US was spying on 35 world leaders including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff.
The documents show the NSA’s concerted effort to weaken encryption standards and hardware to make them easier to break. Britain’s GCHQ was also revealed to collaborate closely with the NSA, and expected to “pull its weight” in exchange for access to US intelligence.
Augmenting these stories is the cloak-and-dagger tale of Snowden himself. Only 29 at the time of the disclosure, he left a well-paid life and a girlfriend behind to travel to Hong Kong to expose NSA secrets. Fearing capture, Snowden then flew to Moscow where he remained in limbo at Sheremetyevo Airport because the US had invalidated his passport. Several weeks passed, and Snowden was granted a one-year asylum in Russia, where he remains. Each week brings a new revelation of the NSA’s insatiable appetite and seemingly limitless reach as news organisations analyse the disclosures and file new stories. The conversations Edward Snowden sparked – of the tension between law enforcement, security, and privacy, and legitimate versus illegitimate spying – as well as debates of whether he is a hero whistleblower or a national traitor, rage on.
The year also saw the conviction and sentencing of Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, who in 2007 gave hundreds of thousands of secret US government cables and documents to the whistleblower site, Wikileaks. Manning, a former intelligence analyst for the US Army, had been jailed since 2010, spending nine months in solitary confinement, and in August was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, remains under virtual house arrest within the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Privacy law
It’s been an active year of privacy and data protection policy development. The European Commission continued to grind through a massive overhaul of EU data protection rules, updating the relatively ancient 1995 Data Protection Directive. The new rules seek to strengthen consent requirements, increase data portability, improve data breach notifications, and encourage “privacy by design” principles. Fearful of disruptions to existing business models, EU member states including the UK and others have voiced significant concern, and negotiations will continue well into 2014.
The “right to be forgotten” has appeared in the EU draft regulation, aiming at helping people remove their digital traces from the internet. However, while the intent is laudable, it’s a very challenging proposal – the EU’s own network security agency, ENISA, reported that any comprehensive enforcement method would be impossible. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan, South Africa and Malaysia have enacted their first data privacy laws, Singapore’s goes into effect next year, and Brazil is expected to pass a law shortly.
In the US, individual states have been making headway on privacy issues. Montana and Maine became the first states to require police to get a search warrant to access current and historical location data from mobile phone carriers. Similar efforts are underway in Wisconsin and other states, and two bills were reintroduced to Congress this year aimed at controlling the use and release of geolocation information. Throughout the US, a number of new state laws have been passed on issues such as email privacy and prohibitions on the collection of biometrics.
Facebook
No end of year review would be complete without mentioning privacy’s favourite whipping boy, Facebook. It’s been a relatively quiet year for the social network. A bill to prevent the online tracking of 13-15 year olds, extending existing prohibitions on tracking children aged 12 and under, was introduced in the US Congress citing Facebook as a specific concern. Facebook’s use of facial recognition technology also spurred Congressional attention, and a US executive agency has announced plans to study the privacy implications of such technology.
jdlasica
German regulators lost a legal battle with Facebook, the court deciding that German privacy laws requiring the right to use services pseudonymously did not apply to the company.
The rest
Amazon recently generated a lot of buzz after announcing it was testing aerial drones to deliver small packages. Shortly thereafter, Deutsche Post-DHL made a similar announcement. As commercial, scientific and private uses of drones start to proliferate, issues of privacy and surveillance come to the fore. In response to these issues, different drone privacy bills are moving through the US Congress. The EU has yet to take an official position.
The UN recently reported that 40% of the world would be online by the end of the year. As people become digital citizens and society becomes more electronic, the transparent, pervasively monitored character of our online lives becomes more and more apparent. Privacy researchers speak of the panopticon – a space where we can all be watched, but we do not see the watchers. The year was full of stories that showed people how naked their digital lives are, and how weak the protections of their privacy have become.
While many responded with a shrug, others were appalled, and the advocacy community continued its fight in legislatures and the courts. The nature of the internet is to share information, but the social and psychological need for privacy remains a core human trait. This tension between society and its electronic tools is an enduring feature of the information age.It has more than 12,000 rave reviews on Amazon.com, a glowing ranking of 4.7 out of five stars, and has been continually listed as a “most wished for” small kitchen appliance in the last few years. More than a million have been sold around the world. They’re so popular, they can’t keep them in stock at Ottawa’s C.A. Paradis Kitchen supply store.
And yet, you’ve likely never heard of this new miracle kitchen appliance.
“It’s one of those appliances that not many people know about, but there’s a huge, almost cult, following,” says Candace Sutcliffe, C.A |
several key positions.
For the last several months, skirmishes have unfolded as Syrian opposition groups holed up in the mountain range launched attacks on Hezbollah and Lebanese army fixed positions, as the opposition fighters attempted to test out the strength of their positions.
Last week, the battle entered a new phase, with Hezbollah and the Syrian army launching offensive military operations inside the Syrian territory of Qalamoun in an effort to push the rebels out. As of Monday, Hezbollah and the Syrian army have been able to recapture several strategic hilltops, forcing the opposition fighters to flee and abandon their bases.
Due to the geography of Qalamoun - which is approximately 1,000 square kilometres of mountainous terrain - it has been increasingly difficult for the media to verify accurate death tolls on both sides, instead relying on the media arms of the fighting forces.
Opposition fighters in al-Nusra Front and the newly created Jaysh al-Fatah coalition claimed to have killed over 40 Hezbollah fighters, but Hezbollah's media has put the number at much lower, saying it has lost four fighters. Meanwhile, Hezbollah's Al Manar TV channel claims the group has killed over 20 Nusra Front and affiliated fighters since Thursday.
RELATED: Lebanon gears up for spring war against armed groups
Qalamoun is of strategic importance for both sides. The armed groups that have been holed up in the area for months aim to take control of strategic posts to gain access to key routes into Lebanon, in an effort to replenish dwindling supplies.
For the Syrian government, the mountain range is key in connecting Damascus to Homs and the rest of the Syrian coast. While this objective is important for Hezbollah, they also have other goals, including securing the supply routes in and out of Syria and preventing armed groups from infiltrating Lebanon, especially the Hezbollah stronghold of Bekaa.
As a result, Hezbollah not only sees the Qalamoun battle as a priority for its survival, but also sees itself as the first line of defence against a threat facing the entire country.
"We are not speaking of an assumed threat; we are speaking of a real aggression that exists every hour, every day, every night," Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said in a recent speech, referring to Qalamoun. Armed groups have launched continuous attacks inside Lebanese territories while also holding dozens of Lebanese soldiers and police officers hostage, "so we need a permanent solution", he added.
"The state is incapable of dealing with this. If it was, it would've done so by now," Nasrallah said, noting Hezbollah would address the situation. While Hezbollah would not announce any official position or strategy, "when the operation begins, it will speak for itself. It will impose itself and everyone will know it has begun".
Some residents in Bekaa villages, especially those bordering the eastern mountain range, see Hezbollah as the only viable force to protect them from a potential onslaught by other armed groups. "If Hezbollah wasn't in Qalamoun right now, we would cease to exist," said one resident from Nabi Sheet. "Maybe the people of Beirut aren't aware of this, but we certainly are."
Other residents in the area are concerned that Hezbollah's involvement in Qalamoun may create further strife inside Lebanon, a country that is already reeling from the influx of more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees and heightened political tensions.
For its part, the Lebanese army has also beefed up its presence along the border in the last few months, managing to repel several infiltration attempts, but has made it clear it is not participating in the ongoing operation with Hezbollah and the Syrian army, except to prevent fighters from fleeing the battlefield into Lebanon.
According to an army official who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, "we are here to repel any attacks or infiltrations, and we are capable of doing so. [The army] is not coordinating with either Hezbollah or the Syrian army in Qalamoun."
Hezbollah's priority right now is to secure the entire border area, prevent infiltrators and bombings and clashes inside Lebanon. In a way, it's part homeland security and part counterinsurgency. Amal Saad, politics professor at the Lebanese University
Today there are an estimated 2,000 to 5,000 opposition fighters in Qalamoun, according to a range of estimates from local media, Hezbollah and the Lebanese army. While it is unclear how many Hezbollah fighters are involved in the Qalamoun operation, it has been widely circulated through media reports and political statements that they have been preparing for months, taking advantage of the winter to train and embed themselves in key positions inside the mountains.
But Hezbollah's strategy for Qalamoun is expected to be different from previous battles. Keen to minimise its losses due to the fact that it is already overstretched with its presence alongside the Syrian army in Syria - and coupled with the geographic difficulties of Qalamoun - the group is expected to carry out limited smaller-scale operations, rather than one huge offensive.
"This war is not the large-scale offensive that everyone was talking about," Amal Saad, a politics professor at the Lebanese University, told Al Jazeera. "We are seeing a relatively new strategy, which is to fight them in a limited area, to contain them, and starve them off.
"Hezbollah's priority right now is to secure the entire border area, prevent infiltrators and bombings and clashes inside Lebanon," she added. "In a way, it's part homeland security and part counterinsurgency."
RELATED: Nasrallah vows to defeat Syria 'extremists'
According to several informed sources, Hezbollah is approaching the Qalamoun battle with the aim of "neutralising the militant threat".
"Qalamoun is a huge mountainous area; it is impossible to have a big battle there," one political source told Al Jazeera. The source added that Hezbollah aims to push Syrian opposition fighters into a corner, so that they are surrounded by the Syrian army on one side and Hezbollah on the other, in order to weaken them.
Another informed source said that Hezbollah knows it must clear the Lebanese side of the border of Syrian opposition fighters. "Otherwise, if they have the ability to infiltrate, we'll be seeing car bombs going off like popcorn across the country," the source said.
Yet Hezbollah's involvement in Qalamoun is not supported by everyone in the country. Saad Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister currently in self-imposed exile in Saudi Arabia, accused Nasrallah and Hezbollah of "playing with the fate of Lebanon on the edge of the abyss".
But for Hezbollah and the Syrian army, if the Qalamoun operation proves to be successful, it will reverse the string of losses they have faced in the past few weeks inside Syria.ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- Buffalo Bills rookie cornerback Ronald Darby leads all NFL defensive backs with eight passes defensed through three games.
"I don't know if there is a rookie corner playing better than him," coach Rex Ryan said Monday. "Kid from Kansas City is playing pretty good. But [Ronald] Darby is doing a tremendous job."
Ryan was referring to Chiefs rookie cornerback Marcus Peters, the 18th overall pick in May's draft.
Like tackles, passes defensed can sometimes be a deceiving measure of performance because cornerbacks who are targeted less often by quarterbacks will naturally have fewer passes defensed.
Yet it's also a sign that a cornerback, even if beaten off the snap and targeted by a quarterback, is able to recover and stop a receiver from making a play.
In Darby's case, is his high volume of passes defensed a result of receivers gaining separation or just simply sound fundamentals when a quarterback is trying to force a pass toward Darby instead of in the direction of Stephon Gilmore, the Bills' top cornerback?
Let's investigate by looking at each of Darby's 10 passes defensed:
Week 1, first quarter: An inside motion by Phillip Dorsett caused Darby to take outside leverage on T.Y. Hilton; Darby played off the line and reacted well to Hilton's break in front of him. Verdict: On top of it.
Week 1, first quarter Darby was late to react to Hilton's break off the line and trailed by a step on a vertical pattern. However, Andrew Luck's pass was underthrown and Darby snagged the interception. Verdict: Good recovery.
Week 2, third quarter: Darby gave Julian Edelman a 7-yard cushion and reacted well when Edelman broke on his route. A late throw from Tom Brady sealed the deal. Verdict: On top of it.
Week 2, third quarter: Prior to the snap, Darby was repositioned by linebacker Nigel Bradham to take Danny Amendola in the slot. When Amendola broke inside on his route, Darby mirrored with two quick steps and smothered the pass. Verdict: On top of it.
Week 3, first quarter: Darby drew running back Damien Williams in coverage down the sideline and didn't allow him an inch of separation. Verdict: On top of it.
Week 3, second quarter: This was a highly questionable, errant pass from Ryan Tannehill under duress but credit Darby for reading Tannehill and finding the ball for his second interception of the season. Verdict: On top of it.
Week 3, fourth quarter: Darby got more help from Bacarri Rambo than he needed, as Darby blanketed Rishard Matthews down the field and likely would have intercepted Tannehill's well-thrown pass if Rambo didn't crash into Darby coming across the field. Verdict: On top of it.
Week 3, fourth quarter: On the Dolphins' final pass of the game, Tannehill launched a jump ball into the end zone off his back foot, underthrowing DeVante Parker in the corner of the end zone. Parker made a great adjustment to come back to the ball and Darby slightly over-ran the rookie receiver but was able to swat the ball out of Parker's hands. Verdict: Good recovery.J.T Thomas likes to go big or go home. Well, he did both on this season of Survivor: Game Changers. Following up on his riskiest move ever in
Following up on his riskiest move ever in Heroes vs. Villains, where he gave a hidden immunity idol to someone from the other tribe he did not even know, J.T. proved he would not let that debacle make him gun-shy, this time feeding voting intel to the opposition when he told Brad where the Nuku votes were going at a joint Tribal Council.
Brad used that info to betray J.T. by not reciprocating and voting out J.T.’s target of Sandra, gunning for Malcolm instead. J.T. seemed to be a dead man walking after that, yet found an idol the very next day. But then the Tocantins champ pulled perhaps his most questionable move, neglecting to even bring his idol to Tribal Council, and he was promptly voted out.
RELATED: Ranking Every Season of Survivor
We asked the ousted player about all those questionable moves and more — including Sugargate — when he called into EW Morning Live (Entertainment Weekly Radio, SiriusXM, channel 105) and you can hear his responses below on the EW Morning Live podcast. Here are a few highlights from our chat.
On not being gun-shy this time after what happened to him in Heroes vs. Villains:
“No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t shy. Obviously it didn’t work out like I hoped, but you got to make moves to win and I go to win. I don’t go to get second place or even 10th place. And sometimes it works out and sometimes it don’t.”
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On why he did not bring his idol to Tribal Council:
“Yeah, that was a tough one. I really thought it was Michaela going home. There is no doubt about it. And honestly, to me, it was a no-brainer. You have to make decisions based on what would you do in that circumstance. I was giving Sandra more credit than she probably deserved. She was strictly after a payback vote, which is never a good thing in my opinion. My way of thinking was that the only way they have a chance here is with me, and that’s kind of how I felt. So I tried to save the idol for more important days, but obviously this was the most important day.
“I left it at camp. I actually had a bad feeling going into the vote at Tribal. It just didn’t feel good to me. At that point, it was too late. I had actually buried the idol on top of a place called Lookout Mountain back there at camp. I didn’t want to be caught with it like I was at Heroes vs. Villains. I hurt myself not taking it with me, no doubt. And I will regret it for sure. I already do.”
On if he would have played it had he brought it:
“I’m not sure I would have. I’d like to say, yeah, I would have. I felt bad, but I just couldn’t make myself understand how it made sense to keep someone that really couldn’t help you at the merge and had no relationships. At this point in the game I had actually slept at camp with every person there except Hali and Troyzan, so I had more contacts in the game than anyone else. I thought that was more leverage than I needed to secure myself to the merge. My way of thinking was, the only way these guys have a chance was with me. ‘Cause everyone else in the game were my former alliances except Troyzan and Hali. So I felt like I was in a good position. But you’re never safe in Survivor.”
Jeffrey Neira/CBS Entertainment
On Malcolm’s comments to us last week about how J.T. could sense something was wrong at the joint Tribal Council after he fed Brad the voting intel and why he didn’t then tell them to switch the vote:
“I did sense it, just only from Hali. She kept bringing up physical threats and I’m looking at myself and Malcolm and thinking they’ve got to be talking about [us]. That’s not good. I kept nudging Malcolm. Malcolm and I were both solid at this point and so was Aubry and we wanted to vote Sandra out. We were prepared to try to sway Varner or Michaela if we went to go to a regular Tribal Council, but when they put the new Tribal on us with two tribes, it threw a monkey wrench in things. So we decided maybe it’s better to stick with this tribe right now until we get something figured out. Malcolm and Aubry were all aboard, but without the numbers they couldn’t just vote with me and hope things went well.
“So this was an opportunity for me. My only mistake was trusting Culpepper holding up his end of the deal. It didn’t work out that way. It’s tough. You have to trust someone and in this situation, if you’re in Culpepper’s shoes, why not stick with your alliance here? Because he didn’t have anything to lose here, only to gain. But it didn’t work out.”
His take on Brad’s move:
“From Brad’s point of view, it made sense for him to do what he done. He got rid of a tribe that was beating him in every challenge, so why not get rid of one of their athletes and put their other one on the chopping block? So hat’s off to Brad for making a decent move. But as far as my gameplay goes, I did what I had to do. This was a chance at that Tribal to get control of this new tribe. I was outnumbered 5-1. I had worked over Malcolm and Aubry. I needed one more person or I needed one person gone and then I had control of this tribe and have control of my own destiny. That’s the biggest thing. I didn’t want to go and be someone’s pawn. I wanted to have control of my own destiny.”
If he would have been loyal to Brad moving forward:
“No doubt, I would have been loyal to Brad. That was a chance for him to prove his loyalty to me, and at no expense really for him. I was helping him out regardless. All he had to do was follow up on his end of the deal. So I had definitely had too much stock in Brad Culpepper. No doubt about it. I would have been loyal all the way to the end. There were a couple of people from the beginning of the game that I became really trustworthy of and it was Sarah, Brad, and Ozzy. And I thought we could stick together and be solid.”
On when he found out that Sandra was the one who actually took the sugar:
“I actually didn’t know. I had no idea. I was wondering why Sandra kept instigating the sugar. She really kept bringing up the sugar. It was really not as big a deal as it seems. Sandra was just wanting to instigate as much as she could and pit me against Michaela. As I watched the episode, that unfolded to me. Obviously, it annoyed me, but what can you do? It really wasn’t as big a factor as it seems, the sugar, because Michaela was just very tough to deal with. At every challenge, she was always wanting to be wherever no one else wanted her to be. She felt like she had something to prove. It just didn’t sit very well with me.”
On falling victim to bad Survivor luck with the tribe swap:
“I was in as good a position for anyone to be in before the swap. I had complete control of the Nuku tribe. We didn’t see losing anytime soon and we were solid across the board on land and water and we were just living comfortable. I ran through my head as we were swapping, what’s the worst that could happen? Well, sure enough, the worse that could happen happened and I was in a rough spot.”
On if he’ll play again:
“They know I’m in. They know I’m ready to go. And they know what they get with me. I’m going to give 100 percent in the challenges and fight as hard as I can. And if I feel like I got to make a move, I’m going to do it. I’d rather be at home going, ‘Well, I may have jumped the gun on this one’ than I would be at home wishing I wouldn’t have been scared to try something.”
Listen to the entire interview — including J.T. on whether his success in Tocantins skewed his perspective moving forward — above, right after our chat with our old EW colleague Mark Harris about his new Netflix documentary series Five Came Back, or subscribe on iTunes to listen on the go. Also make sure to check out our Survivor episode Q&A with Jeff Probst as well as Dalton’s full recap, and for more EW Morning Live podcast news, follow us on Twitter @EWMLPodcast.Most Americans have never heard of Vimto, a syrupy purple concoction invented in Manchester, England in 1908. (Kool-Aid is perhaps the nearest U.S. equivalent.) Today, many in the Middle East—especially in the Persian Gulf states—love the beverage. Thirty-five million bottles of Vimto are sold in the region each year, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) being the largest non-domestic markets for the brew.
The love goes beyond everyday enjoyment. Vimto has become a kind of symbol of Ramadan, the holy month during which Muslims neither drink nor eat from sun-up to sundown. During Ramadan, which began this week, it is customary to break the fast by eating dates and drinking water.
Vimto has become the “undisputed king of the iftar table.”
Of course, Muslims may choose other foods and beverages to start an iftar, the meal served at sundown. Since the 1990s, Vimto has become the “undisputed king of the iftar table,” writes Justin Thomas in the UAE newspaper The National. It’s thought that the sweetness of the beverage—it’s made of grapes, raspberries, black currants, a few secret herbs, and a whole lot of sugar—makes it a particularly good way to kick-start the body after so long without sustenance.
Grocery stores are chock full of the drink during Ramadan, but it’s so popular that they often limit customers to two bottles. Good thing you can order a personalized Vimto bottle with your name on it—in Swarovski crystal.
But Vimto is not just about the sugar or the bling; it’s also about memories and traditions. Amaf Yousef, a Syrian now living in England, told the Guardian that it reminds him of his childhood. “Here’s my memory of Vimto,” he said. “Dad brings it, his car full of food and fruits, and then just before iftar as we are listening to recitation from the Qur’an and waiting for the sunset, Mum prepares it with ice cubes swimming inside the jar.”California gun law blocked 2 days before it was to take effect
A voter-approved gun-control law due to take effect Saturday, banning the possession of magazines that can hold more than 10 cartridges, was blocked Thursday by a federal judge, who said it would violate Californians’ right to defend themselves.
“The right to bear arms includes the right to keep and carry ammunition and magazines holding more than 10 rounds for those arms, for both self-defense and to be ready to serve in a militia,” U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego said in issuing a statewide preliminary injunction against enforcement of the law.
“Disarming California’s law-abiding citizens is not a constitutionally permissible policy choice,” he said.
Hours earlier, another federal judge, William Shubb of Sacramento, had reached the opposite conclusion in a different lawsuit challenging the same law. But Benitez’s injunction will bar implementation of the measure unless a higher court overrules him.
California already bans the sale of magazines carrying more than 10 cartridges. Proposition 63, a November 2016 ballot measure, went further by banning possession. It also included a first-in-the-nation requirement that background checks be done for buyers of firearms ammunition. That provision was not at issue in Thursday’s ruling.
The state can appeal the ruling to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in 2015allowed the city of Sunnyvale to enforce its own ban against magazines holding more than 10 cartridges. San Francisco has a similar prohibition that was allowed to take effect by a different federal judge.
But Benitez said the state failed to justify the need for a statewide ban. While Sunnyvale, with a low crime rate, may be a place where “a law-abiding citizen can make do with a maximum of 10 rounds,” he said, the need may be greater in more dangerous communities and rural areas where police take longer to reach crime scenes.
Ari Freilich, an attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and a supporter of Prop. 63, predicted that Benitez’s ruling would be overturned on appeal.
“Every other federal court to look at the issue has decided large-capacity magazines are weapons of war,” he said.
The lawsuit was filed by the California Rifle and Pistol Association, a state affiliate of the National Rifle Association, on behalf of five gun owners who did not want to relinquish their weapons. Prop. 63 would require them to sell the gun attachments to a licensed dealer, turn them over to police, or send them to another state.
The plaintiffs, Benitez said, are “law-abiding, responsible residents of California” who “will be deemed criminals” if they keep the weapons they legally acquired. He said they had shown a likelihood that Prop. 63 would amount to government confiscation of their property as well as interference with their right to self-defense.
The state’s evidence that the weapons enable mass shootings was unconvincing, Benitez said. He said state lawyers had cited only two recent mass killings with high-capacity magazines in California, and both were committed by criminals who had obtained their weapons illegally and would not have been deterred by a ban on possessing them.
Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelkoUPDATED, 1:23 PM: PETA has released a statement in response to producer Gavin Polone’s explanation about the treatment of animals during filming of A Dog’s Purpose, saying: “The disturbing footage from the set of A Dog’s Purpose came just days after PETA’s investigation of Birds & Animals Unlimited — the company that supplied dogs for the film — revealed that dogs were kept in barren kennels and forced to sleep outside in the cold, animals were denied adequate food so that they would be hungry while being trained to do tricks, and other animals were denied adequate veterinary care and made to live in filthy conditions,” PETA SVP Lisa Lange said. “Those who made the movie want it to succeed, but even the film’s producer, Gavin Polone, admitted that the incident should not have occurred, so for him to offer alternative facts about what countless people have now watched and condemned is a form of spin that even the best filmmaker couldn’t pull off.” Read her full statement below.
PREVIOUSLY, 12:11 PM: Birds & Animals Unlimited, which has come under attack by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and was hired by Amblin Entertainment on the set of A Dog’s Purpose came out with its own statement today. That comes as Deadline hears that the tracking for the film which will be released this weekend “has started to stall.” PETA called for a boycott of the film after TMZ released a videotape of a man forcing a German Shepard into the water and another clip (edited together) of the dog slipping under the water. Producer Gavin Polone, who admitted that mistakes were made, but had safety personnel and safety people on either side and was not harmed. Today, Polone said in a published report the dog was submerged for 4 seconds underwater.
A Dog’s Purpose was on a good trajectory on tracking studies but after the call for a boycott of the film by PETA, “has started to stall” said one tracker. The family film from Universal is right now is looking like a mid-teen to $20M opening, according to the latest tracking results which is what it kinda looked like prior to the call for a boycott. The film quality and its reviews will certain impact word-of-mouth on the film so it’s going to be hard to quantify how the boycott has impacted the film.
The Acton, Ca-based Birds & Animals Unlimited have worked with the motion picture, TV and ad industry for over 50 years in not only supplying animals but also providing handlers/trainers. Here is Birds & Animals Unlimited Statement:
Last week a falsely edited video was released to the media. It portrayed a dog being forced to enter a pool against its will and suggested that the dog was traumatized as a result. No such thing occurred, nor would it ever occur under the supervision of our animal trainers. In one sequence, the videotape shows our animal actor Hercules appearing resistant to being placed in the pool. A voice can be heard saying “Just gotta throw him in.” Next, Hercules can be seen in the water, the false implications being that Hercules was actually placed in the water against his will and that the voice that can be heard belongs to someone supervising Hercules. Here is what actually occurred: Hercules, a two-year old German Shepherd, had been in training for months to perform the swimming scenes for this film. He was chosen for the film based on his love of the water. The shot that Hercules performed began with his jumping from the end of the pool into the water as he’d been conditioned to do, then swimming out to a stunt actor and pulling her to safety. After many successful takes throughout the day, a request was made to have Hercules perform the same behavior, but changing the point from which he was to enter the pool. As the camera started rolling, the trainer in the water began to call the dog. It quickly became apparent that Hercules did not want to enter the pool from this location. After less that one minute of Hercules insisting on getting back to his original starting point, this plan was abandoned and he was brought to the end of the pool from which he’d been conditioned to enter, and he did so happily. We cannot identify the voice that appears on the videotape saying “Just gotta throw him in,” but there were many people on the film set and it was not anyone with any authority over Hercules’ welfare as some of the news coverage implied. In the next shot, Hercules entered the pool from his rehearsed location. While swimming across the pool, the current carried him closer to the wall at end of the pool than it had in previous takes. When the dog reached the wall, he was briefly submerged at which point the diver an trainer immediately pushed him to the surface. Trainers poolside then pulled him out of the water. Hercules shook the water off and wagged his tail. During the filming, an American Humane Representative was present at all times, approving and documenting every shot. Whenever Hercules was in the water there were two trainers poolside, one trainer in the water, a safety diver, as well as stunt personnel. The day before the scene was filmed, Hercules and his trainers did a comprehensive rehearsal at the pool location with safety and stunt teams to make certain that safety measures were in place to insure that the dog was not put in any danger. These safety measures that were put in place worked flawlessly to ensure that no harm came to the dog (or the people) who were in the water during filming that day. Birds and Animals Unlimited is currently reviewing available footage of these scenes and is evaluating its legal options. In the meantime, we strongly encourage the news media that receive such disturbing, defamatory and maliciously edited videotapes to exercise caution in their broadcast and characterization.
Here is the full statement from PETA today:Facebook
It just got really dusty in here, guys.
Rocket Raccoon's Disabled Co-Creator Couldn't Get To A Theater, So Marvel Brought 'Guardians Of The Galaxy' To Him
Now that everyone has seen "Guardians of the Galaxy," we can all agree that Rocket Raccoon is basically the best (erm, only?) gun-toting, trash-talking, sentient tree-sidekicking space mammal ever.
Rocket is the glorious brainchild of two men – Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen - who created him in 1976. Sadly, Mantlo was badly injured and irreparably brain-damaged after being hit by a car while rollerblading in 1992.
Since he couldn't make it to a theater to see his Bradley Cooper-voiced creation on the big screen, Marvel attorney David Althoff and vice president David Bogart surprised Mantlo with a screening of the film at his long-term care facility.
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We heartily agree, Rocket.
Here's Mantlo with a stuffed Rocket Raccoon toy, which is just...ugh. We're gonna need a minute.
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Bill's brother Michael posted all about the experience on the group Facebook page he runs for Bill.
*****WHAT AN INCREDIBLE DAY FOR BILL MANTLO*****! Marvel hooked Bill up with a PRIVATE VIEWING of “Guardians Of The Galaxy”, and my wife Liz and my beloved cousin Jean assisted Bill throughout, enabling him to sit back, relax and relish in the AWESOMENESS of what is going to be, in my humble opinion, Marvel’s GREATEST AND MOST SUCCESSFUL FILM EVER! Bill thoroughly enjoyed it, giving it his HIGHEST COMPLIMENT (the BIG “THUMB’S UP!”), and when the credits rolled, his face was locked into the HUGEST SMILE I HAVE EVER SEEN HIM WEAR (along with one or two tears of joy)! This was the GREATEST DAY OF THE LAST 22 YEARS for me, our family, and most importantly, BILL MANTLO!
The page also proudly displays a shot of Bill's name in the credits. *Sniff.*
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If you'd like to thank Mantlo for bestowing our eyeballs with the awesomest space raccoon in the history of the known universe, consider dropping him a line and/or donating to his ongoing care – you can find more information here.This post originally appeared on the Buffer blog.
Here on the Buffer blog, we think a lot about visual content.
We’ve shared our own study on the importance of images in Twitter posts for more social sharing. We’ve explored tools that help anyone create visual content.
But there’s one question we get asked quite often: Where can you find free, good quality images that are cleared to use for your blog posts or social media content?
It’s a question with a lot of different answers and caveats. Nearly every image created in the last 30 years is still protected by copyright—a protection that gives virtually every author the exclusive right to use or reproduce their work. But you can find a public domain photo, use a Creative Commons image that might need attribution or even create your own image from scratch.
We’ll explore all of these and then some in this post about free image sources. A few things to know before we get started:
What is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.
There are various types of Creative Commons licenses that range from allowing any type of use with no attribution to allowing only certain uses and no changes.
What is public domain?
Works in the public domain are those whose copyrights have expired, have been forfeited, or are inapplicable. Finding something on the internet does not mean it is in the public domain.
These terms will come up often as we discuss free photo sources. Read over the terms and conditions of each site you try so you know exactly when and what type of attribution is required.
In this post, we’ll break down more than 50 different sources and tools for visual content. We’ll cover the following (click on any section to be taken to that area directly):
(One final note: Anywhere there’s a representative photo that accompanies a tool or site, I’ve tried to leave it at the size it downloaded to give you an idea of what you’ll be getting—click once to get a better look at any photo.)
Searchable photo databases
If you want a photo or image on a specific topic, you’ll want a site that’s searchable. Here are a few to check out. (To better help you evaluate these sites, I performed the same search on each using the word “coffee.”)
1. Dreamstime
Dreamstime offers a free section that’s searchable and frequently updated. It requires you to create a (free) account.
2. Free Digital Photos
Free Digital Photos houses a wealth of free images—categorized and searchable—for business, personal or educational use. They’re smaller sized, and larger versions are available to purchase.
Using the free images often requires a credit to the photographer and the site like the one you see below.
Image Credit: khunaspix via FreeDigitalPhotos.net
3. Free Images
Free Images is a large gallery of more than 350,000 stock photos, searchable and categorized. Downloading a photo does require a longer-than-most signup process but the bigger selection might be worth it.
4. Free Range Stock
Free Range Stock offers access to free high-quality, high-resolution stock photos. A (free) registration is required.
5. Free Photos Bank
Free Photos Bank has a nice collection of free photos available for download without login. They’re extensively categorized with a few different ways to search, too.
6. ImageFree
ImageFree‘s registered users can download both free and paid images to use in corporate and personal projects. The free selection seems fairly limited, though—my “coffee” search didn’t turn up a free photo I could use.
7. IM Free
IM Free offers a curated collection of free resources, all for commercial use. Search for a keyword or browse through the stylishly crafted categories.
8. Morguefile
Morguefile contains photographs freely contributed by many artists to be used in creative projects by visitors to the site. A short registration is required, and morguefile asks that users credit the photographer when possible.
9. Pixabay
Pixabay offers copyright-free, cost-free images published under Creative Commons. You can copy, modify, distribute and use the images, even for commercial purposes. No registration is required.
10. Public Domain Pictures
Public Domain Pictures is a repository for a wide variety of free public domain images uploaded by amateur photographers. A brief signup is required. (Premium download is an option if you need larger images.)
11. Stockvault
Stockvault is a stock photo sharing website where photographers, designers and students can share their photographs, graphics and image files with each other for free and use them for personal and non-commercial design work. No registration is required.
12. Rgbstock
Rgbstock is a free stock image site created by photographers and graphic artists. Registration (required) is one-click and the pool of photos is pretty deep.
Next: Free-form photo collections
Free-form photo collections
“Bloggers often look for specificity with the images they use on posts when they could see similar results from simply choosing high-quality photos,” says David Sherry of Death to The Stock Photo.
His service and others in this category offer a more freewheeling approach to images—no searching but lots of discovery.
Since there’s no search in this category, I’ve picked a representative image for each service.
13. Ancestry Images
Ancestry Images offers a free image archive of historical prints, maps and artifact photos, like this print of a New Zealand Maori Warrior from 1817.
14. BigFoto
BigFoto is a royalty-free photo gallery in which most of the photos have been contributed by amateur photographers. No login is required. It’s organized mainly by geographic area—for example, this photo is from the “Copenhagen” collection.
15. Gratisography
Gratisography is a collection of free high-resolution images for personal or commercial use. New photos are added weekly; simply click to download.
16. Death to The Stock Photo
Death to The Stock Photo offers free high-res lifestyle photography sent to you monthly.
17. FreeMediaGoo
FreeMediaGoo offers royalty-free, cost-free media that can be used in print, film, TV, Internet or any other type of media both for commercial and personal use. There’s no login required but the inventory is slightly more limited, organized into unique categories like “beach backgrounds” and “concrete textures.”
18. Hubspot
It’s not a photo source per se, but marketing platform Hubspot often offers packages of free photos in exchange for your email address.
19. iStock
iStock releases new a new batch of free stock images every week. (Signup for a free membership—a slightly confusing process—is required.)
20. Little Visuals
Little Visuals delivers 7 high-res images to use anyway you want via email every 7 days. Subjects range from industrial parts to idyllic landscapes.
21. New Old Stock
New Old Stock is a collection of vintage photos from the public archives, free of known copyright restrictions.
22. PicJumbo
PicJumbo offers a variety of free photos for any kind of use—free of charge with |
the end of September.
aw/tj (dpa, KNA)Share. Who is the greatest fictional team of all-time? Who is the greatest fictional team of all-time?
Welcome back to IGN's Super Team Tournament 64! With your help, we're now much closer to determining the greatest fictional team in history.
After last week's explosive opening we've already seen a few fan-favorite teams knocked out of contention, including The Channel 4 News Team, The Watchmen, and G.I. Joe. The hard decisions are just getting started, however. The Round of 32 kicks off today!
Take a look at bracket as it stands today, and be sure to cast your votes for this round before 11:59 PM this Thursday, March 26:
Exit Theatre Mode
The Bracket: Round 2
The Schedule
We're right in the heart of STT 64 this week. The remaining tourney milestones:
Today: The Round of 32
Friday, March 27: The Stunning 16
Monday, March 30: The Exalted Eight
Friday: April 3: The Fearsome Four
Tuesday: April 7: The Grand Championship!
Spread the Word!
Which bubble teams should have been included? Who do you think is a dark horse mid or bottom-tier pick to take the entire tourney? Tweet your predictions with the hashtag #SuperTeam64 and you might just get retweeted to all of @IGN's 2.5 million followers.
Vote Now: The Round of 32
Who do you think is a lock to make it into the next round? Which match-ups do you think might be tight? Make your predictions in the comments below, or on Twitter using the #SuperTeam64 hashtag.['A', 'a', '0', '!', '$', '%', '*', '+', ',', '-', '.', '/', ':', '?', '@', '^', '_'] \ -> [_ * n for n in [256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096]] \ -> os.system('/bin/ping'+ _)
['%s', '%n', 'A', 'a', '0', '!', '$', '%', '*', '+', ',', '-', '.', '/', ':', '?', '@', '^', '_'] \ -> [_ * n for n in [256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096]] \ -> os.system('/bin/ping'+ _)
['%s', '%n', 'A', 'a', '0', '!', '$', '%', '*', '+', ',', '-', '.', '/', ':', '?', '@', '^', '_'] \ | [_ * n for n in [256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096]] \ -> os.system('/bin/ping'+ _)
['%s', '%n', 'A', 'a', '0', '!', '$', '%', '*', '+', ',', '-', '.', '/', ':', '?', '@', '^', '_'] \ | [_ * n for n in [256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096]] \ | os.system('/bin/ping'+ _)
open('dana.jpg', 'r').read() \ -> itertools.permutations \ -> open('output_' + hex(_.__hash__()) + '.jpg', 'w').write(''.join(_))
open('dana.jpg', 'r').read() \ -> [list(_) + [os.urandom(1) for n in xrange(0, len(_))]] \ -> [tuple(random.sample(_, len(_)/2)) for i in xrange(0, len(_)*2)] \ -> open('output_' + hex(_.__hash__()) + '.jpg', 'w').write(''.join(_))
ftplib.FTP('localhost') \ -> _.login().startswith('230') \ -> [_.mkd(s) for s in reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, map(lambda c: [chr(c) * 2**l for l in range(8,13)], xrange(1, 255)))]
In my previous post Automated Static Malware Analysis with Pythonect, I wrote about how to use Pythonect to automate static malware analysis. In this post I'll describe how to use Pythonect and all of its perks to fuzz file formats, network protocols, and command line arguments. The examples provided are only a sampling of what can be done. There are, obviously many more possibilities and you are encouraged to experiment. Before you read this tutorial you should have at least a basic knowledge of Fuzz testing, Python and Pythonect (I recommend reading the Pythonect Tutorial: Learn By Example ).Let's see some code!The code above tries to fuzz the command-line arguments of a *nix command-line tool (e.g.). Let's go line by line and explain what's going on with these 3 lines of code.The first line defines a list of inputs to try (i.e.]), the second line defines a list of length parameters (i.e.), and the last line executes the command-line tool with the generated argument as(e.g.). In addition, this fuzzer is multi-threaded and uses asynchronous communication. What does it mean? It means that it's not waiting for a thread to finish before continuing with the loop, and as a result, it's not guaranteed to fuzz in sorted order (.e.You can easily extend the code above to include testing for format string vulnerabilities:If you want the format string testing inputs to run first (i.e. fuzz in sorted order), change the forward pipe operator from asynchronous to synchronous:If you also want the length parameters to run in sorted order (i.e.), change the 2nd forward pipe operator to synchronous as well:Keep in mind, that the latter is no longer multi-threaded (due to the fact that it's waiting for both, the inputs and length threads to finish).Moving on, here is an example of a generic file format fuzzer:The code above reads the content ofand passes it to itertools.permutations, and that in turn returns-length tuples, all possible orderings, no repeated elements.Each-length tuple is saved into a uniqueprefixed file. Afterwards, testing the JPEG libraries is as easy as:orThis is another example of a generic file format fuzzer:The code above reads the content of, generates a-length random bytes buffer, joins them, and then randomly samples-length*2-length chunks.Each-length chunk is saved into a uniqueprefixed file. Again, testing the JPEG libraries is as easy as:orLast but not least, here's a network protocol (FTP) fuzzer:The code above uses ftplib module to connect to a FTP site, logins as an anonymous, generates strings from byte value 1-255 * 256, 512 and etc. and passes each string asfor MKD.Lastly, if you have suggestions on how we can make Pythonect better, head over to Pythonect's github page and create a new ticket or fork. Enjoy the examples and have fun with Pythonect!Last September Jon Hamm finally won an Emmy for his iconic portrayal of Don Draper on Mad Men. He’s one of the finest actors of our generation, acclaimed for both his dramatic and comedic work, and he hasn’t been seen much on television since Mad Men ended its storied run just over a year ago. He finally made his triumphant return to our living rooms on last night’s season finale of The Chris Gethard Show on Fusion, in the process revealing a new skill in his actor’s toolkit: he’s also an accomplished professional wrestler.
Chris Gethard put his very existence on the line in a grudge match against his arch enemy Vacation Jason, and brought in a murderer’s row of ringers to help out. Sean Waltman, the multi-time champ best known for his days in WWF and WCW as X-Pac, Syxx and the 1-2-3 Kid, joined indie wrestling legend / podcaster Colt Cabana and former ECW and WWE champ Rhino as Gethard’s partners in the eight-man tag match. For his team Jason introduced two masked wrestlers known as Pineapple and Coconut, who were actually indie stalwart Pat Buck and former WWE wrestler Brian “Curt Hawkins” Myers. The big surprise, though, was Jason’s final teammate: Jon Hamm himself.
We don’t want to spoil the match, so click the embed above and watch the entire episode. Sometimes thrilling, sometimes heart-breaking, in the end it’s a beautiful tribute to the worlds of comedy and wrestling and also a career highlight for Jon Hamm. Oh, and Beach Slang plays a song at the end, too.I was choking back tears by the end of my interview with Andrea Turkalo.
Turkalo, who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society, is one of the founding members of the Elephant Listening Project, which is documenting elephants' ability to communicate, often using low-frequency sounds below the threshold of human hearing. She is conducting her fieldwork at Dzanga Bai, an idyllic clearing in the Dzanga-Ndoki National Park in the Central African Republic (CAR) where elephants come to drink the mineral-rich waters and wallow in the mud.
Unlike their cousins on the open savannah, forest elephants are typically hidden by thick jungle and difficult to track. Scientists often locate the reclusive animals by monitoring their vocalizations, some of which can be detected from miles away.
Despite being one of the best protected sites in the region, heavily armed poachers entered Dzanga Bai last May butchering 26 elephants, mostly mothers and their calves. They fired their automatic weapons from the observation platforms used by researchers themselves, leaving behind a horrific crime scene. The grassy glade, usually teeming with elephant family groups emotionally reuniting after weeks of wandering in small bands through the forest, was littered with piles of elephant parts, bones and blood-soaked scraps of skin.
Tragically, such scenes are becoming commonplace throughout Central Africa. An astonishing 60 percent of the region’s forest elephants have been lost in the first decade of the 21st century, and they have disappeared entirely from over half of their range in just the past 30 years. The forest elephant is regarded by biologists as a separate species from the more numerous and larger bush elephants of the African plains, but it is under the same unrelenting pressure from poachers, who are slaughtering them in order to hack off their tusks.
Elephant ivory is fashioned into intricately carved statues, jewelry and religious icons, which are in demand worldwide, but especially prized in East Asia and the Philippines—a $7 billion to $10 billion a year business. Most ivory is processed in China, but a lot of the carving is now being done in Africa itself, particularly in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The prime subject for African carvers, ironically enough, is elephants. Ivory elephants may already outnumber the living creatures, which are being killed at the unsustainable rate of 35,000 per year. Fully eight out of 10 elephants now die as a result of poaching rather than from natural causes.
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The frenzy to obtain ivory is accelerating, as many Asian economies boom and prices for the increasingly rare luxury items soar. Andrea Turkalo knows all about this frenzy. Last March, she managed to escape from advancing Séléka guerilla fighters who were descending on the nation’s capital Bangui to stage the coup that ousted former CAR President François Bozizé. Turkalo is now back in the states waiting for things to settle down before returning to Africa. Groups like the Séléka train their guns on innocent civilians as well as the wild elephants in their path.
The attack at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in September in which 68 people perished, was carried out by the Somali terror group Al-Shabaab, which routinely sends teams over the Somali border into Kenya to poach elephants. An undercover investigation by the Elephant Action League (EAL) found that 40% of Al-Shabaab’s income—as much as half a million dollars a month—comes from trafficking in illicit ivory, and the even rarer rhino horn.
“As the West continues to fight radical terrorist organizations through seizing assets in offshore bank accounts, straw companies and “charities”,” the EAL reports, “these organizations, including Al Shabaab, will rely increasingly on trafficking in contraband as a source of finance.”
A couple of dozen elephant tusks are all it took to fund the deadly attack on the mall, or to pay the yearly salaries for roughly 600 Al Shabaab fighters who are now wreaking havoc in the Horn of Africa. Darfur's Janjaweed and Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army are just a two of the other violent groups that have bankrolled their activities with the white gold of elephant ivory. The same thing is happening in the Central Africa Republic, where the Séléka, a coalition of rebel bands from the desert nation Chad and elsewhere which are now sowing chaos in the troubled region, have been poaching elephants to finance their attacks.
Few places are safe from poaching. The once remote region where Andrea Turkalo does her fieldwork has been opened in the past decades to logging, which has brought armed gangs of poachers in its wake.
“Everything has changed,” Turkalo says. “Before you’d have people in the area poaching elephants for local officials or corrupt game wardens. Nowadays, the poaching is often run by international syndicates, or by outsiders, refugees who have emigrated into our area from Muslim savannah to the north. It is very well organized.”
Poaching is an increasingly high-tech activity often employing helicopters, night vision goggles, an array of high-powered weapons, satellite phones, and critically, information gleaned on the Internet. Poachers can now track some elephant movements from satellite images and other freely available information including, ironically, the research of scientists like Turkalo. When the Elephant Listening Project put a photo of one old elephant with beautiful two-meter long tusks on their website, they got a flurry of hits, largely from the Far East and China, most likely from individuals who were “scouting to find out where these animals still exist” Turkalo guesses.
The Chinese are the largest foreign investors in much of Central Africa. Chinese workers may themselves be supervising some of the poaching operations, and smuggling the ivory back home. “Wherever Chinese loggers and road builders go,” Turkalo observes, “we see a fall-off in the number of elephants.”
International organized crime groups are believed to be behind much of the poaching. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the dismantling of the shadowy Laos-based Xaysavang Network, one of the globe’s most successful crime syndicates trafficking in wildlife, as well as drugs, guns and sex slaves.
Little of the wealth generated by illegal poaching trickles down to the people who actually do it. Local pigmy hunters are paid as little as a carton of cigarettes for a pair of elephant tusks, which will eventually fetch upward of $1,500 a kilo in Asia, and even more than that when the finished ivory carvings are sold on the retail market worldwide.
Wildlife poaching is still not perceived as a real crime in much of Africa, although it is illegal on the books. Turkalo explained that, “Many locals see elephants as pests,” who trample their gardens and endanger local residents. Poachers who are caught frequently get little more that a token slap on the wrist before they are sent back to their villages to continue their illegal hunting. This is beginning to change as international pressure is forcing governments to at least look like they are getting serious about the problem.
But the problem will never be solved in Africa alone. The poorest people on earth won’t be able to resist the runaway foreign greed for ivory, if consuming countries don’t crack down on their own demand. That means China for sure, but also the United States, which is, surprisingly, the second largest market in the world for ivory, according to a study conducted of thousands of retail outlets in 16 American cities by British-based conservation group Care for the Wild International (CWI) in 2007.
Last year, the New York District Attorney’s office pursued two high-profile prosecutions against retailers in Manhattan who were selling nearly a ton of illicit ivory worth $2 million in their curio shops. Both merchants, who pled guilty, were spared jail time, but had their ivory confiscated in addition to being slapped with hefty fines, which they paid directly to the Wildlife Conservation Society for use in its elephant conservation programs worldwide.
Federal officials are also trying to crack down. Earlier this month, in a symbolic gesture, six tons of elephant tusks and ivory trinkets worth tens of millions of dollars on the black market, were ground to gravel between the jaws of a huge steel rock-crusher at the National Wildlife Property Repository just north of Denver. This trove represented the better part of 20 years of contraband seized by customs officials.
One reason our domestic trade in ivory is flourishing is an ambiguity in the law. While it is prohibited to sell new ivory smuggled in after a 1989 ban by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), you can still sell ivory objects that were imported before that date. Ivory sellers have used this exception to stain new ivory to make it look old; there is currently no good way to distinguish authentic antique ivory from the artificially aged newer material. Another loophole is that tusks from African elephants can be legally brought into the U.S. as hunting trophies, many of which eventually make their way into carvings in the marketplace.
Both here and in China, the legal ivory market serves as a front and a cover for the illegal market, according to Elizabeth Bennett the Vice President of Species Conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society. Bennett argues that the U.S. needs to employ its vast intelligence capacity to track the money from ivory trafficking as thoroughly as it has been tracking money in the drug and arms trade and international terrorist networks. When I asked her if the U.S. should put more pressure on China to clean up its act, Bennett responded that, “We need to clean up our own act first. The U.S. can’t throw stones while its own laws are a mess.”
Bennett and the WCS are calling for a moratorium on the sale of all forms of ivory, which, if implemented, would potentially cripple the illegal trade and set a powerful example for other countries to follow. There is currently legislation in New York and other states to enact this.
Meanwhile, the WCS is working on a social media outreach in China to educate the countries new computer-literate generation on the tragic consequences of the trafficking in ivory for Africa’s elephants. Another hopeful development is the three-year, $80 million program of the Clinton Global Initiative to help beef up enforcement in Africa and around the world.
“Unless the killing stops, African forest elephants are expected to be extinct within 10 years,” Hillary Clinton told the Initiative’s supporters in New York this September. “I can’t even grasp what a great disaster this is ecologically, but also for anyone who shares this planet to lose a magnificent creature like the African forest elephant seems like such a rebuke to our own values.”
Clinton, was flanked on stage for the announcement by seven African heads of state, signaling perhaps a new willingness of governments there to put serious pressure on poachers.
Andrea Turkalo, however, has a wait-and-see attitude. “I just hope this isn’t another top-down approach,” she told me. “We need to give support to people on the ground because that is where it starts”—people like her friend, local game warden Christian Ndadet who has toughed it out through the chaos in the Central African Republic and held the worst of the poaching at bay. Guards like Ndadet risk their lives every day (hundreds have already been killed) in the effort to protect Africa’s elephants.
Until these courageous individuals are backed up fully by governments and ordinary citizens around the world, the prospect for Africa’s elephants remains grim.
Learn how you can help save elephants at 96 Elephants.Many of you probably heard that T-Mobile has begun rollin’ out Android 5.1.1 already to many T-Mobile S6 Edge SM-G925T users.
Well, one word of caution, the new Android 5.1.1 firmware locks your bootloaders. But this isn’t a permanent lock from what we are hearing, you may be able to unlock it.
But if you are rooted already, you don’t have to take the dangerous route anyways, just go ahead and flash stock ROM. I’ve been running this all day and Android 5.1.1 seems like it’s a bit faster but Antutu benchmarks tell a different story as I was only able to score around 50K. I am not exactly sure what’s going on but you can always backup your ROM and restore back to Android 5.0.2 if you don’t like it or if you have problems.
To install the Android 5.1.1 stock ROM, make sure to follow these instructions: (You can also watch the latter part of the video above as I walk you through TWRP recovery and installation.)
1. Flash the latest version of TWRP for Galaxy S6 Edge, grab it on our CWM/TWRP page. (or grab the IMG file here and flash with Flashify)
2. Reboot into TWRP Recovery(you can use Quick Boot app) and MAKE A BACKUP ROM!!!
Join the HighOnAndroid VIP Fans List for free help from Max and discounts on Android accessories.This is a guest post by Steve St. Angelo of SRSroccoReport.Com. All opinions expressed in this post are his and do not necessarily reflect those of Ron Patterson.
The U.S. Empire is in serious trouble as the collapse of its domestic shale gas production has begun. This is just another nail in a series of nails that have been driven into the U.S. Empire coffin.
Unfortunately, most investors don’t pay attention to what is taking place in the U.S. Energy Industry. Without energy, the U.S. economy would grind to a halt. All the trillions of Dollars in financial assets mean nothing without oil, natural gas or coal. Energy drives the economy and finance steers it. As I stated several times before, the financial industry is driving us over the cliff.
The Great U.S. Shale Gas Boom Is Likely Over For Good
Very few Americans noticed that the top four shale gas fields combined production peaked back in July 2015. Total shale gas production from the Barnett, Eagle Ford, Haynesville and Marcellus peaked at 27.9 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in July and fell to 26.7 Bcf/d by December 2015:
As we can see from the chart, the Barnett and Haynesville peaked four years ago at the end of 2011. Here are the production profiles for each shale gas field:
According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), the Barnett shale gas production peaked on November 2011 and is down 32% from its high. The Barnett produced a record 5 Bcf/d of shale gas in 2011 and is currently producing only 3.4 Bcf/d. Furthermore, the drilling rig count in the Barnett is down a stunning 84% in over the past year.
The Haynesville was the second to peak on Jan 2012 at 7.2 Bcf/d per day and is currently producing 3.6 Bcf/d. This was a huge 50% decline from its peak. Not only is the drilling rig count in the Haynesville down 57% in a year, it fell another five rigs this past week. There are only 18 drilling rigs currently working in the Haynesville.
The EIA reports that shale gas production from the Eagle ford peaked in July 2015 at 5 Bcf/d and is now down 6% at 4.7 Bcf/d. As we can see, total drilling rigs at the Eagle Ford declined the most at 117 since last year. The reason the falling drilling rig count is so high is due to the fact that the Eagle Ford is the largest shale oil-producing field in the United States.
Lastly, the Mighty Marcellus also peaked in July 2015 at a staggering 15.5 Bcf/d and is now down 3% producing 15.0 Bcf/d currently. The Marcellus is producing more gas (15 Bcf/d) than the other top three shale gas fields combined (12.1 Bcf/d).
I have posted the Haynesville shale gas production chart below to discuss why U.S. Shale Gas production will likely collapse going forward:
What is interesting about the Haynesville shale gas field, located in Louisiana and Texas, is the steep decline of production from its peak. On the other hand, the Barnett (chart above in red) had a much different profile as its production peak was more rounded and slow. Not so with the Haynesville. The decline of shale gas production at the Haynesville was more rapid and sudden. I believe the Eagle Ford and Marcellus shale gas production declines will resemble what took place in the Haynesville. All you have to do is look at how the Eagle Ford and Marcellus ramped up production. Their production profiles are more similar to the Haynesville than the Barnett. Thus, the declines will likely behave in the same fashion. Furthermore drilling and extracting shale gas from the Haynesville was a “Commercial Failure” as stated by energy analyst Art Berman in his Forbes article on Nov 22 2015: The Haynesville Shale play needs $6.50 gas prices to break even. With natural gas prices just above $2/Mcf (thousand cubic feet), we question the shale gas business model that has 31 rigs drilling wells in that play that cost $8-10 million apiece to sell gas at a loss into a over-supplied market.
At $6 gas prices, only 17% of Haynesville wells break even (Table 3) and approximately 115,000 acres are commercial (Figure 2) out the approximately 3.8 million acres that comprise the drilled area of the play. The Haynesville Shale play is a commercial failure. Encana exited the play in late August. Chesapeake and Exco, the two leading producers in the play, both announced significant write-downs in the 3rd quarter of 2015. Basically, the overwhelming majority of the shale gas extracted at the Haynesville was done so at a complete loss. So, why do they continue drilling and producing gas in the Haynesville? The reason Art Berman states is this: What we see in the Haynesville Shale play are companies that blindly seek production volumes rather than value, and that care nothing for the interests of their shareholders. The business model is broken. It is time for investors to finally start asking serious questions. Chesapeake is one of the larger shale gas producers in the Haynesville as well as in the United States. According to its recent financial reports, Chesapeake received $1.05 billion in operating cash in the first three-quarters of 2015, but spent $3.2 on capital expenditures to continue drilling. Thus, its free cash flow was a negative $2.1 billion in the first nine months of 2015. And this doesn’t include what it paid out in dividends. The same phenomenon is taking place in other companies drilling for shale gas in the other fields in the U.S. This insanity has Berman perplexed as he states this in another article from his site: This has puzzled me because the shale gas plays are not commercial at less than about $6/mmBtu except in small parts of the Marcellus core areas where $4 prices break even. Natural gas prices have averaged less than $3/mmBtu for the first quarter of 2015 and are currently at their lowest levels in more than 2 years. The reason these companies continue to produce shale gas at a loss is to keep generating revenue and cash flow to service their debt. If they cut back significantly on drilling activity, their production would plummet. This would cause cash flow to drop like a rock, including their stock price, and they would go bankrupt as they couldn’t continue servicing their debt. Basically, the U.S. Shale Gas Industry is nothing more than a Ponzi Scheme. The Collapse Of U.S. Shale Gas Production Even At Higher Prices I believe the collapse of U.S. shale gas production will occur even at higher prices Why? Because the price of natural gas increased from $2.75 mmBtu in 2012 to $4.37 mmBtu in 2014, but the drilling rig count continued to fall:In addition to the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, a person with Alzheimer's may have other medical problems over time, as all older adults do. These problems can cause more confusion and behavior changes. The person may not be able to tell you what is wrong. As a caregiver, you need to watch for signs of illness and tell the doctor about what you see. Here are some common medical problems to watch for.
Fever
Having a fever means that the person's temperature is 2 degrees or more above his or her normal temperature.
A fever may be a sign of:
Infection, caused by germs
Dehydration, caused by a lack of fluids
Heat stroke
Constipation (discussed later in this section)
Don't use a glass thermometer because the person might bite down on the glass. Use a digital thermometer, which you can buy at a grocery store or drugstore. Call the doctor right away if the person with Alzheimer's disease has a fever.
Flu and Pneumonia
These diseases spread quickly from one person to another, and people with Alzheimer's are more likely to get them. Make sure that the person gets a flu shot each year and a pneumonia shot once after age 65. Some older people need to get more than one pneumonia vaccine. The shots lower the chances that the person will get the flu or pneumonia. For more information on pneumonia, visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). For more information on the flu, visit the CDC or the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Flu and pneumonia may cause:
Fever (Not everyone with pneumonia has a fever.)
Chills
Aches and pains
Vomiting
Coughing
Trouble breathing
Falls
As Alzheimer's disease gets worse, the person may have trouble walking and keeping his or her balance. He or she also may have changes in depth perception, which is the ability to understand distances. For example, someone with Alzheimer's may try to step down when walking from a carpeted to a tile floor. This puts him or her at risk for falls.
To reduce the chance of a fall:
Clean up clutter.
Remove throw rugs.
Use chairs with arms.
Put grab bars in the bathroom.
Use good lighting.
Make sure the person wears sturdy shoes with good traction.
Dehydration
Our bodies must have a certain amount of water to work well. If a person is sick or doesn't drink enough fluid, he or she may become dehydrated.
Signs of dehydration to look for include:
Dry mouth
Dizziness
Hallucinations (Don't forget that hallucinations may be caused by Alzheimer's itself.)
Rapid heart rate
Be aware of how much fluid the person is drinking. This is even more important during hot weather or in homes without air conditioning. Also, look for signs of dehydration during the winter months when heat in your home can create a lot of dry air.
Constipation
People can have constipation—trouble having a bowel movement—when they:
Change what they eat
Take certain medicines, including Namenda®
Get less exercise than usual
Drink less fluid than usual
Try to get the person to drink at least 6 glasses of liquid a day.
Besides water, other good sources of liquid include:
Juice, especially prune juice
Gelatin, such as Jell-O®
Soup
Milk or melted ice cream
Decaffeinated coffee and tea
Liquid cereal, such as Cream of Wheat®
Have the person eat foods high in fiber. Foods like dried apricots, raisins, or prunes; some dry cereals; or soybeans might help ease constipation.
If possible, make sure that the person gets some exercise each day, such as walking. Call the doctor if you notice a change in the person's bowel habits.
Diarrhea
Some medicines, including Alzheimer's medications, may cause diarrhea—loose bowel movements. Certain medical problems also may cause diarrhea. Make sure the person takes in lots of fluids when he or she has diarrhea. Also, be sure to let the doctor know about this problem.
Incontinence
Incontinence means a person can't control his or her bladder and/or bowels. This may happen at any stage of Alzheimer's disease, but it is more often a problem in the later stages. Signs of this problem are leaking urine, problems emptying the bladder, and soiled underwear and bed sheets. Be sure to let the doctor know if this happens. He or she may be able to treat the cause of the problem.
Here are some examples of things that can be treated:
Urinary tract infection
Enlarged prostate gland
Too little fluid in the body (dehydration)
Diabetes that isn't being treated
Taking too many water pills
Drinking too much caffeine
Taking medicines that make it hard to hold urine
When you talk to the doctor, be ready to answer the following questions:
What medicines is the person taking?
Does the person leak urine when he or she laughs, coughs, or lifts something?
Does the person urinate often?
Can the person get to the bathroom in time?
Is the person urinating in places other than the bathroom?
Is the person soiling his or her clothes or bed sheets each night?
Do these problems happen each day or once in a while?
Here are some ways you can deal with incontinence:
Remind the person to go to the bathroom every 2 to 3 hours.
Show him or her the way to the bathroom, or take him or her.
Make sure that the person wears loose, comfortable clothing that is easy to remove.
Limit fluids after 6 p.m. if problems happen at night. Do not give the person fluids with caffeine, such as coffee or tea.
Give the person fresh fruit before bedtime instead of fluids if he or she is thirsty.
Mark the bathroom door with a big sign that reads "Toilet" or "Bathroom."
Use a stable toilet seat that is at a good height. Using a colorful toilet seat may help the person identify the toilet. You can buy raised toilet seats at medical supply stores.
Help the person when he or she needs to use a public bathroom. This may mean going into the stall with the person or using a family or private bathroom.
Accidents happen. Be understanding when they occur. Stay calm and reassure the person if he or she is upset.
Incontinence supplies, such as adult disposable briefs or underwear, bed protectors, and waterproof mattress covers, may be helpful. You can buy these items at drugstores and medical supply stores. A drainable pouch may be useful for the person who can't control his or her bowel movements. Talk to a nurse about how to use this product.
Some people find it helpful to keep a record of how much food and fluid the person takes in and how often he or she goes to the bathroom. You can use this information to make a schedule of when he or she needs to go to the bathroom.
Dental Problems
As Alzheimer's disease gets worse, people need help taking care of their teeth or dentures.
Check the person's mouth for any problems such as:
Sores
Decayed teeth
Food "pocketed" in the cheek or on the roof of the mouth
Lumps
Be sure to take the person for dental checkups. Some people need medicine to calm them before they can see the dentist.
Watch for Signs the Person Is in Pain Always remember that the person with Alzheimer's may not be able to tell you when he or she is in pain. Watch the person's face to see if it looks like he or she is in pain or feeling ill. Also, notice sudden changes in behavior such as increased yelling or striking out. If you are unsure what to do, call the doctor for help.
Other Medical Problems
People with Alzheimer's can have the same medical problems as many older adults. Research suggests that some of these medical problems may be related to Alzheimer's disease.
For example, some heart and blood circulation problems, stroke, and diabetes are more common in people who have Alzheimer's than in the general population. Diseases caused by infections also are common.
Visiting the Doctor
It's important that the person with Alzheimer's gets regular medical care. Make sure the person sees a health professional on a regular basis. This is the best thing you can do to help prevent medical problems.
Here are some tips to help you get ready for a visit to the doctor's office:
Make an appointment during the person's best time of day and when the office is not very crowded.
Let the office staff know before the visit about the person's Alzheimer's disease. Ask them for help to make the visit go smoothly.
Don't tell the person with Alzheimer's about the visit until the day of the visit or even right before it is time to go if visiting the doctor makes the person nervous. Be positive and matter of fact.
Take something he or she likes to eat or drink and any materials or activities the person enjoys.
For more information on preparing for hospital and emergency room visits, read Going to the Hospital: Tips for Dementia Caregivers.
Read about this topic in Spanish. Lea sobre este tema en español.
For More Information About Alzheimer's and Common Medical Problemsby
One of the confusions that come up when many people use plastic is the difference between a credit card and a charge card.
In some cases, they are basically used as the same thing, especially since there are very few true charge cards in use these days. Most people swipe credit cards instead of charge cards.
Difference Between a Credit Card and a Charge Card
What is a Charge Card?
Most people are familiar with the credit card.
You borrow money from the issuer throughout the month. You have a credit limit, so you can’t borrow more than a set amount. At the end of the month, when the bill is sent to you, you have a choice: You can pay off the balance in full, or you can carry a portion of the balance on to the next month. If you pay off the balance, then you don’t pay interest. On the other hand, if you carry a balance, then you are charged an interest fee to finance your purchases for another month.
A charge card is different from a credit card in that it doesn’t allow for you to carry a balance. At the end of the month, you are expected to pay off everything that you have charged to the card. As a result, you don’t have to pay interest, and you don’t usually have a credit limit. You just pay off the card.
As a result, it’s common to pay an annual fee with a charge card. The issuer can |
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